by Julia London
“No!” Grace cried, and shooed him off before he made his mark.
Jeffrey swallowed down his rapidly increasing pulse.
“My lord, I beg your pardon!”
Jeffrey had not seen Mr. Drake at the door until that moment. “Drake, did you give this dog to Lady Merryton?”
“No!” his wife said cheerfully. “In spite of Mr. Drake’s best efforts to save me, I absconded with him.” She scooped the pup up in her arms and the dog licked her face. “I refused to allow Mr. Drake to drag him off to the hangman. I was quite determined. Wasn’t I?” she cooed to the dog.
The pup squirmed free of her arms and leaped, sliding over the tile before gaining traction, and then bounding over to where Jeffrey was standing, his tail wagging furiously as he sniffed at his shoes.
“The hangman?” Jeffrey repeated as the dog caught his trouser hem and began to tug. The chaos in that foyer—the broken glass, which a footman was hastily sweeping up, and the asymmetry of the flowers, the dog running about—it felt as if the walls were closing in. He clasped his hands at his back and tried to shake the dog off.
“The whelp won’t take to the gun,” Drake said apologetically. “Scared of his own shadow, this one.”
“I will not listen to another word, Mr. Drake,” his wife said firmly. “I have taken the dog under my wing and I mean to keep him there.” She suddenly shrugged out of her Spencer jacket and marched forward, dipping down to tie the arm of her coat with the puppy’s collar. She stood up, holding the other arm of the jacket in her hand, having fashioned it into a sort of lead. She forced a smile at Jeffrey. “It’s sinful to toss aside one of God’s creatures because he’s not perfect, isn’t it? I’m not perfect, either.”
“Madam—”
“You said I might do what I like, to find something to occupy me,” she said. “Well, I have found something to occupy me. Now, then, if you gentlemen will excuse us, the dog and I are going to have a look about his new home.” She smiled warmly at the men gathered in that foyer, a lovely smile brimming with happiness and youthful beauty. She laughed with joy when the pup began to growl and attack her hem, and God help him if Jeffrey would be the one to douse that smile.
Not that his wife had any intention of allowing him, apparently, for she marched off to the staircase leading the pup with her jacket.
Jeffrey glanced back at Mr. Drake. “It’s all right,” he said. “Have a proper lead sent up to the house.”
“Aye, milord.” Mr. Drake quickly ducked outside.
That left a stricken Cox standing in the middle of the foyer, staring at Jeffrey.
“I will allow it for a time,” Jeffrey quickly assured him. “Until she has settled here.”
“Yes, milord,” Mr. Cox said, and started a bit when the sound of barking reached them.
Jeffrey turned and headed for the sanctuary of his study, trying not to think of a dog running, unfettered, through his house.
But that afternoon, he heard her wretched playing of the pianoforte, accompanied by the yapping of the puppy. He could hear his wife’s laughter drifting down the hall to him. He closed his eyes. Eight.
* * *
JEFFREY WAS EXPECTING the dog to be bounding about the room when he came down to dine that evening, but thankfully, the dog was nowhere to be seen. His wife was there, however, standing at the window, beaming with delight and, he thought, triumph.
There was no sign of the dog, but there were flowers on the table, the sideboard and, most disturbing, in a bud vase in the center of his plate setting. His senses were assaulted with the riot of color and variety.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she said apologetically. “The hothouse is full of these beautiful spring flowers, and I thought it would be an awful thing to ignore them. I didn’t put them in the foyer,” she added quickly, assuming, incorrectly, that the foyer was his objection. “I know you like your roses there.” She looked around the room. “Aren’t they beautiful? I’ve never seen so many beautiful flowers in one place.”
Good God, she was beautiful. Her creamy skin and her hair seemed to glow in the low candlelight. He thought of taking her now, of putting her on his lap, teaching her how to ride him—
“Do you agree?” she asked.
He thought it was bedlam. He couldn’t think in the mayhem of different blooms and colors and felt a bit of perspiration under his collar.
