Beyond A Wicked Kiss

by Jo Goodman

  West gave a short bark of laughter at the thought. "No. Most definitely not." He sobered gradually. "What she eventually learned was that the duke was still visiting my mother and had deeded her the cottage I told you about. She discovered that he was paying for my education at Hambrick and had every intention of supporting me at university should I decide to go. She thought such attention to his bastard was excessive."

  Ria ventured her opinion softly. "It does seem he was rather more generous than most."

  "Does it? It was the price my mother exacted. That the duke was willing to pay it says something about how very much he wanted her."

  "Perhaps it says something about his guilt."

  West shook his head. "The duke was not disposed toward the same base emotions that plague other mortals."

  Now Ria sat up in bed, unwilling to let his comment pass with no rejoinder. She looked down at him, her attention frank, even a little challenging. "How do you explain, then, the duke making a confession of his first marriage before his death? I do not think you could have become the ninth Duke of Westphal if not for your father's guilt."

  "Do you think I wanted this inheritance under those circumstances? To give the selfish bastard peace of mind? That's what his deathbed confession was in aid of. He could have set things right at any time, yet chose what caused him the least inconvenience. He despised me, Ria. If I stirred an emotion in him, it was loathing."

  "Self-loathing," she said quietly. "I do not think he despised you at all. I think he despised himself for not being a better man, one who could bear the stain upon his reputation if the truth were known. He wished he were a man who could suffer what others might say about him and remain standing tall and straight and proud. It is probably truer that he cared too much about how he was thought of, not too little. It seems to me that he should have liked to have been a man who could do what was honorable, not merely what was convenient."

  Ria placed her hand lightly on West's chest. "I believe he wished he were more the man you are."

  West felt a pressure in his chest that was out of all proportion to the weight of Ria's small hand. The tightness of his throat made his voice sandpaper rough. "Being a bastard helped shape the man I am. Do I thank him for that, Ria?" He put his hand over hers. "Should I dismiss the years of torment he visited upon my mother because he was unable to do what was right? My father did not know enough about the child I was to understand the manner of man I became."

  "He was weak," she said. "A weak man, not an evil one."

  West was uncertain if he believed that. "Weakness begets evil."

  "Yes." She did not think he realized how tightly he was squeezing her hand. She let him do it because she sensed she was his lifeline now, and she could not set him adrift. "Weakness can do exactly that."

  He glanced at her, and a faint smile crossed his face. "You are not going to argue with me?"

  "No. I am learning it is not always necessary, nor even wise, to do so." She felt his grip ease, still without conscious thought. She bent her head, placed a lingering kiss upon his lips, then straightened before he could tempt her with something more than she intended. Weakness did not always beget evil, she thought. Sometimes it begat another bite of the apple. "When did you learn the truth?" she asked. "I think you did not hear it for the first time from the duke's solicitor. Mr. Ridgeway would not have had the courage to deliver the whole of it to you. He must have been profoundly discomforted to inform you that you were to inherit."

  "Profoundly," West said. "I believe he thought I meant to kill the messenger. I am certain the duke warned him that I would not take kindly to learning of it." He rubbed the stubble of beard with his knuckles. "My mother told me about her marriage while I was still at Cambridge. She judged I was sufficiently mature to receive the news."

  "Were you?"

  "I spent an entire fortnight drinking and whoring."

  "I see."

  "Then I rode to London and confronted my father."

  Ria's eyes widened. Very much afraid she knew the answer, she forced herself to ask, "Confronted him? How?"

  "I called him out." West saw that Ria had no words to properly express her horror, but that emotion was clearly stamped on her features. "He refused the challenge, said I was too drunk to be held answerable for it."

  "Then he did you a favor."

  "I don't know. I have often wondered why he said it. I was completely sober at the time."

  "Can you not conceive that he didn't want to burden you with the sin of patricide?"

  "Have a care, Ria," West said. "Else you will next be making an argument for his sainthood."

