“You must have had a good laugh,” he ground out.
“No.” She shook her head fiercely, her knuckles whitening where she clutched the table, water running over its surface and dripping to the carpet. “It wasn’t like that—”
“Is that how you amuse yourself?” he bit out. “Disguise yourself and bed whomever you like? How many others have there been?”
Fire lit her eyes, flecks of gold in her green gaze. She swiped a hand through the air. “There have been no others.”
“Oh, I’m certain,” he scoffed, dragging a hand through his hair. “Only I inspired you to toss yours skirts to the wind.”
Angry color mottled her face, chasing off her pallor. “Stop,” she spit out, her lips trembling. “It wasn’t like that!”
“Why did you come here?” he demanded, stalking an angry path toward her. “To gloat?”
His eyes raked her, seeing past the ugly black sack she wore to body beneath, the warm flesh that had sheathed him, hugged and milked him, erasing the memory of every other woman that came before.
The memory betrayed him, inflaming him. Unable to stop himself, he hauled her against him, indifferent to her struggles.
He had never thought to see her again. And here she was. Aurora. Jane. Anger and desire surged inside him, a drugging poison smoldering through his veins.
“All this time I thought you were so different, so changed.” He burrowed his fingers through her hair. The pins dropped free, skimming the tops of his hands on their way to the floor.
“Please,” she moaned as her hair flooded past her shoulders in a rich mantle.
“So cold, so proper, all ice in your veins,” he snarled against her quivering lips, fingers fisting in the silken tendrils of her hair. “You should have told me you only wanted this.”
Crushing his lips to hers, he smothered her cry and plundered her mouth in a brutal kiss. His hands spanned her waist and lifted her onto the wet table in a hard move. Using a knee, he forced her legs apart, settling himself between her thighs.
An erection pushed at his breeches, aching and hungry for her sweetness, for the snug heat of her. Grasping her hand, he forced her to touch him there, groaning at the tremble of her slight fingers against his length. Heaven and hell in one touch. He guided her fingers over him until she moved on her own.
He ravaged her mouth, punishing her.
She submitted, complied, caressed him in feverish strokes. Not a sound escaped her as she took his kiss, suffered the savage invasion of his lips and teeth and tongue on her soft mouth.
Not fighting, but not responding. Not blossoming to life in his arms as she had done at Vauxhall. Or at the musicale…before she had slapped his face.
Disgusted, he cursed and broke contact. Chest heaving with serrated breaths, he fought his need for her and demanded, “Why have you come?”
Her fingers traced her lips, wet and swollen from his kiss.
“Why?” he thundered.
She stared, her eyes hunted, wounded. Large and bright in her pale face. Beautiful. Hell’s teeth, even now she got beneath his skin.
Bile thick in his throat, he stepped back and swung around, the erotic picture she made with her skirts bunched between her legs atop the table too much to bear.
With the desk between them, he snarled, “Say something, damn you.”
“I—I had no choice.”
He heard something in her voice then, in her barely audible words that had him looking at her with fresh dread sealing his heart.
The agonized look in her eyes told him her next words would forever change his life.
“I’m with child.”
Chapter 17
Jane shoved her skirts down and slid from the table, regretting the decision as soon as her knees gave out. She grasped the edge of the table, barely catching herself from falling to the carpet and shattering into pieces alongside the vase.
Seth made no move. Merely stared at her. Through her. His scar so very stark, lightning-white on his swarthy face. Her stomach heaved, pitched, and for a moment she feared she would be sick all over the fine Persian rug. She clutched a hand over her belly as if she could quell the violent reaction.
His brown gaze darkened, the amber light in the centers vanishing as he followed the movement of her hand. His granite-carved face cracked and emotion bled through. Fury. Astonishment. Shaking his head, his lips peeled back from his teeth in a bitter laugh. “Oh, this is rich.”
His laughter carried an edge. Like a finely honed razor, she felt its slice keenly, digging and twisting into her heart. Dropping her hand, she squared her shoulders. “I’ve come because you have a right to know—”
He laughed harder, the sound slicing through her. “And you’re so concerned with what’s right, are you?”
Heat swarmed her face.
“You’ve come only to inform me of this. You want nothing.”
She dropped her gaze, studying the swirls in the carpet with rapt attention. “I don’t know,” she replied, squeezing her eyes in one long blink, mortified at the feebleness of her response.
“You sought me out at Vauxhall,” he proclaimed, his eyes narrowing. “Why? Was this your scheme?” His slid his gaze to her stomach again. “Is the child even mine?”
Her hands curled into fists, the nails digging into her tender palms. “I suppose I deserve the question.” She wet her dry lips and wondered if she would ever endure something so shaming as this again. “Yes, it’s yours. Whether you believe me or not.”
He studied her a long moment, his hot gaze roving over her face in searing thoroughness, as if he stripped away flesh and bones to see all she hid within.
“And you’re expecting a proposal no doubt?” he demanded, his voice frightening in all its calm. Standing before him, suffering the hot condemnation of his stare, she wished she had not come. Some shame, she decided, was in fact too much to bear.
