What the Duke Desires (15 page)

With a blush, she righted her chemise and searched the floor for her wrinkled gown.

She felt Simon watching her before she actually looked up at him with a shy smile.

He reached for her and drew her against his still-naked body. When his arms came around her, she shivered with renewed desire and let her gown fall away.

“Come upstairs with me,” he whispered against her hair “Stay with me tonight, Lillian.”

She hesitated as she tilted her chin up to look at him. There was such an earnest desire in his face that she couldn’t say no. And in truth, she didn’t want to. What if when they parted the magic of this night faded? Certainly that was inevitable given what she was here to do, but she found herself reluctant for that future.

He must have read her hesitation for far different reasons than were truth, for he cupped her chin. “I promise you, I’ll make sure no one sees you. I will not let you be publicly ruined by this.”

She hesitated. “This doesn’t mean I’ll be your mistress,” she whispered, her voice shaking.

There was a moment’s silence before he jerked out a nod. “Then just be my lover. Tonight.”

Instead of answering, Lillian rose up on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his. They kissed, just as passionate as they had been before they made love. It took a great deal of effort for her to part from him and nod shakily.

“Yes, Simon. Take me upstairs. I’m no more ready to end this than you are.”

And he certainly hadn’t meant to make her first time on a billiard table while he was still half drunk. She deserved better.

However, now, as they lay sprawled across his bed after making love a second time, with Lillian’s naked body pressed to his and her head in the crook of his shoulder, he forgot those regrets. He forgot everything except how right it felt to be with her.

Lillian absently traced a light pattern on his bare chest with her fingertips, entirely unaware of how arousing that light, teasing touch was. And that innocence made it all the
more
powerful. In a few more moments he would be more than ready to show her yet again how much he wanted her.

She glanced up at him, hazel eyes hinting at gold in the fading firelight. “Do you want to tell me now what so troubled you when I found you in the billiard room?”

He tensed, immediately brought back to the problems he faced. To the fact that his father wasn’t the man he believed him to be. To the realization that he had at least one unknown brother in the world and possibly more.

Looking down at her, he pondered the question. It was a risk to reveal anything to this woman. As close as he now felt to her, they hadn’t met but a week prior. He liked to believe that she would never
purposefully
let his family’s secrets out into the world, but even if she accidentally whispered the truth to the wrong person…well, it could very well bring the censure of the
ton
down upon them.

And while Simon hadn’t yet ruled out letting the world see what his father truly was on his own terms, he didn’t want an outsider taking that option away from him.

But still, he ached to share his pain. Especially with this woman who had given him such pleasure.

“I am beginning to think I didn’t truly know my father at all,” he finally said with a deep sigh as he gathered her even closer. Her warmth made some of the chilling facts he’d uncovered fade.

“How so?” she said softly, turning her gaze away.

He stared at the ceiling above them for a long time before he shook his head and continued.

“How much did you know about him?”

She hesitated before she shrugged one shoulder. “A little. Everyone knew
of
him, of course.”

Simon frowned.

“Yes, my father had a very public reputation. He was highly respected for his support of sometimes controversial acts in Parliament and his passionate defense of those less fortunate. But beyond that, he had a personal reputation, as well. People saw him as decent, above reproach in every way. Pious even. Those things gave him power to fight the righteous battle. But now…”

He trailed off as bitterness tinged his mouth. What a lie those things had been.

Lillian propped herself up on one elbow and stared down at him. Bright interest lit her eyes. “Now?”

He hesitated. Not only was it dangerous to reveal the truth, in some way it still felt like a betrayal of his father. He sighed. It seemed he was willing to protect the old man even now.

“Now”—he shrugged—“well, now I wonder if there was ever any truth to anything he taught me. And if I
had
known the real man, I wonder if I would have liked him.”

She nodded slowly, and there was powerful emotion in her stare as she lay back down against him.

“When we are children, it seems our parents can do no wrong,” she said after a long silence. “But as we get older, we recognize the complications, the humanity of them. It’s not particularly comfortable, is it?”

He shook his head. “No. It is most definitely not.”

Now it was she who stared straight overhead, her gaze unfocused as if she was lost in memory.

“I thought my mother was nothing short of perfection. My father sheltered my brother and me from many of her periods of sadness, so I didn’t see how troubled she truly was. Not until she took her own life.”

