by Olivia Drake
“But I’m perfectly safe with you.” Sounding almost forlorn, Jane leaned closer to him, or perhaps he only grew more aware of her soft bosom pressing lightly against his arm. “You would never take unfair advantage of me.”
“Of course not,” he said, too quickly.
“Lower your voice,” she murmured. She glanced around the garden, as if trying to make out the faces of the other strolling guests. “You don’t want everyone to hear the truth.”
“The truth?”
His fingers rested on the tender inner flesh of her arm, and she laid her gloved hand over his. She had a firm hand, well shaped and slender. “The truth, Ethan, is that you are not completely lacking in honor.”
He stopped in the shadows, bringing her to a halt. She couldn’t know how dishonorable his thoughts were right now. “Can I trust my ears?” he said. “Is that praise coming from Jane Mayhew?”
“Yes. I believe there is a core of goodness in you, a goodness you hide from the world. Remember all those days you sat and talked with old Yarborough, the gamekeeper, keeping him company after he’d been laid abed?”
“It was my duty. He’d been shot by a poacher on my father’s estate. My estate.”
“But Yarborough was only a servant, an employee.” She nodded as if agreeing with herself. “Yes, the more I think on it, the more I believe you have a kind heart. Why else would you be standing here in the garden with me when you could be dancing with one of your women?”
With a shock, Ethan realized he would much rather be strolling these dark pathways with Jane, basking in her approval, than conducting yet another flirtation with a jaded coquette. Had his life grown so boring that he preferred the company of a nettlesome rustic? “Kindness has nothing to do with me bringing you out here,” he denied. “You drank too much, and I won’t see you make a goose of yourself in front of all my guests.”
“Nevertheless, behind all your bluster and flirting, you’re a generous man. I believe you would always help a woman in need.”
He frowned, trying to make sense of her adulation. “Are you in need of funds, Jane? Is that what this is all about? Just say the word, and I would be happy to arrange a loan for you.”
“No! I was merely making a general statement about your character.” She sounded insulted, then went on in a rush, “You must try harder to demonstrate your goodness to people. You must take every opportunity to show that you have an unselfish, charitable side to your nature. Promise me that.”
He found himself dangerously pleased by her favor. It had to be the champagne talking, he told himself. Either that, or …
He realized where they stood—in the same arbor where they had played with Marianne a week ago. Suspicious, he drew Jane deeper into the shadows and forcibly sat her down beside him on a stone bench.
“Marianne is the cause,” he said. “This is another of your attempts to make me acknowledge her.”
“No, you misunderstand.…” Jane blew out a breath and fell silent, staring intently into the garden. Most of the guests had returned to the ballroom for the supper dance. Ethan knew he would have to escort Jane back very soon. But not yet. Not until he had straightened out her tangled opinion of him.
“I don’t misunderstand,” he said, gathering her hands in his. “Jane, it’s admirable of you to watch over Marianne’s welfare. But I’ve already promised that I’ll care for her. I’ll do it even if we can never prove for certain that she is my daughter.”
He surprised himself with the admission. Yet when he thought of the baby, smiling and gurgling, reaching for her rattle, he felt a clutch of tenderness in his chest, and he wondered if he might not enjoy having a family of his own, children who adored him, a wife to love him.
Addlepated nonsense. Wives were either frivolous like his mother or deceitful like Portia. All in all, they were manipulative creatures who seduced a man’s heart, then squeezed him dry.
“You are Marianne’s father,” Jane asserted, her fingers pressing his. “We may very well prove that when we interview Lady Greeley.”
“Perhaps.” Clenching his jaw, he thought of Lady Serena Badrick. The dowager Viscountess Greeley had lived up—or rather down—to her reputation as a famous beauty and an infamous slut. She had been one of his few mistakes, a tigress both in bed and out. And far too possessive for his tastes. He had barely escaped with his manly parts intact. “It’s strange that she hasn’t come to town yet,” he mused aloud. “If she delays much longer, I’ll have to visit her in Hampshire.”
