‘Jack Johnstone and the others changed that.’ She couldn’t recall the name of the first fighter her father had trained; only that he smiled a lot and all his front teeth were missing. It had taken her years to equate that gentle, smiling man with the fiend he became in the boxing ring. His was the first fight she’d watched, huddled on the sidelines of that seething, blaspheming crowd, between her brothers Thomas and George, holding tight onto little Beatrice’s hand – Bea, who was too young to be there but nevertheless refused to be parted from her and held on tight right to the bitter end. Bea, whom she’d cosseted and loved in ways she’d never loved Amelia.
The crowd that day had been particularly fierce. Ale and gin ran freely. The sun had baked the ground into clay and everything stank of stale sweat and pigswill. When her father’s man went down, the baying for blood reached fever pitch. He only just escaped with his life, battered and torn, his nose forever misshapen.
Even now, it still didn’t seem right that such a handsome life should be built on the back of such raw brutality, but that’s how it was. Slowly the family’s fortunes had turned around, little by little, season by season, until now they were wealthy enough to host an Earl’s son, and her father’s prize-fighters were good enough to attract the attention of the ton.
‘Are you suggesting your father’s business practices are responsible?’ Darleston asked. His brows furrowed.
‘No.’ Emma sauntered towards the window. She let herself out onto the balcony. A chill wind had risen since the sun began to set, which whistled around the side of the house and tugged at the hair that spilled over her shoulders.
Her father’s enterprise had come too late. Oh, the deaths had slowed once the prize-fighting money began to roll into the household coffers, though there were few of the family left for the reaper to claim. Her mother had fallen to puerperal fever ten days after the birth of her fifteenth child. The boy – she did not do well with boys – was stillborn, and entombed with her in a single coffin. Emma had raged against it, but her grieving father had dismissed her concerns as childish. They’d needed the money too much to go to the expense of two coffins. But then he didn’t understand the true horror of being pressed together like that, while Emma could never forget the sensation of waking to find another curled against her like a frozen crab.
Darleston caught her. She hadn’t heard him move, but neither had she been aware of the floor rushing up to greet her until his arms encircled her body and shocked her out of the faint to which she’d succumbed. ‘I’m fine,’ she barked, trying to push him away. Lord, the heat of him was intense; it burned through the layers of their clothing to sear her skin. It made her pulse fire so fast and so hard that her head ached from the pressure.
She’d forgotten … she’d forgotten how it felt to be encompassed by so much warmth.
‘You’re not. You just collapsed.’ As she frantically wriggled in his grip, Darleston carried her all the way to the bed, where he laid her upon the quilt. ‘Emma, I’m sorry I touched you, but I couldn’t let you fall.’ He crouched by the bedside. ‘You were damn close to the edge.’ She saw the horror in his face then, the fear that penetrated right to his eyes. His pulse had been racing too; the thud of it had beaten against her arm as he’d carried her. If she’d swayed forward and toppled that way instead of back into his arms then the low balustrade might not have saved her.
She turned her head away from him, tears welling in her eyes, frightened as much by his concern as by the aftershock of his touch.
‘Mayhap it would be best if you skipped dinner.’
‘No.’ Emma pushed herself upright. If she hid here then Amelia would be completely unmanageable. The silly twit would believe she’d triumphed with her little show of autonomy. She needed reining in before she did something ridiculous and disgraced them all. Nor could she lie here and fret over what had just occurred and what might yet be. The normalcy of dinner would serve her better. ‘I’m all right. I’m all right.’ She rubbed at each of the points where he had touched her, as if the action would somehow wipe away the contact. Instead, it made her skin tingle all the more.
Emma rose and hurriedly bound her hair. The call to dinner came while she was still pushing pins into place. It was only as she scuttled toward the door that she realised Darleston still sat upon the bed. His expression remained thoughtful. ‘Are you coming?’ she asked.
He slowly bowed his head. ‘Go ahead. I’ll follow you down.’
She hesitated a moment. ‘What is it? Is something wrong?’
