by Megan Bryce
His head dipped toward hers and she whispered his name. A sigh and a prayer. Want and longing.
“Sinclair.”
His lips touched hers and she closed her eyes at the contact. He breathed, “Elinor,” against her lips and she opened.
Opened for her name and his breath and his tongue.
They danced slowly around the large table, swaying from side to side, bodies pressed tight. Lips and mouths and breath coming together.
She wanted to touch him, run her hands over him, but they were trapped. She could only feel with her mouth and she traced his jaw with her lips, felt his rough stubble and then his smooth lips.
She could only feel his body with her own, his legs hard between hers. She tried to get closer to him and he pulled against her bottom, bringing her in tight.
He nuzzled her ear, breathing hotly into it, and she shivered.
Sinclair mouthed her ear. “Cold, my Elinor?”
Never. She’d never be cold again.
He lightly nipped with his teeth and she tried to pull her hands out of his. She wanted to wrap her arms around his neck and have him lift her onto the table behind her so she could wrap her legs around him as well.
But her hands were trapped in his and the harder she pulled, the tighter he held her.
She pushed and she pulled, and he tightened his grip, squeezing her closer.
She growled in frustration and Sinclair froze.
He pulled away enough to ask quietly, “Was that you or the dogs?”
She growled again, pushing and pulling, trying to free her hands, and he let her go.
She didn’t know whether she wanted to shove him or pull him back in so she sniffed and said, “I thought we were dancing.”
“We were.”
“We weren’t moving.”
“We weren’t?”
They hadn’t been, not at the end.
Alan was still knocking on her door, she could hear it now, and shouting.
Sinclair said, “Ignore him, Elinor. He’ll go away.”
She laughed, a short sharp crack. “Do you think so?”
“Or he’ll lose his voice with all that shouting.”
“I have neighbors, Sinclair. I can’t wait for that to happen. And I won’t cower, hide, in my own home.”
She stepped away from him and opened the kitchen door. Her dogs raced out and up the stairs and she shouted after them, “Jones! The door.”
So unladylike of her, and her father’s voice filled her mind.
There is a difference between someone suspecting you are not a lady, Elinor, and someone having the proof.
She pushed away her discomfort, pushed away her father’s voice. Let Sinclair think whatever he wanted.
She turned back to the man still standing in her kitchen and didn’t shout, though she wanted to.
“Sinclair. The door.”
He stared hard at her for a long minute, then stomped past and up the stairs.
Her dogs began barking and she could only assume Jones had finally opened the door, and she rushed after Sinclair.
Her dogs were well-trained and normally listened to Jones, but her brother brought out the worst in them. She didn’t like them around him without her there.
Not to protect her brother; she simply preferred that if they attacked him it was because she commanded it.
Sinclair stopped suddenly on the stairs and she bumped into the back of him.
She couldn’t decide if she wanted to shove him or kiss him again, and then he said, “Why did you go to the country?”
“What?”
“Why did you go to the country so suddenly?”
To get away from you, she wanted to say. To stop wondering if a night, or a week, or a year in your arms would be worth losing all my dreams.
He didn’t give her a chance to answer even if she could have thought of anything not stupid to say.
He turned on the step above her, folded his arms and said, “I’m beginning to wonder if St. Clair is right. You’re playing the same game with a different opening.”
It took her a minute to work through that statement, and when she did she wanted to shove him again.
Instead, she batted her eyelashes. “Perhaps you’re right, Sin. Perhaps I’m trying to catch the fish of the season by running away to the country.”
He shrugged. “Some men like to chase. Apparently, I’m one of them.”
She didn’t know why Sinclair had been waiting for her tonight. She hadn’t expected it, and she didn’t think he quite knew what he was doing here either.
Except that she could still hear her brother shouting, could see that all of Sinclair’s feathers were ruffled and that he was trying to block the stairs with his body.
The look in his eyes wasn’t anger at her. He was listening, through the dogs and the shouting, to the danger upstairs.
He was trying to protect her.
He’d been worried about her.
The widow.
She said softly, “Apparently, you’re one of them.”
He raised his hand to stroke her jaw. “Why not catch me? Throw me back when you find the right one.”
The right one. The one who would marry her after she was carrying his child.
“And what if you’re half of the right one, Sinclair, and you give me what I want before I have to throw you back?”
His eyes were sad and his voice solemn when he said, “Elino–”
She shook her head sharply, cutting him off.
Don’t say it. Don’t say that she might never have a child and it won’t be true.
“What if it was simply bad luck, Sinclair?”
“You’ve been a widow for what, a month? I’m sure you could explain away a child.”
Perhaps. Except it had been two months.
And she didn’t want to explain away a child. She wanted a child and the husband to go with it.
She wanted children. Because one would be lonely.
“We can’t have each other, Elinor. But we can have this.”
“It won’t be enough.”
“It will be everything.”
It would be everything. And then it would be over.
