She rose from their bed and silently crept out to the larger room. The remnants of their early morning repast stood as a reminder of how he had made love to her there. In haste. And joy. Passionately upon the tiny table.
And without protection from ruin.
She pushed that reminder aside. In months to come, there would be enough time to consider her folly here. And deal with it.
She sought the warmth of the sunshine and opened the door. Naked still, she somehow felt secure from prying eyes. Another measure of how she trusted Justin to have prepared for this tryst so well that no one, not even servants, would intrude.
She stepped out onto the path and the fragrance of roses surrounded her. At once, she saw why. Here before her stood a dozen or more cuttings of rose bushes. Each was planted in good loam, secured with posts and held to the rods toward the warmth of the sun by tiny ribbons of good hemp.
She’d not been so dazed by lust last night when Justin brought her here that she was dreaming when she smelled the musk of roses.
“They will bloom next year I am told,” Justin’s voice reached out to her.
“Your gardener has done a very good job,” she said as she walked forward to examine the expert cuttings. “What colors will they be, do you know?”
“I do. Ruby red and virgin white.” He came to stand behind her as she bent to smile at the plants and touch a fingertip to two in turn. “I understand you love those colors best.”
She tipped up her head, shielded her eyes, trying to see him but failing because his form was silhouetted by the sun. Complimented but wary of his knowledge, she had to ask, “How do you know that?”
“I’ve inquired here and there,” he said with some pride.
“My friends?” she prodded.
“Your cook,” he admitted.
“She told your butler who in turn, told you.”
“Quite so.” He grinned.
She frowned. Shot up and spun away from him.
He caught her by the arm. “Darling, aren’t you pleased?”
“How can I be, Justin?”
His brows knit. His eyes dimmed. “They are for you. You alone.”
“They cannot be.”
“I know you raise roses,” he declared. “That you garden to lighten your anxiety. That you need the fragrance and the beauty to overcome—”
She froze, intimidated, exposed and damned furious. “You have spied on me.”
“No, not–”
“Inquiring does not constitute invasion of my private life?” she rebuked him.
He swept out two hands. “What do you think this is if it is not your private life?”
“For a day. A night! Hardly the sum total of my life!”
“But it should be.” He took hold of her shoulders, his hard power only serving to unnerve her even more. “You belong here. With me.”
“I cannot stay here.” Suddenly, she was embarrassed at her nakedness. Reality drove out all joy of her interlude with him. “I never should have come.”
“You could not refuse me.”
Trembling with outrage, she challenged him, “Because I needed your fees?”
His face crumbled. “Because you love me.”
To hear him speak the truth she dare not admit to herself made her shake with despair. Tears glittered in his eyes.
In her own, too. “Let me go.”
“I dare not. I will never get you back.”
How true. How very true.
“Marry me.”
“No.”
“I love you, Katherine. I always have. Marry me.”
“I will never marry anyone ever again,” she announced with a resolve that sounded hideous, even to her own ears.
Since they had resumed their acquaintance weeks ago, she had often studied his handsome face, his unconcealed emotions. She had seen humor and compassion, consideration and rejection. She thought she had seen surprise. Now she recognized shock.
“That’s absurd. You’ll marry again. You’ll marry me!”
“Never,” she told him with such severity he blanched.
“This is what marriage to Henry did to you,” he concluded, bitterness in each word.
“Yes. And that’s my resolution. No marriage. Ever. To you or anyone else.”
Chapter Four
Three weeks later on a Wednesday afternoon at two, she sat down in the drawing room of the Lord and Lady Winston Martindale upon the occasion of their annual At Home. Parliament had dismissed two days earlier, and the Martindales’ afternoon reception was one of the three closing highlights of the late Season. Few festivities remained which drew the Set before all dispersed to the countryside for the summer months.
“I shall be happy as a bee to leave town,” Maggie confided as she sat next to Kitty and fluttered her Chinese fan in the uncommon June heat.
“You are quite flushed, Maggie. You are very sure you are not….hmmm?” Kitty had asked this question twice this past week of her sister. “I recall being very hot when I was…in that way. You know.”
“I might be.” Her sister flashed her a brilliant smile. “But I am not yet positive.”
“Just wanted to be certain.” Glancing into the hall where others arrived for this party, Kitty flicked open her own fan and gave herself a nervous cooling off. God, if she could only be certain Justin would not attend, she could proceed to enjoy herself tremendously.
“Certain, eh?” Maggie eyed Kitty’s fan. “After your visit to a certain gentleman, I could ask you the same question.”
“No.” No. Kitty knew she was not pregnant. She’d had the proof last week, much to her immense relief. Maggie had been nearly as wild as she to learn if she were enceinte. Her sister had known of her rendezvous with Justin—and if Maggie still had few facts about their affaire, they were enough for her younger, newly wedded sister to conclude that scandal and ruin might not be the only result of Kitty’s interlude at Belmont Manor.
“I still think you owe him an explanation for leaving,” Maggie ventured, her eyes straight ahead.
“I gave him one.”
“Did you?” Maggie challenged her with a huff.
Kitty drew back. It was not like her dear sister to pick an argument with her.
