In My Wildest Fantasies (18 page)

He had not spoken to his father privately about his engagement. He had chosen to announce it publicly at dinner the night before. Everyone had applauded, and his father, who was seated at the head of the table, had risen and raised a glass and delivered an elegant and jovial toast. No one in a hundred years would have guessed the man was off his rocker.

Devon was simply relieved that he had not thrown a fit over Letitia.

"But I confess," his mother continued, "that I sense you are not completely comfortable with your decision. Are you having doubts?"

He leaned back in his chair and regarded her. "Do not worry, Mother. I am a man no different from any other, and as such have earned the right to have cold feet before my wedding day. Which is being planned with incredible haste, I might add. What man wouldn't be uneasy?"

"But you are not just any man," she replied. "And I know you too well. It's more than cold feet."

He gave up trying to appease her with jokes and lighthearted assurances. "You have always known it would be this way for me, Mother. You know how I feel about marriage and love."

"I know how you feel about your role in Vincent's tragic attempt at marriage."

He paused, then spoke in a low, gentle voice. "Your unhappiness has always cut my heart deeply, Mother."

He had always known his parents' marriage had been arranged, and later he had come to understand that she had once loved another. Though she would never speak of it.

She slowly stood up and turned away from him. "Please do not say such things. It would break my own heart to think that I was the cause of your unwillingness to find joy in your marriage." She faced him again. "Do not use Vincent or me as examples, Devon. We are poor ones. Especially me."

"Because you married for duty to your family? Isn't that what we all must do?"

"Not necessarily."

He gazed long and hard at her. "You know I am in an impossible situation, Mother. Father has already altered his will and he has an iron fist when it comes to what he thinks is best for everyone. I have already surrendered to my duty and proposed. There can be no turning back."

"I don't want you to turn back, nor do I want you to simply 'surrender to duty.' I want you to have more than that. I do not want you to feel as if you put everyone else's happiness before your own. I don't want you to feel as if you have made a mistake."

"Are you saying you made a mistake in marrying Father?"

He wanted to hear her say it.

She was speechless for a moment, but remained always the proper duchess and wife. "No, I will never regret the decisions I have made. I was meant to marry your father, so that I could have you and Vincent and Blake."

"And the twins," he added for her. "Charlotte and Garrett."

She lowered her gaze. "I was meant to have them, too, of course."

But they were the evidence of what she believed was her greatest transgression--her one brief flirtation with happiness, her children by another man. She carried the shame with her like a wedding ring.

No one ever spoke of it. It was one of those family secrets buried in the gardens of the past, where flowers grew from roots no one would ever see.

She sat back on her heels. Her voice was resigned and heavy with guilt. "Don't, Devon. I came here to discuss your future, not my past."

He leaned forward and took her hands in his, determined just this once to expose that wound she kept wrapped and hidden from everyone, and gently apply salve to it if he could. He spoke softly.

"Do not punish yourself, Mother. You are a saint. You seized one moment of happiness, which you deserved. You deserved it because you sacrificed your entire life to give your sisters and family a better future. You never thought of yourself. You still do not, and we all respect and adore you for that. You have set the finest example for all of us, so do not tell me to do something different from what you have done."

She gave him a warning look. "I am not a saint. I was unfaithful to my husband."

There--the words were out, the scandalous admission of her sin. It pained Devon to hear the disgrace in her voice, maybe because he understood it too well. Better than anyone.

She rose from her chair. "But as I said before, I did not come here to discuss my life. I came to discuss yours. You have your own regrets, too, Devon, and the guilt to go along with it. It is why I knocked on your door."

He sat back.

"You don't believe you deserve happiness either," she said, "and you are going to try to deny yourself, even when it is within your grasp."

"But is it truly within my grasp?" he asked, feeling angry all of a sudden. "I will never be able to forget what happened that day three years ago. Never. I will always regret my weakness and my impulsive passions. Yet here I am, rushing into marriage with a woman I barely know."

She knelt before him, placed her hands on his knees, and spoke with conviction. "I have a good feeling about her, Devon. You will be happy, if you will only let yourself. What happened with MaryAnn was tragic, there is no question about that, but you never meant for it to happen. You did your best. Her death was an accident."

"But her feelings for me were..." He paused.

"What she felt in her heart is not your fault either. You did what you could to discourage her and to be loyal to your brother. You need to forgive yourself."

He gazed into his mother's caring eyes. She was a wise and intelligent woman, but she did not know the whole story about MaryAnn. No one did. "Vincent has not forgiven me," he said.

"He will in time. Now that you are home."

"I am not so sure of that."

She sat back on her heels. "Please, Devon. It is true that you have been pushed into this marriage because of your father's demands, but you can still open your heart to the possibility of love and happiness with the woman you have chosen to be your wife. Learn from my mistakes. Do not repeat them. Run toward love, not away from it. Don't resist what you feel for her. You could bring hope and joy back into this house. Lord knows we all need it here."

"That we do," he replied, feeling the weight of his responsibilities looming heavier than ever. "That we do."

That night after the theatricals in the grand saloon, the ladies said goodnight to each other, while some of the gentlemen decided to taste the brandy in the library and engage themselves in a few hands of cards.

Devon encouraged them to do so, ordered more brandy to be brought up, then discreetly slipped behind the crimson drapery in the saloon to the hidden door in the wall. He flicked the latch and entered the dark passageway, where a candle was waiting for him in a sconce.

