Six Weeks With a Lord

by Eve Pendle

  Outside of the closed door, he hesitated.

  “No!” and the sounds a scuffle propelled him forward. He took in the tableau at a glance, as Rayner and Grace both looked over to him. Rayner was holding Grace’s wrist, and she was tugging to try to get away, brandishing a teapot in the other hand.

  “What do you think you’re doing touching my wife?” Everett kept his voice restrained as he walked toward them, all the muscles in his arms bunched up.

  Grace snatched back her wrist, and Rayner let her go. Retreating, she still held the teapot in front of her.

  Rayner straightened his cuffs and curled his lip at Grace as he addressed Everett, “There are some things you ought to know about your wife, Lord Westbury.”

  “I’m sure I know quite enough.” Everett unbuttoned his coat and shrugged out of it, as casual as a man coming home and about to inquire about what was for supper. He threw his coat over a chair. Turning to face Rayner, he folded his arms as though he were a pugilist rather than an earl.

  “She has told you a sorry story about Anna, hasn’t she?”

  Everett stared at him implacably.

  “It’s just that. A story. Has she told you why she had to go away? And how it is that she went just after Anna left? Rather convenient timing, don’t you think? Geneva is so far away, no one would ever think of looking for her. And a girl’s finishing school. A good front, were one to require such a thing.”

  The insinuation was clever, just enough to ignite distrust. It might even have done so and been convincing, if they hadn’t spoken about this only days ago. But Grace’s distress and Anna’s fright were too genuine to be anything but true.

  “Your sordid mind—” Grace snarled.

  “I am aware of all this, Lord Rayner.” He wouldn’t argue with a man who had no morality. “What I am not aware of is why you are in my house, in a room alone with Lady Westbury.”

  Grace trembled and paled. Without looking away from Rayner, he held out one arm in tacit invitation. She put the teapot down and moved into the shelter of his embrace.

  “Alone with a man.” Rayner smirked. “Typical behavior for Grace, as I’m sure you’re aware. Little firecracker she is.” He spoke to Everett, as though she were not right there listening to him insult her.

  “That is quite enough.” He wanted him out and away from Grace and everything he cared for. “I invite you to leave immediately, or I cannot be—”

  “It would be unfortunate were Chancery to hear rumors about her conduct.” Rayner looked idly around. “I doubt they would look favorably on leaving an impressionable young boy with a woman prone to sudden nine-month disappearances and irrational whims.”

  Rayner’s threat hung in the room. Chancery would take a dim view of leaving a boy with a sister with even the smallest mar against her character. An alleged pregnancy out of wedlock and an irregular marriage were a significant stain. Everett might be compromising their chances of getting Henry back by needing money, but this could kill it.

  “What do you want?” Everett said eventually. This boy-lord was a tiresome would-be bully and although he didn’t believe he would or could do anything to hurt Grace or her brother, he wasn’t going to allow him to stay in his house.

  “Grace should’ve married me like her father wished. If she wants to see her brother, she has to do what’s right and drop the Chancery suit. I will provide her with access to her brother and an appropriate living. From what I’ve heard about the strange circumstances of your marriage, a separation shouldn’t be a problem to you, Lord Westbury. I will allow you to keep half of the dowry. And I will testify to adultery if you wish to divorce her.” He said these like they were a condescension.

  His emphasis on testify made Everett itch to hit him. “That will not be necessary.”

  Rayner shrugged. “Or maybe you want to try to annul. Though, it’s much easier to divorce these days, or so I’ve heard.”

  Everett tightened his grip on Grace’s upper arm. “You seem to have been misinformed, Lord Rayner. I love my wife, and her home will always be here.”

  Rayner turned slightly, as if to address Grace alone. “If you love Henry, then you will take me up on my offer. I am only thinking of you and your brother. You would not want anything to happen to him, would you?” He made the threat so lightly, but still, it permeated the room. “Don’t leave it too long to do the correct thing. I am a forgiving man, but even I have my limits. Good day.”