Maggie sniffed and fluttered. Sniffed and fluttered. “I doubt you told him all.”
“I have not even told you all.”
“And it took you over a year to reveal what you did!”
“It took me a year to even speak the words, let alone—”
“There he is.”
“What?” Kitty sat straighter, her gaze darting to the foyer. And the dark, imposing handsomeness of Lord Justin Belmont. “Oh, no.”
“Do not leave, Puss,” Maggie breathed. “You’ll be so obvious.”
“I’ll be so trapped.”
“Good afternoon, Lady Carruthers,” Maggie cooed over an elderly matron who was passing them, intent on the buffet tables. She rose to take the lady’s hand. “So delightful to see you out.”
The lady lifted her lorgnette to her rheumy eyes. “And you, too, my dear. Margaret Downey, isn’t it?”
“Yes, my lady. Except I am now married. Lady Donaldson.”
“Oh, yes, yes. Fine gel. Fine. And this is your younger sister, eh?”
Kitty was on her feet. “Older.”
“Kit? Kat? What is your name, pet? Help an old woman, will you, like a good girl?”
“Katherine Varney, Lady Carruthers.” Kitty stood and put a hand to the old woman’s. Justin hovered just behind, conversing with Maggie’s husband. “Margaret and I have not seen you since her wedding.”
“Is that so?” The woman startled. “Did I enjoy it?”
Maggie chuckled. “Yes, my lady, you did. Here is my husband. Do say hello,” and Maggie—soon to die at Kitty’s own hand for desertion—led Lady Carruthers into a discussion with her spouse.
And that left, of course, Justin peering down at her from his infernally superior height. “Good afternoon, L
ady Varney. Darling,” he ventured under his breath as he took her hand and kissed it in the Continental manner.
She snatched it back. “Lord Belmont.”
“You’re looking fetching.”
You’re looking too fit and rested and totally unconcerned, damn you. “Thank you.”
“I like your hat. New, is it?”
She patted her day bonnet of pink silk and white ostrich feathers, thrilled he was a man who could notice a woman’s attire. Still, she could not resist taunting him. “Very. I’m gratified you like me in clothes.”
“Oh, but I like you any way at all, Puss. A new frock to match?”
She wanted to preen in the new pink muslin, but she dared not, for this lavishness was one of her vices. “Yes. It is.”
“Purchased with your fees.”
“How do you know that?” she shot back, then checked surreptitiously around them to see if anyone paid any attention to them. None seemed to care about them, their heads together.
“I know so many things about you. Like what a spendthrift you are with your dressmaker.”
She gasped.
“Fear not. I approve of a lovely woman spending her money to adorn herself. And though you need wear not a stitch to be the most beautiful woman in London, I applaud your style, darling.”
“You know too much. And I am not your—” two gentlemen passed by—“darling.”
“But you are. And to boot, I adore your taste in day dresses as well as negligees. So you see, I like how you are spending my money.” He had that truly irritating way of laughing with one corner of his mouth turned deliciously up.
“My money.”
“Whatever you say, my Puss. I like what you’ve done with the fees. You do have taste.” He winked.
She scolded him with her eyes. “We’ve said hello. Smile at me now, and I shall leave to rejoin my sister.”
“But why?” He took hold of her arm. “We have just struck up a conversation.”
“We have not.”
“We are. Smile again, darling. And let me get you a glass of champagne.”
“I can’t drink the stuff,” she rejoined and stuck her nose in the air, hustled along nonetheless.
“Why not?” His hazel gaze turned dark and stormy.
“Makes me sick to my stomach.”
“Why?” he insisted.
She blinked, understanding his true question was about her physical condition. “Not because of that. Don’t be daft.”
He hurried her along the hall and into an alcove. “I’m afraid you’ve made me so, my dear. While I am relieved to hear that you are not pregnant—”
“Hush! Are you an idiot?”
“Mad, delusional, a cretin in the mix!” He stepped inside a tiny hallway lined with cupboards and closed two doors on either side of the four foot space. “Call me any name you like, my Puss. You are driving me out of my head!”
“Well deserved, too!” she blustered as he pulled her into his arms and she once more felt the marvelous sensation of being captured by him. Held against his warmth. His might.
“Not by half, you minx. You cash my bank notes. But you will not receive me at home. You avoid me at church. Walk around me in the Park. I am reduced to waylaying you like a highwayman at a party on Wednesday afternoon!”
A laugh bubbled up from her throat, but she squelched it. “We have nothing to say to each other.”
“No,” he said with dour tone. “We have so much to say that only this will do.” He caught her chin, wrapped one arm around her waist and kissed her as he had that first night in her drawing room. Long and lavishly. Repeatedly. Killing her reason and her resolve.
Her fan slid from her fingers. Her hands pulled him closer. These past weeks, she’d pined for him like a schoolgirl. She’d relived every moment in his arms, in his bed, even in his rose garden at his cottage. She had cried and mooned and railed at fate for what she could not have.
He took her mouth with ravenous delight, trailing kisses across her cheek and down her throat to her bodice. His hands molded her to him and suddenly, she felt his fingers lift her skirts and slide to her pussy. Caress her seam. “Darling, I am so delighted you wear none of those ridiculous pantaloons. You are so plump and wet for me,” he murmured, and what words came next became a serenade of all the endearments he had declared in his cottage and all that still lived in her heart.
