Chapter 5

Chapter Five

The Earl of Edgerly spends most of his time in London while his wife remains in Northumberland. The reclusive countess is known as somewhat of an oddity.

~Private report to Agent Noble from an intelligence officer assigned to the northeast region

J asper woke the next morning fully clothed and lying on the floor of his bedchamber.

When he recalled starting his slumber on the settee .

He rolled to his back, his tattered groan echoing off the walls and through his aching skull. By bloody God, he was getting too old for this. When Hildy had recommended he drown himself in a bottle, he’d held her to her word. At least he could guarantee that Dash Campbell and Xander Macauley—who’d taken pity and joined in his misery—felt like shite this morning, too. They’d run through every ounce of drink in the indigo parlor Hildy had relegated them to, then sent a footman to bring them whatever else he could find.

Jasper flicked the pearl stuck to his cheek off with a factual sense of dismay.

That damned kiss was a problem.

He’d always believed his fascination with Cece derived partly from her being his first. Which he realized was fundamentally a sentimental feminine perspective, but he’d been so taken by her—and not many women had been interested, at the time, in tupping a stuttering asthmatic.

It hadn’t hurt that she’d been his every dream realized.

What lad wouldn’t fall for such beauty, wit, and courage, with an unflinching sense of bravado tossed into the mix? He’d been captivated from the moment he met his charmingly peculiar neighbor with the lone dimple dinging her cheek. That his father detested her incomparable uniqueness had been a bonus.

Shoving aside the memory of her, Jasper pushed himself to a sit, sending dots swirling across his vision.

Mind over matter would be required to get through this day. And forget that kiss.

He struggled to his feet and began to go through his morning routine without the aid of Nelson, who’d stayed in London because long carriage rides tended to aggravate his hip, a relic of his time in the military. Jasper was cross, queasy, and likely reeked of whisky. He rushed the razor over his skin and cursed as a bubble of blood formed on his cheek.

He was unsteady when he needed to be resolute. The severe discussion he had with himself before running into Cece again required a bloke who was up to listening.

He dabbed blood from his skin and gave the man questioning his life choices an honest talk.

They had no future, he and Cece. She was a countess on the husband hunt, and he was a pensioned spy looking for peace. If he ever married, he’d not stoop to marrying her . The troublesome chit who’d had such influence over him that he’d been grievously unhappy for, oh , going on two years after leaving Northumberland. Pits of hell unhappy. Blind nights and unseeing mornings unhappy.

Though training to be an operative for the Crown while not caring if one lived or died made for a contented union.

I’m bored , Jasper decided while staring at his grim reflection in the vanity’s mirror.

He was exasperated his life had stalled while everyone else’s was chugging right along. His friends were finding wives, having children, and adopting kittens faster than he could button his waistcoat. He squinted and trailed the razor’s dull edge over a mark on his neck. Turning, he crossed the room and grabbed his spectacles from the bureau top. When they were settled on his face, he returned to the mirror.

A shot of arousal hit him at high speed, his sudden breathlessness doing nothing to relieve his nausea.

The discoloration to his skin was miniscule, one that would be confused with a shaving mishap. He stroked his thumb across the spot in wonder. It had been years, eons , since someone had bitten him. An act he’d never enjoyed before. Why did this crude evidence of the previous night’s encounter light him up now ?

Damn that girl, he thought and tossed his razor into the basin with a clatter.

Constance Willoughby stepping back into his life was a test. His famed discipline had vaporized like mist in sturdy sunlight the second she waltzed into the gaming room in a dazzling gown revealing every amazing change time had wrought.

He’d best remember the countess was also a con artist.

Jasper hadn’t missed the cunning gleam in her eyes. It was the same spark she’d had twenty years ago during the chase and look how that had turned out. Love didn’t safeguard a man. In fact, it left one’s heart in a snowstorm without an overcoat. There was no place for her in the life he’d created after the other went up in flames.

Letting this verdict settle, Jasper gripped the vanity’s cool porcelain and released a ragged breath. The ache in his cock and his temples was too much to fight with a leaden head and an empty stomach .

Take me, Crispin.

That’s what she’d whispered before she came.

Or as she came. Hell, he’d been half there himself, a piece he’d like to forget as well as hearing that name on her lips. Crispin . The only woman ever to call him such in the throes, of course, and it had almost pushed him over the edge.

Imagine that fucking horror of a thought?

He gave the basin a savage swipe with a rag. Did the scheming little counterfeiter think he didn’t want to take her? Turn her over his knee, bend her over his desk, climb atop her and sink inside, never to leave? Taste her until she screamed, this time knowing what he was about. Once a man had delved deeply into the only woman made specifically for him, the rest were bland versions of reality.

Sadly, he and Cece had been very good together.

