‘Eaton, thank goodness you’re here.’ Eliza emerged breathless and relieved, her mask of indomitability slightly askew.
‘I told you I would be.’ He motioned for Baldor to lie down. He studied her, following her restless perambulation about the atrium with his eyes. She was agitated, her colour high—perhaps from the evening walk or perhaps from some inner excitement? ‘Have you come to talk, Eliza?’
She turned from the fountain, the distress on her face unmistakable. Eaton’s gut clenched in primal protectiveness. Whatever Detford had said or done to cause that distress, the man would pay for it. ‘The shareholders want to push me out.’ The next moment, she broke, her voice trembling, her strength leaving her. ‘I know I said I needed to do this on my own, but I need help.’ She took a shaky breath. ‘Eaton, they want to take the mines. They want to take everything. I’m not enough for them.’
Everything. His mind focused on that word. He knew what it meant to lose something so monumental that it felt like everything. He saw in an instant what ‘everything’ was to her: pride, hard work and long hours of toil to maintain her independence. All those things could be swept away in one act: his ability to have a family, to perpetuate the line of Bude, his purpose in the world. How long had he berated himself? What if he’d not sneaked off to Kilkhampton for the horse show? A single poor choice in a life full of good decisions had cost him. Oh, yes, he knew exactly how Eliza felt.
Eaton was beside her, guiding her to the bench at the fountain’s edge, firm hands over hers where they lay clenched in her lap. He lent her the strength of his touch as he listened. The shareholders wanted to buy her out. Did Detford not understand this woman at all? Did Detford not see all it would cost her to take such an offer? That money could only cover so much. There was no price that could be put on her pride. ‘How long until you have to decide?’ Eaton asked calmly when she finished.
‘It’s five days until the shareholders’ meeting.’ Eliza shook her head, ‘But I don’t think I will have a choice. They will expect me to take the offer. I do not think they will take no for an answer.’ She drew a shaky breath, emotion catching her again. ‘How could they do this to me, after five years, after letting me think everything was all right, that they respected me?’
‘I wasn’t enough for them,’ she’d said and now Eaton saw that the disappointment that overwhelmed her stemmed from more than the offer itself. This was about how it had been planned behind her back. This was a betrayal. Women saw the world so much differently to men. For them the world was built on a series of relationships. The relationships she’d counted on had been false. No wonder she felt alone.
‘Eliza, I am sorry.’ He stroked the back of her hand with his thumb, a soothing motion, as he thought. ‘But surely you don’t mean to take this lying down? What if you buy them out? Make a counter-offer and then find new shareholders who support your vision and admire your leadership.’
‘If I were a man, such a thing might work. But if I were a man, this would never have been an issue to begin with. Besides, where would I find such investors, even if I could afford to buy everyone’s shares? I could not sustain the business on my own for long.’ Already, he could see her agile mind running the sums it would take and measuring them against the capital she had to hand. That meant there was a spark of hope and Eaton would take that spark over the desolation he’d seen in her eyes.
‘What if I could find investors?’ He was already thinking of Cassian and Inigo, and Inigo would have financial connections to others with capital. ‘I will write in the morning.’ Inigo and Cassian were in Truro for the autumn, just a half day’s ride away. Arrangements could be made quickly. If the shareholders were counting on the isolation of Cornwall to work against her, the bastards would be unpleasantly surprised. They thought to hold her hostage to their offer, thinking they were all she had.
‘Would you even need to buy out everyone?’ Eaton began to hypothesise. ‘Maybe these malcontents don’t speak for everyone?’
‘It’s hard to say, perhaps not for a few.’ She withdrew her hands from his and Eaton tensed. There was more. She was withholding something else. ‘They may not wish to sell their shares to me, or they may drive the price up to a point where I cannot afford to purchase their shares. Those who are most interested in buying me out feel there is lucrative expansion for the Porth Karrek mine under the sea.’
She explained the recent quarrel over the tunnel with an apologetic nod. ‘So you see, Eaton, I don’t know that you can just throw money at the problem and make it go away. This can’t be one of your projects.’