Simon flinched. It was hard for him to imagine what kind of loss this remarkable woman had suffered, both personally and then later as others began to suspect the truth and shunned her.

“The worst part of it,” she continued softly, “was that at first I
hated
her for what she did. I felt betrayed that she would end her life rather than face her problems. I saw it as selfishness that she would leave her husband without a wife and her children motherless. For years I blamed
her
.”

Simon rolled to his side and propped himself up to look at Lillian. Although she spoke with strength, tears sparkled in her eyes. Raw emotion lived there as well. Her vulnerability made her all the more beautiful to him, for he recognized it was a side she rarely shared with others. She put up a wall to protect herself, just as she had done with him when she first arrived here. Now he understood her reluctance to get to know him, to accept how attracted they were to each other.

Thank God she finally had.

“How did you overcome your anger?” he asked, taking her hand in his and looking at their interlaced fingers.

She glanced at him sharply. “What do you mean?”

“Well, it isn’t as if either one of us can simply talk to our parents and work out the problem that brought us such pain. Because they’re gone, it complicates things.”

She nodded slowly. “Yes, I suppose that is true. The resolution has gone with them, leaving us with only the pain.”

There was a long pause as she considered his question with a pondering frown.

Finally, she whispered, “It was only recently that I truly overcame my anger when I understood her real reasons for taking her life. I suppose I transferred my rage to—to someone else…someone I blamed for her death.”

His brow wrinkled. There was something troubled and even guilty to her expression. Something he wished he could soothe away. And yet he couldn’t, no more than he could end his own pain.

“I doubt that will help me in my situation,” he said with another sigh. “I don’t think anyone else is responsible for my father’s actions. But perhaps I’ll one day begin to understand them and that will ease the anger and betrayal I feel at present.”

She turned her face and he couldn’t read her tone when she whispered, “Perhaps that is true, Simon.”

She pushed at the coverlet and moved to rise.

“It is very late. I must return to my chamber. Gabby will already have suspicions.”

He realized what she said was true, but he found himself reaching for her arm and pulling her back to him, nonetheless. She didn’t resist as he slid her beneath him and lowered his mouth to hers. In fact, with a sigh she instantly tilted her head to grant him greater access to her swollen lips.

“Don’t go yet,” he murmured as he moved to nuzzle the elegant curve of her throat. “Just stay another hour.”

As his hand cupped her breast, she let out a low moan before she nodded. “O-one more hour.”

Before she could finish the thought, the harsh scrape of flint echoed from the corner of the chamber and suddenly a candle glowed to life. Holding it was Gabby, clad in her dressing gown and rising from a cushioned chair in the changing room.

“Lillian,” she said, shaking her head as she made her way across the room. “Lillian!”

There didn’t need to be much more said. There was enough censure in just her name to let Lillian know Gabby had been waiting for her for hours. She winced as her friend lifted the candle and examined her in its glowing light. Slowly, her friend’s mouth turned down and her eyes widened.

“Lillian…what did you do?” she whispered as she set the candle on the closest table.

All the emotion, all the guilt, all the confusion Lillian had felt in the past few days welled up in her and unexpected tears stung at her eyes as she fell into her friend’s waiting embrace.

“We made love,” she admitted, her voice muffled in Gabby’s shoulder.

“Oh, Lillian,” Gabby gasped as she guided her to the settee where they collapsed together. “You surrendered your body to him?”

She nodded, waiting for the heat of embarrassment to flood her cheeks. To her surprise, it didn’t. Even when she thought of the passionate evening she had spent in Simon’s arms, shame was not her reaction. In fact, she quivered with pleasure and renewed desire, instead.

Shaking off those troubling reactions, she forced herself to focus on Gabby.

“I think it might be worse than that,” she said on a sigh. “I fear your earlier accusations are true. I’ve begun to involve my heart with this man.”

Her friend drew in a sharp breath, but didn’t interrupt.

“Tonight I forgot about his father, I forgot about my duty to my own father and my mother, I forgot everything but him. I lost myself in him. And it was…well, it was magnificent.”

