She said nothing.
“Of course he did this!” Jan ran a hand through his hair wildly. “The damned blackguard. I knew he held something against you. He was making the slyest innuendoes at the wedding. But I had no idea…” He raked the horizon with his gaze. “He has property near here. I never dreamed he would dare come here.” Jan turned to look at her. “I swear I didn’t, Beth.”
“You mustn’t spare it one single thought,” she said. “It’s a problem of my own making.”
“If he troubles you, then you must tell Father. He will take care of it.”
“That is what I am afraid of.” She tentatively touched her knee and winced. How bad was it hurt? Could one break a knee? Oh, damn! It couldn’t be hurt, not with the coming ball and all that must be done to prepare for it.
Jan picked up a twig and tested it in his hands. “I never had a good feeling about Watson—never trusted him.”
The twig snapped.
She studied the thunderous expression that was so out of place on his elegant features. “Do you trust anyone, Jan?”
He nodded slowly, his face relaxing into a grave, somehow wary mask. “I think I trust you.”
“Well, I take that as quite a compliment.”
His pale gray eyes fixed on her with sudden intensity. “Listen, Beth, if Watson has disrespected you—insulted you in any way—Father will call him out, no matter their friendship. My father may be many things, but he is foremost a gentleman. He challenged someone over my mother once. Some French émigré who made a jackass of himself over her. She enjoyed his courting, but he became indignant when she ultimately rejected his more amorous advances. Then the ignorant frog lashed out at her most viciously—spread the worst sort of rumors about her. Perhaps she’d invited his behavior but, no matter the cause, Father would not abide disrespect to his own wife.”
Jan’s voice rang with a grudging pride that set ice crystallizing in her blood. Men could be so stupid with their matters of honor. God forbid Jan should go running to tell Grey. Grey would feel honor bound to issue a challenge. “Your father cannot know that Mr. Watson spoke to me alone like this.” She released her throbbing knee and gripped his arm. “You must swear you will not tell him.”
He blinked. “Father must be told. Your honor is at stake.”
“I do not want him to risk himself on my account, you mustn’t tell. You mustn’t!” Her voice became strident.
Jan drew his dark brows together. “You mustn’t upset yourself…your injury, you could make yourself ill.” The boy’s voice quavered as though this would be the worst possible thing imaginable.
“You must promise me,” she said with increasing stridence.
He stared at her with a pained expression for long moments and then he rubbed his mouth and sighed. “Well, what shall we tell him?”
“This is not your worry, Jan. It’s between your father and myself.”
“When he hears of your injury, he will come. How shall you explain? He loathes fecklessness and inattention to caution. He called my mother a henwit once. It is one of my very first memories. I was a small boy and I had accidentally fallen into a large bucket of water. It wasn’t even her fault! She hadn’t been looking. I was totally helpless, like a beetle on its back. As I said, it was a large bucket—huge! I fell into it backwards, I couldn’t pull myself out, or so they say. One of the servants fished me out. They say I didn’t breathe for long moments, one of the maids had to turn me over and I coughed up water.”
Beth rubbed her leg absently, forgetting her pain somewhat as she became caught up in his passionate portrayal of this boyhood memory. “My goodness! How did it happen?”
His eyes shone with the intensity of the memory. “I don’t know. I don’t even remember that part. But I certainly do remember the afterwards, the soap had burned my eyes and they were flushing them with tons of clear water. Mother was crying that they would drown me all over again. The soap I’d swallowed made me sick to my stomach and Mother cried all the harder, loud, inhuman sounding sobs. It was terrible, simply terrible.”
Beth’s heart squeezed with sympathy for Jan. “How horrid for you.”
“Oh, it gets worse. Very shortly, Father arrived, he was often at sea in those days but he happened to be in port and we happened to be in town. He came directly to visit me and Mother came in. He escorted her from the nursery to the antechamber. Her voice was muffled through the door, but then I could hear him—as you know, he never raises his voice—“
Beth raised her brows and compressed her lips.
