Between a Rake and a Hard Place

by Connie Mason

  She stiffened in his arms. “But Leonard,” she said with a sniff, “I am not your mistress.”

  “I know, love.”

  “But the servants—some of them must know of the connection between the chambers. I’ll move back to the old room first thing tomorrow.” She pulled away from him and crossed her arms over her chest, giving him her back. “I will not be made an object of speculation by the below-stairs gossips.”

  “I doubt any but Honeywood know of the passageway. Lord knows, there are enough cobwebs to prove no one’s been cleaning back there. And our butler is far too tight-lipped to noise about any of Wyndebourne’s secrets.” Leonard came up behind her and slipped his arms around her waist. Then he ran his lips over her nape in the way he knew she liked. Little tendrils of pleasure bloomed over her skin. “Come, Amelia. I’ve missed you so. Don’t be so fussy.”

  “Fussy? You think I’m being fussy? How very inconvenient of me.” She whirled on him. “What wife doesn’t want to be confused with a man’s mistress?”

  “Most men love their mistresses more than their wives and you have the unique position of being both to me, my dear. Utterly forbidden and entirely church-sanctioned. No wonder I can’t get enough of you.” He caressed her breasts through the thin fabric of her wrapper and night rail. A wicked smile lit his face.

  He bent to tug down the neckline of her night rail, kissing along the edge of the lace there.

  With effort, Amelia pushed him away. “It’s been nearly three years. How long are we going to keep this a secret?”

  “As long as we must. Charles Fox kept his marriage to Elizabeth Armistead a secret for ten years, you know,” he said as he untied the bow between her breasts.

  “The fact that Elizabeth Armistead had been a courtesan before she married him might have had something to do with it.”

  “And so did the fact that he knew she’d never be accepted at court even after the marriage was made public,” he said.

  “I am no courtesan.” Amelia pulled her wrapper tight around her and stalked away from him. “You think I would not be accepted?”

  She’d been born a gentleman’s daughter. It was only bad luck that she’d had no brother to ensure she retained her place in Society when her father died. Even so, everything in her urged her not to play the lady now. She longed to lie down on the bed and spread her legs for this man she loved, but she was so tired of pretending to be merely his daughter’s companion.

  “Of course, you would be accepted eventually, but right now it would—”

  “You’re ashamed of me.”

  “Never.” He grasped her shoulders and forced her to face him. “Never,” he repeated. “But I’m a pragmatist. If I didn’t have a marriageable daughter we need to protect from the foolishness of the ton, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.”

  She hated to admit it, but he was right. From the beginning, she and the marquis had been drawn to each other. Leonard maintained his distance during his period of mourning, but once he removed his black armband, he pursued his daughter’s governess with single-minded intent.

  Amelia refused to allow him into her bed. He’d never know the nights of frustration that had cost her, but in the end, Leonard had proposed because he had to have her.

  They agreed to marry in secret and keep their fiery passion under control when they found themselves under the scrutiny of others, for Serena’s sake. Leonard claimed it didn’t matter to him what the world said about his making a commoner his marchioness, and he was chafing to drape her publicly in the jewels and honor of her true station. But they both knew it would not redound to Serena’s favor if their union became public knowledge.

  Especially not now, when Leonard’s daughter was poised to become a member of the royal family.

  Still, Amelia chafed at being hidden away, as if she were a lunatic aunt in the attic. As if Leonard were embarrassed by her. She turned in his arms and gave him her back.

  He bent his head and nibbled her neck. “‘Come live with me, and be my Love,’” he whispered into her ear, “‘and we will all the pleasures prove.’”

  She let her head fall back against him while he reached around and covered a breast with his palm. She could never refuse the man when he quoted Christopher Marlowe, but would Leonard value anything he won too easily?

  With effort, Amelia pulled away from him and put a few steps between them. However, she couldn’t resist turning to look at him. The need in his face lanced her heart.

  “Only a few more months, dear. Once Serena is the Duchess of Kent, everything will be different,” he said, spreading his arms in invitation. “I promise.”

