“Do you like it, doing this where we could be seen?” he asked raggedly. He could barely get the words out, but he had to ask, had to know.
In answer, she only whimpered and gasped out “Yes.” If he let her keep going, he would spend in her mouth. He bit his knuckle to keep from shouting.
“Christ,” he said. “That’s enough. Sweet girl, stop, I’m close to death.”
But she didn’t stop. She glanced up at him, not breaking their connection. And then she gripped him more firmly and sucked long and hard, pressing his hip against her temple.
He pulled out and narrowly managed to spill into his shirttails, burying his face in his arm to keep from bellowing with the pleasure of it.
He sank down to his knees in shaky gratitude and drew her against him and wiped her lips with the cuff of his shirt. She was warm and pliant, panting just a bit.
“You’re a very naughty man, Lord Bore,” she whispered, smiling up at him. “It’s really rather shocking.”
Outside the crowd gasped. The performance must be nearing its end. They needed to right themselves while they still had time. But instead he heard himself saying, “You have no idea. Open your legs.”
He expected her to protest, but instead she laughed a laugh that contained a hundred filthy secrets. “They’re nearly done. Quickly.”
He reached under her skirts until he found what he wanted. She was wet—dripping wet. He kissed her voraciously as his fingers found the pert flesh at the juncture of her thighs and worked at it indecently. He knew she was close. He knew that the danger, the crowd, the champagne, were having the same effect on her they’d had on him. Her pussy throbbed beneath his fingers. “Fuck, what I would give to sink my cock inside you.”
At his words, she began to come undone. He felt her go still and tense with it. He did not relent, and as her orgasm hit her, she cried out into his mouth, collapsing against him on her knees. As she did it, he lost his balance, his knee slamming against the hard marble floor. He wobbled, sending her arm flailing out to catch the curtain.
He realized it was happening precisely too late to stop it. As she clutched the curtain, the whole thing began to topple down around them.
Her low orgasmic cry rapidly became a shrill, full-bodied one as yards and yards of linen came collapsing down around them, sending them reeling back onto the ground in a pile.
The noise of the crowd went hushed.
He scrambled to free them from the curtains until he could see.
The startled acrobats, just ending their routine, were careening toward them on ropes, their expressions puzzled.
A tiny, dark-skinned woman in pantaloons landed just next to the balustrade.
She raised her arm, and presented the tumbled sight of them to the crowd.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Westmead’s voice boomed dryly. “May I present the Earl of Apthorp and his future countess.”
He stared out at a sea of aghast faces, and he was glad.
Because some things were so shocking you could never, ever recover from them.
Some things were simply irreparable.
It was selfish and inexcusable and wrong, but he didn’t want to let her go.
And now … he wouldn’t have to.
Underneath the pile of drapes and the mess of her skirts, Constance felt Julian’s hands quickly working to discreetly return their garments to rights before the marveling crowd could see that they were not only jumbled in each other’s limbs, but also in a state of complete indecency.
The furious chatter from downstairs made it clear the guests were already eagerly speculating about what the two of them had been doing alone behind the curtain to cause it to collapse with them entangled in each other’s arms.
She did the only thing she could think to do to stop the speculation. She gave them something to watch.
She leaned forward and put her lips to Julian’s cheek.
The crowd roared its approval.
She plastered the biggest smile she could muster on her face, untangled her gown from the drapery, rose, and curtsied to the crowd.
“Bow,” she whispered to Julian through her smile.
He did.
The crowd roared louder.
“Say something,” she hissed.
“Ladies and gentlemen, my future bride,” he said. “Isn’t she stunning?”
Cheers.
She stood in a daze, her body still murmuring with the aftershocks of what they’d done, and accepted this surge of approval as the orchestra cued the first strains of the minuet. Apthorp took her hand and, with another flourishing wink at the crowd, led her down the stairs and through the parted throng to the dance floor, smiling as though nothing in the world was wrong.
As the orchestra surged around them, and the room filled with the ethereal rain of flower petals falling down from the ceiling like shooting stars, he bowed and whispered in her ear: “Marry me.”
He said it in a low, rough voice. But when she looked at his face, he was beaming at her.
Her heart leapt.
Still, it wouldn’t do to force him into something he’d regret simply because a curtain had fallen down. “We don’t have to,” she said quickly when their hands next met. “Nothing has changed.”
“Everything has changed.”
“I don’t want to force you to do something you don’t want to.”
“Good. Because I’ve been in love with you for eight years, and there’s nothing I want more.”
She stopped dancing.
“Julian, is that really true?”
He smoothed a lock of hair that had fallen into her eyes.
“Yes,” he said tenderly. “I told you.”
“I thought you were pretending because you felt guilty.”
“I know, sweet girl. I didn’t want to pressure you to do something you didn’t want to. But it’s true. I’ve always wanted you. The night I asked you about proposal gifts … I asked because I wanted to buy one for you when the bill passed.”
“But all that time …”
“I was scared of failing to live up to who I wanted to be, Constance. I was scared of not deserving you unless I did. I was scared you wouldn’t want me.” He sighed, shakily. “I still am.”