Jan didn’t appear to notice. “But Father spoke very loudly and very sternly to her. He said, ‘You henwit! Don’t blame the servants. He’s your charge!’ I didn’t know what he meant at the time, that I was her ‘charge’. But can you imagine her shame to be called a ‘henwit’? Well, it was simply terrible.”
Despite herself, Beth had to suppress a smile. Not because he had almost drowned as a child—that was terrible—but Jan made it sound like being called a henwit by his father was the worst of all possible outcomes from the event.
“I think it is what broke them apart.”
Beth frowned. “But they were already parted, weren’t they?”
“No, I mean what parted them early in their marriage. He thought she was silly and stupid.” Jan’s look turned serious, slightly sad. “I don’t want to see that happen to you.”
“Nevertheless, what transpires between your father and myself is not your worry,” she said firmly.
He frowned. “Everyone tells me that about everything!” He ran a hand through his wavy black hair. “I shouldn’t like to see Father put you aside. I think you are very good for him—probably better than he deserves.”
The breeze gusted and rustling sounds made her look at the multi-colored leaves twirling and dancing on the ground. She shivered.
“Oh Beth!”
At the alarm in his voice, she jerked her neck around to look at him. His eyes were wide, his dark brows drawn into an expression of contrition. “Here I have been talking and talking and you are injured.”
“I am fine. I just don’t think I can walk.”
His refined features tensed even more. “You must be in a great deal of pain. And perhaps shock. It is getting chilly.” He removed his coat and laid it over her shoulders. Then he took a flask from his pocket. “It’s only tea but it should be warm. You’d better have some of it. Well, I’ll return to the house and have them send a cart for you. You can’t walk on that leg.”
She took the flask and allowed her smile to broaden then she nodded. “Yes, please, Jan, I think you had better send for the cart. But don’t worry. I shall be just fine.”
His eyes glowed and he grinned. “I’ll make haste, Beth—you’ll be astounded at how fast I return.”
Chapter Fourteen
Squirming under Grey’s quiet, steady gaze, Beth almost wished he would call her a henwit—anything rather than his silent censure. What was wrong with her? Why had she lost her head and spat at Watson like that? It had only provoked him into his cruel actions.
Truly, she had her mother’s wild blood. It drove the sense from her again and again. Grey was correct. She was still behaving like a girl.
“Now, let me understand this. You allowed my seventeen-year-old son to goad you into racing him on horseback, over uncertain terrain?”
His chastening tone made her wince.
“I wouldn’t have put it exactly like that.” Beth shifted on the bed. Good heavens, her knee still hurt so badly. And she could just wring Jan’s neck for that letter he’d sent Grey, telling him this ridiculous fabrication. But she sensed Grey would be angrier yet with his son if she revealed the falsehood for what it was. “I am just so restless and bored here. The country is far more tedious than I had expected.”
He stared at her for a moment, blinking several times. Then he leant back against the wall and folded his arms over his chest. “Beth, I don’t need this kind of worry now. If you insist on trai
psing off on your own, then I have to have some faith that you won’t be trying to kill yourself while you’re away.”
“I simply fell from my horse. Anyone can fall from their horse.”
He compressed his lips. “You’re not just anyone—you’re my wife. I am responsible for you. Good God, what if you’d been pregnant?”
“I am not.”
He kept staring at her. “But what if you were?”
His words struck her in the heart. True, she hadn’t been racing Jan, but she had let her emotions get the better of her with Watson and provoked him. She glanced down at the coverlet. “I don’t know.”
“Well, try thinking next time.” His dry tone startled her.
She began to breathe more quickly. Hot tears pricked at the corners of her eyes—her throat burnt with them. “Yes, I shall, but you don’t have to be so angry now. I am quite well despite my leg.” Her shoulders slumped. “This is a fine welcome.”
