Livia lifted again, using her hands as leverage. When she sank back down, thrills chased each other around her body. “Oh, I like that.”
“Then keep doing it.” Cupping her breasts, he lifted his gaze to hers. “I like it too.” His voice deepened.
He helped her, thrusting up as she came down, like a kind of primitive dance, one she preferred to any other. Small sounds of surprise and arousal escaped her mouth involuntarily.
Adrian murmured words of encouragement and praise. “Oh yes, that is so good. You are a constant surprise, so beautiful, so clever. Your skin is better than silk to my hands. Come, love, keep working. Can you feel it rising inside you? You couldn’t stop now if I asked you to, could you?”
No she couldn’t. Involved in the rhythm of their joining, her motions instinctive, Livia rose up and plunged down, slammed her body onto his. Everything in her rose and exploded.
He stopped playing with her breasts and gripped her waist, lifting her and continuing the dance as she lost control. He drove hard up into her, prolonging her ecstasy until, with a cry, he found his.
Flooding her with his tribute, he dragged her close against him. Yards of silk crushed between them, but she found his lips and sealed them together, as he kissed her lavishly, his body still jerking inside hers.
He rolled so she lay by his side, and gently withdrew, but stayed close. When he finished the kiss, he glanced down and laughed. “All that to make an heir.”
She stiffened, but forced herself to relax. She had promised herself this was a new start, and that involved children. She’d welcome a baby from this man. Despite his reputation he’d shown her nothing but consideration and kindness. Now he’d introduced her to passion and she was grateful for that too. Another thought occurred to her, a new notion. “How do you know we will make a child? You have made none before.” She bit her lip. Unless— “Mickey?”
“An urchin, my love, but nothing to do with me. I merely recognized his intelligence and he amused me.” He kissed her again, then sat up. “We are not sleeping with your robe. There must be hundreds of yards of silk in this thing.”
“Twelve,” she said without thinking. “When I like a fabric, I usually buy twelve yards of it. Or sixteen.”
“Hmm.” He tugged silk from under her and she obligingly lifted up for him. Silk slithered from under her. Crumpled silk now, probably marked by what they’d just done. Perhaps Finch could restore it. Her maid could work wonders on delicate fabric.
“In answer to your question, no, I have no children. But I have taken great care not to make any.” Glancing up, he favored her with a wink. “Unlike just now with you. Coming inside you is glorious. I will never have the strength of will to pull out of you again. Not now I know what delights await me inside your body.”
“Oh.” He’d done it again. Covered her with confusion but thrilled her at the same time. She wasn’t that good, she couldn’t be. She’d only known this kind of pleasure briefly. Her time with Jeffrey could be discounted, because that had been nothing. Not compared to what she was discovering with Adrian.
Circling her waist with one arm, he lifted her to pull the remaining silk from under her body, making her giggle and lose her balance. When she fell backward, he released her. As he came over her, he kicked the robe off the bed, and grinned down at her, as he studied her love-soaked body.
His gaze paused at her stomach and lower. When he lifted his eyes to her face he was frowning. “What is this?”
Softly, he traced a line on her lower belly, one she had followed herself, that he had absently traced the first time they’d made love. Then he found another.
“You’ve seen the marks before. You said you’d seen everything. I asked you.”
“Not these. Tell me what caused these.” His voice was steady but cold.
Her heart sank. She could not lie to him. If he had not marked their significance before—and the lines were faint, silvery, easily missed in dim lighting—then he needed to know now. Not telling him gave Jeffrey a power over her she refused to allow. If he discovered that she was keeping it from Adrian, Jeffrey would exploit it for all he was worth.
“They’re marks left by childbirth.”
Carefully, quietly, he rolled to one side of her. The side away from the light, so the candles above and by the side of the bed left her fully illuminated. He swept his gaze over her body but didn’t meet her eyes. “You gave birth? Did the child live?” His voice was steady.
