The Earl Takes A Bride (Elbia Series Book 2)

by Kathryn Jensen

  What worried him was the other issue. Neither of them could afford an unwanted pregnancy.

  As Thomas knit his wide fingers through her slender ones and pressed her hands into the soft blanket, he moved himself deeper and faster. He sensed that only seconds remained. Concentrating until the last possible moment, he at last pulled himself free with a reluctant groan.

  He caught only a glimpse of puckish smile on her lips before he collapsed beside her, his muscled leg draped over her hips, his arms wrapped round her head, crushing her to him as he hit the wall between the ultimate male bliss and the shock of reality.

  He had committed treason…and he didn’t care. All that mattered was that Diane was his. For these precious seconds she was part of him, all he’d ever wanted and more than he deserved. Until forced to release her, he wouldn’t let go.

  Six

  Thomas felt Diane shift beneath him. He gently lifted his leg to give her room. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” She beamed up at him. “That was—” she shook her head “—beyond words.”

  She did look sublimely happy. He was certainly glad of that. But now came the hard part, and he didn’t know how to broach the subject in any way but bluntly.

  “I’m sorry. I should have used a condom.”

  “I suppose,” she murmured, touching her palm to his shirtfront. “You know, some day, I’d really like to see all of you naked at the same time.”

  “I’m serious, Diane. It was irresponsible of me not to. We hadn’t discussed our histories. I want to reassure you, I’ve never done that before…gone without protection.”

  “I wasn’t worried,” she said, sitting up to watch him tuck in his shirt, pleating it at the sides, military-style.

  “You should worry about such things, now that you’re single again.”

  She shrugged as if to say she understood, but right now she didn’t want to discuss anything so unromantic. “Anyway, thank you for taking the only precaution you could. It’s been so long, it never occurred to me to even think about the possibility of pregnancy.” She blushed prettily, looking suddenly embarrassed.

  He watched as she finished tidying herself up, and felt himself react again as she dressed. Amazingly, he wanted her again.

  This time, he resisted. “Come, let’s eat. You were hungry before. You must be famished by now.”

  As they shared the meal Cook had prepared for six instead of two, Thomas watched Diane for any signs of regret for what they’d just done. But she glowed brighter than the sunshine. She laughed and told him stories of her younger years. She had nearly joined the Peace Corps in her senior year of college, but then she’d found out she was pregnant with her first child. And her life had abruptly changed course.

  “You never thought of giving up the baby?” he asked.

  “No,” she said without hesitation.

  “You wouldn’t have felt compelled to marry Gary then,” he pointed out.

  “I realize that, and I won’t say that the thought never crossed my mind.” She bit into a crisp apple. “But I knew I could never give up a baby. And when I told Gary, he was the one who suggested we marry. He said he wanted to share the responsibility of raising our child.”

  “And did he?”

  “For a while.” Diane took another bite of her fruit thoughtfully, then chewed faster. “Let’s talk about other things.”

  The afternoon wore on, and they spent it eating, chatting and holding hands beneath a brilliant sun. Thomas felt like a teenage boy again, discovering girls were different. Only this time he was detecting a finer line—that one woman was different from so many others. He couldn’t get enough of Diane’s laughter and smiles. In all the times he’d seen her, she’d never seemed this happy. Although he was pleased, her carefree attitude troubled him more and more as the sun dropped lower in the sky. Now that they’d crossed a line that was never meant to be crossed, what would happen?

  “We should be getting back,” he murmured, leaning over to kiss her lightly on the lips as she lay gazing up at the clouds overhead.

  “I know.” She frowned prettily at him. “I don’t want this day to end.”

  “Neither do I.” And he meant it.

  “I take it you still think Jacob wouldn’t be pleased to hear that we—”

  “He would be livid.”

  Diane studied him, lifted a finger to trace the contours of his face. She looked more curious than upset. “The king’s right-hand man isn’t allowed a personal life?”

  “Of course I am, but that’s separate from my duties to the royal family and the court.”

  “I see,” she breathed out each word distinctly, “all…very…discreet.”

  “Yes.”

  Her eyes were twinkling too mischievously for his comfort. “And we’ve been discreet. Why can’t we continue?”

  He had to make her understand this wasn’t a game. “What happened between us here, today…it can’t happen again, Diane.”

  “Why not?” she asked simply.

  He was astounded. “We didn’t plan this. It just happened. And it was—”

  “Wonderful,” she filled in for him, smiling from ear to ear.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “It was. But we can’t carry on an affair under the king’s roof and—”

  “Dear me, no! I’m sure the royal palace of Elbia has never been witness to an affair. No duke every chased a lady-in-waiting up a turret. No queen ever had it on with the stable boy. How shocking!”

  He shook a finger at her. “You’re making fun of me. I’m serious.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Why do you think I’m not serious, too?”

  “Don’t make this any harder than it already is for me. I’m trying to do the right thing for Jacob’s sake, but also for yours.”

  Her smile was suddenly gone. Rich gray-green eyes changed to cold granite. “For my sake? You’re protecting me, is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes,” he said sighing, relieved that she finally understood.

  “From what?” she demanded loudly.

