by Gayle Eden
“—you never told me that.”
“I might have, had you not avoided me!”
“I wasn’t avoiding you. I was—busy.” Harry sighed, having snapped at Caroline. “We’ll iron this out. Do not worry. Things always work out.”
“Not this, Harry.” Caroline put her hand to her head and murmured, “This is an awful tangle. And I wish I were anyone but myself. Stoneleigh will ask for my hand, father will give it, and then—where will I be?”
“I don’t know where, but I do know what—you’ll be a future Duchess. Caroline…” Harry closed her eyes a moment then opened them. “What exactly do you want?”
“I want to see my Captain.” Caroline whispered.
“Oh, dear God.” Harry felt a headache coming on. She resigned herself to suffering it, because Caroline was weeping again. Not just weeping, but also muttering, “He probably thinks I played him the fool. I have not had a moment to slip out, thanks to Stoneleigh and his blasted rigidness about schedules. He is so very—punctual.”
It was a very long hour’s visit, and even when Caroline had to leave—to be on time for Stoneleigh to collect her for a musical—Harry still was not certain she could make sense of it.
One thing was clear however. Jules LeClair, Earl of Stoneleigh, obviously would end up wed to Lady Caroline Bordwyc.
At the Assembly Hall
Jules heard Lady Caroline say, “There is my friend. Excuse me, my lord. I must speak with her.”
He delayed her with a hand on her arm, his eyes on the woman standing just feet away, dressed in a black sheath with beads on the bodice, and rows of shimmering fringe on the bottom of the skirt. Her hair was smoothed in elegant waves.
“Harry…uh, Lady Harriet, is your friend?”
“Yes.” Caroline’s chin went up. He could feel her glaring at him before she pulled her arm away. “I’m very proud to call Harry my friend. She has more sense than half the people here, of any sex.”
Caroline had walked off, and it took her reaching Lady Harry for Jules to come out of his muse.
He watched the two talking, Harry arching her elegant neck down to hear what Caroline was saying. At one point, Harry’s eyes flickered to him, and it took all of Jules’s ability not to react. He kept his “social mask” on, but when they walked together a space off, he found himself following.
When he reached the pair, he bowed to Harry. “I don’t think we’ve been…formally…introduced.”
Harry’s lips curved but her eyes held something reserved. “No. How do you do, Lord Stoneleigh? I am Lady Harriet Brunswick.”
He took the hand she offered, bowed over it, brushing his lips on it.
“Famous,” Caroline said, but there was a subtle roll of her eyes with it. “All the niceties are seen to. Now if you’ll excuse us…” Her hint was not exactly a hint.
Jules had no idea what Harry had told her, and that put him off balance. He tried to search her face, read it, but she gave nothing away.
“Certainly. I shall leave the two of you to talk, and take myself out for air and a cheroot.” He nodded to both and walked out.
He needed both the air and the smoke, and the time to wonder at their friendship. Perhaps, like himself, there was more to Caroline? He would have never thought so. She had a rep as being even tempered, even sweet, and obedient… Whatever that meant.
Jules paced the small garden and decided he hadn’t cared enough when with Caroline to engage her beyond pleasantries, so he assumed she was as shallow as most, and consumed with painting water colors, and shopping for hats or something. When he wondered what she and Harriet had shared as far as confidences went, he told himself that Harry proved she could both be discreet and impartial.
She certainly would not tell Caroline about…
He did not know if it was for his own comfort that he clung to that, or because it was really true. He had spent less time with Harry (and in unusual circumstances) than he had with Lady Caroline, yet he felt he knew her better because there time had been genuine. Yes, that was his fault. He wanted, strived, to keep any relationships amid society on a superficial level. That included Lady Caroline, for obvious reasons. Was it possible….she was doing the same?
Cursing. He went inside.
Jules joined the ladies, but politely stood a bit from them, as they were in deep conversation. There was noise and music in the ballroom, so he just picked up an occasional word here and there.
