Gareth: Lord of Rakes (17 page)

“Mr. Holbrook, what a delight to see a friendly face. May I perform the introductions?” She blithely proceeded with proper introductions in the proper order, during which two grown men made proper replies at the proper times.

Though what Gareth wanted was to properly run the bastard through for the way he smiled at Felicity.

“I haven’t seen you in the park of late, Miss Worthington,” Holbrook said. “Your dear sister has been allowed to prowl without supervision a time or two, but so far she seems content to harass the ducks and attempt felony assault on her bonnet.”

“Astrid hates that bonnet, but she did mention you’d foiled her efforts to be rid of it,” Felicity replied.

“I did wonder.” Holbrook turned to Gareth, his smile undergoing a subtle transformation. “And you, my lord, do you enjoy the pleasures of the park?”

Gareth smiled as well, infusing his expression with barely enough charm to fool a halfwit. “I do, Holbrook, though I’m more likely to enjoy them mounted.”

“I enjoy a brisk ride myself,” Holbrook countered. “Miss Worthington, are you fond of mounted recreation, or do you prefer more pedestrian leisure activities?”

Holbrook stared at Gareth as he asked the question. There was something off about the man’s eyes, and patently intolerable about his innuendo.

While Felicity was still beaming at the damned blighter. “I haven’t had time to ride much in recent years, though as a girl I enjoyed the stables tremendously when we lived on the estates. I cried for a week when my old pony died. Astrid is the one who must have her outings to the park, and fresh air is good for her.”

“You must let me take you driving, then, so she might have her fresh air with your company,” Holbrook offered.

“Perhaps sometime after spring has more reliably graced us with her presence,” Felicity said. “And I will not mention this offer to Astrid, who would pester you into immediate compliance with her wishes.”

“At your pleasure, then.”

“Holbrook,” Gareth cut in, having exceeded the limit of his meager supply of patience for the evening. “You must excuse us. We were on our way to fetch the lady’s wrap. The evening has grown tedious.”

Holbrook displayed a lot of handsome white teeth. “Oh, I agree, Lord Heathgate, tedious beyond belief. I am inspired to follow your example and make my apologies to our host and hostess. Your servant, Miss Worthington.” He bowed over Felicity’s hand and departed.

Gareth resumed their progress toward the main doors, his hand clamping Felicity’s glove firmly to his arm. She maintained her silence until they were, at last, at the curb and waiting for his carriage. Gareth handed her in wordlessly then seated himself beside her. She’d no sooner arranged her skirts than Gareth settled an arm around her shoulders.

Then he was kissing her—really kissing her, with pent-up passion and longing and—had he completely lost his reason?—anger. When she made no move to pull away, but stroked her hand softly over his jaw, he gentled his attentions and settled back to encircle her with his arms while she rested against him.

“Is this as difficult for you as it is for me?” The question hadn’t formed in his brain; it had come tripping directly out of his idiot mouth.

Felicity took her time. There was no bullying this woman, no cowing her or intimidating her. “Yes, but in a different way.”

He did not pounce on those words, but instead focused on the feel of her beside him, the scent of her lavender fragrance, the calm she brought him by her simple presence.

“I cannot for the life of me figure Holbrook out, Felicity. Don’t trust him, please.” He stripped the glove from her right hand and stroked his thumb over her bare palm.

“You don’t trust him. Why not?”

“I have a sense he isn’t what he appears to be, and his intentions toward you and Astrid are not altogether honest.” Gareth offered a half-truth, because he had more to go on than his instincts, though not as much more as he’d like.

“Has it occurred to you he might simply be seeking to pay me his addresses?”

“He had damned well better disabuse himself of that notion, at least for the next several weeks.” But yes, it had occurred to Gareth. Late at night when his eyes were too tired to read any more damned reports, the idea that Holbrook might be smitten occurred to Gareth rather a lot.

“You are being ridiculous,” Felicity chided, humor in her voice. “If you are going to hop from one wench to another at your merest whim, then you can’t expect I won’t be dancing with other swains, should they ask.”

Wench-hopping had lost its appeal the day he’d found Felicity in his formal parlor, staring at his ugliest Axminster carpet.

“Dancing is one thing, Felicity, but you and I have an assignation in three weeks’ time. I would request that you restrain your urges until then.” The comment was unfair. She’d never once indicated an interest in indulging her urges without his personal provocation.

In the dark confines of the coach, he heard Felicity sigh.

“Gareth, I’ve already told you I have no intentions of taking up with other men, not now, not ever. It would not be… It would not be right for me.”

He had the dread suspicion she was trying to comfort him.

