Gayle Wilson

by Lady Sarah's Son

  “All the others, I guess,” she said, a deliberately wicked gleam in her eyes.

  “I’ve never had a female valet.”

  “Then,” Sarah said softly, “you really have no idea what you’ve been missing.”

  “Just...a few bits and pieces,” Justin suggested.

  “Not, ” Sarah answered, smiling at him again, “any of the important ones.”

  She held his eyes, and in hers he read nothing of the apprehension he felt. None of the fear. Only the same love he had seen when she had held out her hand by the fire. And trusting her love, because he understood that if he truly wanted Sarah, he had no other choice, Justin sat down on the edge of the bed and held out his left leg.

  She tugged the boot off by straddling his ankle and gripping the heel, exactly as his valet would have done. Apparently her claim about having helped her father had not been the generous untruth Justin had assumed it to be.

  “And now the right,” she suggested quietly.

  He realized she was waiting for him to hold out his right leg, the one that now ended midcalf, so she could remove its boot. No more hiding. And not nearly enough darkness.

  Steeling himself, he straightened his knee, holding out the gleaming Hessian. After only a heartbeat’s hesitation, she turned her back to him again, straddling his calf and putting both her hands around the heel of the boot.

  He should have warned her, he realized belatedly. Due to the inflexibility of the artificial foot, this one was always much more difficult to take off. She took a firmer grip, obviously determined not to admit defeat. Unable as he was to bend the ankle to help the boot slide off, there seemed nothing he could do. Except, of course...

  Just as Sarah made another valiant effort, Justin put his left foot on her slim, rounded derriere, temptingly right in front of him, and pushed. It was what he did to assist his valet in the difficult removal. This time, however, his attempt to help didn’t have quite the same effect.

  The boot suddenly flew off, taking Sarah with it. She stumbled forward, dropping the Hessian and throwing her hands out to break her fall. She succeeded, ending up rather. inelegantly on her hands and knees in front of him.

  She looked at him over her shoulder. “You did that on purpose,” she accused, her eyes alive, filled with laughter that he hadn’t seen in them in far too long a time.

  “Why, whatever are you doing down there, Lady Wynfield?” he asked, laughing with her.

  “Looking for more port, perhaps?” she answered tartly.

  “You didn’t believe me,” he said, realizing only now that she had known he wasn’t foxed that night in London.

  He held out his hand, which she ignored. She turned around instead, settling comfortably cross-legged at his feet, her shirts disarrayed enough to display slim, stocking-covered ankles and neat kid slippers.

  “I will. I promise I will believe you,” she said. “I’ll believe whatever you say about that night...if you’ll tell me why you really went to London.” The laughter was gone. Her voice had softened, no longer teasing.

  “To see the king?” he suggested lightly.

  And then, when her eyes refused to respond to that lightness, the hand he had held out fell back against his leg.

  “You had made yourself ill,” she said. “Because you were working too hard?”

  “My...recovery wasn’t as far along as I had hoped.”

  “What does that mean?”

  What did it mean? He could tell her, of course, about the constant irritation the ill-fitting foot had been to the newly healed stump. Explain that he’d been determined to work as many hours as possible—no matter the pain—so that he could delay coming back to Longford. Back to where she was.

  He had done the same thing today, of course. Refused to come back to Longford after he had seen her with Osborne in the clearing. And then there had been the hunt for Drew. Another long day of being on his feet, so that among the assorted discomforts that had resulted from the fight with Osborne was the dull, familiar ache of the stump.

  “What does that mean?” she had asked. Without giving himself time to think about it, no time at all to examine the very good reasons for not answering that question—or for not answering it in this particular way—he stood and began unfastening his trousers. Sarah’s eyes now seemed locked on his fingers, watching his hands rather than his face.

  Finally he stepped out of the trousers and stood before her, clad only in his knee-length knit underdrawers. Her gaze fastened on what the removal of the trousers had revealed—the cunningly carved foot and ankle and the leather harness that attached it to his leg. He held his breath, an eternity it seemed, before her eyes lifted again to his.

  “How does it work?” she asked.

  He could read nothing but curiosity in the question. And, more importantly, nothing beyond that in her eyes. Simple curiosity—as natural as that Drew had displayed from the first.

  And so Justin began to breathe. One slow breath and then another. Until finally, the familiar pattern of breathing seemed restored enough to provide air to form an answer.

  “Not as bloody well as one might wish,” he said truthfully, his voice deliberately laced with a shaky attempt at humor.

  “Show me,” she said, her eyes still on his face.

  He didn’t move for a long time, but her eyes never faltered. And they never changed. “You are like Drew,” he said finally.

  The banter was only a bridge, a joint conspiracy created to carry them beyond the things they couldn’t afford to talk about. At least they had found a bridge they could use to get them through this. And when it was over...

  He sat down on the side of the bed, and although his fingers trembled, hurrying over the now-familiar task, he unfastened the harness that held the artificial foot in place, and laid the contraption on the floor. Her eyes fell, but he didn’t even look down at the reddened stump. Its ugliness was clearly imprinted on his mind’s eye, so he knew exactly what Sarah was seeing.

