Next, Lily opened the buttons at the top of Hessian’s shirt. “Uncle speaks well of those with ambition, until they’re wealthy. Then they become encroaching mushrooms.”
“Lily, if you persist…”
She kissed him. “One can’t be comfortable in a bed when fully clothed. Finish your story.”
Hessian held her so her face was pressed to his shoulder. “How am I to think logically when you are removing my clothing?”
He let her go, and Lily subsided against him. Had he kept his hands to himself in aid of self-restraint? That would be very like Hessian Kettering.
“Delmar and Walter had a spectacular falling-out,” he went on. “The shouting could be heard throughout the house, though such a disagreement was unprecedented in their relationship. Nobody knows if the subject was permission to court your sister, a financial matter, or something else entirely. The next morning, Delmar was gone, and your sister was missing as well. Nobody saw them leave, and Walter was soon putting it about that his niece was off to a fine finishing school in Switzerland.”
“And Uncle has never had a house steward or man of business since,” Lily said. “Not that I know of, nor has he permitted Oscar to learn much about the finances.”
“Your hair… Do you use French soap? I can’t place the fragrance.”
Hessian sniffed right above Lily’s ear, and beneath the cozy covers, she shivered. “I buy it from a shop in Chelsea. If my sister is kicking her heels in Scotland, Uncle is probably that much more desperate to get her money out of the trust accounts and into his own hands.”
Next came more of a nuzzle than a sniff.
“If Walter knows your sister is alive and well. Maybe she served him a portion of his own recipe and dissembled about her demise, the better to be left in peace.”
Quiet stretched, with only the crackling of the fire to mark the moment. Lily tried to think—tried to parse how Hessian’s discoveries would impact Walter’s behavior—and was foiled by a welter of sensations.
Hessian’s fingers, casually stroking her arm. The beat of his heart beneath her cheek. The sheer, shameless relief of being close to him.
“I should be packing for Scotland,” Lily said. “I don’t want to move.”
Hessian shifted to peer down at her. “You cannot in any way let your uncle know what you’ve learned, Lily. For the next two weeks, he controls the money, but it’s in trust for you, your sister, your ducal relations, somebody. If he has you followed to Scotland and learns that the real heiress is alive, what will he do? Look at the lengths he’s gone to with you. Two years in an exclusive finishing school, an elaborate charade, significant expense, this farcical notion of marrying you to Oscar.”
“You’re saying Uncle is desperate.”
Hessian brushed her hair back from her brow. “Only a desperate man would risk deceiving ducal in-laws for years on end, much less defrauding them of settlements that in all likelihood should have reverted to their hands.”
“But if my sister—”
He kissed her, barely a peck on the lips. “I will go to Scotland. I’ll investigate your sister’s circumstances, if indeed Mrs. Delmar is your sister. You must stay here and carry off one last deception, Lily. You have always done your uncle’s bidding, however much you might grumble. You must for two more weeks be that resentful but submissive niece and give me time to untangle this mess.”
They would be the longest two weeks of her life. “I’d rather go myself,” Lily said, winnowing her fingers through Hessian’s hair. “If my sister is alive, I want to hear her explanation. I want to see her. I want to know what she can tell me about who my father is.”
Hessian dropped his forehead to Lily’s. “If you attempted the journey to Scotland, the instant your uncle caught up to you—there being very few wellborn redheaded young ladies traveling the Great North Road at speed—he would claim you’ve taken leave of your senses and apply to become your guardian. I beg you, don’t give him that opportunity.”
Recent threats from Walter suggested he would enact even that plan.
“Be careful,” Lily said, holding Hessian tightly. “Please, be very, very careful.”
He wrapped his arms around her, Lily shifted, and as if the room had been shaken by thunder, she realized that despite all the information Hessian had conveyed, despite the clear thinking he was capable of, he had also convincingly dissembled for the second time in one day.
Hessian had been a dutiful reporter, he was prepared to gallop forth on his next assignment, and his affections thus far had been bestowed reluctantly.