“You will come to see it differently, Felicity,” he said, closing his eyes, the better to breathe in her scent. “You might start out intending to remain celibate, but you will get lonely and frustrated, and some fellow will come along who demands little of you and offers you respite from your dis-ease. You will take him up on his friendly offer and realize, to your surprise, it wasn’t so difficult after all.”

Self-torture being a fine diversion from lust, Gareth went on. “You will realize the encounter was more enjoyable than you’d thought, though less than you’d hoped, and the man, if you chose well, did bring you some pleasure and some companionship. The next one will be easier, the next easier still, until you are adept at finding just the man and just the circumstances to suit your
whim
.”

She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder, reminding Gareth that he’d thought her a feline sort of woman from the moment he’d laid eyes on her.

“And is that how you came to be in your present state of gentlemanly debauchery?” she asked. “You gradually allowed these people, these peers of the realm, to relieve you of your dreams, your integrity, your scruples, until you amount to little more than a series of gratified whims?”

Her arrow buried itself all the deeper for the casual tone of her question.

“Christ, Felicity… You and Andrew both in one night?” And yet, Felicity saw clearly. For all her innocence, or maybe because of it, she saw clearly. “You perceive me as jaded. I see me as the inevitable result of growing older and wiser in the ways of the world into which I was thrust.”

“Gareth, you mustn’t trouble yourself,” Felicity said, lacing her fingers through his. “This situation with me is not of your doing, and it will soon be behind us. I cannot abide to see you upset, when all you’re doing is trying to help me.”

He was silent. He hated it when she made excuses for him, apologized to him, or tried to placate him. He deserved none of her kindness and all of her scorn. Andrew, at least, saw that much.

Felicity kissed his knuckles, a startling reversal of the chevalier’s role. “I could love you, you know.”

For the first time, Gareth heard bitterness in her tone, and it stung like acid.

He said nothing, but neither did he let her remove her hand from his for the entire journey to her home.

Gareth waved his butler and valet off to bed and settled into the library with a small glass of brandy. To his surprise, Andrew was waiting for him, boots off, cravat undone.

“If you’re going to further sermonize at me, little Brother, the lecture would have better effect were you fully dressed. Brandy?”

“I am not here to lecture. I came to apologize,” Andrew said, accepting a glass with two fat fingers of Gareth’s finest sloshing gently in the bowl. Gareth leaned a hip on his desk and considered the handsome younger brother who’d offered—or threatened—to marry Felicity.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Gareth said, regarding his own drink. “Besides, Felicity wouldn’t marry you even were you to ask.”
Thank
God.

“Well, there’s a blow to a fellow’s ego. Why not?”

“You aren’t me.” Of all the damned, unfathomable reasons.

Andrew tossed a pillow onto the raised hearth and took a seat with his back to the fire. “And haven’t I thanked heaven for that bit of fortune often enough. Is Felicity going to marry you?”

“She said she could love me, but she isn’t going to marry me.” Her illogic and her courage provoked him to smiling, and because Andrew looked comfortable perched before the fire, Gareth took a second pillow from the couch and sat beside his brother.

Andrew touched the glass to his lips but didn’t drink. “She said she loves you—Felicity Worthington said this. And what did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“I see,” Andrew replied, looking thoroughly confused. “You are, meaning no disrespect, the biggest tomcat on the stinking wharf that is Polite Society, and a decent woman declares her love for you. You offer her no agile response, no gently humorous repartee, no polite expression of regretful flattery…?”

All Gareth could do was shake his head, for the situation was worse than Andrew grasped: no agile response, humor, or flattery had even
occurred
to Gareth.

Andrew moved his boots away from the heat of the fire, though he was clearly warming to his topic. “Get your hands off the reins of all the damned business you transact and take her away on some travels. I’ll mind the tiller here, you romance her, and she’ll come around. God knows the marquessate can’t be that hard to manage, not when I’ve watched you bugger it up for nearly a decade.” Andrew concluded his homily with a magnificently casual swallow of his brandy.

“Bugger it up?” Andrew was teasing, wasn’t he? Or goading, which qualified as teasing between them. “And how do you equate trebling the family’s worth in ten years to buggering it up? Could you do better?”

“I wouldn’t have to, Gareth. You’ve set us up so well we’ll be wealthy until hell freezes over.” Which did not seem to impress Andrew in the least.

The fire was warm at Gareth’s back, the brandy beyond excellent, and this conversation, as difficult as it was, was a comfort in some way, too.

“Do you want me out of sight that badly?” Gareth asked, wondering if he’d misjudged his brother all these years. Not
seen
his only surviving brother.

“I despise the title, Gareth, and all it’s demanded of you, and well you know it. I’ve seen it eat you alive, steal your sense of joie de vivre, and make you into someone who is content to be miserable and call that his life. You do your duty to the title, and then you take your revenge on yourself. It breaks my heart, and I don’t know how much longer you can keep it up before you turn into something as pathetic as Riverton.”

