Her Husband’s Lover (26 page)

‘I know it, but I can’t seal the mouths of everyone around me. Lord knows, we’ve been discreet. At least I thought we had, until her sister started bleating.’

‘Amelia suspects?’ Neddy’s surprise doubled his doubts over the care they’d taken to avoid discovery. Then again, he hadn’t precisely hidden his interest in Emma. That had been part of the initial plan of courting her after all, to draw attention away from him and Lyle. This all made it sound horribly premeditated, which in no way reflected his actual feelings for her. The fact was he’d fallen hard and fast, and he didn’t want to give her up, not for a single minute. However, he couldn’t allow Lucy to hurt her.

‘How so?’ Neddy asked. ‘She’s been here the last few days, crowing over the fighters and generally getting in the way, when she wasn’t busy playing Bathhouse and Quernow off against one another. I’m surprised she’s had time to pay you any regard.’

‘I don’t think she has paid me any regard, but she seems to feel slighted by her sister and is evidently looking to retaliate.’

‘Then you’d best prepare yourself for the worst.’

‘Hm!’ Darleston turned his back to the barrel and crossed his arms across his chest. He’d relished life the last few days more than he’d done for years. He supposed it was too much to hope that such merry times would last.

Neddy circled around to face him. In the dim light, with his normal easy-going smile replaced by a frown, it truly felt like looking into a mirror. Even the pain he saw reflected in the black of his pupils was the same. The only difference lay in the source of that pain. He knew his own. He’d never enquired too deeply into his brother’s.

Neddy reached out and squeezed his shoulder. ‘At least you’re not entertaining thoughts of running.’

‘What would be the point?’ He shrugged off the hold. ‘Credit me with a little more bottom than to leave them to face her mercy alone.’

‘I wasn’t suggesting you would.’ Clearly hurt by the rebuke, Neddy stuffed his hands into his coat pockets. ‘I only wish you’d shown such fortitude in the past, so that a life of heartache might have been avoided. You really ought to have refused her hand.’

The topic had come up so often he saw little point in retreading it. Yet he still found himself defending himself. ‘I don’t recall being given a choice.’

‘Oh, come on. What was dear mama going to do to you? She wasn’t about to let her eldest son starve to death by cutting you off. It would have been an idle threat anyway. The title will be yours. The estates and all the coin are entailed down to the last bloody farthing. She wasn’t going to expose you and risk forfeiting that to the crown.’

Grumbling annoyance at the accusation brought pain to Darleston’s chest that he tried to relieve by coughing. It didn’t work, just making him sound consumptive. At least he wasn’t bringing up blood. ‘Perhaps not, but I had no real concept of what I was getting myself into. I’d met Lucy twice and had barely spoken to her. There was nothing to indicate she’d be such a venomous harpy.’

Neddy gave a nod. He turned away and began lifting the filled sacks onto empty hooks. ‘Speak to the maid. Don’t let her ruin you. You know my opinion on your preferences, but if you can make this arrangement of yours work, then all well and good.’ He frowned. ‘Well, mostly well and good. You realise this way you’re saddling me with the burden of continuing the legitimate line.’

‘Only if I ensure that Lucy doesn’t get her way. I suppose I ought to get to it.’

‘And I ought to rest. I’ve a fight to oversee tomorrow. I best check Harry’s seen Jack off to bed too.’

Darleston lingered outside the barn after he and Neddy said goodnight. Bright stars filled the heaven. Across the fields, lights gleamed in the windows of Field House. He’d go up to the maid’s room once everyone had settled for the night. That wouldn’t be for another hour or two. Meanwhile, he was torn between seeking out Lyle and Emma to reassure them, and wariness over drawing any attention whatsoever. He lit a cigar and watched the smoke curl away. A baby – God pity the poor mite in having Lucy for a mother. He’d never met a more self-centred woman. He prayed one didn’t exist.

Ten minutes later he spied a figure heading towards him. Darleston stubbed out his cigar and strode to meet his lover. Even from two field-lengths away he recognised Lyle’s striding gait. Closer to, his coat and blond curls provided further identification. They met where the stile crossed the bramble-entwined hedgerow. A tiny brook babbled over a rocky bed nearby, filling the twilight with a gentle music.

‘Rob?’ Lyle’s shadow extended halfway across the field. ‘You are still here. I feared …’ He heaved a sigh of relief. ‘I … We weren’t certain what you’d do.’