  Everett listened to his steps down the hall, then pulled Grace around into a full embrace. He held her tight against him. Only when her hand reached up to touch his back did he notice she was shaking. Of course she was afraid. She had every reason to have been scared, but feeling the evidence of it was infuriating. She had been alone and terrified not only for herself, but for her little brother, too. Rayner was just youthful bluster, but she didn’t know that.

  “Grace,” he whispered into her hair. “It’s all right. I’m here. My Grace.” And then, the possessive was in his mind as he murmured endearments to her. His Grace. Eventually, questions replaced the incoherent comforts. “Why did you not ask one of the footmen to stay with you?”

  She answered into his coat, and it took several attempts before he made out her words. A gradual ice spread across him as he comprehended. He pulled away, keeping her shoulders clasped in his hands, regarding her pinkened face in horror.

  “Tell me you didn’t put yourself in danger for the sake of preventing him saying something incriminating about us. That wasn’t worth it. It was too great a risk.” She could have been hurt, and the thought made him want to pummel Rayner into the ground. Or maybe keep his wife with him every moment of the day. And wear a pistol. Worse, Rayner could have persuaded her to go with him while Everett had been placating the dowager. That thought had him tightening his grip on her. He had to force himself not to crush her to him again.

  She looked up at him defiantly. “I promised I wouldn’t jeopardize our fiction. I meant it.”

  God, that cut at him like the many tiny cuts made with a serval when releasing a bad humor by bleeding. Hundreds of little cuts for what could have happened if he had not arrived in time for her stubbornness, her honesty, and for his continued perfidy.

  He took her face in his hands to ensure she saw how much he meant this. Her jaw was so silky, so vulnerable under his fingers. “Your safety and happiness are so much more important than any promise you made to me. You must never do anything like that again.” Turmoil built inside him when she didn’t respond. “Promise me.” His voice sounded low and fierce, even to him.

  “Did you mean it?” Her eyes were wide as she looked up at him, a deeper brown than their usual amber.

  He opened his mouth to say yes, there was nothing in the world more precious to him than her, and it would kill him if she put herself in danger again. But the question in her eyes was not about his wish to protect her. There was something else.

  Of course. She needed to know this. It had become a part of him without his even realizing it, but the words were new to her. “Yes. I think I have loved you since I saw you in that gold dress.”

  Her lips curved slightly, though her expression remained serious. “It was yellow. And at least two seasons out of date.”

  It was a comment so typical of her that it made him grin, even though what he had wanted was a declaration from her. She leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his, and every complaint was silenced. Her lips were warm and demanding and his answered. He was still cradling her face in his hands, giving him an illusion of control. But it was Grace who was pulling closer, and how he loved it, wanted it. There was a satisfaction in seduction that tempted rather than cajoled he hadn’t known before meeting her. There was pleasure in taking the lead, persuading a woman against her better judgment to come to bed with him, of course. But to feel her will exerted on him was totally different. It was the thrill of watching a strong rose bloom out of doors, compared to a delicate hothouse flower that flopped as soon as it was
exposed.

  Her hands drew lines down his back, traveling firmly down, ending on his buttocks. Her grasp insisted, and he responded, going from slightly aroused to unbearably hard.

  Grace pulled her mouth away from his. “He said our marriage could be annulled.”

  Everett focused on her eyes; they were full of uncertainty.

  “It could be, couldn’t it? Because we haven’t…”

  “Is that what you want?” All the blood in his body seemed to stop and wait for her answer. Annulment on the basis of non-consummation was unusual and difficult, but technically possible.

  “No. I don’t want an annulment. Or a divorce. I think…” She looked down, shyly, then slowly raised her chin until she was staring straight into his eyes.

  What he saw there—trust and desire—heated him all over.

  “I think we should consummate our marriage.”

  His blood resumed pulsing around him at thirty times the rate as before, though more to between his legs than anywhere else. Yes. Now.

