Lady Lyte's Little Secret (29 page)

A slow teasing smile spread across his lips.

“Well, of course,” he replied in the same tone he would use to answer whether the sky was blue or whether there were twenty shillings in a pound.

For the rest of his life Thorn would remember her squeal of delighted astonishment as she wrenched her hands from his and threw her arms around his neck, sending them both sprawling onto the floor.

It was not enough to hear his words. Felicity needed
to feel his arms, strong and dependable around her. She needed the familiar reassurance of his kiss to be certain Thorn’s feelings toward her had not altered.

All her senses quivered to a feverish pitch, attuned to any subtle sign that might contradict Thorn’s declaration.

His arms closed around her as he lay on the floor, with her draped over him. His lips found hers with unerring aim.

The kiss did feel different, somehow, than any they had shared before. But Felicity approved the difference—a new masterful confidence that set her flesh aquiver even as it soothed her afflicted spirit.

She had been forgiven.

Like a warm rain over parched fields, the enriching power of that unfamiliar sensation soaked into her heart.

Her family had never forgiven her for not being a son. The Lyte family had never forgiven her for not bearing a son. And she, in turn, had never been able to forgive her husband’s infidelities. Not that he’d ever asked.

Time and again on their trip north, Thorn had seen the worst side of her character—imperious, distrustful, insecure. Yet he had persisted in caring for her, even when she’d been bent on driving him away.

Did Thorn also feel a difference in the way she responded to him? Until this moment she had always held part of herself back, fearful of giving away what she could not afford to lose. Now she offered herself to him completely, confident that he would accept the sum total of who she was, even those parts of herself she did not much care for.

Oh, the warmth of his hands as they stroked her
body through the thin barrier of her nightgown! The delicious potency of his kisses! Both the sweeter because she had expected never to feel them again.

“If I were a fanciful fellow,” Thorn murmured between kisses, “I would say that even a wooden floor feels like a feather bed as long as I have you in my arms.”

He made a droll face of exaggerated pain. “I hope you will not think it an insult if I say that bed of yours looks deucedly appealing after a long day in the saddle.”

“Certainly not.” Her laughter came out a trifle thin and shaky as she rolled off Thorn. “If you spouted any such nonsense, I would fear you’d taken a fall from your horse straight onto your head.”

“Come on, then.” She grasped his hands to help him off the floor. “Let this be the first night of a new beginning for us.”

“I like the sound of that.” Thorn perched on the edge of the bed to pry off his riding boots.

He shrugged off his coat, then went to work on the buttons of his waistcoat.

Caught up in her anticipation of the night to come, Felicity did not hear the approaching footsteps.

The door eased open, then burst the rest of the way as the innkeeper’s wife barrelled in.

“Lord-a-mercy, what’s all this?”

Felicity screamed.

Mrs. Merryvale bore down on Thorn like the brawny arm of some vengeful goddess, yanking him to his feet by the ear. “I’ll have yer hide, scoundrel, accosting defenseless ladies in my house!”

“Ouch!” Thorn struggled to free himself from the
woman’s remorseless grip. “You’re mistaken, madam. I’m not accosting anyone. This is my…wife.”

“It’s the truth, Mrs. Merryvale,” cried Felicity, anxious to spare Thorn any worse punishment at the landlady’s hands. “My…husband heard I’d taken ill on the road, so he came to me at once.”

“Ye gave me the fright of my life,” the innkeeper’s wife scolded. But she did let go of Thorn’s ear. “I heard a noise and came to see if there were aught amiss.”

“Thank you for your concern.” Felicity tugged Thorn back toward the bed. “But I’m feeling much better now that my husband is with me.”

“Husband?” the innkeeper’s wife muttered. “I thought ye told me ye were a widow.”

Felicity scrambled to remember what she had said. “Perhaps you misunderstood me.”

Mrs. Merryvale shook her head. “A queer thing if I did. Don’t ye recollect? I asked what yer husband was thinking, letting you trundle about the country in yer condition—”

Felicity sprang from the bed, pushing the other woman none too gently toward the door. “I hardly knew
what
I was saying, then.”