Andrew sounded not disgusted, not taunting, but sad.

“This is a night for revelations. I did not realize you felt so strongly, Andrew.”

Andrew pinned him with a gaze that had Gareth looking away as a silence rang loudly in the library.

“The discussion of travel is moot, Andrew. It isn’t the scenery Felicity takes exception to, it’s me. And I agree with her. I would make her a sorry husband, though I believe I’ve become quite proficient at being the marquess.”

“Do you want to marry her?” Andrew asked, because somewhere, in the handbook given exclusively to little brothers, they were tasked with charging in where angels—and marquesses—feared to tread.

For Gareth did want to marry Felicity. A small, sentimental, inconvenient part of him did indeed want to marry her. The lateness of the hour was taking a sorry toll.

“I would make her miserable, and she would turn me down did I offer. She deserves a real husband, not a casually intimate business associate, which is what I’d seek in a wife. I would break her heart, and then you’d have to call me out in truth.”

Andrew passed the drink under his nose—a handsome nose, and not the least bit arrogant. He did not correct Gareth’s summation of the situation.

“You really think I could ever be as pathetic as Riverton?” Gareth asked, taking another small sip of the brandy.

“Worse, Gareth, because he never had potential, and you do.”

Holy
God.
Gareth rose to refresh his drink, and because the fire’s heat was becoming uncomfortable. “I don’t know, Andrew. Riverton was once young and probably attractive, his manners can be fine, and he keeps a handsome house.”

“Yes, and maybe some interesting company,” Andrew suggested. “Did you happen to notice he and Holbrook exchanged a few words before you and Felicity ‘ran into’ Holbrook?”

Gareth paused, his hand on the cool cut glass of the decanter. “I did not.” Though thank God, Andrew had been paying attention. “How long did they speak, and was anyone else privy to the conversation?”

“I could not overhear them, and the exchange was little more than a nod and a greeting, but how do they know each other? Holbrook would seem to be new to Town, and if he’s moving in Riverton’s circles, that cannot be good.”

Gareth lifted his glass to take a drink, then realized it was empty. “This can’t be good, particularly when Holbrook is exerting himself to charm Felicity. I want to dislike the man, Andrew, but I find him… worthy. Suspicious, but worthy. He has dealt decently with Felicity and Astrid thus far.”

“Whatever that means.” Andrew tossed Gareth’s pillow back to the sofa rather forcefully. “Astrid’s judgment is hardly to be trusted when it comes to gentlemen. Witness, she likes
me
.”

Perhaps self-loathing was a family trait. “Why shouldn’t she? You have been all that is avuncular and pleasant to her, and you will have a chance to charm her further the day after tomorrow.”

Andrew sat a little straighter, his instincts apparently in good working order. “I shall?”

“Mother has decided we will picnic, weather permitting. You, Mother, and Astrid will accompany Felicity and me, though I am tempted to take Felicity up in the curricle and leave you to manage in the vis-à-vis.”

“I take it back, I’ll dice you for the title, and you can sit backward with the dowagers and schoolgirls,” Andrew said. “Where is this bacchanal to take place?”

An older brother with potential was entitled to indulge in a bit of needling. “I don’t suppose there’s anyone you would like to bring along?”

“Don’t be droll. I have no need of a fiancée, wife, heir, or spare, if you’ll recall. I am in the process of enjoying my youth, not that you’d recognize such a pursuit if it bit you on your skinny arse.”

“We’re rusticating at Willowdale for luncheon. You won’t be trapped in the carriage long.” A mere two hours each way, in good weather.

Andrew rose, fired the second pillow at the sofa, and rubbed his derriere with his free hand. “I haven’t been to Willowdale for years, Gareth, not since Father banished you after your first year at university.”

“It’s a pleasant little place.” And Felicity would love it. The old-fashioned Tudor manor house boasted eight bedrooms, lovely gardens, and several thousand acres of attached farm, pasture, and wood. Gareth had always enjoyed it, and allowed himself several weeks of peace and quiet there every summer and fall.

Andrew tucked his boots under his arm and put his glass on the sideboard. “My time has been bespoken, so I’ll see you the day after tomorrow, but, Gareth? Think about what I’ve said. You’ve suffered enough for the title and obligations to family. The past nine years have taken a toll on you I don’t think you clearly see. Mother and I both would rather you were happy than titled, and I mean that.”

“Thank you, Andrew,” Gareth said, considering his empty glass as Andrew left for his bedroom.

Felicity’s hair in a certain light was the same color as very good brandy.

Felicity, who loved him.

