by Grace Burrowes, Shana Galen, Miranda Neville, Carolyn Jewel
“I do not keep a mistress.”
“Really? Mrs. Veney who was not my affair is no longer yours either?”
“For your information, Stella Veney died three years ago.”
That took the wind out of her sails, but only for a second. She didn’t wish anyone dead, though she’d often thought unkindly of Mrs. Veney, but Linton was the target of her ire. “I am sorry for your loss. It doesn’t change the truth that you had her in your keeping both before you married me and afterward.” Delivering the speech without shouting cost every piece of composure she possessed. Linton hadn’t made her this angry in years. “I am aware that the world would think me a fool for caring and expect me to turn a blind eye. You told me so yourself. But the fact remains that you are an adulterer, and I am not, and you make me sick.” Her voice broke on the last words.
She would not cry, and she would not let Linton see how much he had hurt her. Hurrying to the door, she fumbled with the key.
“Stop!”
She ignored him and met Nick and Lady Lavinia in the passage. Irrelevantly, she noticed that the old lady was holding the infamous ribbon.
“Are you—?” She cut her brother off with the palm of her hand.
“I am unwell,” she said with a loud sniff. “I will call for the carriage to take me home and send it back for you.”
“But, Allie. Are you all right? Do you want me to come with you?”
“No.” She suddenly felt almost as angry with her brother as she was with her husband. “I wish to be alone.”
Chapter Nine
‡
The starlit night with a crescent moon was perfect for love and rowing.
Linton was rowing, up and down the lake for an hour and more, ignoring the agony in his shoulders and trying to forget the pain in his heart.
It had taken five minutes to learn that Nicholas was both chaperone and tickler in the supposedly compromising situation. By that time it was too late and Althea was in the carriage, bowling down the drive. Since Lady Lavinia insisted on claiming the prize for the scavenger hunt, he’d had to tolerate the congratulations of the party, the anxious (and avidly curious) enquiries about his wife’s health, and make small talk for two interminable hours until he could go home. Althea had locked both her doors and wouldn’t answer his knocks, nor Nick’s.
“Tell her you’re sorry,” Nick had said when, in desperation, Linton confided his mistake. “Allie’s not a girl to hold a grudge.”
She was holding one tonight. Knowing he would never sleep, he went to the lake.
Fool, fool, fool, his mind chanted in time with the oars.
Jealous fool, the lapping water jeered at him.
For that was what he was. Jealous of her youth and joie de vivre that he had lost or never possessed, jealous of the gaiety of her young friends, jealous of the unstinting love and loyalty she gave her twin, and jealous of every man who ever looked at her.
Digging his oar too deep at the turn, he caught a crab and ended flat on his back. As he recovered his balance, the prow rammed into the rushes. He couldn’t even row properly. Lucky Nick was competing and not he. Having righted the scull, he set off again, attending only to his rhythm, the play of his muscles, the ripples on the silent lake. When he passed the point across from the small hill on which Althea had stood and kept time, he saw that he had a watcher, dressed all in white, almost formless in the dark. It must be a ghost.
Linton didn’t believe in ghosts.
Since he was rowing at some speed, the shadowy form faded into the distance, and he wondered if he’d conjured the specter of his wife from his own yearnings.
Linton wasn’t the kind of man to conjure anything. He had no imagination and acted only on evidence. Some of which turned out to be wrong. Making the turn perfectly, he sped back, resisting the temptation to look over his shoulder. He pulled to a halt in the middle of the lake, next to the hill.
She was still there. Althea.
“Linton!” She stepped forward.
“Take care!”
Too late. She misstepped in the dark, slid down the dewy grass, and splashed into the water, feet first.
Abandoning oars and boat, he scrambled over the side and swam to the bank. “I’m coming.”
She floundered and splashed and shrieked a few words unbecoming to a lady. Reaching her before she sank, he grasped her by the waist and managed to get her up the slope to firm ground. She lay on her back, arms stretched out, eyes closed, completely still. Was she dead? She couldn’t be. He must have reached her in time.
“Althea?” No reply.
He recalled seeing a man resuscitated from drowning by someone breathing into his mouth. On hands and knees, he leaned over her.
She opened her eyes. “I can swim, you know.”
He hadn’t known. There were so many things he didn’t know about her.
“Besides, the water is only a foot deep at the edge.”
She smiled up at him with parted lips, and he decided to try the mouth remedy. Just in case.
Her lips were cold and wet, her breath was hot, and the pent-up frustrations of weeks, months, and years went into his kiss. He cupped her head, feeling damp hair and warm skin against his palms, and feasted on her, ravishing her mouth. If this was the last kiss he ever had from her, it would be a good one.
She raised her arms, but instead of rejection, she clasped his head and drew him closer. Her tongue met his, and he was lost to further thought. Nothing in the world existed but Althea: the ridges of her teeth against the tip of his tongue, the texture of her mouth, her taste of sweetened lake water. His thumbs traced the angles of her cheekbones and explored the whirls of her ears. Shapely ears that he would kiss later when he could bear to relinquish her lips. Her hunger seemed as great as his, her kisses as devouring, while his eager hands traced the column of her neck, descended to her shoulders, reaching under clinging muslin to find cool, satin-smooth skin as alive and vibrant as she. The ache in his loins heated and grew.
