WidowsWickedWish (8 page)

And Jack was lost. He brought the engorged head of his cock
to her tight little cunny, gripped her hips and thrust into her wet heat, hard
and deep, until he was buried within, until his balls bounced against her mound
with the force of his penetration.

“Oh, God!” Olivia cried out, her hips jerking in his hands,
her back curving and her hands gripping the rim of the tub.

“Damn,” he growled as he withdrew until only the head of his
shaft remained, her inner muscles clenching around him. “Livy?”

“Again,” she begged, her ass wiggling as she pushed back
against his invading cock.

Jack slammed into her, filling her, stretching her, again
and again. And Olivia met each thrust with a throaty cry and a twist of her
hips, urging him on. She released the slippery rim, her hands splashing into
the water. On her hands and knees, free to move with him, she bowed her back,
her ass rising in the air. She pushed back against each of his wild thrusts,
taking him deeper and deeper into her body.

Mindless with lust, Jack pounded into her until with a rough
groan, his climax took hold of him, blinding him to everything but the
unimaginable pleasure that rolled over him, tightening his balls, throbbing
down the length of his shaft.

Buried deep within her tight quim, he felt her walls closing
around him before, with a guttural moan, she came around him, clenching around
his cock, squeezing, milking the last of his seed.

Jack released his tight grip on her hips and fell forward,
his forehead coming to rest between her shoulder blades, his hands landing in
the water beside hers, taking his weight and holding him suspended over her. He
pressed his lips to her heaving back, held them there, barely moving, as he
pulled air deep into his starving lungs.

It wasn’t until Olivia moaned softly, her limbs trembling
beneath him, that he became fully aware of his surroundings, of the cooling
water, the warm air, the golden light of the fire shifting and dancing around
the room.

“Livy,” he breathed against her spine.

“Oh, Jack,” she whispered, her head slowly shaking as she
drew a stuttering breath, her back rising beneath his lips. “I never knew… My
God, I never knew.”

Jack smiled, placed a soft kiss on her warm flesh and gently
pulled his cock from her soft, wet warmth, amazed to find that he was still
hard, though no longer pulsing with need. He climbed from the water and stood
looking down at Olivia as she pushed back until she was sitting in the center
of the big tub, her hands gripping the rim, her head bowed.

“Come here, love,” he murmured as he bent to carefully help
her to her feet. She looked up at him with a soft smile, her eyes blinking
sleepily.

With a satisfied chuckle, he lifted her slippery form into
his arms and turned to the bed. She wound her arms around his neck and laid her
head on his shoulder with a contented little sigh that lifted the damp hairs at
his nape.

“We’ll get the bed wet,” she whispered, nuzzling his neck.

Jack stopped beside the big bed, allowed her to drift down
his body until she stood before him swaying. “Can you stand?”

“I think so,” she answered around a small yawn.

But when he turned around with a long length of soft linen
in his hands, he found her sitting on the edge of the bed, her head bent
forward, her shoulders drooping. Jack knelt before her, gently rubbing the
toweling over her long legs, up over her belly and around to her back.

“It’s been years since someone dried me after my bath,” she
said, her words soft and slightly slurred.

“Doesn’t your lady’s maid care for you?” he asked in
surprise.

“Of course, but not…Celeste doesn’t touch me when I’m
naked,” she replied with a wispy laugh. “I don’t even touch myself…”

Jack looked up from his ministrations, arched a brow in
question.

“When I’m naked,” she finished shyly.

“You seemed to enjoy it,” he said, standing before her and
draping the towel over her head and shoulders.

“I never knew,” she whispered with a shake of her head.

Jack finished drying her hair in silence, his mind filled
with the image of Olivia’s small hand cupping her breast, her long, elegant
fingers plucking at her nipple.

“Under the covers,” he ordered gently as he pulled the towel
from her head. Her short sable curls stood up all over her head in every
direction.