Suddenly, she understood.
All his lectures. All her hurt. All his anger. All those years.
Her heart broke for him and for herself even as it swelled.
“Don’t be scared of that,” she said. “It was never true. I’ll prove it.”
She leaned in and kissed the Earl of Apthorp in the middle of the party of the century.
And when she was done, the crowd cheered so loud she knew she would remember it all her life.
Chapter 17
He put the conversation off.
He knew that he must tell her the full truth about his past, and the risk it brought to them, before they married.
But he wanted to find the perfect words. He wanted to find a way to tell her that it had never changed the way he felt about her. That she need not regard him differently, or less.
But he was not quite used to being honest with her. And when he was around her, the brightness in her eyes was so sharp and buoyant that he didn’t want to dampen it.
Which must be how he had gone from having a week to having a few days, to having two nights, before they were due to stand in the chapel.
And why he was once again climbing up the trellis to Constance’s balcony window at an hour peopled primarily by thieves and nightsoilmen.
He tapped softly at her shutters.
“Are you certain you were never a highwayman?” she said, appearing in the window with a yawn. “You missed your calling as a criminal.”
“I’m sorry, did I wake you?”
“No. I was writing. But should Shrimpy not be more alert to intruders?” She pointed to the dog, curled up peacefully in his basket before the fire, asleep. “I think you gave me a defective hound.”
Apthorp smiled at her.
“Perhaps he objects to doing his duties out of protest at that ridiculous name.”
“Shrimpy adores his name. Don’t you, my wee prawn?”
The dog snored.
“May I come in?”
She smiled, stepped back, and pulled him in. “I would like nothing better.”
Her bedchamber was unsettlingly bare. “Where are all of your things?” he asked.
“Most of them are already en route to your house, I would imagine. I have little left here except my wedding gown. Which you really aren’t supposed to see until I walk down the aisle.”
She gestured at a pale gown that stood on a wooden Paris doll. It was wide as a horse cart and ghostly in the moonlight. Despite its pomp, it looked a little mournful without her in it. He looked away, thinking of how forlorn this place would be when she left it.
He shook off the thought. She would be at his house. As his wife. Provided he managed to get through this conversation.
He reached out and took her hand again.
“Constance, I need to tell you something before we marry. I’ve been trying to find the right words and I’m afraid they have eluded me.”
Her face went soft and gentle, like she could tell how deeply he did not want to have this conversation. She squeezed his hand in her two smaller ones.
“I am familiar with your checkered past,” she said. “Whatever it is cannot be so terribly shocking.”
“Well, actually, there’s a rather important detail I haven’t shared with you.”
“Julian,” she said softly, tracing the webbing between his fingers. “I think I know what you’re about to say.”
“You do?”
She nodded. “And if I am correct, you have done the best you can.”
“Really?”
“Well, ideally you would have married. But we all make mistakes, and it seems you have handled it honorably.”
She seemed very serene and certain and he was not at all sure she had understood what she had just forgiven him for.
He swallowed. “Marriage is typically not the desired outcome of the arrangement. That’s the reason one chooses to pay for it. To keep marriage entirely out of the equation.”
“You were paid for siring a bastard?”
He paused. “Constance, what are you talking about?”
“Anne,” she said quietly.
“Anne?”
“I don’t mean it like that!” she said quickly. “She’s an innocent child, and I adore her. We will openly acknowledge her and settle funds on her and raise her as we would any other daughter. You needn’t worry.”
“You think Anne is my child?”
She gave him a slightly sympathetic smile. “It wasn’t terribly hard to figure out, Julian. She looks exactly like you. Isn’t that why you were so reluctant to make love to me? You didn’t want to risk another …”
He felt himself stiffening, wanting to turn away and shut this conversation down.
“Anne isn’t my daughter,” he made himself say. “She’s my ward.”
“Julian.” Constance looked at him skeptically. “If we are to marry, you must be honest with me.”
He sighed. This wasn’t his secret to tell, and he had promised never to tell it. But she was right; he had to learn to trust her. And she would no doubt find out the truth as a matter of course given she was about to join his family.
“Anne isn’t my child. She’s my niece.”
She looked at him in genuine shock. “Your niece? But that would mean …”
“Yes. She’s Margaret’s.”
Constance gaped. “But Margaret’s so innocent.”
He sighed. “Yes. That is precisely the problem.”
Constance looked distressed. “I’m sorry. I would never say anything … but, well … how? Who?”
He hesitated. He’d promised his mother and sister never to speak a word of the sordid tale to anyone. Maintaining the appearance of respectability was his mother’s greatest wish. Secrecy had been the only consolation he’d ever been able to offer for having failed them.
“You can tell me,” she coaxed. “Julian, you can tell me anything. I promise you discretion. Especially about something like this.”
“Anne’s father is Lord Harlan Stoke.”
At his name, her shocked expression turned into something more appalled.
“Oh no. No. Poor Margaret.”
