Ethan: Lord of Scandals (18 page)

And
that
is
a
large
part
of
why
I
love
you.

“I thought I could. I was wrong.” That he could say so to her was another part.

He held her to him, treasuring the feel of her naked body in his arms, until Alice levered up and speared him with a look.

“I want you in my mouth.”

“I beg your pardon?” She was already shifting up and across him, intent on her goal. She curled up at his side, her cheek resting low on his belly.

“No sass from you, Ethan Grey. We have talked about this, and I have kissed you here.” She took his erect cock in her hand. “Fair is fair. There’s such a lot of room in this bed, too, we shouldn’t let it go to waste.”

Ethan didn’t even have time to be thankful he’d bathed earlier, before Alice’s lips were closing over him.

His hand tangled in her hair. “You don’t have to do this. It isn’t a ledger account, to keep balance or score.”

“Hush,” she admonished, gently cupping his testicles.

They
had
discussed this on one of Alice’s scholarly tours of his body; they’d discussed it as something beyond naughty, and moved on to less fraught topics.

“Naughty” and “don’t stop” collided again in Ethan’s mind as Alice gained confidence in her welcome. She explored him carefully and thoroughly, and tried different touches and approaches, until she found the combination that had Ethan’s hips slowly undulating.

“Sweetheart”—Ethan’s voice was urgent—“I’m close… Too close.”

She sealed her mouth around him and sent him past too close to that realm where reason and restraint were dim memories. His body bowed up, and she plied him with ruthless devotion until he was panting and spent, his only movement the caress of his hand in her hair.

“Everlasting… powers.” Ethan wanted to gather her up, to tug her back over him, like a blanket, like a comforting lemony blessing, but he was simply incapable. Alice remained where she was, nuzzling his parts as she cradled him in her hand.

“Easy,” Ethan cautioned. “I’m… sensitive. No sudden moves, please.”

Alice shifted, sitting up and reaching for the glass of water on the night table. “I was sensitive too. I wanted to cry.”

He smiled at her admission, misdirected though it was. She offered him the glass when she’d had her fill, and he took it, pleased at the small sharing. When she set the glass aside, she tucked herself against him without him having to ask, and his gratitude for that assumption—that they would want to hold each other—nearly did make him cry.

“So this was my warning shot?” Alice asked, her hand once again finding his flaccid penis. She held him gently, though not in a casual way either.

“In what sense?” Ethan liked that she touched him this way, loved it, in fact. There was reassurance in the gesture of insecurities he hadn’t known he still had.

“Tomorrow night, you’ll come to me again, and it will happen all over, but we’ll be… joined.”

“I pray to God that’s so. Having second thoughts?”

Alice gave his cock an admonitory little tug. “Hush with that question, or I’ll make you stand in the corner.”

“But you’ll spank me first, won’t you? I’ve been very naughty.”

“You are the furthest thing from naughty, but I think you’d like this spanking, wouldn’t you?”

“Any touch from you would be to my liking.”

She climbed over him, and while he missed the feel of her fingers around his cock, Ethan enjoyed the press of her breasts against his chest.

“Don’t be shy.” He caressed her bottom, shaped the smooth, warm female wonder of her. “Cuddle up.”

“I’m not…” Alice frowned against his chest. “I’m untidy.”

“You want a handkerchief? Or would you instead let me feel this luscious untidiness that follows when a woman is well pleased in bed?” He patted her bottom again, a more businesslike affection that urged her down against him.

“Naughty, naughty, naughty.” Alice sighed, easing her hips down. Ethan bumped up, letting her feel the softening mass of his penis against her damp sex. A body kiss, a cozy, intimate kiss of parts that made Ethan ridiculously happy.

“With you, I’m the friendly sort,” he said, sweeping her braid down her back. “And I like to feel you near me.”

“Feeling’s mutual,” Alice said, stifling a yawn. “I don’t mean to be rude, but my eyes are heavy.”

“Go to sleep, love.” Ethan kissed her temple. “I’ll be gone by morning, but back tomorrow night.”

