Lady Lyte's Little Secret (2 page)

Yet, she had chosen him. And for the first time in his steady, dutiful life Hawthorn Greenwood had done something less than respectable. Something furtive.
Something scandalous. Something so exhilarating, he could scarcely believe it was happening to
him
.

Felicity Lyte had offered him a banquet of forbidden fruit. Even as he’d gorged himself upon it, Thorn had found his appetite piqued rather than sated. By mutual agreement the span of their time together had been limited to this one Season at Bath. Then, with several blissful weeks still ahead of them, Thorn had received a tersely-worded letter from Felicity ending their relationship.

As he should have expected, she’d grown tired of him. Found a superior replacement, perhaps.

Now Thorn glanced around her shadow-shrouded bedchamber, satisfying himself that Felicity had been sleeping alone—for tonight, at least.

He shook his head hard to banish his selfish desires and motives. Certainly he’d been angered by the casual manner in which Felicity had cast him off. Hurt, too—might as well admit it. Still, that didn’t give him the right to burst in on the woman at such an uncivilized hour and shock her into a swoon with his distressing suspicions.

“Felicity?” He’d bellowed her name in the entry hall, then gasped it when she’d collapsed into his arms. Now he spoke it in a coaxing murmur as he chafed her hand. “Wake up, please. I’m sorry I broke the news to you so baldly. I should have known it would come as a terrible shock.”

A wave of alarm swelled within him when she did not rouse right away. He pressed his fingers to the tender flesh at the base of her throat, searching for a pulse.

“Thorn?” Felicity’s eyelids fluttered. She spoke his name with the peculiar softness of affection as her lips
half curved in a drowsy, quizzical, trusting smile. “What happened? Where am I, darling?”

Thorn’s heart lurched in his chest. Could he have misunderstood her letter? Might she still want him, for a few more weeks at least? The possibility elated him and that precarious sense of elation unsettled him.

What terrifying power over his happiness had he yielded to this woman?

As if to demonstrate that very capacity, Lady Lyte opened her glittering green eyes wide as a tremor of aversion quivered through her. She flinched from his touch.

“What are
you
doing here?”

If she’d raised her hand and slapped him hard across the cheek, it could not have stung like the steely chill of her tone. Thorn winced from it, pulling upright from his solicitous crouch beside her bed.

A sharp intake of her breath told Thorn she recalled why he’d come.

Her next words confirmed it. “Oliver and your sister? Run off together to Gretna? Are you certain?”

Slowly, she rose to perch on the edge of the bed. Thorn bit his tongue to keep from warning her to be careful. If the woman wanted to risk another fainting spell, it was no business of his, after all.

“If I’d been
certain
, I would hardly be wasting my time here, Lady Lyte. I’d be on the road to Bristol this very moment trying to catch them before they got any further with such folly.”

“You must be mistaken.” Felicity’s doubtful tone belied the certainty of her words. “I breakfasted with Oliver just this morning. I never saw a young man who looked less like he meant to elope.”

Her balance appeared equally dubious as she surged
to her feet. Though Thorn willed his arms to remain straight at his sides, one reached out of its own accord to steady Felicity.

Thorn Greenwood had always taken modest pride in knowing his own mind and acting in a deliberate manner upon carefully reasoned decisions. Unused to being pulled in contrary directions, he did not enjoy the sensation.

He
wished
he did not enjoy the sensation of Felicity Lyte clinging to his arm.

“I hope you’re right about your nephew.”

Thorn wasn’t certain he meant it. If they discovered Oliver Armitage tucked up sound and alone in his own bed or burning the midnight oil in his study, then Ivy’s disappearance would take on a far more sinister complexion.

“Will you at least humor me by confirming his presence in your house?”

“Very well.” Felicity wrenched her hand back from Thorn’s arm as though she regretted the necessity of accepting his support. “Anything to speed you on your way.”

As she stalked past him toward the door, Thorn followed, ready to catch her again if she so much as swayed.

She did not.

Indeed, her steps seemed to gain assurance as she marched down the hallway.

“I’ll try his study first.” Felicity tossed the words over her shoulder as she halted before a door at the end of the wide corridor. “He often forgets the time when he’s absorbed in his work.”

