by Emma Wildes
“Oh.” Her gaze met his with scandalized alarm as she registered the presence of his stiff erection between them. Immediately, she squirmed away and sat up, clutching the sheet to her breasts, all satiny skin and luscious curves. “You told him to come right back.”
“I know that, unfortunately.” Lounging against the pillows, Trenton gave her a dark smile. “Count yourself reprieved, Miss Fairman. For now, at least.”
She flushed a little at his implication and said tartly, “So, what’s next, my lord? I am sure the rest of your brilliant plan is ready to set in motion now that we’ve been discovered in such a…shamefully scandalous position.”
“You mean stark naked in bed together? It is a might scandalous, but hardly shameful. I’m a man and you are a woman, a delightfully, enthusiastically sensual woman, I might add. Sex is a perfectly natural part of life.”
“If that is the explanation I am supposed to give my mother, you can think again, Lord Declan. Her one hope for our financial salvation was that I might marry well, even if there is little opportunity for socializing due to our impoverishment.”
“I’ve already told you, Jess, I realize I have no choice but to wed you, so stop fretting. I’m sure you’ll admit a wealthy earl is not a bad catch, and your mother and I are fond of one another. I am certain she will be amiable to my interest. Besides, the matter is settled once word is out. I am honor bound to marry you after deflowering you and ruining your reputation.” It was a little surprising, Trenton realized, that he wasn’t more appalled at the idea of suddenly becoming life-shackled to one woman. He’d resisted the idea of marriage so far simply because he’d never met a woman he wasn’t afraid would eventually bore him, both in bed and out.
Eyeing the young woman he had so thoroughly compromised the night before, with her silken pale hair, lovely smooth skin, and feminine features, not mention the splendor of her very well-shaped, alluring body, he wondered if Jessica Fairman might not just be able to hold his interest. She was vital and intelligent, undeniably beautiful, and what’s more—he had to face it—a handful of trouble.
What she needed was a man to curb her independent spirit and keep her in line, and, recalling her enthusiastic and uninhibited response to his lovemaking despite her innocence, a lover with both imagination and stamina.
He could handle both matters easily.
* * * *
Aunt Edna tapped her cane on the floor of the parlor, her eagle eyes sharp with reproof. “It’s in the blood, I tell you, Martha. The Wyatt family’s closets are veritably stuffed with rattling skeletons to bursting. Why, the old earl was every bit the rakehell his son has turned out to be, setting London on its ear with his notorious affairs. I doubt the boy could help himself.”
“Oh, dear,” Jessica’s mother murmured, clutching her handkerchief, her eyes slightly red from weeping.
Standing stiffly in the middle of the room, like a naughty child caught in a prank, Jessica said defensively, “Trenton is hardly notorious. Maybe a few whispers have circulated now and then, but he is basically an honorable man.”
The two older women exchanged glances. Her mother, sitting on a shabby settee that was fading into colors of soft pink and washed out green, cleared her throat. “If he is so honorable, perhaps you can explain, young lady, why he lured you into his bed? I’ve known him all his life, and I have to say, I would never have thought him to do such a thing.”
“You just said he is notorious for seduction,” Jessica pointed out caustically, deflecting the question.
“Not of proper young ladies,” her mother snapped back.
The late morning sun slanted in the long windows, making the room a little stuffy and exacerbating her growing headache. “So, you agree. He is honorable then?” Jessica asked sweetly, not certain why she was belaboring the point, though it did feel wrong to not defend her future husband when he was being vilified for something he wouldn’t have done at all under normal circumstances.
She needed to face it. The current situation was all her fault.
“Don’t be pert.” Her mother sent her a reproachful look. “I haven’t even gotten around to addressing your amoral behavior, Jessica Elizabeth Fairman. How could you risk your entire future for…for—”
Raising her brows, Jessica waited, wondering what would happen if she supplied something like “unbelievable pleasure” or “glorious sexual congress” or…
“—that,” her mother said flatly.
