Come Near Me (23 page)

Geoff positively blanched. “Are you out of your
mind, man? Me? What do I know of hosting a ball?”

“And what would there be to know, I’m asking?”
Chollie laid a heavy hand on Geoff’s shoulder. “The bunting’s up,
the guests have all been greeted, the candles are glowing, the wine
is flowing, the violins are sawing away. Other than to remind the
servants to flush lovers out of the shrubberies in the gardens, I’d
say you’ve less than nothing to do.”

“But—but—” Geoff looked to Chollie, then to his
brother once more. “What are you going to do, Adam? Tell me that,
at least. Just because half the men here are drooling on your wife
whenever you step more than a foot away from her—well, that’s no
reason to leave your own ball. Asquith couldn’t have been serious
when he said he would leave his wife in a heartbeat if only Sherry
would dance with him again.”

Adam shook his head. “Sherry can’t help being the
sensation of the Season, Geoff. Unlike Miss Wicks, she does nothing
more to attract foolish gentlemen than to be her own sweet self.
Although,” he added, “I won’t say I’m unhappy that we’ll be
returning to Daventry Court in the morning. Now, if you’ll excuse
me?”

“Chollie?” Geoff bleated.

“Let’s go see if the wine is flowing freely enough,
shall we, boyo?” he suggested, winking at Adam as he gave Geoff a
friendly push to get him moving. “And then we can search out Hoggs,
and you can throw yourself on his mercies. A good enough man,
Hoggs. He’s sure to know how to go on. Adam?” he then said, turning
back to his friend once more. “I’m off to Ireland in the morning
and won’t be seeing you again for awhile. But it’s been a grand
Season, more than grand. Say my good-byes to Sherry, if you will.
Give her a kiss for me, boyo, among the dozens you give her every
day.”

“I’ll do that, Chollie,” Adam said, sad to part from
his friend, but knowing that he had less than two minutes to find
his way to the end of the balcony. “Have a good journey.”

“I always do, knowing I’m going home, don’t you
know.” He smiled, then gave the still-reluctant Geoff another
playful push. “Come on, boyo, don’t you know when you’re not
wanted?”

Adam watched them go, then neatly avoided old Lord
Quigley—the man could talk a hole in a bucket—and slipped out
through one of the French doors, on his way to paradise.

She was standing in a shaft of moonlight that had
found its way through the trees and onto the balcony. She had her
back to him, her head lifted on the slim column of her throat as
she watched the stars. She looked so young, so heartbreakingly
beautiful.

But when he addressed her as Lady Throgbottom she
turned to him, her green eyes alight with mischief, and he took her
hand so that, together, they could race down the steps and into the
night-dark gardens of the Grosvenor Square mansion.

“Did you see my husband, Baron Buckfastleigh?” she
asked as he led her behind one wonderfully wide-trunked tree and
began nibbling on her neck. “As I said, he’s terribly jealous. And
quite a monstrous good shot.”

“I’d heard,” Adam mumbled against her ear, tickling
her lobe with the edge of his tongue. “So I threw him down the
stairs. He won’t bother us, I promise.”

“Poor Throgbottom,” Sherry said on a sigh as Adam
freed one breast from her low-cut bodice, cupped it in his hand.
“He was always so clumsy. Shall I look good in widow’s weeds? I’ve
never before worn black, you understand.”

Adam’s mind drew him an achingly clear picture of
Sherry’s ivory skin caressed by finest ebony silk, her dark red
hair spilling onto her shoulders: He moved his lips down her
throat, across her chest. Found her nipple.

“Baron Buckfastleigh!” she objected, playfully
pushing his head away even as she ground her hips against him. “I
am in mourning.”

He shifted so that he could slide a leg between her
thighs, lifted a hand to lightly pinch her exposed nipple between
thumb and forefinger. I know, Lady Throgbottom,” he said, grinning
at her as she did her best to look indignant even as a contented
sigh escaped her parted lips. “I’m here to ease your suffering. You
must be quite distraught.” He waggled his eyebrows at her. “Perhaps
if you were to lie down?”

She slid her arms around his neck, pulling him
close, nipping at him with her teeth. “No need, dear baron. You may
not have noticed, but your breeches are undone, and I believe lying
down might only be considered a shameful waste of time.”