Those were fighting words, or they would be if Eaton didn’t see what she was doing. She was pushing him away, pushing aside help because she thought it made her vulnerable, made her beholden to others.
‘Eliza, my men won’t fail you. These are good men with deep pockets.’
‘And you’d be there to ensure their compliance. Not me. Why should I trade one board of shareholders—men I’ve known through my husband for years and by rights should have been able to trust—for a board of shareholders who are strangers to me? Men who owe their loyalty first to you, a marquess. How could I ever compete with that?’ She sighed. ‘Your offer is generous, Eaton, but it would cost me everything I’m trying to protect. It wouldn’t be mine any more. It would be yours. Your men, your money, your plans.’
‘The mines would be yours, you would still sit at the head of the board,’ Eaton argued. ‘I don’t want to take anything from you, Eliza. I want to help you keep what is yours.’
‘You want to slay my dragons.’ She was quick to go on the defensive, or perhaps Detford had already put her there as the ‘friend’ bearing bad news. Did she not see Detford for the snake he was? Eaton had seen the man for all of a few minutes and had his measure completely. He was not to be trusted.
‘What’s wrong with that? Surely it has not escaped your attention that I care for you.’ It was the first time either of them had given voice to their feelings and it ignited a powder keg.
‘Everything is wrong with that! My mother lost all she had when she allowed a man to act on her behalf,’ Eliza cried.
‘I am not that man and you are certainly not your mother. You cannot compare the two situations,’ Eaton argued, attempting to do battle with her ghosts and her dragons.
‘But you are a man. People will not see your interference as chivalrous. How long do you think it would be before everyone concluded I was your mistress? A kept woman, propped up by your money and your friends? My reputation would be in tatters.’
Eaton gave a wry chuckle. Detford was a serpent indeed. Something else had happened in that awful conversation. ‘It seems your “friend” has been poisoning the well. Is that what he said? Did he warn you away from me for the sake of your reputation? Convenient for him, don’t you think? To isolate you, to cut you off from help, very powerful help, I might add. I doubt he and his friends have a marquess in their pockets. Perhaps he aspires to be more than your friend, Eliza?’
‘Perhaps once, but not any longer. I disabused him of such thoughts years ago.’ Eliza dismissed the notion, but Eaton did not. Did she really think she was so easily forgotten? His suspicions had been right. Detford was the man in Truro who had been the focus of the rumours. A man who had been after her money, if the gossips could be believed. Perhaps they should be believed. Eaton had suspicions anew.
‘What did he do to earn such a rejection, Eliza?’
‘Nothing more than offer an honourable proposal of marriage after Truro society made inappropriate observations about us. I’ve learned to be more discreet since then.’ Did she really not see the man for the worm he was? Detford should have been more discreet years ago. Eaton would have liked to have wrung the man’s neck for such behaviour. Detford should have known what it would look like to others even if Eliza hadn’t. In the aftermath, she had not learned to be more discreet, she’d learned t
o be more alone, convinced that her freedom must always come at the price of intimacy. Detford was a cunning devil, ruining her for other men.
‘You should not discount Detford so easily. I saw the way he looked at you today at Bosrigan.’ Eaton brought a hand to her cheek. He knew the way he looked at her, how she brightened a room simply by being in it, how she captivated him. He was not willing to give her up. He imagined Detford wasn’t either, although he suspected Detford’s protective-friend act was fuelled by more than romantic notions. He stroked her cheek, his eyes holding hers. ‘You are the sort of woman who drives a man insane, Eliza, the sort of woman a man sees at a dinner table and he wants to undo her—not just her clothes, but her secrets, too.’
‘And you, Eaton? Is that what you want?’ Her eyes searched his, wary and cautious, yet desire was there, too. She had come here tonight for more than talk of mines. She was on the precipice of surrender and so was he. He wanted her with an intensity that surpassed longing, but he could not take her lightly and he could not fail her in his answer to her question.
