Footmen ran out to retrieve what pieces of fruit they could.
He crossed the lawn, aware of a sudden silence. From the corner of his eye, he saw Jane Kirk, ashen, a hand over her mouth. Did they really think him as awful as that? “Miss Wellstone—” He held out his hand to Lily. What little conversation was still ongoing ceased.
He heard Eugenia whisper, “No, Mountjoy.”
“Give me the racquet, if you please.”
Lily handed it to him with only a slight tilt of her head. During the exchange, he shoved his note into the top of her glove. Racquet in hand, he turned to his left.
“We’re saving the pieces, Mountjoy,” Eugenia said. She held her hands to her mouth, then lowered them. “They’re to be fed to the chickens and the stoats.”
He stooped for an apple. It was discolored and soft. “Even this one?”
“Yes,” Ginny said. Behind her, Jane Kirk shook her head. Caroline looked at him as if she expected him to bite off someone’s head.
“It’s hardly fit for a pig.”
No one said anything.
Mountjoy tossed the apple into the air and hit it with all his strength. It shot through the air like a thing possessed, whirling and spinning and then disintegrating. Bits of apple rained down, yards and yards distant, he saw with some satisfaction, from where anyone else’s had landed.
Caroline Kirk leaned over to Eugenia and said, not too softly, “Applesauce.”
Jane shushed her.
Lily kept a straight face. “Well hit, your grace.”
He handed the racquet to Lily. “That’s how it’s done.”
“Indeed, your grace.”
“See that the scraps are fed to the livestock.” And then he stalked away like an ogre retreating to its lair.
Chapter Twenty-six
MOUNTJOY PACED WHILE HE WAITED. HIS REGULATED life was falling to bits. Nothing was as it should be. He no longer knew how to behave toward Lily in public and it seemed whatever he did only made Jane’s opinion of him worse. People were noticing a difference in him, too. Since Lily’s arrival, the men he regularly met with had all remarked, in small ways and large, that he was a changed man. Eventually, he was going to say the wrong thing to Lily in front of someone, if he hadn’t already, or pay too much attention to her and not enough to Jane. He’d be caught staring at Lily, not Jane, and the rumors would start.
When the door to the tower room opened, Mountjoy stopped pacing and wondered at the way his heart beat so hard. He said nothing. His life came to a halt. She had a key. He’d given Lily the key to the tower room he considered his sanctuary.
Lily closed the door and leaned against it, hands behind her. She was…serene. “Are you angry?”
“Not angry,” he managed. He must break with her. Send her home to Syton House now. He must say the words he had ready.
“Eugenia and Jane had nothing to do with it.”
He nodded.
“It was all in good fun. I didn’t think I needed your permission for a game. The new apples are already put by. We only hit the ones that no one would ever eat.”
“Close the door.” Heart sinking to his toes, he knew he wouldn’t say what he should. He was still enthralled. The boredom would come, and then he’d break with her. But not yet. Not while she was at Bitterward. Surely, he could manage until she left. Then his life would go back to the way it was.
She did, then faced him again. Patient. Lovely beyond his understanding. “I daresay the hens will thank me for saving them from eating all the really rotten bits.”
“It was your idea.” He sounded a bloody fool. Hadn’t she already told him so?
Her chin lifted. “Every part of it.”
“I’m not angry.”
“I am glad to know it.” Cool as ice, she brought her hands from behind her and drew his note from the sleeve of her glove. “You’ll want to burn this.”
“Come here.”
“I am here, your grace.” God, that inscrutable expression of hers, as if nothing he could do or say could ever touch her. “At your pleasure.”
“You should be here.” He glanced at his feet, well aware there was a crude interpretation to his words and action.
Her mouth curved, and the last of her wariness slid from her eyes. “Maybe you should be here.”
“Come here. To me.”
She leaned her head against the door. “I think I will be safer here.”
“Yes,” he said. “You would be. Much safer. Is that what you want? To be safe?”
She pushed off and walked toward him. He watched her approach. “Are you sure you’re not angry?”
“Quite.”
“Well then. If you’re not angry, why the imperial summons?” She waved his note.
“I thought I would go mad watching you. They admire you, all of them. Too much. Especially that damned Dr. Longfield.”
“Don’t be jealous,” she said when she reached him. He took back his note, the dratted thing. “It’s unbecoming a duke.”
He drew her into his arms and brushed his mouth over hers. They fell into a kiss so carnal his initial thought of indulging just in this, just the kissing, flew off with his good sense. He pulled away. “I have a sheath,” he said. “From Venice. I’m told they make the finest.”
At first she didn’t understand, and he felt a pang of guilt that she was innocent enough not to know what he meant. But then her expression cleared. “Oh. I see.” Her cheeks turned pink. “Have you?”
