by Eva Devon
It was all too ironic. Temptation was something to which he usually gave into without thought. Now, he had to resist it with every muscle of his being. No. Not just resist it. He had to drive it away. London wasn’t the place for his beautiful Cordelia. “You truly intend to stay?”
She kept her gaze averted, slightly over his shoulder. “As you see.”
Purposefully, he bent his head, gazing at her perfect face. “Have you missed me?” he asked.
A sad smile tilted her lips. “Galling as it is to admit,” she said softly. “I have.”
It was so hard to believe, that a woman as marvelous as she could miss his company. So hard to believe, he missed a step and nearly stomped on her toe.
She let out a concerned yelp. “Ah. I can see you shall now say, and I have missed you like the plague.”
A laugh boomed from him. God. It was cruel that she could inspire humor in him even in such a moment. “I have missed you, I cannot deny it.”
“Yet you act the ass.”
Another laugh rumbled out of him. “How succinct of you.”
She shrugged as they whirled away from the orchestra. “Accuracy and bluntness are my specialties.”
“As is befriending the members of my tarnished past,” he said dryly.
She gave him an innocent stare. “If I am to know you truly, how am I to ignore your tarnish?”
“And, now that you know more?” he queried. He tried to sound as if her reply meant nothing, but he couldn’t ignore the anxiety gnawing at his innards.
She tilted her head back, gazing at him through her long lashes. “I find that your joi de vivre hides a great deal of sadness.”
“Sadness,” he echoed.
“Mmm.” She pursed her soft, red lips in thought. “It is remarkable seeing how you did it again and again.”
Her pity struck an unpleasant note in him. He didn’t want that. He hadn’t weeks ago and he sure as hell didn’t wish it now. “Did what precisely?”
“You ensured no woman could ever get close enough to love you,” she said simply. “For instance. If I had to guess, I am the only woman who knows how you take your tea, except perhaps your mother.”
He wanted to snap that she was ridiculous. That such a thing didn’t matter. Instead, he found himself asking. “How do I take it?”
“Plain with lemon. I am also fairly certain you don’t care for quail eggs.”
He furrowed his brow, astounded by the workings of her mind. While he knew he should be focusing on getting rid of her, he couldn’t. He longed to hear every word she had to say. “What would make you assume such a thing?”
“I ate them voraciously that day we dined alfresco.” She peered up at him, an incredulous look wrinkling her pert nose. “You didn’t touch them.”
Is that what she had thought then? Clearly, she hadn’t considered something else entirely. “I was otherwise distracted,” he said lowly, whispering it against her ear.
“Oh?” she gasped.
“With your fascination for a large pile of dirt,” he murmured, resisting the urge to cause a scandal and nibble.
She didn’t jerk away, but rather held her head against his cheek. “It was a barrow,” she whispered.
The sudden intimacy between them was painful. Terribly painful. He swallowed. If he dared, he could pull her to his chest, into his arms, and make her his. If he just dared. “Why are you still here?” he demanded, his voice harsh now.
“Because, Your Grace,” she pulled back and stared full into his face, blue gaze unyielding, “you love me.”
“I do?” he rasped, feeling as if he couldn’t draw breath. The ball was suddenly too hot. There were too many people. Too many voices. And then there was she, declaring he loved her.
“Yes,” she said simply, a sure smile curving her lips.
“Cordelia. . . my darling girl,” his voice was failing him. He couldn’t believe. In his whole life, no other woman save she had laid him low with emotion. “I will not bring you down.”
“That seems to suggest that you do love me,” she pointed out gently. “But you wish to save me from yourself. A most asinine thing to do.”
He forced himself to lean away, to harden himself. “I don’t love you, Cordelia.”
“Kiss me,” she murmured, apparently undeterred.
“Here?” he said blankly. It seemed that not only had his usually controlled emotions abandoned him. Where the hell had his brain gone?”
“Not here.” A delicious laugh rippled from her lips. “In a dark nook.”
