She dropped her jaw and the look on her face stopped his breath. “Truly noble. Unlike some I’ve met.”
What other men had caught her fancy or merited her disdain? “For example?”
“I’d be impolitic to reveal them.”
“Do. For me.” When she demurred, he said, “I won’t tell.”
“Let’s say of the three other men who visit with us this week, I like only Lord Pinkhurst.”
“Pinkie?” Why did that man pique her interest? “He’s a good fellow. In want of a wife.” He’s got two thousand a year. Not much. Barely enough to put a lady into his bed.
“He’s pleasant. Funny. Kind. But—”
“But what?”
“If I tell you, that gives you too much information.”
“To do what?”
“Make fun of me.”
“I may be cold, solitary, even sour, but I doubt anyone has ever said I was critical of others.”
She cast her eyes away, her shoulders flexing in discomfort.
“Please don’t think me capable of ridiculing you. Far from it.”
“Why would you ask about my feelings for Lord Pinkhurst then?”
“I’m curious because—” Oh, hell. “I want to learn what kind of man does appeal to you.”
She stiffened in her saddle, as if she girded for battle. “That’s very personal.”
“Of course it is. It gives me an advantage.”
“Do you need one?” she threw back at him.
“Do I?” he persisted, undiplomatic as that was.
Her eyes locked to his, she considered that a long moment. “He’s asked for my hand once.”
Julian stiffened, alarm winging through his blood. “I would assume because you’re here with me that you refused him.”
She sniffed. “I did not.”
No? “What then?”
“I told him I was not considering any proposals until June.”
“Why?” he blurted, in frustration and fear.
She rolled a shoulder. “I want to take my time to consider such a momentous decision.”
“I’m pleased.”
“Are you?” She faced him, her brilliant gaze locking on his and searching for truth.
I wish to God I had Pinkie’s income. That sum could commend me, if only a little. But he couldn’t tell her that, lest she link his finances to his desire for her hand. “Very pleased.”
She said nothing but only nodded and rode onward.
He sought to bridge the gap. “I’d like to show you the house. It’s old, filled with treasures and totally mine.”
“Wonderful.” She followed his lead.
At the kitchen entrance, he dismounted and reached to help her down. Looping the horses’s reins over the iron rail, he opened the door, took her hand and led her inside. He’d spent most of the afternoon rehearsing a speech about marriage and money and a future they might build together. But as he escorted her through the scullery and up the servants’ back stairs to the first floor and the pink marble foyer, he felt lost. His mind went blank.
“Oh, my,” she exclaimed as she turned in a circle to view his ancestors whose portraits hung in the massive hall. “My relatives are not so many.”
“And not so dour, I’d bet.” He hurried to the butler’s closet, found two candles in holders and lit them with a flint.
She lifted her taper to illuminate one painting and pointed toward one male peacock in vermilion velvet doublet and black codpiece. “Who is this gentleman?”
“Ah, Randy Roderick Ash. No gentleman at all. A courtier to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. A spy for the Crown. A seducer of many women. Father of too many children, all illegitimate but one.”
“Good for the family,” she said with humor. “And who is this lady?”
“The fourth marchioness, Lady Ann Ash. A terror they say. Ruled her husband with an iron hand, saved the estate from the clutches of Oliver Cromwell and bore her husband ten children.”
“A lioness. Was she never Duchess of Seton?”
“The marquessate was given as a land grant separate from the duchy. The estate has remained in the family as the support of the marquess, run separately.”
“So, this house is really yours?” She seemed surprised.
“It has always belonged to the next marquess of Chelton upon his twenty-first birthday. Along with the sixteen thousand acres of rich farmland. Half as grand as many in this county, but good soil.”
“Does that mean you are self-supporting?”
Good God. The things she asked. Thank heaven he had answers. Sound ones. “Slightly. We have hopes for a good harvest this season. But bad weather has taken its toll.” He paused.
She tipped her head. “And what else has?”
“Over the past few years, I’ve poured most of my winnings at the tables into new plows, younger horses and new seed. But I’m not as skillful a gambler as I thought. What I’ve contributed has meant some improvement.” But it needs more. And damned if I want to marry and use my wife’s money to make it so.
“Pinkie tells me his own estate fails to produce what it did even last year. You are not alone in your predicament.”
He stared at her. Pinkie would want her dowry to shore up his failing income. The bugger.
She caught sight of something in the parlor. “Might we go in there?”
He nodded, pleased she diverted the conversation, while he searched for a way to move the conversation to his main goal.
“Whose is that?” she asked when she stood beneath the massive silver sword crossed with a straight saber.
“My grandfather’s sword on the left. He fought with Wellington and took the saber on the right from a French Cuirassier whom he relieved of his life. He insisted my father become expert at fencing and so my father bade me learn the same value of a good thrust and parry.”
“I’m glad you need not use it.”
He put a hand to his heart, pained. “But if you should, I am prepared.”
“I’m impressed. My relatives are an even more ragtag bunch. My father comes from the wharves of Dublin. My mother was born to poor farmers in Baltimore. The fights they fought were to eat and stay alive.”