“We’ll visit her,” Jane stated. “You aren’t going without me.”
Her zeal nudged a smile from him. Perhaps she was the tigress, defending her cub. Would Jane be so passionate between the sheets?
Disturbed by the thought, he forced himself to concentrate on the distant strains of music. “The supper dance will be drawing to a close. In a short while, I must be present for the announcement of Mother’s betrothal.”
Ethan started to rise, to offer his assistance, but Jane grasped his arm and clung tightly, drawing him back down onto the bench. “Not yet,” she said. “Please, I’m still feeling faint. I can’t face all those people and that stuffy ballroom quite yet. Let’s stay here for a little while longer.”
She sounded so desperate that he frowned at her. “You aren’t going to retch like you did that time on the lake, are you?”
“The lake?”
“On my estate.” How could she not remember? “You rowed the dingy out to the island so that you could spy on me and—whoever I was with.”
“Harriet Hulbert.”
“Yes, her.” He’d been fifteen, about to taste a bosom the size of a cow’s udder, when Jane had come marching up to chastise him for luring the butcher’s daughter into sin. Harriet had gone off squealing, rowing herself back to shore, leaving him to return in Jane’s boat. During their quarrel, a storm had blown up, and they’d ended up navigating into a hard wind. Jane had turned pea-green, heaving her guts over the side of the dingy. “You’re sure you won’t be ill now.”
“No. No, I’m just not … feeling quite myself.”
“Then we’ll sit here until you feel better.”
She put her hand to her brow as if she were about to swoon. It seemed utterly right for him to place his arm around her back and offer his support. Utterly natural for Jane to cuddle closer and tilt her head against him. Her curls brushed the underside of his jaw. She smelled as fragrant as the roses twining the arbor that arched overhead. He felt a profound awareness of her that he told himself was concern for her well-being. The link between them had been forged in childhood, after all, and it alarmed him to see a weakness in Jane. But then, she’d shown him a lot of surprises tonight.
Her cheek cradled on his shoulder, she looked up at him. “This is something you’ve surely done many times before.”
“What is?”
“Sitting in the moonlight, your arm around a woman.” She lowered her voice so that he had to bend closer to hear. “But it’s my very first time.”
Her admission stunned him even as it filled him with a strangely tender exultation. He made a jest out of it. “What, no trysts in the hayrick with a stable lad?”
“Not a one. It’s strange to realize that we grew up near the same village, yet you’ve had so many more experiences than me.”
He shifted, uneasy with the wistful envy in her tone. If only she knew all his regrets, the darkness that lurked inside him. “Believe me, you’re better off keeping your innocence.”
“Am I?” She lowered her lashes slightly, running her fingertip over one of the silver buttons on his coat. “There’s something I never told you. Those times when I saw you kissing other girls, I thought…”
“You thought you had the right to be my conscience.” He chuckled, determined to make light of her reminiscences. “No doubt you thought you were saving me from being damned to hell.”
“No, that wasn’t it. That wasn’t it at all.” Jane took a deep breath, her bosom brushing hi
s chest. “I was jealous because … because I wanted to be kissed, too. I wanted to know what it felt like to be held and touched and loved.”
He could not have been more shocked if she’d told him she’d lost her virginity in a flaming affair with the Prince Regent. “You can’t mean that.”
“I do. And even though I’m old enough now that it shouldn’t matter anymore, it still does. Nothing has changed. I still feel that same ache inside myself. I still want to know.”
Her voice rang with emotion, and she had a dreamy moonlit yearning on her face. An irresistible innocence that called to him. An innocence he should leave untouched.
Jane had felt physical lust. The knowledge quaked through him, realigning his opinions and completing her metamorphosis into flesh-and-blood woman. While he had mocked her for her bookishness, pitied her as a passionless virago, she had experienced the same bodily desires as any other young woman. She had kept those desires hidden within an unattractive façade—much as he had concealed his darkness behind a mask of charm. They were alike, both of them, reluctant to reveal themselves to the world.