  When she looked up again, she smiled at him. And her eyes were still the same. He had expected revulsion. Or perhaps, because she was Sarah, only pity. There was nothing of either in the clear calm blue.

  And then she touched him. The hand he had so often watched caressing Drew’s curls brushed now, with the same obvious love and compassion, over the reddened skin that the surgeons had drawn tightly downward and gathered to cover the end of the shattered bone they’d sawed away. Her fingers lingered tenderly over the places that had been rubbed raw by the long hours he’d worn the foot today.

  “I told Drew not to talk to you about this,” she whispered, her eyes lifting again to his. “I’m sorry I did that. I know now it was wrong.”

  “Not... wrong,” he denied softly.

  He tried to remember how he had felt before he had seen her eyes. The overwhelming flood of relief made it hard to remember how much he had dreaded this. He had dreaded having anyone see what had happened to him. Especially Sarah. But Drew’s curiosity had always been less painful than the carefully averted eyes of adults. More honest. And far more natural. As were Sarah’s openness and her questions tonight.

  “This is part of you,” she said. “It will always be part of you. And there is no reason not to talk about it. No reason not to let Drew ask his questions. You never minded them.”

  “I never minded Drew’s questions.”

  “But...” she whispered, hearing the caveat.

  “I was afraid of what you’d think,” he admitted. “Of how you’d feel. Or maybe afraid of what I’d feel.”

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  It was darker in the room. The fire was burning itself out, but neither of them had thought to add more wood. Nothing mattered tonight, of course, but being together. And for that they didn’t need light.

  Only time. And space. And one another. And it seemed finally that they would have all of those. At least for tonight.

  “No different,” he said softly, and was aware with a deep sense
of surprise that that was true.

  She had given him that—the surety that to her he was the same man she had fallen in love with. Whether she saw him sprawled at the foot of a staircase or stumbling awkwardly, trying to escape David Osborne’s punishing fists, in her eyes he was still the man she had loved so long ago. Still the same.

  As she was to him. She had borne another man’s child, and he knew now that what she had done truly made no difference to him. She was still Sarah. And she was his. No matter how twisted the path that had brought them here tonight, he could not doubt Sarah was his. Or that she should always have been.

  “Love me,” she whispered, perhaps seeing that realization finally in his eyes.

  They had been robbed of what should have been the first joyous culmination of their love. Robbed by time. And distance. Her trusting innocence had played a role, of course. And David Osborne’s poisonous charm. Maybe even Justin’s stubborn pride.

  He found it no longer mattered to him why Sarah had done what she had done. He had accepted, without any explanations, that she had. And tonight he could regret nothing that had brought them, finally, to this place.

  He held out his hand again, and this time she took it, allowing him to pull her up from where she had been sitting at his feet. She stood before him a moment, and then her fingers began to loosen the bodice of her gown. His heart faltered and then began to race, the blood it had dutifully pumped through his veins now rushing instead, hot and heavy, to his groin.

  She slipped one sleeve of the gown off her shoulder, exposing smooth ivory skin, brushed now with gold by the low fire. And then she lowered the other and slipped her arms out of the sleeves. With one hand she held the dress in place over her breasts a long moment, her eyes on his.

  Finally she released it, pushing the garment down over her hips. It fell to the floor, pooling around her feet. The chemise followed, a small foam of white lace centered against the darkness of the fallen wool. She stepped out of them and bent, gracefully somehow, at least in his eyes, to remove her slippers and then the thin silk stockings. When she straightened again, her eyes found his once more.

  Her hands did not lift to hide the small perfection of her breasts. She stood straight and tall, almost proudly. The fire highlighted softly rounded curves and darkened secret places that finally—finally—he would be allowed to know.

  Despite what he believed about her relationship with Osborne, Justin did not hurry her. He was as patient as he had always been with Drew, she thought. There had been no sense of urgency conveyed in the slow glide of his fingers. He touched her as if she were delicate, fragile and infinitely precious.

  His hard, callused hands moved so knowingly against areas of her body she had never dreamed a man could want to touch, producing feelings beyond anything she might ever have imagined. They coursed along the network of nerves and veins and arteries that spread sensation throughout her whole body.

  From the beginning, despite her trembling, she had refused him nothing. She had no guides where he had taken her. Little knowledge of what would happen. No expectations. Nothing to hold on to except her love for Justin and her unwavering trust.

  With endless patience and unquestioned skill, he had begun to coax from her untutored body responses that left her gasping his name in the fire-touched darkness. His lips moving against her throat. His fingers drifting over the small, hardened nipples of her breast. His tongue... His tongue exploring in ways that caused her bones to melt and her blood to flow in a thick molten stream through her veins. A hot river of need and desire, its source the very center of her aching body.

  Soon, after all these long years of lies and deceits, he would know the one truth that mattered. He might not understand that truth, but it would mean as much to him as his hand, placed in hers tonight, had meant to her. Hope restored. Trust and faith renewed. And the knowledge that no matter what David Osborne threatened, they would somehow deal with it together.