She nodded. “As far as I know.” Tears filled her eyes. She let them fall, trickle down her face, roll above her ear and into her hair. “They took him away.”
“Him?”
“I’m sorry.” Unable to hide her distress, she turned to him. Silently he gathered her in. She let him turn her, so they were lying against the pillows, and pulled the sheets up to cover her. He held her against his hard, naked body as she sobbed helplessly.
“I didn’t mean to tell you this way.”
“Did you mean to tell me at all?”
“I thought you knew. You touched one of the marks and I asked you if you had seen it all, and you said yes.”
She would tell him the truth, all of it, and let him decide her fate. “It’s in my past. He’s gone. I looked for him for years, and I had no success. It was as if he had never existed at all.”
“You had a son,” he said dully.
“Yes.” And it all came pouring out, easier now she’d started. “You knew I was not a virgin, and you knew who did it. When I found I was expecting Jeffrey had already married Maria and was due to leave for the continent with the army. What good would telling him do?”
She stopped to catch her breath. “My mother knew, my old nurse, and my father, and my sister Claudia. That was all. Nobody else. I couldn’t tell anybody else, and everybody agreed the whole unfortunate incident was best forgotten.” Except her. “When I could not hide the pregnancy any longer, my mother took me to the cottage in the grounds, and told people that I had smallpox. It’s normal to isolate the sufferer, and we knew that. And to keep them separated for a time after, so that nobody caught it. I gave birth.”
She refused to stop, although everything inside her screamed to stop, to end this. “It was a boy. Sherwood—the nurse—was to take the child to relatives of hers, who had been paid to care for the baby. When I was older, we would bring the boy back and find him a position with us, or so my mother promised. But Sherwood disappeared. We tried to find them, we truly did, but we could find no account of where Sherwood had gone or what she’d done with the boy. Even if he was alive or dead.” Then she had to stop.
He held her, listening, saying nothing. Until she stopped, hiccupping against his shoulder. She was wrung out. Whatever happened next, she didn’t care.
“So that was why you went to the orphanage,” he murmured, his lips against her hair.
She forced the breath back into her body enough to speak again. “Yes. I never stopped looking for him. I’d had information—vague, but it was worth a try. I promised myself I would forget him. But I saw him after he was born, and I heard him. They wouldn’t let me hold him, Adrian.”
“I see.” He sounded angry. He had every right to be. She’d effectively tricked him into marriage.
“I’m sorry. I should have told you.”
“Is that why you refused to marry?” he said softly.
She nodded. “I was frozen in the past. A few days ago Claudia told me it was time I stopped mourning. And she was right. I hadn’t wanted to get on with my life. Not until that day in the street when you kissed me. That was when the thaw started.”
The day her life had taken a totally unexpected turn. The day an accredited rake had kissed her in the street and forced her to think about what she really wanted out of life. But she had wrecked that now. “I should have told you,” she repeated. “No secrets, you said.” She spoke dully now,
unable to muster any emotion. “But I couldn’t. I had never told anyone before. Those who knew didn’t need to be told. I didn’t know where to begin. I’m sorry Adrian, I’m so very sorry. I thought once you saw the marks, you would understand. Once I realized you didn’t know, I had to honor my promise to you and tell you the truth.” There could be no lies between them. She refused to live a lie for the rest of her married life, or to allow herself to be held to ransom. Rather than that, she would risk losing Adrian, to live apart from her husband if he required it. Why would he want her anymore, knowing she had kept such a secret from him?
“I see. Do you trust your mother?” His voice was steady, without expression.
“Completely.” Livia didn’t hesitate. She had not forgotten her mother’s distress when she confessed the baby couldn’t be found.
Fatigue swept over her in a great wave. The lids drooped over her eyes. Held close to the body of the man she loved, she found herself drifting into nothingness. Exhaustion took her under.
The last words she heard were, “Sleep now. We’ll talk about this another time.”
“You won’t leave me?”
She didn’t hear the reply. She was already asleep.
