The Rose's Bloom (7 page)

A dull cough made them both stiffen. Damon lifted his mouth from hers and peered over her head into her father’s angry eyes.

Claire turned to face her father, though Damon did not release her. Instead, he positioned her in front of him to hide the bulge now forming within his breeches. Claire settled back against him. She showed no signs of surprise at his aroused state—in fact, she settled her plush bottom firmly into him. She flexed her bottom muscles, as if to tease him. Damon gritted his teeth, fighting back the impulse to groan.

“Have you ruined my daughter?” Killory asked, his expression screaming fury.

Ruined?
“No,” Damon said with conviction. Claire stiffened against him. “I have made her mine.”

“There is no difference,” Killory snarled.

“You are wrong. Only you can ruin her, by sending her to a man who has no want for her other than the coin she brings.”

“The contract has been signed. There is nothing I can do to halt it.”

Claire sucked in a breath. Her father’s words held little conviction, but Damon knew why this man did not want to break the contract. There could only be one reason.

“I have no need for your coin. When Claire and I marry, you can forfeit the coin to Sir Gerald.”

The older lord hit the table with his fist again. “You think it is that easy? She is promised to another!”

“Sir Gerald will not want her any longer. Not least if you force me to write to him and inform him his betrothed could be carrying my heir.”

Clare sucked in another startled breath as she moved a shaking hand to her stomach. It was clear the thought had never occurred to her, though the look her father gave the motion spoke volumes.

“Daughter, I arrange a marriage for you and you go running to your lover for help?” he snarled.

Damon gave her no time to reply. “She did not come running to me. I was on my way here to see you when I found her in tears,” Damon said. His words held censure and conviction.

Claire turned in his arms. “You were coming to speak with Father before…?” At his nod, her eyes widened. “About what?”

“I was coming to ask for your hand.”

Tears glistened in her eyes. He stroked away the moisture with a finger as it spilled over her lids. He hated to see her in tears, even if they were from happiness.

“You have brought scandal on my family!” Killory bellowed, recapturing his attention.

Damon gazed at the older man and levelled him with a look that was not to be challenged.

“I am one of the wealthiest lords in England and have asked for your daughter’s hand with no expectation of dowry for it. Scandal will not be brought upon her as my wife, whereas the marriage to a gambler and well-known vagabond, which you have proposed, would far increase the chance of shame being brought onto your family—more than if she remained unmarried. I will have her, Killory, mark my words. I hold more power than you in the House of Lords and instead of having me in your court, you should think about what it will mean to have me as an enemy.”

“Are you threatening me?” her father asked, and for the first time Damon saw the man’s uncertainty.

“No, merely warning you. I am more use to you as a friend—and son—than as a foe.”

Killory said nothing for a time, and Damon could sense victory.

“I will take her to Gretna Green if you do not consent,” Damon added.

“No,” Killory said as he sat back down in his chair. “I will have the banns read and the wedding will take place here in a month. I trust the babe, if there is one, will not be due for some time, daughter?”

Claire shook in Damon’s arms as she nodded.

Her father took a deep breath and picked up his drink. “Well, it is done. I will send word to Sir Gerald and the paper. The notice will be published in the next issue.”

They were dismissed. Killory turned his chair away from them and looked out of the wide window lining the back of his study, his drink in hand.

Damon took her arm and led her to the door. Though Damon began to walk towards the foyer, Claire grasped his hand and led him in the other direction, pulling him though a small archway into a demure sitting room.

“You are sure you wish to marry me?” Claire asked, looking up at him with worry.

He narrowed his eyes at her. “You are having second thoughts?”

She shook her head almost violently. “No. Not at all. I just do not want you to regret it later.”

Damon wrapped his arms around her as she rested against his chest. “Why would I regret marrying you?”

“I don’t know,” she mumbled, but Damon sensed she did.

“My rose, tell me what worries you.”

“D-do you love me, Damon, or is it only desire you feel for me?”

Damon closed his eyes for a moment before he nuzzled into the softness of her hair.

