But if it was wicked, why did it feel so lovely and pure and good? This was ever a conundrum in Ara’s mind, one she had put to her mother. Mama had blanched and urged her to never again speak of such a despicable thing.
And so, Ara had learned her lesson. She would never again ask her mother about such matters. Instead, she would enjoy despicable things without worrying about the rightness or wrongness of them. For indeed, no gentleman had ever made her feel so many despicable things as Clayton.
She felt them now as she allowed her mind to wander to him while she awaited his presence in their appointed meeting place. He was so strong. His lips were beautiful, as was his smile. What would they feel like against hers? Would he dare to kiss her? Would she dare to let him if he did? He had been a perfect gentleman upon each of their clandestine meetings. Nothing he had said or done had suggested his heart beat for her in the same fashion hers did for him.
But she liked to believe they had an unspoken bond. An understanding.
From the moment he had come upon her in the forest that day, they had spoken to each other with a candor and an ease she had never known. She was one-and-twenty years of age. She had taken her curtsy at court, had experienced her comeout. She had been courted by suitors who inspired not even a flutter in her belly or a pounding in her heart. Nothing and no one compared to Clayton.
Or, as she had begun to think of him recently when she was mooning over him in the privacy of her chamber each night, Clay. Yes, that was the perfect name for him. Far more suiting than the rigid and overbearing Clayton.
She tried her new sobriquet for him in the welcoming shade of the forest. “Clay.” A dreamy sigh escaped her as she waited, hoping he would return as he had promised he would.
It had been fourteen days since he had discovered her watching him in the forest. Fourteen days since they had spoken for the first time. Fourteen days since everything had changed.
“Lady Araminta.”
With a squeal of surprise, she spun about to find him, her beautiful man. She had not heard him approach, but she had learned in the short time they had known each other Clay was adept at being stealthy. If he wished to be heard, he would be. If he chose to remain elusive, no one would have an inkling he had approached.
Heat rushed to her cheeks as she realized he must have seen her pacing about, sighing his name to herself as if she were a young girl who had just seen her first gentleman.
“Call me Ara if you please,” she corrected him, furrowing her brow. “It suits me ever so much better. If only I could convince my family of the same. They seem to enjoy making light of my irritation.”
Oh, Lord. She was rambling again. Saying too much, allowing her inner nervousness to surpass her poise and grace. He came nearer to her, handsome in a way that was almost reminiscent of nature itself. He was rugged and beautiful, raw and angular, a force.
“Ara.” He smiled then, striding forward. His teeth were even and neat.
She wanted to kiss him. Or for him to kiss her. Anything, any action on either of their parts that resulted in their mouths fusing would be lovely. It would be enough to change her world forever, she was sure of it.
And, she hoped, to change his as well.
They were meant to be together, the two of them. She knew this with the kind of certainty that told her the sun would rise each day. She felt it deep in her heart, in her bones. In her soul.
“I do like the way you say my name,” she whispered, watching with wide eyes as he stopped only when his boots brushed her skirts.
She wanted more.
“I like the way you say mine.” He touched her chin then. Just a small, brief caress.
And she melted. “Clay. Won’t you kiss me?”
He shook his head, his dark regard growing intent. “I would not presume to take such a liberty, nor am I fit to do so. You deserve far better than a lowly man such as me. You deserve everything, in fact. All the stars and the moon, the sun, every flower, every diamond, each ruby. Were it in my power, I would give you all those things.”
The ferocity in his tone struck her heart. “I do not want those things, Clay. All I want is you.”
And your heart. Please, please, say it can be mine.
He exhaled, the sound harsh. “You do not even know me, my lady.”
But of course, she knew him. They had shared a great deal about each other these last two weeks. He liked to read poetry best. He was a talented rider. Hunting had never appealed to him. His favorite color was copper, like her hair. He did not enjoy sweets, though he could not resist fruit, especially pineapples. He had one brother.
“I know you,” she argued, daring to reach up and cup his whisker-roughened cheek. “Moreover, it would not be taking a liberty if I give my approval.”
He shook his head, shrugging away from her touch and putting some space between them. “What you ask is impossible. I am not who you think me.”
She frowned, following him, confounded by his sudden withdrawal. “You are Lord Clayton, the Duke of Carlisle’s son. I have already told you I do not give a fig about the feud between our fathers. Their old enmity belongs to them and not us. We cannot allow it to ruin our friendship.”
Or—she dared hope—their courtship.
Clay’s father the duke owned the lands bordering her father’s estate, but for reasons her father refused to divulge, the two men detested each other. The quarrel was the reason for the reticence she sensed in Clay from time to time, she was sure.
“I am not Lord Clayton,” he bit out grimly, plucking the hat from atop his head and flinging it to the forest floor.
A trickle of unease licked down her spine. It occurred to her for the first time that perhaps he had lied about his identity. Mayhap he was a groomsman or a steward for the Duke of Carlisle. She would not have known the difference, having never been introduced to any of the duke’s household. He could have led her along quite easily. And she had lapped up every word he spoke like an eager little kitten. Because she had lost her heart to him somewhere along the last fortnight of furtive meetings.