  “Come upstairs with me.” He had meant it to be a question, but it came out as an order. It took all his control to wait for her to nod.

  Chapter Seventeen

  They ascended the stairs with unseemly haste. The moment the door closed behind them, Grace’s mouth was overwhelmed by Everett’s on hers, demanding and hot. Bringing her hands up, she plunged them into his hair, holding him down to her. She wanted him. Wanted all of him and had no idea what that really meant, only that there was a desperate want and a twitch of burgeoning pleasure low in her that needed satisfaction.

  She didn’t let him go when he tried to pull away.

  “The bed. Our clothes. For this first time, we should do it right.” His lips were still against hers.

  Do it right. Nervousness tainted her arousal and she loosened her hold on his hair.

  He took a step back and reached up to take her hands in his. “Lead the way.”

  She glanced over at the enormous bed and the height of Everett towering next to her. She was small and inexperienced, wanting something desperately without any idea of how to lead them to it. The words spilled out of her, even as her feet wouldn’t move. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Everett laughed. “That’s never stopped you before.”

  Her heart seemed to vibrate. “That was different. I was just copying you. I don’t know how to… You know. I’ve never done this, not the whole of it. How can I lead when I don’t know where we’re going?”

  Pulling her toward the bed, he murmured, “But you do know. You have had someone talk to you about it, or seen animals mate, or something?”

  That was a ridiculous statement and not at all to the point. She held herself a bit aloof from him. “Did you just compare yourself to an animal?”

  “Absolutely.” His eyes sparkled. “I practically am. A man’s brain shrinks in inverse proportion to how his member engorges. But in all seriousness, you are aware of the joining of a male and a female?”

  Join had just become yet another word that she couldn’t hear from his lips and not feel a streak of want. She nodded and looked away from his eyes to the looming dark furniture of the room. In between the smell of him, there was an aroma of beeswax polish and efficiency.

  “That is hardly the same thing, though. People talk of being a skilled lover and knowing techniques to drive a man wild with desire.”

  He took her hand and pressed it between his legs. Beneath her fingers, there was strength and heat in his rigid member.

  “What do you think this is, if not ‘wild with desire’?”

  She looked at the hard and needy bulge under the fine lawn of his trousers and her small hand over it. “Turgid.”

  His face relaxed into a grin. “Prose can be turgid, Grace. My cock, though, is wild with desire.”

  “First, you say that you are an animal. Then you make allusions to untamed poultry.” Her heart was fluttering, and she grasped at control with another terrible joke.

  “You are incredibly beautiful, you know that?” Everett didn’t laugh. With leisurely ease, he looked her up and down, then grasped her hand in his and brought it up to his mouth. “And I want you.”

  His breath was silk on her palms and the compliment was salve on her nerves. She reached up and undid the top button of his shirt, revealing his neck. She traced the elegant line of his collarbones, then moved down to the next button, then the next, stroking each new section of his chest that she exposed. At his waistband, she pulled out the tails. She wanted to run her fingers over the familiar muscles of his abdomen, push the fabric off his shoulders, and start to undo the buttons on his trousers. But Everett covered her hands with his, taking them in his and turning her. He kissed under her ear as he undid the buttons up the back of her dress, peeling it open. She yanked at the ties of her skirts, then let them fall to the ground.

  When they were both naked, he lifted her onto the bed with him so that he sat against the pillows, and she was sitting, straddled on his lap. There seemed to be more blood in her, pumping around to every part of her and making her excruciatingly sensitive to every touch of his skin against hers.

  Her legs were shockingly open over his, his chest bare almost against hers. He braced one arm around her back, and she was wonderfully held in place on him. Between them, there was the head of his erection, a hard touch between her legs where she was hot and slippery.

