Tempting Eden

by Margaret Rowe

  “Eden. It’s just three words. You make it sound like you do not understand their meaning.”

  “You’ve never said them.”

  He stepped back. “What?”

  “You’ve never said them,” she repeated.

  “Would you have believed me?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then. It’s all your fault. Why should I waste my time saying I bloody love you and I bloody want to marry you when you bloody won’t believe me?”

  “Your language. The girls might hear.”

  “That’s all you have to say?” Hart asked, incredulous.

  “No. I mean, yes. I’ll marry you.”

  “Yes?”

  Eden looked up at him, her lips twitching. “My lord, it’s just one word. You make it sound like you do not understand its meaning.”

  “You’ll marry me.” Hart wanted to flop down onto the gravel path and take Eden with him. But that was bound to be uncomfortable. He settled for a kiss.

  Not just a kiss. The perfect kiss. A kiss of promise and protection. A kiss of sweet seduction. A kiss of innocence and wickedness and trust.

  Well, Eden thought, perhaps it was not the most romantic proposal in the annals of history, but it was timely. And very, very welcome, she acknowledged to herself. More than she had dared to hope, despite the fact it was merely the latest in Hart’s offers of marriage. Eden felt a key tumble and turn within. It wasn’t a smooth sensation, but rather an uneasy fit into a rusted lock. But the lock was opening—she was opening. Somehow Hart valued her, perhaps even loved her as much as she loved him. He offered her a chance to forever close one door and open another. He had made it clear he would be with her every step of the way. When she stumbled. When she looked back in spite of her good intentions. She knew that together they would be able to go forward.

  She had been too proud for him before to accede to his wishes, thinking she’d never, ever suit as his wife, but the flutter within her now led her to believe otherwise. The past lay beyond the scattered glass and blood. But it was not only because her villains were dead. Her hero was alive, and she was in his arms, right where she belonged. It was time to be happy.

  Epilogue

  CUMBRIA, OCTOBER 1820

  Her son lay, perfect, in her arms, each spidery gilt-tipped eye-lash, each tiny wrinkled finger counted. His nose was pressed against her breast, his plump cheeks pumping as he suckled. It was altogether a different sensation from when Hart had been similarly occupied in that particular location. Eden allowed a small giggle to escape. John’s baby brows knitted for an instant, then relaxed as he fell into a milk-induced stupor.

  “I’ll take him, my lady, and be back to help you dress in a trice.” Mattie held her hands out, and Eden reluctantly passed the infant to her maid to return him to the nursery and the girls. It was still something of a scandal that Eden had refused the wet nurse Hart had engaged, but she was determined to be a presence in John’s life. Her son was not to be left to the care of strangers. Was never to be ignored, his future marred by mischance as hers had been. There would be no one to induce him into debauchery, even if she had to protect and teach him at home herself.

  Eden worried at her lip. Hart would want the future Baron Hartford sent away to school. It was expected amongst the ton after all, even if Hart didn’t lend much credence to society ways. He had voluntarily absented himself from London all these months, seemingly with no trouble. He’d become quite the country gentleman, riding all over the estate, even helping his tenants with their harvests. Hart had become an expert in roofing, reaping, gossiping. He knew who had kissed Molly the miller’s daughter behind the hedges at the church fete and why the brewer’s wife had left him and with whom. He had regaled Eden with such tales when she became too cumbersome to leave her bed at all the last few weeks of her pregnancy.

  And he had undertaken the education of the girls. By all accounts, they were now well-versed in Napoleon’s and Wellington’s battle strategies, had a smattering of Italian to go with their fractured French, and were rivaling Diana the Huntress herself with their archery skills. Eden suspected her romantically inclined charges found him a far more appealing instructor than they did her.

  Her bemused smile was still in place when Hart found her abed a moment later. He entered without knocking, and she straightened up. Two unexpected visitors so early in the day left her at a disadvantage. Her hair was still a bit of a mess for all that Mattie had fussed during Dr. Canfield’s visit, and she had a great longing for some tooth powder. Fortunately young John’s standards of hygiene were focused solely on his food source.

  “What did the doctor have to say, Eden? His mouth was too full of his free breakfast to give me the time of day, the old codger.”

  “He was a bit early. I expected him later in the morning.”

  “He knew Mrs. Burrell would fatten him up, I reckon. Well?”

  Eden blushed. She heard what he was really asking. “He’s very pleased with John’s development.”

  “You are deliberately toying with me, madam.” He plunked himself onto the blankets and captured her hand. “I should like to resume my marital rights. If it is safe and you will let me.”

  Her face was fiery now. “There is no impediment.”

  “Ah, but there is.” His blunt fingertips brushed her chin, and she raised her warm face to him. “Do you still love me, Eden?”

