Chapter Twenty-Five

S imms rapped lightly on the drawing room door.

Jess looked up from the book she’d been struggling to read. She’d been unable to concentrate on anything at all since leaving Ealing, and her art had been neglected. But she’d used the excuse of putting her art aside in favor of spending what little time she had with Amanda, who was planning to leave the day after tomorrow…and who had no idea that Jess had given her heart and body to Lucien. She and Auntie had managed to hide that well, and anything that Amanda might have noticed about her that seemed out of place was blamed on their argument.

Matilda was busily knotting her knitting into something that resembled a scarf and paused to glance up at the butler. “Yes, Simms?”

“You have a caller, ma’am.”

Jess glanced at Amanda, whose expression suddenly grew worried. Her visit was secret; she didn’t want anyone to see her for fear they would notice the bulge beneath her loose-fitting dress.

“Who is it?” Auntie asked.

“His Grace the Duke of Crewe.”

Jess’s heart stopped. Lucien was here? Impossible.

Amanda and Matilda swung their gazes to Jess, and even from several feet away, Jess could hear them both catch their breaths as they waited to see what she would do.

But what could she do? “Please…send him away,” she managed to force out around the knot in her throat. “I’m not accepting visitors.”

“Then it’s a good thing I’m not here to see you,” Lucien countered as he swept into the room without waiting to be announced.

The three women scrambled to their feet in surprise.

A tall, blond man Jess had never seen before followed immediately on Lucien’s heels. He halted when his eyes landed on Amanda, who let out a soft gasp.

“We’re here to see Miss Amanda,” Lucien explained. “Well, he’s here to see Amanda.” He jerked a shoulder in a gesture that was half shrug, half point at the blond man. “I’m just the coachman.”

Matilda’s mouth fell open, Amanda and the stranger stared with locked gazes at each other, and Jess didn’t know where to look…except that she was terribly glad to see Lucien, despite the ball of anguish weighing on her chest.

“Your Grace,” Auntie demanded, too flummoxed to remember to curtsey, “what on earth…?”

“Apologies, Miss Davidson, for my bad manners.” He gave her a shallow bow, then one to Amanda and Jess, who saw the determined glint in his eyes. “But I had important business that couldn’t wait.” He gestured toward the man, who hadn’t moved his gaze away from Amanda for a single moment. “May I introduce you to Mr. Henry Graham, formerly of the East India Company?’

Amanda darted her eyes to Lucien. “ Formerly? ” Then she took a hesitant step toward Mr. Graham before she realized what she was doing and halted in her tracks. “I don’t understand…”

“Which is why I think you ladies and Mr. Graham should have a long conversation,” Lucien explained.

“Yes,” Amanda whispered, her face paling as she sank onto the settee.

“Yes, yes! Of course.” Aunt Matilda hurried forward to take Mr. Graham’s arm to lead him toward the settee. “Simms, please bring a tea tray.”

The butler nodded and hurried away, but not without a parting look of curiosity over his shoulder at the scene unfolding in the drawing room.

With the gravity of the situation electrifying her limbs, Jess moved to join Amanda on the settee. The man who had fathered her sister’s unborn baby had arrived, materializing out of thin air, with Lucien of all people, and she needed to be here when—

Lucien took her arm and stopped her. “Not you,” he said in a low voice. “This is between Amanda and Graham, and your aunt can work out anything else that needs to be settled.”

“But—” Jess threw a look back at the three of them as they settled in before the small fire. Then she watched breathlessly as Mr. Graham sank to the floor on one knee. “But that’s—”

“Come with me. I’ll explain everything.” He tugged her gently from the room, then snatched up a bonnet and pelisse from the hooks beside the door before leading her outside. “They don’t need us interfering. Let’s take a drive around the park, shall we? You can congratulate your sister on her impending wedding when we return.”

He didn’t release her arm as he hustled her down the front steps to the waiting town coach. The tiger flung open the door as they approached.

She glanced, baffled, at the bonnet and pelisse in Lucien’s hand and blinked. “Those aren’t mine.”

“They are now.” He helped her inside before she could stop him and climbed in after her. “Go!” he ordered the driver as soon as the door closed.

Jess sat back against the velvet squabs in the rocking coach and leveled a hard look on him. She drawled, “I have the suspicious feeling that I was just kidnapped.”

He quirked her a half-grin from the bench across from hers. “Then we should drive straight on to Gretna Green.”

