Temptations of a Wallflower (17 page)

She would turn to ashes in an instant, and everything she'd known and felt before this moment had been a pale shadow of experience. But with his hands, his lips, his body, he communicated to her all the need in his heart. All the wicked, wonderful things he wanted to do with her. She had only to say the word, and it would be hers. Everything would be hers.

He broke the kiss with a gasp. “That is a yes.”

“It is a yes,” she agreed. “If we tell my parents before we wed, they'll try to stop it.”

Jeremy's lips tightened. “Your father won't be pleased.”

“No,” she answered candidly. “Is that troubling?”

The look in his eye firmed with resolve. “Not for myself. But I won't have him hurt you.”

“I can't be hurt.” She smiled, replete. “I have you.”

“The sentiment is appreciated.” He cupped her face
between his big, warm hands. “But romanticism has to face certain cold realities.”

“Whatever my father does or says cannot matter,” she answered. “All that counts is what we feel for each other. And that isn't simply romanticism speaking. It is the unshakable truth.”

Jeremy smiled at her, warmth in his eyes. She hoped her own showed confidence and assurance. Because she truly did not know how her father would respond to his only daughter marrying so far beneath her. Winning his approval would be a challenge. One that she wasn't certain she could overcome.

She didn't know, either, if the Lady of Dubious Quality could continue to exist when Sarah became Jeremy's wife. Sarah needed her. She needed Jeremy, too.

They were going to have to make a leap together, hand in hand. But where they landed . . . no one could know.

“What of you, my lady heart?” he asked me. “I know so little of you.”

“You know all of me,” I answered.

“That is but one part of who you are,” he pressed. “Give me all your treasures.”

I hesitated. My life was one marked by privilege and luxury rather than the want and rootlessness that were the hallmarks of his own existence. We were creatures from two very different worlds . . .

The Highwayman's Seduction

“
H
ow do you expect me to greet this news, Sarah?” her father demanded, sitting on the other side of his desk in his study. His face was set, his hands clasped in front of him. He regarded Sarah and Jeremy, seated before him. The rain steadily drummed against the windows like impatient fingers.

“With joy, I'd hoped,” she answered him as evenly as she could.

“Joy?” Her father exhaled. “By special license, you two have gone and married. There's no joy to be found
in such an alliance. Duke's daughters are meant for more than becoming vicars' wives. And you've gone and thrown yourself away, without even
consulting
me.”

The wedding that morning had been small and hasty. Two paid witnesses and the priest. A cold rain falling. Sarah had worn one of her better dresses, but it hadn't been a wedding gown with acres of lace. Hardly the stuff of girlhood dreams.

“If you'll forgive me, Your Grace,” Jeremy said firmly. “My father is the Earl of Hutton. Your concern about her stooping to marry me is unfounded.”

“Is it?” her father challenged. “You are a third son. The likelihood of you inheriting a title is practically nil.”

“I have no intention of inheriting,” Jeremy countered. “I have a profession, and one that will provide very well for Sarah.”

“But not in the manner to which she's become accustomed,” the duke returned.

“Which matters not at all to me,” Sarah threw in.

“You say that now,” her father said pointedly. “With the glow of a newlywed. But what about in a few months' time, or a year, when the bloom is off this youthful fantasy, and you long for London life—its Society, its pleasures and luxuries?”

“Have I once, in my life, expressed a love of those things?” she disputed.

The duke glanced away. He muttered half to himself, “Always secreting yourself in the Green Drawing Room whenever you've got the chance. I don't know what you do in there all day.”

“Things that don't require London Society, pleasures, and luxuries,” she noted, glancing quickly at
Jeremy. No one could ever know—not her husband, not her family—what she did in that drawing room.

Worry and regret stabbed her. Secrets would follow her into her new marriage.

“And what of all the other suitors that offered for you? You rejected them but wed
this
man?” her father pressed. He looked at Jeremy. “I must speak frankly, sir. We are talking of the fate of my only daughter, and I won't let social niceties stand in the way of her future security. If the wedding took place only this morning, we could obtain an annulment.”

Before Sarah could speak, Jeremy said, his voice hard, “Your Grace, all that matters is Sarah, and her happiness. I cannot promise her fathomless wealth like those other men. Nor a houseful of servants and a carriage of her own. I have only my heart, and my constancy. Those things will always be hers.”

“Prettily said,” her father replied. “But I worry that such sentiment cannot continue through a lifetime together. Status, safekeeping—these are the foundations of a lasting union.”