“I adore spring,” she said. “It is the start of so much new. The Season, of course. Country house gatherings.” She looked at him as if she were waiting for agreement.
“Where is the dog?”
“Oh! Mr. Drake recommended a portable kennel be brought up for him. We’ve put him in the kitchens, near the hearth. He’s had a bowl of milk and a bone Cook gave him and he’s quite content.”
At least something in this house was content. Jeffrey felt as if his heart would leap out of his chest with so many thoughts mixing wildly around so many flowers. He was relieved when Cox entered from the serving door to serve.
But his wife, the cause of the chaos in this room, looked at him, and at Cox. “Will we not have a bit of wine first to aid in our digestion?”
The only thing that would aid in Jeffrey’s digestion was to escape this room as quickly as possible. But he gestured to the wineglasses, then caught Cox’s eye and nodded at the bud vase on his place setting.
Cox moved immediately, sweeping it off his plate.
His wife watched Cox, her mouth falling open in surprise as he picked up the vase at the center of the table and carried it out of the room, as well. That left a vase on the sideboard, another on a serving table near the window.
“Where did he go?” she demanded as the service door swung shut behind Cox. “Why did he take the flowers?”
“Please sit,” Jeffrey said, and Ewan moved to pull out her chair.
She looked at Jeffrey in bewilderment as she reluctantly took her seat. “I don’t understand your aversion to flowers!”
“I have no aversion to flowers. Look around you, there are many in this room yet.”
She did not seem appeased.
Jeffrey noticed the pearls threaded through her hair. He tried not to think of last night, but the image was suddenly in his brain. He swallowed hard against it.
Cox reappeared, carrying a soup tureen. As he ladled soup into bowls, his wife suddenly straightened and took a long breath before saying, “By the by, I have taken your advice, my lord.”
“My advice?”
“The dog and I took a long walk this afternoon, down to the vicar’s house. I thought to call and inquire where I might begin my charitable works. So that I may atone,” she said, emphasizing the word he had used.
Jeffrey had nearly forgotten the remark.
“But as it happens, the vicar is away just now. His mother is ailing and his return is indefinite.”
Ah, yes. Jeffrey had forgotten that, too, in the chaos of the past week.
“But I’ve thought of an alternative. I thought perhaps you might introduce me to some of your tenants.”
She had caught him off guard and she knew very well she had. He could see it in the slight curl of one corner of her mouth. “Mr. Cox informs me that you intend to call on a few of them on the morrow,” she said smoothly. “It’s perfect, is it not?”
She cast another lovely smile at him that made his blood heat. Bloody hell. “These are not social calls,” he said curtly. “I’ve the business of the estate to see after, and I intend to ride—”
“Splendid!” she quickly interjected “I am an excellent rider. I won’t be a bother. I want only to meet your tenants so I can begin my charity. In earnest.”
Jeffrey kept his expression flat, but he gripped the arm of his chair. “What of your dog?” he asked dryly.
“He should come, too!”
“No.”
“All right. I’ll find someone to tend him. What time shall I be ready to ride?” She smiled triumphantly again.
He was cornered, and she knew it. To deny her w
ould spark some sort of war where flowers of all shapes and sizes would bloom and his house would be overrun by disobedient puppies. “Nine o’clock,” he said. “Don’t be tardy. I will not wait.”
She laughed as if he’d said it to be amusing. “Somehow, I had guessed as much, my lord. Oh, and I should like to change the music room about a bit. I hope you don’t mind. And I would like a music tutor. My play needs some tidying up, really. I wish I’d been more attentive when I was a girl, but there were so many distractions.” She shrugged. “No time like the present, is there?”
She continued to chatter through the meal, waxing about music and dogs, the latter being much on her mind, as well as the need to settle on a name for the pup. Jeffrey scarcely heard her—he gazed upon the shape of her mouth. On the swell of her bosom, the flesh spilling out of her bodice.
His wife lingered over the last course, purposely prolonging it, he suspected, as she knew he waited. But when she at last put her fork down, he put his linen aside. “If you will excuse me.”