  As he caressed her, her own fingers moved through the curling mat of hair on his chest, her breathing uneven, her skin flushed and damp. Occasionally she scored his skin with her nails, unable to bear, it seemed, the sweet, mindless ecstasy of what he was doing. Sometimes she felt that if he touched her again, she would shatter into a thousand pieces and each would beg anew for his touch.

  When she began to tremble, her body’s inner eruption was totally unexpected. She had no guide, except his love. The heat of need gave way to a sudden cascade of moisture, scalding through her loins. Without her volition, her hips arched, hands grasping at Justin’s shoulders as he began to move over her.

  His weight was suddenly on her chest and stomach, her breasts pressed into the hard, unyielding wall of his. She could feel the roughness of the hair that covered those’ muscular thighs, trembling now against the smoothness of hers. His hands caught either side of her head, forcing her to look at him. And what she read in his face caused another involuntary upward surge of her hips, bringing her into contact shockingly direct contact—with the hard strength of his erection.

  Her eyes widened as he began to push into her, his own hips rocking forward just in time to meet the next uncontrollable arch of hers. Flesh met flesh, seeking that most intimate of all positions, trying to fulfill the perfect design nature had intended for man and woman.

  She gasped and her head fell back as the pressure increased. More than pressure. Beyond it now. She wanted to tell him that he was hurting her, but the words refused to form on her lips. Then again, more powerfully this time, he pushed downward into the heat and wetness he had so carefully created.

  She watched his eyes as realization penetrated his passion-drugged mind. They widened, pupils expanding quickly, and then they closed, involuntarily it seemed, as he pushed against the barrier he had never expected to find. A downward thrust so strong it succeeded in tearing through. As it did, the pulsing jet of his hot seed poured into her body. His head was back, eyes still closed, as his own body was racked with the same shuddering ecstasy he had created in hers.

  She held him, understanding nothing except that he loved her. Held him until the convulsive movements of his body finally stilled, and he lay against her breasts, like a spent swimmer who had ventured too far into a strange ocean and been barely able to return to shore. Finally his breathing eased, returning to something approaching normality.

  He pushed away from her, onto his elbows, and looked down into her face. His eyes traced over her features, studying each for a long time. In a silence that was too long. And frightening.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

  She wanted to fell him now—especially hearing what was in his voice—but she had given her word, her most solemn oath, and even this... Even this...

  “I can’t,” she whispered. “Please, please don’t ask me.”

  She raised her head enough to touch her lips to his. Trying to soften her refusal. Or perhaps to let him know, without words, how much she had always loved him. Even when she had written that letter four years ago. Maybe more then than at any other time. Except this.

  “Drew isn’t your child,” he said, not a question, of course. Not after tonight.

  “No,” she whispered.

  “But David Osborne is his father?”

  Not against her oath, and the part she had feared most about Osborne’s threat, the important part that she could never tell Justin. David had a true parental claim to Drew. And she, who had loved him, who had raised him since his birth, had none.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And you won’t tell me—”

  “I can’t,” she interrupted. “Please don’t ask me anything more. Please, Justin. No more questions.”

  All the questions she had forbidden him to ask were reflected in his eyes. There were only so many possibilities and explanations, of course. Eventually he might discover the right one, but her father’s vindictive and premature funeral for Amelia made the chance of that very slim.

  “It didn’t ma
tter to you tonight,” she said softly, fighting against the tightness in his face. “Why should it matter now?”

  “If Osborne goes to court—” he began.

  “We’ll live through it together,” she said. “You and I and Drew. He won’t take Drew away unless he can get my father’s money, too. That’s what he really wants. And my father will never recognize Drew as his heir. He can’t. So we’ll only have to endure the gossip a little while and then...”

  The words faded. His face had hardened, becoming almost as cold and set as when he had swung the stone bottle. She wasn’t sure if the anger was directed at Osborne, at the possibility of a renewed scandal or at her.

  “What is it?” she whispered. Her fingers found his face, running coaxingly over the late-night whiskers. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but this. You and I. And Drew. Nothing else is important.”

  Finally, very slowly, the tension around his mouth relaxed. He lowered his head, his lips finding the small pulse at the side of her neck. Her eyes closed, feeling the spiraling heat start again, low and deep within her body.

  Whatever happens, she thought. It was almost the last coherent thought she had, because his hips had begun to move again, slow and sure and powerful. “Whatever happens we’ll handle it together, my darling. Whatever happens...

  Chapter Fourteen

  By daylight the following morning the earl of Wynfield had finished the messages that he would have dispatched as soon as the servants began to stir. He.had also completed the documents, writing them by candlelight, his pen scratching across the foolscap in the silence of the room where his wife still slept.

  When he had folded the messages, pressing his seal into the hot wax, he set them aside and walked across to the bed they had shared for the first time last night: A bed he had deserted more than two hours ago, dressing quickly in the darkness, because suddenly he had known exactly what he had to do. As soon as the decision was made, he had been eager to put it into effect.