The Reckless Love of an Heir

by Jane Lark

  “Your Uncle Edward is going home in the morning,” Uncle Robert, Robert, Henry’s father, her father-in-law, said as the footmen began serving. Oh it was going to be a task to call him something other than uncle.

  “Why?” Henry looked at his father. His tone was sharp, as though he was shocked.

  “Because I told him to go. There is no point in him kicking his heels here. I told him to leave Rob and Caro in peace and go home.”

  Henry sighed, then looked at his wine. He picked up his glass. It was as if he wanted to say something and did not, for some reason.

  As she was served, Susan slipped her hands underneath the table and rested one on Henry’s thigh, he glanced at her and they shared a smile. Then he sipped his wine and set the glass back down.

  “Has Harry gone too?” Percy asked.

  “Yes, he had to go back to his regiment anyway. He left today.” Uncle Robert was dished up the vegetables to accompany the salmon that had been served.

  The conversation then moved on, but both Uncle Robert and Henry were quiet. Susan spoke more frequently, with a desire to compensate for Henry’s silence, and stop the others from noticing that something was wrong. But there was definitely something wrong.

  As the crockery for the dessert course was removed Aunt Jane stood. “We will leave you now.” Sarah, Christine and then Susan rose too, to leave the men and Stephen and Gerrard alone with the port and their private male conversation. Susan lay her hand on Henry’s shoulder before she walked away, and for a moment his hand lay over hers and he looked up. His eyes showed his gratitude.

  She did not wish to be another burden to him, she wished to take away some of his burdens.

  When she walked into the family drawing room Susan looked at the pianoforte. “Shall I play for you, Aunt Jane?” It would give her something to do, she could not sit here with nothing beyond conversation to occupy her mind.

  “That would be pleasant, Susan, but please, nothing boisterous, and please stop calling me Aunt Jane.” She walked across and hugged Susan for an instant. “Please call me Mama now, or just Jane at least.”

  Susan held her in return, seeking to offer comfort as much as gratitude; all of Henry’s family were subdued with grief.

  When Susan turned to the pianoforte Christine walked across the room. “Shall we play together?”

  Susan smiled at her. “If you would like.”

  “Shall I help choose the music and perhaps I might sing with you,” Sarah offered.

  Perhaps they all needed other things to occupy their mind.

  “Then I shall sing too,” Aunt Jane, Mama… Oh. Jane stated, and came to join them.

  There was then an excited debate over which sheet of music to choose.

  When the boys walked in with Percy it was to a ballad sung by them all in what was a very reasonable harmony. Percy walked over to join in, as Stephen and Gerrard excused themselves and left. Jane… Mama… Henry’s Mama, smiled at them and waved goodnight, but did not stop singing.

  Susan sat on one side of the stool playing the part at one end of the pianoforte, while Christine’s fingers moved over the keys of the other side.

  Susan glanced away from the music, looking over her shoulder at the door. Neither Henry nor his father came in. She continued playing, smiling at Percy, Sarah and Jane, as they began the next verse.

  When Henry walked in ahead of his father Susan was playing the last chorus. She looked over. Henry walked straight to the decanters as his father walked over to Aunt Jane. Jane. He whispered something in her ear then turned away and walked out of the room.

  Susan looked at Henry. He drank the brandy he’d poured, then poured another.

  “What shall we sing now?” Sarah asked immediately after Susan had played the final note.

  “Let me look,” Percy answered.

  Susan stood. “I shall bow out and let you play, Sarah.”

  While the conversation continued over what to play next, Susan walked across the room to Henry. He did not notice; he was staring into his glass.

  “Henry?”

  He looked around. “Hello. Sorry I have been a bit of a misery over dinner I suppose.”

  “You have no need to apologise, you have a good excuse to be miserable. Would you like to retire?”

  He smiled. “Oh Lord, yes. I cannot tell you how much I would love to escape this damned house.”

  He drank his brandy then set down the empty glass.

