Irina parted her lashes to look up at him, the jeweled deep-blue depths of her eyes searching his. Desire swam in them, but something else did, too. Something that gave him pause. With a long inhalation, as if to fortify herself, she stepped away out of his reach to the other side of the billiards table.
“I can’t do this.”
“Do what?”
Irina looked sapped of all strength. As if it had taken all her willpower to step away from him. He, too, felt the loss of her keenly.
With a sigh of frustration, she shook her head and gestured between their bodies. “This.” Her voice lowered, a blush filling her cheeks. “What happened at the waterfall. We both know it cannot happen again.” She smiled brightly at him, though the heaviness remained in her eyes. “You did say no to my very unconventional proposal. Perhaps I thought obtaining a ‘yes’ was going to be as easy as the very first time I asked you to dance on the way to the duke’s wedding ball so many years ago.”
“Irina—”
“No, wait. This must be said.” She paused, staring out to the candlelit gardens beyond the panes, as if to gather her thoughts. “I do not want us to fight or argue with each other. I wish for us to start over with a clean slate. As friends.”
“Friends,” he echoed.
“I know what you said at the waterfall, about what it is you want.” Her blush intensified as she drew a ragged breath, her free hand fluttering to grasp her middle. “But you’ve also made it clear that there can be no future between us, and I don’t want to lose you. As a friend.” Irina stalled, going quiet for a long moment as if pondering her thoughts. “You asked me what I want. Well, I want something more for you, Henry. I want you to find love.” Her throat bobbed. “And you have a chance at that with Lady Carmichael. She loves you very much, you must know that.”
The statement left him slightly stunned. “Love?”
“Yes, love. She could make you happy.”
Henry understood her words but still somehow didn’t. She wanted him to be happy?
“I am happy,” he said, frowning.
“You’re confusing pleasure with happiness,” she said, setting down her playing stick on the felt and moving toward the large windows lining the opposite wall.
Pleasure is happiness, he wanted to tell her, but the air had cooled between them, and Henry knew the moment was gone. As it should be.
He watched her at the windows, her face in thoughtful profile. She did not turn back toward him.
“I will leave you be,” he said after a while, repeating the same words she had said to him when he’d first refused to play billiards and she had turned to go. He’d jumped at the chance to keep her in the room. With him. He paused a moment, waiting for her to do the same now. When she remained at the windows, looking into the darkness, Henry nodded to himself in understanding. She wanted him to go.
He left the room, closing the door behind him. The footman who had been standing just outside the door, he noticed, had gone. Henry turned right and started down the long corridor in the direction of Worthington Abbey’s grand foyer. The walls were a rich and glossy mahogany with carved stone pillars arching overhead. It reminded Henry of a church, and as he passed underneath each one, he felt the increasing urge to apologize.
Irina wanted him to love and to be happy, and she’d turned away from him as if weighted down with sadness. As if she knew he would not be able to find those two things with her. You are marrying Rose and should find them with her, he told himself as he turned a corner and saw the foyer ahead. Strangely enough, it was Irina’s voice he heard in his head saying this. And it was his own voice that responded with: no, I won’t.
He did love Rose. He adored her, but it was as a brother. He would enjoy her companionship. They would be friends as they had always been. They shared a love for John and memories of him, but they would not share romantic love themselves.
Rose knew it, too. And like Irina, she’d urged Henry to search out happiness.
He stopped walking and stood still within the quiet corridor. The manor was so big and vast, he could not hear anything through the walls or ceilings surrounding him. Somewhere in the upper floors, Hawk and Lady Bradburne were tending to their children. Perhaps getting ready for bed themselves. Hawk adored his wife. Henry saw it in every gesture the man made when she was present. He’d change from surly and serious to teasing and relaxed. He’d become happy.
And that was what Irina wanted for him. More than pleasure, more than self-serving lust, she wanted him to be able to sit back and simply be content.
