The Wild Baron

by Catherine Coulter

  He raised up between her legs and watched himself come out of her body. Then he closed his eyes, his hands fisted on her thighs. She felt him move into her again, but then he drew a very deep breath and pulled himself out of her.

  He cursed. He rested on his knees between her legs, his head down, his breathing deep and rapid. Then he looked at her and lightly touched her. “You are beautiful, Susannah.” She actually felt her flesh begin to pulse. It was mortifying. She wanted him to keep touching her, she wanted . . .

  His fingers were gone. “Just maybe next time you’ll caress me. A man enjoys that as much as a woman does.” He eased down beside her, then cursed again. He got up, soon to return with a basin of water and a cloth. “Hold still.”

  He bathed his seed from her. She was so shocked that she doubted she could have moved in any case. She closed her eyes. The water was cool against her. It felt wonderful. “Maybe now you won’t be so sore,” he said, and gently eased the wet cloth, wrapped around the end of his finger, inside her. He held his finger perfectly still.

  She felt drugged, outside herself, as if she were standing apart from the woman on the bed who was lying there like a strumpet. Surely a strumpet was what she was, just lying there, with his finger inside her, and she was enjoying how his finger made her feel. She wanted his finger to push deeper inside her. She wanted to press against his finger, she wanted . . . Then he was gone.

  He lifted her and eased her beneath the covers. He snuffed out the candles. When he pulled her against him, she began to weep.

  He said nothing, merely stroked her hair, impossibly tangled now because she’d been such a wild thing, and that blessed memory made him smile, made him feel like a god all the way to his toes. Then he frowned. He hadn’t lied to her. He had never before in his life felt that way with any other woman. Naturally she didn’t believe him.

  Of course he had never been married before. Perhaps it was those words spoken by Mr. Byam that sanctioned this mysterious, even frightening reaction he’d had. There had simply been too much pleasure and too little control. He’d lost himself and he didn’t like that one bit. He wondered if she’d felt that way. He saw that lost look in her beautiful eyes and imagined that she had. He rather hoped so. A woman shouldn’t be afraid of her husband. She should want him and use him and enjoy him.

  She’d used him very well. Finally, her sobs became hiccups. Still, he said nothing, for what could he say to her? He knew the moment she was gone from him into sleep.

  He’d known her for one day less than a fortnight.

  He didn’t wake her the following morning, for the simple reason that he didn’t awaken until there was a soft knock at the bedchamber door. She was warm, wrapped all over him, her hair tickling his nose, her knee over his belly.

  The knock came again.

  Why hadn’t he awakened before?

  He sighed, gently eased himself away from her, covered her well, then shrugged into his dressing gown.

  “Good God,” he said upon opening the door, “it’s you, Tinker. About time you got here.”

  “Yes, my lord, and Mr. Pulver is with me. He had a putrid throat, my lord, and I could not very well leave him. Thus he was ill and I was his nurse. But we are here now, my lord, to take care of you.”

  “I’ve already been well taken care of, thank you, Tinker. But perhaps my cravats have suffered injury in your absence.”

  “Mr. Fitz told us that you have married, my lord. Married! Not just newly married, but married for many years, even a few years before your dear father died, and you have a child, a little girl. You are a father. And you kept it a secret. You didn’t even tell me. Not a hint. Nothing at all. This is all unusual, my lord. You kept it from Mr. Pulver as well. If his throat were not still sore, he would tell you of his torment that you had no trust of him. I cannot credit this, my lord, surely not, for a man of your appetites wouldn’t—”

  “Perhaps you could find a less-bramble-filled verbal path to trod upon, Tinker. Yes, I’m married, thank you. If you look beyond me, you’ll see my wife in my bed. Yes, I kept it secret from everyone, including my mother. Does that make you feel less slighted? Now, what do you want?”

  Pulver suddenly appeared behind Tinker. His voice was low and raw. “We do not mean to intrude, my lord”—he coughed vilely—“but surely you must realize that we are stunned. We are nearly without speech.”