“I shouldn’t,” Alice protested as Ethan felt her lashes sweep a butterfly kiss to his chest.

“You should. Sleep in my arms, Alexandra, and dream of me, for I will certainly dream of you.”

While she drifted into the arms of Morpheus, he was a long time holding her and considering what it meant to love a woman for the first time in more than thirty years on earth. He’d wanted to love his wife, tried to talk himself into believing lust and initial infatuation could mature to something more. He’d wanted to fall in love, to find someone to whom he could entrust his heart, his future, his children.

Well, he had the children, and now he had a woman to treasure and cherish and intimately appreciate. It was enough; it was more than he’d hoped to have when he’d consigned himself to marrying Barbara—so much more—and it was enough.

***

Alice awoke the next morning to see her curtains whipping in a damp breeze. The overcast that had rolled in during the night had let her sleep later than usual, so she hurried through her morning toilette, until a slight sensitivity in her private parts had her blushing and recalling the events of the previous evening.

Ye gods, ye gods… so that was sexual pleasure? That was the great prize given to the married and the naughty unmarried?

She couldn’t imagine sharing so intimately with any other man, and with that insight, she gained some understanding of Ethan’s claim that he could not make love with her unless desire was mutual. She did not want just the glorious sensations, she wanted
Ethan
. She wanted his arms around her, his voice in her ear, his scent on her skin, his hands stroking her flesh.

She wanted his confidences, his dreams, his hopes, and his rare playful gambits. She wanted his headaches, his extended family in Kent, and his stubborn determination to get her back up on a horse. She wanted not just his lovely body, but his entire heart.

Oh, dear.

Alice collapsed onto the bed and considered what it meant, when she longed for a man to trust her with his heart. This could not be a good thing, not when the man was a confirmed widower who’d endured one miserable marriage for the sake of his children. Not when he was so wealthy the Regent turned to him for financial advice.

Not when he’d been so carefully honest with her, assuring her he was beyond ever remarrying.

Oh, dear.
Oh, God.
She’d fallen in love with Ethan Grey, and where did that leave her—besides looking forward to the coming night?

Alice had always thought love could only come to her slowly, a gradual shift in emotions from respect to affection to the kind of abiding regard her parents had had. She had never expected this tumult, this drama of the emotions, would befall her.

There was no fighting it. Her feelings were subject to neither reason nor logic, and all she could hope for was to keep her sentiments behind her teeth, where she would not embarrass Ethan with them.

Or herself.

So they would make love tonight, and in the privacy of her heart, Alice would love Ethan too. When he tired of her, her heart would break, but she’d be prepared for that. Her idea of heartbreak had shifted, though.

Heartbreak was no longer a vague, bothersome sense that she’d be unhappy for a while. Heartbreak was worse and better, she decided as she pinned up her hair. When Ethan set her aside, she’d be devastated at the loss of him, but she’d also be richer for having shared with him what lovers shared, even temporarily. It would be enough. It was more than she’d thought life would offer her, and it would be enough.

“How old is Uncle Dolph?” Jeremiah posed the question to his father as their horses walked back to the barn at the end of the one weekly ride that did not include Joshua.

“Nineteen, maybe.” Ethan realized he wasn’t quite sure. “Or maybe eighteen. I don’t know. Why?”

“He’s still at school. He’s been at school a long time.”

“Not so long. Dolph spent only a couple of years at public school, and he’s been up at university for two years, I think. Before that, he was tutored at home, as you and Joshua have been.”

“You went to public school,” Jeremiah said, his tone diffident.

“I did, for a few years, as did your uncles Nick, Beck, George, and Dolph. Do you want to go to public school?”

Ethan’s tone was equally casual, though a cold knife of anxiety sliced at his guts. Children did go away to school as young as six, and Ethan wondered at their parents for allowing it. Was Jeremiah somehow so unhappy he wanted to leave home?

“A young man goes away to school,” Jeremiah said, his gaze even more intent on his pony’s mane, “and you said I’m on the threshold of young manhood.”