“What condition?” asked Thorn.

Pretending she hadn’t heard, Felicity rattled on. “I’m feeling ever so much better now. I swear to you, this man
is
my husband, and we are both very tired, so if you don’t mind—”

“
What
condition?”

“Men!” The innkeeper’s wife heaved an exasperated sigh as Felicity urged her out the door. “What condition do ye think, ye great simpleton? With child, of course. Now if ye have any sense, ye’ll put yer foot
down about her gadding all over the country. Or next time she’s taken poorly away from home, ye might not be so lucky!”

Felicity slammed the door behind the woman, not caring if it hit her broad backside.

If only she could have similarly evicted Mrs. Merryvale’s damning revelation, which hung in the air like a cloud of noxious gas.

Chapter Twenty

“P
lease, Thorn, I can explain.”

Felicity’s voice seemed to reach him from a great distance while a vast swarm of his own thoughts crowded between them, all clamoring at once.

He gave voice to the most insistent one. “With child?”

“Yes.”

“My child?”

“Of course!”

Thorn’s knees gave way. Luckily, he was near enough the bed to sit down hard upon it.

His child. How could that be?

The cruel truth kicked him deep in the belly, mocking him for a fool that he’d let himself be so easily duped.

You wondered why she’d taken a man like you into her bed!
it roared, heaving him headfirst into the mud.
Well, there’s your answer, you daft ass!

He groped on the floor for his boots.

Felicity snatched them away, just as she’d snatched the candle from his hand that night in Bath when he’d come to tell her about Ivy and Oliver.

“I won’t let you leave here until you’ve given me a chance to explain, Thorn.”

“Explain?” The word retched out of him on a gust of harsh laughter. “I prefer not to tax your powers of invention, my dear. I marvel that after a week like this, you have not strained them beyond recovery.”

Everything that had puzzled him about Felicity’s behavior this week suddenly made sense. Brutal, revolting sense.

“I was going to tell you.” In the fading light, she looked the very picture of guileless sincerity.

Thorn hardened his gullible heart.

“Indeed? When? On the child’s fifth birthday? His tenth? On my deathbed?” He held out his hand. “Stop lying to me, damn you, and give me my boots!”

She stepped in front of the door, hiding his boots behind her back. “At first I didn’t ever mean to tell you.”

“Now,
that
sounds like the truth.” Denied his boots, Thorn grabbed his coat from the bed, jamming his arms into the sleeves. “After such a steady diet of falsehood, I wonder that I can recognize such a rare delicacy when I hear it.”

He loathed the scathing mockery he heard in his voice. But Thorn could do nothing to prevent it. If he did not spew out the poison brewing inside of him, he feared it would eat away his heart.

“Perhaps you think I should be flattered that you chose me for a stud to sire your little foal.”

Felicity’s mouth fell open.

Thorn took some perverse pleasure in shocking her with his show of crudity.

“Is
that
what you believe I did?” she asked.

“What else am I to believe, pray?” The faintest hint
of a doubt flickered within him, but Thorn trod it under his heel. “You assured me you were barren, which is clearly not the case. By your own admission, you meant to keep your condition a secret from me, and I have only your word that you ever intended to tell me.”

To think he’d flattered himself that a woman like her could care for him. When all the time he’d been no more to her than a convenient object of use. Once they’d set out from Bath, he had become an inconvenient burden, to be placated with hollow flattery and false promises until he could be safely discarded.

Though Felicity shrank from his reproaches, she did not budge from in front of the door.

“I know I’ve given you no reason to trust my word, Thorn, but I beg you to listen just the same. I see now that what I meant to do was wrong, but at the time I felt I had no other choice. Bad as that was, it is not half so bad as it may look to you now. If you hear me out, I feel certain you will believe me.”

“Of course I’ll believe you, dammit!” Thorn ploughed his fingers through his hair. “Haven’t I swallowed every other honey-dipped lie you’ve ever fed me? I am a fool, Lady Lyte—a daft, besotted fool, ready to let you lead me ’round by the nose…or some other portion of my anatomy.”

