A Season of Seduction (26 page)

Becky hesitated in the doorway to the kitchen, and Jack turned from the stove. His chest tightened at the sight of her. So beautiful, in her rumpled chemise. She’d brushed her hair and it hung in a sleek black fall down her back. His eyes lingered on the suggestion of creamy mounds rising from the neckline of her shift.

“Good morning,” he murmured, dragging his gaze to her face. “Coffee?”

“Oh. Well, yes. Thank you.”

“Have a seat. I’ll bring you some. There’s also fresh hot cross buns and some boiled eggs.”

She nodded and sat at the table. He lowered a plate and a cup of steaming coffee in front of her and then took the chair beside her with his own food. She took a tentative sip of coffee. From the way she grimaced, it seemed she didn’t drink coffee often.

They ate their breakfast in comfortable silence, and though the table lacked Stratford’s ever-present stack of newspapers. Jack found himself more content to be drinking his coffee beside Becky.

When they finished eating, he took the dishes into the scullery, rolled up his sleeves, and washed them. She trailed after him and watched him with a bemused expression on her face.

“How odd.”

Up to his elbows in water, he raised his brows at her. “What’s odd?”

“You’re washing.”

“Yes…?”

“I never knew a gentleman who cleaned dishes before.”

“You haven’t known very many gentlemen.”

“True.”

“And we haven’t any servants to perform the task for us.” He reached a soapy hand out to her, and asked, “Would you like to help?”

Her lips twitched. “I haven’t the first idea what to do.”

“Tell me you’ve never in your life washed a dish.”

“I’ve never in my life washed a dish.”

“Not even when you were a child scampering after the servants and their children?”

“No. I never scampered.”

“Ah,” he said. “Did you frolic? Cavort? Romp? Play?”

“No.” She leaned against the doorframe, perfectly relaxed. “My father died when I was four years old, you see, and my mother when I was six. Garrett purchased his commission in the army when I was very young and was absent for most of my childhood. My aunt Bertrice made certain I was safe and well, but she wasn’t the most maternal of guardians, and she discouraged childish behavior.”

The wistful expression on her face pulled at his chest. She’d been lonely even as a child. He held out a cloth. “Well, then, I’ll help you. Use this rag and rub it round the plate. When it’s clean, rinse it in the tub here.”

She pushed up her sleeves and followed his directions. He nodded in approval after she pulled the clean plate from the rinse water, and he directed her how to place it on the drying rack.

“What happened to your parents?” he asked as he handed her another plate.

“My father died of an apoplexy. My mother of consumption.”

“Do you remember them well?”

She dipped the plate in the rinse water. “Not my father. I recall a very stern, scowling man, but I cannot say for certain whether my memory of him is accurate. My mother I remember a little better. She was always very frail, and she seemed unhappy. I was never to raise my voice or become boisterous in her presence, for such behavior agitated her. I always thought she was so sad because of something I did wrong, but now that I think back on it, I cannot imagine what it was.”

“I doubt she was sad because of something you did, Becky.”

They finished cleaning the dishes in silence, and then they went into the parlor, where Jack built a fire and then sat beside her on the sofa. He drew her head against his chest and played with the soft, silky strands of her hair while they gazed at the flickering orange flames.

“It is so peaceful here,” she murmured. “It’s like a dream. When we leave, we’ll wake up in a completely different world.”

“The harshness of that world cannot diminish what we’ve shared here.” What he hoped they could continue to share. He was unaccountably, oddly nervous. They both knew he’d ask her to marry him again, but the question was when. He wanted to choose the right time.

“I hope you’re right.”

He kissed the top of her head. “I know I am.”

“Did the harsh outside world diminish what you and Anne shared?” she whispered some moments later.

Against his will, he stiffened. Then he forced himself to relax. “I told you the rumors weren’t true. We weren’t lovers after her marriage.”

She was very still beneath his arm. “But you were before she was married.”

“Yes.”

She sighed.

“That was many years ago. I was a boy of seventeen.”

“I know.”

“I don’t like talking about her,” he admitted. “I don’t speak of her to anyone.”

“I understand.” She paused. “I don’t like talking about William, either. But you can tell me now… if you will. I know you don’t like to speak of it, but…” Her voice trailed off, and then she added, “Perhaps I should know.”

She was right. Nevertheless, sickness churned in his gut. He had to be so careful. Careful not to lie to her, and yet he couldn’t reveal the truth. “What would you like to know?”

“Tell me about her.”

He was quiet for a long moment. “We were friends,” he finally said. “Her father’s lands bordered Hambly, my father’s estate in Kent. We were of an age—well, she was half a year older than I was. She seemed infinitely older than me when we were young.”

He tried to keep the facts on the surface, but as he said them aloud, they dug under his skin and burrowed deep. Anne, with her joyful smile and yellow hair and her snapping cornflower blue eyes. She was a bright, lively daisy.

“Did you love her?” Becky whispered.

He looked down into her ocean-blue eyes. So different from Anne’s. She was different all over. Older than Anne ever was.

