An Unforgettable Rogue (17 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

After dinner, Alex went upstairs to see what the Duchess and Claudia had purchased in one afternoon of dedicated and relentless shopping. But Hawk had too much on his plate to linger, so he excused himself and went up to their sitting room in search of a glass of brandy and a modicum of peace.

Just thinking about his father’s will, enraged him. He untied his cravat and tossed it. His frockcoat followed as he dropped exhausted into a chair.

Quick upon the heels of sitting, he saw the solicitor’s missive for Alex riding a whoosh of air toward the blazing hearth. With an oath, Hawk shot to his feet to rescue the charring note. He had forgotten the thing existed, never mind giving it to Alex.

Hawk plunged his hand into the flames, grabbed it by its sizzling sealing wax, and jerked his hand away, tearing it open as he did. “Blast and damnation!”

Hawk forgot his burned finger as he found himself staring at a paid receipt for four thousand, six hundred and seventy-five pounds sterling. A note was added by Fitzwilliams to the bottom. “All debts gathered and paid. All vouchers destroyed.”

What in the world had Alex to do with such a large debt? Vouchers? Gambling vouchers?

Had she taken to gambling? To support the family?

Nonsense. Even if she had gambled and lost, she did not have the funds to repay so high an amount. Devil it; what manner of predicament had she got herself into?

Her laughter far down the hall made Hawk scramble to hide the evidence of his knowledge. He looked about and secreted the paid receipt in his
portmanteau
, stuffing that into the back of the closet. Whatever trouble his wife had gotten herself into, he needed to understand to help.

Poor, Alex, he thought, what had he driven her to, marrying her and leaving her destitute? And to whom did she owe the great sum she had used to pay what seemed for all the world like a gambling debt.

Alex stopped laughing before she entered her room. Sabrina was right, she needed to concentrate. If Sabrina’s oil was to produce the desired effect, Alex must now appear uncomfortable and in need of her husband’s aid.

Her hesitation to carry out a set of instructions that seemed patently dishonest fled in the face of Hawk’s appearance—handsome, deeply furrowed brow, open-necked shirt, skin-tight inexpressibles, and a goblet of brandy cupped within his long, tapered fingers.

A lady-killer. A rogue. And all hers … if she managed to seduce him.

Alex stepped forward and winced. “Oh. Ouch.”

“Hawk reached for her arm with his free hand and set down his glass. “Alex? What is wrong? Are you hurt?”

“I seem to have twisted my back, somehow, when I bent to place Juliana in her crib.”

Immediately, her husband’s attention was focused entirely on her, just as Sabrina said it would be. Alex did not even need to ask him to rub her back, for he began all on his own. Neither did she have to fake her sigh of pleasure, for that escaped of its own volition.

“Oh, that does feel good,” she said, leaning against him, and wincing again, lest he think he could stop too soon.

“What can I do for you?” her concerned husband asked. “Would you like me to help you undress?”

Would she like him to ravish her? Yes to both. “Bree gave me an oily salve that she said would ease the spasm in my muscles. Do you think you could rub it on for me?”

Hawk took a step back at the request and Alex wondered if he realized that he did. “Of course,” he said.

“I will need your help to undress, first, though. Even raising my arms increases the pain.”

Hawk swallowed as he nodded and walked her to their bed, where she remained standing, hoping he would take over, in much the same way he had done that night at the hotel.

He did, but this time when he unbuttoned her dress, she made certain to move in such a way that his hand must skim her skin, but only once or twice, not to be obvious. When Hawk reached for her garters, Alex tugged her skirt upward to allow him better access, and a better view of her legs.

By the time she bade him remove her shift as well as her stays; perspiration beaded his poor, beleaguered brow. “I do not wish to get oil on the fine lawn fabric,” she said. “We cannot afford to replace it; neither can we allow my undergarments to ruin my gowns.”

“Of course,” he said, though Alex was disappointed that he somehow managed to cover her within moments of removing the shift.

No matter. The scented oil would do its trick, Bree had promised. She said she knew from experience that the oil could work magic.

The jar that contained the waxy oil was made of a pale milky-green glass. As Alex lay on her belly, naked beneath the covers, she watched Hawksworth pick up the jar and examine it as if it might bite, his big, capable hands trembling.

She hid her smile with a painful sigh, all the while watching, until he finally stopped hesitating and came to stand beside the bed.

