White Regency 03 - White Knight (15 page)

“I am not a damned animal, Grace. I
don’t know why I can’t seem to control myself. I need to feel you. I need to be
inside of you. I just can’t help it.”

She looked at him, her eyes shining softly
in the moonlight coming through the window behind her. “I want to be close
to you again. I have missed you. It is all right, Christian.”

But it wasn’t all right. This was not the
way a man of his age and status in life made love to a woman, most especially
his wife. Nonetheless, his breeches were down around his ankles and he fell
over her again, pulling at her skirts, searching through the layers and layers
of silken fabric, desperate to find her. When he had succeeded in pushing them
up around her waist, he parted her legs and came between them quickly. His
heart was hammering now against his chest. He could scarcely breathe. He
thanked the saints when he found that she was at least partially aroused and
then thrust himself deeply, crying out as he buried himself totally within her.

When next he had regained his senses,
Christian was panting, his forehead damp with perspiration. Even as he lay
there atop her, his face buried against her neck, he could not believe what he
had done. He had just ravished his wife in a guest bedchamber at the home of
one of his closest friends while half of London danced in the ballroom beneath
them, spilling his seed inside of her not just once now—but twice. Somehow he
knew at that moment his grandfather was laughing.

Christian took himself away from Grace
without a word. He stood to quickly fasten his breeches. He turned toward her.
She lay there, quietly watching him in the moonlight. One stocking was down
around her ankle and her hair was a tumbled mass of curls against the pillow.
Her eyes were wide and totally filled with that same damned adoration she
always looked on him with. She looked incredible, so incredible that he felt a
slight tightening in his groin, even after what he had just accomplished.

Christian lowered her skirts, noting
unhappily that in his frantic assault on her, he had torn the edging of her
gown. He stared at Grace, and she him for several long moments.

“I’m afraid we will not be able to
return to the ball. I’ve quite ruined your coiffure.”

Grace touched a hand to her disarranged
curls. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care about the ball. I just want to be
with you.”

Christian stood stiffly. They were not
words he needed to hear right then. “I will notify my mother that we are
leaving. I’ll see to retrieving our cloaks and calling for a carriage.” He
looked at her. “Grace, I have no right to expect that you would
understand—”

Christian never finished his thought for
Grace had stood and very gently placed her fingers against his lips,
whispering, “Shh. Please don’t spoil this, Christian.”

Her eyes were shining brightly in the
moonlight and her face was taken with a dreamy sort of smile. He took her
fingers away. “Grace, you do not realize it, but this is not the way
relations are normally conducted between a man and a woman. Men who behave as I
have, who perform as I have, are animals. A man should be able to control his
impulses long enough to take a woman to a proper bedchamber and long enough so
that she might at least remove her gloves.”

Grace looked at her hands then as if
suddenly realizing she still wore them. She looked at him. “But it wasn’t
terrible, Christian, not even the first time on our wedding night. I’m sorry
for whatever I did wrong to make you leave that night. It is just that I wasn’t
aware it was going to hurt and it was only for a moment and everything else you
had done up to that point—especially the kissing part—that had been nice. And
tonight wasn’t terrible. It didn’t hurt at all this time. It startled me a
little, but I think, at least I hope it brought me closer to you.”

Christian stared at her. Good God, she was
blaming herself. He couldn’t believe she was apologizing to him for his having
taken her virginity so badly. “Damnation, Grace! You are a dreamer!”
He wanted to shake her, knock those fanciful thoughts right from her head.
“I cannot tolerate this. I will not stand for this to happen again!”

“Christian, you are angry with
me.” She set her hand on his arm. “You are displeased that I danced
with Lord Whitly instead of waiting for you to ask me. It was a mistake. I know
that now. I promise I will not do it again.”