This was probably how his father had brought their family to the brink of ruin, by giving ear to lies he wanted so desperately to believe.

The realization that he had let his soft, partial heart overrule his sound judgment shook him to the core. It made him feel as if he no longer recognized himself. He despised what he had become—what Felicity Lyte had made of him.

“I will not stay and be persuaded of what I wish to believe.” He strode toward the door. “I can do without my boots if you insist on keeping them from me. The night is not cold enough to prevent me riding barefoot.”

But how would he shift her out of the way without touching her? And how would he stop touching her once he’d begun?

The anger that surged through his veins like fire had not seared away the bedeviling itch of his desire for this woman. Rather, each fueled the other—two sides of the dangerous coin that was passion. He had been right to keep it out of his cash box until now.

Yet, torn as he was, Thorn Greenwood had never felt so fully alive.

Felicity did not cower as he approached her. Neither did she move. “No matter how much you hate me at this moment, I know you will not harm me.”

How well she knew his every weakness, and how skillfully she played upon them.

“Get out of my way, woman, or I will not be answerable for my actions!”

Felicity held her ground. “When I told you I was barren, I believed it to be the truth.”

Why would she have permitted that insufferable Norbury cub in her house if she had reason to know the young man was
not
her husband’s natural son?

The wheedling little voice in his mind only stoked Thorn’s fury, for it proved what an easy mark he was for this woman’s well-aimed lies.

Taking firm but restrained hold of her upper arms, he lifted her off her feet and moved her clear of the door. If he could only keep his renegade desire in
check for a few moments more, he’d put himself beyond her seductive power…forever.

And count himself lucky to have escaped her clutches with a few shreds of his self-respect intact.

She was losing him!

If she let him get away now, the Thorn Greenwood she had come to know in the past week would disappear—stifled by propriety, stabbed through the heart by her deception, buried under a mountain of suspicion and resentment.

Is this not what you wanted?
whispered the loathsome little voice of her selfishness.
Thorn Greenwood conveniently out of your life and your child’s?

“No!” Dropping Thorn’s boots, she grabbed hold of his coat cuffs the instant he released her arms.

For her own sake she could not have humbled her pride to cling and plead with him like this. But she could not permit her child to be deprived of such a father. Better if…

Suddenly, Felicity knew what she must do.

For her, that brief timeless interval between one heartbeat and the next ached with loss and remorse enough to fill a lifetime.

“Would you abandon your child to a woman like me?” The question stung her throat.

“Eh?” Thorn froze.

Felicity willed her voice to keep steady. If she became overwrought, she would drive Thorn away. Perhaps, forever.

“I have greater confidence in your judgment than you appear to, my dear. I am asking you, for the sake of our child, to hear what I have to say with an open
heart and mind. If you will do that, I promise I will give you the baby to rear once it is born.”

“If this is another trick of yours…” Thorn jerked his coat free of her hands, but he made no move toward the unblocked door.

Felicity shook her head. “I would
never
say such a thing if I did not mean it with all my heart.”

For a moment that stretched almost too long and tight to bear, Thorn did not move or speak.

At last he found his voice. “Why?”

“Why would I give you my baby?” The prospect made Felicity tremble. “Because today I proved I cannot be a good aunt, let alone a decent mother, while you have proven you can be mother and father both.”

If she stood another minute, she would swoon. And Thorn would probably catch her, as he had on the night this whole fateful journey to Gretna had begun. Then some compound of pity and desire might overpower his reason, and he might accept what she told him without truly believing it.

Much as she wanted to hold on to him, she could not do it at that price.

Her legs had just enough strength to carry her back to the bed. “If you still wish to go, I will do nothing more to prevent you.”

She drew the bedclothes up to her chin, knowing that neither their warmth nor the glowing coals in the hearth could protect her from the chill of Thorn’s leaving.

Darkness had fallen in earnest, now, but the embers of the small fire gave off enough rosy light that Felicity could see Thorn bend and pick up his boots.