Lady Lyte's Little Secret (22 page)

Thorn could just imagine the furious buzz of tattle that would ensue if certain persons there knew what he and Felicity had been up to in recent days. Hard as he tried to dismiss such worries with the contempt they deserved, he could not quite manage it. Shame seeped into his spirit, cold and slimy as a bucketful of slops poured over his head.

What did he have, after all, besides his spotless reputation? No title. No fortune. It behooved him to preserve his good name. Not only for himself, but for the sake of his family.

However, when Felicity’s hand returned to provoke his desire anew, propriety fell by the wayside, like an unsecured article of baggage off the boot of the coach. He angled himself around to engage her lips, while his hand fumbled beneath her cloak to brush against her bosom.

With a squeak of surprise, Felicity’s eyes flew open. So she’d truly been asleep after all.

“I…didn’t mean to wake you.” What a fool he felt! “Only, you touched me, and I thought perhaps…”

Felicity salved his embarrassment with a low chuckle as sinfully rich and sweet as a cup of chocolate, a luxury in which Thorn Greenwood seldom indulged. “Pray don’t apologize, my dear. Whatever you thought, I can assure you I heartily approve.”

Then she shocked Thorn quite speechless by unfastening the buttons on the lap of his breeches and sliding her fingers in to investigate the effect her touch wrought upon him.

“One seldom wakes from such an agreeable dream,” she murmured in a husky tone that stirred Thorn almost as much as the feel of her hand, “only to discover it is quite real.”

Once she had thoroughly tantalized him, she withdrew her hand from his breeches and launched herself onto his knee. There she commenced to grapple with the buttons of his shirt, all the while kissing him into a frenzy.

“We…really oughtn’t carry on like this,” he protested in a passing moment of reason, even as his hands made a liar of him by roaming over the tempting curves of her body.

“Why ever not?” Felicity pulled his neck linen loose. “Can you suggest a more diverting pastime to idle away the hours until we reach Preston?”

“Hardly.” Well, he couldn’t lie, could he? “What if someone sees us, though?”

“You must be joking!” Her breath came in rapid spasms.

After she had kissed him breathless, as well, she
gasped, “The light is too dim and the carriage is going too fast for anyone to mark what we are up to.”

“But…your servants…”

The husky chuckle that greeted his suggestion was laced with only a little bitterness. “I can assure you that after serving my husband for so many years, no one in my employ would be so foolish as to stop the carriage and fling open the door without warning.”

Thorn recalled the blind eye all her staff had turned on their relationship. It had never occurred to him that they might be accustomed to such goings-on.

Propriety was not his only concern, though.

“There’s only so much of this…a man can stand…” he stammered.

His face was probably glowing in the dark like a red-hot coal!

“Is
that
what you’re worried over?” Laughter gushed out of her. “Well, there’s no need to be. I haven’t the least intention of working us up to a pitch of passion, then leaving us unsatisfied.”

“But…a carriage…”

She silenced him with the tip of her forefinger pressed against his lips. “I can see we must begin to cultivate your imagination, dear heart.”

The next thing Thorn knew, Felicity had hiked up her skirt and straddled his lap, her bare bottom warm and welcoming against the open flap of his breeches. Even if he could have phrased a coherent protest from the seething turmoil of his thoughts, he could never have forced the words out of his constricted throat.

She twined her arms around his neck and began nuzzling her way up his throat. With every delicate kiss and nibble, she tore great gaping holes in Thorn’s
token resistance. By the time she reached his lips, he could think of nothing but how much he wanted her.

Not only in his arms, but in his life.

All trace of restraint seared away, he cupped one hand beneath the soft rounding of her backside. The other he let dally between her parted legs while he kissed her with the pent-up ardor of a lifetime. When he felt her quiver in the grip of the same delirious need she had excited in him, he let Felicity push his breeches down over his hips. She expelled a shuddering sigh as he buried himself deep within her.

Every sway and lurch of the vehicle sent pleasure pounding through him on heavy hooves.

Thorn braced his feet against the opposite seat and gave himself up to the wildest carriage ride of his life.

A ride whose destination lay but one stop short of heaven itself.