  He lowered his head to her breast, laving it with his tongue, the sensation going through her whole body. She squirmed at the intensity, and he wrapped his arms around her waist and held her in place. As he nipped and kissed her breasts, his cock rubbed on her soaked quim and she arched herself closer, the pleasure seemingly coming from all sides.

  “Shouldn’t we…?” This was delicious, but they’d done the same many times. They ought to be consummating their marriage. They ought to be…fucking. That’s what he’d called it. “Don’t you want to…?” She couldn’t say the word out loud.

  “Yes.” He tightened one arm around her waist and the other caressed her side, slipping down to her thigh and then around to the slit between her legs. “But first things first, love.”

  Her hands were still in his silken hair, but when he thrust his fingers into her, she arched, and seeking a firmer hold as he buffeted her with strokes over her quim, she held onto him. His fingers slid over her again and again while he kept up the erotic assault on her nipples. The spiral was familiar now and always different. He didn’t tease her this time, as he sometimes did, moving on and off the center of her pleasure. He looped over the spot with his finger, giving her only the tiniest pause between the pulses. Her skin was on his, they were naked, and there was nothing in the world beyond his hands and his mouth. She was so close, her breath coming out in panting gasps.

  Everett took his hand away from the bud at her core and she moaned in protest.

  “I know, I know.” He lifted her up on him with one arm so she, kneeling, was half supporting herself, at least as much as being held by him. “But it’s up to you now, darling.”

  They were consummating their marriage. She’d practically forgotten in the torrent of his pleasuring her. Leaning back, she saw his face, fuzzy through her lust-filled eyes, and he swallowed. He was holding his own need in check. Perhaps his cock was wild, after all, and he had to strain to control it. With him kissing her neck, she was sidetracked from the throbbing between her legs for a second.

  “I’m here for your taking.” He moved beneath her so the head of his male part was positioned at her entrance, waiting for her. His gaze was steady, but there was a shake in his hand that she could feel, even as he held her tight.

  He was holding his cock in place or, a fanciful thought caught at her, restraining it. But then, the ache between her legs was crying out for him, and suddenly it wasn’t an action to lower herself. It would have been an act of denial not to. She sank until he was firm against her. Breathing in, embracing the feel of his hands on her and the closeness of the
ir touch, she stretched herself onto him. She wanted this. Not just because of his shaky exhale as he barely contained himself for her. For the throbbing of want, despite the uncomfortable tightness. But there was the solid resistance of his member against her, feeling as though she could never envelop it.

  “Yes. That’s it.” His muscles were tense with control.

  She looked into Everett’s lust filled eyes. But they were soft with love, too. He’d said so and that confession had filled her heart and changed everything. The promise she’d made herself not to make love with him until their bargain was over slipped through her mind like a breeze flickering a candle. But the candle remained lit. There were risks and bargains and potentially a pregnancy at stake here, but none of that mattered when she was looking into his eyes. He loved her, and they would sort out all of those things after the six weeks, and in the interim, she’d give herself over to him.

  She sank down onto him. A shock went through her and she pulled back up, gasping with the sharpness. From somewhere far away, he groaned and she recognized pleasure. When she paused, he ran his hands down her legs, then up and to her waist, gently holding her. He’d supported her when she’d needed him with Rayner, and now he was patient and soothing even as she was hesitant. She could trust him, she knew that now. And as if that thought eased everything, she slipped lower, back, then lower, until finally she could feel his body against her breasts and belly. The length of his member was thick inside of her. His rough jaw scraped across her cheek, then his mouth was on hers, his tongue against hers, teasing and stroking.

  He withdrew slightly beneath her, a smooth friction moving inside her. His hands braced over her hips, he moved her up and down in time with the nudge of his tongue in her mouth. It was good. Really—

  Oh. Her nipples were rubbing against the coarse hair on his chest, causing thrills that went all the way through her to where they joined. She engaged her thighs to drive down onto him, to increase the sensation at her most sensitive point. They were moving together, the smack of him against her, all the way in and nearly out, almost pushing her into the abyss.