Her Husband’s Lover (33 page)

Darleston’s fingers stilled and he lowered his hands from his lips. ‘It’s only a courtesy title, and I’ve a reputation that’s foul enough to scare off most.’

‘You’re the son of an earl. You could dance about naked painted all over with yellow spots and they’d still come to simper and titter before you.’

Vexed now, she pushed him away a little, a move that instantly brought a frown to his face. ‘I think we’re all a little nervous of how things will be. I know I don’t desire to start a war. You’ve said yourself that Lyle’s never been forceful or discourteous to you. He wishes you the very best.’

‘But only if it’s not with his lover, and don’t try to pretend otherwise. I know my husband well enough to read his moods. He was far from pleased when I told him what had happened between us.’

‘I won’t deny it,’ Darleston said. He rubbed the side of his rather long nose. ‘He has expressed some doubts but, like you, he’s nervous, he’s frightened. None of us truly knows how this will work out. What’s important is that we’re all committed to trying it. For my part, I want you both in my bed, and I just pray that I can persuade each of you to go along with that.’

As a first act of persuasion, he pressed a lingering kiss to the juncture between her neck and her collarbone, a touch that left her boneless and trembling in his arms. Darleston eased her down against the pillow, where he fanned her brown hair around her head. Two long strands framed her face. He curled one around the tip of his index finger.

Emma lifted a hand to touch his face, but he laced their fingers together instead, before placing a kiss upon the back of her hand and then another on her wrist. ‘Come closer,’ she whispered. The mattress creaked as he changed positions so that he lay stretched over her, braced upon his knees and elbows. She smiled up at him, knowing this was the position he planned for them to take when the three of them lay together. ‘Have you secreted Lyle close by?’

A crease appeared between his brows. ‘No. I left him supervising the fight with your father.’ She hadn’t realised that the boxing match was already under way, but nap-taking did tend to skew one’s sense of time.

‘There’ll be talk over your leaving.’

‘I doubt anyone has noticed. They were far too engrossed in the brawl. Only Quernow saw me leave and he was more concerned with the book Littleton and Oxbury were running. Regardless, it was far more important to come and see that you were well than to avoid comment. I had to apologise.’

‘Have you apologised?

He dipped his head again. ‘I believe I was just about to.’ He kissed her in a slow, meandering way, one that roused her senses slowly and made them burn all the brighter for it. Emma clung to him. After all that had passed that day, she couldn’t bear to let go. The flick of his tongue against hers coaxed her into relaxing, as did the reassuring weight of his body above her. How strange that she should consider it so, when if it were anyone else she’d be half out of her wits with fright, desperate to scrub even the memory of their touch from her skin with a scouring brush.

Not content with a simple kiss, Darleston hitched her cream petticoat and sought the bare skin that lay above her garters. ‘Let me,’ he whispered, when she modestly pressed her thighs together. ‘I can give you pleasure like this without raising unnecessary complications, just as Lyle once showed you, I believe.’ Lyle had never demonstrated that. He’d shown her what it was like for a man, and described how she might apply such knowledge to her own fulfilment. Still, it remained a lesson for which she was grateful. Lyle did care for her in his own quiet way, and she for him. Perhaps they might grow to appreciate one another in more intimate ways, given proximity and time. If anyone could bring that about it was Robert Darleston.

Emma gazed at his narrow face with its frame of red hair around it. His mouth took on a sultry expression, turning up ever so slightly at the corners. It wasn’t so much that the expression invited her kiss, more that it promised wickedness. ‘Are you plotting something?’

‘Only this.’ His hand moved from where it lay warm against her thigh and came to rest over her mons, while his thumb traced the seam of her labia.

‘Oh!’

‘Oh?’ he repeated, while his thumb stroked back and forth, wakening her body, so that the head of her little nub peeked out. ‘Did you ever put into practice Lyle’s lesson? I think I would have enjoyed observing that
tête à tête
.’ The pad of his thumb brushed her nubbin, making her jerk at the sheer intensity of the spark that dashed through her innards.

Emma’s cheeks blazed.