Henry turned around, and without thinking of doing anything more than thanking Irina and telling her he understood what she’d meant to say, started back for the billiards room. He’d been inside Worthington Abbey in the past, but the foyer was so grand, it was often the focal point of every ball. He’d never been in the deeper reaches of the castle before this evening. The mahogany corridor with its stone arches stretched onward and onward, until far, far down there was what appeared to be an arched window of stained glass. There were doors on both sides of the corridor, all matching flat panels of heavy wood. The billiards room was to the left, Henry knew that, at least. However, as he continued down the corridor, he wasn’t certain which door it was exactly.
He stopped at one closed door, believing it was most likely the one, and grasped the knob. The moment he opened the door and stepped inside, he realized he’d been wrong. There was a little bit of light in the room, from a fire in a hearth, but there was no billiards table. And while there were large windows like the one Irina had been standing at, they were draped.
Henry was about to duck back out when a loud rustling sound stopped him. The room wasn’t empty. Two figures were standing up from one enormous chair that had been pulled in front of the flames of the fireplace. That they were both men was the first shot of information through Henry’s mind. That they were both hastily readjusting their clothing was the second.
And though the lighting was low, the shadows of the room heavy, Henry quickly discerned their identities.
“Lord Remi,” he said, his eyes then cutting to the footman who had disappeared from the corridor outside the billiards room.
Irina’s friend took a handful of steps away from the footman, who was fumbling with the front of his trousers.
“Langlevit,” Remi said as he smoothed his cravat and then ran a palm through his hair. “Still skulking about, I see. I must say your timing is impeccable.” His sarcasm was not lost on Henry.
The footman finished with his trousers and grabbed his livery jacket before rushing from the room, though not by Henry, still within the doorway. He took a back door, no doubt to a servant hallway.
“Henry?”
Irina’s voice behind him startled him, and he turned quickly, knocking his elbow upon the doorjamb.
“What are you doing?” she asked, attempting to peer inside the room. He didn’t know why he did it, but Henry quickly closed the door, shepherding Irina back into the corridor.
“Wrong room,” he said, grasping for an excuse. His urge to apologize and thank her for her honesty had become tangled with preventing her from discovering Lord Remi, half undressed and caught in an obvious tryst, in the private home of her sister’s in-laws, no less.
“I should not have left you alone in the billiards room,” he said. “I came back to see you to the foyer and to your carriage.”
Irina blinked a few times and frowned, as if she didn’t believe him. Or perhaps she did and was disappointed.
As they walked to the front of the abbey in silence and then summoned their individual carriages, Henry wondered at Lord Remi’s unabashed reaction to being discovered. He’s a smug bastard, he thought. And good at covering the truth. The spy Henry had contacted in Paris to dig up information on Remi had written nothing about his preferences. Was it just men, then? Or women and men both?
His horse arrived first, and Henry bid Irina a distracted good evening before departing.
Lord Remi was becoming more of a nuisance and a mystery by the day. Henry needed better information, and he apparently couldn’t rely on his known contacts.
He’d have to go digging himself.
Chapter Sixteen
A siren in lavender silk leaned against the billiards table, tempting him beyond reason. Irina’s gaze hinged on Henry’s as he approached. One shoulder of that beguilingly sinful dress had slipped, exposing her skin, and as he raked her over with his eyes, he noticed she wore no slippers. Something about her bare feet, those elegant, perfect toes buried in the plush carpet, drove an instant possessive need into him. A need to bare every inch of supple flesh to his greedy gaze. A need to take her. Claim her. To make her his and his alone. From the way his siren was looking at him, her lips parted and her eyes heavy with longing, he knew she would welcome it. She wanted him just as much as he did her.
Irina’s nipples strained through the thin fabric of her dress, and Henry touched them, his thumbs rubbing rough circles as he kneaded her breasts. She threw her head back and moaned as he dragged the top of her bodice down. Her breasts came free, spilling into view, and then Henry’s hands and mouth were on them. His tongue swirled the hard peak of one nipple while pinching the tip of the other, and Irina cried out his name. He didn’t care if anyone heard.
