Read Lady Beauchamp's Proposal Online
Authors: Secret Cravings Publishing
Tags: #erotic romance, #historical romance, #romance novel, #erotic historical, #historical europe
“James…” Her voice was a desperate plea and
she rocked her hips. As much as his heart longed to stay in this
moment, his body couldn’t resist her blatant invitation to move any
longer.
But he would make this last. As long as he
possibly could. He began a relentless, agonizingly slow rhythm,
holding her gaze, loving her with his eyes just as much as loving
her with his body. Retreating and returning with long, deliberate
strokes within her tight, clutching passage. Relishing all the
small sounds she made—the sighs and pants; cataloguing every
expression that crossed her face in these last shared minutes.
But as surely as the sun was rising beyond
this room, he couldn’t sustain this exquisitely restrained pace.
The inexorable pull of sexual bliss drove him to plunge harder and
faster, steadily escalating the tension, spiraling them both higher
and higher towards the zenith they both sought. Together.
And then Beth cried out, her fingernails
clawing him, her sheath gripping him in a spasm so tight, so
uncompromising, he had no hope of holding back. With an almighty,
shuddering groan, he let go and joined her, his world exploding
into blazing rapture; like a comet burning through the heavens.
Bright, perfect, heavenly fire, consumed him, suffused him, like
his love for this woman.
My love forever. My Beth
.
He collapsed onto her, then rolled and
gathered her to him, skin to skin, heart to heart. Waiting for the
knock on the door that would end these last moments in
paradise.
“I love you,” he whispered against her
sweet-smelling hair.
And then the summons came.
* * * *
“Lady Beauchamp, ye have ten more minutes
until this door is unlocked.”
Elizabeth lifted her head from James’s
shoulder and reluctantly pulled away. James was breathing heavily,
still overcome from their exertions. His dark brown gaze, glowing
with satisfaction and love, rested upon her face.
Oh my.
She didn’t trust herself to speak so she
just looked at him, and traced the outline of his chiseled lips and
his stubbled jaw, his nose and brows with trembling fingertips.
Such strength and beauty.
This is how I will remember him
whenever I close my eyes
.
“We must get dressed, my sweet angel,” he
murmured softly before turning his face a little to feather a light
kiss upon her wrist.
She nodded. He was right. The time had
come.
Wordlessly, they rose and collected their
discarded garments, then helped each other to dress, both taking
every opportunity to caress with gentle hands, to place another
kiss on exposed flesh before it was covered over. To Elizabeth, it
felt like they were dressing to meet the end of the world, not the
start of a new day. They hadn’t even parted yet and already she
ached inside.
She would never stop aching.
It wasn’t until she began to tie James’s
cravat that she at last felt strong enough to speak without risking
tears. “James…” She focused on the activity of her fingers as she
worked the linen into a series of knots. She couldn’t meet his
eyes, but she felt his gaze on her face. “I know that we’ve already
been through this…and when all is said and done, we may need to
agree to disagree about whether you wait for me or not. But you
will be forty, if not older when I am a widow in truth…” She
glanced up then, and saw James’s mouth was compressed into a hard,
determined line. She bit her lip.
Oh dear
. She shouldn’t
have brought it up again. She didn’t want to part on a quarrel.
Swallowing past the tight feeling in her
throat, she tried to blink away the sudden mist clouding her
vision. “I just want you to be happy,” she whispered.
James reached out and cradled her face
between his hands, brushing her tears away with his thumbs. “I
know…but I will only be happy if there is the promise of
us
again,” he said gently. “I won’t give up the joy of being with you,
Beth.”
“But if you meet someone else—”
“Shh.” James placed a finger against her
lips. “As you said, we will agree to disagree, my love.” He tucked
a lock of hair behind her ear. “I want you to promise me something
though.”
“What is it?” If it was within her power,
she would do anything for this man.
He swallowed and placed a hand on her belly.
“If you bear my child, Beth, will you write to me to let me know if
it’s a boy or a girl?”
“Of course,” she breathed, her sorrow now
truly threatening to engulf her. Even if Hugh never let her pen
another private letter again—she was certain he would scrutinize
every piece of mail that entered or left their household from now
on—she would get word to James, somehow.
