“You want me,” he said softly.
“Yes. Oh yes, I want you, Richard, my love.” I caught another quick breath when he moved his hand again and sent sensations of rising excitement through my very heart. “How do you do it? Make me need you so much?”
“Years of dedicated practice,” he said, coming back up the bed after one particularly soul-wrenching twist of his hand. “But you—you are the culmination. I’ll never get over you. I never want to.”
He covered my body with his, needing no help to guide him, watching me as I watched him. I welcomed the careful pressure, his heat, the sublime sensation of his hard shaft probing my melting softness. My flesh shivered when he pushed his way inside.
I breathed his name before he dipped his head and kissed me, deep and passionate. Then he leaned back so he could see me and watch my reaction to my growing need of him. I didn’t hold back. I knew he loved to watch me, and I loved to give him pleasure. Morning light gilded his skin, stroked the taut muscles in his shoulders and chest.
Arching my back, I pushed against him, wanting as profound a joining as we could achieve. I lifted my legs to curl around him and hold him tightly. He drove in, plunged into me, and I opened to him, loved his ruthlessness when I clenched around him.
I closed my eyes when my peak approached, fast as a bolt of lightning, as devastating as if that bolt had lanced through me, freezing time, stopping my heart. He grasped my hand and pressed it down into the soft pillow, another link between us. “Oh, my love, never, never stop—”
“Never,” he gasped. “For the rest of my life. Only you.”
From the breathiness of his tone I knew he was close to his peak, so I opened my eyes again, watching as he in his turn lost control. That he trusted me, loved me enough to let go meant more to me each time. I wrapped my free arm around his back, felt his muscles hard and straining with effort and held him tight when he climaxed, his explosive cry of my name better than the most exquisite music.
Even when the act of love overwhelmed him, he never forgot my welfare. He slid carefully to one side of me before letting his body relax. I lay still, one hand clasped in his, one arm across his back, breathing deeply. I was never so aware of my body as when we made love. He made me feel beautiful, desirable, wanted.
After a few moments he opened his eyes and smiled. “Rose.” Just that, just the one word, but suffused with love. He leaned forward to kiss my shoulder, and I turned on my side so I could kiss his mouth. He touched my face with his hand and cradled the back of my head protectively. I rested my head on his shoulder and breathed in, letting the scent fill me—love, arced through with him. “Wonderful.”
“Yes.”
“Wonderful too to have you here, so I can turn over in the night and know I’m not alone. I’ve never slept as well as I do with you.”
“I’m sorry we ever have to sleep apart.”
“It’s one of the reasons that, when you had Helen, I preferred to sleep in a chair in here than in my own room. That, and the need to look after you. I’d never felt so helpless.”
I looked up at him in surprise. That aspect of things had never occurred to me before. “Helpless?”
He smiled wryly. “I could do nothing to help, nothing to share your pain. I was desperate and angry.”
I smoothed my hand across his chest, resting over his heart, which pulsed with life. Richard always remained in control, organised his own life with ruthless efficiency before I met him. “I was happy I could do something for you, at last.”
He made an impatient sound. “You’d already done more than anyone else ever had. The child was an irrelevance. At least she was until I saw her.” His smile reflected the one I had first seen when he had taken her up into his arms. Now, so close to giving him another child, I hoped to see that expression again.
“Well we know that I can give birth and recover after. It won’t be as fraught this time—will it?”
“I pray every day that it will not.” He held me tighter. “I’m sure you’re right. Shall we stay here all day and send our apologies to visitors?” he said after a few moments of blissful closeness.
The idea tempted me. “Richard, we can’t do that.”
“Why not? You need your rest. I need to care for you. We can have something to eat sent up to us as we did in Venice. Do you have anything important arranged for today?”
A small shudder passed through me, and Richard looked at me in concern. I smiled reassurance. “Nothing. I think someone walked over my grave.”
