by Ingrid Hahn
Chapter Nineteen
So what if they were drawing stares? Jeremy didn’t care if it wasn’t the done thing for a married couple to acknowledge each other’s existence in a social setting. Surprisingly, he didn’t care what these people thought they knew of their affairs. What they believed didn’t matter.
At least, not to him. A wife complicated the equation.
Her hair had been parted in the middle, and two featherlight ringlets framed her face. The simplicity set off the symphonic arrangement of her beauty.
Having Eliza on his arm drew up an unexpected welling of warm gratification. It was hard not to think that having her made him the most fortunate man in the room…that she was his wife made him the most fortunate man in the world.
“I want to go someplace private where we can have a quiet word.”
A few rooms away from the ballroom was a gallery. The house boasted a magnificent art collection, the mistress of the place being renowned for her taste. Her husband, by all accounts, knew comically little about his wife’s passion, though he was happy enough for her to spend what money she pleased, and he boasted prodigiously of her prowess.
The world beyond the windows was cloaked in black, but in the gallery, a dozen or so candles on three freestanding candelabra lit the room. The room was otherwise deserted.
Jeremy wouldn’t have been able to trust himself had he taken Eliza to a more secluded spot. He was desperate to toss up her skirts and take her hard and fast…or even slowly and tenderly, stroking her and caressing her. Just so long as he could have her.
Neither of them spoke until they were standing in the far end of the long space before one of those horrid paintings of bountiful abundance. Innumerable fruits and vegetables were crowded on the canvas in a great heap, their depiction precise but not the least bit appetizing. So far as he knew, that could have been the point.
Eliza’s features were calm and collected, but her voice betrayed a hint of tension. “What are you doing here?”
“My man of business called me here on an urgent matter.”
“What matter is that?”
“I haven’t seen him yet.” Because Jeremy’s desire to see her first had outweighed everything else.
“What did you want to talk to me about?”
Talk to her about? He wanted to be near her. He wanted to touch her and taste her, to see that glorious dark hair down about her shoulders. He hadn’t known how much until she’d gone.
“You deceived me.” It wasn’t what he meant to say. It was what had mistakenly emerged. Because it all came back to that, didn’t it?
“Which I have owned several times over.” She sighed. “I’m growing weary of this conversation, my lord. Either forgive me or not, that’s your business.”
“It will always be between us.” No matter how much he might want her, he could never forget what she’d done.
“Is that your final pronouncement, my lord?”
“It is.”
“And what am I supposed to say to that, exactly? If you don’t want to move on, that’s also your business, but pray keep your boorishness to yourself when we’re together.”
Jeremy’s passions flared to life. With a few long strides, he pinned her against the wall between two paintings, his arms on either side of hers, hands pressed flat against the plaster. “I’m boorish, am I? I have half a mind to show you exactly how boorish I want to be with you.”
Her eyes were huge, her cheeks flushed. “My lord…”
“You have no idea how much I want to bore myself into you. To show you the depths of my anger toward you by bringing you to the very brink of pleasure again and again until you’re begging me to allow you your release.”
“That sounds cruel.”
“It does, rather, doesn’t it?”
“Are you a cruel man?”
“No more so than my desire for you has tortured me into my present state.”
…
His desire for her? Eliza’s cheeks went hot. The earl’s dark scowl eased somewhat when he flicked a glance over her. One glance. That’s all it took. The power and virility of his maleness brought to life an awareness of herself she hadn’t realized existed until he’d come into her life. It was as frightening as it was exhilarating. Inappropriate thoughts intruded into the front of her mind. Ideas, images, and wants she’d hardly dared allow herself to have, after they’d led her to ruination.
“If you’re angry at me because you”—it was difficult to force the word out—“desire me, then I suggest you go away and have a good long think until your blood cools.”
“It’s funny you say that because that’s what I once thought. But I’ve come to realize it’s not possible. My blood will never cool around you. I’ve regretted every moment since you left.” His lips came close, and his voice dropped. “For having let you go without first taking you to my bed.”
He could have kissed her again. Oh, dear sweet Lord, why wouldn’t he kiss her? He smelled of those welcome days of early spring when the new season was in the air but not yet visible in the flora. It made her want to surrender to him in a way she’d sworn she’d never surrender to a man again. Why him? This interaction here and now only proved just how dangerous he was to her.
Fighting to maintain control of her hard-won sense, she gave him a little push. “You’re hardly behaving appropriately.”
“We’re alone.” His low voice melted her last reserves. He wanted her. Shockingly, she liked him wanting her. And more surprisingly, she wanted him, too.
“We’re at a ball. Someone could come in at any moment.”
“It’s hardly going to ruin us. We’re married.”
“My lord, you told me very plainly that there was to be no scandal. You’re as responsible for maintaining that scandal-free ideal as I am.”
“Don’t I know it only too well.” He ran his fingers through his hair.
In her peripheral vision, she caught sight of a couple entering the gallery. Which meant they were no longer alone, dash it all.
