When the Marquess Met His Match (26 page)

“You’re so wet, my love,” he murmured, his fingers still caressing her in front. “So ready. You must want me. Can’t you say it?”

She pushed her hips back, wiggling her bottom, wanting him to come into her, end this torment. She wanted to say it, but she couldn’t. Between her tight corset and the sensations he was evoking, she couldn’t seem to get enough air. Each breath was a pant, desire was overwhelming her, and her body was moving in little jerks against his hand. “Want,” she gasped. It was all she could manage.

“Not good enough,” he said, his fingers moving faster, and she could feel her orgasm coming. Oh, God, she could feel it coming.

“I love you,” he said, his breathing now as ragged as hers. “I love you, and I want to be inside you. But first you have to tell me you want me, too.”

One more stroke of his hand, and she was there. “Yes!” she sobbed as she climaxed, her voice ringing out over the hops fields, but she was too overwhelmed to care if the entire world heard her declaration. “I want you, I want you. Yes, yes, yes!”

That was all he needed. He entered her, thrusting deep, and she came again, then again, and each time seemed to shatter her into pieces and break chains that had been in place her whole life. Into this maelstrom, she heard him cry out, and she felt the spasms of his orgasm as he thrust into her several more times. Then he stilled, his arm still tight around her waist. There seemed nothing else in the world, his breathing and hers the only sound in the soft stillness of the afternoon.

At last, he eased back, relaxing his hold. He lowered her skirts, smoothing them back into place, then turned her around. He kissed her, then tipped her chin up to look into her eyes. “Glad you finally said it,” he said, giving a hoarse chuckle as he cupped her flushed cheeks. “I’m not sure how much longer I could have held out.” He kissed her mouth, a long sweet kiss, full of tenderness. “I love you.”

He looked at her, waiting, and she knew what he wanted, but she wasn’t ready. She wasn’t sure. She couldn’t think.

He kissed her again, and let her go. He turned away, picked up the picnic basket, and started down the hops alley, but when she didn’t follow, he stopped and looked at her over his shoulder. “Well, aren’t you coming? We have a train to catch, you know.”

Chapter 21

T
hey didn’t talk much on the train, for they were surrounded by people. At Victoria Station, they separated, taking different hansom cabs home. In love affairs, one had to be discreet, especially in town. But Nicholas had to know when he would see her again, and as he assisted her to step into her waiting cab, he stopped her.

“Belinda?” When she turned, one foot on the step, her hand in his, he squeezed her fingers. “I have to see you. Meet me tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“Your house? A hotel? Anywhere.”

“How about Claridge’s?” She smiled. “For tea?”

He groaned. “I meant a room,” he muttered, “and not the tearoom.”

She shook her head. Glancing around, she whispered, “I can’t. Too many Americans in the hotels. Someone might recognize me, in the foyer or in a corridor . . . I can’t risk it.”

“Your house?” When she shook her head again, he began to feel desperate. There had to be somewhere. “Lilyfield’s. Quarter past five? Everyone will be gone by then.”

“All right,” she whispered.

He kissed her gloved hand, and stepped back, watching as her cab pulled away, merging into the traffic that clogged the narrow exit onto Victoria Street.

“My lord?”

He turned to find Chalmers behind him. “Your hansom is waiting. The luggage is loaded.”

“Let’s be off, then.”

It was just past six o’clock, and at this hour of the day during the season, traffic in London was fairly light. Gentlemen commuting home from the City had already arrived home, and for society, this was that brief lull in activity between tea and dinner. Nicholas was back at South Audley Street by quarter to seven.

But he’d barely made it upstairs and ordered his valet to draw him a bath before there was a knock on his bedroom door. “It’s Denys,” the voice said from the other side of the door. “May I come in?”

“Of course,” he called back, undoing the knot of his four-in-hand tie. But his fingers stilled as his friend came in, for the look on Denys’s face told him something was very wrong. “What is it?” he asked. “What’s happened?”

“If you hadn’t been coming back today, I’d have had to cable you.” Denys closed the door behind him, leaning back against it with a sigh. “It’s off. The whole thing’s off.”

“What whole thing?”

“The brewery, of course. It’s finished. We can’t do it.”

“Why not? Good God, Denys,” he added, as his friend didn’t answer. “This suspense is killing me. Spit it out, man.”

His friend took a deep breath before he spoke. “My father has withdrawn from the venture. He won’t fund it or buy shares.”

“What?” The word was a guttural sound, for he felt as if he’d just been kicked in the stomach. Panic followed, but he worked to shove it down. “Why? Do you know?”

