Louise Allen Read online

  ‘No. It would be wrong to wed you.’

  ‘I am of age, I can decide who to marry. Love grows. I would take a risk on yours.’

  ‘Your father would cut you off,’ Giles said. ‘Disown you.’

  ‘Do you want my money, then?’ she jibed at him, wanting to hurt him as he was so unwillingly hurting her.

  ‘No—but I do not want to deprive you of it.’

  ‘As your wife I would hardly starve,’ she pointed out. ‘And I am not at all extravagant. We would not be invited to all the most exclusive events, so that would be a saving in clothes—’

  ‘Do not jest,’ Giles said, shaking his head at her. But she could see the reluctant curve of his mouth. Misery and pessimism did not come easily to him. ‘A scandal would affect my business and then how could I support you?’

  ‘You are imagining the worst.’ Isobel shook his arm in exasperation. ‘What if marriage to the daughter of an earl was good for your business? I would keep the other women at bay, I would entertain, I know all the people who might commission you. You say you do not think you will ever fall in love—well then, why not take the nearest thing to it?’

  ‘Stop it, Isobel.’ Giles put both hands on her shoulders and looked down into her face. ‘You are talking yourself into an emotion you do not feel. I will go back to London. In a week or two you will go home and take part in the Season and you will find an eligible, titled husband and live the life you were born to live.’

  ‘No. I will not,’ she stated with conviction. ‘I was waiting for a man to fall in love with. One who loved me. One I could confess my secret to and who might accept me despite it. I do love you, I know that now—this could not hurt so badly if it was simply desire. But I cannot believe that after Lucas, and now you, that I will find a third man to love, and one who feels the same. So I am resolved to give up on the Season. I will become a spinster, a country mouse who will dwindle quietly away as a good daughter and sister. One day, no doubt I will be an aunt and much in demand.’

  ‘You are talking rubbish.’ Giles’s voice was rough. ‘What secret?’

  ‘That I am not a virgin.’ There was the other thing as well, the thing that tore at her heart, but she could not tell him that, however much she loved and trusted him. ‘Lucas and I were lovers in the weeks before he died, you see. Men seem to place such importance on that, in a bride. I could hope that someone who loved me would understand, but not a man who was making a marriage for other reasons. I could lie, I suppose, and hope he would not notice. I could pretend to be ignorant and innocent—but that is hardly the way to begin a marriage, by deceiving one’s husband.’

  She shrugged, his hands still heavy on her shoulders. The truth, but not the whole truth. But Giles, of all men, would not understand why she had done what she had done, why she had made the dangerous, desperate choice that she had.

  He stood there silent and she wondered if she had shocked him. Was he like all the rest, the respectable ones who would condemn her for the sin of loving? ‘I have disappointed you,’ she stated, unable to wait for the condemnation on his tongue, the rejection on his face.

  ‘Then you misjudge me,’ Giles said. ‘You were in love with him. He was a fortunate man. I can feel jealousy, I will admit that. But how can I condemn you? But you are right about one thing—it would have to be a deliberate act of deception to pretend to your husband that you are completely unawakened. Even holding you in my arms, kissing you, I felt the sensuality, the awareness of your own body’s needs and of mine.’

  ‘Giles?’

  ‘Mmm?’ He drew her in close and held her warm and safe against his bruised body and she felt his breathing as she slid her arms under his robe and around his waist. Suddenly it was all very simple.

  ‘Make love to me.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Giles’s heartbeat kicked and his hands tightened. ‘Isobel, think of the risk. You making love with the man you were going to marry is one thing. But I’ll not chance getting you with child.’

  ‘There are ways of making love that hold no risk,’ she said. It was easier to be bold with her burning face hidden against his shirt front. ‘We…Lucas and I, made love like that the first time.’

  ‘You trust my self-control?’ His voice rumbled in his chest against her ear and she felt the pressure as he rested his uninjured cheek against her hair. He had not rejected her out of hand. Her pulse quickened, the heaviness of desire settled low inside her. If he touched her intimately he would feel the evidence of her desire for him. And she wanted him to touch her, shamelessly.

