To Seduce a Lady’s Heart (The Landon Sisters)

by Ingrid Hahn

  “I’d already forgotten.”

  “I can’t imagine a worse beginning to your first day at Idlewood.” Christiana twirled an artfully stray curl at the nape of her neck.

  “Surely the limits of your imagination extend beyond madly frightened lambs and a ruined carriage.” The statement was a deflection—an attempt at being lighthearted without overlooking the fact that the day was undoubtedly going to get worse. Much worse. Lord Bennington still had no idea whom he’d married.

  “Oh, frightened lambs and ruined carriages are well outside the bounds of my imagination, I assure you.” Christiana smiled—the first impish smile on her face since before she’d become the ward of Lady Rushworth. With the tip of one finger, she pushed her spectacles back up her nose. “What are you going to wear for your first dinner at Idlewood?”

  Eliza hadn’t been thinking about her gown. Her mind was on the jewels, the ones hidden in her trunks. “Oh, I’ll find something, I’m sure.”

  “Shall I help you?”

  “Tomorrow, perhaps. Tonight any old thing will do.”

  Christiana looked taken aback. “But it’s your first night at Idlewood as the new countess.”

  “And everybody will be tired after traveling and all the more weary after what happened with the lambs.”

  After Christiana left her bedchamber, Eliza, heavy with renewed guilt, pushed aside the shifts and stockings packed in the trunk and withdrew a wide, flat box from behind the false bottom. With reverent care, she placed it on the surface of the dressing table. Taking a tiny key hidden in the secret drawer of the box of toilette items, she unlatched the lock.

  The necklace, bracelet, and earrings her father had given her were hidden within. The diamonds were the color of fine champagne, their facets throwing off the light as she gently picked up the necklace and placed it about her throat.

  She’d been fourteen the day her father had presented her with the box. He’d been shining with pride. “I’d given these to old Bennington for safekeeping. Today I got them back.”

  “Why did you give something to Lord Bennington for safekeeping?” she’d asked. Given her mother’s open animosity for the Landon family, the earl had seemed a strange choice. It was a question she’d puzzled over for a time and then forgotten about until she stood with the new Lord Bennington as his bride.

  “Never mind that, Eliza.”

  At the time, she’d assumed it’d had something to do with her mother. Something she didn’t care to think about…well, at all, really.

  Then he’d opened the box. She’d gasped at the sparkling array.

  “You’ll look beautiful in these, my girl,” he’d said. And then he’d paused, considering her, his eyes misting and his voice cracking as he added, “You always look beautiful, adorned or not, because your true beauty resides in the depths of your heart.”

  The day she’d received them, she’d imagined being old enough to wear them. Later she’d despaired of ever doing so—knowing her mistake had cost her the life she’d been meant to lead. How her father’s words had haunted her. Her true beauty…something she’d sullied irrevocably the day she’d allowed that wretched man to ruin her, naught but a few months after her father had given her the jewels. And with her virginity went her chance to ever be truly loved. For a while, she’d hoped things might be different. That there might be hope for her yet. Foolish. Captain Pearson had taught her only too well how wrong she’d been.

  A thousand times she’d dreamed of selling the stones and starting her own life away from her mother. Twice, she’d even smuggled them to a jeweler’s, only to find herself outside the door, feet stuck to the ground, unable to walk inside. Her father had always appeared in her mind, his pained expression all too clear.

  As she placed the stones around her throat, Eliza drew in a breath and tried to wipe her mind of all these maudlin thoughts. She was not going to feel sorry for herself, she was not.

  For all their troubles, Eliza knew that her father would have wanted her to care for her mother. To be a good daughter, no matter how terribly she’d fouled herself in the past. Which only increased the burden of guilt for her latest transgression. Marrying Lord Bennington was as good as abandoning her mother, just as selling the jewels and running away would have been.

  “I miss you, Father,” she whispered, studying her reflection as she lightly fingered the stones.