Quickly he rubbed the last of the moisture from his body,
watching as she crawled under the covers, rolled onto her side and snuggled
down into the bed, her head cuddling the pillow, until with another soft sigh,
she lay still.

Jack crawled in beside her, matching his chest to her back,
curling his legs beneath her bottom, and wrapping his arm over her waist.

“This is nice,” she murmured.

“Spooning?” he asked, nuzzling her nape.

“Spooning,” she repeated, her voice little more than a soft
breath.

“Haven’t you ever spooned before?” he asked before the truth
hit him. “Did Palmerton never spend the night in your bed?”

“I never thought to ask him to.”

Jack pulled her tight against him. “When we’re married
you’ll never need to ask.”

He waited with breath held for her response before leaning
over her to see her eyes closed and a soft smile drifting around her lips. He
studied her profile, watched the play of firelight drift over her flushed skin,
watched her lashes flutter, the long dark hairs casting shadows over her
cheeks. She blew a soft contented breath, her lips puckering for a moment
before her mouth fell open and the tip of her tongue came out to delicately trail
across her lower lip. He felt her soft inhalation, felt her back expand against
his chest, felt her breath drift over his arm when she exhaled.

Jack lay his head upon the pillow next to hers, his lips
resting against the soft skin and silken hair at her nape, and timed his
breaths to hers, until his eyes drifted closed and sleep took him.

“I’m not giving up, you know.” Jack stared down into
Olivia’s upturned face wanting to be certain she understood him.

“Oh, Jack,” she replied with a chuckle. “I’ve told you that
you needn’t wed me to bed me.”

Jack shook his head. “Cheeky girl.”

“You like me cheeky.”

It was true. His perfect regal lady was surprisingly cheeky.
The things she said.

They had spent three days and two nights together and she
had continually surprised him with her saucy mouth and honest curiosity.

Christ, the things she said, the irreverent questions she
asked, the uninhibited way she’d taken to his lovemaking. It about knocked him
sideways just thinking about all the ways he’d divested her of her innocence
and rewarded her curiosity. And all the ways that lay ahead.

“You’ll be in London by mid-March?” he asked.

“Or early April,” she replied.

They stood together in the circular drive before Idyllwild
Cottage. Mary, Molly and Tom had already made their goodbyes and disappeared
into the house, taking Charlie with them. Fanny was standing with Justine
giving her last-minute instructions on just what to tell her Aunt Beatrice when
the jerseys, scarves and mittens were delivered.

“I won’t give you up,” Jack promised.

“Nobody is asking you to,” Olivia said, her eyes bright in
the morning sun.

Jack looked over at their children, assured himself they
were paying their parents no mind, and leaned down to press a hard kiss upon
her waiting lips.

“Be careful,” she murmured against his mouth.

“You too.”

“It’s only a month or two, three at the most,” she reminded
him.

“I’ll have the marriage settlement prepared and waiting,” he
whispered.

“Oh Jack, don’t you dare.”

“All that will be lacking is your signature.”

“I won’t sign.”

“You might be carrying my child,” he told her even as he
sent up a prayer that it was true.

“I’m not,” Olivia disentangled her hands from around his
neck.

“You could be,” he answered. “We took no precautions.”

“Jack, I am not carrying your child,” she told him firmly.

“If you are, you’ll marry me.”

Olivia looked away, her eyes sweeping the countryside, a
frown puckering her forehead and pulling at her lips.

“Olivia?” he said when it seemed she would not agree.

“If I am carrying your child, I will marry you,” she finally
said without looking at him.

“As I said, I will have the marriage settlements drawn up
and waiting. Just in case you are wrong.”

“You are stubborn.” She turned to face him with a smile that
seemed strained.

“You don’t know the half of it.”

And she didn’t. She couldn’t possibly know how stubborn he
would be in this, he thought as he and Justine cantered down the long drive.

“Are you going to marry Lady Olivia?” his daughter asked as
they turned onto the London Road.

“Yes.”

