Guilty Series (84 page)

“J
ohn?”

He woke at the sound of her voice, and it was only then that he realized he had fallen asleep. He inhaled the scent of violets, and it aroused him in an instant, bringing him fully awake as he remembered the passionate lovemaking of a short time ago. His arms tightened around her and he pressed closer to her, his chest against the soft, smooth skin of her back. He nuzzled her neck, kissed her bare shoulder. “Hmm?”

“It's dinnertime.” Viola stirred in his hold. “I'm hungry.”

“So am I,” he said with feeling, trailing one hand along her naked hip.

She began to laugh and pushed his hand away. “For
food
. I want my dinner.”

“Can't we frolic first?” He spread one hand across her tummy, cupped her breast with the other. “Then have food?”

“Frolic requires sustenance,” she pointed out, but even as she said it, she began to yield, arching her body against his, her hips pressing his groin.

Gently, he nipped her shoulder and toyed with her breast. He brushed his fingers along her tummy, feeling her muscles quiver at the light touch. “Still ticklish, I see.”

“John!” She wriggled in his hold, laughing.

He slid his hand between her legs. When he did, her laughter changed to a moan of pure pleasure.

She was already moist, and he began to caress her. “Food or frolic? Which do you want first?”

“Food.”

“Really?” He stroked her slowly, gently, teasing. “I think you want this more. I know I do.”

He could see her profile in the dim light of late afternoon that peeped between a gap in the draperies. He saw her bite her lip, shake her head. “Uh-uh,” she denied, even as she began to move in rhythm with the touch of his fingers. “Food.”

“Frolic first.” He pushed the tip of his finger into her, then pulled back, spreading her moisture in light circles, then stroking again. “Come on, Viola,” he coaxed. “Give in.”

She shook her head again, panting now.

John pushed his cock between her thighs, but he did not enter her. He groaned even as he continued to tease her. She began to shiver with each
upward stroke of his fingers, and began to make the soft, whimpering sounds that told him she was close to climax.

“If you really want food,” he went on, his own breath coming faster, “I could stop now, and we could go have dinner. Hmm? You want me to stop?”

“No, no. Don't stop, John. Don't stop.”

“Sure?”

She nodded, frantic. “Sure.”

“Want me more than food, do you?”

“Yes, yes,” she gasped. “Yes.”

He entered her, pushing deep into her from behind as he stroked her in front. She came almost at once, crying out as she tightened around him in the tiny convulsions of feminine bliss that sent him to climax as well.

Afterward, he caressed her hip as the muscles inside her slowly stopped clenching him and she was sated. Even then he did not move. He liked this, holding her this way, with himself deep within her. He always had.

“John?”

Her voice was almost plaintive.

“Hmm?”

“Now can we have dinner?”

He gave a shout of laughter and rolled onto his back. “I should hope so,” he said in an injured voice. “If you keep demanding these strenuous
demonstrations of my affection, you're going to have to feed me once in a while.”

She hit him with a pillow.

 

During dinner, Viola tried not to stare at her husband, but her gaze kept straying to him seated at the other end of the long dining table. It was still strange to see him there, but it felt good, somehow. It felt right.

He looked up and caught her gaze. His brows drew together in puzzlement. “You are staring at me quite intently,” he said, smiling. “Why?”

“I am trying to get used to seeing you in that chair.”

John took a sip of wine. “Is it a good sight, Viola?” he asked. “Or not so good?”

He wasn't teasing. “Good,” she admitted. “Strange, but good. Although,” she added, her voice taking on a hint of mock severity, “you really need to appreciate the schedule of things here at Enderby and not come down so late to dinner.”

“I am terribly sorry.” He smiled, and she caught her breath. He could still make her heart race when he smiled. “I was unavoidably detained.”

“Dessert, my lord.” Hawthorne placed a glass bowl in front of him, and a footmen did the same for her. Viola picked up her spoon and took a bite of trifle.

“Take it away.”

