by Jen YatesNZ
Rearing back, he glowered down at her, his eyes losing their deep, dark hue and beginning to glow with an eerie pale fire.
‘Fucking bitch!’ he snarled, leaping off the bed and heading to where his neck cloth hung over the back of the chair.
He’d turned back towards her with it in his hand before Jassie’s mind had cleared enough for her to realize what was happening. Staring back into his blazing light eyes, she was hit with a sudden epiphany.
Before he’d taken a step back towards the bed she’d forced her trembling body to calm enough that she could slide off the mattress and stand upright, meeting him halfway across the floor.
His eyes flared like torches in the dark. ‘You never learn do you, bitch? You’re a fucking—’
‘I’m sorry! Rogan! I’m sorry!’ Jassie cried.
She reached her hands out to him and he took them in a punishing grip.
‘—damaging whore and I will make you sorry—’
He began wrapping the neck cloth around her wrists. Jassie let her body sag against Rogan’s instead of going rigid and resistant. Startled by this departure from her normal behavior, he let her hands slide through the cloth and she fell to her knees before him, wrapping her arms around his knees.
‘I am sorry, Rogan! I’m deeply sorry—truly—so sorry—’
Jassie clung tightly to his naked legs and pressed kisses to his knees, then slowly kissed down one shin until she knelt with her mouth pressed fervently against the top of his foot.
‘I’m sorry, Rogan and—I love you. Please forgive me.’
For several seconds he hung, motionless above her, then with a deep, dragging breath he began to sag and fold until he knelt before her. Clasping her shoulders, he lifted her until they knelt, facing one another.
Then he leant forward and kissed her forehead, her nose, her mouth. Each touch of his lips was a benediction, a blessing, a touch of grace.
‘Thank you,’ he whispered against her skin after a few more deep breaths. ‘I love you, Jassie. I love you in ways I can never explain.’
Jassie thought her heart would swell right out of her chest as he slid his arms around her body and held her close, rocking their bodies and continuing to press soft kisses across her cheeks, nose and forehead.
‘Forgiveness,’ he murmured at last, pulling back to look deeply into her eyes. ‘I know it wasn’t your sin, my love, but hearing you ask, hearing you speak that word, was like soothing balm on a livid, searing burn. It was like—in that moment before sanity returned—I felt a satisfying, deeply fulfilling peace flow through the whole of my body from somewhere deep in my core.’
Jassie couldn’t keep her mouth and hands from him any longer. She cupped his face, drew it down to her and sealed their lips together. It was gentle, reverent at first. But when her tongue slipped into his mouth a soft groan rumbled up from his belly and she finally knew her Rogan was back.
When an answering moan vibrated from the back of her throat, Rogan lifted his head and whispered, ‘Shall we take this back to the bed?’
Smiling against his mouth, she murmured, ‘Yes.’
Epilogue
Nine months later almost to the day, Philip Dominic Wyldefell, heir to the Windermere title and estates was born at the Abbey—in the very bed where he’d been conceived. His dark hair and sunny blue eyes were all Wyldefell but the dimple in his chin was generally held to be a Carlisle trait.
On the day of his christening in the Cistercian Chapel at Windermere, the Duke of Wolverton held his godson in his arms—and remembered. He looked across at the boy’s parents, and found himself struggling with a surge of emotion that would not be so easily buried beneath his cultured aloof façade as usual. Since that night just before the opening of the grouse season at Windermere, he’d watched his cousin emerge from the shadows, like a portrait taking on a sharper, clearer focus under the skilled brush of an artist. Rogue had finally stepped fully into the sunlight—and that sunlight was Jassie.
They both glowed with happiness and the joy and gratitude Dom saw in their eyes as they smiled across at him was almost his undoing.
He glanced back down at the baby, whose blue Wyldefell eyes were watching him, as if committing his face to memory. Disconcerted to feel tears stinging the backs of his own eyes, he was devoutly grateful he’d already said whatever was required of him for he could not have spoken if life itself had depended on it.
Surely there was a reward for being honorable and heroic, but any reward for him could never include Jassie—nor the kind of happiness that radiated from her and Windermere. And if it was to include children of his own it was time to cast aside impossible dreams and dredge up honor and heroism once more to do his duty by a title he’d neither wanted nor ever thought to inherit.
Time to choose an acceptable duchess from among the highly suitable families of the ton, a young woman with the breeding and consequence to honor the role when there were none so golden, so bright or alluring as Lady Jassinda Windermere.
Time to acknowledge it was Windermere’s presence at Jassie’s side that fueled that glow from within, not the Duke of Wolverton’s.
Time to put his foolish heart aside and focus on duty.
What was going through Dom’s mind? Jassie watched him with her son and knew him affected by deep emotion. It was not hard to guess what his heart ached for. He had changed in the last year; become a little more austere and cynical and yet less inclined to his old rakish pursuits, if rumor was to be believed. Surely there was a woman somewhere among all the diamonds of the ton who could put the wicked buccaneering glint back into the Duke’s somber green eyes.
If only Sheri—
So tall, so regally blonde and serene at Dom’s side, she was the perfect foil for the dark piratical Wolfe of Wolverton. Perhaps she and Dominic could—
Her husband leaned close and proved how close their thoughts always were.
‘Not our place to interfere, my love,’ he murmured. ‘Dom will find his happiness now he knows we’ve found ours.’
She smiled up into her husband’s dark blue eyes. It was because she’d never ceased to believe in their love that they stood here today with this child as testament. If belief was what it took then she would concentrate on believing hard enough that the Duke found his love also.
She and Rogan and the future generations of Wyldefells of Windermere Abbey owed it to him.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I sincerely hope you enjoyed the Earl of Windermere’s story, the first in the ‘Lords of the Matrix Club’ series. I would be very grateful if you could leave a review on Amazon at:-
http://www.amazon.com/Jen-YatesNZ/e/B009MSEA7U
And because I know you can’t wait, the Duke of Wolverton’s story, ‘Marked for the Duke’ comes next.
To find other books I have written please visit my website - http://www.jenyatesnz.com
Happy reading.
Jen YatesNZ.
