It Happened One Midnight (PG8) (34 page)

And as she screamed her release, he slipped from beneath her, and turned, and seized her hips and guided his cock into her, and sank into her deeply. He withdrew, then drove hard again, pulling her hips back into him, taking her deeper and deeper still, their bodies colliding hard, her fingers clawing into the counterpane, until she felt it, amazingly, once more, the pleasure swelling against the very seams of her being. She heard the roar of his breath, and his groan of helpless bliss as he plunged ever more swiftly. And then he went still. He came on a hoarse cry. And seconds later she did, too, nearly weeping from the unthinkable, nearly unbearable pleasure.

So good. So endlessly, endlessly good. She would never, never have enough of him.

He collapsed next to her, and scooped her, sated and boneless and thoroughly pleasured, into his arms. They were both sweat-shiny and limp.

“That’s upside down taken care of,” he murmured. “For you, that is.”

She couldn’t wait to find out what upside down for him meant.

R
OUND ABOUT THE
seventh hour they both fell asleep, Tommy splayed half on top of him, his arm wrapped around her.

He snored.

She woke before he did, and pressed her head against his chest, and listened. To his soft snoring. To the faint gurgle in his stomach. To the steady beat of his heart.

I am so blessed. So very, very lucky.

So privileged to love him. Because she did.

She knew he loved her, too.

There would be time to worry about what it meant, or think about the future.

For now there was only this man and his heartbeat, and the rise and fall of his breath as he slept.

Chapter 27

J
ONATHAN DIDN’T RETURN TO
his parents’ town house on St. James Square for a fortnight.

He didn’t go to White’s. He didn’t go to the opera, to balls, or to the theater, and he missed a few dinner invitations.

He most certainly didn’t go to the salon.

He told no one where he was sleeping at night. Not because of any great need for secrecy. In a haze of sex and happiness, he simply forgot that someone might wish to know.

He ventured out only to buy food. And then he returned to the snug little nest in the rickety building in Covent Garden, where he exchanged life stories with Tommy, and made love and slept and made love some more.

And to think he’d thought he’d been
happy
before. This was something altogether different. Something anarchic he couldn’t command, something unreasonable and likely untenable in the long run. A dream, surely, for he could see no way of transferring it to the life he lived in the ton. But for as long as he possibly could, he wanted only to feel, not to think.

A
T THE END
of a fortnight, Jonathan stopped in at Klaus Liebman & Co. on Bond Street.

Klaus and Argosy, who was leaning against the counter and watching Wyndham sketch a certain handsome Miss Elizabeth Francis, whom Jonathan had danced with perhaps once, all turned and gaped at him.

“Who had ‘Jonathan Redmond is alive?’ in White’s Betting Books?” Argosy said dryly at last.

“I’m in the Betting Books?” Jonathan still felt pleasantly cushioned from real life by happiness.

“For the past week you’ve
dominated
the Betting Books. Someone else wagered that you had disappeared along with your brother Lyon Redmond. There’s been much debate over whether an Eversea was responsible.”

Oh, God. He could only imagine what his father would think when he saw that. Not only was the name “Lyon” invoked, but someone had thought to poke the embers of the Eversea enmity while they did it.

He
knew
he shouldn’t have ventured from the Building of Dubious Occupations.

“And there’s another wager, too, Jonathan,” Argosy said carefully. It was Argosy’s tone. “If you’ll just come with me for a moment?”

Argosy beckoned him into the back room.

Argosy’s expression was portentous.

“What?” Jonathan said, irritated.

“I know, Redmond.”

“What do you know? Apart from the best horseflesh and where to buy gloves that cost one hundred pounds?’

“I know you’ve been with Tommy de Ballesteros this entire time.”

Jonathan could feel the blood drain from his face.

“What makes you say that?

Argosy was amused. “You should see your face, Redmond! Don’t worry. I’m not going to call you out. I could see the writing on the wall.
You
are hardly inscrutable, at least to me. And no woman is quite that interested in
investing
.”

“You’d be amazed at what women are interested in, Argosy.” He was carefully, surreptitiously assessing his friend for evidence he felt betrayed. But Argosy was remarkably sanguine for someone whose heart was broken, since he’d made just such a production over Cynthia Brightly breaking his heart.

“Who else knows?”

“I don’t think anyone
knows
. Well, apart from me, now, because you as much as admitted it. But . . . this is what I wanted to tell you. There’s a wager in the books about the two of you. You and Tommy.”

“Christ! Who wagered it? And why?”

“The trouble is that you
both
rather vanished from the London scene right about the same time. This coincidence was remarked upon at White’s, and Harry Linley, well he’d had about a couple pints too many, and he decided it answered a question about where the two of you had got to, so he wagered Edmund Rickburn. How Linley intends to win that bet is beyond me.”

Jonathan thought quickly. “Have you seen my father in White’s?”

A hesitation. “Yes. Or rather, he’s been seen at White’s. Deep in discussion with the Duke of Greyfolk.”

Jonathan sighed, and yanked off his hat, and slumped back against the wall. “Damn,” he muttered. “Damn, damn, damn.”

That didn’t mean Isaiah had read the Betting Books. Or had heard or taken to heart prurient gossip. But his father had his ways of discovering what he wanted to know.

Damn.

“So what is it like?” Argosy ventured casually.

Jonathan looked up at him dangerously.

“What is
what
like?” he said with clipped politeness. Knowing full well what he meant.

Argosy simply stared at him incredulously, an eyebrow arched.

“Horrible.” And Jonathan smiled slowly.

“Oh, yes. I’m certain it’s horrible. You’re positively gaunt from all the vigorous shagging you’ve been doing. Would you like a piece of cheese?”

Jonathan laughed. Then sighed. “I best take a look at the books here to see how the orders are doing.”