  She stepped into his arms and let him take her into his lusty dream. Later, while he lay spent and sleeping, Amelia rose from the bed and moved around the room, blowing out the candles. She wondered if things really would be different once they no longer had to keep their marriage a secret.

  Would their love still be this wildly exciting once they didn’t have to sneak around? Would Leonard seek a mistress once she no longer served as both wife and light-o-love?

  Amelia climbed into bed and curled around his back. Sufficient unto the day…She’d worry about that when it happened and cherish the man next to her until then.

  ***

  Jonah couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was a strange air in the great house. He moved through its shadowy corridors, silent as a wraith, his skin prickling with every step. It was something intangible but there, nevertheless. He felt it in heightened senses as he avoided the creaky floorboards and passed noiselessly from room to room. There was a watchful waiting, an expectancy in the very house itself.

  If he didn’t know better, he’d say someone in Wyndebourne was having “rumple-the-sheets-beyond-recognition-and-smother-your-cries-with-a-pillow” sex.

  Perhaps it was only that he hoped he and Serena would be in those happy straits shortly. She wanted new and forbidden experiences, didn’t she? He was just the man to give them to her.

  It was about bloody time.

  If any of the women he’d been with before had heard that Jonah Sharp had been pursuing a certain young lady for as long as he’d known Serena without having taken her to his bed once, they’d have surely laughed.

  And wondered if some horrible accident had befallen Jonah’s manhood.

  Nothing wrong there, he assured himself. His cock had assumed a semi-rigid stance in anticipation. It would only take a whiff of Serena’s fragrance to send him into battering ram hardness.

  That sounds entirely too military.

  Besides, Jonah had no intention of being rough with her. Serena was a virgin. While he hadn’t deflowered any in the past, he’d heard a good deal about the proper technique to ensure the young lady was inconvenienced as little as possible by the loss of her maidenhead.

  Of course, if the way she practically leaped on him in the stable was any indication, Serena might blossom into the sort who enjoyed a hard swive. For just a moment, he imagined bending her over at the waist so her bum was smiling at the ceiling. Then he’d plunge into her moist pink slit while her fingers were splayed on the floor.

  He stifled a groan. A man could lose himself in the heat and friction of a tight fit while he smacked his balls against silken thighs. He drew a deep breath and mentally counted to ten, lest he spend right there in the empty hallway. Blood pounded in his ears so loudly, he was surprised no one else heard the steady drumbeat and came to investigate.

  Get a grip on yourself, Sharp.

  It wasn’t as if this was the first lady’s bedchamber into which he’d finessed his way. But this was the first one he was approaching with mixed motives.

  Part of him was running on the pure carnal rush of an impending sexual encounter with a woman who’d driven him to distraction. He couldn’t wait to claim Serena, to initiate her into the ultimate world of the sensual.

  And another part of him, a confused part, wondered if he was just another item to be checked off her
confounded list. He wasn’t sure why it should be so, but it irritated the fool out of him to think he might be lumped with smoking a cigar. Neither more nor less important, but merely something Serena wished to try.

  His reasons for bedding her were still sound. In order to spare his family the scandal Mr. Alcock threatened to rain down on him, Jonah still needed to remove Serena from consideration by the royal duke. But somewhere along the line, Serena Osbourne had stopped being a means to the end for him.

  He was beginning to want her simply because of her.

  Jonah closed his hand over her crystal doorknob. Did she want him to take her only so she could check off another forbidden pleasure? Or did she want Jonah for himself? Given what she knew about him, how could she possibly?

  His cock told him it didn’t matter. The growing lump in his chest told him nothing else did.

  Coward, he named himself for hesitating. Get on with it.

  Jonah turned the knob and pushed open the door.

  Nineteen

  “DAFFODIL: Perhaps her Ladyship dislikes the opera singers, because they are like fashionable husbands! he! he! he!

