She wriggled in his arms, trying to get free. “You do not have the right to order me about. Put me down now, Mr. Ludlow.”
He did not even pause his stride. “Cease squirming or I shall drop you.”
Naturally, she did not heed his warning. Instead, she moved about, pushed at his chest, doing everything in her power to make him release her. But he held firm. She felt as ineffectual as a butterfly flitting about the head of a lion, just as he had once said.
As they re-entered the house, one of his men approached, wearing a forbidding expression. The servants were nowhere in sight, the house eerily silent.
“We have searched the entire home, sir,” said the man. “We cannot find the assailant responsible for stabbing Beauchamps.”
“The young duke,” he barked, never breaking his steady pace. “There are two men guarding him?”
“Aye, sir. Two men at the nursery, another on the ground below watching the perimeter.”
“And Beauchamps?” Clay asked.
“He’s in a bad way. There’s a doctor seeing to him now, sir,” answered the man. “We have also sent word to the Duke of Carlisle. I expect he will be arriving within the half hour.”
“I’ve found the assailant, Farleigh,” Clay said then, apparently satisfied by the reports he’d just received. “He’s in the gardens.”
“In the gardens? Shall I interrogate him, sir?”
“This bird won’t sing, Farleigh,” Clay said harshly. “I am afraid I had no alternative. Perhaps you might see to the body. I would not have the child or an unsuspecting domestic seeing it. Search him for any hint of information.”
“Aye, sir,” chirped the man called Farleigh, heading off in the direction from which they had just come.
Clay was like a general commanding a field of battle, and her glimpse into the man he had become left her shaken. So shaken she forgot temporarily her struggle to be released. Until her wits returned to her, and with them, her outrage. “Release me at once.”
He ignored her, stalking to a small saloon she scarcely ever used, and elbowing the door open. Once they were over the threshold, he kicked the portal closed at his back and released her so suddenly that when her feet met the plush carpet, she almost tumbled backward in a heap of skirts.
Smoothing her dress into place, she glared at his back, for he had turned away from her to pace the length of the chamber. “I am grateful to you for saving my life whether you like it or not. But you, sir, have no right to cart me about. Who do you think you are?”
He spun on his heel, bearing down on her, eyes blazing. The ferocity in his expression stole her breath. “I am the man who just killed for you. The man who is charged with your wellbeing and safety. I have every right to protect you as I see fit.”
“And yet you left me hours ago, with no word of when you would return,” she charged, her shock giving way to anger. Anger was far easier. She could cling to it. Hide herself in it. Wear it like a shield.
“I alone am to blame for this breach, and I know it.” He raked a hand through his hair, looking every inch the dark, dangerous warrior. “I should not have abandoned my post. I would never have done so under ordinary circumstances.”
The reason for his abrupt departure hung between them, unspoken and heavy.
He had discovered he was her son’s father.
But she could not think about the magnitude of her revelation to him now. Not when a man who’d wished to murder her lay dead in the gardens. Not when she had almost been in that man’s place. When she had almost been the one whose blood had spilled. The one who breathed her last breath.
Clay had saved her. And despite his highhandedness, she could not deny he had spared her life today. Without him, she would not be here before him in this small chamber, wanting to kiss him and rail against him.
“I am thankful you returned when you did,” she managed to say softly. “How did you know where to find me?”
He swallowed, his expression becoming pained. “I heard you scream. I had returned to find Beauchamps badly wounded, and I knew I had to find you and the lad as soon as I could. I made certain the lad was safe. You screamed. I ran. I was…Jesus, Ara, I was afraid the bastard would reach you before I could.”
She stared at him, reading the emotion in his countenance, hearing it in his voice. Her foolish heart longed to believe that a part of him could still care for her, at least in some small measure. Because she realized in that moment, shock still making her weak, part of her had never stopped caring for him.
That her heart still beat for him.
When he was in a chamber, he was all she saw.
When he was gone, he was all she thought of.
He had been back in her life for scarcely any time at all, and she was as weak for him as she had ever been. Young, foolish Ara had believed this man her destiny. She had thought they could never be torn apart. Older, harsher Ara could still fall prey to the same fanciful notions, it would seem.
“Clay,” she began, but there was no opportunity for her to complete her thought, for he was upon her.
He caught her waist, guiding her with sudden force, not stopping until her back met the door. There was no gentleness. No lover’s finesse in his touch. It was pure and wild. Raw need. Hunger and desperation, fear and life and death and the frantic desire to celebrate taking a breath.
And she felt the same. Felt the furiousness of her emotions. Felt it all return to her in a flash, if indeed it had ever truly been gone. There was nothing and no one but Ara and Clay. No past. No present. No future.
There was the moment, and then there was his mouth.
Hard and firm, insistent and demanding, his lips crashed into hers. She wanted it. Welcomed it. Needed the mercilessness of his claiming. Her hands sank into his hair, her body arching into his. Her breasts crushed against his chest. She opened for him, sucked his tongue into her mouth. He tasted of whisky and bitterness and sin.
He tasted of life and raw emotion and the sweetest passion.
He tasted of the past she had never truly left behind.
