by Reid, Stacy
“I would dance every dance with him if propriety permitted.” While she highly esteemed Henrietta’s opinion, Evie was still directed by her own.
Ignoring her friend’s appalled look, Evie squared her shoulders as her mother approached with the Duke of Carlyle. His eyes ran over her in a blatantly possessive scrutiny, and her stomach knotted. In quick order, he secured two dances with her mother’s beaming approval. He was also to lead her into supper, an honor that would not go unnoticed by those in attendance. The duke’s actions were informing everyone she was off the marriage mart, before she had even made her debut.
Many agreeable and affable young men swarmed to her side, and within a few minutes, all of Evie’s dances were spoken for. The night passed in a blur of dancing, conversation, and dreaded anticipation of being alone with His Grace. She’d consumed several glasses of champagne to soothe her rioting nerves, but the bubbly drink did the opposite. Evie felt on edge, jittery, her heart a beating mess.
She was now pairing with His Grace on a second dance, for he had arrogantly stolen a cotillion from a young lord who had hardly put up a fuss. They glided about the room, the duke moving with surprising grace despite his larger frame.
“Your mother informs me you are a dutiful daughter,” the Duke of Carlyle drawled as they twirled around each other. “With the accomplishments and comportment befitting a duchess.”
Dutiful. She was heartily resenting the word and the way it implied her subservience to her mother, society, and her future husband’s expectations. Unable to proffer any answer that would suggest she was gratified to have received a compliment, Evie allowed her lips to tip into a small smile that neither implied pleasure nor dissatisfaction.
The dance ended and they dutifully clapped.
“Walk with me, Lady Evelyn,” he commanded, holding out his arm, expecting her compliance.
Her mother looked on with a keen eye, silently urging Evie to not be foolish. She barely touched his arm, and they moved through the crowd toward the section that would lead to the main entrance hall. She glimpsed Lord Richard lounging in a far corner, a ravishing lady glued to his side, gazing at him with earnest adoration. Evie’s breath hitched when she noticed he was watching her and the duke depart the ballroom. In Lord Richard’s golden eyes, she saw a dare to not conform to her family’s expectations. His lips curved, and her breath hitched. His wicked smile was not terribly reassuring.
Do not be foolish, Evie. Mamma will be very disappointed.
In short order, the duke deftly whisked her away from the crush to the drawing room, but he was correct enough to leave the door ajar.
The revelry had been left behind, and the sudden silence was quite intimidating. The duke observed her, his eyes stripping her naked where she stood. Discomfort curled through her. “Your Grace, I believe it would be best if we speak in the gardens or on the terrace.” She felt intimidated by his size in the intimate seclusion of the drawing room.
“I think after this morning, Lady Evelyn, you know why I have brought you here.”
A blush warmed her cheeks. His kiss against her closed lips had been alarming and unpleasant. Her stomach knotted even further. Surely, he did not want to speak of marriage so soon?
“I am at a loss, Your Grace,” she said, trying to postpone his proposal.
He moved closer and drew her to him. His lips muffled her squeak of surprise. Evie lurched back, distressed at his boldness. “Your Grace, I cannot permit you such familiarity!”
His dark gray eyes glittered as if he were fevered. “You have given me back my youth, dear girl. It confounds me how eager I am to kiss your enchanting lips.”
She laced her unsteady hands together, leaning away from the duke. He pressed his advantage, and her back was now flush against the wall. Dear Lord. Another quick, hard kiss was placed to her lips. She froze, her heart wildly pounding.
The duke lifted his head and smiled. “You’ll make me a wonderful duchess,” he murmured huskily.
The champagne churned in her stomach and Evie swallowed several gulps of air. She tried her very best to belch, and what came forth was a loud, embarrassing gurgle that somehow transformed into a belch that echoed around the drawing room.
Thank heavens.
The duke froze, distaste settling on his face. Before he could berate her, another belch issued forth and his nose wrinkled in distaste, outrage darkening his gray eyes.
She rubbed her clammy palms together. “Oh, forgive me, Your Grace, I…I…suffer from a delicate constitution.”
His eyes narrowed. “Delicate constitution?”
“Oh yes, my stomach has been out of sorts for several months. I seem to belch quite frequently. A distemper of my digestion, perhaps? Or delicate nerves. The doctors are mystified.”
“Lady Gladstone did not mention this,” he said stiffly.
“I am mortified to even reveal my delicateness to you, but I cannot in good conscience let you not be aware of all my peculiarities.”
He tugged at his cravat. “Your peculiarities?”
She took a bracing breath and then slowly released. “I…I…seem to also pass wind uncontrollably.” Evie wanted to die from the humiliation coursing through her. She had irrevocably lost all sense of herself.
The duke’s jaw slackened, and he seemed rendered speechless.
“Your Grace,” she started, staring at him in helpless mortification. “Forgive my vulgarity.”
His face turned florid, and she feared he was in danger of passing out. She watched in amazement as he tugged at his cravat, then spun sharply on his heel and departed the room with clipped strides.
