Ethan: Lord of Scandals (19 page)

“I haven’t discussed your personal business with anyone. Not even Lady Heathgate knows the details, and I do not keep secrets from my wife.”

“I wish to hell you wouldn’t discuss this with me.”

“I don’t believe that’s so.” Heathgate rose and went to stand beside Ethan where he stared out his mullioned windows. “You don’t like what I know of the crimes against you, Ethan Grey, but you’d like it even less were you completely alone with the knowledge yourself. You’d begin to doubt your memories, tell yourself you exaggerated and embellished when you did not and you do not. Read those notes, my friend. Those jackals ambushed you once. You must not let them ambush you again. Think of your sons and your family.”

“I am thinking of my sons. What would you have me do? Turn myself in to the constable as a sodomite to implicate Collins in something easily dismissed as distasteful schoolboy nonsense?”

“You don’t have to do anything.” Heathgate put a hand on Ethan’s shoulder and just let it rest there. To be touched by another man while discussing Hart Collins was at once unbearable and oddly comforting.

Heathgate removed his hand, but apparently wasn’t done passing out advice. “There’s a middle ground between calling Collins out in some misguided attempt at revenge and ignoring him completely. The middle ground is to be informed and prepared, and thus to give yourself the upper hand if and when he acts. He has lingered longer in England this time than at any point previous, and no longer has the funds to debauch his way across the Continent.”

Ethan let out a held breath, his mind comprehending Heathgate was offering him wisdom, even if his body was more prepared for a fight. On some level, he’d been prepared for a fight ever since the day Collins had assaulted him as a boy in the Stoneham stables.

“We’re not boys anymore,” Ethan said. “What makes you think Collins is any threat to my peace of mind at all?”

Heathgate’s glacier-blue eyes gave away nothing. “I saw the condition they put you in, and that wasn’t schoolboy nonsense, and believe me, having attended Stoneham for four years, I saw plenty of nonsense. Something is wrong with Collins. He was tossed out of at least three other schools for either extreme violence or incidents similar to the one you were involved in. There’s probably a word for the kind of man he is, but if he were a horse, I’d put him down.”

“He did the same thing to others?” The heart in Ethan’s chest took up a heavy drumbeat, not dread exactly, but a sense of the moment bearing portents with far-reaching effects. “How many?”

“At least two others whom Hazlit spoke to personally,” Heathgate said. “Hazlit says Collins was engaged briefly, but the lady wouldn’t have him. And as quickly as Benjamin has assembled a very thorough report, the man has to be nigh notorious. Then too, Hazlit has some personal animosity toward Collins which I do not doubt goes back as far as your own. They’re both from Cumbria, though Hazlit keeps his antecedents quiet. You’ll read the notes?”

“I will.” The idea of Collins originating from the same shire as Alice made Ethan want to retch.

Heathgate continued to study Ethan. “You wonder if it’s ever going to completely go away, don’t you? You bury yourself in your commerce and immure yourself here in the woods of Surrey, and all the while, in the back of your mind, it lurks, waiting to pounce.”

“Do you expect me to admit that to you?” There were depths to Heathgate, and not necessarily happy ones.

“Oh, of course not.” Heathgate’s smile was humorless. “Whatever you’re dragging around, whatever memories you’re trying to ignore, they don’t learn their proper place until you turn around and stare them down.”

“Have you taken up hearing confessions too, your reverence?” Ethan’s tone was dry, just short of desperately disrespectful.

His guest’s expression was utterly serious. “My name is Gareth. I will thank you to use it henceforth, should we be informally private.”

Ethan’s eyebrows rose, for such an invitation was beyond peculiar—also blatantly flattering. As neighbors, someday Ethan might have been expected to address the marquis simply as “Heathgate,” but never by his given name. Only a brother might have presumed to call him by his name.