It had been so long.
When she shivered, he reluctantly lifted his head. “You are cold. You should go in.”
“I am a little cold,” she said. “I wonder what we should do.” Her wicked smile expanded his desire to unmanageable proportions.
“I’ll warm you.” The night was cool and his clothes even wetter than hers, but his body was a furnace from exercise and lust.
Gathering her close, they went on kissing, but her gown and his shirt intruded. “I think we’ll be better off without these.” To encourage her, he tugged at the neck of her gown and undergarments, barely exposing a taut nipple. First, he breathed on it, then took it in his mouth and sucked. Her pelvis bucked against his. “I can do that all over you, and you’ll be as warm as toast in no time.”
“Linton,” she said on a breath, and that was invitation enough.
“Sit up.”
Her loose gown came off easily enough, but the wet lacings of her light stays refused to yield. The need to drop fervent kisses on her neck and shoulders didn’t help his concentration. “The knot is wet.”
“Do you have a knife?”
“No,” he croaked, and cursed his useless ducal existence that made it unnecessary to carry tools. This couldn’t be over. It must not be.
“Never mind,” she said, and twisted around to throw her arms about his neck and wrestle him to the ground in a tangle of limbs and wet skirts.
He shoved the muslin up her legs and found them bare. No stockings, the minx, nor drawers, and she was here, and in his arms. His questing hand found her miraculous center, warm and wet but not from the water. His head burst with triumph and his breeches with the need to enter her, now, without delay, and relieve his protesting cock.
He made himself slow down by making his mind register the discomfort of wet breeches and the night air cooling his damp back. He was determined that she would find fulfillment, with or without him inside her, preferably both.
His mouth on her breasts, finge
rs playing inside her, his thumb stroking the core of her pleasure, he did things he’d never thought proper for his virginal bride. Earth could offer nothing better than listening to Althea’s gasps of delight, feeling her breasts grow firm as he sucked, the blissful writhing of her hips, and the clenching of her inner muscles on his fingers.
One thing better. Wet breeches, his mind screamed. Don’t care, his cock answered back.
Before he exploded, she came with a long shudder and a deep sigh. “Linton,” she murmured as she melted beneath him. “Now, Linton. I want you.”
He might have lost a button or two as the fall of his breeches fell faster than bails off a cricket wicket, then, at long last, he was inside her. What an idiot he was to have cared what she did and given up the chance for this. He should have let her go her merry way and come back to him at night so that he could bury himself in her and drive himself to bliss. Mine, mine, mine, went a drumbeat in time with his thrusts. Mine forever, he thought as she moaned and rolled her head and dug her nails into his shoulders. Mine forever, as one delicious quiver after another embraced his accelerating thrusts.
“Althea,” he shouted for every creature in the park to hear as he expelled his seed and collapsed, panting as though he’d rowed farther and better than ever before.
They lay still for a few minutes, his head tucked into the crook of her neck, her hands resting lightly on his back. Replete and sleepy, he wanted only to rest in her arms, but his brain insisted on being curious when his body felt only satisfaction.
He looked at her, pale and impossibly beautiful in the dim light. “Why?” Just one word.
“I believed what you said. The Duke of Linton never lies.” She was talking about Stella Veney, he realized. He hadn’t given that part of their quarrel another thought. He opened his mouth to tell her his former mistress meant nothing to him and explain why he had continued to pay for her keep after they separated.
“Don’t say anything.” She placed a silencing finger over his lips. “When we talk, we argue, and I don’t want to.”
Disinclined to argue about anything, he kissed her softly, pulled her close, and fell asleep.
He woke up alone. Had he dreamed the whole wonderful night?
But he was covered with a canvas boat cover that lived in the boathouse, and his breeches were unfastened.
It was dark, and he could still see the stars and the moon, but a faint lightening on the horizon across the lake told him dawn approached. It had been a perfect night for love and rowing, and he had done both. He had made love, and for the first time in his life, he was in love.
Chapter Ten
‡
All day long as she went about her duties, Althea felt as though she held a special secret close to her breast. Last night, unable to settle, she’d pulled on an old gown and walked to the lake in search of answers. Finding Linton had been a surprise, but what occurred afterward was an answer of sorts and satisfied her for now.
More than satisfied her. She hugged herself in glee, causing the gardener to ask her if she was cold on an unusually warm summer day.
After dinner, she and Linton played the piano for Nick. They’d almost mastered the Mozart, and she was not without hope that many more duets lay in their future. But she wasn’t certain. She excused herself and retired to her rooms, evading Linton’s suggestive glances. He had said good night with a gallant kiss on her hand and looked disappointed. He wouldn’t be for long.
Through the connecting door, she heard him moving about the room. Once he dismissed his valet, she smoothed her long hair for the last time, hung a gauzy silver shawl over her arms so that it did not cover one inch of the skin exposed by her nightgown of white cotton so fine it was almost transparent, and slipped into his room.
