A Spring Deception (Seasons Book 2) (18 page)

She caught her breath when she saw him. In the months she had been safely in the care of Gray and Rosalinde, her grandfather had clearly declined. He was thinner by at least a stone and a half, perhaps even two, and his shock of white hair was beginning to thin. His nose was crooked now where Gray had broken it months before. But his blue eyes, the ones she and Rosalinde had each inherited, were just as sharp as they had ever been. They focused squarely on her as he closed the door behind himself.

“I called Cranston a liar when he said you’d shown up here,” he said. “Struck him across his bloody face.”

She swallowed hard at that statement. “Well, you can see he was not lying, for I am here, Grandfather.”

He looked her up and down with a sniff and then moved to the sideboard to pour a drink. “Without a chaperone, he said.”

Celia pursed her lips. “I knew Gray and Rosalinde wouldn’t approve of my coming here, so I…I pretended a headache, then snuck out and walked. Your home is only half a mile from theirs through good neighborhoods.”

He faced her with a grin. “Are you not afraid your sister will put you out if she hears you broke her embargo and came to see me?”

Celia folded her arms. “Rosalinde would
never
put me out. She is not like
you
, sir.”

“No, she isn’t like me,” he grunted. “
You
were always closer.”

She turned her face as if his words slapped her, and in a way they did. The last thing she would ever want to be in this world was anything like Gregory Fitzgilbert. He was cold, calculating, unfeeling, cruel, along with a dozen other worse adjectives.

“So you snuck out of Grayson Danford’s pitiful little manor and came crawling back to me,” Mr. Fitzgilbert mused as he took a seat and stared up at her. He took a swig of his drink. “What do you want?”

He had not invited her to join him, but Celia sat anyway. She took a long, deep breath and met his stare evenly, although it was hard to do so. It was like looking into the eyes of a reptile. A dangerous one at that.

“I am certain you must have heard that I am now being courted by the Duke of Clairemont,” she said, in no mood to dance around the subject with him. The sooner she did this, the sooner she could leave.

His jaw set and his grip tightened on his glass, forcing her to tense in preparation for the storm that might follow. “Did you come here to brag, Celia?”

She shook her head. “No. There would be no point in that. I did not accept his suit because of you, nor to spite you. But you once wished me to marry a title, didn’t you? You made a devil’s bargain for me to do just that not a year ago.” She drew in a deep breath. “Would that deal still stand?”

He pushed to his feet, and she flinched as he stalked around her to pace the room. He pivoted to look at her again, his smile predatory and smug. “You are talking about the bargain we struck that you would marry a title and I would tell you who your real father is.”

“I assume you won’t tell me out of the goodness of your heart,” she whispered.

He stared at her a long moment and then tilted his head back for a laugh. “Why would I give away my leverage? I assume that means Rosalinde’s husband has been unsuccessful in his searches for the man who all but stole your mother and saddled her with two children out of wedlock.”

She shut her eyes at the cruelty of his description. In truth, her mother had fled this man’s cold and angry household with a servant. No, she had never married the father of her children, but there was every reason to believe that their lack of vows had been a way to protect Celia’s mother from being found by Fitzgilbert.

When she died, Fitzgilbert had swept in, stealing the children and telling them their father had died too. But since Celia had found out the truth, that the man lived, she’d hardly stopped thinking of him. Knowing he was out there somewhere, it felt like a hole in her heart. A hole that could only be filled with the truth her grandfather kept in his pocket like a miser with gold.

“Answer me,” he said, his tone harsh.

Celia opened her eyes and stared at him evenly, praying her fear and loathing of him wasn’t written all over her face. “Gray has not been successful,” she said through her grinding teeth. “Your habit of abusing and discarding servants without reference has paid off. No one we’ve found can give us the information we seek. No one but you.”

He chuckled but said nothing.

Her eyes narrowed. “I know that is exactly what you want to hear, so you may crow about it. But I am not here for you to celebrate your victory any more than I am to celebrate my own. I’m here to talk to you about the bargain. So I ask you again…if I marry this duke, if I take on the highest title I can obtain without catching a prince…will you honor your earlier promise to reveal our father’s identity to me?”

