“Clun, I simply cannot credit that you have no wish for a loving marriage,” she said quietly. “How can that be?”
He sighed, sat up again and scraped the blowing hair back off his forehead. “Bess,” was all he said in a long-suffering tone. “I will not promise you the fairy tale romance you expect. I’m bound to disappoint you. Evidently, it’s hereditary.”
“Why in God’s name must you be so pessimistic?”
“Not pessimistic, realistic. And if you cannot accept me as I am, do not expect me to change to suit you. And do not pretend you can love where you will always find fault.”
“Does expecting the worst make you happy, Lord Clun?”
“I expect what is possible and that cannot make me miserable, Lady Elizabeth. That is the blessed point.”
“Won’t you even try?” She asked around the lump in her throat.
“Only to fail?” Clun glanced at her and said, “No. I won’t.”
His finality stunned her. For a moment, he looked as miserable as she felt. He turned away to stare fixedly at the bare, thorny rose canes.
“Then, much as it disappoints me, I must end our betrothal.” She tried to read his expression. His profile revealed nothing.
“Very well, Lady Elizabeth,” he replied, “We leave at first light for London tomorrow.” Still polite, he stood up quietly, bowed, excused himself and left her.
It was over.
* * *
“Much as it disappoints me,” she’d said. Better to disappoint her now than later when nothing could be done about it.
Clun left Elizabeth on the terrace without a backward glance. He was determined to escape before she dissolved into tears. For that’s what women did when disappointed. They wept. They whimpered to win arguments. They bawled their dissatisfaction till you wished yourself deaf or them mute. His mother was not the only female in his acquaintance to resort to tears, but she was the subtlest practitioner he’d met so far. Tears were a woman’s weapon of choice because they disarmed and wounded simultaneously.
Morbid curiosity almost kept Clun on the terrace to compare Elizabeth’s lachrymose collapse to the reigning mistress of romantic martyrdom. Instead, he decided to give her some privacy. Or rather, to deprive her of an audience.
When he was much younger, the Fury had kept him on tenterhooks with her tearful reproaches. She said ‘Oh, William, how can you be so unfeeling?’ Fortunately, heartlessness was second nature to him now when faced with tears.
Elizabeth ended their betrothal and she cried? Where, by Jove, was the logic of that?
His footfalls echoed down the vaulted hallway. He paused at the staircase to listen.
For all he cared, she could indulge in a noisome fit of the wet sulks on her own and be damned. He wouldn’t relent. Or apologize. He’d told her from the outset what he wanted in a wife: a female with realistic expectations. He never wavered or misled. He was rational, clear and consistent while she was female, full of fanciful delusions and therefore prone to spouting twaddle about a man divulging signs of phantom emotions and not knowing his own damned mind.
No. If she insisted on having a lovesick swain, back she must go to her father.
In the meantime, let her howl.
Yes, Clun seethed, let her blubber till she dissolved into a salty puddle for all he cared. He would not hesitate to mop up her soggy remains, wring them into a bucket and haul the slops of her back to London, where he’d leave her sloshing on the doorstep of No. 1 Damogan Square.
Truth to tell, he was even angrier with himself because making Elizabeth miserable did not sit quiet with his conscience. This was a first. She had somehow found and exploited a tiny chink in his fortress heart. Why in God’s name couldn’t she see that her girlish, fairy tale fantasies would complicate everything? Expecting ‘Love’ from him was like waiting for a dog to recite Shakespeare. He’d forever bark and she’d be ever more disappointed.
Just like the Fury.
Clun waited at the stairs to see if the lady would bellow her unhappiness loudly enough to be heard from the terrace.
Silence.
He crept back a few paces, now intent. Still nothing.
Wait.
He edged near the half-closed door to the room he’d stormed through only minutes ago. He heard her huff as if she were fighting to control her breathing. He peeked around the door he left ajar. She blinked and tilted her face up. To roll the tears back into her eyes, he imagined. He waited for more. Of all things, out came one of her throaty gusts of laughter and not a bit soggy. She sounded uncomfortably self-assured.