Grey could feel the pull of Beth’s sad eyes. Sympathy tugged at his heart. But, damn it, he wanted to hang on to his anger anyway. When he’d received the message from Jan’s housekeeper telling him that Beth had fallen from her horse, he’d known sheer fear like he’d never experienced. A leaden weight had settled in his stomach, preventing him from eating or having a moment’s peace. He hadn’t been able to get here fast enough. He’d been sure that she was injured and they were choosing to wait to tell him how badly once he arrived.
Then he’d spoken with Jan and learnt the full truth and all that emotional energy had turned to anger. At Beth. Dear God, hadn’t he had enough of this kind of mindless, careless nonsense with Juliana? He’d expected better from Beth. Still, she was obviously hurt and in pain. He ought not to stand and glower at her. He forced himself to take several measured breaths. Carefully, he sat on the bed beside her.
How odd to be here in this house with Beth. This house where, during the imposed idleness and isolation of a late winter storm, he had impregnated Juliana on an old bed in the attic storeroom while their fathers had negotiated the financing of a voyage to the Orient.
Little had Grey known that, a little over a year later when the East Indiaman finally sailed, he would eagerly join on as supercargo to escape the heartbreak and disaster of his life in New York City.
But there would be no escape from his marriage to Beth—and he wanted no escape. But he did wish things could be vastly different.
She watched him with blue eyes made all the more dazzling by their dark, dilated pupils. The effects of the medication.
He traced over her wrapped knee with his fingertips. “Does it hurt?”
She shook her head, her silver-gilt hair shimmering in the sunlight streaming in through the open window. “No, the doctor gave me laudanum. He says it shall take at least two weeks of rest to fully heal. But I am already weary of rest.”
She had fallen from her horse.
Just thinking the words sent a sharp pain slicing his gut.
God.
Before he could stop it, the image of Beth falling played in his mind. Vividly, right down to her face hitting the ground, scraping on a sharp, fallen branch. Vanity had not moved her to cover it. The cut still lay exposed—a red, vicious slash upon her cheek. A silent accusation. He ought not to have allowed her to come here. But, damn it, wasn’t she a woman grown? He didn’t have time for foolishness like this now. “Beth, you have to take care of yourself. You must be well for the ball in December. You are my wife now. I depend on you to fulfill that role.”
She stared at him, her eyes widening and her face paling a degree.
He flinched inwardly. What a jackass thing for him to say when his wife was laid up injured. He knew it, yet he could think of nothing else to say. He should stay furious with her.
He wanted to stay furious with her.
But, truthfully, for the first time in more weeks than he cared to take note of, he wanted her. Wanted her with a passion that was pressing almost unbearably upon him. Yes, she’d acted rashly. But at least she had done something—anything—instead of creeping wraithlike about his house, a sad, colorless shell of her former self.
However, that logic was so faulty it made him beyond frustrated with himself. He shouldn’t want his wife to act like a wild hoyden. Damn it, he understood himself even less than he understood her. Confusion, frustration, vexation and lust all swirled within him in a storm of excessive, unnerving emotion. If the circumstances were different, he’d have pushed that entirely aside and fucked her until they were both mindless and he could forget himself, but a gentleman should never impose on an injured wife.
He leaned closer and gave her a quick, chaste kiss. At her soft, warm lips against his, he held his breath, barely aware that he was waiting—waiting for some response from her. Something to indicate that she’d enjoy being imposed on, despite her knee.
Her lips remained passive under his.
He raised his head slightly and looked into her sky-blue eyes. “I shall be in the study, if you should need me.”
Emotion flickered in her eyes, so briefly that he might have imagined it. She nodded.
The old Beth would have teased and tormented him. Seduced him into staying. But, of course, he shouldn’t want her to distract him at all. He did have a fair amount of very important correspondence to take care of today, and the last thing he wanted was to have her beneath him, as still as a stone.
