She glanced at the other papers and then met his eyes once more. “My father’s wedding was timed so that his leaving England would not be remarked as more than a bride-trip. He married my mother and took her to the South Seas. They were on a mission on behalf of Sir Robert Walpole and other investors, but when they left in August, the South Sea Company was still going strong, so they did not wish to alarm a volatile market. It was given out that they had gone abroad on their honeymoon, but they never set foot on the continent.”
He heard the words with dull shock. Each echoed around his brain as if they had no meaning. Eventually he roused himself enough to ask, “When did they return?”
“The market collapsed in September, so my father used the visit to conduct other matters. He bought land, and businesses. We have ample proof of his visit.” She nodded to the bundle of papers on the table and glanced at the two in his hands. “Here’s what proof I could gather quickly.”
He spread the papers out on the table. One was a letter, briefly saying they had arrived safely. It was dated and sealed, but on its own it was no proof. Another, however, was a bill of sale for a parcel of land in Jamaica. That was a formal document, and it was dated and signed in December 1720.
“And this is your father’s signature?”
“Indubitably.”
The signature was the same as the one on the letter. “This is true?”
She nodded again. “They did not arrive back in Britain until the following April.”
It was true. The Duke of Kirkburton was not his father.
His knees gave way, and he grabbed the table for support. It wobbled, and he snatched it back. Helena rounded the table quickly and grabbed his elbow, guiding him to a heavy wing back chair that stood by the fireplace.
He slumped into it, but gripped her hand tightly. “You have more proof?” Not that he needed it. He needed time to assimilate what had just happened here.
“Land deeds, letters, certificates of employment…” She laughed shakily. “My father never throws anything away. They sold out of the South Sea Company before they left, which was just as well, as it turned out.”
He nodded and grinned wryly. “Your family is always on the winning side, is it not?”
“I wouldn’t say that. They lost a great deal in the Civil War. They were royalists, too.”
Staring at the papers on the table, mocking his own contribution, the sheet of writing that had cost him his happiness, he swallowed. “My mother lied? Why would she lie?”
“Any number of reasons. I never knew the lady, so I cannot say.”
“She was a good woman. I remember her. She died when I was thirteen. She was a society beauty, but so much more than that.” He let his melancholy free. If she had lied, why would she do so? “What reason would she have for lying?”
In a swish of skirts she bent down, sitting on her heels so they faced each other. They still only touched where their hands were linked. “I cannot say,” she repeated carefully and slowly. “Perhaps your father knows.”
He met her gaze. “He believes it too. He made her confess and write the note. Then he accepted me as his.”
She frowned. “Why would he do that? From what I know of your father, he is as much a family man as mine. My father would have sent his wife away to have the child in secret. He would never have accepted him as his heir. Later children, maybe, but not the heir!”
He was as puzzled as she was. “I do not know,” he said. “But I mean to find out. You swear this is true?”
Without hesitation, she nodded. “Walpole and the group of men who were concerned about the Bubble deliberately confused anyone asking where my father was. They said he went abroad on his marriage, because they did not want people to know they were concerned. The market was volatile to the point of madness. One word in the wrong direction would have forced the collapse. As it happened, it collapsed anyway, but only after my father had arrived in the South Seas.”
“Dear God,” he said, his words scarcely more than a breath. “This is hard to believe. For the last five years, I’ve thought of us as siblings. Or tried to.” With her so close he could not deny the truth. “I never succeeded. I told myself that love is love, that I had mistaken romantic love for a different kind of connection.”
He gripped her hand so tightly that he must be hurting her but she never showed, by a twitch or a change in her lovely eyes, that he was doing so. With an effort, he relaxed his hold. She did not pull her hand away but left it there, resting in his. That small gesture meant so much to him.
“I lied to myself and kept on lying, but it didn’t work. It was still a lie.”
She nodded. “My feelings were never confused, not after the first shock.”
“I’m so sorry.” His words were so inadequate, but he had to start somewhere.
“At first I believed what you said in the letter. Then I thought again, and remembered. You didn’t lie here, not in this house. I know that for certain. But I was young and I had no way of getting through to you. I thought of barging into your house and demanding an answer. I thought of confessing all to my parents. But what would those tactics do? Where would they leave me? So I did nothing and waited.”
“You were wiser than I, love.” The word had just slipped out, but he would not take it back now. “I made inquiries, but everything I discovered spoke to the truth of what my mother said. I went to Rome—”
“You did?”
“What else could I do? I needed the truth. There, I discovered exactly nothing. No evidence that your parents had been there all that time ago, but that proved nothing.”
He got to his feet. She came with him, rising like Venus from the waves in a froth of green silk.
“Do we speak of everything now?”
A smile toyed with the corners of her mouth. “Do we have to? Or will we meet again?”
“We have to.” Clasping her hands between his, he drew her closer. “It appears we are married, after all. But give me some time, love. I need to talk to my father, to discover why my mother could lie to him in that way.” He closed his eyes. “He told me five years ago.”
