Lynne Connolly (22 page)

Relief released some of my tensed muscles. If we had Hart’s support, we’d win through.

“Ah, Pitt, it’s good to see you this evening.”

I hadn’t noticed Mr. Pitt until he bowed to me. I must have been deeply concerned not to notice his vital presence. I curtseyed, and he gave me his arm to lean on. Hart left to talk to the rest of his guests and I realised, finally, what was going on. Hand to hand, the most powerful men in the room were showing their support. I commenced strolling with Pitt, discussing trivial matters, dropping a little information about my bruise, avoiding the curious stares of people who glanced at me and then away again, in the most casual manner.

The quartet at the plinth at the end of the ballroom, who’d previously been playing light airs, switched to a minuet, a signal that the dancing was about to begin. A stir announced the entrance of John Kneller, but he appeared with little élan and joined a group of people close to the door. I tried to ignore him. Instead of blue, he wore pink tonight, very noticeable, very flamboyant, but without the detail that distinguished Richard’s appearance.

Richard approached me and, after exchanging civilities with Pitt, led me on to the dance floor. “You are, as always, my love, my saviour.”

Next to us stood John Kneller, his arm elegantly adorned by Lady Sarah Whittington, one of the season’s loveliest debutantes.

Richard danced superbly, especially the minuet. He added nuances to the elegant measures of the dance, turned a dance of courtship into something more, something sensual that nobody could stop watching.

Despite my increasing bulk, I could keep up with him, although mostly as the recipient of his attentions rather than the centre of attraction.

Tonight he chose to show me off. He never took his attention from me, ignoring the actions of his son, who could dance very well and elegantly but with a lack of feeling that made Richard appear like the genuine article and John a mere imitator. A pity he tried to outdance Richard this evening, especially when Richard remained oblivious to him.

He was Romeo, Paolo, a most gallant Benedick, the epitome of every lover who’d ever adored a lady. Not a man who would visit a notorious club and engage in vicious activities with women of exceedingly loose morals. He only had eyes for one woman.

Me.

Although I knew the performance was mainly to further our story, to chip away at any credence of the Drurys and John Kneller, underneath lay plain truth, truth he’d convinced me of without doubt. I was his last and now his only. And he was mine, except he’d been my first too. I could respond without guile because of this truth.

The music stopped and an appreciative pause fell before the pattering of polite applause. Of course the spectators could have been applauding all the couples on the floor, but for this first dance, instead of the usual crush only ten or so couples occupied the space. Richard ignored them, but offered me the support of his arm.

This time nobody moved away. I sensed a restraint in some quarters and we didn’t push the issue, only stopping to talk to people willing to meet us. Some people still avoided us. If they didn’t move away in an obvious manner, we didn’t meet with them in our two circuits of the ballroom.

By that time Gervase had arrived, and Caroline and George too, and we handed the baton to them, exchanging a few smiling words before we took our leave. We had dropped seeds of our adventure to almost everyone we spoke to, and now all we could do was to leave the company to come to its own conclusion and to spread the word about the strangers setting out to attack Lord Strang and his wife. That was speculation enough.

I fell into bed completely drained, but Richard didn’t come to join me. After half an hour I went to find him. He sat by the empty fireplace in his room, staring into the void. I laid my hand on his shoulder and he covered it with his own. “You should be in bed.”

“Not without you.”

He turned his head and met my gaze, his eyes filled with regret. “I’m sorry, Rose. It appears that no bad deed goes unpunished. I never knew about him, but that doesn’t excuse what I did, does it?” His mother had removed Lucy before Richard had even known of her pregnancy. She feared Richard might marry Lucy out of hand and destroy his mother’s dynastic ambitions.

I had no patience with Richard’s previous remark. “It doesn’t excuse what he did, either. He could have come to you privately instead of challenging you last year. He could have explained the matter to you. You’d have given him an allowance, offered to provide him with what he needed. I know you would. But he chose to strike at you through me, forced you to act.”

