Married By Midnight (17 page)

Anne did not feel quite so jubilant, however, for it was not a dream she dared believe in. She had been disappointed once before by a man who abandoned her for money, and after the scandal, she’d had no choice but to forsake the idea of an honest marriage for herself.

And Garrett—having just tragically lost a fiancée—seemed so very unattainable.

“
Please, Charlotte,” she said, “Do not encourage me in this. I do not wish to pursue something I cannot have.”

“
You don’t know that.”

“
No, but I know what I feel, and I fear I am headed for disaster if I imagine a fairy tale ending. I am afraid to believe it. Promise me you will help me keep a clear head.”

Charlotte regarded her with reluctance.

“
Promise
me,” Anne insisted, “or I will take this gown off immediately and wear the old rag I was wearing when I arrived.”

Charlotte drew back in horror. “Good heavens, we cannot have that."

“
No, we certainly cannot.” Anne lifted the hem and looked down at her stockinged feet. “I will need shoes to go with this. And gloves. Can you help?”

“
Of course.” Charlotte went to hunt through her wardrobe, while Anne exhaled heavily with a growing angst that was beginning to weigh very heavily upon her heart.

* * *

Garrett followed his mother back to the sofa and urged her to sit down, for she had gone white as a sheet.

“
It’s been a very trying day,” she said. “First your father disappears, now this question from you.”

“
I only want to know the truth. I already know I am not legitimate, but we have never talked openly about it. Now that I am home, I need to understand.”

She clasped his hand. “Of course you do, and I do not wish to keep anything from you. What would be the point now that your father is so ill? He will never come back to us like he once was.”

Her voice trembled and Garrett squeezed her hand. “Tell me what happened all those years ago.”

His mother sat back in her chair. “I will come straight to the point. Your intuition is correct...about Dr. Thomas.”

For a long moment Garrett said nothing.

“
Does Charlotte know?”

Adelaide nodded. “Yes. Like you, she suspected the truth when she met him. He has been coming to the palace since the spring, not long after Devon returned from America. Dr. Thomas is the most brilliant physician in London, and we all wanted the very best for your father.”

“
Why didn’t Charlotte tell me?” Garrett was surprised by this, for she was his twin—but he supposed he deserved to be kept outside the circle. He had abandoned her and the rest of his family by choice.

“
She would have told you eventually, I’m sure...when the time was right.”

Garrett massaged his temples and tried to absorb all of this. “Is he your lover?”

“
Good heavens, no,” he mother firmly replied. “He is a friend to me now. Nothing more.”

Garrett frowned. “Does he know I am his son?”

“
Yes.”

Garrett recalled the moment he dropped to his knees in the Great Hall and Dr. Thomas arrived and took the duke from his arms, and then continued to carry him upstairs. In his mind, Garrett also went over their conversation a short while ago.

Garrett admired the man’s intelligence and kindness, but this was not easy to accept.

“
It’s important for you to know something,” Adelaide said. “What happened between Dr. Thomas and me was not a brief, torrid affair. I was very young, to be sure, but I loved him and I still love him, though now it is a quieter sort of love.” She stood up and held out her hand. “Let us go for a walk outside in the fresh winter air. If I am going to tell you everything, Garrett, I must start at the beginning.”

He took hold of her hand and rose to his feet.

* * *

A short while before it was time to dress for dinner, Anne was resting in her bed, fighting to clear her mind of Garrett, when a knock sounded at her door.

She rose to answer it and found herself staring at the very face she was working so hard to forget.

He wore his heavy overcoat and was turning his hat over in his hands. His cheeks were flushed and vibrant from the chill of the outdoors. “May I come in?”

“
Of course,” she replied without hesitating, and stepped aside.

He entered and set his hat down on a chair, removed his coat and wasted no time before beginning to explain the reason for his visit.

“
I learned something today,” he said. “Something my brothers do not know—at least not yet—and since we are legally betrothed I feel you have a right to know.”

There was something rather alarming in his voice, as if it were an emergency of some sort. With a pang of concern, she gestured toward the chairs in front of the fire. He went to sit down and warmed his hands while Anne took a seat across from him. “Should I send for tea, or something stronger?”

He shook his head. Then he lounged back in the chair and ran a hand through his thick golden hair.

Heaven help her, it was not easy to focus on the matter at hand when he was sprawled in the chair looking like a beautiful lion and all she wanted to do was lunge forward and rip his waistcoat open, slide her hands up under his shirt, and press her lips to his chest.

Anne cleared her throat. “What happened?”

He let out a sigh. “Sometimes I wonder if there are certain things in life that one is better off not knowing.”

“
What do you mean?”

He reached for both her hands and held them. “I just spoke to my mother and learned the identity of my real father.”

A log shifted on the grate and sparks flew up the chimney. Anne regarded him thoughtfully.

“
That’s good news, isn’t it?” she said. “Or perhaps you’re trying to tell me it’s not. What happened between them? Who is it? Are you at liberty to tell me?”

