The Golden Season (34 page)

“Bah!” Eleanor said dismissively. “It is not the same at all. They were still people of influence. Lockton can only promise Lydia poverty and anonymity.”

“They may begin poor,” Emily allowed. “But he does not seem the sort of man who would remain that way long if given the proper opportunity. As for anonymity and Society, Lydia deserves to discover who she is when the public, and Society, is not looking. You and I, we already know her caliber and her character. Her kindness, loyalty, and generosity. I believe Captain Lockton does, too. He
loves
her, Eleanor.”

“Love,” Eleanor snickered. “How long will his love last? How can he match what I have already given? Years of love and care and guidance.
Years
, Emily.

“And what of you?” the duchess went on. “Do you think they will invite you to live with them when they haven’t the wherewithal to keep even themselves in a reasonable fashion? And in what capacity, my friend? As a maid? A nanny?”

“I should like to be a nanny,” Emily replied, faraway fondness softening her eyes.

Eleanor made a sound of disgust.

Emily reached out to touch Eleanor’s hand. “Eleanor, if Lydia did not love Captain Lockton, I would not be pressing this matter. But Lydia does love him. And he loves her.” She met the other woman’s gaze. “If you convince her to marry someone else, eventually she will end by becoming one of us: a woman who runs off with her lover to feed her starving heart; or a woman for whom her husband had so little regard he abandons her in an asylum; or a woman so embittered by years of mistreatment she no longer believes in love.”

Eleanor drew in a thin hiss of breath, startled and pained.

Emily met her gaze with sad sympathy but no compromise. “Is that what you want for Lydia?” she asked.

Eleanor’s gaze fell to her hands clutching each other in her lap. “No,” she whispered. “No.”

“I’m sorry, old man,” Borton said gravely. He stood with his hat in hand, just inside Ned’s library door. Having delivered his news, he was preparing to leave. He couldn’t leave quickly enough for Ned’s sake. It took all Ned’s self-possession to simply stand.

“I didn’t want you caught off guard when you heard it. I thought it best coming from me,” Borton said.

He had come to report that Childe Smyth had proposed to Lady Lydia Eastlake and fully anticipated her consent before the day was through. He had heard Smyth himself, at Boodle’s not an hour before. He was being congratulated by his cronies.

“Yes. Thank you.”

Ned heard the door open and click shut as Borton left, and he turned toward the window overlooking the garden behind his rented rooms.

Lydia was meant to be his.

He couldn’t afford her.

He should never have written.

He was not an impulsive man.

He could not bear the thought that she imagined he could touch another woman, make love to another woman.

He could not live with the idea that she thought he didn’t know her.

He loved her.

She was going to marry Childe Smyth. Wealthy, debonair Childe Smyth.

He loved her.

Bloody hell!

He pounded the wall at head level and let his fist lie there, and he leaned his forehead against it. He heard the door to his library click open again and then shut. Borton with some new bit of torturous information?

“Go away. Please,” he said without opening his eyes.

He heard the light rustle of fabric, caught the scent of orange blossoms—he swung around.

Lydia stood inside his library door, enveloped in a hooded cloak. Silently, she untied the knot at her throat and it slipped like a whisper of warning to the floor. Her dusky violet eyes held his, but the lace fichu trembled over her heart.

“You’re marrying Smyth.” His tone was dead.

“No.” She shook her head. As he watched, she reached behind her and with a click, turned the key in the door lock. She dropped it to the floor.

He wasn’t aware he moved, how he crossed the room. One minute she was standing, the next she was in his arms and he was kissing her hungrily, ravenously, desperately, and she was clinging to him, her arms locked tight around his neck. He lifted her, lashing her to him with one arm and moving backward until he felt the desk hit the back of his thighs. Then he swung around, his mouth still locked to hers, and leaned over, sweeping his free arm over the desk, sending the contents flying across the room.

He seated her on the desk edge and gently eased back. She anchored herself, holding hard to his shoulders. He followed her down, his tongue moving against hers as he nudged his leg between her knees. Her thighs opened eagerly, inciting madness, and he slipped his hands beneath her, hands filled with the soft mounds of her bottom, lifting her, pulling her against his hardness.