“He could win.”

I came around his chair to kneel at his feet and took his hands in mine. “What can he win?”

“He’s already done some damage. The resemblance between us is strong, and he’s doing his best to increase it. People believe the obvious, that I’m his father. They won’t let anyone turn them. Rose, tonight our friends supported us, but others will not. Once doubt enters in, it will unbalance everything, make Gervase and his concerns suspect, destroy some of the relationships we have with people in the City and elsewhere. The Southwood fortune is not built on land and privilege alone, and we employ hundreds, maybe thousands, certainly indirectly. This boy is affecting all that. Ripples are deeper, and they’re worsening every day.”

He’d dig his own grave if I let him. This had to stop.

“If they see your lack of confidence, it will worsen. Stop it, Richard. Shall I show you why you’ll win through?”

He shook his head. “This whole mess is because I raked around as a youth and I started too early. I might have other children, but after Lucy I took as much care as possible not to make any woman
enceinte
.”
He glanced up at my face and a shadow of a smile lit his eyes briefly. “Except you.”

“And you succeeded so well with me. We’ll ensure that our children never have the treatment you had or that your mother wished on your children.”

“Even then, they could have come back when Lucy’s husband died and asked her for more. I don’t know why she didn’t do that. By then I was old enough to take responsibility for what I’d done.”

“And marry Lucy?”

He shook his head. “No, but I’d have taken care of her.”

I felt a sudden urge to talk to Lady Southwood. Perhaps I’d pay her a visit in the morning.

But I didn’t want to think of her now. I released his hands and slid them over his robe, the brocade textured and silky under my palms with the heat of his body pulsing underneath.

As always, I wanted to feel his body next to mine, and I swallowed when my mouth went dry. Since I’d passed my third month, or what we supposed was my third month, my desire had grown, and I wanted my husband at the most inopportune times. Not that I considered this one of those times. I loved him and I could prove my love now. Console him and maybe make him happier.

He watched me, eyes glinting in the light of the candles set on the mantelpiece, but he made no move to stop me. His robe fastened over his chest with two elaborate braided froggings. I slipped the toggle through the loop on each of the two fastenings and drew the sides apart, revealing the powerful chest few people imagined lurked under the fine clothes.

I could never resist spreading my palms over that expanse of flesh and muscle, and I didn’t even try to now. He lifted his hands off the arms of his chair, but I said, “No,” and he let me continue, resting his hands back down again. I leaned forward and he opened his legs so I could kneel between them and reach his body, kiss his skin. I traced my tongue around one nipple, then the other, felt the small buttons harden into arousal and heard his sharp gasp. I loved the way I could arouse him, loved his response to me.

The knowledge that he watched me made my arousal spike, and I unfastened my own gown, shrugged it off my shoulders so I could feel his skin against mine. I leaned back to allow the robe to fall away, and it tumbled around me in a slither of silk.

When I lifted my gaze to his I saw his eyes, not bleak as before but hot with need. He looked his fill, his gaze sliding over my body like a physical caress, lingering at my breasts and my belly. I smiled and returned the favour, loving the sight of his hard-tipped nipples and his flat stomach, then lower to his rising erection. When I licked my lips he moaned and slid forward, letting his head fall back.

Now I could reach it. I explored his shaft as if I’d never seen it before, never touched it, never taken it into my body. I felt the ridges under the tender head, smoothed my fingers down in a gentle spiral, never increasing the pressure on it as I knew he yearned for. He’d appreciate it better later.

His balls in their soft sac swelled under my touch, and I lifted them, weighing them in my hands, the soft hair that furred them an added sensation to my starved fingers. Leaning forward, I let my hair slide over my face, much as the silk had glided down my body a moment earlier and teased him with the soft sensation. He whispered my name, and finally I allowed my lips to touch the tiny slit at the tip.

