The Bastard (25 page)

Following the direction of his gaze, Jeannette bit her lip and smiled uncertainly, but whether or not she blushed was hard to determine. Her face was already tinged with red from the rum.

“Do you want to touch me, Lieutenant?” she asked softly.

Treynor guessed his desires were as obvious as those of a dog who sits near the dinner table, wagging his tail and begging with his eyes. He cleared his throat and tried to turn away, but she reached out to stop him.

“Don’t go.” Her lovely eyes pleaded with him.

He raised his hand to her breast and felt his breath catch in his throat. He’d promised he’d not force her. Taking her while she was drunk was probably just as bad. He knew better than to stay, but the soft mound of flesh felt so good in his palm...

“I will be happy to oblige you in the morning, if you still desire my company.” Hearing the thickness of his own voice, he forced his hand to let go of its prize while he still had the power to do so. “Before anything happens, I want to know you are in full agreement.”

“I don’t think I want to be a virgin when I meet my next decrepit husband.” She giggled and went for his buttons. “Will that do?”

“What about your family?”

She couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything other than ridding him of his clothes. “After stowing away on a frigate, my reputation will be ruined. Besides—” she paused long enough to wave a distracted hand “—my husband wanted to send his male friends and relatives to my bed. What is so wrong with me choosing the first one?”

“What?” Treynor stilled her hands and forced her to look up at him. “Is that why you ran away?”

She nodded and went back to his buttons.

“He told you this?”

“No. My brother overheard some men at the wedding placing wagers on whose seed would take in my belly.” She frowned. “I think I even met some of the candidates.”

“What about your parents? Would they not protect you?”

“What could they do? We are powerless, even pitied in this country. But...do we have to talk about this now?” Slipping her arms inside his shirt, she pressed her cheek to his chest.

They had to talk about something or he’d be swept away by the lust leaping and burning through his veins. “You’re drunk,” he said.

Jeannette lifted her head. “And you are beautiful!”

Warmed by a smile that was as frank as her words, he laughed. Dear God but she was a difficult woman to refuse. Despite his anger at her and the difficulties she’d caused him, there was something about Jeannette that would not let him forget her. “I think that’s my line.”

He took in her curly hair, her small, pert nose and sensuous mouth, then lowered his gaze to feast on her firm young breasts and narrow waist. He’d undressed her before. He knew what treasures lay beneath her clothes, but he never dreamed he’d be invited to sample them, touch them, taste them.

With a groan, he tried to pull away, but her fingers roved over his chest, turning his will to mush. Perhaps if he made love to her, finished what they’d started at the Stag, they’d both be satisfied. She’d stop invading his thoughts at the most inopportune moments, and he’d be able to concentrate on his work.

Bending, he took the tip of one breast into his mouth.

Jeannette started in surprise, then arched toward him. Her head fell back on his pillow and her eyes slid closed as he began to trail tiny kisses up her neck. She felt as greedy as he did; he could see it, sense it in the tension of her body.

But she was drunk. And she was young and probably untouched. As much as he wished to justify taking what he wanted by telling himself his lovemaking would give her a positive experience for her first time, he could not.

Letting go of her, Treynor raked a hand through his hair, but he didn’t move far enough away that she couldn’t guide his hands back to her body. Sweet torture, what was she doing to him? Was she trying to amuse herself by discovering how the other half lived? Or was she merely trying to prove that she could make him want her, take her, and beg her for more when he was done?

Her skin was warm and smooth to his touch, her lips wet, parted. He longed to tear their clothes away and enter her warmth, to push past the barrier of her virginity and feel her close tightly around him. He wanted to carry her with him like the wind buffets a leaf, higher and higher until, together, they plunged off the tallest pinnacle to fall freely through space, suspending both time and reality until, eventually, they swirled gently back to earth.

But Jeannette was uninitiated in the ways of love. And he had been born on the wrong side of the blanket. She needed a nobleman and a wedding.

“Show me what it is like to make love with you,” she said. “Let me feel you inside me before it is too late, and I am doomed to never know.”

The enticement echoed in Treynor’s ears, challenging everything he believed himself to be. “Perhaps another day,” he managed, but it felt like he might burst if he didn’t take her. “When you know your own mind.”

“But I do,” she protested. “This is exactly what I wanted the first night I met you.”

He grimaced at the thought of how that night had gone and tried to move back. He wanted to slow the rapid pounding of his heart, but the temptation of her body shackled him to the bed.

“I did not mean to hurt you that night,” she whispered.

“Then you know very little about the anatomy of a man.”

“Show me.” She touched his hardness through the fabric of his uniform, and he gasped at the sensation.

“I don’t think you want to do that.” He meant to move her hand away but ended up covering it with his own. “I may not be able to stop myself.”

“Do not worry, I will stop you.”

There wasn’t a shred of commitment in her words, but they were enough to make Treynor teeter on the edge of indecision. The feeling of her naked breasts against his chest would be worth the cost of drawing closer to the flame—worth almost any cost.

He pulled her against him, marveling at the pleasure of such a simple thing.

