Guilty Series (80 page)

One of her hands came away from the desk, lifted to his unshaven cheek and touched skin rough like sand. Her lips parted. The strands of his hair were like damp, heavy silk in her fingers as she slid her hand to the back of his head and deepened the kiss.

His tongue met hers and his hands tightened on her hips, holding her imprisoned against the desk as he tasted her. The kiss stung, burning where his beard stubble rubbed the skin around her mouth. Mornings with John, erotic images that had taunted her for years, images she had finally thought forever buried, came raging back to taunt and tease her now. Images of his hands touching her in the morning sunlight in a big mahogany bed at Hammond Park ran through her mind, sending electrifying excitement pulsing through her body now, impelling her to press her body closer to his. Her arm came up around his neck.

He made a rough sound against her mouth and broke the kiss. He leaned sideways and with a sweep of his arm cleared the desk, sending the stack of books toppling off the side and onto the floor. Then his hands cupped her buttocks and he lifted her to set her on the desk.

He reached for the sash wrapped around her waist, untying the bow with a hard, quick tug. He parted the edges and pulled her dressing robe apart. His fingertips touched her breasts through her nightgown, brushing back and forth over the hardened nipples. Pleasure rose within her, pleasure long forgotten, pleasure that made her gasp and shiver with excitement. Her hand tightened in his hair and she pulled him closer, guiding his head down to her breast.

He laved the tip of her breast with his tongue, dampening the muslin. His hand came up to embrace her other breast, his thumb and forefinger closing to tease her nipple through the thin fabric. Sharp sensation rose with each pull of his mouth and each roll of his fingers as he suckled her and touched her and teased her through her nightdress.

She cradled his head in her hands, trying to pull him even closer. She was lost in the hot, demanding urgency of his hands and his mouth. It had been so long since she had felt John's hands on her, so long since she had felt this wild, sensual drive. She could hear the soft, hushed sounds that came from her own throat, sounds of desperate want and aching need. She heard herself moan his name.

He straightened, moving one hand to the top of her nightdress. He began slipping pearl buttons free as he used his other hand to yank the hem of
the nightgown upward, above her knees. “God,” he groaned against her throat, “how I've missed this.”

Missed what? Having a woman?

Those questions sprang into her mind, and with them came reality, as cold as ice water washing over her. Good lord, what was she doing?

She stiffened as his hand moved between her thighs, and she clamped her legs tightly together, putting a stop to this madness before it went any further. “No, John,” she gasped, seizing his wrist. “No.”

He went rigidly still, his hand wrapped around her inner thigh, his harsh breathing mingling with hers. “Viola.” His hand stirred against her hold, slid up her thigh an inch or two.

She pushed at his wrist. “Let me go.”

He hesitated, and it was that moment of reluctance that galvanized her. “Let go, let go, let go!”

Panicking, desperate, she slammed her palm into his shoulder, shoving him. She twisted sideways, hurling herself off the desk, stumbling over the hem of her robe in her haste to get away from him. “Out of my mind,” she muttered, shaking her head. “I must be out of my mind. What am I, a glutton for punishment?”

“Viola—”

The sound of his voice had her coming to a halt a few steps away from him. She whirled around, wrapping her robe around her body to shield every part of it from his view. “I cannot believe how eas
ily I make a fool of myself over you and how often.” She pressed her fingers to her forehead, once, twice, three times, wondering what happened to the brains inside. “I can be so, so stupid.”

He looked at her, still breathing hard, his face conveying a disbelief quite different from hers. He took a step toward her, reached for her, tried to touch her.

She evaded him, moving farther out of reach. “I can't even blame you for it. That's the worst part. It's not as if you lied to me this time or anything. You have admitted that you have never loved me. You could not even promise to be faithful to me. Yet thirty minutes later I was ready to lay my body down for you to take. Where on earth are my brains? Where is my self-respect?”

“Self-respect?” He rubbed his hands over his face, gulping deep breaths of air. “God, woman, your self-respect isn't the problem. Neither are your brains. It's your timing.”

“Eight years without you, building my own life,” she went on, ignoring him, lecturing herself, “and after only a few outings with you and a couple of stolen kisses, I am behaving as wantonly as one of your bawds.”

“You are my wife! There is nothing bawdy about wanting to make love with your husband. And you wanted to, damn me if you didn't. Why did you stop?” He raked his hands through his hair and turned away with another oath. “Hell,
Viola,” he said over one shoulder, “sometimes I despair of ever understanding you.”

