Rhys shifted uncomfortably. “Well, judging from the nonchalant way your father lays out the details, it leads me to believe it might not have been the first time he made such a payment. And…”
Simon sank into the closest chair. “And since he lived three decades afterward, it was likely not the last. You believe there are other children. Other bastards.”
Reaching out, his friend briefly touched his shoulder in an awkward gesture of comfort. “I think it’s safe to assume that is true.”
Simon returned his gaze to the name on the sheet.
Henry Ives.
An abandoned brother who was living God only knew what kind of life. He could be in trade, or a parish priest, or a common thug.
Or dead.
Simon’s chest hurt at the thought. His head spun when he considered the possibility of other brothers and sisters who very likely existed in the world. Children his father had created and then discarded with only a simple payment to make up for everything else they would lack.
“If she knew…” he mused, more to himself than to Rhys. “No wonder she hated him.”
Rhys cocked his head. “I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing,” Simon said, waving his friend off as he staggered to his feet. “I would like to be alone.”
Inclining his head, Rhys backed toward the door. “I understand.”
But as his friend departed, Simon looked around the room. It made him nauseous to be here. He wanted to scream. He wanted to shake his father. He wanted a drink.
And he wanted to erase what he now knew from his mind. Any way he could.
“Look at her pace,” Lillian whispered, nudging Gabby with an elbow as she watched Simon’s mother from across the room. “She is upset, for sure.”Gabby rubbed her side as she gave Lillian a glare. “Yes, dear. You’ve mentioned this several times. It’s evident Lady Billingham is quite upset by her son’s disappearance.”
Lillian’s stomach clenched.
“Don’t say disappearance,” she said, looking out over the group with worry. “It implies he might not return.”
Her friend shot her a side glance. “Do you care so much?”
Lillian worried her hands in front of her. She wanted to say she didn’t, but Gabby knew her too well to accept the lie. Of course Lillian cared. She had cared when Simon left the parlor today in the middle of tea, she had cared when his mother stalked after him with such furious intent in her cold stare, and she had cared when he had vanished from the group, appearing neither for supper nor for this gathering afterward.
In short, she was worried, no matter how much she tried not to be. Something was clearly troubling Simon. Something dark and deep that probably involved his father, if their earlier conversation was any indication. She tried to tell herself that was the only cause for her interest.
But that was a lie, too.
“I’m going to look for him,” she murmured.
Gabby turned on her with a huff of breath. “Lillian!”
She shrugged. “I cannot miss this chance to uncover something about the late duke, can I?”
“That has nothing to do with your desire to find Simon and you know it,” her friend hissed under her breath. “This has to do with your growing feelings for him. Admit it.”
It seemed everything in Lillian’s body froze at her friend’s accusation. “F-feelings? For Simon? Don’t be daft.”
“I would be daft if I didn’t see them.” Gabby sipped her drink as she stared at Lillian evenly. “No matter your original motives for coming here or your misgivings about Simon’s pursuit, the fact is that you have begun to care for this man. And your feeling for him seems to increase with each passing day.”
Lillian shook her head. “His offer to make me his mistress made it clear he is no better than his father.”
Her friend’s snort interrupted her. “Please. You wish to be insulted, and perhaps some small part of you is hurt that he made such a shocking request. But your eyes also sparkle when you think of being in this man’s life, even in such a scandalous manner.”
Lillian’s mouth dropped open, though she had to acknowledge to herself that every word her friend spoke was truth. But she wouldn’t say it out loud. “I could never…”
She trailed off as Gabby’s eyebrow arched incredulously.
“Well, believe what you wish, then,” Lillian snapped, a bit louder than she had intended. She corrected her tone with a sigh. “Regardless, I’m going to look for him. Will you make my excuses if anyone asks?”
Her friend let out a long-suffering sigh. “You know I will. But don’t think for a moment that you have me fooled.”
Lillian ignored the parting shot and slipped from the room as surreptitiously as she could.
In the hallway, she drew a long breath. Now that she was alone, Gabby’s accusations rang with even more troubling clarity. Was her friend correct?
No, she refused to accept that she might have feelings for the man. Simon was a means to an end for her, she could not forget that.
Not ever.
Straightening her shoulders with this new resolve, she began wandering the quiet halls of his home, peeking in chambers and listening at doors in the hope she would find him. Once she did, she had no idea what she planned to do, but she would decide that once the time came.
She had all but given up on the main level of the house when she reached the final chamber on that floor. She pushed at the door and peered in. It was the billiard room Simon had shown her the day she arrived here. She thought it was empty as she looked around, but just as she was about to depart, she saw a twisting trail of smoke coming up from a high-backed chair with its back to the door.
Her heart jumped to her throat and Lillian almost bolted, but she forced herself to step inside.
“S-Simon?”
There was a long pause before a low, sensual chuckle came from the chair. The sound played along her spine and made her nerves jump and twitch.
“It would be you who found me,” he murmured as he pushed to his feet and turned toward her.
