When next Christian turned, he faltered, taking the wrong direction. Grace had been unprepared for it and so when she stepped right, Christian went left. She lost her footing and fell directly against him, every inch of her pressed intimately to him. His response, or rather that of his body, was immediate.
“Good gracious,” Grace said.
An understatement, to say the least.
Thank God they were just beside the door to the terrace, otherwise half of London society would have seen just how aroused Christian was. Instead, he quickly recovered his footing and turned them both out onto the terrace.
As he closed the door behind them, Christian said a silent prayer of thanks that it was a chill night and no one else had ventured from the ballroom. At that moment, he was beyond any thought but wanting her. He backed Grace against the far wall and pulled her hard against him, taking her mouth in a kiss that was fraught with impatience, and lust. The curves of her body molded to his and he groaned into her mouth. And the more he kissed her, felt her, knew her, the more he wanted her.
The more he needed her.
“Damnation!”
Christian tore his mouth away from hers, staring at her in the moonlight, searching for some sense of explanation for the effect she had on him.
“Christian?”
“Come,” was all he said and he took Grace’s hand, striding across the terrace to the far side. At least he still had enough sense to know he certainly couldn’t take his wife there against the railing of a moonlit terrace. He found that blessedly the door to Robert’s private study was unlocked. He opened it, navigating his way in the moonlight to the opposite side of the room. Grace said nothing, just followed behind him, the rustling of her skirts against the carpet the only sound between them.
Christian’s pulse was pounding as he took her up the back staircase usually reserved for the Devonbrook servants. He went to the first bedchamber he could find, opened the door, entered, and locked it behind them. He turned to face her. He was breathing hard. His body felt on fire. At that moment, he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life.
“Grace.”
It was all he managed to say before he took her against him again. He kissed her deeply, thrusting his tongue into her mouth while he backed her to the side of the bed. He laid her down and fell atop her, burying his face against her neck, breathing in the scent of her, his hands groping her everywhere, anywhere, all at once. He fumbled with the fastenings of his breeches, cursing himself aloud as he did.
“I am not a damned animal, Grace. I don’t know why I can’t seem to control myself. I need to feel you. I need to be inside of you. I just can’t help it.”
She looked at him, her eyes shining softly in the moonlight coming through the window behind her. “I want to be close to you again. I have missed you. It is all right, Christian.”
But it wasn’t all right. This was not the way a man of his age and status in life made love to a woman, most especially his wife. Nonetheless, his breeches were down around his ankles and he fell over her again, pulling at her skirts, searching through the layers and layers of silken fabric, desperate to find her. When he had succeeded in pushing them up around her waist, he parted her legs and came between them quickly. His heart was hammering now against his chest. He could scarcely breathe. He thanked the saints when he found that she was at least partially aroused and then thrust himself deeply, crying out as he buried himself totally within her.
When next he had regained his senses, Christian was panting, his forehead damp with perspiration. Even as he lay there atop her, his face buried against her neck, he could not believe what he had done. He had just ravished his wife in a guest bedchamber at the home of one of his closest friends while half of London danced in the ballroom beneath them, spilling his seed inside of her not just once now—but twice. Somehow he knew at that moment his grandfather was laughing.
Christian took himself away from Grace without a word. He stood to quickly fasten his breeches. He turned toward her. She lay there, quietly watching him in the moonlight. One stocking was down around her ankle and her hair was a tumbled mass of curls against the pillow. Her eyes were wide and totally filled with that same damned adoration she always looked on him with. She looked incredible, so incredible that he felt a slight tightening in his groin, even after what he had just accomplished.
Christian lowered her skirts, noting unhappily that in his frantic assault on her, he had torn the edging of her gown. He stared at Grace, and she him for several long moments.
“I’m afraid we will not be able to return to the ball. I’ve quite ruined your coiffure.”
Grace touched a hand to her disarranged curls. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care about the ball. I just want to be with you.”
Christian stood stiffly. They were not words he needed to hear right then. “I will notify my mother that we are leaving. I’ll see to retrieving our cloaks and calling for a carriage.” He looked at her. “Grace, I have no right to expect that you would understand—”
Christian never finished his thought for Grace had stood and very gently placed her fingers against his lips, whispering, “Shh. Please don’t spoil this, Christian.”
Her eyes were shining brightly in the moonlight and her face was taken with a dreamy sort of smile. He took her fingers away. “Grace, you do not realize it, but this is not the way relations are normally conducted between a man and a woman. Men who behave as I have, who perform as I have, are animals. A man should be able to control his impulses long enough to take a woman to a proper bedchamber and long enough so that she might at least remove her gloves.”
Grace looked at her hands then as if suddenly realizing she still wore them. She looked at him. “But it wasn’t terrible, Christian, not even the first time on our wedding night. I’m sorry for whatever I did wrong to make you leave that night. It is just that I wasn’t aware it was going to hurt and it was only for a moment and everything else you had done up to that point—especially the kissing part—that had been nice. And tonight wasn’t terrible. It didn’t hurt at all this time. It startled me a little, but I think, at least I hope it brought me closer to you.”
