A mother who, even married to a reprobate like Waters, had not given up on life; who’d instead coaxed joy where she could from her children. Unlike his own mother who’d merely subsisted and then ultimately willed herself to death with her husband’s passing. That juxtaposition should serve as a stark reminder of Nick’s goals for the Barrett family and, yet, there was this unwitting and unwanted desire to hear more. For reasons he didn’t understand. For reasons that had nothing to do with Rutland or revenge.
“My sister always read books of exploration and dreamed of travel,” Justina said, opening the door further into her world. Letting him inside, the minds and dreams and hearts of her, as well as Rutland’s wife. “My mother never demanded she abandon those dreams.”
“What of your dreams?” he asked quietly, his inquiry born not of the seeds of revenge, but of a true need to know what a lady who wore her heart in her eyes yearned for. His belly knotted viciously and he hated himself for wanting those revelations from her.
Justina wetted her lips. For a long moment, he believed she’d ignore his question. Then, she stole a glance about. “I have always wanted to hold a salon within my own home, a place where young ladies can speak freely on literary works and exercise their minds without worry or recrimination.” She blushed. “Of course, I don’t think I’ll be an Elizabeth Vesey, or an Elizabeth Montagu, but I do dream of having young ladies and gentlemen come to share ideas and works. As I share mine, Your Grace.” Justina swiped the black leather journal from the table and looked at it for a moment. She held it out.
“Please, call me Nick,” he responded.
Justina stared at him, confusion spreading across her features. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace?”
“Nick. That’s my name. If we are to the point of discussing dreams, I think we can safely use our Christian names in private, don’t you agree, Justina?” he replied.
“I…I suppose that would be acceptable,” Justina stammered as she continued to hold the book out to him.
Nick stared blankly down at the book. How easily she turned over her intimate words for him. Had he embroiled a ruthless Societal lady with an empty head who hungered for nothing more than wealth and title, it would have been easier than this. A woman who lamented having an indifferent father. A woman of clever intellect who sought more in terms of her learning and her happiness. His gut clenched and he forced himself to take it with stiff fingers.
He flipped open the journal.
A lofty title, a lady doth aspire. Of course they did. Bitter cynicism pulled at his lips.
But in time, she finds there are greater gifts to admire.
A lover’s heart, and truthful lips those, forever inspire.
He paused, his gaze transfixed on those words.
…truthful lips…
Guilt blazed a fiery path through his conscience, holding him silent. How could the lady retain that joy and belief in good when there were no true happy endings? And I will destroy her. I will crush every last dream and hope of love and happiness. A viselike pressure squeezed about his lungs cutting off air flow. And he didn’t know what to do with this unwanted guilt or any sentiment that ran parallel to his thirst for revenge.
“It is incredibly rough,” she said matter-of-factly, bringing his head up. “That is merely the beginning, but I thought how important it would be for young ladies to talk about the matches they make or are expected to make. And what we, as women, truly desire.” She dropped her chin into a hand. “I visit the The Circulating Library and listen to countless discussions on romantics and the meaning of verses, but never do the speakers talk about challenging the cold, emotionless unions we’re expected to enter in to.” That made his planned rescue of her in those streets all the more vile for its cold-heartedness. His stomach turned. Who knew he, who’d prided himself on his indifference, was capable of feeling this shame? “No matter how many times I begin, I just cannot find the next part.” She sighed. “I’m hopelessly stuck with nothing more than an idea and a handful of sentences.”
Nick returned his gaze to the page. “Write your own words,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“Do not search for inspiration within another poet or author’s tales or verse.” He captured her fingers and guided them to her breastbone. “Write from here.” From that place where all great agony, love, and despair lived in a synchronistic harmony that left a man forever in tumult.
