Forbidden Pleasures

by Bertrice Small

  “For which I am very grateful,” the duchess replied calmly, “for I mean to have the earldom of Chetwyn for a second son one day, milord. As I am the last of the Thorntons, and you have a good relationship with both the king and the prince, we should be able to manage it once Uncle has drunk himself into his grave.”

  “So that is why you cosset the man,” Justin Trahern remarked with not just a hint of admiration in his voice.

  “Yes,” the duchess answered in a cold voice.

  “Do you give him money?” the duke demanded to know.

  “Of course,” she said. “God knows I have enough, thanks to my father. His investments in the East India Company paid off quite well. I do not give my uncle a great deal. I pay his valet, his wine bill, and just enough of his gambling debts to allow him to keep gambling.”

  “Thereby continuing to make him unattractive as husband material, and gently hastening his path to the grave,” the duke murmured. “Very clever, my dear. You say you want your family’s title for a second son, but we have not even a first son. Or daughter, Caro. And you were not in London, my dear. At least, not at your uncle’s.”

  “How can you possibly know that, milord?” She began to ascend the stairs.

  “Because I had you followed,” Justin Trahern responded, keeping pace with her. “Do you think I am a fool, Caro? We haven’t even been married for a year, and you are always disappearing from Malincourt. You do not take your coach, but ride out alone.”

  They had reached the top of the stairs, and the duchess almost ran to her rooms.

  “Where do you go? Have you a lover? Someone you took when my uncle lay dying?” he wanted to know.

  “I think you can have no doubt that I was a virgin when we married,” the duchess said coldly. “And I am not a woman to betray her marriage vows. How dare you impugn my honor, milord?” She had reached her chamber door. “Leave me now! I am tired and cold and wet. I wish a hot bath, a tray, and my bed.” She looked at him imperiously.

  “You may have your hot bath and your tray, madam,” he said. “But I will share your bed tonight, for I have lacked your company for many nights.”

  “You are intolerable!” the duchess said, and she stepped into her chamber, slamming the door in his face behind her.

  Behind her the door sprang open, and the duke entered the room. “Get out!” he said sharply to his wife’s maid. “Her ladyship will call you when she needs you.” He almost shoved the girl from the room. Turning, he said in a deceptively quiet tone, “Now, Caroline, you will tell me exactly where you have been, and with whom you have been consorting. If you do not I shall lock you in this room until you do.”

  “You wouldn’t!” She gasped.

  “But I would, madam. Oh, yes, I would,” he responded.

  “You would not understand, Justin,” she said, actually using his name in her despair. “How could you? What could you know of the horror I have seen?”

  “I cannot if you do not tell me,” he replied in a gentler tone.

  She flung herself into his arms, pulling his head down to hers and kissing him passionately. “Make love to me,” she begged him. “Oh, please make love to me!”

  Their clothing seemed to evaporate as they pulled the garments from each other. Naked, he swept her up in his arms and carried her to the large wing chair by the fire. And all the while they kept kissing each other again and again until both their mouths were bruised and sore from a mixture of both passion and sweetness. They cuddled together, slowly exploring each other’s bodies. His big hands cupped her small, perfect breasts, kissing the nipples until they were tightly puckered, like small frostbitten rosebuds. His teeth tenderly scored the sensitive flesh of her bosom.

  The duchess sighed with her pleasure as he lifted her to sit facing him and his mouth traveled across her torso. Her fingers entwined themselves in his dark hair, kneading his scalp with her rising desire to be possessed by him. Her slender legs rested on his shoulders. But as eager for her as he was, he was not quite ready to consummate their mutual passion. He licked her body, tasting the saltiness of the sea on her skin. Then, lifting her up, he impaled her onto his engorged lover’s lance. She sighed again.

  “Now, madam,” he said in measured tones, “you will answer my questions or you will gain no further pleasure from me.”

  Her blue eyes widened with her shock. She could feel his thickness throbbing within her love passage. “Justin,” she whimpered. “Please!” She attempted to ride him, but he held her firmly about her narrow waist, his fingers digging cruelly into her flesh. “Please!”