She grabbed fistfuls of his hair, tugging, angling his mouth to hers, struggling to control him. They savaged each other. Ara bit his lower lip. He nipped her back with a growl. His long fingers sank into the braid pinned to her crown, pulling with just enough force to move her mouth back to where he wanted it. His subtle domination—on the verge of painful pleasure—made her knees go weak.
She moaned, kissing him back with ruthless abandon. His other hand slid from her waist to her breast, cupping her through her bodice and corset, making her ache. This was not the touch of the young man she had once loved but the bold, commanding caress of a man. He had changed. So had she. And yet this—the conflagration between them—remained the same.
Or perhaps, it was more.
She had never burned for him the way she did now. Her cunny was slippery with need, aching and pulsing and yearning. She wanted him to lift her skirts, find the slit in her drawers, and slide home.
It was wrong, and she knew it.
There were so many reasons why they could not. Why she could not. Should not.
As if he sensed the tumultuous nature of her thoughts, he tore his mouth from hers, breathing heavily. His dark gaze burned into hers. She could not look away from him. He was glorious, his mouth swollen from their kisses, ruby-red where she had bitten into his sensual lower lip. His face was all harsh lines and angles, his expression inscrutable.
She fought to regain her breath, the madness receding proportionally to the distance between their hungry mouths. Her first thought was of Edward. Though Clay had reassured her he was safe and Farleigh had reiterated the same, she would not be satisfied until she could be certain herself. “I need to see my son now, Clay. Please.”
He stiffened, his eyes darkening, his mouth taking on a harsh flatness. “Our son, Ara. He is mine as well, and you must accustom yourself to it. I’ll not press the matter with him now, but in time I will want him to know
who I am.”
Of course he would want Edward to know he was his father. She had expected and feared as much. “He is a boy, Clay, and he has just lost the only father he has ever known. I do not know when, if ever, he will be ready for such a revelation.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “He will know who I am.”
“When the time is right,” she agreed quietly.
“When I decide the time is right,” he snarled. “You have kept him from me long enough.”
“Out of necessity alone,” she defended. “I gave him a father and a home when he would have had neither.”
“You gave him what you wanted, and the one thing I could never have given you—a bloody title.” His lips twisted, and he released her, moving away as if he could not bear to be in such proximity to her now that he had regained his senses.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “How very wrong you are.”
He could have given Edward far more than any title. And if he thought that marrying Freddie had given her everything she’d ever wanted, he was sorely mistaken. She had loved her husband, but as a friend. No man before or after Clayton Ludlow had ever made her feel the way he did, as though he was the other half of her she had never known was missing. Until he had left her behind with nary a goodbye.
Until he had left her to find a way of raising their son on her own.
There was so much more she could say to him, but she did not. Her foolish weakness for him knew no bounds, it would seem. Otherwise, she never would have allowed him to kiss her. She never would have kissed him back.
“It would seem we have both been very wrong,” he said then with a funereal air. “Come, madam, I will take you to our son.”
She ignored the arm he proffered, running her tongue over lips that still felt the brand of his kiss upon them. “I do not require your escort.”
How she wished she had not kissed him.
His lip curled. “You shall have it whether you require it or not.”
How she wished she did not long to kiss him again, even now.
Oh, heart. Do be quiet. We cannot afford to indulge in your particular sort of trouble. Not now, and not ever again.
But as he trailed her all the way to the nursery, she knew instinctively that her heart and her common sense had not waged the last of their war against each other. Instead, she had a weighty feeling that the real war had just begun.
Chapter Fifteen
Clay helped Ara down from the carriage, trying to ignore the old sensations a mere touch from her gloved hand elicited in him. The moment her boot-shod feet touched the gravel drive, she released him and swept away, as if his touch had scorched her. Mayhap it did if she felt even an inkling of the need coursing through his veins after their kiss.
It took every shred of his control to keep from following her with his gaze. Even in a black travel gown, her copper locks covered by a demure midnight hat, she was so bloody lovely it made his chest ache. But the sight of the small, solemn face exiting the carriage next made his chest ache in an entirely different fashion.
“Welcome to Harlton Hall, Your Grace,” he said, striving to keep his voice good-humored for the lad’s sake. He had already been through hell, and the sudden departure from London following an attempt on his mother’s life could not have been easy on him. “Though it be humble, I hope you shall find it to your liking.”
“Thank you, Mr. Ludlow,” the lad said seriously as he stared up at the looming, partially resurrected home at Clay’s back.
He had bought the sixteenth century manor house and its two hundred acres with a notion to restore it to its original glory. He had been drawn to its forest, which had reminded him of the lush woods at Brixton Manor. But his familial home and the adjoining estate his father had settled upon him had never appealed to him in the wake of losing Ara. Harlton Hall had been his chance for a new beginning, far from the memories haunting him. The west wing was still in a sorry state of disrepair, but the main hall and east wing restoration had been completed, meaning that there would at least be a comfortable space for Ara and the lad to spend the next fortnight.