Sometime while they were talking, the shouting had stopped. The dogs had stopped their barking.
She said, “He’s left. You can stop distracting me now.”
His eyes crinkled as he smiled. His hand was still cupping her jaw and he stroked her bottom lip with his thumb.
“If I leave tonight, we won’t get another chance.”
“Go to your mistress, Sinclair. Let her take care of you.”
“I have no mistress. I had one, eight years ago–”
“And then you left her for India.”
He wouldn’t leave Elinor for India. He would leave her for a virgin bride hand-picked by the earl.
And Elinor couldn’t count on the separation of a continent and an ocean to help ease the sting. She would have to see him and them.
She brushed past him, squeezing by in the narrow stairway.
Sinclair followed her and when they entered the main floor, he took his hat from the waiting Jones.
Sinclair nodded at the man and Jones reported that Mr. Rusbridge had departed, though the gentleman would want to be careful on his way home.
Elinor decided she would need to sit her servant down and remind him who his employer was.
It wasn’t her brother. It hadn’t been any of her five husbands.
It wouldn’t ever be George Sinclair.
Jones opened the door and Sinclair walked out.
She said, not unkindly, “Don’t come back.”
She said it because she wanted to say the opposite. She said it so she wouldn’t chase after him.
He walked down the outside steps, donning his hat and saying over his shoulder, “Of course not. Why would I when we obviously detest the sight of each other, the feel of each other. When I came solely to make sure that you were safe and sound. . .”
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br /> He turned when he got to the pavement, eyeing her, and she held her hands out wide. “As you see.”
He smiled, taking out his dog to a chorus of ferociously adorable barks. He waved her little paw at Elinor and then turned away.
Walked away.
For good this time, because he was leaving and there wouldn’t be another chance.
Elinor called after him. “Sinclair?”
He stopped, didn’t turn. Just stopped and waited.
She said, “You can’t keep a dog in your pocket.”
He laughed and started walking again, and said loud enough for her to hear, “I think the earl would like you, Lady Haywood. I think he could like you a lot.”
Six
The countess sat in her carriage and debated with herself.
On the one hand, she was simply visiting a member of the ton. A slightly scandalous member sitting perhaps-not-so-happily on the fringes, but it wasn’t as if Flora was sitting outside the home of a woman of ill repute.
On the other hand, her husband would be quite upset with her should he learn of her visit.
On another hand. . .
Flora stopped. She’d obviously been married to Sebastian for far too long because now all she could think was she only had two hands. There wasn’t another hand.
Only had one decision to make with two choices.
To go inside. Or tell her driver to go back home.
Flora descended from the carriage, and when she was sitting comfortably in a brightly colored drawing room and sipping tea with the widow, she didn’t know how to start.
Lady Haywood started it for her. “You’ve come about Sinclair.”
The countess sipped. “Not entirely. Though I am concerned for him and you. You must know that any attachment would be. . .doomed.”
Elinor smiled. “Doomed. Yes, that’s the word for it. Never fear, Lady Ashmore, I realized that the moment I knew who his brother was.”
Flora sighed. “If we’d had a son, it might have been different.”
“No, it wouldn’t have.”
She was no doubt right. If Flora had had a son, George would have never come back from India.
The widow said, “And there still may be a son. You still have time.”
Their eyes met and Flora said, “There may be time. There is little interest.”
“I think few women have interest in a fifth go-around.”
“It is the earl who is not interested.”
Flora’s heart raced at that confession and she felt her face heat. It was shameful that a man who lived by duty couldn’t bring himself to bed his wife. Shameful to the wife.
“Why is he not interested?”
Flora patted her cheeks. “Does it matter? The result is the same.”
Lady Haywood shrugged. “I have had a husband or two uninterested in procreating. Each for their own reasons, and despite the sting I think it had little to do with me. In each case there was little I could do to change his mind.”
“I must change the earl’s mind. It is my one job, to provide him an heir. That is it. And he won’t let me.” Flora took a deep breath. “I wondered if you could help.”
Lady Haywood paused with her cup halfway to her mouth, froze with her mouth open and her eyes wide. She flicked her eyes up to meet Flora’s, and then quickly back down.
“I. . . I. . have heard of such things but I’ve never participated. I have no interest in providing a third for your bed sport. But thank you for the offer, Lady Ashmore.”
Flora blushed hotly and set her cup down. “You misunderstand me.”
“Thank goodness.”
“I would like you to help me seduce my husband. Tell me how to wave my fan and bat my eyelashes and generally overwhelm his senses into complete and dithering madness.”
Lady Haywood said incredulously, “Complete and dithering madness. The earl?”
“Yes.”
“You would like me to tutor you.”
“Yes! Yes, that is right. Tutor me.”
Flora beamed at the blank look on Lady Haywood’s face.
“So you can seduce the Earl of Ashmore. The most stoic and reserved man to grace polite society with his presence?”
“Yes. Well. I would like to change all that.”