Caroline was obviously distressed about something, though her social mask was on too. He could read her body language. Harry was cool and composed and yet he saw her pat Caroline’s arm.
When he was taking his leave, Harry slipped a note into his white glove. Jules in turn, put it inside his vest pocket. He did not read it until he had escorted Lady Caroline home.
“Caroline?” He said distractedly, oddly anxious to see Harry and using Caroline’s first name for the first time, prior to taking his leave on the stoop.
“Yes.” She looked surprised.
“I’ve no objection to Lady Harriet. You are free to chose your friends as you like.”
Her eyes went over his face. “Thank you, Stoneleigh. Not, that I was seeking permission.”
He almost smiled at that, but murmured something and got in the coach. The mansion door was still open when they pulled past and he would swear Caroline stood there with a puzzled frown on her pretty face.
He entered Harriet’s shade-drawn residence sometime later, removing his hat and gloves. Jules’s eyes first found Harry, still in her stunning gown, standing with a glass of wine by the seating area.
She said as he walked toward her, “There’s someone here to see you.”
Feeling tension immediately overtake him, Jules then had a sense of someone, a man, standing just by the makeshift sideboard, but he kept his eyes on Harry.
“Who?”
“Your blackmailer.”
He placed his hat and gloves on a small table very carefully. “How did you know?”
“The packet. The one you thought Raith dropped in your coach and brought it to the guest room. I opened it. It contained papers. Apparently Stratton’s private dealings—which held evidence, you were being blackmailed.”
Other questions were filtering through Jules mind at an alarming speed, yet he masked that and finally walked past Harry. He found himself facing a male profile and when the man turned, Jules recognized him, tall, handsome, with thick light brown hair, and very pale blue eyes.
He murmured, “Sir George.”
Cowley nodded, his gaze holding Jules’s with obvious reluctance.
“Why?”
The man confessed softly, “Stratton… was blackmailing me.”
“Why?”
George held his gaze more meaningfully this time and waved his hand, as if to say, the obvious.
What he did confess was, “Unlike you, I didn’t have a fortune at my disposal, Stoneleigh. I could think of none of my acquaintances, who could help me. As you may know, I have been employed as a currier for the war office…”
Leaning back against the table, wanting a whiskey but forgoing it, Jules felt a nerve tic in his jaw. He had gone to university with Sir George, but since their circles were not the same, they rarely mingled. He would have never thought of him…
“You kept blackmailing me after Stratton…died. Why?”
George looked down at the glass of port he held. “Because—of the scandals—the investigations. I had no way of knowing the information that Lady Harry somehow got hold of, was not still uncoverable. I would be beyond ruined. My…life…would be over, either way. I needed the money to leave, and go somewhere, to start over. I knew I’d have to disappear before there was more digging into Stratton’s affairs.”
Hand covering his mouth a moment, pensive, uncomfortable, Jules did not look from the man. He tried to feel some sympathy, but the blackmail had put him through his own hell.
He dropped his hand and asked coolly, “Did you set this up, yea
rs ago?”
“No.” George looked up, obviously surprised. “No, of course not.” He finished his drink and turned to set the glass down. His profile was still to Jules as he offered tightly, “I had seen you when…two years before. Nevertheless, you did not join the wilder goings on that most of our mates got up to. You were always studying.”
He cleared his throat. “Females, who were brought to the hall, were forever going on about your looks—. They are hard to miss—by anyone. But plenty of the chaps were just as...…” He motioned with his hand as if to imply Jules could fill in the blanks.
Jules knew he was not going to like what came next, but for all the tension in his guts, he had to know.
George murmured, “When you joined the revelry the night before, I was there. I…was not drinking or partaking. I had just a glass of wine that noon. I….”
Feeling heat in his face, yet sure he could mask it Jules gathered George witnessed his loss of virginity, among other sexual acts.
“Yes, well…” George sucked in a breath and let it out. “The next night, after you’d left with the female…and you came back. I saw…. my chance.”