Her late husband had been a skilled and considerate lover. Felicity would have been the last to deny it.

Even after other parts of their marriage had soured, on those increasingly rare nights when Percy had come to her bed, she’d still been able to fool herself into believing he cared for more than her fortune. Indeed, if it had not been so, she might never have felt the need to take a lover after her husband’s death.

Yet in the time since she had first made the intimate acquaintance of Thorn Greenwood, she’d discovered a more profound fulfillment than she’d ever hoped to find. It made no sense, for she hadn’t chosen him on the basis of an overwhelming attraction. From their very first night, she had tried to hold something of herself aloof. But the harder she had struggled, the deeper she had fallen.

Now, as she clung to him in the darkened carriage, spent in the most delicious way, Felicity knew she had fallen too far to turn back without an effort that might wrench her apart.

Before she could stop it, a sigh seeped out of her.

Thorn stirred. “Is something the matter, dear heart? I…this…didn’t hurt you, I hope.”

He touched his lips to hers with such tender restraint that she felt quite ashamed of herself for entertaining the slightest doubt about her feelings.

“Hurt me?” She endeavoured to mask her unease with a flippant answer. “No, indeed.”

Nor never would he, either. Never hurt her, deceive her or betray her.

“If I had to stifle a cry, just now, it was for the opposite reason, entirely.”

“I could say the same.” Thorn pressed his cheek against Felicity’s hair and inhaled deeply, as if to glut himself on the scent of her. “I fear you will make a wanton of me yet, woman.”

Beneath his jesting tone, Felicity sensed a faint note of true disquiet. For reasons she could not fathom, it coaxed her to make her own admission, disguised in banter.

“And I fear I will become a slave to my desire for you.”

There, she had voiced her anxiety. The sense of being powerless against her growing love for Thorn Greenwood made her uneasy. She had only known true power and control over her life since she’d become a widow. Before that, she had been prey to such unhappiness. Not even moments of ecstasy like she had just experienced would be worth so harsh a price.

Thorn gave a quiet chuckle, that wrapped around
her heart in a warm embrace. “I vow I shall be a kind master to you, if you’ll be a kind mistress to me.”

How could she resist such an entreaty? How could she entertain such foolish fears when Thorn held her in his strong, dependable arms? She must find some means to atone for doubting him.

Tell him about the baby, perhaps?

No. She could not yet bring herself to do that, even though she could guess how happy the news would make him.

Once Thorn knew of it, their child would bind her to him even more firmly than marriage vows. Though the prospect of parting from him had pained her, the notion of never being able to part from him, or any man, still haunted her.

The child was his, too! her conscience protested. Thorn had a right to know about it. A right to know that he was not giving up the chance for a family by wedding her.

She would tell him. Just not today—not this moment. Soon, though. Perhaps it could be her wedding gift to him.

Wedding…?

“It does seem a terrible waste…” Her voice gathered fresh conviction with every word. “…to travel all the way from Bath to Gretna Green, then come away with no wedding to show for it.”

“All the money you paid for inns and tolls,” agreed Thorn. “Not to mention the wear and tear on your carriage to make such a journey.”

A silence fell between them, broken only by the muted hoof-beats of the horses, bearing them mile by mile closer to Scotland. Felicity willed them to gallop faster.

Fast enough to outstrip her silly doubts.

“Do you mean what I hope you mean, Felicity?” Thorn swallowed hard. “Or am I only dreaming?”

She lifted her face to him, unable to see more than a shadow in the darkness, yet somehow conscious of the dear, hopeful light in his eyes.

“The way I was dreaming a little while ago, you mean?” she asked. “Then woke to find it true?”

“Those are the best kind of dreams…when they’re good.”

“Shall I pinch you?” She let her hand rove down beneath his open waistcoat and unbuttoned shirt. “To make certain you’re awake?”

“Oh, no you don’t!” He flinched from her touch, his body shaking with soundless laughter. “I’m prepared to take it on faith.”

“Does that mean you won’t protest if I haul you in front of a parson when we reach Scotland?”

