Lady Lyte's Little Secret

by Deborah Hale

  “I’d rather come along, if you don’t mind.”

  Before Thorn could protest, she reached out and laid her hand on his. “Not because I don’t trust you to manage on your own or any nonsense of that sort. It’s just that, in spite of all our misadventures, I’ve rather enjoyed the past few days with you.”

  Wasn’t the kind of man who made such things possible worth keeping in her life?

  Thorn’s brows shot up, as if he’d just discovered something surprising. “I’ve enjoyed them, too. Apart from nearly drowning.”

  “And being accosted by that dreadful highwayman.” Felicity shuddered.

  She gave Thorn’s hand a parting squeeze before returning to her dinner. “That’s all settled, then. We’ll go together.”

  “If you insist,” said Thorn, who didn’t look as though he’d needed much persuasion. “I’ll tell you, though, I’ve had my fill of chasing after Ivy and your nephew only to miss them by minutes. I suggest we press on for Carlisle with all speed and wait there for them to come to us.”

  “An ambush?” Felicity savored the notion. “Yes. It would serve them right after the bother they’ve put us to. I’ll tell Mr. Hixon to be ready first thing in the morning.”

  Thorn shook his head vigorously. “We shouldn’t delay. They have only a few hours’ head start on us, if that. We’ve never been so hot on their heels.”

  He thought for a moment. “At least not that we’ve been aware of. I believe we should go as soon as we’ve finished eating. Can a carriage be readied for us in the meantime?”

  “Possible.” Felicity tapped her fork against the side of her plate. “But not advisable. Really, Thorn, there are times a little self-interest is not such a terrible thing.”

  “But if we don’t reach Carlisle and prevent them from crossing the border into Scotland, all our efforts until now will have been wasted.”

  Under the table, she ran the toe of her slipper down his booted leg. “Not entirely wasted, I hope.”

  The color rose in Thorn’s face.

  Though she knew she should not take such amusement in teasing him, Felicity couldn’t help herself. There was something curiously endearing about a man who could blush.

  “The word waste was badly chosen, I’ll admit. But you know what I mean, Felicity. Unless we intend to do whatever we can to stop this elopement, perhaps we had better stay put at Trentwell and enjoy ourselves.”

  She lowered her chin, casting him a mischievous, inviting look through the dark fringe of her lashes. “You mustn’t tempt me like that.”

  “Felicity…” The pretended severity of Thorn’s tone matched his look.

  If she finally made up her mind to marry him, Thorn might try to curb her occasional excesses. But never too harshly and always for her own good. Always honest and open, never underhanded or manipulative.

  To Felicity’s surprise, the notion of such firm but loving limits kindled an unaccountable feeling within her. One so unfamiliar that she scarcely recognized it at first.

  Could it be…security?

  Chapter Fifteen

  Was he mad to risk his heart and his future on such a passionate, headstrong woman? Thorn asked himself the next day as Felicity’s carriage sped north, past the cotton and wool milling towns that huddled along the ragged edge of the wild Yorkshire moors.

  Against his better judgment, he’d let Felicity persuade him to pass the night at Trentwell before continuing their journey. The sly minx had cajoled him into staying with veiled promises of lovemaking in one of Trentwell’s enormous beds. During the few minutes it had taken her to steal down the gallery and into his guest chamber, however, Thorn had fallen so deeply asleep she hadn’t been able to rouse him.

  He found that all but impossible to imagine.

  Yet something—her scent, perhaps, or the warmth of her body pressed against his—had trickled deep into his dormant mind. That sweet, twilight awareness of her had soothed and cheered his dreams, granting him the most restful night’s sleep he could recall in a very long time.

  Evidently it had been less so for her. When they’d rolled away from Trentwell that morning, it had been just light enough for Thorn to make out the dusky smudges beneath her eyes. Later, while they made swift progress through the flat, green plain of Cheshire, he had caught Felicity more than once rubbing her eyes or stifling a yawn.