“A dark nook?” Was he only capable in answering her with stunned questions? It certainly seemed so.
She nodded. “I do think that the appropriate place. Still, you must forgive me if I haven’t your family experience with amours.”
“Thank God for that,” he drawled.
“Prove to me you don’t love me,” she said. “If you prove it to me, I shall leave London. I shall leave your life forever. Kiss me.”
Those words lingered between them, heating his blood to fever pitch. What she was asking was a fool’s request. He’d kissed hundreds of women. He could kiss her without feeling. He could.
Still, it was a trap. He knew it to be. His body hungered for hers in such a way he could barely stand so closely to her and not sweep her into his arms. But what she could not understand was that even if he was swept away with passion, there had never been a kiss powerful enough to make him stay.
So, he would do this. He would give in to her request so that she would finally see the truth. The truth of him, an empty shell of a man who could only give pleasure of the flesh, but not of the soul.
Wordlessly, he swept them out into a hall. Vacant except for towering Dutch paintings and the low glow of distant candles, it was the perfect escape for lovers. Jack slowly, backed her into a wall, caressed his fingers along her chin then tilted her head back for his kiss.
Just the contemplation, the promise of the touch of her lips, sent his heart thundering with fear and desire. The fear that whispered in his heart insisted that he could never let her go and yet he must. He must.
But not before. . . Not before he kissed her one last time.
Chapter 29
It was a dangerous game she was playing. She’d made up her mind to leave him be. To accept he couldn’t be touched. And yet, he’d shown up at the ball. She’d thought for certain that after their encounter at the club, he’d continue to avoid her. She hadn’t dared hope. Yet, here he was. In a hall with her. About to kiss her.
Tilting her head back, she offered her mouth up.
The kiss was deliciously punishing, a demand. His lips took hers, devouring her with untamed hunger. Within moments, he pulled her tight to his body, his arms bending her back to further deepen his kiss. She clasped his shoulders, holding on for dear life. Holding on for the love she knew was between them. Even if he did not.
His tongue caressed the line of her lips. On a soft moan, she opened to him, allowing his tongue to thrust deep into her mouth as she so wished his cock to do. If she could have, she would have wrapped her legs around his waist and urged him to let her ride him here and now.
As it was, despite her skirts, she curled her calf around his, sliding her thigh along his.
A rough growl emanated from his throat and he slid his hands into her hair, tugging slightly. Their tongues tangled around their rough breaths and need.
Even through his breeches and the folds of material swathed about her limbs, she felt the evidence of his desire harden. Out of shear need, she slipped her hand between them and caressed him.
He bucked against her hand. And he tilted her head back, with a passionate tug. His mouth moved from hers to the line of her throat, kissing the delicate skin, until he made his way to her breasts. There he bit lightly at the pressed mounds. Then he took his hands from her hair, sliding them along her ribs before he pressed his palms to her breasts, plumping them for his siege.
His thumbs found her nipples traci
ng them, teasing them into hard points. Impatiently, he pulled aside her gown and sucked one nipple into his hot mouth, first barely touching it with his tongue then taking it between his teeth and nipping almost to the point of pain.
She gasped, digging her fingertips into his shoulders. This was what she had hoped for. The moment when they both abandoned themselves to each other. The moment when everything she had worked for succeeded. She drew in a shuddering breath of pleasure and sighed, “I love you.”
Instantly, he stopped, his entire body freezing. Slowly, in terrible degrees, he pulled away. First his mouth, then his body, and then at last, his hands slid away from her, adjusting her bodice.
His face was stricken but those dark eyes of his were dead of emotion. “I have kissed you then. And now I must take my leave.”
“W-what?”
“Go back to Africa, Cordelia. Do not try to rescue me. It is a fool’s errand. And I have never taken you for a fool.” With out looking back, he turned and strode down the hall and back out into the ball.
Away from her.
Again.