It was his turn to shudder. “Terrible expression. I told you that you needed rest.”
I snuggled into him and felt his arms tighten around me. There was nowhere I would rather be than here. Perhaps he had a point. When we got up we’d have to face the day and the true reason for my shudder. John was in London. I couldn’t avoid facing the problem forever, but I didn’t need to rush into it.
WE ATE BREAKFAST INFORMALLY, no servants present, so we could converse easily. We helped ourselves from the dishes laid out on the buffet. The only exceptions were our levée days, when we would receive people as we dressed, and then we usually ate in our separate rooms. I preferred these days, but I had to hold the levées. Part of the job.
“I have a letter from Lizzie.”
“Really?” Richard looked up from the heap of correspondence and newspapers lying by his place at the table. “What does she say? Is she happy with her Marquês?”
“Blissfully.” I read a little further, sipping my morning chocolate. “They’re spending most of their time in a house in the hills just outside Lisbon. She says it’s very beautiful, and we must visit them when we can. It gets very hot in the summer—good God!” He looked at me with concern as I replaced my cup in its saucer. The pretty, gold-rimmed cup shook before it settled, off balance. “She’s pregnant!”
“That was quick,” he remarked.
“Wasn’t it? They must be very happy together.”
“I never doubted it.” He paused and picked up the Gazette. “You will send her my best wishes for the continuation of her health?”
“Of course.” I glanced up, met his soft gaze and smiled. “I’m glad she finds her husband’s country so pleasant. I thought she would be lonely, but she’s managing very well.”
“You thought you might be lonely for a time after we married, didn’t you?”
“Not really.”
He laughed. “Yes you did.”
My face relaxed despite my best efforts to appear stern. “I knew you’d be there. It was just the suddenness of our marriage, that was all.”
His gaze searched my face, a trace of anxiety in the tight lines about his mouth. “And now?”
“I have friends, my family, and I have you. My worst time was when I was expecting Helen and I began to increase. I thought you might be repelled by the changes in my body, might not want me.”
He didn’t answer immediately, but glanced away and then back at me before replying, “To tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure myself. I knew I would remain with you, would support you, but I didn’t know if desire would remain intact.” He raised his coffee cup and toasted me with it. “It did, and does.”
I laughed at the toast, but his answering smile left his face when he looked down at the Gazette. He had turned over from the first page of advertisements to the news inside. “I suppose it had to come.”
“What?”
“The report of the ball last night. One of the grand affairs of the season, so bound to appear in the newspapers. His name is there, as Mr. John Kneller, a gentleman from the North. Thank goodness they don’t mention any more.”
“Will you consult?” I meant Thompson’s, the agency we owned along with Mrs. Thompson and Richard’s manservant, Carier.
“I’ll have him watched. No doubt he’ll research his staff carefully now he knows about us, but I can still get someone in to his household if he sets up somewhere substantial. If he has any sense, he’ll set up in bachelor lodgings, wi
th two indoor servants and maybe a groom.”
“No more than watched?” I didn’t want him using my pregnancy as an excuse to keep me worry-free.
He glanced up at me, his gaze pensive. “Not yet. We’ll let him make the first move. I want him to show his hand.”
“Won’t that give him the advantage? We know he’s come here for us, don’t we?”
Richard shook his head, a wry twist to his mouth. “If we act, it’s giving him power. We’re acknowledging him, that he has power over us. He doesn’t, but I’d rather he confined his activities elsewhere. I have no desire to admit that I have a thief and murderer for a son.”
“What about his sister?” Susan concerned me. She’d begun to sort out her affairs, and she might not welcome interference from her twin brother.
“I’ll send word.” He bit his lip.
He took too much blame on those broad shoulders. He’d fathered the children, but he hadn’t even known that at the time. His mother had removed Richard’s lover, a maid in the household, before he knew, otherwise he’d have cared for her and the children. The fear that he would have married her, had he discovered her condition, drove his mother to send the woman away. But he held himself responsible, perhaps too much, and all I could do was remain steadfast and support him.