  She frowned. They didn’t look right. Maybe it was because the diamonds represented one more deception—a secret she’d kept from her mother at her father’s request. He hadn’t wanted Lady Rushworth to know they weren’t to be hers, deciding instead to save them for his daughter. Eliza had given her word, but she’d struggled with the guilt of the secret for years. Her mother would be crushed if she ever discovered the duplicity.

  Lord Bennington wouldn’t know. It was their first night together at Idlewood. It should have been the right occasion.

  But it wasn’t.

  Slowly, with some regret, Eliza returned the necklace to the box, turned the lock, and tucked them behind the dressing table.

  They would need to be better hidden, but she could think about that after dinner. Or—she stifled a yawn—perhaps tomorrow morning.

  Tonight, there was an entire evening to endure. She would have to look her husband in the eye and admit she’d lied. She’d have to see the hurt and anger on his face. Whatever the consequences to her actions, she’d have to face them.

  Chapter Eight

  In his bedchamber after an all but interminable evening, Jeremy let his valet help him out of his jacket. If what had passed tonight was a look into his marital future, he was going to have to make a few adjustments.

  He reminded himself again and again that he barely knew his wife. Yet church and Society sanctioned them to share one another’s beds and bodies.

  That left the question of whether or not he had one all-important thing—the most important blessing of all. His wife’s. Would she welcome him into her bed? Or would she merely endure his…what would they be between them? Husbandly attentions?

  His stomach curdled at the unfortunate terminology. Once begun, he’d never before experienced trouble completing the deed. But even he might have trouble staying hard in the face of that unfortunate nomenclature and all it entailed.

  He wanted a good, fast rut. The kind that left them both flushed, and breathless, and trembling from pleasure.

  “It’s all right, Yates.” Jeremy went to work on the cuffs of his sleeves, a curling lock of hair falling over his brow when he bent his head. “I can manage the rest myself.”

  “As you wish, my lord.”

  The slim figure of the servant slipped from the room.

  Leaving Jeremy to the unfortunate company of the decision before him.

  Dressed in nothing but his banyan, he stared at the door joining his bedchamber to his wife’s. Should he wander through? He was master of the place, after all.

  No, surely not. He was the master of Idlewood and the earl, but he wasn’t an oaf. He had to knock. Eliza had a choice in this matter, after all.

  He raised his hand. But didn’t rap his knuckles against the door.

  What did other newly married couples do? He and she weren’t the first to have married without knowing aught of each other.

  Pulling back, he ran his fingers through his hair. Why was this so difficult?

  He looked down. Maybe it would be easier if he weren’t sporting such a bloody obvious proof of his arousal. Usually, a wooden cock was just the thing. But with a wife who’d been raised as a lady?

  It was unlikely she was used to thinking of people as having carnal natures and core animal compulsions. His carnal nature and core animal compulsions were almost too much for him—his greatest shortcoming and the genesis of all his greatest sins. They could easily land him on the wrong side of heaven.

  He was going to have to hide that part of himself from his wife. She could never find out how profound his needs were. It was going to be diffic
ult, but he’d cultivated control his entire life. Now it mattered more than ever.

  Hell. A wedding night wasn’t supposed to be so difficult. The equation wasn’t complicated. A man was supposed to slip into his wife’s bed, and then into her body.

  There was but a single thing to do.

  He knocked.

  …

  Eliza started at the sound of the knock. This was it. He was coming, and they hadn’t even had time to discuss…well, anything.

  She made a dash for the bed, blowing out the beeswax candle with a quick puff of air and hauling the heavy coverings up to her chin. Her book hadn’t made it to the bedside table, but there were many instances of having slept the entire night with a tome lost in the blankets. Nothing to trouble herself over.

  In the dark silence, she cursed. Why hadn’t she simply opened the door? It wasn’t as if she could escape the inevitable revelation of truths under the pack of lies.

  Oh, but she had so many sins for which to atone. All of them against her husband—and they hadn’t yet been married a full three days.