  By the time they passed the smoky sprawl of Manchester, her head had lolled against his arm at increasingly frequent intervals, and her conversation had gradually subsided into deep, easy waves of breath. Now, she rested against him, calm and quiet in repose as she would never be otherwise.

  Long suppressed feelings for her surged in Thorn’s heart, even as faint eddies of doubt lapped around the edges of his resolve. No matter how much he wanted to, could a man like him hope to make a woman like Felicity happy…for as long as they both should live? And if he failed, how unhappy would that make them both?

  Thorn couldn’t bear to answer either question, so he occupied himself with watching the changing countryside. All the while wishing Felicity would open her eyes, whisper his name and dispel all his foolish, reasonable doubts.

  Good Lord, what was that? Thorn started when Felicity’s hand, which had lain slack on his thigh, began to move, setting a hot, hungry plague of sensation swarming through his loins.

  He glanced down at her face, expecting to find her staring up at him with a naughty little smile, eyes brimming with lusty mischief. Instead, he discovered her still asleep, though her eyes seemed to rove in a restless manner behind her closed lids.

  Had he caught her in the midst of a sultry dream? Or was she only feigning sleep to bedevil him?

  Suspecting the latter, Thorn slid his own hand between hers and the far too sensitive flesh of his thigh. It helped, but only a little. The sweetly suggestive motion of her fingertips made him ache to remove every barrier between them and his bare skin.

  Exercising every ounce of restraint he could summon, Thorn shifted her hand back to her own lap. Though part of him yearned to rest his fingers there and give Felicity a taste of her own provocative medicine, he managed to resist.

  In an effort to quench the impish flames of lust that nibbled at him, he forced his mind to the most tedious subjects he could imagine—summing columns of numbers, deciphering the fine print in legal documents, listening to pointless, repetitious gossip in the Pump Room at Bath.

  Thorn could just imagine the furious buzz of tattle that would ensue if certain persons there knew what he and Felicity had been up to in recent days. Hard as he tried to dismiss such worries with the contempt they deserved, he could not quite manage it. Shame seeped into his spirit, cold and slimy as a bucketful of slops poured over his head.

  What did he have, after all, besides his spotless reputation? No title. No fortune. It behooved him to preserve his good name. Not only for himself, but for the sake of his family.

  However, when Felicity’s hand returned to provoke his desire anew, propriety fell by the wayside, like an unsecured article of baggage off the boot of the coach. He angled himself around to engage her lips, while his hand fumbled beneath her cloak to brush against her bosom.

  With a squeak of surprise, Felicity’s eyes flew open. So she’d truly been asleep after all.

  “I…didn’t mean to wake you.” What a fool he felt! “Only, you touched me, and I thought perhaps…”

  Felicity salved his embarrassment with a low chuckle as sinfully rich and sweet as a cup of chocolate, a luxury in which Thorn Greenwood seldom indulged. “Pray don’t apologize, my dear. Whatever you thought, I can assure you I heartily approve.”

  Then she shocked Thorn quite speechless by unfastening the buttons on the lap of his breeches and sliding her fingers in to investigate the effect her touch wrought upon him.

  “One seldom wakes from such an agreeable dream,” she murmured in a husky tone that stirred Thorn almost as much as the feel of her hand, “only to discover it is quite real.”

 
Once she had thoroughly tantalized him, she withdrew her hand from his breeches and launched herself onto his knee. There she commenced to grapple with the buttons of his shirt, all the while kissing him into a frenzy.

  “We…really oughtn’t carry on like this,” he protested in a passing moment of reason, even as his hands made a liar of him by roaming over the tempting curves of her body.

  “Why ever not?” Felicity pulled his neck linen loose. “Can you suggest a more diverting pastime to idle away the hours until we reach Preston?”

  “Hardly.” Well, he couldn’t lie, could he? “What if someone sees us, though?”

  “You must be joking!” Her breath came in rapid spasms.

  After she had kissed him breathless, as well, she gasped, “The light is too dim and the carriage is going too fast for anyone to mark what we are up to.”

