Just as you do not want me. The words hung, unsaid between them.
His green eyes seared her. “Of course I do.”
She wondered if they were still talking about Caesar. But it was too much to hope he may have heard her unspoken words and answered them. “That still does not explain your presence in my chamber.”
He glanced down. “I have not yet crossed the threshold, my lady, as I am awaiting your permission to enter.”
How silly. Her lips flattened as she considered him. This entire house and all its contents were his, right down to the slippers upon her feet. He did not require her permission for anything, much as he had already demonstrated.
But she was getting a cramp in her neck from gazing at him over her shoulder, so she supposed she may as well acquiesce.
“Please, Leonie,” he added before she could respond.
This request, so raw and soft, sounding as if it had been torn from him, along with the use of the diminutive he had given her, found its way to her heart. Why did he have to chase the bitterness of last night with such light?
She swallowed against an unwanted rush of emotion. “Very well. You may enter, but I cannot make any promises where Caesar is concerned.”
“Merciless as a highwayman,” he said, owning the chamber with his long strides and stopping to bow before her with a poignant elegance. His handsome countenance remained still, stark. “You did not join me for breakfast this morning.”
It was not what she had anticipated he would say. Caesar shifted on her lap, prodded into wakefulness by the presence of his master. She gave him a reassuring scratch on his velvety head, staring up at her husband.
“I was not feeling myself,” she said coolly.
His gaze traveled over her, lingering upon the pillow beneath her leg before snapping back to hers. “Your leg is hurting?”
His concern seemed unfeigned, and it, too, pricked her heart. “It is aching a little more than ordinary after I spent a great deal of yesterday upon my feet.”
Searle’s frown deepened. “Why were you upon your feet?”
She stared at him, unwilling to make the admission. “Will you not seat yourself for this interview, my lord? I little wish to continue looking up at you.”
Her voice was sharper than she intended, but she was feeling sharper today, rather like a knife which had just been honed. Perhaps it was what she needed to gird herself. To defend herself and her heart, both. Why, oh why, did this man have the power to affect her as no other before him ever had?
He sat on the fainting couch in the seating area of her apartments, opposite her, looking distinctly out of place amidst the gilt and femininity of her chamber. “You did not answer my question. Why were you upon your feet so much?”
For a moment, Leonora considered fabricating a less mortifying answer, but in the end, what could she say? That she had been dancing all evening?
“I was worried about you,” she admitted. “I was pacing, awaiting your return, my silly imagination conjuring up all manner of unfortunate incidents which could have kept you from returning.”
The harsh lines of his face relaxed, softening into an expression she had only seen on his face during their times of intimacy in the past, tenderness. He cocked his head, considering her solemnly. “And what manner of nefarious ends did you imagine for me, Leonie?”
Again, the sound of his name for her, uttered in his sinful voice, performed untold feats upon her ability to resist him. “A carriage accident, or a fire at your club. A pickpocket attempting to rob you and then delivering a mortal wound when you resisted, as of course you would.”
“Ah, Leonie. Once again, you prove I am not worthy of you.” He paused before issuing a self-condemning sigh. “The truth is far worse than any of those fictional scenes, though I must say, I take offense you do not think me capable of defending myself against being murdered by a lowly London street thief. But I shall tell you what delayed me just the same.”
Here it was. She braced herself, wondering if he was about to admit he had taken on a paramour. Leonora stroked Caesar’s fur with more vigor than necessary, causing him to rise, give his body a solid shake, and leap to the floor. He strode over to Searle, sniffing his calves and shoes. “Little traitor,” she grumbled at the canine.
“Good fellow,” Searle murmured, patting his head. “Although indeed, I, too, must question your judgment.” He paused, glancing back at Leonora and wincing. “I was at my club.”
“Mr. Kirkwood’s club?” she queried, sitting up straighter at the revelation. She had been at home, worrying over him, fretting for hours, and he had been at his club? The scoundrel.