‘I want to do neither, Eliza. I have no desire to undo you, to claim you, to remake you in my image. I want you just the way you are, the determined, stubborn, private, whole of you.’ He took her mouth then, his hands cradling her neck, framing her face as his mouth testified to his want, his need. Once begun, he would give her no quarter, no permission to hide from her desire. He merely needed a sign from her that she had accepted his earlier invitation in full. He did not want her in his bed because she was mad at Detford or because she was desperate and upset. Those things might have been reason enough in the beginning when pursuing her had been a distraction. But she had not been a game to him for a very long time now. Before this went any further, he had to know. ‘Eliza,’ he whispered her name against her lips, ‘what changed your mind?’
Her hands were in his hair, her gaze locked on his. ‘I don’t want to be alone any more. I used to think being alone was the price for my freedom, but I saw today that my sacrifice didn’t matter.’
‘Is that what this is about, Eliza?’ His voice was hoarse, a sign of how tight the leash was he kept himself on for her sake. She would hate herself in the morning if that was what this was, but by the saints it was hard to do the right thing just now. ‘Do you want me, Eliza?’ Eaton breathed, his voice a low, seductive husk at her neck, his mouth at her throat as she arched against him.
‘You know I do.’ Her own voice was smoky with desire.
‘But do you know it? I want to hear you say it. Say you want me. I won’t tolerate regrets in the morning.’ She understood. He was gifting this to her, wanting her to grant herself permission for claiming pleasure after years of denial.
Her hands were moving through the tangles of his hair, her mouth pressing kisses to his face. ‘I want you. Only you.’
‘Then come with me.’
* * *
This was what she’d come here for. Deep at the core of her, she’d known the moment she entered the orangery this was how the evening would end. She’d come here wanting more than to talk with him. She’d wanted to be in Eaton’s arms, wanted his mouth on her mouth, his hands in her hair when he kissed her. She fairly trembled with anticipation as Eaton led her to a small antechamber hidden behind the foliage of the aviary. It was a sparse room furnished neatly with the necessities—a bed, a battered trunk at its foot, a table—but she spared little time for the details. Her attention was for the man who’d brought her. Tonight, she would not be alone. It could not be more than that; the world wasn’t made for such things to last. This one night would be temporary succour. She would take tonight and hold it against all the nights to come. She would not make excuses for this. In the morning, she would not claim seduction or false promises.
She wrapped her arms about his neck. She let her mouth answer his, let her body answer his, let her hips press against his. She would give no man dominion over her, but she would partner one, be the equal of one. He was dancing with her now, a slow sensual waltz of bodies against one another, his lips lingering on hers as they reached the bed.
His eyes were hot on hers as he whispered the solemn admonition, ‘Watch me, Eliza.’ He stepped back to pull off his boots and to tug his shirt over his head, revealing his body to her in the lamplight, as glorious in its nakedness as it had been dressed.
Yes, she would watch him. Eliza sat down hard on the bed’s edge, every fibre of her being alive with hungry anticipation. He was riveting, all ridges and planes, with the chest of an outdoorsman who strode through woods and sands, with arms that hefted sleeping children upstairs with ease. Stark virility was etched in every hard line of him, particularly the two muscled lines that flanked his flat abdomen and disappeared into the waistband of his trousers with tempting invitation for her hands to follow. She bit her lip. Oh, to touch him, to trace those lines to their wicked destination.
‘Do I please you, Eliza?’ His dark eyes glittered, all too aware, no doubt, of the effect he had on her.
‘I am drowning in how pleasing you are.’ She swallowed, her mouth dry. She’d known from the first how out of her depth she was with this man and tonight only confirmed it. None of her experience with intimacy had prepared her for this moment. Lack of preparation did not make her shy, though; it only made her hungrier.
‘Would you like to join me?’ he drawled in low tones. ‘I can play lady’s maid, if you wish.’
‘If you wish.’ He wanted to undress her? The very notion made her heart pound with anticipation. She went to him, giving him her back. How long had she dreamed of such intimate play with a man, fantasised about it alone in her bed?