Jeannette seemed to like the contact as much as he did. She gave him a sultry smile, wound her arms around his neck, and turned her face up to receive his kiss.

Treynor took his time with her lips, then gently explored her small, straight teeth and velvety tongue.

She responded tentatively at first, until she grew confident in what she was doing. Then her lovemaking took on a wild abandon that stole his breath. When he felt her quiver against him, his hands moved to finish with their clothing. But this last barrier was all that stopped him from possessing her completely. Were he to remove it, he knew he’d be powerless against the animal inside him.

“Damn it!” he groaned.

“What?” She gazed up at him as if thoroughly confused as to why he might be unhappy.

Staring at Jeannette’s wide eyes and her lips, swollen from his kisses, Treynor knew he couldn’t win. His conscience wouldn’t allow him to proceed; his need wouldn’t allow him to stop.

Finally, he extricated himself from her arms and stepped away.

She blinked at him in surprise. “Where are you going?”

“Anywhere but here.”

“You’re not leaving....”

“Yes.” He quickly buttoned his jacket. “But I must be the stupidest bastard in the world.”

The war between his mind and his body was making him angrier by the minute. Why did his damned conscience have to intervene at a moment like this? At the very peak of sexual desire? How long had it been since he’d wanted a woman as badly as he wanted Jeannette?

Never
came the answer. And that terrified him. God, he prayed, not her. Anyone but her.

Silently, he railed at himself and cursed Jeannette, too. But, considering the situation, only one thing could set his world right again—besides another fifteen minutes with the count’s daughter.

He needed a good brawl.

Fortunately, he knew several members of the crew who’d be happy to oblige.

Helen crumpled the letter in one hand and tossed it into the wastepaper basket below the mahogany secretary where she sat in her study. She’d spent all evening composing the lines that had covered the perfumed sheet. Yet there seemed to be no good way to express what she had wanted, for many years now, to tell her son.

She stared out the second-story window near her desk at the moonlit, snow-covered box hedges and Greek statues in the gardens below and thought back to their last interview at the cottage near Liskeard. Treynor had been livid with rage. She’d made him that way. But she’d only been striking out at herself. By behaving as he expected her to—by being what he thought she was—she ensured his continued rejection and no longer needed to fear it.

Dipping her quill into the inkwell, she pulled her gaze away from the glistening snow and shadowy, leafless trees to start again. She’d never spoken of Treynor’s true father. His name wasn’t recorded in any journal or previous letters—none that she hadn’t destroyed. Even her husband, the marquess, did not know the truth.

She’d had a short affair with their stable master, but that had come at least a month after the pregnancy, as a purposeful cover. The marquess had not returned from the colonies as planned, and she’d been forced to do something.

When her husband finally did arrive, her condition was quite obvious. He was so embarrassed that she would take a servant into her bed he’d hushed it up as carefully as she’d guarded her own secret, until no one knew, really, where Treynor had come from.

“Ah, ’ere ye are. Busy tormentin’ yerself again, I see.”

The voice of her housekeeper broke the silence. Surprised that Mrs. Peters was still up, Helen lifted her head. “It’s late, Elizabeth. What are you doing looking over my shoulder?”

“I don’t need to look over yer shoulder to know what you’re doin’. It hasn’t changed for years.” Her jowls wagged as she shook her head. “Ye closet yerself away up ’ere an’ write an’ write as though ye might actually send a letter or two. But precious few make it out in the post. Writing them is just yer penance.”

Helen sighed. “Perhaps someday I will send all the ones I haven’t destroyed.”

“Ye need to forget the past.” The harsh expression on Elizabeth’s round face softened with love and pity. “Ye’ve punished yerself long enough. It’s been nearly thirty years.”

The sting of tears burned behind Helen’s eyes, but she’d become adept at keeping her composure. She knew her tears would never fall, not while she had a witness. “You may retire,” she said, using her most imperious voice. “I can take care of myself from here.”

But mere dismissal wasn’t enough to get Elizabeth to leave her in peace, not this night. “M’lady, per’aps I should ’ave said these things before—”

“You didn’t need to,” Helen broke in “I can always tell what you think.”

“Then why not pay ’eed? I might be an old, fat crone, but no one knows ye better. No one’s cared for ye longer.”

“I know.” Helen set her quill aside and pinched the bridge of her nose. Elizabeth had been her mother’s housekeeper when Helen was just a girl—and her only comfort for years.

The housekeeper moved beside her, her hand, chafed from so many years of work, resting on Helen’s arm. “One mistake didn’t warrant another. That’s why ye let the babe go. Are ye forgettin’ ye had to provide yer ’usband with an ’eir an’ protect ’im from all the waggin’ tongues? Ye be’aved as befitted a marquess’s wife an’ ye gave no name to yer pain. Lord knows it wasn’t an easy sacrifice.” She paused as if waiting for a response, but Helen had nothing to say.

“An’ what of the boy’s father?” she went on. “Ye loved ’im.” She frowned to stop Helen when she would have denied it. “But ye gave ’im up, too.”