Counterfeit Countess (6 page)

“No.”

He kept his voice soft and unthreatening. “What exactly did you think you would do?”

“I’d disappear. I’m not unemployable, I could make a living.”

She shrugged. “I still can. I left the marriage lines to John Smith and a letter declaring that we were never married. It’s on the table, with the deeds to this house and a promissory note for whatever funds you feel I owe you.”

“Could you get a position with no character references?” He grazed the top of her buttocks with his thumb. Perfectly rounded.

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She snorted. “Please. As if I can’t handle that.”

The concept interested him. “How would you do that?”

“I’d reference my mother, who would do anything rather than have me back home and an old friend who married well. She’ll help me, and be discreet about it if I asked her. Or I’d forge something.”

He laughed, a gentle chuckle. “Anyone who thinks women are helpless should consult you.” He wanted to kiss her, but he held off, because he suspected he wouldn’t stop once he’d begun. Already he desired her with a desperation entirely new, an emotion he badly needed to process before he gave into it again. On the first occasion her nearness to him had provoked him into kissing her, and then more followed as day did night. His lack of control worried him, even while he planned to make love to her at least once more tonight. This time with no mercy. “So you’d disappear, live a miserable life as a poorly paid employee. Why did you do it in the first place?” Confirmation. Coming at the question again, so he could watch the way she reacted.

She bit her lip. “I didn’t think I was doing anyone any harm.

Without a wife your army pension would have died with you. My only extravagance was this house. I was harming nobody. But now I know you’re alive, you don’t deserve I should do this to you.”

“Do what? Prevent the dowager from foisting one of her daughters on to me?” He watched her take the piece of information in. Her pretty eyes widened, her body stiffened against him. “If you are not here, she won’t relent. I’ll be married before the year’s out.”

“Charlotte and Louisa are much more agreeable without their mother present. I believe she imposes on them a little too much.

But it is none of my concern. Either would make an excellent countess.”

“Not while I’m married to you.” He rolled further in to lean over her, his cock lying on her hip, informing her, as if she needed it, of his renewed arousal.

She blinked but showed no other sign. “We’re not married.”

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He framed her face with his hands, bent his head lower, watched her lips part, ready for his kiss. He wondered if she knew she was doing it, or if it was a natural action, and craved the latter. “We could be,” he murmured, before finally giving way to temptation.

He’d give her that much, the temptation of the worm on the hook.

She sighed into his mouth and he surrendered, for the time being at least. Gave himself over to pleasing her, and by doing so, pleasuring himself. He’d taken women in desperation, with the certainty this would be the last time he would do this because the next day he’d stare death in the face. Again. Taken them with mutual pleasure in mind. Never before had he desired anyone this badly. He needed her, more than here, in bed, but elsewhere too. If he could not persuade her, then his task would be all but insurmountable.

When she arched into his hold, teasing his cock with her feminine slickness, her soft skin, her sighs, he forgot any other consideration.

His shaft didn’t need guidance this time. It knew its way. All he had to do was rise up enough to let it slip between her legs. When she widened her thighs and opened for him, he drove in, deep and sure, all the way home.

A sense of rightness washed over him, together with an insatiable need to thrust hard into her, force her to call out, accept him as her—he would have said ‘master,’ but he didn’t want that.

Only his recalcitrant member seemed to force him to want it. He could use the feeling, and he did.

When he pushed straight in, she moaned, but it seemed practiced, by rote, her actions what she expected him to want.

Difficult to describe, but he knew he’d seen those reactions in other women. At the time he’d known they were trying to please him, mostly because he was paying them.

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Not now. He watched her when he changed his angle, so he thrust sharper, then lifted an inch or two so he grazed the lower part of her channel.

There. Victory roared through him when she gave a sharp gasp and reached out as if to clutch him. “Open your eyes,” he whispered to her. “Let me see you.”