Her lips parted and she roved her gaze over his face. “I’ve never met anyone like—”
Nick cupped his other hand around her nape and claimed her lips under his, quelling words he didn’t deserve from this woman, silencing her erroneous conclusion that he was in any way good. Justina stilled in his arms and he moved his mouth over hers in a gentle exploration, coaxing the tension from her, until a breathy sigh escaped her.
The women he’d taken to his bed over the years had been women whose souls were as wicked as his own. There was nothing tender in their words, thoughts, or kisses and caresses. As such, he’d engaged in violent matings of the mouth that had only served as a ruthless precursor to their inevitable sexual joining.
Nick continued to taste her and, abandoning her journal, he moved his hands down her waist. He caressed her lush hips, aching to sink his fingers into that flesh without the hindrance of her muslin skirts between them.
Fueled by the feel of her in his hands, he deepened the kiss, slanting his mouth over hers again and again, until she groaned and allowed him entry. He thrust his tongue inside and she touched hers to his in a tentative meeting. That innocence, so wholly unlike anything he’d known in any of the women before her, sent blood pumping to his shaft.
With an increasing boldness, Justina fiercely met his strokes, tangling her tongue with his in a primitive match that met the lusty joining of two bodies. She wrapped her hands about the back of his neck and pressed herself against him.
He groaned, the low sound swallowed in her mouth, and he worked his hands between them, searching her body. Discovering her. The ample swell of her breasts spilled over his palms and never more had he despised fabric than he did in this moment for impeding his exploration of her satiny soft skin.
Nick drew his mouth away, trailed kisses down her cheek and lower, to the place where her pulse pounded in her throat. Growling, he sucked and nipped the flesh.
“Nick,” she panted. That one-word plea, his name, fueled him.
He moved his lips in a slow, wicked path to her modest décolletage. He dropped a kiss atop the cream white mounds. The echo of footfalls in the corridor penetrated the mad haze of desire she’d cast. Struggling for breath, he swiftly slid to the opposite end of the sofa.
Her eyes clouded with passion, Justina blinked and glanced about.
Andrew Barrett burst into the room, panting. “H-Huntly, old chap,” he rasped out, his chest heaving. “Just on my way to my clubs when I heard you’d paid me a visit.” The man need but a single glance at his sister’s swollen-kissed lips and rosy cheeks to glean what he and the delectable Justina Barrett had been doing. Instead, the fool remained fixed on him, oblivious.
Disgust coated Nick’s tongue. The lady had been cursed with a ruthless father and an indifferent brother. “Barrett,” he greeted.
The younger gentleman rushed over and inserted himself into the seat between Nick and Justina. “Thank you for entertaining him in my stead, Justina.”
She rolled her eyes skyward and Nick found himself smiling. “My pleasure.”
The future viscount was too consumed by his own self-importance to hear the sarcasm. “Care to join me at Forbidden Pleasures, Huntly, old friend?”
Having served in the role of father and elder brother to his own sister, Andrew Barrett’s absolute disregard for the young woman before him defied fraternal logic. He snapped his eyebrows into an annoyed line and glanced pointedly at Justina. “I hardly believe such talk is proper discourse.”
Befuddlement glazed the other man’s eyes as he glanced from
his sister to Nick. “Because of Justina?” he blurted. “Quite fine discussing it in front of her. She knows all about the gaming tables.”
Intrigue replaced his earlier disgust with the man. “Does she?” Nick drawled, favoring the young lady with a long look. A bluestocking with a love of literature and who knew about the gaming tables.
A delicate, pink blush marred her cream white cheeks and she glared at her brother. “My brother is merely jesting—”
“No, I’m not.” Andrew shook his head with such vigor that even with the thick pomade oil greasing his closely cropped Brutus curls, a strand fell loose. “In bad form to jest about the gaming tables, you know, Justina.”
“It is also in bad form to discuss wagering in front of a lady,” she muttered.
Despite himself, a low chuckle rumbled from Nick’s chest; rough from ill-use, but raw and unjaded.
