She bit her lip at the loss of him, but he merely dragged his mouth down her neck, where he nipped at the place where her pulse beat for him.
“Genevieve,” he whispered, nothing but her name, and her knees buckled.
He easily caught her and pulled her against the hard, muscled wall of his chest, anchoring her close. At the contact, her nipples pebbled hard against the fabric of her gown and desire; wicked and wanton, and all things wonderful flooded her senses, as she strained close, desperate for…she knew not what, only that she’d never known this explosive passion from any of her former betrothed’s chaste kisses.
She sought his lips again and he raised his obligingly, returning her kiss. With every slant of his mouth, he ran his hands searchingly over her; the curve of her hip, her lower back, her buttocks, and heat exploded inside her and threatened to consume her in a fiery conflagration of desire.
“Lady Genevieve?” The distant call of her maid brought them apart.
Genevieve stood cloaked in a thick haze of desire and a slow-dawning horror. She frantically searched about.
“Here,” he murmured, as with the same methodical precision of last evening, he put her hair to rights and then swiftly retrieved her book. His remarkable calm bespoke a gentleman accustomed to far too many close calls.
Her belly tightened as a green, vicious envy twisted inside.
“Lady Genevieve?” her maid’s voice grew stronger as she drew closer.
Genevieve snatched the volume from his hands. “I am h-here, Delores.” She flinched at the tremor to her words. Frantically, she whipped her head back. “Please,” she whispered. “Surely you understand, as my every action is under scrutiny, I cannot see you again.”
He put his lips close to her ear, and his breath fanned her skin, sending delicious shivers radiating out. “Do you truly want that?”
No. “It matters not what I want,” she said on a pleading whisper.
Cedric placed a hard, quick kiss on her lips. “What you want should always matter.” He took her by the shoulders and gave her a gentle nudge toward her maid’s approaching footsteps. “And Genevieve?” he said in hushed tones, as she turned to go. She looked questioningly back. “Primrose.” Her heart jumped. “By the scent upon your skin, I would wager it is primrose you place in your water.”
Chapter 9
The empty sketchpad lay open, the blank pages both mocking and tempting. Cedric sat staring at them, as he had for the better part of the hour. How many pages had he secretly filled before his bastard of a sire had ultimately discovered, and ended, all such trivial pursuits?
…my heir will not do something as foolish as to waste his time with frivolous pastimes. Find yourself a whore, not a bloody sketchpad…
The fury of that diatribe rang around the chambers of his mind, all these years later.
He’d loved sketching. Loved it when he’d really loved nothing. On the pages of those books, he’d found a peace and calm, and a sense of freeness from the constrained world where he was nothing more than a future duke. More, he’d forgotten how much he loved it until a too-brief conversation in Kensington Gardens that morning with a lady who both knew art and was unashamed and unapologetic in discussing it. Where he’d buried that desire to create, tossed his charcoals into the rubbish bin, and yet…he’d retained this old book.
Of their own volition, his fingers found the pen and, dipping it into the inkwell, he proceeded to mark the page. With each slash and slant of the pen, an amorphous image took shape. His hand flew frantically over the previously blank sheet and a long forgotten exultation fanned out dulling the ennui he’d known of late; an ennui which had not been solved by gaming or whoring or spirits.
The door bounced open with such force it slammed against the wall. “By God, I said find a respectable wife. I should expect you’d show up at my bloody ball and dance only once and with the Farendale doxy.”
Cedric jerked his gaze up and cursed. His father stood framed in the doorway. The only hint of his barely concealed fury was the vein throbbing at the corner of his left eye. Quickly closing the book, Cedric dropped his pen. “Father.” He forced an indolent grin and propped his feet on the edge of his desk. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?” There had never been any father-son warmth between them. Theirs had been a relationship built on nothing but the unfortunate circumstance of blood and the obligations that went with that same blood.
