The Book Of Scandal (18 page)

He lay on the hay beside her, his lips on the nape of her neck. He slipped his hand into the open neck of Evelyn’s nightgown and cupped her breast, squeezing it gently, feeling it swell and warm in his hand, rolling the peak between his fingers. Evelyn sighed, then drew a slow breath and pushed her breast against his hand. He realized he could feel her breath in him—when she breathed, he felt the draw in his own lungs. When she sighed, he felt the breath leave his body.

Nathan moved his hand down the smooth plane of her belly, his fingers sliding into the soft curls at the apex of her legs. He kissed her neck, catching a bit of her hair at the corner of his mouth as his fingers slipped between her legs and into petal-soft folds slick with desire. He stroked her, his fingers dipping deep inside her, then out again, swirling around her tiny peak, faster and faster until Evelyn began to gasp softly and press her hips into his cock.

The heat in her body was swirling in his. He could feel her in his blood, could feel her heart pulsing in his veins. He took her ear between his teeth, pressed his cock into her hips, moving against her, sliding up and down as his fingers danced at the very core of her.

In his dream, she whimpered and closed her legs around his hand, squeezing. She arched her back, her breath coming in ecstatic little gasps that swept through him, thrumming in all his nerves. With one last moan, her body slackened, and she slowly drifted away from him, disappearing into the ether of his dreams.

Nathan lay in the hay, his body aching for release…until he thought of the horses. He began to wonder where they had gone. Where had the horses gone? Donnelly would be frantic…

He tried to get up and find them, but his limbs felt dead. The door was suddenly thrown open, and a rude and blinding light filled the stables…

Stables.

Nathan groaned. He wasn’t in a stable at all, but in his bed. “What in the devil are you about, Benton?” he snapped. “You must harbor a secret desire to shovel coal, sir!”

“Not Benton. Me.”

Evelyn’s voice startled him. In the ravaged corners of his mind, he worked to understand what she was doing in his room and tried to bolt upright. But only one arm would move. The other arm, and one leg, for that matter, felt oddly restricted. He opened his eyes.

His gaze landed on Evelyn at the foot of the bed. Her bed. She was dressed, but her hair hung loose around her shoulders. She had her arms folded and was drumming the fingers of one hand against her arm. “You owe me an apology,” she said simply.

Nathan glanced around him. He could not begin to imagine how he’d ended up here, in her bedchamber—good God, what had he done? The last thing he remembered was losing fifty pounds to Lambourne.

“Well?”

She was smiling wickedly, one brow cocked high above the other. He glanced up; his wrist was bound with a silk stocking to the poster of the bed. A tidy little slip knot was tied high up the post, out of his reach. His leg, he noticed further, was bound at the ankle to the post diagonally across from his bound arm.

“May I ask why I am bound to your bed?” he asked hoarsely, wincing at the pain in his head.

“Because you owe me an apology.”

“All right, I apologize.” He tugged at the restraint on his arm. “Perhaps you might tell me how I came to be here.”

“You may ask your companions why they thought to bring you here.”

Lord. His head was throbbing. He needed his own bed. “All right then, you’ve made your point, Evelyn. Let me up.”

“Not until you apologize,” she said.

He closed his eyes, rubbed his fingers in them. “I apologize. Profusely. Completely. With all that I am, I apologize,” he said, and opened his eyes.

“For what?”

He couldn’t begin to name all his transgressions, but he was aware the list was quite long. “For…everything,” he tried lamely.

She shook her head, sending a curtain of golden hair spilling over her shoulder. “That’s not quite good enough, Nathan.”

All right, then—she was going to make him pay dearly for this. “I beg you, madam, my head feels as if it might explode at any moment and all over your lovely and expensive linens. I feel like a bloody fool for having somehow ended up in your bed trussed up like a Christmas goose. I apologize. Now please let me up.”

Evelyn chuckled in a way that sent a little shiver of fear up Nathan’s spine. “Do you honestly believe that is apology enough?”

“No,” he admitted. “But I hoped.” He tried to kick free of his restraint. It was useless—she’d apparently been very studious when he’d taught her how to tie a slip knot.

Evelyn laughed at his efforts. She walked around to the side of the bed and peered down at him.