“Poor man,” she said in a way that chilled him. “Won’t he have a time getting me to London.” She moved toward the deep casement window and chortled again. “Two days, poor Clun.”
The blood froze in his veins. He tiptoed back to the staircase. She wasn’t weeping, she was too busy plotting.
‘Poor Clun’? For once in his life, he would have preferred the usual tears.
Upstairs, Clun slammed his bedchamber door behind him, tore at his cravat and wrenched the waistcoat off, losing buttons. His valet stood not ten feet away, waiting to help him undress. Fewings flinched at the tic-tic-tic of each tiny button projectile as it landed.
“If the lady were not so damned appealing, I should crate her bound and gagged for shipment back to the earl this very night. It would be the wise course, I know, but I am a man of my word and I will do as I promised to see her safely home.”
Fewings opened his mouth to speak.
“Stubble it, Fewings.”
Chapter 13
In which the lady doesn’t vanish.
Early the next morning, Elizabeth eased open her bedchamber door to steal away. But, drat the man, Lord Clun had anticipated her inclination. He’d posted a servant in a chair down the hall all night, by the looks of it. When she poked her bonneted head out of the door, the footman leapt up in rumpled livery with powdered wig askew and asked politely if ‘my lady required something,’ to which she stammered an embarrassed ‘no’ and remained in durance vile.
Early that morning, Elizabeth joined Clun for breakfast.
“Sleep well, Lady Elizabeth?” He asked, rising to his feet, his face wan.
He dismissed the footmen waiting to serve them so they could be alone. He pulled out the chair to his immediate right; she glared from the foot of the table. He offered her the second chair away from him, then the third and finally the fourth farthest away before she finally came and sat.
He leaned down to murmur into her ear, “I must return you to your father without delay or mishap. If you promise not to hare off, I’ll send you to London in my carriage with my coachman, a postillion and a proper maid. You can be rid of my vexatious self immediately.” He draped her napkin across her lap and added, “In a few days, you’ll be home where you can find a man more to your liking.”
“I will not return to the earl,” she retorted in a whisper.
“You must,” he whispered back. “Or marry me here without delusions.”
“I cannot marry where there is no hope of love.”
“So you’ve said,” he replied. “Henceforth, that philosophical debate will be between you and your father. I have said all I intend on the matter.”
“Let me go, Clun,” Elizabeth urged him.
“I cannot let you wander around to be robbed or worse. How would I explain that to the earl?”
“You’d never have to explain it. He doesn’t know I’m here. His runners haven’t found me yet. If I leave soon, no one will ever know. Don’t you see?”
“I will know and as a gentleman I will not pretend otherwise. You are here, my lady,” he said walking back to his chair. “I am responsible for your wellbeing until I restore you to your father. There’s an end to it.” He sat and snapped his napkin down on his own lap.
“But he doesn’t care whom I marry, Clun.”
“That may be, but again, it’s no longer my concern. Will you give me your word you will go
straight home?”
“No. I won’t.”
“Right. I’ll return you myself. Indeed, it’s no great inconvenience,” he added, “I find myself in want of a prize heifer. I may as well stay in Town to survey the pasture.”
“If you’re determined to find another female, couldn’t you let me remain here a bit longer? I won’t be any trouble, I promise.” He snorted at this. She persevered, “I’ll return to the cottage and when I’m one-and-twenty, I’ll go away.” Though it pained her to say it, she added, “I’ll promise not to interfere with your plans. Will that do as my pledge?”
“No, devil take it, that will not do. It was scandalous having you here from the first, but we were soon to wed. I thought there’d be no lasting harm. What you ask now is impossible.” He released a long, slow exhale. “Give me your word you’ll go home as you must, Lady Elizabeth.”
“I won’t,” she said. Her defiant green glare scorched him.
“You force me to take you home, you cannot want that.”