Fitzgilbert rubbed his chin, pondering her request. “I have my doubts your bitch of a sister would agree to those terms.”

Celia fisted her hands at her sides and swallowed back her defense of Rosalinde. “It isn’t a deal between you and my sister. It’s a deal between you and me.”

He laughed. “How wonderful, so you will lie to her?”

“I will omit,” Celia whispered, blinking back the tears that stung her eyes at the thought of such a betrayal. “It won’t be entirely the same.”

“As you wish, if it helps you sleep at night,” Fitzgilbert chuckled. “And what of your
duke
? Would he be willing to offer me anything in the realm of influence, access?”

Celia held her breath. Clairemont had been out of Society so long, she wasn’t certain he would hold as much sway as someone like Stenfax had, even if he was more elevated by his title. But she nodded regardless.

“I am sure I could soften him to you and your desires,” she said.

Fitzgilbert returned to his seat across from her and set his drink aside, crossing his legs and steepling his fingers over his knee before he smiled at her. “And tell me, my dear, does he know you are a bastard?”

Heat flooded her cheeks both at his cruel question and at the answer she would be forced to give. An answer that burned within her the closer she got to Aiden.

“No,” she admitted, her voice cracking.

Fitzgilbert’s grin grew wider. Uglier. “And you and Rosalinde call
me
the mercenary. Good, Celia. Very good. You must keep him in the dark, for no duke would want you if he knew the truth. And it is only a duke that will do now that you have struck this bargain. If you fail in landing this one, don’t think to come back to me with another earl or a marquess and expect that I will ever tell you a damn thing about your father. Am I making myself perfectly clear?”

She sucked in a broken breath. “Yes. Then do you accept the bargain? A duke for the truth?”

“Yes.” He held out a hand. “Shall we shake on it?”

She stared at his offering and instead stood and moved away from him. “No need. I know how your bargains work, Grandfather.”

He stood with her. “Of course you do. Now run along. I tire of your presence and
you
have much work to do. Don’t fail me this time.”

He pointed toward the door and she held her shoulders back as she trudged before it, trying to maintain as much dignity as she could. But in truth there was almost none to be had.

She had made a bargain with a demon. She had offered to trade Aiden for what her grandfather possessed.

She moved to the door and walked out into the sunshine, but there was no pleasure to be found in the warmth of the spring day. She took in big gulps of breath to clear her lungs of her grandfather’s presence, but there was little use. He was in her mind now, and no amount of fresh air or clean water or distance could get him out.

She walked out onto the street and staggered blindly toward her home. He’d said she was like him. And wasn’t it true? If she was willing to lie to Rosalinde and to use Aiden to get what she wanted, wasn’t she
exactly
like him?

She was about to turn down the next street when a carriage suddenly pulled up next to her. The door opened and she turned toward it. To her surprise, Aiden sat there, his eyes wide with astonishment.

“Celia?” he asked. “Are you…are you
alone
?”

She shifted, still reeling from her encounter with her grandfather. “I—yes,” she admitted.

His lips pursed and he held out a hand. “Get in, please.”

He said please, but there was no doubt he was ordering her to do so, not asking. She was too numb to argue and took his hand. He helped her into the carriage and a footman hopped down from the back to shut the door.

“Where to, Your Grace?” the young man asked.

Aiden stared at her, his gray gaze even and unwavering. “Drive around the block a dozen times, then ask me again,” he ordered.

The servant nodded at the order, then shut the door. After a moment, they began to move. Only then did Aiden reach out to take both her hands.

He frowned. “You are cold as ice, Celia. What in the world were you doing?”

She swallowed. Her encounter with her grandfather was difficult enough, but now to sit face to face with the man she’d offered to betray for her own purposes? That was impossible.

“I needed air,” she lied. “Just a walk.”

