by Debra Glass
* * * * *
From his study window, Jack watched Lady Huntingdon’s coach pull away. When he’d seen Sophia stepping out of it just two hours earlier, his spirits had soared. Although he’d known at once Lady Huntingdon had brought her here to torment her, he’d hoped—just for a moment—that Sophia had come to accept his offer.
Why was she so stubborn? Why couldn’t see what sort of life he could offer her? Once he’d produced heirs with Lady Hilda, he would be free to do as he pleased with whomever he pleased. There was no shame in having a lover if one kept it discreetly behind closed doors.
I love you.
Love.
What a foolish notion! How could she possibly think she loved him? What had given her that idea?
Only a silly female would confuse passion with something else. He shook his head as darker thoughts intruded.
That’s why he’d had to say such hateful things to her. Why he’d been forced to tell her that what happened between them had been a mistake.
The look in her eyes had nearly crushed him and if she’d shed the tear that lingered in her lash line, he would have gathered her into his arms and made love to her right there in the day lit garden.
Life was about responsibility. His fist throbbed and he realized he’d been clenching it. Flexing his fingers, he shook his head. Responsibility. His father’s death had taught him that.
Jack watched the coach disappear around a bend of tall shrubs. Before his father’s death, he’d lived a carefree existence. Feeling blissfully immortal, he hadn’t considered his future. All that had ended when he became the earl, when he realized what a vast responsibility he had to the title he’d inherited.
It was then he’d put aside his philandering ways. He’d known encouraging Lady Huntingdon had been a mistake but it had been a year and he’d been lonely for female companionship. He’d never dreamed he would make a far greater mistake in riding off with the wrong woman.
He rolled his eyes when he thought of how foolishly he’d acted.
Now he’d ruined her and, worse, he couldn’t get her out of his mind—or out of his dreams.
She’d called Wisbech a brute. Jack found it difficult to imagine that foppish dandy acting brutish at all but he recalled how Sophia acted in Wisbech’s presence. She shrank from him. When she’d thought he, Jack, was a highwayman, she’d climbed onto his horse and had left with him with only one look back at Wisbech. He’d traded her for a ring.
A ring.
What sort of gentleman traded his fiancée for a jewel, heirloom or not?
And then her thoughts turned back to Jack.
Love.
Sophia didn’t love him. If she did, she wouldn’t be marrying a brute who’d traded her for a bauble. She’d consent to become his mistress and live out a life of pleasure and ease in Paris, far from Wisbech and society.
Jack drew in a sharp breath and even as he called himself mad, he yanked the bell pull to call for a servant to saddle Armageddon.
* * * * *
It was all Sophia could do to keep from falling apart as Lady Huntingdon dragged them mercilessly from manor to manor.
Sophia had learned to remain in the company of Miss Markham, who seemed to genuinely like her companionship. As long as she was with the other ladies, Lady Huntingdon’s thinly veiled but sharply aimed barbs lost most of their sting.
Besides, Sophia didn’t need Lady Huntingdon’s reminders that she would never be anything more than a common doxy to Jack. It was good that Jack had told her she’d been a mistake. It was good that he’d been so cruel. Now, she could walk down the aisle and marry Lord Wisbech without her…love—mortified, she remembered how she’d expressed her love for Jack. She cringed every time she remembered it but now, she could marry without some silly notion of love getting in her way.
By the time the carriage pulled up in front of her house, Sophia was exhausted.
She bade her farewell to Lady Huntingdon and to Miss Markham but Miss Pettigrew snored soundly from her position slumped in the corner of the coach.
“The next time I see you, you’ll be Lady Sophia, Duchess of Wisbech,” Lady Huntingdon said snidely.
Sophia ignored the remark. She took the footman’s hand and descended the coach steps.
Before the footman could close the coach door, Lady Huntingdon leaned forward and smiled without mirth. “That is, unless something unfortunate happens.”
