Sinful (26 page)

He’d never felt his heart fill with emotion, or his soul come alive when eyes, glazed with passion, met and held his. He had never made love until he reached for Jane’s hand and pulled
her up, encouraging her to watch him enter her body. She watched, wide eyed, as her body took him in and loved him.

When he could no longer fight off the desire to spill himself, he pulled her to sit atop him, wrapping her thighs around his hips while he buried his lips in her hair. His hands squeezed her lush bottom, forcing her up and down, driving her to take all of him.

He’d never experienced love until she clasped his head to her breasts and clung to his hair, her hips moving instinctively as
she
made love to
him.

“Loveliest Jane.” The strangled endearment was ripped from his throat and with a rough shout and a final deep, penetrating thrust, he pulled out, allowing his seed to splash between the cleft of her bottom.

For minutes they sat, clinging to the other, arms clutching and hugging, faces buried in each other’s necks, a fine sheen of perspiration trickling down her back and his chest. Slowly he came back to earth, his angel still secured in his arms.

He looked at her, traced the freckles on her nose, then kissed each one, sighing as he did so. “I love you, Jane Rankin,” he breathed, holding her tightly. “I love you more than you will ever comprehend.”

They walked back together, hand in hand, stopping to watch the swans swimming. Stepping behind her, Matthew wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her neck. “I adore you, Jane,” he murmured. “It was not the height of orgasm that made me say it.” Jane felt light, as if she was floating as she turned in his arms. “I love you, Jane,” he said, his lips lowering to hers.

She kissed him, and caressed his cheek. “I love you, as well. So much.”

He captured her hand in his and brought it to his lips. “You’re going to have dinner tonight with me,” he whispered, kissing her fingers. “In the cottage. Just the two of us.”

“And will you paint me?”

He tweaked her nose. “Yes, naked with blossoms scattered around.”

Jane kissed his knuckles before she released his hand. “I’m going to see Sarah now. It’s been hours since I’ve checked on her.”

“All right, I’ll meet you shortly, I have some business to attend to.”

Jane walked the short distance to the house, lost in thought. She was in love. Oh, God, she was in love with Matthew, Lord Wallingford. And he returned that love. It still astonished her.

They hadn’t talked of the future, no plans had been made, but Jane felt it, that deep, abiding connection that would see them through. They were of different classes, but that did not matter, because what they had defied the strictures of money.

Strolling into the house, Jane passed Her Grace who was walking alongside a young woman dressed in the height of fashion.

“Miss Rankin, won’t you come and be introduced to Miss Jopson?”

Obediently, Jane strolled to where they stood outside the crimson drawing room.

“Miss Jopson,” she murmured as she curtsied.

The woman eyed her with amusement. She did not return the curtsey. “This is Miss Rankin, our little nurse that I was telling you about.”

“Ah, yes,” Miss Jopson said, her eyes glittering with what Jane thought was malice. “Charmed.”

“Miss Jopson will soon be joining our family,” the duchess murmured. “Won’t you wish her well, Miss Rankin?”

“Indeed.” She was confused, not comprehending exactly what position this Miss Jopson was going to be filling.

“Well, it’s teatime,” the duchess announced as the hall clock began chiming. “Good day, Miss Rankin.”

The door promptly shut in her face.

Jane had never cared for the duchess or the way she seemed indifferent to everyone, especially Sarah.

Determined not to let Matthew’s stepmother sour her thoughts, Jane ran to Sarah’s room only to find her gone.

Not bothering to change, Matthew barged into the drawing room, eliciting gasps as he slammed the door shut behind him. In the room were his father, stepmother and a young woman whom he supposed was going to be his wife.

Miranda, his scheming stepmother, spoke first. “Wallingford, meet Constance Jopson. Won’t she make a lovely bride?”

He glared at his stepmother and barely looked at his prospective bride. “I won’t be marrying her, or anyone else you pick out.”

Miranda’s eyes glittered. “Make him see reason, darling,” she cooed, brushing her hand along his father’s arm. Clearing his throat, his father glanced curiously at Constance. “Oh, Miss Jopson and I have spent the morning having a little tête-à-tête. It is all out in the air, Your Grace.”

Matthew glared at Miranda who smiled and rose from her chair to look out the window. Just what damn deal had she struck?