“I would like you to leave.”

He walked across the room, putting even more distance between them. His back to her, he straightened his clothing while she straightened hers. Neither of them spoke. After a few moments he walked over to the chair where he had left his coat earlier in the evening. He put it on. “The three weeks are up. I shall come for you tomorrow at noon. You'd better decide tonight which house you want to live in. If you don't, Tremore can expect a demand from the House of Lords the day after.”

She started to refuse, but when he turned around to face her, she closed her mouth and gave it up. There was defiance in his face now, defiance of her wishes, challenge in the lift of his brows, pride in the grim, determined set of his jaw. She knew that countenance very well. Arguing was pointless.

“I gave you my word,” he reminded her in a hard, tight voice, and added, “I want a willing mate, so you needn't worry about having to lay your body down for me to take. Far be it from me to treat you like a bawd.”

Bowing, he left her.

All very well for him to tell her not to worry. Worry wasn't really her problem. It wasn't worry that gnawed at her. It wasn't worry that made her
insides twist with dread and made her want to board the next ship headed for France.

It was how the man who had hurt her so much, the man she ought to despise, could hold a crying baby in his arms and make him laugh. It was how he could still make her laugh, too, even after all he had done. It was how he could make her melt into a puddle when he kissed her and how he could light her on fire when he touched her. She wasn't a foolish girl anymore, but she still wanted that man. She could fall in love all over again with that man. It would be so, so easy. Easy to say yes and give him what he wanted, having nothing in return. Not even a promise he would be faithful.

No, she wasn't worried. She was terrified.

I
t wasn't until the cold light of day that John's desire and anger simmered down to a point where his brain began to work again and he could think clearly. And he had to think. He had to figure out what his next move should be.

He stared down into his plate and idly pushed kidneys and bacon around with his fork. If he'd been thinking at all last night, which was doubtful, it had been about taking advantage of the blessed opportunity he'd been given as quickly as possible. He probably should have gone more slowly—wooed, coaxed, eased her into her bedroom upstairs. But he hadn't. And then he had compounded the problem by getting autocratic and reminding her that the three weeks were up. If she didn't come with him today, he'd have to go to the House, for he could not back down. Even then, when they were living together, he would still have to do some serious wooing together into bed.

He dropped his fork into his plate with an exasperated oath. No man should have to put up with this from his wife. Most other men in his situation would drag her into the marriage bed and get on with it. But what other men would do didn't help him. He wasn't that sort of fellow, never had been.

Christ
. He wanted a willing wife. A passionate wife. Was that too much to ask?

She said she could not trust him. He hadn't pointed out that trust went both ways and so did the ability to inflict hurt. He could have promised Viola that he would never go to any woman's bed but hers, but he wasn't going to make that promise unless he could trust her not to spurn him when she was angry. He would not be the victim of any woman's sexual blackmail, and that was what she had done to him, even if she could not see it. How could they ever get past that?

He thought of Dylan Moore's suggestion to him that he and Viola become friends. It seemed an insane idea, but then, Moore was rather mad, always had been.

John sighed and sat back, looking at the little glass pots of jam on the table. Blackberry and apricot. Hammond Park.

Those days had been shoved to the back of his mind long ago and had lingered there for years like other hazy, half-forgotten dreams of his youth. Yet now they called to him, beckoning him back to a time when he had been content, even
happy. He'd made Viola happy, too. He was certain of it. There had to be a way to bring all of that back. He was no longer content to believe it had been lost forever.

Become friends.

John sat up straight in his chair, staring at the jam pots. Perhaps Moore was on to something. He and Viola had been friends once. That was what they'd had back then, that summer in Scotland and that autumn in Northumberland. They had been lovers, too, and fought and scrapped like lovers, but they had laughed and had fun, and he'd been more pleased with his choice of a wife than he could have ever imagined. Then it had all gone wrong.

He wished—God, he wished—they could be like that again, and that he was having breakfast in bed with her right now, kissing blackberry jam off her face. Just now that seemed a dismally remote possibility.

“The morning post, my lord.”

Surprised, he looked up as Pershing set a stack of correspondence by his plate. It was usually John's secretary who brought his letters. “Where's Stone today?” he asked the butler.

“Mr. Stone has the measles. Upon the advice of his brother-in-law, who is a physician, he has removed himself to his sister's home in Clapham until he is no longer infectious to others. Mr. Stone said he bitterly regrets that he will be unable to be of service to your lordship for the next ten days.”

