Cold-Hearted Rake

  As she squirmed against him, Devon flinched and gasped, and she realized she had inadvertently pressed against his ribs.

  “Oh… I’m sorry…” Kathleen began to roll away from him, panting.

  “No harm done.” He kept her in place. “Don’t go.” He was breathing hard – it must have been hurting him – but he didn’t seem to care.

  “We have to stop,” she protested. “It’s wrong, and it’s dangerous for you – and I feel —” She paused. No word in her vocabulary could account for the seething desperation that filled her, the agonizing tension coiling inside.

  Devon nudged her intimately, the subtle movement drawing a deep shiver from her.

  “Don’t,” she moaned. “I feel hot and ill, and I can’t think. I can’t even breathe.”

  She couldn’t fathom why Devon was amused, but as he brushed his lips against her cheek, she felt the shape of his smile.

  “Let me help you, love.”

  “You can’t,” she said in a muffled voice.

  “I can. Trust me.”

  He pressed her onto her back, his parted lips dragging over her throat and chest. She didn’t realize that he’d been working at the fastenings of her clothes until he spread her gown open.

  She started as cool air wafted over her bare skin. “Devon —”

  “Hush.” The word blew against the tip of her breast.

  She moaned as his mouth covered her, drawing in the tender flesh with a firm, warm tug.

  It seemed that his notion of how to help was to heap even more torment on her. He cupped her breasts in his hands and suckled with the lightest possible pulls, until her hips stirred helplessly to relieve the merciless tension. His palm slid beneath her nightgown to clasp her bare hip.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, “your skin, your shape, every part of you.” His hand insinuated between her thighs, easing them apart. “Open for me… a little more… yes… God, how soft you are, here… and here…”

  He sifted through crisp curls and stroked into the tender furrow, separating the wetly yielding layers with his fingertips until an aching peak of flesh was revealed. Skillfully he teased around it and traced the melting-soft folds down to the entrance of her body. A jolt of surprise shook her as the tip of his finger slipped inside the tightness. Her eyes flew open, and she reached down reflexively, gripping his thickly muscled wrist.

  Devon went still, seeming confounded as he stared down at her scarlet face. His expression changed to a mixture of wonder and pleasure and lust. “Does it hurt, love?” he asked huskily.

  Her body had clamped around the intrusion, throbbing and smarting. “A… a little.” Awkwardly she tugged at his wrist, but he resisted the wordless plea.

  Gently his thumb swirled over the tight, sensitive bud. His finger slid deeper inside her, caressing, eliciting such abundant wetness that she cringed and tried to look past the tangled bunch of the nightgown around her waist.

  Breathing hard, he pressed his lips to the anxious lines of her forehead. “No, don’t worry. You become wet… in here… when your body is ready for me… it’s lovely, it makes me want you even more… Ah, sweet… I can feel you holding me.”

  She could feel it too, her flesh working in lubricious pulls to welcome him. The invasion withdrew briefly, and then two fingers slipped inside, stretching her uncomfortably tight. His entire hand cupped her, the heel of it pressing against the soft crest of her sex, his fingers thrusting deep, deep, and she couldn’t help arching in hot confusion. Too much sensation was rolling up to her, making her heart thump so wildly that it frightened her.

  “Stop,” she whispered through dry lips. “Please… I’m going to faint…”

  His taunting whisper tickled her ear. “Then faint.”

  The tension heightened unbearably. She spread her legs, helplessly rocking against his hand. It all began to uncoil with astonishing force, tumbling her headlong through a release so consuming that it felt like dying. The sensation kept opening, flowering, breaking into squeezing shudders. As she moaned and gasped, Devon kissed her, sucking at her lips as if he could taste the sounds of her pleasure. Another surge went through her, the heat spreading in her head, breasts, stomach, groin, while his mouth never stopped ravishing hers.

  After the last liquid shivers had faded, she wilted against him, her head swimming. She was vaguely aware of having moved to her side, her face pressed to the softly springy hair on Devon’s chest. He had pulled her gown back down over her hip, one hand rubbing her bottom in comforting circles, while his breath eased back to its normal rhythm. She had never wanted to sleep as much as she did right then, steeped in the warmth of his body, snuggled close in his arms. But she could hear the distant sounds of housemaids beginning their morning chores, cleaning the grates, sweeping the carpets. If she stayed much longer, she would be discovered.

  “Your body has gone as taut as a bowstring,” Devon said drowsily over her head. “And after all the work I just did to relax you.” A chuckle escaped him at her mortified silence. His hand came to her back, caressing the length of her spine. “Has that never happened to you before?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t know it was possible for women.” Her voice sounded strange to her own ears, low and languid.

  “No one told you before your wedding night?”

  “Lady Berwick did, but I’m sure she didn’t know anything about it. Or perhaps…” She paused as a discomfiting thought occurred to her. “Perhaps it’s not something that happens to respectable women.”