“Yes.”
“What of it, Mountjoy?” Her arms stayed around his shoulders. One of her hands played in his hair.
“I have it with me.” He patted his chest in the location of an interior pocket of his coat.
“Convenient.”
“I want to fuck you here.” The words sounded crude, not what he meant at all. “Right now. With you wearing that pretty frock.”
She drew in a sharp breath. “Wicked man.”
He released her and walked to the sideboard to pull the salver from beneath the bottles there. He put an edge of his peremptory note to the flame of the lantern until it caught. When the fire licked down nearly to his fingers, he dropped what was left on the salver and waited until nothing remained but ashes. He also found some still water, thank God, and dropped his sheath into a glass of it so it would soften.
“Best stir the ashes,” Lily said. “To be sure no one can reconstruct the note.”
“It’s gone up in smoke.” He looked over his shoulder at her. She remained standing in the middle of the room. “No one will be reading it, I promise you.”
“I can see most of the shape of the paper.”
“And?”
“I once read a novel in which a spy was uncovered in just such a manner. The clever heroine was able to read the words etched into the ashes of the page.”
“Balderdash.”
“Upon such convictions are nations brought down.” In a softer voice, she added, “And reputations destroyed.”
She was right. And it would be her reputation that was shredded. There was no reason for the risk, far-fetched as it might be. He sighed and stirred the embers with his finger until all that was left was curling bits of blackened motes. He splashed some brandy on his fingers and wiped off the ashy residue with his handkerchief. Turning, he said, “Do you think we’re safe now?”
“Not at all,” she said.
Carrying the glass with his sheath, he returned to her and set it on the floor by the chaise. He put his hands on her shoulders and brushed his thumbs over her exposed skin. “You’re right, Lily. Neither one of us is safe now.”
She smiled. “Not in the least.”
Taking her hand in his, he sat on the chaise where he drew her between his open thighs. He reached for the buttons along the side of her glove. One tiny pearl after another, he unfastened her glove enough for him to pull it off. He did the same with the other and draped them both over the top of the chaise.
“Thank you,” she said. “T
he better to touch you.”
He slid his hands underneath her skirts. His hands glided up her legs until he was touching the bare skin of her thighs. “The better to touch you. Like this.”
She gazed down at him. “It’s not wise.”
“We’ve established that.” He cupped the back of her thighs and pulled her forward. She was careful to lift her skirt, and he took care not to crush her frock more than necessary. She straddled him, knees on either side of him, and gasped softly when his fingers pressed between her legs. Soft skin, the folds of her already slick with want. Of him. He unbuttoned one side of his breeches and opened the fall to free himself.
Lily dropped her hands to his shoulders and watched him retrieve the sheath. Her skirts hid his hands sliding the lambskin over his cock and fastening the ribbon, but she knew what he was doing.
“Ready?” he whispered.
Her dark eyes stayed on his face while he adjusted them both. He brought her down on him, hands cupping her hips while he pushed up. Her body surrounded him, and as he closed his eyes and gave in to the exquisite sensation of being inside her and surrounded by the soft slickness of her, she whispered, “You feel good. So good.”
When he was seated in her, pressing her down on him, he opened his eyes and said, “Say my name.”
“Your grace.”
He brought his hips toward hers and angled himself so the side of his cock, the sensitive head of him, rubbed harder against her passage. He pulled her forward sharply and thrust hard into her. “That isn’t my name.”
“Mountjoy.” Her lips parted, and he disengaged his hands from her skirts and wrapped one hand around the nape of her neck. He kissed her. Hard and deep, tongue sweeping into her mouth. He moved his other hand to her belly, as far as he could reach before the bottom of her corset barred the way. He angled his fingers so he could stroke her. He knew where to touch a woman to bring her to pleasure, and he did so for her.
Lily’s fingers dug into his shoulders, and he drew back from their kiss to watch her while he brought her closer to the edge. Closer. Until she shattered, and then he lay back, angled on the chaise, drinking in the heat in her eyes, the sensual curve of her mouth.
“Like that,” he said. “God, yes. More.”
She moved on him, rode him, sent him out of his mind with delight, and the same happened to her. When she came, she did so without reservation, and he adored the way she gave herself over to her pleasure. Her reaction made him feel potent, a lover worth keeping.
“Beautiful,” he whispered as she used his body.
Her eyes opened slowly, a satisfied smile curving her mouth. “And you?” she asked.
“I’m close. Very close.”
“What do you need?”
He sat up and rearranged them so that her back was to his front, her gown safely tucked up, with his arms under her shoulders, her legs spread over his thighs, and he pushed into her again. Thrust. Pulled back, thrust again, and she understood the motion he needed. His felt his reaction spiraling tight, out of reach yet closer with every thrust, with every clench of her body around his cock.