Eliza, pulling away from her husband now that others were present, was about to reply when a laugh from her nightmares clawed icy nails down the whole distance of her spine. She went numb.
He was here.
She winced.
And, sure enough, as she helplessly turned toward the source of the sound, there he was.
Sir Domnall.
She clasped her hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t retch. If he came close enough for her to catch a hint of that particular fragrance he’d worn the summer she’d known him, she would lose the contents of her stomach all over the gallery floor.
Lord Bennington grabbed her elbow before she even knew her legs were going weak.
He scowled. “You’re ill. You need a doctor.”
“No.” She was stronger than this. She shook her head, trying to smile. “It’s nothing. Too much canary wine earlier, I daresay.”
“The devil it was. You haven’t touched a drop of anything harder than lemonade, have you?”
“Don’t you dare impugn my word.” She was rattled by Sir Domnall’s presence and taking her fright out on the wrong man.
“Don’t lie and I won’t have to.”
“No gentleman I know would ever say such a thing to a lady.”
“I am a gentleman, and you are a lady.” His teeth clenched. “You also happen to be my wife.”
“What do you know of me?”
His countenance went dark. “Less than I would like, it would seem. There is a wall between us. Is there something you need to tell me?”
“Of course not.” Eliza swallowed. The lie was supposed to protect her, and it would, but it also compounded her sins. Her cheeks radiated that horrible, stinging warmth—the badge of shame for the untruth.
“Whatever secrets you’re keeping from me, wife, I’m going to have them out of you.”
Quite without her realizing, he was steering her toward the front of the house. They left the gallery and found th
eir way to the entrance hall, where he told the servants to gather their things.
He was so big. So strong. And so close. He couldn’t possibly know what a comfort his presence was to her…how much she wanted to lean into him and allow him to be strong on her behalf. In all the years since that fateful summer, she’d never been able to rely on anybody else. She’d been so alone. She still was, even with him. Her secret once again become a desolate prison where, utterly alone, she awaited her true punishment.
“I can’t leave now—not like this.” She spoke in a whisper, unsure whether Sir Domnall had seen her, and praying he had not. “You said you wanted to stave off gossip, and here you are—”
“Yes, but you’re unwell, and you’re my wife, Lady Bennington. I’m going to take care of you.”
Eliza had to ignore the velvety way he intoned her new title or be in danger of throwing herself directly into his arms and begging him to kiss her. And what a mortifying scene that would have been. “But people will talk.”
“I don’t wish to downplay the significance of the venom Society is more than willing to sip and share, but even I have my priorities, my lady.”
The footman signaled to them, indicating their carriage was ready.
“We can’t go without taking leave of our hosts.”
“I’ll write them a note.”
“I know you took some time away from Society, my lord, but one doesn’t simply leave this way and then—”
“They’ll understand or they won’t. My concern is for you.” He tucked her hand around his elbow and led her out into the night.
“If you think you need to protect me—”
“Of course I need to protect you.”
The hardness of his voice made Eliza simultaneously shiver with renewed awareness of how close together they were and made her want to balk against him. “I think of all the ladies in London, I’m one of the very last who’d need anything by way of protection, my lord.”
“Are you now?”
Carriages cluttered the street. Coachmen stood in groups talking or sat around a makeshift table under a streetlight with cards. A few were attending horses, and still others worked a rag over the polished doors to ensure they didn’t lose their gleam.
Then Lord Bennington was helping her into a carriage. He climbed in, took the bench seat opposite, and the door shut.
Panic leaped within her. Sir Domnall’s ghost still hung over her like a demon on her shoulder threatening to tear everything away from her at a moment’s notice.
The space inside was so small. And it was only the two of them, her and her husband—together and alone.
The window was still broken, so she didn’t need to let down the glass. She opened her cape so the air of the late-spring night cooled the skin above the low neckline of her bodice.
The earl gave her a stern appraisal, far more than the situation merited. But he was still trying to puzzle something out, wasn’t he? “What are you doing?”
“I’m overly warm, is all. Where are you taking me?”
“To your mother’s, of course.”
When they came to her mother’s house, he helped her down and came with her to the door. “It’s all right, my lord. You can go now. I’m quite safe.”
“Go?” He scowled darkly. “Where am I to go, pray tell?”
Her pulse picked up pace. “To…wherever it is you are staying, of course.”
“I’m staying with you.”
The heir. He wanted to begin working on conceiving the heir.
A panicked flutter erupted in the pit of her belly. “But, my mother—”
“She either gets you with me or she doesn’t get you at all. It’s as simple as that.”
“No, actually, I don’t think it is. I have a say in this, and I say…” She was cut off from finishing her thought by the butler opening the door to them.
Trembling with anticipation of the measure of her transgression, she stepped inside. Daisy ran down the stairs and leaped at her skirts. She scooped the sweet little pup into her arms.
Eliza had known Caruthers for the whole of her life. The last time the man had lost his squint, the head footman had spilled bright-red wine on the tablecloth in front of her mother.
That had been a decade and several head footmen ago.
With Lord Bennington standing outside the door, Caruthers opened his eyes wide enough to reveal his irises were a light golden brown.