With time spent reviewing the three introductory lovemaking sessions of his youth, he’d come to realize lust alone wasn’t the answer. A simple, deadly truth. There were chemical mysteries at play, and desire was an unspeakably enigmatic thing. Christ , brilliant men had lost kingdoms over less than he and Cece had experienced.

Jasper returned his watery gaze to the mirror and recalled the brutality of those first months without her. Waking and wishing he’d not. Walking the streets without notice of the icy chill or the foul stink. He’d gone into another life with barely a recollection of breathing. The numbness had fairly consumed him, but it had helped him survive, like a coma would a grievous injury.

Dredging up techniques from his training, Jasper separated himself from his feelings as another trickle of blood coursed down his jaw like a prophecy. Emotion ruined plans and threw stratagems into the muck. Being able to leave them behind had made him the most successful emissary in the business. A career he’d escaped to then remake himself as a morally questionable entrepreneur. He refused to let Cece come in like a raging squall and distract him from this path, even if that lost boy he’d once been begged him to. He wasn’t going back to being a baron’s son, back to a world he hadn’t been suited to.

Not even for her would he make this sacrifice .

If she was— hopelessly —still the chit he longed to stumble upon in a roomful of people, he would feign disinterest until he got the hell back to Bloomsbury. If she was the chit he dreamed of, he would ignore his dreams until he could find someone else to infiltrate them. The process of hardening his heart could be better accomplished in the privacy of his abode. Seeing Cece, touching her, was a challenge he wasn’t sure he was up to conquering. Every one of his thirty-six years was weighing him down imagining the fight.

Heaped atop this angst were the memories , the bloody, fucking memories. And the raging scent of orange blossoms that was forever wedged in his nose.

The passionate girl was indeed the one who haunted his dreams, and she’d never been good at letting him go, nor he her.

Jasper let his head fall back with a groan. He could survive this wretched party for three more days, couldn’t he?

Unusual for her, Cece was late to rise.

Sunshine was a violent burst around the closed drapes, a beckon to crawl from beneath the coverlet and find the man who had invaded her dreams and impeded her slumber. She’d heard Mara preparing Josiah for breakfast and pretended to be asleep, making her the worst mother in the history of mothers.

Amazingly, there was a valid reason for her fatigue.

Cece laughed softly and rolled to her back, her hands rising to cover her flushed cheeks. If she tried, she could feel a tremor of sensation between her legs and in the heaviness of her breasts. Crude and positively decadent , Crispin’s touch. Magic remained despite their years apart. Maybe she didn’t like him, maybe he didn’t like her. Maybe they’d grown in different directions, paths never to be joined.

Nevertheless, they still desired each other. The quakes racing through his broad body hadn’t lied, even if his words had. She giggled breathlessly into her hands, her body overheating. His hard cock hadn’t lied. She guessed he’d have tupped her right there if he’d been able, and she wouldn’t have put up a fight. The contradictions of the man appealed to her worst qualities—curiosity and rebelliousness—making the situation dangerous and compelling. She was, without question, a defiant woman.

Where Crispin had been entirely reachable, this Jasper Noble fellow was a bit like frost in the spring. A cool exterior, but manifestations that melted upon contact.

She planned to dissolve his resistance in the three remaining days she’d been given.

Scattered plan in place, her step was light as she dressed, her loupe tucked neatly in her skirt pocket for security. Cece lived an independent life with no lady’s maid to trouble her. She’d had enough of devious domestics in her youth who’d told awful tales to her parents. In any case, she couldn’t afford a governess for Josiah and a full staff, so she dressed simply for multiple reasons aside from a practical sense of style.

The gallery corridor was deserted when she arrived, Hildy’s guests likely sleeping off their activities of the previous night. She’d forgotten what late hours society kept. She was a morning person, up at dawn to ride across the fields surrounding her home, then back for a hearty breakfast with her son, the loveliest part of her day.

Her slippered footfalls were a dull echo mixing with the sound of pots being emptied in the kitchen, her trip to the breakfast parlor taking her past the infamous gaming room where she’d first encountered Crispin. The voices were low, not much above a whisper, but she recognized both with a sense of awe and dread.

Josiah stood before the billiards table, a cue longer than his body angled in his small hands. Thanks to Mara, his dirty blond hair was neat, his trousers and cotton shirt pressed, unstained, and next to perfect. He wouldn’t stay that way for long, she’d bet. His governess sat in an armchair by the fire, knitting what she claimed was a scarf for her sister.

Although Cece’s attention was fixed on the scoundrel guiding the boy’s shot.

Quite simply, the sight stopped her heart.

“Remember, a balanced stance helps control your movement. One foot slightly in front, like so.” Crispin nudged Josiah’s boot into more proper alignment and gently curled his hand around the boy’s shoulder. His long fingers, she was unsurprised to note, were as gorgeous as the rest of him. And what glories that hand had shared with her last night. “Look across the baize and try to see the shot in your mind. There, that’s it.”