“Of course I don’t,” she said. “Any more than you wish to escort me there, you big oaf.”
Lord Clun, she muttered to herself, “was above all a nasty, perverse creature given to irrational, incomprehensible freaks about honor and other stupidities.”
“Do not fight me on this, Lady Elizabeth. I’m only doing what’s best for you.”
“No, my lord, you’re doing what’s easiest for you.”
“I most certainly am not,” he yelled. With that, he brought his hand down on the table. She flinched and the tableware clattered.
* * *
He heard himself roar at her with more feeling than he meant to reveal. He hadn’t intended to hit the table either, but his stinging palm felt good.
“Why can’t you see,” he said, struggling to calm down, “that returning to London without incident is essential to your future, your happiness — it is essential if you want to marry for love.”
“Going back will not make me any happier.”
He felt veins in his temples throbbing faster and probably harder than vessels could withstand. “You wish to kill me, do you?” He massaged his temples and the sides of his head hard. “If you cause me a fatal brain seizure here and now, it would be your just deserts. It would also be your ruin. Not that I would care. No, not at all! I could succumb to a brain hemorrhage with a clear conscience and leave you to explain your unchaperoned presence at my estate to your father.” He leaned back in his chair and pointed out, “Yes indeed, while my spirit’s wafting off peacefully to my final reward, you’ll be hopelessly compromised, the butt of cruel jokes and ton gossip, to be married off under a cloud to whatever cash-strapped lord the earl arranges to take you. With your dowry, there’ll be a slew of willing takers to be sure but,” here his voice fell to a gruff whisper, “not one of those men will cherish you or care about your happiness or love you the way you deserve.”
She looked shocked, her mouth a small o.
He snapped his mouth shut before he blurted out more.
Even if he didn’t succumb to a fatal spasm of some sort, there was an even worse possibility making Clun’s brain hurt. If anyone caught wind of her ill-conceived visit to Shropshire, she would have to marry him. After all, he’d brought her to The Graces when he should’ve bustled her back to London the instant he discovered who she was.
“Elizabeth, if you don’t go quietly,” he pleaded, “you could end up married to a man who’s now convinced it’s a terrible idea. Would that be your dream come true?”
She glanced away.
“No, of course not,” he said softly. “I vow to do what I must to safeguard your reputation and to see you home. If you want some great mooning looby for a husband, by God, you should have him, Lady Elizabeth. Just spare me your histrionics in the meantime.”
“My histrionics?” She took offense, as he intended. Even better, she stormed from the room.
He hurled his last instructions after her in his voice of command, “Lady Elizabeth, be ready to leave on the hour if you please. Anything you neglect to pack I shall have sent after the fact.”
Watching her leave, her spine stiff with outrage, cheeks flushed and eyes flashing, Clun could only groan. He predicted the toll the next two days would take on him, but what choice did he have? If the lady would not return willingly to London like a good girl, he would haul her there like the hoyden she was.
Chapter 14
In which our hero has a problem on his hands.
It was afternoon when he found the empty travel carriage near the road.
Where was she?
A copse of trees stood not far away. He ran there. Thrill of the hunt offset some of his usual foreboding. He stepped through the undergrowth to the edge of the stream. Clun saw her floating like a lotus in the dark water. Her legs flickered below the surface. Her arms swept languidly back and forth. His siren watched him, submerged to her grin, with laughing green eyes daring him to join her.
He hopped and struggled out of his boots and clothes. He careened heedlessly into the water, cussing and hissing when the cold hit his tenders. Her laughter rippled in the air.
Clun held her gaze as he swam to her in a few strokes. She slid both hands up over his shoulders, into his hair, and kissed a little rivulet that dripped down his neck. He sighed at the warmth of her soft lips.