This one, he wouldn’t let go.

“I loved her. Yes.”

Becky looked away from him, and he took her jaw in his hand, turning her back to him. “You asked for the truth.”

“Sometimes the truth hurts. I know it shouldn’t. But it does.”

“I won’t lie to you, Becky. You don’t want to hear my lies.”

“True.” She clenched her fists in her lap. “It is unfair of me. But I wish you didn’t love her.”

“I don’t love her anymore.” He pulled her close and kissed the corners of her eyes, tasting the salt of her unshed tears. “It was a long time ago. I was young. The young love violently.”

“Yes, they do.”

Jack realized that Becky was only three years older than Anne had been when she’d died. Older, yes, but still so young. And yet she’d eloped four years ago. Before her husband had destroyed her, she must have loved him as he’d loved Anne.

“There’s something about love that I always wondered,” Becky murmured.

“What is that?”

She licked her lips, stared up at him with eyes that had darkened to indigo. “Once you love someone so powerfully, is it possible to love again?”

He didn’t answer her; just stared down at her beautiful oval face.

“I have thought often that I could never love anyone after what happened with William,” she murmured. “Then again, there is my brother…”

“What about him?” Jack had heard the basic facts surrounding the divorce of the Duke of Calton and Sophie, the current Viscountess Westcliff, but Jack had only been back in England for a short time, and the complexities of the duke’s marriages and offspring had been difficult for him to follow.

“When I was a little girl, Garrett was madly in love with Sophie. He married her when I was six years old. They were very happy together, and when he went away to Waterloo, she was pregnant with his child. He didn’t return for eight years. He was presumed dead, and by the time he finally came home, I was eighteen, his daughter was seven years old, and Sophie had married Tristan, his cousin and heir, who had also assumed the title of Duke of Calton.”

“Good God,” Jack said. “What did he do?”

“He took possession of his title and lands and tried to win Sophie back. In many ways, he still loved her, and she still loved him. But they had both changed too much in all those years away from each other, and Sophie loves Tristan beyond measure. She couldn’t let him go. Finally, Garrett understood that Sophie would never fully come back to him. So he gave her up. He divorced her, and they share custody of their child.”

“Incredible,” Jack murmured.

“You’ve seen Tristan and Garrett together. On the whole, it is amicable, oddly and uncomfortably so for most. My family is one of the oddest families you shall ever meet, I’m certain of it. Yet they are also the most loving and generous people in the world. Any one of us would sacrifice anything for any one of the others.”

Despite their twisted relations, Becky’s family sounded far superior to his own. “You should feel proud to be part of such a family.”

“I am,” she said quietly. “I am very proud.” She gazed up at him. “Perhaps you have seen how deeply my brother loves his wife. Kate is my dearest friend, and they fought with such violent passion to be with each other. Yet Garrett is in his thirty-ninth year. He still loves passionately, even though he is no longer young, and even though Kate was not the first woman he loved.”

He gazed at Becky, rubbing his thumb back and forth over her plump lower lip. “So your brother has proven it is possible to love again. But I didn’t require evidence.”

“Can you really love again, Jack? Love as powerfully and as violently as you did the first time?”

“Yes,” he murmured as he bent down to kiss her. “Perhaps I already do.”

She flung her arms round his neck, kissing him back and thrusting her breasts against his chest with an urgent, brazen need that made his cock flare to life. Lady Rebecca, so reserved, so bookish, so melancholy and quiet, had proven herself to be a vixen in bed. And he loved it.

He ran his hands from the flare of her hips up over her narrow waist and pressed between them, insinuating his palms over her breasts, cupping them over her chemise.

He lowered one hand to the hem of her chemise and dragged it up her leg, trailing his fingertips over the smooth skin of her calf and then her thigh. She was all soft, eager woman, panting under his touch. Damned if he didn’t want her every second of the day.

He pressed his hand between her legs, sliding through the already slick folds of her sex, and she arched into his hand.

He slid his fingers over her again and again, circling her clitoris and finally burying a finger deep inside her.

“Ahhhh…” She shuddered over his hand, clutched wildly at his shirt. Still in a seated position beside him on the sofa, she twisted restlessly this way and that, her face flushed, her eyes half-lidded and glazed with passion.

He pumped his finger inside her, then added a second finger, grazing along that spot deep inside her that made her shudder and whimper, made her body tighten around him. If he kept stroking, it would bring her to release.

He never took his eyes off her, because every breath, every pant, every cry of pleasure she made added to his own. Made him want her more. Made him love her more.

“Jack,” she whispered, her eyes locked on his. “Jack… please…”

Without removing his hand from between her legs, he slid off the sofa and knelt on the floor before her, gently pressing her knees apart and tugging her forward so she sat perched on the edge of the sofa completely exposed to him.

She braced her hands on the cushions at her sides, staring down at him with wide eyes.

“What are you…?”

But her words were cut off when he leaned forward and pressed a kiss against her sex. Then he swiped his tongue over her slick inner lips.

“Jack!”