He undid his flies, and plunged up inside her. Against the cupboard, she braced herself and gave over to the rapture of his possession.
He was warm and turgid and—
Something shattered.
Tinkled all around them.
“Don’t move,” he warned as he held her tightly.
“What?” she asked soundlessly, her cunt so full of him, her breasts so needy of his kisses she thought she’d scream.
Blinking repeatedly to clear his vision and his head, he glanced about them. “Dear God, sweetheart, we’ve broken the family crystal.”
She surveyed the tiny room and the astonishing wreckage. “Justin. Oh, hell! We’re in the butler’s pantry!”
“So—we—are,” he murmured, fucking her so decidedly with each gruff word. “I’ll fix it.” He spread her thighs wider. “Christ, you are so hot for me, my darling woman. How can you deny this between us?” he whispered as he gave her the repeated thrill of his cock, the friction a wild torment that had her moaning.
“I’ll scream with this,” she told him in a rush. “You do this too damn well.”
He chuckled as he pumped her. “Don’t dare scream, Puss. Just feel.”
And oh, did she. His cock was thick, hard, forceful and so talented that she hung on him, her cunt pulsing, milking him dry.
They hung there, her head to his shoulder, his arms tight around her.
“I must go first,” she whispered as he made to withdraw and she groaned at his loss.
He reassembled her dress, his flies, then lifted her chin and gave her a sweet peck. “I adore you, Lady Varney. Now leave me to pick up the pieces.”
Would that he could also pick up the pieces of her heart, so broken that she could not have him all the time, any time, for the rest of her life.
* * * *
Sunday morning at eleven, Kitty kneaded her hands in her lap, gazing at the man seated across her friends’ dining room at another table. It had been four days since their last meeting—their last assignation—and she swore she could feel Justin’s formidable body. Still inside me.
This bright morning, Justin Belmont was attired for the occasion in morning coat and top hat. Looking splendid, Justin had arrived early to the wedding of his friend, Bruce Claymont, to Kitty’s friend, Lucy Darlington. Throughout the ceremony in the tiny chapel in the square, Kitty had felt Justin’s eyes upon her. And true to expectation, each time her gaze sought him, he examined her, head to toe.
Now with the wedding breakfast well underway at Lucy’s parents’ townhouse, Justin made his way toward her. “Where is Maggie today? Has she left you to me alone?”
She told me as much last night. Kitty set her teeth. “She is not feeling well.”
“A headache?”
“Nausea.”
“Ah. It’s what comes of love matches.”
Kitty glanced toward her friend Lucy, and the smile wreathing her face made Kitty understand the full meaning of the word envy. “You’ve seen the scandal sheets? How someone found my fan in the pantry?”
He nodded, looking horrid. “The gossip du jour.”
She clutched her stomach. “Do not make light of this.”
“Sorry, darling. I should have seen it there before I left, but I was in such a rush, I didn’t.”
She reached out and squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry, too. I should have had my wits about me. But I—”
“I was the same.” His gaze was consoling and incredibly sympathetic. “Undone. Wanting you.”
She inhaled, sat back. He was so kind, so sweet, so unlike Henry. “Tell me what happened after
I left the pantry.”
“I cleaned up the glass. Found a kitchen maid who hailed the butler. Then I apologized and offered to purchase new glassware.”
“But how did you explain why we—you were there?”
Justin shrugged. “I lost my way in the house.”
“He believed you?”
“I thought so.”
They stared at each other for a long moment in which she expressed more gratitude with her eyes than with her words. “As soon as someone connects the broken glassware to my fan, we will be done for.”
“Not if you marry me, we won’t.”
“Do not begin that again,” she warned beneath her breath.
“I must.”
“Why?” she asked him, stood and said, “I must find the ladies’ retiring room. Excuse me.”
She made her way out of the dining room, but Justin was hard on her heels.
In the hall, she spun on him and stamped her foot. “Following me is so obvious. Go away.”
“No. You must listen to me. About the roses.”
She put her hands to her ears and strode down the hall.
In two steps, he pulled her from her chosen path and swung her into the family library. Pressing her against a stack of books, he braced his hands on either side of her head.
Blocked, she fumed and fussed, then said, “Very well. Tell me about the roses.”
“They have sprung their first blooms now. Rich reds and creamy whites. They have grown, changed. They need more space to mature. Some must be transplanted soon.”
His declaration melted a cold, hard part of her deep inside. “They must be lovely.”
“They won’t be for long.” He caught a teardrop from her cheekbone.
“No?”
“They need someone to tend them properly.”
“You have a gardener.”
“I have no wife. And I need one, my darling. I need you.” He wrapped his hand around her nape and sank his fingers against her scalp. His lips brushed hers.
“I’m not a good bet, you know I’m not.” And there is your uncle’s demand for a rich heiress.
“You married an old man and endured him. Marry a young man and enjoy him.” He kissed her then, his tongue darting inside to tantalize her with the promise of a different life.
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