The Dangerous Love of a Rogue

by Jane Lark

  He positioned himself carefully above her, feeling his tip at the moist juncture between her thighs.

  Her blue eyes were wide and luminous and fear hung there again now, as it had earlier, but it was best to get this over with. He could not delay it in case her father discovered her absence earlier than they thought. He did not want to delay it anyway.

  “It will hurt, just for a moment…” he whispered to reassure her, and then he plunged, hard and quick.

  She cried out as his penetration pierced her barrier. A high gasp.

  Buried inside her he held still, watching her bite her lip as he breathed hard and fought against the emotion damming in his throat.

  Then he kissed her brow, her nose, her cheekbone. He wanted to take the pain from her. I love her, I do – he’d never felt this way about a woman or known anything so precious.

  When her expression relaxed he withdrew slowly. He had not been with a woman for a year, a whole year, not since he’d decided Mary was his choice. He’d waited a long time for this moment.

  God his friends would be laughing if they knew how important she’d become to him. They had no idea he’d entirely abstained. But he was committed to her, as he wished her to be to him.

  He was the first man inside her body.

  The only man who would ever be inside her body.

  Pressing back in, he relished every sensation, preserving it to memory.

  Her fingers released the covers and lifted to his back as her body relaxed a little.

  Her eyes had shut.

  He moved out and pressed in, cautiously, over and over again, trying not to hurt her any more than he had, but knowing the best cure for her pain was pleasure.

  Every contour in her face and her body was beautiful. The candlelight flickered over her skin.

  She opened her eyes and met his gaze after a while, and now the glaze looked more from desire than wine. But he could see she did not understand this.

  Lord… He did not understand this. The emotion inside him made him feel like he would split in two as he held her gaze and swallowed back the lump in his throat.

  “Mary.” Her name was a supplication, a promise – he idolised her.

  Her fingers gripped his shoulders.

  She had such a gentle, caring touch.

  “Come again for me, sweetheart,” he urged her vocally as he moved. A flame burned inside him for her, drying his throat.

  It had burned for a year.

  The breath slipped from her mouth. Her blue irises shone like glass.

  “I love you,” he whispered, his throat constricting with the emotion he could no longer hold back. Maybe it was true. Maybe it was not. He thought it was. But it was what she wished to hear and he would give her anything she wished, his heart was brim-full of her.

  “Mary, it will be right between us. Everything will be good”

  She nodded, her eyes clouding with tears.

  “I love you,” he repeated.

  “And I you,” she answered pressing her hips up against his next invasion as her fingers slipped to his back.

  Oh, God, she was beautiful.

  “Mmm…” The sound escaped her lips and her heels pressed into the mattress.

  If this was pain for her, it was heaven for him.

  She licked her lips.

  He worked determinedly, with more skill. “Does it feel good now?”

  Her blue eyes looked at him through a cloak of dark eyelashes and she nodded.

  The muscles in her thighs gripped his hips.

  “Can you bear it if I go a little faster?”

  She nodded. Her eyes closing completely.

  He increased his intensity pushing deep, fast and hard, forgetting her virginity and seeking bliss for them both as her breasts rocked with the force of his thrusts.

  Her breath came in pants and her fingernails clawed into his back as her thighs fell open wider for him. She sighed with a whimpering sound. Then…

  “Andrew?” Her eyes opened and her gaze clung to his, terrified for an instant as he took her to the edge. She hid nothing as she broke, crying out, her fingers clawing, her body arching into pleasure as sweat glistened gold in the candlelight dancing over her skin.

  Lord. Once, twice more, he thrust in hard losing all restraint and thought. A third time, and then… he came to pieces – a wave crashing over the shore, a burst of rolling power.

  God in heaven. Sex had never been like this before. He held still, buried deep inside her as sensation ripped through him. He bit his tongue and shut his eyes. God.

  When it was over, he laughed and tumbled to his back, pulling her over him. “Mary, you are my dream.”

