Captivated by a Lady's Charm (Lords of Honor Book 2) (29 page)

“Yes.” Agony underscored that one word utterance.

Oh, God, he needed to stop. It would kill her if he stopped. “D-do you need to stop?”

“I will die if I do.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I do not understand you men. You would…” He palmed her center and all thought fled.

“Yes?” he whispered, trailing his lips down her cheek and then nibbling at the corner of her lips. All the while, he thrust deep inside until her body climbed that peak once more and then crested.

She stilled, her body freezing, and then on a shattering scream came undone in an explosion of white light. He followed her over that precipice, going taut in her arms. He spilled inside her, coming in long, rippling waves. Christian continued to thrust into her, wringing each agonized drop of pleasure-pain from her, until she dissolved into a shuddery puddle in the folds of his leather sofa.

Christian collapsed atop her. His breath came in rapid, painful spurts. He adjusted his large frame rolling sideways and taking her into the curve of his arm. They lay that way a long while with her buttocks tucked against the vee of his legs; replete, no words needed.

A pleased smile played about her lips as she burrowed close. He’d given her magic. From across the room, the precious branch he’d given lay forgotten, abandoned upon the floor by his desk. She ran her fingers up and down the length of his arm, wanting to learn all of him. He spoke of having nothing to give her, and yet, he’d given her so much. Yes, marriage to her had provided him the funds he desperately required, but she wanted to give him something more. Prudence froze. There was something she could give him. Nay, someone. And hopefully that someone could provide the peace he’d long denied himself.

He pressed a kiss to her ear. “You are quiet, love.” His breath tickled her skin.

“I am thinking,” she whispered, turning into his kiss.

Christian cupped her breast, toying with the erect nipple. She moaned. “It does not speak well of my efforts if you are capable of thought after that.”

“Hmm?” she murmured arching against him.

He rolled her underneath him once more. “Much better.”

There would be time enough for thinking later…

Lesson Twenty-four

You can tell much about a man by the loyalty of his servants…

F
or the first time since he’d inherited the title of Marquess of St. Cyr, a weight had been lifted off Christian’s shoulders. After handing the reins of his mount to a waiting groom, he strode toward his townhouse. He bounded up the broken steps and Dalrymple pulled the door open in greeting. “My lord,” the man said, easily catching the cloak Christian tossed to him.

He tugged free his gloves and handed them off to the servant. “Dalrymple, a wonderful day is it not, my good man?” And it had been wonderful ever since he’d wed Prudence three days earlier. He grinned and the other man smiled in return.

“A good meeting with the solicitor?”

The first good meeting he’d had with Redding in, well, in
any
of his meetings. It was not, however, the sudden improved finances but rather the woman waiting here for him. A grin formed on his lips as yesterday’s memories rushed in of making love to her last evening. “It was a splendid meeting.” He’d the funds now to not only secure his current staff’s posts but to grow the members of the household. He rubbed his chilled palms together. “Where can I find my—?”

“She is in the White Parlor, my lord.”

He inclined his head. Whistling a jaunty tune, he continued along the threadbare carpets that had once served as a pressing reminder of his circumstances and onward to the White Parlor. His grin deepened. A perfect place for his white gown-wearing wife to spend her time. He came to a stop outside the doorway and paused a moment. Unaware of his presence, Prudence was seated upon the window seat overlooking the London streets below, staring intently out, her nose pressed to the glass.

Christian narrowed his eyes. He had known his wife less than three weeks. Longer, if one considered their chance meeting on Bond Street prior to Christmas.

As such, he knew her well enough to know she was up to something. He studied the sketchpad opened on her lap as she devoted more of her attention to the overcast skies outside that window. “Do you find yourself uninspired?” he drawled from the doorway.

Prudence shrieked and the book tumbled to the floor and landed with a loud thump. She swung her legs over the bench and hopped to her feet. “You startled me.”

He folded his arms at the chest and lounged against the doorjamb. “Were you expecting another, love?” A guilty blush stained her cheeks and he frowned. “Were you expecting another?”

She trilled a laugh and slapped the air with her hand. “Oh, Christian, you are hilarious. Who would I be expecting?” It did not escape his notice that she returned a question with a question.

God, she was a deuced awful liar. He entered the room then proceeded over to the tray of refreshments and tea set out and rescued a tart.

Prudence flew across the room. “That is not for you.”

He froze with the pastry halfway to his lips. His wife plucked the delicate treat from his fingers and crumbs flaked off, dusting the black of his jacket. “Then who is it for?” he asked with a frown as she rearranged the tray of assorted pastries.