“Then it shouldn't matter that I'm the daughter of a duke and he's a vicar,” Sarah interjected. She gripped the edge of the desk in front of her. “The men you spoke of, that parade of Society's finest scions, they cared nothing for me. They looked at me and they saw
you,
Father. Your wealth, your title. I was simply a cypher. A means of acquiring a country estate and a fine entry in
Debrett's.
It wasn't
me
they wanted.”

“But I want Sarah,” Jeremy continued resolutely. The light from the rain made him glow softly, handsome and unyielding. “It doesn't matter if you approve
or not. She agreed to be my wife, and the bond has been sealed before the eyes of God.”

Her father rubbed the space between his eyebrows, as he always did when troubled. Sarah and her father had never been precisely close. He was a man of great consequence, so their paths crossed infrequently. She knew him best from the other end of the dining table—a dignified, slightly intimidating presence that required good behavior and polite, somewhat impersonal conversation. She had always been her mother's project, not her father's, so he'd passed Sarah on to the duchess with a distant smile and a pat on the cheek.

This was, perhaps, the longest conversation she'd had with him.

“Father,” she said quietly, “I come to you as a gesture of good faith. I'm of age now. I can marry whomever I like. And I did. But I'd hoped that I might have your blessing.”

The duke knotted his fingers together. “If you're worried that I'll cut you off—don't. Your dowry and inheritance are secure.”

Sarah exhaled, and she was fairly certain that Jeremy did the same.

“However,” her father went on, “you are to leave here by tomorrow morning. You will not be welcome back for six months. Correspondence to me and your mother will be unanswered during that time, as well.”

Her heart sank. She'd known, logically, that she would live elsewhere with Jeremy, yet to be cast out from the only home she'd ever known was a cruel blow. “But—”

Her father stood. “These are the cold facts, Sarah.
The decision you've made is one I cannot endorse. However,” he added, “I am not without feeling. In time, you may be permitted to visit—briefly. That is the best I can do.”

“Father,” she said, rising, and Jeremy did the same. “You are a duke. You may do precisely as you wish.”

Her father's smile was thin and wry. “How little you understand the world, my girl.”

“Your Grace,” Jeremy said decisively, “whatever you may think of me, know this: Sarah's happiness is my sole ambition.”

Her heart swelled at his words, but her father was more obdurate. “If that was the case, Mr. Cleland, you would not have married her.”

A
t this late, unfashionable hour, few riders were out on Rotten Row—only a handful of dedicated sportsmen and women too concerned about exercise to care much for the hours kept by polite Society.

Jeremy's father was just such a sportsman, preferring to take his bay gelding out for a ride when there was little chance of actually meeting someone and wasting time with idle chitchat. This evening, Jeremy joined the earl. The conversation he was about to have wasn't one he particularly looked forward to—but it had to be done.

Riding a spotted gray mare, Jeremy kept pace with his father as they trotted between the rows of chestnut trees, occasionally nodding at a passing rider but mostly keeping to themselves. With tension building inside him, Jeremy felt like a steam engine. He had to speak, but there was still something intimidating about
talking with his own father. However, only that afternoon he'd faced the Duke of Wakefield. Surely talking with Lord Hutton couldn't be as daunting. Or perhaps the task of speaking with his father was even more formidable. Jeremy cared for the duke's opinion only as much as it affected Sarah. But his own father . . . he'd always been a large, insurmountable presence in Jeremy's life, ever since childhood. Intimidation, threats . . . this was the currency of the earl's realm.

Jeremy wasn't a boy any longer, though, but a man. And a man who'd married that morning.

Before Jeremy could speak, his father broke the silence. “How fares your task?” he asked, making it sound more like a demand than a question. “The search for that
authoress
.”

Damn.
Jeremy had been involved with his own life, rather than his father's task.

“It proceeds,” he said instead. “She hides herself well. She's extremely intelligent.”

“Wily and cunning, rather.” Lord Hutton exhaled through his nose. “Which only proves that she cannot continue peddling morally depraved smut.”

Jeremy wondered if there was any other kind of smut, but he decided it was best not to quiz his father on the subject. “Have you ever read her books?”

Lord Hutton looked appalled. “God, no! I'd never waste my time with such tripe.”

It seemed so easy to criticize something with which one had no experience. Yet this, too, was something that Jeremy opted not to voice.

He had to do it. “I do have some other news,” he began. They'd reached the end of Rotten Row and had
turned their horses around to begin another lap. “I'm married.”

