He wanted to see his father, too. He wanted to hear that he was no longer fearful of a flood and a family curse, for the sun was shining.
All at once the yearning to see the man, who had once callously turned him out, affected something in Devon’s heart. He remembered his cautious return to the palace not long ago. He had not believed the shattered pieces of his life could ever be put back together and mended. But they had been mended, in some ways, at least, for he felt a deep, soulful compassion toward his father, and a genuine desire to ensure that he was well cared for, no matter what the future held.
The coach pulled to a smooth stop and a footman lowered the step and opened the door. Charlotte and their mother came down the stairs to greet them.
Devon stepped out, into the fresh air. His mother wrapped her arms around him. “Welcome home,” she said.
He hugged Charlotte as well, then turned to assist Rebecca out of the coach. The duchess embraced her and held her close for a long moment. “My dear, I am so sorry about your father.”
“As am I,” she said solemnly. “But he is at peace now.”
Just then, the duke appeared at the open palace doors waving a letter over his head.
“What is that?” Blake asked, looking suspiciously up at their father.
Adelaide sighed heavily. “It is a letter from Vincent. It arrived yesterday.”
“And what about Garrett?” Devon asked. ”Has there been any word from him?”
“No, nothing, but your father sent a man to Greece two days ago to hunt him down and bring him home.”
“Garrett won’t be pleased,” Blake said. ”He’s likely to toss the messenger into the Mediterranean.”
The duke came hopping down the steps in his slippers.
“Has Dr. Thomas been back yet?” Devon whispered discreetly to his mother.
“No,” she replied. “But he is coming tomorrow, thank goodness.”
“Devon!” the duke called out. “How wonderful that you have returned! And your beautiful wife. You are a work of art, dear girl.”
“Thank you, Your Grace,” she replied with a smile.
“I see you have a letter from Vincent,” Devon said.
“Indeed I do.” The duke handed the letter over. “And just look at the sunset, will you? I dare say, we are doing well.”
Devon exchanged a curious look with Blake, then read the letter. A knot tightened in his gut, and he ran a hand down over his face.
“Surely not,” he said, holding the letter out to Blake.
Blake read it, too. “Good God. No, he can’t be serious. He’s engaged?”
“Yes!” the duke said, dancing about on the steps. “Oh, Vincent, I am so proud. I shall give him my best shotgun for hunting. Or maybe that pair of boots he sometimes borrowed without asking. And look at the weather, would you, please?”
They all turned and looked at the colorful sunset on the horizon.
“Who is the lady?” Rebecca asked, while Devon was still unable to speak, for he was in shock.
Blake handed her the letter.
“Good heavens,” she said. “It is Lady Letitia, the Duke of Swinburne’s daughter.” She looked at Charlotte, who was biting her lip. “She will be our sister-in-law.”
“Vincent has acted too hastily,” Devon said. “He has not given it adequate thought.”
“When did adequate thought ever get a man to the altar?” his father asked. “A young, robust man needs to listen to his John Thomas. Eh? Eh?”
Blake sighed. “She is a handsome woman. That was probably enough for Vincent, under the circumstances.”
“She is the perfect young gel,” the duke said cheerfully. “I shall adore her. He is bringing her home tomorrow.”
Devon inhaled deeply and looked back toward the sunset. Rebecca laid a gloved hand on his arm, expressing her understanding.
“So it appears the curse has been thwarted again,” he said, with a notable sense of defeat as he looked into his wife’s lovely, knowing eyes.
“Indeed, thwarted again!” his father shouted triumphantly. “Now, do tell me, what time is supper? I’m hungry for beef.”
“Shall we enjoy the diary tonight?” Devon asked, pushing through the large portrait on the wall in Rebecca’s bedchamber and closing it behind him. He stopped and turned around, however, to swing the portrait open and closed a few times. “These hinges need to be greased.”
Suddenly his wife leaped onto his back and wrapped her legs around his waist. He laughed, and she dropped to her feet on the floor, pulled him around to face her, and crushed his lips with hers.
“Where were you?” she asked, after a deep and tantalizing kiss. “I thought you would never get here.”
He somehow managed to get an apology out between laughter and more kisses. “I’m sorry—Blake kept me late in the library.”
Rebecca pulled his shirt out from inside his breeches and lifted it up to his chest, then went down on her knees, kissing his bare stomach along the way, probing his navel with her hot, wet tongue. He was instantly, overwhelmingly aroused.
She looked up at him with a wicked smile as she unfastened his trousers. “I shall read to you from the diary tonight,” she told him, “but this will be the last time.”
“Why the last?”
“Because after tonight, we shall contrive our own fantasies and write our own future.” She pulled his breeches down to his ankles and rose to her feet, while he ripped his shirt off over his head.
“But before we put it away for good,” she added, “I thought you might like to know what happens to Lydie and Jess.” She pulled off her nightdress, tossed it to the floor, and climbed onto the bed.
“I admit I’ve been curious.”
She rested her cheek on a hand and beckoned him with a smile. “Come here, then.” She patted the spot beside her and pulled the book out from beneath her pillow. “Now, where did we leave off?”
He slipped under the covers, naked and stiff as a post, and faced her.
“I’m happy to listen to anything you wish to read to me.”
She flipped through the pages, then settled on an entry toward the end. “In that case, lie back and listen.”
He obeyed her command—all ears as she began to read.