The way Lyle’s broad shoulders were hitched with tension spoke volumes about how precarious their relationship was. He thought they’d built a relationship upon trust, but now he wasn’t so sure that trust was mutual. Lyle might have forgiven him for what had happened years ago, but he remained wary over the present.

‘Did you really believe I’d go, without a word?’

‘Of course not.’ The tick in Lyle’s jaw said otherwise. ‘Emma’s worried. That’s why I came out to look for you. She’s fretting.’

Naturally, what woman wouldn’t? Somehow they all expected the worst of men, particularly one with whom they’d been intimate. He rubbed his brow, irritated to think that she’d even considered him so despicable as to run away now that he’d worn down her defences enough to indulge in pleasure.
Damn!
He wasn’t so jaded that he had to resort to such measures to whet his palate. He hadn’t gone to her offering reassurances because he was trying to protect her – Lyle too, for that matter.

‘Lucy remains?’ he asked.

Lyle gave a meagre nod. ‘She’s frightfully charming.’

Dear God, his wife was anything but that, but she certainly knew how to act.

‘What happened this morning, Rob? I don’t mean with your wife. I mean with mine. Emma said …’ Lyle choked back the rest of the phrase as if he couldn’t bear to utter it. Doubts swam in the depths of his dark eyes, and he appeared momentarily gaunt. ‘I mean, how far did it go?’

Darleston held his tongue. He ought to have anticipated this moment. Not Lucy’s arrival and the trouble she caused, but Lyle’s reaction to the growing intimacy between him and Emma.

Jealousy, doubt – they were always difficult emotions to weather.

He reached out and curled his fingers around Lyle’s shoulder. ‘How detailed would you like me to be?’

Lyle placed his hand over the top of Darleston’s and removed it from his shoulder. He held on to it, though, turned their palms and laced their fingers together. ‘I don’t need to know any details. I just wanted to be certain of what has passed. Emma wasn’t particularly explicit, and she’s not exactly experienced.’

‘She’s no longer a virgin,’ Darleston offered as clarification.

Damn, this ought to have been a pleasant moment, not a cause of this tension between them. Lyle ought to have been there when in happened. Instead, he seemed entranced by something on the grass and refused to hold Darleston’s gaze.

Darleston squeezed his hand. ‘It doesn’t change anything between us.’

‘Are you sure about that?’

‘Yes – I’m sure. Lord damn it, Lyle!’ He shook off Lyle’s hold and grasped him around the waist instead. Fist tightened around the fabric of Lyle’s coat, he tugged him forward, meaning to embrace him, show him what he felt through the fever of his kiss. But, instead of sailing into his arms, Lyle stumbled. His shoulder hit Darleston square in the chest, winding him. His knees buckled under the unexpected weight and they both dropped like stones.

In dazed silence, Darleston stared at the dim stars. Cold seeped out of the earth beneath him. It penetrated his clothing, setting a chill in his bones. Overhead the purple haze of twilight had now melted into the black of night.

Lyle’s shadowy form reared over him, blocking out the light of the waning crescent moon. ‘I don’t know how I feel about it, Rob. It makes me uncomfortable. She’s my wife. I don’t desire her in that sense, but it feels damned wrong condoning what she’s doing with you.’

‘Doesn’t she deserve the same freedoms as you?’

The wag of Lyle’s head was wholly indecisive. ‘I want her to be happy, but –’ he caught the edge of his lip between his teeth ‘– I just wish it wasn’t you she’d fixated upon.’

‘It’s what we wanted, Lyle. It’s what we planned.’

‘It’s what you planned. I know I agreed, but agreeing to it and experiencing it are two very different things. I’m torn. I’m –’

‘– frightened,’ Darleston supplied. It was easy to forget that Lyle’s experience of relationships amounted to a platonic, touch-free arrangement with his wife and spur-of-the-moment encounters with men who sought swift satisfaction and nothing else. This was his one experience of anything deeper; hardly surprising he was terrified of losing it.

‘You’re worried that I’ll love her more than you. That you’ll get left out. It won’t happen, Lyle.’ He wanted them both equally. More than that, he needed them. ‘Lyle …’

They stared at one another, locked in wordless conversation. Somehow that made it easier than actually spitting out all the things that needed to be said.

Lyle touched Darleston’s face, brushing aside the red strands of his hair. Darleston’s lips tingled as Lyle’s caress became a slow sweep of his thumbs around his open lips. Lyle dipped down and kissed him. The moment their mouths met, heat ripped through him, relaxing everything apart from his cock, which woke with the appetite of a hungry wolf.