Spinning about, she headed for the door. “I shouldn’t have come. I don’t know what I thought to accomplish—”
His hands clamped on her shoulders, whirling her around. “Don’t you?” His fingers flexed, burning through the fabric of her dress. “You knew precisely what it was you wanted from me when you walked in here.”
She struggled in his arms, furious at his words because she could not deny them. “Release me.”
“What’s wrong, Jane? Is this any way to treat your husband-to-be?”
She froze, staring at him with wide, aching eyes, certain she had misunderstood.
“Isn’t this what you wanted? Can you not find the nerve to admit it?” He jerked her against him. “Ironic, isn’t it? Once upon a time I wasn’t good enough to marry a Spencer.”
Molded so tightly together, she was unsure where either one of them began or ended. He cupped the side of her face, and the warmth of that large hand, the rasp of his calluses on her skin sparked a response deep within her. She had to stop herself from leaning into his palm like a purring cat.
“Why?” His strained voice sounded almost suffering to her ears—something her conscience could not bear. She had never set out to hurt him. Had only thought to have something for herself at long last. “Just tell me that.”
She struggled to swallow past the lump in her throat. “I—I wanted us to be together. Because of what I once felt for you.” There. She had said it. Perhaps not the full truth, but close enough.
“If you felt something for me, you have a strange way of showing it.” His grip on her face tightened. “Likely all you saw was a plump pigeon, ripe for the plucking. A convenient escape from Billings and the sort of half-life he would have you lead. You’d do anything to be free. Even shackle yourself to me.” He set her from him forcefully.
She staggered away, touching her face, still feeling the burning imprint of his hand. His rebuff stung. It had cost her much to say those words, to admit that she had gone to Vauxhall out of the love she once felt for him, mirage that it had been.
A bitter taste filled her mou
th. She hadn’t changed much over the years. At seventeen, she knew nothing of love. A woman grown, she knew even less.
Gathering the scraps of her pride, she turned for the door. “Think what you like.”
She would not suffer another moment convincing him that her foolish heart, and not a cunning scheme, drove her into his arms at Vauxhall.
“Where are you going?”
“Home,” she replied, hastening from the room as if the devil himself were after her. And perhaps he was.
“You march in here, announce you’re carrying my child, and think to leave,” Seth’s harsh tones followed her into the foyer, as did the stomping of his boots.
“I owed you the truth,” she tossed over her shoulder, releasing a shaky, grateful breath when no butler or footman lurked near. This was difficult enough without an audience.
“Look me in the face and tell me you don’t expect me to drop down on bended knee?”
Slowly, Jane faced him, a strange calm settling over her.
She scanned his face, memorizing every stone-carved line, resting briefly on the deep scar slashing his hard mouth. Stark. Bleak. Like blood on new fallen snow.
She envisioned him dropping on one knee to the cold marble floor and asking for her hand in marriage. The vision blurred at the edges, impossible to see distinctly. Even Marcus had not extended the courtesy. Her father had negotiated her marriage in his study, minus her presence. It had been a coldly calculated union from the start. Marriage to Seth, she realized, would be little better. Born of necessity, it would be just as cold. Grow just as empty. She saw that now.
Her calm threatened to snap then, and she knew she had to flee before her composure crumbled and she fell to pieces at his feet. Later, alone, free of him, the fog would lift and her mind would clear. And in the clarity she would see things perfectly—would see a solution with which she could live.
“I expect nothing from you, Seth. Nothing at all.” Expectations were for other people. Fresh young girls with their innocence and souls fully intact. It had been years since she had been such a girl. She should not have come. Should not have attempted to rob him of the chance to find such a girl.
But then it had been years since he had been such a boy.
Before she could convince herself that they perhaps deserved each other after all, she marched out the front door, her entire body trembling in fear that he would stop her…and in agony when he did not.
Seth stared after her, watching the rigid line of her spine as she ascended her carriage, the black swish of skirts at her ankles a taunting flash.
What game did she play? Surely she did not mean to depart as if matters between them were settled.
His hands curled and uncurled at his sides, his right index finger twitching with the impulse to jump down the steps and yank her into his arms. Whether to hug her or shake her, he did not know. But he resisted. The woman affected him too much, threatened his control. The very control he had sworn to never again surrender.
Standing still as stone, legs braced as though aboard ship, he watched the carriage clatter down the street.
“Seth?” Julianne approached from behind.
Instinctively he turned, shielding her from the brisk afternoon air. Taking her elbow he shut the door and guided her back to his study.
“I thought I heard Jane’s voice.”
His gut tightened at the hopeful ring in her voice. Julianne liked Jane. There was no getting around that. “Yes, she was here. She left.”
Her face fell. “Oh. I see.” Julianne sank onto the sofa, her hand sliding along the heavily padded arm as if searching for a handhold, for reassurance. “She did not wish to see me, then.”
“We had matters to discuss.”
Her brow creased. “What could you have to discuss? I did not think you much liked her.”
The memory of Jane’s yielding heat surrounding him, binding him like silken chords, tormented him. As it had for nights.
For weeks, his hunger for two different women had confounded him. He had ached to possess both of them. Discovering they were the same woman made sense in an odd sort of way.