Chapter 17
After spending a long time staring at the canopy above them, holding his wife until the candles guttered in their sockets and went out, leaving just the fire in the grate to illuminate the room, Adrian heaved one huge sigh.
She had borne a child when she was sixteen. The baby had been torn away from her at birth.
Fury had chased his astonishment away, and then horror, that Livia had suffered all this without telling a soul. Of course she’d been stuck in grief. How could she not be?
Adrian clenched his teeth. This matter did not end here.
He wanted to damage someone for this, and he had a good idea who.
He hadn’t needed to ask the name of the father. That bastard Jeffrey Creasey had abandoned her to marry someone else. She’d said that he hadn’t known about the baby, but he’d bet his last guinea that he had known all along. Sir Jeffrey was the kind of person to run when faced with responsibility. Although, in the face of his ambition now, he should have married her. Adrian was thankful that he had not.
Sir Jeffrey’s parents had not appreciated the Shaws. Perhaps they had instigated Sir Jeffrey’s hurried marriage. Every bit as hurried as his own, Adrian reflected with a wry smile. He’d wanted to secure Livia before Jeffrey had a chance. Well, he’d done that. It mattered nothing to him that Sir Jeffrey’d had her first, only that he did not repeat that boast to anyone.
When he was sure Livia was sound asleep, Adrian slid out of bed. At first, when he tried to extricate his body from hers, she whimpered and moved closer. The task took him much longer than he’d imagined. Dawn was feathering its fingers into the room by the time he’d managed to slide away.
He nearly slipped on her damned robe as he was leaving too, but he righted himself. Grabbing his banyan, he shrugged into it as he left her room and strode up the corridor to his own apartments.
His man came in from the powder room, blinking and rubbing his eyes. Still in nightshirt and cap, his valet shook his head and waited for his master. “Riding clothes,” Adrian snapped. “I want a message sent to Lady Strenshall. I will meet with her at her earliest convenience.”
The man nodded, leaving the room to dress while Adrian found a pen and scrawled a message on the paper left on the small table by the window. Impatiently he scattered sand over the missive, and tipped it back into the pot when the ink had dried. Pausing, he wrote another. He did not know what his plans were, not until he’d spoken to her ladyship, and then to one other. But he wanted Livia cared for.
Confusion and anger warred in his head. Hearing her story had sent him into a numb world of his own at first, but then everything had slid into place. She’d given birth, and been unable to keep the baby. No respectable woman would have been allowed to do that. Indeed some had “pages” or treasured servants. They sent the child away to be brought up quietly, or they gave it away, and found it later. Had Livia intended to do that?
He would listen to her, but he no longer knew how he felt. Prepared to tell her of his love for her, she had knocked the wind out of his sails when he’d discovered the marks. He’d seen that type of line before. Even if he had not fathered children on his past mistresses, other lovers had not been so careful.
Time to act.
He was up and about now, and the sun was rising. After sending a quiet message via his valet, he received the reply that her ladyship would receive him in her boudoir. In the past, with other women, that had meant an assignation. Today it meant business.
She was waiting for him, hair tucked up into a lace cap, and a voluminous robe enveloping her slight form. She watched him enter, her face stony. “You are dressed.”
“I have an errand,” he said. “I think you can guess what it is.”
She said nothing at first, but her complexion blanched. She sighed. “I told Livia to tell you before the wedding.”
“I knew some of it.”
“And now you are leaving her.”
“Not precisely. I’m going to find what you have lost. But I need clarity first. She had a son by Sir Jeffrey Creasey, I know that much.”
“Sir Jeffrey? You’re sure?” Her voice rang with shock.
Ah, so her mother had not known the father. That filled a space in his reasoning. If the Strenshalls had known who was the father, why did they still receive him in their home? The answer was that they had not known. Livia had not told them. His admiration for his wife increased. By the laws of society, he should condemn her for what she had done, but with everything he discovered, his regard for her only increased. She’d accepted her fault in the unfortunate affair, she had borne a child and never ceased to search for it. Most women he knew would have given up years ago. And she had continued with her life, refusing to become what people expected of her; a dried-up spinster.