And yet, he was aroused. He was utterly, absolutely, wonderfully aroused.
Chapter Seventeen
* * *
Hessian buried his face against Lily’s shoulder and buried a coach-load of self-reproach as well.
He’d had such worthy ambitions for his day: interview the former governess, speak with the duchess, report to Lily, and formulate the next step in a plan to see her freed from Walter Leggett’s schemes.
Items notably missing from that agenda had included:
Playacting to cozen confidential information from an unsuspecting innkeeper.
Peering into kitchen windows and climbing through same to inspect the governess’s personal abode.
Perching like London’s most unlikely gargoyle outside Lily’s window and watching her drift off to sleep before the fire.
Climbing into bed with Lily for any reason, even to comfort her amid upheaval that would have sent a woman of lesser fortitude into strong hysterics.
Making love with Lily.
Hessian had tried to stand fast against the need to hold her, touch her, kiss her. Without even trying, Lily had blasted through his best intentions, and here he was, hard as any standing stone decorating the Cumbrian countryside.
“Lily, this isn’t wise.”
She stroked his hair. “It’s much too late for wisdom, Hessian. Wisdom would have prevented my mother from risking my conception—and my father, whoever he might be. Wisdom would have put somebody trustworthy in charge of Mama’s money rather than my varlet of an uncle. Wisdom would have seen me raised somewhere other than a coaching inn and never let my sister be lost to me. We must make our own wisdom now.”
Her illogic was beguiling, her touch was irresistible. Hessian allowed himself a protracted kiss that started off tender and ended up incendiary.
Bad idea. Glorious, bad idea. “When I come back from Scotland, we can discuss—”
Lily resumed kissing him, bringing up the topics of desire, pleasure, and present joys rather than distant negotiations or headlong journeys. She had a firm grasp of the subject matter and a firmer grasp of Hessian himself.
“I want you naked, Hessian, and I want you badly.”
As an accomplished horseman, Hessian knew of two strategies for dealing with a runaway mount. The first, learned early in a horseman’s career, instructed the rider to use main strength to pull the horse’s head around to the rider’s knee, to force the beast to travel in smaller and smaller circles, which necessarily resulted in a reduction in speed—or in a series of vigorous bucks aided by the physics of a curve taken at a gallop.
The second strategy was one Hessian had come upon on his own: allow the creature to run free. Revel in the privilege of being one with an equine glorying in its natural spirits and pray God the footing was sound. Exhaustion usually brought the horse back under control soon enough, without a fruitless and often dangerous battle waged by the rider.
Hessian also theorized—hoped, more like—that knowing the occasional wild dash was permitted allowed a spirited animal to better tolerate domestication. Horse after horse had proved his theory worthy.
Hessian was not a horse, but the compulsion to dash headlong, despite all caution to the contrary, pounded through his veins.
He extricated himself from Lily’s arms and sat back. Her gaze held reproach and disappointment… until he untied the bow in the center of her nightgown’s déco
lletage. Then she smiled, and the considerable animal spirits lurking in Hessian’s soul sprang into a joyous gallop.
“This is not wise,” he said. “But for us, now, I cannot think it wrong.”
He pulled his shirt over his head, and Lily’s smile became all the encouragement he needed to shed his breeches and help her out of her nightgown. She beheld him as if he were her every passionate fantasy brought to life, and then she beckoned.
Hessian straddled her, his eyes closed lest the sight of her unclothed send his best intentions straight into the ditch. She brushed her hand over his chest, stroking the fine hair more than his skin. The effect was maddening, until her hand drifted lower and lower still.
“The last time,” she said, “I didn’t get to see you. I like this better.”
Hessian loved this—loved the gloss of her fingers over his cock, his stones, every part of him that knew nothing of plans, schedules, or calendars, and everything of wild pleasure.
“I like it all,” he said. “I like your every touch, your sighs, your kisses, your passion. I like your silences and your tart tongue. I like—I like that rather a lot.”