He tentatively shook his head. ‘No. Not at all. As I said, I’ll follow.’
* * *
The situation at dinner only exacerbated Emma’s unease. Their father turned a blind eye while Amelia acted the jade. And she … she could do nothing for the memory of Darleston’s touch spinning around in her head, as though at any moment she might leap upright and be forced to blurt that he had held her and that she had touched him too. Only Lyle’s watchfulness curbed such rashness. His attention repeatedly returned to her throughout dinner, as though he were checking to ensure that she remained where she ought to be and he hadn’t somehow mislaid her. His soft brown eyes were somewhat mournful this evening. He reminded her of an old family pet, beloved and yet left behind while they went out for a walk. Perhaps he worried over the potential for tragedy they were brewing between the three of them. While Emma felt no desire for Lyle – she had never wanted passion from him or been inclined to offer pleasure to him – she did not harbour any wish to maim him. He had held Darleston dear first. She knew the men had known one another long before Darleston’s arrival at Field House. Darleston: it was he who made everything different and difficult. If she had been another woman, matters would surely have culminated before now. Only her fears and pantheon of old ghosts held her back, else she might well have given herself up to his love.
Emma dipped her head when Lyle’s gaze lingered a little too long. Perhaps he realised the discomfort he caused, for he turned away too, only to look upon Darleston with much the same expression of woeful longing. Lyle had said to her that he did not mind her lusting after his lover, if only she promised not to steal him away. I’ve not deliberately coaxed him in any way. She was sure she’d tried to thwart Darleston’s efforts to persuade her into his bed, yet things kept occurring between them that she could not explain as normal interactions between one man and another’s wife.
‘Miss Amelia, have you some entertainment for us this evening?’ Mr Aiken asked, raising his head from the political meanderings of Mr Tipton.
The only entertainment of which her sister seemed capable at present was raising her skirts to flash him her garters. She’d never owned any musical talents, nor was she overly proficient at cards or any other game. The silly girl needed a London season under the wary eye of a chaperone just to set her straight about gentlemen’s expectations of a bride. Only the bounders and rakehells sought the company of a coquette. That said, all the gentlemen were now focused upon her.
‘Well, Mr Aiken, I had thought it might be pleasant to stroll a way, but that was before the wind got up. I fear we may have to content ourselves with poetry readings and a hand or two of piquet.’
Did Amelia even know how to play piquet?
‘It will be a delight to hear your choice, Miss, and perhaps if the wind drops again as rapidly as it rose we might take that stroll together too.’ Aiken turned to Hill. ‘Ain’t all this gusting a little unseasonal, sir?’
It was Phelps who looked up from his lamb chop to reply. ‘For London, perhaps, laddie, but not for these parts. The wind she does blow as she pleases.’ He licked a greasy smear from his lips, before burying his gravy-stained fingers in the household’s best napkins.
‘I suppose we’d better be hoping that this gale blows itself out before this bout of yours, Hill. That old stable’s as drafty as hell and it won’t hold a handful of the folks that’ll come to see Jack. We need the punters in if we’re to make a bean.’
H
ill chewed thoughtfully on a limp cabbage leaf. ‘The fight’s to take place in the copse, not over by the Cottage. The trees muffle the noise better and stops folks hereabout at the other big houses getting too curious. One or two of them lack vital humours. The commoners, they know where to go, and if they don’t, Dan Furrows at the Arms knows where to point them. You’ve arranged that with him, haven’t you, Harry?’
Harry Quernow confirmed that he had.
‘Are we to host any more guests, Father?’ Emma enquired, remembering Amelia’s assertion.
‘Just the two, lass. Oxbury and Littleton should be with us around noon tomorrow.’
Two, not the five Amelia expected. ‘No ladies.’ Some additional female company might set Amelia back to rights.
‘Not that I’m aware of. Though I dare say we could accommodate one or two should the need arise.’