“And done very well, I’d say.”
“My father has. I’ve no claim to ingenuity.” She waved a dismissive hand and walked toward a landscape painting of courtiers at the hunt. “Do you track game?”
“Shooting parties. Yes, we do. Have you gone to any since you’re here in England?”
She shook her head. “I’d love to be invited.”
“Really?” That stunned him.
“Quite.” She looked up at him over her shoulder. Her abundant hair curled over her ears in enticing tendrils and her mouth was open, ripe with humor. “I’m a very good shot.”
“A good horsewoman and an excellent marksman. I must remember that.”
“But you’d hunt with me? Even if I bagged more grouse?”
Her teasing had him laughing. He put his own candle down on the table behind her and took hers from her to set aside as well. When he returned to her, she melted against him. Her lips parted. Her breasts bore into him. She was all warmth and sensual woman. He enveloped her, the wealth of her a raw temptation to his desire to remain a gentleman.
She went up on her toes and brushed her lips on his. “Say you’d hunt with me.”
“Not for years and years,” he heard himself saying as his lips sizzled with the lure of her own on his. “I’d have better things to do with you.”
Horrid man that he was, he scooped her up and found the settee, his legs weak as a baby’s from wanting her. He sent his hands into her hair, the heavy silk alluring to his fingertips. She wiggled, her efforts to sink into him spiking his cock to ribald heights.
She placed her mouth on his, a full kiss, mad in its appeal.
He bent over her, smoothing her hair back over her ear, admiring the beauty in his arms and warning himself…warning himself to remain in control.
She gasped, clutching him closer and rubbing her breasts against him. “Show me.”
“What?”
“The better things.”
He crushed her to him. “You’re too adventurous for your own good—or mine.”
She arched an elegant brow. “Say it’s our secret.”
He swirled her beneath him to the cushions. “A witch.”
She chuckled.
But her laughter was caught short by his assault on her mouth. His tongue laved the seam of her lips and she let him inside. He stroked the wet cavern of her with a demanding glide and she undulated under him, willing and wanton. The fires inside him exploded in flames of glory. She was his. Would be.
He needed more of her. His lips branding her skin, laying claim to all she was. He lifted the hem of her white blouse, his suspicion that, like last night, she wore no corset or chemise a correct one. And in his fury to have more, he tore the thin cambric straight up the center. She was bare to him, her bounteous breasts pale and glowing in the rays of the moon.
“Darling,” he said as he cupped one breast and admired the large round nipple that hardened as he gazed at it. “I have never seen such perfection.”
And then he took her areola in his mouth and sucked her high and hard into him.
She bucked, her nails digging into his jacket, her legs restless.
He caught one of her thighs and hooked it up around his hips. The new position made him growl for now his cock was nestled in the hollow of her loins. He caressed her hip and sent his hand further along the line of her cleft. Dear God. Had she nothing but those sweet damn trousers between his hand and her finest treasures? Finding the waist of her trousers, he slid his hand inside and down. Her skin was silk. Her folds were heavy, flowing with need of him. She was so ready for him, he pressed his forehead to her chest. And madman that he was, he sent his fingers along her juicy cleft and up inside, deep into her hot flowing core. She wanted him, in all ways. Of that, there was no doubt. Virgin and minx, innocent and wanton, if she wanted him, he’d give her all he could.
He captured her mouth and sank his fingers higher inside her. She groaned and shifted to give him better access to her core. It was then he turned gentle and heathen and found her nub. Satin hard, her bud stood in invitation and he circled her, tapped her, rubbed her over and over as she writhed and let him take her up to a rough ecstasy where she clung to him, suspended in her own passion and cried out, drifting down to him and his fierce embrace.
He cuddled her close, the aftermath for her so vital to his suit. She shuddered and nestled near to him.
“Julian,” she murmured.
He kissed her time and again.
With one hand, she cupped his cheek. “That was marvelous.”
He grinned at her, the rogue in him coming out. “For me, too.”
She wrinkled her forehead. “I daresay not as much.”
“You know the mechanics of this business, do you?”
“I grew up on a ranch. I’ve seen horses and cattle in their throes. But—” She licked her lips. “Never imagined it was this…thrilling.”
He pinched her nose and pulled the two sides of fabric of her ruined blouse together. Then he slipped off his jacket, urged her to put it on and pushed himself away from her.
He rose, strode to the fireplace and back. His cock raged to have her. But his code of honor told him he mustn’t have more than he’d taken already. “I promised you and myself I’d never hurt you.”
“I believe you.”
“You shouldn’t.”
She startled, her lashes fluttering in confusion. Presently, she clutched the garment to her chest. “Why not?”
He jerked around. For all his days, he’d never get over how direct she was. “I want you. Badly. Want to offer you more and yet I…”
“Don’t stop,” she urged him.
“I want to say…”
“Please tell me, Julian.” The light in the room did not reach her. But he could see her heart in her beguiling blue eyes. She was too precious to toy with or avoid her appeal.
“Lily, I have nothing. Soon, less than nothing. We Setons are on the verge of ruin.”