“By all means,” she said, and smiled in a way that made his blood race.
Jeffrey went straight to his study, locked the door, then yanked furiously at his neck cloth in search of air. He had not felt this disconcerted since that night in Bath. There were dogs, and music rooms and chatter. So much chatter! And he, unable to think of anything but rutting on her, of his mouth on her sex, his cock sliding between her breasts—
Jeffrey counted, divided, multiplied, added and counted again to quiet his thoughts, to bring him back to familiar ground and to sanity. It had been so long since he’d been this troubled by his affliction that he found himself dwelling on what the bloody hell it was, and why in God’s name it involved the number eight.
He suspected that whatever was his illness, his father had suffered from it, too—the earl was determined to have precise order in his life and demanded the same from his children. They were to move through life lockstep, and when they did not, they all felt his wrath. His father had been especially demanding of Jeffrey, his firstborn and his heir. Jeffrey could clearly recall several incidents of where the punishment for the perceived infraction was severe. Once, when he was eight years old, Jeffrey had failed to properly greet a gentleman caller. His father had made him stand in the center of the foyer so long that Jeffrey had watched the sun sink from the sky. His knees had buckled, he’d felt sick with despair and hunger, but his father would not release him from his punishment until Jeffrey had reached some standard only his father could see.
John and Sylvia had suffered their father’s harsh punishments, too, but not like Jeffrey. He’d tried to shield his younger siblings where he could, taking the blame for things he’d had no part of, just so they would not be subjected to their father’s twisted sense of punishment.
But in spite of his strict upbringing and his father’s peculiarities, it wasn’t until Jeffrey’s father died that Jeffrey began to notice signs of his own moral corruption, of the depravity that had knit itself into his bones. There was nothing—nothing—Jeffrey could do to banish it. Eight was his only relief. Somewhere, somehow, eight had become his tether.
Fortunately, he was not generally as mad as he’d been this past fortnight. He had learned to live with his affliction, and if he followed his prescribed path each day, if he lived simply, he lived contentedly. Not happily, but at least contentedly.
Jeffrey didn’t know how long he’d been in his study, but when he emerged, Cox had already made his rounds, dousing the wall sconces.
He walked in the dark, his steps measured, his breathing shallow. He had no intention of entering his wife’s rooms, convinced that he had to stay away from her if he was to have any hope of banishing the images. As he undressed, however, his body was turning damp from the exertion of pushing down the images. He was bedeviled, consumed with the lurid, immoral thoughts. He did not want to go to her, he did not—but there was nothing to keep him from it. There was no law, no tug of virtue, that could or should keep a man from his wife.
Jeffrey donned his dressing gown and was in the hall before he could think. He rapped once on her door, then opened it.
She was seated at a writing table, her pen moving furiously across a sheet of vellum. She dropped the pen when he stepped through the door and hastily came to her feet. Jeffrey saw something flicker across her face at the sight of him—fear? Yes, fear, it was obviously fear, because she took a step back as he moved deeper into her room.
That pained him terribly. But it was too late for them both—he had slid too far into his debauched thoughts, could find relief only in her body.
He walked across the room to where she stood, grabbed her by the waist and crushed her to him and thrust his tongue hungrily in her mouth. He was ashamed, so ashamed, and he ignored the little cry in her throat. He guided her hand to feel his lust for her, opening the gap of his dressing gown and closing her fingers around it.
She did not recoil or shriek as he expected. But she tortured him with her innocence. Her hand began to move on him, her fingers sliding up, her thumb brushing across the tip. The sensation was unbearable; he suddenly picked her up with one arm about her waist, and in one swift stride he had put her on her back on her bed. She was still fully clothed—there was no time for her to disrobe. Jeffrey groped for her hem, pushed her gown up, then slipped his hand under her back and took hold of her, intending to turn her around so that she would not have to look at him as the plunged into her depths.
“No!” she cried, and grabbed his shoulders, her fingers digging into his flesh.
