ThePleasureDevice (12 page)

Nicholas sucked in air at her intrusion. “Darling, no!” He
sat up. “We mustn’t.”

For only a moment they stared at each other wide-eyed,
puffing shallow, astonished breaths before Nicholas took her in a devastatingly
needy kiss.

Helena gave in to his demands, letting his tongue tangle
with her own, letting him twist her to lie back, letting him place his weight
on top of her, letting him trap her against the mattress. Her hands explored
his back, discovering the muscles masculine and exciting as they moved and
reacted to her gripping fingers steadying herself against the assault of
pleasure. His hips rocked against hers in a slow rhythm. She responded
instinctively, pressing up and tilting down to his sensual cadence.

He lifted his head, gazing beseechingly. “Darling, your very
presence drives me mad with desire.” He stroked her cheek. “Then to be with you
like this, to love you like this, to touch you like this, I am beyond my
senses.”

“Me too.” She smiled and drew her fingers down his spine,
tracing every ridge, every valley of every vertebra until she reached his
waistband. She slid her hands under the fine wool, hesitatingly, slowly. She
hardly knew what she was doing, but it felt perfect.

She sensed a new energy surging through him at her touch.
His lips pecked a string of kisses from her ear to her décolletage, his tongue
darting under the fabric of her neckline. “My love, Helena, we oughtn’t be
doing any of this.” Despite his speech, he did not stop.

She did not want him to stop. She wanted to ride the tumult
of emotions from confusion to delirium. But his truth made her remember why she
had to get away from the crowd in the ballroom in the first place. “No, we
really oughtn’t,” she said, the words choking in her throat as fresh tears
smarted in her eyes.

Nicholas abruptly pulled back. “Helena?” He slid to her
side. “Oh God, I’ve been a brute.”

“Nicholas, no, please, it’s nothing you did.” She took the
edge of his shirt again to wipe her eyes. “When I’m with you I feel nothing but…but
joy. Absolute joy, unfettered freedom.” She smiled up at him, his face racked
with concern and delight. “I fear I will never experience such feelings with
another. I know I could not.” She drew in a bracing breath. “My mother has
found a husband for me. I don’t know who it is yet. She said he is a kind man
but an older man.”

Nicholas gaped, then fell back onto the mattress in defeat,
gasping, stunned and disheartened as she. “I’m sure whoever your mother has
chosen for you will be a suitable match,” he said, staring up at the canopy.

Helena rested her hand on his belly feeling uneven breaths
course through his torso. “Nicholas, I’m afraid. How can I love him if I don’t
know him?”

“Perhaps he is a good man. Perhaps love will grow.” He didn’t
sound convinced.

“But I want to feel what I feel when you kiss me.”

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. “Perhaps
he is an interesting man. A man of science.”

“Can dukes and earls be men of science?” she lamented.

He chuckled. “Yes, I think so.” He gave her a little
squeeze. “Why do you not know who it is?”

“My mother said she has written to my father in California.
I think I have to wait until he approves.”

“Oh.” He could not hide the disappointment in his voice and
yet there was a hint of something akin to hopefulness. “Do you have any idea
who it might be?”

“I’ve thought it through. It has to be a duke. I’ve met a
couple of those who were at least forty, I think.” She gazed up at him. “Nicholas,
I don’t want to think about it right now. I want to be with you.” She slid her
hand across his stomach, stroking the silky strands that disappeared
tantalizingly beneath his waistband.

“All right.” He kissed her hair and grabbed her hand,
holding it away from him as he tugged down his shirt. “But I don’t think we
should continue with what we were doing. I’m not sure I could restrain myself.
And I would have the wrath of both your father and your future husband to deal
with.”

Helena giggled. “Tell me about the girl you were with.”

“No! Absolutely not.”

He didn’t seem angry, so she pressed. “Do I know her?”

“I will not besmirch the name of a fine young woman.”
Despite his stalwart words, he was smiling.

“So you admit what you did was wrong?” she taunted
mischievously.

“What? No! I mean, yes, it was very naughty, but if two
people—” He broke off.

“Yes?” she said expectantly.

“You are incorrigible, you know that.”

“I do.” She smiled.

“How any man will put up with that, I don’t know.”

“You would.”

“I would,” he agreed. He pulled her close again. “Tell me
about the stars, Helena. Tell me about the constellations.”

He was changing the subject to make her feel better. She
nuzzled into the crook of his arm. “When I was a child, Mama and Papa used to
tell me bedtime stories about gods and goddesses. One night, Papa took me
outside on the lawn of our house in New York. We lay there and he told me the
same stories while we looked up at the stars. I spent that summer reading about
the constellations and the myths during the da, and studying the sky at night,
watching it change as the hours passed.” She sighed. “I suppose the wife of a
duke doesn’t really need to know such things.”

