Gareth: Lord of Rakes (28 page)

“It’s always nice to be appreciated,” he said, patting her bottom. “And some forms of it are illegal.”

“Shut up.” She emphasized her request by kissing him with the voluptuous languor of a well-pleasured woman. “I need a crane to hoist me off of you—no, don’t touch,” she admonished as Gareth would have helped her swing a leg over him. She managed to get situated beside him, her head on his chest, one leg thrown across his thighs.

“If you don’t mind, I will pause here for a few minutes,” she said, yawning. “You have done me in, Gareth, and we are still not finished.”

His hand, which had been lazily caressing her neck and arm, went still, then resumed its stroking. “We are not done, no. Unless you’re sore?”

He’d taken great pains to tell her about how delicate ladies’ parts could be, and how to care for herself after an overzealous bout of lovemaking—another of the asinine lectures he’d inflicted on her.

“I feel fine,” Felicity said, stretching like a cat. “Naughty, but fine.” Her hand wandered over his chest, then down, rib by rib. Gareth braced himself for the inevitable, and soon enough, her hand drifted lower.

When Felicity encountered Gareth’s flaccid cock, her hand stilled. Several heartbeats of silence ensued.

“What is this about?” She waggled his member gently.

“What is what about?” Not that he’d be able to bluff his way through this.

She waggled him more firmly. “This.”

“I like how that feels.” And he did, actually, though he couldn’t recall a touch of hers he hadn’t liked.

“Gareth, you mean to tell me I’m plastered to you, carrying on at great, strumpetous length—and don’t tell me strumpetous is not a word—and the
marquess
here”—she gave him another wiggle—“is not aroused?”

He heard the consternation in her voice and knew where her practical, virginal mind would take her next: she wasn’t desirable enough.

“Calm yourself, love,” he said, urging her back into his embrace. “This circumstance is one the professional ladies probably encounter fairly often. We men don’t like to speak of impotence, as if doing so will conjure it.”

“You are not having me on, are you?” She sounded not suspicious but distraught.

“No, love, I am not having you on, not about something like this. I am puzzled though, because until this day, I had no personal acquaintance with this… phenomenon.”

This problem—though in truth, he couldn’t regard it as a problem. More of a blessing, oddly enough. Perhaps St. Jude had taken a hand in things after all.

“You are tired.” Her fingers around his cock took on the oddest, protective feel. “And you’ve been drinking more. You said that doesn’t help a man’s performance.”

His drinking had nothing to do with it; his fatigue had nothing to do with it.

He would have been concerned, except he was too relieved. The decision of how to avoid debauching the spinster-madam had been taken from him, and time had run out. Somehow, he knew that between now and tomorrow’s meeting with the solicitors, the marquess, as Felicity had christened his cock, would not be a party to any mischief involving her.

Who would have thought a man’s conscience could be located in his underlinen?

Though beside him, he could
hear
Felicity worrying.

“What am I to do about this?” she asked miserably, patting his genitals.

“There is nothing to do, Felicity. Sometimes a fellow’s spirit is willing but his flesh is weak, so to speak. You are not to fret.” He heaved her up to straddle him again, and gently forced her back down to his chest. “Your maidenhead, if you had one, has been destroyed. Of that I am certain.” He kissed her brow, but it didn’t make her scowl go away.

“I may not have a maidenhead, Gareth, but how do you know that’s all a midwife would look for? Even Crabbie knows not all women bleed on their wedding nights.”

Felicity Worthington was born to challenge every reassurance he could possibly give her—and she’d been interrogating the help rather than bring her questions to him.

“I am
almost
positive you cannot be found to be a virgin with any medical certainty, but we aren’t going to let it come to that, Felicity. Nobody is going to be subjecting you to a medical examination. I won’t have it.”

“Pronouncements, no matter how confidently made, may not carry the day.”

Gareth knew Felicity’s gears were turning, but so were his. His were revolving around the thought that he’d never again hold Felicity naked against his skin, never see the desperate look in her eye when pleasure overtook her, never feel her indignantly waggle his limp cock while she interrogated him about his failure to ruin her entirely.