“What are you going to do, Redmond?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been in love before.”

“
Love?
” Argosy was shocked into choking the word. “You mean, what I had for Cynthia?”

Jonathan hadn’t the patience. “With all due respect, Argosy, that wasn’t love. Trust me, you’ll know it when it happens.”

I
T WASN’T THE
day of the salon—which Tommy had in fact utterly forgotten to attend for the past two weeks—but since Jonathan had gone down to Bond Street to Klaus Liebman & Co., and the Countess Mirabeau had sent a note asking her if she would call upon her that morning, Tommy went off cheerfully.

The house seemed very quiet without the usual hubbub of the guests. Later Tommy would come to think of that quiet as portentous. It was a bit like the way birds fell silent right before a nasty storm.

She smiled and accepted kisses on the cheek from the countess, who was dressed, startlingly, in the height of fashion, a turban wound round her head, a plume arcing over it, her dress plum-colored silk.

The countess whispered in her ear, “He asked for an introduction to you, my dear, and since he’s clearly a very wealthy and important man, I thought it in your best interests to effect it.”

Countess Mirabeau was pleased with herself. She wagged her brows up high, and took herself out of the room.

Tommy was still.

And she swiveled.

Rising to his feet from a chair was an older man, an extraordinarily handsome man, a man with the sort of presence that made one’s breath catch a moment.

And intangibles . . . the height of him, the way he held himself, that set of his shoulders, the way his body straightened as he rose from the chair to greet her—it was eerie. It was like glimpsing Jonathan thirty years from now. Like him, and yet not like him.

He bowed. “Miss de Ballesteros, I presume?”

“Mr. Isaiah Redmond, I presume?”

If this surprised him, he showed no signs of it.
He has green eyes, too
.

“I wondered if I could perhaps have a word with you. Will you sit down with me? It shan’t take long.”

She moved warily into the room, her eyes marking him as if he was a wolf. She knew a bit more about his kind now. The immovable powerful men of the world. The builders and destroyers.

She sat gingerly in the chair across from him, and folded her hands in her lap. She turned to him expectantly.
Breathe, Tommy
.

“It’s my understanding that you’ve taken my son as a lover.”

The words harpooned her.

It was a moment before she could breathe again, and she was certain he’d noticed. For he was the sort who noticed everything. And it was too late to protect Jonathan or deny it.

“I fear you misunderstand the nature of our association, Mr. Redmond.” She was proud of her steady voice.

“Oh, I doubt that.”

He was too experienced at this sort of thing. He’d read her quite easily.

“I do wonder what business it is of yours?” she asked politely, almost disinterestedly. She was proud of her cool tone, given that her hands were already clammy.

He paused. Either for effect, or he truly was gathering his thoughts.

“Do you have a family, Miss de Ballesteros? A mother, a father, siblings? People you love, and who love you in return?”

And thusly he twisted the spear. He must know, somehow, that she had no one. Had he spoken to the duke? Did he know?

She was breathing shortly now. She could feel the heat starting up in her cheeks.

He was satisfied that her silence was a response.

“Because unless you do, I don’t know if you can understand what his family means to Jonathan, or what he means to the family. And if he marries inappropriately, everything he cares about will be denied to him—his home, his family, his past, his inheritance. Not only that, but the usual opportunities for advancement and connection afforded a young man of wealth and stature will be denied him if he marries into a class other than his own. He will, quite simply, ultimately be miserable. Perhaps at first he will not be, but in the end, he will. I can assure you. Someone like Jonathan doesn’t simply abandon everything he knows.”

Tommy’s nails dug more and more deeply into her palm, a reminder to steady her temper. She stared at him, amazed.

“You don’t know your son at all,” she said slowly, allowing her amazement to show. “You underestimate him greatly. And you may one day soon regret it.”

She was beginning to wonder if all men who possessed green eyes were bastards.

Something about her tone—her icy bearing, her utter confidence—made him pause. He studied her curiously for a moment. Jonathan was right. Here was another man like her father, she thought. She was scarcely worth his notice. Scarcely worth any minute amplification of emotion.

“Oh, I doubt that, too,” he said finally, easily enough. “This is what I came here to say to you. If you care for my son, you’ll refuse to see him, and allow him to go on to the future that was meant for him. It’s bright, and he has a chance to be happy, and if you want his happiness, surely you’ll let him go. Because if he continues his, shall we say, association with you, he’ll be cut off from his sister, his brother, his mother, his rightful inheritance, and his birthright. It is absolutely nonnegotiable, Miss de Ballesteros. I will ensure it happens. And believe me, I have the power to ensure that it remains that way.”

Breathing was more of a struggle now. Oh, how she hated men like him. Who had earned money in order to bully people with it, in order to shape the world the way they wanted it.

She was the proverbial wayward nail, pointing up out of the plank, and he thought he could hammer her into place again.

“Didn’t you threaten another son, Mr. Redmond, with something very similar? Tell me, will he be dining at your table this evening? Will you see him tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day? Or did he, in fact, disappear entirely?”

She watched fury slowly infuse Isaiah Redmond. It was subtle, but apparent, and fascinating. And his brand of fury was a cold bitter thing, she could see. He would never lose his temper in an ugly way. It stiffened his muscles, and tensed his jaw, and his eyes went cinder gray.

And in that moment, she loved the power to make someone like him furious. For the only way to make him furious was to know his weaknesses.

“You won’t see a penny of Jonathan’s family money, Miss de Ballesteros. I shan’t worry, however. Women like you always land on their feet. It was just that I felt, as a father, I should appeal to whatever affection you may hold for my son. He has no future with you, and you should release him now, before he is hurt. For above all, I shouldn’t like to see him hurt.”