Her eyes widened. “You told him about us?”
“I didn’t have to. He’d been watching us. He knew I felt more than I should for you. He told me that my mother confessed she was carrying another man’s child in Rome. He said that he left her and traveled around Italy, trying to decide on his course of action. He loved her, you see. When he returned, the child had been born. He was ready to leave me with guardians in Rome, but the King feared the gossip would be damaging and prevailed on him to keep me.”
So often children born that way, illicit, unwanted children disappeared as if they had never existed. “He loved her, so he kept me.” He paused. “There was another reason. At the time he believed himself incapable of siring children. Although he’d had mistresses, he’d never sired a child.” He shook his head. “My father must have been remarkably naive at the time. He discovered how fertile he was when my brothers and sisters came along. I believed it because he believed it.”
They gazed at each other. He had never dreamed she would be this close again, or if she was, that he would have her in his grasp. “Every time I saw you I wanted you. Always and ever, I desired you. How could I stay in the same room as you when I felt like that? How could I share such a terrible secret with you?”
“I saw it, but you would not let me anywhere near you.”
“I dared not. Or I might have done this.”
Even though the matter was far from settled, he could not resist drawing her close and bringing his mouth down on hers.
She opened to him immediately and it was as if the last five years melted away as they kissed. He moaned into her mouth, his shaft rising, and all his primitive instincts rose, shrieking, “Take her! Take her!” into his mind.
He pushed her away, gasping. “To touch you is to want you. We cannot.”
“Why not?�
�� She moved closer, nestling against his chest. “I forgive you. Your reasons were perfectly correct, although I will probably punish you for not telling me sooner. Except for when I want to hit you, of course.” Sliding her hand into her pocket, she drew out an object he had not seen for five years. His signet ring. “This is still valid.”
He blinked away a tear as he took it and fitted it on her finger. “It is also still too big for you.”
She folded her fingers over it. “It’s mine. You gave it to me.”
“It is always yours. But I will get you another. One that fits.”
Her smile warmed him right to his heart. “Why did you wait this long?”
“I told myself more than once that I should tell you, but I was a coward. I told myself I wanted to spare you the agony. I searched the family records, and while I did not find absolute proof, everything pointed to my mother telling the truth. Your father’s friends concealed his mission so effectively that not one of the publications from that time reported that he had gone to the Americas. I went to the newspaper offices and demanded to see their archives. I did everything I could think of to disprove what she said, but I could not. And I could not come near you without wanting you, so I kept away. I vowed that when I saw you marry another man, I would give you my blessing. I told myself when you moved on, so would I. And there was the other matter.”
“Ah, yes,” she said. “That.” She rested her forehead against his chest. “It seems unfair that political matters affect us so closely, but that’s the nature of the beast, is it not?”
He touched her cheek, marveling at his right to do so. “And you did not move on. This week it became clear to me that you had to know. I didn’t want you to feel what I did when I learned what we were to each other. That I had taken my sister to my bed.”
She shuddered. “If that had been true, I would have wanted to know. I could have fallen pregnant. What then?”
He stared at her, a chill spreading through him. “I don’t know. Would we have sacrificed ourselves for our child?”
Her little head shake told him everything and nothing. “I don’t know either. But it didn’t happen.”
He clasped her closer. “I know what would have happened. I would have claimed you, and we would have been forced to investigate my mother’s claims sooner. All this would have come out into the open.”
“But we didn’t know that.”
No, they didn’t. Speculating on would haves and should haves was nonsense. They were here now, after throwing so much time away. He didn’t want to waste another moment. “Shall we carry on where we left off?”
She stared at him, eyes dancing.
“If you say yes, we’ll leave England today, tonight. No going home to pack, no looking back.” Even as he said it, the mental pictures of the people he would hurt and those he would let down danced before his eyes.
“We can’t.”
“No.” The visions of freedom crashed and burned, never to return. “We have to face people, do we not? Tell them what we’ve done.”
“It won’t be so bad,” she said softly, cradling his jaw in her hand.
“Not if we do it together. We might even go to live in that house in France after all.”
“Perhaps. But we were foolish to think we could do that in the first place.”
He nodded. “You’re right. We cannot do such a thing.”
She gave a sudden spurt of laughter. “My brother would have hunted us down. He would not have rested. It was foolish of me to even imagine that he would.”
“Why are you laughing?”
“Because we are here, and married, and we cannot fail. Not now.”
He wished he had such lightness of spirit because he had no such expectation. But at least he knew he would fight for her. “Make love with me.” Nothing mattered more. He hungered to know how she had changed and what she looked like now. Her skin was still dewy-soft. The thought of waking with that perfection within reach every morning for the rest of his life made him giddy.
“Yes.”
Right then and there he tumbled even deeper in love with her. Her faith, her lack of doubt, humbled him. With her, he could be a better person. The last five years had completed his education. He had delved into deeper cynicism and at the bottom, to his surprise, found answers. Practical answers that served to keep the balance between their two families level.
