David Lord of Honor (The Lonely Lords) (22 page)

“Then try harder, unless you crave the dukedom that badly.”

“That’s the last thing I want.”

David left Letty’s side to rifle her escritoire. He scrawled something on a piece of paper and shoved it at Westhaven. “These men are competent. They won’t talk to your mother like she’s three years old, they won’t let your father bully them, and they will offer effective treatment. Other than bleeding him, what are Perry and Stephens doing?”

“Drinking vast amounts of brandy, cluttering up the sickroom.” Westhaven helped himself to a third cup of tea, then offered Letty a look that was probably the ducal version of sheepish. “They mutter about humors and vapors and such, but I haven’t really seen them
do
anything.”

“The congestion should be treated with steam and poultices,” David said, making more notes. “The inflammation and pain with willow bark tea. Use laudanum sparingly, and only if he isn’t getting any rest, and for God’s sake, keep offering him food and drink.”

“Westhaven?” Lord Valentine Windham stood in the doorway, looking handsome and bewildered. “What on earth could bring you to a brothel?”

“His Grace,” Westhaven said, draining his mug of tea. “Moreland has taken a turn for the worse. I thought you would want to know.”

“Of course I want to know, and might I say, you look like hell yourself.”

“Valentine,” Westhaven growled, one fist going to a hip. “I did not jeopardize my own health and that of my horse for the privilege of trading insults—”

“Now, children,” David interjected, “you have more important things to do than scrap in front of the neighbors. My coach and team are waiting in the mews, and you, Westhaven, may borrow my cloak.” He swept it from his shoulders and settled it around Westhaven’s shoulders in an oddly fraternal gesture. “It’s pouring out there, and cold as Hades. Watkins!”

The footman came on the run, then left to fetch Lord Valentine’s cloak as well.

“Letty.” David turned a smile on her that featured a number of perfect teeth. “Have we any of the medicinal stuff on hand?”

“Of course.” She left the room, knowing full well David was being more than hospitable to a pair of ducal offspring. He’d conjured this errand to give him privacy with the Windham brothers, though Letty was at a loss to fathom why.

***

David turned back to his guests in time to see Westhaven’s gaze following Letty’s retreating figure, and the poor sod wasn’t even subtle about it.

“That,” Westhaven said pensively, “is one particularly fine woman. She has…”

“Grace,” Lord Valentine said wistfully.

“Not only grace,” his brother mused. “It’s more—”

“It’s more,” David said, “that she’s spoken for, and you can’t have her.” Westhaven would never stoop to the company of a woman who wasn’t at least nominally associated with the peerage, in any case—would he?

“At least for now,” Westhaven concluded.

They were very civilly glaring at each other when Letty returned moments later with two silver flasks and Windham’s coat. Oblivious to the undercurrents, she handed the brandy to David and held up the cloak for Lord Val, who slipped into it, buttoned up, and tucked a brandy flask in the inside pocket.

David handed Westhaven the second flask. “You will heed my advice regarding your father?”

“I will talk to Her Grace first, but I will be blunt. And as for the other topic…” He paused and studied the silver flask before slipping it into a pocket of David’s borrowed cape. “The word I was searching for was
gentility
, gentility deserving of far more than this.”

Westhaven might be overly impressed with himself, a dull stick, and duty bound to the exclusion of anything resembling fun, but the blasted man wasn’t wrong.

“No argument there,” David said. “Watkins, see their lordships to the porte cochere.”

Lest one of them come sneaking back to make calf eyes at David’s… madam.

David closed the door and turned to the lady. “Mrs. Banks, I am stranded here for the nonce. Have you dined?”

And
have
you
missed
me
as
much
as
I’ve missed you?

“I have not had supper,” Letty said, smiling at him
pleasantly
. And how David hated that smile, for she used it on every patron to cross the threshold. “It is good to see you again.”

“And you.” Good and awful. “You look tired, Letty. Have things here been that busy?”

And so they dined together, talking about the business, about ledgers that didn’t balance, about how the suspicious expenditures came from the kitchen, which made the matter complicated. David spoke of his visit with his sisters and their families, about the never-ending rain that had replaced the never-ending snow, and finally about nothing at all.

“The coach should be returning shortly.” David crossed his utensils over his plate. “I’ll see how things go in the parlors, then be on my way.”

Letty folded her serviette in tidy quarters by her plate. “You are welcome to stay here tonight.”

He’d never slept at this establishment, hadn’t felt he had the right. “Is that what you want, Letty?”

Now her wineglass had to be lined up two inches from her plate and serviette, both. “It is who I want.”

“And you’re who I want, but this is not how I want you.”

She clutched the serviette in a tight ball. “David…”

“Pax, Letty.” He smoothed his fingers over her knuckles, needing any touch he could have from her. “I apologize. I will stay with you and be glad of your company.”

Before David permitted himself what Letty offered, he made the rounds in the front rooms, pausing to chat with almost every patron and flirt with most of the ladies. He found his way back to Letty’s office after midnight, coming upon her curled on the fainting couch, fast asleep. Silently, he removed his coat, cravat, and cuff links, regarding Letty critically as he did.

She had lost flesh, and she had been too slender to begin with. Faint bruises shadowed her eyes, and when he’d joined her earlier, she’d held his hand almost desperately. While visiting his sisters, David had tried to reason through his situation with Letty, to no avail. Quite simply, he could not force her to marry him.

And yet their brief separation had been hard on her, if her appearance was any indication. He’d sent her several notes, to which she’d replied, though the contents had been business related. The only personal aspect to them had been that Letty signed hers with an
E
, something only David would have understood.

“Sweetheart?” He sat at Letty’s hip and kissed her forehead, but she didn’t stir. “Letty?”