He nodded, his dark eyes suddenly shining
too brightly as they roved over her face, his gaze ending on her
mouth. His head began to lower and her heart twisted in agony. This
was it. His kiss goodbye.
His hand pushed into her tangled hair as his
mouth met hers, his firm lips sliding, caressing, worshipping her
with lingering, heart-wrenching slowness. When his tongue stroked
against hers, she couldn’t bite back a whimper of distress and she
sagged against him, clutching at his shoulders, her hands fisting
into his shirt. Helpless with grief and desire. And love.
The key suddenly rattled in the lock and
James let her go, just as the door grated open to reveal one of
Hugh’s grimly scowling henchmen. A small pistol was trained on
James. Hugh was obviously leaving nothing to chance.
“Time fer his lordship to go.”
Elizabeth nodded. Somehow, she forced her
hands to relinquish their grip on James, and she took a step back.
“Goodbye, my love.”
Through the blur of her tears, she saw his
mouth tilt into a small, lop-sided smile. “For now.”
He suddenly reached for her, pulled her back
into his arms and gave her a swift, hard kiss. A determined kiss.
Not a goodbye kiss at all this time. Then, just as abruptly as the
kiss had started, he released her, strode to the door and snatched
his coat from the back of the handle.
And then he was gone.
Elizabeth pressed her fingers to her
swollen, trembling lips. The end of the world had indeed come at
last. But it hardly seemed fair that she was still breathing, that
her heart was still beating; that sunlight still filtered through
the grimy mullioned window onto the rumpled bedcovers, and the rug
at her feet. Not when she wanted the earth to split open and the
sun to be extinguished. She wanted to lie down here and never
wake.
“Lady Beauchamp, yer carriage is here.” She
glanced up to find the chancer, MacSweeney, was standing in the
doorway. His brow was creased with something like concern. “Are ye
all right?”
She bit her lip hard as she put on her
bonnet and lowered her black veil. “I’m fine.”
Holding her head high, she then marched past
him, out the door.
Back to Hugh.
* * * *
Hugh was still seated in the wing chair
before the fire, brandy in hand, when she walked into the sitting
room of his suite at Boyd’s Inn. With the exception of his scarf,
which now lay discarded on the hearth rug, he was still clothed in
the same outfit she had last seen him in.
Had he been up all night, waiting for her?
Brooding? Despite the fact that he had organized her ‘assignation’,
she couldn’t help but think he would punish her in some way. That
her penance for what she had done was only just about to begin.
A frisson of cold unease crept down her
spine as he cast her a measured look. His gaze was hard and
assessing as it travelled over her disheveled hair, lingered on her
stubble-grazed cheeks, to the bruises on her neck left by James’s
passionate kisses. Thank God he couldn’t see below her skirts to
where James’s seed still clung to her inner thighs.
“You look like a whore, Elizabeth,” he
sneered, his consonants slightly slurred. It seemed he had indeed,
been drinking throughout the night.
She felt her cheeks grow hot, but
nevertheless she lifted her chin. “Isn’t that what you wanted,
Hugh? For James to tumble me all night?”
He snorted and tipped back what remained of
his brandy in one large swig. “You’d better hope that Rothsburgh
got the job done,” he said as he poured himself another drink, then
dispensed a peculiar looking concoction of darkly colored drops
from another small, dark brown bottle—she suspected it was
laudanum—into the golden-brown liquid. He swirled the mixture
around, then glanced at her again, his eyes narrowed. “And you’d
also best pray that it’s a boy you carry.”
Fear, like nothing else Elizabeth had ever
known, suddenly frosted her blood and twisted her gut. The cat and
mouse game had begun again in earnest. A taut silence stretched
between them as she struggled to make her numb lips and tongue work
again. “What do you mean?” she eventually asked, knowing that Hugh
would probably enjoy the fact that she was breathless with
fear.
“Suffice it to say, that if you fail to
produce me with a healthy male heir, I’ll have to get someone else
to do the deed. And after what Blaire told me about his stint at
Eilean Tor, I’m sure that he’d be more than happy to offer his
services. He always wanted to be in the Sapphire Club, you
know.”