  “Where were you?” he demanded once again. “Where?!”

  “France.” She gasped. “I was in France!”

  “You will tell me the rest afterward,” he told her, standing.

  “Put your legs about me, Caro.” He walked across the room to her bed and, laying her down, stood over her, fucking her at first slowly, and then with more rapid strokes until she was sobbing for release. A release he was not yet ready to give her. He quickly took his own pleasure, and then withdrew from her heated body. Moving to a table with a basin and pitcher he bathed his satisfied member.

  “Bastard!” she hissed at him. She was aching and unsatisfied.

  “When you have told me all,” the duke said, “I will scratch that naughty itch of yours, my dear. But not until then. Do you understand me?” He climbed into bed, taking his wife into his arms. “Now, why were you in France?”

  “Have you heard of Lady Lavender, Justin?”

  “The person who rescued the Duchesse d’Almay and her children? Of course. It was the talk of the ton several months ago. Why?”

  “I am Lavender, milord. It is I and the women who work with me both here and in France who have been rescuing the victims of tyranny and injustice. Not just the nobility, but decent working people who have been denounced to the Committee for Public Safety. All one need do is drop a paper with a name on it in those boxes they now have in Paris and every small town in France. Today we brought back a vineyard owner, his wife, his old mother, her elderly maid, and three children. On our last trip it was the Comtesse d’Islay, her maid, and the old seamstress who had sewn for the comtesse for years. And Justin, there are so many more who need our help.”

  He was astounded by her confession, and then he grew angry. “How dare you endanger yourself, Caro! And who are the women who work with you? You all put yourselves at risk! It stops now! Do you comprehend me? It stops now!”

  “No! No!” she cried to him. “There are too many who still must be rescued!”

  “I cannot have the woman I love putting herself at risk like this,” Justin Trahern told his wife. “I love you, Caro! Do you understand that? I love you! Even if you do not love me, I love you! I have since the first day we met, and I learned to my grief that you were my uncle’s bride. I have waited patiently to have you. I will not lose you now!”

  “Ohh, Justin,” the duchess cried softly. “I love you too. From the first day we met, and I was your uncle’s wife. But he understood young love, and that is why he arranged for us to marry when he was dead. He knew neither of us would ever betray him while he lived. He was such a fine man, just like my father. That is why they were best friends. And that is why he agreed to marry me, so my fortune would be protected from Eddis Thornton when my father died. My uncle had the title by right of succession, but father’s fortune was his to disburse as he chose. My uncle would have run right through it, and sold me to the highest bidder to feed his bad habits.”

  “If you love me then why do you put yourself in such mortal danger?” the duke wanted to know.

  The duchess sighed deeply. “My mother was French, Justin. She was the Duke of Medoro’s oldest daughter. Grandfather had no sons, only three daughters: Claire, my mother, Justine, and Louisa. Every summer my mother and I would go to France to stay with my grandfather and his family. The summer I was sixteen my father was not pleased to have us go. He said it was much too dangerous. It was the y
ear after La Bastille. There was much unrest. But Mama assured him it was Normandy, not Paris, and that all would be well, and grandfather was ill. So we went.

  “My father was right. On that first anniversary of the revolution a mob came to the château. When my grandfather protested this invasion they killed him. Some of the servants fled, but many of them, along with Mama and me, my tante Justine and her little boys, and my tante Louisa, who was just two years older than I, were taken into the cellars of the château and imprisoned. Mama’s maid, however, had escaped the château. She fled directly to the coast, found passage to England, and hurried to Chetwyn to tell Papa what had happened.”

  His arms tightened about her, and he kissed her brow. “You need not speak of it again if it disturbs you, Caro,” he murmured.

  “No, Justin, you must understand why I do what I do,” she told him. “The servants were terrorized into telling the most awful lies. A footman was made to say he was the father of my tante Justine’s sons. They were taken from her. They were only three and five. Several weeks later she was allowed to see them. They spit on her and called her a dirty aristo. She never saw them again. Nor her husband, who had been in Paris with the new government, attempting to make order of chaos.

