A Wedding by Dawn (24 page)

Everything.

He framed her face in his hands, drinking deeply of that sweetness. Her arms came around him, and she was so damned soft and pliant, pressing herself against him with an intoxicating little sigh, and he may have ordered her to leave but right now he was so bloody glad she hadn’t.

Stay,
he wanted to say.
Stay with us. With me.

Instead he hooked her under the knees and lifted her into his arms. Kicked the door shut behind them and carried her to the bed. Laid her across it and stretched over her, kissing her harder now, deeper, filling his hands with flesh covered by soft cotton.

He rolled with her so she lay on top of him and he could pull her braid apart, shaking her golden hair loose to fall over her shoulders and onto his chest. Touched her face, brushed his thumb across her lips, dug his hands into her hair and pulled her down, kissing her with a need so strong it scared him.

He pulled at her gown, needing to touch bare flesh. Felt her pushing his shirt up—Christ, he wanted her touch. Craved it. He pulled at her gown, pulled at his own shirt, and then—

Yes.

God.

She was naked. Full, uninhibited breasts. Pale, curving hips. Smooth belly above the softest patch of dark golden curls that he already knew hid a channel that would accept him with a slick, hot resistance.

He pulled her to him. Felt her breasts against his bare chest, her hard nipples pressing against his skin. She was all softness and curves, and he touched her everywhere—breasts, belly, hips, thighs.

He slipped his fingers into her folds and found them already damp with anticipation.

And touching her wasn’t enough. He trailed his lips down her neck, across her collarbone, while he filled his hands with her breasts and pushed them high, kneading, glorying in the beauty of those pink crests.

He took one in his mouth. Savored the tautness of it between his lips and pulled. Heard her cry out, felt his cock pulse in response. He took the other.

Turned her again so she lay beneath him. Pushed her breasts together and suckled each in turn, then began teasing her with his thumbs, knowing a deep satisfaction when her thighs parted and her hips strained upward.

He kissed his way down her belly. And God
—God—
her petals were so pink, so open. He pushed her thighs wider, dipped in for a taste, and her ragged response inflamed him. Made him want to devour her more than he’d ever wanted anything, and he did—his tongue circling over her pleasure, dipping into her channel, finding her tight bud once more. He gripped her hips, but she strained hard, panting, gasping, signaling that she was climbing closer to climax, closer, closer....

And she was there, fisting the covers in her hands, throbbing and pulsing around his tongue as she peaked, and it was too much.

He had to be inside her.

Now.

Immediately.

He stripped off his breeches. Rose up over her, let his erection find the sweet spot where his tongue had just been. And her hips surged upward, and he slipped to her opening, entering her, and he drove himself forward—

* * *

O
H
. O
H
!
I
NDIA
felt him thrust into her, tasted her own musk in his kiss, sighed as her channel stretched full and tight around him the way she’d longed for it to do ever since that night in Paris.

Nicholas.

Her husband.

Her love.

Her heart seemed to swell as he moved powerfully between her legs, pushing himself inside her again. Again. Again. She tangled her tongue with his, felt him dig his fingers into her hair, welcomed him with open thighs and tilting hips that she pushed up, up, up to meet him.

He was so beautiful—eyes dark, lips gasping against the intensity of the pleasure. She kissed them, and he responded instantly, and she tried to press herself closer, hold him tighter, bring him deeper.

I love you.

Each thrust drove the fact more deeply home.

I.

Love.

You.

And oh, heaven, he was rolling with her now so that she lay on top of him again. His hands guided her hips up...down...
Oh.
And she moved on him that way harder, faster, watching him strain upward to take one of her nipples into his mouth, and pleasure spiked below.

Spiraled higher.

And she felt him fully inside her—all of him—and now the intimate muscles between her thighs clenched him, seized, pushed her over the edge into sweet oblivion that left her panting and calling his name.

Nicholas.

He was there, holding her hips, taking over, straining up into her.

And she collapsed onto him, breathing hard against the crook of his neck, inhaling his scent while her thighs still straddled his body. For the longest time they lay there, before he finally turned with her to the side, and she felt him slip from her body. She looked into his face—his beautiful green eyes, his perfectly sculpted nose, his firm lips.

His arms came around her, holding her fiercely as if he would never let her go.

If only it were true.

* * *

N
ICK
SLOWLY
CAME
awake and opened his eyes, feeling India next to him with her arm draped across his bare chest. It took a moment for the memories to come, but they did.

Lovemaking. Never in his life had he done anything like what they’d done tonight. He hadn’t known it was possible to be that...
close
to a woman.