Nathan smiled, too. Charm was the only defense left to him. Perhaps she would take pity on him.

But when Evelyn smiled back, it was the smile of a woman who held all the cards. She surprised him by picking up her skirts, stepping up onto the bed, and straddling him, sitting on his abdomen. With her knees squeezing his ribs, she put her hands on his shoulders, holding him down, and then leaned over him so close that her hair spilled onto his chest, and her face was only inches from his. “You owe me an apology, Nathan,” she said silkily.

Her lips were so wet, so plump and enticing, and so close to his. In spite of his predicament, all he could think of was kissing her.

“Apologize.”

“I apologize,” he said, and he meant it. “Whatever it is, I apologize.”

“Apologize for abducting me. And drinking to excess.”

“My sincerest apologies for it all—especially drinking to excess.” He caught her hair in his free hand and lifted his head, tried to kiss her, but she laughed lightly and moved her head just enough that he couldn’t reach her.

“Now apologize for leaving me to face my demons alone.”

“I didn’t know you were coming down to supper,” he muttered, and tried to nip her lips again, but again, she moved just out of his reach; her hair brushed across his mouth. He smelled lavender, and his body went hard with want. “I didn’t know, love. On my word, I didn’t know. Kiss me, Evie,” he growled. “Untie me and kiss me.”

“I scarcely mean for leaving me to face my supper alone, Nathan. For leaving me to face my grief alone.”

She was serious. Bloody hell, she was serious. “I didn’t leave you alone, Evie,” he said earnestly. “You wouldn’t let me help you—or I didn’t know how to help you. But I did not leave you alone, I swear it.”

She slowly sat back, considering him, her eyes searching his face as she moved ever so subtly upon him. Up and down. Up and down. “Then please do explain how we could have drifted so far apart when we needed to be so close?”

Not only was she serious, but she expected him, in this miserable state, to explain how the scaffolding of their marriage had collapsed. He shook his head. “I can’t rightly say. I have often questioned it myself.”

Her eyes dipped to his mouth, to his shoulders, and to his eyes again. “You owe me another apology.”

“I can’t possibly guess what else—”

“For your chums bringing you round,” she said, her eyes narrowing dangerously. “And being constantly underfoot.”

One corner of his mouth tipped up, and he caressed her shoulder, her arm. “They are rather underfoot, aren’t they? I apologize, darling. Sincerely, deeply, I apologize.”

“Oh, Nathan,” she sighed, and bent forward, brushed her lips so close to his that he could have sworn she touched him. He strained to rise up and meet her, but she kept just a hairsbreadth of distance between them. She did it again, and then glided down his body, feathering his chest and abdomen with tiny little kisses. His body reacted; his blood began to rush. “Oh Nathan…poor Nathan…” she whispered.

She was driving him mad. He struggled beneath her, one hand on her head, the other one straining to come free of its ties.

“Poor, dear, Nathan,” she said as she reached the waist of his trousers. She nipped at the buttons with her teeth, then suddenly rose up and climbed off him. “But the apology for your friends wasn’t good enough,” she said with mock sadness, and twirled around, walking away from him.

“Evelyn—”

“I am going down to breakfast, my lord,” she said breezily, and stepped before the mirror at her vanity to check her appearance.

“Evelyn!” he said gruffly. “You will not walk out that door! Untie me!”

She laughed as she sailed out of the room, leaving him trussed to her bed with silk stockings. “Evelyn!” he shouted. Her response was the unmistakable sound of a door closing. “Ah hell,” he moaned, letting his head drop back. “Bloody, bloody hell.”

Nathan came to a rather heartfelt conclusion after Kathleen, her face as round and red as an apple, untied him. He stood up, thanked her, and walked out of the room, his thoughts clear and focused in spite of the ringing in his ears. He was sick unto death of apologizing. He was weary of treading lightly around his wife. But he was beginning to understand her needs, and he’d made a decision: he would court her. He would court her, woo her, seduce her back to him, and by God, he was going to return to her bed whether she liked it or not.

E velyn needed a place where she could think. What had happened in the middle of the night had been…extraordinary. From the moment he touched her she couldn’t—wouldn’t—stop him. She wanted to feel his arms around her, his lips on her skin. She had wanted him inside her—moving, caressing, breathing inside her.