“Like this?” Josiah popped up on his toes to reach over the table.

Crispin leaned over her son and positioned the boy’s arms. “Like this. Slow, steady.”

He twisted slightly when Josiah made the attempt, as if he took it himself, presenting his lean hip. She stood riveted, counting the seconds, understanding Crispin would change into someone else when he saw her. His hair looked damp from his morning toilette, the streaks of gray at his temple stark against the jet strands. He wore a simple but smart set of dark clothing, the informal knot at his neck crafted by his hand, not a valet’s.

Something, though, was different. Cece stilled, her breath leaking away. He was wearing spectacles .

When he turned to her in an elegant pivot, lamplight across his lenses obscured his eyes, the tightening of his lips obscured his thoughts, and she realized this was Jasper Noble.

Diplomat, brute, capitalist, charmer.

No sign of the innocent young man anywhere in the parlor.

“Mum, I’m learning to play. And how colored balls aren’t the way Mr. Noble played as a boy because there were only two whites and a reddish ball, mostly made of ivory. But now we have ones like a rainbow! I knocked the orange ball in the side pocket all by myself,” Josiah said, beaming, waving the cue around like a sword. “Now I have a new nickname, too. Jos! Like my real name, only shorter.”

Crispin danced to the side to avoid being struck by the weapon. “Hold up there, lad. According to Miss Mara, you’re due for breakfast. Growing boys need food and lots of it.”

“Oh, bother,” Josiah murmured, his shoulders dropping, the tip of his cue dusting the carpet. “Now I’ll be left with my mum to teach me. She promised, and she’s kind to offer, but she’s still a dumb girl.”

With a gusty snort, Crispin crouched before her son, balancing his hand on the floor. Cece couldn’t tear her gaze away from the two of them, heads bowed, grins so arrogantly male it made her ache. Men must be born with the inclination. “If your mum agrees, Jos, we’ll have another lesson tomorrow morning. We can’t leave the teachings of such manly things to dumb girls.”

Josiah brightened. “Right-o!”

Laughing, they shook on it. A picture she’d hold dear for life .

After delaying as long as he could, Crispin glanced up, his eyes behind his lenses the pale blue of summer skies and shallow seas. His face was clean-shaven this morn but imperfectly, evidenced by the rosy mark on his jaw. As she stared, his mouth tilted down at the corners, highlighting an inner battle between the covert aristocrat and the out-and-out cad.

How many women had he seduced using his unique blend of those remarkably conflicting sides?

Her envy was unwelcome and brought a chill into the room despite the hearth warming her back. It was difficult to deny her possessiveness when she’d once considered the man hers.

Tearing his gaze away, Crispin refocused his attention on Josiah. “Replace your cue in the rack and place the balls in the leather pocket at the end, lad. That’s the final step in any game of billiards.”

While her son busied himself with his duties, Crispin ambled over as if he’d not a care in the world. His casual stance didn’t fool her. Though it had been years, she recognized the tells signaling he was steeling himself against her. Hands shoved in his trouser pockets, shoulders back until he stood that much taller. The muscle ticking in his jaw so very Crispin Sinclair. She recalled them well. They’d not gotten along all the time back in the day.

He must have felt himself frowning because his lips tipped in a sudden, dishonest smile. Back to the charmer, much to her chagrin. “What’s that calculating look, Countess? Or should I be afraid to ask?”

She couldn’t help herself—and her inclination was faster than his reflexes. His skin was smooth beneath her fingertip, his jaw rock-solid. “You have a nick.”

He closed his hand around her wrist and squeezed none too gently. “ What I have is a love bite that stung like the very devil when I tried shaving over it this morning.”

A memory of sucking his skin between her teeth as her release swept her crawled into her mind. My , she’d been lost in the man.

Cece recovered quickly, slipping from his hold to massage her wrist as if he’d been too rough. Which he hadn’t. She simply needed something to do with her hands to keep them off him . “Apologies, Mr. Noble. I let the situation get the better of me. I admit, I’ve never had a kiss go that far, that fast. It’s been years, oh … let me think how many.” She tilted her head, tapping her fingers and thumb together as if she were counting. “Why, I was a young woman of seventeen the last time I experienced anything like it. An obliging neighbor in Northumberland. A baron’s son. He was my dream.”

She leaned in as her words hit him like blows to whisper next to his ear, “Not counting the kind of pleasure I give myself, which occurs often .”

Finally releasing his held breath, he gave his spectacles a vicious nudge. “Playing the game like you were born in the stews, minx. Damned if I’m not impressed.”

She lowered her regard to the protrusion denting his trouser close. “An effective strategy, it seems.”