Christian stared at her. Good God, she was blaming herself. He couldn’t believe she was apologizing to him for his having taken her virginity so badly. “Damnation, Grace! You are a dreamer!” He wanted to shake her, knock those fanciful thoughts right from her head. “I cannot tolerate this. I will not stand for this to happen again!”
“Christian, you are angry with me.” She set her hand on his arm. “You are displeased that I danced with Lord Whitly instead of waiting for you to ask me. It was a mistake. I know that now. I promise I will not do it again.”
Christian closed his eyes, so furious with himself at having given over to his passion once again that he wanted to break something. Simply the thought of what he’d done—dragging her here from that crowded ballroom to a guest chamber in Robert’s home, taking her as he did, spilling his seed inside of her again—filled him with a raw anger that threatened to explode inside of him. He was a marquess, heir to an esteemed dukedom. He had been raised to eschew all emotion and feeling, quash it beneath a cold, hard blanket of indifference. It was the way of the Westover men and he had spent twenty years cultivating the icy reserve that had kept him safely apart from the rest of the world. He didn’t know what it was about this woman that made him forget completely who he was. But whatever it was, this madness had to stop. He was determined that it would.
As he started for the door to make the arrangements for their swift departure, Christian drew on every ounce of callousness he could, hardening his heart against the memory of her eyes, her sweetness, while he made a silent vow to himself, one in which he would not fail.
If it meant he had to banish her to the country, he was not going to break this vow.
He was not, under any circumstances, going to sleep with his wife again.
Chapter Sixteen
&nb
sp; Christian would repeat his vow against bedding his wife twice more during the following fortnight. Every time he made the oath anew, he was just as determined to persevere. And every time he failed, he grew that much more disgusted with himself.
Something must be done about this madness.
Blessedly, for the past week, Grace had been occupied with preparations for hosting her first supper party. It had been Catriona’s idea, apparently, a way for Grace to establish herself as a member of society. Other than to ask the advice of Eleanor or Lady Frances when necessary, or consult him on the guest list, Grace had embraced the venture wholeheartedly, taking it upon herself to make all the arrangements. Invitations had been issued to well over a dozen guests—friends and associates of the Knighton family as well as several principal society figures. Not one of the invitations Grace had sent had been refused—a good sign, yes, for it indicated that she had been received well by the ton.
As he stood before his dressing mirror preparing for the evening’s event, it wasn’t the guest list or even what they would be serving that occupied Christian’s thoughts. Instead it was a peculiar message he’d received two days before, an anonymous note that the Knighton butler Forbes found lying upon the doorstep.
It was addressed to Christian and sealed with a wafer, a black wafer, something customarily reserved for correspondence of mourning. The handwriting wasn’t noticeably male or female and the stationary was indistinct, leaving it virtually untraceable. The message contained inside was but a single phrase.
One can never know what it is to lose something precious until it is gone.
Frighteningly cryptic, the words were tinged with a good deal more meaning than Christian cared to admit. He had reread the note a dozen times since and each time it had given him the same sick sort of feeling deep within his stomach. He would have considered canceling the supper party had it not already been too late. So instead, Christian told no one about the message, hoping he might discover its origin quietly and without causing alarm to the others. What bothered him most was that he couldn’t know for certain who or what the letter pertained to; there were so many possibilities. No one in the household—Grace, Eleanor, Lady Frances, or himself— could be excluded from the threat the message posed, leaving them all at risk and bringing Christian face to face with the very thing he had spent the past twenty years running from.
Someone else knew the truth about the past and had waited until now to reveal it, after his marriage to Grace had taken place and just when Eleanor was making her social debut. It couldn’t have come at a more disastrous time.
Christian turned from the mirror as his valet, Peter, came into the room carrying Christian’s newly polished boots.
“That coat looks fine on you, my lord. A good choice, the dark blue.” He set the boots on the floor near the chair. “Will there be anything else, my lord?”
Christian shook his head as the valet bowed and made to leave, adding as he went, “Lady Knighton asked me to tell you she would await you in the parlor with the other guests.”
Christian adjusted his cuff. “They’ve already begun to arrive?”
“Aye, my lord. The Duke and Duchess of Devonbrook and Lord and Lady Edenhall are here, and Lady Frances and Lady Eleanor have gone down already as well. There were two or three carriages stopping at the front when I started up the stairs.”
Christian nodded. He quickly tugged on his boots, straightened his neckcloth in the mirror, then headed from the room, wishing he could put the menacing words of the mysterious message out of his mind for the night.
As he came down the stairs, he heard the sound of laughter and conversation coming from the formal parlor. He did not immediately go in, but stood just outside the door, looking quietly inside. As he studied the faces inside the room, a terrible thought struck him. What if the author of the message was one of their guests? Surely not Devonbrook or Edenhall, his closest friends, but a good number of the other guests had been acquaintances of his family when his father had still been alive. What if one of them had known the truth all this time?