He caught Constance’s cool expression and realized that she was a younger miniature of Miranda. His stepmother caught his gaze from across the room and smiled knowingly, setting his hair rising on his neck.

“You will marry Constance,” his father announced. “It’s been all arranged.”

“No.”

His father’s right eye twitched, and he glanced at Miranda who motioned him on. His father pulled at his cravat as if it was choking him. “If you do not, then I will send Sarah away to an asylum for the insane.”

His world came crashing down. “No,” he roared, thundering toward his father. Miss Jopson wisely jumped up from her chair and ran for the door, opening it, preparing to flee. His father stepped back, but maintained his position.

“She will be locked up, shut away from the world with all the other idiots no one wants.”

“I want her!” he stormed.

“And you have no rights to her or her care. I am her father and I will decide what it is best for her.”

“And locking her away where she will be mistreated and ignored is your idea of what is best for her?”

“Then marry Constance, and she’ll be safe.”

There was a gasp at the door, and Matthew snapped his attention to the horrified sound.

Jane.

He ran to her, but she disappeared down the hall and out the front door. Miranda followed him into the hall. When she smiled, he pushed her back against the wall and wrapped his hand around her throat.

“How could you?” he snarled. “How could you do this to your own flesh and blood?”

She clutched at his wrists, clawing for air, and he squeezed, wanting to crush the windpipe he felt beneath his hand.

“You know I love her, and you can’t stand it.”

He thrust her back and she coughed, falling onto the floor.

“I won’t let you take her away from me.”

“It’s too late,” she gasped. “She’s already gone. She’ll return once you’ve agreed to the marriage.”

“I won’t,” he roared. “I’ll tear this house down looking for her. I’ll search the countryside, but I’ll
never
marry Constance Jopson.”

Miranda sent him a scathing sneer. “You pathetic fool, she’s already been taken away, and you’ll never find her. Never.”

Jane ran until her lungs burned, till she couldn’t see any longer. Until she was at the temple and leaning against the wall, crying.

What had she thought? That they could be together? There was no future for a woman like her and a man like Matthew. He was going to be a duke, and she was…nothing.
Nobody.

And Constance Jopson. She sobbed as she thought of the beautiful, fashionable creature. She was perfect for him, the sort of wife he should have on his arm.

But what they had done, what they had shared that afternoon, it had been more than their bodies. They had held one another, touching and whispering. They had confessed their love—and she had believed him.

“Jane.”

He came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her, holding her tight. Rocking her, he whispered in her ear. She held on to him, sobbing, not caring that she was acting silly. He had made her no promises, offered her nothing but pleasure. It had been her own naïve fantasies that had made her think that they had a future together.

“Jane, I must,” he whispered, clutching her. “I’m sorry.”

She flung herself from his arms. “Why?”

“Because I must wed,” he said, coming to her and taking her hand. “But it needn’t interfere with us.”

She slapped him hard across the cheek. When he looked at her, his eyes were dark, stormy. “I love you.”

She hit him again, hating him. “And what am I to be?” she cried. “Your…whore?”

He held her wrist. “My lover? My mistress?”

That word ended any hope she had of any sort of future with Matthew. She could not be a mistress, not Matthew’s, not any man’s.

“No.”

“Jane,” he said in a nauseating placating tone that made her want to slap him for a third time. “Be reasonable.”

She couldn’t. Not when her heart was breaking into a million tiny pieces.

“I need you to understand that this is out of my hands.”

“Why must you marry her?” she demanded.

“Because she is who my father wants.”

“And you have no say?” His gaze flickered to hers, and the muscle in his jaw tightened.

“No. I have no say.”

“I don’t believe you. You’re a liar,” she spat.

“The truth is, Jane, that I must. They will send Sarah away to a lunatic asylum if I decline. You know she won’t survive that. She won’t…” He looked away and fisted his hand against a pillar. “I can’t let her go, Jane.”

“And what of me?” she asked, trying to stem the pain in her voice. “Will I just go on and survive, then? Why? Because I am tougher? Because I am not a lady?”

He took a step closer, and reached for her, but she backed away, stumbling as tears clouded her vision. “Or am I just easier to replace, and therefore, the logical choice to go?”

He looked at her with such agony that Jane knew the answer.

“Don’t make me choose,
please,
” he begged.

“I’ll make it easy for you, my lord. You won’t have to.”

