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She whispered in his ear. Her hand fell on his thigh. Despite the black roil in his gut, his body tensed, and he vowed to do every one of those things to her, and more. Tonight. Maybe, if he did them well enough she would see more than there was, in violation of all the laws of nature. Maybe he could fool her into believing there was more to him than a cold man with a deep-seated loneliness.
But her smile stretched too wide, her laugh pitched too high. She, too, was holding something back. It came to him. Those words she’d said—everything you own, pitted against everything I own.
She’d had no clients recently.
But she’d said—he’d been certain of it—that she had some money saved. He’d given the matter no more thought. Just as he’d thoughtlessly assumed she had a maid secreted away somewhere to assist her in putting on a gown.
“My God, Jenny,” he interrupted, “you really mean you couldn’t pay the fare.”
She looked away. “It’s none of your concern, Gareth.”
“Not my concern! You told me you had money saved. What the devil did you mean by that?”
“I did,” she said stiffly. “I had four hundred pounds. It’s been…misplaced.”
His head pounded. “First, four hundred pounds hardly signifies. I pay White more than that in a year. And second, why did you say nothing to me? What am I to you?”
“You aren’t my banker, that’s for certain.”
His hand closed around her wrist. “What else can’t you pay, Jenny?”
She sighed. “Everything. It’s not a problem. I had a plan.”
“Let’s hear it.”
She exhaled slowly. “I planned to sell everything I own and leave.”
“Leave.” His fingers convulsed on her wrist. “Leave me.”
“Leave London,” she clarified, as if that would ease the pain that spread like a net of fire, sharp pinpricks settling under his skin. Her pulse thumped through the wrist he clutched. It was steady and even. Staid. Her heart beat in a normal tempo. Of course; it was only his that constricted into a cold, dark lump.
“Ah. And leaving me would just be an unintended consequence. One you had not planned to inform me about.”
“I would have told you. Eventually. I didn’t think I meant that much—”
He kissed her, hard and fast, before she could finish that horrendous lie.
“Humbug,” he said when he let her go. “I know I never know the right thing to say. I’m a damned nuisance. But you’re not stupid. You know I adore you.”
She was silent. She should not have been silent. She should have been throwing herself at him, professing her own adoration. Jenny, the woman who saw strength and courage everywhere else, had nothing to say about Gareth.
Well. He’d wanted to know how she saw him.
Now he knew.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
BY THE TIME THEY REACHED Jenny’s home, separate factions in Gareth’s head had broken out in a pitched battle. He could not help but respect what she’d done for Ned. He’d not known what to think, what to say. And when she’d laid that final card…He’d thought, in that second, that he was more than a little in love with her.
But she was leaving. She was leaving him—the Marquess of Blakely. There were no words for the fury that made him feel. Black rage boiled up. Without even trying, she’d walked into that gaming hell, her hair billowing around her like an aurora. She’d done with ten minutes and sixteen pounds what Gareth had not accomplished in two days. What he could not have done, if he was honest, in two years with sixteen thousand pounds. And she was leaving him, as if he were nothing to her.
She opened her door, unaware that Gareth was engaged in a fierce battle for his soul.
He reached for her before she could move. He caught her lips against his. Damn her, but she kissed him back without reservation, her hands roaming over his tense body. How well she knew him. How well she knew to touch him like that, running her hands down his abdomen, her fingers points of pressure against his skin.
Hot rage. Fierce love. Intense anguish. And above it all, that damnable knowledge that she was leaving him. She was leaving him. God. He pushed her against the wall roughly, pressing his hips against hers.
She moaned against him, opening to his touch. If there were light, she would have seen the black marks that his coal-dark heart must be leaving against her skin. But there was nothing but murk inside. Murk and midnight. He unbuttoned the fall of his trousers and lifted her against the wall. He pulled her drawers down and pushed her petticoats up. And then, arms trembling, he thrust into her in one stroke.
She was wet and welcoming. She sank around him, and firm, tight bliss shot from his groin clear to the top of his head and then down again. The muscles of her passage gripped his member; she wrapped her legs around him. Pulling him against her. Welcoming him inside her.
He took what she offered. Every stroke sent longing spiraling through him. He didn’t want to just flood her with his seed. He wanted to flood her with his entire being.
If he could bring her to climax before him, maybe he could make her forget that it had been he who’d been impotent to do anything about his cousin.
If he did it twice, maybe she’d forget she’d ever planned to leave.
Illusions all, but with her body clenched around his, illusions were what he needed.
And so he angled himself inside her. He circled his hips against hers while her moans grew sharper. Louder. Harder. Her hands raked along his back. And then she clamped down on him. Hot, hard waves crashed through her and into him. She screamed his name, her body tensing in his arms. Gareth rode those waves.
But in this thing, too, he was outside his skills. He’d intended to calm down, to take her to pleasure once again. But he couldn’t stop. Not with her body pulsing warmly around him. Instead, he let out a groan and pumped hard. Pleasure propagated down his stiff cock and out his groin. It filled him like dark, warm water. He grabbed her close and spent himself inside her with a wordless roar.
The fire passed gradually. And there was nothing around him but the dark of the night and the velvet warmth of her body.
He shivered inside her, pushing her against the wall. Not letting her go. His muscles trembled with the effort of holding her legs high on his hips, but he would be damned if he’d give up this closeness. Instead, he pressed into her. She sighed warm air against his neck.
She didn’t say anything.
She didn’t have to.
She was still planning to leave him, and the very thought choked all returning coherence from his mind.
The rage of lust had burnt from him. And now on this charred battleground, he realized that the war inside him had ended. Peace had broken out. But the surrender that had been negotiated was not a strict win for either party.
Gareth would not let Jenny wrap him up like a convenient package, brought to his knees. He’d make her need him as much as he needed her. More
. She’d thought to let him go with no more than a sigh and a kiss goodbye? He would show her, once and for all, that she was wrong. She should have cared for him enough to not say goodbye.
His thoughts distilled until nothing was left but a single chant, repeated over and over.
“You’re not leaving,” he growled in her ear. “I’m going to keep you.”
Her chest expanded against his in a shivering breath. She turned her head away in rebuttal.
He kissed her ear. “Are you planning to go any time before tomorrow at two?”
She shook her head. Her hair pressed against his lips.
“Good. I’ll come ’round then and take you for a drive.”
He couldn’t let her go. He wouldn’t.
NED HAD READ in travel diaries about northern climes where, when winter reigned, the sun disappeared for months. In summer, the sun would never set. That’s how he’d classified his life. It fell into two parts: years of near-frenetic bliss, followed by months of darkness. Until last night, the two had never met.
But last night he’d won a portion of hope at five-card loo.
The Duke of Ware lived in a stone edifice in Mayfair. Solid blocks of stone, once white, now streaked with generations of London soot, stretched up four stories. The dark walls terminated in a slate roof, the steep line of which was interrupted by blackened chimneys and rectangular attic windows. The house was every bit as imposing as Ned had imagined it.
Ned took a deep breath and walked up the steps to the door. If Ned had asked, Blakely would have come with him.
But Ned hadn’t wanted to delegate his life to another. Not again. Madame Esmerelda had lied to him; Blakely had shoved him around. In the end, none of it had made any difference. The darkness he’d feared had enveloped him anyway.
Still he stood, waiting to take one tiny step forward.
Last night, as he stared at the cards on the table, he’d realized one fundamental truth. Fate had not saved him from suicidal folly all those years ago. Madame Esmerelda had not intervened with the spirits on his behalf. There was only one conclusion: He must have unwittingly saved himself. What he had accomplished once by accident, he could do again by choice.