His father kicked the door closed with the heel of his boot. “Goddamn it, you know what has brought me here.” Yanking off his gloves the duke stomped across the room. He stopped at the edge of Cedric’s desk and slapped his gloves together. “Put your bloody feet on the floor,” he snapped, as though speaking to a recalcitrant child.
Alas, Cedric hadn’t been a boy for a long time now. Rather, he’d been shaped into a cold, unyielding figure, masterfully crafted in his father’s image. Lounging in his leather chair, Cedric folded his arms at his chest.
With a grunt, the duke slid into the opposite chair. “I could not have been clearer during my last visit.”
Visit. Is that what the old bastard would call these meetings? This man had never been driven by familial devotion or regard, but rather for discussions on wealth and power. “Ah, yes,” Cedric said, reveling in the way his father’s eyebrow dipped. “The very important business of my securing a wife.” Important business his father could hold his breath, all the way to hell, and wait for.
“I’ll see you in hell before I’ll see you wed the Farendale chit.” If anything could entice him, well, it would be that small triumph over the duke’s wishes.
With the depravity of his existence, he’d see him in hell, regardless.
Regardless, his father’s worries over Cedric’s dance with Genevieve Farendale were irrelevant. Although strangely enchanted by the guarded lady’s peculiar interests, Cedric had as much intention of marrying as joining the bloody clergy. That truth, however, did not prevent him from some very deliberate needling “Come, Father, she is a marquess’ daughter. Even you cannot fault the lady’s birthright.”
“She is a whore,” his father said bluntly and all amusement left Cedric, replaced with a red haze of fury that sent his hands curling reflexively on the arms of his chair. What he wouldn’t give to bloody the old bastard’s face.
He swung his legs to the floor refusing to allow the duke to needle him. All the while, a seething fury ran through him. “Other than your dictatorial efforts for the selection of my future bride, is there anything else that has brought you here?” he asked, maintaining a thin grasp on his wavering control. When was the last time he’d been roused to this unholy rage at anything his father said or did? And because of Lady Genevieve Farendale. How in blazes could he account for that?
“A fortnight.” The duke’s terse utterance cut across his confounded thoughts.
A fortnight…?
“To select a bride,” his father said with a triumphant smile on his hard lips. “If you fail to do so, I’ll see you cut off from your creditors and funds, until you do decide to cooperate.”
When Cedric had been a young man, he’d journeyed by ship to the Continent. Two days into his travels, a violent storm had ravaged the sea. In his fine quarters, Cedric had clung to the high-quality mattress, while his stomach in revolt, dipped and lurched. How very much this moment was to that long ago day.
“Nothing to say now?” his father waggled his eyebrows. “Where is the mocking grin and stinging wit?”
Cedric curled his hands reflexively upon the arms of his chair, his nails leaving crescent marks in the Italian leather. “You will not cut me off,” he said at last. The only thing the duke cared about more than his title, was the way in which the world saw that title. Any hint of weakness or shame to that beloved status would shatter the bastard in ways that no emotion or feeling could.
The tightening of his father’s mouth hinted at the truth to Cedric’s supposition. “Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps not. But is that something
you care to wager your security on?”
Yes, Cedric rather believed it was. He’d no interest in spreading the poisonous Falcot seed to some innocent miss, even if that innocent miss was desiring of nothing more than the title of duchess.
…I have no interest at all in the title of marchioness, duchess, or anything else…
“Get out,” he said curtly.
And surprisingly, his father stood. “You do not wish to wed, Cedric, and I understand that more than most. The last thing I wanted was to marry your fool romantic of a mother.” At the detached emotionality of that admission, a chill iced his spine. How very cold and callous the man was about the wife who’d given him his precious heir. “But we are not unalike,” his father said pragmatically.