  “I would say the only thing you are missing is a modicum of wits. I’m pleased you didn’t croak from your putrid throat, Pulver, but you still sound like the very devil. Go see Mrs. Beete. She knows every remedy for every malady. Then get yourself to bed, at least until noon. Now, again, what do the two of you want?”

  Suddenly there was a look of utter surprise on Tinker’s pinched face. “My God, I’ve been bitten!”

  He whirled about to see a little girl grinning up at him. Once he’d moved, she was past him in a flash, grabbing Rohan’s leg.

  He immediately reached down and picked her up. “Good morning, pumpkin. Did you sleep well? Did you draw blood when you bit Mr. Tinker’s leg?”

  “He was in my way,” Marianne said and surveyed the two dumbfounded gentlemen from her new height in Rohan’s arms.

  “Tinker, Pulver, this is my daughter, Marianne.”

  “She looks greatly like you, my lord.”

  Rohan didn’t hesitate. “Yes, she does.”

  “Mayhap she will have her grandmother’s glorious character,” Tinker said. “Oh, dear,” he quickly added, his brows beetling, “her exquisite ladyship is now a grandmother. What an appalling notion. It’s quite unthinkable, preposterous really. She must be prostrate. Oh, dear.”

  “Don’t worry. My mother is quite pleased with Marianne and with my wife. Also you will meet Toby, my wife’s younger brother. He’s a good lad, studying with Mr. Byam until he’s off to Eton. Now, once more, what do you want?”

  Marianne pulled away. “Mama,” she said, and pulled some more.

  It wasn’t to be. All his tender visions about waking Susannah, watching her beautiful eyes all vague from sleep go wild when he came deep inside her, faded into the wainscoting. “Go,” he said, and set Marianne on her feet. He watched her run to the bed and set about climbing up. She managed to pull most the covers off Susannah as hand over hand she shimmied to the top of the bed.

  He heard a groan from Susannah, then a laugh. “Lovey, good morning to you. How pretty you look this morning. Come and hug me.”

  Soon Rohan heard the sucking of fingers and smiled. He looked back at Tinker and Pulver. They were staring at him as if he’d grown fangs and would soon froth at the mouth.

  The smile disappeared. “Now, what is it? Surely it’s still morning, surely there’s no fire in the west wing? Mrs. Beete didn’t put either of you in the attic?”

  “Well, my lord,” Pulver said, “the fact is, Miss Lily came to your house in London because she was very worried about you. We didn’t know what had happened, since you had not communicated with us until the letter requesting our presence here. We could tell Miss Lily nothing. She is upset, my lord. Not distraught, because she isn’t that way, but definitely upset.”

  “Well, damn,” Rohan said. He’d forgotten Lily existed, which wasn’t well done of him.

  “We thought you would like to know immediately,” Tinker said, sounding portentous. He lowered his voice, saying behind his hand, “Your father, my lord, never forgot to keep all the ladies informed of his whereabouts.”

  Rohan rolled his eyes. “Thank you for informing me. Pulver, since you are here, I will put you to work. No, wait—you’ll rest in bed until after luncheon. Then you will wade into those piles of accounts for the estate farms. I will join you later, maybe, if I decide to flagellate myself. But to be honest, it’s unlikely.”

  He shut the bedchamber door in their faces.

  21

  ROHAN TURNED TO SEE SUSANNAH SITTING UP IN BED, THE covers pulled to her throat because she was quite without a stitch on beneath. Marianne was
on her lap, singing a song that sounded suspiciously like one of Jamie’s limericks.

  He walked to the bed and eased under the covers. “Well, pumpkin, will you sing to me now?”

  “I must speak to Jamie,” Susannah said, sighing.

  “I thought I recognized that tune.” He leaned over and kissed his wife’s cheek. He splayed his fingers and began to smooth the tangles from her hair. She just stared at him.

  “You feeling like an animal again?” He rubbed her scalp, then resumed easing the tangles out.

  “Marianne is here.”

  “Why are you playing with Mama’s hair, Rohan?”

  He told her the truth without thinking. “She has the most beautiful hair in the world, soft as a mink’s fur, and I love to touch it. But she slept restlessly last night. I’m just brushing out the tangles with my fingers.”