But Jane had revealed herself to him now, and the insight into her vulnerability touched him deeply.
His gaze fell to her lips, lush and inviting in the darkness. He could satisfy her curiosity. He could give her this one experience. Certainly it was better that he do so than allow her to seek out another man. God help her if she chose an unprincipled rogue like Keeble or Duxbury.
She sat up straight and turned her head downward, while her fingers plucked at the feathers of the fan in her lap. “I shouldn’t have told you all that,” she whispered. “I—I don’t know what came over me.”
He caught her cheeks in his hands and angled her face up to him. “Don’t be ashamed of your honesty,” he said roughly. “Don’t apologize for feelings that are perfectly natural, either.”
She shook her head, her eyes dark and troubled in the moonlight. “Please. I’ve said enough on the matter. I should like to stroll again—”
“Hush. First, let me see to your education.” With that, he brought his mouth down on hers.
Her lips were soft, far softer than he had imagined. The rest of her body remained stiff, unyielding. She clutched awkwardly at his coat, and he feared for a moment she would push him away. His prickly Jane. With tender amusement, he brushed his mouth back and forth in a coaxing movement. His fingers stroked the curls of her hair in a beguiling pattern. All of a sudden, she uttered a sweet little moan and relaxed into him, her breasts pressing against his chest, her arms reaching up to encircle his neck.
He had meant to end it there, with one modest kiss, enough to satisfy her need for knowledge. But when she cuddled closer to him, he could not resist sliding his arms around her willowy form; he could not stop himself from tracing his tongue along the seam of her lips. She tasted of champagne. And she felt like a dream.
This could not be his Jane. And yet she was Jane. She showed a shy, untutored enthusiasm for his embrace, combing her fingers into his hair, moving her body against him. She felt slim and lithe to his touch, all warm, willing woman.
When he probed with his tongue, she let him into her mouth with a surprised gasp that he found both endearing and exhilarating. Her naïveté awakened a craving within him that burned harder and faster, a dark fire that knew no bounds. It was more than the simple lust he’d felt for other women, for his response to Jane was tangled with his memories of the girl he’d once known and the woman he had only just realized she had become.
She made small kittenish sounds in her throat, and he moved his mouth across the smooth skin of her cheek, relishing the softness of her, intrigued by her secrets. What had started out an act of benevolence had ripened into the richness of passion, a passion that delved far deeper than the needs of the flesh. Swept by hunger, he slid his hands over her body, seeking her sinuous curves. He touched her breasts, letting the back of his hand slide over soft hills and mysterious valley. But when he found himself reaching for the buttons at the back of her gown, sanity struck awareness into him.
The garden enclosed them in silence. The golden windows of the ballroom glowed through the darkness. The music had ceased, and his guests would be at supper by now. While their host seduced an innocent in full view of anyone who happened past.
Breathing hard, he gripped her shoulders and pushed her back. “Jane. We must stop.”
“No,” she murmured, her fingers caressing his face. “Not yet. Please.”
The way she was touching him, as if he were infinitely precious to her, made it difficult to speak. He wanted to press her down on the grass and introduce her to intimacy. The temptation of it shook him fully to his senses. “Listen to me. There are people about. Someone could see us.”
As if to prove his words, the tap of approaching footsteps sounded on the stone pathway. Jane heard it, too; he could tell by the way she sat bolt upright, her head cocked to listen. “Dear heaven,” she said in a strange, strangled tone. “I nearly forgot—”
Ethan put his forefinger over her mouth and shook his head warningly. The shadowy figure of a lone guest moved along the pathway. A woman. She was unaccompanied, perhaps desiring a moment away from the noise of the party. They would wait here in the gloom until she had gone past. Then he would escort Jane back to the ballroom, where she would be safe from him.
Safe from the lust that bedeviled his loins.