He turned his head on the pillow, looked at her lips curving peacefully in satisfaction and slumber.

At least, for now.

A feeling stirred in his chest—a desire to pull her closer, hold her, wake her up and make love to her again only more slowly this time. The look in her eyes when he’d been buried inside her...

He’d be seeing those eyes in his memory for the rest of his life.

Already he was half-aroused. He pushed himself slowly, carefully to the edge of the bed. Thankfully she did not awaken.

This never should have happened again. Now that it had...

Damnation.

They would have to pretend that it hadn’t. Nothing had changed—he still had no money, and she still wanted her freedom above all else, except perhaps some of the money he didn’t have....

And wasn’t that going to be entertaining.

He took his breeches off the floor and quietly pulled them on.

A candle flickered on the writing desk, burned so low that barely an inch of wax remained. He walked over to snuff it out and saw a letter lying there. It was to India, from Miss Germain, dated after he and India had left Paris.

He started to blow out the candle.

Skimmed over the first sentence, then the second. A few of the words had pencil marks on them. Odd.

A third sentence, and then he was reading the entire blasted thing.

...a terrible confession to make, and I fear you will never forgive me. From the moment we met with William and Lord Taggart I knew there was nothing to be done against them, but that is no excuse.... My only defense is my desperation. You know optimism is not my strong suit. I helped him, India. Lord Taggart came to me while we were aboard William’s ship and offered me one hundred pounds in exchange for helping make sure you did not escape him in France. And God help me, I was so terrified that I agreed. I know our friendship can never be repaired after what I’ve done. Perhaps it will be of some comfort to know that what money he did eventually give me was stolen from my hands no sooner did I leave his presence. Right now I am dependent entirely upon Philomena’s generosity, which I fear will end very soon. I hope to find a tolerable position in Paris very quickly....

There was sudden movement from the bed. His gaze snapped up.

“What are you doing?” India started to scramble from the bed, apparently realized she wore no clothes, then grabbed the covers and pulled them up to her chest. “That letter is private!”

It was, and he hadn’t meant to read it.

But— Bloody hell. She knew that he’d bribed Miss Germain. She hadn’t said a word about it earlier—but then, he’d hardly given her the chance.

“Forgive me,” he said.

“I’ll not forgive you for that.”

He tried to determine whether she meant she wouldn’t forgive him for reading her correspondence or for paying Millie to help him in France.

“India, about what Miss Germain wrote—”

“I know what she wrote.”

“You should know that I took advantage of her desperation. If anyone is to blame, it is I.”

“I never doubt that you are to blame for anything, Mr. Warre.” She scooted to the edge of the bed and got out, dragging the covers with her, and snatched her nightgown from the floor.

Mr. Warre. A few short hours ago, it had been Nicholas. Not that he should have expected that to last, even under the best circumstances, which these decidedly were not.

If nothing else, he owed her an explanation. India held the covers with one hand and worked the nightgown over her head with the other. Her head poked through the neck hole, then an arm wiggled through a sleeve. “I knew when I asked her to help me that she would never turn down what I offered her,” he said.

She stopped with her other arm halfway through the sleeve and stared at him.

She was furious, of course. She had a right to be.

“I knew she was my best hope of keeping you with me.”

She finished pushing her arm through the sleeve. He waited for her attack as she let the nightgown fall and pushed the covers into a heap on the bed.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me,” he said. “And perhaps there’s no reason to forgive her, either—” he wouldn’t mention that Miss Germain had tried to blackmail him with information India had surely divulged in confidence “—but as she told you, I
was
the one to approach her with a proposition she was hardly in a position to resist.”

“I see.” She looked drawn. Almost...stunned. If he didn’t know better, he would think she hadn’t known until this moment. “And how much did you offer her?”

Nick stood there, half-naked at the foot of the bed that was rumpled from their lovemaking, from sleeping in each other’s arms, and realized...

She
hadn’t
known. The letter was there—she’d obviously been reading it—but she hadn’t known.

And he thought of Paris, of that night at the salon when the gratitude on her face had been so out of proportion to what he’d done.

He’d saved her from having to read aloud. That’s what he’d done.

And there was the list—the inventory of Taggart she’d so haphazardly begun, shifting from room to room without finishing what she’d started.

Not because she was inefficient or making light of the situation, but because—

She couldn’t
read
it.

And what in bloody blazes was he supposed to say now?
Pity you can’t read. Excellent job in bed, though.

“One hundred pounds,” he finally answered. And the sum had been
stolen.
He felt a little sick.