As a boy he had explored these narrow corridors hundreds of times, and he and his brothers often escaped punishment when they'd been confined to their rooms by lock and key--at least until the new nannies discovered the secret doorways hidden behind movable bookcases or builtin wardrobes.

Their favorite places to explore had always been the subterranean passageways, for they were dark and damp and made of stone, and had once been used by the monks at the abbey before the king had dismantled the monasteries and turned them out.

That particular bit of palace history, along with the story of the prior who was murdered by his own canons, had provided Devon and his brothers limitless opportunities for ghost stories and trickery. That was how they had always managed to have new nannies. They could never keep one for very long after she'd been lured down to the foundations of the palace, where mice and cobwebs were always readily available in the pitch-black caverns, along with their own ghoulish howls.

But that was years ago. These days he used the passageways for a different kind of midnight game altogether.

He reached the secret entrance to Rebecca's room and paused with the candle in his hand, listening. His mother's maid had been assigned double duty to assist Rebecca until she found a permanent maid of her own, so he was careful to make sure Alice was not about. He heard a drawer open and close, but no one spoke, so he carefully pushed open the door.

He entered the well-lit room from behind the floor-to-ceiling portrait of one his ancestors, and stood briefly beside the bed, watching his betrothed stand before the mirror on the vanity, running a brush through her thick, wavy hair. She stood with her back to him and wore a white dressing gown, and was humming a melody he did not recognize.

As he watched her, he wondered why he had come. He had been working very hard to keep his mind fixed on his duties and responsibilities and all the practical details involved in planning a hasty wedding. He had been relatively successful in that regard, at least until his mother had knocked on his door earlier in the day and given him that speech about happiness. As a result, he had discovered that looking at his mother was like looking in a mirror. He had tried to convince her to let go of her guilt and shame and allow herself a better future. She had said the same to him.

After she left, he'd had no choice but to contemplate his own advice with a bit more care and reflection.

He glanced to the right and saw the diary sitting on the bedside table, and wondered if Rebecca had been reading it just now, or intended to read it when she climbed into bed.

Just thinking about some of the words on the pages of the book gave him a stir, so rather than continuing to fight against his unwieldy passions, he blew out the candle he held, set it on the table and slowly strode forward toward his betrothed.

She spotted his movement in the mirror and sucked in a breath, startled by his unexpected appearance. Whirling around to face him, she whispered hotly, "Don't do that to me! I thought you were a ghost."

"No ghosts in this house, darling, only randy fiances who can't help sneaking around to see the objects of their desire."

She huffed. "Did you come through one of those secret passages again?"

"I did indeed."

He reached her and let his eyes wander down to her bare toes, then back up again.

Suddenly duty and responsibility had nothing to do with anything. He wanted sex with her, and he wanted it now.

She narrowed her clever gaze at him when their eyes met. "I beg your pardon," she said, playfully scolding, "but I thought that after our previous disregard for propriety, we were going to make this a respectable engagement and wait until our wedding night to properly celebrate our nuptials."

"But that's two days from now."

"You can't wait two days?" she said, incredulous.

"Definitely not."

She made a valiant effort to hide her smile, and walked past him toward the bed, stopping to turn around in front of the bedside table.

He raised an eyebrow and leaned to the side to see past her. She glanced over her shoulder.

"You want to read more of that diary, don't you?" she asked, with a teasing tone.

"Don't you?"

"I already know how it ends."

He strode toward her. "I, on the other hand, do not, and the suspense is killing me."

"I hardly think that is what's killing you."

How right she was.

He stopped a few inches away. She laid a hand on his chest, then slowly slid it down inside his trousers, wrapping it around his rock-hard erection, already standing stiffly at attention. "You just want to hear the naughty bits," she said.

"Aloud, if you don't mind."

He grinned wolfishly, realizing he adored this woman more with every passing second, and he was a very lucky man to have found her before anyone else had.

Perhaps there was hope for happiness after all--at least at night, after the sun went down, when he could forget about real life for a while. Maybe she was meant to be his oasis.

She looked him straight in the eye as she stroked him with her warm, proficient hand, and the pleasure mounting in his loins compelled him to set a hand on the bed to keep from staggering sideways.

"Where did we leave off last time?" he asked, wanting to get down to business.

"Jess had not yet taken Lydie's virginity."

"Then perhaps we might skip ahead a few pages," he suggested, taking her into his arms so that she had to remove her hand from his pants. She grabbed on to his shoulders and he swept her up off her feet and laid her on the bed.

He stood over her, tugging at his tie to loosen it before he picked up the diary and looked carefully at the brown leather casing on the front cover. "In the mood for a little reading?"

"I'm always in the mood for a story."

He handed the book to her, and she flipped through the pages searching for a particular entry, while he sauntered around the foot of the bed, removing his dinner jacket and waistcoat and tossing them onto the upholstered bench.

He climbed onto the bed and lay down on his side facing her, his elbow on a pillow, his head resting on a hand, while he admired her lovely profile in the lamplight. Her skin was creamy white, her lips full and moist. When she began to read, her voice was smooth and intoxicating like wine...

"Dear Diary,

"Tonight it happened and it was perfect, the most incredible day of my life. It was a gloriously hot and humid evening without a single breath of wind, and after dinner I could not contain my desires. My body was tingling with wanton urges, so I ran out the door and headed to the forest.