“I will read your notes, Gareth.” Ethan said the name carefully, feeling the strangeness of it, but thinking the name suited the very masculine specimen before him. “And you have my thanks for taking an interest in my situation.”

“I’m off, then. I’ve invited James and Will to ride out with me tomorrow morning, weather permitting. Amery might bring Rose if he can’t weasel out of it, but the boys learned you mean to take your two cubbing this fall, and so you see before you a doomed papa.”

When Heathgate dropped a subject, at least he dropped it entirely.

“Cubbing is harmless enough,” Ethan said as he walked his guest to the front door. “I have no appetite for true blood sport.”

“Neither do I, but Nick enjoys it, doesn’t he?”

“I think he enjoys a good gallop and a romp with the hounds. A man his size is not permitted to cringe at a grisly death, or to sympathize with poor Renard.”

“A man his size?” Heathgate’s gaze traveled Ethan’s length, which exceeded his own by a couple of inches.

“I am a veritable sylph compared to my brother. Just as you are ancient compared to yours.”

“Just so.” Heathgate pulled on his gloves. “My marchioness found a gray hair on me yesterday. Don’t have daughters, my friend. They age a man as sons cannot.”

“You’re a font of wisdom, at least today.”

“‘A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country,’” Heathgate quoted. “I have to dispense my wisdom where it will be appreciated—so see that you heed me.”

Ethan let him have the last word because, after all, the man had made sense—except for that blather about daughters. But rather than head back into the library and read the damned notes, Ethan turned the other way and sought his younger son. He had plans for his day, and his night, and reading sordid history did not comport with those plans at all.

***

The gentry were proving accommodating, suggesting to Baron Collins that he’d been remiss not to frequent English house parties in years past. While enjoying fine food, decent drink, and the occasional housemaid—or footman—Collins could keep an eye on Ethan Grey and meet easily with that handy tool known by the locals as Thatcher.

“I can’t be sneakin’ about like this,” Thatcher grumbled. “Miller watches me, and the work won’t do itself when I’m waiting for ye to come strollin’ along.”

“Stable work is completed before dark,” Collins retorted. “And I wasn’t about to risk hanging felonies without corroborating your characterization of Grey’s situation.”

“Ye done what?”

A handy tool often sported a dull blade. “Without making sure Grey is as rich as you say he is. Many a fine lord is living on credit.”

“He ain’t a lord. He’s a right bastard.”

“He’s a wealthy man.” An affront to the natural order, that was, when the scion of an old and noble house had to scrounge for accommodations while a lowly bastard prospered. “He will soon be much less wealthy.”

Except as Thatcher reported the routine in the stables, Collins realized the timing of his plans would be delicate. Ethan Grey’s stables were busy, with grooms on hand at all hours and the tyrant Miller overseeing every detail. Worse, the children were closely supervised, and Mr. Grey himself often in company with them—and having Grey about would not do at all.

“I shall be patient,” Collins decided. “I’ve waited nigh twenty years to put this particular upstart in his place. I can wait a bit longer.”

Thatcher shuffled away in the shadows, leaving Collins to study the edifice up the hill from the paddocks.

Ethan Grey had indeed prospered, and that… that simply wasn’t to be borne.

“I liked sleeping with you,” Alice announced when Ethan let himself into her room. The hour was late, approaching midnight, and she’d already donned her summer nightgown and wrapper, though the evening was decidedly more autumnal.

“I liked sleeping with you too.” Ethan smiled to see her already out of her clothes. She no doubt thought she’d foiled his desire to see her naked as she undressed, silly woman. “And I’m sure I’ll like it even more tonight.”

He drew her to her feet from where she sat at her writing desk and wrapped his arms around her. She was all warmth, soft curves, and fresh lemony fragrance, and Ethan felt arousal stirring just to be holding her. There was more to his reaction, too—a kind of mental sigh, to have achieved the sanctuary of her embrace.

“It isn’t too late to change your mind, Alice,” he whispered near her ear. “I won’t think less of you if you send me packing.”