He wanted to reach out to India, hold her. Had she been so rebellious, even as a child, that she had refused her tutors? Had Cantwell denied her an education?

“I see,” she said woodenly. Her eyes were full of pain and betrayal, and it made him want to hold her all the more.

“It was supposed to secure her a future after you and I were married.”

“How very kind of you.”

“India—”

“I would like to be alone, please,” she said, standing rigidly next to the bed.

And with no words to justify what he’d done, and no idea how to acknowledge what surely she realized he now knew...he chose to honor her request.

* * *

S
HE
CRIED
WHEN
he’d gone.

He’d seen the letter. Assumed she’d read it.

He’d seen the stupid, useless markings that Mr. Wiggins was teaching her to make and that might have helped, eventually, but she was only just learning to use them and there hadn’t been time.

And now Nicholas knew. He hadn’t said as much, but she’d seen it in his eyes.

Which meant that any hope she might have had that he would change his mind and want her to stay—which was a silly hope to begin with that only the silliest ninny in the world would have—was gone.

Millie had been helping Nicholas. Had accepted
money
from him.

India thought back, walked through their journey from Marseille. There’d been the dressmaker—India’s plan to seduce Nicholas that had gone oh, so very awry.

Millie had not objected. India had just assumed it was because of her desperation.

And then there was the morning after the maid had set her free. It was Millie who’d talked her back into the carriage with Nicholas.

And there’s been the sudden headache and disappearance from the Pont Notre-Dame.

India sat down.

Millie had betrayed her. The truth of it sat heavy in her chest, but there was little point in being upset now. Millie’s deception had led her into the arms of the man who’d just made love to her. The man who held her heart but didn’t know it.

The man whose eyes had gone soft with pity at the realization that she could not even read a simple letter, that she couldn’t be the helpmeet he would need.

India put her head back down on the damp pillow and wept until she fell sleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

M
ILLIE
STARED
AT
Philomena in the upstairs drawing room Millie had shared with India before Lord Taggart had whisked her away, hardly comprehending what she was being told. “Employment?”

“Yes. It’s an excellent position, too—possibly better than you deserve.”

Even though Millie knew better, a spark of hope lit inside her.

“The Duke of Winston—” Philomena began.

“Duke,” Millie interrupted sharply. The spark snuffed out.

Philomena arched a brow at her. “Yes. He was injured a few days ago in a terrifying incident when a piece of facade fell off a building near the palais.” Philomena shuddered. “So tragic. The man standing next to him was killed. I can only imagine the effect that knowledge has had on poor Winston’s psyche.” Millie suppressed a horrified shiver, but could not quite accept that
poor Winston
would be an accurate description. “In any event,” Philomena went on, “the injuries have delayed his plans to travel to Greece, and he requires an attendant with medical knowledge to accompany him. I’ve told him I know the perfect candidate.”

Millie was already shaking her head. She could not—
would
not—be a personal servant to a duke. “I can’t do that. You know I can’t.”

“I’m not entirely without sensitivity to your feelings,” Philomena said. “I told him the candidate was a certain Mr. Miles Germain, who I know from London and who I encountered by chance here in Paris. If you’re careful, he never need know you aren’t what you claim.”

“Unless he has a penchant for young men,” Millie said sharply.

Philomena laughed. “Let me assure you in no uncertain terms that Winston is a consummate connoisseur of females.”

Which was
worse.
“It couldn’t possibly work.” Already a panic was beginning to rise. “I haven’t the disposition to jump at the bidding of a spoiled, self-indulgent—”

“The question, Millicent, is what choice do you have? You need employment,” Philomena said, “and the duke will pay you handsomely.”

“But what will he
want
of me?”

“Heaven knows! No doubt he’ll want you to mix up concoctions and poultices, that sort of thing. Listen while he airs his complaints. But of course I don’t know
precisely
what he will require—you’ll have to learn that from him, which you will do tomorrow. I told him you would be there at half past eleven for an interview.”

An interview.
Tomorrow.

“And I would suggest you put on your best manners,” Philomena warned, then smiled. “But only think...when your employment with Winston is finished, you’ll be in Greece—practically next door to Malta and that surgical school.” She reached over and patted Millie’s hand. “I can’t think of a more perfect situation, can you?”

* * *

H
ALF
AN
HOUR
after arriving in London, Nick stared at his solicitor, dumbfounded. “I don’t understand.”

He tried to comprehend the words the man had just spoken, but couldn’t.

The man frowned down at the papers in front of him, spread out amid a clutter of files and books. “This is your thirty-fifth birthday, is it not?”

Nick nodded, and thought he might be sick.