“Send him a note, and assure him I prefer an absent secretary to a sick household. Tell him to stay in Clapham until he is fully recovered.”

“Yes, my lord.” The butler withdrew.

John glanced through his letters, sorting them as he went.

An invitation to both Lord and Lady Hammond to dine at the home of Lady Snowden. The Countess of Snowden was clearly more optimistic this morning about the state of his marriage than he was. A note from Tattersall's confirming that the new mare he'd purchased two weeks earlier had been delivered to his estate in Northumberland. He'd bought the horse for Viola. It was a spirited four-year-old thoroughbred with breathtaking speed, but given the current state of things, he didn't think he'd be racing horses on the downs with his wife until this particular mare was tottering into her grave. Since the note needed no reply, he tossed it into the fire that burned in the grate nearby, and continued working his way through the stack of correspondence. A report from his steward on things at Hammond Park. A bill from his tailor, and another from his boot maker, both for the costume he was wearing to Viola's charity ball, a ball to which he had still not received an invitation from his wife. Another letter from Emma Rawlins.

He paused over the folded, sealed square of delicately perfumed paper. He had to admire the
lady's persistence. How many letters was this now? A dozen, at least. The first few he had read—an apology for her possessiveness, then a reproof for his cool reply, then a scathing condemnation of his inattention. After those, he had ignored the rest, not bothering to read them or reply. He heard she had sold the cottage he'd given her and was living in France. Hoping she remained there, he tossed her latest letter into the fire unopened.

Keeping only the report from his steward, which he could read in the carriage on his way to Grosvenor Square, and the invitation, which he would ask Viola about before replying, he left the breakfast table. Instructing Pershing to place the bills on Stone's desk for the secretary to pay when he returned, John went upstairs to bathe and shave.

As his valet assisted him with his morning routine, John tried to anticipate what Viola's next move was likely to be. His wife could be as unpredictable as the weather, but if he had to guess, he thought it most likely that she would refuse to see him and force him to go to the House of Lords to get her back. But when he arrived at Grosvenor Square that afternoon, he found that she was not refusing to see him, nor agreeing to see him. Instead, she had left town.

“Where?” he asked, looking into the pretty, violet eyes of the Duchess of Tremore, who had been the one to impart this news.

The duchess did not answer for a moment. In
stead, she stirred her tea, her head tilted in consideration as she studied him from behind her gold-rimmed spectacles. “Before I decide to answer that, I would like to ask you a question, Hammond.”

“Certainly.”

“If Viola refuses to return to you, is it really your intention to petition the House to force her back?”

He smiled a little. “Duchess, I sometimes think even the House of Lords could not make my wife do what she does not want to do,” he said, trying to make light of it.

The duchess did not seem satisfied by that. Instead, she continued to look at him with all her placid equanimity. He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to think of how to answer her when he did not know what the answer was. He gave his sister-in-law the most direct, honest reply he could. “I refuse to accept the possibility that she will not return to me,” he answered. “I reject it utterly and completely.”

“And how long will you reject it?”

He set his jaw. “Until I make her see sense and reject it, too.”

“That may be a long time.” She tapped the tiny silver spoon against the side of her cup and set it on the rim of the saucer beneath it.

He could not argue with that. Tight-lipped, he nodded. “Yes.”

“Love is not the basis of your determination to win Viola back.”

Was that an accusation? A condemnation?

Before he could decide, she took a sip of tea and spoke again. “Viola is at Enderby.”

The duchess's sudden capitulation surprised him, and though he tried not to show it, she noticed. “You did not expect that, did you?”

“No, Duchess. I did not.”

“In instigating a search for your wife, you would have inquired at Enderby first, and the servants would have told you she was there. They are paid by you, after all.”

“Is that the only reason you told me?”

Those pretty lavender-blue eyes widened. “What other reason could there be?”

“There has to be one. You risk your husband's wrath by even sitting down to tea with me.”

“True.” She did not seem worried about that, and he suspected that this serene and mild-mannered lady held the duke's haughty heart in the palm of her hand. Such was the inexplicable nature of love. “If you hurt Viola again, Tremore will most likely challenge you to a duel. He would kill you quite cheerfully, believe me.”

“And you?” he asked, genuinely curious. “Do you share his animus for me?”

“No,” she said. “I don't.”

He forced a laugh. “I cannot think why not.”

