Twice Fallen (30 page)

His sidelong glance was swift. “You’ve met all of them?”

In her mind they didn’t have much of a connection
otherwise, but that was at least true. “I suppose… You
know
I know Arthur. I’ve met the others at one time or another.” Her skirts brushed his booted feet, and even though his hands were currently clasped behind his back, there was a palpable excitement from just his closeness. Her relationship with Arthur had not been this way. She’d liked him, yes—thought she’d loved him—but she hadn’t felt breathless and unsettled around him, and now that she could tell the difference between deep affection for someone and falling in love, she wondered at why the underlying distance between them hadn’t been more obvious to her from the beginning.

Friendship and romantic love were very different. Once a person recognized this, she doubted they would ever make that mistake again.

“Why?” she belatedly remembered to ask, having been absorbed in studying the clean line of Damien’s profile.

His smile was faint and enigmatic. “I’m looking for a similarity between them. A common bond. The thread that ties them together.”

“Those four? Why?”

“Let’s just say I owe an old friend a favor and it seems if I fulfill that obligation, I might be able to help a few others also. Any thoughts? One of the many things about you I admire is your intellect. Maybe this needs a woman’s perspective.”

As a compliment it was nicely done. Lily smiled, pleased, warmed by his presence and the words, but she still had to shrug. “I don’t know what I could possibly tell you.”

“Anything.” He stopped by a decoratively trimmed
yew, his eyes glimmering in the illumination. “It doesn’t matter if you think it is important or not.”

What actually mattered was that she wanted him to take her in his arms. The lack of an official proposal was not so much disturbing as disappointing. Bended knee was not as necessary to her as much as hearing the words out loud.

Instead he wanted to talk about certain gentlemen of their acquaintance. “As I said, I only know several of them in passing, and one of them, poor Thomas Fairfield—”

“Died recently, I know.” Damien’s voice was curiously blank, as if he were thinking of something else. “James told me.”

“Does this have something to do with Arthur asking me if someone knew about his… secret?” She wasn’t sure what to call it.

“I don’t know, but it does make me wonder.”

Half turned away, she looked at where the moon threw shadows across the path. “Is he the friend you owe a favor?”

“No.”

“Then why are you asking
me
?”

“A valid point.” His fingers caught her chin, making her turn. “Lily, shall we forget Arthur and his troubles for now? We’re alone in the moonlight and you are extraordinarily beautiful this evening and I haven’t been able to do more than touch your hand.”

It is certainly about time
, she thought, catching the gleam of his dark eyes. She also knew that singular slow smile was a prelude to a kiss.

And then he bent his head and his mouth touched
hers, lifted momentarily, and then captured her lips a second time in a kiss that sent the blood rushing through her veins.

It was hardly decorous the way she pressed immediately against him or the fervor in which she accepted his embrace, but she didn’t care. If there was one lesson she’d learned from being the victim of vicious rumors for four years, it was that innocence did not prevent personal misery, and she was more than willing to welcome happiness now that it was hers again.

His lips were firm, smooth, infinitely warm.… She felt him groan, and reveled in how he pulled her closer. When he tore his mouth away, his breath was hot in her ear. “I might just kidnap you again this evening. How the devil am I supposed to wait for an engagement and a wedding?”

“As I recall, you didn’t.” She smiled, appeased, the stilted dinner under the eye of her family and the duchess now worth it.

“A valid point,” he said dryly, “which further illustrates my impatience. James didn’t seek to cleave out my gizzard this evening, so I suppose that is one male relative that doesn’t disapprove, and the duchess seems delighted enough. What about your brother?”

“He will ask what I want.” At least Lily could say that with perfect confidence. She and the current Earl of Augustine may not know each other all that well, as Jonathan had grown up in America, but she had learned
that
about him. He was fair almost to a fault and genuinely concerned about her future or he would never have put her into the hands of his wife’s formidable grandmother in the first place.

“And what
do
you want?” The question was soft and quiet.

Her throat was a bit tight as she answered. “A man who has a map to every hidden staircase in London. One who can pick a tricky lock in a wine cellar. One who has cohorts who abduct young ladies with ease from their bedchambers.”

Long-fingered hands grazed her shoulders, his voice like velvet. “And would you marry such a man?”

“I just might.” Lily tilted her head back, looking into his eyes. “Were he to ask.”

“Hasn’t he? How remiss of the gentleman with those dubious skills.” Damien kissed her passionately again, and maybe all young women experienced a similar exhilaration, but certainly her pulse was racing when he finally lifted his head.

“Lily… marry me.”

“Do I have an option?”

“Always.” His hand stilled in the act of smoothing up her back, the heat of his touch viable even through the thin material of her gown and underclothing. “If you want something else.”

“It was a jest.” She touched his face and whispered, “Yes. I want nothing more than to lurk in libraries together for the rest of our lives, but… how will your family feel?”

“Delighted.” He brushed his mouth against her temple, and unless it was her imagination, the exhale of his breath was in relief. “So far you have the approval of one sister-in-law, and two brothers.”

“Surely they know—”

“I am intelligent enough to choose wisely? Yes, they know.”

“I meant about Arthur… the elopement.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Not a one of them cares about idle gossip.” His grin was just a flash of white teeth. “I’m glad we have that settled then, Lady Lillian.”

For the first time, she believed it.

It had
all
happened for a reason. The insight was profound and moving. The four years of disgrace, the awful night when Arthur had broken down, told her the truth, and shattered her sheltered world, the retreat to the country to lick her wounds. She’d been waiting, and it was all worth it.