  MACPHARO: Like fashionable husbands! How is that, Daffodil? Is it because they are usually accompanied by horns?”

  —from The Ton; or, Follies of Fashion by Lady Wallace

  House parties are rife with opportunities for indiscretion. Once the gay Society of London descends upon Wyndebourne, is it possible that the royal duke might sprout the horns of a cuckold even before his match with Lady S. is settled?

  From Le Dernier Mot,

  The Final Word on News That Everyone

  Who Is Anyone Should Know

  Serena squirmed in the tufted chair before her fire, turned to the second page of her friend Lysandra’s letter, and held it closer to the light of the candle.

  “And so, my dear friend, there is no doubt that the feckless Miss Pinckney finds herself in an ‘interesting condition.’ Worst of all, her father has yet to convince the gentleman responsible—if the silly chit knows which gentleman that is!—to do the honorable thing. If the scoundrel can be identified, I expect it will come to pistols at dawn before a rushed wedding can be affected. For Miss Pinckney’s sake, let us hope it is soon. Heaven knows, she can only let out her seams so many times before the gown will no longer give.”

  Serena sighed. “Trust Lysandra to have the most barbed gossip to share.”

  There was a time when Serena would have joined her friend in shaking her head over the foolish behavior that led to Miss Pinckney’s predicament. They’d have decided the girl deserved the shame being heaped upon her for giving into her baser urges.

  But that was before Jonah made her aware of the power of those urges.

  “I tell you these things, Serena, my dear, because I remember how dreadfully obvious Sir Jonah Sharp was about displaying his interest in you before you left Town. It’s come to my ears that the upstart baronet accompanied you and Miss Braithwaite to Wyndebourne and, even more shocking, has remained in residence there.

  Never say you have encouraged him.”

  She bit her lip. What would Lysandra say if she’d seen the way Serena threw herself into Jonah’s arms in the stable?

  “At any rate, I shall be there shortly and if I perceive that Sir Jonah has gotten above himself with you, you may depend upon me to deliver him a scathing cut direct!”

  A cut direct was the most damning of public censures. It involved looking right through the person to be shamed as if they were not even there at such a time when the action would be seen and marked by the most influential people. It shouted “You are dead to Polite Society and unworthy of the rarified air you breathe” more effectively than a raging scene.

  Lysandra was a master of the art.

  Serena crumpled the letter without reading the rest. Her father always encouraged her to court the good opinion of the ton, but suddenly what Lysandra and her ilk thought meant less than nothing to her.

  How dare Lysandra feel herself above Jonah?

  She really knew nothing about him. She had no idea what he’d done for his king and country and how the gravity of that service weighed upon him. She didn’t know he was quick-witted and a handy man in a pinch, a situation in which Serena often found herself. Lysandra had no clue that Jonah had not only not laughed when he learned about Serena’s list of forbidden pleasures, but he’d helped her experience so many of them that she was beginning to lose count.

  Of course, Lysandra didn’t know about that secret list at all, and Serena was glad she’d never confided in her.

  What Lysandra doesn’t know won’t hurt me.

  And most of all, her friend had no idea how Jonah made Serena feel every time they embarked on one of those small adventures together. It was more than just the excitement of exploring the unknown with a knowledgeable guide.

  She was safe with him.

  He didn’t upbraid her for her wants. He took the unruly part of her that longed for the extraordinary and accepted it as no one ever had.

  Serena ripped Lysandra’s letter to pieces and scattered them on the embers of the fire in the grate. She took grim satisfaction in watching them flare briefly and then curl into gray ash.

  “How’s that for a cut direct?” Serena said with vehemence.

  “Who are you talking to?” came a whispered voice from the dark.

  Serena startled, hand to her chest, but when he stepped into the light of the fire, she let out her pent up breath in a single whoosh. “Jonah, you scared the life out of me. How did you manage to enter the room without me hearing you?”

  “Practice,” he said. “Lots and lots of practice.”

  Well, an assassin for the Crown would need to be stealthy, wouldn’t he?