There was some silence following that and Jules resisted looking at Harriet, who leaned against that cluttered table across the room.
He asked George bluntly, “Did you put something in my drink?”
“Not me, no. A chum of mine, yes. It was not dangerous, just a… relaxant. Something to lower the inhibitions. I had used it before myself, and I…I did not want to take advantage of you and I had thought perhaps you would be…inclined. But that, like some, you would struggle to release those inhibitions.”
“—How much do you need?” It was asked abrupt and cold from Jules.
Sir George named a sum.
Again, that nerve twitched in Jules jaw, but he said coolly, “I’ll have it for you in the morning. Then— it is over. Finished. I never want to hear from you again.”
Nodding, the man finally turned. Jules allowed him to look at him for long moments and he read everything there, rather distantly, but still seeing regret, embarrassment, and yes, an attraction.
Sir George murmured, “I’m sorry. I was desperately terrified of what Stratton would do…”
“You should have simply come to me, George.”
A half smile lit on George’s mouth. “No one—simply comes to you, Stoneleigh.”
Jules scanned George’s face. “As of tomorrow. It’s over.”
George nodded. “I’ll sail on the first ship to Italy.” He hesitated a moment, then moved away.
Jules watched him stride toward the entry and pick up his hat and coat, and then leave.
Turning to pour that whiskey, Jules did so, and drank it straight down. He let the glass slide to the table with a clink and took up the bottle. He turned to look at Harriet.
She had her arms folded, hips against the table.
Jules strode over and took her by the upper arm, leading her around and to the chair he’d once sat in. he locked the door, subdued all the lamps, so that only the firelight bathed them.
Eyeing her relaxed figure, that muse-smile on her lips, he removed jacket and cravat, and undid his shirt, afterwards seating himself in the chair she once held. Sitting back himself, he sipped enough from the bottle to feel it burn and have his head pleasantly buzzing.
His black mane mussed, lying against his sculpted cheeks and down on his shoulders, the white shirt was opened and laying wide enough to expose the slabs of his upper chest, hard dark nipples, and ridged stomach.
Jules unlatched his snug black trousers, strong thighs wide, the material between tugged open exposing shimmering black hair and the round, peach length of his sex. The crown was flushed, smooth. The stone hard shaft was fully veined. His long artistic fingers skimmed up it and then passed over the head lightly several times.
He did this repeatedly, touching down to the base gliding up and over, playing softly and tracing the sensitive crown. The firelight caught on the moisture beading at the tip. He touched a finger to it, smoothing it against the head.
With his free hand, he lifted and sipped from the bottle, eyeing Harry as she slowly stood and unlatched her gown. It slid to the floor, leaving her in nothing but black silk stockings and her velvet shoes. Her sleek body caught the light while she draped the gown over her chair back, and then reached to take off her shoes.
The fire crackled. A thick rain had started.
Harriet stepped toward him.
Jules’s gaze went from her creamy upper thighs to that strip of curls between them, up her flat stomach and ribs, to the hard nipples. She was looking down at him, her eyes bright, face flushed, and lips slightly parted.
He set the bottle down, reached for her, pulling so she stood astride his thighs, the low chair giving him a nice view of her sex as well as allowing him to lean back, and eye her face.
That same hand now moved to her curls, his fingertip parting them and rubbing lightly, while he kept fingering his own sex.
Lazily, huskily, he murmured while watching her arousal reflect on her face, “You knew, all this time, and you could have told me.”
“I could have.”
“Yet you let him keep blackmailing me.” His finger slid down, up all the way into her sex.
Sucking in a breath, she merely leaned over, hands on the chair by his shoulders, and face very close. “I thought it might….shake you…loosen your control. Teach you something.”
Jules plunged his finger in and out of her several times, feeling her thick, silken juice flow as he rubbed the walls. “That’s not the way to teach me something, Harry. You helped perpetuate a very unpleasant period in my life. That—angers me.”