“You might wish to remove your shirt,” Alex suggested. “so the cuffs do not get ruined. Getting into bed beside me might help as well. Kneading as you rub the oil into the muscles will ease the spasm, Bree said, and you will certainly not be able to soothe my aches from up there.”

An understatement.

Hawk retained his shirt, but rolled up his sleeves, wondering what horrible sin he might have committed in his lifetime to bring him to this abysmal pass. He had grown erect from undressing her, never mind rubbing her silken skin with oil. Never mind doing so in bed.

Still, he hurt because she did, so he removed his shoes and climbed into their bed beside her. Uncovering the jar, the scent that rose from the thick, waxen oil was like to do him in for good and all.

Spice, flowers … seduction.

Sex, pure and unadulterated. Raw. Lusty. Potent.

“This does not smell like medicine?” Hawk cursed the tremble in his voice and the tightening in his groin. “Are you certain this is supposed to ease your pain?”

“From what I have observed, it promises to accomplish everything Sabrina said it would. I hope she is right. For the wait is exceeding torturous.”

At this moment Hawk well understood torture.

Alex squeaked when he placed perhaps a little too much of the
salve
on her back. “I did not expect it would be cold,” she said.

“It will warm against your skin,” Hawk said. God knew he would. “Are you certain you do not have a fever?”

“I think I might. The room seems very warm, of a sudden. Lower the blanket, will you, so I can cool down and you can reach my lower back, which I believe is nearest the location of my problem.”

The base of her spine was a most beautifully curvaceous and inviting location. Hawk wanted to place his lips upon the very spot, but he denied himself and turned to his wife.

He saw her in profile, the curve of her cheek, her firmly-set lips, and the globe of one breast, pressed against the mattress.

Would that she were pressed against him, anywhere.

Beneath his hand, her skin felt like satin, the more so for the oil easing his way.”

“Mmm,” she said. “I like.”

Then after a few moments. “Perhaps you could use both hands.”

Inside Hawk, heat flared like a pitch torch as he placed the jar on the bedside table and extracted more of the oily cure.

“Oh, that is good,” his wife said on a throaty sigh. “Yes. Right there. Oh. Mmm. Just a bit lower.”

If Hawk were not already afire, he might self-combust.

“Harder,” she said with a satisfied moan. “To the left. Oh, God, yes.”

She sighed, she purred, she moaned. “Ah. Yes. Mmm, more. All the way up … yes … all the way down. Again, up and down.”

Hawk was like to explode. If he had ever entertained the foolish notion that he could not carry out his husbandly duties, his doubts had been set to rest.

As a matter of fact, any more of this and he would explode without sheathing himself in Alexandra’s tight, silken— Think of something else. “Did you enjoy your visit with Bree?”

“Hmm?”

Hawk frowned. Was
she
not the least bit tortured? “Am I putting you to sleep? How is your back?”

“Everything feels good, as long as you are rubbing.”

“I know exactly what you mean.”

“Hmm?”

“I would feel the same, if you were tending me.”

“Nice. But Hawk?”

“Yes, love?”

“My upper back, toward the right and somewhat beneath my arm … I feel a slightish … twinge there as well. Could you rub me there?”

Hawk threw his head back and silently cursed all twinges to perdition. “Of course.” If she did not desist soon, he would show her how good a rubbing could feel.

Hawk ran his soothing, oiled touch from her shoulder to the side of her breast, almost to its tip, but not quite, garnering such a wondrous sigh of pleasure from his wife that he could almost imagine it as sexual. Not to mention what stroking her was doing to him. Her breast, he knew, would fit his cupping hand extraordinarily well.

“Alex? Would you like me to … ease you anywhere else?”

“Mmm hmm.” She purred like a sleepy cat.

Was that a yes? “What?”

She opened her eyes. “What?”

“You want me to rub you, where?”

“On my back, as I said.”

“I thought I heard you say you wanted me to rub oil on you somewhere else.”

“Do you think it would help?”

“Lord, yes.”

“All right. Go ahead.”

Hawk sighed feeling his frustration rise up with a need to throttle, never mind stroke. “Go ahead and rub … where?”

“Wherever you wish.”

Hawk damned near came. Then he stopped, because….

“Alex?”

“Mmmmm….”

“Do you want me to stroke your other breast, ah, shoulder? Would you like to lie on your back?”

But nothing could be heard save the ticking of the mantle clock. His wife had fallen asleep, naked; one oiled breast riding his knee, his erection somehow nestled against the small of her back, just below her tiny waist, and just above her beckoning bottom.