‘Don’t be shy about it. I think a woman ought to know her own body. I refuse to be hypocritical about it. I’ve indulged myself often enough. More than a few times while thinking of you.’ He kept his stroke light, so that his thumb, followed by his fingertips, danced over her skin. ‘I half thought that I’d go mad from the possibility of not having you. I might well have done, if it weren’t for Lyle, and even then it was hard to dispel the thoughts of you. You’ve haunted me, Emma.’ His lips joined in the delicate dance and he drew circles over her throat and décolletage. ‘And after you showed me that teasing glimpse of your derriere … well, I certainly gave it and several other parts of you considerable thought. I stroked myself, in the way you’ve watched your husband give himself pleasure, and all the while I pictured the soft swell of your breasts and skipping my palms over them, and the roundness of your belly. I thought of how it would feel to have you hold me. But most of all I imagined doing this.’ He fell back on his haunches and with an elegant flick lifted her rucked-up petticoats fully out of the way. He paused, leaned over her, breathing in her musk, then brought the intense pleasure of his kiss to her peeping nub.

He had done this thrice now. Each time its power seemed magnified. Emma clutched at the sheets, then at his back, then his hair. She wove her fingers into the bright strands, blindly guiding him, while he worked magic with his tongue. After a while, she realised that he was speaking, not just kissing her, but whispering endearments and secrets to her cunny. His tongue probed her entrance, filling her, but not nearly as well as his cock.

Despite the nightmares of dawn, her need for him began to build. His tongue, beautiful and talented as it was, didn’t satisfy her as his prick could. He’d claimed there were ways of managing things to avoid her conceiving. ‘Robert.’ She tried to lift him to her. ‘Robert.’ Rather than responding to her pleas immediately, he applied himself more precisely to the task, sucking and licking and drubbing the very tip of his tongue at lightning pace against her nub. He’d surely bring her to climax before he even thought of sliding into her. Maybe that was the way. If her little death didn’t happen while he was inside her, the spark that brought a child into the world wouldn’t occur. Maybe he’d have to withdraw too, before he reached a peak.

‘Robert … please … I need more than this.’ She opened her eyes to beseech him the more, only for an astonished gasp to burst from her throat. A second later she inhaled enough to scream.

Lady Darleston stood at the side of the bed. She had softened the stark white costume she had donned earlier by adding a mid-blue fur-trimmed pelisse. A hat composed of the same materials, with tassels to one side, perched upon her abundance of ringlets.

Darleston started to lift his head. ‘No, don’t get up, Robert. Stay right there.’ Lady Darleston pressed the barrel of a flintlock to his temple. ‘I see my assumptions weren’t so very far off. Mrs Langley seems to tolerate your touch perfectly well, or is it that she just doesn’t mind licking, without the press of a hand?’ With her own free hand Lucy tugged at the front of Emma’s dress. The pins gave way, exposing the layers of linen beneath and the swell of Emma’s breasts. ‘I can see why you’re charmed by her. You always did like nice tits.’ She grabbed one of Emma’s breasts and cruelly squeezed the nipple.

‘What do you want, Lucy? Let her be.’

‘“Let her be.” Oh, I don’t think so, for I can see how very much she hates this. Am I making your skin crawl, dear Mrs Langley?’ She pinched again, hard enough to bruise, and then squealed in delight when Emma flinched. Emma turned her head away, determined not to show her tears. This woman would not see her pain, or how much it cost her to tolerate this rough handling.

‘As for what I want, husband mine, you already know that. You’ll accept the child as your heir, or I’ll pull the trigger and rid us both of the problem. I’m sure with a small degree of manipulation I can get both you and Mrs Langley off together.’ Amusement bubbled from her in the form of another laugh. ‘Isn’t that what lovers are always questing for, to die the little death together? Only in your case it won’t be so little and it’ll be a tad more permanent.’

Considering the pistol barrel pressed to his head, Darleston maintained his impassive expression. He might have been greeting a neighbour at a ball, not facing a deranged woman with a gun. ‘If you pull that trigger you will splatter yourself from head to foot in gore and bring every servant in the house rushing here. It’s unlikely you’d go unpunished, no matter how fine you think your acting skills.’

‘I’d get what I wanted. The line would continue in your name.’

‘You’re not remotely concerned about the title, only the status it gives you. I don’t think you’re prepared to sacrifice yourself for a child. Though, having said that, isn’t it time we ended this ruse? What is it you want, Lucy? Money? I’m not going to argue paternity with you any longer, because we both know there is no child.’

