Cheryl Holt (42 page)

He’d definitely raised a ruckus as he’d sauntered inside. The grumbling had commenced when his retainers had recognized Emma, and it had elevated to an impossible clamor as he’d taken her directly to his bedchamber. His servants were a conservative lot, and they weren’t too keen on the concept of his putting their Miss Fitzgerald in a compromising position.

To save his sorry hide, he’d had to do some fast talking. Only his adamant, stentorian insistence, to all present, that he planned to marry her as soon as the vicar from the neighboring parish could visit Wakefield, had staved off a full-fledged revolt. He’d had to show them the wedding bands he’d purchased in London before they’d believe him.

The brilliant gold rings had settled nerves and provided
sufficient guarantees as to his intentions, so that they’d let him proceed, though they’d hovered in the corridor, equipped to barge in should Emma need their assistance.

At first, he’d been terrified that a dreaded illness had seized her, or that she was about to waste away from a hidden infirmity. Despairing and concerned, he’d whispered as much to the housekeeper, but she’d laughed and patted his hand, assuring him that Emma was merely worn out from the hectic pace she’d been keeping since his departure.

Then, he’d confided that Emma was increasing, but the older female hadn’t been shocked. Apparently, rumors had been flying as to Emma’s plight and the prospect of her nuptials with the generally loathed Vicar Martin, but John’s name hadn’t been linked to the scandal. With the truth revealed, the group was in a hurry to rush out and disseminate the news, so he’d dismissed them, but not before he’d suffered through a lecture as to Emma’s delicate condition.

He hadn’t understood that pregnancy could excessively fatigue a woman, or that a heavy workload was bad for mother and babe. Actually, he didn’t know very much about the state at all, having made it a point to avoid those who were in the family way, but now that he’d been apprised of the details, he could wring Emma’s bloody neck.

What was she thinking, being so heedless of her health?

The housekeeper had scolded him, contending that Emma would need extensive rest, ample diet, and pampering for the remaining months of her ordeal. She’d glared at him as though she were challenging him, or leveling a massive burden that he’d fail to assume.

As if it would be a cumbersome hardship to spoil Emma! He couldn’t wait to begin!

Tiptoeing to the bed, he watched her, as he’d been doing for many hours. He enjoyed studying her, assessing her smooth skin, drifting with the rise and fall of the quilt as she inhaled and exhaled. Sporadically, she mumbled, her reverie cluttered and distressing, her forehead wrinkling with worry. Once, she’d murmured his name—at least it had sounded like his name—and he liked it that even after so much time had passed, he could disturb her slumber.

When she was alert and in possession of her faculties, she might pretend she didn’t care, she might rant and rave and try to discourage him, but when she was asleep and vulnerable, she called for him.

He tried to take some comfort in the fact.

While he’d made mistakes, had behaved badly and irrationally, his blunders had occurred because he was crazy about her. His monumental affection made him say things he didn’t mean, and effect results he’d never contemplated.

He wasn’t very adept at apologizing or fixing his errors, so he was wandering into unfamiliar territory. She had little patience for equivocation or folderol, so he needed to tread cautiously. He’d botched things so royally that he couldn’t suppose he’d have many more chances to make amends.

Shifting about, she rolled onto her back and flung an arm over her head. Her curly mass of hair was spread seductively across the pillows. She was so beautiful, so remarkable, and if he played his cards right, she’d be his forevermore—the trick being to get her to agree without too much fuss or aggravation.

It had been an eternity since he’d held her, since he’d lain with her. From the day he’d left for London,
he’d been able to dwell on nothing but how much he missed her. Without his being aware that it was happening, she’d become the better part of himself.

She’d thoroughly ingratiated herself, but he hadn’t a clue as to how she’d accomplished it. He was utterly bewitched, his feelings for her powerful and potent, spurring him to odd and erratic conduct. Over the years, he’d stoically grasped that he’d have to eventually marry, but he’d eschewed the notion, declining to progress toward what he’d postulated would be an arduous nightmare.

How wonderful, how refreshing, to find that—in the end—it wasn’t difficult in the slightest.