  “I love you,” she whispered to his neck as he drifted into sleep with her as his blanket.

  Chapter 12

  Ellen Marlow rolled over in the bed she shared with her husband Edward. It was still dark and Edward lay stretched out beside her, one of his hands beneath her hip. The other slid from her waist as she turned. They’d dined and retired early. She’d been glad of a break from the season’s late hours.

  A light knock rapped on the bedchamber door.

  Ellen sat up unsure if she’d imagined it. It was surely nowhere near dawn.

  “My Lord! My Lady!” Mr Finch, John’s butler.

  Ellen shook Edward’s shoulder. “Something is wrong.”

  He rolled to his back, his eyes opening.

  “Mr Finch is knocking.”

  When he did not immediately rise Ellen slid from the bed and picked up her nightgown from where Edward had thrown it to the floor when he’d stripped it off her earlier.

  She slipped it over her head, letting it fall and sheath her body as she crossed to the door.

  She opened it a little. “What is it Finch? Is it one of the children?”

  He held out a folded sheet of paper. “No, Lady Marlow. This. A servant delivered it a few minutes ago, I’m told it is from Lady Eleanor.”

  “Eleanor?” Her niece? Why?

  “So I was told.”

  Ellen took the letter.

  “Were you told any more?” Edward’s fingers touched Ellen’s waist. She stepped aside and he opened the door a little wider. “Why would Eleanor send a message in the middle of the night?”

  “I cannot say, Lord Marlow, I was not told.”

  Edward leaned past Ellen to light the single candle he’d collected from the bedside, touching the wick to the one Finch held.

  Ellen turned, her shaking fingers opening the letter as Edward held the candle close. He had dressed in a loose silk robe which shone a ruby colour in the candlelight.

  Dear Aunt Ellen,

  I am only writing because I thought. Oh, there is no way to say this to you with any ease. But I thought, I am sure you told me, Mary was not going with you to Pembroke Place but staying in town with the Smithfields. Only I saw that family tonight at a ball and she was not with them. When I asked after Mary they looked at me as though I were mad, saying she was not staying with them and that there had been no intention for her to do so. I hope I was wrong. Did I mishear, or did Mary change her mind. Is she with you?

  An ice cold sensation gripped in Ellen’s chest. “No.”

  “What is it?” Edward asked.

  She could not breathe.

  She looked up. “What has she done?”

  “Eleanor?”

  “Mary?” Ellen breathed her daughter’s name, as tears clouded the words of Eleanor’s letter.

  Edward took the letter.

  “No.”

  Edward’s heart pounded. Mary had hugged him and cried when she had said good-bye. She would not have done anything wrong.

  “She must be at John’s. There must be a misunderstanding. We will go back now.”

  “What about the children?”

  “We will leave them with John and Kate. We can return tomorrow.”

  Ellen nodded, her eyes expressing the same emotion which gripped in his chest.

  He turned to the be
ll pull and called for Ellen’s maid, not even wishing to wait for Finch to fetch the woman. “If you dress, I’ll go and tell John.” He looked back at the half open door, where Finch still stood. “Have the grooms ready a carriage immediately; we wish to be gone as soon as we can.”

  Elopement. The word whispered through Edward’s head but he refused to believe it. Yet there was the image in his mind of her speaking with Framlington only days ago.

  Mary had said, “It was nothing, Papa. He stopped me that is all, and I argued with him and told him to stay away.”

  But there had been the day she’d said she’d seen him in the park too. The day she’d unusually disappeared for an early morning ride.

  Yet Mary was sensible – level headed… She would not. Lord, I pray… She would not.

  He walked along the hall to John’s rooms, fear gripping at his stomach.

  He knew elopement was Ellen’s fear too. But Mary had been fixed on Lord Farquhar and hurt by him… hadn’t she?

  She would not have…

  Or, was her distress caused by something else, someone else?

  He knocked on the door of John’s rooms.