“You never know.” He kissed her hair and threaded his
fingers through hers. “I didn’t think it would happen so soon,” he said
quietly, his voice betraying his disbelief. “I thought I’d have a bit more
time.”

“Time?”

He pressed his face against her. “Time to be with you.”

It was a curious thing to say. Even all the time in the
world would not have changed the fact that he was a doctor. Still, an old duke
might not mind if she had her pleasures once she bore him an heir. “Nicholas,
could we be lovers after I am married?”

She felt him tense briefly. “I would very much like that,
Helena.”

“We could make love in third-floor bedrooms.”

He smiled and looked down at her. “How positively wicked.”
He pulled her close and took her in a deep kiss.

She opened for him, letting him consume her, her lungs
tightening against the sobs threatening to break forth, knowing it was probably
the last time they would be together. She tugged him on top of her to envelop
him in her arms, gripping for dear life, letting his body crush hers, just
needing to feel him more.

He broke away reluctantly, loosening her hold on him yet
understanding the urgency, letting her run her hand inside his shirt. His
muscles trembled under her frenzied fingers.

“Darling,” he said softly, “I have to go away for a while on
business. I mean, there’s a family matter, an illness, and I must attend to it,
I don’t know when I will see you next but I will see you. Even if you are
already married, I will find you.”

Helena nestled against him. “And then we can become lovers?”

“And then we can become lovers.”

It was said with a hopeful note.

Nicholas had lost her. His beloved Helena, gone, to another
man, a stranger who did not love her.

Still, Lavinia—dear sweet, practical, intelligent, beautiful
Lavinia—had convinced him he had to see his father even without the hope of
Helena. Once the Earl of St. Albans died, the press would discover Nicholas’
relationship to him. It was best for Nicholas’ future—and his marriage
prospects—if he made an effort to reconcile with his family. Women adored
honorable men, she had said.

Mason the steadfast butler showed no surprise when he opened
the front door to the sprawling estate and saw the proverbial prodigal son
returned.

“Good afternoon, Lord Saxondale.”

The reference to the courtesy title was jarring. “Good
afternoon, Mason,” Nicholas said kindly. With Jack dead, the servants would
just assume he was the new Viscount Saxondale. There was no point in admitting
his reservations.

He was led in and his hat and coat dutifully taken. “I’m
here to see my father, Mason.”

“Yes, sir. Right this way, sir.”

As they climbed the stairs, passing paintings of his
ancestors, Nicholas saw how much the house had been left to deteriorate. Along
the corridor of the second floor, where a maid would have usually cleaned, dust
clung to woodwork and covered the tops of tables, less thick where objects had
been removed, probably to be sold. The patent disregard for their once-esteemed
heritage disgusted him.

“Where are you taking me, Mason? This is not at all where I
remember my father’s bedroom was.”

“Yes, my lord. The bedroom wing was closed a few years ago.
Much of the house is no longer used. It saves on the expense of coal and other
things, my lord.”

Yes, of course. Jack had acquired his nickname not just
because it was a diminutive of his Christian name, Jonathan, but because of his
gambling habit, developed, unfortunately, during his university days when he
became known as Jack of Diamonds. Nicholas knew his brother had recently been
excessively in debt and now the magnitude of that debt stared him plainly in
the face. Jack and his father seemingly had fired the entire staff—save for
Mason and perhaps a cook—sold family heirlooms and closed off most of the
house. It was amazing how much devastation vice could bring upon a family in
just a few years.

Mason stopped before a room Nicholas remembered as his
mother’s summer morning room. “We are here, my lord.”

His heart thumped nervously. “Tell me, Mason. What state is
he in? Can he speak?”

“Yes, my lord. You father is bedridden but he can speak. He
will be delighted, I am sure, to see you. He has much to say.”

“Thank you, Mason.” Nicholas drew in a fortifying breath and
went in.

The room was as he had remembered it when his mother was
alive, except a narrow servant’s cot had been placed before the fireplace and
instead of the scent of lavender, the stink of death hung in the air. The Earl
of St. Albans, a formidable man when in his prime, lay shriveled and pale under
a dense goose-down comforter in the small bed.

“Nicky, is that you?”

Nicholas’ heart dropped at the sound of the frail voice.

“Yes, Father, I am here.”

“Good, good. I have been waiting.”

Nicholas drew up a chair and sat at the bedside.

“The bullet went close to my heart, if you would like to see
it, Doctor.”

Nicholas was taken aback. The earl was trying to humor him.

“If I may, Father.”

Nicholas drew the comforter down. His father’s left shoulder
was covered in a bandage—expertly done, he had to admit. He loosened and pulled
back a corner. The stench of infection hit him first. The wound was beyond
repair, discolored and decaying.