“I did say that. Give me your reins, Jeremiah.”

Jeremiah looked puzzled but complied, and watched as his father tied the reins to a ring on the front of Waltzer’s saddle.

“Up you go.” Ethan grasped Jeremiah under the arms and lifted him from the pony’s back to the front of Ethan’s saddle. Waltzer paused, adjusted to the new load, and sauntered on while the pony obediently trailed beside the horse.

“You might have asked.” Jeremiah looked down at his pony and reminded Ethan for all the world of Alice Portman when she was displeased with her high-handed employer.

“I might. I’m sorry. Next time I will. What is this interest in public school? Are you ready to leave your papa and strike out on your own?”

“Soon. Joshua should come with me, and he’s still too young.”

“I’m glad he’s too young.” Ethan had one arm around Jeremiah’s waist, which meant he could feel the tension in his son’s body.

“Why would you be glad about that? Miss Alice says we’re growing like magic beanstalks,” Jeremiah said, fiddling with the horse’s mane.

“Why?” Ethan paused and tried to find words to explain the hole in his heart, in his life, in his soul, that would result if his children left his household now. He was just coming to know them, to be a father to them in any meaningful sense, and here his six-year-old—
his
six-year-old
—was calmly suggesting Ethan abandon them to the likes of Stoneham and Hart Collins.

“Because, Jeremiah Nicholas Grey, there is nobody I love the way I love my sons, and I would miss you very, very much.”

Before him, Jeremiah stopped fiddling with Waltzer’s mane. “You would? You’d miss us?”

“Because I love you.” Ethan emphasized the words Jeremiah had tried to ignore. “Because you are my family, and too soon you will grow up and become a young man who wants to make his own way in the world. Then I will have to let you go, but I won’t like it then, either.”

“Even when we’re old, like Uncle Dolph or Uncle George?”

“Even when you’re old like me. I didn’t go to school until I was fourteen, Jeremiah, and then only because my father thought Nick and I should be meeting other boys our age.” This was a lie, but Ethan forgave himself for it before the words had left his lips.

“Fourteen? That’s twice as old as me, and more.”

As I, Ethan thought with a parent’s inherent need to edit grammar. He kept his parental editor quiet and hugged his son instead. “It’s forever from now, and there are plenty of young men who go to university without ever having gone away to school.”

“I don’t want to go,” Jeremiah said on a huge sigh. “Mr. Harold said we ought, because we were an embarrassment and gutterswipes.”

“Guttersnipes. It means orphans or little criminals in the making. Children who have no supervision or manners or home.”

“I have supervision and manners and a home,” Jeremiah said with a touch of defiance. “Mr. Harold was wrong.”

“Very.”

And when Jeremiah might have burdened his father with yet more memories of the execrable Mr. Harold, Ethan chose that moment to tickle his son gently. “Are you ready to return to your own saddle?”

“Not yet. I like it way up here. When can Joshua and I have bigger ponies?”

“Horses, you mean?” Ethan tousled his son’s hair with a gloved hand. “Not for a while. Joshua is a demon on that pony, and I’m frankly scared of what he’d do with a larger mount.”

“Thunder and Lightning are good boys,” Jeremiah declared staunchly. “I wouldn’t want to sell them.”

“So we won’t. This estate can support a couple of ponies who’ve done their share of work.” Ethan did not examine too closely the notion that other children might come along to interrupt Thunder and Lightning’s retirement.

“We don’t have to sell them?” Jeremiah turned to regard his father. “Mr. Harold said the only things more useless than me and Josh were those fat, lame ponies of ours. He said they should go to the knackers, because they were a complete waste of money.”

An accurate description for Mr. Harold. Ethan batted aside the paternal guilt following that sentiment.

“Mr. Harold was likely jealous. Your ponies are first-rate, and you ride them like a pair of Cossacks. And Jeremiah? It’s ill-bred to mention it, so I beg your discretion, but what we do with our wealth is none of Mr. Harold’s damned business.”