  “More than I can bear.”

  “Excellent.” Hart’s face split with a naughty boy’s grin. “I shall come to you tonight.”

  Eden kept his hand firmly in her grasp. Recklessly, she asked, “Why wait until tonight? John will not need me for another few hours. I believe I have time to spare for you, my lord.”

  Hart raised an eyebrow. “In the daylight? How absolutely shocking.” He looked absolutely delighted.

  “You knew when you married me I was a sad rip. Do lock the door. Mattie will return any minute.”

  She watched him stride across the room, the exquisite cut of his coat melding with every muscle of his back. Before she knew it, the coat was on the floor along with the rest of his clothes, and his long, lean body was beside her.

  “That is a lovely bed jacket, madam wife, but I believe you must be too warm.”

  “Yes,” said Eden, her voice a sigh.

  “Let me help remove it.”

  Eden lifted her chin as Hart pulled the satin strings open. His fingers neatly dispatched the nightgown’s buttons from their buttonholes and soon both garments were tossed aside. He opened the bedside table and took out the skeins of velvet ropes.

  Eden kept close watch on her husband’s face. Her body was a girl’s no longer. And Mrs. Burrell was busy fattening her up so John would continue to thrive. The breakfast delivered to Eden had been enormous, and to her shame she had eaten every last crumb. Perhaps it would have been wiser to wait until tonight. Candlelight was every woman’s friend.

  “I haven’t even cleaned my teeth,” she remembered.

  “It’s of no consequence. It’s not your teeth I’m interested in.”

  And Hart began his amorous assault, making her forget any objection she might have had to the hour and the circumstances. He only paused at the rattle of the doorknob, to growl, “Come back later. Much later.”

  And thus their marriage entered its next chapter, bound by their love and the little miracle in the nursery, guarded by earthly angels.

  Keep reading for a preview of the next title by Margaret Rowe

  Any Wicked Thing

  Available in January 2011 from Berkley Heat

  YORKSHIRE, APRIL 1818

  If he thinks he can come here and lord and master it over me, he is much mistaken.

  —FROM THE DIARY OF FREDERICA WELLS

  “No and no and no.”

  “Frederica, you can’t refuse to see him forever. This is his house, after all.” Mrs. Carroll preened in front of the pier glass, retying the strings to her widow’s cap for the third time. Sebastian Goddard, t
he new Duke of Roxbury, was apt to make the most devout of widows toss up their black petticoats for a blissful tumble with the ton’s most revered, most thoroughly unrepentant rake. Mrs. Carroll was devout only when considering her own pleasure, and Sebastian its possible provider.

  “I can do anything I like. And this is hardly his home. I doubt he knows an inch of Goddard Castle—he’s only been here once, and that was ten years ago. I imagine he’ll get lost and fall down the garderobe.” Frederica pictured Sebastian, stained and stinking. Some brave souls had once stormed Chateau-Gaillard through a latrine drain in 1204, if she remembered her history correctly. But mentally it was much more satisfactory to push Sebastian down than to picture him climbing up, conquest on his mind.

  “He is your guardian.”

  “I don’t need a guardian! I’m a grown woman, for heaven’s sake.” The terms of his father’s will had been explicit, however, and Frederica was stuck with him. She had dreaded the day he would come here again.

  “You may be long in the tooth, but not in possession of your fortune just yet.”

  “It’s hardly a fortune,” Frederica said. Well, she supposed it was. She could live quite independently until her hair was silver, and she didn’t have a long tooth in her head. The old duke had made wise investments on her behalf. It was a shame he’d been unable to do the same for himself. The financial climate at the castle was chilly at best.

  Frederica stabbed at the fabric in her embroidery hoop with a vicious stitch. “Duke or not, I won’t have Sebastian Goddard bully me for the next two years. Whatever was his father thinking?”

  “If only you had married when you had the chance, you wouldn’t find yourself in this predicament.”

  Frederica tossed her sewing aside. “Oh, stop! Not that again.” Living with her eccentric uncle Phillip had been no picnic, but it had not been bad enough to marry the lisping, lecherous Earl of Warfield, one of several suitors who, at the duke’s invitation, had come to court her like she was a Yorkshire Rapunzel in her tower. The ensuing attentions had been most unpleasant, Warfield leaving to blacken her name after she brandished a fourteenth-century sword at him in defense of the virtue she had already parted with. Frederica was content to be left alone, although lately she had begun to wonder if independence was all that it was cracked up to be.

  Sometimes Frederica thought that the old duke had invited the least suitable men on the planet to Goddard Castle. She suspected in his heart he hoped she was still carrying a sputtering torch for Sebastian. If she was, she planned on dousing herself in very cold water before she saw him again.