“It is my right—”
“Jeffrey!” she cried, startling him with the use of his Christian name. “Do you find me so ugly?”
That rendered him speechless. She was beautiful.
“Do I revolt you?” she cried, pushing against him.
“No!”
“But you make me turn. Why won’t you look at me?”
He didn’t know what to say, how to explain the mad thoughts in his head.
She suddenly cupped his face with her hands, her eyes shimmering up at him. “Look at me. Count to eight if you must, but look at my face.”
His breath froze in his chest—she couldn’t have stunned him more. How could she know, how could she have deduced his affliction?
“Say my name, I beg of you. Look at me. I am your wife.”
His blood was raging now, rushing through him, carrying him away.
“Please don’t turn me away as if I was some loathsome task to you.” She lifted up, kissed him lightly on the lips. It was a timid kiss, but it was as powerful as any he’d felt in his life. “My name is Grace.”
“Grace,” he whispered, and wrapped his arms around her and kissed her.
She couldn’t know how hard he struggled to restrain himself, how her tender kisses didn’t leash his lust, but inflamed it. She couldn’t understand that if he said her name, if he allowed that whisper into his heart, he could not let it go, he could never let go, and he would obsess over her, no matter how much she might come to hate him.
But once again, it was too late for him. “Grace,” he said again, and eased her onto her back, then proceeded to remove her shoes, one at a time. “Grace,” he said again, and reached under the hem of her gown. “Grace,” he muttered as he lifted the hem of her gown and pushed it up, to her waist. She was exposed to him now, just like in the images in his mind. Dark and glistening, beckoning him. He leaned over her, kissed her mouth, then kissed the hollow of her throat, and down, to her chest, her bare thigh. He said her name, kissed her flesh.
Her scent incited him. He sank before her, his entire body engorged with desire. He pushed her legs apart and touched his tongue to her, sliding in one long stroke. Grace jerked at the touch and gasped loudly. He would not stop, and grabbed her hips, holding them firmly in his hand, lapping his tongue across her folds, dipping into the darkest recesses.
Grace bent one knee. She clutched at his hands, curling around his as he continued th
e onslaught. He sucked her into his mouth, teasing her with his lips and his teeth, making her writhe. He dipped his tongue into her again, swirling up, then sucking her into his mouth.
Grace, his wife, cried out. She arched as her body released into pleasure, pressing against him, seeking more.
Jeffrey stood up. He lifted her legs, put them around his waist and then guided his cock into her. He stroked her at first, but the depravity in him was too powerful, and he began to thrust, his pace unrelenting.
He looked at her beautiful face, never moved his eyes from it. He unleashed the fury of lust on her, reaching for a powerful climax. When he thought he could bear it no more, she closed her eyes and groaned again, arching her back, tightening around his body and pulling an explosive response from him.
“Grace,” he said roughly, and collapsed over her, completely spent.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FOR THE FIRST time in a very long time, Grace woke up feeling refreshed and happy. She smiled as she stretched her arms high over her head, and then suddenly remembered why she felt so well—a shudder of pleasurable memory shot through her, fluttering in her chest, as she recalled Merryton’s mouth on her. Grace had felt almost delirious last night, having been fully initiated into her marriage—she’d never felt such pleasure, had never imagined the possibility of it.
She wanted more. She wanted to know all the things her husband could do to make her feel that way again
A noise in the dressing room brought her arms down. She paused, listening, then grinned with delight. “Come here, you wee beast,” she called, and the next moment, Dog came trotting out of her dressing room dragging her shoe with him.
“No, you mustn’t!” Hattie cried, running in behind him. But the dog thought Hattie intended to play and growled with delight as she tried to tug the shoe free. “Milady, he’ll ruin it!”
“I don’t care!” Grace said gaily, and leaned over the edge of the bed, whistling to him. Thankfully, the puppy was easily distracted and came running to Grace, attacking the hank of her hair that hung to the floor while Hattie swept up the shoe.