That. An inadequate word, certainly, to describe the wonderful things the notorious Earl of Declan had done to her body the night before. Suddenly, the situation was at least a little amusing, but perhaps it was hysteria due to the sudden tumble her life had taken into madness. Jessica stifled a weak laugh and said, “Mother, in case you haven’t noticed, Trenton Wyatt is a very charming, very attractive man.”
“Too handsome for his own good,” Aunt Edna said gloomily. “Always has been.”
Which was a little too close to the truth for comfort.
“This is not a disaster. After all, he is going to marry me,” Jessica stated, still in a state of disbelief over that development, but not willing to let her mother or her great-aunt see it.
“Better late than never,” her mother huffed. “Though he certainly shouldn’t delay. For all he knows, he’s planted a child inside you.”
Utter shock made Jessica go very still, the possibility of conception not something that had occurred to her yet this morning, not in the tumultuous aftermath of her discovery in the earl’s bed, her embarrassing departure from Declan Manor with the all the servants avidly watching, and—to say the least—her arrival home in disgrace. “Oh. I didn’t think of that.”
Throwing up her hands, her mother rose. “See? Goodness, Jessica. Are you that naïve?” Pacing to the window, still slim at fifty, with her blond hair now showing streaks of gray, caught at her nape and her shoulders drooping, her mother murmured, “I suppose this is my fault, for I have known that for years you were infatuated with Trenton and never discussed it with you.”
Off-balance that her mother—who usually existed in a sheltered world in which she ineffectually embroidered, played the pianoforte, and tried to ignore their tenuous circumstances—would have discerned such a thing, Jessica swallowed. “That’s not true.”
“Really?” Turning from the window, her mother looked skeptical. “You’ve followed him around since you were four years old, darling, trotting at his heels like a puppy whenever he was here, which was quite often when he and Stephen were in school and home on holiday. When you got older, you were more clever about it, but a mother knows these things—”
“Please say nothing to him of this absurd theory,” Jessica interrupted, controlling the panic in her voice with effort, “lest he suddenly feel I set out to trap him. It would hardly due to have him decide he didn’t wish to marry me after all because he’s been deceived.”
“Did you set out to trap him, girl?” Aunt Edna asked bluntly.
“No.” Grateful she was able to deny it honestly, Jessica shook her head.
“Lord Declan is here.” Their housekeeper announced from the doorway, her sallow face uncharacteristically flushed with all the scandalous excitement, her reddened hands clutched in her apron. “He wishes to speak with you, my lady.”
Giving her mother one last warning glance, it was Jessica who said, “Show him in, Mrs. Withers.”
* * * *
How could he not have noticed the deterioration of the house, Trenton wondered, tugging at his gloves as he waited. Taking them off and tucking them in his pocket, he glanced around. Ivywreath—as some long ago Fairman had christened the place—was not nearly as big as Declan Manor, but was still a large, rambling country house, and at one time, had been both gracious and inviting. Two large wings swept off a central foyer with a curving Elizabethan staircase, and though the interior was scrupulously clean, the wood floors looked worn, and the rug running the long length of the main hallway was both threadbare and
a little tattered.
The rest of the house echoed that air of vague shabbiness, though he could swear that when he had last visited a month or two ago, it had not been so pronounced. Or, he acknowledged to himself wryly when he followed the housekeeper toward the formal parlor, he had simply been absorbed in his own affairs and it hadn’t registered.
The gaze of three sets of female eyes fastened on him as he walked through the doorway, their varying expressions enough to send even a stalwart male running. Jessica looked poignantly lovely and distressed, her pale, golden curls caught back simply at her nape, a light blue gown flattering her slender figure. Her mother looked at him with understandable affront, her thin mouth set in a line, her eyes a much paler version of her daughter’s. Stephen’s great aunt, always a dragon of the first order, stared at him with curious and wickedly amused interest.
Rescuing heedless females was a damned uncomfortable business in some aspects, he told himself wryly as he steeled himself for the confrontation to come. “Good afternoon,” he bowed to the room at large.
