Lady Lyte's Little Secret
Read Lady Lyte's Little Secret Online
Authors: Deborah Hale
Tags: #Historical Romance, #Regency Romance, #Romance, #love story, #England
Lady Lyte's Little Secret
Deborah Hale
Harlequin (2002)
Rating: ****
Tags: England, Historical Romance, Love Story, Regency Romance, Romance
Felicity Lyte Was In A Quandary
How could she tell her cherished paramour of his impending fatherhood? Hawthorn Greenwood, despite his straitened circumstances, would surely make a responsible, honorable offer of marriage - which Felicity could never accept. For she would only wed him in truebound love -
or not at all!
Thorn Greenwood had thought to but share an idyllic Season with Lady Lyte - and instead found his soul's partner. But Felicity had abruptly ended their liaison. Did she think him a fortune hunter?
A rank falsehood that, for the only wealth he sought was the bounty of her love!
“Take one step, and I’ll toss your clothes on the fire!”
“What’s gotten into you, woman?” A grimace of pain twisted Thorn’s features as he lurched to his feet. “You’re not my mother, for pity’s sake. You don’t even want to be my mistress anymore. So leave off trying to coddle me.”
He tried to take the threatened step, but the strength of his legs clearly failed to match the strength of his will. He staggered toward Felicity, who mustered all her strength to push him back onto his bed. At the last instant, his hand closed around her wrist and pulled her down on top of him.
The indignation she tried to summon melted like summer hail.
A bewildering sense of completeness stole over her as the fleet skip of her heart tangled with the strong, swift beat of Thorn’s until it became one thrilling, intricate rhythm…!
Praise for bestselling author DEBORAH HALE’s latest titles
Whitefeather’s Woman
“This book is yet another success for Deborah Hale.
It aims for the heart and doesn’t miss.”
—The Old Book Barn Gazette
The Wedding Wager
“…this delightful, well-paced historical
will leave readers smiling and satisfied.”
—Library Journal
A Gentleman of Substance
“This exceptional Regency-era romance
includes all the best aspects of that genre….
Deborah Hale has outdone herself…”
—Romantic Times
#640 THE FORBIDDEN BRIDE
Cheryl Reavis
#641 DRAGON’S DAUGHTER
Catherine Archer
#642 HALLIE’S HERO
Nicole Foster
L
ADY
L
YTE’S
L
ITTLE
S
ECRET
D
EBORAH
H
ALE
Available from Harlequin Historicals and DEBORAH HALE
My Lord Protector
#452
A Gentleman of Substance
#488
The Bonny Bride
#503
The Elusive Bride
#539
The Wedding Wager
#563
Whitefeather’s Woman
#581
Carpetbagger’s Wife
#595
The Love Match
#599
“Cupid Goes to Gretna”
Border Bride
#619
Lady Lyte’s Little Secret
#639
To Graham McDonald,
nuclear engineer, rock climber
and all-around answer to a maiden’s prayer,
as well loved by his sisters as Thorn Greenwood.
Nobody deserves a “happily ever after” more than you,
Big Red!
Contents
Chapter One
Bath, England
May 1815
“F
elicity!”
The sound of her name, bellowed in a resonant masculine voice from the entry hall of her Bath town house, roused Lady Felicity Lyte from a restless doze.
It must be after midnight. What could Thorn be doing here at this unholy hour?
Not that Mr. Hawthorn Greenwood was a stranger to Number 18 Royal Crescent after dark. Quite the contrary. A mere two nights ago, at this very hour, he had been warming the bed beside her, serenely unaware that his days as her lover were numbered.
Until this moment, she’d had no communication with him concerning the polite note in which she’d terminated their discreet love affair.
Off in the distance, Thorn roared her name again. Felicity heard his footsteps thunder up the stairs. Her pulse fluttered in her throat, as she threw off the bedclothes and groped for her dressing gown.
She’d never heard Thorn Greenwood raise his voice. Nor move with anything but quiet, temperate steps. The racket of his current approach frightened Felicity just a little—and stirred her a great deal.
The man must be well-foxed, she decided as she thrust her arms into the sleeves of her dressing gown and fumbled in the dark to tie the sash. Had he fortified himself at some fashionable drinking establishment, then come here intent on begging her to take him back? Perhaps to demand some better account of why she’d decided to cast him off so abruptly?
The notion that he cared enough to demand or beg anything gave Felicity a queasy sensation that was not altogether unpleasant. Rather like looking out at a breathtaking vista from an alarming altitude.
Much as she longed to, she could not afford to continue her enjoyable love affair with Thorn Greenwood. Neither did she dare tell him the true reason why.
Darting the length of her bedchamber, she threw the door open just as Thorn came skidding to a halt before it. Expecting to encounter the reek of spirits, so familiar from her experience with her late husband, Felicity was surprised when she smelled nothing of the kind.
In the faint glow cast by a night lamp in the upstairs hall, Thorn looked perturbed to a degree Felicity associated with immoderate drinking. His greatcoat was unbuttoned, his hat absent altogether, and his dark hair ruffled either by the wind or his own haste. His eyes, usually the calm, steadfast brown of freshly turned earth, now flashed with the sparks of flint struck against flint.
Gazing up at Thorn as he towered over her, his broad shoulders and muscular torso filling out his
greatcoat, Felicity had to anchor herself against the intense attraction that threatened to propel her into his arms.