So many nevers…

“You’re sighing mightily,” Felicity observed, her chin resting on his sternum. “I can hear your mind parsing the problem. We shall contrive.”

That platitude should have irritated him, but it didn’t. Her faith in him, and in their ability to cope with what lay ahead, echoed his own certainty that his failure to perform today had been a final step in the resurrection of scruples that had lain dormant too long. Somehow, they would contrive, and he would see her future secure.

As he pondered the angles on that challenge, Felicity grew heavier. Her breathing deepened; her limbs went slack.

Gareth wrapped his arms about her and held her as tenderly as he dared, letting the shadows in the room shift into twilight as she slept on. When she finally stirred, it was full darkness, and still, he kept his arms around her.

***

“It’s like this, Brenner,” Gareth said, “Miss Worthington came to me claiming that as a condition of the will, I had to educate her regarding the duties of a madam—including the most intimate ones. In that last regard, I have failed.” A failure of which he was inordinately proud, and how long had it been since he’d felt any pride in himself at all? “What does the will
require
in terms of proof she in fact complied adequately to inherit?”

Brenner’s features pursed into a frown as he listened, and before Gareth’s eyes, Michael Brenner, competent if unassuming man of business, took on the raptor’s visage of a lettered legal clerk.

“Perhaps your lordship would like to have some supper while I look over the relevant documents?”

“I couldn’t eat, though I will leave you alone. Would you rather work here or in the library?”

“The library, with the legal references,” Brenner said. “Is there anything else I should know about this situation, your lordship?”

Gareth trusted Brenner, trusted him more than he’d realized.

“You should know there is gossip in the solicitors’ offices,” Gareth replied. “The details of this will are already circulating on the fringes of Society, and we can’t afford for them to go any further. It is imperative we conclude this business tomorrow, and without physical examination of Felicity’s person.”

“Solicitors will gossip,” Brenner allowed in a virtuosic understatement. “If you’ll excuse me?”

Garth waved him on his way and remained seated behind the desk, mentally pacing the bounds of the problem.

First, why would Callista do something like this to her cousin? Neither Gareth nor Andrew, both of whom had known the woman well enough, found such viciousness in character. Second, how had the rumors started, and why were they—now—so close to the truth? Third, how did David Holbrook figure into the equation?

Gareth turned over each question until he was ready to hit something—David Holbrook’s handsome face, for example, or Callista’s solicitors. When he heard the clock chime ten times, he made his way to the library.

“Almost done,” Brenner said, for once too absorbed in a task to rise in the presence of his employer. “There’s good news and bad news,” he said, scratching some notes on a sheet of foolscap. Gareth stood by the hearth, waiting with as much patience as he could muster.

Which was to say, precious damned little.

“Bad news first.”

***

“I like your choice of attire,” Gareth said as he settled into the coach.

Felicity had chosen a dress of deep green velvet, an ensemble that would have been suitable for church and a little severe for social calls. At Gareth’s approval, the knots in her stomach eased fractionally.

“I see you’re every inch the marquess today as well.” And heavens, he made an impressive show in his elegant attire.

“One goes into battle as well armored as possible.” He took her gloved hand in his, then scowled, stripped off their gloves, and laced his fingers with hers. “You shall not fret. Brenner and I were up half the night going over Callista’s will, and he gave me plenty of ammunition.”

Ammunition because it
was
a battle.

“We’ll need it. The solicitors were very clear with me, Gareth. I was to be subjected to every possible indignity should I not be convincingly…”

She trailed off, frowning. What exactly had they said to her, and what had she implied or been led to imply?

“Yes?”

“The will is legal,” Felicity said. “They assured me of that at great length.”

“Brenner gave me leave to doubt that.” Gareth sounded viciously pleased to announce this. He was thinking clearly—thank God somebody was.

“This is going to be quite complicated, isn’t it? Should we have brought Brenner?”

“He offered,” Gareth said, drawing the shade down the last inch. “I may have to fight dirty, and Brenner is somewhat of a stickler.”

