The Sinful Nights of a Nobleman

by Jillian Hunter

  She lifted her gaze to his and gently ceased the suction of her lips. “I’m doing it properly?”

  He nodded his head. He was shivering, not even able to answer.

  Then before he could move, she set back to the task, refusing to stop again until his belly quivered and he spurted his seed into her mouth.

  And when he could move again he leaned down, wiped her glistening chin off with the sheet, and clasped her face in his hands. She smiled at him. And he smiled back.

  God only knew what fate had befallen him and what yet loomed ahead. He knew only that its invisible threads had wrapped themselves insidiously around him in a web he had less and less desire to escape. And that even if his life had been turned inside out, he did not mind.

  Jocelyn’s bare toes ascended the instep of her husband’s left foot before climbing his muscular calf to his warm groin. His eyes still closed, he smiled approvingly and locked his arms around her hips. She nestled against his bare chest. His stubbled chin abraded her shoulders before disappearing beneath her breasts.

  “You look handsomely wicked when you have not shaved,” she whispered.

  He brought his knee between her thighs and forced an opening there. “And you like wicked men, do you?”

  “I appear to have a weakness for one in particular.” She shivered as he caressed her back. “You know, I’ve never asked, but I’ve always wondered: Is it true that you held up a coach and demanded kisses from the courtesan inside?”

  He drew his head back and gave her a dark grin that sent chills all over her body. “Do you want me to wear a mask and tie you to the bed?”

  She wasn’t sure whether to jump at the offer or pinch him. “Is this a performance that you give on command?” she asked archly.

  His grin widened. “I have a domino under my bed if you require proof.”

  She gazed into the mirthful blue eyes that had seduced her body and soul. It was one thing to realize that the rumors of his rakehell past were well-founded, but to know that evidence of his past was beneath their very bed…“I take it that this is not the same domino you wore the night we were caught together in the tower?”

  The rogue did not hesitate a heartbeat. “What difference would it make if I had a dozen of the things?”

  “What difference—”

  His deep kiss captured the protest that she would have uttered. “It worked, didn’t it?” he asked mercilessly. “You came into your masked lover’s arms that night with little hesitation.”

  “Thinking you were Adam,” she whispered, unwisely perhaps, but annoyed at his male arrogance.

  Which he proved remained intact as he imprisoned her between his iron-hard body and the bed. “I’ll wager you haven’t thought of being in his arms since.”

  She did not even bother to deny it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was past noon when Lord Devon and his well-seduced wife bestirred themselves from the bed, dressed between deep kisses, and plodded downstairs for the breakfast that the thoughtful Mrs. Hadley had kept warm in the kitchen. She had been quick to show her approval of their marriage by serving the most enormous breakfasts.

  It was a ritual that Devon thought he might even learn to enjoy. A passionate romp with his wife, a late breakfast together, he sorting through his mail while she sipped tea and perused the newspapers and scandal sheets that, by this hour, had already entertained an unknown number of Londoners who relished a good dose of gossip before beginning their day.

  “Anything interesting?” he asked, putting down his coffee to stare at her. She looked delectable after a night of lovemaking, and he wondered now why he’d so willingly come downstairs when they could have enjoyed breakfast in bed. And each other’s company.

  “As if you didn’t know,” she said in a voice of hurt disbelief that didn’t sound anything like the lighthearted woman who’d warned him only minutes ago to behave himself at the table. He hadn’t taken her favorite cup, had he? Forgotten her birthday? It couldn’t be their wedding anniversary.

  “What is it?” he asked in bafflement.

  “Don’t make me say it.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Not this time, you deceitful…deceiver.”

  He looked down at the paper. He’d hoped she was joking. The woman who was withdrawing from him before his very eyes was not his sweet, passionate wife. She looked betrayed—but surely not by him. “What have I done now?”

  “Do not even bother to deny it,” she said across the breakfast table at the precise moment the footman laid a silver platter of crisply fried bacon, sausages, and warm buttered scones between them.

  “What exactly is in the paper?” he asked warily.

  Her silver teaspoon clanked against her cup with an emphasis that challenged the integrity of the elegant bone china. “The gossip of London. Last night’s gossip. The—”

  “Gossip,” he said, leaning back against one elbow in his chair. “I do not need the word hammered into my skull with a teaspoon to take your meaning. What sin am I accused of now?”

  He thought a tear glistened in her eye. Her voice, however, was quite even as she whisked the newspaper from the table and dropped it on the platter. “Pray read it yourself.”

  “And what is it that I’m supposed to read?”

  “The charming piece entitled ‘Wives and Concubines.’ ”

  He picked up the paper, scowling, and read the article several times. He could feel Jocelyn studying his face as if to interpret every nuance of reaction. And in the end he was hard pressed to hide his own annoyance.

  The unidentified correspondent of the piece had described in uncanny detail Devon’s actions of the previous day and a good part of the night. This included a rendition of the encounter at the park between Jocelyn and a gallant.

  A certain “Sir G’s” chivalrous intervention was lauded when her husband appeared to have neglected to do his spousal duty. To further compound his lack of responsibility, this sinful nobleman had visited an infamous brothel later that same evening whereupon he was personally received by the proprietress of the exclusive Bruton Street establishment.