That was not amusing. She folded her arms and narrowed her eyes. “Lucien—”

“That man is the father of Amanda’s baby. I managed to track him down through contacts at East India House. Right now, he’s proposing, Amanda is apologizing, and your aunt is gleefully planning the wedding, although someone will have to break the news to her that the ceremony will need to be held by special license, in secret, and so soon that your cook most likely won’t even have time to bake a cake for the wedding breakfast.”

Jess’s head swam. “But he’s supposed to be in India.” Then a happy thought hit her. “ Formerly of the East India Company?” Followed rapidly by a second one that instantly deflated all her hope. “Then…he has no way of supporting them.”

“I’m providing a dowry of sorts that will help them on their way—a position for Graham, a place to live, and a bank account to help them establish their household.”

Her mouth fell open. She knew he wasn’t the scapegrace society believed him to be, but this … “Why would you do that?”

“Haven’t you heard? I’m turning good.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and met her gaze. “And as for you, Jessamyn…” All teasing suddenly vanished from his handsome face. “Good Lord, how I’ve missed you.”

He sat back and held open his arms in invitation for her to come to him.

She didn’t dare move, her fingers gripping the seat edge on both sides of her and her heart leaping into her throat. To go to him, to let herself fall into his arms, to let him kiss and caress her… Her pulse spiked at the temptation, the racing of her heart pounding like a beckoning drumbeat.

But a cooler head prevailed. “We need to go back,” she protested, calling on all her resolve to stay right where she was. “Immediately. I can’t be alone with you in your coach.”

“Why not?”

“It’s scandalous.”

“We’re engaged, remember? All the gossip rags say so. It’s not improper for an engaged miss to go riding with her fiancé.”

“You are not my fiancé.” Oh, how much it hurt to utter those words!

“But I could be.” Casually, he reached up to close the curtains on both sides of the compartment. “I very much want to be.” He gently removed her clenched hands from their death grip on the seat and tugged her across the compartment to him. “I very much want you .”

He brought her onto his lap. With affection shimmering in the green depths of his eyes, he caressed her cheek.

“Do you still love me, Jessamyn?” he murmured, his velvet voice seeping into her and swirling an ache in its wake. “Because I still love you.”

When he brushed his thumb along her jaw, her resistance snapped. The temptation of him was simply too great, and she brought her mouth to his in a kiss so full of longing and need that a pained whimper tore from her.

Not caring that they were rolling through the streets of Mayfair, Jess cupped his face between her hands and held his head still while she kissed him with all the yearning bubbling inside her. In response, his hand slid a long caress up her spine to her neck, where his skilled fingers began to knead at her nape. It was a simple massage, not at all intimate, yet the way his fingers worked at the knot of tension there felt shamefully erotic. And oh, so very good.

What they were doing was wanton and reckless, and she simply didn’t care. She thrilled with excitement and desire, with the sheer joy of being back in his arms. Only Lucien could draw out the feminine need from her like this, a need that made her head swim and her body ache to be possessed. His deep groan rumbled onto her lips and reverberated into her chest, making her breasts grow instantly heavy. Still kissing him, she slipped her arms around his neck to stay close to him in the swaying carriage and ran her fingers through his hair, knocking his hat off to the floor and not caring that she did.

But what a fabulous idea—undressing him. So her hands made quick work of unknotting his cravat, until he stopped her.

She blinked down at him, bewildered. “But I thought…don’t you?”

With a chuckle at her confusing question, he rose up to kiss her. “Oh, I do. I very much, do.”

To prove it, he slipped his tongue between her lips in a heated promise of thrusts and swirling retreats, mimicking the way his body had possessed hers that night in Ealing when they’d surrendered completely to each other. When she finally moved her mouth away to catch her breath and collapsed weakly upon his chest, he buried his face in her hair, his large hands drawing slow, poignant circles across her back and down to her bottom.

“No need to undress me, though. You , on the other hand…” His hands slid further down to her legs and tugged up her skirt. “But only what’s necessary.” He shifted her on his lap until he could push her skirt all the way up around her waist, then turned her until she straddled him. His hands swept along her inner thighs and sent a ripple of goosebumps over her heated bare flesh exposed so wantonly to his eyes, and another groan of desire fell from his lips. “ Absolutely necessary.”

He touched the throbbing ache between her legs.

Jess closed her eyes and let her head roll back as his fingers toyed with her wet warmth. Spread wide with her knees resting on the bench on both sides of his hips, she reveled in the possessive way he stroked and teased at her. Against the noise of the rolling carriage rocking beneath them, she begged him shamelessly with wordless whimpers to satisfy the mounting ache he stirred at his fingertips and give her the release she craved. Appeasing her, he slid the side of his hand back and forth into her slick crevice, making her impossibly wetter, hotter, and throbbing with feminine arousal. His thumb delved down beneath the engorged hood and pressed the little knot of nerves throbbing there in time to her heartbeat.