She purred deep in her throat and his mouth slanted over hers, feasting on the gorgeous sounds, his tongue stroking hers in the most erotic of dances, tasting her. Instinctively, her hips lifted and pulsed in a primal reaction against him. His body tensed to rock-hard readiness in response, and reason fled in the face of desire as raw as it was unquenchable.

He tore his mouth away, raising himself up over her on braced and trembling arms. “Lydia,” he said hoarsely.

Her eyes opened and she reached to pull him back down.

“God, Lydia, there are limits to what I can resist,” he ground out. “What I can bear.”

“Are there? I suspect there aren’t. I suspect you can resist anything.”

She wasn’t making sense. He shook his head, desire making his thoughts sluggish. “We’ve got to stop.”

“No,” she whispered raggedly. “Not this time. Dare you turn from me now and I swear to you I will never be here to turn away from again.”

She swallowed and his gaze fell on the sight of her flushed throat like a predator.

“I have tried to convince myself that I am not like Caro Lamb,” she whispered, “that I do not love so tempestuously and that reason rules my passion. At least, it always seemed so to me before.”

He looked down at her, torn between a desire to comfort her and make love to her. Her dark brown hair spilled across the surface of his desk, her lips slightly swollen from his kisses, her gaze seeking reassurance.

“You are not like Caroline Lamb,” he reassured her.

She shivered, her eyes filling with fear, and reached up to stroke his cheek. He closed his eyes, drinking in the carnal pleasure of her voluntary caress. “With you. For you. I may be,” she murmured softly. “I love you. Recklessly, stupidly, uncontrollably. Passionately.”

“Dear Lord,” he breathed.

“I love you,” she said, the eyes searching his face filled with qualms, “but I would rather leave here now and never return than be the ridiculous partner in an unequal love, always wanting more until one day you grow tired of being asked for something you cannot give, and leave me.”

“Never,” he vowed hoarsely. “I will never leave you.”

“How can I know that when it is so easy for you to pull away from me, to deny me, to deny this?” Her fingertips skated along his jawline and brushed over his lips.

His pulse hammered in his veins, his muscles burned with the tension of holding himself in check. “What would you have me do, Lydia?” he asked, helplessly, nearly overwhelmed by desire. Only the thinnest thread of honor connected him to his resolve to do what was right. “How can I win? You have offered no honorable way for me to win you.”

For a long moment she gazed up at him and then a sad, crooked smile touched her lips. Regret darkened her eyes.

“You are right,” she said. “I have left you no honorable way to win me. So we shall both lose.”

She rose onto her elbows and he lifted himself, his hands braced against the desk on either side of her. “Lydia.”

She reached out and gently laid her hand on his chest. He trembled. “Let me go,” she said softly.

“Never,” he muttered and, seizing her wrist, pulled her roughly up and into his embrace. “Never.”

His mouth fell on her in hungry desperation. For a second, she did not react. But then, with a low moan of capitulation, she lashed her arms around his neck and opened her mouth beneath his.

He wrenched off his coat, dropping it to the ground. She tore at his shirt, sending the buttons skittering across the floor. He pushed the silk from her shoulders, tugging down her bodice until her breasts were bared. He broke off their kiss and carried her across the room, lowering her to the leather couch and hissing with pleasure at the feel of her soft breasts crushed beneath his naked flesh, her nipples hardening into pebbles.

His head dipped down to the side of her neck and he traced the elegant line of her throat with his tongue, stopping at her earlobe and nipping it. She shivered and he sucked it gently, moving his hand down to cup the soft, warm mound of her breast. Lord, she was sweet, soft, pliant, and supple. Honey. Brandy. Silk and velvet. Heated and slickery. Salty and clean. Every texture and flavor of sensuality.

His breath became ragged as he charted a sensuous course down her neck and shoulders, lifting the plump breast to take the nipple in his mouth and suck. She cried out, arching, her hips pumping lightly, instinctively, in a dance as old as time.