She did so, blinking into his face. He saw shock, mingled with heat.
Oh, yes
. Her expressive gaze showed him her reactions. Her unguarded behaviour with him flattered him more than any words.

She trusted him, and he suspected she gave her trust to few people.

Urged on, he moved again, touched the same sweet, soft place and watched her pupils widen, her bright eyes darken, sparkling with shared intimacy.

“Let me help you there, Faith.”

He continued with his slow, steady thrusts, taking care to touch the spot that gave her most pleasure. Another time he’d work on her clitoris, but they were still learning and in his experience one step at a time worked best. Get that right and move on to the next.

Concentrating on her helped him to delay his own culmination until he could ensure hers. As she blindly reached out, her hands touched his shoulders, clasped tightly and held on. Her cries became whimpers, shreds of sound in rhythm with his thrusts, keeping the beat until he changed, paused and then began again.

One, strangled cry, her eyes closed and she turned her head, pressing her cheek against the pillow, crying his name as she came.

The rush of heat and the way her body clenched around him were enough to set him off. Barely able to think, he gave a helpless choke as his seed spilled into her. Crushing his body close to hers, he felt every throb, every spurt.

He dropped his head to the empty space on the pillow and breathed hard, inhaling the heady aroma of their coupling. He revelled in the feel of a woman’s soft form under his. It had never, ever felt this way. Every woman was different, he knew that, but
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this woman was completely unique.

Breathing heavily, his mind flashed back to the moment of sheer terror when he woke in the medical tent and realised he didn’t know who he was. Nothing. His memory loss had been total for a day or two before fragments seeped back over the next week. But one instant remained; the horror of being nobody in a mass of people he didn’t know.

Now he welcomed the temporary blankness as respite from what he had to face, in the certainty he’d remember. He felt helpless in her arms as if he’d given her everything he was.

It didn’t last. It never did. He rolled away, flung back the bedclothes and found the cloth to clean her, barely noticing the chill in the air once he’d left the safe haven of her bed.

She watched, her eyes half closed while he performed his task before joining her again. She curled into him as if she belonged there. He kissed her, slow and affectionately.

“You said we could be married?” A note of fear entered her voice.

He sighed. He’d wanted to have this conversation later. It seemed it had to be now. He had to make her understand, or at least to stay for a while. “You were planning to leave. What did you think would happen after you’d gone?”

She shifted, but didn’t urge him to let her alone, for which he was glad. She felt good in his arms, right. “You’d denounce me as a fraud and laugh about me with your friends. It’s my fault, so it’s only fair I take the blame.”

“What friends?” he demanded savagely. “What do you think I am? I’m an earl by omission, my dear. I might have had august relatives, but I wasn’t part of their world. Ever.” He waited for the customary bitterness but it never came. Instead, he told her the facts. “I refused to live on expectation of the inheritance. After my parents died, I chose another path in life.” He propped himself on one elbow, gazing down at her face. “I never courted society or
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cared about it particularly. I’m an outsider. People will say it’s only what they expected. They’ll call me upstart, and then say I’m a fool for trusting a woman I knew nothing about. Until I belong to the elite in society, I need you.” The brutal truth. A poor relative turned earl. Except he wasn’t so poverty-stricken these days. Not that he had any intention of letting anyone know. At least, not yet.

“Society?” Her lips turned in a sneer. “You want that? Balls and court and parties in the country?”

He couldn’t blame her for thinking of society in such a superficial way—her life had never contained that kind of business before. And it
was
business. “The Earldom of Graywood is a wealthy and widespread one. There are investments, property, financial speculations. The Graywoods own mineral concerns, ships and a small street in London that makes a staggering amount in rent every year. All these concerns employ people and generate revenue, and I’m the hub, the figurehead. I have to be beyond reproach. More than that, I have to prove myself capable. Do you understand now?”

She stared at him, blue eyes wide and he watched, saw the comprehension creep in. “If you’re damaged, if society rejects you, it will mean the end of your investments?”