The earl followed her inside, and the butler shut the door behind them.
A minute ago she hadn’t wanted the earl to stay. All it took was stepping inside for her decision to be made. They were married. They could stay together—and where they pleased. Eliza wasn’t going to tiptoe around Lady Rushworth’s moods and whims any longer.
“Caruthers, have a room made up for his lordship, please.” Eliza’s insides were jelly. Her mother was going to have a fit. It was going to be awful. Lady Rushworth hated the Landons with every last fiber of her being. “The room next to mine.”
Chapter Twenty
Instead of retiring directly, Eliza insisted they pay her mother a visit. “She’ll be expecting me. And it’ll be far better if she finds out you’re staying here tonight than if she hears it from a servant, after the fact.”
Having handed over their things to the footman while awkwardly juggling the dog from one hand to the other, they took the stairs up to the sitting room.
“This is where she spends her days recovering.” Eliza spoke in a low voice outside the closed door. The cut of her high-waisted, opalescent gown skimming her figure just so. “Her physician recommended Bath, but she refused to go.”
Of course she had.
“Oh, Nancy.” Eliza caught the attention of a passing housemaid on her way up the stairs.
“Yes, my lady?”
“I think today isn’t the day we let on to my mother that we’ve allowed a dog in the house. Have a footman take her into the garden. It’s been a while, and we don’t want any accidents overnight. And have the tea things sent up, won’t you?”
“Tea, my lady?” The maid raised her brows.
“Yes, please. Tea.”
Nancy nodded, took Daisy, and retraced her steps down the stairs.
“Tea?” Jeremy arched his brows in question once the maid had vanished.
“Medicinal.”
“Wouldn’t you care for something a bit stronger?” That wouldn’t have gone amiss with Jeremy, but she let the comment pass without responding, instead staring at the door as if the oak panel would save her from whatever was coming next.
Without her animal companion, Eliza looked as if she didn’t know what to do with her hands or arms. They hung stiffly by her sides, her shoulders straight, her neck long, and her hands alternating between fists and stretching her fingers long.
Without thinking, he reached out and slipped his hand around hers. “You’re not alone.”
She looked taken aback. “Why would you say such a thing?”
Although the impulse surprised him as much as it surprised her—maybe more—he wasn’t going to back down. A protective instinct had surfaced. One he couldn’t ignore.
He knew Lady Rushworth’s ways well enough not to wish the woman’s wrath on anyone. Eliza had withstood her mother alone for years. Now she had him. “Because you look as if you feel alone.”
With her free hand, she cupped her check. “I do?”
“You have an ally in this, my lady. Me.”
It was there no more than an instant, but it burned into his mind—the flash in her features of warmth and gratitude and strength. He’d put it there, he was sure of it. And if he died remembering the expression, he’d leave this world a happy man.
“But how can we be allies? I deceived you.”
“I know. And, as I told you, that’s going to be between us forever. But in this, you have me.”
Head high, cheeks white, Eliza swept into the room, Jeremy following.
The last time he’d seen Lady Rushwo
rth, she’d been blackmailing him into marrying Christiana. She’d played on the one thing he’d wanted the most in the world—to be free of that godforsaken debt his uncle had left him—and manipulated him into doing her bidding.
Lady Rushworth appeared to have aged ten years in the few days since he’d last seen her. She appeared shrunken, the wrinkles on her once handsome face cutting deeper and more harshly into the papery texture of her skin.
At the sight of him, her brows rose almost as high as her hairline. Just as quickly, the shock vanished. Her eyes narrowed. “That man is not allowed in my house.”
Without replying, Eliza took the seat opposite, indicating to him that he should take the one beside her. The air in the room was thick with tension. Tea arrived, and none too soon.
“I’m not taking tea with him.”
Ignoring her, Eliza took her mother’s key and opened the box on the mantel where the dried leaves were kept. She moved through the ordinary tasks of preparing and pouring, the procedure loud and unsettling in the terse silence, the china’s clinks unnaturally jarring.
“He doesn’t think he’s staying here, does he?”
Before Jeremy could answer, Eliza replied, her tone level. “He’s my husband, Mother.”
“Under my roof? Disgraceful. I won’t hear of it.”
The disgust in her voice suggested she had something particular in mind about what it was she didn’t want done under her roof. Well, she wasn’t wrong about that. Jeremy had to take a hasty sip of tea lest it show on his face exactly what he would like to be doing with Eliza.
Lady Rushworth clutched at the fichu around her throat as if it were the one thing between her and the devil himself. “He can very well make other arrangements.”
“It’s far too late for that, Mother.”
“That’s no problem of ours, my girl.”
“I’m afraid I must insist upon one thing, my lady.” Jeremy met Lady Rushworth’s stare with one of his own. “Do not discuss me as if I weren’t in the room.”
Lady Rushworth turned pointedly toward her daughter.
Drawing a slow breath, Eliza put her cup down in her saucer. “No, I think we shall either both be staying here or both be staying elsewhere.”