Adam dropped a hand to his breeches, shocked to
realize that she was right. She was getting rather good at this,
the shameless minx. When, a moment later, her hand somehow found
him, released him completely, he decided she’d gone beyond the
rather good, and had graduated to the excellent.

“I may not be Hayes, Baron Buckfastleigh,” she told
him as he felt control slipping away from him and worked to
hurriedly bunch her skirts up around her waist, “but I believe I
can be of assistance if you should require it.”

“Oh, madam, you shall pay for that insult,” Adam
threatened, laughing even as his passion grew. Her gown wouldn’t
defeat him. The chance of being caught making love to his own wife
in his own gardens in the midst of his own ball didn’t give him a
moment’s pause. With the handy tree trunk as his ally, with the
cover of the shrubs and a moon conveniently sliding behind a
similarly convenient cloud, Adam bowed to impulse and urgency,
lifting Sherry against him, reveling as he felt her silk-encased
legs lift, encircle his waist.

This was wild. Wanton. Idiotically impulsive and
wonderfully abandoned.

He held her tightly, kissed her madly, poured his
seed into her in an explosion of passion that should have been
heard inside the ballroom.

At least it appeared as if his triumphant shout
could be heard in the gardens.

“Dickie? Did you hear that? We’re not alone.
Quickly, hand me my petticoat!”

“Oh, my God, Adam,” Sherry whispered, her arms and
legs clasping him, in a vise that nearly robbed him of what little
breath his exertions had left him. “We’re not alone out here.”

“Shhh, darling.” he whispered back, afraid to move
so much as a hair for fear of giving away their location, exposing
his wife to the embarrassment of being caught out in a most
revealing circumstance.

Besides, he recognized the voice, as it was one he’d
heard before. Too many times before. The woman was Melinda, he was
sure of it. While he had been making love to his wife, the duchess
of Westbrook had been having her own tryst in the gardens. Except
that the duke of Westbrook was not named Dickie.

“Just stay still, sweetheart,” Adam whispered in
Sherry’s ear, and the two held their breath as Melinda’s companion
spoke, his tone amused, laughingly wicked.

“If you were to unwind your legs from my neck so
that I could get up off my knees, dear lady, I imagine I’d be
delighted to honor your request. Otherwise, I can see no way to
help you.”

“Damn you, Dickie, this isn’t funny!” Melinda
exploded, her anger obviously blinding her to the fact that, if she
could hear someone else, that someone else most probably could hear
her as well.

“Oh, on the contrary, my sweet, this is fair
bordering on the hilarious. Now, put this on, and let’s be out of
here, shall we? I have a carriage waiting. Unless you’d like to
return to the ballroom with grass stains on your lovely rump?”

“That’s where I wanted to go all along. It’s you who
wanted to play slap and tickle in a damp garden. Damn you, damn
you, damn you, Dickie!”

“Yes, you said that. Now, are you ready to adjourn
to my lodgings so that we can be damned together?”

There was more rustling, a few more curses from the
lady and pithy comments from the gentleman before the night was
quiet once more.

Spent, his legs turned to butter, Adam and Sherry
sank to the ground in a tangled heap, laughing and kissing and
holding on to each other like guilty children.

“I shouldn’t be laughing,” Sherry said between
kisses. “We were very nearly caught out. The marquess and
marchioness of Daventry, making wild love in their own gardens in
the midst of their own ball. Did you recognize their voices,
darling? Do you know who they were?”

Adam hadn’t recognized Dickie’s voice, or his name.
Not that it mattered. And he wasn’t about to tell Sherry that the
woman had been none other than the duchess of Westbrook, once very
nearly his wife.

“Do we care?” he asked, helping Sherry as she tried
to smooth down her gown, even as both of them knew they’d soon be
sneaking up the servants’ stairs to find other clothing. “However,
if you want to worry about anything, my darling, perhaps it would
be in helping me dream up a workable reason why we greeted our
guests in these clothes and will be bidding them
adieu
in
another two hours wearing something entirely different.”

“We were caught outside on the balcony in a sudden
rainstorm that lasted only a minute?” Sherry suggested as, hand in
hand, they made their way through the gardens and toward the
kitchen entrance.