With a shudder, she collapsed forward against his chest and buried her face in his neck. Sweet heavens, how much she loved him! There was no hiding that truth. She loved the way he made her feel alive and so very alluring, loved the soft sounds of desire she drew from him, loved the way he stroked her in caresses that were impossibly both tender and eager at the same time. Most of all, she loved that he let her take the lead in their intimacies, content simply to be brought along with her.

She stiffened when his fingers plunged inside her tight warmth, then relaxed around him with a shudder. She ran her hands through his silky hair and tangled it between her fingers, bringing his head down to her bosom so he could bury his mouth against her breasts. She inwardly groaned in frustration at still being clad in layers of clothing, at not having his hot mouth suckling at her bare nipple. But what he was doing between her thighs…heavenly!

“More,” she panted out as his fingers thrust in wonderful little pulses inside her.

“Gladly,” he murmured.

Yet instead of bringing her to release with his fingers, he withdrew from her in an agonizingly smooth retreat that left her bereft.

A soft cry of frustration rose from her throat, and she arched her back to bring her pelvis against him, only for the cry to transform into a moan at the feel of his large erection pushing up beneath his trousers. Shamelessly, driven by need, she bore down on him and slid her groove back and forth along the hard ridge beneath his trousers. The friction created by the kerseymere rubbing against her most sensitive place shuddered in hot waves though her. Yet it still wasn’t enough.

“Oh, please, Lucien.” She sank her fingertips into the hard muscle of his shoulders. “Give me more of you…please!”

He wiggled his hand down between them to unbutton his fall. “Take all of me you want, my love.”

With trembling fingers, she reached down to stroke his hard length. She caressed him in alternating squeezes and strokes, pumping his flesh and priming him until he was steely hard and evidence of his desire gathered in a tiny drop at his tip. She rubbed it against her palm and smeared it over him until he was wet and glistening in the muted afternoon sunlight filtering in through the closed curtains.

She brought her mouth down to his in a blistering kiss, then slid her mouth to his ear and whispered hotly, “I want you inside me— now .”

He reached between them to position the tip of his erection against her folds. With a lift of his hips, he slid himself just barely into her, then groaned as her muscles tightened around his head in an attempt to take him deeper. Holding himself there, with only his tip penetrating her, he put his hands around her hips and stared into her eyes.

Jess held her breath. If she could freeze just one moment of her life forever, it would be now. At this moment, he belonged to her, she to him, the future couldn’t hurt them, and in only a few moments he would be inside her, filling her, loving her. At that moment, her world was perfect.

Then time moved on, and Lucien pulled her forward, sliding her smoothly down his hard length and filling her so swiftly in one glorious plunge that she gasped. She clung to him, unmoving, as bright lights flashed before her eyes. Slow, steady breaths…she forced herself to focus on the rise and fall of her lungs as her trembling body adjusted to having him inside her again. Where he belonged.

“Jess?” Concern thickened his voice.

With a nod that she was fine—oh, more than fine!—she slipped lower down his steely shaft until her thighs pressed tightly against his hips, until he penetrated impossibly deep inside her and filled her to bursting. She smiled against his mouth as the muscles inside her relaxed and radiated a faint sensation of release through her, only to clamp around him once more when she felt him flex inside her. Then she melted into a sigh, only to feel him stir again. Clench and release, clench and release…neither of them moved, yet a wonderful, wanton waltz danced inside her and brought a sob to her lips.

Then, she began to move. At first, she gave just small, testing slides of her hips that pulsed softly up and down his thick shaft. Then she began to take longer and faster glides. With his hands still resting on her hips, Lucien didn’t complain about her lack of experience or that she was experimenting upon him as she learned how to move in this delicious, new position. He was patient and oh-so devilishly handsome when he quirked a grin up at her, and she paused in her thrusts only long enough to swoop her mouth down to bite his bottom lip, earning herself a wolfish growl.

Her confidence built along with a mounting need that demanded release, and her movements grew harder, faster, and far more intense. With a guttural sound of frustration rising from her throat, she grabbed the top of the seat with both hands for leverage and rose up on her knees to thrust her pelvis as hard as possible against his, only to slide back teasingly until his length nearly pulled completely out of her before plunging forward again. Each time she sank over him, she took her own breath away.