She turned and walked away, and he roared her name, which she ignored. He came after her, stomping down the incline. He grabbed her arm and she pulled viciously, freeing herself from him.

“Jane, don’t leave this way.”

She didn’t reply, but she picked up her skirts and hurried her pace. She was going to sob uncontrollably and she didn’t want to do it in front of him.

“Jane, please, you don’t understand. I can’t let her go.”

But he could let
her
go, and the knowledge was killing her.
Despite the pain, Jane continued marching down the incline. She had no idea that he had followed her until she felt his touch on her arm, halting her.

“I can’t choose, Jane.” Her heart broke and she looked away, but he caught her chin and forced her to look up at him. His gaze faltered, and he looked away, then immediately it swung back to her.

“Jane, Sarah is my child.”

The words were out. His shameful secret was known.

“Your child?” she asked, the words just a whisper. He hated to see the tears in her eyes, the pain his actions were causing her. He longed to wipe them away, but he knew he no longer had the right to touch her—not with his filthy hands.

“My daughter. Yes.”

She stumbled, her expression dazed. He helped her to sit, and he sat down beside her, wishing he could hold her. He needed her now, more than ever. Her mouth opened, then shut. She looked at him, then away. He feared her response, the horror of her thoughts as she wrote the story in her mind.

“I was fifteen when Miranda, my stepmother, came to me one day in the stable.” He stopped, blinked a few times and took a deep breath. He had never said the words aloud—to anyone.

“I was big, nearly full grown. She used to look at me,” he said, unable to say the words. “And…and…”

“Don’t,” Jane whispered, tears were streaming down her face, but he couldn’t stop, not now that the words were out.

“That day in the stable, she cornered me. She had been looking at me for months, leading me on, a glance, a brief touch, whispered innuendos. I…I didn’t know what to think. But that day,” he said in a quiet voice, “she came to me. She dropped to her knees and undid my britches.”

“Oh, God,” he heard Jane whisper beside him, but he had to go on. The words were spilling out of his mouth.

“She handled me so well. I’d never been touched, only by my own hand.” He closed his eyes, refusing to relive the visuals that threatened to come upon him. “I was so damn hard,” he said through gritted teeth. “And when she took me into her hand, and then…into her mouth…” He clenched his jaw. “Christ, I didn’t want it to end. I…hated it, seeing her there between my legs with my cock in her mouth, but I liked the way it felt. She made me watch, her eyes looking up at me. It was wrong and shameful. She was my father’s wife. But she was only twenty-two at the time and had already given him two daughters. I hated her, but I loved what she did to my body. She would come to me in the dark and wake me with her mouth. She tutored me in sex, and it became dark and disturbed.

“I hated her more for what she was making of me. I tried to degrade her, but she liked it, found the perversion titillating. It destroyed me, Jane.”

She reached for him and held him, her tears trickling into his hair. “She raped you.”

He looked up at her and shook his head. He wished to God he could lie and say she had, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t lie to Jane. “No, Jane. I agreed. I wanted it. Sometimes, I searched her out, too. Some nights I lay in bed, playing with my cock, hoping she would come to me.”

He lowered his head and rested it against her breast, hiding his face from her gaze, ashamed by this necessary admission.
“It was my first sexual experience, Jane. I was only fifteen. I didn’t know how to control my body or my needs. I was just learning about sex, and Miranda…she taught me to use and be used. And all the time she told me not to tell. Who was I going to tell?” he scoffed. “She was my stepmother, for Christsakes. No one has an illicit affair with their stepmother, and at fifteen.”

“Matty,” she whispered kissing his brow. He clutched at her gown and rubbed his cheek against the swell of her breast.

“It went on for months, and then she became pregnant with Sarah. She came to me in a panic. She was pregnant and had not slept with my father in months. We planned his seduction, and she convinced him that she had conceived that night. I tried to break it off, but she wouldn’t hear of it. I tried,” he said, clutching Jane. “But she would return to me night after night, and when you’re fifteen, Jane, and hard whenever the wind blows, you want it. God, my body wanted it so much that it won out over my mind. I hated her, even as she pleasured my body. She would come to me, pleasuring me as my child grew within her. It disgusted me what we were doing, especially when I saw what I had created with her. But I…I couldn’t stop, Jane. And then she had Sarah.” He paused and looked up at her. “I named her, you know. When I saw her, I loved her. Not because of Miranda. But because she was a piece of me.
My own.
Miranda hated that I loved Sarah. She was perversely jealous. The summer I was seventeen, Sarah was turning two. I was leaving for university and Miranda didn’t want me to leave. We were still…fucking,” he said, remembering those times with disgust. “On the day before I was to leave, I met her down by the lake. As I crossed the bridge, I saw something floating in the lake. And then I saw Miranda, she was holding Sarah beneath the water.”