  Or maybe she didn’t. “From disappointment. You know there is no future for us.”

  “I told you before, it doesn’t matter to me. It’s enough to feel alive again! To feel special, to lose control, to respond to a man the way you make me…respond.” She flashed her eyes at him. “I discovered something today, Thomas. I enjoy being touched. I enjoy forgetting where I am, what time of day it is, and…and even who I am! And I—”

  “Enough,” he said firmly. How could he possibly do the honorable thing when she talked like this? The more she argued with him the more he wanted to throw her down in a patch of wildflowers and start all over again. And he wasn’t going to do that! “You have a home across the ocean, a life to return to.”

  “At the end of the summer. Yes, all of that is waiting for me, and I’ll return to Nanticoke to pick up where I left off. But while I’m here, I mean to do exactly what you said I should do while I’m on vacation.”

  He glared at her. “Dare I ask that you remind me?”

  “Relax and enjoy myself. And I can’t think of anything I’ve enjoyed more in all of my life than making love with you.”

  She was so forthright about her feelings, it took him aback. He was accustomed to circumspect women. Women who hid their emotions and buried their hearts under bank accounts and hidden social agendas. He didn’t know what to say. Then he felt her hand on his arm, and he looked down to meet her questioning eyes.

  “Maybe I misunderstood the way you were with me,” she said softly. “I felt it was so very special, and I assumed it was that special for you, too. But I’ll understand if you tell me that this one time was enough for you.”

  “What is enough and what must be are two different things,” he said stiffly. “I didn’t have the right to do what I did in the first place. I can’t compound the sin by repeating it.” He started tossing food back into the picnic baskets. “Let’s get back to the castle before yo
ur sister becomes suspicious.”

  Diane met his eyes and held them for several seconds, then nodded slowly.

  Thomas didn’t know what more he could say to her. He felt utterly helpless. To lead Diane on would be cruel. They had so little in common that a long-term relationship would be impossible. Beyond concerns for just the two of them, her children needed a father—someone they could depend upon. He wasn’t that man and never could be. So he had no choice but to leave the door open for a man better than he—a man who would stand by her.

  Diane spent the following days exploring anew the castle’s many chambers, storage rooms, hidden passages and collections of art and historic treasures. Sometimes she was in the company of Allison, and they became young girls again, giggling at imagined ghosts, knights and legends of an ancient world. Other times Diane preferred to be on her own, to wander the stone halls hung with rich tapestries or stand on a balcony overlooking the courtyard, the town beyond and the wildflower-strewn meadows leading up to the mountains. She remembered vividly the touch of Thomas’s sometimes gentle, sometimes demanding hands on her body. If she closed her eyes and breathed quietly, she could almost feel him still within her.

  She felt guilty for wanting him so. He was staying away from her for reasons she didn’t fully comprehend, but they were reasons he believed were honorable. How could she blame him for placing honor above passion? If she’d thought she was capable of seducing the man, she probably would have tried. Then she would feel badly for making him break his vow. She had told him, on their way back to the castle that day, that once was enough to last her a lifetime, if that was how it must be.

  She’d lied. Every waking hour, she yearned for him.

  Despite grieving for her lost lover, time did pass. Another week was soon gone, and Allison commandeered Diane to help with plans for the lavish summer festivities marking the anniversary of the von Austerand family’s coming to power in Elbia nearly five hundred years before.

  It was on the afternoon of a reception for visiting foreign dignitaries that Diane took a wrong turn and ended up in an unfamiliar wing. She turned around and headed back toward the central part of the castle when she caught a whiff of a bold scent that sent ripples of lovely sensation through her. She stopped before a door not entirely closed.

  Slowly she moved toward it, and the scent grew stronger. The connection struck her all at once. Thomas.

  This was Thomas’s aftershave—a blend of musk, smoky sweetness and leather. She breathed in the intoxicating essence, and her limbs felt rubbery. Flashes of him backed by green meadow rushed through her mind. She envisioned his tautly ridged stomach, poised over her, revealed by his opened shirt. The muscles contracted with the rhythm of their union, moving in synchrony with their dance of love. She closed her eyes and shuddered.

  A voice urgently called out his name, and she was shocked to realize it was her own. “Thomas?” she repeated more softly, hoping he was in his chambers, for this must be the apartment he’d spoken of. His territory. His private sanctuary from the royal family when he was off duty.

  “Thomas?” she called again, then knocked on the heavy wooden doorjamb. “Are you decent?”

  Music was playing inside. American jazz. A saxophone crooning low and sensual tones against a ripple of piano notes. She hadn’t realized Thomas liked jazz, and this set her musing as to how little she really did know about him. He was a private man, except for the stoic face he chose to reveal to others. She wondered what other tastes he enjoyed that she didn’t know about. She wanted to sit and talk with him as they had that distant day in the town. What kinds of foods did he love? Did he like opera better than jazz? Did he prefer Shakespeare to Neil Simon? Van Gogh over Rembrandt? Did he sleep in pajamas—top and bottom—or in the nude?

  She giggled. Well, that last was definitely a bit prurient. Perhaps she wouldn’t ask that.