  ‘Yes.’ The second time with Lucas, neither of them had had any self-control. But it had not mattered, they told themselves, lying tangled in a happy daze afterwards. They would be married within weeks. ‘Am I asking too much of you?’

  ‘There is nothing you could ask me that is too much, except to forget you. This is only going to make things worse for us, you know that?’

  ‘I know. But it will not be worse until tomorrow.’

  Giles gave a muffled snort of laughter. ‘Feminine logic,’ then gasped as she pulled a handful of shirt from his breeches and put her hands on his bare skin. ‘Isobel, if we are found out—’

  ‘Lock the door. Lock the door and make love to me, Giles.’ Isobel stepped back out of his arms. ‘Please. Make me yours, as much as we can.’

  As he went to the door she blew out all but two of the candles.

  ‘Isobel?’ Giles turned back, the key in his hand.

  ‘I am shy—a little,’ she confessed and knew her blush added veracity to the half-truth. She did not want to risk what he might read from her body.

  ‘There is no need,’ he said, smiling at her as he let his robe drop then pulled his shirt over his head. ‘It is all right,’ he added as she ran forwards with a cry of distress at the sight of his ribs, marked black and blue with bruises. ‘Bruised, not broken. Let me see you, Isobel.’

  Her robe slithered to the floor. Under it all she wore was her nightgown, warm and sensible flannel for February. ‘Ah. My little nun,’ Giles teased and pulled it over her head before she could protest. ‘Oh, no, not a nun. My Venus.’

  ‘I am not that,’ Isobel protested, her hands instinctively shielding her body, even as she warmed with shocked pleasure at Giles’s expression as he looked at her in the shifting shadowlight.

  ‘Slim and rounded and pale.’ His hands traced down over her shoulders, down her arms, over her hips. His touch was warm now. ‘When I first saw you I thought you were too thin and your nose was red from the cold. You seemed quite plain to me. I must have been blind.’

  ‘And I thought you were a cold statue, too perfect to be real.’ She let her hands stray to his chest and played with the dusting of dark hair. ‘So cold.’ His breath hitched as her fingernail scratched lightly at one nipple.

  ‘No. Not cold,’ Giles said thickly. ‘Hot for you.’ He kissed her, held her tight against him so her breasts were crushed against the flat planes of his chest and her thighs felt the heat of his through the black silk of his evening breeches. The thin fabric did nothing to disguise the hard thrust of his erection against her belly. This was no shy and tentative young lover, this was a mature, experienced man. Isobel moaned into his mouth, pressed herself against him.

  She wanted him, needed him inside her so she could possess and be possessed, know that she was his. But they must not, she knew it. Whatever she did, she must not put Giles into a position where he felt honour-bound to marry her, come what may. Somehow—if only he would come to realise that he loved her—they would find a way, but not like that.

  Giles slowed the kiss, gaining control after the first shock of their lips meeting. He edged her against the bed until she tumbled backwards and he followed her, rolling her into the centre of the mattress and coming to lie beside her.

  ‘Your breeches.’ Isobel felt for the fastenings, but his hand stilled hers, pressing it down over the straining weight of his erection.

  ‘Better leave
them on.’ He was having trouble controlling his breathing, she realised.

  ‘No.’ She shook her head and burrowed her fingers beneath his. ‘I know what to do. Let me touch you, Giles.’

  ‘You are— Oh, God.’ He sank back as her determined hands pulled down his breeches and tossed them away.

  ‘Oh.’ He was…magnificent. The fight had battered and bruised his upper body, but below the waist the skin was unblemished, winter-pale. The dark hair that arrowed down from his waist added emphasis to a masculinity that did not need any enhancement. Isobel realised he was holding his breath and did what instinct was clamouring at her to do. She bent and kissed him there, her hands curved over the slim hips.

  Satin over teak beneath her lips, the scent of aroused male musk in her nostrils, lithe muscles in tension beneath her hands, his sharply indrawn breath—every sense was filled with him as she trailed her lips upwards.