She’d never felt desire as sharply as that.

There was no place she could go to quiet her mind, no room without a memory to confuse her even more. So she walked, her head down, her eyes on the carpet, thinking. How long she walked, she had no notion.

She pressed her cool hands to her warm face as she recalled the way he’d stroked her body, so reverently, so provocatively. The memory of it stirred her again, snatching a small gasp of breath. One small touch, a single touch, and her body had raged with thirst for him.

Yes, but when the sun rose, she was still furious with him for falling into her bed swimming in his cups. She was still furious that they lived like this—he and his friends, she in her rooms. How many times had his friends come to Eastchurch in the years they were married and diverted him, keeping him out, keeping him away in pursuit of tawdry sports?

She was furious that he’d forced her from London, furious that she’d ever felt as if she had to escape there.

And she was livid with the world at large that things hadn’t gone differently for them, that they hadn’t borne a healthy son, or that they couldn’t seem to navigate the sea of emotions after Robbie’s death.

She was furious, and she was only beginning to realize she’d been furious for a very long time.

As she pondered that, her eye caught sight of a stain on the carpet.

Evelyn drew up. She knew that stain—it had been made by a little hand who couldn’t stay out of the ink-well.

She knew precisely where she was and drew a steadying breath. She’d managed to avoid it, but she’d been lost in thought and suddenly found herself in the one place she promised herself she would never ever lay eyes on again.

How could she have been so careless?

Staring at the nursery’s green door with pale cream trim, her breath shortened. She almost expected Robbie to come toddling out, that look of joyous wonder on his upturned face. She could see him in the room beyond that door, sitting at the little table and chairs, his feet just scraping the floor, or sleeping in his tiny bed. She could see him standing on the stool before the basin, happily splashing the palm of his hand in the ice-cold water. She could see the wooden blocks stacked neatly in the corner alongside his wooden animals. A cow. A dog. His pony.

Her heart was beating rapidly, pounding the breath from her lungs. Evelyn pressed a hand to her breast, turned her back to the door, and walked quickly in the other direction, fleeing the room that held so many vivid memories.

She didn’t slow her step until she reached the foyer. Benton was there, laying out hats and gloves for the gentlemen.

“Good morning, Lady Lindsey,” he said congenially. “If you’ve not yet broken your fast, a light repast is served in the family dining room. Lady Harriet has taken her breakfast with Kathleen.”

“Thank you,” Evelyn said.

Lord Donnelly was the only other person in the dining room besides a footman. He sat with his head hanging over a cup of tea. When Evelyn slammed the door behind her, he winced painfully and laboriously pushed himself to his feet. “Good morning.”

“Good morning, sir!” Evelyn smiled brightly as the footman went about laying a place for her at the table directly across from Donnelly, who rubbed his forehead as if it pained him.

Evelyn took her seat, calmly lifted her heavy silver fork, and let it drop onto the very fine china plate. The resulting clatter made Donnelly jump a good foot in the air. “How clumsy of me,” she said sweetly when he gaped at her. “I beg your pardon, you don’t look well, sir. Late night?”

“All right then, you have every right to be angry,” he said, sparing them both the need to pretend. “But what were we to do with him?”

“Oh, you must think nothing of it, my lord,” Evelyn said with an airy wave of her hand. “I’ve grown quite accustomed to it. It’s certainly not the first time someone has carried that old dog to a bed.”

“It is the first time I have done so, madam,” Donnelly said, bristling a little. “It is unlike Lindsey to fall so far into his cups.”

“It’s quite like him, actually,” Evelyn disagreed as the footman poured tea. She hardly needed Donnelly to tell her about the many nights of Nathan’s drinking, or gambling, or hunting parties that ended only God knew where.

“I assure you, it is not,” Donnelly argued. “Granted, there was a time…but he doesn’t care for drink as he once did.”

Evelyn raised a brow.

Donnelly frowned. “Yes, all right, as of late he’s had a bit of a thirst. But I assure you he—”

The door suddenly opened, and speak of the devil, Nathan strode through. He looked, Evelyn thought, rather remarkably virile, particularly given his condition last night. So virile, in fact, that she had to look down at her tea…she couldn’t help the small smile that curved her lips at the memory of him trussed up in her bed.