Hawk cursed, sighed, and blew out the candle before sliding perilously down in the bed, afraid to embarrass himself in the process, though he managed not. Then he tortured himself the more by wrapping his arms around his slick and scented bride, allowing his manhood to pulse incessantly against her as his hand cupped her beckoning bottom.

And before long, Hawk’s mind was so enmeshed in the puzzle of her charred receipt that his body calmed, quite of its own accord.

The following night, to protect his sanity, Hawk
misplaced
the jar of oil, not certain which of them was more disappointed, him or his wife.

Alex appeared so downhearted that he damned near unearthed the bloody thing from the drawer where he had hidden it, just to see her smile, never mind the splendid self-torture.

But sanity reigned, thank the heavens.

Alex curled up in the bed with a book and fell almost immediately to sleep.

Well, Hawk thought, there was still the puzzle of that paid receipt to solve, not the first conundrum concerning Alex since his return from Belgium.

He rose and went to his dressing room and just as he was about to don his dressing gown, Alex began to whimper as if she were frightened.

Hawk ran to the bed where she was thrashing and weeping and calling his name, so he climbed in beside her to take her into his arms and calm her.

She relaxed instantly, though she seemed to be trying to climb inside him, if that were possible.

That was when Hawk realized that he was stark naked and in bed with his now naked wife.  When had that happened? He could have sworn Alex was wearing ... something when he went into his dressing room.

Devil take it, she coiled about him, now, like the roots of a tree, and heaven above, did he love it. Hawk ordered his excited body to calm, even as perspiration formed upon his brow.

Even without perfumed oil, he knew this was going to be another long, hard night.

Alexandra smiled in her sleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Two nights later, as they were preparing to attend a ball, their first, at the Viscountess De Monteneiro’s villa in Kensington, Alex came to his dressing room wearing the most amazing black corset Hawk had ever beheld. That, and a pair of white silk stockings and matching brocade, heeled evening slippers.

Her breasts, pushed upward and outward by the man-straightening garment, looked as if they might spring, literally, free at any moment.

“One of my garters is twisted,” she said, studying his open shirt, while Hawk hoped that his scars did not show.

“It is one of the garters in the back,” Alex said. “And I cannot seem to fix or fasten it.” She turned her back on him then and bent over to brace herself on a chair, presumably to give him better access to her wayward garter, though she afforded him a most pleasant view of her delicious bottom as well.

Did she realize it? Hawk was beginning to wonder.

Probably not. That would simply be too perfect a situation to be possible.

Nevertheless, Hawk was appalled but enticed, and more interested than he should be in every satin inch of exposed skin and scrap of black lace.

Unable to stoop so low, literally, he placed a chair behind her and sat down.

No doubt about it, her garter was twisted beyond anything he had ever seen, not that he had seen that many up close. So close, he wanted to kiss the inner silk of her thigh. So close, he skimmed a finger, just there, and heard her intake of breath when he did, which was nothing to his own reaction.

“I like that,” she said.

Did she mean she liked him helping with her garter, or she liked his more-intimate touch?

No matter, for when he finished, she toppled gently backward onto his lap. Resting her head against his shoulder, she sighed. “This is nice.”

But she started to slip, and he grasped her to keep her from falling and ended up cupping her warm center, neither of them daring to breath.

They remained that way, until Hawk realized Alex was throbbing beneath his hand, as she must feel him against her bottom.

  When he added pressure to his cupping palm, her sigh was real, her regretful thanks something of a mystery as she rose, straightened, and departed without looking back. “I will be ready in just a few minutes,” she said.

Hawk was hard as a pikestaff. “Well I am ready now!” he shouted. Let her come back and question that statement, as she had once questioned the evidence of his physical reaction to her.

“I will not be fit to be seen in company for at least ten minutes,” he groused to himself.

Damn. She was asking for it.

Was she? Asking? And did she even understand for what she asked? Or know she was doing it?

Impossible.

Half an hour later, to mark Claudia’s first ball ever, they stopped to see how she was doing in her preparations and found her as excited as a child at Christmas. After kissing her cheek and wishing her well, they left her to finish and went downstairs.

The Duchess had invited Gideon and Sabrina, Reed Gilbride, and the old Duke of Hazelthorpe, to make up numbers at the dinner she was giving before they left for the ball.

As they all waited for Claudia to come down before going in to dinner, Hawk stepped away to greet Hazelthorpe, while Reed approached Alex.