RICHARD MADE ME STAY at home that morning, insisting I rest. “I’ll give orders for you to be left alone,” he said, and he kissed me and left. I was thankful for the rest, more tired than I’d thought I would be. I didn’t dress until noon, and only when I thought I might receive some guests.
I wasn’t wrong. Martha arrived just before two with Ruth in tow. Martha didn’t waste time in small talk. After the maid had brought tea and left, and she’d enquired about my health, she went straight to the purpose of her visit. “You’ve recovered from the terrible shock of last night?”
“It wasn’t such a shock. We expected to see him again.”
Martha knew of Richard’s relationship to John Kneller, one of the few people who did. I’d told her the previous year, to try to explain some of the things that occurred then. But my sister Ruth did not know. Kneller, as I supposed we must call him, enticed Ruth into a fondness he didn’t return, but he was wholly aware of fostering. Ruth was young, and more naïve than most young ladies thrust into polite society. Her first beau had entranced her, and she’d come close to declaring her preference in public. That was before Kneller tried to kill me and Richard had been forced to deal with him. And that was my main concern—that Richard would kill him this time if Kneller tried to hurt me. He was capable of it, but to commit the sin of killing his son—it would destroy him. It might destroy us.
With Ruth present, Martha couldn’t express herself as forthrightly as she must wish to do, something I could only be glad of as I had no desire to share any more of our feelings on the matter until we knew more.
Martha glanced at Ruth. “I informed Ruth of Kneller’s unacceptable behaviour last year,” she said, tight-lipped. Nobody did disapproval like Martha, except perhaps my motherin-law, whose approbation was more often than not aimed at me, whereas Martha’s was generally directed elsewhere.
Ruth had so far amused herself by glaring at us, one to the other. She hadn’t attempted to add anything, until now. “Why did you make him leave, Rose?” I understood her pain, but not her insistence that we were at fault and not her erstwhile lover.
Martha turned to hush her, but I shook my head. Ruth had a right to ask. “I’m most terribly sorry he wasn’t the man you wanted him to be, Ruth.”
“But I was very fond of him—I loved him!” Her lower lip trembled. She gripped the arm of her chair so tightly I feared for the brocade, but the action helped her to block her tears. It was a small price to pay to avoid an unpleasant scene.
Martha sipped her tea, keeping a wary eye on us both. At one time she would have taken control of the situation, but I had proved my ability to take care of my own affairs and she didn’t interfere now. I appreciated that.
I tried to be as gentle as I could, but I couldn’t tell Ruth the complete truth. It wasn’t my secret to tell. “All I can say is that you loved an illusion,” I told her. “He played you a cruel trick, Ruth, as he did all of us.”
“Do you know where he is now?”
“Not precisely at this moment.” But soon I would know his movements, day and night, when Richard had made his arrangements at Thompson’s. I met her gaze unblinkingly. “After what he did, we couldn’t ignore his behaviour.”
“What, ask me to run away with him?” Ruth sneered, her thin mouth taking a downward turn. “After the way you disapproved of him, what else could he do?”
I glanced at Martha and she shook her head. She hadn’t told Ruth the worst, then, and at that moment I realised that my sister needed to know more. She was an adult now, and shouldn’t be sheltered any more than was necessary. As the sister of an earl, and the sister-in-law of a viscountess and a marquesa, she’d be subjected to a great deal of pressure from fortune hunters and power brokers. She had to grow up soon, or she’d suffer. What would work for Miss Ruth Golightly of Devonshire wouldn’t be enough for Lady Ruth Golightly of London.
I put down my tea dish, hearing the tinkle as it met the deep saucer with a touch of satisfaction. I couldn’t deny that these possessions I could now afford gave me pleasure every time I used them, compensated for a hard day or the difficult truths I was about to entrust in my sister.
