Forever Your Earl (28 page)

“I've tried all those. His club. His former cronies.” Daniel turned to face her. “He's cut himself off from everything and everyone he's ever cared about or once enjoyed.”

Though for the majority of his life Jonathan Lawson had been a second son, he still had a reputation—­for kindness. Even Eleanor knew about it, and how he was unusually dedicated to giving time and money to charities. It had been joked that he was
too
good, except he still loved what young men loved—­spirited company, and women. Especially women. “Everything?” she pressed.

His brow lowered thoughtfully. “There's one possibility . . . remote, nigh impossible, but I'm holding out hope.” He walked to a fine wooden box perched on one corner of his desk. Opening the lid, he pulled out an object and held it up for her.

It was not what she expected.

“Cheroots,” she noted. Walking over, he handed it to her, and she gave the cheroot an appreciative sniff. Rich notes of earth and spice drifted up—­but she had known that fragrance many times on his clothing, and in the flavor of his kiss. Heat washed through her at the memory.

“This is my particular blend of tobacco,” he explained. “I get it from a shop on Church Street. The tobacconist's specialty is making custom cigars and cheroots to suit the individual tastes of his patrons. His is the most exclusive tobacco shop in London. Jonathan's father always purchases his cheroots there.”

“Does Jonathan also buy his tobacco from the Church Street shop?”

“He smokes the same blend as his father—­or he started to when he came back from the war,” Daniel said. “Catherine told me her brother developed a kind of mania for it before he disappeared. When they'd run out, he'd become wild, angry. Break things. Until someone hurried over to the tobacconist and purchased several dozen cheroots.”

Eleanor tapped her lips, contemplative. “He smoked a different kind of cheroot before he left for the war?”

“Yes. Acquired at a shop on King's Street. But that changed when he returned from battle. Why?”

She held up the cheroot Daniel had given her. “I've only to take one sniff of this, and I instantly think of you. You flood my senses.” Her cheeks heated, despite the intimacies they had shared. It still felt so new to reveal herself to anyone—­though she knew she could trust him beyond all the instinctive wariness of her heart. “If I were to take this with me, all I'd need to do was smell it, or better yet, light it, and I'm with you again.”

He didn't throw her admission back in her face. Instead, he looked pleased. “Then, by all means, keep the cheroot.”

“I will,” she answered. “But the fact that Jonathan changed from his own blend of tobacco to his father's—­it seems significant. He likely grew up with his father smoking the same kind of cheroot. It was a scent of home, of comfort and security. A time in his life when he wasn't wracked with memories of horror. When he was a carefree boy.”

“So he switched when he returned,” Daniel concluded, “in an attempt to recapture that lost time. That lost self.”

She nodded. “No wonder he'd fly into a rage when he ran out. It was a kind of tether to who he once was.”

Daniel rubbed at his forehead. “Damn it—­I knew he'd fallen far and hard, but I never knew how much he tried to cling to what he'd lost.” He glanced out the window, where pale sunlight sifted through the curtains and spilled upon the Persian carpet. “If he's alive, he
must
be found. That's why I've instructed the tobacconist to let me know whenever anyone purchases those cheroots.”

“Any luck so far?”

“None yet.” He paced to the window, which looked out into the gardens. She noticed that the plants hadn't fully bloomed due to the unusually cold weather.

He continued, “I thought of it some time ago, but it didn't yield any information, so I changed my tactic. Still, there may be a chance. Yet I'm afraid that chance grows smaller by the day, by the hour.”

She crossed the room to stand beside him. Eleanor stroked her hand along his back, offering comfort how she could. “You haven't failed him, Daniel.”

His smile was full of self-­reproach. “I saw him before he vanished. I knew something was wrong. His eyes . . . they'd changed. They looked hollow. Barren. When there were signs of life in him, he was a feral thing. Desperate. And I . . . I pretended not to notice. Or exempted myself. ‘He's a grown man,' I thought. ‘His life is his own to master.' But all I was doing was excusing my own selfishness. The truth is . . .” His voice went raspy, and he cleared his throat, though when he spoke, it was just as rough as before. “ . . . it wasn't convenient to me to help him. It got in the way of my pleasure. It meant thinking, really thinking, about someone other than myself. So I let him go.”

