David Lord of Honor (The Lonely Lords) (25 page)

“My dear Letty,” David said
quite
pleasantly, “is adrift in the arms of Morpheus, so I’ll be the one seeing you out.”

Rather than get up and take himself off, Windham reached for his drink and took a slow, savoring—taunting?—sip.

“Between the quality of this instrument and the caliber of the liquor served, you make it damned difficult to recall exactly where home is and why one would want to frequent the place.”

“Clean linens,” David said, wondering where Windham was biding these days. “Solitude. The chair that has conformed itself exquisitely to one’s anatomy. One’s cat, exactly where one’s cat should be. The ability to navigate the premises in complete darkness without bruising one’s shins. A comfortable place to become inebriated without having to face the elements at the end of the evening. Need I go on?”

“Gracious God. Is that all home is to you?”

Windham was intent on mischief tonight. Perhaps his father had been bedeviling him—or his mother. Moreland’s duchess was not to be underestimated.

David shifted so they were both facing the keyboard. “My home is also the location of my personal business records and various artifacts and curios that have sentimental value. My country seat is entailed with the viscountcy, but a comfortable enough place to visit.”

“You are impoverished,” Windham said, closing the cover over the keys and caressing the wood with an index finger. “Though your wealth is the envy of your peers.”

“I try not to let my peers know the extent of my wealth, but what is home to you, then, if you’re so disdainful of my definition?”

He knew better than to ask that question, but somewhere, Letty had had a home, and it hadn’t been where she’d kept her personal business records or become cozily drunk of a frigid evening.

Windham’s version of thinking meant he opened the cover and ran his left hand over an F-major scale, descending two octaves, then ascending.

“Home is where my late brother Bart taught me how to make a flatulent noise with my armpit,” he began. “We laughed so hard we were soon… Well, never mind. Home is where Westhaven will always make time for our sisters’ concerns and needs, no matter how tired, distracted, or upset he is with my father’s latest misbehavior. Home is where my brother Victor finally succumbed to the peace of death. Home is where those I love most dearly in all the world will always be safe and warm and welcomed.”

This recitation required that David finish his drink. “So you are a poet as well as a musician?”

“Letty Banks would be home to you,” Windham said quietly. “Night after night, she makes this business of yours what it says it is: a pleasure house, a place where a man can indulge his petty vices, safe from the judging eyes of the world. All the while, she watches for you, hour after hour, and she waits for you. I honestly don’t know what makes her more upset: when you join us here, or when you don’t.”

“Your concern, Lord Valentine, is touching. Are you offering to succeed me in her affections?”

Windham closed the cover and shoved off the piano bench. “Nobody will succeed you in her affections. She will grow old and lonely, and what you’ve offered her will be all she knows of love, pleasure, or human companionship. The woman loves you, and you are taking more from her than if you’d robbed her blind and left her bleeding in a ditch.”

“And would your tirade,” David asked, rising as well, “be directed otherwise if you knew I’d repeatedly offered our Letty marriage?”

Even in the flickering candlelight, David could see his companion was astonished.

“I am shocked, not that you would make the offer, but that she would refuse you,” Windham said. “I have five sisters and a brace of female cousins. Letty Banks lives for the sight of you.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” David said, settling into a comfortable chair near the hearth. “She enjoys my company, as I do hers.”

As understatements went, that one would round out the evening nicely.

Windham remained standing over him, like some angel of judgment. “She hasn’t your ability to mask her feelings. For anyone who knows her, her eyes give away her emotions. You, by contrast, are not much more familiar with her than you are with the other women here, and you’ve been coming around this place less and less.”

“I would do Letty no good whatsoever were I to fawn over her more than is needed to ensure she doesn’t suffer unwanted advances.”

Silence stretched while David felt a tidal pull from the private apartment at the back of the house, where he’d left Letty in an exhausted, well-loved slumber.

“I wonder,” Windham said musingly, “if she has a husband stashed away back in Little Weldon.”

Husband? The very word dashed across David’s fatigue like cold water.

“Where?” Douglas had said the housekeeper—Mrs. Newcomb—had received letters from Little Weldon, and Letty had said she’d come to London with Mrs. Newcomb.

“Little Weldon, Oxfordshire,” Windham said. “I offered to undertake a business arrangement with Mrs. Banks earlier this evening, when she said she had obligations back in Little Weldon that tied up her capital.”

“A business arrangement?”

“For God’s sake, Fairly, I’m not offering her carte blanche. She’d make a terrible mistress.”

“She would?” David asked, bristling for reasons he didn’t want to consider. Windham had proved entirely insightful enough for one evening.

“Of course she would,” Windham scoffed. “I see that now. She loves too deeply. A little affection, some friendship between a man and his mistress is fine, but Letty Banks is made for loving, not swiving.”

The same conclusion David had been hammering his conscience with for weeks.

“For a man who hasn’t gone up the front stairs once in all the time you’ve been bivouacking here,” David observed, “you’ve made a thorough study of matters between men and women.”

“I most certainly have not,” Windham said, his gaze going to the damned piano the way some men might watch the love of their lives walk away. “At the risk of burdening you with confidences, I understand Letty’s demeanor because in certain regards it reflects my own.”

“You have obligations back in Little Weldon too?” And would another drink truly be a bad idea?

“Of course not, but I am more comfortable making love than swiving. It’s hardly well done of me, and more inconvenient than you can imagine—particularly for a man who is trying to elude parson’s mousetrap. But there it is, probably part of my artistic temperament.”

Whatever that meant. “Did Letty happen to mention the nature of her obligations in Little Weldon?”