His father pulled up so abruptly on the reins that his gelding danced sideways. “What?”

“I took a wife,” Jeremy explained. “Entered into the bonds of holy matrimony. Tied the knot.”

Lord Hutton looked uninterested in Jeremy's attempt at wit. “To whom? When?”

“Lady Sarah Frampton,” Jeremy answered. “This morning.”

Now his father truly looked shocked. “The Duke of Wakefield's daughter?”

“The same.”

For a moment, Lord Hutton seemed incapable of speech. He stared at Jeremy, the distance between their two horses seemingly as wide as the English Channel. In all his life, Jeremy had never seen his father appear so utterly at a loss, and it startled him a little to see the older man thus.

“I . . .” Lord Hutton cleared his throat. He never cleared his throat. “I wasn't even aware that you knew Lady Sarah.”

There was a considerable amount about Jeremy that his father didn't know. Much more, ever since he'd come to London.

“We've come to care for one another during the time that I've been in London,” Jeremy said. “We knew her father wouldn't approve, so we married by special license today.”

For a moment longer, Jeremy's father continued to stare at him with amazement. Then his expression shifted to one of reserved happiness.

“My congratulations,” Lord Hutton finally said, a small smile creasing his face. It was the first time Jeremy had ever received felicitations from his father—even when he'd been ordained as a priest, he'd gotten a handshake, but that had been all. Not today. A rising feeling of pride awakened in Jeremy's chest.

“You've landed quite a rich catch,” Lord Hutton crowed.

Disappointment shot through Jeremy at his father's words. So that's what this was about. Seeing Jeremy not as a man capable of earning the love of a worthwhile woman but as a fortune hunter.

“Her dowry is not why I married her,” he said coldly. He nudged his horse into motion.

His father was quickly at his side, looking utterly baffled. “Why else?” he wondered. “The gel's a wallflower of the first water. Hardly much besides her money and title to recommend her.”

Fury gripped Jeremy—he'd never felt such rage and disappointment toward his father, not even when he'd forgotten his birthday two years in a row. Those were minor slights, but to insult Sarah . . . that was intolerable.

“Whatever you may think of her,” Jeremy said tightly, “she's my wife now.” He nudged his horse into a sedate walk. His father rode beside him. “The duke isn't happy with the union.”

“Has she been cut off?” His father looked alarmed.

“She's packing right now. The duke wouldn't permit her to stay under his roof for more than a night.”

“But what of her finances?” the earl pressed.

“Those are untouched.” Yet he'd seen the hurt in Sarah's eyes when her father had made it clear that relations between them from now on would be strained. Curse the man for causing her any pain. But Jeremy would give Sarah a lifetime of happiness, as much as he could possibly bestow, to ameliorate that hurt.

Lord Hutton exhaled. “That's good.”

“But I am putting my search for the Lady of Dubious Quality on hiatus,” Jeremy went on. “I need to spend time with my new bride.”

His father didn't look pleased by this announcement, but he must have realized that to insist otherwise would have been contrary to his own trumpeting of morality.

He mulled over this prospect. Then, “It was a small wedding?”

“Yes. It's better that way.” It hadn't felt odd that his father hadn't been there, but his mother would likely be hurt by the suddenness and smallness of the wedding. “Sarah spends the night at her father's, and then we leave for Devonshire at first light.”

They reached the end of Rotten Row, and in silent agreement, they guided their horses onto one of the other paths.

“Not going to spend your wedding night with your bride?” His father frowned. “Aren't you impatient to bed the girl?”

Heat crept up Jeremy's collar. He didn't like speaking of this with most people, especially his father. His desire for Sarah came from his heart and body. It was something private and personal between him and Sarah alone. Yet the marriage rites were public, in a way, much as he disliked the idea.

“I want to truly make her my wife soon, yes,” Jeremy allowed. He kicked his horse into a lope, riding ahead of his father. “But she needs the night to gather her possessions.”

Despite the discomfort of discussing such matters with the earl, excitement and fear danced through Jeremy. Soon he'd take her to bed. Notions of his vicar's morality and responsibility to decorum fled. All he wanted was to give her as much pleasure as she could take. But for the first time, he wished he had more experience besides his one night with the Widow Marley, if only to guarantee that Sarah's first time was good. Better than good. He didn't want her to regret a moment of her life with him, and if that meant the constant pleasuring of her body, then he'd gladly apply himself to the task.