Tapping gently on the door, she called her nephew’s name, but received no response.

“Oliver?” She turned the knob and pushed the door open a crack. “Are you there?”

A musty odor of old books wafted from the room, mingled with the faint reek of chemical solutions. But all was dark and still within. Oliver Armitage did not answer his aunt’s call.

“He must have retired to bed at a decent hour for a change.” A note of uncertainty crept into Felicity’s voice.

Pushing past Thorn to the door opposite her nephew’s study, she knocked harder and hailed him in a more urgent tone. “Oliver, wake up! It’s urgent I speak with you at once.”

No acknowledgement.

“He’s a sound sleeper.”

Thorn wondered whether she meant the remark to reassure herself or to confound his mounting conviction that he’d been right all along.

Forsaking subtlety, Lady Lyte thrust open the bedroom door. “Oliver, pardon us for waking you, dear boy. But Mr. Greenwood has come with the most preposterous…”

The rest of her sentence evaporated into the dormant shadows of the empty bedchamber. The hall lamp’s dim glimmer revealed crisp outlines of furniture, including an undisturbed bed.

“Perhaps he has gone out, after all,” Felicity suggested, clearly forgetting her earlier claim that there was not a young man in Bath less anxious to venture out on the town.

“Perhaps.”

A splash of white against the bed’s dark coverlet caught Thorn’s eye. He brushed past Felicity. His hand closed over a sheet of paper, neatly folded and sealed
with wax. Pulling it into the faint ribbon of light that spilled through the open doorway, he squinted to decipher two words written on the outside.

He shoved the paper toward Felicity. “It’s addressed to you.”

Chapter Two

F
elicity willed her hand not to tremble as she held it out to receive the communication Oliver had left for her.

“Can you fetch me a light, please?” she asked Thorn.

Whatever message this paper held, she had no intention of returning to her own bedroom to read it. Certainly not in Thorn Greenwood’s company.

Why, the place was crammed to the ceiling with vivid, bedeviling memories of the nights they’d spent together. The last thing Felicity wanted to contemplate just now was any reminder of Thorn’s deliberate, attentive lovemaking and her own ardent response to it.

Ever obliging, Thorn headed out into the hall and returned bearing a lamp.

The thickness and texture of the paper in her hand put Felicity in mind of the letter she’d written to him just the other day. Reluctance had tugged at her elbow. Regret at having to end their affair prematurely had sharpened her words. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him, but neither had she wanted him to hold any false hope that she might change her mind.

If Thorn had entreated her with those steadfast brown eyes and the earnest set of his handsome features, Felicity had feared she might capitulate.

With disastrous consequences.

“Well?” Thorn prompted her, his gaze fixed on the paper. “Do you intend to open it or not?”

“Of course.” Felicity stirred from her musings. Her fingers fumbled as she broke the seal. “Don’t badger me!”

Events had so far confirmed Thorn’s preposterous suggestion. Still, Felicity persisted in the vain hope that this note from Oliver would not say what she feared it might.

To the best of her knowledge, her nephew had only the barest acquaintance with Ivy Greenwood. And even if he knew the young lady well and cared for her deeply, a man of science like Oliver hadn’t the rash temperament to bolt for Gretna Green on the spur of the moment.

Then again, Ivy Greenwood had an impulsive streak quite wide enough for both of them, not to mention a winsome beauty that might make a fool of the cleverest man.

Felicity’s insides churned as she forced herself to read what Oliver had written. Thorn held the lamp high, peering over her shoulder. The warm tickle of his breath on her ear made it nearly impossible to concentrate on deciphering the young scientist’s spiky scrawl.

“Dear Aunt Felicity,” Thorn read aloud. “By the time you find this, I will be well on my way to Scotland, where I plan to wed Miss Ivy Greenwood. As Miss Greenwood is below the age of consent and she feared her brother might not approve the match…”

Under his breath Thorn muttered, “Too right, lad,” then picked up where he had left off. “…We have decided to elope. Knowing how fond you are of my wife-to-be, I trust you will wish us every happiness. We look forward to making our home with you when we return. Ever your affectionate nephew, Oliver Armitage.”

