He smiled lazily, still scanning the printed lines. “I especially don’t read gossip about myself. It annoys the hell out of me when it’s false, and even more so when it’s true.”
“Well, perhaps you can explain to me which category this bit of news falls into…truth or untruth.”
Hearing the rising tension in her voice, Jack glanced at her face and then dropped the paper onto a nearby table. “You tell me what it says,” he suggested, becoming serious as he realized that she was genuinely upset. His hands came to her shoulders, stroking her upper arms. “Relax,” he urged gently. “Whatever it is, I have no doubt that it’s of little consequence.”
She remained stiff against him. “It’s a nasty little piece that speculates on the unions of older women and younger men. There is a mocking paragraph on how wise a man like you must be to reap the benefits of an older woman’s ‘grateful enthusiasm.’ It’s a completely dreadful article, and it makes me sound like a lust-crazed old crone who has managed to ensnare a young man for stud service. Now, tell me at once if there is any truth in it!”
One would have wished for immediate denial.
Instead, Jack’s expression became guarded, and Amanda realized with a sinking heart that he was not going to refute the newspaper’s claim. “There is no solid proof of my age,” he said carefully. “I was born a bastard, and my mother never registered the event in any parish records. Any speculation that I am younger than you is merely that—a bit of guesswork that no one can confirm.”
Amanda jerked back and stared at him incredulously. “You told me the first time we met that you were thirty-one years of age. Was that true or not?”
Jack sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. Amanda could practically see the series of rapid calculations in his mind as he devised a strategy to handle the situation. She did not want to be handled, damn him! She merely wanted to know if he had lied to her about something as fundamental as his age. Finally he seemed to acknowledge that there was no way to avoid admitting the truth.
“It was not true,” he said gruffly. “But if you recall, you were damned sensitive about your thirtieth birthday at the time. And I knew that if you became aware that I might be a year or two younger than you, I’d probably be set out on my ear at once.”
“A year or two?” Amanda repeated, her voice taut with suspicion. “That’s all?”
The wide line of his mouth tightened impatiently. “Five years, dammit.”
She felt suddenly as if she could not breathe properly, her lungs deflating inside her chest. “You’re only five-and-twenty?” she managed in an airless whisper.
“It makes no difference.” His sudden reasonable manner sparked fury amid her distress.
“It makes every difference in the world,” she cried. “For one thing, you lied to me!”
“I didn’t want you to think of me as a younger man.”
“You are a younger man!” She glared at him vehemently. “Five years…oh, God, I can scarcely believe I’ve married someone who is practically a…a boy!”
The word seemed to catch him off guard, and his entire face hardened. “Stop it,” he said quietly. He caught her as she backed away from him, his big hands closing around her.
“I’m no damned boy, Amanda. I take care of my responsibilities, and as you know, I have a hell of a lot of them. I’m not a coward, a gambler, or a cheat. I’m loyal to the people I care about. I know of no other requirements for being a man.”
“Perhaps honesty?” she suggested acidly.
“I shouldn’t have lied to you,” he admitted. “I swear I will never do so again. Please forgive me.”
“This cannot be resolved that easily.” She rubbed her brimming eyes with miserable wrath. “I don’t want to be married to a younger man.”
“Well, you’ve got one,” he said flatly. “And he’s not going anywhere.”
“I could seek an annulment!”
Jack’s sudden chuckle infuriated her. “If you do that, peaches, I’ll be forced to publish exactly how many times and ways I’ve already had you. No magistrate in England would grant you an annulment after that.”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
He smiled and pulled her resisting body against his. “No,” he murmured. “Because you are not going to leave me. You’re going to forgive me, and we’ll put this behind us for good.”
Amanda strove to retain the remnants of her anger. “I don’t want to forgive you,” she said, her voice muffled against his shoulder. She stopped struggling, however, and let herself rest against his chest, sniffling back her remaining tears.
