What a Lady Demands (18 page)

Cecelia hovered at the top of the stairs. Good heavens, why was she even hesitating? It was her wedding night. Lind was perfectly within his rights to expect her to spend it with him. But it would be helpful if he were here with her, because she wasn’t sure at all which bed he intended her to sleep in.

Since they’d begun their affair, or whatever it was, she hadn’t had to worry about offending his sensibilities by suggesting she sleep in Lydia’s old chamber, but they hadn’t been married then. And Lind had made the question moot by carrying her off to his chamber every night.

Now the obvious choice seemed off-limits, due to the annoying fact he wasn’t there. He hadn’t been home all afternoon, actually. After they’d seen Eversham lounging against the roadside wall in the village, he’d taken her back to the manor and insisted on riding out with half his staff to find the scoundrel.

“You can be sure he’ll be looking to start trouble,” Lind had said. “The sooner I catch him, the better.”

He hadn’t even kissed her before he set off. And what was taking him so long? She recalled his promise to tear Eversham apart, but that was mere hyperbole. Wasn’t it? Lind wasn’t literally taking the man apart joint by joint. He couldn’t be. Not that Cecelia much cared for Eversham’s sake, but she certainly cared for Jeremy’s.

He didn’t need the man he considered his father to be transported, or worse, for murder.

For that matter, Lind didn’t need that on his conscience, either. He carried enough burdens from his own past without adding her scandal to the load.

At this rate, she might as well go back to the governess’s quarters under the eaves. It seemed the safest choice, but before she could make up her mind and head up to the next landing, her annoyance at herself boiled over.

For better or for worse, she’d married him. It was best to begin the way she intended to go on, which meant staking her claim. And if it offended his sensibilities that she slept in Lydia’s old bed, then so be it. If they were to make a go of this marriage, he’d have to choose. Either he lived in his past or made something of his future.

As she was turning for the near bedchamber, the main door slammed. A moment later, a pair of feet thumped up the main staircase. The tap of a walking stick against the parquet beat a counterpoint to the rhythmic thuds of Lind’s boots.

She retreated to the top of the stairs.
Coward.
She would have to stake her claim at some point, but perhaps her wedding night was not the best time for that, not if she wished to pass the hours in more agreeable fashion. Tomorrow would be soon enough.

“Did you find him?” she asked.

“No.” Lind’s expression was thunderous. “The little weasel’s gone to ground.”

Not an auspicious beginning, but her fingers itched to ease the frown lines away from his forehead. “Have you had anything to eat?”

The man had missed his own wedding breakfast, leaving her to preside over her brother, her sister-in-law, and Jeremy. She’d deflected their questions with an invented story of some crisis or other with one of the tenants. Her brother had been none too pleased at being abandoned, but so be it.

“I stopped in at a pub or two down in Falmouth in hopes someone might have heard something. I got a bite while I was there.”

Ale, too, if her nose didn’t deceive her. “You went all the way to Falmouth? You must be exhausted.” She looked up at him from beneath her lashes and let a smile spread across her face. She hoped it was inviting. “Why don’t you come to bed?”

His gaze swept over her from head to toe. She was still wearing the gown she’d donned this morning for her wedding, an old, pale green morning dress—the best she owned, if several seasons out of fashion. It fit her form well enough, but the muslin was hardly the stuff of seduction. And if she’d thought ahead, she might have greeted him in her chemise.

She might have awaited him in his bed, naked.

Still, he reached out and dislodged a tendril of hair from her coiffure. “Don’t mind if I do.” And then he met her smile with a devious grin, one she was well familiar with by now. One that promised all manner of wickedness. “I may have to beg a service of you, though. I hope you won’t mind. I’ve been on horseback all day, and you know what that does to my leg.”

“Why, yes.” She traced a finger along her lower lip, noting how he followed the movement with his gaze. Noting how his eyes darkened and his smile faded to something far more serious and far more promising. “I believe I do.”

An erotic artist might paint just such an expression as Cecelia wore, all breathless anticipation and wicked intent overlaid with promise. A potent combination of experience that still retained a small thread of innocence. Flushed cheeks, luminous eyes, parted lips crowned with the dark beauty of her hair.

