Love With a Scandalous Lord
Read Love With a Scandalous Lord Online
Authors: Lorraine Heath
Love With A Scandalous Lord
For my Dad.
You dreamed such big dreams for your children.
Wish you were here to share this one coming true.
I miss you.
The young woman’s breathless cries rose to a fevered pitch,…
As the dark crimson coach sped along the narrow country…
Rhys abhorred weeping women. He stood within his mother’s bedchamber,…
“I should have taken him with me.”
Rhys was fairly certain he’d dined on the glazed duck—after…
Unable to sleep, Lydia stared at the shadows haunting the…
Lydia Westland was a temptation any man in his right…
The shrieking began at precisely four o’clock.
Lydia couldn’t explain what drew her into the shadowy hallway…
Rhys meticulously calculated the sum of the numbers written on…
The Harrington stables were vast. Lydia couldn’t imagine the joy…
Lydia stepped out of the inn and glanced down the…
Lydia was acutely aware of the uncomfortable silence stretching between…
Lydia sat in the drawing room. A few lamps provided…
Lydia awakened, not certain why, with darkness hovering around her.
Lydia knew it was probably unseemly to have a spring…
Standing on the steps leading into the manor, Rhys watched…
Lydia trembled with anticipation, shook with trepidation.
Rhys stood in Lady Sachse’s cluttered drawing room awaiting her…
“The seamstress did an excellent job in so short a…
True courtship was not at all as Lydia had envisioned…
Rhys was not one to panic easily, but as he…
There were moments when Rhys wondered how he could possibly…
Lydia awoke to a tapping. She opened her eyes to…
Her heart was shattering. Lydia actually thought she could feel…
The Duke of Kimburton’s ball was without a doubt the…
Rhys stood within a small room not far from where…
It was whispered about London that tonight’s ball was the…
London
1879
T
he young woman’s breathless cries rose to a fevered pitch, as he skillfully urged her toward the pinnacle of pleasure. Against his palms, her hips quivered.
“Geoffrey, ah, Geoffrey!”
Confound it!
He stilled, knowing beyond any doubt what would follow. A tiny whimper and then tears. More quickly than most, she succumbed to both insipid reactions.
Ever so slowly he lifted his head from between her thighs and captured her horrified green gaze for only a heartbeat, before she looked away and her tears began in earnest.
“I’m frightfully sorry,” she rasped.
As well she should be. It was exceedingly bad form
to call out for one’s husband while in another’s bed.
Rhys Rhodes pressed a light kiss to the inside of her thigh, which only served to make her flinch and escalated her weeping into abhorrent sobbing. Tenderly he positioned her shapely leg in order to extricate himself from the intimate place she obviously no longer wished him to be.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, he opened a drawer in the small mahogany bedside table and withdrew a neatly folded monogrammed handkerchief, one of a dozen he kept readily available for just such an occasion. Of late they were occurring with irritatingly increasing frequency.
He truly needed to speak with Camilla regarding the women she was sending his way.
He glanced over his shoulder. This latest one had turned away from him, presenting him with her lovely back. Reaching over her curled shoulders, he dangled the linen in front of her. “Here now, make use of this.”
She snatched at his offering and proceeded to wipe away her tears, sniffing inelegantly during the process.
“It’s not fair,” she muttered. “He’s with his dreadful mistress tonight. Why can’t I take on a lover without feeling guilty?”
He retrieved his dressing gown from a nearby chair, slipped into the silk, and tightened the sash. Experience had taught him that absolution was best given when flesh was not pressed against flesh. Stretching out on the satin sheets, he folded his hand around her quaking shoulder. “Come here.”
She shook her head. “I can’t. Not yet.”
“Countess, let me hold you. I’ll even allow you to beat on my chest if it’ll make you feel better,” he said quietly.
She peered over her shoulder. Tears dampened her cheeks and pooled at the corners of her mouth. “Don’t you want to finish?”
He bestowed upon her a wry grin. “Dear lady, trust me on this matter: we are well and truly
finished
.”
More tears surfaced in her limpid eyes as she rolled toward him. Cradling her in his arms, he rocked her gently.
“I want to hate him, truly I do, with all my heart, but I can’t seem to find it within me to feel anything beyond disappointment that our marriage is no more than it is,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“Why can’t Geoffrey love me?”
“Perhaps he does,” he offered.
Although he knew in all likelihood the Earl of Whithaven did not love his wife. Love wasn’t always a consideration for matrimony among the aristocracy. As evidenced by the tragic marriage of his brother Quentin, the Marquess of Blackhurst.
“My coming here was a silly notion. I can’t fathom why I even considered it.” She looked up at him, her eyes searching his. “Was I unfaithful, do you suppose, if you never actually…if we were never truly…joined?”
He touched his lips to her forehead. Women sought him out because he was adept at giving them what they desired, even when all they truly wanted were carefully chosen truths, bordering on but not quite crossing over into the realm of lies. “No, you weren’t unfaithful.”
“Truly?”
“Not to my way of thinking, but I don’t believe I would broach the subject with your husband if I were you. He might not be nearly as understanding as I.”
She smiled then, a sweet, shy smile that made him want to search out her errant husband and beat the unappreciative man until he came to his senses.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
“My pleasure.”
Her smile grew slightly, almost impishly. “It really wasn’t, was it? Your pleasure, I mean.”
It seldom was. But he had no plans to oblige her with the truth and risk having it whispered about London.
“Why don’t I pop downstairs and scrounge up some warm cocoa for you to drink, before I fetch the carriage to take you home?” he offered.