Bent over the silver tray as she was, she paused. “Hmm?” She blinked like an owl startled from its perch. He could practically see her thoughts rapidly spinning. “Well, they
are
for us,” she said slowly, as though she spoke to a small child. “Just not yet.”

A startled squeak escaped her as he drew her into his arms. “Splendid,” Christian breathed against her lips. “I was afraid you’d invited company.” He nibbled her plump lower lip. All the while he worked his hands along her slender waist, downward to her gently flared hips. “And I am selfish, for I’m not prepared to share you.” A breathless sigh slipped from her, that gentle puff of air warming his lips and heating him all over with the promise of picking up precisely where they’d left off last evening. “I want to make love to you in this parlor, Prudence.” And in every room in the townhouse, so each echoed with the memory of her desirous moans and her climax.

His words brought her eyes flying open and she slipped out from his arms.

“Would you like that?” He stalked toward her.

She danced out of his reach, knocking against the small, rose-inlaid table with the tray of pastries and tea. Prudence shot her hand out to quickly steady the delicate porcelain teapot. “U-undoubtedly.” Skittish like a doe caught in the snare of a hunter, she backed away from him. “J-just not now.”

Her gaze skittered beyond his shoulder and he followed her stare to the ormolu clock. The broken ormolu clock. Her lips flattened in a little frown. “It is nearly thirty minutes past twelve.”

Prudence yanked her gaze back to his. “It is? How do you know?”

He folded his arms at his chest and sank his hip upon the edge of the upholstered sofa. “I had my meeting with my solicitor this morning.”

“You did?” Then she widened her eyes. “Of course! You did! I just was not thinking of your meeting, but rather—” She clamped her lips tightly closed, bringing her ramblings to an immediate cessation. “How was your meeting?” she blurted when he opened his mouth to speak.

The niggling of suspicion crept in yet again. What was she up to? “My meeting went well.” Her gaze strayed past him, once again, over to the door and lingered. His wife was expecting someone. The way she worried her lower lip hinted at her distractedness. “With the funds, we are now free to fly to the moon.”

“Are we?” she murmured, maintaining her focus on the doorway.

“Oh, yes,” Christian drawled. “And Redding informed me we are now in a position to fit the King’s soldiers in new uniforms made of white gowns.”

Prudence stitched her eyebrows into a single line and swung her attention to him. “What?”

He closed the distance between them and, settling his hands on her shoulders, he leaned down and kissed the sensitive skin at the nape of her neck. “Was it the mention of white gowns that earned your notice?”

She tipped her head sideways, granting him greater access to her satiny soft flesh. “I detest white gowns,” she breathed.

“You could wear a tattered, drab shift and still be as magnificent as—”

The sound of a clearing throat at the doorway cut across his words and Christian shot his head up. Dalrymple bore a faint trace of amusement on his coarse face. “The Duke of Blackthorne,” he announced.

As though scalded, Christian drew his hands away from his wife. He stared in a hazy fog of a dream turned nightmare as Dalrymple stepped aside and admitted the towering bear of a man. He stood, his frame in profile, and with the cold, austere stare he raked up and down their persons, he may as well have been born to the role of duke. Larger than he remembered, broader in his shoulders, the duke only bore hints of the young man he’d skipped rocks with as a boy of seven. Silence ticked away the tense moments and he dimly registered his wife looking between Christian and Blackthorne.

Except, this stranger was not the friend of his past. The man turned, presenting the whole of his face.

The muscles of Christian’s gut clenched as guilt sucked the air from his lungs.

At his side, Prudence drew in a slow, audible breath. He marveled at her strength. Most women and men would cower at the ferocity glinting in the Duke of Blackthorne’s lone blue eye. The hideous, jagged, white scars that covered half his face stood a glaring reminder of Christian’s crimes.

A hard, mocking smile formed on the other man’s scarred lips in a macabre rendition of amusement. “St. Cyr and…” He scraped another gaze over Prudence. “I take it this is the new Marchioness of St. Cyr.”

Christian watched his former friend’s entrance into the room, feeling much like a player who’d not practiced his lines upon a Drury Lane stage. Gone were the once long, powerful steps. Blackthorne now moved with the aid of a serpent-headed cane as his leg hitched with the force of each stride. This was his doing. All of it. He balled his hands into tight fists. “Blackthorne,” he said quietly. He tried to make sense of his former friend’s reentrance into his life. “This is my wife. Prudence Villiers, Lady St. Cyr.” A sea of questions raged through his mind, all coming back to a single one—what was the man whose last words to him were “rot in hell” now doing here?