“I’m going to spend inside you,” he said.
When he came, his peak hit hard, spun him out of his mind, out of his control. The only thought on his mind was more. More of this. Let him be thrown out of his mind. Inside his chest emotion quivered. He damn near let go of her because he was completely lost to his reaction to her. Releasing inside her.
Once he had his breath back, when he was back inside his body, and they’d separated, he said, “Don’t leave, Lily.”
Saying her name cracked his heart in half.
She did not answer.
“Don’t leave me,” he whispered. “Not so soon. Not yet.”
“I have to go back outside before much longer.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
She pushed up on one elbow and peered into his face. “What do you mean?”
“Stay here.” He curled a strand of her hair around his finger. “At Bitterward. At least a little longer.”
She looked away.
“Why not?” he asked.
“My father needs me. I can’t gallivant around the country for weeks and weeks. He gets lonely, you know, and he hasn’t any friends. When he came to live with me, he gave up all that. No one should be lonely when they’re old and frail. What sort of daughter would I be if I left him alone like that?”
“If he’d raised you with half the thought you give him now, you’d have had a happy childhood. He’d be the sort of man who could make new friends.”
“I’ll be here another fortnight. That’s a long time yet for me to impose on your good graces.”
“You’re no imposition.”
She leaned down and kissed the tip of his nose. “And when I do leave you’ll think just the same. That I was a delightful guest. You’ll have fond memories of me.”
“More. You know that.”
“Yes,” she said without smiling this time. “Yes.”
What would he do if, after he’d tried everything he knew, she left him anyway?
Chapter Twenty-seven
AT BITTERWARD’S FIRST BALL, MOUNTJOY WORE ONE of the new suits that had arrived at the house just the day before. He felt foolish even though he knew he looked, in some indefinable way, more like a duke than he ever had before. Everyone was staring. In the last two hours, he’d had more compliments about his appearance than he’d had in the last ten years. He accepted each surprised remark with a nod but could not help thinking he remained the same man he’d been every day before this.
The fit was as comfortable as both Elliot and Lily had promised, but his cravat had a deal more starch than he was used to. His shirt was of so fine a linen that even he, with his dislike of any change and his aversion to even a tacit admission that he had been a stubborn ass, had to admit he liked the way his coat slid on and left him with no urge to pull or tug at the parts that bunched up. Now and again, he caught sight of himself in a mirror or a fortuitously reflective surface, and he scarcely recognized himself. He looked a dandy, but without the fussiness he associated with those overdressed fools.
This was a night in which he learned he’d been wrongheaded about more than his clothes. Obviously, Mountjoy had completely underestimated the importance of social entertaining. In London he rarely went to events that weren’t political or for some purpose of business, his or the government’s. He had not been to a ball these five years at least and had yet to as much as hint that a voucher for Almack’s would be put to use. He did not care to be turned down by the Almack’s patronesses—he wouldn’t be the first duke to suffer that humiliation—any more than he would actually care to attend such an affair.
He ought to have begun formal entertainments here years ago. He really should have.
Here he was. A duke from the skin out, in a house full to the rafters with what looked to him to be the entirety of High Tearing and half of Sheffield. There was a steady procession of people through the room where samples from the treasure Lily had uncovered were on display. The pieces, though they appeared to be metal parts and fittings torn or removed from centuries-vanished armor and other equipage, were nevertheless beautifully worked. With the dirt removed and what repairs the local goldsmith felt competent to make, the displayed collection took one’s breath.
An hour of talking to his neighbors had cemented better relations with them than all his years of appearing at the Sessions or at any of the official or ad hoc governance meetings that had taken place over the years. A good many of the men were genuinely interested in his opinions of the management of an estate, its tenants, lands, livestock and crops, and other holdings. The men’s wives knew a great deal of their husbands’ interests. More than one extended a verbal invitation for a social meeting that even he, at last, understood was at least as much a business opportunity as it was luncheon or supper or tea.
Presently, he was standing at the edge of the ballroom watching the dancers i
n the last set before the orchestra took an intermission and his guests could sit down for an informal meal. Nigel was not yet back from London, which had caused much consternation and upset with Eugenia. The Kirk girls were here, but for Jane, which was odd. Somewhere, though not within immediate sight, was Lord Fenris, who had not been invited but who had come nevertheless.
Eugenia was dancing with the mayor of High Tearing. She was lovely in pale blue silk, happy and smiling as she had not been for far too long. Miss Caroline Kirk was dancing with Dr. Longfield. He did not see Lily anywhere. He scanned the room, expecting to find her easily and feel that rush of his pulse that happened whenever he laid eyes on her.
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