Christian closed his eyes, so furious with
himself at having given over to his passion once again that he wanted to break
something. Simply the thought of what he’d done—dragging her here from that
crowded ballroom to a guest chamber in Robert’s home, taking her as he did, spilling
his seed inside of her again—filled him with a raw anger that threatened to
explode inside of him. He was a marquess, heir to an esteemed dukedom. He had
been raised to eschew all emotion and feeling, quash it beneath a cold, hard
blanket of indifference. It was the way of the Westover men and he had spent
twenty years cultivating the icy reserve that had kept him safely apart from
the rest of the world. He didn’t know what it was about this woman that made
him forget completely who he was. But whatever it was, this madness had to
stop. He was determined that it would.

As he started for the door to make the
arrangements for their swift departure, Christian drew on every ounce of
callousness he could, hardening his heart against the memory of her eyes, her
sweetness, while he made a silent vow to himself, one in which he would not
fail.

If it meant he had to banish her to the
country, he was not going to break this vow.

He was not, under any circumstances, going
to sleep with his wife again.

Christian would repeat his vow against
bedding his wife twice more during the following fortnight. Every time he made
the oath anew, he was just as determined to persevere. And every time he
failed, he grew that much more disgusted with himself.

Something must be done about this madness.

Blessedly, for the past week, Grace had
been occupied with preparations for hosting her first supper party. It had been
Catriona’s idea, apparently, a way for Grace to establish herself as a member
of society. Other than to ask the advice of Eleanor or Lady Frances when
necessary, or consult him on the guest list, Grace had embraced the venture
wholeheartedly, taking it upon herself to make all the arrangements.
Invitations had been issued to well over a dozen guests—friends and associates
of the Knighton family as well as several principal society figures. Not one of
the invitations Grace had sent had been refused—a good sign, yes, for it
indicated that she had been received well by the
ton.

As he stood before his dressing mirror
preparing for the evening’s event, it wasn’t the guest list or even what they
would be serving that occupied Christian’s thoughts. Instead it was a peculiar
message he’d received two days before, an anonymous note that the Knighton
butler Forbes found lying upon the doorstep.

It was addressed to Christian and sealed
with a wafer, a
black
wafer, something customarily reserved for
correspondence of mourning. The handwriting wasn’t noticeably male or female
and the stationary was indistinct, leaving it virtually untraceable. The
message contained inside was but a single phrase.

One can never know what it is to lose
something precious until it is gone.

Frighteningly cryptic, the words were
tinged with a good deal more meaning than Christian cared to admit. He had
reread the note a dozen times since and each time it had given him the same
sick sort of feeling deep within his stomach. He would have considered
canceling the supper party had it not already been too late. So instead,
Christian told no one about the message, hoping he might discover its origin
quietly and without causing alarm to the others. What bothered him most was
that he couldn’t know for certain who or what the letter pertained to; there
were so many possibilities. No one in the household—Grace, Eleanor, Lady
Frances, or himself— could be excluded from the threat the message posed,
leaving them all at risk and bringing Christian face to face with the very
thing he had spent the past twenty years running from.

Someone else knew the truth about the past
and had waited until now to reveal it, after his marriage to Grace had taken
place and just when Eleanor was making her social debut. It couldn’t have come
at a more disastrous time.

Christian turned from the mirror as his
valet, Peter, came into the room carrying Christian’s newly polished boots.

“That coat looks fine on you, my
lord. A good choice, the dark blue.” He set the boots on the floor near
the chair. “Will there be anything else, my lord?”

Christian shook his head as the valet
bowed and made to leave, adding as he went, “Lady Knighton asked me to
tell you she would await you in the parlor with the other guests.”

Christian adjusted his cuff. “They’ve
already begun to arrive?”

“Aye, my lord. The Duke and Duchess
of Devonbrook and Lord and Lady Edenhall are here, and Lady Frances and Lady
Eleanor have gone down already as well. There were two or three carriages
stopping at the front when I started up the stairs.”

Christian nodded. He quickly tugged on his
boots,
straightened
his neckcloth in the mirror, then headed from the room, wishing he could put
the menacing words of the mysterious message out of his mind for the night.