Should the need arise … Why did Darleston stiffen at those words? Why had his jaw tightened at the mention of Oxbury and Littleton? She would have to ask. Only he never presented her with the opportunity, for both he and Lyle slipped away the moment dinner ended.
‘Aren’t you joining us?’ Amelia flounced past Emma as she stood in the entrance hall trying to determine which way to go. The proper thing to do would be to help entertain their guests, while her chief desire was to run after Darleston and Lyle. It wasn’t so much that she wished to spy upon their loving, but rather that she wished to know what lay in their hearts. She felt sure that Lyle would be bemoaning their current situation, even though it was he that had initially brought them all together. She simply couldn’t accept that he’d wish to see her in a different way. She’d been his wife two long years, but never, ever his lover. Intercourse was something he indulged in with other men. And Emma had never been interested in those men before Darleston arrived.
‘I expect my poetry choices would be too dour. Besides I have a sore head.’
Her sister paused on the threshold of the drawing room. She turned her head to look back at Emma. ‘You’re not about to order me to bed too, are you? I don’t have a headache, and I don’t see why my pleasure should be dependent on your whims.’
‘I’m sure you’ll be perfectly fine with Father. After all, you managed one another all day.’
Amelia’s eyes narrowed but, despite her stubborn pout, she didn’t retaliate. Instead, she swanned into the centre of the company and accepted a glass of heaven only knows what from Harry Quernow. Still, Darleston was right. It was time she let Amelia manage herself. Then it was her responsibility if she stuck her head out so far that she lost it. ‘Take care, dear heart,’ Emma muttered under her breath as she chose the pathway that led upstairs. She had worried over her sibling since the moment of her birth. Now it was time she turned that care to her own afflictions.
She braced herself before pushing open the door to her bedchamber, expecting to find the two men within. Instead, darkness met her. There was no evidence to suggest that either Lyle or Darleston had set foot in here since before dinner.
They’d sought to deliberately exclude her.
They’d gone to Darleston’s room.
A chasm opened in her chest as she coaxed a flame from the coals stacked in the grate. She lit a candle and took it over towards the bed. She could still see Darleston kneeling beside her, his concern almost palpable. The warmth of his embrace still chafed against the painful cuddles of her past, leaving her struggling to make sense of her warring emotions. ‘I can’t do this,’ she said to the empty room. There was safety in isolation, an ease of existence, and yet … She slumped heavily onto the bed with a sigh.
Something crinkled beneath her weight. Emma turned her head to find a writing-case lying beside her on the counterpane, from which poked several sheets of parchment. She gathered them up without giving them much thought, only considering the oddness of their appearance as she stretched to place them on top of a nearby trunk. Lyle was normally fastidious over the storage of documents. It seemed unlikely that he’d leave them upon the bed.
Emma turned over the leather case. She was not sure Lyle owned anything so pretty in which to store his papers. Emblazoned upon the front of the oxblood leather was the Darleston coat of arms. So the case was his, not Lyle’s. Curiosity immediately got the better of her. She didn’t precisely mean to snoop, but it had been left upon her pillow. Perhaps he’d even intended her to find it.
She flipped open the case, only to drop it immediately. Charcoal-drawn images scattered across the bed. From each of them her image stared. Or rather there were drawings of her, but it wasn’t her. She’d never posed in such a fashion. She’d never been touched in such a fashion.
Her sensuality leapt off the paper, her expression an intense mixture of torment and bliss. Only a sweat-dampened shift covered her womanly curves. Me. This is how he sees me. Yet such sensuality was beyond her. However, it was not her rapture or grace that captured her attention, but the cause of it. Her hand was cupped over her mons, the middle finger extended to brush against her nubbin. In other drawings she was caressing her own breasts. One depicted Darleston’s head between her thighs, doing something unspeakable with his tongue. She’d seen him suck her husband’s cock, so it was no great leap to imagine a man might pleasure a woman in a similar fashion, but seeing it depicted in such a way gave her such palpitations that she’d have reached for the smelling salts if she’d owned any. Her constitution was normally robust enough to ward off any such missishness.