  Lord. “Mary what have you done?” Edward whispered in a bitter voice as he pictured his first child in his mind’s eye as an infant in his arms.

  “Come!” John called.

  * * *

  Mary believed Andrew loved her. He’d made physical love to her again in the darkness just before dawn, kissing her throughout, his pace excruciatingly slow, as he’d whispered endearments over her lips, saying “I love you,” again and again.

  But it was not just his words, it was the gentleness with which he touched her that had convinced her of his affection.

  He’d been mindful of her soreness, and at the end he’d stroked her hair back from her forehead and said, “You are beautiful, Mary.”

  He had gone back to sleep but Mary had been unable to.

  When he’d woken it had been full light and he’d got up, washed, dressed and then he’d helped her dress and kissed her nape while she’d pinned up her hair.

  He’d said I love you again, against her skin, and she’d turned and said it to him too. Then they’d kissed for a long time before going down to breakfast.

  She’d eaten lots, her stomach was calmer, and he’d teased her over her sudden appetite. But when he’d risen he had come about the table, kissed her hard and then licked the taste of bacon from her lips.

  His vitality, beauty and tenderness had wrapped around her, but she felt as if it was made of glass and at any moment everything would break as she pressed her thigh to his and gripped his arm, while he drove the curricle on steadily through the greenery of England’s landscape.

  Perhaps it was because she could not quite forget that her parents did not even know she had gone yet. They would discover her deceit soon.

  * * *

  A tight pain bit hard in Edward’s gut when the carriage drew to a halt before John’s ostentatious townhouse.

  If Mary was not here?

  That was a question he had refused to consider.

  Glancing back at John who’d chosen to accompany them, leaving Kate with the children, Edward opened the door to alight. One of John’s footmen was already there, setting down the step.

  Edward jumped down, then turned to take Ellen’s hand. She descended hurriedly. John followed. Edward left them behind him, rushing towards the open door.

  Dawn had broken as they’d travelled, flushing the sky pink. Now it was full light, and the sky an azure blue.

  “Is my daughter here?” Edward thrust the words at the porter who’d opened the door. “Miss Mary. Is she here?”

  The man looked blankly at him, as though Edward was a fool.

  “Is she here!” She had to be.

  “Miss Marlow left with you, my Lord, a day ago, she has not returned. I did not think she was expected.”

  The answer hit like a fist in Edward’s stomach.

  “She has not come back here!” Edward called across his shoulder to Ellen and John, a chasm opening in his chest.

  Edward looked to the footman who held the coach door. “Have the stables saddle myself and His Grace horses, as quickly as they can.” Perhaps Mary was at Smithfield’s after all and Eleanor mistaken.

  The footman had not moved. “Horses! Now! Run!”

  The man did.

  Edward looked at John. “We shall ride to Smithfield’s. If she is not there perhaps his daughter will know where she is.”

  Ellen looked pale. “I will go to her room.” She pushed past him. “Perhaps she has left a letter.”

  If Mary had left a letter it could only mean one thing – she had eloped.

  Edward followed Ellen as she crossed the black and white chequered marble floor. Then he hurried up the stairs beside her, his hand at her back as she gripped her dress lifting her hem from her feet, John followed behind them.

  Edward walked through limbo – riven from reality. Someone had tied his hands so he could not reach out or do anything.

  This was his precious daughter.

  The child who had been a light in his life ever since her birth.

  Moments illuminated his thoughts; the moment she had walked, the way as a baby she had rubbed his earlobe when she was tired. Her fingers gripping his leg to get his attention as she had grown. The beauty of her smile when she had come out. Mary?

  There was no sign in her room that anything was amiss. Everything was still where it ought to be.

  Two days ago he’d handed her up into a carriage, where the hell had it taken her.

  “The writing desk?” John pointed.

  Edward turned to look. He’d bought it for her, as a gift. It was mahogany and had a delicate inlaid pattern of roses carved from rosewood, walnut and apple woods.