As he came down the stairs, he heard the
sound of laughter and conversation coming from the formal parlor. He did not
immediately go in, but stood just outside the door, looking quietly inside. As
he studied the faces inside the room, a terrible thought struck him. What if
the author of the message was one of their guests? Surely not Devonbrook or
Edenhall, his closest friends, but a good number of the other guests had been
acquaintances of his family when his father had still been alive. What if one
of them had known the truth all this time?

As he surveyed the room, Christian spotted
Grace near the fireplace, talking with Augusta and Catriona. He paused a moment
to look at her. The transformation over the past month was remarkable. Gone was
the meek, naive country girl who had stood with shaking hands at the chapel
altar in Little Biddlington. In her place was a young woman who was doing
everything she could to successfully fulfill her new role as marchioness. He’d
spotted the gown she had chosen to wear earlier that evening draped across the
foot of her bed when he’d passed her chamber door. Pale lavender silk set with
brilliants that glittered in the candlelight—he remembered thinking it would
look lovely with her eyes and hair. Indeed, he had been right.

If only he could have been as right about
his ability to control his own lust.

Before the delivery of the message,
Christian had considered the possibility of sending Grace and her maid away
from London to Westover Hall for a while, to put her a safe distance away from
him while he figured out how he was going to find his way back to having a
marriage in name only. But sending her away would no longer be possible, not
when he needed to keep her and the rest of the family close in the face of the
ominous message he’d received. If anything happened to any one of them because
of it, he would never be able to live with himself.

At the sound of Eleanor’s laughter,
Christian looked
and
saw that his sister was standing off to the side of the room engaged in
conversation. She looked radiant and Christian was pleased to see that she was
enjoying herself, until he realized that the person she was chatting so happily
with was Lord Herrick. His body went instantly cold at the sight of the earl
and the casual, almost intimate manner in which he was speaking to Eleanor.
Christian didn’t recall having seen Herrick’s name on the guest list when Grace
had shown it to him. In fact, he distinctly remembered having looked for it to
make certain the earl wouldn’t be attending.

Why, then, had Grace invited him?

Christian entered the room, working his
way slowly toward his wife to question her about it. His progress was stopped
several times by greetings from their guests.

“Knighton, good to see you,”
said Lord Rennington, an older earl who had been a member of his father’s club.
Lady Rennington was one of the few close acquaintances his mother had left in
town. They had been acquainted with his family for two generations. He
wondered, could either of them have been responsible for the message?

Christian paused a moment to exchange
polite conversation, then broke away from the earl to join Grace. As he made
his way around the room, he mentally catalogued the other guests present. Lord
and Lady Faneshaw. Viscount Chilburn, newly wedded to his second wife. The
Talbots. The Fairfields. The Sykes. Even Herrick. Any one of them could have
sent the note. He tried to remember if there had ever been anything mentioned
among any of them that might indicate they knew more about the past than he’d
thought. All he met with was a blank, virulent void.

“Christian,” Catriona said,
noticing his approach, “I was just telling Grace that we must have the two
of you up to Devonbrook Hall in the fall. You haven’t yet seen the estate since
it was rebuilt after the fire.”

Christian smiled, all politeness, in order
to shield the tension stretching through his insides. “We would love to,
Catriona. Set upon a date and we will be there.” He took Grace’s arm.
“Now I hope you ladies won’t mind if I borrow my wife for a moment? There
is a matter to
do
with this evening’s supper that I must discuss with her.”

As Catriona and Augusta nodded,
Christian turned and walked with Grace across the room to the entrance hall. As
soon as they were out of the parlor, his polite smile vanished. He attempted to
subdue the irritation in his voice as he said, “Would you mind telling me
just what in perdition Herrick is doing here?”

Grace looked startled, glancing uneasily
past Christian’s shoulder to where Eleanor stood with the earl near the drinks’
table. “I had thought Eleanor would enjoy his company tonight. She talks
of him so often.”

“His name was not on the guest list
you gave to me.”