  “Let me say goodnight.” Susan walked across to the pianoforte. “Henry and I are going to retire, if you will excuse us. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight, Susan, dear.” Jane hugged Susan, as she’d done earlier.

  The others said, “Goodnight.”

  Henry did not come close to say goodnight himself. His mother lifted a hand in his direction. He smiled, that was all.

  Susan returned to him, and he lifted his arm, not offering it, but encouraging her to walk ahead of him. Yet once they were outside the drawing room, his arm fell on to her shoulders and he sighed. She leaned against him as they walked towards the stairs. “What is it?”

  “Nothing for you to be concerned over.”

  “But I am concerned because if it affects you then it affects me.”

  “That is very sweet of you to say, Susan, but I do not expect you solve my problems.”

  But I want to. She said nothing more. She did not think he was in a mood to be persuaded with words—but with her body. She could and would comfort him like that, she had learned in only one night, and during that evening in the rose garden, that Henry was more than willing to open himself up in that way.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  “Ahhh,” Henry sighed as he breathed in Susan’s scent, pressing his forehead against her soft stomach as she stood before him naked while he knelt on the floor in front of her.

  He’d not let her call for a maid but disrobed her in the sitting room and now her clothes, and his clothes, were scattered across the floor and he was on his knees before her, holding on to her, just holding on.

  He kissed above her hairline, then kissed her hip, then kissed the juncture between her thighs and reached his tongue between her closed legs. She moved and stood with her legs apart allowing him greater access as her fingers played in his hair. His hands gripped the back of her thighs as his tongue reached farther.

  She tilted her pelvis towards him.

  His forefingers and thumbs pressed into the first curve of her buttocks as he sucked her sensitive spot and licked the silkiest flesh.

  He was lost in what he did, lost in her. Utterly absorbed. She was beautiful, and so precious to him. So new, and loved.

  He used his fingers, then licked his fingers, then used them again as she sighed and rocked against his invasion.

  Love.

  He loved her.

  He’d thought he’d loved her weeks ago. But now…

  Now, he loved her.

  He stood up and kissed her mouth, his fingers cupping her bottom and holding her against his erection. Then he gripped her hand and led her to stand before the fire. It was not alight, it was a luke-warm summer evening, but there was a rug there.

  He brushed her hair out of the way, over her shoulder, and kissed the back of her neck, then moved behind her, and sucked the skin on the back of her neck gently as he held her hips and her bottom against his erection. Her head dropped forward. She was dopey with desire—with desire for him. That was a strong aphrodisiac.

  “Kneel,” he whispered in her ear.

  She obeyed, and he knelt too.

  “On all fours,” he ordered. Perhaps it was a matter of needing to be in control, but for whatever reason, this was the way he wanted it, and he wanted it this way with Susan.

  She leant on to her hands.

  He kissed her back and his hands ran over the curves of her bottom and her legs, then up along her back and to her neck—that beautiful curve. His fingers gripped her there as he slid inside her, while his other hand held her hip.
>
  “Oh.” It was a sound of surprise that left her lips.

  He moved slowly and steadily. She was hot, wet and so welcoming. She was everything he needed.

  “Oh.” Another breathy sound of pleasure and shock escaped her throat.

  He knew how to move to the greatest effect. He knew how to heighten her pleasure. He knew how to make her climax in a moment.

  He withdrew and then only half penetrated her, moving quickly, caressing her most sensitive points. Her breath became desperate panting. He plunged in deep and hard, then deep and hard again, and after three times he was rewarded with the success of her release. He began again, he wanted more. He wanted control. He wanted pleasure. To be lost for a long period in a world that became only the joy of pleasing a woman—pleasing Susan. This was his precious wife.

  ~

  The clock in Henry’s sitting room chimed once. He sighed into the dark air. His skin had become cold. They’d probably been lying on the floor in the moonlight for half an hour. Susan had fallen asleep, her cheek resting in the crook of his arm and his shoulder.