  There was a ring of first-person authenticity to the account that brought his blood to a slow boil.

  The last few lines, however, were what he realized had given his wife offense.

  “It wasn’t exactly a brothel,” he said, which admittedly was not the best defense he could have presented.

  “If it was not a brothel,” Jocelyn said, her spoon tapping again, “then what was it?”

  “It’s more of an exclusive club than a brothel. And no matter what it was, I did not go there for pleasure. I came to you.”

  “There are women of easy virtue in a bordello, Devon.”

  “There are women of no virtue whatsoever,” he said unwisely.

  “And you think to visit these women without virtue after only a week or so of marriage?”

  “I didn’t think of them at all. I went there looking for Gabriel.”

  She stood, visibly upset, the quaver in her voice upsetting him. “You left my bed last night to go to a brothel?”

  “Audrey Watson is a family friend.”

  “She is a votary of Venus, Devon.”

  “I don’t deny what she is, but I only went to her house to look for Gabriel.”

  She swallowed. “But the paper said that this Watson woman took you into her private chamber to entertain you.”

  “Well, not exactly. We went into her chamber to talk. Audrey does not receive callers in front of an audience.”

  “You were alone with her.”

  He rose from his chair. “I came to you last night, Jocelyn. I merely talked to Audrey.”

  She backed away from the table. He had a horrible feeling she wasn’t listening to anything he was saying. “That’s what my father always told my mother. And don’t remind me. You warned me at the wedding.”

  He stared at her, his heart twisting in realization. “I won’t tell you anything of the sor
t.”

  She nodded slowly. “It’s not your fault. I know you didn’t want to marry me.”

  He watched her helplessly. Suddenly he understood, or he thought he did, even if for several moments he was so insulted that she’d compare him to Gideon that he could not react. The pain in her voice reminded him that she had probably not been raised in the happiest of homes.

  “I’m not like your father,” he said carefully. “I’m not anything like my own father, for that matter. I was with you last night. I wanted—”

  “Devon, it’s all right.”

  “It damn well isn’t. Not unless you say you believe me.”

  She gazed at him, biting her lip.

  “Say it,” he said, his voice urgent. “Say it, and mean it.”

  The door opened as she turned to leave, and Devon was prepared to chastise one of the servants for interrupting. The person who appeared to take Jocelyn’s place, however, was none other than his older brother Grayson, who managed to enter the room between Jocelyn’s escaping figure and the door.

  “Did I arrive at an awkward moment?” Grayson asked with a rueful glance in his disappearing sister-in-law’s direction.

  Devon shouldered him from his path. “Why would you think that? I’ve just been libeled wholesale in the papers, and my wife believes I am the incarnation of her father.”

  Grayson removed his gloves. “I don’t suppose a private appointment with my jeweler on Ludgate Hill would help?”

  “At this point,” Devon muttered as he heard a door slam upstairs, “I’m not sure that an offer of the Crown Jewels would help.”

  Devon did not chase after his wife to offer another apology for a fictitious offense.

  For now he had a more pressing matter to attend. Yes, he’d been gossiped about in the past, but not as maliciously as this. And he wasn’t about to let it happen again.

  Grayson followed him out into the vestibule. “Where are you going?”

  “To find out who’s slandering me.”

  “That sounds like a lively afternoon’s entertainment. Do you care for company?”

  Devon hesitated. He knew his brother meant well, but having Grayson on his shoulder like a stone gargoyle would only hinder his baser instincts. If Devon found the guilty party and wished to throttle him, he did not want his brother interfering. “We can call a family cabal, females excluded, later tonight to discuss the matter.”

  “You’re doing this alone?” Grayson asked in his masterly marquess and patriarch-of-the-family tone of voice.

  “I went off to war by myself, didn’t I?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Viscountess Lyons came to call on Jocelyn only a half hour after Devon had left the house. To judge by the terse set of Emma’s delicate shoulders, Jocelyn concluded that her sister-in-law had read the morning paper and was not amused.

  For all of Emma’s ladylike demeanor, she exuded the wrath of a warrior queen as she regarded the damning newspaper that still lay on the platter of eggs where Jocelyn had dropped it.

  “This,” Emma announced, picking up one corner of the paper between her thumb and forefinger, as if it were a live cockroach, “must be burned posthaste.”

  Jocelyn smiled wanly at this display of support and watched the viscountess march toward the coal fire in the grate. “There must be hundreds more where that came from,” she said ruefully, unsure whether she meant the paper itself, or the vicious rumors it contained.

  Emma shook her head in consternation. “I confess it is upsetting, but I know Devon. He is not guilty of these accusations. As I am sure he told you.”

  “Yes. He denied any infidelity.”

  Which should have been the end of the matter. In fact, Emma was looking at her as if she was expecting Jocelyn to announce that it was. It should have been. Deep inside, Jocelyn knew it was not fair to judge Devon by what her father had done.