Her every day revolved around when she could sneak away and what subterfuge she might employ so she could see him once again. She passed the hours from their goodbye to the moment she saw him again filled with desperate longing.
She touched his coat sleeve, needing to feel his reassuring strength and warmth. “Have you deceived me, then?”
If he had, she did not care. It did not matter to her who he was. She would forgive him. She would find a way to be with him. For now that she had known him, she could not fathom her life without him in it. They were like two halves coming together to form the perfect whole.
He stiffened but did not move away from her this time. His countenance was hard and harsh, so different from the young gentleman she had come to know. “I am Clayton Ludlow.”
She blinked, her brow furrowing. “I am afraid I do not understand, Clay. That is precisely how you introduced yourself on the first day we met.”
“I am a bastard,” he bit out, the words emerging like a feral roar, torn from him, it seemed. “Specifically, I am the duke’s bastard. Not a lord. Not Lord Clayton. I will never be a lord. Nor will I ever be truly welcomed in drawing rooms or ballrooms. There will not come a day when those who see me do not look upon me with scorn, knowing I am the product of sin.”
His revelation took her breath. But not because of who or what he was. Rather, because of the resigned manner in which he disparaged himself. It was as if he believed he was a monster to be shunned. That he was unfit, lesser than because his father had not married his mother. He could not help the circumstances of his birth. Tears welled in her eyes, unshed. For him. For the burden he had borne his whole life, the burden he would always carry.
“Clay, it does not signify,” she began, but he cut her off.
“Yes, it bloody well does,” he hissed, raking those long, beautiful fingers through his rich, dark hair until it stood on end. “I was wrong. So damned wron
g to allow this to carry on for as long as I did. I should not even have besmirched your reputation by speaking with you. I do not know what I could have been thinking. You must not—we cannot—associate with each other any longer. I am so sorry, Ara, but this has to be goodbye. It must be goodbye for us.”
“No.” She launched herself at him then, without a second thought. Without a moment of hesitation. Straight into his chest she went, her arms looping around his lean waist and holding tight. She breathed in his delicious scent. His heart thrummed.
“Ara, release me,” he growled, tugging at her arms in an attempt to dislodge her.
“No,” she repeated into his coat, turning her face until her ear rested above that reassuring thump. She locked her arms tighter. “Never.”
He caught her elbows and pulled. “This is not proper, and if the earl were to discover I have been meeting with you in secret, he would have my hide and you would be ruined. We need to forget we ever met. I am not for you, and you are far too good for the likes of me.”
“You cannot say that,” she cried with feeling, still holding on to him with all her might. “I will never, ever forget you. I do not care if you are not Lord Clay. I have never wished to be a lady anyway. All I want is to be happy.”
Mama was a countess, and she was not happy. Rosamunde had become a countess as well, and each time Ara saw her, the grooves of sadness alongside her eyes had grown deeper. Titles and wealth and comfort did not make a contented heart.
His hands slid from her elbows to her upper arms, gripping, but not with enough pressure to hurt her. Rather, it felt as if he was not sure if he wanted to set her away from him or bring her closer still. “It is easy for you to say so, when you have been treated with respect all your life. You are your father’s rightful daughter. You are a lady. No one will ever look upon you with disgust, as if you are a shameful secret that should have been locked away.”
He was right. She had never experienced what he must have endured, and she could not fathom the pain he must know, being treated as if he were less worthy than anyone else by mere virtue of his birth.
“You make me happy,” she whispered, stroking him tentatively at first. Just a swipe of her right palm over the indent of his lower back. Then higher, up the rigid curve of his spine where corded muscles flexed beneath her touch. And then her other hand could not resist moving as well, following the same path, not halting until she reached his powerful shoulders.
So much strength contained in one man.
His arms and his large, lean frame dwarfed her. But she had never felt more safe or alive.
“I cannot make you happy.” His voice rumbled against her ear, mingling with the steady, reassuring throbs of his heartbeat. “I cannot bring anyone happiness. I am a curse.”
But his hands too had shifted, one cupping her shoulder, the other curling about her nape. He did not wear gloves, and his bare skin upon hers sent a shiver of something wonderfully sinful tremoring all the way to her toes and then back up her body once more, settling between her thighs.
The despicable thing had returned.
“You’re wrong,” she told him, daring to tilt her head back and look up at him. “You bring me happiness, Clay.”
Their gazes clashed, his dark and angry and fraught with a host of emotions she could not begin to read. He was so handsome, so beloved, and she ached just looking upon him.
He caught his full lower lip in his teeth, worrying it, and how she longed to kiss him there. To set her lips upon the flesh he tortured. To soothe it. To take away his every pain.
Clay let out a low groan. “Do not look at me in such a fashion, I beg of you, my lady.”
“In what fashion?” she asked innocently, allowing her gaze to stray once more—quite intentionally—to his mouth, for it had seemed to provoke him.