The steady rise and fall of her bosom and the way her little pink nipples were pressing against the fine fabric caught his eye. Fascinated him. Just how opposed was she to his advances? Before he knew what he was doing, he was touching the swelling flesh right above her lace-trimmed bodice, gliding his fingertips gently over the soft warmth.
She caught her breath and her chest stilled, but she didn’t try to deny him—instead she closed her eyes and sighed. Encouraged, he shifted and cupped both of the soft yet firm globes. God, but she had the most perfect breasts. Neither too large nor too small, they fitted his hands as if they had been made to measure.
His cock lengthened and grew harder, pressing against his fall. He bent down and put his mouth on hers again, pressing gently. Again, she lay accepting and open but so damned passive.
He lifted his head. “For God’s sake, Beth, kiss me back for once.”
He didn’t know what he expected to achieve by that tersely uttered command, but her eyes widened.
“That’s what you want? It matters to you.”
He searched her eyes, looking for a hint she was teasing. That maybe this was some wifely way of tormenting him. Of attaining power and control over him by making him beg. But she seemed perfectly sincere. “Of course it is what I want. Why else would I kiss you if I didn’t wish to be kissed in return?”
She flinched. He’d spoken too sharply. Devil take him, why did things have to be so tense and difficult lately? And how had they come to this point?
He touched her face and smiled. “You certainly lured me here to Red Oaks; you may as well show me some affection for my trouble, you vixen.”
She stared silently at him.
“Kiss me, Beth.”
“Oh.” She put her fingertips to his lips.
His heart quickened its already rapid beat. He held his breath, trying not to reveal his impatience. Damn it, either she wanted this or she didn’t. He had other things he could be doing. Things that needed doing. If she wanted to be left in peace, she need only say so.
She removed her fingers, then came closer, her mouth slightly open. Her sweet breath wafted over his face. He parted his lips and tasted her sweetness on the air they shared. She moved closer yet and his heart hammered against his chest. Her soft mouth touched his. And her tongue stole into his mouth to twirl around his, then withdrew, coaxing him follow. He thrust into her honeyed sweetness and she thrust back. God above, this was more like it. His cock throbbed with hunger and he wrapped his hand about the base of her throat and drank greedily of her mouth for several moments.
The
n, impatiently, he tackled the little buttons on her nightdress. There seemed to be dozens of them and their dainty size proved a challenge. His mistresses had always focused on garments that were easy to remove, leaving him all out of practice with a wife. However, once they were undone, he pulled the sides apart and bared the white globes with their bright pink, hardening peaks. Like raspberries in the snow.
God, he couldn’t resist. He had to taste her. He bent and lazily traced circles upon her breast, drawing ever-smaller circumferences until he reached her nipple. It grew more erect until it rolled under his tongue like a pebble wrapped in a rose petal.
She moaned and arched her back, straining into his touch. He trailed his hand down, pulling the sides of her unbuttoned nightdress apart. He placed his hand on her flat belly and her flesh quivered under his hand. That little movement sent fresh blood rushing into his erection.
He let his hand trail down to caress the silver-gilt hair on her sex, lingering over its silken texture. He cupped his hand about her outer lips. Their plumpness excited him as always, making him think about the moment when he would slide his cock amid them. He slipped his fingers between and her wetness drenched him. He flicked his thumb over her nub and it throbbed against him, growing more erect.
She caught her breath and arched up off the bed.
Well. She didn’t appear to be opposed at all.
So much for playing the gentleman.
He rolled away from her, got up and stripped out of his clothes.
Naked, he returned to her, aware the whole time of her gaze traveling over the length of his body. Her eyes glowed with affection and desire. His cock throbbed urgently and all he wanted to do was lose himself in her deliciously wanton nature.
Flicking a glance at her bandaged knee, he eased himself back upon the bed. He bent close to her and ran a flirting, caressing hand over the side of her waist and ribcage. He licked her earlobe.
“Curl on your side, Beth,” he whispered into her ear.
The little catch in her breath told him she would comply.
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