His Lordship's Downfall: The Complete Edition

by Josie Litton

  Aside from her mind, of course. That had to be the biggest shock of all. A few weeks before he would have scorned any such notion and now he could not imagine it being otherwise. Going forward decades, he didn’t conceive of a day when he would find her intelligence, her insight, and the courage to act on both anything less than enthralling.

  Of course, there were also bound to be times when he would be tearing his hair out in frustration over her foolishly Utopian convictions or trying to convince her to have at least some small regard for her own well-being and safety. So far gone was he that he was looking forward even to that.

  “Ahem,” Jane said.

  He grinned, loving how damned polite she was, and gently parted her outer lips. Having learned the power of the tongue stud, he deployed it mercilessly. Her taste was rapture, her soft cries delight. He pursued her relentlessly, not content until she clasped his hair, her thighs tightening around him, and came screaming his name.

  Oh, no, sweet, tormenting Jane, he wasn’t about to let her off that easily.

  Rising out of the pool, the water sluicing off him, he carried her a short distance to a wide lounge. In that small space of time, her mouth found his, her tongue thrusting, twisting, threatening the shred of control to which he clung.

  Even as he savored the intimacy of that kiss, he remained resolute. Having laid her down, he came over her swiftly, covering without touching her.

  With what little breath he had left, he said, “Tell me what you want.”

  She didn’t hesitate. “You, now.”

  His gaze followed the path of her hand between their bodies, the slim finger slipped through the ring in his cock, the little tug as she arched her hips and drew him to her.

  Penetrating slowly, he discovered that the added effect of the gold ring within the tight, pulsing clench of her cunt more than wiped away the sting of having been so boldly adorned. With each thrust, he felt the weight of the ring tugging at his crest, making it even more acutely sensitive. At the same time, the devilish device rubbed repeatedly against her most sensitive spot, making her cry out helplessly.

  “Oh, god, Adrian, don’t stop! More!”

  To his intense pleasure, he was supremely willing and able to indulge her.

  He did try to prolong the moment for them both but whereas the night before had been slow and extended, this was anything but. The orgasm drawn from him by the back-clawing, writhing intensity of her own shattered all sense of separation between them. Sinking even deeper into her, he was struck by an ineffable sense of having reached a destination he had not known existed yet had been in search of his entire life.

  So much so that in the aftermath, having drawn her close against him, he tumbled into a blissful sleep embroidered by dreams in which he and Jane gamboled with fluffy white bunnies over rolling green lawns while bovines bleated in the distance and oddly, a camel ambled by.

  Some unknown time later, he half-awoke and turned, anticipating the soft, enticing warmth of her body next to his only to encounter emptiness. He was alone on the chaise. Sitting up, he took a quick glance around. The pool area was deserted. No sounds came from the house.

  He stood up and was about to go in search of her when the torque slipped off. He made a grab for it but too late. Unable to look away, he watched as it fell from around his neck and tumbled through the air before hitting the ground with an audible thud.

  Nature and training alike had combined to assure that in any situation, his lordship would stay calm, do what was needed and above all, not make a fuss. All that vanished in an instant. He ran, leaping over stray chaises, hurtling through the patio doors, racing down the gallery under the stern gazes of his ancestors and out across the lawn toward the glass house.

  He didn’t stop until he saw Jameson, puttering around near the entrance just as though the butler had anticipated that someone might come plunging through it.

  “Where is she?” Lord Adrian blurted. “Jane, I mean, where--”

  Gone. He was going to say that she’d packed a bag and high-tailed it out of there. And who could blame her really? All that going on about how much he needed her, not saying a word about love, never mind that it was a stupidly inadequate word for the feelings inside him, all that yearning and being thrilled and terrified at the same time-- What was he going to do without her? How would he possibly go on?

  “I believe Miss Smythe is in the library, sir,” Jameson said without batting an eye.

  Not so Jane who batted both eyes and upped the ante with a quirked brow when Lord Adrian strode into the room where they had shared so many memorable moments.

  “Did you forget your shorts?” she inquired.

  Only then did he realize that he had left them wherever they’d gotten tossed near the pool.