She blinked. “I am not enamored of money.”
“How wonderful of you to say.”
Standing, she clutched his jacket more tightly about her. “I don’t say what I don’t mean, Julian.”
He had to be as forthright. “You come with stipulations.”
Her eyes darkened. Her mouth thinned. “Not I. My father’s, you mean.”
“No—”
“It’s the shipping company. You object to…to what? American money?” She grew angry.
He winced. “I object to being bought!”
She sucked in a breath. Insult had frozen her. “And I to being sold.”
“We are two people who want someone whose circumstances offend their pride. What if,” he asked with bated breath, “we were neither sellers or buyers, but simply two people who were meant for each other?”
Shock limned her features. “Are you asking me to marry you, Julian?”
Could he ask for her hand in all good faith?
Her face fell. She whirled away toward the door.
He caught her by the wrist. “Don’t go. Look at me. I’m asking if—”
“Shouldn’t you first seek my permission to marry, my boy?”
With a gasp, Lily spun, whirling back against Julian and facing their intruder.
Julian braced her. Outrage burned through him. “Why are you here, Father?”
The duke strolled toward them and Lily shrank backward into Julian’s embrace. The look on the older man’s face was no less than a sneer.
Her blood froze. Ashamed of her dishabille, shocked at the man’s hauteur in the presence of his son, Lily steeled herself for whatever confrontation the duke so obviously intended.
He removed his hat, ran a hand through his wind-blown silver hair and focused with lascivious brown eyes on her hold of Julian’s coat at her breast. “I told you, Julian, I wouldn’t approve of this match.”
“What?” Julian spat. “You did no such thing,”
The duke wiggled a finger, indicating Lily’s bodice. “Here’s proof why such a union is unsavory.”
“You lying basta—”
“He’s wanted you from the start.” The Duke of Seton was pleased with himself, cutting her with his disdain, strutting as he paced the room. “Did you know?”
She straightened, drawing away from Julian’s comforting body. Julian had been attracted to her, and she’d believed him in spirit and truth.
“Ah. I see you did not. He knows what you’re worth, girl. He needs your dollars.”
She couldn’t move.
“Come with me, Lily. Don’t listen to this creature.” Julian turned her wooden body toward him, his mouth a taut line of anger as he tucked his riding jacket around her more securely. “I’ll escort you back.”
“You need to tell her what we agreed to, boy.”
Her heart fell to her feet. “Julian?”
If looks could kill, Julian would have struck his sire dead. “We had no agreement.”
The duke laughed and walked forward so that he could capture Lily’s gaze. He seared her with his menace. “He lies.”
“I don’t believe you,” she got out. Could Julian have struck a bargain with his father about courting her? She’d become enchanted with him. But did he care for her, truly? “He couldn’t…” Wouldn’t seduce me.
“But he has no money.” The duke extended an arm toward the appointments in the room and hall. “Not enough to support a wife. With his titles and his looks, he could have any woman. Why would he choose a gauche American? The daughter of a dockside brawler and a thief.”
Much she could bear, but insult to her father was not one. She broke from Julian’s grasp, headed for the hall and the servants’ stairs.
“Wait! Lily!” Julian tracked her.
She scrambled down the
steps and reached for the kitchen door, a way out of this horror.
Julian caught her around the waist, pressed his body flush to hers, his lips in her hair. “Darling, don’t believe him. You mustn’t.”
“Let me go.”
“Why he plays this game, I can only guess.”
“I won’t.” She rested her forehead to the wooden door. Despair drained her of strength.
“Lily, please. Let me tell you what he really wanted from me and you.”
“He’ll say,” said the duke from the head of the stairs, “that he forbade his son marry a woman of loose morals.”
That slur gave her new vigor. She wrenched out of Julian’s hold and managed to pry the door open.
But she had one foot out and came smack up against the Duchess of Seton.
The woman wore a smirk. “See here,” she said and stepped aside, “your daughter, sir, is truly in an unacceptable condition.”
“Papa,” Lily said as she beheld the forbidding countenance of her father standing behind the duchess. Trapped in a maze of conflicting people and emotions, she stood her ground. But her hope to escape withered.
The duchess folded her hands before her, self-satisfaction in every line of her form. “I’m sure your father is outraged.”
“Madam,” said he to the lady, as he walked around her, “I’ll have none of your interference. Lily, what goes on here?”
“I came riding with Jul— Lord Chelton. He showed me his home.”
Her father lifted his eyes to Julian. No good will greeted that man. “Why take her out in the middle of the night?”
“Sir, I acknowledge it was foolish. This is my fault because I—”
Julian should not take the blame. “He was being kind, Papa. I wanted to ride—”
The duke snorted. “Oh, aye! In more ways than one.”
Killian Hanniford was at his most ferocious when countered by one who wished to take him down in scurrilous ways. He set his jaw, his black eyes flamed.
Inside, Lily cringed.
“Your Grace,” her father said with spite in every enunciated syllable, “my daughter is as fragile a flower as yours. Today, you gave yours to a brute of a man.”
Wild Lily (Those Notorious Americans Book 1) Page 14