  Ria had no patience for his gently mocking tones. "The man who cut your back to ribbons with his stick will never be a saint," she said sharply. "But neither will I make him a devil. Did you go to your mother and demand an accounting for the choices she made?" For a moment she wondered whether he might actually strike her, and she remained poised for the blow, believing it was not deserved but willing to take it because her words were truly meant.

  West did not raise his hand. Instead, he curled it into a fist at his side while he collected his thoughts. "You are fearless," he said finally. "I cannot say otherwise." His hand rose slowly, the fingers unfolding with equal deliberation. He touched the curve of her neck, brushing aside the fall of her pale hair. She remained very still, and he gave her full marks for not flinching when he found the narrow ridge of scar tissue at her neck. Here was evidence that she was familiar with the sharp snap of the duke's walking stick. "Tell me about this."

  "You know."

  He suspected, but he didn't know. "He struck you." Ria nodded, but West saw that she was regarding him curiously. "He was angry with you?"

  "No. Not at all. He was angry with—" She stopped, collecting her thoughts. "You don't remember? I have always thought you remembered."

  His index finger traced the long line of the scar. "I don't understand. What is it that I should remember?"

  "You told me at the outset that you had not forgotten the occasion of our very first meeting."

  "I haven't. I bear the scars of it."

  "As do I."

  Deep creases appeared between West's brows. "I don't understand," he said cautiously. "How did you—" He stopped because suddenly he did understand. A single moment in time came back to him with crystalline clarity. He was once again lying sprawled in the sweet and prickly grass, his shirt only slightly more tattered than the flesh it covered. He could hear the shrill whistle of the ebony walking stick slicing the air and feel the searing pain of the blow as if it were being freshly dealt. Bewilderment and betrayal cut him a second time. Then, surprisingly, there was the weight of something unfamiliar on his back, and when his father's stick whistled again, there was no more pain, only blessed darkness.

  West could not quite believe the conclusion he had drawn, yet it made sense to him also. Four, or twenty-four, it was the sort of mad, brave, heroic thing Miss Ria Ashby would do.

  "You climbed on my back," he said more certain of it now. "You took a blow for me."

  Ria found she could not hold his eyes. Vaguely embarrassed by his regard, she looked away quickly and tried to shrug his fingers from her neck. He held her fast, not hurtfully, but firmly. "You took many for me," she said.

  "They weren't for you. The duke... the others... they thought I pushed you in the lake. Those blows were meant for me." He gathered a heavy handful of her hair, twisted it, then exerted just enough pressure to bring her leaning toward him again. Just as he intended, she had to stretch herself along his length to find relief from this gentle coercion. "You were very young," he said, suspicious of her memory. "What do you really know about that afternoon that has not been told to you?"

  "It is just the opposite of what you think. It is my earliest memory, and it is surprisingly clear. What happened that day was rarely discussed, even when I inquired. I heard few accounts from others to cloud it." She laid her hand against his cheek so that its curve sof
tened the taut angles of his face. "I remember running and falling and running again. I remember the cast of the sunlight on the lake and thinking I could walk on that mirror. Imagine how surprised I was to find nothing solid beneath my reckless feet. Sometimes I think I can still taste the lake water in my mouth and the sting of it in my nose. You found me, dragged me out, and while I was passed into the arms of my mother, you were hauled from the water and beaten. Do you think that even then I did not know it was because of me?"

  "They thought I pushed you," West said again. "And perhaps I did. I could not catch you, and so I lunged. It could be that—" He stopped because Ria was shaking her head.

  "You didn't," she said. "I know you didn't. I would have told them so if I could have done other than cry. Do you know what is my most vivid recollection of that day? It is the duke's enraged countenance. His complexion was a deep shade of red, and his features were changed in a way that made him almost unrecognizable—and frightening—to me."