“The love I hold for you, my rose, is so great that I worry I will perish if I am not with you.”

She gasped and pulled back to look at him, tears again in her eyes.

“Why must you cry? It pains me so to see you this way.”

“I love you too, Damon. More than anything. You make me feel beautiful and cherished. I have never felt like that before.”

Damon moved his hands to her face as he held her gaze. “You are beautiful and most definitely cherished. You are mine. Know it, and know every day how much I love you. In fact,” he said with a devilish smile, “let me show you.” He held her close, his lips claiming hers with hungry need.

Also available from Total-E-Bound Publishing:

Lady Lovett’s Little Dilemma

Beverley Oakley

Excerpt

Chapter One

“The Earl of Lovett has taken a
mistress
?”

The breathy shock of pretty newlywed Mrs Rupert Browne sliced through the buzz of conversation, lancing its unsuspecting target three feet away and causing a deaf colonel to solicitously ask the Duchess if she required a glass of water.

Still choking on her champagne, Cressida, Lady Lovett, strained to hear the response of her cousin, Catherine, who had obviously disseminated this latest shocking
on dit
, smilingly assuring deaf Colonel Horvitt she was quite all right, as if her happiness were not suddenly hanging by a gossamer thread.

She strained to hear more.

“
Surely not?
” gasped the generally well-intentioned but oblivious Mrs Browne to Cousin Catherine’s whispered reply. “But the Earl made a love match. Mama told me he scandalised society by marrying a nobody.”

Cressida had to use two hands to keep her champagne coupe steady. The indignity of being described as a ‘nobody’ was nothing compared with the pain of hearing her husband’s amours—real or otherwise—discussed in the middle of a ballroom. She forced her trembling mouth into her best attempt at a smile as the Colonel leant forward and wagged his finger at her, his stentorian tone precluding further eavesdropping. “Your husband ruffled more than a few feathers with his speech in the House of Lords last night, Lady Lovett.”

Cressida had once giggled with her ferociously forceful cousin Catherine that the Colonel used his deafness as an excuse to peer down the cleavage of every pretty lady he addressed. She was in no mood for giggling now. Clearly, Cousin Catherine was disclosing details about the state of Cressida’s marriage of which Cressida, apparently, was the last to know. She straightened and pushed her shoulders back, suddenly self-conscious of appearing the sagging, lacking creature the several hundred guests crowded into Lady Belton’s newly renovated ballroom must imagine her, if they were already privy to what she was hearing for the first time. Before her last sip of champagne she’d considered herself happily married. It was all she could do to remain standing and dry-eyed.

Adjusting the lace of her masquerade costume she managed, faintly, “Ah, Colonel, you know Lord Lovett and his good causes.” She tried to make it sound like an endearment, but the axis of her world had become centred on ascertaining what other titbits about her marriage Catherine was divulging to Mrs Browne.

The music swelled to a crashing crescendo, the end of which was punctuated by Mrs Browne’s shocked squeak, “Madame Zirelli? Was she not once Lord Grainger’s mistress? No! His
wife
? He divorced her? And now she and Lord Lovett—?”

Cressida hadn’t wanted to come to Lady Belton’s masquerade. Little Thomas was teething, but Justin had been especially persuasive, reminding her that it had been a long time since they’d been out in public, and that, yes, he knew Thomas was cutting a tooth but there was nothing Cressida could do that Nurse Flora couldn’t, just for a few hours that evening.

Searching the ballroom for her husband, she spied him talking to her friend Annabelle Luscombe near the supper table. His look was solicitous, as if he were hanging on her every word. Cressida knew he would take equal interest if Annabelle were talking about her latest bonnet or about the Sedleywich Home for Orphans, of which both Justin and Annabelle were patrons.

A frisson of longing speared her. Justin had looked at her like that when she’d first met him. So handsome, so determined, so sincere.

The thought that he’d made a special plea for her presence tonight purely in the interests of stilling wagging tongues was almost too terrible to consider.

A mistress? Her kind, beloved, faithful Justin?