The center of his chest began to ache, and he felt as if his heart were inflating with an incredible amount of joy. He rubbed at the spot, smiling, reflecting on how fortunate he was.

Suddenly anxious to be unclad and snuggled with her, he stripped off his clothes.

He’d done this once before, had bathed her and put her to bed, then he’d climbed in with her. On that fateful afternoon, he’d made one horrid gaffe after another.

By spilling his seed inside her, he’d broken his vow. Then, to his great shame, he’d let insolence and arrogance rule his haughty tongue. She’d been panicked, trapped and alarmed, and he’d been too overbearing to offer her the promises she’d needed to hear.

Pride had goaded him into leaving her to fend for herself, to endeavor and toil beyond her limits. In her forlorn search for aid, he’d driven her into the arms of Harold Martin. If Ian hadn’t communicated the pending disaster, John couldn’t have achieved a providential arrival to stave off catastrophe.

He shuddered to imagine what Martin might have ultimately done to her—and her mother and sister.

Though a fire crackled in the grate, the flames had died, the temperature had cooled, and he shivered, the floor icy under his feet. He lifted the blankets and crawled in, easing himself down so that he wouldn’t startle her.

The bed was a warm cocoon, and he stretched out, an arm under her shoulder, the other on her waist, a thigh over her hip. She was nestled close, and he shut his eyes, letting his starved sensations fill themselves with the feel and smell of her. Contentment resonated through his veins.

Without hesitation, she cuddled herself to him, and though he’d envisioned that the encounter would be chaste and restrained, his untended cock swelled to attention.

He’d not had sex in months, not since the decisive occasion he’d made love with Emma, and his anatomy emphatically and bluntly reminded him of the lack. His unruly physique should have embarrassed him, but he couldn’t muster any chagrin. Emma had perpetually aroused him to novel heights, and he wasn’t surprised to ascertain that naught had changed.

With an insane voracity, he lusted after her, and he couldn’t conceive of his desire waning in the next fifty or sixty years. An hilarious, unbidden vision flashed—of himself as an old man. He’d be chasing her around their bedchamber, still randy, still unassuaged, still craving the satiation he obtained only in her company.

Flexing his hips, he relished how his cock surged against the silky softness of her abdomen. He flexed once more, just because it felt so exceptional, and she arched her hips and met him in mid-stroke, her body as ready and eager as his own.

Fleetingly, she accepted his presence, smiling and purring, welcoming the subtle connection as though she
were in the middle of an erotic dream and he was correctly performing his role. Then abruptly, she froze, her muscles contracting, a frown marring her brow.

Time seemed to pause, her breathing arrested, then her eyes flew open. There was an interlude of clear disorientation, where she didn’t comprehend where she was or who she was with, then reality crashed down.

“You!” she snarled as if he were a dog that wasn’t allowed in the house.

“Hello, my darling Emma.”

He kissed her on the mouth, but she lurched away and rose onto her elbow. Gaping about, she was frantic to identify her surroundings, and several seconds ticked by before she distinguished that she was in his bedchamber.

“How long have I been asleep?” she asked between clenched teeth.

“Sixteen hours, give or take a few minutes.” He reached out and twined a strand of her hair around his finger.

“How did I end up in your bed?”

“You fainted, and I brought you home.”

“Why, thank you very much,” she fumed, “but this is
not
my home! How dare you presume so much!”

“Did I ever tell you how cute you are when you’re angry?”

“Ooh . . . I must get out of here!” She pitched the blankets back, and the chilly air hit them both, causing her to look down and note that she was bare. So was he. “Aah!” she screeched, scooting away. “I’m naked!”

“Just how I fancy you.”

Wildly, she clutched at the bedding, trying to shield herself from his prurient, roving regard, but to no avail. He adored her being in the nude, and he wasn’t about
to glance away, or act the gentleman to her unanticipated outbreak of maidenly modesty.

If it was up to him, he’d never let her get dressed again.

“How did I come to be disrobed?”

“At your service, Miss Fitzgerald.” He lied effortlessly, letting her infer that he’d removed her garments, piece by delicious piece, and that he’d reveled in every mischievous, decadent, inappropriate moment.