* * * * *
“He’s impoverished!” Jack’s friend, Hugh Darlington, exclaimed as he sank into a leather chair at their gentleman’s club.
Jack sipped his brandy. That would explain why he was so desperate to marry Sophia despite the fact that she’d been spoiled.
“He’s the scorn of society,” Hugh said, rising to refill his snifter. “Everyone knows some highway robber had his fiancée.”
“Yes,” Jack said. It panged him with guilt to no end. “I heard about that. Most unfortunate. But if he is so impoverished, then what of his servants?”
Hugh scoffed. “He can’t keep them in his employ.”
“Why not? No funds?”
Hugh shook his head. “He’s known to have a foul temper. Rumor was that when his father was alive, Ralph beat a servant girl so badly she died later.”
Jack stared at the paneled walls without really taking in the richly waxed wood and the plush crimson carpeting of the club. “Why was he not brought up on charges?”
“His connections to the Duke of Gloucester, as far as I know.”
“Wisbech is a brute,” Sophia’s voice echoed in Jack’s head. Had Wisbech already shown her his wrath?
Jack heaved a sigh and swirled his brandy around in the snifter watching the legs of the amber liquid cling to the crystal before cascading downward. This revelation complicated matters. Greatly. He’d decided to end it with the girl, to let her have her grand title and her place in the haut ton.
But now?
She’d wanted to marry him and instinct told him she was holding out for just that. But there was still no way he could marry her. For God’s sake, her own wedding was tomorrow. Sophia had to be realistic about matters.
Jack closed his eyes briefly. There was simply nothing he could do. Nothing he should do. His first assessment of the situation was correct. What had happened between them was a mistake.
A mistake that he would do well to put behind him.
Chapter Seven
Sophia’s wedding gown was the most feminine, delicate thing she’d ever worn in her life. Made of shimmering gold and silver silk, the stomacher was embroidered with a floral pattern. An angelic cloud of fichu lined the bodice and instead of the fashionable three-quarter-length sleeves, the sleeves of this dress were short, descending just below the shoulders. Scalloped laced made the skirt appear to fall in elaborate tiers. Each scallop boasted its own embroidered design.
The panniers were nearly as wide as her arms reach and could not be fastened into place until she’d arrived at the church.
Her mother had insisted on powdering Sophia’s highly coiffed hair until it was silvery white and decorating it with several garish ostrich plumes.
Gazing at herself in the looking glass, Sophia could see how Jack had mistaken her for Lady Huntingdon. She didn’t look like herself. She looked like one of the grand ladies of the haut ton…or a ghost, she thought miserably.
She was a ghost. In just a matter of hours, she would be wed to Lord Wisbech and she felt as if she were marching to the scaffold instead of the altar. She gagged and swallowed the bile that rose in her throat. “I feel as if I’m going to be sick,” she complained.
“Don’t you dare vomit!” her mother railed. “Trixie has done too fine a job on your face for you to go and mess it up.”
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other while the servants fussed around her, powdering and adding touches to her makeup and hair. Already she was weary of this and the day had only just begun.
Thunder boomed and rain pelted the wind
ow panes, matching Sophia’s black mood. Lightning spiraled and an ear-shattering strike followed. Startled, several of the servants jumped.
“I knew we should have stayed with Wisbech last night. The coaches will never get through this mud,” her mother complained.
Sophia could only hope the roads were impassable.
Her mother darted to the window. “The carriage has arrived. Come, come. We don’t want to be late.”
It took three servants to help Sophia lift the heavy hem of her skirts so she could descend the stairs. One footman wielded an umbrella over her head while another footman held her hand as she bent so as not to undo her piled-high hair and plumage as she entered the carriage.
She did not harbor the excitement she felt most brides held on their wedding days. Instead, she dreaded this day as she’d dreaded no other in her life because she knew what would follow when the sun went down and she was alone with her husband.