Oh, she’d phrased it carefully, in deference to his delicate sensibilities, but the truth had been aired, despite all common sense and convention to the contrary. She loved him, and Gareth knew better than to disparage her sentiment as a silly infatuation. Felicity Worthington was a grown woman, one who had faced adversity for much of her life. If she said she loved him, then she did.

If she said she wouldn’t be taking up with other men, then she wouldn’t be, at least not while Gareth was associating with her.

So how in the hell, how in the ever-loving
hell
was he to take her to bed, knowing she felt as she did? To permit himself those intimacies with her would be cruel beyond measure, and yet he knew he was going to do it. Worse, he was going to do it and make it as memorably pleasurable for himself—
and
for
her
—as he could.

He owed her that, at least.

***

“This is absolutely lovely!” Felicity exclaimed as Gareth handed her down in the drive of a cozy Tudor manor. “How can you stand to dwell in Town when you have this alternative so close at hand?”

“Come.” Gareth slipped her hand over his arm and patted her knuckles in a gesture that was likely unconscious. “I’ll show you around inside. We keep a skeleton staff here unless I’m in residence, though Mother warned the housekeeper we’d be coming today.”

He’d dodged her question, but Felicity allowed him to lead her into the house anyway. Willowdale was as charming on the inside as it was outside, with mullioned windows shedding light on gleaming wood floors and fragrant bouquets. The estate, house and grounds both, glowed with a serene contentment that could only come from age and ceaseless good care.

“What are you thinking?” Gareth asked. He’d brought her to an upstairs bedroom to freshen up, a room much like the one Felicity had enjoyed as a girl. The high, fluffy bed sported a patchwork quilt in Dresden blue and white, and morning sun poured through the windows and suffused the room with peaceful stillness. Gareth leaned against the jamb of the door as Felicity wandered the room.

“I would like to live in a place like this,” she said. “The house has a benevolence to it, and a sense of dignity. It’s pretty but unpretentious, much like our former family seat.”

She would enjoy the thought of him dwelling here, in this quiet, serene place, though it would pain her to know he was two hours from London.

“I’ve always loved this property,” Gareth said, closing the door, crossing the room, and tugging her wrist until she sat beside him on the bed. “I feel more at home on this small estate than I do anywhere else. One of the last summers my father was alive, he bade me spend it here with only Andrew and the staff for company. We had the time of our lives, fishing, riding, staying up playing cribbage until all hours, and making the acquaintance of all the local lads. I tried to get Andrew drunk, but he has a very thick skull, and more common sense than I gave him credit for.”

“He would have been little more than a child.”

“He matured early. It’s a characteristic of the males in my family.”

And then, with no warning at all, he gently shoved her back onto the mattress, and Felicity found herself pinned under him as he nuzzled at her neck and breasts. Her heart kicked into a canter, and her bodice abruptly became unbearably tight.

“If I don’t get my hands and my
mouth
on your breasts in the next minute, I am going to tear your dress off, and devil take the hindmost,” Gareth growled, rolling her over and unfastening her dress without further preamble.

She felt him start on her stays, and made a feeble bid in the direction of common sense. “Gareth, your mother will be here any minute, and Astrid and Andrew as well.”

Feeble protest, indeed. She didn’t roll away or otherwise impede his busy, competent fingers when he lowered her bodice. He untied her chemise next, and within the prescribed minute had exposed her breasts to the lovely light of day.

“Ah, God, Felicity, what you do to me,” he said, molding her breasts with his hands and bringing his nose to her cleavage. “I promised myself I’d leave you alone for these few weeks, but for the love of God, I cannot.”

He wedged her up so she lay fully on the bed, the pillows beneath her head, then attacked his own clothes with one hand, even as he continued to fondle and shape her breasts with the other. Perhaps his reference to their few remaining weeks together preyed on her self-restraint, because Felicity wanted nothing,
nothing
as much as she wanted to strip Gareth naked and get her hands on him.

She reached up to help him free himself from his breeches, and he groaned at the touch of her fingers on his erection. He fell silent as Felicity wrapped her hand around him and began to stroke in firm, rhythmic caresses intended to bring him pleasure in short order.

“Love, slow down,” he rasped, head thrown back, eyes closed. “I’ll spend.”

“I know,” Felicity said, not slowing down one bit.

Gareth scrabbled backward away from her, shot her an exasperated look, and sat breathing heavily on the edge of the bed.

“Come, Gareth,” Felicity said, reaching around his waist to fondle him again. “You said we have some time before the others arrive. You’re wasting it when I am offering you some… ‘respite from your dis-ease.’” She slid one hand up under his shirt to brush her fingers over his nipples.

She was supposed to learn the erotic arts from him, but all she was learning in truth was to desire him, and to cast her dignity aside at the least provocation. Sometime soon, she would regret this state of affairs. Right now, she wanted only to touch him.