Those plump lips curled into a smile as she reached to tug at his cravat. Her nimble fingers unknotted the length of starched linen and pulled. Then she began on his buttons.

“I do hope your valet will not object if I take his place tonight.” Already, desire dropped her voice to a raspy husk.

“He may not object, but I will.”

“Oh?” Her fingers halted their progress at the last fastening of his waistcoat. “What cause will you have?”

“I will object”—he stretched his hand toward the buttons at the top of her bodice—“if you confine your services to those of a valet.”

She looked at him through the veil of her lashes, the expression the embodiment of everything knowing and womanly. “It would require a singular valet indeed to perform the sort of services I’m planning.”

Her hand slipped into the waistband of his breeches, and all he could do was groan in reply. Her fingers encircled his cock, the grip firm and bold and sure. Perfection. He’d been hard and aching to be inside her from the moment he spotted her in the corridor. Waiting for him.

For as often as they’d satisfied their mutual lust over the past several days, he still couldn’t swive her out of his system. In fact, the opposite seemed to be happening. Every time he joined his body to hers, he craved her all the more—to the point where he even asked himself if what they were doing was merely carnal or something deeper.

Despite—or perhaps because of—her attentions, his bad leg threatened to buckle. A bead of sweat snaked its way along his temple. Regretfully, he placed his hand over hers. “The bed. Now.”

“That’s right.” For an instant, her teeth sank into her lower lip. “I promised to see to your leg.”

His gaze riveted on her mouth. He wanted those teeth to be his and his tongue to soothe the spot afterward. “You can leave your hand right where it is.”

She laughed, the sound low and throaty and sensual. “That will make getting you on the bed an interesting challenge.”

Despite his order, she removed her hand, wrapping her arm about his waist to help him to the mattress. Her palms pressed to his chest, and she peeled away his topcoat and waistcoat before her touch slipped lower.

“Wait,” he whispered. As much as he desired her hands on his body, he longed to see her—all of her. “Stand back. Now remove your garments. Slowly.”

She raised her arms, her hands reaching behind her head. The muslin of her gown pulled taut across her breasts, outlining their perfection. Pin by pin, she dislodged her curls from her coiffure until her tresses fell in a dark cloud about her shoulders. Her fingers moved to her bodice, tracing along the edge, skimming the upper swells of her breasts. He swallowed against a suddenly dry throat, unbuttoned his falls, and took himself in hand.

Her eyes went round, and her tongue darted out to moisten her lips. He forestalled any comment with a single word. “Continue.”

The front of her bodice sagged as she unfastened another button. “You enjoy giving orders, don’t you?”

“Just as much as you enjoy countermanding them.”

“I think you’d enjoy the way I’d choose to countermand that one.”

His cock jerked in his hand. He was just as assured as she sounded. The past week had proved as much. For some reason, he couldn’t get her statement that first night out of his head.
You’ve made me feel beautiful.

As much as his body craved the pleasure she could bring him, he wanted to make her feel beautiful again, with his mouth, his hands, his body, his entire being. Not just tonight, but every night.

Cecelia obeyed his order to undress slowly a little too well. Of all the times for her to begin to pay heed, but he wasn’t about to complain. Not when she revealed such perfection. By the time she eased her way out of her shift, he was stroking himself firmly, aching for her tight heat about him. Pulsing. Milking his cock with her crisis.

She stood before him, all lush curves, smooth white skin, and dark hair. One hip thrust to the side. A hand traced the line of her sternum. Saucy minx. She wielded her sensual power all too well.

Full breasts, narrow waist, lithe thighs all begged for his hands to map their contours. The gentle slope of her belly leading down to the dusky curls at the apex of her thighs cried out for his tongue.

“Now come here.” The raw need that shook his voice sent a jolt of shock through him.

She seemed to float to the bed, her breasts swaying with every step. He reached for her, framed her face with both hands, and drew her into a heady kiss. She opened for him, invited him in, her tongue rising to dance with his, her hands seeking the flesh beneath his shirt. They traced the ridges of muscle with heat. In the midst of the kiss, she settled next to him on the mattress, her body pliant against his, hips restless.