John's voice, the emotionless words, had her looking up. His face was as expressionless as his voice, and the very flatness of it was so startling, she set down her spoon. It was as if she were looking not at her husband's face, but at a mask of it.

Hawthorne removed the dessert he had just placed on the table. “Would you like something else, my lord?”

“Just the port.”

The butler stepped back and set John's dessert on the sideboard. He brought a flagon of port and a glass, poured out the wine, and once again withdrew.

As if sensing her scrutiny, he shifted uneasily in his chair. “I don't eat trifle,” he said without looking at her.

“I had forgotten how much you dislike it.”

“Odd, what? Jam, sponge cake, custard. What is there about it to dislike? It must be that I have an absurd desire to be different from everyone else in Britain.”

He smiled again, that brilliant, heart-stopping smile, but this time it did not reach his eyes. This was more than just dislike. There was something oddly painful in that smile that hurt her, too. An emptiness. Viola set her serviette beside her plate. “Hawthorne,” she said, signaling the butler forward again. “Take mine away as well, please. I don't want it. And bring me a glass of madeira.”

“You didn't have to do that,” John said as the
servant stepped back with her uneaten dessert.

“I think I did. It bothers you to even look at it.”

He didn't answer, but he didn't have to. She knew it bothered him a great deal. “Why?” she asked.

He turned his face away.

“Would it be so hard, John?” she asked. “To tell me?”

When he still said nothing, she shoved aside her disappointment and rose to her feet. “The sun is setting,” she said. “You always liked to walk at sunset. I may have forgotten about the trifle, but I remember that.” She took her glass of madeira from where Hawthorne had just placed it on the table. “Shall we take our wine and go for a walk in the garden?”

He picked up his port and they went outside into the cool air of the May evening. By unspoken agreement they started down a graveled path flanked by herbaceous borders, toward the folly that overlooked the river. As they walked, she inhaled the sweet scent of stocks and half-opened roses, and memories rose up, bittersweet, of their courting days, when John would have her and her brother to dine here at Enderby, how he would try to hold her hand if Anthony wasn't looking. She was in residence here most of the year, but she hadn't walked this path since those days. Without John it hadn't been the same.

“Remember when you used to have dinner parties here?” she asked. “Before we were married?
We always took this walk afterward.”

He reached for her hand, holding it fast when she tried to pull away. He laced their fingers together. “I remember, Viola.”

They walked up the steps of the folly, a round, open structure of limestone columns, capped by a copper dome long ago turned to verdigris. They climbed over the three-foot stone wall at the back of the folly and sat down on it like they used to do. Hand in hand, they stared out over Kew Gardens on the opposite side of the Thames and watched as the boats pulled into docks along the river, their work done for the day.

Neither of them spoke as twilight settled in. He did not seem inclined to talk. She didn't know why he found it so hard to reveal himself. She didn't understand what held him back.

But in her bed that night, in the hot sweet dark, there was nothing held back. There was nothing baffling about the way he touched her and kissed her. The way he made love to her. Viola savored it with all the hunger of the eight years she had been without him, but as much as he could pleasure her, it wasn't enough.

There were things that stood between them now as much as they ever had. Without love, what did she have to hold him? She was afraid that whatever she had, whatever she did, would never be enough to make him tell her why he didn't like tri
fle and why his boyhood was a nightmare. She was afraid that she would never find the key to his heart. Most of all, she was afraid he would never save all his smiles, all his kisses, all his caresses, and all his poetry for her and her alone.

 

Viola loved making love in the morning, but when John woke up, any notion he had of pleasing his wife in that respect was banished almost at once. He managed to get one, only one, kiss before the first interruption.

A scratch on the door was the only warning before the door opened and Tate came marching in with a bundle of letters in her hand. “The morning post, my lady,” she said, and looked up. When she saw the mistress of the house sitting on top of her husband, naked, with the sheets only partly covering them, she flushed a deep scarlet. “Oh!” she gasped, and promptly dropped the letters on the floor. “I'm so terribly sorry!”