He held her for a long time, cuddling her in the shelter of his body, murmuring apologies and endearments into the curve of her neck and the soft indentation beneath her ear. She began to relax against him, unable to maintain the mortified resentment of discovering that she was the older partner in their marriage. Indeed, there was nothing she could do about it now. They were locked together legally and every other way.
His hands moved to the backs of her hips, pressing her lower body against the tremendous, arching shape of his erection.
“If you think I will go to bed with you after this,” she said against his shirtfront, “you are absolutely mad.”
Jack rubbed her slowly against the bulge of his sex. “Yes. I’m mad over you. I adore you. I lust after you constantly. I love your sharp tongue and your big gray eyes and your voluptuous body. Now come to bed and let me demonstrate what a younger man can do for you.”
Startled to hear the word “love” escape his lips, Amanda inhaled sharply at the feel of him through the veil of her white, ruffled dressing gown. He tugged the shoulders of the garment until her upper half was exposed. “Later,” she said, but the glide of his fingertips over her back left trails of fire in their wake, and the downy hairs on her body prickled in sudden excitement.
“It has to be now,” he insisted, a flick of amusement in his voice. He nudged his burgeoning loins against her. “After all, you can’t allow me to go around like this all day.”
“From what I’ve learned so far, this is your natural condition,” came her pert reply. She felt his mouth touch her neck and wander to the pulse at the base of her throat.
“And I depend exclusively on you to relieve it,” he murmured, tugging at the ribbon tie that closed the front of her gown. The covering of fine white muslin dropped from her body, and he clasped her naked limbs against his clothed ones.
“You’ll be late for work,” she said.
His bold hand traveled over the full shapes of her buttocks, squeezing and kneading the pliant flesh. “I am helping you with your work,” he informed her. “I am giving you new material to use for your next novel.”
A gurgle of reluctant amusement rose in her throat. “I would never put such a vulgar scene in my book.”
“The Sins of Mrs. D,” he mused, lifting her in his arms and carrying her to the unmade bed. “We’ll give Gemma Bradshaw some competition.” He released her to the bed, gazing appreciatively at her abundant pink-and-white flesh, and the cascade of her auburn curls.
“Jack,” she said faintly, torn between excitement and mortification. She reached for a sheet to cover her naked body.
He joined her among the heap of snowy bed linens, still fully clothed. Snatching the sheet from her grasp, he pulled it far away from her and spread her limbs wide beneath his.
“You can’t solve anything by taking me to bed,” she told him, gasping a little as the silken fabric of his waistcoat brushed over her breasts.
“No. But I can make both of us feel a hell of a lot better.”
Her hands came up to his arms, gliding over the muscular shapes covered in thin shirtsleeves. “Is there anything else that you have lied to me about?”
His blue eyes stared directly into hers. “Nothing,” he said without hesitation. “Just that minor, inconsequential difference in age.”
“Five years,” she moaned in renewed discomfort. “Good God, every birthday wil
l be an agonizing reminder. I can’t bear it.”
Rather than look remorseful, the scoundrel actually had the temerity to smile. “Let me ease your pain, darling. Just lie still for a little while.”
Amanda would have liked to prolong her disgruntlement for at least a few more minutes, but his mouth covered hers gently and the clean, salty spice of his skin teased her nostrils. Her body arched upward as a current of pleasure hummed through her. It felt strange to be held bare against his clothed body…she was more exposed, far more vulnerable, than if he had been naked, too. A small sound rose in her throat, and she plucked at the layers of fabric that concealed him from her.
“No,” Jack whispered, moving downward to kiss the firm angle of her collarbone. “Put your hands down.”
“I want to undress you,” she protested, but he caught her wrists and pressed them firmly at her sides.
Amanda closed her eyes, the rhythm of her lungs quickening. His breath touched her nipple like a waft of steam, and she pushed upward with a muted groan when she felt the exquisite flick of his tongue. “Jack,” she panted, reaching for his dark head, but once again he took her hands and brought them to her sides.