Gabby reached out to cover her hand gently. “Under any other circumstance, I would thrill over this news. But not this way. Lillian, you cannot go on like this. It’s wrong to make love to the man, to have deeper feelings for him, if you still intend to betray him and his family.”

Lillian yanked her hands free as more guilt threatened to overwhelm her. She knew her friend was right. She got to her feet and stalked away, her mind spinning on
all
the events of the night, not just the ones that involved her surrender or Simon’s gentleness.

“I-I’m not sure if betraying him is possible anymore.” She shook her head. “His father has done that already.”

Gabby leaned away slightly. “I don’t understand.”

“I wasn’t able to determine the specifics,” Lillian whispered. “But Simon was so upset when I found him. I’m certain he has uncovered some secret about his father that goes far deeper than mere political intrigue.”

“And somehow that changes things for you?” her friend asked.

Lillian squeezed her eyes shut, and an image of Simon’s broken expression tormented her. She knew what he felt, she had felt it, too. That pain. That raw betrayal.

“It does. I came here because Simon’s father destroyed my family with no thought to the consequences. I thought to reveal him for what he was and all the evil he had done. But if I do that, the only person it will destroy is Simon. If I do that, am I any better than his father was? Am I not involving innocents just as he did?”

Gabby shook her head. “Never compare yourself to that man!”

“I must. If I can be no better than my enemy, then he has won, hasn’t he?”

A sigh was Gabby’s response. “I’ve said from the beginning that I had my misgivings about your plans, so I don’t wish to discourage this change of heart, but I must know, why does all this suddenly matter to you? Up until even a few hours ago you weren’t certain that Simon wasn’t as much of a liar as his father.”

Lillian flinched. She had accused him of as much. Slowly she turned to Gabby and held her friend’s gaze evenly.

“Tonight when I found him, there was no mistaking the authenticity of his pain. And when he spoke of his father…I-I
believe
him, Gabby. Perhaps that is foolish or wishful thinking, but I don’t think he knew anything beyond what his father wanted him to believe. And now that the truth is coming out, it is breaking him.”

Unexpectedly, tears stung behind her eyes at the thought that Simon had so much more information to find that could hurt him. Including the fact that she had come here with betrayal and vengeance on her mind.

“But can you truly forget why you came here?” Gabby asked softly. “Your father’s deathbed request, your mother’s sad end…
can
you release those things?”

Lillian covered her eyes. It was only those things that made her hesitate. For months she had been driven by them, her need to fulfill the duty her brother could not eating at her and keeping her moving forward even when she wanted to collapse.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I know my mother still deserves some kind of justice, but I just don’t know how.”

Gabby reached out and caught her hand. “You lost everything. It is understandable that you would want to steal some of it back.”

“Tomorrow I’ll go to Simon,” Lillian finally said with a shiver. “In the light of day with a little distance from tonight, I think everything will be clearer for me.”

“And what will you say to him? Admit why you came here?”

A shudder worked through Lillian. God, if he knew she had come here, she had made love to him, all while plotting to ruin his family name, well, she could guess he wouldn’t have a positive reaction.

“No. Not yet.” Lillian frowned. It was a coward’s way, but so be it. “No, I want to see if I can find out a little bit more about why he was so upset. Perhaps if I know the truth, it will ease my mind. Perhaps knowing that Roger Crathorne’s beloved son despises him will be enough vengeance, even if I didn’t mete it out personally.”

Gabby nodded, but Lillian could see the utter relief in her friend’s eyes. Strangely she felt some of the same in her own heart. This drive for revenge had never been comfortable for her. Only necessary. A duty she had felt she had to take on since no one else would.

But the idea of letting it go made her lighter than she had been in ages.

“And what about Simon?”

A shiver worked through Lillian at Gabby’s quiet question.

“What about him?” she asked, though she knew perfectly well what her friend meant.

“You two made love tonight and it is clear you have a bond that goes deeper than mere physical desire.” Gabby tilted her head. “What do you intend to do about that?”

Lillian shook her head. “I don’t know. I still think there is too much in the past to allow us to be together. Besides, if he discovered why I came here, what my connection to his father is…he would likely loathe me.”

“And yet you still long to share more, don’t you?” Gabby whispered.

Lillian turned her back on her friend and made for the bedroom. “I long for a great many things, Gabriela. But the majority of them I will
never
have.”