“At least you can think,” Alice said, kissing his jaw. “I’ve been useless all day, watching the hands of the clock crawl forward, wondering when the sun decided it would choose today to refuse to set.”

“The days grow shorter. You are impatient.” And may she always regard their joinings as eagerly.

She subsided more snugly against him. “Impatient, also a bit anxious.”

As was he, truth be told. Heathgate had picked a miserable day to come to call.

“I do not like to see you anxious,” Ethan said, kissing her forehead. “Shall we get under the covers?” Before she noticed that despite his anxieties, Ethan’s body was anticipating lovemaking.

“I won’t have a breathing spell,” she said. “Not with you.”

“I’m glad.”
Neither
would
he, not with her.
Ethan stepped back enough to undo the sash of her night robe. She surprised him by whipping her nightgown off over her head and scrambling under the covers.

“You’d like to watch me.” And how pleased he was that she did. Alice perched up against the headboard, fingers laced around her knees. Ethan did not consider himself a vain man, but the heat in Alice’s gaze would make any fellow willing to strut before her.

He made no attempt to turn his disrobing into flirtation—he was too interested in joining her in the bed. When he was naked and his clothing folded on the clothespress, he climbed into bed and stretched out beside her. “What shall we talk about?”

“Talk? We’re naked in bed and again, you want to talk?”

“I do.” Ethan drew his finger down her nose. “As a younger man, I failed to appreciate the pleasures of visiting with a lover in bed. I was all business, so to speak. I don’t want to be all business with you, Alexandra.”

“Not business then.” Alice made as if to nip his finger. “I’ll tell you Joshua has made some real strides in his reading.”

“I was slow to read.” Ethan leaned in and kissed her eyes, one then the other. “Nick was much faster and had to help me.”

As soon as he said his brother’s name, Ethan expected a bolt of regret… that never came.

“You read all the time. Do you ever read to the boys?”

“I read to Joshua, once. He was quite small and ill, and his mother had just died. He was barely speaking himself, but the sound of my voice soothed him.”

“Children know when someone cares.” Alice laced her arm under his neck. “And they know when someone doesn’t.”

“Jeremiah had some interesting questions along that line on our ride today.” Ethan shifted to his back, so Alice lay tucked along his side. He was astonished to realize that talking this way, about the boys, about anything, was not just a ploy to relax Alice’s anxieties.

This talking, cuddled up on her big bed, was a comfort to him as well.

“Jeremiah wanted to know if I missed his mother and claimed he himself did not, because she yelled a great deal and threatened to send him off to boarding school as soon as may be. I add it to the list of things I must try to forgive her for.”

“Was boarding school on Jeremiah’s mind today as well?” Alice scooted, bringing her near leg up over Ethan’s hips.

“It was.” Ethan drew his finger down her nose again, and right on down her midline under the covers to her mons. “He was concerned I would send him and Joshua away when Joshua turned six.”

“You didn’t mock him, did you?”

“I hugged him,” Ethan said, curling down to bury his face against Alice’s neck. “I told him I would be miserable if he wanted to tear off into the world so soon, and Alexandra, I meant every word.”

“Oh, well done, Ethan.” Alice hugged him to her. “Well done, indeed.”

They were quiet for a long moment, Ethan letting himself bask in her approval and affection and in the rare knowledge she loved his children the same way he did.

“I think your sons are happier now than they were at the beginning of the summer.” She stroked the back of his head as she spoke, and Ethan wanted to hold so still that she never stopped, so much did he like the way she touched him.

“They are,” Ethan said, picking up the reins of the conversation. “As am I.”

“Oh, let’s make it unanimous.” She sounded so pleased with herself. “Though I wasn’t exactly unhappy previously.”

“I’m pleased.” Ethan brushed his mouth across hers. “Pleased you’re happy with us. Joshua asked me if I thought you’d ever canter.”