Denys shook his head. “I don’t. All I know is . . .” He paused, cleared his throat, and looked at him with an expression that said things were about to get even worse. “All I know is that yesterday, Landsdowne came to see him. I don’t know what was said, but afterward, the old man called me in. He was white to the lips. He said he was sorry, but he couldn’t back us.”

“Landsdowne,” Nicholas muttered, rubbing his hands over his face. “I should have known.”

“I can’t imagine what was said,” Denys went on. “Conyers refused to discuss it, so whatever it was, I know it was bad.”

“You may not be able to imagine it, but I can.”

“If you’re thinking of a bribe, I can assure you that my father—”

“No, not bribery. Your father has plenty of money. Landsdowne knows that. He wouldn’t even waste his time trying that.”

“Then what?”

“Blackmail. Or some other threat,” he added when his friend protested. “Landsdowne is capable of finding anyone’s weakness and using it against him.”

He sat down on the edge of his bed, feeling as if everything good and right and wonderful had just been sucked out of him. “I should have known this would happen,” he muttered. “He came to see me at Honeywood a few days ago. He found out what we were doing, and he said he wouldn’t allow it. I shouldn’t be surprised he’s managed to stop it.”

“I’m sorry, Nick.”

“It’s not your fault.” Nicholas sat there a moment, thinking, then he stood up and began reknotting his tie. “There’s only one thing to do.”

“What?”

“Find the money elsewhere.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to find another investor?”

“I don’t know. But I know I have to try.” An image of Belinda at Honeywood, surrounded by meadow grass and daisies, came into his mind, reminding him of his vow to earn her respect. Yes, he had to try.

T
HE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON,
Belinda was at Lilyfield’s, just as she and Nicholas had arranged. She’d been anticipating their time together the previous evening, lying in bed last night, all day today. The hours had seemed to pass with interminable slowness, but at last, the time had almost arrived.

In her eagerness, she’d come a bit too early, and she waited in her carriage across the street, watching as the workers filed out with the five o’clock whistle, and a few moments later, she saw Somerton emerge. He stopped in the doorway when he saw her alight from her carriage and start across the street.

“Lady Featherstone,” he greeted, doffing his hat with a bow as she halted in front of him. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see Nicholas. Lord Trubridge,” she amended at once. “We arranged to meet here. To . . . um . . . to . . .” She stopped, for she hadn’t prepared some sort of excuse.

“You needn’t be discreet,” Somerton said. “He told me ages ago he wanted to marry and was seeking your assistance.”

“Oh.” That would do. “Yes, right. I . . . um . . . didn’t know if you knew.”

“I knew. And it’s a good thing. He’ll have to find himself a rich wife, especially now.”

She frowned, feeling a shiver, as if someone had just walked over her grave. “What do you mean?”

He sighed. “I suppose the news will be common knowledge within a day or two.” He gestured to the brewery behind him. “We’re not doing the brewery. We’re closing down.”

“What?” she gasped, dismayed. “But why? You were both so keen.”

“My father’s pulled the funds. Without financial backing, we can’t afford to carry on. Nick’s trying to find someone else to back us, but I doubt he’ll succeed. His father is very powerful.”

“Landsdowne? What’s he to do with it?” But even as she asked the question, she understood. “He doesn’t want his son engaging in trade, does he?”

“I would imagine that’s his motive. Brewing beer? Landsdowne would think that far beneath the son of a duke.”

Belinda felt sick, for she knew Nicholas must be devastated by this. “How is he? Where is he?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since I broke the news to him yesterday. He didn’t even come home last night.”

“Oh, God.” She pressed a hand to her mouth, truly worried.

“I’m sure he’s all right,” Denys hastened to assure her. “Nick always bounces back. He always finds a way to let his father’s schemes roll off his back like water off a duck. He’ll be all right.”

“Will he? Are you sure?”

“Well, he already told me he’s determined to carry on with this somehow though between us, Lady Featherstone, I don’t see how he’ll manage it. Unless he marries, of course. Find him a rich American girl, would you? One who won’t mind being hated by her father-in-law, smeared and reviled?” He gave a humorless laugh. “Good luck.”

No wonder Nicholas had spent his whole life rebelling against his father. She’d thought it was for revenge, but no. It was so that he wouldn’t have his dreams crushed. She thought of her words to him in the maze in a new, much more bitter light. They seemed so cruel.

But not as cruel as Landsdowne. Rage rose up within her, rage so great, it displaced her worry for the moment. It choked her, it smothered her, it made her for the first time in her life genuinely want to kill someone. Because that man, that odious, awful man, was grinding Nicholas’s dreams to dust. Again.