After a long moment, he pulled away from her mouth. “I like you this way,” he murmured against the soft skin at the base of her throat. “You’re so much more biddable.”

She let out a strangled little cry, half moan, half outrage. “I ought to make you stop right now.”

Raising a brow, he retreated to gauge her sincerity. “You wouldn’t.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

“If I stopped, you’d miss this.” He dipped his head to take a nipple into his mouth, teeth tugging lightly.

She arched her back, fingers digging into his hair, and let out a throaty moan.

“Still want me to stop?”

“Don’t you dare.”

“Is that the proper way to address me?” Good Lord, he never expected to enjoy insubordination this much.

“Don’t you dare,
my lord
.” The emphasis she put on the honorific was hardly respectful, but he’d anticipated as much. In the bedchamber and out of it, Cecelia would challenge him for the rest of their lives.

“That’s better.” Better, but not what he wanted to hear. “But not perfect.”

She captured his gaze, and he didn’t think he’d ever known such a moment of perfect complicity. “Surely you don’t expect
your majesty.
”

One side of his mouth tilted upward. “I expect you to call me Lind. I’ve asked you before.”

A slow grin stretched her cheeks. “I can do that. Lind.”

He rewarded her with his tongue on her nipples, first one, then the other. Her breasts were firm beneath his hands, but he didn’t linger there. He trailed lower, between their bodies, to test the texture of the curls at the apex of her thighs.

An inch farther, and he parted slick flesh. She raised her hips to meet his fingers, groaning as they slid home, two at once penetrating moist heat. She strained toward him.

He raised his head to watch her reaction. A flush tinged her cheeks, and her lips parted, her breath coming in rapid puffs. He pressed deep and deeper, curling his fingers until she thrashed beneath him.

He smiled. “Do you want me to stop now?”

That earned him a glare.

“Such a demanding woman I married. I ought to teach you the virtues of patience.”

He thrust with his hand, his thumb rubbing the rigid bud of flesh above her cleft, while his fingers worked inside her. Again. Again. Faster, twisting her need ever tighter. Her inner muscles clenched about him, making his erection ache with hunger to be inside her.

Her eyes rolled back, lids fluttering. Her breathing harshened into pants.

“But not now. Not now. Right now, I want to watch you come.”

He lowered his head once more, increasing the tempo, dipping for a taste of her salty essence. She strained and gasped. Her fingers tangled in his hair, a wordless plea for more.

“Lind. Lind, please.”

His hand worked her furiously. He lapped at her bud like a cat before a bowl of cream. Her head bowed back. Against him, she bucked, surged, and cried out. Thighs trembling, she rippled along his fingers, and he gritted his teeth against the urge to come right along with her.

Soon. He’d be inside her soon.

Long moments later, the waves subsided. Naked and sated, she lay on a tangle of bedcovers. Her eyelids fluttered open to reveal a shattered expression that speared him through the chest. It stole his breath and set his heart pounding. The very ground seemed to shift beneath him.

No woman had ever turned such a vulnerable gaze on him, ever.

Run
. All his instincts seemed to shout the word.
Run hard and fast.

But he couldn’t. Not now, not ever. He’d married her. And she was pulling him down for a kiss. He took her lips, and his body gave in to another instinct, deeper and more primal. As her yielding, hot flesh closed around him, he prayed for oblivion to take him.

Lind lay back on the pillows and waited for his heart rate to calm. Cecelia’s long hair spread out across his body as he cradled her against his chest. He could still taste her salty essence on his lips. Her body was warm, but the warmth she generated went deeper than the physical. He could admit that now. Somehow she’d crept inside him and filled a void that had lain empty since he’d buried Lydia.

Before her death, if he was honest with himself. He’d returned from the war a broken man, to find her belly full far too soon, and that had been the end. The news had driven a spear of ice straight through his heart, and no matter how she pleaded with him that she’d thought him dead, that Battencliffe had only meant to comfort her in her despair, no matter how she’d begged for forgiveness, he hadn’t been able to give it.