She caught her breath. Every other time she had met with Simon, he’d been impeccably dressed and pulled together. Not tonight. Tonight his cravat was gone, leaving his shirt gaping at the neck to reveal a vee of smooth skin at his throat. He obviously hadn’t shaved since that morning, and a dark hint of stubble had begun on his cheeks and chin. Actually, he looked quite like he had just stumbled out of bed.
The image was delicious.
“Why are you here, Lillian?” he asked, but despite his blunt question, his tone held no malice.
She glanced around before she answered. Her gaze slipped to the small table beside the chair he had occupied when she entered. The remains of a cigar smoldered in an ashtray there, along with an empty bottle of whiskey and a glass half full of the same.
Her stare returned to his face. His gaze was glassy and so sad and disenchanted that she nearly flinched at the powerful emotions he made no effort to hide.
“Are you drunk?” she whispered.
He shrugged one shoulder as he took a long step in her direction. “Not enough.”
Her voice cracked as she asked, “And how much is enough?”
A bark of laughter escaped his lips. “I don’t know yet. Ask again in a few hours.”
“Simon—”
He reached out and caught a lock of her hair between his fingers. As he tugged it loose from her fancy style, her words cut off in her throat.
“You never answered my question,” he said, his tone soft.
She swallowed hard. He’d moved closer again, and all she could see or feel at that moment was him. The rest of the room faded.
“Which question?” she asked.
He smiled. “You know which question, I think. Why are you here?”
“You—you disappeared,” she explained, knowing she should move away, but somehow unable. Most definitely unwilling.
“And you have been designated as search party?” he asked solem
nly. “Did you bring dogs to scent me out?”
“Simon—”
His eyes fluttered shut for a moment. “I do love it when you say my name.”
He began to lean toward her, and she gasped. Somehow she found the ability to step away, though her pounding heart kept on beating like butterfly wings against her rib cage.
“There is clearly something wrong with you. Please tell me what it is.”
“Why?” he asked, a hard edge to his voice as he grabbed the drink behind him and swigged the remaining liquid.
“Perhaps I could help,” she whispered, hating herself for using him. And hating herself equally for the fact that she truly did wish to be of assistance.
He set the empty glass aside.
“How could you help me?”
She opened and shut her mouth a few times. In truth, she had no plan. Finding Simon was as far as she had gotten in her mind. She’d never thought she’d come upon him like this. Out of control. Needy and seductive in equal measure.
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
Once again, he moved on her, only stopping when he was just a fraction of an inch away. His heat suffused her gown, leaving her burning and branded. It made her ache. It made her want.
“I think you do know,” he murmured. “I think you look at me and you know what I need. So tell me, Lillian, how will you help me?”
She shivered as his breath caressed her cheek. He was right. Deep inside her, in dark and hidden places, she knew how to make his hurt go away, if only temporarily. She knew how to erase the pain. To make them both forget.
And just as Gabby had accused her of earlier, that was exactly what she wanted. On her own terms. This moment was for her and no one else. She could return to duty later.
Her fingers trembled as she lifted them and threaded them through the crisp locks of his dark hair. He didn’t resist her touch, only let his breath out in a ragged sigh, as if he had been waiting for this moment for an eternity and now he was ready to surrender to it. She trembled as she tugged gently and drew his lips to her own.
And then she kissed him.
Chapter 13
The moment Simon’s lips met hers, Lillian realized that this encounter wouldn’t stop until they had made love. But despite her innocence, despite her refusal of his offer the day before, despite all her duties when she came to this estate, she didn’t feel afraid. And she didn’t feel wrong.
No, the only emotion that roared through her as their mouths collided and tongues danced, was excitement. This was her choice and there was no doubt it had been made. There would be no going back.She drank in every moment, memorizing the assault on her senses. He tasted of whiskey and sweet cigar smoke. But beneath it all was a sharp current of male desire. She smelled the same indefinable aspect on his skin, a heated, musky scent that called to her body and made a strange wetness rush between her legs.
His breathing echoed in her ears between kisses, a panting drive of air that merged with her own as the only sound in the otherwise quiet room. But that shared breath was as beautiful as a symphony to her, inspiring feelings she wouldn’t have been able to define even if someone offered her all the gold in the world to do so.
When his arms came around her to drag her against him, she felt the full power of his superior strength, as well as the insistent evidence of his desire. She shivered with the realization that she had done that to him. She had made his body hard and ready and edgy with need.
With a groan, he pushed her backward across the spacious chamber, devouring her lips all the way, until her backside touched the edge of the billiard table. Then he leaned into her, nudging a leg to tangle with her dress between her thighs. She found herself grinding down against him in some ancient give-and-take of pleasure. She reveled in the friction that wanton action created. It was something so focused and powerful, so wicked and yet so right.
The chamber seemed to get hotter, closer, as their lips and tongues merged. And Simon seemed to be getting closer, too, his body curling around her as they arched backward in tandem. Finally she was flat on her back against the top of the billiard table, with his hard body covering hers.
There had never been anything like this pleasure. She was on fire, her breasts tingled and ached most deliciously, her legs trembled as she crooked one knee around his calf, her sheath clenched in a rhythm she had never experienced before.