“I didn’t think of inviting him
until later. I had intended to tell you, but you haven’t been at home much in
the past several days. Is there some reason why I shouldn’t have invited
him?”

“I just don’t want Eleanor setting
her cap on the first man she meets. I would prefer that she meet a number of
gentlemen and not devote her attention to one so soon after her coming-out. But
it is too late. The damage, at least for this evening, has been done.”

Ignoring Grace’s immediately wounded
expression, Christian turned and left her standing in the hall, hoping that
both the delivery of that mysterious message at the door and Herrick’s sudden
presence in their lives were merely coincidental. Somehow it didn’t seem possible,
and as he went back into the parlor, he wondered if there would be any other
unexpected guests that evening.

Grace sat at the far end of a long
mahogany dining table set with various pieces of silver that gleamed in the
candlelight from days of polishing. The service was impeccable, the room looked
exquisite, and each course of the meal was prepared to perfection. Yet she
found herself wondering if the evening could be any more a disaster than it
already was.

Everything favorable about the evening
had disappeared behind the frown Christian wore over his wine goblet as he sat
opposite her down the length of the table. His displeasure at discovering Lord
Herrick was
nothing
compared to that at the guest who sat to his immediate right. Grace had thought
that by inviting the old duke and seating him and Christian together, they
might somehow be persuaded to talk to one another and perhaps find a way to
begin mending their terrible rift. But the murderous looks Christian was
sending her way only told her she couldn’t have been more mistaken.

To make matters worse, the room was
markedly silent. Supper parties were made for sparkling conversation, the
reporting of news, the sharing of opinions and ideas. With the exception of the
occasional request for salt or more wine, no one in the room was saying much of
anything. Instead they stared at one another across the table, occasionally
looking her way. Finally, blessedly, Catriona spoke up.

“Robert,” she said to her
husband, “why do you not tell everyone about the fish little James caught
when you took him trouting for the first time last month.”

As the duke began to relate the tale of
their young son, Grace leaned toward Augusta, who sat at her left, and
whispered, “Why aren’t any of the others talking to one another?”

Augusta took a sip from her glass—a
concoction of milk touched with cinnamon, a treat she found she craved now that
she was with child, and which the cook had been all too happy to prepare for
her. “I’m not an expert on things pertaining to society—that was always my
stepmother’s forte—but I would guess they are not talking because before now,
they have never been made to spend this much time in each other’s
company.”

“But I don’t understand. I made
certain to seat all the husbands and wives together.”

“That is precisely the problem.”
Augusta nodded her head toward the other end of the table. “You see Lord
Faneshaw there? He will not give his wife even the slightest nod of his
attention, but he certainly has been throwing glances in Lady Rennington’s
direction three seats down and across from him. It is because typically at such
events, the two of them are seated together.”

“They are?”

Augusta set down her spoon and said quite
matter-of-factly, “Of course, dear. She is his mistress.”

Grace covered her mouth with her napkin
just quickly enough to stifle her gasp.

Augusta nodded. “And Lady Faneshaw is
usually seated with Viscount Chilburn whose new wife, Lady Chilburn, is usually
seated with Lord Sykes for much the same reason. Among the society set, a good
many hostesses do not think it fashionable to seat a husband and wife together,
which is why Catriona and I don’t normally attend such functions. We actually
enjoy conversing with our husbands, but we are never seated together and thus
are stuck with either a boor like Rennington, or a lecher like Chilburn.”

Grace could but shake her head in
disbelief. “I had no idea. How stupid everyone must think me.”

“Not at all, dear. I rather like your
order to things. I am usually so very occupied in my observatory. I am awake in
the evenings and rest during the day so I don’t have the opportunity to see
Noah as often as I’d like. Lately I seem to be sleeping more and more, most
likely because of the babe. We have spent most of tonight catching up on what
typically should be discussed over breakfast. It has been nice to have this
time where neither of us has to be off doing other things. Don’t trouble over
the others. Leave the situation to Catriona. By the time she gets through, you
will have set a new trend in seating arrangements.”