Jane held on to him, clutching him as he began to tremble.
“I thought she was dead as I pulled her out. But she lived, and she is how she is because of me. Because of what I did with Miranda.”

“Matthew,” Jane sobbed. “My heart is breaking.”

“Then, stay, Jane, because the thought of you leaving is making my heart break, as well. Stay because I need you. Because I love you. Stay because I cannot live without you.”

Later that evening, after Jane had had a bath and cried until she had no tears left, she sought out Matthew and asked him to walk with her.

He followed, silent, pensive, until he reached for her hand and brushed his thumb over her knuckles. Stopping her, he kissed her palm, and then wrapped it around his cheek. “Stay.”

She closed her eyes, blocking the desperation she heard.

“I can offer you everything you could ever want, Jane.”

She looked away, biting her lip. No, he could not. It had taken hours for her to admit that. Hours of introspection and tears and heartache.

“Jane, look at me.”

They were standing on the bridge with the sun setting behind them. He lifted her chin, and she saw him through a veil of mist. She heard his breath catch. His voice shook.

“You undo me with your tears, Jane.”

“I do not mean to.”

“Your happiness is now vital to my existence,
you’re
vital to my survival.”

“Matthew, it cannot be. To skulk and hide…to love in secret like it is a crime, a shame—”

He held on to her, stepped close to her so she was forced to tip her head back to see him. “Is it so very bad to want me, Jane? To want the pleasure I feed your body and soul? Is it so very sinful to love me?”

Am I that sinful?
The question burned in his eyes. Reaching for his hand, she brought it to her lips, kissed his chafed knuckles and pressed his hand to her warm cheek. A tear fell from her eye, and she let it roll down and splash onto his hand, where it trickled between his fingers.

“Jane, I live for you now,” he whispered, his voice breaking. “How can you not know that? How can you not believe it?”

She believed it, felt it with every fiber of her being. She lived for him, as well. Her heart beat for him, and always would.

“Jane, believe me when I tell you I can give you everything you ask for, and things you don’t. I will hand you the moon and stars if they be your desire. I can make love to you every night, every morning. I can let you touch me. I will cherish those touches, will welcome them—
crave them.
”

“But you cannot give me the one thing I have yearned for my whole life.”

He sucked in a breath, his hand trembled in hers. “Jane—”

“You cannot give me respectability, Matthew.”

He exhaled long and deep, a tortured sound from deep in his wounded chest. “What is a piece of paper worth when it’s only a signature? What does it mean when the heart is not in it? It means nothing, Jane. It is just a document. I have spoken of my love, my feelings. I have given you something much more important than my name, I have given you my trust. My body. My heart.”

He tipped her chin up and smoothed his thumb along the wet trail of her tears. “What I have shared with you—my love, my body, the secret I have kept for seventeen years—it is more sacred, more powerful than any wedding vow. Jane, you are my confidante, my helpmate, my friend. My lover. You are everything the word
wife
means to me. In my heart, we are wed. In my soul, you are mine. Does the title mean so very much to you, Jane?”

His fear shone in his eyes and she ached to soothe it. “No, Matthew, your title means nothing to me. I do not need to be a countess. I do not aspire to be a duchess. I only aspire to be your wife, in name, Matthew, not in a higher, philosophical plane. But the mortal plane, where society dictates the rules. I do not want to be hidden away in a cottage by the sea, waiting for you to come to me. I do not want to be called whore or mistress. I do not want any children we might be blessed with to be labeled bastard.”

He squeezed her hand hard, fighting to keep her within his clasp. She gripped him back, showing him the violence of her feelings. “Jane, you are breaking my heart.”

“I am broken, too, Matthew. I wish it could be different for us. But if we are to stay true to ourselves, then we must do what is best for us. You must marry Constance to save Sarah, or hate yourself…or worse, hate me for making you choose. And I must leave you, because you cannot offer me what I need. Passion. Love. Lust…it is so very strong between us now, but will it be that way in a year? Two? Will we despise ourselves later for our weakness now?”