Elizabeth nearly choked on the nausea that
surged to her throat, and dark spots appeared before her eyes. She
clutched at the back of a nearby chair to keep herself from
falling. “You bastard,” she whispered. “You wouldn’t. I’d rather
die than have that man touch me.”
He smirked and shrugged. “I don’t know why
you are looking so shocked, my dear wife. You know I don’t mind
sharing. And despite your previous history, you now clearly have
the morals of the commonest street doxy.”
She closed her eyes against his mocking
visage and attempted to control her breathing, and roiling stomach.
She would not faint. She would not vomit. If she was to survive
this life with Hugh, she must not show any more weakness.
“I will be able to let you know within a
week or two whether I am with child,” she managed to grit out from
between clenched teeth.
He nodded once. “Good girl. And I’m glad to
see you have gotten control of yourself. You know how I hate
histrionics.”
Ice cold anger, as hard and sharp as an
iceberg in the Arctic, formed within her. It suddenly occurred to
her that she would need to hold onto this feeling to sustain her
through the long, fraught years ahead. She dragged in a deep breath
and made herself release her hold on the back of the armchair.
Smoothed her skirts. Lifted her eyes to Hugh who was watching her
with sardonically amused interest.
“Is there anything else, my lord?” she asked
with pretended docility.
He sighed and raked her with a withering
look, but she steadfastly resisted the urge to flinch this time.
“Spare me the false sweetness, Elizabeth. But yes, there is
something you can do. Go and clean yourself up. We leave for
Scarwood Hall within the hour.”
Harcourt House, London, August 1816
“Excuse me, my lady.”
Elizabeth lifted her gaze from the tapestry
she was sewing—a cushion seat featuring a pair of swans for the
nursery upstairs—to find Jenkins lingering uncertainly in the
doorway to the drawing room.
That was not like Jenkins at all.
Her brow furrowed with concern. “What is it,
Jenkins?” she asked, laying aside her sewing as unease prickled
beneath her skin. Something was clearly wrong.
Jenkins’s eyes flitted briefly to her
swollen belly—an action that was also uncharacteristic of the man
because as a rule he would never overtly acknowledge her advanced
pregnancy—and then he swallowed and cleared his throat.
“There is a Bow Street Runner at the door, a
Constable Vickery, who wishes to speak to you, my lady, and
a…colleague who will not identify himself. I did mention that you
are not receiving visitors at present. But the constable is most
insistent.”
Elizabeth nodded. “It’s all right, Jenkins.
Did either of them mention what this is all about?”
Jenkins hesitated, his lips compressing into
a thin line before he answered. “No, my lady. But at the risk of
both disconcerting and displeasing you by stepping beyond the
bounds of my station, I feel I should mention that Lord Beauchamp
did not return home last night.”
“Oh…” Elizabeth felt the blood drain from
her face, and she placed a hand over her belly where the
baby—James’s baby—suddenly kicked. “I know he went out last night
with Lord Blaire.”
“Yes, my lady…but he hasn’t yet
returned.”
“I see…” Elizabeth closed her eyes and
didn’t know what to think or feel. After Hugh had entered into a
stage of apparent remission from the pox, they’d left Scarwood Hall
in Gloucestershire, and had returned to London in the middle of the
Season. With the rash resolved and his full head of blond hair—and
therefore vanity—restored, Hugh had again taken to frequenting his
club, gaming hells and whatever other dens of iniquity he cared to
visit, usually with Blaire in tow. That meant she rarely saw him or
the equally lascivious and odious Blaire—a circumstance that she
was wholeheartedly grateful for.
Indeed, once she had announced that she was
unequivocally pregnant, during the long journey from Edinburgh to
Gloucestershire, Hugh had been content to leave her to her own
devices. For the most part. Although largely ignored, she knew her
movements and correspondence were constantly monitored by his staff
that included several recently appointed, burly footmen and a pair
of pernicious lady’s maids.
At times, Jenkins and Dr. Morton seemed to
be her only allies.
But despite her lonely existence, Hugh
needn’t have worried that she’d do anything rash during her
pregnancy. As much as her body and heart—indeed her very
being—longed for James, she wasn’t going to run off and find him.
She would rather throw herself off a cliff than disgrace the
Marquess of Rothsburgh’s name and ruin his whole family’s
reputation.