“I like her.”

“So do I,” Jack agreed.

“It would be nice to have Fanny and Charlie for sister and
brother.”

“I’m thinking of giving you a few more sisters and
brothers.” Jack couldn’t wait to begin the process, hoped that perhaps Olivia was
already increasing, never mind what she’d said. She would marry him then.

They met up with Jack’s father and stepmother, Lucille, at
her sister’s sprawling estate half a day’s journey from Idyllwild. There they
languished two days while the sisters gossiped and made their plans for the
coming Season.

Jack spent the journey to Town reviewing and altering his
plan to marry the Countess of Palmerton.

When he’d first learned of Palmerton’s death and begun to
plot his impending courtship, he’d imagined he would have to woo Olivia, play
the adoring swain for all of London to see. He’d cringed at the idea of
toadying to her shrew of a mother, befriending her rather bumbling brother and
pushing his way through the crowd of gentlemen that would have set their gazes,
not to mention their depleted coffers, on the woman who would certainly be the
catch of the Season.

Finding the lady rusticating in the north had been a
surprise. An exceedingly welcome surprise. Discovering that her husband had
left her with a pile of debts, left her to fend for herself to dig her way out
from under them, had only sweetened the surprise.

Her mother might not oppose the match, after all. Jack
wasn’t titled, but he was quite wealthy, something that any mother would
recognize as more important given her daughter’s situation, not to mention that
of her grandson, the young Earl of Palmerton.

Her brother would likely require very little encouragement
to see the wisdom of the match. Jack didn’t know the young Earl of Hastings
well. He’d been away at Eton for most of the years Jack had visited with Easton
at his uncle’s country estate and stately town house. But surely Hastings had
no desire to support his sister and her children forever. He’d want to start a
family of his own soon, to fill his nursery and continue his line.

Jack appreciated the notion.

He was in a hurry to marry and set about producing an heir.
He had only to win the lady’s hand and get her with child. He was not opposed
to reversing the order if necessary.

One way or the other, Olivia would marry him. She would give
him what she’d so blithely taken from him more than a decade before. She would
not only give him an heir, she would give him a house full of children that
would never know the lonely isolation with which he’d been raised.

Olivia would give Justine and all their future children the
entrée into society that he had been denied. She would ensure that when his
sons went off to school they would not be taunted for their humble origins,
that when they attended university it would be their due as gentlemen, not as
the result of a debt their father had called in from a dean with a secret.

As he rode ahead of the carriage conveying his small family
into London, Jack sifted through his previous plan to win the hand of the
Countess of Palmerton. It had seemed a good plan, daunting though certainly not
impossible.

He’d thought to begin by allaying any worries the lady might
have regarding her role in forcing him into an unwanted marriage. But if Olivia
felt any guilt, any worry that he might hold a grudge, she certainly hadn’t
shown it.

Jack wondered if she knew that his marriage had been a
living hell. She was likely blissfully unaware of that fact. He and Elizabeth
had spent little time in London, and even less time in the august company in
which the countess moved about. Likely the
ton
had all but forgotten Mr.
and Mrs. Bentley but for a few whispers at the haste with which they’d wed and
the tragedy that had ended the lady’s life. Without the need to alleviate
Olivia’s guilty conscious and assure her she was forgiven, Jack could move on
to the next phase of his plan: the public courtship, seduction and eventual
capitulation.

Except he’d already seduced the lady, with little or no
courting required. She’d all but fallen into his arms, there to spend every
stolen moment she could for three days and two nights.

Capitulation could not be far behind.

Jack didn’t give much credence to her declarations she would
not marry again. She only needed a bit of time to forget her sorry treatment at
Palmerton’s hands, a bit of persuasion that marriage to him would not be more
of the same.

Jack did not doubt he could persuade her, nor did he doubt
that he could do it quickly, certainly before the end of the Season.

And if he could not make her see reason, he would swive her
silly until his seed took in her womb.