She’d sleeved him with her grip and begun a slow stroking.
Then, “I like that rather too much. My turn to play, Lily.”
She was gracious in victory, letting him put his hands and mouth to her breasts, until she was an undulating sea of desire beneath him.
Hessian had been faithful to his wife, but he’d not been a saint before or since his first marriage. Nothing in his experience prepared him for the enchantment that intimacies with Lily wove. The experience was profoundly physical—and pleasurable—but also an encounter of the heart. Pleasing Lily was not only a matter of consideration, but also the measure of his own satisfaction.
“Hessian Kettering, you have toyed with me long enough.”
Not nearly. He braced himself above her nonetheless, because the hour was late, and morning would arrive all too soon.
“That feels…” Lily’s sigh was the sweetest benediction. “You feel marvelous.”
Her body eased around him in glorious welcome, and then thought was impossible. All was pleasure, stretched between clamoring desire and a lover’s determination to deliver his lady more satisfaction than one mortal woman could endure.
Hessian succeeded—barely—for Lily had apparently been intent on a reciprocal goal. She lashed her legs around his flanks and counterpointed his thrusts until Hessian’s control began to slip.
Lily unraveled beneath him, and Hessian withdrew even as his own satisfaction overtook him. He shuddered his release against her belly, heaving as if he’d been run to ebullient exhaustion.
Which he had. He drifted into the drowsy aftermath, heedless of tomorrow’s challenges, heedless of anything save the soft rise and fall of Lily’s breasts against his chest. Her legs fell to his sides, flesh caressing flesh in yet more sweetness.
“I cannot let you go, Hessian.” She sounded dazed and disgruntled.
“At present, I can barely move.”
Lily smacked his bum—gently—which helped him pull together the scattered parts of his mind. Some brave, determined soul needed to leave the bed and locate a damp flannel. Hessian nominated himself, for Lily could not move until he peeled himself away from her.
In fact, she did not move even when he was standing beside the bed, the damp flannel in his hand. The picture she made—naked, tousled, replete—sent naughty thoughts coursing through him, when he should not have been able to sustain a naughty thought for the next week at least.
“You withdrew,” she said, stroking his hair as he swabbed at her belly.
“I nearly couldn’t.” Nearly hadn’t. “And withdrawing is not a guarantee of anything.”
“So why do it?”
“Because we are not married.” Weren’t even engaged. “Any reduction in the likelihood of conception should be encouraged.”
Logic was trickling back into Hessian’s brain, and he resented it for the irritant it had become: The preferred approach to preventing conception was to keep one’s breeches buttoned.
“You’ll come back.” Lily spoke with assurance, and yet, her eyes held a question.
“I will return from Scotland, but that’s not enough, Lily. I must return with enough proof of Walter’s scheme to pry his fingers from your fortune and your future. By traveling north, I leave you to face a significant risk, for we have no guarantee Walter will wait another two weeks to see you wed to Oscar.”
Lily studied the cloth in Hessian’s hand, then flipped the covers up. “But that ceremony will not be valid.”
Hessian took the flannel behind the privacy screen rinsed it thoroughly, and wrung it far more tightly than the occasion warranted.
He came back to the bed and sat at Lily’s hip. “The ceremony will not be valid, but you must go through with it, lest Walter become suspicious that you are intent on exposing his malfeasance. And following a wedding, Oscar will expect a wedding night.”
The idea made Hessian ill, but to deny the possibility was to deny Lily time to plot against that fate.
She sat, back braced against the headboard, knees drawn up, covers tucked high. “Oscar would not survive such a wedding night, and then I’d be a felon in truth.”
“That’s one option,” Hessian said. “Not one I can recommend.”
Lily studied him, though the fire was dying and not much light remained. “You’ve been thinking about this.”
“I’ve been fretting about it.” Endlessly. “I have a few ideas.”