  “But that was not the worst. The men in charge began taking the women servants in the night. Some returned; some didn’t. They were being raped, of course. Then one day they came for me. My mother begged the man in charge to take her instead. She told them she was the wife of an Englishman, and that her daughter was English. That my father would pay a goodly ransom for my safe return, but only if I was returned untouched. They took us both, and I was forced to watch while my mother was raped over and over again. And then they brought my tante Justine to be raped. Each time I tried to look away they beat me. My mother and aunt both died, and I was dragged back to the cellars to weep with my tante Louisa. They came for her several days later, and I was again forced to watch their brutality. My youngest aunt was a virgin. When they learned that, nothing was too bestial for them. She too died at the hands of the Revolution.

  “Several more days passed, and at last they came for me again. I thought surely this time it would be my turn to be raped until I died. But instead my father was there with the revolutionary captain who held grandfather’s château. I was a fortunate little aristo, he told me. My father had paid a great deal of money for my safe return, and because I was English—and he spit after the word—I would be permitted to leave. Captain Arnaud. I will always remember him, and his toady, Citizen Leon. And I will not rest until I have revenged my grandfather, my mother, her sisters, and all our family on these wretches. Rescuing others from them is the only way I can, Justin. You must let me continue! You must! They threw the bodies of those they slew into a common pit. There is not even a marker to remember them. My mother’s house was a great and noble one, and now it is gone. They are gone. All gone.” And the duchess began to weep bitterly.

  “I will help you have your revenge,” Justin Trahern promised, “but this must end.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Michael Devlin put down the pages he had just been reading. “This is great stuff, Emily,” he said. “Caro’s backstory is particularly poignant. But she should have a little eighteenth-century survivor’s grief,” he suggested. “It will make her more likable.”

  “I agree. The coldness is, of course, a shield she uses to hide her grief behind,” Emily said. “I need to show some of that grief to make the reader sympathetic toward her. Do you like the duke?”

  “Yes. He’s different from your other heroes. More masculine. He’s got a bit of a hard edge, except where his wife is concerned. It’s a weakness I find endearing, and so will your readers. How do you know so much about love?” He smiled warmly at her, and Emily felt herself melting, as she always did when Devlin smiled that particular smile.

  “I don’t know,” Emily admitted. “I guess I just try to make my characters the way I wish people really were.”

  “Haven’t you ever been in love?” he queried her.

  “Once,” Emily said. “Only once.”

  “What happened?” Devlin said.

  Emily shook her head. “I guess I’m not his type,” she replied.

  “Foolish man,” he said.

  Have you ever really been in love? Emily wondered. Could you fall in love with me? But she didn’t dare to voice her question aloud. She didn’t want to see the pity in his eyes. It would kill her if he pitied her.

  “I have to go to Frankfurt in October,” he said. “And I’m going to stop in England on the way back. Savannah and Pruny need a mediator. You could meet me in England, angel face,” he suggested. “I know you like England.”

  “I could stay with Savannah,” Emily said thoughtfully. “But it couldn’t be any longer than a three-day weekend, Devlin. I’m in the home stretch, and I want this book in on time. I don’t want J.P. to have any negotiating room with Aaron. She called him and offered a new contract before he and Kirk went off on vacation.”

  “What did Aaron say?” So J.P. had been listening to him after all.

  “That he’d discuss it with her when he got back from Italy.” Emily grinned.

  Michael Devlin nodded. It was fair. Aaron was no dope, and he was hedging his bets with J.P.—making her want the new contract more than he appeared to want it.

  “Okay,” she said, launching herself into his lap. “No more business! You’re on vacation. Want to try it in one of the boys’ beautiful wing chairs?” Her blue eyes twinkled at him mischievously.

  “If I get cum all over the tapestry neither of them will be happy with us,” he said seriously. “But what the hell, angel face, I’ve always wanted to try it in a wing chair.” Reaching down, he unzipped his pants, and his penis almost flew out.