“Ah, do that again. Please.”

He willingly obliged, in part because his efforts to ease her closer to lovemaking with words and simple bodily proximity were having their effect on him. He kissed her with the slow, relaxed savoring of a man who knows he has all night, hours and hours, just to move to the next step.

When he began to explore her mouth with his tongue, Ethan felt Alice shift on the mattress, her limbs relaxing, her spine lengthening.

“Kiss me back, love,” Ethan coaxed, his tongue teasing past her lips. “Come out and play with me.”

He paused, his mouth a hairsbreadth away from hers, waiting for Alice to arch up and brushed her lips against his. She repeated the caress twice more, until Ethan pressed her mouth open beneath his. She twined her arms around his neck with a slow, languorous sigh, and Ethan felt his heartbeat kick up a notch.

The barest hint of a misgiving skittered through his vitals, but not for the usual reasons. He wasn’t experiencing the old uncertainties or ambiguities; he had no doubt he and Alice belonged in that bed together. He was neither unsure of himself sexually nor fearful of inexplicably losing his desire for her. He experienced an instant’s hesitation only because he wanted this night to be better than right for her. He wanted it to be perfect.

And then Alice pulled her body closer to his and found his lips with her own. She welcomed him into the kiss and then welcomed him further, her legs spreading as Ethan shifted his body over hers.

The doubts Ethan battled—not just that night, but many nights in the past twenty years—vanished. He knew what to do, knew how to express his caring for this woman with his mouth and his hands, and body. This was Alice, whom he cared for greatly, and with her, for this one night at least, all would be well.

He closed his eyes, let himself feel the wonder of her naked body beneath his, and gave himself up to the loving.

***

When Ethan began to kiss her in earnest, a bolt of anxiety went through Alice’s body and her mind. She lost track of the kiss and began to fret, even as Ethan’s tongue glided sinuously over hers: What if she couldn’t breathe? What if this night left Ethan with a disgust of her? What if she couldn’t enjoy what he was trying to share with her? She hadn’t cared with Mr. Durbeyfield, being only a little bit curious and a lot bored. With Ethan, God help her, she cared a great deal. Cared too much, and hence, the worrying gathered momentum.

But then he shifted, bringing his body carefully over hers in an embrace that caged Alice between Ethan and the bed. For all of her adult life, she’d hated being confined, hated any sort of entrapment. To be anchored under him this way should have made her frantic to escape.

A different panic gripped her, though. She wasn’t frantic to escape.
She
was
frantic
to
get
closer
to
him.
She did not like being confined—maybe nobody did. But she saw it was also true, true in a blindingly new and stark way, that for all her adult life, she’d been profoundly
lonely
. And what Ethan offered her was not confinement, but rather, intimacy. He offered her the closeness that had nothing to do with confinement and binding, but instead sought to free her.

With Ethan’s body sheltering hers, his naked strength surrounding her, she felt that paradoxical sense of being utterly in accord with another and yet utterly unfettered, and she wanted intensely—desperately—to bring that feeling closer. She spread her legs, letting him settle against her, and wrapped her arms around him.

“Easy,” Ethan murmured, grazing her jaw with his nose. “There’s no rush, love. None at all.”

Alice felt the impressive length of his erection against her belly. “I want you closer.”

“Soon,” he assured her, pained humor in that one word. “Wrap your legs around me.”

He whispered his request again before she opened her eyes, brushed the hair back from his forehead, and shifted the angle of her hips to accommodate him.

“Like this?” She kissed his shoulder then scraped him with her teeth. He tasted clean and warm and faintly of the lavender sachets Mrs. Buxton hung in all the wardrobes.

“Like that.” Ethan dipped his head to kiss her mouth. “Now guide me to you.”

Alice left off using her tongue to taste his flesh. “Guide you?”

“Take me in your hand,” he said, holding her gaze steadily, “and guide me home.”