Chest deep in water, he drew her tight against him and felt her nestle close, pressing the tight tips of her breasts against his skin. She licked a few more drips of water from the hollow above his collarbone, then along his jaw. He waited for her to find his lips and when she did, she gave him a sweet, teasing kiss. He responded with the clawing hunger he felt. He took her mouth, opened her lips with his tongue and feasted. Cupping her bottom in both his hands, he lifted her against himself, opening her legs wider, holding her against him where he was hard and lusty. She twined her long legs around him and let him explore with gentle fingers. Her hair dripped cool streams down his back as he pleasured her. He felt an inner tension, a coiled fluttering, that signaled the beginnings of her release.
She arched back with a slow moan. Her hair, sleek as seal’s fur, streamed down her shoulders and over her breasts. He lifted her and let her settle slowly onto his cock. With a devilish grin, he sank low in the water to let her float moored intimately to him. When he stood, she eased fully onto his erection and surrounded him with her heat.
Slowly, he thrust into her and she responded to each stroke, again and again, tightening around his shaft as she rode him. They raced each other to reach the climax. She paced him, gripped his buttocks with un-shy hands and urged him deeper. He thrust faster and harder till she cried out in his arms. A few heartbeats later, he was poised to follow her with his own release. When it washed over him, it left him gasping.
Her inner spasms milked him and he came again and again within her. He roared as he filled her womb with a conqueror’s seed. She was his now, his forever. His alone.
Clun roared so loudly that he woke himself from yet another damned convincing dream. Ever since Elizabeth had climbed onto his back while he slept, he was having a devil of a time distinguishing dreams from reality.
This time was no different. His senses slowly informed him of his actual circumstances. His eyes adjusted to the darkness and he saw a cramped guest room at The Scribe and Scholar, a respectable but unfashionable inn in Oxford. It was the second and last day of their trip. He lay naked on a lumpy mattress with bedclothes wrapped about his bare hips, not long, lean legs. Elizabeth slept in a separate room with a lady’s maid in attendance, at a safe distance down the narrow hall, her virtue intact. (He’d paid for strong hot toddies at the end of their long day to make sure she slept too deeply to scamper off in the night.)
Almost nothing in his dream was real.
Except his erection. He lay in bed now fully awake and still it steadfastly refused to subside without satisfaction. He grumbled to himself about being too old for a schoolboy’s cock-stand and tried
relaxing to relieve the torment. It only grew more adamant. Making matters worse, his bladder was full.
Clun took stock. Though the doors to their rooms were distant, the rooms shared a wall — a thin wall. Last night, he’d heard her murmur to her lady’s maid and the maid’s murmurs in reply. He eyed the chamber pot, judged his need and decided against relieving himself thunderously into the stoneware. Not that he could manage to point himself downward without inflicting serious injury.
Muttering to himself, he dressed in tented breeches, boots and un-tucked shirt and stumbled downstairs in the cold, pre-dawn darkness to find the privy where he might remedy his difficulty well out of range of delicate ears.
He soon found himself in a ramshackle structure behind the inn’s stable unbuttoning the falls of his breeches. The shock of cold air helped reduce somewhat his difficulty so that with concentration he managed gingerly to relieve himself. This relief did not address the other outstanding issue. In fact, it recurred.
The walls and door of the privy gaped with knotholes and inch-wide open seams between planks. He glanced over his shoulder through the privy door. What choice did he have? He couldn’t very well sport a maypole at breakfast nor could he do what he must in the room next to hers.
He leaned with one hand against the back wall and spit into the other, fisted himself and started stroking slowly. To move things along, he recalled some of the most stirring moments of his latest dream: taut nipples, soft curls between her legs, the pink of her sex just where he’d lap up her sweet musk and finally the warm, tight sensation of plunging into her and feeling himself fully sheathed in her as he spent himself explosively.
He pumped away, picking up the pace while his recollections had the desired effect. Tension gathered like a rope twisting into knots in his lower belly and groin as he worked himself, accelerating to release. He felt his bollocks tighten. Nearly there, he panted. Nearly. There.
The Baron’s Betrothal: An On-Again, Off-Again, On-Again Regency Romance (The Horsemen of the Apocalypse Series) Page 13