As he surveyed the room, Christian spotted Grace near the fireplace, talking with Augusta and Catriona. He paused a moment to look at her. The transformation over the past month was remarkable. Gone was the meek, naive country girl who had stood with shaking hands at the chapel altar in Little Biddlington. In her place was a young woman who was doing everything she could to successfully fulfill her new role as marchioness. He’d spotted the gown she had chosen to wear earlier that evening draped across the foot of her bed when he’d passed her chamber door. Pale lavender silk set with brilliants that glittered in the candlelight—he remembered thinking it would look lovely with her eyes and hair. Indeed, he had been right.
If only he could have been as right about his ability to control his own lust.
Before the delivery of the message, Christian had considered the possibility of sending Grace and her maid away from London to Westover Hall for a while, to put her a safe distance away from him while he figured out how he was going to find his way back to having a marriage in name only. But sending her away would no longer be possible, not when he needed to keep her and the rest of the family close in the face of the ominous message he’d received. If anything happened to any one of them because of it, he would never be able to live with himself.
At the sound of Eleanor’s laughter, Christian looked and saw that his sister was standing off to the side of the room engaged in conversation. She looked radiant and Christian was pleased to see that she was enjoying herself, until he realized that the person she was chatting so happily with was Lord Herrick. His body went instantly cold at the sight of the earl and the casual, almost intimate manner in which he was speaking to Eleanor. Christian didn’t recall having seen Herrick’s name on the guest list when Grace had shown it to him. In fact, he distinctly remembered having looked for it to make certain the earl wouldn’t be attending.
Why, then, had Grace invited him?
Christian entered the room, working his way slowly toward his wife to question her about it. His progress was stopped several times by greetings from their guests.
“Knighton, good to see you,” said Lord Rennington, an older earl who had been a member of his father’s club. Lady Rennington was one of the few close acquaintances his mother had left in town. They had been acquainted with his family for two generations. He wondered, could either of them have been responsible for the message?
Christian paused a moment to exchange polite conversation, then broke away from the earl to join Grace. As he made his way around the room, he mentally catalogued the other guests present. Lord and Lady Faneshaw. Viscount Chilburn, newly wedded to his second wife. The Talbots. The Fairfields. The Sykes. Even Herrick. Any one of them could have sent the note. He tried to remember if there had ever been anything mentioned among any of them that might indicate they knew more about the past than he’d thought. All he met with was a blank, virulent void.
“Christian,” Catriona said, noticing his approach, “I was just telling Grace that we must have the two of you up to Devonbrook Hall in the fall. You haven’t yet seen the estate since it was rebuilt after the fire.”
Christian smiled, all politeness, in order to shield the tension stretching through his insides. “We would love to, Catriona. Set upon a date and we will be there.” He took Grace’s arm. “Now I hope you ladies won’t mind if I borrow my wife for a moment? There is a matter to do with this evening’s supper that I must discuss with her.”
As Catriona and Augusta nodded, Christian turned and walked with Grace across the room to the entrance hall. As soon as they were out of the parlor, his polite smile vanished. He attempted to subdue the irritation in his voice as he said, “Would you mind telling me just what in perdition Herrick is doing here?”
Grace looked startled, glancing uneasily past Christian’s shoulder to where Eleanor stood with the earl near the drinks’ table. “I had thought Eleanor would enjoy his company
tonight. She talks of him so often.”
“His name was not on the guest list you gave to me.”
“I didn’t think of inviting him until later. I had intended to tell you, but you haven’t been at home much in the past several days. Is there some reason why I shouldn’t have invited him?”
“I just don’t want Eleanor setting her cap on the first man she meets. I would prefer that she meet a number of gentlemen and not devote her attention to one so soon after her coming-out. But it is too late. The damage, at least for this evening, has been done.”
Ignoring Grace’s immediately wounded expression, Christian turned and left her standing in the hall, hoping that both the delivery of that mysterious message at the door and Herrick’s sudden presence in their lives were merely coincidental. Somehow it didn’t seem possible, and as he went back into the parlor, he wondered if there would be any other unexpected guests that evening.
Grace sat at the far end of a long mahogany dining table set with various pieces of silver that gleamed in the candlelight from days of polishing. The service was impeccable, the room looked exquisite, and each course of the meal was prepared to perfection. Yet she found herself wondering if the evening could be any more a disaster than it already was.
Everything favorable about the evening had disappeared behind the frown Christian wore over his wine goblet as he sat opposite her down the length of the table. His displeasure at discovering Lord Herrick was nothing compared to that at the guest who sat to his immediate right. Grace had thought that by inviting the old duke and seating him and Christian together, they might somehow be persuaded to talk to one another and perhaps find a way to begin mending their terrible rift. But the murderous looks Christian was sending her way only told her she couldn’t have been more mistaken.
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