Surprise flickered in the heart of Lucy’s pupils, to be quickly consumed by rage. ‘Of course there’s a child. I have all the symptoms. I have fainted and been sick and I have had no flow of blood.’ She clutched her hand to her stomach as though a sharp pain ran through that part of her body. ‘What else makes a woman ill in that way?’

‘I’m sure I don’t know.’

‘Nothing. It’s a child, you fool.’

‘Of course,’ Darleston agreed in a soothing tone, but in a way that suggested that he knew her to be hiding from the truth. ‘Very well, so you require money. I’ll provide money. Let Emma go and we’ll talk. She’s irrelevant to this.’

Lucy’s grip on the pistol relaxed a fraction, but then she gently squeezed the trigger. A maniacal grin stretched across her milk-white face. ‘Do you think so, Robert? I’ve never found your mistresses to be irrelevant. How sad to find you think so little of them, but then you have always been a selfish rip. Seven years we have been together and not once have you planted your seed in my belly. What is the point of marriage if not to produce an heir? Dear God, you even set your brother to the task of performing for you. I thought it could not be me, that it was merely a function of your unnaturalness, only here I find you with a mistress. There have been tens of them, have there not? It is just me you’ve spurned. You even made love to your best friend’s wife.’

Emma tried to quell her shock, but she had not known the extent of his past debauchery. She would let him explain himself before making any judgements.

‘You will accept this damned child as your heir, Robert. You will.’ Lucy’s voice became a shriek.

‘As you wish.’ He said it so quietly that at first Lucy did not seem to have heard him over her escalating screams. When it did sink in, she stared at him coldly. After a moment of silence, she began worrying her lip.

‘You agree. You give your word as a gentleman and won’t go back on it?’

‘I agree.’

‘I want to set up my own household. Not as I have had to endure these last few months, but a proper establishment such as my rank entitles me to.’

‘Of course.’

She laughed. ‘How delightful to find you so amenable. I should have put a gun to your head years ago.’

‘I would prefer if you could remove it now.’

‘Would you? Then I don’t think I shall. I’m finding this all rather enjoyable.’ She clutched her hand to her stomach again. If there had been a chair nearby, Emma suspected she would have sunk into it. ‘Besides, I do so wish to get to know Mrs Langley better. Mayhap we can cosy up and become intimate.’ Her face lit up then as though she had been struck by the most wonderful idea. ‘Why don’t you introduce us properly, Robert? Is your cock still at a stand?’

‘What?’

From where Emma lay beneath him, peering up into his face, it was plain that he regretted the outburst, but Lucy had taken him by surprise. The corners of his eyes wrinkled with rage, but somehow he forced his voice to remain urbane and unworried.

‘No. I’m afraid I don’t find any eroticism in the situation.’

‘Do you hear that, dear?’ Lucy sighed. ‘He finds nothing inspiring about your muff, even with his nose pressed to it. Tut, tut. We shall have to pray he is lying.’ She grabbed hold of the hair upon the back of Darleston’s head. ‘Rouse yourself. I want to watch you poke her.’

Darleston paled to the core. If they ever got out of this bed and this room, Emma was certain he would murder his wife. A coldness she had not seen before swept over him like an icy wind. His face became a sneer, full of haughty aristocratic abhorrence. ‘You’ll have to shoot me. I find myself disinclined to put on a show.’

Lucy’s mad grin transformed into a scowl. There was a sort of glazed sheen in her eyes that made Emma wonder if she hadn’t taken laudanum or some other potion to temper the aches that were so obviously afflicting her.

‘Oh, Robert, you are no fun. And just when we were getting along so well.’

The chamber door swung open at that moment, whoever it was not bothering to knock. ‘Emma?’ the intruder enquired. Lucy turned sharply, gun in hand. As she moved, Darleston rolled towards her. Catlike, he landed on his feet and sprang up between Lucy and the bed. He made a grab for the pistol, which went off with a deafening roar. For one horrid moment, as smoke billowed around the matchlock, Emma feared for Darleston’s life, but when Lucy staggered backwards from the recoil Darleston followed her. He wrenched the pistol from her grip and cast it across the room. It skittered over the polished boards and came to rest in the window bay.