“Trenton.” Martha Fairman’s condemnation was heavy in that one word, said with utter reproof.
How did one apologize for ruining an innocent maiden? Luckily, it wasn’t a circumstance he’d encountered before. Actually, it wasn’t luck at all, for he had made it a point to avoid inexperienced, marriageable females completely. Summoning his most charming smile, he said ruefully, “I don’t suppose the fact that I can’t think of anyone I’d like better as a mother-in-law will redeem me, will it?”
“A proper courtship would have been a much better way of going about all this,” Martha said tartly, but her expression softened a fraction.
“Nothing that happened was planned,” he responded, ignoring the way Jessica’s brows winged upward. “Though I realize you disapprove of our impetuous actions, I can’t say I am displeased with the outcome.”
“It is high time you marry and do your duty, true,” Mrs. Fairman agreed with a sigh. “I suppose I can understand how all this came about. You are both young, and certainly not the first to do this all backwards.”
“Your daughter,” Trenton said honestly, “is very beautiful.”
“And you are a handsome young rogue,” Aunt Edna declared with a signature thump of her cane. “Let me say both shame on you, Declan, and welcome to the family. Tell me, when’s the wedding?”
“Today.”
Though Jessica had yet to speak a word, she echoed, “Today?” in a shocked gasp, and when he glanced over at her, her cheeks were pink and her hands fisted in the material of her gown. She said, “You can’t be serious.”
“Indeed I am.” Trenton’s smile was bland. “I have arranged for a special license. The ceremony will be this afternoon at the chapel at Declan Manor. Afterwards, I am afraid we have to depart for London. I have business that needs attended to, and the plans were laid some time ago.”
Martha murmured, “Perhaps that’s best. With you legally married and not around to remind the wagging tongues, the scandal will die down quickly.”
His actual motivation was to get Jessica as far away from any possible contact with whatever she’d been involved in. Reading the communication she’d been carrying certainly hadn’t eased his mind in any way, for it had been in French and nothing but a bunch of gibberish. When he had her alone again, he had every intention of finding out just exactly what she had been doing and for whom. In the meantime, he wanted her out of range of her dubious associates.
Whoever they were.
Damnation. He certainly hoped she had been telling him the truth, and he wasn’t about to marry a French spy.
Chapter 4
Lifting a forkful of flaky crust, Jessica took a small bite, covertly watching her husband across the table as he sipped his wine. Not even the heavy feel of the ring on her finger—a beautiful sapphire and diamond setting that sparkled in the candlelight and was a Wyatt family heirloom—could dispel the aura of fantasy. However, she knew the very real, dangerously attractive Trenton Wyatt sitting across from her was no illusion, and his brooding stare both disturbed and intrigued her.
They were legally man and wife now, the ceremony brief and final.
He had barely spoken to her since.
Abstractly, he lowered his glass, a faint frown between his fine dark brows, still watching as she finished her meal. From time to time, the innkeeper bustled in and surveyed the private dining room, making certain there was enough wine, or whisking away an empty plate, but otherwise they were very much alone.
Patience had never been one of her virtues. Finally setting aside her fork, Jessica said abruptly, “Have you already found my company so dull, my lord, that you cannot summon up polite conversation?”
He did not react except that the corner of his mouth lifted slightly in the ghost of a smile. “Forgive me. Am I being remiss by not chatting your ear off, Jess? It seems to me in the carriage on our journey, you were the one who informed me you did not wish to talk any longer.”
That was true enough, but only because his choice of topic, from almost the moment he handed her into the vehicle and they rolled down the drive toward London, was that infernal communication—the one he’d taken from her the night before. Jessica said coolly, “I did not mean I didn’t wish to speak with you at all. I simply felt we had exhausted that particular venue of conversation.”
“A wife should not keep secrets from her husband.” His dark gaze was direct.
“Everyone,” Jessica countered, “has secrets, my lord. Don’t fool yourself.”