‘I wish, very much.’ His voice was a raw, heated whisper at her ear sending a trill of hot desire down her spine. ‘You smell divine, like a summer’s day, Eliza. It was one of the first things I noticed about you when you walked into the school.’ She blushed in the lamplight at the compliment, overcome that he’d noticed such a minute detail about her from the start. While she’d been intent on calling him to account, he’d been intent on her perfume. Of course he had. He was a physical man in all ways.
His hands made short work of her lacing and he pushed her gown from her shoulders, letting it slide to her feet. Her stays followed as his mouth pressed kisses to the bare skin of her shoulders, her neck, her back. He reached for the hem of her chemise and her hand captured his in rote reflex, despite the fantasy. ‘Wait.’
‘Have you never been naked before a man, Eliza?’ Eaton whispered at her ear. ‘We shall be naked together, nothing between us, skin to skin.’ His words nearly undid her. It was all the coaxing she needed. This was how she imagined lovers talked. Husbands and wives most assuredly did not speak to one another this way. Huntingdon had not. Eaton’s hands cupped her breasts, drawing her against him, back to chest, the heat of his body warming her, calming her even as the hardness of him aroused her and the issue of the chemise was put on short hiatus.
‘Shall I go first, Eliza? Shall you help me with my trousers?’ he murmured, turning her in his arms. ‘Slide them off, Eliza, free me.’
It was wondrous to undress him, to drink him in with her eyes, to touch him with her hands, to know he wanted her hands on him. Pushing the fabric away, his manhood rose strong and thick from a nest of dark hair, proud like its master. She circled him with her hand, delighting in the adamantine hardness of him. He had strength, even here at his core there was no weakness to him. He would need no efforts from her to ready himself. The thought shamed her. Tonight was not for comparisons or for remembrances. It was for fantasies.
Eaton’s hand tipped her chin upwards, forcing her to meet his gaze. ‘Does something displease you?’
‘No, how could it? You are beautiful. Too beautiful. I hardly dare believe you’re real.’ Would he hear the unspoken comparison? That she had known a good man, but not a beautiful man. Her husband had been decades beyond the virility of a man i
n his prime. There’d been little hardness to his body.
‘You are beautiful, too.’ His hands were at the hem of her chemise once more. ‘Allow me to show you.’ He kissed her then, a deep, slow, abiding claim as he lifted the chemise from her and tossed it away. ‘Come to bed with me. Let me chase away your ghosts.’
Eliza wound her arms about his neck. ‘And let me chase away yours, too,’ she whispered. How had she not seen it until now? It wasn’t all her needing him. They needed each other.
Chapter Fourteen
Only his reverence for her kept Eaton’s want in check. She stole his breath and very nearly his control, but this was too important to rush in the first flush of lusty pleasure, no matter how hungry they might be for one another. And she was ravenous, eager, and, despite the moment’s hesitation with the chemise, she was determined to be the master of her own pleasure at last. Her late husband might have loved her, he might have given her a comfortable marriage and even comfortable companionship, but he’d not given her passion, had not made her pulse race and her breath catch. He’d not lain with her naked, had not worshipped her in the lamplight of an orangery.
Eaton levered himself over her, his arms taking his weight, his eyes meeting hers, offering promises of pleasure, offering encouragement. Follow me down pleasure’s path, his body whispered to hers. He moved against her, her own hips rising to meet him. He gathered her close, making love with his mouth at her mouth, at the base of her neck where her pulse beat fast, at her breasts where his mouth suckled and his tongue caressed, at her navel where he tickled her skin with a feathering breath until her body arched in to him, a little moan escaping her pretty mouth.
From the intimate seat of her navel, Eaton hazarded a glance up the seductive line of her body with a wicked smile, thrilling in her response. She was bold in bed just as she was bold in life, a woman who knew what she wanted. ‘Ah, just wait, my love. There is more, there is better than this.’ His own voice was husky with anticipation. His hands bracketed the slim curve of her hips, his mouth moved down to the feminine juncture of her thighs, his body heady with the feel of her, the scent of her, his own arousal growing in response to hers, need driving him as hard as it drove her.
The Secrets of Lord Lynford Page 13