“Then the funds may be distributed.”

The funds. “Are you...quite certain there hasn’t been some mistake?”

He could see the solicitor quietly taking stock of his reaction, of the fact that Nick hadn’t had the first idea. “Your mother was very clear. Hold the property in trust until you reach the age of thirty-five.”

“James never mentioned receiving anything at thirty-five. But I suppose only Honoria and I—”

“The only trust your mother’s solicitor spoke to me about was this one, for you alone. I’ve brought a list of the trust properties and other assets....” He shuffled through the papers. “You’ll find the holdings are quite significant, sir.”

Nick heard a rushing in his ears. “How significant?”

* * *

B
Y
THE
TIME
Nick left the solicitor’s office, he hardly knew what to think. His mind raced, trying to grasp what he’d just learned.

Significant
did not begin to describe what Mother had left him. How could he never have known?

He stood outside the building, too dumbfounded even to call for a chair. He would need an extra day in London—at least. He would need to talk to Holliswell. And Cantwell’s man of business.

Right there on the pavement, Nick started to laugh.

Holy God—he needn’t concern himself with either of them after today. His debts would be gone, Taggart would be secure and India...

The laughter faded. India would still want her freedom. The very freedom he’d promised he would give her should he ever acquire the means.

A chill ran though him, and he finally got in a chair and headed for Holliswell’s.

Freed from that burden, he stopped to tell Cantwell’s man of business that no further dealings between himself and Cantwell would be necessary, and that Cantwell should be informed that Nick had no more use for their agreement.

Just before exiting Ludlow’s office, Nick stopped. “What can you tell me about Lady India’s education?”

The man frowned. “Very little.”

“It has come to my attention that her education may not have been...complete.”

“Oh?”

“Or perhaps she was a less than diligent student?”

“Does that trouble you?”

The man knew something, and Nick decided he wasn’t leaving this office until he discovered what it was. “As a matter of fact, yes. It troubles me greatly to imagine that perhaps she was
denied
an education.”

He could see Ludlow considering how to answer that. “Not all children absorb their tutors’ teachings like a sponge, Lord Taggart. I ought to know—I’ve a boy of ten at home who would sooner fence with a pencil than write with it.”

“Are you suggesting Lady India had trouble with her tutors?”

The man looked at him. “Lady India’s education—”

“My daughter’s education,” came Cantwell’s derisive voice from behind him. “An oxymoron if ever I knew of one.”

Nick turned abruptly. Cantwell. Here? “I’d been told you left for the colonies.”

“I did. Storms the moment we left the Channel...We put in at France, and I booked passage home. The colonies can wait.” He walked into the room. “Why are you inquiring about India’s education? She comes as-is, Taggart. You’ll not be giving her back because of any shortcomings.”

The man’s tone had Nick clenching his jaw. “Why is Lady India’s education an oxymoron?”

Cantwell reached for a newspaper on Ludlow’s desk, gave it a once-over. “India never would learn a bloody thing. Not a tutor in London hasn’t been in my employ at some time or other. Not one did any good. Lazy child. Never was one for learning.” He tossed the newspaper aside.

“Am I to understand that despite having every tutor in London, India never received an education?”

“Oh, she received an education. Whether she accepted it is another matter. Such crying and fussing...you would have thought I was forcing her to submit to the rack. Even the much-touted Wiggins could do nothing with her. And of course I tried everything I could think of to impress upon her the importance of her studies—withheld anything that could possibly be used as a toy, even went so far as to withhold meals...Good God, only Henry VIII’s wives spent more time locked away. But that’s neither here nor there. She’s your problem now, Taggart.”

Something Miss Germain had once said to him came whispering back...

Will you promise never to lock her away?

“Yes,” Nick bit out, needing to leave—quickly—before he blackened the eye of a man he would see session after session in the House of Lords. “She is.” He left quickly and ordered the chair to return to James’s house.

He could hardly stand to think what she must have suffered as a girl at Cantwell’s merciless hands. And it was too easy to imagine what India had been thinking last night when he’d so unwittingly discovered that she couldn’t read. Did she imagine he would treat her the same way Cantwell had?

He guessed now that it was exactly what she feared. And he could either return to Taggart now and tell her he would never,
ever
imprison her for that or any other reason and spend the rest of his life trying to prove it was true, even as she wilted in the confines of Taggart’s boundaries...

Or, he could do what he’d promised.

He could give her the freedom she wanted.

* * *

N
ICK
ARRIVED
AT
his brother’s town house to find that James had returned to London the day before. He told James what he’d learned from the solicitor—there would be no hiding it. But he didn’t tell his brother the reason he suspected Mother had left an inheritance of this magnitude just for Nicholas.