“I told you to lie still,” he murmured, his voice caressing. “Be a good girl, Amanda, and you’ll get what you want.”
Perplexed, aroused, she tried to relax beneath him, though her hands clenched in an effort to keep from reaching for him again.
Murmuring his approval, he bent over her breasts, softly kissing the space between them, the tender undercurves, the resilient plumpness at the sides. Her nipples tightened into aching peaks, and she felt a mist of sweat break out on her skin as she waited, waited, until finally he covered one tip with his mouth and tugged. Searing delight coursed from that one point of contact to the rest of her body, and her loins swelled in eager preparation for him.
One large hand came to rest lightly on her belly, just above the triangle of auburn curls. She could not prevent the pleading undulation of her hips, and Jack pressed firmly on her stomach, keeping her flat against the mattress. “I told you not to move,” he said, sounding amused rather than threatening.
“I can’t help it,” Amanda gasped.
He laughed softly. His thumb circled her navel, exciting the responsive skin. “You will help it, if you want me to continue.”
“Yes,” she said, beyond pride or dignity. “I’ll be still. But hurry, Jack.”
Her shameless pleas seemed to delight him. Perversely, he became even slower, if possible, covering every inch of her skin with lazy kisses and nibbles. She felt him touch the curls between her legs, his palm brushing as gently as a breeze, and she wanted his fingers against her, inside her, so badly that she could not prevent a pleading moan.
His lips searched through the curls, found her, and the strong, immediate suction of his mouth caused her breath to catch sharply. Delight shot through her, scalding and relentless, and she felt his fingers stroking into the crease between her thighs. His wet finger traveled lower, too low, softly delving between her buttocks in a way that made her start uneasily. “No,” she whispered. “No, wait…”
But his finger slid inside her, in a place so strange and impermissible that her mind went blank from the shock of it. The gentle glide continued, and she tried to push him away, but somehow her body trembled and yielded, and the pleasure enveloped her in a hot, saturating cloud. She cried out again and again, thrashing, arching, until finally the sensation eased and she breathed in frantic bursts.
While her limbs still twitched in delicious aftermath, she felt Jack unfastening his trousers. He came into her deep and hard, and she wrapped herself around him, moaning, while he plundered and possessed her. Amanda kissed his taut face, his mouth, his shaven cheeks, loving the heat of him inside her, the way he groaned in the manner of a man who had been thoroughly sated.
They lay wrapped together for several minutes, her naked thigh hooked over his trouser-clad one. Amanda felt so exhausted and replete that she doubted she would ever move again. She rested a hand on her husband’s taut belly.
“Now you may go to work,” she finally said.
He laughed low in his throat and kissed her thoroughly before he left the bed.
Although Jack Devlin was not a scholarly man, he possessed a combination of intelligence and instinct that amazed Amanda. The sheer weight of his business concerns would have crushed a lesser man, yet he handled them with cool competence. It seemed that his range of interests knew no bounds, and he shared his many enthusiasms with her, opening her mind to ideas that had never occurred to her before.
To Amanda’s surprise, Jack discussed business matters with her, treating her as if she were an equal partner rather than a mere wife. No man had ever accorded her such a mixture of indulgence and respect. He encouraged her to speak freely, challenging her opinions when he did not agree with them and acknowledging openly when he was wrong. He urged her to be bold and adventuresome, and in this pursuit he took her everywhere with him, to sporting events, taverns, scientific exhibitions, even to business meetings at which her presence was received with frank astonishment by the other men attending. Although Jack must have been aware that such behavior was not condoned by society, he did not seem to care.
Most mornings Amanda reserved time to write in a spacious room that had been redecorated for her use. The soothing sage-green walls were lined with towering mahogany bookcases, while framed engravings occupied the spaces between. Instead of the usual ponderous furnishings that one would find in a library or reading room, the desk and chairs and settee were light and feminine. As Jack added constantly to Amanda’s collection of pen holders, many of them jeweled and engraved, she kept them in a leather-and-ivory case on her desk.