“You can’t change him.”
Flora thought no truer words had ever been spoken.
“I don’t want to change him. I want to change us. I want what we used to have.”
“I don’t think I’m the right person to be giving that kind of advice. None of my husbands have lasted more than a year; I have no experience in rekindling a dead passion.”
Flora tamped down her anger. Their passion wasn’t dead.
Dying, perhaps.
“If you were to seduce the earl, how would you do it?”
Lady Haywood muttered into her tea cup, “I would do it by leaving the country as quickly as possible.”
“Would you? Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that?”
Lady Haywood cleared her throat. “No. Excuse me. I was being rude about your husband. There is no excuse except. . .I have never had a conversation quite like this before. And, to be truthful, I don’t want to think about the earl in that capacity.”
Flora smiled. “You remind me of my brother-in-law. Although your tone has more of a bite to it.”
When the widow’s face fell and she looked toward the window, Flora said softly, “You know it is impossible. Not while he is heir presumptive.”
“I know it.”
“So help me.”
Lady Haywood sucked in a breath and Flora whispered, “Help me and I will do what I can for you.”
If there was no son for the earl, there would be no help for the widow. Nothing Flora could do to make a scandalous, married-five-times widow acceptable as George’s wife.
But if there was a son. . .
“And call me Flora.”
Lady Haywood’s breath came too fast, the hope in her eyes too bright for Flora to doubt that her offer would not be accepted.
Lady Haywood said, “Elinor,” and turned away from the window.
“I will do all that I can for you, Elinor. If there is no son, what I can do is nothing.”
Elinor nodded. “Very well.”
She tapped her fingers and Flora could see shrewdness and intelligence in her eyes.
“I must ask again why he has no interest. Does he like men?”
“Of course not.”
“Too much drink?”
“Of course not,” she said in the same tone of voice. The earl didn’t too much of anything.
“I’m afraid, Flora, that we have exhausted my limited experience in the disinterest of men.”
“I was very sick after the last. I think he is. . .scared.”
“He cares for you?”
Flora nodded. She knew Sebastian cared for her. Perhaps more than most gentleman did of their wives.
Or perhaps he did not want to go to the trouble of finding himself another.
“He doesn’t care for me more than he does for a son. That can’t be possible, Elinor.”
“It does seem unlikely for an earl of the realm. It does seem unlikely for the Earl of Ashmore, specifically.” She held up her hand and closed her eyes. “Forgive me. I will stop insulting your husband.”
Flora hadn’t been insulted. She knew how her husband came across. And she knew that it was unlikely that any earl, hers included, would care for his wife more than he wanted a son.
But she said, “It might be for the best. A good habit to get in to, in case. . .”
Elinor opened her eyes. “In case. . .”
She cleared her throat.
“Step one: touch him every chance you get. Play with his hair, brush lint from his coat even if there is none, touch his hand. Get close to him.”
The Earl of Ashmore was tired. Too many problems this week at his estates, too many meetings with his advisers.
He’d dragged his brot
her to all those meetings, and dragged was exactly what Sebastian had been forced to do.
“I will not do it, Sebastian,” that brother said. “I am too tired.”
George flopped back in his seat, the carriage bumping along the road to another ball. . .at the. . .
Sebastian turned to his wife next to him and she patted his knee. “The Westins.”
He nodded. “Right. The Westins.”
George said, “With, I am sure, an eminently eligible daughter who I will be forced to dance with and converse at. And I am too tired. My plan is the card room and copious amounts of liquor.”
And copious amounts of eminently ineligible women, if Sebastian knew his brother.
He looked again at his wife and her hand still perched daintily on his knee.
She said, “Yes, a daughter. Just out this year–”
George closed his eyes and groaned. “The torture, it never ends.”
Flora’s shoulders shook and she shared a look with Sebastian before saying, “She is a lovely girl, actually. Beautiful and gay and somewhat spirited. I think you will like her, George.”
“Shall we make a wager?”
“And, I think, you will have quite the competition for her. The problem may very well be that she will not like you. She might not even notice you.”
George opened his eyes a slit to glare at his sister-in-law. “Your tricks will not work on me, Jezebel.”
“That was not womanly manipulation, dear George. That was truth.”
He hmphed and closed his eyes again, folding his arms and saying with nary a word that he did not believe it.
If truth be told, neither did Sebastian.
It wasn’t easy to not notice George. He also didn’t believe that Flora wasn’t trying to manipulate his brother by making the girl somewhat unattainable.
He smiled at his wife, relieved that it was not him who would need to swing around a fresh-faced silly girl.
She smiled back into his eyes, snuggling a little closer in the tight confines of the carriage. Sebastian took her hand from his knee and hooked it through his arm.
He patted her hand and smiled. Relieved that the tension between them was gone. Relieved that she was herself again.
And he pushed down the little wiggle of worry that was making him wonder just why his wife was no longer tense and unhappy with him.