“He took to calling on her three summers ago, while I was working in town. He summers near my estate. He courted her, told her he would marry her … not to worry that they had not said vows in a church yet. And when he learned she was with child, he dropped her. Flagrantly denied his involvement.”
Margaret had been so despondent he’d worried she might harm herself. And then her pregnancy had been difficult, endured in secret at a small, cheap house he’d let in Scotland with only their mother for company. She loved Anne, and had recovered her health, and was infinitely relieved the scandal had stayed hidden. But the ordeal had made her fragile in a way she had not been before. A way that seemed soul deep.
“That’s despicable,” Constance seethed. “I’d heard he had by-blows, but I had no idea about Anne. Why didn’t you call him out? He should be kept away from women.”
It was a fair question—an obvious one—but it still demoralized him to have to explain it. His futility had never been more apparent than the day he had not been able to save his little sister.
“I tried. I went to him and demanded he make it right. She’d been sixteen. He laughed at me. Refused to acknowledge the child or Margaret and said that if I made claims against him publicly, he would expose her pregnancy. He needs a rich wife, and I couldn’t afford to dower her. And he was right; he had me. I couldn’t force his hand. My mother was horrified of bringing shame on Anne and didn’t want to ask for help from anyone else in the family. So we arranged for her to go away to have the baby.”
“That mealy-livered bastard. And your poor, dear Margaret. What an ordeal it must have been.”
He nodded, relieved she understood. “It was frightening to watch. But she recovered. And we hope that she might meet a gentleman and find a marriage that brings her happiness. If the story is exposed, that will never happen.”
“I will find her a husband,” Constance said instantly. Seeing his alarmed expression, she laughed and held up her hands.
“Don’t worry. No gossip. I have thoroughly learned my lesson.”
He exhaled. “Thank you.”
Constance tapped her chin. “You know, Julian. This means that Lord Harlan knew you had information that might ruin his chances of marriage at the time he was courting Gillian.”
“Yes. I’m sure that’s why they cut us at the opera. He wouldn’t wish for her to learn of it.”
“Do you remember when I mentioned the actress from the Theatre Royal? And you asked me to let the matter go?”
“I do.” His own efforts to pursue the lead had come to nothing.
She bit her lip. “Well … I didn’t let it go. Don’t be angry, but my dressmaker has been quietly unraveling the connection, and last week she left me a note with what she’s uncovered. It seems the woman who was spreading rumors about you at Lady Palmerston’s is a theater actress who sees a number of gentlemen in an apartment she keeps on Charlotte Street. Where it is possible she saw you coming and going and drew conclusions, or spoke to neighbors, or overheard. Valeria mentioned that one of the gentlemen she entertains is Harlan Stoke. I know you think there is not a conspiracy, but there must be some connection! For if he knew about your club, the best way of protecting himself would be to destroy your credibility.”
“But how would he know to tell you?”
She sighed. “Well, he wouldn’t on his own. But it seems Gillian has gathered I am behind the circular. It’s possible she mentioned it to Lord Harlan, who conspired to plant the rumor so he he could then send my circular on to Evesham without betraying his own involvement.” She slumped down on the settee, looking dejected.
“So it’s my fault. As usual.”
“Don’t say that. Even if it’s true, it changes nothing. He’s already gotten away with it.”
“Well, perhaps not. We could use the information to put pressure on him to do the right thing by Margaret. Or to warn others.”
“No,” he said sharply. She looked startled at his tone.
“I’m sorry,” he said, softening his voice. “But I promised Margaret and my mother we would never speak a word of this to anyone. They would be devastated if anyone outside our family knew.”
It had been bad enough that he had not protected his sister the first time. He would not cause her to suffer more than she already had.
Constance looked unconvinced. It made him nervous.
“Constance, promise me you will say nothing.”
“Of course,” she said quickly. “Yes, of course. I promise.”
“In any case, it is not my sister’s secrets I came here to tell you. It’s my own.”
She smiled. “I already know about your Wednesdays, Lord Bore.”
He took a deep breath. “No, you don’t. Not entirely. And it is possible—likely even—that the truth will come out. Maybe sometime soon. Henry Evesham is circling around the club, prodding for more information. If he exposes me, it will cause another scandal. A bigger one.”
In true Constance fashion, she looked more intrigued by this than alarmed. “Why?” she uttered. “What is the truth?”
He drew in a deep breath. “The club you wrote about? I was not a member of it. I was a host.”
She shook her head blankly. “You mean, like an investor?”
He sighed. “No. I mean like … a tart.”
“What?” she asked, with a strangled, disbelieving laugh.
“I worked there.”
“As … a courtesan?”
“Of sorts. My role was to play a domineering sort of man in bed for members who paid for the privilege of indulging such a fantasy.”
Constance was staring at him with her jaw suspended, like he was an exhibit in a museum. “It was all very discreet, I thought,” he said quickly. “I wore a mask, and was known there only as Master Damian. I didn’t sleep with anyone I might know outside the club. And it was safe, as those things go—I took measures to protect against disease.”
The Earl I Ruined Page 22