  “Susan.” His finger stroked across her cheek. “We need to get into bed.”

  She nodded against his chest, half asleep.

  He sat up drawing her with him. Then stood and took her hand to help her do so, but once they were on their feet, he picked her up. Her fingers stroked across his cheek as she fell against him, her hair brushing his naked chest.

  She fell asleep once more as he carried her to the bedchamber. “Samson, off,” he ordered the dog, who’d occupied their bed as they had occupied the sitting room. As Samson jumped down, in the deerhound’s languid style of movement, Henry roused Susan again to get her beneath the covers. Then he walked around the bed and climbed in beside her, but he did not embrace her, he knew he was unlikely to sleep and so it was fairer to let her lie undisturbed.

  He lay on his back looking up at the dark shadow of the canopy. The shutters were closed over the windows in here, but he’d left the sitting room door open so that some of the moonlight shone through.

  After dinner, as Percy, Stephen and Gerard had left the room. Henry had caught hold of his father’s arm before he could follow them and pressed him to say why he’d thought it wise to tell Edward to go?

  Henry had received a barked rebuff, asking him why it was any of his business.

  In the last few weeks it was as though their roles had turned, Henry had stepped into the role of father and earl, while his father…

  Well he did not know what the hell was wrong with him.

  No. That was a lie. Of course he knew what was wrong—grief.

  The clock in the sitting room chimed twice.

  Henry sat up. He’d had enough of the same thoughts spinning about in his head for an hour. He got out of the bed, careful not to disturb Susan, left the room and shut the door.

  His dressing gown lay over the back of a chair in there. He picked it up, slipped his arms into it then wrapped it about his middle and tied the silk sash to secure it.

  Their clothes were still strewn across the floor. He picked them up by the moonlight and set them all in the chair he’d retrieved his dressing gown from. Then he walked across to the side table by the chair they had made love in the night before. There was a small drawer underneath it. He pulled out the pack of cards that was in it, then sat down to play patience with himself as Samson watched him as though he thought Henry mad. He was still playing when the clock chimed four times.

  “Henry… Do you never sleep?”

  He looked at Susan. His hand clasped about the part of the pack of cards still in his hand. Susan had stopped in the doorway from the bedroom, and her arms had clasped over her chest.

  She was wearing her ridiculous nightdress again, the one that covered everything bar her hands, toes and head.

  She still looked beautiful.

  “I do not sleep much these days, no.”

  She walked across the room, the fabric of her nightdress whispering against her legs as Samson rose and walked over to greet her. “Tell me what is keeping you awake, perhaps it will help. Is it to do with William? Is it something to do with the conversation you had with your father?”

  He set down the remainder of the cards on the table, and pushed the table away. “I cannot tell you how grateful I am to hear you use William’s name. Papa will not. Come and sit with me.” He patted his lap as he sat back.

  She sat sideways across his lap, with an arm reaching about his shoulders, as she drew her legs up, so even her toes disappeared within the white cotton. He wrapped his arm about her bent knees and her back, to hold her steady, as Samson sat before the chair and rested his head on Henry’s knee and Susan’s covered feet.

  “Why does Uncle Robert not say William’s name?”

  “I do not know. I think he is afraid of it… It is as though… Oh, I do not know. He has stopped living. He ignores us all even Gerard and Stephen. He is locked away somewhere with no sight of reality. I am worried and Edward was trying to make him see sense, but now Papa has told him to go away. I was angry with him over that. He told me it was none of my business. But Edward was helping me too. He was helping me manage the estate. When I told Papa that, he said it was a selfish view and that Edward had his own estate to manage…”

  Susan’s head rested against his shoulder, as her fingers laced together and braced his shoulders, trapping him within her arms. “You are not selfish. It is the last thing you are.”

  His head fell back on to the chair and he looked up. “Remember you have said so yourself, before, and I do not deny it.”