If only he’d come to confront her any time but now—anywhere but here. Late at night, on the threshold of the room where they’d made love so often. Yet, not often enough. If they held their breaths and listened, they might hear her bed calling them with its sensual siren song.
Her skin warmed with the physical memory of his strong but gentle touch. The sensitive tips of her bosoms thrust out against her nightgown and dressing gown to lure his lips. The sweet fissure between her thighs took fire in readiness for another delicious coupling.
If Thorn Greenwood dropped to his knees and begged for one more night, his face pressed to her bosom and his large deft hands cradling her backside, no power on earth, least of all her own badly divided will, could force Felicity’s lips to frame a refusal.
“Is Ivy here?” he demanded.
The words were so contrary to anything she’d expected that Felicity struggled to understand them.
“Ivy? Your…sister?”
“Of course, my sister.” Thorn’s brusque tone rasped against her kindled passion like a man’s un-shaven cheek grazing the sensitive flesh of her bare neck. “Do you think I’ve come here at this hour because I’ve developed a sudden passion for horticulture?”
Felicity’s fragile sense of anticipation shattered into sharp splinters of ice.
“What on earth would your silly sister be doing in
my
house in the middle of the night? If this is some
spurious pretext for you to barge in here and wake me from a sound sleep, you will regret it, Mr. Greenwood, I assure you.”
“Depend upon it, Lady Lyte, nothing less dire than the defence of my sister’s virtue and reputation could induce me to cross a threshold over which I’m no longer welcome.” Even in the dim light Felicity could see the muscles of Thorn’s firm jaw tighten further. “As to why Ivy might be under your roof, I suggest you put
that
question to your nephew, the young scoundrel.”
Every word out of his mouth splashed cold water over Felicity’s fevered flesh. Bad enough Thorn Greenwood should come here at this hour of the night, exciting all manner of absurd expectations in her only to smash them to pieces again. But to insult her late husband’s nephew, a young man Felicity loved like the son she’d never expected to have, that was an outrage she would not bear.
“Pray, watch your tongue, Thorn Greenwood! I know of few young men who less deserve to be called a scoundrel than Oliver Armitage. What is my nephew
supposed
to have done to have compromised your sister’s reputation that she couldn’t do quite as readily on her own? I vow, I never met a more heedless little romp.”
That wasn’t true, Felicity’s conscience reproached her. On those few occasions when she’d encountered Thorn’s younger sister on the town, Felicity had been captivated by the child’s sweet high spirits, so at odds with her brother’s gentle gravity. Despite the difference in their ages, the two women had gotten on famously and Lady Lyte had been known to make quite a fuss over young Miss Greenwood.
Felicity turned a deaf ear to her own reason. Thorn’s unwarranted slight against Oliver demanded tit for tat. He wouldn’t mind any insult to himself half so much as one to his beloved sister.
Thorn’s powerful hands clenched and unclenched, as though barely restrained from grasping her upper arms and shaking her until her teeth rattled. Or perhaps pulling her close to kiss her until her knees gave way. Just contemplating those possibilities left Felicity a trifle dizzy.
“B-besides,” she added, “I doubt Oliver even knows your sister. There cannot be a young man in all of Bath less anxious to venture out on the town.”
Not that his doting aunt hadn’t cajoled him often enough. A fortnight ago, Ivy Greenwood would have been just the sort of winsome creature Felicity might have urged on her nephew to lure him away from his books and his laboratory.
Thank goodness she hadn’t. A shiver snaked through Felicity. Any match between Oliver and Ivy would have bound her inextricably to the Greenwood family, just when she needed to get as far away from Thorn as possible.
The words he hurled at her next echoed Felicity’s deepest fears. “I have reason to believe your nephew and my sister have eloped to Gretna Green.”
Felicity Lyte had no patience whatsoever with women who swooned. She considered it a vapid affectation. The last thing in the world she wanted was for the shock of Thorn’s news to make her wilt into his arms. But as everything around her began to twirl like a child’s spinning top, she found herself with no choice in the matter.
“Felicity!”
Breaking his vow never to budge a step across the threshold of her private chamber again, Thorn hoisted his erstwhile mistress into his arms and carried her to the bed.
As he laid Felicity on the rumpled sheets, the familiar fragrance of rosewater wrapped around him strand by delicate strand, pulling him toward her. It took every crumb of Thorn’s considerable self-control to curb the urge to indulge in one final kiss. The last time he’d pressed his lips to hers, he hadn’t realized it would be
the last time
.
For a moment, his passion for Felicity blotted every rational thought from Thorn’s mind, including the concern for his sister which had brought him here in the first place. The wild brown tangle of her hair against the pillow tempted his hands to touch. If he inhaled until his head spun and he pitched on top of her supine body, Thorn doubted he could breathe in enough of her subtle fragrance to satisfy him.
He should have known from the moment this beautiful, sought-after creature first invited him to become her lover that she’d made a foolish mistake. What could such a diamond of the first water want with a tiresomely respectable fellow like him? A man of sound but scarcely brilliant intellect, and no pretensions of wit or charm. Not ill-looking, but hardly a beau of fashion. A man with family responsibilities and financial obligations, unable to shower her with presents or even tender an honorable bid for her hand.