Lily scooted over, Hessian climbed in beside her, and they talked far into the night about ways to keep Lily safe, while Hessian was hundreds of miles away, searching for a means to set her free. He made love with her once more—withdrawing again—and then slipped out into the waning night after promising her that come fire, flood, plague, or pirates, he’d return to London.
And to her.
* * *
“I never suspected you of a devious streak,” Worth Kettering said. “You were always the fellow who insisted on citing the rules, even when we played cricket or got up a team for crew. You arrive on time, you never overstay your welcome. You reply to all correspondence within a week and pay your tithe to the penny, no matter how poor your harvest.”
Worth would also have said that Hessian was a firm believer in a good night’s sleep, and yet, his lordship looked far from rested in the dawn’s early light.
“What rule do I break by trading traveling coaches with you?” Hessian replied as the grooms loaded a trunk onto the back of the vehicle.
Jacaranda might have asked such a question. “The rule that says I’m the brother who has all the mad adventures, takes stupid risks, and rackets about the realm on short notice.”
Hessian accepted a leather satchel from the butler, who returned to the house after sparing Worth a nod. The only activity in the alley was from Hessian’s household, a quiet, purposeful procession of servants and goods from mews to house and back again.
“Walter Leggett spies,” Hessian said, rummaging in the satchel. “He watches Lily, her old governess, his own son, and he’s probably watching you and me, or he soon will be. Send my coach out to Trysting to fetch Yolanda, as I indicated on the schedule, and I will be much in your debt. The damned thing isn’t in here. Kendall, a moment.”
The footman scampered around from the back of the vehicle, leaving his compatriot to finish securing the trunk. “My lord?”
Footmen were to come in matched sets in the best households, and Kendall’s complexion would not match that of any other servant in Hessian’s employ. Worth noted this as another inconsistency between the man Hessian had become and the rather dull fellow Worth had decided he must be. The Earl of Grampion ought to observe society’s unwritten rules as well as those printed in the manuals of the sporting associations.
“I forgot a handwritten volume,” Hessian said to Kendall, “a journal, in the drawer of my bedside table. The bo
ok is marked with a year embossed on the cover and spine. Might you retrieve it for me?”
“Of course, my lord.” Kendall was off at a trot, while Hessian tossed the satchel into the traveling coach.
“About that schedule,” Worth said. “Will I have to hire Oscar Leggett in truth? From what I’ve observed, he hasn’t a thought for anything except getting drunk, chasing opera dancers, and getting into arrears at his club.”
“Such a waste of good tailoring would benefit enormously from seeing how hard you work,” Hessian said, flipping open a gold pocket watch then eyeing the gray sky. “You will look after Lily? Communicate regularly with Rosecroft? Look in on my staff?”
Another footman charged across the alley bearing a picnic basket that was stashed inside the coach.
“You think I work hard?”
“Incessantly, would be closer to the mark,” Hessian said, tucking his watch away. “I don’t suppose you’ve come across any more clues regarding Leggett’s finances?”
Worth took Hessian by the arm and led him a dozen steps from the coach. “He hasn’t a single marker out at any club I know of, not one. Nobody can recall seeing him at a charity do for the past two years, not even in the company of his niece. He attends social dinners, but he’s yet to host any this year.”
“Is he growing eccentric?”
Kendall reappeared from the house, Lady Evers’s journal in his hand. He remained by the coach, a respectful distance away.
“Leggett’s behavior is growing eccentric.” Which was bad news for all concerned when a fortune had likely gone missing. “What’s in that box?”
Another parcel had been affixed to the back of the coach, this one sizable, but with one side of wire mesh rather than wood.
“Pigeons. Rosecroft has kindly lent me two. They’ll cover the distance from Dumfries to London in less than a day, if the weather’s fair. Kendall, my thanks.”
Who was this man? Hessian had thought through details Worth would never have considered, had minions running in six directions, and was attempting a journey in two weeks that Worth would not have tried to complete in a month.
His Lordship's True Lady (True Gentlemen Book 4) Page 23