Her lips felt soft and damp to his touch, and he snatched back his hand, curling it into a fist. Incredible as it seemed, Jane had roused him to hard, raging need. His response to her must be an aberration, the shock of realizing she had depths he had never before imagined. Despite her transformation, Jane Mayhew was not his type of female. He preferred more worldly women, women who knew how to please a man, not an artless virgin from the country who had waited twenty-six years for her first kiss.
Jane shot to her feet. “Come along, Lord Chasebourne,” she said in a clear, ringing voice that must have carried throughout the garden. “I vow I’m weary of sitting here any longer.”
Her abrupt manner made him frown. As she sailed out of the arbor, he sprang to his feet and stalked after her. Damn the chit. Was she angry at him for kissing her? She had all but invited her own ravishment, and if she dared to accuse him of mistreating her, he would set her straight posthaste—
His angry thoughts ground to a halt. Jane had walked straight to the guest on the pathway, a foolish move, for it gave witness to the fact that Jane had been out here, unchaperoned, in the company of a rogue. Hadn’t he already lectured her tonight on guarding her reputation?
Cursing her impulsiveness, he strode forward, searching for an excuse to explain their presence out here. He would say that she had felt indisposed, that he had merely been lending her aid.
Then the woman drew back the hood of her cloak. All other thoughts fled his mind as his gaze riveted to her moonlit blond hair and familiar features.
Portia.
Innocent, treacherous Jane had lured him out here to meet Portia.
Chapter 11
Clutched by cold misery, Jane stepped back so that Ethan could come face-to-face with his former wife. No longer did he look at Jane with tenderness; his attention was focused on Portia. Like a penitent Mary Magdalene, she stood with her head bowed slightly and her hands folded above her rounded belly, her exquisite features glossed by moonlight.
“How the devil did you get in here?” he said in a hard, icy tone. “Never mind answering that—you always did have a way with the menservants.”
“Don’t be angry, Ethan, please don’t,” Portia said in a soft, pleading voice. “You refused to see me, and this was the only way I could arrange a meeting.”
“Ah. So this was arranged.”
He flashed his coal-dark eyes at Jane, and she fought the urge to beg for his understanding. “I think you should listen to her ladyship,” she said in an encouraging tone. “She asks only the courtesy of your audience.”
“And I suppose this is where I show the unselfish, charitable side to my nature.”
Jane winced to hear her own words hurled back at her. He knew now that she had been lecturing him, prodding him to help Portia, rather than giving him true praise. She wanted to say that she believed all those things, that hidden somewhere inside his wicked exterior was a worthy man, a man who really did possess a core of honor and goodness.
But was she right? She prayed so, for Portia’s sake.
“Return to the ballroom,” he said curtly. “Else you’ll be missed.”
Turning his broad back on Jane, he took Portia by the arm and guided her toward the house.
Jane stood watching as they entered a dimly lit room on the ground floor. They made a stunning couple, Ethan tall and manly beside dainty Portia. So much more glamorous a pair than he and Jane.
She had tricked him into meeting with his former wife. How he must depise her.
A lump formed in her throat, and she wished for all the world that they were back on that stone bench, and he was kissing her again as if she truly mattered to him. Their embrace had surpassed her most romantic dreams. She had not known that pleasure could feel so intense, that she could be so willing to let a man use her as he liked.
But she was fooling herself to think Ethan cared. Like any full-blooded rake, he had given her what she’d begged for. She had been dizzy with wine and moonlight, emboldened by her own alteration. She had felt like another woman, a beautiful woman, and so she had bared her soul to him, revealing her deepest longings. He couldn’t be faulted for taking what she had offered to him. Nor could she blame herself. Her desire for him was more than a physical yearning; it had arisen from her unguarded heart.
The cool air chilled Jane to an awareness of her surroundings. Conversation and laughter drifted from the reception rooms above her. She could not brood out here all night. Rubbing her goosefleshed arms, she slowly ascended the stone steps to the balcony.