“My love life doesn’t fascinate you,” Windham said, picking up an empty pink Sevres vase from a spot on the mantel formerly occupied by a porcelain angel. “I am devastated. The only thing I could surmise about Letty’s obligations is that they affect her finances. Should you wish to learn more, I suggest you ask her.” He set the vase down and aimed an equally curious look at his host.

Who was not half so worth examining as antique porcelain.

“She keeps secrets, Windham, and those secrets are part of why she won’t consider my suit.”

“Part of why?”

In for a penny… “Neither she nor I care that we would not be welcomed at Court, and I doubt Letty gives a fig for being accepted among the beau monde. A quiet life would, in fact, suit us both. I suspect she is unwilling to marry me mostly because she knows our children may not be received by the best families.”

“You will have to convince her then, that being loved is more important than being received,” Windham replied. “And unearth her secrets if convincing doesn’t work.”

Convincing had already failed repeatedly. “Bring the decanter over here, Windham, and have a seat. There’s a small task you might be willing to undertake for me. A small task requiring significant discretion.”

***

Cold, wet seaweed wrapped itself around Letty’s waist. She’d been to the seacoast only once, and had no idea what seaweed wrapped about one’s middle felt like, but this was her dream, so reality was of no moment.

The seaweed gradually warmed and became David’s hands, stroking themselves over her breasts, her arms, her back. On and on his hands drifted, caressed, teased, and brought her to arousal. When he slid into her gently from behind, Letty felt her body contracting around him—not a dramatic, earthshaking cataclysm, but rather a pleasurable greeting between lovers.

David thrust into her, prolonging her pleasure generously, but not attempting to force it to any greater intensity—which he could do and often did. Letty laced her fingers through his where they kneaded the fullness of her breast.

“Missed you.”

“Missed you too,” David whispered back. “Relax, Letty, and dream on.”

She almost could, so undemanding was he. Lately, each night he joined her in bed, his approach was different, as if he’d show her all the pleasures she would miss when they parted. One night, Letty had awakened to find that he was penetrating her body with a jade phallus, and to her shock, she had been on the verge of satisfaction before she’d become aware enough to sense her pleasure came from an
object
. When she had scooted away in indignation, David had seemed bewildered, even hurt.

“I want to make love with
you
,” she’d tried to explain.

“There’s nobody here except me.”

“But you are not inside my body. That
thing
is.”

“And what of this thing,” David argued, sliding a finger inside her. “Is
this
thing unacceptable to you, Letty? I fail to see the difference between my hand and what is wielded by my hand.”

“It isn’t a difference you see,” Letty said, feeling tears threaten for no definable reason. “It’s a difference you feel”—she tapped her chest—“here.”

He’d desisted, of course, and given her a very traditional, pleasurable loving, but it had reminded Letty how ill-suited she was to the role of mistress, and how much broader David’s experience was than hers. The ever present anxieties—that she bored him, that he would grow tired of her, that she was too difficult, that they simply did not belong together—had undergone considerable growth since that night.

Another time she’d awakened to find her wrists tied to the bedposts. Again, she’d been less than pleased, but she had kept her complaints to herself, and found, in David’s hands, restraints could heighten pleasure.

Still another night, David had suggested she might take him in her mouth, and that, she had to admit, had been fascinating, pleasurable, and the fulfillment of some very private daydreams, probably for both of them.

Tonight, it seemed, would be less adventurous. David stroked into her from behind, Letty’s head resting on his arm. He took his time and built Letty’s arousal slowly. She’d already found pleasure once, however, so her fuse was short.

“Will you come again for me?” The dratted man had somehow divined that Letty liked his naughty talk. “I want to feel you come, Letty. You caught me by surprise the first time.”

And because he was never content to torment her with only words, he gently rolled first one nipple then the other between his fingers.

Desire coiled beneath Letty’s womb, as well as the same sense of desperation that likely fueled David’s sexual devotions.

“Letty, will you answer me?” He slowed his thrusting, as if listening for her response. “Do you want to come again?”

“I do.” If she tried to wiggle against him, he’d only tease her more.

“You want me to make you come now?” David asked again, nudging at her with his cock.

“I want you to make me come now,” she confirmed, sighing on the penetration. “And hard. So hard I scream for you.”
Because
I
will
surely
cry
for
you.

“I can do that.” His tone held approval—he liked it when Letty was demanding, and he liked it better when she was beyond even pleading. He didn’t move any more quickly or deeply. He lazed along, all languid patience and slow, soft caresses.

Letty was on the verge of offering him some very clear direction, when he withdrew on a gentle retreat, rolled her to her back, and without warning thrust into her hard, and kept on thrusting. After a startled moment, Letty locked her legs around his waist, got her teeth into his shoulder, and braced herself for an explosion of pleasure.

“Oh, God,
David
… Merciful heavens,
David… David
…”

He was getting worse, in some sense. Letty was nearly certain he hadn’t spent—he never did anymore unless he wore a sheath, but what he visited upon her had become much more intense in recent weeks. Unbearably intense, and unbearably precious.

“You kill me,” Letty said against his chest when she could talk again. “The pleasure approaches violence, David, and to be honest—”

“Yes, Letty-love?” He was all tenderness again, a placid, golden lion, content to caress her with indulgent gentleness. “The pleasure approaches violence… For me too, you know.”

“I am almost afraid of you sometimes. What are you trying to prove in this bed, David?”

He was silent for a long moment, and Letty was concerned that she might, again, have offended him intimately. His touch didn’t change, however, it remained… sweet.

“Maybe I am trying to prove that I am still myself. That I haven’t changed for loving you.”