He stood in the middle of room in a dark red dressing gown. His eyes gleamed, and his jaw dropped. She’d never thought much about her husband’s mouth before. When she was in the mood to admire him, she noticed the whole man, or more recently his upper body, but those lips could do wonderful things, as she now knew. She smiled in anticipation.
“Althea.” He held out arms she was eager to fall into.
First, business.
She folded her arms and imitated his tone when speaking to his secretary. “It has come to my notice, Your Grace, that you are in need of a mistress.”
His brow creased as he tried to make out what she meant. “I don’t want a mistress. I have a wife, and you are all I need or want.” A good answer but not quite good enough. Her husband had a lot to make up for.
“I haven’t much enjoyed being your wife, Linton. After last night, however, it occurred to me that I would enjoy being your mistress. In my experience, wives are treated to formality, scoldings, and—for the most part—attentions in the bedchamber that are somewhat cursory.”
His Grace had the grace to look abashed. “I am sorry for that, but—”
She cut him off. “I told you last night I didn’t want to discuss the past.”
“We—”
“Listen to me, please. I have a proposition for the future. I don’t have much knowledge of the perquisites of a mistress, besides a smaller house in a slightly less good part of town than the wife, but I like the idea of it. I imagine that instead of formality, a mistress enjoys intimacy. Instead of scoldings, she is treated with flirting and compliments, and as for the other, I would like to find out. As you have often pointed out, I like to enjoy myself, and it seems to me that mistresses have more fun.” Her speech so far received nothing but a blank stare. “I am applying for the position.”
She looked back at him with a confidence she was far from feeling, waiting to learn if the cool duke obsessed with propriety would respond or the slightly crazed man who played piano duets and exchanged amused glances and made love to her under the stars. She wanted the latter badly and wouldn’t take back the former under any circumstance.
“Would a mistress rub her protector’s shoulders?” He spoke with perfect gravity and a lurking smile.
Her heart skipped. He understood her.
“A very grateful one would,” she said, tilting her head.
He glanced around the room. “Unfortunately, I don’t have any jewels on hand.”
“There are other ways to earn gratitude besides material gifts.”
“I will bear that in mind.”
Images of other ways flooded her mind and scorched the air. Her shawl dropped to the floor. “Do you have any more questions?”
“Would a mistress be available to me during the day or only at night? Would she, for example, attend dinners with the vicar, and picnics, and scavenger hunts, and balls?”
“You shock me, Linton. Such dull occasions are the purview of the wife. The mistress only does things she enjoys.”
“Would a mistress watch me rowing?”
She nibbled her finger while she considered the matter, and his exaggerated composure wavered. She trusted he would be earning her gratitude in the near future. “While you are training your wife’s brother, it would be grossly improper for the mistress to be present. The mistress would only be there when you are alone, particularly when the night is warm and the stars bright.”
“So my mistress would be a secret between ourselves?”
“A delicious secret. Especially if she were very grateful. Oh! What are you doing?”
Linton, practiced pugilist and fencer that he was, could move fast when he had to. He picked her up and carried her to the bed. “A mistress needs to keep up her strength and mustn’t squander it on unnecessary walking.”
“I didn’t know that, but then, I am new to the business. I’m afraid you would have to instruct me in many matters. Am I to understand that I have passed the interview and won the position?”
“With flying colors.”
She sprawled on the mattress with glee and rising excitement. It appeared that Linton was as naturally talented at this game as he was at other sports. What he would be like with practice… “Le
t us come to terms. I have told you what I expect as your mistress. I daresay you have demands of your own.”
“I hope you won’t find me too demanding, but I have certain requirements.”
Being ordered around by him suddenly didn’t annoy her at all. “Tell me.”
“For a start, I don’t like my mistresses guilty of excessive adornment, and you, my dear, are wearing far too many clothes.”
“My abject apologies, Your Grace. Is it my duty to remove them or yours?”
“Do I need tools?”
“There are no stubborn laces on this garment.”
“Then allow me.” He patted the bottom of the bed. “Come and sit here.”
She obeyed him and raised her arms so that he could pull her nightgown over her head, as one might undress a small child. His expression made her feel anything but childish. She sensed neither shyness nor shame while his burning gaze roamed over every inch of her exposed body, even between her slightly parted thighs.
“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” he said, reverently caressing her naked breasts. “You are perfect in every way.” Being praised, even in her role as mistress, soothed a little of the hurt caused by his disapproval of his wife.
“Am I permitted to beg for a kiss?” she whispered.
“Begging isn’t required.”
“But I might enjoy it. Please, please, Your Grace. Kiss me now.”
He complied, on her lips, deeply, and any other number of other places. She discovered that she was particularly receptive at the base of her neck and around her ribs. Falling back on her elbows, she positively purred, and then began to laugh, and so did he, nuzzling her belly and taking hold of her hips when she pretended to struggle. Mistresses really did have more fun. When he fell to his knees between her flailing legs and planted a kiss right on the curls of her mound, she gasped with shock and a kind of appalled longing.
“Shh. Let me. I think you will like it.”