  “Never mind about them. You unlocked the torque. Nearly gave me heart failure when it fell off.”

  He meant that quite literally; it really had felt as though his heart simply could not go on beating. There wouldn’t have been any point.

  Softly, he said, “I was afraid that you’d left.”

  Surprise and what looked very like remorse flitted across Jane’s face. She opened her mouth to speak only to abruptly close it again as she regained her composure.

  Belatedly, he realized that they were not alone. Two burly delivery men were gaping at them or more particularly at him. Happily for all concerned, Jane had replaced her short little robe with slacks and a blouse. She looked cool and elegant as she directed them to set their burden down near the windows overlooking the garden.

  The low, wide couch in ox-blood leather that emerged from its cocoon of protective wrappings had the shape of an elongated S with two graceful arcs at either end, one higher than the other. The curvature resembled that of a reclining human form. As an elegantly designed piece of furniture, it could not be faulted. Nonetheless, Jane seemed a little uncertain.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” she said when the delivery men had accepted a generous tip and departed. “I saw this the other day and it appealed to me. I thought it could replace your copper contraption, which went to the scrap heap, by the way.”

  “Did you?” Lord Adrian murmured, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. He had to do something while he stared dazedly at what she had found so tempting.

  “Do you know what this is?” he asked.

  She blushed most becomingly. “Well, I did glean from the accompanying literature that its configuration is intended to allow for a versatile range of positions, ergonomically speaking, that heighten or facilitate might be a better word extended sessions of…”

  “It’s a Tantric sex couch,” he said, mercifully cutting her off. “Intended for the practice of a highly advanced erotic discipline capable of extending release over long periods of--”

  Sudden understanding dawned. Last night, the skilled prolonging of his orgasm… She certainly hadn’t learned that from him so how had she--?

  The little minx really had been reading up. Never had he appreciated the fruits of intellectual curiosity more. Bookish women were far and away to be preferred over any other.

  “I’ve always wanted one of these,” he said, still marveling that it was right there in front of him. “But it requires the right partner. Tantra’s definitely not for dilettantes.”

  He walked toward her, his stride purposeful, his goal beyond question. Holding her gaze, he said, “It requires commitment, patience and above all, real intimacy. But you already know that, don’t you?”

  “I may have done a bit of research,” she admitted.

  Elation spread through him. She had been inspired to do that, had she? And all the while she was tormenting him with talk of leaving. He might have to warm her bottom, provided that she let him.

  “Then you also know that true practitioners spend decades together refining their skills to reach the heights of sensual and spiritual enlightenment that few can even imagine. That really won’t work if you still want to run off to Bora-Bora.”

  S
he pretended to pout but a smile defeated her. “I hear the lagoons there are lovely.”

  “Then we’ll go together.” Dropping all pretense of anything but his desperate longing for her, he said, “The truth is, Jane, that I’ll go to the ends of the earth if that will make you happy. Just please, come with me.”

  Admittedly, a man so cast down from the heights of arrogance as his lordship was can be viewed with a certain vindictive pleasure. But if Jane indulged in that at all, it was only briefly.

  Instead, she took his hand, drew him to her, and said, “As it happens, I believe that I have already arrived where I want to be.”

  ∞∞∞

  That was all well and good but one snag remained before Lord Adrian could regard their happiness as complete. The resolution to it arrived two months later on a stormy day that brought a brisk wind out of the north and filled the streets of London with a sea of bobbing black umbrellas.

  Jane was seated in the library of their town residence when his lordship returned from a meeting with his solicitors. He hadn’t told her the purpose and she, sensing that he was nurturing something of importance, had not pressed him to reveal the matter.

  Even so, she looked up from the papers she was studying and observed him closely as he shook off the drops of rain clinging to his dark hair and the shoulders of his bespoke suit.

  “How was your lunch?” he asked. She had gone to a meeting of one of the committees she’d been invited to join, some reform-minded effort.

  “Exciting, a dozen women will be standing for the Commons in the next election.”

  “It’s the end of the world.” He spoke not with regret but with a healthy dose of anticipation for whatever was coming next.

  After taking a moment to warm his large, strong hands by the first fire of the turning season, he asked, “What about you?”