  "Yet you did what no one else watching him would do. I think he might have killed me if you had not taken a blow yourself. Striking you may have been the thing that brought him to his senses."

  "That is what I've heard," she said. "I do not remember leaving the protection of my mother's arms or anything that followed until I woke much later in the day. The gash on my scalp and shoulder was already stitched. My mother was sitting at my bedside, but I remember that the duke was also there, and that he remained until I fell asleep again."

  West was not impressed by his father's show of concern. "Who explained what happened to you?"

  "For a very long time, no one did. Not the truth of it. I was told it happened during my spill into the lake. Rocks, or some such nonsense, is what I was asked to believe. It was Tenley who finally told me the truth—not because he wanted to, but because I had annoyed him in some way and he couldn't seem to help himself." Ria responded to the question West raised only with the slight uplift of one brow. "It was shortly after my parents died, and I was sent to live with the duke at Ambermede. Tenley needed to get some of his own back for whatever I had done to him, so he made certain I knew I was in his home on sufferance, that it was because his father needed to make amends that I had come to live at the manor."

  "Did you go to the duke immediately for confirmation," West asked, "or did you simply threaten to?"

  Ria tempered her smile so it was not unseemly in its smugness. "The latter. Tenley was infinitely more amenable after that." Her smile faded. "And you?" she asked, her features grave now. Tenley had told her how quickly everyone had departed the lake. The duke himself had lifted her from West's back and taken her to his carriage. If there was anyone who did not favor leaving a young boy bleeding and unconscious at the lakeside, it was not mentioned in the duke's presence. "What happened to you after we left the lake?"

  West shrugged. "I woke at dusk and made my way home. My mother nursed me, upbraided me for intruding on the duke's picnic, but also swore that she would not permit him to visit the cottage. He came three days later while I was still abed and took my mother to hers. I pretended I didn't know that he had been there, and she pretended to believe me."

  "I'm sorry," Ria whispered. "I wish I—"

  He shook his head, silencing her. "You are not to blame. It is not so easy to admit that my father was punishing me for being his son, not for what he imagined I did to you. He would have done it whether you were there or not." He touched her lips with his. "You were his excuse, perhaps, but you were my angel."

  Ria's mouth parted and she kissed him long and sweetly, responding to the craving she had for the taste of him, the pressure of his lips, the damp, slightly rough edge of his tongue against hers.

  The need was mutual and this touch, a prelude. She knew his body more intimately now, knew what response he would make when she kissed him on the mouth, at the neck, behind his ear. She tested this knowledge by doing the things that gave him pleasure: her fingernails lightly scoring his chest; the caress of her hand along his inner thigh; her mouth gliding over his taut abdomen. These things pleasured her also, and in giving, she denied herself nothing.

  She stroked his back, felt the narrow pinching of his flesh where his wounds had healed badly. She laid her mouth over his heart where the wound was only now beginning to close.

  He stared at the ceiling, dry-eyed, and felt something inside him cave at the gentleness of Ria's touch. His heart. His will. His stubborn pride. The name for what he was surrendering to her eluded him. He did not know if it mattered. For a moment he simply was, and in the next moment, he was simply hers.

  He sifted through the silky threads of her hair with his fingertips and stroked the back of her neck. When she looked up, he beckoned her with his eyes. Smiling, she came to him and laid her mouth tenderly across his.

  He took over the kiss, removing all tentativeness from its touch. He felt her respond immediately to what he wanted, following his lead so that it became what she wanted as well. Tenderness gave way to teasing, playfulness to purpose.

  The pillow from under Ria's head was pushed aside as she was turned on her stomach. She rested her cheek on the back of her hands and closed her eyes. She was made more aware of him, not less. Anticipating his touch was so arousing that it made little difference where he touched her, only that he did.

  He would not be hurried. The placement of his hands and mouth was careful. Deliberate. He judged her readiness by the subtle changes in the cadence of her breathing and the small, throaty cries she could not restrain.