Only one thing was going to appease it and, thank God, Lyle seemed set upon delivering it.

Darleston squirmed, the tight front of his breeches making for an unwelcome pressure on his erection. He needed freedom to breathe and a firm five-fingered grip around him. Only suddenly Lyle didn’t seem to be in any hurry to oblige. His touch was tender, exploring rather than demanding. The same remained true of his kiss. Their tongues danced, but in slow tremulous circles rather than a lively gavotte. Yet Lyle had to be aware of the reaction he’d triggered. Their hips were stacked one above the other so that their loins were pressed tight together.

Friction
. He needed friction. Only one thing was going to satisfy him. He lifted his hips. Lyle met him, roll for roll.

‘Will you do to me what you did to Emma?’ Lyle breathed the husky whisper straight into his ear. It was far more than a request, rather a plea dredged up out of Lyle’s gullet and spoken through clenched teeth. The notion that he’d somehow missed out and been replaced dangled like a lodestone around his neck. His kiss took on a note of aggression, became far more insistent. ‘How did you do it? No one ever cracks her core.’

Darleston tasted his kisses and matched his fervour. ‘It’s not about what I’ve done. I’ve simply made it easy for her to take what she already wanted.’ He clasped his hands over Lyle’s arse and pulled him closer so that their loins were squashed together with no space between. ‘You know as well as I that attraction isn’t something you can predict or pretend to understand. For some reason she sees something in me that makes her want to break down the barriers she’s created. I don’t know what that is or why. I’m just grateful for it. Regardless –’ he looked Lyle straight in the eyes ‘– none of that changes how I feel about you.’

Lyle reared up onto his knees and went straight for Darleston’s frontfall. ‘She can give you things that I can’t,’ he said, but the statement lacked the power of his earlier assertions.

Darleston knocked Lyle’s hands aside and dealt with his own fastenings. ‘The reverse is also true.’ His thoughts ran to all manner of crudities as he spoke the reassurance. Things he would never ask Emma to do, even if they were physically possible. Some things were best left between men. Some aspects of his psyche he never wanted exposed to a woman. Leastways, not one he actually liked.

Having finally freed his erection, Darleston stared up at Lyle expectantly. His cock jerked, leaving sticky dots behind on his stomach as the night wind blew its cool caresses over its surface. Yet despite the hunger that turned up the edges of Lyle’s mouth, Lyle didn’t reach out to stroke him.

‘What does your wife want?’ Lyle asked instead.

‘The same things she always wants – money, social clout, dominion over me.’ Darleston covered his shaft with his own palm, took up the stroking Lyle had failed to provide. He needed relief. The day had been one long trauma. Tomorrow might well be worse. ‘Lyle,’ he gave a tormented plea, while his fist took up a faster pace of slip and slide.

Lyle dipped forward a little, but still made only passing contact. He tilted his head to one side. ‘If I just sit here are you going to stroke yourself to eruption?’

‘Shit!’ What in God’s name was this torment about?

Lyle released his own breeches, which fell open around his hips. The blunt head of his cock reared beneath his shirt, tenting the cambric. ‘What if I just stay here and rub until I spend too? Are we simply being sordid or are we actually together?’

‘Deliberately vexatious is what it’d make you.’ He didn’t trouble himself with thoughts of what it made him. Desperate, most likely.

‘Did Emma stroke you? Is the taste of her still on your cock?’

Why the hell did it matter?
‘Why don’t you lick it and find out?’

Lyle stuck his tongue out, but nevertheless he bent and troubled the slitted eye with the very tip of his tongue. He followed that up by gently sucking the head, which rapidly had Darleston trying to count stars in the heavens just to hold onto some focus. No denying that Lyle had learnt a trick or two since their youth. Darleston’s hips bucked involuntarily, driving his cock deeper into the warmth of Lyle’s heavenly mouth. Hell! Lyle just swallowed it down too, as if it was effortless. That’s why it came as so much of a shock when Lyle abruptly released him. He got right up close to Darleston’s face. ‘I’ve got something for you. Think you can lie still and take it?’

‘Lying still ain’t a great favourite.’

‘Yeah – I’ve heard you’re rather good at it.’

‘Lyle.’ Darleston lifted his arm to push his hand into his lover’s thick golden curls, only for Lyle to brush him off. ‘A-aah! You don’t get to touch.’