And that was how she knew.

She loved him. She loved him more than her good name, more than her profession, more than her money, more than her friends, more than anything in the world. She would give up everything, all she had, even her life, if it meant saving him a moment of pain, at his father’s hands or anyone else’s. She loved him that much.

“Lady Featherstone?”

She started at the sound of Somerton’s voice. “Sorry,” she said, pasting on the polite smile that came from years of hiding her true feelings. “I was woolgathering. Did you ask me a question?”

“Yes. I asked if you have any idea what Nicholas might do?”

“No.” She paused, her polite smile vanishing. “But I know exactly what I’m going to do.”

N
ICHOLAS SAT DOWN
on one of the wrought-iron benches of Park Lane and stared at the immense mansion across the street. Night had fallen, and the gaslights inside the house had been lit, illuminating the luxurious interiors for all the world to see. Outside, the streetlights along Park Lane lit the house’s equally luxurious exterior of marble columns, white limestone, and large, perfectly manicured lawns. The fountain in front, a statue of Zeus carved from Siena marble, must have cost thousands of pounds all by itself. Its water glistened and sparkled in the light of more gaslights, strategically placed to show it off even at night.

He’d played in that fountain once as a boy, he remembered. After he’d been caught, he hadn’t been allowed at Landsdowne House for over a year.

He leaned back, exhausted. He hadn’t slept last night. Wanting to be completely alone, he’d gone to a hotel and obtained a room, but he hadn’t slept. He’d lain in the dark, staring at the ceiling, striving to think of connections, men who might have money to invest—schoolfellows from Eton and Oxford, their fathers, their friends.

This morning, he’d taken the prospectus they’d drawn up for Conyers to other men he thought might be open to the investment, but though some had expressed an interest, all had asked him if Landsdowne had approved of his venture into commerce. And when given a negative answer, one and all had refused to participate.

By the end of the day, the sick knot in his guts told him he was fooling himself. Even if he found someone who was willing to have a go without Landsdowne’s goodwill, he knew what happened to Conyers would happen again. There was no one Landsdowne couldn’t bribe, or smear, or blackmail into pulling out.

I can make it right.

The old man’s words came back as if to mock him because here he was, trying to work up the courage to go in there and do what he vowed he’d never do again in his life. He was here to ask for something.

It would probably be futile, but he couldn’t lose Belinda without a fight. He was here to ask, to plead—to beg if he had to—for his father to accept Belinda as his choice of wife and to reinstate his trust fund. Without that, he had no income to support Belinda, and he would never ask her to bring her money to their marriage. That would make him the very sort of fortune hunter she despised, and he couldn’t sink to that level in her eyes, not again. If he did, he wouldn’t be able to bear it.

So here he was, in front of Landsdowne House, readying himself to do what he had to do. He tried to think of what might persuade his father to agree.

Belinda did meet a few of Landsdowne’s criteria. She was a respected lady of British society, with a sterling reputation. She was Church of England, having converted upon her marriage to Featherstone. And she was wealthy, too, able to bring a dowry into the family. His father didn’t have to know he had no intention of allowing a penny of Belinda’s money into Landsdowne coffers. Her background and her nationality were the biggest stumbling blocks. He just couldn’t see Landsdowne allowing an American to be the future duchess. Most of British society had accepted her long ago; indeed, most didn’t care that she’d once been a New Money nobody from Ohio. But Nicholas knew his father would never forget a thing like that, and he’d be only slightly less appalled by the prospect of an American daughter-in-law than he’d been about an Irish one.

If that wasn’t enough to make Nicholas’s chances utterly dismal, there was also the fact that he had no idea if Belinda would ever agree to marry him. In all the passionate cries he’d wrung from her the previous afternoon in the hops field, a declaration of love had not been one of them.

Still, he had to try. Nicholas stood up, took a deep breath, and started across the street, trying to prepare himself for the hardest thing he’d ever had to do in his life.

Wilton was still the butler at Landsdowne House, and as unflappable and proper a butler as any duke could want, but upon the sight of Nicholas, even Wilton gave way to a slight display of surprise. He raised one bushy gray eyebrow. His mouth opened, then closed. He cleared his throat. “Lord Trubridge,” he said at last, giving a bow.

“Wilton. How are you?”

“Very well, my lord, thank you.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Is the duke at home?”

“I—I’m not certain, my lord.”

“Find out, would you? I wish to see him.”

“Very good, my lord.” Wilton bowed and left him in the foyer.