  Ria's fingers curled into fists as her hips were lifted. The discarded pillows were pushed under her. She felt him move behind her. His hands palmed the rounds of her bottom, slid over her thighs. She caught her lip. The anticipation of this touch was almost too much bear, yet it was exactly what she did until he entered her. His slow, fierce control was her undoing. She thrust back sharply and took all of him into her, then held him in exactly the way he had once encouraged her to do. He bent over her, kissed the back of her neck, and whispered something against her ear that she could not quite make out. It didn't matter. She hummed with pleasure anyway.

  He reared back, then caught the rhythm she had begun. His hand fell on the small of her back. He felt her shiver as his thumb brushed the base of her spine. His fingers trailed across her hip, then slid under her and between her parted thighs.

  Ria sucked in a lungful of air and held it. The delicious heat that he made with that gentling hand held her perfectly still. She heard him admonish her softly to breathe. She did, though it was through a small, strangled cry that she drew air.

  The shudder that began in her ended in him, and what vestige of gentleness remained was there for them to use to hold each other as their breathing calmed. They fell asleep in a tangle of limbs and blankets, her head tucked into his shoulder, his hand covering her breast. His mouth lay softly against her hair, her knee was slipped between his.

  Sometime later, they came to a drowsy state of awareness that he was deeply inside her again and that she wanted him to be there. They made love without ever quite waking up, dreaming as much of what they did as doing it.

  When Ria woke a second time, she was alone in bed. West was standing at the window. He had drawn back the drapes and was looking out. There was a hint of sunlight on the horizon, and this is what Ria supposed held his rapt attention. He would be taking his leave soon, she knew. He had only to put on his greatcoat to be ready to go, and it lay over the chair beside the fireplace waiting for him.

  "West?"

  He let the drapes fall and turned from the window. "You don't say my name often enough," he told her.

  "I don't?"

  He shook his head and approached the bed. "Not nearly often enough."

  The husky quality of his voice made her feel warm of a sudden. In spite of that heat, she drew the blankets up around her as she sat up. "I shall endeavor to do better, Your Grace."

  West sat down, his faint, appreciative smile fading the longer
he regarded her. "I have to return to London," he said. He pressed a finger to her lips when she would have spoken. "I'll go to Ambermede first so my presence can be accounted for, then tonight I visit Beckwith's home, though not Mr. Beckwith. I cannot make the return trip to London as quickly as I came. Draco will not stand for it, and in truth, neither will I."

  Ria was relieved he was not going to ride hell for leather over the countryside. She waited for him to withdraw his finger. "You will write regarding news of Jane?"

  He nodded. "I will."

  "I wish I might go with you."

  West didn't doubt it. He also suspected that Ria knew all the reasons she must stay, chief among them her responsibility to the girls of Miss Weaver's. "There are things I must do in London apart from finding Miss Petty," he told her. "But they will not engage me overlong."

  "I understand," she said. "You will have a great many invitations to choose from. You cannot avoid the ton forever."

  "You do not understand. It is not the ton's affairs I must attend to, but the colonel's."

  "Oh." She searched his face but found that his expression yielded nothing in the way of his thoughts. "Colonel Blackwood is rather more to you than you would have me believe." Ria was not deterred by his shrug, finding that it communicated something other than the indifference he intended. "And your friends, I think, are not at all what they seem."

  "They are friends," West said slowly. He gave her full marks for trying to draw him out with a lengthy silence. It was a good effort, but she gave in before he did.

  "They are friends," she repeated. "And something more besides."

  "If you wish to think so."

  The singular look that Ria gave him indicated she was not fooled by his mild protests. She did not pursue the subject, but chose another. "Thank you for the book of verse," she said. "I should not have left it to so late to tell you how much I treasure it."

  "It was my mother's."

  She nodded. "I thought it might have been."

  West found her hand and squeezed it. "Do not forget that I will need a copy of Sir Alex's portrait."