“The same.” He inclined his head. “I am afraid I partook of too much of Mr. Kirkwood’s fine Scottish whisky, and I…devil take it, Leonie, I got thoroughly soused, and Mr. Kirkwood lent me a room to restore myself to some semblance of order before returning home. I am not proud of my actions, but there is the truth for you, plainly and simply.”
Her dudgeon had returned in spades. Fury lanced through her, making her spine stiffen. “Why would you do such a thing? Is it the source of your nightmares? Does the part of your past at war that haunts you drive you to drink?”
He went rigid at her reference to his nightmares, which he refused to acknowledge. She had been hoping having Caesar would soothe him as the Duchess of Whitley claimed the pup she had given her husband had done for him. Not a panacea, but a means of ameliorating the anguish, at least.
But instead, he had spent the entirety of the day drinking spirits in such a great quantity, Freddy’s beleaguered husband had been forced to give him a chamber to compose himself. And even upon his return, he had still smelled of liquor.
“I do not wish to speak of my time at war,” he said slowly, as if he fought to keep his voice even and calm. “I will not speak of it. Not with you, not with anyone. But I can promise you that what occurred yesterday will not happen again. And I can also do my best to earn your forgiveness, beginning now.”
Leonora watched as Caesar huddled ever closer to Searle, pressing his snout into the marquess’s open palm and sniffing deeply, then licking. She noted her husband had not stopped stroking the pup’s fur or scratching his head ever since Caesar had defected to him.
Of course, she could not force Searle to share the painful details of his time at war with her. She could not fathom what he must have endured, and she had no doubt his suffering informed the man he was now, complex and enigmatic, hot then cold, always somehow beyond her comprehension.
“Why yesterday?” she could not help asking, the words leaving her before she could think better of them. They had spent an almost enchanted sennight together, and then he had disappeared. She could not help but to wonder if it was something she had done, something she had said, which had driven him from her side, propelling him to seek mindlessness at the bottom of a whisky bottle.
He swallowed, and she saw the dip of his Adam’s apple before it disappeared beneath his cravat. She loved his throat, such a place of vulnerability, laden with his masculine scent, and the urge to bury her face there and inhale deeply hit her with a pang. Angry as she was with him, she nevertheless found resisting him difficult. He was her weakness, and her heart knew it. So, too, did her traitorous body.
This man was hers, and she was his. Sometimes, it seemed as if a deeper, heretofore undiscovered part of herself had always understood she belonged to this man. Fate. Destiny. Whatever the word, whatever the name, the effect he had upon her was unlike anyone and anything else. She could not deny it. Could not deny him, for that matter.
“The way I desire you, Leonie,” he rasped. His vibrant gaze met hers, verdant with flecks of cinnamon and gold. “It terrifies me. Makes me weak. I have never felt for another woman even an inkling of the feelings you inspire within me. And I…I thought I had lost my ability to feel anything a long time ago.”
She bit her lower lip, stifling a sob that had risen within her. A sob for his pain. Her fingers kn
ew the ridges of the scars marking his back. He had been brutally flogged, burned, and only the Lord and Searle knew what other excruciating indignities had befallen him.
“I am your wife now, Searle.” She paused, summoning her courage for what she truly wished to say. “If you seek anything, let it be me.”
His jaw tensed, his expression freezing over, and she knew she had said too much. He was proud, untouchable. He did not want her aid or her sympathy.
“You know what I want from you, wife.” His voice, too, had gone as cold and remote as the rest of him.
He was telling her, once more, all he desired from her was her body beneath his, pliant and ready, his to take. All he wanted from her was physicality. Not her heart, not her mind, not her caring. He did not want her to be his comfort or his source of strength.
Disappointment stung her, but she was not surprised. What truly shocked her was his willingness to seek her out after she had eschewed breakfast, and not just that but his quiet, pensive demeanor as he had approached her, the lightness of his darkness shining through until he had ruthlessly squelched it once more.