He led her upstairs and pushed open the door to the bedroom. “You’ve already been up here,” he said.
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Your perfume.”
“I’m not wearing any perfume.”
He drew her close and breathed in deep. “I beg to differ.” He glanced down at her gown. “You look lovely, but I wager you’ll look better with this off.”
“Are we not rushing into this?”
“Yes.” He had to confess all. “But I am afraid, sweetheart. I’m afraid you will change your mind, or disappear, and I’ll never have this chance again. I’m afraid I’ll never touch you again, never hold you or call you mine.”
Who knew what waited for them outside these doors?
“No more talk. We’ll decide what to do after. Later. Should I send your carriage away?”
Another laugh. “Good lord, no! Julius would only send another to collect me.”
Undressing her proved a delight he should perhaps have lingered over, but he could not. Now she was here, now he was with her, he couldn’t wait to see her, to touch her. As he revealed more, he became more intoxicated. When he urged her to turn around so he could unfasten her stays, she wagged a finger at him mischievously.
“Watch.” She unhooked her stays from the front. “My mother thinks it’s scandalous that I’ve taken to using this style. Of course for formal wear, I use the back lacing, but this way I can undress myself and get dressed again.” She paused, her hands on the last hook. “Which is of course why it is scandalous.”
“You should let me unlace you sometimes.” There he went, speaking as if their staying together was a foregone conclusion, but he could not imagine any other outcome.
“I will.” Then his certainty was reflected in her.
When she was in her shift and nothing else, he reached for her and helped her with her last garment. He was naked and rampantly aroused, his cock hard and aching for her, their clothes scattered haphazardly over the floor, the chair by the dressing table, and the one by the window. He’d dragged the curtains across but had not bothered to arrange them, only to cover their actions from prying eyes. He hid nothing from her, but revelled in her possessive gaze. With the fine lawn whisked over her head, she was naked too.
“Here we are equals. But we were wrong before.” He murmured the words against her hair, rippling down now it was free of the restraining pins. “We cannot shut the world out. We have to let it in.” If he had learned anything while they’d been apart, it was this. “All that you are makes you more precious to me.”
How could he have ever imagined they were brother and sister? She was his love, the only person meant for him, and he for her. That was why— “I took no mistresses. I shared my bed with nobody while we were apart.”
She stared up at him, blinking. “Truly?”
He smiled at her amazement. “Yes, truly. I wanted nobody else. Every woman I met I compared to you, and they all came up wanting.”
She laughed and lowered her head. “I am not so perfect. My sister is considered the beauty.”
“Then they are mad or blind. You are perfect for me, Helena, and you are the only woman I want.”
Her sigh sent a hot breath of air across his chest. “You’re perfect too. That’s why I didn’t accept any offers. That, and knowing I was already married.” She lifted her chin. “How could you ever have expected me to move on just with your say-so? After I obtained our certificate of marriage, do you know how many times I tried to see you?”
“I contrived never to be alone with
you,” he confessed. “It was too dangerous.” Bending his head, he brushed his lips across hers. “Now get into that bed before I burst.”
His confession sent her into gales of laughter. She was still laughing when he joined her, but he put paid to that when he rolled over her and kissed her.
“Sweetheart, this is what I dreamed of.”
The years melted away. He had a lot to make up for, and he would devote every waking moment to it. Starting today.
When he touched her, he discovered how wet she was. He lifted his fingers to his mouth and tasted them, watched her eyes widen.
“Let me reacquaint myself with you and assure myself that this really is my wife in bed with me.”
Kissing her was to taste heaven. He kissed down her neck, stroking his lips over her shoulders. The glory of her breasts awaited him, twin cushions of bounty tipped with rosettes that hardened into stiff peaks when he took them into his mouth and sucked, and then licked around them. Her gasps and tiny moans of delight fed his need to please her, to give her everything he could.
He could have feasted on them all day, but more luscious delights awaited him, and he did not want to miss them. Kissing down, he dipped his tongue into the sweet indentation of her navel and then farther. She gripped his hair. Now it was long she could grasp handfuls of it. She tugged.
“Tom, you cannot…”
“Watch me.” He lifted his head and met her wide-eyed blue gaze. “I want to. I need to claim you, every part of you.”
“Tom, how…?”
He took his first lick of her intimate juices. “Now be quiet and enjoy.”
Her sighs and moans delighted and enthralled him. He explored her fully, tasting every part of her. She needed no preparation, but he urged her anyway, determined he would give her pleasure this way first.
She did not need telling this time. Spreading her legs, she lifted her knees to give him greater access. When she pushed her cleft at him, he rejoiced and did as she bade him, sucking and teasing. He inserted a finger into her silky heat, urging her to greater heights.
She cried out, her body clamping down on him, the pulses signaling her release. Her first release. He did not return to her until he had wrung every last spasm from her, and then he surged back up the bed, unable to wait a moment longer.
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