“No?” There was compassion in her face as she
looked at him, and that made him shift uncomfortably in his chair. “I know how desperation feels, Hammond. Unlike my husband and my sister-in-law, I have been without money and means, and it was the most terrifying moment of my life. I would have done anything—anything, mind you—to rid myself of that terror. If fortune had not put the Duke of Tremore and a ship passage to England in my path, I might easily have been forced to marry for money.” She paused. “Or worse.”

“I am glad that did not happen,” he said, and meant it wholeheartedly.

“You have another ally besides myself, you know.” She smiled a little. “My son has taken quite a liking to you, I understand.”

He smiled back at her, remembering Nicolas and Mr. Poppin. “Heard about that, did you?”

“From Beckham.”

“He is a fine boy, Duchess.” As he said the words, John felt envy begin to burn his insides, the same envy that had seared him while he stared out the window of this very room and watched the Tremore family walk in the park. His smile faded and he turned his head away from the compassionate eyes of his sister-in-law. “A very fine boy.”

“Thank you.” She stood up. “I hope you are sincere in your desire for a real marriage and a family, Hammond. If not, God help you.”

John rose as well. “Because your husband will challenge me to a duel?”

“No,” she answered at once. “Because I will save Anthony the trouble and fire a pistol shot into you myself. For blind stupidity, if nothing else.”

“I believe you mean that,” he murmured, noting the sudden hardness in her face.

“I do mean it.” She held out her hand to him.

“Then you may put your mind at ease, Duchess,” he said, and bent over her hand to kiss it. Straightening, he went on, “Because I am sincere. Obstinate as well, I grant you. Cynical, certainly. A bad husband, perhaps. But also sincere.”

“I hope so, for your sake and for Viola's.”

He departed, not knowing quite why he had the duchess's good opinion, but grateful for it. He went home to Bloomsbury Square, but made no move to pack for Enderby.

He was not about to take anything for granted. Viola had clearly decided not to fight a legal battle with him, but she was not ready to give in. The night before in Tremore's library made that perfectly clear. In light of that, he knew his best move was to give his wife a bit of room to breathe. His absence, he thought wryly, might make her heart grow fonder—for a change.

John allowed a week to pass. Then, accompanied by his valet and a pair of footmen, he went to Enderby, arriving there an hour before dinner. His arrival caused a bit of fluster, for the master of En
derby hadn't put in an appearance on this estate in years and had sent no word ahead that he would be arriving. He inquired of Hawthorne, Enderby's current butler, where Viola might be.

“I believe Lady Hammond is taking a nap, my lord. Shall I show you to the drawing room while I inquire?”

“Expect me to sit like a visitor and cool my heels in my drawing room, Hawthorne?” he asked softly, smiling.

The butler flushed a deep red, pained by his inadvertent blunder. “No, my lord,” he said stiffly.

“Good.” John saw no need to embarrass the fellow further. “Have my things sent up to my room, will you? And show my valet, Stephens, the way of things here at Enderby. Introduce him about, show him the laundry rooms, give him the meal times and such. You know what to do, of course.”

Looking profoundly relieved not to be dressed down by a master he had never met, Hawthorne nodded. “Yes, my lord.”

John turned away and started up the wide, curving staircase, one hand on the wrought-iron rail. Though Enderby was one of his estates, it had become Viola's primary residence over the years, and since their complete separation two years before, her only residence. He spent most of the year at Hammond Park, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd been here—four years at least. But he'd spent a lot of his childhood here, and after
Cambridge, this had been his home up until his father's death. He remembered exactly where the bedchambers were.

Viola had done a great deal to the house, he noticed as he mounted the stairs. It was as feminine as a house could be, all pastels and flowers. His father would turn in his grave if he knew, John thought, and he tried to take some comfort in that.

He stopped at the door of Viola's room, opened it, then stepped inside without making a sound. He saw that she was indeed taking a nap. He came into the room and shut the door behind him.

The sound caused her to stir, and she made a murmur in her sleep but did not waken. She turned onto her side, facing him, and loose tendrils of hair fell over her face. She looked all tawny and golden, like a sleepy lioness.

He gave a cough, and she stirred again. Slowly, she opened her eyes.

“Comfortable?” he asked.

“You!” She was off the bed in an instant, fully awake.

He reminded himself that he'd pushed her too hard too fast that night a week ago. A light, offhand approach was best. “I was going to curl up with you and kiss you awake, but you woke up too soon.” He shook his head in disappointment. “A devilishly good plan spoiled.”