“C.S.M. Gilbride, how good it is to see you again.”

“Please, you must call me Reed.”

“Thank you, Reed. As titles go, both Squadron Corporal Major and C.S.M. are entirely too long.”

“Agreed. You are looking lovely and bright this evening. Not at all pale and peaked as you were the first time I saw you.”

“How ungallant of you to say so.” Having practiced social coquetry earlier that day with Claudia, Alex tapped his hand with her fan.

Reed laughed. “I am not a gallant,” the military man said, “which you will soon realize. But I do know a beautiful lady when I see one. A true lady.”

“Do me the honor of treating me as a friend, rather than a
Lady
, please, for I will never really be one of those.”

Reed nodded. “My pleasure.”

“Thank you. As a friend, may I ask what life was like during the war? Hawk has changed to a great degree and I have a need to … I do not know, help him, or simply be his friend and confidant, perhaps.”

“A wife who is a friend and a confidant.” Reed nodded. “A novel thought. Oh, do not frown. I am not making sport.” He took her arm to walk her toward the far end of the spacious salon. “I will tell you about Hawk, if you promise not to divulge whence you received your information; else he will have my head.”

“We have a bargain.”

“You must know that his father … taunted him, shall we say, into joining the Guards. You can imagine, then, that Hawk did not know what he was getting himself into.”

Alex nodded. “I feared as much.”

“When the fighting began, Hawk realized immediately that he was out of his depth.”

Alex felt sick, but she firmed her spine, and Reed was gentleman enough not to mention her weak moment. “Please continue,” she said.

He nodded. “Hawk rose to the occasion, and distinguished himself more times than anyone realizes. I do not know if Gideon is even aware of this, but your husband is quite the hero. The volley that nearly killed him was originally aimed at Stanthorpe. I saw it happen, from too far away, and with too many of Boney’s troops at hand, to make a difference. But Hawksworth was there, and he covered Gideon’s back as the enemy struck, and fought their attack, himself.”

Sabrina gasped. Until that moment, they had not realized she was approaching.

Gideon heard, saw her stricken look, and came to her.

Hawksworth was right behind him. “What happened?”

By then, Sabrina had stepped into her husband’s embrace, but she regarded Hawk. “You saved Gideon’s life?” She turned back to her husband. “Did you realize, Gideon? Reed saw Hawksworth step between you and the Frenchman who felled him, otherwise you might have been as badly hurt as he was in your stead. Or killed.” Sabrina’s eyes filled and she began to kiss her husband as if she would not stop.

In his turn, Gideon pulled her tight into his arms and kissed her soundly. As this was not an embrace meant for public exhibition, the rest of the company made their way back across the room.

“Perhaps we should go on to the ball without them?” Reed suggested.

“Nonsense,” the Duchess said, lacking her usual aplomb, for she looked as shaken by the realization of nearly having lost her grandson as Gideon and Sabrina were.

Alex was upset, too, and Hawk must have noticed, because he put his arm around her waist and turned them away from the room at large. She rested her head on his shoulder. “You never said anything,” she whispered.

“What was there to say?” Hawk shrugged away her words, though she liked the way he was looking at her, as if he were seeing her for perhaps the first time.

From behind them, Reed cleared his throat. “Ah, perhaps I had better go on to the ball, alone?”

Hawk tore his gaze from her—that was the only way to describe it—and regarded Reed. “We will all go. Claude would be crushed if we did not. If she ever comes down. How long can it take one girl to don one gown?” he asked, easing the tension.

Claudia did finally come down, but during dinner, Sabrina and Gideon announced their decision not to attend the ball, after all. It had been clear to everyone, and a bit uncomfortable, to see how in love they were, how badly they wanted to be alone, after learning how close Gideon had come to being wounded, or lost, at Waterloo.

During dinner, Gideon, Sabrina, and the Duchess, in turn, thanked Hawk for saving not only Gideon, but all of them, ultimately, with his battlefield heroism. Alex could see that the praise made Hawk uncomfortable, and by the time they were ready to leave, he was a bit snappish.

Wraps were donned and carriages called for in a rather brisk manner. There was nothing left to say to Gideon and Sabrina, after all, except good bye.

Since two of the Duchess’s carriages had been brought round, and because Hawk felt a sudden and inexplicable need to be alone with his wife, he suggested that Claudia and Reed, the Duchess and Hazelthorpe, travel in one coach, and he and Alex would take the other. Claude, in particular, embraced the idea, for Reed was a handsome rogue and being escorted to the ball on his arm would bring a newcomer like her a deal of admiring attention.