Her mother and father elected to ride in the coach behind and another carriage carried the trunks and servants who would attend them during the day. And as the procession pulled away, Sophia watched her house and the grounds so familiar to her disappear.
Tears stung her eyes, threatening to fall. She blinked. It wouldn’t do to ruin all the hard work Trixie had done to powder her face white. She jostled as the coach rolled over a rough patch of road. It wasn’t much farther to the church and already, Sophia’s heart twisted with trepidation.
Rain drove against the coach and outside the thunder and lightning continued to rage.
“Stand and deliver!” a voice rang out over the din of the storm.
Sophia’s breath froze in her lungs as the coach rumbled to a halt. Peering through the rain, she saw Jack, clad once more in his mask and cocked hat. What the devil was he doing?
“Step out of the coach, m’lady,” he said from atop his stallion.
At once, Sophia flung open the door but her father had already alighted and started toward Jack. “Are you the miscreant who abducted my daughter? I’ll see you hang!”
“Help me down!” Sophia whispered urgently to the coachman. He climbed off his seat, leaping down into the mud to pull down the stairs for her.
“My business is with the lady,” Jack said, fingering the pistol jammed in his belt.
“Don’t get out of that coach, Sophia!” he father ordered. “You’ll muddy your dress and shoes. Sophia!”
But already, she had stepped down, heedless of the rain and mire.
Jack walked his horse closer. “I will make my offer once more,” he said and held his gloved hand down to her.
Sophia stared.
This was the single most romantic thing that had ever happened to her. She could go with Jack right now. She could take him up on his offer to install her in a Paris apartment. She could run away from all this. From Lord Wisbech. From all of it.
She could be with Jack.
Her heart pounded so hard it hurt. Did she love that much? Did she love him enough to have only part of him?
She looked at her father. His face flamed red with rage. Her mother gawked from inside the second coach.
“Will you bind yourself to a man you think a brute or come with me?” Jack asked.
Sophia’s gaze connected with his again. Despite all the arguments she’d used to forswear her feelings for him, she could not deny that she loved him.
And yet, he’d made no promises to her other than that he would care for her. He’d not avowed his love. This was too much to consider. She felt as if she would burst with indecision.
Even if she didn’t accept Jack’s offer, if she rejected Wisbech, then she knew no man would ask for her hand. Not after what she’d done with Jack.
“What do you want? Money? Jewels?” Sophia’s father’s voice dragged her back to the present.
“I want Sophia,” Jack said.
“You’ve already spoiled her and cost me a great deal more than she’s worth!” her father ranted.
It was then that Sophia realized she’d made her decision the moment she’d stepped out of the coach. She put her hand in Jack’s and without a word he hoisted her into the saddle. Armageddon spun around. Sophia glanced back as the horse raced away, snickering when mud spattered Peter Astley’s face.
* * * * *
Jack didn’t let up on Armageddon until they were back at the hunting lodge. He leapt down from the saddle and dragged Sophia with him.
Her heart took wing as his mouth descended on hers. Clinging desperately, she returned his kiss with a passion that rivaled his own. “What am I doing? I’m such a fool,” she gasped in between kisses.
Rain washed down her face and dripped from his cocked hat but she didn’t care.
He put a gloved finger to her lips. “Hush, do not question your decision. Not now. Not today.” His mouth found hers again, his tongue tenderly tasting before spearing between her lips as if he could lay claim to her by the act of kissing her.
Sophia’s knees went weak as Jack drove all thought from her mind. Desire welled and pooled in her abdomen and her body took on a will of its own.
“I want you out of this damn gown,” he said. “I want your hair down and loose.”
“I can’t think about that right now,” she said, frenzied.
Erotic need inflamed her and she knew she would not be satisfied until she’d had him inside her. “Please,” she implored, groping to find his manhood erect and ready for her. Lust consumed her.
His hand caught hers and she gathered up her drenched skirts as he led her into the lodge.