“Rose, please.” The words made me feel powerful, wanted, and I gave him what he desired, but not until I tasted the fluid he bestowed on me. Clear and salty, the essence of him, I savoured it before I opened my mouth and took it in. It filled my mouth with a satisfying curve of taste and sensation, my tongue doing homage to the precious flesh.

I licked him, opening my mouth to allow the flat of my tongue free to float over him, from rougher, ridged skin to incredibly delicate, sensitive at the tip, ran my teeth gently over the top until he caught his breath and moaned.

He wasn’t thinking of anything but me now. I’d put money on that.

Then I sucked, closed my mouth around him and sucked as if drawing out the most precious essence, the most valuable substance known to mankind. I took him as deep as I could, wishing I could get it all in, but making the most of what I had. Holding his balls in one hand, the other on the seat of the wide chair to help with my balance, I worked him, pulled at him, and heard his moans as the most beautiful music in the world.

“Ah no, sweetheart, no, I can’t hold back.”

I would have told him not to, but I had my mouth full. I wouldn’t let him go, wouldn’t allow him to tug me away because of some misguided thought of sparing me. Greedy to taste him now, I worked him harder and faster, the wet sounds of my mouth on him driving my body into a frenzy of need. But not for lovemaking, for him. Always for him. I needed this, needed him.

With a shout he erupted and I took every drop, drank it down as the sweetest of nectar, savoured him. He gripped my shoulders, and the weight increased when his body sagged forward, but after touching a kiss to the top of my head, he removed his weight and I looked up.

He smiled down at me and offered me his hands, drawing me up so he could kiss me. “Thank you,” he murmured against my lips. “Wonderful woman. Now it’s your turn.”

I didn’t want that, so instead I got to my feet, not without a little difficulty, and led him to the bed. “I want you to hold me,” I said. “I want to go to sleep in your arms.”

I climbed into bed and he came after me to curve his arms around me and tuck his knees into the bend of mine. We lay together, as close as spoons in a drawer, and I drifted off to sleep with his warm body nestled against mine.

At some dark hour of the night, he woke me with gentle kisses on my shoulders, and then my shoulder blades, kissing down my spine in a way he knew I loved. I came awake smiling into the darkness.

He urged me on to my back, gazing down at me. He must have lit a candle because a dim light flickered, and I could make out the outline of his body. We slept with the drapes open, only a fine gauze curtain concealing ourselves from any curious onlooker, but since our rooms overlooked the garden at the back of the house, it was doubtful anyone could see.

He kissed my breasts, took a nipple into his mouth to urge it into hardness and then switched to the other to give it the same treatment. I felt every stroke of his tongue, and when he kissed lower, licking my navel, I stretched and reached for him, digging my fingers into the thick curls on his head, running them through for the silky sensation.

When he reached my cleft, he tasted it delicately, and then shocked me by drawing the pearl of flesh into his mouth and sucking hard.

Sending me right into the vortex. I arched up into his mouth, and he put his hands on my thighs, holding me in place so I couldn’t move away with the intensity of my movements. I cried his name, sobbed wordlessly. How could he do this, drive me up so hard, so fast? His tongue worked miracles, caressing as he sucked, and I lost sense of time as he drove me into one fast climax and then started on another, by now my body so sensitive I couldn’t bear any more.

But he made me, urged me up, thrust two fingers, maybe three, into me before my body clenched and thrummed, sending me into a howling peak.

When he rolled me on to my side I thought he planned to curl up and go back to sleep, but his hard erection probed between my legs. I opened for him, lifted a leg when he pushed his knees between them and rested my foot on his calf. He guided his rigid shaft into my eager body, the sound of his entry reminding me, as if I needed it, of the wetness he’d driven me to.

One hand just below my breasts, he held me close and thrust, gaining the perfect angle to drive me into madness once more. My body tingled, helpless in his embrace, but with a helplessness I welcomed and adored.