When the carriage moved off, Hawk crossed to sit beside Alex, in want of her nearness. He took her hand, raised it to his lips and wished he were worthy of her.

He also wished that he had as much faith in the institution of marriage as Gideon seemed to have.

“They are very much in love, are they not?” Alex said, gazing off into some romantic distance, likely thinking of Chesterfield. “I envy them.”

“Oddly, I do too, though I am not certain why.” He and Alex had been friends forever, Hawk thought. If she did not love elsewhere, she would be the best wife for him. He liked and respected her, admired her. After everything, he cherished her. If she were willing, he would happily take her to his bed every night for the rest of their days and be faithful unto death.

If they were not already doomed to parting, it seemed to him, that love—if the myth existed—might enrich what they already shared. But no matter how hard he tried, Hawk could not wrap his mind around the disappointing and insubstantial concept. “Do you think it exists, really?”

“Do I think what exists?”

“Love. My parents preached it, until my mother’s early death, but I do not think they practiced it, as happens in every
ton
marriage I ever saw, until Gideon and Bree’s.”

“I think love does exist. My father said it did. When he was last ill, he said that he had missed my mother for the entire sixteen years of my life, and though he was sorry to be leaving me, he was happy to be going to her.”

“Love beyond life?” Hawk said. “Does that not seem improbable?”

“Gideon and Sabrina appear to have such a love.”

“If I had not seen those two tonight, I would say you are wrong, but I begin to believe it. Between them, the elusive emotion seems very much alive and thriving.”

“With their children, the five of them epitomize what I have always supposed a family should—unity, caring, the sharing of even the smallest joys and sorrows.” Alex blushed and gazed out the window. “They are fortunate.”

“Yes.” Hawk yearned for something like, himself, the closeness of mind and spirit that Gideon and Sabrina shared. Oh, he had always had women, but never someone so much his own that she would breathe for him, if she could.

As Sabrina seemed willing to do for Gideon

As Alex had always seemed willing to do for him.

Hawk regarded Alex anew, then, as though….

He shied away from the thought, for the staggering power of Gideon and Sabrina’s love alarmed him, as did the corresponding responsibility, which only made him feel less worthy and more determined to let Alex go.

Yet despite that, he yearned to keep her hand in his and to walk beside her, however halting his steps, as long as fate, and Alexandra Wakefield, herself, would allow.

Beyond life…. Imagine.

As if sensing his mood, Alex leaned her head against his shoulder and looked up at him, and Hawk could do nothing but open his lips over hers.

He was going to unearth that jar of oil tonight and offer to rub her back for her, just so he could remove that black lace corset, himself.

The Viscountess De Monteneiro’s Kensington Villa was everything Alexandra had supposed a villa must represent—a fortune in marble and gold, art and artifice, glitter and glut. Gaudy. Uncomfortable. Hot. Crowded.

“A veritable crush. A sweeping success,” the raven-haired, husband-hunting Viscountess prattled effusively. Immediately they entered, she set her sights on Hawk, but when she realized he was taken, she turned her narrowed kohl-lined eyes upon the man in the scarlet tunic.

Reed winked at Alex, bowed over Claudia’s hand, made an irreverent comment about the power of a uniform, and gallantly escorted the Viscountess De Monteneiro into the middle of a verdant Italian marble dance floor, for the most scandalous of dances, the waltz.

Hawk’s injured leg would not allow him to participate in that dance, but Alex was just as happy to lend him her arm as they strolled around the perimeter of the ballroom greeting old friends and meeting new. Some of their acquaintances had already learned that Hawk survived, but were seeing him now for the first time since he went to war. Others, who had not known, were astounded and excited.

One matron fainted upon sight of him.

“It is my scars,” Hawk whispered, standing back, as others attempted to bring her around.

“It is your ghost,” Alex responded in kind.

His friends all seemed to hold him in high regard, Alex noted, though the ones she had long-ago overheard discussing
beauty and his beast
acted rude and knowing.

“I dislike that bunch,” Alex said as they moved away.

“I always knew you had excellent taste.”

She stopped. “But they are your friends, are they not?”

“Not,” Hawk denied with a firm shake of the head. “They are acquaintances to whom I had rather not give the time of day. Hangers on, the lot of them. They talk an impressive talk, sometimes, but drivel slides off their tongues too much of the remaining time.”