“He abducted Steven Drury and me. He tried to make Steven rape me, assumed he would because of an incident in our past.” I ignored Martha’s sharp intake of breath. “But Steven has changed. He refused, and we delayed matters long enough for Richard and his body of men to reach us.” That was enough. It should persuade Ruth of the inadvisability of pursuing the connection. Nothing about the man’s criminal activity, nothing about his relationship to Richard. I tried another tack, since her mulish look remained stubbornly planted on her face. “You’re playing into his hands now by acting this way. Look about you, see what’s on offer. You are the last of the so-called beautiful Golightly girls left single. Make the most of it, Ruth. You have the Season to yourself.”
Martha’s gusty sigh spoke volumes. “I’ve told her that. This is the first season she can bask in the sunshine all on her own, but so far she hasn’t listened.”
I thought back to how it was when I was Ruth’s age. Lizzie would have given her soul to have what she had now, but not everyone’s dreams were the same. “All my life I had Lizzie to contend with. She was always dazzlingly beautiful, but I loved her too much to let her know how damaging she was to my prospects. When I started to go into the county, people said I was Lizzie Golightly’s older sister, and they should wait for her. When she came out, she did her best to include me, but she was always the centre of attention. Despite that I’ve done very well, in the eyes of the world as well as my own.” And I had. I had the man I loved, who happened to be wealthy and powerful, as well as being the other half of my soul. “Lift your head, Ruth, make the most of your time now. You are lovely. You could be one of the hits of the season if you chose. Do you want John Kneller to think you can’t cope without him, that his desertion of you means that much to you?”
I think I hit a nerve there, because my sister looked up and at me with a new understanding. “There is that,” she said reluctantly. “I should perhaps try to do that. If I’m a success, he’ll want me more, won’t he?”
“But you can’t have him, Ruth.” Her stubborn insistence irritated me, but I had done what I could. Now it was up to her.
Chapter Three
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, Richard helped me out of the carriage outside Southwood House. Since this was one of Lady Southwood’s days for not receiving general visitors, we thought we’d get our visit to her over with in relative privacy. I quirked a brow at him as we faced the shiny black-painted front door. “We paid her a visit just two weeks ago.”
“I need to face her before John does.”
“He wouldn’t dare come here.” Lady Southwood had spirited Richard’s mother away before the children were born. She would hardly welcome them back.
“Nevertheless, I want to prime her and ensure she won’t do anything to encourage the boy.”
We ascended the steps to the door, which we didn’t need to sound. The ever-perspicacious butler opened it before we reached it. He bowed low. Not quite as low as he would have done for Richard’s father the earl, but lower than for most visitors. And for Richard’s brother Gervase, his junior by a matter of minutes and his superior in wealth.
Richard acknowledged his presence with a bare nod. He didn’t acknowledge the footman who took our outerwear. I wanted to smile my thanks, but in this house it would be reported to the mistress and considered even more evidence of my provincial origins. So I forbore and in this instance followed my husband’s lead. He escorted me up a very grand set of stairs and into the drawing room, a deeply formal salon, against the current taste, but this in itself gave it a timeless quality, a sense that the Southwoods were above such trivialities.
I hated it.
But I made my curtsey and Richard gave his mother a supremely elegant, soulless bow. She stood at his presence, something she rarely did for anyone, and returned his greeting.
So did the other person in the room. Richard’s son, John.
Richard hardly acknowledged his presence, but the youth bowed to him. I didn’t curtsey and I knew my role in all this. To support my husband, in whatever he wanted to do here. To trust him, as I always did. As he did with me.
Richard helped me to a seat on one of the gilded, spindle-legged sofas and took his place next to me, flipping his coat aside in a gesture so practised it seemed elegantly natural. At his most intimidating, he tilted his chin at his mother, inviting her to speak.
She regarded him under half-closed lids. “You vouch for this young man?”
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