She hurried after him to the ballroom. Anxiety pressed in on her as she waited for him to approach her mother. Instead, the duke ignored the countess and directed his attentions to a young lady who was quite grateful and excited by his regard if the speed at which she fanned herself was anything to go by.
After several minutes of the duke disregarding her presence and her mother’s severe frowns of confusion, Evie’s stomach unknotted. Her gaze scanned the crowd until she found Lord Richard. He was by the terrace door, and he was staring at her with an indiscreet intensity. He lifted his glass in salute and winked. Evie giggled, exhilaration pumping through her blood.
Oh yes…our friendship will be grand indeed.
Chapter Two
July 1815
Grosvenor Square, London
Three years later…
The war was finally over, and England was awake celebrating the Duke of Wellington’s victory at Waterloo. The street rang with jubilant cries that Bonaparte had been defeated. Relief should have been the only thing Richard felt, considering the long and brutal war was finally over, and the chance for all those affected to heal was on the horizon. Instead, he was hollow…empty, gutted. The soft voluptuous body pressing against his could not detract from the turbulent grief coursing through his veins like acid. His heart had been cleaved in two, and at this moment it felt as if nothing could mend it. His brother was dead, and the world would never hear Francis’s booming laugh again, or learn from his kind and infectious spirit.
“Oh, Richard, how I’ve missed you,” the woman in his arms said, a deep sigh slipping from her when he glided the tip of his finger over her breast, a fleeting touch, but she shivered violently in his arms, tossing her long, auburn hair.
A few months ago, he would never have imagined the woman he was tumbling to the settee was the very woman who had made him weary of the fairer sex—Lady Trenear. He wished he was eager as well, but in truth, desire hardly consumed him. Inside, he rioted with pain, and the need to lose himself in a warm, willing body was the driving force behind his decision to bed her for the night. That and the fact that she was eager to spread her legs for him again now that he was the Marquess of Westfall, heir to a wealthy and powerful dukedom. The agony that slammed into him almost buckled his knees. He released her and staggered away.
“Ah damn,” he groaned, as the monster called gr
ief welled up once more and tried to drown him. His brother had passed three weeks previously from a fever, and every day Richard rose, there were a precious few seconds where he did not remember Francis was gone. The awareness that his brother was buried in the family crypt always had the same vile taste of despair and wrenching agony coating Richard’s tongue. His brother was dead, and now Richard possessed that which should have belonged to him. His brother was the one who deserved life—he had been the soul of kindness, honorable, a good son, while Richard had been the undisciplined and dishonorable libertine. How had the world got it so wrong?
“Why have you stopped?” Aurelia sashayed over to him, divesting herself of her high-waisted gown with practiced ease.
“Stop,” he commanded gruffly, lowering himself to the edge of the bed.
“No, my darling, you need me.”
In short order, she stripped, walked over to him, and climbed atop his lap. “Take me. It has been so long for me, and for you, I believe, as well?”
She rolled her hips, the motion sensual and sinuous. Need and grief roiled in him, a turbulent and disturbing combination. He gripped her hip, wound her hair through the fingers of his other hand, and took her mouth in a punishing kiss, hating the world, hating that he was now the marquess, hating that she was the one he was kissing. Richard spun with her, lowering her onto the bed, splaying her like a goddess he was about to feast on. Yet he was not tempted to indulge.
He felt cold, empty, and here was not where he wanted to be. A sweet smile and large green eyes framed in an enchanting face swam in his vision. Evie. It was Evie he needed more than he desired his next breath. He missed her, terribly. It had been weeks since he last saw her—he had only gotten a glimpse of her at the funeral service yesterday morning. What he would not give to have her here at this moment, holding him as he roared his pain to the heavens. She would not judge him for unraveling, for the tears burning his throat and eyes. No, his Evie would simply offer him the support he needed.
“What are you waiting on, my darling? Ravish me,” Aurelia whispered seductively.
The invitation left him unmoved. He allowed his gaze to skim over her breasts and down to her quivering stomach. Through the haze of grief and pain, awareness shimmered. He froze, his eyes cataloguing the spidery network of marks running over her stomach and hips. He shook his head to clear the fog of liquor he consumed earlier.
“What is it?”
He surged to his feet and grabbed the candle by the bed and drew it close, splashing the light across her body. She made to sit up, and he pressed a hand against her belly, ensuring she felt the strength in his action but careful not to hurt her.
“Westfall, please…”
How easily everyone had started to call him by the damnable title. It was as if his brother had never existed. Even his parents were already encouraging Richard to find a wife and secure an heir. He traced one of the marks with his fingertip. “What are these?”
Fear and guilt were plastered on her face. Without speaking, he considered the marks once more. He’d once bedded a courtesan for a few months, and she’d had similar marks. Helena. Though she had been sensual and possessed enough skills to make grown men weep with pleasure, she had been ashamed for him to see and kiss these slight imperfections. “You’ve had a child.”
Aurelia’s breath hitched audibly. Tension locked her body underneath his fingers. He deliberately splayed his fingers across the area of her body that bore the brunt of the stretched skin.