His thumb lazily rubbed circles on the back of her hand, while his mind was likely miles away. “You relish the thought of playing dirty.”

“I think somebody has played
you
dirty,” he replied. “I relish the thought of being your champion.”

Gracious.
She had not recovered from that broadside before he brought her knuckles to his lips for a kiss.

“Are you sore today?”

“Gareth, how can you possibly think of such a thing?”

“Your welfare is never far from my thoughts.”

Gareth Alexander spoiling for a fight was a formidable companion.

“I took a soaking bath last night, and another this morning. I am in good health.” She regarded their joined hands. “We should not be having this discussion.” She could not make herself use his title, not quite yet.

Beside her, he shifted subtly, so his body was closer to hers, and the light, spicy scent of his shaving soap stole through her senses.

“I told myself, Felicity, that for today, I would treat you with the distance and decorum you truly deserve. I told myself it would be kinder—and easier for us both—if I maintained some propriety between us and kept my infernal paws to myself.” He paused as if to gather his composure. “I simply
cannot
do it, not when I know that when I drop you off at home after this meeting, I will drop out of your life, and you out of mine, for all practical—and impractical—purposes.”

Her champion was very fierce, also very brave. She would reward him with as much bravery of her own as she could muster.

“I am glad your noble resolve failed you. As it is, I wondered why you didn’t kiss me, why you didn’t put an arm around me. When you took my hand, my fears abated, but this decorum you refer to, it would have cut me to the heart.”

Though she knew well, as he no doubt did too, that cut awaited them both.

***

According to Brenner’s research, the firm of Willard and Willard was the enterprise of two brothers, one a good deal older than the other, assisted by a younger nephew, as well as various clerks and secretaries. The offices gave every appearance of prospering, but the address was of middling prestige, the place smelled of books and coal smoke, and the office help were thin and poorly attired.

Gareth and Felicity were ushered into the office of the senior Willard brother, Thaddeus by name, and joined by the other brother and the nephew. They were then offered tea and a polite ration of small talk while they stood around a long, gleaming table waiting for documents to be produced.

Gareth ambled around the room, handling whatever struck his fancy, then taking a seat at the head of the table, though it certainly hadn’t been offered. Frowning, he stood right back up.

“Miss Worthington, I am remiss and do beg your pardon.” He held out the chair directly to his right, causing the other gentlemen to exchange uneasy looks. Of course they should have offered the lady a seat, but this was a
marquess
.

“Our pardon, Miss Worthington.” The younger brother, Abernathy, offered her a bow along with the apology, and Gareth mentally labeled him the brains of the operation.

“And, gentlemen?” Gareth made a gesture designed to invite them to sit as well.

As the solicitors were flipping their tails and clearing their throats, an office boy came in, carrying a stack of beribboned files, which he laid on the table by the nephew.

Suggesting the nephew was the one who actually did the work.

“The Hemmings estate file, if you please.” Thaddeus held out a peremptory hand toward his nephew. The nephew passed the file up while Gareth silently bided his time.

“Ah, yes, here it is.” Thaddeus enjoyed himself for long minutes, perusing the documents, muttering to himself, and occasionally lapsing into Latin. “And is the midwife expected soon?” he asked his nephew.

“I believe so, Uncle.”

Gareth glanced at Felicity, who was engaged in a battle of direct gazes with Abernathy. Utterly expressionless, she let the weight of her stare rest on the man, until he glanced away, a frown replacing his earlier jovial expression.

“Is somebody anticipating a happy event?” Gareth asked.

Thaddeus looked up, his surprise no more convincing than it was genuine. “Why no, your lordship. We are preparing to comply with the terms of Miss Hemmings’s will. The language is specific, you see, and as her solicitors, we have a solemn duty to ensure the terms are complied with in every respect. This has all been explained to Miss Worthington.”

Thaddeus continued to smile benignly, even to the point of bestowing a small nod in the aforesaid Miss Worthington’s direction.

Gareth endeavored to look perplexed, when what he felt approximated the intent to do treble murder. “The language is specific, you say?”