They made it no farther than the table. “Bend over,” Jack ordered but he was already pushing her face down.
She gripped the wood as he yanked up her skirts and roughly pushed them out of his way. His foot kicked hers out so that she spread her legs. Fingers plundered her folds.
“God, you’re wet,” he growled and then she felt the head of his cock searching and then breaching.
Her head fell on her hands as all sensation spiraled to her center. The more he filled her, the more she wanted and she heard her own voice encouraging him in ribald language. “Fuck me, Jack! Yes. Harder. Oh, dear God! Yes!”
His groin slammed hers in punishing, rhythmic repetition. Sophia’s low-heeled shoes lifted off the floor with each thrust. The heavy table legs grated the floor as it shifted from their exertion.
She let out an animalistic groan, wishing she could reach between her legs to massage her throbbing bud. Jack’s fingers burrowed into her soft flesh, squeezing until she thought she could bear it no more. With each stab, his breath left his lungs in an uneven rush. The feel and sound of it surrounded her, transported her.
Ecstasy crept ever closer, skirting just out of her reach. So close. Oh, so close. Jack…
And then, he before she could finish, he dragged his cock out of her and slid it between her ass cheeks. Hot seed spurted onto the small of the back as he rocked through her cleft.
“Damn you, damn you!” she cried, clawing at the table top.
A hand pressed her back down on the table as he stepped aside. Sophia struggled until a smart slap landed on her backside. “Oh!” she cried as heat shined through her flesh.
“I love you like this,” he growled. “Bent over with your arse in the air.”
His tone both frightened and excited her. She quivered.
“You’re mine now,” he said. “And I will do things to you that will make you beg me for mercy.”
Sophia’s thighs trembled. Wetness from her juicy channel coursed down one of her legs. Fingers dipped into that wet center and slathered it over her pearl and back to her rosette. She gulped. Intuitively, she knew he intended to violate her there. Her sheath clenched at the thought.
“You like it when I play with your ass, don’t you?” he asked.
She whimpered.
Her eyes closed. She felt drunk with the passion he inflicted on her. “Just, please, finish me.”
She wanted out of this wet gown,
these soggy shoes. One limp ostrich plume stretched like a dead animal across the table. “Please,” she said as he continued to circle her anus with his cream-coated fingers.
She couldn’t accept him there. It wasn’t possible. She couldn’t bear it. But even as she dreaded it, she lifted her rump and spread her feet farther. In spite of herself, she knew that part of her was softening to his touch, awaiting his intrusion.
But, never, could she admit to herself or to him that she wanted it.
One fingertip wriggled inside the rim.
“Oh!” she yelped, tensing.
“Relax, love,” he said, caressing her bottom with one hand while his finger continued to tease and prod.
“I can’t,” she said, clenching her fists.
“You will,” he assured her.
Her pulse skittered as he pushed harder. “No, no!” she cried. Frustration mounted. She’d been on the edge and he’d stopped. She ground her teeth and groaned but he just laughed. She’d never known such sweet torture.
“Tell me you want my finger inside you,” he said. “Tell me you want me to stretch you and ready you to take my prick up your arse.”
Her heart seemed to beat in her throat. Why didn’t he just bind her wrists and take from her what he wanted? “Please…” she begged.
“Please, what?”
“Put your finger inside me,” she said. Her fists unfurled and her fingers splayed on the table. She braced for pain but instead, when his finger slipped into her most private recess, surprise flooded her at how good it felt.
“That’s it,” he cooed. “So tight. So slick.”
His fist pushed up tight against her bottom. He’s all the way inside! Sophia shuddered.
“I have a toy made just for this particular orifice,” he told her. “It’s made for you to wear.”
The thought of him inserting an object for her to wear there caused her channel to contract over and over. She tried to desperately to swallow.
He stepped between her legs again, this time reaching with his other hand, groping until he found her hungry pearl. Jolts of pleasure raced through her. Yes. Yes. Don’t stop.