Relief flooded him when he realised she’d understood. “Exactly.

I don’t want to let those people down. The ones who work for me, and depend on me, not the ones who can take care of themselves.”

His personal bugbear, the one thing he refused to do in life. “I need the respectability of a wife. A scandal like the one you’re proposing to set up, hard on the heels of my inheriting the title, could ruin me, whether I was to blame or not.”

“Am I allowed to say no?” He relaxed, knowing she wouldn’t do that now. But she might not want to take part in his efforts. The thought of letting her go made him falter in his rapid assessment, but if she wanted it, he would do that. Just not let her run away.

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“Not yet.” He would honour her truthfulness with the same.

She’d lied by omission, and he would discover her secrets, all of them, before he decided if he wanted to keep her. Already his opinion of her had shifted. With the disclosure of her dilemma had come comprehension of the reason she’d adopted his name reasonable. A penniless woman alone in the world faced a tough and probably short future. Governess at best, whore at worst, but the choices were limited. And she’d believed him dead. For that, he’d reconsider a few of his decisions. Not the principal one, though. He could use her and look nothing worse than a fool when she was exposed as a fraud, not his wife at all. Or he could consider the immediate future as an interview, a way of assessing her suitability as his wife in truth. In one way she had exceeded his expectations. He opened his hand, allowed himself the indulgence of caressing her silken skin.

He gave a wry smile. “You know I can’t stop you disappearing?”

She shook her head. “You could lock me up.”

“I suppose so.” The thought repulsed him. “But I won’t. I can’t watch you every hour of the day. I have to sleep. You should know that if you take that course, I’ll say you’re in the country, at one of my houses and I will hunt you down. So you’ll still be Lady Graywood.”

“No, no I won’t.”

One thing would hold her. If he had to choose between Faith and the two daughters of Lady Graywood, he knew which he would prefer. However, it had not come to that yet. “I want you to be my wife for a while. Give me time for me to elude the fate of marrying Charlotte or Louisa, to avoid the attention of the matchmakers.

They require the title and the wealth, not the man, and I have a strange, probably unsuitable desire to be wanted for myself. So will you marry me?”

Faith stared up at his face, unable to read anything there past the half smile quirking his lips. John was better at concealing his
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feelings than her, and she thought she’d done well in that. Certainly she’d lived as his widow for two years without anyone suspected anything. Mostly, she had to admit, because they didn’t care overmuch. She hadn’t mattered to them until today—yesterday.

“You mean
really
marry you?”

His smile melted her. The way the amusement broke the habitual solemnity of his face, revealing his vulnerability reached deep inside her. “Maybe. In time we could slip away and make the illusion real if we suit.”

She reached up and touched his chest. Immediately he covered it with his hand. Pressed her palm against him so she felt his heart thumping rhythmically. As if she had the power to stop that vital throb.

“It’s so complicated,” she said. He’d still be better off with someone else. Someone fertile. She wouldn’t lie to him about that, if he meant what he said about marrying her.

“You could have a fine life as a countess.”

“Don’t.” She almost turned from him. “If I do this, it won’t be to live the high life.”

“Not even a little?” Again, that smile that turned her heart over.

She thought of the lace gown she’d seen in a shop window last week, the one that was exquisite but well out of her price range and bit her lip. No, not even for that gown, which wouldn’t have suited her anyway. He laughed, the low sound of amusement he’d used earlier. Everything they did here in this bed was so intimate. “I can see you’re thinking of something.”

“What would I have to do?”

“Appear with me at key functions. The season will be starting in another couple of weeks, right after Easter. Lent is nothing but a breathing space to most of society, a chance to order the gowns and the rest of the armour they’ll need. Behave as my wife.”

His analogy made her chuckle. “Like preparing for battle?”

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“Exactly like that. So you’d have to order new clothes and go through the family jewels.”