  ‘Isobel.’ He sounded in pain, but she knew enough to realise this was not agony. ‘Not yet. Let me…’

  She did not fight him as he pulled her up to lie beside him. She would let him lead because it was on him that the burden of control fell. But she would help, she would be rational and—

  Giles took her right nipple between his lips and tugged and all rational thought vanished. Isobel pulled his head against her breast with a sob and the knowledge that he could do what he wished with her, she had absolutely no will to stop him.

  His mouth, wicked and knowing, tormented each tight, aching nipple in turn, until she was writhing against his flank, gasping his name and some incoherent plea she did not even understand herself. Her body, the flesh she had thought immune to desire for so long, ached and clamoured and, as his fingers stroked down, laced into the damp curls, slipped between the swollen lips, she simply opened to him, quivering with need as he slipped into the tight heat that clenched around his fingers.

  ‘I love you,’ she managed and was silenced by his mouth, his tongue. Against her hip she could feel his straining body and reached for him, finding the rhythm as her fingers curled around him and his thumb worked wicked, knowing magic at her core. ‘I love you,’ she gasped, the words lost in his kiss as her body arched, pressing up into the heel of his hand, shuddering as the bliss that was almost pain took her.

  ‘Isobel,’ she heard through the firestorm and Giles thrust into her circling fingers, shuddered and was still.

  How long they held each other afterwards, she did not know. She must have drowsed, for she woke to find him gently washing away the evidence of his passion, then he pulled the covers over them, snuggled her against his side and she felt the long body relax as he slid into sleep.

  There was only one candle alight now, Isobel noticed hazily. And Giles had said nothing. Her body had not betrayed her as she feared. He had not realised she had borne a child and her secret was still safe from the man she loved.

  *

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘I can’t tell with you wrapped round me like this,’ Giles said, disentangling the clinging limbs that chained him so deliciously to the bed. He managed to raise himself on one elbow and lift the carriage clock that stood on the night table. It was almost completely dark and he had to bring it to his face to squint at the hands in the faint glow from the fire. ‘Half past four. I must go soon.’

  ‘Already?’

  Isobel sounded peevish, he noted, amused, as she burrowed back against his side. The chuckle turned to a gasp as she slid one hand down and stroked. ‘Ten minutes. Fifteen,’ he amended as the caress tightened into a demanding grip.

  ‘Only fifteen?’ Isobel wriggled up to kiss his stubbled jawline. ‘You are all bristles.’

  ‘You would be amazed at what I can do in fifteen minutes with these bristles,’ Giles said and burrowed down the bed, ignoring the twinges from his ribs.

  ‘Oh, do mind your nose and the stitches,’ Isobel said. Then, ‘Oh!’ in quite another tone as he pressed her thighs apart and began to make love to her with mouth and tongue and, very gently, his teeth.

  She was not shocked, he realised as he luxuriated in the scent and taste of warm, sleepy, aroused woman. Her fiancé must have made love to her like this as well. He half expected a twinge of jealousy, but surprised himself by feeling none, only pity for the other man. He would have married her if only he had lived, poor devil.

  Then everything but the present moment and the pleasure of pleasuring Isobel was driven from his mind as she took his head in her hands and moaned, opening for him with complete trust, total abandon.

  *

  ‘Ten minutes,’ Giles said with what even he recognised as smug masculine satisfaction when they lay panting in each other’s arms, half inclined to laughter, completely relaxed.

  ‘Fast is almost as good as slow,’ Isobel murmured, kissing her way up from the tender skin just below his armpit to his collarbone. ‘Giles, do you regret that your mother kept you instead of finding you a home where you would grow up with a family you thought were your own?’

  ‘What on earth makes you ask that?’ He sat up and struck a light for the candle beside them. Isobel rolled on to her back, her hair a tangled, wanton mass of shifting silk on the pillows. Giles bent and kissed her between her breasts.

  ‘I don’t know. Do you regret it? It cannot have been easy, being known as the Scarlet Widow’s illegitimate son. It sounds as though you were bullied at school and there are some in society who shun you.’