“In front of my chum, Huntly?” Shock rounded the dandy’s eyes. “Quite safe to speak freely in front of one’s friends.”
Wheedling his way into Andrew Barrett’s graces and lulling him into a sense of false friendship was going to be easier than snatching peppermint from an unsuspecting child. Far too easy to merit any true sense of triumph. In fact, both Barretts were making this too easy. It was the only reason to account for his restlessness.
Barrett continued his chattering. “Heard you were all the crack at the tables, but couldn’t have ever predicted just how skilled.” The dandy puffed out his chest and that slight movement stretched the pea green satin fabric of his jacket. “Granted, you’ve never sat down to a set of faro with me.”
“Yes, all the skill required in that particular game,” Justina drawled. Her brother broke from his pompous bragging to frown.
“Not just a game of chance like some might think.”
Layering his arm to the ruffled edge along the back of the sofa, Nick leaned around the younger man and caught Justina’s gaze. A little twinkle danced in her fathomless blue depths. I’m sorry, she silently mouthed.
He winked and her lush lips formed a smile that momentarily froze him. With her pale blonde curls and heart-shaped face, Justina Barrett would forever fit with all the standards of English ladylike perfection. That breathtaking grin transformed her into a captivating siren whose innocence he longed to peel back layer by layer and unveil the wantonly beautiful creature he’d tasted moments ago, whose passion was longing to be set free. He fixed a smoldering gaze on her.
Her lips parted ever so slightly and a whispery sigh slipped out. How free she was with even her silent thoughts; that unspoken desperation for a glimmer of romance. One which he’d exploit. He tightened his jaw.
“My chum, Huntly, no doubt knows as much,” Andrew went on. “I can show you all my greatest secrets to winning at faro. A visit to Forbi—er…the clubs?”
Nick forced his attention away from Justina and attended the man. “I am afraid I must politely decline.” He quickly stood. “I’ve matters of business to attend.” He couldn’t stay here. Not with this woman who threw into tumult his well-ordered plans and dark revenge.
“Mayhap later, after?” Barrett persisted, wandering even further down the path to his own ruin.
Nick flashed his most charming grin. “I’m looking forward to it,” he lied. Nick sketched a hasty bow. “If you’ll excuse me, Miss Barrett?”
The two Barretts spoken in harmony. “You’re leaving so soon?”
Justina brushed her palms over modest, dull ivory skirts. She searched her transparent gaze over his face. “That is, what I’d intended to say,” if her blush turned any redder, her cheeks would catch fire, “is that it was a pleasure, Your Grace.” Her breathless words stirred the embers of desire, once more.
“The pleasure was all mine,” he murmured. Nick gathered her fingers and drew them to his mouth. He placed a lingering kiss on the inside of her wrist and thrilled at the hard pounding of her pulse there.
Andrew Barrett clapped his hands, effectively severing the charged moment. “Until later, then.”
“Until later,” Nick concurred. It was a certainty there would be a later. He was not here to make friends or connect emotionally with a woman, but rather to see justice done. Barrett’s vowels, the viscount’s, would all belong to him, so that not even the Marquess of Rutland’s obscene wealth could salvage them.
He turned on his heel and left.
Chapter 5
The following afternoon, Nick, in the company of Vail Basingstoke, Baron Chilton, sat at the table in the back corner of Brooke’s.
“Yesterday’s turn of events was certainly convenient,” Chilton drawled. The sardonically grinning man lifted his glass. “You hardly required my assistance at all.”
Yes, everything had proven remarkably easy where Justina Barrett was concerned. He’d come to her rescue, albeit not in the way originally planned. Paid her the requisite visit, returning her silly book of poetry, and kissed her senseless. Yet, it was easy. Almost too easy.
That had to be the sole reason to account for this…restlessness inside.
With a snifter of brandy cradled between his hands, Nick took a slow swallow of his drink and looked beyond his friend’s shoulder to the gentlemen boldly staring in his direction. The furious whispers filled the club.