“I… The earl and I—”
“The ton knows the earl is impotent. The gossips speak of his visits to the pleasure gardens and of your dissatisfaction with him. When we parted, you did not marry the earl until almost a year later.” Enough time to bear my child in secret. “The delay for the marriage was not an illness as your family claimed. You were hidden away in the country because you carried our child.”
The silence became oppressive. It took such strength at that moment to lift his head and examine her features. A frantic pulse beat at her throat, and surprisingly tears streamed unchecked down her temple to her ear. His heart twisted into painful knots, and his chest damn well ached. “Was it a boy or a girl?”
Her throat worked on a swallow, and she made three attempts before she spoke. “A daughter. We have a daughter.”
Have? “She lives?”
“I…Yes.”
A strange weakness assailed him. He slowly removed his hand from her now taut stomach, distantly noting his fingers trembled. “Why did you let me believe otherwise? Where is she?”
Aurelia shuffled from the bed, scooping her gown from the floor and positioning it in front of her protectively. “Richard, please, she is being taken care of. It is best—”
“Where?” he snarled.
“She was sent away at birth. I hardly know if she resides at the same dwelling.”
“Where?”
She blanched. “At a baby farm in Willesden Green—”
A baby farm? A moan of denial rose in his throat and spilled into the room. He stumbled from her as rage, shock, and fear fought to seize his mind. Hundreds of innocent children died at the farms yearly. Such establishments only cared to make a profit, and were run with no compassion for the children they were supposed to care for. An orphanage would have been kinder, though such institutions were also harsh. The main objective of many baby farms seemed to be to deliberately cause the deaths of the youngsters without making their erstwhile relatives feel unwanted guilt. It was easier to say the child was weak and had died of natural causes. Orphanages and the workhouses would at least train the unwanted boys and girls for some menial employment. They were tough, cold, and the children were underfed but they did not actively seek to end their miserable lives.
“Why?”
She placed a hand over her mouth as if to stifle her sobs.
“You could have brought her to me, or allowed a kinder arrangement for her. Why a baby farm?” he demanded hoarsely.
“It was my father who made the arrangements. He said many of our society did that same thing.”
At that moment, Richard made his first enemy not on the battlefield. “Have you seen her? How do you know she lives? What is her name?”
“She was given the name Emily Rose.” Aurelia took several deep breaths. “I have never seen her, but I still send the money quarterly to the location.”
“What is the exact address?”
“Please, let us not stir troubled waters when it is not necessary. Society knows nothing of her, and it is best—”
“You vile, loathsome creature. How could I ever think I loved you?”
She gasped, her hand fluttering to her throat. Seconds later she wilted on the bed, sobbing, her face buried in her hands. Richard felt no pity. There had been so many other options. He would have taken his daughter and buried the scandal if that had been her family’s wish. He would never have named her mother. He would have simply claimed his child, and loved, protected, and cherished her. Instead, she had been abandoned as unwanted rubbish with barely a fuss and paid for by a few shillings per year. Aurelia lifted her face from her palms, looking even more beautiful with the tears flooding down her cheeks. She stood, tightening the sheets that had loosened across her breast.
“Please, believe me, Richard. I am haunted by regret and loneliness.”
“Do not pretend you have a heart. You lied to me about our child, and then you abandoned her to live a life of poverty and degradation, while you live in comfort and wealth. I will never forgive you, countess. Never approach or speak to me again, or I will ruin you and your earl.”
Growing pale, she staggered back.
He moved away, refusing to look around as she called his name. A dark cloud of anger and pain seemed to hug him close, refusing to let go.
Richard was hardly aware of where his steps took him, and it was several minutes later he recognized he was standing in front of the Gladstones’ townhouse. With a start, he saw that several carriages li
ned the street, music spilling from the house along with gaiety. They were holding a ball.
He fished for his pocket watch and considered the time. It was almost four in the morning. Evie was most likely to be abed. With stealth, he jumped the side gate and stumbled around the back to where he knew her window stood. He was certainly foolhardy, but he could not fight the urgent need to see her.
Stooping in the dark and searching for some pebbles, he grabbed a handful. He stood and gently pinged them against the windows. Several seconds passed before she appeared. The window was shoved up, and her head peeked out. Everything turbulent inside him righted itself.
“Richard! I’ll be right down. I’ve only just retired and am still dressed.”
Without answering, he grabbed the trellis leading to her window and efficiently climbed up to her balcony, thankful the trellis had creepers and not climbing roses riddled with thorns. He grabbed onto the balcony and hung suspended before using his foot against the column for purchase to haul himself up.
“Whatever are you doing?” she whispered furiously, leaning over and peering down the street.
With a grunt, he made it onto the small balcony and climbed through her window.
“Good heavens, hurry before someone sees you.” She all but grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and pulled him farther into her room. The sight of her filled him with an intense rush of pleasure. At nineteen, Lady Evie was even more ravishing than when he’d first met her. She had become a well sought after social butterfly, stunningly beautiful with her golden hair, elegant yet voluptuous figure, and intelligent without making it too obvious to the rest of the ton. She had even been featured in the Gazette several times, the society pages admiring her ball gowns and fashionable hairstyles.