“You said damned. I won’t tattle. Do you think Miss Alice will ever canter?”

If Ethan had his way, her heart at least would be galloping that very night. “I don’t know. For her to get on Waltzer, much less to hack out at the trot, took a lot of courage. We should be proud of her.”

“She’s proud of us. She tells us all the time. I like her, even if she makes us do lessons.”

Ethan tolerated another filial inspection and realized Jeremiah had cast one of his subtle lures. “I like her too, Jeremiah. I like her a great deal.”

“More than you liked Mama?” Jeremiah sprung the trap with casual innocence.

“That’s complicated.” Ethan searched for useful truths amid the painful and surprising realities. “I will always treasure your mother because she gave me you and Joshua, but she’s in heaven now, and we are left here to live out our lives without her. I do like Miss Alice a lot, and I respect her. Those are probably the same feelings you have about your mother’s memory.”

“Sorta.” Jeremiah started to braid a hank of mane. “Mama wasn’t always nice.”

“Nobody is nice all the time.”

“She yelled.” Jeremiah shrank back against his father’s chest as he spoke. “She yelled
a
lot
, at you, and at us too.”

“Some people yell.” Ethan tried to keep his tone level, but God above, Jeremiah had barely been out of nappies when his mother had died. Was his only memory of his mother her temper? “It doesn’t mean they don’t love you. I yell. Uncle Nick yells.”

“He yells, but mostly when he loses his ball in the weeds. Uncle Nick went to public school too.”

Back to this?

“He did. A different one than I did.”

“Mama wanted to send us away.” Jeremiah gave another one of those sighs, as if his entire soul was heaving away a burden, and Ethan felt his heart breaking. He wanted to argue Jeremiah out of these memories, to tell the boy Barbara had only been teasing or exasperated or trying to raise Ethan’s temper in response, but he couldn’t. Barbara had been fiendishly expert at ferreting out Ethan’s sensitive issues, and though they’d argued about everything at some point, she’d honed in on public school as one of the most sensitive issues of all.

Ethan pressed a kiss to his son’s crown. “Isn’t it interesting that your mother is the one who did go away, thankfully to a better place, while you and Joshua are here, with me, right where I want you?”

“I don’t miss her,” Jeremiah said, undoing the braid. “Sometimes I go look at her picture so I’ll remember what she looked like. Mostly I try to remember for Joshua.”

“It’s all right not to miss her. And you were very, very little when she died, Jeremiah. I’m surprised you recall her at all. My mother died when I was little, and I can’t put my finger on any particular memories, though the scent of lilies makes me think of her. I used to look at her portrait too.”

“Was she pretty?”

“She was.” Ethan realized it was true. “She was tall and blond and had happy eyes.”

“Joshua has those. Miss Alice is tallish, but not blond, but her eyes are happy too, mostly.”

“And she’s pretty,” Ethan reminded his oldest son. “Maybe even prettier than either of our mothers.”

That seemed to address the topic to Jeremiah’s satisfaction, because he remained quiet—and up before his father—for the entire remainder of their ride. When Ethan and Jeremiah turned up the lane toward the Tydings stables, the Marquis of Heathgate emerged from the bridle path on his chestnut mare.

“Greetings, your lordship.” Ethan wasn’t exactly glad to see his neighbor, though he was glad to have Jeremiah up before him. “Finding some peace and quiet on a summer morning?”

“Nearly autumn.” Heathgate smiled at the boy, a surprisingly friendly expression Ethan could not recall seeing before. “Master Jeremiah, good morning. Did you finally wear that pony out?”

“He did.” Ethan answered for his son, unwilling to hear Jeremiah explain to his lordship that Papa had plucked him off his mount’s back for sentimental reasons no grown man would want to confess to another.

“Enjoy your place of honor while you can, young man,” Heathgate said. “Another year, and you won’t be fitting so handily in your papa’s saddle.”

“Another year, and Papa will buy us horses from Lord Greymoor.”