  She shoved that uncomfortable thought away. With any luck, Honeywood was well on his way to locating the unfortunate man Jonah had sought in Portsmouth and would convince the mysterious Sgt. Leatherby to flee before Jonah was forced to kill him.

  The sooner Jonah stopped living that shadowy double life the mysterious Triad required of him, the sooner his soul could heal and he’d be free to live the life he was intended to live.

  “What are you burning?” he asked.

  She moved away from the crispy remains of Lysandra’s letter. “It’s nothing. My friend’s foolishness upset me. I suppose I should have read it to the end, but I simply lost patience with her.”

  He snorted. “Remind me not to try your patience.”

  “Too late for that. You always do.”

  ***

  She hadn’t moved toward him, but it seemed as if she leaned his way, as if her weight rested on the balls of her feet and she strained in his direction, merely waiting for the right moment to slip the invisible cord that bound her and launch herself at him.

  A man can hope, can’t he?

  “What am I doing to try your patience now?” he asked.

  “Well, for one thing,” she said with cat’s satisfied smile, “you’ve been here for more than a minute and haven’t tried to kiss me once.”

  He bounded across the room to her in half a heartbeat and took her into his arms. “Serena, you should know by now that when I decide to do something, I don’t try. I do.”

  Jonah bent to kiss her, but he didn’t have far to go. She stood on tiptoe to meet him halfway, her face flushed in breathless anticipation. When his mouth covered hers, it was as if they picked up exactly where they’d left off in the stable, the sudden passion between them flaring white-hot. He knew his kiss was probably bruising her lips, but Serena gave as good as she got, nipping and suckling.

  He should’ve known she’d never do anything by halves.

  Jonah kissed along her jawline and down her neck. He sucked at the tender skin below her ear for a moment. “Lord, you taste so good.”

  She tipped her head back, giving him better access, and murmured incoherent little nothings that went straight to his groin. He fisted her hair to hold her still as he kissed along her
collarbone, parting her wrapper and shoving the silk off her shoulders. She whimpered when he trailed his tongue along the lacy top of her night rail. Then she threaded her fingers through his hair, kneading his scalp in encouragement.

  Even though the room was dim, the dark shadows of her nipples showed beneath the thin muslin. Jonah wasn’t going to settle for suckling her through the fabric this time. He tugged the ribbon that held her bodice closed with his teeth. The knot gave and the fabric fell away, baring the curves of her breasts.

  He parted the front of her night rail and looked down at her. Her breasts weren’t overly large, but they were perfectly sized to fit the palm of his hand. He cupped them both. Her hot, hard nipples fairly scorched his palm.

  He bent and took one into his mouth, sucking hard. The tip was sweet and felt so good between his lips.

  “Oh, Jonah, what are you doing to me?” she murmured. She grasped his shoulders and hooked one leg around his to steady herself.

  “You tell me.” He brought his teeth down on the taut bud in a sharp love nip. She rewarded him with a gasp. “How do I make you feel?”

  “Wild and out of control.” She gave a shuddering breath and rocked herself against him. “More than a little wicked.”

  “If there’s wickedness done tonight, let it be on my head.” Jonah straightened and ran his hands down her spine. Then he cupped her bum and pressed her against his hardness. “I’ll answer for it.”

  Serena reached up and stroked his cheek. “I want you here, Jonah. This is my choice. If there are consequences, they are my consequences too. Only…”

  “Only what?”

  “Only a woman’s consequences are always more serious than a man’s.” She unhooked her knee from around his leg and settled her foot back on the floor. “I supposed it’s my friend Lysandra’s letter that’s making me fret. She wrote me about a mutual acquaintance of ours who now finds herself with child while she is yet unmarried. A consequence which is unthinkable to me.”

  She worried her lower lip, and Jonah felt the tension roiling off her. She wanted two things at once—both sensual adventure and safety. Just because she was passionate didn’t mean she’d checked her sense of self-preservation at the door to possible ruin.