If James knew anything about Nick’s parentage, it didn’t show. No doubt James assumed Mother had wished to provide for her second son.

And so they sat in the library with glasses of cognac while Nick tried to imagine telling James the truth—but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. All he could think of was that he was about to lose India, and he couldn’t stand to lose James and Honoria, too.

“You’ve gone mad,” James said now, looking at him with raised brows and doubting eyes. “Give India a ship? Of her own? She’ll be dead within the year.”

Irritation flared. “She’s got more skill than that.”

“Forgive me if I don’t agree. A young lady of nineteen does not belong on the high seas in command of her own ship.” James, of course, would know, being a celebrated naval captain himself.

But, “For God’s sake, James, your own wife did exactly that.”

James gave a sharp laugh. “Katherine and India are very different.”

Nick remembered how easily India had gotten along aboard William’s ship and wondered exactly how different. Given her own command now, by the time India was Katherine’s age she could well have all the expertise that Katherine did.

His mind drifted forward. By that time, Emilie would be India’s age, perhaps even married.

And Nick would be alone at Taggart.

He took a drink of cognac. “She says I’ve ruined her life,” he said, shifting his glass in small circles on the table. “I’m inclined to think she’s right.”

“Giving her a proper home is ruining her life?”

“My keeping Taggart won’t make a difference to her. You know her—you’ve sailed with her. She’s too free-spirited, too...enamored by the wonders of the world. To India, life at Taggart is like...being locked away.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake—”

“She never wanted this marriage, James.” Nick sat forward. “I forced it upon her. Literally. I literally dragged her into a bloody church with Winston and Charles Vernier as my henchmen and forced her to say the vows. Our marriage isn’t even legal.”

“Who’s to challenge it?”

Nick gave a laugh and drank more. “How many times did I threaten India with those exact words?”

James sighed. “So you give her a ship. She sails away, and six months later you learn she perished in a wreck. How will you feel about your decision then?”

He would never forgive himself. But, “I’ve been watching her these past days—it’s unbearable. The light has gone out of her. If I force her to stay at Taggart, I’ll watch her perish as well, only much more slowly and painfully. And I’ll know it’s
my
fault—every last bit of it.” She’d made a tremendous effort for Emilie’s sake—they both had—but somehow that only made the whole situation more tragic. “She’ll never be happy with me, James. My sins against her are too great.”

* * *

W
HILE
E
MILIE
DUG
the soil in a small garden plot of her own Miss Ursula had given her, India drifted farther down the garden to where Miss Ursula trimmed dead roses off the bushes. Millie’s letter was tucked up her sleeve. India stood there watching Miss Ursula work.

Snip. Snip.

This was a bad idea. There was no telling what Miss Ursula might say. Perhaps she couldn’t even read herself.

Snip. Snip-snip.

India slipped the letter out. It trembled in her fingers as she unfolded it, and the entire situation Nicholas had described about Millie replayed in her mind. She wanted to hear Millie’s words.

Miss Ursula tossed a handful of dead flowers into a bucket. “Well? Are ye going to stand there waffling all day, or are ye going to tell me what’s in that letter?”

India swallowed. “That’s...just the trouble. I...I’m not sure what’s in the letter. Precisely.”

Snip-snip-snip.
A trio of dead roses flew into the bucket.

India fidgeted. “I was wondering if perhaps...you could read it for me.”

Snip.

Miss Ursula tossed a final rose into the bucket and reached for the letter. She squinted at first, then frowned, then frowned more deeply. “Ye want me to read it aloud?”

“Yes, please.”

Miss Ursula looked at her—hard—and shuffled toward a nearby bench, grumbling, “Can’t read all this standin’ up.”

India sat next to her and listened to Miss Ursula read the letter aloud, and India’s heart broke for Millie. “Poor Millie.” She sighed when it was finished.

It hurt—it did—but she knew Millie too well to hate her. Millie feared being alone and powerless in a world of cruel men. There was no way she could have resisted Nicholas’s offer.

She told Miss Ursula about Millie, about taking the
Possession,
about the plans they’d had. “Suppose I can understand it,” Miss Ursula said. “Suppose I can at that. But I never would have pegged ’is lordship for something like this,” she added, still frowning.

“It hurts, but...I can’t hate her for it.”

“And ’is lordship?”

India looked at her hands. She couldn’t hate him, either—not even after this. Offering Millie that money...it was all part of the same thing, his desperation to keep Taggart. “No, I don’t hate him.”