He turned to her, his gaze bleak. “I could've done something, but I was too caught up in chasing my own gratification to care. He slipped away from me, and I let him fall.”

The pain and guilt in his voice—­in his eyes, the rigid lines of his posture—­cut her deeply. Seeing him hurt . . . it hurt her, too. And while she'd never reveled in the suffering of others, it hadn't ever touched her the way Daniel's agony affected her now. Only Maggie's pain could reach her so intensely. Yet on a different level. Maggie was her dearest friend, but she didn't hold Eleanor's heart in her hands.

What could she say? How could she comfort him? She couldn't offer false palliatives, trite words that neither of them believed. He deserved better than that.

“Whatever sins you committed in the past,” she murmured, resting her head on his shoulder, “what matters now is the atonement for them. The will and desire to make a wrong right.”

“Perhaps.” Yet he didn't sound much convinced.

“Hell,” she said, with a little smile, “you marched into my office and offered me a chance to peer into the darkest corners of your life. That's the act of a man who truly wants to do good.”

He gave his own tiny, answering smile. “Or one with considerable disturbance of his mental faculties.”

“And look where that got you.”

“I have looked.” He turned, and wrapped her in his arms. Heat filled his gaze, chasing away the pain she'd seen moments earlier. “I've looked and wondered and been amazed.”

A tumult of birds' wings pervaded her belly, fluttering and soaring. “You're not alone in your amazement.” She gave a small shake of her head. “A month ago, I'd have laughed myself dizzy if someone had told me that I'd lose my heart to a libertine aristo.”

“Have you?” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Lost, indeed. Never to be found again.”

His gaze darkened. He held her close.

In slow increments, he lowered his head. Until his mouth met hers.

It was a silken, promise-­filled kiss. His tongue stroked against hers. There was that tobacco taste, and his own flavor, that worked through her like an opiate. Making her pliable yet demanding. Turning her bones to satin ribbons that curled on themselves, while filling her with immeasurable power. What had he come to mean to her, this wicked, rakish earl? This man who felt far more deeply than he ever let anyone know? This honorable profligate?

Everything.

He held her tightly, possessively, and while she desired to be no man's possession, there was something viscerally thrilling about him wanting her so completely to be his. She felt it in the hard, tight lines of his body, growing harder and tighter by the moment. One of his hands cupped her hand, and the other splayed on the curve of her lower back. They stood hips to hips. The long, rigid curve of his arousal pressed into her, and she remembered how he looked, thundering down that narrow, dangerous lane in St. Giles. Coming for her, all purpose and intent. And oh, how it made her head spin, like a falling leaf.

She pulled back enough to rub her lips over the stubble darkening his jaw. Poor man—­he couldn't seem to keep his shave for more than a few hours. But she didn't regret it as she felt the rasp of his incipient beard against the tender skin of her mouth, her cheeks. She could well imagine that one of his ancestors had been a pirate, prowling the Spanish Main. It seemed only the smallest push was needed to turn Daniel from elegant aristocrat to wicked buccaneer, as if his wild forefather's blood ran through his veins and eagerly wanted to return to those unruly days.

With unerring instinct, he moved so that he rubbed his prickly jaw over her neck, and lower. Trailing kisses and stubble along her collarbone and the small band of exposed skin above her dress's neckline. She still wore her shabby dress, the fabric thin and threadbare, so that she felt him easily through her clothes.

The flesh he kissed was delicate, sensitive, and with each rasp, fire built in her, centering in her breasts and between her legs. How did he know her so well? What she needed, wanted? Yet he did, and she delighted in it.

Hazed by sensation and desire, she barely noticed when he guided them both from the window to his desk. He kissed her at the same time that he lifted her up, setting her on the front edge of the desk, and stood between her legs. Bringing them even closer together.