Ethan remained poised above her, his gaze locked with hers. There was both challenge and reassurance in his gaze. He would not subject her to the kind of fumbling she’d known before with another man. He was not going to allow her to passively tolerate intimacy either, but most of all, he was not going to allow her to be disappointed. Not in him, not in herself, not in what they shared.

Alice saw all that before she closed her eyes.

He nuzzled her throat. “Take my cock in your hand and show me where you want me. I’ll wait all night, if you want me to, but that means you wait too.”

Logic, and at such a time. Alice tucked her face against his shoulder and brushed her fingers over the soft skin crowning his member.

He could wait all night, she was sure of that—and equally sure she could not.

***

Ethan felt a tentative brush of Alice’s fingers over the head of his cock. He thought of accounts payable and boiled cabbage and the recipe for Miller’s horse liniment, and even tried the Lord’s Prayer in Latin, but Alice closed her grip around him and brought him snug against her damp sex.

He had to kiss her.

“God above.” He exhaled unsteadily, resting his forehead against hers but unable to resist her mouth for long. He sealed his lips over hers in a hot, open-mouthed, needy plea for some kind of immediate joining. Her tongue met his, and it was all he could do not to roar into her body, tongue, cock, fingers,
anything
.

“Ethan,
please
…” Alice tried to move against him, to take him into her body on her own initiative, but Ethan feinted with his hips.

“Behave,” he said. “We savor this.” He emphasized his words with the barest hint of forward movement of his hips, and Alice abruptly ceased her attempts to rush their joining.

“Better,” he murmured, then, “relax, my love. We’re not going to hurry this.”

She could not relax. Beneath him, Ethan felt the tension in Alice’s body, felt the tight, shallow breaths she expelled against his neck. He wanted to believe she was simply aroused past bearing, but she was so tight around the tip of his cock, he had to suspect she was simply anxious.

“Breathe, love, and recall your promise.”

She opened eyes that had been tightly shut, and peered at him in the dim light as he brushed his fingertips over her forehead. “My promise?”

“You’ll tell me if you don’t like something or if it’s uncomfortable. If you ask it, I will stop.”

“I don’t want you to stop,” Alice replied, sounding more resolute than aroused.

“And I don’t want to be stopped, but you promised.”

He held himself against her, applying a firm, steady pressure but making no move to advance more deeply into her body. She wanted him, of that he was confident, but she lacked the experience to know her body needed time.

“It isn’t supposed to be this difficult,” Alice muttered.

Ethan pressed more firmly into her.

“Tell me how it’s supposed to be,” he said, laying his cheek against hers.

“Easy,” Alice replied, sounding a little bewildered, “and sweet and pleasant.”

Merciful God. He was about to explode, and she expected a tea party. “This is pleasant,” Ethan said, kissing her lingeringly.

“I feel… discontent.”

“Discontent is good,” Ethan murmured before slipping a hand down and closing it over her breast.

“
That
is good.”

“Not just good. Lovely, beautiful, dear…” He caressed and stroked and gently kneaded, all the while holding his cock against her, but just shy of real penetration. When Ethan closed his fingers around her nipple, Alice groaned, and using her ankles for leverage, heaved her hips against him.

He allowed it and slipped that first hot, glorious, wet inch inside her body.

“Shame on you, Alexandra. I’ll kiss you silly for that.”

She turned her head to hasten her fate, and Ethan obliged by covering her mouth with his again. She came out not to play, but to tease, entice, coax, and madden with her mouth and tongue and sexy little sighs. “Ethan, I need you.”

He applied a hint of pressure to her nipple and let her have more of his cock when she arched tightly against his hand. This required such concentration of him, he decided it qualified as a form of prayer.

“More,” Alice whispered. “More,
now
.”

From somewhere, he found the self-restraint to deny her, distracting her with his tongue in her ear, his teeth on her earlobe, then his lips closed around her nipple as she growled low against his temple.