“You . . . you . . .” Her puritanical tongue couldn’t wrap itself around a word that was insulting enough to describe him. “Where are my clothes?”

“I burned them.”

The destruction of the pitiful apparel had been an inspiration, and he was abundantly delighted that he’d had the foresight to dispose of everything. The elimination had garnered him a threefold benefit: She couldn’t run off without being accoutered. In the interim, he’d have her sequestered and nude. When the finery he’d ordered for her was delivered, he’d have the pleasure of observing her fashionably turned out.

If he lived to be a hundred, he would never permit her to wear black, gray, or brown again.

“You
burned
my clothes?”

“Every last item.”

Indignant, she dissected him as though he were a species of foul insect she’d like to step on and grind under her heel.

“What am I to do? Lounge in your bedchamber like a harem concubine, catering to your personal whims, and ministering to your carnal needs?”

“Precisely.”

“You’re commanding me to do this?”

“No. I’m rather hoping you might wish to of your own accord.”

“And if I refuse?”

“You can’t.”

“I’m a prisoner, then?”

“Not a
prisoner
exactly.” Her temper ignited and flared with each exchange, and he chuckled inwardly, pondering how far he could push her before she snapped. “Don’t forget: You have debts to work off.”

“Debts!”

“You
do
recall your unpaid rent?”

“Of all the outrageous, dictatorial, underhanded—”

“I love you.” There! He’d said it aloud, the first time ever, and he was especially proud of himself.

“Well, I hate you!” she hissed in response.

He laughed. After the myriad ways he’d scorned and discarded paramours over the prior decade, how hilarious, how fitting, that his sole declaration of strong sentiment should be completely discounted!

“No you don’t,” he gently chided.

“Yes I do!” she insisted. “I really do!”

In a quick motion, he gripped her by the waist and yanked her across the mattress, situating them so that he was on top of her. His torso weighed her down, his thighs cradled hers, and his cock slipped between her legs, throbbing with a reckless urgency at being so near its lush destination.

At the end of her rope, she didn’t struggle or try to escape, seeming defeated after having battled too long and too strenuously. The fight went out of her. Her body was limp, her arms slack, and he was devastated to detect tears in her eyes.

“Don’t do this,” she beseeched. “Please! I can’t bear to go through it all again!”

“And what is it, my dearest Emma, that you deem you’ll be forced to
go through
?”

“You’ll sweet-talk me into lying with you. For a
day. Or a week. I always relent!” She gulped down a flood of misery. “Then, after I do, you’ll return to London.”

She assumed he was toying with her! That this was a temporary visit! How marvelous it would be to prove her wrong!

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“I don’t believe you.”

What a hard nut to crack! Desperate measures were called for, and lest he lose his nerve, he blurted out, “Will you marry me?”

“Stop it! It wounds me when you act like this! When you flatter me with compliments you don’t mean! When you—”

He kissed her, cutting off her tirade. For a brief instant, she resisted, then she sighed and mellowed.

“Marry me,” he repeated as their lips parted.

“No!”

He rested his palm on her stomach, and he massaged in slow circles, picturing the tiny child sheltered within. “Isn’t there something you need to tell me?”

As it dawned on her that he’d discovered her secret, fury clouded her gaze. “I did tell you!”

“When?”

“As soon as I suspected. I wrote you a letter.”

He tensed, his focus narrowing. Since his contentious, hideous meeting with Georgina, he’d conjectured as to what her warning had referred, and if it might have concerned Emma. Was she alluding to a letter? Had she somehow stolen it?

If she had, there were many methods by which he could find out, as well as many ways to extract revenge.

His ex-mistress would permanently rue the day she’d crossed him.

“You wrote to me?”

“Yes, but you never answered.” Tears dribbled down her cheeks, and he swiped them away. “You never came for me.”

“So you thought I didn’t care?”

“Yes. I’ve been alone. All this time.”

She started to cry in earnest, and he clasped her to his chest, hugging and caressing her, rubbing his hands up and down her back. It aggrieved him that she’d felt she couldn’t depend on him, but then he’d spent his life perfecting indifference to a fine art. What else could she have concluded?