Only when she felt the tug of his fingers on the fastenings of her borrowed gown did she manage to surface just enough to ask, “Here?” She glanced around the study.

“Anywhere,” he growled. “Everywhere. I can't get enough of you.”

This thing between them, it burned hot and fast. She'd read accounts of the Great Fire of 1666, and now knew how the city felt, leveled by flame, becoming nothing but a smoldering ruin. Yet she'd gladly immolate herself in this fire, turning to ash, carried aloft by the wind.

And like the fire, this, too, had to be extinguished. She'd be razed by the flames, charred into nothingness. But she wouldn't give this up, no matter what future devastation came.

“Daniel,” she whispered.

“My keen-­eyed hawk of a woman,” he answered, taking little sips and nips from her flesh. “Bird of prey.”

She smiled against his mouth, bittersweet. “How do you manage to make that sound like a compliment?”

“It's meant to be.”

Cool air stroked over her skin, and she realized that while he'd distracted her with his words and his lips, he'd also managed to undo more fastenings on the back of her well-­worn dress. The neckline inched lower, revealing the top edge of her chemise and more of her sensitive flesh.

His mouth followed, teasing and tasting. He tugged on the fabric, and with his clever, wicked rake's fingers, he managed to inch the garment even lower. Until he'd bared her breasts. Her nipples tightened, becoming even more sensitive, more ready.

“Ah, lovely woman,” he breathed. Lowering his head, he took one nipple between his lips. Drew lightly on it.

Arcs of fiery sensation shot through her, pulled forth by his talented mouth. She cradled his head to her. His hips rocked against hers. He understood her so perfectly.

He turned his attention to her other breast as his hand gathered up her skirts. She scraped her fingers along his shoulders and was rewarded with his pleasured shudder. It seemed an outrageous thing to do—­make love in a study in the middle of the day—­but it felt exactly right. Anywhere he was, that was the perfect place to join with him. Her dark logic knew they only had a limited time together—­she'd take whatever she could, to hold close and treasure in the cold, solitary time that lay ahead.

She hooked her heels around his calves, snugging their bodies even closer. Her back arched as he continued to kiss and toy with her breasts, his play filling her with heat and need. He was an irresistible force that knew her body as well as she did.

His hand skimmed up her leg, over her stocking, past her garters. These at least belonged to her, and were of a finer quality than her dress.

Thoughts scattered when he found the opening in her drawers. Then touched her. Lightly, only a tracing, a relearning of her. She jolted from the exquisite sensation.

She was nearly embarrassed at the state of desire he found her in—­wet, ready, wanting. But then, she'd seen the evidence of his desire straining within his breeches, so there was no hiding for either of them. She sensed in his fevered touch that he wanted to join with her as much as she with him, in the most profound way possible.

Every moment with him, she fell farther and farther. There would be no going back. And she couldn't make herself stop. Didn't want to stop. Because this—­he—­was everything she needed. While she could still have it.

“Yes,” she breathed as he delved deeper, caressing her intimately. “Yes,” she sighed again as he circled her bud, shaping pleasure, with his mouth against her neck, another hand on her breast. His touch grew more focused, more intense. A madden ecstasy built and built, robbing her of sense. Raw need urged them on. They were still fully dressed, because they couldn't wait. Here he was, touching her as though he'd created her body specifically for this pleasure.

Sensation grew, consuming her. And when he slid a finger into her, she broke apart.

She cried out as the climax engulfed her. Her release became the entire world, holding her fast in its bright grasp. He hooked his finger slightly, pressing into that deep place within her, pulling forth another climax and holding her there for a keen, fleeting eternity.

Finally, she fell back against the desk. Scattering pens and papers. But he didn't seem to care. He stared down at her with a scorching gaze, a look of profound satisfaction on his face. More heat ripped through her as he licked his fingers.

“Yours is the only taste I'll ever want,” he murmured. He gave her a heavy-­lidded look, replete with meaning. “And I mean to have more. And more. To last me the rest of my life.”

Oh, she was lost, lost. And she couldn't make herself care if she was ever found.