Not truly. Not deep inside. Oh, he’d said the words, because part of him wasn’t ready to let her go. The war had taken too much out of him, and if he’d accepted losing her, he didn’t see how he could have gone on. But the rancor remained like corruption lurking beneath a closed wound. It had festered and grown, and no matter how he’d tried to keep it buried, things had never been the same between them.

Even after Jeremy’s birth, when she’d returned to his bed, an invisible wall had remained. He’d never again felt the closeness to her that he once had when they’d lain together in the tangle of sheets, their passion spent. At times, it had taken all his strength not to disengage himself, climb straight from the bed, and return to his chamber. As it was, he’d visited her less and less often in the weeks leading up to Jeremy’s accident.

He pushed the memories aside. He didn’t like to revisit that period in his life. He most certainly shouldn’t do so when he had a vibrant, willing young woman cradled in his arms. One who gave and gave and gave. One who asked for nothing in return but pleasure. Pleasure he was all too happy to dole out.

She lifted her head and rested her chin on top of her folded hands, looking up at him. “I never expected this.”

He brushed the hair back from her face. “Never expected what?”

“Us. I am certain you must believe I took this job so I could seduce you, but I didn’t. I truly didn’t.”

“Why did you take the job?”

“We have no secrets left now, do we? I was looking for somewhere to escape Eversham, but everything I said about my brother was true, as well. He sees me as a silly young chit, still. I wanted to show him I was a grown woman, ready to take on a position of responsibility.”

“Yes, the incident with his daughters.”

Her fingers traced an idle pattern across his chest. “There was that, too. I also had something to prove there. He reacted very badly—as anyone would expect—but he was harsh enough to me that I wanted to get away. And then I thought,
I can show him I’m better than that. But if Eversham digs the old scandal up again…
”

“Your brother knows enough now not to listen to anything Eversham says. We discussed it during your marriage settlement. Eversham cannot hold the information over your head if you let those who are important to you know.”

She was already shaking her head. “Alexander suspects something happened while he was away, but please tell me you didn’t give him the details. He’d never understand.”

Lind allowed himself a smile. “I did not, but if he knew, he might help me kill Eversham.”

She raised her head, suddenly serious. “Please reassure me you’re only speaking figuratively when you say you want to kill him.”

“Yes, in the main, although I’ll admit I wouldn’t feel the slightest bit of remorse should the man meet with an unfortunate accident.”

“No, no. He must not. He must be made to go away—but please, I don’t…” She ducked her head, and he suddenly saw the shy young girl she’d once been—when she was fifteen and trailed after him at house parties. “I don’t want to lose you, and if you go to prison—”

He cut her off by tucking his fingers beneath her chin and raising her lips to his. “I am not planning on going to prison,” he said once he broke off. “I’ve lived in my own version for far too long.”

At the admission, she gasped, and his own heart jolted. He didn’t even know where that had come from. But as she climbed up his body, to press her naked form fully to his and kiss him senseless, he realized the truth of the words. He’d shut himself off from the world, here on his estate. Perhaps, just perhaps, it was time he started letting a few, well-chosen people back into his life.

He could start by truly making amends with Sanford. That relationship, at least, was still salvageable. Lind’s efforts, so far, had been halfhearted, and geared toward keeping Sanford out of Battencliffe’s camp, but in marrying his sister, Lind had raised himself somewhat in Sanford’s eyes.

You could prove yourself the better man.
Somewhat, but not totally.

Battencliffe, on the other hand, was a lost cause. Even if Lind did feel like forgiving the bastard at some point in the future, his plan had passed the point of no return. Or so he reckoned Boff would inform him on his return from London.

Lind lay awake, contemplating the beams in the ceiling, long after Cecelia’s breathing had grown deep and even. Ironic, that. Lydia used to chide him for wanting to drowse the moment he’d finished, and now he could not sleep after yet another vigorous tumble.

His leg throbbed from his efforts at drawing out the pleasure for both of them. If Cecelia’s cries were any indication, though, he’d succeeded. The rhythmic twinge in his thigh now served as an agreeable reminder of all that had transpired over the past few hours.

Cecelia’s hair spread in a dark cloud across the pillows. He reached for a hank and wound it about his wrist, breathing in the lingering scent of citrus. The curly strands flowed through his fingers like silk. His touch strayed to her cheekbone, the translucent skin at her temple, the bridge of her nose.