She’d marry him then.

Spring rolled into the north of England early that year. Not
four weeks after Jack and Justine road down the long drive surrounded by
melting snow, the temperature soared, the sun shone bright in the cloudless
blue sky and the first crocuses broke through the dark soil.

In the first week of March, Mr. and Mrs. Porter and their
daughter and son-in-law arrived from the village to assist with the plowing and
planting of the sprawling vegetable garden behind the Cottage.

Idyllwild in the spring was a time of renewal and rebirth.
Mirabel dropped a gangly legged foal in late March much to Fanny and Charlie’s
delight. The barn cat Sheba birthed a litter of seven mewling kittens in the
hay loft, two of which were claimed by the children as pets and mousers for the
house. Finches and magpies soared across the sky, building nests in the stately
old oaks until the air was filled with the sound of baby birds chirping.

When Olivia awoke before the dawn one morning to discover
she’d begun her courses she was not surprised. Of course there would be no
baby. She’d known it, had not allowed herself to hope. Even so, she buried her
face in her hands and allowed her tears to wash away the heartache that
overwhelmed her.

“Mama, why are you crying?” Charlie asked as he toddled
across her room, his big gray eyes wide.

“Come here and cuddle with your mother, Bonny Prince
Charlie,” she whispered, holding her arms open to embrace his warm body. She
pulled him into her arms and carried him to the window seat, settled him onto
her lap, and brushed her tear-damp cheek against his soft curls.

“We’re not going to ‘ondon today, are we?” he asked, his
pudgy fingers fiddling with the buttons on her night gown. “Fanny says we has
to go soon.”

“Have to go,” she corrected distractedly.

“We don’t,” he replied.

“No, Charlie, we don’t,” she agreed. “Not today.”

“Not never, Mama.”

“Never is an awfully long time,” she said with a smile.

“Longer than a day?” he asked, leaning back in her arms to
peer up at her.

“Much longer.” She kissed his pert little nose.

“Longer than a week?”

“Longer than a week, a month or a year.”

“Yay!” her son cried as he scrambled off her lap and ran for
the door, nearly falling as his bad foot slipped on the polished boards.

“Charlie,” she called.

“Fanny! Fanny! We gets to stay a year!”

Olivia shook her head and laughed as he took off down the
hall. She was in trouble now.

In early April the first of many letters from the Countess
of Hastings arrived insisting that Olivia return to London as the Season was
soon to begin. Olivia ignored the first two letters, replied to the third to
assure her mother she would arrive in Town soon. By the seventh letter, Lady
Hastings had ceased insisting and moved on to demanding. Still Olivia did not
begin packing until the final day of the month and then she dragged the chore
out for nearly two weeks.

“I don’t want to go!” Fanny screamed from across the
nursery, hands on hips, tears streaming down her pink cheeks. “You said we
could stay a year!”

“I said no such thing,” Olivia replied in exasperation. She
was kneeling on the floor carefully folding the last of her daughter’s dresses
and storing them away in the huge trunk that had been dragged down from the
attic.

“Charlie said you said we could stay a year. Are you calling
my baby brother a liar?” Fanny demanded, one tiny slippered foot tapping on the
wood floor.

“Fanny, you know perfectly well Charlie misunderstood me.”

“I hate London!” Fanny cried.

“Yes, so you’ve told me countless times,” Olivia said.

“I want to stay with Mary and Molly!” Fanny marched across
the room, grabbed the pink dress her mother was folding, and threw it down at
her feet. “I won’t go and you can’t make me.”

“That’s enough. We are leaving in the morning and you had
better make up your mind to it, young lady.” Olivia calmly gathered up the
dress and refolded it, placing it in the trunk. She reached for another but
Fanny got there first. She grabbed armfuls of clothing and ran to the window.
Before Olivia could jump to her feet, the entire pile of clothing went sailing
out the open window.

“Frances Marie!” she screamed.

Fanny turned and ran from the room howling.