The duke ignored that introduction. Instead, he eyed the threadbare furnishings and the worn upholstery of the sofa. His lips peeled up in the corner. Shame tightened Christian’s cravat at the unspoken scorn there.

Of course, his cheerful, ever optimistic bride broke the thick tension blanketing the room. She rushed over and then stopped in a whir of white skirts. “Your Grace,” she greeted and sank into a deep curtsy. “It is an honor.”

Christian braced for the other man’s curt rejection of her warm greeting.

Instead, his former friend inclined his head displaying a trace of the charming gentleman he’d been before his entire world had been blown up with the spark of a flint. “Indeed,” he said on a lethal whisper.

Prudence’s smile faltered and she fisted her skirts. “Would you care for refreshments?”

Refreshments? Had his wife lost her bloody, everlasting mind? Blackthorne had not come ’round for—

Christ
!

Christian took in the tray of refreshments, his wife’s earlier, odder than usual behavior. Why…why…she’d orchestrated this bloody meeting. “Prudence,” he said quietly, willing her to return to his side. “His Grace does not want refreshments.”

A vile chuckle rumbled from the duke’s chest. He spread his arm wide, the tip of his serpent-headed cane nearly brushed Prudence’s arm. “Do not be ridiculous, St. Cyr. Why, this is a festive occasion. A reunion. How would I dare reject your,” he smirked, “lovely wife’s graciousness?”

He silently cursed.

Prudence hesitated a moment and then slid into the shellback chair with its ripped upholstered seat. She reached for the teapot.

Blackthorne claimed the seat closest to his wife. He rested his cane alongside the edge of his chair, but kept the palm of his hand about the gold serpent head. “I must admit when I heard from you, I was at first surprised, my lady.” She froze mid-pour and looked to their revered guest questioningly. The duke settled back in his chair and looped his ankle over his opposite knee. If Christian hadn’t been studying this ghost of his past so very closely, he would have failed to see that faint spasm of pain. But he saw it and knew the long ago injured leg still brought the other man agony. “But upon consideration, I am not at all surprised.”

There was a hint of taunting in those words. Did his wife hear it? Tightening his jaw, Christian stiffly walked over and claimed the only available seat on the opposite side of Blackthorne. As he slid into the King Louis XIV chair, he realized his former friend had carefully placed himself in a way that put him between him and Prudence, and also placed the scarred and burned portion of his face on display to Christian.

…Oh, God…Derek…I am sorry. Oh, God forgive me…

His wife’s words came as though down a long stretch of empty hall. “My husband has spoken of you,” Prudence said softly, favoring Christian with a small smile that yanked him from the hell of the battlefield memories.

“Has he?” The duke wrapped those words in a jeering whisper.

She held out a cup of tea to Blackthorne, but he deliberately ignored that offering.

“And just what else has your husband told you?”

She wetted her lips. Color blossomed on her cheeks.

“Blackthorne, perhaps we should meet alone,” Christian said quietly, appealing to the gentleman the recent duke once had been—before he had gone and destroyed the other man’s existence.

The duke thumped the floor once with his cane. “Come, surely what you would say to me in private you would say to your beautiful, new bride?”

His mouth went dry as all the shame of his past bubbled to the surface, fresh as though those crimes belonged to yesterday and not years ago.

“My husband spoke of your friendship,” Prudence said, finding words when he himself had none. “And I assured him that friends as you were, what happened in the past surely could not keep you apart now.”

Ah, how he loved her. She possessed an effervescent light in an otherwise dark world; this inexplicable ability to see good in him, in Blackthorne, in the now.

They were two dark souls, however, who could not dwell in that world.

As she spoke, Blackthorne’s frame stiffened. Perhaps it was his wife’s words or perhaps it was the years of dwelling in his own townhouse with the world shut outside, but his former friend remained silent. He proceeded to bang the bottom of his cane upon the floor in a slow, grating rhythm. “My you are the forgiving type? First wedding the gentleman who made a public wager involving you and now this.”

His wife’s mouth parted on a small moue. She fluttered a hand about her heart. Prudence, in her innocence, was no match for this stranger’s ugliness.

“Blackthorne,” he warned, infusing a steely edge to his command.

“My how your life has worked out, St. Cyr. You find yourself not the impoverished baronet your father was,” he continued over Prudence’s gasp, “but rather a marquess.” He jabbed his cane in her direction, brushing the hem of her skirt with the bottom. “You have secured a lady’s fat dowry and if that touching display when I first entered the room was any indication, you are even…” He peeled his lips back displaying the gleaming, even row of his white teeth. “
Happy
.” The jeering emphasis placed on that one word indicated he found that sentiment as real as fairies and other fey creatures. “Despite my best efforts.”