She’d given her heart freely again and he’d stomped upon it.
Again.
Why had she listened to Harris? Why? And why, when he’d asked her to dance hadn’t she told him to go the bloody devil?
Cordelia’s fingers curled into fists, a cry of fury and pain shook in her heart but she refused to give it voice. She refused to be the fool any longer. Her heart had been his for the taking. All her life it had been his. But he didn’t want it. He’d never wanted it.
She would never be more than his wife in name only and even that was about to slip away. He’d had what he wanted. And now he was done. He’d never been hers. Not once.
She stumbled down the hall, her vision hazy. She refused to admit that it might be tears marring her sight. At first, the sudden tightening of her insides did not alarm her, but the hall swam slightly and her stomach lurched upward.
Clamping a hand over her mouth, she darted into an empty room. She gazed about frantically, horrified she might cast up her accounts on the floor. She spotted a Grecian urn. Despite the fact she felt she could barely hold on, she checked the vase to see if it was genuine. She was not about to be sick on an artifact. She’d rather do so on the floor.
The paint was perfect and it was clear that it had not been baked by a thousand some odd years of sun, so without ado, she cast up her accounts, clutching the ceramic pathetically.
She didn’t hear the footsteps but the hand on her back was unmistakable. Someone had discovered her. She froze, appalled she’d been found thusly.
“You slept with him, did you not?”
That aged decisive voice. A voice of a harridan shook her to her core, for there was no disdain or judgment in it as there had once been.
A perfectly pressed, snow white linen handkerchief appeared before her face, dangling from a set of wrinkled, slightly boney fingers. Sniffing, she took the object and quickly dabbed her mouth. Was it possible to make a bid for the window, disappear into the night and never ever have to see a member of the infamous Eversleigh family again?
She eyed the distance. It was highly unlikely. So instead, she resolved herself to an uncomfortable interview and said, “Thank you.”
“Of course,” the ancient dowager replied, her voice shockingly kind. “You’re family, my dear.”
She tensed, narrowed her eyes, and turned to face the old bat. The older woman gazed on her with tired, yet understanding eyes. Even from under.
The last time she had seen the old woman, the dowager had been a termagant. A crone who had been determined to have her way. Cordelia narrowed her eyes, deeply suspicious. “I do beg your pardon, but has someone taken over your person?”
The corners of the dowager’s mouth lifted in what could only be deemed a smile. “I am in complete control of my person.”
“Unlike myself,” Cordelia muttered. Her eyes widened as she realized what a fright she must look. She lifted a trembling hand, touching her terribly askew curls. “Do I look terribly bad?”
The dowager’s gaze softened with sympathy, but she assessed her face, in a quick manner. “You look like a woman with child, who’s just been abandoned by the father. . . So, yes. But it’s quite understandable.”
Cordelia blinked. The words rang in her ears but she couldn’t quite fathom them. “I—I—”
The dowager’s mouth opened, a decidedly shocked gesture for her usually authoritative person. “You were unaware?”
Opening her mouth then closing it quickly, Cordy snapped, “I’m not—”
The older woman cocked her head to the side, unswayed by the quick refusal. “Do forgive me, but I’m fairly certain you are.”
Determined to be skeptical, and to avoid a potentially alarming truth, Cordy pursed her lips. She couldn’t be pregnant. And besides someone else wouldn’t know first, would they? “How would you know?”
The dowager arched a wiry silver brow in simple assertion.
“How?” Cordy gritted, feeling exactly how a mummy must feel under inspection.
The dowager sighed and tightened her grip on her ivory headed cane. “I would think you’d understand the simple mechanics of how such a thing came about—”
“No. No.” Cordelia lifted a hand and pressed it to her suddenly throbbing eye. “How do you surmise that I am with child?”
“If you must know, I have had servants investigate your ch—”
Groaning, Cordelia whipped up a hand lest she go into more detail. “Don’t. Don’t say it.”