In the evenings Jack often liked to entertain, for there was a never-ending horde who wished to court his favor…politicians, artists, merchantmen, and even aristocrats. It surprised Amanda to realize how much influence her husband possessed. People treated him with wary friendliness, knowing that he could sway the public view on any issue he took an interest in. They were invited everywhere, from balls and yacht-parties to simple picnics, and they were seldom seen out of each other’s company.
It was clear to Amanda that for all her apparent compatibility with Charles Hartley, he would never have penetrated her soul the way Jack did. Jack understood her with a thoroughness that almost frightened her. He was infinitely flexible, unpredictable, sometimes treating her like the fully mature woman she was, other times holding her on his lap as if she were a little girl, coaxing and teasing until she dissolved into helpless laughter. One evening he ordered a bath to be prepared before the fireplace in their room, and a supper tray sent up. He dismissed the maids and bathed her himself, his strong hands caressing her beneath the hot, soapy water. Afterward he combed her long hair and fed her bites from the supper plate while she relaxed against his chest and stared dreamily at the blaze in the hearth.
Jack’s strong appetites certainly extended to the bedroom, where the intimacy they shared was so raw and relentless that Amanda sometimes feared she would not be able to face him in the bright light of day. Jack let her hide nothing from him, either physically or emotionally, and she was never quite comfortable with being so ruthlessly exposed. He took, and he gave, and he demanded, until it seemed that she no longer belonged to herself. He taught her things that no lady should know. He was the kind of husband she had never known she needed: a man who shook her from her complacency and inhibitions, a man who made her cavort and play until she had lost all bitterness over the responsibility-laden years of her youth.
With the publication of the last installment of An Unfinished Lady, Amanda’s position as England’s premier female novelist was unchallenged. Jack laid out plans to publish the entire novel in a three-volume format, with one edition bound in expensive calfskin leather and another, more affordable version bound in a “false-silk” cloth.
Demand for the forthcoming three-decker edition of Unfi
nished Lady was so high that Jack estimated it would set sales records. He celebrated by purchasing a diamond-and-opal necklace with matching earrings for Amanda, a set so ridiculously opulent that she laughingly protested when she saw it. The necklace had originally been made for Catherine the Great, empress of Russia, three-quarters of a century earlier. The design was called “moon and stars,” with fiery opal moons set in gold filigree, and large clusters of diamond stars set between them.
“I can’t possibly wear such a thing,” Amanda told him as she sat naked in bed, clutching the sheets around herself.
Jack approached her with the necklace in hand, the morning sun causing the jewels to sparkle with unearthly brilliance. “Oh, yes, you can.” He sat behind her on the mattress and pushed the curling mass of her auburn hair to one shoulder. As he fastened the heavy piece around her throat, she gasped at the coldness of the stones against her sleep-warmed skin. He dropped a kiss onto one bare shoulder and gave her a hand mirror. “Do you like it?” he asked softly. “We’ll exchange it for some other design, if you prefer.”
“The necklace is magnificent,” she said dryly. “But it is not appropriate for a woman like me.”
“Why not?”
“Because I know quite well what my limitations are. You may as well tie a peacock feather to a pigeon’s tail!” Reluctantly she reached behind her neck and tried to unclasp the piece. “You are very generous, but this is not—”
“Limitations,” Jack repeated with a snort. He took hold of her hands and gently pushed her down to the mattress. His hot blue gaze roved over her naked body, lingering on the pale, pure expanse of her chest as the opals scattered miniature rainbows on her skin. His expression was infused with lust and adoration as he lowered his head to kiss her throat, his tongue venturing into the little spaces between the diamonds and round opals. “Why can’t you see yourself as I see you?”
“Stop it,” she said, squirming as she felt the protrusion of his aroused sex through the fabric of his robe. “Jack, don’t be silly.”