  Pain gripped about his heart when he opened the lid and saw a muddled pile of letters, some written by a hand he knew, but others…

  The letter which lay on the top was the one Edward had seen from Smithfield’s daughter, confirming her parents’ agreement for Mary to stay. Was that a lie? Had he not even known his daughter? How many times had she lied?

  John leaned past him and took out some letters.

  Edward took a pile too and passed some on to Ellen. They all began scanning the words. Those that Edward read were inconsequential. These were letters from her female friends, young women’s chatter. “There is nothing here.”

  “DF?” Ellen said.

  Edward turned.

  Her eyes shone with fear. “Mary received a letter. She said it was from Daniel. That is why I thought she had a liking for him. These are all love letters signed DF or D. Most are dated after Daniel’s engagement… Why would I disbelieve her? Mary never lied. Never…” Tears dripped on to the letters Ellen held.

  Nausea gripped at Edward’s stomach. “They are not from Daniel Farquhar…” Damn… would Mary really be so foolish.

  “They speak of meeting her, Edward. Who has she been meeting? I thought her silence and distraction a symptom of a broken heart. These letters urge her to trust him. Why did she not speak of this to me?”

  Edward cast the letters he held down on the desk behind him, and moved to comfort Ellen, though he felt no comfort himself. “Because they are from a man we told her to avoid…”

  “Drew Framlington!” John growled. “She would not have been so foolish!”

  “It looks as though she has been…” Cold fear raced beneath Edward’s skin.

  “They have been passing these letters through a stable boy.” Ellen pulled away, anger in her voice now. “If we find who it was…”

  John growled and turned away.

  “She has eloped,” Ellen said when John left the room. “We do not even know him, Edward. How could she? Why did she not at least try to persuade us? We have always told her she may choose her husband.”

  “Because both John and I would have told her no, Ellen. My guess is she feared that speaking would only alert us
to the possibility. I would not have condoned this match. The man is a manipulator, he’s charmed her. He will have told her not to speak to us.”

  “If he has hurt her—”

  “I will kill him.” Edward growled. What had Framlington said to her, done to her, to persuade her? Damn it. Edward wished he had challenged her harder the other day, he could have prevented this.

  He held Ellen as she wept.

  “Mama!” Edward turned as John came back. He held a young lad by the shoulder and the boy looked scared. “I found Mary’s little messenger. Tell Lord and Lady Marlow, what you told me.”

  “I didn’t do nothin’ other than what m’lady told me to.”

  Edward glared at the boy. “Then tell us what she told you to do.”

  “She gave me letters an’ said no one else should know. She made me swear.”

  “Where did you deliver the letters to, to whom?”

  “I don’t know the gent’s name, m’lord, ’e was just some toff who lives in the Albany. I took letters there, an’ ’e sends ’em back and one time ’e came ‘ere.”

  A knife lanced into Edward’s chest. “The man was here?” Had Mary lost her mind. What had happened then? What was happening now?

  “Framlington lives in the Albany,” John stated in a bitter pitch. “He has probably been playing her for weeks…”

  “Damn.” Edward could not look at Ellen. “We had better go there to begin our search. I saw her speaking with Lord Brooke and Framlington only days ago at a ball.”

  “Brooke is Framlington’s best friend,” John stated, “and he rarely goes to such things—”

  “Well he has attended balls recently, twice, he danced with Mary,” Ellen interjected. “Oliver had introduced one of his friends. I never thought to question…”

  “And Oliver clearly never gave a damn,” John growled.

  “It hardly matters now,” Edward stated. “What is done is done. Now we must simply find them…”

  Chapter 13

  Mary had no idea how many miles they’d travelled but it seemed a considerable distance, although they’d stopped at a busy posting inn for luncheon and he’d not hurried the horses. But her bottom was sore from being bounced about on the seat of his curricle over rutted tracks and due to the change in her status last night she ached in other places too.