“Dear Diary,
“Today I learned an important lesson, the most important of my life.
“He came, as I hoped and dreamed he would. I had only just finished writing my last words to you, when I heard a commotion downstairs at the inn. It was my love, Jess, who had followed my father’s coach and found us in London. He came bursting through my door like a white knight. He faced my father with a sword and demanded my hand in marriage, and my father could do nothing but submit. He let me go, and Jess took me away. My brave hero, Jess, who did it because he loves me.”
Devon laid a hand on Rebecca’s arm, touching her with his own love. She continued reading.
“That was one week ago, and we were married today. I love him more than life itself, and I know we will be happy. We will have children together and raise them in a happy home, and I will forever be thankful for the day we met.
“So my lesson, Diary, is this: One must always believe in what the heart knows, and never give up on it. Jess is the world to me, as I am the world to him. We are everything to each other. This is bliss.”
Rebecca closed the diary and placed it on the bedside table, then faced Devon without a word.
For a long time he looked at her, then he inched closer and wrapped his arms around her waist. “I am glad they found their bliss,” he said. “I have found mine, too.”
“Oh, Devon.” She took his face in her hands and kissed him.
“I would not have understood those words a month ago,” he told her, “for I did not know what bliss was until you entered my life. But now everything is perfect.”
“But what about the pain you once knew, Devon? You had not forgiven yourself for what happened between you and Vincent four years ago, and you used
your guilt to put distance between us. Are you able to truly let go of that now?”
He touched her soft face and ran a finger over her hair. “I will always regret what happened, and I will always feel pain when I think of it, but I will not continue to feel dead inside, as I have for the past three years. I have come home and my heart has come back to life. I have found happiness again, thanks to you. And perhaps someday, I will earn Vincent’s forgiveness, though it will not be easy with Letitia as his wife. The woman despises me for choosing you. She will encourage his bitterness.”
She kissed him in the lamplight, and he rolled her over onto her back, using his lips and mouth to express his love for her with tireless devotion to both her emotional and erotic pleasures. For an hour he delighted her senses, sent passionate jolts of excitement to her core, and filled her with a yearning he had every intention of fulfilling.
When he finally entered her in the darkness, she cried out and pulled him close, and he made love to her gently and tenderly, looking into her eyes the entire time, moving with great care and attention to detail. He used every skill he possessed as a man to work her up to a powerful climax, and the instant he felt her body tremble and shudder beneath his own, he, too, surrendered to his own orgasmic pleasures, feeling the shimmering heat of absolute love fill his whole being.
They fell asleep for a short time with his body still inside hers, then they woke to make love again, when he grew hard within her.
It was almost dawn when they finally surrendered to sleep, their bodies drained and sated, and if not for the knocking at their door at daybreak, Devon would have slept until noon.
But it was not to be that morning. He was forced to rise and pull on his trousers. He left Rebecca sleeping and crossed the room to answer the persistent caller. When he opened the door, there stood his mother with a sleeping infant in her arms.
“What is this?” he whispered, not sure if he might in fact be dreaming.
“We have a problem,” she said flatly, in a quiet voice so as not to wake Rebecca. “A woman just left this child on the doorstep. A few of the footmen are out searching the grounds at this very moment, hoping to catch her.”
“There is no indication who the woman was?”
“We have this.” She handed him a note, and he blinked sleepily, willing his eyes to focus on the elegant penmanship. It was too dark to read any of it in the corridor, so he carried the note to the bed and lit the lamp, then read what it said.
He turned to face his mother, who was still standing in the doorway.
Rebecca sat up, clutching the covers to her neck. “What is going on?”
“We don’t quite know,” the duchess said. “This baby was just left here, and I do not think Lady Letitia is going to be happy about it when she arrives to have her engagement announced later today.”
Rebecca squinted drowsily at the baby. “It’s Vincent’s?”
“So the letter writer claims,” Adelaide said.
Devon sank down into a chair. “If that is true, this is his bed. He made it. He will have to lie in it.”
At that moment, the baby began to babble in the sweetest, most adorable manner, and Rebecca leaped out of bed with the sheet wrapped around her, and joined the duchess in the doorway to indulge in a very maternal round of doting, coddling, and cooing.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Michelle Phillips and to Deborah Hale, for your friendship and support, helpful brainstorming sessions, and invaluable critiques. Thank you also to my editor, Erika Tsang, for all your great work at Avon, and to Paige Wheeler, my fantastically marvelous agent, whom I adore.
About the Author
Julianne MacLean fell in love with some of the classic romances—Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Pride and Prejudice—while completing her degree in English literature. Then she decided that she needed a “real job,” but after a brief stint as a government auditor, she realized she just didn’t care enough about numbers matching up. So a month before her wedding, she sat down and wrote the first paragraph of a romance. Now fourteen years, a husband, and a daughter later, Julianne is a happy, fulfilled, stay-at-home mom and a devoted romance writer.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
By Julianne MacLean
IN MY WILDEST FANTASIES
SURRENDER TO A SCOUNDREL
PORTRAIT OF A LOVER
LOVE ACCORDING TO LILY
MY OWN PRIVATE HERO
AN AFFAIR MOST WICKED
TO MARRY THE DUKE
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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
IN MY WILDEST FANTASIES. Copyright © 2007 by Julianne MacLean. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition September 2007 ISBN 9780061745072
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