  “Thomas?” She gently pushed the door open wide enough to step through.

  His chambers were very much like hers—a single expansive room, the stone walls hidden behind modern plaster—but for the one side where the fireplace took up the twelve-foot expanse from floor to ceiling. Modern plumbing had been added at some time, necessitating a portion of the area to be partitioned off as a bathroom. There was a dressing area at one side, at the other a niche surrounded by three windows that sheltered a massive, dark wooden desk with dozens of little drawers for storing things. The bed itself was an enormous four-poster that looked purely British. It rose high off the stone floor, surrounded by opulent Oriental carpets.

  It was obvious Thomas wasn’t in residence at the moment. She should leave, she told herself.

  But she couldn’t. Too much of him was here. It would be like walking out of his life, and although she knew that would be inevitable at the end of the summer, it came too soon now.

  Diane crossed the room slowly, moving toward his bed. The intimacy of the cluster of personal belongings on the square mahogany table near the head touched her deeply. A pair of reading glasses she hadn’t known he wore. A half-filled ceramic mug of water. A bottle of aspirin. A leather-bound volume of Goethe, in German, the ancient script unfathomable to her. She stroked the softly grained cover with her fingertips and imagined she felt Thomas’s hand over hers.

  Three gold-framed photographs stood beside a brass lamp. One was of the royal family—Jacob, Allison, the two children. It was a formal portrait, but Diane noted a sparkle in her sister’s eyes that was genuine. Jacob stood behind her and to one side, but gave an impression of surrounding her and their babies protectively. She smiled. Theirs was a fairy tale that had ended happily.

  The other two photos were much older. Thirty or more years, she would guess, from the subjects’ clothing and faded colors of the prints. One was of a man of fair complexion and aristocratic bearing. He was staring directly into the camera with a stern expression. Although he didn’t much resemble Thomas, she was certain this was his father. He looked like a man without heart. A man who wouldn’t blink at sending his child off to live with strangers. It was the way of the British upper crust; she understood that. But she imagined some parents still might find the tradition a sad one. This man wouldn’t miss a little boy.

  The other photograph was of a woman. A beautiful, dark-haired, dark-eyed woman. She had a long aquiline nose, a proud tilt to her head, high cheekbones and elegant, though broad, shoulders. The resemblance was amazing. If a sketch artist had been asked to draw a feminine version of Thomas, this would be she. Stood side by side, Thomas and his mother would never be mistaken for other than mother and son.

  She reached down and picked up the picture in its gilt frame and held it, studying the woman’s face. What sort of mother walked away from three sons and a husband and never came back? Had she been swept away by a secret lover? Had she run in fear from an abusive aristocratic husband, then kept forcibly away from her children by his solicitors?

  “What are you doing?” a voice roared from behind her.

  Diane gasped and spun around, the photograph still gripped in her trembling hands. Thomas stood in the open doorway, glowering at her.

  “I was just—”

  “Give that to me!” He was across the wide room in four quick strides that seemed to take no time at all.

  She opened her fingers as he wrenched the photograph from them. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

  “Out!” he boomed. “Get out of my room. You have no right to touch my things.”

  Diane was shaking so hard she knew she couldn’t take a step without her knees buckling beneath her. But his accusation stung. She couldn’t leave without setting him straight.

  “I didn’t intend to disturb you or your belongings. I was lost and came on your apartment by accident.” She was gasping for breath as if she’d run a mile.

  He loomed over her, rage contorting his once-handsome face. “And I suppose you accidentally found yourself clear across the room, rifling through my personal possessions?”

 
“No, I—”

  He lurched forward a step. She fell back three smaller ones, curving around him toward the door. As she glanced down at the photograph in his hand, a surprising thought struck her. The physical resemblance between mother and son was obvious. But did Thomas see the comparison stopping there? Or did he believe—

  “Thomas, no one inherits a gene for desertion.”

  He straightened another two inches and glared down at her. His expression was threatening, but also tormented. “Get out!” he growled.

  “It’s true, isn’t it? You think because she left you and your brothers, you won’t be able to stand by a family.”

  He said nothing, but his eyes transformed from earthy-brown to obsidian—sharp chips of volcanic stone that might reverse their chemical nature and glow with dangerous life again.

  “There’s a big difference between what two people look like and their souls.” Tears of sympathy gathered in her eyes. “You and your mother are two individual—”

  “Leave me alone!” he roared, lunging forward in anger.

  She skittered backward, bumped into the wall beside the doorway, then slid quickly through it. The heavy iron-studded door slammed in her face, but not before she caught a last blurry image of Thomas through her tears, his thick brows low over black, black eyes…pulse throbbing in his temple…fists clenching and unclenching as if he would have most certainly struck her had she been a man.

  She stood in the hallway, shaking, trying to catch her breath, shocked by the fury she’d witnessed. She’d seen Thomas react explosively when a pack of reporters descended on Jacob and Allison just after they’d been married. And again, at the airport in New York, when a crowd of curious onlookers threatened to crush Allison and her children in their enthusiasm to greet her. His protective instincts had sometimes turned to rage. But he had never faced her down like this, as if she were the enemy.