If he wasn’t careful, he’d wake her and—what? Take her again? She’d be willing, no doubt. Since they’d embarked on this affair, she’d responded to his advances with all the enthusiasm of a courtesan, yet there was nothing artificial or practiced in her kiss. She wanted him freely and with joy, with boundless energy and generosity.

She’d given her entire being to him at every encounter. Body and soul. With Cecelia, those were more than words. More than a meaningless idiom. In bed, she lived those words. She embodied them.

And now, in marrying him, she was entrusting him with her life.

How was he ever to merit such a gift?

At the thought, something stirred deep inside him. Oh, not his cock. God only knew that bit of him ought to be sated for at least the next hour or so.

No, whatever stirred was lodged considerably higher, and the sensation that infused him was closer to warmth than heat. It ought to comfort him. It did anything but.

Wife or no, Cecelia had no business making him feel…well, anything at all. Only Lydia had that right. And Cecelia had made him experience an entire gamut of emotions from tenderness to anger and everything in between.

Lind’s hand strayed to Cecelia’s back, his fingers tripping down the bumps of her spine, the pale skin over the bone impossibly soft and smooth.

Tenderness. That was what this warmth was. He’d nearly forgotten such a delicate thing as tenderness. He hated the way it opened the cracks in his armor. Imperceptibly, yes, but the warmth flowed in just as insidiously as water infiltrating rock and freezing. With each successive thaw, the fissures widened until granite was reduced to powder. Lind felt just as powerless as the rock to halt the slow wearing of the years.

Oh, God, Lydia. What have I done?

The words rattled around his brain, like a single gem in a jewelry box. He waited for a reply, anything. Half of him expected her voice to echo through his mind, berating him for betraying her memory. Remarrying. Enjoying bedding his new wife.

He wasn’t completely certain why he felt this way when she had trod this same path before him, but every time he thought of it, a voice echoed through his mind.
You left her first. You left her open, vulnerable. You let Battencliffe in to seduce her.

The only real sounds he heard were the night silence and Cecelia’s even breathing. He could barely remember the sound of his first wife’s voice.

A sudden chill settled in the pit of his belly. Lydia had left him.

She left you years ago. You never truly possessed her.

She was gone, but part of him still held on to her memory. To what might have been.

Tossing back the covers, he swung his legs over the side of the bed. His walking stick stood propped by the headboard, waiting for him. He took it up, along with his breeches and a shirt, lying discarded on the floor in a tangle with Cecelia’s shift and stays. He dressed quickly and quietly before passing through the wardrobe to the door that connected his bedchamber with Lydia’s.

Moonlight shone through the window, casting an otherworldly glow over the room, so he didn’t need a candle to find his way. The room was kept the same as the day Lydia departed this life, every dainty piece of furniture, every ornate knickknack, every nook familiar. If her presence was anywhere in this house still, it would be here, among her things.

He crossed to her dressing table and picked up a miniature in a gilded frame. The shadows hid the portrait, but he needed no light to call the image to mind. Lydia, blond, young, beautiful, happy. The bloom of pink roses in her cheeks. A hint of laughter in her smile. A spark in her blue eyes. The artist had captured her essence on that tiny canvas.

With the tip of his finger, he traced the relief of the carved frame, the wood a poor substitute for living flesh and blood.

You have a flesh-and-blood wife. She’s waiting for you in the other room. In your bed.

Damned annoying voice in his head. And where had it come from? Somehow it sounded like Sanford.

He touched the portrait again, paint and canvas. Not cold, precisely, but certainly not warm, for all the artist’s talent.

“Do you love me, Lydia?” he murmured.

He awaited the reply. In his mind, he heard her assurances, the way she always voiced them. Yet another unsatisfactory substitute, but it was all he’d ever have. No more than an echo of the past.

In its wake, he heard yet another echo—Sanford once again.
You are the most stiff-necked, mulish bugger I’ve ever met.
Yes, and wasn’t he? He’d held fast to the past for nearly four years.

Perhaps it was time he started prying his fingers away, one at a time. If only he could find the strength.