As if he were conscious of her from across the room, Justin turned, his dark brown eyes kindling at the sight of her, the warmth of his smile spreading comfort like a woollen mantle. It radiated across the heated, perfumed distance that separated them. Dear Lord, he looked like a handsome prince taken right out of the pages of a story book, his brown, wavy hair brushed fashionably forward, topped with the laurel wreath required by his costume, his sideburns contouring his elegantly chiselled, high cheekbones. Like a stately Roman senator, he was the stuff of every girl’s dreams, yet it was she, insignificant Miss Cressida Honeywell, daughter of a poor country parson, who had won his heart all those years ago.

She’d thought she still had it—had vowed she’d always keep it.

Rallying, she took a step forward, responding to the invitation implicit in her husband’s eye, but the Colonel began counselling Cressida on the dangers of Justin making speeches about orphans and sanitation when he could better rouse his audience in the Lords if he concerned himself with more important matters.

The look she’d just exchanged with her husband was enough to all but dismiss her fears. Exhaling with relief, Cressida smiled at the Colonel who, obviously regarding this as encouragement, closed the distance between them as he pursued his argument. She retained her smile as Justin, from the other side of the room, focused another very warm glance in her direction before attending to the hunchbacked Dowager Duchess of Trentham, whose eightieth birthday celebration this was. Justin had the gift of making every woman feel the centre of his especial interest. Clearly something must have been misconstrued…

And yet.

Awareness prickled through her—that she had for some time sensed all was not quite right. Taking a step back, she swallowed past the lump in her throat while making, she hoped, the appropriate responses for the benefit of the Colonel. Justin, lately, had not been the contented husband of old. The recent bolstering she’d silently received from him faded upon this acknowledgement and her eyes stung. She knew her behaviour had not been beyond reproach—that she had withdrawn and that understandably he was confused. Some months ago he’d tried to raise the subject yet she’d brushed it aside, incapable of putting her feelings into words, unable to entertain that unmentionable aspect of their marriage at the heart of all their problems.

“Catherine? A minute, if you please?” Cressida waylaid the stately, dark-haired young woman dressed as a siren about half an hour later as the Colonel—thankfully—responded to his wife’s perfunctory summons. With a little intake of breath and a stammered excuse, the recently gossiping Mrs Browne slipped away while Cousin Catherine betrayed her guilt with a blush.

“Why, Cressy, I did not notice you. How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough to wonder who Madame Zirelli might be and what she is to my husband,” Cressida responded with uncharacteristic harshness.

Catherine’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, Cressy,” she gasped. “I had no idea you— I’m so sorry. But, of course, it’s only gossip. You know how quick people are to jump to conclusions.” But her cheeks were flushed. She knew she was guilty of the charges Cressida made. “You’re looking unwell, Cressy. I’ll take you home. We’ll have a nice cosy chat in the carriage, shall we? I hadn’t expected to see you out this evening, you’ve been hiding away so long.”

Cressida was about to argue that she planned to return with Justin when Catherine took her arm, saying breezily, “Don’t trouble yourself over Justin. He’s asked me to tell you he’s off to White’s with Roddy Johnson. He knew you were anxious to return home to little Thomas.”

Was that grim satisfaction she saw on her cousin’s face?

It wasn’t until she’d gained the darkness of the vehicle that Cressida broke her tense silence.

“I’d thank you to tell me everything you told Mrs Browne.” Sinking back against the squabs of her husband’s plush equipage, she hid her disquiet beneath a veneer of dignified anger. “If she is under the impression Justin has taken a mistress, you apparently did little to disabuse her of that fact, when I know very well it is not true. I’d like to know the source of your information.”

Catherine shifted beside her and although Cressida could not see her face she could tell she was uncomfortable. “No need to get on your high ropes, Cressy,” she muttered and Cressida could imagine the proud, defiant tilt to Catherine’s pointed chin as she defended her actions, just as she had done all through her impish childhood and spirited adolescence. “Like you say, I’m sure there’s nothing to it.”