“You are my responsibility. I think I deserve to know exactly what you have been doing these past months. After all, here we are, wed in the eyes of the law and the church. Your folly could easily become mine.”
The edge of presumption in his voice was irritating. Yes, it was true. Perhaps she had been in need of his help, and he had sacrificed to provide it, but she was not a child. “I will keep your sentiments in mind,” she said with a false smile.
A muscle twitched in his cheek. “Don’t underestimate my commitment, Madame, to our union and what it represents. Maybe I didn’t court and win you in the usual way, but I married you, and you are my wife.”
An unexpected statement from a man who had avoided permanence in any of his relationships for so long, Jessica didn’t bother to hide her skeptical expression. She muttered, “I fully realize that.”
“By the devil, Jess, do you?” Trenton stood suddenly, his gaze quickening with purpose. “If you won’t be honest with me, perhaps then at least you can be more accommodating in other ways.” He swept her a mocking bow and straightened, holding out his hand. “Shall we retire?”
Retire. He meant, of course, to the room upstairs with its small quaint windows overlooking the lazy roll of the river outside, and the big comfortable-looking bed. She’d heard Trenton specifically instruct the innkeeper he wanted a room with a large bed, as it was his wedding night. The proprietor had fallen all over himself to please his titled newlywed guests. Warmth crept into her cheeks, and a treacherous sort of excitement uncoiled somewhere deep inside her body as she set aside her napkin and rose, taking his outstretched hand.
He ushered her out of the cozy little dining room and up the staircase, the half-timbered walls and low ceilings proclaiming that the Rose and Thistle Inn had been built centuries ago. The evening before, Trenton had swept her into bed so quickly that she hadn’t had time to feel nervous, but tonight she felt a certain sense of trepidation, mixed with wicked anticipation, of being held in her handsome husband’s arms.
In the arms of her dream lover, Trenton Wyatt.
Well, not just being held in his arms, Jessica acknowledged to herself silently as he politely opened the door for her and she stepped inside their room, but to be beneath him, nude and willing, spreading her legs for his carnal possession, letting him touch her in the most scandalous, pleasurable ways.
“Tell me, are you sore?” Her husband closed the door behind him and lat
ched it, the click sounding very loud.
That indelicate question, asked so blandly, made her glance sharply up at him, her cheeks instantly heating. Surely he wasn’t asking…
“Between your legs,” he clarified bluntly, his brows arched in question as he tugged his cravat free and discarded it. “I have no desire to cause you discomfort, and it isn’t unusual for a woman who has experienced sexual intercourse for the first time to be a little tender for a day or two.”
Jessica wanted nothing more than to tell him it was none of his business. The topic of her body, especially that particular part of it, was not something she was used to discussing, but in a way, she supposed, it was his business. Blushing furiously, she said in a strangled voice, “Perhaps a little sore.”
It was mortifying, but her husband simply looked amused at her obvious embarrassment. “We can wait, then, to consummate our marriage in the traditional way,” he told her casually, shrugging out of his jacket. “I’d hardly enjoy it if you were gritting your teeth the entire time.”
It was a little unexpected, but she couldn’t quite quell the surge of disappointment she felt over his so blasé dismissal of the act he had seemed so very intent upon the evening before. True, she was a little nervous, but then again, it had been gloriously pleasurable, and he had certainly seemed to enjoy himself.
Trenton laughed then, a low, rich sound, his dark eyes glimmering as he moved to touch her face, his long fingers sliding over her cheek. “You blush so prettily, Jess,” he murmured in a low, smooth voice that made a shiver run down her spine. “And do not worry. I didn’t mean to imply I wasn’t going to make love to you. Believe me, my beautiful, secretive bride, I couldn’t keep from touching you if my life hung in the balance. However, there are many, many ways we can pleasure each other without my having to actually mount and penetrate you.”
The fact he had so easily seen her regret made her feel gauche and young, but Jessica was so unwillingly fascinated by what he had just said, she couldn’t help but ask, “How? I admit I am not especially educated when it comes to sex, my lord, but—”