And fruitful.
Word of his interest in the lady had already made the necessary rounds. The gossips were abuzz with the tale of the romantic meeting of a duke and a lady; the rescue of that damsel in distress.
Nick swirled the amber contents of his glass. Everything had been expertly set into motion. Everything down to the awestruck stars in the naïve lady’s eyes. Why couldn’t she be the avaricious, ruthless-in-her-own-right Diamond that Society purported she was? His fingers curled reflexively on his glass. It doesn’t matter what kind of woman she is. It only mattered her connection to Rutland.
“What is the lady like?” Chilton asked with a bored edge to that inquiry. “As lovely as the papers make her out to be?”
Lovelier. He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “It hardly matters what the lady looks like.” Or how generously flared her buttocks were. Or how full those breasts that had pressed against his chest. Or that she’d thrown herself into the path of a wild horse to save a beggar child from the street. Nick took another stiff sip. For ultimately, she could be a heartless, toothless crone, and the result was all the same. A means to an end.
“I swear you are the only man who could set out on a path to ruin a lady and be so ruthlessly indifferent to her attributes,” his friend said in dry tones.
Lust still burned through him with the remembered feel of Justina Barrett making a lie of his friend’s erroneous supposition. Nick tipped his chair on its back legs. “Would you care to know about the lady?” he asked, lifting a hand in greeting to some pompous lord who needed some kind of affirmation from him. Bloody fools, the lot of them. And how he despised the pretense of the charming lord they all took him for. “She’s blonde as any other English lady.” With golden strands kissed by the sunlight. “Plump.” Perfectly rounded with hips a man was meant to sink his fingers into. He gave his head a disgusted shake. Enough. Your hunger for the lady hardly signifies. “And short. Blue eyes,” he thought to add. That glittered with flecks of silver in the light. “And she’s in awe of a dukedom. Are you satisfied with that accounting?”
It would not matter whether you were a duke or titleless gentleman… Every single lady from debutante to ancient dowager sought his attention now that he had a title. Surely, she was no different.
“Hardly a scintillating creature to command your notice,” Chilton agreed and then downed the remainder of his drink.
Nick shoved the bottle across the table and his friend promptly refilled his glass. “She needn’t command anything. Her name alone does that,” he said in a hushed whisper intended for the other man’s ears.
“Ah, but it isn’t her name,” Chilton pointed out, with a waggle of his midnight eyebrows. “It is her brother-in-law’s nam
e.”
He frowned at the ever-present disapproval. They fell into a tense silence, as Nick considered Miss Barrett’s brother-in-law.
Rutland. The demon who’d shattered his family. A man whose only family was the woman he’d made wife. Nick gave his head a shake. Oh, the timing. If he had been in possession of the title duke and amidst Polite Society then, he could have robbed Rutland of the person who most mattered. He rolled his shoulders. As it was, he’d have to settle for destroying the man’s sister-in-law. His father-in-law. His brother-in-law. And through that destruction, his wife’s every happiness.
Then, the man would live with the misery of being crushed… without the finality of death, by which Nick’s own family had been forever transformed.
He stared down into his half-empty glass. His mind slid back to a long-ago day. To a different bottle of brandy dripping on the floor. A crystal glass tipped on its side, as the amber brew spilled in a depressed puddle over the important papers scattered on that once-cluttered desk. Nick’s hand trembled and sent liquid sloshing over the side, staining his fingers. He set the glass down hard with a loud thunk.
“You do not expect a man like him will not be abreast, even in the country, of his sister-in-law’s well-being?” Chilton ventured, pulling him back to the moment.
“Hardly,” Nick concurred. Rutland may have retired to the country, but the man, by nature of his evil existence, had made it nigh impossible to penetrate his world. “His wife’s recent delivery and sick babe, however, will command all his notice for some time.”
A Heart of a Duke Regency Collection : Volume 2--A Regency Bundle Page 119