“I am yours,” she told him, refusing to be the first to break the connection of their gazes. “It is you who sent me away last night.”
His gaze became shuttered, his lips firming into a forbidding line. “I will be brutally honest with you, Leonie. I am not myself, or at least, I am not the man I was before I purchased my commission and left for the Continent. I will never again be the lighthearted, careless gentleman of my youth, quick to love and slow to hate. It is not in me to be the husband you deserve.”
She disagreed, for there were glimpses of the husband she wanted. But thus far, their connection had been physical. She wanted more from him than mindless pleasure. She longed to be his source of solace and comfort, his joy and hope. She longed for him to be the sort of husband who would allow her to love him.
Because she did.
Love him, that was.
The realization hit her with a blinding, terrifying bolt of clarity tinged with undeniable finality. She loved the Marquess of Searle, the austere, cold, damaged man she had married. The veritable stranger who made her body come to life and kissed her with such tenderness, the man who called her Leonie and massaged her strained muscles when she was in pain.
And because she loved him, she had to believe it was in him to be the husband she deserved.
“I understand better than most how something horrific can change a person,” she said quietly. She did not often speak of her accident—for years, she had been terrorized by nightmares of her own, in which she fell all over again from the banister—but time had given her both distance and perspective. “I did not know you before you left for war, and I scarcely know you now. But I would like the opportunity to know you better, my lord, for this is the only you I have.”
He stared at her, his countenance inscrutable, for an indeterminate span of time. It could have been seconds or minutes, and yet it seemed somehow like forever, rife with a meaning she could not even yet comprehend.
“We never had a honeymoon,” he said at last, startling her with the abrupt statement, seemingly unrelated to what she had just said. “I wish to rectify that. I want to take you to my country seat, Westmore Manor. Surrey is not far from town, and we can remain there a sennight, if not longer. What say you, Leonie?”
When he called her Leonie, there was only one answer she could give him.
Doing her best to tamp down the hopeful smile longing to break free, she inclined her head. “I say yes.”
Chapter Eleven
Morgan had to have taken leave of his senses.
Madness was the only explanation for why he had seized upon the foolish notion to bring his wife on a honeymoon, why he had swept her away from London and returned to his ancestral home for the first time in years. Sheer lunacy was the only explanation for his presence at a bloody picnic on the bank of the gently meandering stream that curved its way through Westmore Manor’s immense park.
He was seated on a spread blanket, opposite Leonie, clusters of Forget-me-nots sprouting from between lush grasses surrounding them, the sweet cadence of the gently gurgling stream the only sound in the stillness of the exquisitely sunny day. She was smiling at him as if he had personally requested today’s sunshine and gorgeous white clouds.
It was a smile that could make a man happily attempt to conquer nations for her.
It was a smile that made him catch his breath and forget why he was such a fool for entertaining the weakness he possessed for her, this accursed vulnerability within him which made him want to be the source of her every happiness rather than her every disappointment. By God, how had this rare beauty with the heart of an angel remained unwed long enough for him to snap her up in his vindictive, lecherous claws?
Whatever the reason, he was grateful for it.
“Thank you,” she told him softly then, echoing his sentiments of appreciation and tearing him from his warring ruminations.
He neither wanted nor deserved her gratitude. One day soon, she would discover the truth behind his reasons for wedding her, and when that day came, he doubted he would ever see another willing smile from her beautiful lips. The notion should not send a pang of extreme sadness cutting through him, and yet it somehow did. By the time they returned to London, Rayne would have most certainly returned, and from that moment onward, Morgan’s plan would unfold.
He cleared his throat. “I have done nothing which requires gratitude, my lady.”
Her smile deepened, her eyes a shade to rival the sky above them. She wore a fetching bonnet he had been fantasizing about plucking off ever since he had first handed her into the carriage that brought them to this secluded, serene area of the Westmore Manor park. But it was the softness, the unguarded intimacy and admiration in her expression that stole his breath.