“Not a peep.” He cupped her face in his large capable hands and drew it toward him for a deep, delicious kiss to seal the bargain.

“Do you suppose we’ll be able to prevail upon Oliver and your sister to stand as our witnesses?” Felicity asked Thorn the next evening as their carriage drove the last few miles to the border town of Carlisle. “After we’ve forbidden
them
to get married there, I mean?”

Thorn shifted in his seat and flexed his shoulders to relieve the tightness in them. He’d be pleased to stretch his limbs soon and still more pleased to put these long days of driving behind them.

“They just might, you know,” he said. “Especially if we make it clear we don’t mean to prevent them
ever
marrying. We only ask that they slow down a little and make certain this is what they both want.”

Thorn could picture it all. “I’m certain that, given her choice, my sister would vastly prefer a nice church wedding in Lathbury with lots of guests and a pretty, new dress to a slapdash affair in Gretna Green.”

Realizing how that must sound, he began to stammer out an apology. “Not that
our
wedding will be a slapdash affair…it’s just…”

There was something less than respectable about a Scottish elopement. It smacked of fortune-hunting. He’d assured Felicity he cared more for her than he cared what gossip would say about him, and that was true. But it didn’t mean he’d ceased to care about his reputation altogether.

“I believe I know what you mean,” said Felicity. “I’ve had one fine wedding with many guests. But I’d far rather have a quick, quiet ceremony in Gretna Green
with you
.”

“You’re right, of course, my dear.” All the same, he couldn’t help feeling that if she’d been proud of their connection, Felicity might have favored a more public wedding.

Perhaps she guessed something of what troubled him. “At least taking part in our wedding would give Ivy and Oliver a valid excuse for having run off to Gretna. If people are busy gossiping about you and me, no one will have a word of censure to spare for them.”

Thorn could not resist the temptation to rally her a little. “That sounds like an unselfish scheme if ever I heard one.”

“A momentary lapse, I assure you!”

Though he doubted she could see him, Thorn shook
his head. “If I didn’t know you better than that, my dear, I should not deserve to marry you.”

An expectant pause.

“You deserve far better than me.” All trace of laughter had deserted her voice.

He gathered her close to him. “Come now, you can’t mean that.”

“I do, though.” She sounded more like a plaintive child than like the vibrant, forceful woman who had captured his heart.

Thorn doubted many people got to see this side of her character. He felt privileged to be among that few…possibly the only one.

“Nonsense.” He had comforted and jollied his sisters out of similar moods over the years. He knew what to say. “You’re tired out from all this—we both are. Things will look better tomorrow. See if they don’t.”

“Perhaps…”

“Of course they will. You can lie in as late you want tomorrow while I keep watch for coaches coming up London Road heading for Eden Bridge. Once we’ve rounded up Ivy and Oliver, we’ll both be able to breathe easier.”

“What if we fail, though? What if they’ve been a jump ahead of us the whole time? That seems to have been the way of it ever since we left Bath.”

Much as he wanted to reassure her, Thorn could not gainsay the possibility. “Don’t let’s borrow trouble. We’ll deal with that if we have to, but on a full stomach and after a sound night’s sleep. Yes?”

He felt her head move in a tentative nod.

“Very sensible. I need a sensible man like you to keep me on an even keel.”

“And I need an exciting woman like you to shake me out of my comfortable rut.”

“We are good for each other, aren’t we, Thorn?” She turned her face up to him. “Even though we seem so much at odds?”

The sweet moist warmth of her breath tickled his side whiskers. And made the fine hairs on the back of his neck raise in a faint chill.

“We
are
good for each other. We will be happy together.” Surely if he infused his voice with sufficient conviction, Felicity would believe it…and so would he.

Chapter Sixteen

“A
ny sign of them yet, Ned?” asked Thorn as he emerged from the inn on Carlisle’s market square after a restless night’s sleep.

So many long days trundling north in Felicity’s carriage had left him with a subtle but unshakeable sense of that movement. He’d kept waking up, expecting to find himself back on the road. Once awake, he’d had a devil of a time falling back to sleep. Despite his assurances to Felicity last evening, he could not help worrying that they might fail in their task.