  There was another knock.

  Eliza scrambled to sit up fully while yanking the counterpane to keep herself properly covered. The book fell away, sliding down the bed. It landed on the floor with a jarring thump, abusing her chafed nerves. “You may enter.”

  Oh, no. She’d done it. She’d told him to come in—into her bedchamber. Where he was going to expect…

  Lord Bennington appeared holding a candle. “Do I disturb you, my lady?” There seemed to be tension in his voice.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Immediately, she winced. Of all the ludicrous things she could have said. He was going to think her a simpleton. Or worse—too sheltered to know what happened between a man and a woman. One heard of that happening from time to time. Some poor girl raised under absurd notions of purity and innocence. It seemed horribly cruel, to both her and the man she married.

  Eliza wanted to sink back into the bed and disappear.

  The earl stood frozen, shock on his strong features. “I—er—thought we should…should talk about the lambs.”

  Eliza blinked. Then she bit her bottom lip. Hard. If she hadn’t, she’d have burst out laughing. Poor man was probably in agony for having blurted that so thoughtlessly. “The lambs, you say?”

  “You…orchestrated a rather…”

  No doubt he hated himself about now. She would, were their situations reversed.

  “I was trying to help. I’m sorry it turned out the way it did, but I wasn’t about to sit by and watch.” His discomfiture made her bold. She was going to test his limits. She nodded to the door behind him to see how he’d react to being dismissed. Either he’d leave or it would push him toward the truth of why he’d come. “If that’s all, my lord, it’s been a long and wearying day.”

  He stepped a few paces into the room and stopped, running his fingers through his hair.

  “Actually, that’s not all. I realize we never talked about this…” He cleared his throat. “And this is a terrible time to do so, I realize, and I am sorry, but I was wondering if…if you might like it if we…” He raised his brows significantly, gesturing as if trying to find the words in the air. “Well, if you might like to…”

  If she might like to…?

  That was not the question Eliza had been expecting. She’d been thinking all day about whether or not he would ask to come to her bed. If, indeed, he did ask—he didn’t have to do so. He was her husband. He had his rights. But something told her Lord Bennington wasn’t the sort of man to inflict harm on anyone, not for any reason.

  She hadn’t considered for a moment whether or not she would like to. She swallowed. “I’m fully prepared to give you an heir, my lord.”

  “That wasn’t my question.”

  Why did he have to press the point? He couldn’t expect her to admit her feelings on the matter, could he? She hardly knew them herself.

  Except she did, didn’t she? Even if she didn’t want to admit them to herself, they were there. There was something about the earl that was different from any other man she’d ever known. Something that stirred her in places she hadn’t thought could be roused after what she’d done all those years ago. “That’s the best I can do, I’m afraid. We…we might as well, I suppose.”

  “We might as well?”

  “We have a duty to see to, and there’s but one way about it.”

  “A duty.” His voice had gone flat.

  Without warning, he proffered a stiff bow and left, closing the door behind him.

  Eliza fell back against her pillows and stared into the blackness. Putting off the conversation one more day would make it ever so much more awkward. She squeezed her eyes shut and heaved a sigh. The longer they went with her deception intact, the worse everything was going to be.

  Chapter Nine

  Well before breakfast the following morning, Templeton stood in the doorway of the alcove adjacent the library where Jeremy was trying to work. “Has the present for her ladyship arrived?”

  “Indeed it has, my lord.”

  Jeremy threw the land manager’s report on the neatly arranged desk before him. Thank heaven for the interruption. Being tied to the Bennington title meant he kept an extremely close eye on all business and estate matters. But with his wife weighing heavily on his mind, he hadn’t accomplished one single, solitary thing.

  It didn’t happen often that he couldn’t concentrate on matters at hand, but when it did, it was nothing but irritating.