Glancing back to ensure they’d retained a modicum of privacy, Crispin knuckled her chin until she was forced to meet his gaze, her eyes traveling along a delicious path up the sleek cords of his neck and over his lovely lips. When the journey ended, she saw herself reflected, dazed and hungry, in his spectacle’s lenses.

“You want the truth, Ce?” he murmured in a wicked tone so low she could barely hear it. “I’m tempted by the way your eyes strike me like a slap when I walk into a room. More than tempted, hell, I’m midway to enthralled. It’s obvious to me what you’re thinking, which has me in return imagining all sorts of obscene things. The scent you wear, your grandmother’s fragrance, wasn’t it, seems to have embedded itself in my brain, and it’s firing off memories of what it was like to touch you. To have you beneath me, pulsing, crying out. Last night, God , the wonder of you. I could have taken you there, and we both know it.” He laughed, a tendril of mint-tinged air skimming over her cheek. “You see, I want to fuck you as badly as the baron’s son did the dazzling girl next door. You said I was your dream. Well, you were a lustful young man’s dream as well.”

His words lit a fire in her, and Cece tried to respond. Only, reason tangled with yearning until what she’d have uttered would have come out a muddle.

Refusing her time to gather her wits, he flattened his thumb over her mouth as another wave of heat rushed through her. “What’s pinking your cheeks and making you wet between your thighs is lust, Countess. As basic a need as hunger. Simple dealings. I’ve deprived myself of much in this life to get where I’m standing, starting with you . Do you know what it was like the day you married Edgerly and the months following? The battle I fought to create a new existence while tossing aside the one I desired with my entire being? To have nothing and no one, not even the home I used to call my own? Sexual thirst one can ignore or take . Horrid to admit, but it becomes a bit tedious, actually. I humbly acknowledge what I feel for you in that way because it isn’t something I can control. If I could, I’d smash it to bits. L’acte est fait .”

“But—”

He shushed her with a gentle stroke across her bottom lip.

Flushed with temper and arousal, Cece wondered if his friends in the Leighton Cluster knew Jasper Noble spoke French—and not in some lowbrow accent, either.

He was fooling everyone.

But he wasn’t going to fool her .

Crispin shook his head, the vehement slash of his mouth overriding any argument. This was a man who’d been trained to reach a deal by forcing a knife to someone’s jugular. “I want you in that way , I said. Do you understand? I loved the girl. I knew her. It made sense, we made sense… until we didn’t. I recognize, even if it tore me apart, that I handled it badly, that you were given no choice in marrying Edgerly. I was a boy without power, a good name, or money. Now, here we are. I’ll never be a baron’s son again, and you can’t escape being a countess. I can’t go forward, and you can’t go ba ck. In my former profession, I’d call our situation an irrevocable impasse.”

Witnessing her dogged expression, Crispin repeated the rebuke, his calloused fingertip caressing her lips twice more. Leaving her breathless. Speechless. Needy.

“Jasper Noble—” she started before he cut her off.

“Is a bloke I came to like so much I decided to keep him. And he’s decided to avoid trouble in his retirement, which you and your delightful hobby are in spades. I have the life I want, minx, one I worked bloody hard to attain. I’m sorry to say there’s no place for yearnings and dreams a man realizes are rubbish the moment they step into the real world.”

Cece moved to rip his hand from her mouth, and this time, he let her. Combined with her fury, however, was a breaking heart. Crispin didn’t want her, not in a way that mattered, and his decision sounded final. “You’re bringing up a difference in station ? Truly, how frightened are you?”

He blinked twice, his lips parting. He knuckled his spectacles high, a tell she was beginning to see meant he was bewildered. “Of you? Fucking terrified.”

“You arrogant knobstick,” Cece hissed, glancing around him to find Josiah rolling balls across the billiard table, unaware she was about to take down his new hero. “I only wished to get to know you again. I hate to inform you, the Duchess Society, and every soul in attendance at this social tragedy, but I don’t want another husband. The first one was abysmal and a lesson learned, thank you. I have funds to live a modest life, one I paid for, and I don’t mean in blunt. The place for you was in my bed. Since you’re telling me you’re beneath consideration, rookery rat that you are, I’ll look elsewhere. I’m sure there are any number of suitable men who’d be willing to satisfy my needs whilst keeping their ridiculous titles as I don’t require one. I shall live as many widows have before me, a benefit of those freedoms we’ve discussed.”

Crispin stepped in front of her when she tried to circle past. Six feet plus of towering strength and steely reserve. “No,” he said in a rough voice absent of a persuasive purr.

A command. A decree. As if he had the right .

As if any man had the right.

Infuriated, Cece crossed to Josiah and, grasping his hand, exited the parlor with Mara trailing silently in their wake. She saw the fiery glare the governess gave Crispin, nearly singing him where he stood.

Perhaps he’d finally realized his youthful obsession was finished taking orders.