Closing his eyes, he imagined he could smell her—apples and country air. His feelings for Jane ran more complicated than like or dislike.
“Julianne,” he began carefully, knowing the answer to his question before he even asked. “You care for Jane?”
“Of course,” she replied.
Shaking his head, he released a deep sigh and rubbed a hand over his face. “I suppose that will have to be enough,” he muttered.
Jane claimed she carried his child. He could not risk doubting her. Would not risk his child being raised without him. A child of his own. The prospect meant more than he had ever realized. The chance to be a father—the kind he never had—to do something right filled his chest with an odd tightness…stronger than the rage he felt when he considered the feckless female who had duped him.
“How would you feel,” he paused to swallow, knowing the moment the words were out there would be no going back, “if I married Jane?”
“Jane?” Julianne exclaimed, bouncing to the edge of the sofa, a radiant light crawling over her cheeks, reminding him of how she had looked before the accident. Happy, carefree. A girl with the world before her. “You want to marry Jane?”
Want. He let the word roll around his head. Wanting Jane had nothing to do with it. Obligation drove him, that infernal sense of guilt and responsibility that never ceased to gnaw at his insides, that compelled him to set matters to right.
Not a day passed when he did not feel the straining mass of a horse moving beneath him, launching over the fence. Nor would he forget the feel of Julianne’s arms slipping from his waist as she fell to the hard earth.
He could not live with more regrets.
“Have you proposed? Did she accept?” Julianne scooted forward again, looking dangerously close to falling off the sofa.
Staring into his sister’s animated face, the invisible band about his chest loosened, knowing this marriage would at least please her. “Not yet.”
“But you intend to propose?”
He dragged a hand over his jaw. “Yes.”
He would simply have to accept the notion of marrying a woman who affected him in ways that he had vowed his wife never would. So she drove him to distraction with lust. He could resist. He could slake his lust on other women. Women who did not present a threat to the barriers he had erected around his heart.
Chapter 18
By the time Jane returned home, dusk had fallen. She entered through the servants’ stairs and hurried to her room. The silence felt loud, oppressive, pressing in as thickly as fog. The servants were scarce, the house still as a tomb. Preternaturally still. The quiet before the storm, she couldn’t help thinking as she ducked into her room, relieved for the shelter it offered…until her gaze landed on the room’s other occupants. Dahlia, Iris, and Bryony.
Bryony sat at Jane’s desk, rifling through an open drawer, reading old correspondence. She glanced up as Jane entered the room. “Who’s Julianne?” she asked mildly, holding out one of Julianne’s many letters.
Jane strode across the room and snatched it from Bryony’s fingers. “I’ll take that.” Stuffing it back into the drawer, she glared at the girls.
“Where have you been all day? You forgot about our lessons.” Dahlia propped her hands on her skinny hips, her glare hot with accusation.
“Father is furious,” Iris taunted from where she sprawled on the bed, her child’s voice deceptively sweet as she swirled her slippered feet in the air.
Jane studied the girls closely, assessing, gauging to see if they knew why their father was angry with her.
“Is he?” Jane asked with a mildness she did not feel.
“Indeed. You must have done something awful. Mother has been crying. They’ve neglected us all day.”
“What else is new?” Iris chimed, shoving to her feet in a mess of powder-pink ruffles. “They
’re in the drawing room.” Her eyes glinted with mischief. “I know they’ll be pleased to hear you’re home.”
Jane watched her scamper from the room with a heavy heart, knowing she could not stop her, knowing also she could not pack and flee before Iris alerted them to her arrival.
While every instinct urged her to escape, to hide, she forced herself to trail after Iris, shoulders back and hands clasped before her.
She stepped into the drawing room moments after Iris, feeling like a prisoner approaching the hangman’s noose. A chill evening breeze blew in from the open terrace doors, cooling her flushed face.
Her eyes felt hot and itchy, and she blinked rapidly, horrified to realize that tears burned at the backs of her eyes. Tears. And not because she had to face Desmond. No, her burning eyes had more to do with the look on Seth’s face today. She had seen that look before, long ago, when half a dozen footmen escorted him from her home, Madeline watching on with a frosty, self-satisfied smile.
Tell him, Maddie. Tell him you’re going to marry me!
His hoarse cry was still burned into her soul. Jane had said nothing, merely watched in aching silence. She had never wanted to see him hurt. Not then. Not now. As much as she had wanted him for herself, she had wanted him happy—even if that meant marrying Madeline. His expression the moment her sister’s betrayal sank in remained fixed in her mind. It haunted her, and she had seen it again. Today. Only this time she had been the reason.
She couldn’t bear knowing that he believed the worst of her, believed that she had schemed to trap him, that she was as manipulative and socially ambitious as her sister.
“See! She’s here,” Iris cried, motioning to Jane as if she had personally scoured the city to find her.
Desmond’s head swung in her direction. “Leave us, Iris.”
“But Fath—”
“Now!” he thundered.
Jane jumped where she stood, her hands tightening their hold on each other. Iris turned and fled the room with a noisy sob.