  One thing plagued his thoughts: what to do about getting into his wife’s bed. Did they need to talk? Was she simply going to be expecting him tonight? Did she still expect their union to be chaste? Devil take him, but he’d rather have his nails ripped out of their beds one by one than have that be the case. Although, when he’d first come into her room, she had said she’d been prepared to give him an heir, so perhaps marital chastity wasn’t something he had to worry about.

  Desperate for a reprieve from the maelstrom in his mind, Jeremy followed the sounds of women’s delighted squeals and found himself in a part of Idlewood into which he rarely ventured. He stopped at the door outside a small drawing room.

  The scene before him elicited an unexpected warmth in the center of his chest. His wife and her maid were exclaiming over the present. The King Charles Spaniel pup yipped and wagged its tail as its new mistress threw a toy that appeared to have been hastily made of old ribbons.

  Eliza laughed. Her cheeks were rosy, her eyes sparkling. His gaze caught on her—and held. That first morning he’d seen her, she’d taken his breath away. But that was nothing to how beautiful she was now.

  From his stance on the perimeter, Jeremy smiled.

  “I see you like your gift, my lady.”

  The maid sobered and dropped her gaze as she dipped a curtsy. The puppy yipped and danced at Eliza’s feet, trying to regain his mistress’s attention and resume playing. She scooped the creature into her arms to scratch its ears and place a kiss on its head. “I couldn’t be more delighted with her, my lord. Thank you.”

  “Oh, but—”

  “How did you know that I always wanted a dog?”

  “Ah. There, I must confess to subterfuge. I inquired with your maid.” He left out the part about having a conversation with the servant about her role in taking notes back and forth between them before they married. As it turned out, the woman was remarkably loyal. He couldn’t fault her for that.

  “I should have guessed as much.” Eliza beamed at the puppy and then at Margaret. The maid returned the smile with one of her own—wide with unfettered pleasure.

  He was almost sidetracked by the abrupt understanding that his wife was going to make an excellent mother.

  The warmth in Eliza’s eyes as she cast him a shy look could have tempted him to hell. “I’ve decided to call her Daisy.”

  Jeremy cleared his throat and spoke reluctantly, not wanting to mar the moment. “Except it’s a male
dog, my lady.”

  Both the women’s smiles vanished as they reexamined the little dog, who clearly enjoyed the attention. He wiggled and squirmed upward in Eliza’s arms, trying to lick her face.

  Eliza gave a quick glance in the appropriate region. “Oh, I see, so he is.” She concentrated on the dog’s face. “I shall have to think of another name, it seems. What do you think, Margaret? Nothing immediately springs to mind.”

  “I’m sure I couldn’t say, my lady.” The barest hint of a rougher accent lingered in the servant’s words. “I thought he made for a rather nice Daisy, if I do say so myself.”

  “Yes, so did I. Oh, well, ’tis no matter. I’m sure I shall think of something else for her. Him, I mean.” She gave Jeremy a look, head slightly tilting to one side. “Was there something you came to see me about, my lord?”

  Little more than whether or not she would agree to allow him into her bed. How did a man ask such a thing—and of his wife, no less? In all his previous interactions, the outcome had been obvious far enough in advance with naught more than a glance.

  As if sensing she was no longer wanted, Margaret absented herself, head bowed in staid deference. Eliza threw the toy for the dog, who tripped over its legs in pursuit.

  This was his chance. They were alone again. At dinner, too many servants would be about. Although he could dismiss them.

  No. He struck the notion from his mind. It would be far too strange and uncomfortable to broach such a subject over a meal, even if they’d been truly alone. When servants were dismissed, they always vanished, but they never went far.

  Tonight—all he needed to ask was if he could come to her tonight. They didn’t need to go into the particulars. He was being straightforward enough to be understood without saying something that might embarrass them both.

  The words didn’t come.

  He cleared his throat. She looked up from the puppy and raised her brows at him.

  Lord help him, but he hadn’t been tongue-tied like this in…well, he’d never been tongue-tied like this before, come to think of it. What needed to be discussed, he discussed, reasonably and sensibly.