  She looked at him in honest confusion. “Me?”

  “You could stand for the Commons.”

  Jane gave a disbelieving laugh. “Me, be a member of Parliament? I’m far too young and besides…”

  “You won’t be forever,” he said, “too young that is. And your name is out there already. People are talking about you, you know.”

  It was inevitable that they would. However, the gossip was carefully muted and respectful. The effect, no doubt, of the warning he had quietly put about--humiliate her, discomfort her, harm her in any way and answer to the man whose ruthlessness was celebrated in the highest reaches of the realm. It was hypocritical, of course, given their personal history but he was damned if he would let that dissuade him. Whatever Jane needed, she would have.

  “You are seriously suggesting that I stand for the Commons at some point?” she asked with the same degree of incredulity she would have awarded to the notion that she fly to the moon.

  And yet…she could not entirely conceal a hint of interest.

  “In a few years,” he said. “Get a little seasoning, show what you’re capable of, then stand for Birmingham. You’ll win in a landslide, I’ve no doubt.”

  She shook her head at such foolishness. “As an unmarried woman living in flagrante with a notorious lord? I hate to break this to you, Adrian, but the solid folk of Birmingham are not nearly as tolerant as your society chums.”

  “And thank heaven for that. All the same--” He sat down beside her on the plum velvet settee recently introduced as part of a general feminization of his living quarters both in town and the country. A bit to his surprise, he had found that he did not mind it at all.

  “I wasn’t going to say anything to you until we were further along but before we left the abbey, I instructed my solicitors to petition the Lords for a dissolution of my marriage. As it was never consummated, they thought I had at least some chance of success. But as it happens, Bunny has beaten me to it.”

  “Bunny has done what?”

  “She’s filed her own petition in which she informs the Lords that she and Tony and Tata Monkton were joined last month in a ‘triad marriage’, the ceremony officiated over by a Himalayan holy man who sanctified their union on the peak of some mountain or other in the Kingdom of Bhutan.”

  “Triad marriage? Three people all married to each other?”

  “I have to assume so and I must say, hats off to Tony. He’s a braver man than I ever could be. Tata was always a handful but teamed up with Bunny… The mind boggles.”

  He thought for a moment, then added, “I honestly may have been wrong about her, on multiple fronts. Purely by coincidence, or more likely not, we happen to be in the midst of trade negotiations with His Majesty, the Dragon King of Bhutan, who happens, Bunny mentions in her petition, to be the holy man’s uncle.”

  “Do you think the Lords will be swayed by that?”

  He prayed that he was right about the note of hopefulness in her voice. Everything depended on it.

  “They can’t fail to be. The whole triad business will disturb them mightily, being both foreign and the sort of thing they certainly don’t want anyone here getting ideas about. Throw in the matter of the trade negotiations and--”

  His smile could not have been more heartfelt. “I give it a month before my sham of a marriage is no more.”

  Slowly, she said. “You will be free?”

  “Indeed, at least for however long it takes me to convince you to become Lady Jane Burleigh.” At her sharply indrawn breath, his smile turned devilish. “Her ladyship. It definitely suits a brash young woman from Birmingham.”

  On a more serious note, he added, “What do you say, Jane? We both know that you’ve made me a better man. Will you also make an honest one of me?”

  As he was already well aware, Jane of Arc was nothing if not valorous. Moreover, the honesty of her nature was such that he trusted she would not leave him hanging. In this, he was swiftly proven correct.

  Without wasting a moment, she gathered herself, took both his hands in hers, and said with heartfelt sincerity, “I will be more than happy to take you exactly as you are, milord.”

  And so, to his great joy, she did.

  As to whether the scandal of their beginnings could in any way taint their future happiness, that thought did not occur to either party. Through trial and tribulation, they had come to know one another in the truest and rarest sense of the word. Their resulting faith in the rightness of their union turned out, over the happy and fulfilling--if also frequently tumultuous--years ahead to be entirely justified.

  I leave it therefore to the reader to determine whether the tendency of this work is to recommend the reform of a man’s character, or reward the perception of what truly lies within his heart.

  ∞∞∞

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