He arched a brow. “Alone? Without Rosalinde or your maid to accompany you?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “I didn’t want to trouble them.”

His brows lifted and she could see he recognized she was lying. Of course he would. After all, he had always been capable of reading her moods. She waited for him to demand, to push, to rattle off some highhanded reasons why she should tell him the truth.

Instead, he slid to her side of the carriage and wrapped an arm around her, tucking her into his chest. She turned her face into his warmth, breathing in deep gulps of his scent and his presence. Somehow that calmed her, settling her shaking body and slowing her pounding heart. He stroked a hand over her hair gently as he held her, and she sighed.

“What do you need, Celia?” he asked, his deep voice reverberating through her.

She lifted her face toward his and froze. His mouth was just inches from hers, so close that his breath stirred her lips. She kissed him softly.

He made a low sound in his chest and his arms tightened around her. He tilted his head and claimed her lips with more fervor. She fisted the lapels of his jacket, leaning up into him as she opened her mouth to his touch, his taste, the feel of him.

And his kiss did what nothing else could. Thoughts of her bargain with her grandfather, her self-loathing that she might be anything like him, faded away. Left behind was just the simply throbbing need for this man. For the pleasure he’d already given her, for the pleasure she wanted even more of.

“Will you—” she whispered as she pulled back a fraction. Heat flooded her cheeks and she tried to duck her head, but he slid a finger beneath her chin and didn’t allow it.

“What?” he said, his voice so low it barely carried.

“Touch me.” Her voice broke. “Just touch me and make me feel good for a moment. That’s what I want.
Need
.”

His pupils dilated and he cleared his throat, looking around with his lips pursed. He was silent so long that she began to believe he wasn’t going to answer.

“Are you trying to find a way to refuse?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No, I’m doing a math problem in my head. I told them to circle the block twelve times, we’ve gone around one and a half by my reckoning. If he stays at this rate then—”

She cut him off by sliding her hands up to his cheeks and drawing him in for another kiss. This time she took control, pressing her tongue between his lips, silencing any further words he might have said. It seemed to have worked, for he let out a long sigh before he drew back.

He locked gazes with her as he lifted a big hand to her breast. She gasped as he cupped her there, sliding his thumb back and forth over the nipple that hardened beneath her chemise and gown. He’d done this before, at the ball the night before. Now she wished they could do it without the constriction of clothing. She wanted to feel his touch skin to skin and melt with him like she was meant to do.

Just as her breath came short, he lowered that same hand, gliding his fingers down the apex of her body until he nudged her legs apart, settling his hand down against her skirts, between her thighs, where her sex pulsed in need.

“Normally I would try to be more artful in this,” he explained, his tone clipped and filled with tension. “But we are short on time and I want to make sure you find…relief.”

“That I come,” she said, using that word he’d used the night before.

He let out a curse beneath his breath. “Yes, that you come.”

“You could make me come like this?” she asked, and let out a soft moan as he began to move his hand against her. Even through her clothing, the question was answered.

“I could make you come in half a dozen ways,” he growled. “How I’d like to explore each and every one of them. But for now…”

He ground the heel of his palm against her, and her body naturally lifted into him. She closed her eyes, letting sensation take over. She felt him watching her, heard his breath grow heavy as her moans echoed around them. It was amazing how quickly he could mold her body to his desires. A few strokes of his hand and the pleasure mounted, sending out tendrils through her entire being, making her reach and reach for sensations she was only beginning to understand.

“Come,” he whispered against her ear. “Let go, Celia. I’ll catch you.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and her body began to convulse out of control as wave after wave of intense, heated pleasure ricocheted through her. She rode out the sensations, whispering his name, letting go of any fear or unpleasantness she had just experienced as she sagged against him in sated bliss.

He lifted his hand away from her and gently repositioned her skirts before he pressed a kiss to her temple and wrapped his arms around her.

“I could watch you do that all day. A thousand times.”

She opened her eyes and smiled into the dimness. “And yet you have not had your pleasure yet. Will there come a time when I get to reciprocate?”