“We insulted the chef and he pelted us with cream
tarts?” Adam offered as they tiptoed through the kitchens, three
maids and two footmen—plus their French-only-speaking chef—all
turning their backs and pretending they didn’t notice their
disheveled lord and his lady skulking past.

They mounted the stairs and ran down the hallway,
flying into Adam’s bedchamber and slamming the door behind them. He
looked at her, she looked at him.

He smiled.

She giggled.

This is how he wanted her. Alive. Happy. Laughing.
Loving. With never a cloud in her sky. “Oh, the devil with it,
Sherry,” Adam said in mingled exasperation and rising excitement,
reaching for her. “Let Geoff offer our excuses.”

Before...

Arm! Arm! It is—It is—

the cannon’s opening roar.

—
Lord Byron

S
herry sat on the bank of
the stream, dangling her bare toes in the cool water. Bees buzzed
overhead. Birds sang in the trees. The stream bubbled along,
singing its own sweet song. Flowers dipped their bright heads in
the warm breeze.

It was so good to be home.

And this was home. Daventry Court, the most
beautiful spot on all the earth, the most magical, the most
perfect.

Her papa was gone, having traveled back to
Leicestershire to supervise the construction of new pens for his
hounds, enclosures patterned after those at Daventry Court. He’d
waited until Sherry and Adam returned, then shaken Adam’s hand
until her poor husband’s arm was nearly ripped off, kissed the air
in the vicinity of Sherry’s cheek, and then—yoicks!—bolted
away.

He’d taken Mary with him, so that the maid could
gather up any belongings left behind in Leicestershire, promising
then to pay for an inside ticket on the mail coach heading to
Mary’s sister’s house in Dorset.

Sherry missed Mary more than she did her papa, which
gave her an occasional pang of guilt, which quickly passed because
she was so entirely happy. She’d had a wondrous Season as the
marchioness of Daventry, and now she was at home in the country
with her husband, settling down into an easy, relaxed life that
left plenty of time for sitting beside streams, dreaming
daydreams.

She’d brought one of the household account books
with her today. The novel she’d carried with her at the last
minute, however, had proved more interesting, so that she’d spent a
lazy hour reading of the exploits of Jane Gooding, governess. It
was much more exciting than putting herself to sleep perusing
neatly written columns of numbers having to do with the price of
candies and the number of housemaids it took to give Daventry Court
a good cleaning each spring and fall.

She really had to get stern with herself and begin
to learn how to run a household. Adam certainly knew his
responsibilities and, in fact, had been busy almost from morning to
night ever since they returned from London.

Geoff, pleading his case by saying that he wouldn’t
be the heir above another year, had absented himself from Adam’s
daily rides over the estate. He’d also refused to look at a single
ledger or interview so much as one prospective new worker. Adam
grumbled about his brother’s defection a time or two, then simply
shrugged and went back to work.

Adam liked to work. Sherry had come across him more
than once during her long, ambling walks over the estate, finding
him wielding a shovel with a will, or stabbing a pitchfork into a
bale of straw, and even helping out at the gristmill.

Everyone on the estate adored him, from the lowest
cottager to the estate manager, who had told Sherry he’d never
worked for a more knowledgeable or able man. “Almost as if he
wasn’t one of the gentry, my lady, while he’s ears and head above
any of his neighbors. Why, over to Aimsley Manor, Lord Aimsley,
don’t even know iffen he grows wheat or beets. Lord Daventry? He
helps plant ‘em!”

Sherry smiled as she thought about all of this, then
frowned as she wondered if Adam realized that they had barely
spoken for the past weeks, except when they met at a single meal
during the day—and when they went to bed at night. Not that there
was a great deal of talking once they were in bed. She might have
had nothing much to add to conversations that were fairly
one-sided, and that dealt mostly with estate business, but he
didn’t seem to notice that lack once he was holding her, once he
was kissing her.

He asked her, every day, if she was happy, if she
was enjoying herself, if there was anything she wanted, anything
she needed. And he frowned when she told him she’d spent yet
another day wandering the estate, stopping to sit and read a book,
finding an hour to play with some of the children in the small
village, spending a morning in the kitchens, baking apple tarts.
Her wants were so simple she felt silly telling him about her day,
and believed Adam would find her to be silly as well if he had to
listen to her prattle on about such mundane things.