  Susannah snorted.

  “What’s a mink?”

  “It’s a kind of fur. I will get you a mink muff for your birthday.” Marianne stared at him, tilting her head to one side, just the same way George did. She lifted her hand to touch her mother’s hair. “Soft,” she said, then her fingers went back into her mouth. She settled sprawled out on her mother’s chest. The sucking eventually became quieter. Ro-han said, very low, “I have worried about erasing George, you know, rearranging the past so that he never existed. I will even take his daughter. Will we tell her the truth someday? I don’t know. But this bothers me, Susannah.”

  She was lying naked in his bed, her daughter asleep on top of her. All of it felt so very strange. But not as strange as last night had felt. Beneath the seriousness in his voice she heard pain. She cleared her throat. “George doesn’t deserve to be erased. Nor, on the other hand, does he deserve to have Marianne as his daughter.”

  “He was very young.”

  “So was I. Even younger. Does that excuse him?”

  “No, certainly not, but ladies appear to be more aware of the needs of life than do men. He was still a boy.”

  “He was not a boy if he was in on a scheme with that Mr. Lambert. He was not a boy since he hired this man to pretend to marry us.”

  “Yes, you’re right, of course. Still, to be honest, Susannah, I’m praying we will find something in Oxford to mitigate George’s apparent thoughtlessness, his selfishness.”

  “Mitigate his illegal activities, perhaps?”

  “Yes.”

  “Rohan, we will find the truth. Then we will deal with it, with whatever we discover. I hope that George isn’t a villain, but what I have learned about him isn’t encouraging. May we leave today?”

  “Tomorrow morning, I promise. I keep putting it off, don’t I? But there’s much to do today. The two men you saw in the doorway—Tinker, the short, plump one, is my valet, my father’s valet before me. The skinny one who looks ready to fit into a coffin is Pulver, my secretary. I must get them settled, get Pulver immersed in the estate work. If he’s not working, he won’t eat anything at all. I don’t want to be responsible for his starvation.”

  “They came just to tell you about your mistress?”

  “You heard that, did you?”

  “She was so worried about you that she went to your house in London? That’s done? A mistress visiting her protector’s house?”

  “No, but, you see, Lily doesn’t write well. Actually, she has a very difficult time with it. I have taught her quite a bit, but when she’s upset, she forgets how to write even her own name.”

  “You have taught your mistress how to write?”

  “Why not?”

  “As in man cannot live by sex alone?”

  “That’s about the size of it. Even a man of my reputation occasionally has other things than just sex on his mind. You would like Lily.” He paused a moment, looking at a long-dead Carrington on the far wall, then added, “I have known her for a long time. She isn’t a girl of twenty. She’s a mature woman.”

  “Isn’t that odd?”

  He raised an eyebrow. His hair was rumpled. Since he was blond, there was little beard stubble on his cheeks and chin. There were, however, tufts of blondish hair on his chest. Susannah had stroked that chest, feeling that hair sift between her fingers. She had quite enjoyed doing it.

  “Oh, I see. Does she train the new females who come to your harem?”

  “Now, what do you know about harems, Lady Mountvale?”

  She looked suddenly very bereft. “Not much. Just that I appear now to be part of one.”

  He raised his hand and resumed stroking his fingers through her hair. “Soon I’m going to have to get on the other side of you. This side’s nearly smooth as silk, all the tangles long gone.”

  She sighed and leaned against him, her cheek against his shoulder. Marianne obligingly shifted until she was half-sprawled on each of them.

  The door opened and Toby’s head appeared.

  “Toby, before you come in, go see Fitz and tell him we would like breakfast served here. You may join us. As you can see, Marianne has already staked her claim.” He waited only until Toby skipped down the corridor. Without pause, he said to Susannah, “What if I were to tell you that I don’t have a harem?”

  “Come now, a man of your reputation? You have dozens of women. I should not have been at all surprised when you made me lose my head last night. Aren’t you renowned for your prowess?”

  “Actually,” he said, his voice very thoughtful, “last night came as quite a surprise to me. When I caressed you with my fingers, you exploded. It was well done of you, Susannah.”