  “I know, but I was wrong, and you are wrong, and your father is wrong. Your loyalty and thoughts for others have merely never been tested before. You are not selfish, and Uncle Robert will know it in his heart. He is just hurting, Henry. As you are.”

  Hurting. Lord. Yes. I hurt.

  Susan’s arms kept a tight hold about him. He kissed the top of her hair. “I love you.”

  “I know. I know it in the way that Samson knows it, even though you order us about sometimes.”

  He laughed. She was very good for him.

  “Why do you not speak to your mother in the morning? She must be worried too.”

  “Because I do not wish to burden her.”

  “So you are being entirely unselfish and taking every burden on yourself.”

  That did not seem a wrong thing to do.

  Her head lifted and she looked at him, although she still held him. “Henry, you are grieving too. You need to speak to your parents. If you can never sleep you will make yourself ill.”

  A dismissing sound left his lips, that said he did not particularly care… That was both a reckless and a selfish thought. He should not wish himself ill, there was Susan to think of, and his family who would not wish to lose another son and brother.

  He shut his eyes, and breathed slowly, fighting the pain of the emotion gathering in his throat that threatened to choke him.

  Chapter Thirty

  Henry carried Susan back to bed, asleep, and tucked her in for the second time at half past five, then dressed and walked down to the kitchens. Samson followed, his tail wagging in anticipation of being let out. Henry rubbed the dog’s head then asked a boy in the kitchen to take Samson out to the grooms. Then he asked cook for coffee and toasted his own bread on a fork over the kitchen fire, as he’d done as a boy.

  Percy appeared in the kitchen as Henry was eating his warm buttered toast and proceeded to copy Henry and toast some more bread. Then half an hour later Stephen and Gerard appeared and more bread was toasted, over a loud conversation, with cook grumbling at them for getting under the feet of those there to work. They were reminded that the rest of the household would be eating at the table upstairs. Henry laughed along with his brothers, because they all knew that cook had always appreciated their raucous company in the kitchen.

  A desire for William to have been there with them clasped in Henry’s chest. He and Percy had done th
is together before, and clearly Gerard and Stephen had, but this was the first time all four brothers had sat and eaten breakfast in the kitchen. He wished that William had had the opportunity to be with them at least once…

  After they had eaten Samson was returned in the company of his father’s other dogs, their tails wagged as they surrounded his brothers. But Samson, as ever, came straight to him.

  Gerard looked at Henry. “Can we ride out somewhere with the dogs?”

  “We can, and we shall.” Henry rose. “Yet we had best dress appropriately.”

  Percy stood too. “Hurry up then boys, let us get ready.”

  All of them still called Gerard and Stephen boys, but really they were not, they were youths, tall, and growing fast and they’d aged half a dozen years in the last couple of weeks. Stephen lay a hand on Gerard’s shoulder as they walked away. In the same way that Henry might have.

  A warm feeling, the emotion of love, spread like a low mist through Henry’s blood. It was far better to see himself role modelled in that way than to think of himself as an inspiration for the folly that had killed William.

  “Are you walking upstairs?” Percy asked.

  “Yes.”

  Henry did not talk very much as they walked up the servants’ staircase to the hall, and then up the main stairs. He thought of Susan. Of the things she’d said to him last night. He is just hurting, as you are…

  When he and Percy parted ways, Henry sighed out his breath. He had to resolve things with his father.

  Susan was still asleep. He moved quietly finding out his riding clothes, then carried them into the dressing room, shut the door and changed in there. He left via the servants’ door rather than risk disturbing Susan in the last moment.

  While they rode Stephen declared that he and Gerard had agreed that they would like to return to school. Henry later manoeuvred his horse to ride beside Gerard, so he could ask if Gerard really wanted to go. He wanted to be sure the choice had been Gerard’s too.

  It had been.

  The boys had had enough of the miserable atmosphere in the house. Though they’d not said so in words, Henry knew that to be true. He could not blame them; at their age he would have felt the same. He would have returned to school too, to be with the friends that would make life feel normal.