By slow degrees, Thorn let the hand in which he held the lamp drop. Likewise, the hand in which Felicity held the letter fell slack.

Neither of them spoke for a moment, as the indisputable truth did battle with Felicity’s adamant denial and beat it senseless.

“W-why, this is madness,” she insisted when she found her voice at last. “I cannot imagine a more ill-matched pair than my nephew and your sister. What can have gotten into those foolish children?”

As she spoke, Felicity turned to face Thorn. When she saw how close he hovered behind her, she swallowed a little gasp and stepped back. Not that she was frightened of the man—only of the intense, bewildering effect he had upon her. Her fingers itched to reach up and nuzzle his soft side whiskers in the familiar gesture that was their signal to retire to bed.

Had been
their signal, she reminded herself, clenching both hands by her sides to restrain them.

Perhaps some restless hunger in her eyes betrayed her barely checked desire, for Thorn lowered his voice to the mellow, intimate cadence of lovemaking.

“I’ll tell you what’s gotten into those foolish children, Lady Lyte.” His gaze ranged over her face like a fond caress. “The same madness that sometimes afflicts older and wiser hearts.”

“Surely, you can’t mean us?” Felicity forced a
laugh. It tinkled like the cut-glass crystals on a chandelier striking against one another. “I, for one, am well past years of discretion and quite cured of girlish romantic illusions. And you’re the last man in Bath, perhaps in all of Britain, inclined to madness or any other excess.”

Sensible, steady, forthright, respectable Hawthorn Greenwood. Felicity knew, for she had weighed all those somewhat tiresome virtues in his favor before selecting him to become her convenient paramour. She hadn’t wanted a more romantic or fanciful fellow, apt to imagine himself
in love
with her. Whatever that meant.

Thorn did not look as pleased with her tribute to his equanimity as a sensible man ought. His full dark brows drew together and the line of his wide, generous mouth stretched taut. Felicity shrank from the shadow of distress in his too-candid eyes.

“I bore you.”

“Don’t be silly!” Her denial rang a trifle hollow even in Felicity’s own ears.

He didn’t
bore
her, she insisted to herself. He’d only failed to surprise her.

Until tonight.

Now she couldn’t make up her mind whether or not she liked such surprises.

“I’m incapable of being silly.” He made the remark in such dire earnest, it might have been amusing.

But Felicity was not inclined to laugh.

“You make it sound like a crime,” she chided him. “It isn’t. There are far too many silly people in this world, and they cause no end of trouble for us sensible folk. These two youngsters of ours, for instance. The way you barged in here tonight leads me to believe
you’re no more in favor of this ridiculous elopement than I am.”

“Of course I’m not.” Thorn looked offended that she might believe otherwise. “My sister is much too young to know her own mind when it comes to an important matter like marriage.”

Ivy Greenwood could be no more than eighteen, Felicity reckoned. The same age at which she’d embarked on her own misadventure in matrimony.

Thorn shook his head. “And, as you’ve said, they are a vastly ill-suited couple.” He glanced heaven-ward. “My sister—the wife of a scientist. Ivy is sweet-tempered and goodhearted,” he amended, “but rather…”

“Impulsive?” suggested Felicity. “Fickle?”

Thorn looked ready to contradict her, then he shrugged. “You’re probably right. I imagine Ivy has got it in her head that an elopement is terribly romantic. But she’s seen so little of the world. How can she know young Armitage is the man she’ll want to spend the next fortnight with, let alone the rest of her life?”

“How, indeed?” Felicity expelled a sigh of relief. She and Thorn were in agreement about this situation, at least. They had all the same reasons for wanting to stop her nephew from marrying his sister.

Almost all.

She had an additional one that Thorn must not know about on any account. The same reason she had ended their affair prematurely when she would much rather have lingered to the very last second of the Season then perhaps made plans to take up where they had left off again next year.

Now, that could never be, just as her nephew marrying into the Greenwood family
must
never be.

“We’re in agreement, then?” Thorn cursed himself for having let that remark about boring her slip out. What could be more tiresome than a cast-off lover who refused to take his leave quietly? “They must be intercepted, made to see sense and brought home.”