  “But…your servants…”

  The husky chuckle that greeted his suggestion was laced with only a little bitterness. “I can assure you that after serving my husband for so many years, no one in my employ would be so foolish as to stop the carriage and fling open the door without warning.”

  Thorn recalled the blind eye all her staff had turned on their relationship. It had never occurred to him that they might be accustomed to such goings-on.

  Propriety was not his only concern, though.

  “There’s only so much of this…a man can stand…” he stammered.

  His face was probably glowing in the dark like a red-hot coal!

  “Is that what you’re worried over?” Laughter gushed out of her. “Well, there’s no need to be. I haven’t the least intention of working us up to a pitch of passion, then leaving us unsatisfied.”

  “But…a carriage…”

  She silenced him with the tip of her forefinger pressed against his lips. “I can see we must begin to cultivate your imagination, dear heart.”

  The next thing Thorn knew, Felicity had hiked up her skirt and straddled his lap, her bare bottom warm and welcoming against the open flap of his breeches. Even if he could have phrased a coherent protest from the seething turmoil of his thoughts, he could never have forced the words out of his constricted throat.

  She twined her arms around his neck and began nuzzling her way up his throat. With every delicate kiss and nibble, she tore great gaping holes in Thorn’s token resistance. By the time she reached his lips, he could think of nothing but how much he wanted her.

  Not only in his arms, but in his life.

  All trace of restraint seared away, he cupped one hand beneath the soft rounding of her backside. The other he let dally between her parted legs while he kissed her with the pent-up ardor of a lifetime. When he felt her quiver in the grip of the same delirious need she had excited in him, he let Felicity push his breeches down over his hips. She expelled a shuddering sigh as he buried himself deep within her.

  Every sway and lurch of the vehicle sent pleasure pounding through him on heavy hooves.

  Thorn braced his feet against the opposite seat and gave himself up to the wildest carriage ride of his life.

  A ride whose destination lay but one stop short of heaven itself.

  Her late husband had been a skilled and considerate lover. Felicity would have been the last to deny it.

  Even after other parts of their marriage had soured, on those increasingly rare nights when Percy had come to her bed, she’d still been able to fool herself into believing he cared for more than her fortune. Indeed, if it had not been so, she might never have felt the need to take a lover after her husband’s death.

  Yet in the time since she had first made the intimate acquaintance of Thorn Greenwood, she’d discovered a more profound fulfillment than she’d ever hoped to find. It made no sense, for she hadn’t chosen him on the basis of an overwhelming attraction. From their very first night, she had tried to hold something of herself aloof. But the harder she had struggled, the deeper she had fallen.

  Now, as she clung to him in the darkened carriage, spent in the most delicious way, Felicity knew she had fallen too far to turn back without an effort that might wrench her apart.

  Before she could stop it, a sigh seeped out of her.

  Thorn stirred. “Is something the matter, dear heart? I…this…didn’t hurt you, I hope.”

  He touched his lips to hers with such tender restraint that she felt quite ashamed of herself for entertaining the slightest doubt about her feelings.

  “Hurt me?” She endeavoured to mask her unease with a flippant answer. “No, indeed.”

  Nor never would he, either. Never hurt her, deceive her or betray her.

  “If I had to stifle a cry, just now, it was for the opposite reason, entirely.”

  “I could say the same.” Thorn pressed his cheek against Felicity’s hair and inhaled deeply, as if to glut himself on the scent of her. “I fear you will make a wanton of me yet, woman.”

  Beneath his jesting tone, Felicity sensed a faint note of true disquiet. For reasons she could not fathom, it coaxed her to make her own admission, disguised in banter.

  “And I fear I will become a slave to my desire for you.”

  There, she had voiced her anxiety. The sense of being powerless against her growing love for Thorn Greenwood made her uneasy. She had only known true power and control over her life since she’d become a widow. Before that, she had been prey to such unhappiness. Not even moments of ecstasy like she had just experienced would be worth so harsh a price.