In the wake of the attempt on her life, Clay and Leo had decided the best thing to do was remove her and the lad from London. Oxfordshire was not nearly far enough, but the Fenians would not be searching for the Duchess of Burghly at a dilapidated old hall on the Isis.
The situation remained grave. Beauchamps had miraculously survived the attack, but he was still weak and unable to provide any meaningful information regarding the man who had stabbed him from behind. He thought he had heard two pairs of footfalls in the moments before the blade cut into his flesh, but he had not been certain.
As for the knife-wielding villain Clay had dispatched, there had been not a stitch of identification on his body. Nor had there been even an address or an epistle or a newspaper clipping tucked into a pocket.
With so much uncertainty, risking another attempt on Ara’s life had been unthinkable. And so it was that he welcomed his son and the woman he had once loved—the last two people he had ever fancied would pass between Harlton Hall’s Doric columns and step inside its centuries’ old halls. It had been meant to be his haven from the world. A place for his mother to spend her dotage comfortably since she did not wish to be present at Carlisle House for all the licentious gatherings Leo held as a ruse to deflect from his work in the Special League.
Ara too stood, gazing up at Harlton Hall, her expression shielded by the brim of her hat as he approached her once more. Formally, he offered her his arm to escort her. Without sparing a glance in his direction, she placed a light touch—so light it may have almost not been there at all—upon his arm. With her free hand, she reached for Edward, touching his thin shoulders in a motherly fashion, as if to reassure him.
Clay watched the simple interaction, a painful wrenching in his gut. He was reminded he was an outsider in their lives. That he was a father who had never been able to reassure or comfort his son. That his son, even now, believed he was another man’s child. All the pain and resentment festering inside him toward Ara returned tenfold, and he welcomed it, for perhaps it would chase away the pathetic longing for her he could not seem to shake, regardless of what she had done.
“Where have you brought us, Mr. Ludlow?” she asked coolly as the three of them started forward, crossing the drive to the steps that led to the double doors of the main hall.
“To a home where you will be safe,” he hedged, for though he owned it, Harlton Hall had never felt like his. He was a pretender within its walls, and though he had worked hard to amass the funds necessary to purchase it by making sound investments in property and businesses, he would always be the bastard who bought a home where a king had once stayed.
“It is not fair for us to burden a strange household. We could have traveled to Kingswood Hall instead,” she pointed out.
Over his dead, blood-soaked corpse. The day he saw her father again would be the day he left the coldhearted earl with a scar to match his own.
“Your familiar routes of travel, your familial connections, will all be common knowledge to the Fenians,” he said smoothly instead, fighting against the rage that still threatened to consume him. His scar itched, but he refrained from touching it. “One cannot hide in the precise location where one’s enemy will first look, Duchess.”
“Will the bad men find us here?” the lad asked.
Clay felt Ara’s hand tremble on his arm where she hesitantly rested her hand. And his own gut clenched at the lad’s query. “Not if I can help it, Your Grace.”
How bloody odd that title felt in his mouth, on his tongue, speaking it to his own son. How wrong. But before he could dwell upon the injustice, the doors to Harlton Hall opened.
He had not sent word ahead of their travels, needing to keep Ara and Edward’s locations as secret as possible. Thankfully, his mother—a more than capable lady of the house—had outfitted the hall with a full staff of domestics, all of whom, it went without saying,
she held to the strictest standards.
Lily Ludlow may have been a duke’s mistress and never his wife—Carlisle’s death before his duchess’s had rendered that dearly longed-for goal of hers unattainable—but she was a lady to her core. She knew how to dress, how to conduct herself, and she had the biggest, most giving heart he had ever known. She also sang like an angel, but that was another talent entirely.
As if his thoughts had materialized her, there his mother stood, alongside his butler, Keynes. She wore a golden-yellow day gown, her dark hair streaked with gray, her warm brown eyes sparkling with unabashed delight as they met his.
“Clayton, my darling,” she greeted, rushing forward with her signature exuberance and enveloping him in a perfumed embrace. She kissed his cheek. “I cannot believe my eyes. And you have brought company for me. Oh, how lovely.”
She extricated herself and cast a curious glance toward Ara.
He stiffened, hoping she would not prove as discerning in this instance as she so oft was. “Mother, I present Her Grace, the dowager Duchess of Burghly, and her son, the young duke. Your Graces, I present my mother, Mrs. Ludlow.”
Though she had never married, she had adopted the Mrs. before her surname many years before, in an effort to distance herself from the scandal she had once been embroiled within.
His mother beamed at Ara. “Such a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Duchess.” Her attention turned toward the lad, and her welcoming smile faded. She flicked a questioning glance to Clay before pasting the smile back on her face. “And you as well, Your Grace.”
Bloody hell, she had seen the resemblance. Of course she did. The lad was his image, from his dark hair and tall, skinny body to his long blade of a nose, slashing cheekbones, and too-wide jaw.
“The duke and his mother will be our guests for the next fortnight,” he forced past lips that had gone dry. Damn it, how had he forgotten how very shrewd his mother was? How had he ever imagined bringing Ara and her son—rather, their son—here to Harlton Hall would work?
Nobody's Duke (League of Dukes Book 1) Page 16