“Shh, don’t say it, Jane.”

“I could never make you choose between Sarah and me, Matthew. It is not in my nature to do such a thing. You are an honorable man, and I would not ask you to do something that would mar your sense of right and wrong. It is right to do this, to give Constance your name. And while I wish it could be me, I can say that I have fallen even deeper in love with you today, knowing the sort of man you are.”

He reached for her, held her about the shoulders. His eyes were glowing with unshed tears. “Stay, Jane. I have not asked for anything since I was a ten-year-old boy chasing after my mother’s carriage…but I am asking now…no, I am
begging
you.
Don’t leave me!
” Crushing her to his chest, he buried his
face in her hair. She felt the warmth of his tears trickle down her neck, and she clutched him tight, holding him safe. “Don’t leave me, Jane…don’t, please.” He shuddered.

“I will never fully leave you, Matthew. Somehow I think you know that. A part of me will always belong to you, as you will always belong to me. What we’ve shared cannot be taken from us. I will clutch the memory of you—of us—to my breast for the rest of my days.”

He clung to her, murmuring over and over, “No. No, you will not leave. I will not allow it. I forbid it. I can’t bear it. Jane, I will not know how to go along without you. I cannot go back into the cold, not when I’ve been thawed by your warmth.”

Standing at the window of his study, Matthew watched as the door of the carriage shut behind Jane. Their gazes met, and despite the fact that Jane had asked that he not see her off, he had not been able to resist one last look at the woman who had changed him, who’d awakened not only the man, but the heart inside him.

Jane…
Resting his flattened palm on the glass, he tried to connect with her, if only for a fleeting second.
I need your touch…

Despite the silence, Jane heard him and his desperate plea. Her own small hand, devoid of a glove, rested against the carriage window, holding him palm to palm, despite glass, brick and mortar. The sun chose that moment to shine, illuminating the copper curls that had escaped her bonnet, and the glistening trail of tears that slid down her pale cheeks.

Pressing his forehead to the cool glass, he held her gaze, her palm, his eyes pleading with her.
Don’t go. Don’t leave me.

Suddenly he was ten all over again, running down the lane after the carriage that was carrying his mother away. He had
been hurt and confused then, afraid of the future. He knew now what the future would bring for him and he could not bear it, couldn’t stand to awaken to another morning without Jane lying there beside him. Could not endure feeling his newly mended heart shatter once again.

I love you,
he mouthed, and watched as she covered a sob with her hand.

The driver cracked the whip, and slowly the heavy coach lumbered forward. He watched her leave him, the black carriage rumbling down the gravel drive. His palm and forehead still rested on the window until the carriage was nothing more than a tiny speck on the horizon.

He was heartsick. Devastated. Numb.

Jane was gone, and with her, she had taken his heart. His pleasure. His reason for living.

Come back, Jane,
he pleaded as he closed his eyes.
Come back.

“I see the nursemaid has left at last. A wise decision.”

The coldness of that voice cut him to the quick, and he found his old armor, his indifference, his contempt, his tongue that could cut down anyone unfortunate enough to be caught by it.

“You will not come into this room unannounced ever again.”

Constance laughed as she shut the door behind her with a soft click. “Why? Is this where you entertain your little nurse?”

“You will never speak of her again, do you hear me?”

Softly she came up to him. He watched her movements in the reflection of the glass. She circled behind him, much like a shark circling an unsuspecting swimmer. Oh, she was every inch a predator. He saw her scheming expression and he hated her. Despised everything she stood for.

“Very well, my lord. Now that the obstacle is rid of, let us get to the ground rules of our alliance.”

He whirled on her, his voice dripping with coldness and venom. “The ground rules are, we will be married and you will be the Countess of Wallingford. Once my father dies, you’ll be a duchess, entitled to all that the position allows. But you will
never
be my wife.” Her eyes flared, and he stepped closer, intimidating her. “In exchange for my title, you will keep out of my way until I summon you. Then you will lie on your back, and I will fuck you for however long it takes for you to bear the next heir. For your sake, I do hope you’re proficient.”

She had the audacity to smile. “Proficient in bed?” she asked. “Like your little whore, the nurse?”