He reached down and pulled the panel from the front of his breeches and sprang free, hard and heavy, and then he yanked her skirts to her waist. Lust raked him, desire melted all restraint. He wanted, he
needed
to feel her around him, to take her, have her, join to her.

He clasped one of her knees and raised her leg, hitching it over his hip, her silk stocking sliding against his waist, erotic and sleek. She reached beneath his arms, her hands curling up around his broad shoulders, her fingers digging into his flesh. His reached between them down to the juncture of her thighs. The flesh there was soft and sleek and hot. He stroked the warm folds open and she bucked, her eyes flying wide. He shifted over her, covering her, one big hand holding her thigh high over his waist, keeping her open to him, the other moving, petting, caressing her.

He watched her as he moved his finger gently inside her, watched the progression of expressions on her gorgeous face. Shock. Alarm. Excitement. Hunger.
Need
?

Not yet.

Slowly, her body began to move in incremental answer to each slow thrust of his finger. A thin sheen of sweat glazed her breasts and shoulders. Her hips undulated and he lowered his head, sipping kisses from her half-parted lips, her eyes dazed and fixed as he brought her slowly to crisis.

A whimper broke from her lips and her gaze tangled with his and she gasped, “Ned? Ned?”

He could stand no more. He pulled his hand from between them, gritting his teeth against heeding her cry of protest, knowing the torment of unfulfilled need—he’d lived with it for weeks, months now. He clasped her other thigh and hooked her knee at his waist.

Instinctively, she shifted, locking him tight against her. He felt the muscles in her thighs tense and carefully, with mind-shattering discipline, eased the head of his shaft into her, then waited for her to retreat.

Instead, she moved beneath him, her hands grappling at his shoulders, her hips lifting and falling in unconscious rhythm, drawing him deeper inside right to the portal of her maidenhead. She winced, her eyes widening and darkening and he muttered an oath. She arched against the couch and he buried his face in the lee of her shoulder and neck.

“Be still!” he rasped.
Don’t let me hurt her
, he prayed. “Don’t move.”

“I have to,” she sobbed, caught between pain and pleasure. Her legs wrapped tighter about him, destroying his resolve. “Please!”

He thrust into her in one long, searing slide and forced himself to still. Her body closed like a velvet fist around the thickened length of him. He closed his eyes, fighting to remain still. She pushed at his chest, making some space between them. He looked down into bruised and anxious violet eyes. Anxious to trust him.

It had to be good for her. She had to know some measure of the lust he felt. He had to give her a release. He slipped his arm beneath her and rose to his feet, still buried deep in her body. Her skirts rucked up around her waist, her breasts pushed over the rent neckline. She looked floozy and carnal, her hair wild about her shoulders, her nipples tight, mouth parted, panting and disoriented and needful. She gasped as he lifted her, rising to his knees and pivoting, turning, still buried deep inside her.

He shifted her legs so that she straddled his lap, her knees resting on the cushion on either side. He lay back. She stared down at him, uncertain as he cupped the underside of her breast, massaging the soft flesh, his thumbs playing with the silky, distended nipples. Her back arched and her mouth opened as she drew in a shaky breath, her head falling back, her long brown curls sweeping over his thighs.

He played with her until a moan escaped her lips. Then he caressed her in one long sweep from breast to belly to thigh and then to the soft triangle of mink brown curls between her legs. He found the hard nub between the hot, slick folds and pressed it with his thumb.

She jerked, bracing herself with her hands spread wide on his naked chest. He stroked her again. She looked down, her hair falling like a curtain around them. He clasped her hips in his big hands and, holding her shadowed gaze, slowly lifted her up, her hot, tight core dragging against his sensitive member, sending a quake through the muscles of his chest and arms.

“Ned?” She undulated against him and he ground his teeth.

“Easy, love,” he murmured thickly. “I have far less self-discipline than you think or I shall need if you are to find your finish.”

He pushed slowly up into her, seating himself deep within. Her eyelids fluttered. He withdrew again and this time when he pulled her down onto him, he thrust a little harder, his thumb covering her clitoris to make the contact deeper, richer. She cried out. She was so tight. Too tight.