“That’s…good,” Lucien murmured, his hands tightening around her hips in encouragement. “That’s so…damn good…”

With a wicked smile, not slowing her movements, she leaned down to kiss him, only to smother a soft moan of pleasure against his mouth as he lifted his hips and swirled his hard length inside her in wanton reward. A pulse of throbbing electricity surged through her, and she bore down upon him, now riding him shamelessly as hard and fast as she could. She was galloping toward bliss, and she pursued it eagerly.

This wasn’t at all like when they’d spent the night in his room in Ealing, when they’d both felt healed from being in each other’s arms. That night had been patient, affectionate, loving. But what they were doing now wasn’t making love; this was fierce and passionate. Raw. Animalistic. She welcomed it with every pounding beat of her racing heart and every pulsating clench of her body around his.

Her thighs tightened like a vise against his hips, and her body clasped hard around him, to draw him even deeper, to bury him inside her and never let him go.

“Take your pleasure, my love,” he cajoled as his hands on her hips encouraged her to keep pumping herself over him by pulling her forward and back, to keep riding him toward the edge of release that was rushing toward her. “Take all you want of me, now and always. I’m yours.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed herself against him, as if she could somehow mold their two bodies together until they were one, existing beneath the same skin, breathing the same breath, and throbbing with the same heartbeat. With her body tightening, all her muscles tensing, she rubbed herself against his lower abdomen where their two bodies joined, grinding the aching point at her core against his hard muscles—

“Lucien!” she cried out breathlessly as raw joy surged through her.

Bliss swept over her like a tidal wave. With a violent shudder, she tossed back her head and arched herself against him. She was aware of his deep groan as his hands grasped her bucking hips and pulled her down over him as he pounded up hard beneath her. Then she felt him shudder as his hard length jerked inside her, followed by a rush of hot liquid that stole her breath away. This new sensation was exquisite, and the tiny muscles inside her clenched and released around his thick length in pulsating waves of residual pleasure as her body greedily milked his, to prolong his release and shamelessly claim every drop.

He collapsed, exhausted, against the squabs behind him, but he continued to hold her perched on his lap, his spent length still buried inside her as if he, too, didn’t want to part. Gradually, his breath slowed, but she could feel his heartbeat continuing to pound in his chest against hers, a fierce and steady testament to the ferocity with which he loved her.

The same love she felt for him.

“I keep trying to turn good,” he said on a breathless sigh, “but you keep bringing out the devil in me.”

“I can’t help it.” She felt the heat rise in her cheeks at how wantonly she’d just behaved—in a carriage in the middle of Mayfair, no less! And how thoroughly she’d enjoyed it, too. An embarrassed little smile pulled at her lips as she confessed, “I want you too much.”

“Me too.” He stroked his thumb across her bottom lip and stared hungrily at her mouth, as if he were contemplating ravishing her all over again. God knew she’d let him. Even now, her body tightened its hold around him as faint rumblings of need rose again inside her. “I didn’t intend to come inside you like that. But you felt too good, and I lost control.”

She lowered her gaze to his cravat, which she’d ruined in her rush to undress what parts of him she could. She knew what he meant. They hadn’t been careful, and he’d released his seed inside her—No, she’d driven him to it, wanting that moment as much as he had. And yet…

She whispered, suddenly sad, “That can’t happen again.”

He tipped up her chin and placed a kiss of promise to her lips. “I’ll be much more careful in the future.”

Her shoulders slumped, and she shook her head in anguish. “We can’t make love again.” Her voice was little more than a breath on her trembling lips. Her fingers shook as they fussed with his cravat. “It’s simply too much risk.”

“We can make arrangements to eliminate that,” he tempted as he smoothed back a curl of her hair that had come loose from her chignon and fallen against her cheek. “Then we can make love in carriages all over England without having to worry about the consequences.” He grinned mischievously. “I’ve always wanted to visit the Scottish borderlands.”

His teasing didn’t lighten the grief laying heavily on her chest. “I won’t be your mistress, Lucien.” The wretched whisper tore from her. “I deserve better.”

“I meant becoming my duchess, although I’m not certain it’s better,” he mused in a deep voice that rumbled into her. “In many ways, it’s probably much worse. You’ll have to live under the same roof with me and pretend in public that you like me.” He paused, suddenly serious. “But if we’re married, no one will care if you get with child.”

Her shoulders fell, and she corrected in a strained whisper, “I didn’t mean because of the risk of getting with child.”

She meant losing her heart forever.