  His hand continued its slow, reassuring glide up and down her back. “I don’t see why it shouldn’t.” His head lowered, and he whispered near her ear, “But I won’t tell.”

  Timidly she let her fingers trace the edge of the great spreading bruise on his side. “Do other men know how to do… that?”

  “Pleasure a woman, you mean? Yes, all it takes is patience.” He played with a few locks of hair that had come loose from her braid. “But it’s well worth the effort. A woman’s enjoyment makes the act more satisfying.”

  “Does it? Why?”

  “It flatters a man’s pride to know that he can make a woman desire him. Also…” His hand drifted to the soft cove between her thighs, and stroked through the layer of her nightgown. “… the way you tightened around my fingers… that’s pleasurable for a man when he’s inside you.”

  Kathleen hid her face against his shoulder. “Lady Berwick made it all sound very simple. But I’m beginning to think that she left out some important details.”

  He let out a quiet laugh. “Anyone who says the sexual act is simple has never done it properly.”

  They lay together, listening to the sounds beyond the bedroom. Outside, groundskeepers began to push wheeled mowers and edgers across the lawn, the bladed cylinders whirring smoothly. The sky was the color of steel, a strong wind chafing at the last few bleached brown leaves of an oak tree near the window.

  Devon pressed a kiss into her hair. “Kathleen… you told me that the last time Theo spoke to you, he said, ‘You’re not my wife.’”

  She froze, alarm stinging the insides of her veins as she realized what he was going to ask.

  His voice was gentle. “Was it true?”

  She tried to move away, but he kept her firmly against him.

  “It doesn’t matter how you answer,” he said. “I just want to understand what happened.”

  She would risk everything by telling him. She had far too much to lose. But part of her longed to admit the truth. “Yes,” she forced herself to say, her voice thin. “It was true. The marriage was never consummated.”

  Chapter 20

  “S

  o that was what you argued about,” Devon murmured, his hand moving over her back in slow strokes.

  “Yes. Because I wouldn’t let Theo…” She paused with a shaking sigh. “I have no right to be called Lady Trenear. I shouldn’t have stayed at Eversby Priory afterward, except… I didn’t know if I would be allowed to keep m
y dowry, and I didn’t want to go back to live with Lord and Lady Berwick, and besides all that, it was shameful. So I lied about being Theo’s wife.”

  “Did someone actually ask if you’d slept with him?” he asked, sounding incredulous.

  “No, but I lied by omission. Which is just as bad as the other kind of lying. The deplorable truth is that I’m a virgin. A fraud.” She was stunned to feel a rustle of suppressed laughter in his chest. “I don’t see how you can find cause for humor in that!”

  “I’m sorry.” But a smile lingered in his voice. “I was just thinking, with the tenants’ drainage concerns, the plumbers, the estate’s debt, and the hundred other issues I’m facing… finally there’s a problem around here I can do something about.”

  She gave him a reproachful glance, and he grinned. He kissed her before moving to find a more comfortable position, levering himself higher. Reaching for the pillows, Kathleen propped them behind his shoulders. She sat to face him with her legs half curled beneath her, and refastened her nightgown.

  One of Devon’s hands came to rest on her thigh. “Tell me what happened, sweetheart.”

  It was impossible to hold anything back now. She looked away from him, her fingers gripped around the placket of her bodice. “You must understand… I had never been alone with Theo until our wedding night. Lady Berwick chaperoned us every minute, until after the wedding. We were married at the estate chapel. It was a very grand wedding, a week-long affair, and…” She paused as a new thought occurred to her. “You and West should have been invited. I’m so sorry that you weren’t.”

  “I’m not,” Devon said. “I don’t know what I would have done, had I met you before the wedding.”

  At first she thought he was joking, but his gaze was deadly serious.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “After the ceremony, Theo went to a tavern with his friends, and he stayed away all afternoon and evening. I was obliged to remain in my room because… it’s very awkward for the bride, you see. It’s unseemly to linger and talk to people before the wedding night. So I bathed, and Clara curled my hair with hot tongs, and I dressed in a white lace nightgown, and then I sat alone to wait… and wait… and wait… I was too nervous to eat anything, and there was nothing to do. I went to bed at midnight. I couldn’t sleep, I just lay there stewing.”

  Devon’s hand tightened on her thigh.

  She glanced at him quickly, and found him staring at her with a concern that turned her insides to molten honey.

  “Finally Theo came into the room,” she continued, “very much the worse for drink. His clothes were dirty, and he smelled sour, and he didn’t even wash, just removed his clothes and climbed into bed, and started —” Kathleen stopped, reaching for her long braid and fidgeting with the end of it. There was no way to explain the ghastly surprise of being groped and overwhelmed, with no chance to become accustomed to the feel of a man’s naked body. Theo hadn’t kissed her… not that she had wanted him to… he hadn’t even seemed to be aware of her as a person.