Still no response.

David crossed into the bedroom, turned down the covers, stoked and screened the fire, ran the warmer over every corner of the sheets and pillows, then returned to his sleeping beauty.

“Up you go, love,” he whispered as he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed. She stirred, but didn’t even open her eyes until David sat her on the bed and bent her forward so he could unhook her dress.

“You stayed,” she murmured. “I thought you’d left.”

Had she wanted him to go?

“Hush. Let’s get you into bed.” It was scant effort to pull off her dress and stays and untie her chemise. When she was naked and curled under the covers, David took off his clothes, locked the door, and climbed in beside her.

He wrapped himself around her, which provoked a soft sigh as Letty linked her fingers through his. Otherwise, she didn’t move.

As Letty slipped back into slumber, David felt… bereft rather than sexually frustrated. He’d gone about his evening anticipating intimacies with Letty, and now…

Aroused as he was, it didn’t seem right to impose on her. He’d tried to stay away from her, to get his thoughts in order, to see if he even
could
stay away from her, and ten days later, his thoughts were not in order, and he’d proven nothing.

As he was drifting off, Letty shifted, and then he was gently pushed onto his back. She settled herself on top of him, her breasts pressed to his chest, her sex caressing his cock with a slow, rocking glide of her hips. She brought him patiently back to full arousal, and then slipped her body over him, shallowly at first, then to a deeper penetration.

“I have missed you so,” Letty murmured against his throat.

For David, almost lost to sleep, the loving was dreamlike, a languid, sweet joining in the warm, silent darkness. On and on, Letty loved him, stroked him with her body, kissed him, and let her hands wander over his chest, neck, face, and arms. Pleasure stole upon him in delicate, shimmering increments, and then a trickle turned into a quiet, relentless torrent of erotic satisfaction.

As the pleasure ebbed, David held Letty close, his hands tracing patterns on her back.

She was crying again, her tears wetting his chest. He had been cruel to create a separation without discussing it with her, and she was obviously close to exhaustion.

“It it’s any comfort,” he murmured, “I haven’t been sleeping either, and I’ve started at least a dozen letters to you each day. I make art of your name on my blotter, and wonder what you’re doing at each moment of the day and night. I long for you when we’re apart, and when we’re together, Letty…”

She kissed him to silence.

“When we’re together,” she said, “I am so full of feelings that I don’t know where to start should I try to express them, and I want to touch you and touch you and touch you…”

“And touch you,” David concluded. “Letty, it can’t go on like this.”

“I know. David, I know.”

He let her drift back to sleep, their limbs entwined, still no closer to a solution than they had been weeks ago, but more heartsore than he could ever recall being.

And yet he suspected his suffering was nothing compared to Letty’s.

***

“I’ve become pathetic,” David said, offering the short version of events.

“You?” Douglas Allen, Viscount Amery, countered. “My role model for all matters involving savoir faire and grace under fire?”

“I’ve asked Letty Banks to marry me, Douglas. If you tell my sisters or their spouses, I will denounce you in public.” They were in the stables at Douglas’s new property, saddling up for a ride about the grounds, so Douglas might show off his land.

“And how does proposing make you pathetic?” Douglas asked, patting the shoulder of a sturdy bay gelding.

“She turned me down.” David rested an arm across his mare’s broad rump, though it would mean a crop of gray horse hairs adorned his fine wool riding jacket. “More than once.”

The sturdy bay investigated his master’s left breeches pocket. “It’s a lady’s prerogative.” Douglas produced a bit of carrot for his horse. “We ask, they decide. If they say yes, they legally become our property. It behooves a woman to be choosy, I should think.”

A lady. Douglas knew Letty was a lady; no one had had to tell him. “Spoken like the father of a six-year-old daughter.” Also like an honest friend.

“Which daughter, thank God, is not in love with anybody other than Sir George,” Douglas said, referring to the pony Rose’s ducal grandfather had given her. “But you, I think, are in love with Mrs. Banks—need I say, I told you so?—which means we must ask if she is in love with you.”

Yes, we must, at least a hundred times a day, and more often at night.

“She doesn’t say,” David replied, hefting a saddle onto his horse. “But Douglas—”

“Sometimes,” Douglas interrupted, which was fortunate for David’s tattered dignity, “a woman expresses herself without using words.”

“Letty can be very articulate without saying a thing. She cares for me, and I almost think if she didn’t, she’d have married me.”

“You are not going to accept that she simply doesn’t love you,” Douglas concluded, feeding his horse a second treat. “Your instincts, which are legendarily canny, tell you otherwise. While my own are nowhere near so reliable, I note that you seem to be in much the same position I was with Guinevere.”

“How so?” David asked as he fastened the girth.

A third bite of carrot was crunched out of existence. “I proposed to her, knowing we cared for each other, and she turned me down. Her refusal did not comport with her expressed sentiments regarding me; ergo, it wasn’t that she wouldn’t marry me, it was that she
could
not.”

Ergo?
A syllogism of some sort. David’s heart was breaking, and Douglas was spouting logic. “Mrs. Banks, despite her title, is not married.”

“Do you know that for a certainty?” Douglas snugged up the girth on his gelding and ran the stirrup irons down the leathers.

“I have only Letty’s word regarding her unwed state.”

“How much do you know about her?” Douglas asked as he slipped a bit into his horse’s mouth.

I
know
I
love
her, which ought to be all that matters.
“Not nearly enough. I know her real name is Elizabeth Temperance Banks, she was raised as the daughter of a dogmatic, humorless vicar, and her mother died before she came of age. She came to London after a curate dishonored her. When she refused him further favors, he confessed their sins to her father, making her situation at home intolerable.”