Drawing upon every ounce of resolve she possessed, she slowly untangled herself from his embrace and slipped off his lap. She smoothed down her skirt and straightened her bodice as she sat on the bench across from him. Yet she couldn’t help but stare even as her eyes began to sting. The way he sat there, slumped against the squabs with his cravat and hair mussed, his trousers unbuttoned and his shirt yanked up, with his manhood laying so shamelessly in view against his inner thigh… He looked utterly delicious, and it was all she could do to keep herself from climbing right back on top of him, to once again make time stand still.

“Would you please…” She waved a hand in his direction. “Straighten yourself?”

“Didn’t seem to bother you before.” Yet he sat up and tucked both himself and his shirttail back into his trousers. “Besides, it’s your fault, you know. I was perfectly presentable when I stepped into this carriage.” To make his point, he left his cravat a tangled mess. “And yet, you’ve turned me honorable.”

A short laugh left her. “Charitable,” she corrected, “not honorable, and being charitable is a long way from being honorable.”

“Then take me the rest of the way there.”

A sudden sadness came over her like a storm on a summer’s day. “You know I can’t.”

“You mean Phillip and the dukedom.”

“Yes.” No matter how much she loved him, no matter how fiercely she could show him that love, the same wall still stood between them—he was still living a lie, still keeping secrets about himself, and as his wife, he expected her to do the same. All the good deeds in all the world couldn’t compensate for that. She couldn’t live that way, but she also would never be selfish enough to ask him to endanger the dukedom and those who depended upon it. Their situation was as impossible as ever.

He leveled a hard look on her. “You know what will happen if the truth comes out about what my father did, if Prinny and Parliament decide I wrongly usurped the title. They will attaint the dukedom.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do. Thanks to my black reputation and my past as a mercenary, I have few allies at St James’s Palace, even fewer in the lords, and none on the Committee for Privileges. Prinny would simply salivate at the chance to take back a dukedom the size of Crewe.”

“The Crown can only rescind a title in cases of treason,” she reminded him.

His eyes softened on her. “Darling, what do you think I did all those years I was fighting on the Continent? Nationality didn’t matter when secrets were stolen and battles waged, or when men needed to be silenced at all costs. Prinny could easily raise treason charges against me. Even if I’m never found guilty, it would be enough to attaint the dukedom.” He pulled in a ragged breath. “I’ve made provisions for Phillip. I’ve created a trust for him so he’ll be cared for, whatever happens, but there won’t be enough funds leftover to properly care for us and the family we would have. And then what would we do? I have no skills to call upon except for fighting, and I’m too old to become a mercenary again,”

We. Despite herself—and the warning he was attempting to deliver—she couldn’t help a rising thrill at hearing that. She wanted to be his partner and face the future at his side.

She insisted, “We would find a way.”

“No, we wouldn’t. Not the life you and our children deserve.”

“But they won’t have that life anyway, don’t you see?” She placed her hand pleadingly on his knee. “No one deserves to be lied to.”

“They won’t be lied to. The dukedom will become theirs by right. Phillip is never going to marry, and any sons we have will be legitimate heirs in the line of inheritance. I’m the one who doesn’t belong there, not them. No one needs to know the truth.”

“ I would know.” A sharp heat stung her eyes as she rasped out, “So would you.”

He reached for her hand and folded it in both of his. “It won’t matter if—”

“No.” She pulled her hand away. “I won’t let my marriage be haunted by the past.” She had to pause after every few words to take a deep breath and pull herself back from the brink of crying. “Nor can I raise children within a web of lies.”

She sat back and pressed her fist against her chest, as if she could physically force down the sobs that suddenly threatened to overcome her.

“Lies always find a way into the light, and distrust always rears its ugly head.” She pulled in a hard, deep breath against the rising guilt and feelings of betrayal she’d experienced in her childhood. Which she still felt, even now after all these years. “Children aren’t stupid. They know when they’re being lied to, and they can sense when their world isn’t honest. No child should be raised in a home in which they can’t trust their father, who keeps secrets and lies.”

His expression softened, and he guessed quietly, “The way yours did?”

She swallowed hard. “Yes.”

“I’m not like your father, Jessamyn.”

“I know,” she whispered. “He was a selfish bastard who cared for no one and nothing but himself, while you’re driven by how much you care for others. Completely different motivations…” She forced a trembling shrug. “But the same betrayal in the end.”

Her vision blurred with hot tears. Thank God she couldn’t see the expression on his face. She couldn’t have borne it.

“I will never let my children experience that. Never .” She choked on her words, able to utter nothing louder than a breath, when she added, “Even if that means never marrying you.”