He nodded. “I am sure.”
“I suspected, but she always refused to tell me. I never asked her directly, because she would not allow it.” The narrowing of the marchioness’s eyes told him what he needed to know. She didn’t like him any more than Adrian did.
“I don’t trust that man. I understand he is away from home,” he said. “He left when he heard that Livia and I were to marry.”
“His mother is there. She was at the Christmas Day dinner.”
He nodded. “I noticed.” Even though he had been deeply obsessed with Livia, and teasing her about their wedding, he made a note of every guest there. “She seemed none too pleased with the news of our marriage. Will she tell her son?”
“Probably.”
He grimaced. “I feared as much.”
She waved at a chair set opposite hers. “Stop pacing, boy. Do sit down.”
So said a tiny woman used to obedience. He didn’t disappoint her this time, either, but flipped back the skirts of his riding coat and sat on the spindly legged, gold upholstered chair. “I fear for the boy.”
Her hand went to her throat, and her bosom heaved under the confines of her silk gown. “You know where he is?”
He shook his head grimly. “Not yet. But I will.”
“Why do you think such a thing? Jeffrey doesn’t even know the child exists.” She hovered her hand over the decanter by her side, but he shook his head. He’d drink nothing stronger than beer today. He needed a clear head, not Dutch courage. From experience, he knew strong drink would only exacerbate his temper.
“He knows.” He recounted the full story of the brooch and what he had found. “Sir Jeffrey wanted that brooch to taunt Livia, maybe to draw her back to him. He’s hell-bent on bettering himself in society, and Livia would be a considerable asset to him. But their child—I don’t know how he views the boy.”
“You think
he has him?”
Adrian bit his lip. “I’m not sure. But if he does, the boy is in danger. Sir Jeffrey won’t want a hint of scandal to surround him. With my marriage to Livia the child is surplus to his needs. He can no longer use the boy to draw her back to him. The boy becomes a threat, in fact, something that could tarnish his reputation.”
He had realized the added danger as soon as she’d fallen asleep. The boy was no longer a trump card. He was a low-value suit, and needed to be discarded, as far as Sir Jeffrey was concerned.
Her lips tightened but she nodded. “I have also observed. He was eager to play with my children when he was a child. He had ambition, but not the kind that his father had. For his faults, his father was a good man, although he was often at outs with my husband. But he kept to his word and he meant what he said. His son is another kind of man entirely. He wanted success and riches. His army career did not bring that to him, despite his comfortable posting. Neither did his marriage. He made Maria pregnant too, you know, and his father, not knowing about Livia, made him marry her. Otherwise he would have come for my daughter, and I doubt I could have refused him. My husband bought his commission after his marriage as a wedding gift.”
“Ah.” Adrian crossed one ankle over his knee. “And what did you plan for the baby?”
She swallowed. “The usual. We would farm out the child to a respectable household, and later adopt him as a foundling. Charitable work, people would say. We had a family in place, an agreeable couple with children of their own, relatives of the nurse who cared for my children. I trusted Sherwood with the lives of my children and she never let me down.” She shook her head. “But Sherwood took the baby and never had a chance to tell us what had happened. She was delirious when we got to her. Do you know who took her in when she fell ill on the way back?”
Adrian’s heart sank. Everything fell into place. “The Creasey mansion.”
“Yes. Sherwood took shelter there and died. The baby never reached Sherwood’s relatives. My husband and I searched for the boy, but he had disappeared. The Creaseys denied everything, even denying their son’s involvement. I believe the news came as a shock to Jeffrey’s mother, but I was in no mind to comfort her.” Her eyes gleamed, but her tears remained unshed. “John and I searched everywhere for the baby, but we had no success. We had to tell Livia when she had recovered from the birth. She could not even have a proper confinement, and she was never churched.”
Boundless (The Shaws) Page 23