There were voices then, muffled and murmuring, but he could not stop. Let them watch. Henry felt himself bulging against the constraints of his trousers, so hard and swollen he could barely breathe. His desire was a wild, bucking thing, trapped and in anguish, thrashing for release.
He felt her hot breath against his ear as her hand grasped and stroked his length, only heightening the sweet torment. Henry lifted her upon the table and pushed her back until she was fully reclined on the red felt. Her dress was gone now, her naked form writhing beneath him, her legs parting in eager welcome. He climbed onto the table and kneed her thighs farther apart. He would not be gentle. He couldn’t be. She screamed her pleasure as he drove into her, thrusting hard and deep and fast, again and again, marking her as his own as his seed rushed into her.
Henry moaned his satisfaction and opened his eyes. He was not atop the billiards table. He was not atop Irina.
He was alone. Staring at his bedchamber ceiling. In his bed. And his smalls were wet, plastered to his thighs. Henry swore under his breath as he realized it had been a dream. A blissfully erotic dream that had been so real, he’d spent himself in his sleep.
Hell.
He lay still for a few moments, his heart thundering back to its normal rhythm, and felt a rapid hollowing sensation in his chest. Not because he had only bedded Irina in a dream, but because she was not truly there, at his side. It had been years since he’d allowed a woman to spend the night through in his bed, what with the constant threat of his body becoming a weapon during one of his night terrors. But for the first time, Henry wondered what it might be like to wake to the sight of her. He pictured her sable hair spread out in waves across his pillows, her violet eyes sleepy in the early morning sunshine. She’d sleep in the nude, he imagined, his sheets a flimsy covering, barely veiling her nipples. He would greet them first, nipping them with his teeth through the linen and then pulling the sheet low to expose the rest of her, his mouth traveling down her bare stomach to the dark curls below.
Henry opened his eyes again and felt once more the sticky cling of his smalls. He could not lie in bed fantasizing about Irina all day, and he wanted to get up and cleaned before Marbury knocked upon the door and let himself in for Henry’s morning ablutions.
He tore off his smalls, washed himself, and found a clean, ironed and starched pair in his dressing room moments before his valet arrived. Still grappling with the disturbing remnants of his dream and his surprisingly undisciplined climax, Henry dressed, and after, Marbury performed his usual morning shave and trimmed his hair. He frowned.
He hadn’t been with anyone but Françoise since Hyde Park. Since the first time he had left for Essex…when Irina had raced him, and when she had coaxed him out of one of his episodes. That had been weeks ago. Sweet Christ, it was no wonder he’d spent himself.
Heading downstairs and walking past his own billiards room, Henry felt an immediate visceral twitch in his groin and suppressed a groan. He would be ruined for billiards forever. Tugging on his suddenly too-tight cravat, he headed for his study. Henry knew what would put Irina Volkonsky firmly out of his mind, and that was an in-depth and thorough analysis of his tenant ledgers. He was meeting Lord Northridge for a local horse auction at the breeder stables in the neighboring village of Horton, which gave him two uninterrupted hours.
Once ensconced behind his desk, however, Henry could not concentrate, though not for lack of trying. After an hour of staring at the same columns and raking through his hair a thousand times, he rose and called for Carlton.
“Where is the countess?”
“In the music room, my lord,” Carlton answered.
Henry found his mother sitting at the pianoforte. He recognized the lilting strains of Haydn’s sonata in E-flat major, her favorite of his musical compositions. The sound of it immediately drew him back to his childhood. Dismissing the waiting maids and without alerting her to his presence, he sat in the armchair directly behind her and closed his eyes. It was exactly what he needed. Though her health had been declining, her skill had not. Her fingers danced over the keys as she played the second movement, the melancholy notes delving into his soul.