  Mrs. Carroll adjusted a suspiciously bright red curl and turned from the spotted glass. “Very well. All my nagging doesn’t seem to matter anyway. But now you are about to pay for your stubbornness. I shall enjoy watching the new Duke of Roxbury torment you.”

  Frederica stayed her impulse to stab the woman with her sewing scissors. “You really are the most odious companion.”

  The woman gave her a nasty smile. “I am a necessary evil. You wouldn’t want to be left all alone here with him, now, would you?”

  Frederica shuddered. Trapped between a bitch and a bastard. Her late guardian had been oblivious to Mrs. Carroll’s waspish nature, but he was dead now, and Frederica had suffered long enough.

  “All right. I will see Sebastian. And the first thing I shall ask him to do is to dismiss you.”

  Mrs. Carroll blanched, revealing suspiciously bright red circles of rouge as well. “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “I believe I would. When he discovers you helped yourself to his mother’s jewels after Uncle Phillip died, I think he’ll see reason.”

  “How did you—?” Mrs. Carroll bit her tongue and her face mottled to match her paint.

  It had been a guess—an educated one. Mrs. Carroll always locked her rooms behind her. Why be so secretive when one had nothing to hide? “I’ll write you a reference if you go away today—I can lie as well as you can. But leave the duchess’s things behind.”

  “Today! You little brat! I will go, and good riddance to you. Sebastian Goddard will have you in his bed before the week is out, not that you deserve him. But I hear he fucks anything, so even an antidote like you stands a chance.”

  “Get. Out. Now.”

  Frederica picked up her embroidery, not flinching when the heavy door slammed. She was not an antidote.

  And she’d been in Sebastian’s bed before.

  Well, she had not been precisely in his bed. But the consequences were the same and she was ruined. He’d been much the worse for drink and drugs, and she had been in disguise and tipsy herself, so eager and enthusiastic to divest herself of her virtue that she couldn’t even blame that footman who passed her those extra glasses of apricot ratafia. What happened afterward made the night unforgettable for all the wrong reasons.

  Frederica had been a remarkably stupid girl the night she’d taken advantage of Sebastian so he could take advantage of her. She wasn’t sure she was much smarter now, for the thought of Sebastian’s long, dark body anywhere near hers gave her palpitations. But he couldn’t stay up here forever. A few days would bore a man like him senseless.

  The late duke had purchased the castle on a whim almost a dozen years ago. It had sucked up the Roxbury treasury and was still a drafty, dangerous place, the moors beyond it even worse with their sinkholes and fierce winds. Sebastian would soon go back to London or Paris or wherever there was sufficient amusement to be had and leave her alone.

  Frederica removed her spectacles and rubbed the bridge of her nose. She didn’t want to see her embroidery anyway—she was making a dog’s dinner of the vines and flowers on the pointless pillowcase. Why embellish something that was to be drooled on? It was not as though she’d ever have a man in her bed to impress with her neat French knots and chain stitches. And if that’s all he’d be looking at—

  A perfectly wicked thought crossed her mind. True, she had pledged to herself to never marry. She planned on hiring a much nicer companion than Mrs. Carroll in two years when she came into her funds, and living modestly on her inheritance, with a faithful dog or a cat. Men were disappointing creatures who cared for nothing but their own comforts, and often had fleas besides. Sebastian was the very model of such a man—selfish, careless, reckless. But the play upon the family name—he was known as God of Sin by the chin-wags—was surely deserved.

  Frederica’s paltry attempt at sexual experience a decade ago should probably not even be counted as such. While she had undoubtedly lost her virginity, she’d never been transported to heaven. Over the years, she had achieved that for herself without going insane or blind, but how lovely it would be to be brought to abandon by a skillful lover.

  A Sebastian who was not dead drunk or full of poppy smoke. A Sebastian who had ten years to hone his skills and earn his disreputable reputation. Of course, he might have picked up something far less desirable than knowledge—gentlemen were dying off left and right from debauchery. But if Sebastian didn’t have the pox or nasty little insects nesting in his nether hair, he just might do again.

  How very shocking. She was considering making a second mistake with Sebastian. In a real bed this time, with embroidered pillowcases and clean linens and candles scattered about the room illuminating his masculine perfection.

  Of course, there was a considerable impediment to her plan. Sebastian Goddard hated her.

  She would see him. But not like this, not in a worn-out dress with her hair every which way. She would bathe and ask for apple cider vinegar to bring out the shine in her light brown hair. She would powder her face and chest to conceal her unfortunate freckles, perfume herself from top to toe, find a dress that revealed just enough of her skin. And then, if she could figure out a way, she would seduce Sebastian all over again and see if God of Sin was a misnomer or the God’s honest truth.