“Down you go for now.” Ethan settled his son on the pony’s back. “Look after your beast, and tell Miller to get his lazy arse out here to tend to his lordship’s mare.”

Yes
, Ethan’s gaze said as he met Jeremiah’s,
Papa
said
arse
.

“Yes, Papa.” Jeremiah winked at his father, and Ethan had all he could do to keep a straight face as he dismounted.

“Sometimes”—Heathgate’s voice was thoughtful—“the hardest part about being a parent is not laughing. That young man is going to break hearts when he’s older. He has the family good looks, and he pays attention.”

“Sometimes he pays too close attention.”

“And then they ignore you completely,” Heathgate commiserated, climbing off his mare. “If children sat in the Lords, it would be a very different place. Probably better.”

Ethan regarded his companion as Miller led their horses away. “Do you spread sedition like this among your peers?”

“Of course. It isn’t treason to speculate on methods of improving governance, though that’s hardly why I trotted up your lane.”

Ethan walked in silence beside the marquis, realizing the call wasn’t entirely social. With a sense of foreboding, Ethan escorted his lordship to the house, signaled a footman, and led his guest into the library. “One hopes you came to enjoy a cold drink and a little neighborly company.”

“One can hope that,” Heathgate countered when the door was closed, “but one would be attributing to me a delicacy of manners I lack.”

And the true Marquis of Heathgate subtly stepped forward.

“You don’t come bearing another picnic summons, do you? Pardon me. They are invitations, not summonses.”

“More like writs of habeas corpus, issued by the womenfolk.”

“Right.” Ethan did not smile, since having Heathgate in his home was not quite comfortable. He liked the man, respected him, and enjoyed his family.

And yet, he made Ethan… uneasy.

“Tydings is pretty,” Heathgate said, glancing around the room. “Greymoor claimed this was so, and was intrigued that you’ve achieved a graceful home without a lady in residence. Did your late wife take the place in hand?”

He was clearly stalling until the refreshment had been delivered, and Ethan was willing to delay whatever Heathgate came to tell him.

“Barbara was not much inclined to domestication,” Ethan said. “I’ve done what I thought necessary to the place, and thank you for the compliment.”

“I knew the lady.” Heathgate turned his attention to the view beyond the French doors. “You are kind to her memory.”

Ethan was not going to ask his neighbor in what sense he’d known Barbara. She’d taken lovers before and after they’d married, and she’d been a devastatingly attractive woman—physically.

Heathgate surveyed his host. “You are silent. I wasn’t one of her amours, if that’s what you’re wondering, but you probably knew exactly with whom she disported, where and when.”

“I kept close enough track of her,” Ethan responded, and then—thank God—the footman’s tap on the door provided a distraction. When Heathgate was ensconced in a cushioned chair, a cold glass of lemonade in his hand, Ethan settled in the opposite chair and consciously relaxed his shoulders.

Heathgate withdrew a thin sheaf of papers from his waistcoat. “You won’t want to leave this where it can be easily stumbled across by prying eyes.”

“What is it?” Ethan set the papers aside, sensing instinctively he did not want to know their contents.

“My notes, taken when interviewing Benjamin Hazlit regarding certain individuals I’d asked him to investigate.”

The idea of Heathgate and Hazlit coupled like hounds on a scent made Ethan’s blood run cold.

“This would be of interest to me?” Ethan wanted to toss the papers out the French doors, but kept his expression bland.

“I’ve already warned you Collins is back in the country,” Heathgate said. “I thought it prudent to know what he and his former associates were up to, so I set Hazlit to the task.”

“In God’s name, why?” Ethan rose, unable to maintain a cool facade. “It’s damned near twenty years in the past. Why do you insist on bringing this up?”

“I don’t know.” Heathgate sipped his drink, a man in no hurry to cease prying into Ethan’s old wounds. “Greymoor’s countess claims I have a cruel streak.”

“You surely didn’t discuss this with your sister-by-marriage?” Ethan’s voice was tight, and he let his temper show in the glare he leveled at his guest.