  “I didn’t mean to do it. I had no idea that a man could do such things to a woman.”

  “Oh, yes, and there’s so much more. Passion is like that—sometimes you have no control at all. That’s what it was like for me last night. I’d rather hoped to have a repeat performance this morning, but what can one do?”

  Marianne sucked louder on her fingers.

  “Did he please you last night, my dear?”

  She shouldn’t be shocked, Susannah knew she shouldn’t, but still, this was her mother-in-law asking her about being naked in bed with a man and having him do all sorts of things to her with the result that she had enjoyed herself. Susannah gulped, then squared her shoulders. What was one to do in Rome? “Yes, ma’am, he did.”

  “My sweet boy,” Charlotte said. “He has never disappointed me.” Charlotte looked dreamy, and a dreamy-looking Charlotte was an incredibly beautiful creature. “I shall never forget when his father discovered that Rohan was reading a book on planning a garden. Planning a garden, Susannah! Well, my dear boy quickly saw the error of his ways. He quickly realized that a man of his father’s reputation would be drawn and quartered before he would read a book on planning a garden. It was just a small lapse. Here one day and gone the next.

  “No, my beautiful boy has never failed me. Indeed, he has been an inspiration, except for his lapse in marrying you when he was so very young, but that is forgivable, I suppose, when a young man is experiencing incredible throes of lust and the young lady isn’t mistress material, which, naturally, you weren’t.” Charlotte sighed. “Yes, a dear boy.”

  She stopped speaking, at last. Susannah was staring at her. She was profoundly grateful that Rohan wasn’t in the room. What would he say to all his mama’s outpourings? She was certain that his mother, at this particular juncture, would have patted him on the head.

  Susannah cleared her throat. “We are leaving tomorrow for Oxford. I wanted to ask if you would oversee Marianne’s care.”

  “Really, my dear girl, I should be delighted. But Susannah, you must be gowned properly. Just look at you. Rohan told me you will be visiting Phillip Mercerault—if he is at Dinwitty Manor, of course, which he might not be, but his servants all know Rohan, so you will stay there regardless. Now, Phillip—there’s another boy with a maestro’s eye and a flawless technique, or so I’ve been told. Not as flawless a technique as Rohan’s, no doubt, but quite acceptable nonetheless.”

  Susannah had been the re
cipient of a flawless technique, nothing more. Was Rohan, in his own way, like the great Edmund Kean performing Macbeth? Evidently so. It was a pity she didn’t realize she should have applauded him, after she’d managed to restore her wits. That such a thing was even possible still staggered her. She was still having great difficulty coming to grips with it. She had truly lost her head.

  “Susannah?”

  “Yes, ma’am? Oh, my gowns. Do you truly believe I look needy?”

  “You look like a poor relation. You don’t want to shame Rohan. You are the Baroness Mountvale. You now have a responsibility. After all, a wife must always be dressed better than her husband’s mistresses. If she is not, then it redounds to the husband. Surely you do not want dear Rohan to be thought begrudging with his groats?”

  “No, of course not,” Susannah said. “Oh, Charlotte, speaking of mistresses, Tinker said that Lily came to Rohan’s London house. She was worried because he hadn’t communicated with her.”

  “Rightfully so,” Charlotte said, nodding. “Poor woman, she must have been frantic. Usually Rohan is excellent about telling his women when he will be gone and when he will return. I know his father told him that was a gentleman’s responsibility, and Rohan has never shirked his responsibilities. I assume he is even now sending a messenger to London to relieve her mind. And, naturally, others’ minds as well.”

  “Naturally. You sound as if you know this Lily.”

  “Certainly. She and Rohan have been together for nearly six years, which, I admit, is rather odd of him. I do believe Lily was the first mistress he mounted when he came to London. I also recall that he was still studying something—I have no idea what—at Oxford. That was odd as well, both his father and I agreed that it was. Why, in heaven’s name, would our dear boy want to forgo even a moment’s pleasures by continuing to study at Oxford?

  “Yes, Lily and Rohan are fond of each other, as is appropriate. No one wants a mistress or a lover who is rapacious and uncaring.”