She sniffed once more, wiped her eyes, and nodded.
“Splendid.”
While he rolled off the bed, she scrambled to cover herself with the sheets. Ah, how soon modesty returned when roles were remembered.
He walked out of his bedchamber and down the stairs. At the sight of William sitting on the bottom step, Rhys sighed. His valet was scratching his head as though he possessed lice, but Rhys had dispensed with the vile creatures long ago. He wondered what the lad was fretting over now.
As though hearing his master’s descent, William twisted around and lunged to his feet. “A message arrived, sir. I wasn’t sure if I should take it to you”—he cast a furtive glance up the stairs—“what with one of her ladyships bein’ up there and all. The bloke what delivered it—”
“Who delivered it,” he corrected gently.
The lad creased his brow as though deep in thought. “I don’t know his name. Never seen him before.”
Had he not long ago lost his ability to laugh, Rhys might have done so now. Instead he simply stated,
“You said the bloke
what
delivered, and you should have said
who
delivered. I was instructing you, not asking a question.”
“Oh, right. Right.”
“I’m also fairly certain he was a gentleman and not a bloke.”
“Oh, right again you are, sir. The gentleman said it was of an urgent nature.”
“I’m certain it is, coming this time of night.” And would no doubt require his visiting the shadowy corners of London as soon as his guest took her leave.
William handed him the letter, and Rhys tilted his head slightly. “Fetch me some warm cocoa that I can serve to my guest before she departs. Then see to having the carriage readied.”
“Yes, sir.” The lad took off at a lope.
“William?”
William stopped and looked at him with such earnestness that Rhys wondered how it was that the boy’s mother had ever found it within herself to sell the lad at six. Two years had passed before he and Rhys had crossed paths. They never spoke of the horrors that might have transpired during those years. “Have Cook make some cocoa for you while you’re at it.”
The lad’s face broke into a delighted grin. “Thanks, Guv’ner.”
Rhys opened the missive and stared at his father’s precise script. The Duke of Harrington was not prone to elaborate jokes, not prone to joking at all actually, but surely his words were designed to impart some sort of cruel jest.
In a fogged daze, Rhys walked into the drawing room and headed for his favorite cabinet. With a trembling hand, he poured whiskey into a glass. Whiskey
his half-brother had sent him from Texas. “Guaranteed to give you a kick in the gut,” Grayson had written on the note accompanying his gift.
He’d neglected to mention it also burned like a raging fire on the way down. Coughing, his eyes watering, Rhys welcomed the whiskey’s warmth saturating his numb body. Reading his father’s words again, he slumped into a chair, while his carefully built world crumbled around him.
“So how did our little countess fare once she experienced the reality of your skills?” a soft, feminine voice asked, slicing through his despair.
Camilla. Once wife to the Earl of Sachse, now widow. His benefactor, and more often than not, his tormentor. Because she generously provided him with a roof over his head, she had the nasty habit of dropping by at all hours, unannounced.
He glanced up at her. With her brown hair, brown eyes, and perfect patrician features, she was truly beautiful. Unless one happened to search below the surface. “As any woman might who is in love with her husband,” he answered.
She released a sigh of annoyance. “Why in God’s name would she love the Earl of Whithaven?”
He shrugged. “I assure you that I haven’t the foggiest notion. I’m hardly well versed in matters of the heart.”
He gazed back at the missive crumpled within his white-knuckled grasp. The words were no longer visible, but they would be forever emblazoned on his memory.
“Don’t look so devastated, Rhys. It doesn’t become you. I can assure you that love is highly overrated and
does little more than sticky up the situation—as our countess upstairs has proven.”
Ignoring her senseless prattle, he slowly rose to his feet. “My brother’s dead.”
“I must confess that I’m not terribly surprised he met an early end. From what I hear, Texas is a lawless wilderness. Your father was asking for heartache when he sent his bastard there. How did he die? Indians? Outlaws? Was it terribly gory? Do share the details.”
Shaking his head, he was as yet unable to fathom the significance behind the fact that Satan had called his minion home. “Not Grayson. Quentin.”
She gasped and pressed a hand against her throat. “The Marquess of Blackhurst? How in God’s name—”
“Apparently he drowned in the family pond.”
Her shock quickly gave way to her penchant for schemes, as evidenced by the triumphant smile that slowly spread across her strikingly beautiful face.
“Well, well, well. So the
spare
becomes the
heir
.” Stepping closer, she placed her palm over the spot where he had once possessed a heart. “I’ve always wanted to be a duchess.”
He wrapped his hand around hers and flung it aside. “Then you can
want
awhile longer, Countess.”
“Don’t be absurd. We’ve worked well together these many years. We’re well suited, you and I.”
“I daresay I’ve never considered us as such.” He turned on his heel. He could be packed and out of her house, permanently out of her presence, in five minutes.
“And what, pray tell, do you think will happen the first time you attend a ball or dinner?” she threw at his retreating back. “When my ladies discover exactly
who
you are?”
He froze, his heart thundering.
“Do you honestly believe, after all you’ve done, that tongues will not wag, or that any woman would want you?”
“I am well aware that marriage is not an option for me, Countess.”
“Then why not settle for me?” she asked. “I am more than willing to accept your carefully guarded sins.”
“Because I am unwilling to accept them.”
Not only the sins that he’d committed in this house, but the one that had come before he’d taken up residence here. The one he found truly unforgivable.
Striding from the room, he accepted that he would never possess the one thing for which he’d always yearned: the love of a woman.