“
Believe it or not,” he replied, “it is someone you have met. Someone who knows my father quite intimately.” He paused, then shook his head again, as if he could not believe it himself.

“
Is it Dr. Thomas?” she asked.

His eyes lifted. “Is it that obvious? Was I a fool not to see it sooner?”

“
Of course not. He is the only person I have met who seems a likely candidate.” She waited for Garrett to say something more, but he continued to rub the pads of his thumbs over her palms.

“
Are they together now?” she asked. “Are they lovers?”

“
She assures me they are just friends, but she also confessed that she does still love him and that he was the man she wanted to marry from a very young age.”

“
What else did she tell you about it?”

He inhaled deeply. “She explained that they were raised in the same county, and he was the son of a viscount. Her father seemed agreeable to the match until the illustrious Duke of Pembroke set eyes on her in a London ballroom and decided he had to have her as his duchess. He immediately made an offer and her father demanded that she accept. She felt duty-bound to obey, meanwhile Dr. Thomas was being strong-armed to join the army.” Garrett bowed his head. “It seems the whole world was against them. Dr. Thomas later defied his father and went to medical school instead, was disowned and disinherited, so any hopes my mother clung to—that her own father might change his mind and allow her to marry the great love of her life—were lost. They were separated for almost ten years, but she never quite got over him.”

“
Then what happened?”

“
After providing three heirs to the Pembroke dukedom, she was abandoned by her husband in all ways. He resided in London, took an endless string of mistresses, and she was left to endure the humiliation of his indiscretions and excessive drinking. Eventually there came a night when she couldn’t endure it any longer and she left him. Mother says she saddled a horse and rode hard to reach Dr. Thomas, who promised to help her escape the life that had been so cruelly forced upon her. She was going to ask the duke for a divorce, but it never came to that. After a week away from Pembroke, she missed her boys—my three older brothers—and knew the duke would never let her see them again if she divorced him. So she left Dr. Thomas and returned home. Nine months later she gave birth to Charlotte and me.”

“
My word,” Anne said, leaning back in her chair. “Did the duke know the truth?”

Garrett nodded. “Yes, and he accepted us as his own only to avoid a scandal. As for Dr. Thomas, he was quite devastated when she returned to Pembroke, determined to be a faithful wife. Consequently he never married. Since he couldn’t be with the woman he loved, he devoted his life to the study of medicine and the human brain. At one time, she needed his help when I was very ill as a child, and he managed my care. I vaguely remember certain details about his kindness. Then last spring—to help the very man who stole her away from him—he was steadfast in his duties to help the duke. Mother said he has been a godsend, and I confess, I must agree.”

Anne closed her eyes, raised Garrett’s hand to her lips and kissed it. “Oh, my darling. What will you do? Have you told Dr. Thomas that you know the truth?”

Silence. No response.

When she opened her eyes, Garrett was watching her mouth. Her heart began to race as he slowly, gently stroked his thumb across her chin and along the line of her jaw. His eyes glimmered with desire.

She wanted so badly to be practical about this man, but every time he touched her, or simply looked at her as he was looking at her now, she melted into a puddle of intense yearning.

Garrett sat forward on the edge of his chair and cupped her face in his hands. His lips touched hers in a soft, brush-like stroke of teasing allure. The sizzling heat of his lips caused a spark of electricity to explode in her veins and shoot all the way down to her toes. She was easily enticed out of her chair and before she realized it, Garrett was easing her down onto the soft mattress and covering her body with his own.

“
Garrett,” she whispered as she wrapped her legs around him and tore his jacket off his shoulders. “How do you do this to me? I cannot think straight when you touch me.”

With a husky groan of exertion, he tugged her skirts up around her hips and wrestled with the fastenings of his trousers.

Now, she didn’t care about foreplay. All she wanted was the swift, immediate sensation of his body entering her own.

When their clothing was out of the way he rose up on both arms and looked into her eyes while he shifted his hips to position himself at the entrance to her womanhood.

Already slick with desire, she welcomed him when he thrust slowly forward with tantalizing ease.

“
It feels good,” she whispered in a mindless haze of rapture.

He moved inside her smoothly, in and out, for a long while as passion built...until at last, the orgasm came. She could not fathom the intensity of it, the searing pleasure of the friction and heat—nor could she understand how he made her experience such feelings of love when they barely knew each other...when she had accepted that he did not want her beyond these two brief weeks of engagement.

She lifted her hips to meet the fierce thrust of his passions and cried out in ecstasy as their lovemaking reached a fevered pitch.

God, how she’d wanted him.

Worse yet, she wanted to
tell
him how she felt, but she could not. She had to bite back the words that nearly spilled from her lips while she was pulsing in the throes of that incomprehensible rapture.
I love you
, she wanted to say.
I love you...

His orgasm followed hers almost instantly—as if he were pushed over the brink by the sounds of her panting moans and the violent tensing of her body all around him.

His seed spilled into her vigorously. She felt the hot gush of it reach her womb and was only half-conscious of the risk they had taken—because it felt so blissfully perfect.