And so it continued the rest of the day and long into the night.
But in the morning Olivia and her children settled into the old traveling
coach, one of two conveyances that had not been sold the previous year, and
began the two-day journey south.

It was the longest two days of Olivia’s life. Fanny
alternately screamed like a banshee and wept piteously into her hands. She
threw tantrums in inn yards and public dining rooms and sobbed out her story to
any stranger who would listen.

Charlie, never a comfortable traveler, lost his breakfast
before they had reached the end of the long winding drive from Idyllwild. After
their first stop to change horses and stretch their legs, he crawled onto
Olivia’s lap for a nap and woke up long enough to lose his lunch down the front
of her lilac traveling dress.

By the time the weary travelers arrived at Palmerton House
as the sun was setting the next day, Olivia was more tired than she’d been
after a long day of plowing and planting. Her shoulders hurt from holding a
restless Charlie the last five miles, her head was pounding from Fanny’s
wailing that had increased in volume with each mile they traveled nearer to
London. Olivia was hot and dirty and as irritable as she could ever remember
being when she stumbled from the coach with Charlie in her arms and Fanny
sniffling behind her.

“My lady,” Johnston, the stoop-shouldered butler who’d
served the Earls of Palmerton for half a century, greeted as he opened the
massive front door to allow the motley trio to clamber inside. “Welcome home.”

The fourteen servants that remained of the original
twenty-nine were lined up in the immense foyer to greet the young earl, his
mother the countess, and little Lady Frances.

Olivia smiled weakly, shifted a sleeping Charlie on her hip
and ushered Fanny in with a hand on her back.

“Thank you, Johnston,” she murmured.

“May I take the lord?” Nurse Radcliffe asked as she
approached. She was a tall, formidable lady with steel-gray hair and sharp
hazel eyes. She’d been Palmerton’s nurse, so of course she’d been chosen to
stand as nurse for his children. Olivia found her cold and condescending.

“He’ll only awaken,” Olivia answered tiredly. “I’ll take him
up. Perhaps you can help Fanny to bathe and have a bite to eat.”

“Oh, but dinner is not served until eight o’clock,” the
nurse replied with a sniff.

“Fanny is tired, she’ll not be awake that long, surely you
can ask Cook to fix her a tray of meat and cheese.”

“Muffins,” Fanny said. “I want muffins and milk.”

Mrs. Radcliffe looked down at her charge with a frown.
“Little ladies do not eat muffins for dinner.”

“Oh, for the love of God,” Olivia ground out between
clenched teeth. “Get her bath ready and I’ll feed her myself.”

When Mrs. Radcliffe continued to stand in front of her
glaring, Olivia growled, “Kindly move before I knock you out of my way.”

She heard the collective gasp of the assembled servants, but
the nurse stepped aside and Olivia marched up the stairs with her son in her
arms and her daughter clinging to her skirts.

“Would you really have knocked her out of the way?” Fanny
asked an hour later. She was sprawled against the pillows on her mother’s big
bed, a nearly empty glass of milk in one hand and a lemon muffin in the other.

“I just might have,” Olivia answered with a sigh.

“That’s funny,” Charlie mumbled around a mouthful of bread
and cheese.

“We should sack Nurse Radcliffe,” Fanny announced and
Charlie agreed with a decisive nod.

“We cannot sack your nurse,” Olivia replied automatically.
Then she stopped and thought about it and decided she could and would. “Not
until we find another.”

“Pardon me, my lady, but my sister’s looking for a
position.”

Olivia looked across the room to her maid Celeste who was
busily unpacking one of the traveling trunks.

“Has she experience with children?” Olivia asked. She quite
liked Celeste, found her to be a cheerful young woman with a seemingly
unlimited supply of energy.

“Sophie’s the oldest of us, and there were eight,” Celeste
answered, her big blue eyes twinkling. “She had a hand in the raising of the
younger ones, what with my mother taking in laundry after our father passed
on.”