“You did ask,” she said, unapologetically. “It is in my nature to know everything about those close to my family which does indeed now include you.”
“I did ask, but I had no idea that you would be so. . .” She searched for a word that would describe such a compulsive busy body. “So. . .”
“Thorough?” she supplied.
“Yes.”
“My dear, as you will learn, if you haven’t already, the Eversleighs are no easy lot.” She thumped her cane against the Persian rug. “But I had an idea from a few other points.”
“Did you?”
“You’ve evaded me since your return to London,” her gaze dropped to her bosom in a calculating sort of way. “But tonight, I couldn’t help but notice a certain part of your anatomy seems a trifle larger, your moods, usually very stable are completely out of sink, and then there is the fact that you just cast up your accounts in a Grecian urn. Also, your good friend Kathryn, the Duchess of Darkwell told me.”
“My moods are not out of sink!” she retorted a trifle more loudly than she had intended. She smoothed her hands down the front of her gown. “Your grandson has simply made my life more trying than usual lately.”
“Hmph,” The dowager replied.
Ignoring the old lady’s noise, Cordy felt her heart slam painfully against her ribs. “Why would your Kathryn tell you but not me?”
“Kathryn is a good woman who knows I will help you. That I actually do care about you and my grandson. Even if my methods are dubious.” The dowager sighed. “She was also afraid you’d run half way to Egypt if she confronted you a week ago.”
Abruptly, the several mornings and evenings her stomach had run riot and her extremely sensitive sense of smell, things she had attributed to an unusual case of disappointment, no longer seemed so innocent. Any sane woman would have felt a sinking sensation, for the father was most adamant about his position or lack thereof. But it was not sadness Cordelia felt. It was the strangest little flicker of hope. She’d never once considered she might be a mother. A confused mother, but a mother none the less. “What am I to do?” she whispered.
The dowager’s eyes flared slightly. “You’re asking my opinion?”
She couldn’t fight the laugh that bubbled form her throat. “Shocking, is it not?”
This time the older lady smiled, a warm slow movement of her lips. “Very shocking. But I’m glad. And I will happily give it.
”
Cordy’s laughter dimmed. She needed Jack’s grandmother to understand how difficult it was for her, to even contemplate needing assistance. “I don’t generally ask for help.”
“I know.” The dowager gave a nod. “Its something I’ve come to admire about you. Your capability. At first, I thought it unnatural and then I realized you are exactly what Jack needs.”
Cordelia’s face crumpled. Horrified, she realized tears were filling her ears. What on earth was wrong with her?
“Oh, dear girl, it was not my intent to induce—”
She sucked in a shuddering breath and said around a rather annoying sob, “He’s told me to go back to Africa. More than once.”
Shoulders tensing, and eyes wide with alarm, the dowager duchess of Hunt reached out a hand and rapped her sympathetically on the back. “Of course he has. What else would he do?”
She jumped forward at the old lady’s shockingly heavy handed attempts at condolence and managed to sputter, “Ask me to stay of course.”
“Jack?” his grandmother huffed. “Never.”
The dowager was about to administer another round of sympathy, a gesture she clearly assumed to be soothing but Cordelia stepped to the side and blew her nose on the handkerchief. The dowager stopped mid swing at the noise which emanated from Cordy’s person.
Sighing, Cordelia balled the fabric in her palm. “You sound like Harris.”
“Who the deuce is Harris?”
“Someone who tried to convince me that Jack loves me and. . . Oh never mind.”
“I won’t never mind, because, dear girl, he does. Everyone in the family already knows it but him. I even think he knows it, but he’s got it in his head he’s not allowed to be in love. That we all think him unworthy of it.”
Cordelia studied her hands, wishing she’d never been put in such a precarious position. But she had no one to blame but herself After all, it had been her decision to go off with Jack. No one had forced her. She could have put a firm foot down, and she was certain that her husband would have let her go. He wasn’t a monster. “He is most determined that he does not love me.”