A thousand denials sprung to his lips and he wanted to snap and hiss at the other man for seeing any part of Cedric in him. Instead, he remained motionless, immobilized by the long-known truth. He was his father’s son. He’d never put anyone’s interests or pleasures before his own, and lived for his own physical gratification. The same ugly running through the duke’s veins ran hot through his own. After all, in his mother turning Cedric fully over to her husband’s control when he’d been a mere boy, she had seen that truth herself. And that had been his mother, who’d dedicated her last days on earth to her other child, Clarisse. What did that say when one’s own mother saw her child as irredeemable at just eight?
His father tugged on his gloves. “I am pleased that you see logic,” the duke said, misinterpreting the reason for Cedric’s quiet. Without any hint of even false pleasantries, he left, closing the door with a decisive click behind him.
Cedric clenched and unclenched his hands as he fought for the restoration of his ordered thoughts and calm, and then with a furious string of curses, he surged to his feet so quickly, the legs of his leather chair scraped noisily along the floor.
He began to pace, a seething tension thrumming inside; a restless energy that threatened to consume him. He’d never been viewed as a person by either of his parents. His father had seen him as a ducal extension and, well, his mother had seen Cedric as an easy thread to snip off and turn over to her husband’s care. Now, his father would seek to control him in this way. Never, more had he hated himself than he did in this instance. Hated himself for having lived an indolent life, dependent on all that came from the title he was born to.
His gaze locked on the closed leather book on his desk. With a black curse, Cedric came to a jerky stop. He swiped it off the otherwise smooth mahogany surface and opened it. The smudged rendering in ink, marred from when he’d hastily hid his work from his father’s eyes, did little to conceal the sharp features and expressively sad eyes of the very woman his father had warned him away from.
Unnerved by the directness of her silent stare, Cedric yanked open his desk drawer and tossed the book inside. He needed to get bloody soused, find a whore; a hot, eager body who’d serve as a receptacle for his lust and frustration. Not necessarily in that order.
And so taking leave of his office, a short while later, seated at his private table at the back of Forbidden Pleasures, Cedric sipped from his glass of brandy. He passed a bored gaze over the unsavory club. The clink of coins hitting coins on gaming tables blended with the boisterous laughter of gentlemen and the whores who courted their favors.
Only the most dissolute lords and notorious scoundrels frequented the club and, as such, Cedric was far more comfortable with the company here than the polite, dull members of the peerage.
A sensuous woman with red curls caught his eye from across the club. In her frothy crimson gown that displayed her generous curves, she was a veritable feast he would have taken on any occasion. Perhaps on this very table. Take her. She is what you’ve come for. But her hair was a crimson shade and not the strawberry blonde of another. Christ. For some inexplicable reason, however, on this night, there was an ennui; as though he sat on the outside looking in at the wicked deeds being happily carried out by the base lords.
Powerful noblemen with experienced courtesans on their laps, and their hands buried up the skirts of those women. Whores who moved from one lord to the next, without a hint of compunction in their jaded faces. Restlessness surged through him and he took another long swallow.
For the first time in the course of his life, it had happened. He who’d fashioned himself as a rake and thrilled in the debauched life he lived in London, was…bored. And all because he’d met a lady who didn’t give a jot about his title or his reputation as an expert lover.
He gave his head a frustrated shake. Of course it made sense. His life moved in a monotonous rhythm. Day in and day out he would visit his clubs. He would lose himself in the arms of widow after widow. He would place obscene wagers; wagers which he more often than not, won. Every day folded over into a remarkably similar day. That was the logical explanation for this bothersome fascination with Lady Genevieve and her moss green eyes filled with rebuke.
“Now you visit your clubs,” the droll voice of Montfort brought his head quickly up. Without seeking permission, his friend yanked a wide backed chair out and plunked himself into it.
“Montfort.” Cedric shoved his half-empty bottle across the table and the other man easily grabbed it.
“You know with your attendance at that goddamn ball last evening, I lost a bloody fortune.” He motioned over the red-haired buxom beauty who’d been previously making eyes at Cedric. She sauntered over with a glass, poured a snifter full, and then promptly climbed onto the earl’s lap.