  “I tried to hold still at first,” she said. “That was what Lady Berwick said I was supposed to do. But he was so heavy and rough, and he was cross because I didn’t know what to do. I started to protest, and he tried to quiet me. He put his hand over my mouth – that was when I lost control. I couldn’t help it. I fought and kicked him, and suddenly he pulled away, doubling over. I told him that he smelled like a dung mixen, and I didn’t want him to touch me.”

  Pausing, she glanced at him apprehensively, expecting disapproval or mockery. But his expression was inscrutable.

  “I ran from the room,” she continued, “and spent the rest of the night on the divan in Helen’s room. She was very kind and didn’t ask questions, and the next morning she helped me to mend the torn lace on my nightgown before the maids could see it. Theo was furious with me the next day, but then he admitted that he shouldn’t have had so much to drink. He asked me to begin again. And I…” She swallowed hard, flooded with shame as she confessed, “I refused his apology. I said I would never share a bed with him, that night or any other night.”

  “Good,” Devon said, in a different tone than she had ever heard him use before. He had glanced away from her, as if he didn’t want her to see what was in his eyes, but his profile was hard.

  “No, it was terrible of me. When I went to Lady Berwick and asked what I should do, she said that a wife must tolerate her husband’s advances even when he’s in his cups, and it’s never pleasant, but that’s the nature of the marriage bargain. A wife exchanges her autonomy in return for her husband’s protection.”

  “Shouldn’t the husband protect her from himself, if necessary?”

  Kathleen frowned at the soft question. “I don’t know.”

  Devon was silent, waiting for her to continue.

  “During the next two days,” she said, “all the wedding guests departed. I couldn’t make myself go to Theo’s bed. He was hurt and angry, and he demanded his rights. But he was still drinking a great deal, and I said I would have nothing to do with him until he was sober. We argued terribly. He said that he would never have married me, had he known that I was frigid. On the third morning, he went out to ride Asad, and… you know the rest.”

  Devon’s hand slipped beneath the hem of her nightgown, lightly stroking her bare thigh. He studied her, his gaze warm and interested. “Do you want to know what I would have done,” he asked eventually, “had I made the same mistake as Theo?” At her cautious nod, he continued, “I would have begged you for forgiveness, on my knees, and sworn never to let it happen again. I would have understood that you were angry and frightened, with good reason. I would have waited for as long as you needed, until I had earned back your trust… and then I would have taken you to bed and made love to you for days. As for you being frigid… I think we’ve disproved that conclusively.”

  Kathleen blushed. “Before I leave… I know that a man has needs. Is there something I should do for you?”

  A rueful smile tugged at his lips. “I appreciate your offer. But at the moment, it hurts to take a deep breath. Being pleasured by you would finish me off for good.” He squeezed her thigh. “The next time.”

  “But there can’t be a next time,” she said bleakly. “Everything must go back to the way it was.”

  His brows lifted fractionally. “Do you think that’s possible?”

  “Yes, why not?”

  “Certain appetites, once awakened, are difficult to ignore.”

  “It doesn’t matter; I’m a widow. I can’t do this again.”

  Devon caught one of her ankles and tugged her toward him despite the pain it must have caused him. “Stop it,” she whispered sharply, trying to pull down the hem of her nightgown as it rode higher on her hips. “You’ll hurt yourself —”

  “Look at me.”

  He had taken her shoulders in his hands. Reluctantly Kathleen brought herself to look into his eyes.

  “I know that you regret Theo’s death,” Devon said quietly. “I know that you married him with the best of intentions, and you’ve tried to mourn him sincerely. But Kathleen, love… You’re no more his widow than you ever were his wife.”

  The words were like a slap in the face. Shocked and offended, she scrambled from the bed and snatched up her shawl. “I should never have confided in you,” she exclaimed.

  “I’m only pointing out that – at least in private – you’re not bound by the same obligations as a true widow.”

  “I am a true widow!”

  Devon looked sardonic. “You barely knew Theo.”

  “I loved him,” she insisted.

  “Oh? What did you love most about him?”

  Angrily Kathleen parted her lips to reply… but not a single word emerged. She pressed the flat of her hand to her stomach as a sickening realization occurred to her. Now that her guilt over Theo’s death had been at least partially assuaged, she couldn’t identify any particular feeling for him except the distant pity she would have ha
d for a complete stranger who had met such a fate.

  Despite that, she had taken her place as Theo’s widow, living in his house, befriending his sisters, enjoying all the benefits of being Lady Trenear. Theo had known that she was a sham. He had known that she didn’t love him, even when she herself hadn’t known it. That was why his last words had been an accusation.

  Furious and ashamed, Kathleen turned and went to the door. She flung it open without pausing to consider the need for discretion, and ran across the threshold. The breath was nearly knocked from her as she collided with a sturdy form.

  “What the —” she heard West say, while he reached out to steady her. “What is it? Can I help?”