“Nevertheless,” she said, “I appreciate your efforts to make amends with me.”
Was that what this was? Had he decided to bring her here on a honeymoon to do penance for the manner in which he had treated her the evening he had returned from The Duke’s Bastard? He did not want to believe himself capable of such consideration. He wanted to believe he had brought her here so he would be removed from the temptations of town, so he could ravish her as often as possible and preferably get her with child before Rayne returned.
That had been his course of action, all along. Ruin the Earl of Rayne in every possible way before ending him.
What had changed?
Him. He had changed, and he answered his internally posed question with ease. Something inside him was shifting, altering, much as it had upon his initial days as a soldier.
Morgan needed to distract her, to distract himself. The picnic had been his idea, a means to enjoy the fresh country air and the beautiful day, to take sustenance, and for Leonie to experience Westmore Manor all at once. But he had never intended to find himself so besieged by troubling feelings for his wife.
He plucked a strawberry from one of the dessert plates arranged upon the spread coverlet—small mountains of sugar biscuits, macaroons, bonbons, and fruits—then held it to her lips. “Berry, my dear?”
She pursed her lips, watching him with close regard, the stare that made him feel as if she could see within him to all the ugliness and deceit and bitterness he hid. Those feelings continued to make him experience a crushing combination of guilt and shame.
And here was another acknowledgment he did not like…
Her. She was the reason why he was feeling so torn, why the notion of gaining his revenge upon the Earl of Rayne no longer seemed the panacea it once had.
Regarding him solemnly, she nodded. “Yes, please.”
He held out the berry like a flag of surrender. She parted her lips to accept his offering, and then her teeth nipped a bite from the end. The berry was warm beneath his bare fingers, kissed by the sun, freshly ripened and picked that morning from one of the teeming plants in the Westmore Manor c
onservatory for their consumption. The strawberry itself, while vibrantly red and large, was nothing special. Furthermore, he had previously been in the presence of many females who had dined, and he had never once succumbed to lust.
Watching his wife take a bite of the succulent fruit should not have an effect upon him. It ought not to make his cock go rigid in his breeches, so hard he had to shift the manner in which he sat upon the cursed blanket. It most certainly should not make him think far more sinful thoughts, such as guiding the berry between her legs and…
Damnation.
His cock twitched, and he barely suppressed a moan. Leonie ate the rest of the strawberry, nipping the large fruit cleanly at the base where Cook had removed the stem, her lips brushing the pads of his fingers as she did so, sending a fresh surge of need to his groin.
The fruit was the conclusion of their picnic luncheon. Already, they had shared wine and consumed cold meats, cheese, and bread. One appetite had been sated, but another had been roused.
His gaze never straying from hers, Morgan popped the base of the strawberry into his mouth, chewing slowly. Thoughtfully. He swallowed. “Delicious.”
And he was not talking about the bloody berry. He was referring to his wife, specifically. She looked so proper, her bonnet in place, her gloves neatly folded at her side, her skirts fussed into place so that nary a hint of her ankle was visible to him.
And yet, she also looked lush. Delectable. Riper than the sweet fruit he had just consumed. Roses bloomed in her cheeks. A gentle wind blew, freeing a tendril of white-blonde hair from her careful coiffure and sending it curling over her face.
She was perfection. The most beautiful being he had ever seen. She was everything he wanted, nothing he should have. Before him, sat a rare creature, someone who cared for everyone else around her far more than she cared for herself. Leonie was so giving, so sweet. She was his lamb more than his lioness. His sweet, darling lamb.
And one day soon, she would be his willing sacrifice. He would be the lion who took her into his maws and shook her until those sweet and innocent and caring parts of her were dead. He was the predator, and she was the prey. Destruction was the inevitable, unenviable end to their story.
Sins & Scoundrels Books 1-3: A Regency Romance Series Bundle Page 67