Still her heart bounced into her throat, almost choking her, at the sight of actual coitus. Thereafter, each picture seemed more lewd than the last – and more enticing.
As she sifted through the drawings, it became clear that they were not all of her. Here lay one of Lyle erect, while another showed him spent. The final one depicted the three of them together. Not just posed beside one another, but together. The notion left her so shocked she simply stared at the image until the drawing was burned into her mind, ready to haunt her in both the waking world and her dreams.
They could never touch her like that. She could never lie between them naked, could never … Good Lord, the situation was impossible. How could Darleston think for a moment she would consent to such an act? Yet the heat in her cheeks was not caused by revulsion. Rather her pulse fired over the possibility of such a situation happening. How would it feel to be held in such a way, to be touched thus by two men at once? Heaven help her, she was not even accustomed to being held by one man. She had been unable to tolerate even the briefest brush of Darleston’s lips against her fingertips.
Only something had changed inside her, an ache in her belly, curiosity about what might be. Yet how could anything come to pass in the short time they had left together? Jack the Lamp would fight in two days’ time, and then there would be no reason for them to remain here at Field House. Lyle would find yet another lover, and as for Darleston, he would move on to wherever it was he made his home.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Emma didn’t intend to burst in on the men. After all, they had presumably retired to the Winter Room because they didn’t wish her to be present, but the thought didn’t stop her hasty steps, nor did it prevent her opening the door when there was no reply to her knock.
She couldn’t let this one chance she had at love slip away from her. Bravery would henceforth be her motto, although deep down she did not feel remotely brave. The butterflies in her stomach had been replaced by something with a far greater wingspan, which fluttered all the harder at the cosy warmth of the room.
Two thick beeswax candles stood either side of the hearth, their scent heavy in the air. Beside them, only the crackling blaze gave any light. Emma’s head turned towards the bed, only to find it empty, the drapes drawn back to the posts.
‘Close the door,’ Darleston said.
Emma turned back to the fireplace. A wingback armchair stood positioned before it, over the top of which she could just make out the bright coppery waves of Darleston’s hair.
After a
quick glance back down the corridor to make sure she was unobserved, Emma closed the door and turned the key for good measure. There was no sense in inviting observers – observers other than herself.
‘Now come here.’
The brevity of his welcome kicked her pulse into a gallop. Come here, do this, do that. Then again, what did she expect, considering she was intruding upon a tryst?
Lyle knelt in exactly the position she imagined she’d find him, his head buried in the shadows of Darleston’s lap. The only difference from her mental picture was that he was naked as a newborn and, if the wet sounds she heard were any indication, suckling just as contentedly.
‘Closer.’ This time, Darleston turned his head in order to beckon her. Fires blazed like warning beacons in his eyes. Challenging her, warning her to take heed and think before she drew any closer. Was this truly the path she sought? Deep down she knew it was. She wasn’t here to watch. She was here because she couldn’t bear not to be, because she was afraid of missing out, and watching them love one another was the best she could hope for. At least this way she could live vicariously through their pleasure.
‘I said, closer. If you’re going to watch, then at least stand where you can see what’s what.’
They formed a perfect copy of one of the drawings Darleston had left upon her pillow. They were responsible for this desperate sense of longing that filled her and for quickening her pulse so that it raced and beat a heavy tattoo between her thighs. Looking at them, all long elegant lines and hard angles, linked as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she had to wonder if it wouldn’t be better for them all if she simply turned around and fled. The men were meant to be together, that was clear from the affection that infused every interaction, while she was different, apart from them, unable to share those delicate busses and signs of endearment that everyone else took for granted.
She couldn’t get out of her head the picture of Darleston on his knees, being simultaneously, kissed, masturbated and swived by Lyle. In her dreams she’d revisited that moment countless times, in each instant becoming a little braver. She wanted to knock Lyle’s hand aside and bend down and claim Darleston’s cock for herself. He wouldn’t be touching her, only she him.
Her Husband’s Lover Page 14