She fumbled for the doorknob and backed out of the room, closing the door behind her.

“Did you see her face?” Viola whispered. “Good heavens. What a shock we've given her. I'm sure she thinks we're most improper to be making love in daylight. And me without my nightgown on.”

John rolled on top of her, feeling the cool air of the room on his back and the warmth of her body
beneath him. “Forget about Tate. Where were we?”

“Hmm, let me think.” Her eyes half closed, she tilted her head back. “I think you were kissing me.”

“Ah, that was it.” He bent his head and tasted her mouth. “I wish I had some blackberry jam.”

As if in answer to this request, another scratch was heard on the door and a maid came in, rattling dishes. “Early tea, my lady. Oh!”

“Lord, have mercy,” John muttered, and the maid hastily deposited the tray on a table, then vanished, pulling the door shut.

He heard some voices murmuring in the corridor and a few shocked giggles, no doubt commenting on the fact that no man ever slept all night in his wife's room. John waited until the sounds died away just to be sure another maid wasn't about to come in with coal for the grate, then resumed his pleasurable explorations of his wife's luscious body.

“Don't you want any tea?” she asked, pushing him back to give him a smile that was downright wicked.

“Unless it's something I can kiss off of you, forget it,” he said, and slid his leg between both of hers.

The door from the corridor into his bedchamber opened. “My lord?” Stephens called as if looking for him. “Mr. Stone is downstairs, waiting to see you.”

“Stephens,” he shouted through the open doorway to his room, “get out of here!”

“Yes, my lord.”

John heard the door close, but his valet proved to be one interruption too many. The moment was lost.

“Remind me to have a little talk with our staff about the morning routine,” John muttered, and rolled onto his back, giving it up.

Viola laughed and got out of bed. Swinging her loose hair back over her shoulders, she picked up her nightdress and robe and put them on. “Maybe you are just too greedy,” she said as she tied the sash of her robe.

“Greedy, am I?” He jumped up and came after her. She gave a shriek of laughter and dodged out of reach, but he caught her around the waist and hauled her back. “You are the one who almost starved me last night, you couldn't get enough of me.”

“What? Oh, how outrageous!” She pushed at him.

He kissed her neck. “Admit it.”

“I shan't! You are too conceited as it is.” She pulled out of his hold and tugged the bell pull for her maid. “Besides, your secretary is waiting for you, and I have to go back to town today, so we'd best stop lazing our day away and get on with things.”

“Why do we have to go to London?”

“I have a ball to attend. My charity ball for the hospitals.”

He groaned. “Do we have to go? I hate these Fancy Dress affairs.”

“My charities are very important to me. Besides, I missed it last year. I cannot miss it twice. And I don't know why you're complaining anyway,” she added. “You can't go.”

“Why not?”

She grinned, sure she had the upper hand for once. “I never sent you an invitation.”

“Doesn't matter,” he said, and grinned right back at her. “I finagled one from Lady Deane ages ago.” He kissed her and started for his own room. “No wonder you're so bad at chess,” he said, shaking his head.

He closed the door, and from the other side he heard her say, “I can't believe I married such an impossible man!”

 

His secretary was waiting for him in the study.

“Glad to see you've recovered from the measles, Stone,” he said, and circled the desk. A long time, he thought, since he had used this desk. It felt good to stand behind it.

“Thank you, my lord.” The secretary opened his dispatch case. “You have quite a bit of correspondence to answer.”

“I'm sure I do with you lazing away in Clapham
for the past week and a half at my expense.”

Stone had worked for him long enough to recognize that he was teasing, but the poor fellow, alas, had no sense of humor. He did not change expression. “My apologies, my lord.”

John sighed and gave it up. “Anything important?”

Instead of replying, Stone turned the opened case around so John could see the contents. It was full. Completely full of small, folded, sealed sheets of pink paper. Emma.