His tongue replaced his teeth, flicking over his lip. He blew out a gusty sigh. His fingers had begun to slide upward, settling in her carefully pinned coiffure. “You are an innocent, damn it, and you have not the slightest inkling of how I could destroy you. I am not someone you should know, Lady Ara.”
But he could never destroy her. She did not believe it possible. And neither could she resist him. He was Clayton Ludlow, and he was temptation, and she knew without a doubt he was the only man she would ever love. The realization settled in her heart, and she welcomed it.
“I do not care if you are a lord,” she told him, her voice firm, nary a trace of doubt shadowing her words. “I do not care about anything other than that you are Clay, my Clay. Seeing you fills me with warmth. Thinking of you makes me smile. I spend all the time I am not in your presence wishing myself back in it until I am here again, with you.”
“Damn it, Ara, do not do this.” His chocolate eyes begged. “I am trying to be a gentleman, to send you away from me with your innocence and your reputation intact. I cannot be the man for you.”
She did not want her innocence.
Did not want for him to be a gentleman.
Nor did she care for her reputation.
Nothing and no one mattered but the man in her arms, the man who was looking down upon her as if she were the most perfect and revered thing he had ever seen.
Her life had been lonely and empty before him, her future prospects an abysmal marriage like her parents shared—a match made in reason and not in love, doomed to make both parties miserable. She did not want to spend the rest of her life hiding in her chamber, feigning megrims because she could not bear to face what she had become. Now she had found something different. Something right. And she was not going to allow it to slip through her fingers.
She hooked her arms around his neck, rocked onto her toes, and fitted her lips to his. With a low sound of need his mouth took hers, claiming and hungry and seeking. Shocking. Unlike any other forbidden peck she had ever received from a previous suitor.
His tongue swept past her lips, delving into her mouth. Decadent and absolutely delicious. It made the despicable thing quiver and burn inside her.
But just as quickly as he had branded her with his kiss, he dragged his lips from hers and set her away from him. A vicious curse rent the air. He stared down at her, his chest heaving, his eyes darker than obsidian.
“I am no good for you, Lady Araminta,” he said finally. “Do not come looking for me tomorrow, as I will not return. It is for the best. For your own good.”
And then he spun and stalked away into the forest, disappearing as if he had never been there at all. She stared, unseeing, holding two fingers to her lips.
Chapter Five
“Mama!”
Ara bent, arms open, as her beloved son hurtled toward her. His long arms wrapped around her, and he nestled his face into the smooth silk of her mourning bodice. She caught him, burying her face in his head of dark, unruly curls and inhaling. He was growing taller every day, and soon she would no longer need to bend at the waist to embrace him at all.
If he took after his father, in no time, he would surpass her in height. Already, she saw the signs. His arms and legs were lanky and awkward. Even his neck seemed too long for his body, as if preparing for the frame he would one day grow into. Nothing about him resembled her at all, except for his eyes. He would become a strapping young gentleman, towering over her.
How odd to think that the babe she had carried in her womb and held lovingly in her arms would one day become a man. Would he resemble Clay even more as he aged? The thought pained her, but she could not help but to wonder.
Regardless, it would little matter, for Clayton Ludlow would be long gone from both their lives at that point. He would never be the wiser.
Why did the notion cause a pang in her breast? An ache that would not dissipate? She did not wish to think about it. Did not wish to feel. Instead, she turned all her emotions toward the thin body in her arms.
“Edward, my love.” She hugged him tightly, grateful he was not yet of an age where he did not wish to hug his mother. He was still innocent and young
enough to think she could do no wrong and the world was a fair, safe, and lovely place.
Ah, innocence.
“Mama, you are squeezing me far too tightly,” he complained.
Perhaps there went her supposition he still felt she could do no wrong. Just as well, for she most assuredly could do wrong. And she had. But she had spent the last eight years doing her best to ensure none of those wrongs would come home to roost.
She released her son, smiling down at him as a surge of maternal protectiveness rose within her. Nothing could have prepared her for the love in her heart the moment she had first gazed down upon her babe in swaddling. His face had been red and wrinkled, his hair a dark tuft that had reminded her painfully of Clay, but her heart had sung. Being a mother gave her, all at once, both the greatest joys and the greatest frustrations she had ever known.
She could not resist ruffling his dark locks affectionately. “And how is my favorite gentleman today?”
“Growing weary of his studies,” he grumbled. “I wish to go outside. It feels as if we have been trapped inside these walls forever.”
Essentially, they had. Their time of mourning had stretched, each day slowly less bleak than the last. And then, just when their lives had at last begun to settle back into a semblance of normalcy, the Home Office had sent its emissaries and its dire warnings of threats against her life.
Resentment surged inside her, clawing up her throat until she longed to scream. How dare those villains murder Freddie? How dare they take a young boy’s father from him? As if their crimes were not heinous enough, they then sought to take his mother as well. The injustice of it all made her want to lash out. To smash something.
But she was not a violent person.
She was a mother, and she had to be strong and calm now for her son.
Nobody's Duke (League of Dukes Book 1) Page 4