  Thorn gave a quiet chuckle, that wrapped around her heart in a warm embrace. “I vow I shall be a kind master to you, if you’ll be a kind mistress to me.”

  How could she resist such an entreaty? How could she entertain such foolish fears when Thorn held her in his strong, dependable arms? She must find some means to atone for doubting him.

  Tell him about the baby, perhaps?

  No. She could not yet bring herself to do that, even though she could guess how happy the news would make him.

  Once Thorn knew of it, their child would bind her to him even more firmly than marriage vows. Though the prospect of parting from him had pained her, the notion of never being able to part from him, or any man, still haunted her.

  The child was his, too! her conscience protested. Thorn had a right to know about it. A right to know that he was not giving up the chance for a family by wedding her.

  She would tell him. Just not today—not this moment. Soon, though. Perhaps it could be her wedding gift to him.

  Wedding…?

  “It does seem a terrible waste…” Her voice gathered fresh conviction with every word. “…to travel all the way from Bath to Gretna Green, then come away with no wedding to show for it.”

  “All the money you paid for inns and tolls,” agreed Thorn. “Not to mention the wear and tear on your carriage to make such a journey.”

  A silence fell between them, broken only by the muted hoof-beats of the horses, bearing them mile by mile closer to Scotland. Felicity willed them to gallop faster.

  Fast enough to outstrip her silly doubts.

  “Do you mean what I hope you mean, Felicity?” Thorn swallowed hard. “Or am I only dreaming?”

  She lifted her face to him, unable to see more than a shadow in the darkness, yet somehow conscious of the dear, hopeful light in his eyes.

  “The way I was dreaming a little while ago, you mean?” she asked. “Then woke to find it true?”

  “Those are the best kind of dreams…when they’re good.”

  “Shall I pinch you?” She let her hand rove down beneath his open waistcoat and unbuttoned shirt. “To make certain you’re awake?”

  “Oh, no you don’t!” He flinched from her touch, his body shaking with soundless laughter. “I’m prepared to take it on faith.”

  “Does that mean you won’t protest if I haul you in front of a parson when we reach Scotland?”

  “Not a peep.” He cupped her face in his large capable hands and drew it toward him for a deep, delicious kiss to seal t
he bargain.

  “Do you suppose we’ll be able to prevail upon Oliver and your sister to stand as our witnesses?” Felicity asked Thorn the next evening as their carriage drove the last few miles to the border town of Carlisle. “After we’ve forbidden them to get married there, I mean?”

  Thorn shifted in his seat and flexed his shoulders to relieve the tightness in them. He’d be pleased to stretch his limbs soon and still more pleased to put these long days of driving behind them.

  “They just might, you know,” he said. “Especially if we make it clear we don’t mean to prevent them ever marrying. We only ask that they slow down a little and make certain this is what they both want.”

  Thorn could picture it all. “I’m certain that, given her choice, my sister would vastly prefer a nice church wedding in Lathbury with lots of guests and a pretty, new dress to a slapdash affair in Gretna Green.”

  Realizing how that must sound, he began to stammer out an apology. “Not that our wedding will be a slapdash affair…it’s just…”

  There was something less than respectable about a Scottish elopement. It smacked of fortune-hunting. He’d assured Felicity he cared more for her than he cared what gossip would say about him, and that was true. But it didn’t mean he’d ceased to care about his reputation altogether.

  “I believe I know what you mean,” said Felicity. “I’ve had one fine wedding with many guests. But I’d far rather have a quick, quiet ceremony in Gretna Green with you.”

  “You’re right, of course, my dear.” All the same, he couldn’t help feeling that if she’d been proud of their connection, Felicity might have favored a more public wedding.

  Perhaps she guessed something of what troubled him. “At least taking part in our wedding would give Ivy and Oliver a valid excuse for having run off to Gretna. If people are busy gossiping about you and me, no one will have a word of censure to spare for them.”

  Thorn could not resist the temptation to rally her a little. “That sounds like an unselfish scheme if ever I heard one.”

  “A momentary lapse, I assure you!”