When she finished, he gave her a standing ovation. “You continue to astound me with your talent, Mother dear.”
She blushed from his praise. “Henry! I did not see you come in.”
“Will you play another piece?” he asked.
“Which would you like?”
He swallowed. “Beethoven, number five, the adagio.”
His mother slid him an arch glance, and he kept his face composed. It was arguably one of Beethoven’s most romantic pieces. As she began the first few bars, he closed his eyes in bliss. The music flowed over him, doing what nothing else could. He’d first heard it in Vienna, amidst reports that the composer had written it hiding in his brother’s home there while under attack from Napoleon. It astounded him that such beauty could be created in the midst of so much horror.
“Thank you,” Henry said when she finished, standing and walking over to kiss her on the brow. “I’ll leave you to it.”
His mother cleared her throat and shifted on the bench to face him, reaching for his hands. “Henry, I’m glad you are here. I did want to speak with you about Lady Carmichael.”
“Rose?” he asked, arching an eyebrow. “I thought you approved?”
“Of course I do. Her mother is my best friend, after all, and I know why you have chosen her,” she said. “She will no doubt make an excellent wife. And dear William…I should be happy to have him as a grandson, and she will no doubt procure you an heir.”
“Then what is your concern?”
“You do not love her.” The brief, bold statement threw him. He blinked his surprise as she went on. “There is friendship between you, certainly, and caring, but beyond that there is no passion. No love.” Lady Langlevit pressed his hands between hers, and Henry couldn’t help noticing how like parchment her skin had become. He perched on the bench beside her.
“It is my duty to marry, not pursue such frivolous notions.”
“There is more to life than duty, and it saddens me to think you view it as such.” She lifted a veined palm to stroke his cheek. “Oh, my darling boy, you’ve seen so much pain. If only you could leave the past where it belongs and allow yourself the chance to truly live. Happiness is right in front of you—you only need to open your eyes and reach for it.”
Henry stood stock-still. Had all the women in his life suddenly g
one mad?
First Rose, then Irina, and now, his own mother.
“I am happy,” he insisted, standing. Forcing a smile to his face and quelling his irritation, Henry kissed her hands and called for the maids waiting beyond the door. “Now you must excuse me, I have an engagement. I’ll see you later. I will be dining at the residence tonight.”
He felt her eyes on him as he left the room, but thankfully she did not press the issue.
“Carlton, have one of the stableboys ready my horse at once,” he said to the butler, tugging on the riding gloves and jacket that Marbury had brought downstairs. “The black.”
Carlton bowed. “Of course, my lord.”
It wasn’t long before North rode up the driveway, and Henry joined him, pulling himself up onto the sleek, prancing four-year-old Orlov, a gift from the Russian tsar after Count Volkonsky’s arrest. The stallion seemed restless, too, but Henry kept him under firm rein as they rode toward the lane. Cerus was temperamental at the best of times.
As the fresh country breeze hit his face, Henry felt his muscles relax. It was good to get out of the house. “How is Lady Northridge?” he asked. “Not too tired, I hope.”
North shook his head, his big gray Andalusian easily keeping pace with Cerus, and grinned. “She is fine, but has yet to awaken.”
“Last evening was entertaining,” North commented a few moments later. “Remi was in fine form.”
“If you call that form,” Henry said, recalling the man’s tryst with one of Hawk’s servants with distaste. “How much do you know of him?”
“Not much, other than he was a childhood family friend of theirs. A distant cousin. Lana mentioned something about his father being particularly exacting when he was a young boy. He spent considerable time at Volkonsky Palace in his younger years before he ran away.”
“Ran away?”
“To Moscow, I believe,” North said, his brow crinkling as he tried to remember details.
Henry hesitated, wondering how to delicately ask the question about the man’s proclivities, but in the end he didn’t have to ask at all. North explained.
My Hellion, My Heart Page 20