After what seemed like a sweet eternity, his hands moved. He flattened one palm to her collarbone, hesitating as her chest rose and fell on each fluttering breath. Then he stared down at her with an unflinching gaze. His green eyes were so intense at this short distance that she almost wanted to look away, but she couldn’t, not even when his fingers slid down, dancing to rest between her breasts.
“Simon,” she groaned, feeling she should be shocked by this intimacy, and yet not so.
It seemed natural that he would touch her in this way. That he would claim her in a fashion no other man had ever done before. Perhaps no man would ever do so again.
He smiled, but didn’t respond verbally. Instead he moved his hand to cup her breast. She arched helplessly into the touch, shocked by how hot and needy he could make her. The delicate silk that comprised her gown was no match for the rough glide of his skin. She shivered when she imagined how right and powerful it would be when she wasn’t covered by fabric. When his hand touched her bare body.
“Cold?” he murmured as he brought his lips to her neck and nuzzled.
Somehow she managed to shake her head. “Hot,” she gasped as his tongue traced her throbbing pulse. “So hot.”
His head lifted and there was a wicked intent that glittered in his stare. “I can fix that.”
He drew back and pulled her gently to a seated position. She didn’t resist. She couldn’t, even as he popped one tiny button along the front of her simple gown. His gaze never left hers as he repeated the action all along the front of the dress. As she stared, he dropped his lips to the skin he had revealed and brushed them back and forth.
“Simon,” she gasped, digging her fingers into his shoulders as his tongue played along the lacy edge of her chemise.
“Cooler?” he whispered, his breath burning against her skin.
“N-no,” she said.
“Then I had best remove more.”
He chuckled as he dragged her dress down around her waist, tugging it away from her arms. She lifted her backside up, and finally he tossed the gown aside and it landed with a swish of fabric on the floor.
“You are beautiful,” he said, his tone reverent and low.
He looped his fingers beneath her thin chemise straps and glided them over her shoulders, down her arms. The fabric fell forward and she was bared from the waist up.
Modesty dictated embarrassment. That she cover herself. And yet she didn’t. She didn’t want to. She loved how he looked at her, how his eyes glazed with passion. How he seemed to see her as the most exquisite creature he had ever laid eyes upon.
She had never experienced such a thing.
“A-aren’t you hot?” she stammered, untested in flirtation and seduction and feeling inadequate and silly as she tried to play a game in which he was master.
One corner of his lips tilted up in a sensual half smile. “Oh yes.”
She reached out, trembling, and found the opening in his wrinkled shirt, gasping as her fingertips grazed his bare skin. She had never touched another person like that before. She had never felt the taut flesh of a man’s body. She liked it. She wanted more. She wanted to see him and touch him and taste him as wantonly as he had done to her. In some small way, she wanted to claim him, no matter how temporary that ownership would be.
Her fingers felt thick and useless as she struggled to unbutton his shirt. He made no attempt to help or hinder her progress, just watched her through a hooded, heated gaze as she finally pushed the shirt open and away from his shoulders.
Her breath caught. She had never seen a man like this, but she had a suspicion t
he one before her was quite a specimen. His broad shoulders were contoured, layered with lean cords of muscle that tapered into a chest sprinkled with just a dash of wiry hair.
She feasted on the look of him. Clearly he did not buy into the current fashion of lazy aristocracy, for his stomach was not just flat but rippled with the hint of muscles below the taut surface. And his chest hair continued in a thin line that disappeared into his waistband in the most interesting fashion.
“Lillian,” he murmured.
She snapped her gaze to his with a gasp of embarrassment. “Yes?”
“Breathe, darling,” he said as he cupped her neck and brought his lips toward hers.
She sucked in one gasping gulp of air before his mouth branded her yet again. Now that she was free from some of the heavier layers of gown, it was easier to be an active participant in this dance of desire. Her chemise only just skimmed her middle thighs, which meant she could actually part her legs when he nudged between them, she could wrap one around his thigh in an attempt to be even closer.
He groaned as they fell back against the table once more.
“The things you do to me,” he whispered, though the comment seemed to be more to himself than her.
His mouth drifted down to cover her breast as his hand had moments before. She arched up with a helpless cry as he sucked her hard nipple between his lips. His mouth was so hot, so wet as he swirled his tongue around and around the sensitive peak, driving her wild as sensation after sensation exploded from the point of contact to flow through her entire body.
He switched to the other breast, repeating the action there. By that time, she was writhing, digging her fingers into his naked shoulders, pulling him closer with her legs and arching up into his tongue with wanton moans and cries.
“So deliciously responsive,” he whispered, moving farther down her body. Her bunched and wrinkled chemise shifted against her skin as he kissed his way across her flat stomach, to her hip, and finally he parted her legs further and placed a kiss to her thigh.
She shivered, sitting up a bit to see what he would do next. She stared in wonder as he pushed her chemise up until it was a useless scrap of silk around her stomach. He spread her legs wide, his warm hands cupping her mound, then opening the tender flesh there.
What the Duke Desires Page 13