  Emma frowned; if she had any notion of Jocelyn’s private turmoil, she was too tenderhearted to question it. “Of all the numerous sins to darken my brother’s soul, I have never known him to lie. If he claims he is faithful, then he is. And although it pains me to admit this, Mrs. Watson has proven herself a true friend to my family. Not to me, of course,” she added hastily. “I have never sought her company in my life.”

  Jocelyn stared out into the street, at the stream of carriages, carts, and vendors pushing barrows over the cobbles. London was a bewildering city to one unaccustomed to its throbbing undercurrents of life. “Perhaps,” she said, glancing around at Emma, “your brother merely needs time to adjust to marriage.”

  Emma hesitated.

  “Yes, perhaps. In the meantime, I have a proposal to make you. I am woefully understaffed at the academy, and the girls are staging an amateur theatrical for the benefit of our sponsors. I have already enlisted the assistance of Drake’s wife, Eloise, whom I had once hoped to employ. Alas, my brother stole her away from me. Would you mind lending your supervision to my cause?”

  Jocelyn could not find the words to refuse. She recognized a kindness when it was offered. Emma, like her younger sister Chloe, was clearly attempting to take her under her protective wings. Here was a chance to become part of her husband’s family as well as to enlist another ally.

  Indeed, one of the first lessons she had learned about the Boscastles was that there was really no denying them anything once they asked. Had she not been swept under her husband’s spell?

  Furthermore, she was a Boscastle now if only in name. Her children would carry their father’s ancestry in their veins. It seemed obvious that she would by necessity become an irresistible herself, or wither on the vine.

  Devon had resolved to trace the source of the slanderous article to the ends of the earth, which in terms of London’s underworld meant he would probably be forced to scour the lowest dives in the slums of St. Giles. He didn’t care. He couldn’t forget the look on Jocelyn’s face. He couldn’t go home again until he’d made every attempt to prove that everything written in that paper had been a lie. He hadn’t thought of another woman since he married her.

  The pain in her eyes after she’d read that accursed article had ruined the most perfect morning of his life.

  Home.

  He urged his horse through the busy streets, reining in as a peddler pushing a wheelbarrow darted in his path. He cursed softly. Since when had he begun to crave the comforts of home? In the past, his bachelor abode had served as a boardinghouse for drunken friends, a place to rest between battles and entertainments, and even a shelter for his sister’s academy.

  But he had never thought of it as home.

  “Bloody hell,” a familiar voice said beside him. “Are you going to run down every beggar in the street?”

  He glanced at the dark, broad-shouldered horseman who sat as easily astride his sorrel gelding as Devon did his gray.

  “I don’t have time for a family reunion, Drake.”

  His older brother shook his head. “How does it feel to be on the receiving end of Boscastle interference?”

  “Has Eloise let you out of the house already?” he asked in reference to Drake’s young wife.

  “Has Jocelyn chased you out of yours?” Drake retorted with a rude grin. “I seem to recall that not long ago I could not rid myself of your company.”

  “Go bugger yourself.”

  Drake’s shoulders shook with laughter. “Not in such a nice temper now that I’m the one playing nursemaid this time, are you? How does it feel to have a brother pester you incessantly?”

  Devon drew his horse to an abrupt halt. “This is a personal affair. I realize that Grayson must have sent you after me. But there is no danger of a physical nature involved. Even if there was, I would handle it alone.”

  “Damnation, you have bedeviled me from the moment of your birth—”

  “Alone.”

  Drake nodded in reluctant agreement. “As you wish. But remember that I’m more than willing to help.”

  For three centuries Fleet Stree
t had provided residence to printers, booksellers, and publishers alike. At the moment of Devon Boscastle’s arrival, indecent scandal sheets and reprints of Shakespeare’s works were circulating in its surrounding taverns and coffeehouses.

  It gave Devon pause to realize that public-house patrons were gorging their taste for gossip on nasty tidbits of his private life, half-true tidbits that they were. Were his affairs truly so provocative that strangers would pay a few pence to read about them?

  It took him over five hours of threatening a number of Grub Street printers before he traced the source of the libelous column. The last editor he confronted, who never did admit his guilt, insisted that anonymity of his correspondents must remain protected.

  Devon twisted the man’s ink-stained shirtfront around his wrist. He wished belatedly for his brother Drake’s presence, if only to keep him from homicide.

  “All I want to know is who gave you the misinformation.”

  “I-I-wouldn’t say even if I knew, m-my lord,” the short, perspiring man stammered as Devon walked him backward into one of his paper-cluttered workrooms. “Most of my sources come from notes slipped under the doorsill late at night.”

  Devon contemplated this as he watched the man’s spider-veined nose turn various shades of purple. “Then you assure anonymity but not accuracy?”

  “Accuracy has little to do with the business of publishing, my lord.”

  Devon stared down into the man’s empurpled face. “Then what exactly is the purpose of your business?”

  “Entertaining the m-masses.”

  “I could think of a very inventive, violent way to entertain the masses at this precise moment,” Devon said, tightening the man’s soiled shirt to emphasize the threat.

  An apprentice in an apron appeared from a back chamber. He took one look at Devon calmly choking the breath out of his employer and dropped the bundle of sheets he’d been carrying.