“I wish I could have been here to help, Father. I learned
how to treat wounds in the mountains of Anatolia.”

“The doctor did what he could when he could, Nicky.”

“Yes.” Nicholas tucked the bandage in place and sat back in
his chair.

“Thank you for coming, son.”

“It was Lavinia who convinced me.”

“I know.” The earl’s breathing was labored. “Nicky, I know
what you heard, but I did not kill her. I did not kill Louisa.”

Tears welled in his eyes at the sound of his mother’s name.
Nicholas fought hard to calm himself, hearing Lavinia’s voice in his head
telling him he should listen to whatever his father had to say. “Go on.”

“I admit I was cruel to her. I regret that. I was selfish,
foolish, a criminal. I did not deserve such an angelic woman as she.” He gasped
for air.

“All I read was that you and Jack beat her to death.”

“No! It was not like that.” There was a heavy silence as the
earl bolstered himself to tell the tale. “Jack had taken up with a young man
named Percy.”

“The Duke of Amesbury’s son?”

“The very same.”

“Why, he is just a child!”

“He was when you left us, yes. He was a handsome youth when Jack
began his affair with him.”

Nicholas really liked Percy, a delightful boy full of
fantastical notions who amused him with stories of pirates and fairies.

“I really think at one point Jack loved Percy. I had even
hoped the boy would be his savior from drink and debt. But it did not last
long. Jack fell back in with his old friends and began drinking again. That’s
when he started abusing poor Percy.”

Nicholas tamped down the anger boiling within.

“Your mother and I did not know for the longest time. We would
see Percy injured but he always had an excuse. We thought nothing of it. He was
always such an active boy.”

The earl drew in a tremulous breath. Nicholas’ stomach
clenched at the sound.

“I’m not quite certain how it all happened. Your mother must
have heard Jack and Percy arguing, must have realized Jack was beating the boy.
She found him alone in Jack’s bedroom, crying and bleeding, so she took him and
hid him in her own room and cared for him there.

“Jack came home later that night, more drunk than he had
been that afternoon. He looked for Percy everywhere, eventually finding him in
Louisa’s room. He flew into such a rage.”

The earl stopped. He was crying. Nicholas’ head ached from
restraining his own tears.

“It was Jack who beat your mother, Nicky. He hit her as if
she were a man equal to his strength. I heard her screams. The whole house did.
We ran upstairs to her aid but he had a gun and threatened to kill her. He was
raving that Percy was his to do with as he pleased. I knew I had to do something.
In my foolishness I leapt for the gun. In the melee, Jack pushed my Louisa down
the stairs.”

The earl made an effort to catch his breath again. “The
servants went every which way, some to help your mother, some to tackle Jack.
She died on the landing, Nicky. She broke her neck. In her last breath, she
spoke your name.”

Tears blinding his eyes, Nicholas took out his handkerchief.
The “R” for “Ramsay” emblazoned on the corner sent him over the edge of grief.
The earl weakly reached out his trembling fingers. Nicholas squeezed the frail
hand.

“I went to Percy, guarding him, while the servants
sequestered Jack. At that moment, in my sorrow I realized I was the one to
blame. Jack learned such abhorrent behavior from me and the way I treated your
mother.”

Something did not make sense. Something was missing from the
story. “Father, why did I read that you were involved?”

“I was involved, really. But it was for the boy’s sake. A
son of a duke in a pederastic relationship would not sit well with the ton.
That he had been beaten by his lover would have been worse. I had to feed the
press something. I told them it was an argument with your mother that ended in
tragedy. Of course the gossips embellished the story with Jack’s drunken
involvement, that he had been seen with a gun, even daring to insinuate it was
murder.”

Nicholas tried to absorb all he had just heard. Three years
ago, he had read newspapers, listened to gossip and had burned every letter his
father had sent to him via Lavinia. Had he actually read them he might have
known the truth earlier. Still, it would not have saved his mother.

Mason knocked lightly before entering the room. “Master
Nic—pardon, Lord Saxondale, I think it is time your father rested.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Nicky,” came his father’s weak voice. “Will you be staying?”

Nicholas hadn’t bothered to think that far ahead. “Yes,
Father, I’ll stay.”

“Good. We have some catching up to do.”

Once outside, Mason led Nicholas down the hall. “I’ll put
you up here, my lord. I think it was once a parlor of sorts.”

“Yes, it was.” His mother used to entertain close friends
there. “Tell me, Mason, why is my father not in his old bed? Surely he’d be
more comfortable.”

“I had no one to help me move the bed, my lord. And to be
frank, as your mother was killed in the bedroom wing, your father did not want
to die there too. He hopes to feel her spirit in the morning room, where she
spent so much of her time.”

“Thank you, Mason.”