Arthur had been a mistake extraordinaire, but now that she could look back with some measure of distance, she knew why she’d been so dazzled, so susceptible. After all, he was titled, wealthy, charming, with those fair good looks.…

Lily froze even as Damien’s mouth teased her neck. He sensed it immediately and lifted his head, his gaze quizzical. “What is it? You can’t have changed your mind already, my sweet.… It has barely been a moment since I asked.”

“No… no.” She disengaged herself and he let her go as she paced to the edge of the path and stared at a bush full of overblown roses, their petals scattered on the path, thinking, before turning around. “You asked if I knew anything that would connect those men and it doesn’t matter if it seems important or not, correct?”

Immediately the lover was gone, replaced by the calculating spy. “Yes.”

“They all look alike.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Damien, all four of those men look alike to the extent that they are similar in height and coloring. Blond, fair-skinned, and of similar size. I once mistook Fairfield for Arthur from behind.”

Half in the shadows, Damien said nothing, his lashes lowered slightly, his expression difficult to read and his brow lightly furrowed. Then he shook his head. “That’s interesting, but I can’t see how it could be significant.”

Neither did she, but the more she thought about it, it was true. “I agree, but rather an odd coincidence, don’t you think?”

He entered her bedroom without the formality of a knock, but then again, it was late, the house utterly quiet, and rapping on her door hardly discreet.

Just the beginning of his sins for the evening. Damien intended to be very
indiscreet
indeed.

It wasn’t every day a man became engaged. Not officially, of course. He still needed to speak with Jonathan Bourne, but by all accounts Lily was destined to be his wife, and the kiss in the garden had been extremely satisfying, and paradoxically, not satisfying enough.

What was the use of being a spy if one could not slip undetected through enemy lines? It wasn’t done as smoothly with his pronounced limp, but apparently it could still be done.

She was asleep, he saw in the slanting moonlight, curled on her side, her hand outstretched. The rich abundance of her hair spilled around her slender shoulders and her breasts moved with each slow exhale.

Perhaps he should just leave, he thought, standing there, wondering why this young woman moved him so much. From that first moment in the library when he’d turned around and seen her sitting on the settee, he hadn’t been himself.

Maybe part of the problem was that he didn’t know who Damien Northfield was any longer. Not a valuable spy, helping defeat Bonaparte.… That part of his life was over. Not the heir to a dukedom—his brother had a son—and that was more than fine with him, as he’d never wanted the title anyway.

So who was he? Or he might ask who he wasn’t. A husband? A father? What if Lily already carried his child? It was possible.

The odds were it might be even more possible after this evening.

Quietly he undressed, his movements measured but fluid, stealth a familiar friend. The room held a hint of her fragrance and it tantalized him—a reminder of her warm, smooth skin. That he shouldn’t be there was not in question, but that he was certainly brought home some disturbing truths, not the least of which was his lack of patience now that he’d made up his mind.

Lily wouldn’t insist on an elaborate wedding. That he knew of her. She was far too sensitive under her composed exterior to want to subject herself to a large society affair where she was the center of attention.

He didn’t want that either, so it was fine with him. The sooner they married the better. If he was willing to wait, he wouldn’t be there now, sliding back the coverlet and slipping in beside her, running his fingers through the silk of her hair to wake her gently.

“Shhh.” He watched her eyelids flutter and then come fully open. “It’s me.”

“Damien?” Confusion crossed her features for a moment as she obviously registered his presence in her bed. She half sat up, her hair delectably disheveled. “What are you doing? Are you mad?”

It was not the first time she had asked him that, and if he remembered correctly, the last inquiry had turned into an immensely pleasurable interlude.

“I must be,” he said with amused equanimity, “to risk the duchess storming in at an inopportune moment to toss me out on my ear. Can we please keep it to low whispers? While I am not afraid of facing a French battalion, I admit she does intimidate me a bit.”

“She would also intimidate a French battalion,” Lily muttered in a lower tone, looking young in her nightdress, the garment quite similar to the one she’d worn when Sharpe had delivered her on his doorstep.

“Make the risk worth my while, then.” Damien heard the huskiness in his voice as she realized he was naked and aroused already, propped on one elbow. He watched the progression of emotion cross her features. Surprise, a certain feminine wariness over having a large predatory male so close, and then, to his gratification, a shy welcoming in the way she visibly relaxed, her gaze straying to where she could see his bare chest.

“James might burst in and kill you,” she said as he reached for her but going easily into his embrace, her arms slipping around his neck.

“I’m still more afraid of the dowager,” he said, murmuring the words against her lips. “James couldn’t freeze me into an icicle with a glare, so at least I would have a
fighting chance. Women are, in my experience, more frightening than men.”

“Am I?” She touched his hair, her blue eyes wide in the insufficient light.

In answer he kissed her. Not like the kiss earlier in the garden, but with open hunger, shifting her underneath him, his hand sliding up her thigh under the lawn of her nightdress. The first time had been an introduction for them both, an awakening in that he was the instructor and she the innocent pupil, but the level on which they played this game was different now. They were engaged, she was no longer the uncertain virgin, and he wanted her with a need that had sent him to this irresistible rendezvous in the first place.

His brother Colton would be scandalized.

Robert would be amused.

Brianna would be delighted.

No doubt Lily’s family would want his blood.

But at the moment, he didn’t care. His hand slid up to cup her left breast, his thumb circling the taut nipple through her night rail. It was a small lesson in self-awareness to know he’d envied his brothers their personal happiness without actually realizing it. True emotion for the woman in a man’s arms meant a great deal.

Perhaps it even meant
everything
.

He’d never experienced such flagrant desire, his cock throbbing now to the beat of his heart, his skin hot, the feel of her softness and curves enough to make him forget the rest of the world. “Lily,” he said on a low groan, “far too much separates us. Let me undress you.”