“How old is she?”

“Eight and twenty, my lady.”

“And she’s looking for work?”

“Her husband, a baker he was, passed on some months ago,”
Celeste replied. “He didn’t have anything to leave her, so she’s been looking
for work but without a character she’s had no luck.”

“She has no children of her own?” Olivia asked.

“She has a daughter, Meg, who’s five, but my mother can keep
her.”

Olivia thought about that, about separating mother and
daughter, and shook her head.

“She’ll have to leave her with Mum whatever work she finds,”
Celeste hurried to explain. “Domestics always do live away from their families.
And mum’s house is only in Bloomsbury. She’d be able to visit on her half day.”

“That’s so sad,” Fanny whispered. “Poor Meg.”

“Poor Meg,” Charlie echoed his sister sleepily. He curled up
against Olivia’s side with his head resting on her leg and his thumb in his
mouth.

“Will you ask her to come see me tomorrow?”

“Yes, my lady.”

An hour later, as Olivia blew out the candle on the small
table beside her bed and snuggled under the covers between her children, she
thought about Celeste’s words.

Domestics always do live away from their families.

She was ashamed to realize she’d never thought about
servants and their families. She had no idea if any of her servants had
children, husbands, wives, elderly parents. She knew Celeste was unmarried, but
did she have a sweetheart? Did she dream of marriage and babies? How on earth
did working women leave their children for days on end, only spending half a day
with them once a week?

She thought about the last year at Idyllwild. There were no
servants at Idyllwild. Mary and Molly kept the house, hiring a few women from
the village to help out now and then, and Tom, with the help of Mr. Porter and
his son-in-law, cared for the grounds and horses. Of course, Idyllwild was a
small estate, the manor house little more than a cottage.

Palmerton House was immense, four stories, more than forty
rooms. When she had discovered the sorry state of their finances after her husband
died, Olivia had closed off the west wing entirely and only those rooms
necessary to the family were maintained now. The ballroom, the music room, two
formal parlors, two long galleries and the formal dining room had been
abandoned, their furnishings either sold or stored away.

The family now inhabited the oldest part of the house, the
original rooms of the east wing, five bedchambers, the nursery, the orangery,
the library, a small cozy front parlor, a larger formal parlor, a small dining
room and the kitchen. The servants had all been moved to the rooms above and
below stairs of the east wing and center hall.

She’d had to let half of the staff go, some of whom had been
with the family for generations. But she’d had no choice. She’d found positions
for some of them within Henry’s household. Still others had been sent to her
mother’s house in Portman Square.

She’d done the best she could under difficult conditions.
Palmerton’s aunt and her husband had set up a ruckus when the first un-entailed
property had been put on the market but as they were in no position to assist
financially and had no legal claim to any of the estates, they had soon settled
down and accepted that the Palmerton legacy was to be dismantled after hundreds
of years.

If she could have sold Palmerton House she would have done
so. Immediately. She detested the house, had no desire to live in the ancient
mausoleum. It was cold and drafty and a terrible drain on the embattled family
coffers.

For what seemed like the hundredth time she contemplated
offering the house for lease. She could surely find some wealthy merchant in
want of a pretentious address. She could move her family into a small house in
Hanover or Bedford Squares. They could live a simpler life in Town much as
they’d lived a simpler life at Idyllwild this last year.

Her brother Henry had repeatedly offered them rooms at
Hastings House but her mother was in the habit of spending much of her time
there. Olivia had no desire to spend more than the occasional afternoon tea
with Lady Hastings.

Simon and Beatrice would gladly have them to live with them
in the country. They had even offered the use of their town house for Olivia
and the children.

Olivia wanted a home of her own, a refuge where she could
raise her children away from well-meaning and opinionated relations. For the
first time in her twenty-eight years, she was independent. Free. She did not
intend to relinquish her freedom, not to her family, not to the strictures of
Society and certainly not to the domination of a husband.