  ‘I would probably have been bullied anyway,’ he said with a shrug. ‘I was far too pretty—a real little blond cherub until I started to grow and my hair darkened. And if Geraldine had tried to give me away my grandfather would have had something to say about it, so I would have ended up with him and been an illegitimate gardener’s boy instead of having the education and the opportunities I have had. No, I do not regret it. I know who I am, where I came from. I am myself and there is no pretence, no lies.’

  ‘You call your mother by her first name?’

  ‘The last thing she wants is an almost-thirty-year-old man calling her “Mama.” It makes people do the arithmetic and I doubt she’ll admit to forty, let alone fifty.’

  ‘I suppose her position protected her at the time, made it easier for her to keep you.’

  ‘No.’ At first he had assumed that, but with maturity had come understanding. ‘It was anything but easy. I picked up some of the story from her, some from my grandfather, but she kept me when it would have been an obvious thing for her to have pretended she was with child by her late husband. All she had to do was to apparently suffer a miscarriage late on, then retire from sight to recover, give birth and hand me to Grandfather.

  ‘But she brazened it out and never pretended I was anything but my true father’s son. I remember that whenever she is at her most outrageous. She is a very difficult woman.’

  ‘She must have loved him very much,’ Isobel ventured. She was pale and seemed distressed. Perhaps this was bringing back memories of her fiancé’s death.

  ‘She had been in a loveless, if indulgent, marriage to a man old enough to be her father for four years. She must have needed youth, heat, strength.’ Had it been love? Or, as he suspected, had Geraldine simply needed to feel the emotion as she did with every lover since? It was such an easy excuse, love. But how did you learn to feel it genuinely?

  ‘My father was young, handsome, off to fight in his scarlet uniform. Perhaps he was a little scared under all the bravado. By all accounts it was not some wanton seduction by an experienced older woman or some village stud taking advantage of a vulnerable widow.’

  ‘How brave she was.’

  ‘It cut her off from her own family, from her in-laws and, for a long time, from society. But she fought her way back because I think she realised that my future depended upon it.’ Giles got out of bed and began to dress. ‘Not that she was ever the conventional maternal figure. And the shocking behaviour is probably a search for the love and affection she experienced for such a short time.
Not that she would ever talk about it.’ What had she felt when she heard of his father’s death in battle? He had never wondered about that before. Now with someone to care about himself, the thought of his mother’s pain was uncomfortably real.

  Isobel still looked pensive. ‘Giles, what are we going to do?’

  ‘I am going to my own bed and you are going back to sleep. And check the pillow for hairs when you wake.’ He rummaged under the bed for a missing slipper, determinedly practical.

  ‘Our hair is close enough in colour for Dorothy not to notice. You have had a lot of practice at this sort of thing,’ she said slowly. ‘Only I presume it is suspicious husbands you need to deceive, not protective ladies’ maids.’

  ‘Complacent, neglectful husbands—a few in my time,’ he confessed. ‘I do not make a habit of it. Are you jealous?’

  ‘Of course.’ Isobel sat up straight and shook her hair back. It seemed her brooding mood had changed. The sight of her naked body filled him with the desire to rip his clothes off and get back into bed again.

  ‘Yes, of course I am jealous even though I have no right to be,’ she said with a half smile. ‘My brain is all over the place—I am not thinking straight. When I asked what we are going to do, I did not mean now. I meant afterwards. In the morning.’

  ‘And for the rest of our lives?’ Giles pulled on his robe and made himself meet her eyes, too shadowed to read. ‘I do not know, Isobel. I honestly do not know anything, except that this has no future.’

  He turned the key in the lock and eased the door ajar. ‘The servants are beginning to stir, I can hear them moving about on the landing above.’ He looked back at her, upright, shivering a little in the morning air, her lips red and swollen from his kisses, her eyes dark. What he wanted was to drag her from the bed, bundle her in to her clothes and flee with her, take her home to Norfolk and be damned to the consequences. Was that love? If it was, it was selfish, for nothing would more surely destroy her.