* * * * *

“Marry Dr. Christopher!” Helena screamed in horror. “Why am
I to marry Dr. Christopher? I thought I was to marry a duke!”

Mama’s fingers fumbled at the buttons on the back of her
walking dress. “Now, Helena—”

“He’s not a member of the peerage, is he?”

“He’s been made a baronet, darling.”

“Oh but there are gobs of those, aren’t there? Even Papa
could be made one and he’s American.” Helena tugged at her bodice until it fit
properly. Her lady’s maid had the afternoon off, and clearly Mama was too
anxious to be of much help.

“I should not have told you,” Mama sighed. “Everything will
be settled once your father returns.” She pushed on Helena’s shoulders, making
her sit at the dressing table.

“When will that be?” Helena flinched as her mother roughly
brushed her hair.

“I’ve already written him in California—”

“Mama! It could be months!”

“Yes, well, it could very well be. But you needn’t concern
yourself with that.” She inelegantly pinned Helena’s hurried chignon.

“But in the meantime I could be meeting someone far more…appropriate.”

Mama gaped at her in the dressing table mirror. “Dr. Christopher
is a fine man, Helena.”

“But he isn’t a duke, Mama. And you always said I had to do
better than what you did, I mean as far as station is concerned.”

“I should strike you for your insolence.”

“That wasn’t meant as an affront to Papa,” Helena said
quietly. “I love Papa. You know that. But you have been telling me since I was
fourteen that I needed to marry well. And why.”

“Yes, of course.” Mama appeared uneasy. “Well, sometimes
things change.”

Her mother’s nervous fragility emboldened Helena to dare say
aloud what she, and probably others, had been thinking all along. “Why should I
marry him when it is you who is sharing his bed?”

Mama’s eyes flashed in panic, her forehead twisted in worry.
“Who told you that?”

“No one, Mama. But I know you leave after you think I’ve
gone to sleep. And he is ever so attentive when we see him at parties, perhaps
overly so.”

“Dr. Christopher is spending his private time to treat me.
With your father gone, I have no one to turn to.”

It was more than that. There must be a certain physical
intimacy between the doctor and Mama, otherwise, why wouldn’t she just seek out
the company of her daughter?

“Mama, if you need someone to talk to, I would love to be
your friend. To comfort you, as you have always done for me.”

“My sweet child.” Mama pulled her from her chair and drew
her into her arms. “It isn’t that simple.”

Which only confirmed her suspicions. “It’s his pleasure
machine, isn’t it, Mama?”

That elicited a sigh. “When your husband goes away for
months at a time, you’ll understand.”

“But why would a London doctor ever need to leave me?” she
blurted impertinently.

Mama let out a little grunt. “Yes, of course. Why would he?”
She smiled and patted Helena’s shoulders. “You’ll be a lucky wife.”

Helena had to say it, she knew she had to say it. It was her
last appeal. “Mama, I don’t love him. I mean, I like him, I suppose. He’s
polite and kind. But I certainly don’t love him.”

“You’ll grow to love him. Trust me.”

“I really don’t think he loves me, either.”

“He esteems you, dear. That is sufficient.”

“But why can’t I marry the man I love?” she lamented. “You
married the man you loved.”

Mama lifted Helena’s chin to look her squarely in the eye. “Are
you in love with someone, dear?”

Helena felt herself blush. She couldn’t tell her mother
about Nicholas. He wasn’t a duke. He was only a doctor, just like Dr.
Christopher. There was nothing to recommend him except that she was absolutely,
positively, irrevocably in love with him. And she was certain he loved her
back. “There are some men I feel a certain way with when I dance with them. I
think it might be love. I certainly don’t feel the same way around Dr.
Christopher.”

“Ah. I see.” Mama smiled in understanding. “I think what you
need is another visit or two to Dr. Christopher’s office. He can set your heart
at ease. You’ll see.”

Helena sighed as she followed her mother down to the parlor
where they would wait for Lady Banbury’s carriage to whisk them off to some tea
or other. She didn’t much care anymore. What was the point if she was already
engaged?

She pouted and played with her gloves, stretching them and
picking at the buttons. Why was she the one who had to redeem her mother’s name
in the eyes of the Marquess and Marchioness of Richmond? She barely knew them
and certainly did not care what they thought. Why didn’t she get to marry for
love too?

Nicholas, oh Nicholas…

She bit her lip to hide a smile. Thoughts of him inflamed
her body, inspired her dreams and provoked her brain to scheme. What if she
could do exactly what Mama had done? If she became pregnant with Nicholas’
child, then she would have to marry him! Mama and Papa would insist upon it.
The plot gave her hope. But seduction was hardly her forte, and every time she
saw him it was by utter chance. Surely they would have to be left alone for
quite a bit of time. But how to make that happen? She simply did not know how
to begin.