“Yes, you said as much. You should wager less.” The wry note to his words earned a snort from Montfort.
“First attending your father’s dull affairs, then waltzing at the bloody event, and now talking of giving up wagering?” A chuckle spilled past the other man’s lips. “What is next? Attending Lady Erroll’s dull dining affair this evening and selecting a bride from those assembled chits?” he asked. Running a hand up the woman’s skirt he rubbed the expanse of her cream white thigh. He paused and wagged his eyebrows. “Mayhap the Farendale, chit? Hmm?”
With the memory of his father’s threat resonating in his mind, a dull flush heated Cedric’s neck. His fingers twitched with the need to yank at his suddenly too-tight cravat. He’d rather dance through the fires of hell than bind himself to a single woman. “There are no worries there,” he said with a forced grin. Having been friends since Eton, Montfort well knew the vow Cedric had taken to never wed and propagate the bloody Falcot line. He cared even less for that ducal title than he did for his bastard of a father.
While Montfort busied himself with the whore on his lap, Cedric took another swallow of his drink. Another wave of restiveness ran through him. He’d vowed to never wed. He’d vowed to never spill his seed inside a woman and litter the world with children, legitimate or illegitimate, the way his father had. He had ensured that never occurred by always using French letters when in the throes of passion. The corrupt blood in his veins was a mark the world was assuredly better without, and it would bring Cedric the ultimate triumph to steal that power from his father. No, he took his pleasures with guarded caution and lived for his own physical gratification. But when the thrill of that sinful living dulled and left nothing but numbness in its place, what was there?
“You are quiet,” his friend put in casually, as he released the woman’s breasts from the low décolletage. The mounds tumbled forth on lewd display and Montfort swiftly palmed the magnificent orbs, earning a small moan for his attentions.
Cedric squirmed. Once he wouldn’t have blinked at the other man’s casual display with a luscious courtesan. He was growing stodgy in his older years. There was no other explaining his distaste. “Am I?” He knew he was. Montfort knew it. But they did not probe on matters that moved beyond whores, wagers, and spirits.
The earl planted a kiss atop each of the whore’s breasts and then shoved her from his lap. A small moue of displeasure formed on her lips, as she landed on her feet. “Perhaps later,
sweet.” Softening his rejection, he swatted her on the backside, and gave a wink.
With a promise in her eyes, the woman adjusted the bodice of her gown and sauntered off, leaving Cedric and Montfort alone.
Finishing his drink, Cedric reached for the bottle.
“Never tell me this is about the Farendale chit.”
His hand jerked and he knocked the bottle over. He shot a hand out to steady the decanter but it tumbled over the edge of the table and shattered. He ignored the faintly curious looks cast his way. And because his friend was shockingly, uncomfortably too close to the mark, he said in hushed tones, “My father would see me wed. I’ve a fortnight to select a bride.” The way a man might settle on a broodmare.
The usual mocking glint in Montfort’s eyes receded, as the veneer he’d long adopted now cracked revealing a flash of the man under the cold sheen of ice. “He would not dare.” For even Montfort knew the Duke of Ravenscourt cared for the appearances about the title above all else.
He shrugged and looked out at the gaming hell, once more. “Mayhap.” But mayhap not. There was no saying what the duke would dare or not dare in the name of his title. After all, how many bastards had he denied to protect the wealth of the Ravenscourt fortune?
The earl drummed his fingertips in a grating rhythm and Cedric favored him with a frown. “What?” he asked curtly.
Montfort continued that infuriating tapping. “Mayhap the Farendale chit could prove useful to you, after all.”
Shooting a frantic glance about at the lords seated nearby, he bit out on a furious whisper. “What are you on about?”
A Heart of a Duke Regency Collection : Volume 2--A Regency Bundle Page 40