He moved his finger from her and grabbed her hair then brought her down for a kiss, open, hot, erotic that left her breathless. When he let up, he latched onto her breast. While he laved, bit, teased, and tormented her, he used his hand to feel her, to mold her pert ass and trace the seam, then to cup between her legs hard.
Leaving the nipples wet, rigid, and quivering from his attentions, Jules took several kisses she gave him, both of them breathing searing, intense, fast, and feverish.
Jules sat up enough to move her back, turn her, and then bring her firm little backside to him for nibbling and teasing. He heard her moan, gasp, while fingering, rubbing in the hot honey.
He laughed low when Harry cursed and then started begging.
Bending her slightly, he thrust his tongue in, scraped his teeth on her, and suckled. When Harry grasped his sex, he slid down enough to accommodate her hold and strokes, but she got the head in her hot and silken mouth, and Jules did some moaning curses of his own.
His finger going in and out of her, he played at the seam of her buttocks while her tongue laved over the crown of his sex. She kissed it. Kissed all around it, and then rimmed it again with her mouth, sucking in, rolling her tongue in ways that was driving him mad. For the next tense, lusty moments, they worked each other to climax with fingers, mouth, tongues. The pad of his finger chaffed her swollen clit, his tongue, and other fingers massaging in and out of her hot sex. It erupted fiercely, and flowed on a moan of pleasure.
Jules lost little time rising and cleaning up with his handkerchief, before he picked up Harry, the bottle of whiskey, and carried them up to her rooms.
After he’d set her down, Harry went to light a cheroot and watched him remove the rest of his clothing via reflection in the mirror.
Jules smacked her bottom hard when he took the cheroot from her.
“What the bloody hell was that for?” She rubbed the spot, watching him blow a stream of smoke.
“I told you, Harry. I don’t like being manipulated.”
“What would you call the life you live, the ordinary one, if not that?”
His lashes dipped. “My choices.” He laid the cheroot in a tray. Jules grabbed her bottom and smacked it again before she found herself turned, so that he was behind her, his arm around her tightly.
Looking at them in the mirror, he was hard again. His eyes pure green, glittering, he began entering her, filling her, pushing the thickness and hot sleek shaft inside by inches.
Grasping the edge of the vanity, she held his gaze in the mirror. “I ask him about it. Asked him, if he enjoyed you.”
“Harry.” He grated and slammed into her several hard thrusts. “You’re a bitch!”
“Yes.” She reached back and grasped his hair so they could kiss, though it was more scorching mouths and tongues having the same sex their lower bodies were.
When he freed her mouth, she panted, “You cannot blame him. Both sexes are attracted to you, even those who’d never admit it.”
“There’s no excuse for blackmail.” He thrust hard and fast. Jules finished having held her hips and drove himself deep until she felt him end to end.
Later, after a hot bath, one which he had first, so was on the bed in a towel, when she emerged in her robe.
Jules watched her leave. She returned later with coffee. He accepted it, drank, but soon had her on her stomach, the robe lying at her feet. Leaning over her, his palm traced her sleek back and derrière, then her legs to the ankle. With her head turned, he could kiss her, nibble her ear, and lave it. Jules leaned back to study that small sensual smile on her kiss puffed lips. He let his palm slide between her legs.
“You’re hot and wet.”
“I can’t help it.” She sucked in a breath. “I’m not going to try and resist.”
He grit, aroused, “It wouldn’t do either of us any good, with the mood I’m in.”
Jules moved to crouch over her, using his tongue, lips, and hands to caress and taste, feel her, from nape to toes. He breathed her unique scent, liked hearing her murmurs while watching her subtle seeking movements.
Turning her to her front, he kissed her long kisses, sensual and silken. Harry had a soft mouth, a wicked little tongue, and he gave, took and teased her, getting a whispered plea when she had had enough of that and wanted his tongue in her mouth.
Jules was enjoying the lack of hesitancy, the surety in her, as she cupped his head or touched his body, and took kisses for herself. There was no pretense in Harry.