  “Oh, me, oh, my,” Emily said, looking at it. “The big fella is all ready to go, isn’t he? Haven’t you ever heard of foreplay, Devlin?” She pulled away from him and stood up. ” ‘Let me entertain you,’ ” she sang as she pulled off her light green tank top and tossed it carelessly across the room. Then she licked her lips suggestively and shook her breasts at him. ” ‘Let me make you smile.’ ” She began to wiggle seductively out of her shorts. ” ‘Let me do a few tricks. Some old and then some new tricks. I’m very ver-sa-tile.’ ” The shorts followed the tank top. Emily was quite naked, and now she began to dance in what she imagined to be a stripper’s manner, bumping and grinding across the room. ” ‘And if you’re real good, I’ll make you feel good. I want your spirits to climb.’” She wiggled her bottom at him. ” ‘So let me entertain you. And we’ll have a real good time.’ Oh, yeah!” She strutted toward him. ” ‘We’ll... have ... a ... real... good ... time!’ ”

  Reaching out he grabbed her, and impaled her on his penis. “Oh, yeah! We’ll have a real good time,” he sang.

  “Brute!” she said. “Oh, God, no man should feel this good, Devlin! ”

  He reached out and, grasping one of her breasts in his hand, began to lick it. “And no mortal woman should feel this good. You fit me like a glove, angel face. Sit still for a little bit. If you move, I’m going to come. I don’t want to yet.”

  “I’ll make it stand straight and tall again, Devlin,” she promised him. Bending, she kissed his ear, licking around the curve of it. “I love fucking you.”

  “Let’s not stay at Lord Palmer’s when we’re in England,” he said softly. “There’s a great little inn in their village. I don’t want to have to share our passion with Savannah, and you know she’s bold enough to listen at our door.” He chuckled. He released her breast and, finding her lips, kissed her a long and tender kiss.

  “The Drake’s Head,” she said against his mouth. “Yes, let’s stay there. I’ll make the reservations when you have the dates. Oh, God, Devlin! I can’t take much more.”

  “I thought you wanted foreplay,” he teased, nibbling on her ear.

  “Screw foreplay! I want you, and I want us to come together!” Emil
y groaned. “Let go of me! I want to ride you hard, Devlin. Very hard!” She struggled against him, tucking her legs about him, and his hands released her hips, slipping up about her midsection to steady her. She moved up and down on his hard penis, her hands on his shoulders, her eyes closing with her sweet desire for him as she leaned back.

  He watched her face and was enchanted by her rising passions. A pride, almost of ownership, flowed through him. She was his lover. He had taken her virginity and taught her the joys of lust. She had proven an apt pupil. No one had ever had her but him. And no man was ever going to have her but him, Michael Devlin determined.

  “Oh! Ohh! Ohhh!” Her little cries excited him further.

  “I adore you!” he whispered in her ear, his own eyes closing with the intense pleasure beginning to build and build. And then it broke, and his cum flooded her womb with fierce force.

  “Devlin!” She sobbed his name as spasm after spasm shook her from the inside out. Damnation! She wanted her happy ending! She collapsed against him, burying her face in his shoulder and neck.

  “It just gets better between us,” he said after some moments had passed.

  “I have nothing to judge it by,” she said, teasing him gently. But of course she did. Yet had she attempted to explain the Channel to him he wouldn’t have understood. And it did get better between them every time. No man was ever going to satisfy her except the charming Michael Devlin. She could conjure up a host of lovers in the Channel, but no matter how skilled they were, none would ever be Michael Devlin—worse luck.

  “I’m glad you can’t judge my performance,” he teased back. “That makes me the best you’ve ever had, angel face.”

  “Am I the best you’ve ever had?” she dared to ask him.

  “Yes,” he said, not even hesitating for a moment. “There are still things I haven’t taught you, of course, but you are an incredibly apt pupil, my darling.” He kissed her brow, and then said with some small humor, “If we are very careful I believe we can manage not to get the results of our efforts on Aaron and Kirk’s furniture. Has your research been satisfactory, angel face?”