Heartless (17 page)

“Now it will be, then,” he said, spreading his hands over her hips and drawing her down onto him.

She was hot and wet and so ready that she cried out and exploded into release even as he mounted her. He let her shudder into relaxation before enjoying his own pleasure in more leisurely fashion and to the accompaniment of satisfied murmurings from his companion.

He held them coupled until he feared that they must be nearing home. What a wonderful treat, he thought drowsily. He had never made love in a carriage before. It was a step in his education that he was very glad he had not missed. Very glad. He kissed Anna's cheek.

“My coachman might well have an attack of apoplexy if he finds us like this when he opens the door,” he said. “Shall we make ourselves respectable and resume the unrespectability in the privacy of our own apartments later?” He would want her again, he knew. This had merely whetted his appetite.

She chuckled in that throaty manner he had noticed earlier and sighed as he uncoupled them. She bent to retrieve her drawers and wriggled into them. They were seated side by side, not touching, when the carriage drew to a halt and the coachman opened the door and lowered the steps.

Luke escorted her to her dressing room and stepped aside after opening the door.

“Soon, madam?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

She smiled dazzlingly. “Sooner, your grace,” she said and swept into her room, all floating gauze and sparkling embroidery and fascinating femininity.

Soon. Ah, yes. Or sooner. He strode away to his own dressing room.

•   •   •

Hopelessness
had given place to panic, a panic she had tried to control in the carriage. Unusually, miraculously, he had taken her hand in his and she had concentrated all her being on the contact, rested all her sanity on the touch of his hand. When he had removed it, her sanity and her control had gone with it and she had hurled herself at him, only one need driving her. The need to climb right inside him. The need to become so much a part of him that no one would ever find her again.

The feel of him coming into her, hard and long and solidly real, had been so wonderfully reassuring that it was everything. It was all. She had allowed herself the luxury of losing herself in him. And then of letting him hold her, warm and utterly safe, his body still a part of hers.

But the panic had not gone, she discovered when she was in the safety of her own home and her own rooms. She was alone and terrified even while her maid was with her. She fought hysteria while she waited for him to come. He came much sooner than usual though it seemed she had waited for him for hours. She smiled at him from the bed and pushed the bedclothes back from her naked body as he let fall his dressing gown.

Hold me. Save me.

She reached up her arms to him. “Make love to me.”

“It is my full intention, madam,” he said, “as I am sure you can observe.” He bent over the candles to blow them out.

The sudden darkness brought a wave of panic, and then he was beside her and reaching for her and beginning the growingly familiar, but always new, ritual of lovemaking.

“Anna.” He liked to proceed slowly, making every move excruciatingly agonizing, excruciatingly pleasurable. “You are very hungry?”

“Ravenous,” she said. “I am starved, Luke. Fill me.”

“An invitation not to be resisted,” he said.

She parted her legs for him as he moved over her, frantic to be filled with him again, hot and panting with her need. But it was his fingers that touched her first, his marvelously skilled fingers, which could bring her to the edge of madness with their stroking and probing sensitivity. But tonight they met sore and pulsing need as he kissed her breasts and sucked gently on them.

She could hear herself begging as her hands pulled loose the ribbon at the nape of his neck and spilled his hair about her breasts.

And then his mouth was where his hands had been, shocking in its unexpectedness, his tongue more sensitive, more erotic than his fingers. His hands covered her breasts, her nipples squeezed between thumb and forefinger.

“Harder,” she heard herself beg and the increased pressure of his fingers had her crying out in unbearable pain and desire.

She shattered about him, felt the ache build again and shatter again and build yet again.

By the time his body covered her and he came inside her, she was whimpering with a need that had been satisfied time and again but had not been put to rest. She relaxed gratefully against his driving hardness for several minutes until he reached so deep into her soul and became so much one with her there that no conscious thought, no conscious feelings or emotions were left.

Only perfect peace. Perfect love.

When she awoke she was alone. Oh, not alone in bed. He was there beside her, as he always was at night. He was sleeping. But she was alone in the sense that they were not touching. She did not know what time it was, but she guessed that she had slept for several hours. It was amazing—she had not expected to sleep at all.

She was safe. She was in her own bed with her husband beside her. She tried to keep her body relaxed and relive in her mind the way he had made love to her earlier—the most wonderful lovemaking in a month of wonderful lovemakings. She tried to convince herself that he would eventually come to love her as she loved him and that they would live happily ever after.

But it was coming back and she could not keep pushing it away. The panic. And the nightmare memory of how she had lived with it for weeks and months on end for the whole year after his leaving before she had met and married Luke. The bed suddenly seemed a mile wide and he and she perched on opposite ends of it. She felt surrounded by cold emptiness, the cold threat of reaching hands.

She rolled over onto her side and pressed herself close to the reassuringly warm and solid body of her husband and burrowed her way past his arms so that she could snuggle her head against his chest beneath his chin.
Hold me. Please hold me.

His arms came about her and he muttered sleepily. And then woke up.

“Anna,” he said, “what is this? Would you have me lame and impotent from so much use? Give me a few moments and I will be ready for you.”

“No-o,” she wailed. It was not pleasure she wanted now, but comfort. Love. “Luke, take me home. Please take me home. I want to go home.” Perhaps there she would be safe.

“To Elm Court?” he said. “You are feeling homesick? You are missing your youngest sister? I will take you there if you wish it.”

“No,” she said, “not there. Not there ever again. Take me home. Home to Bowden Abbey.”

He held her close for a while, saying nothing. She felt almost as if he had retreated somewhat from her.

“To Bowden?” he said. “Anna, what is all this? Has something happened?”

“Nothing,” she said against his chest. “Nothing at all. But I am tired of London. I want to go home. Please let us go home.”

“Home,” he said. She could feel him draw breath slowly. “Yes, it is home, is it not? But there is something, Anna. What is it?”

She swallowed and pressed closer. “I am going to have a child,” she said. She had not intended to tell him yet. She was not even sure yet.

“Already?” One hand had moved up to her head. His fingers stroked through her hair and massaged her scalp.

“I am a week late,” she said. “I am never late. I think I must be with child. I want to go home.”

He said nothing for a long time. He continued to massage her head soothingly while her hand clung to a thick lock of his hair that had fallen over his shoulder and across her face.

“Yes,” he said at last very quietly. “It is time. Our first child must be born at Bowden. You must have the quiet of the country while he grows in you. We will go home.”

Safety and peace closed in about her again and she felt very close to sleep once more.

“Anna,” he said softly, “it pleases me that you are with child. I thank you.”

She smiled drowsily. In a month of physical closeness and passion and of emotional distance, they were the first words that seemed to reach across the distance. They sounded almost like a declaration of love. For tonight
almost
was good enough. She let herself fall the rest of the way into sleep, held safely in her husband's arms.

•   •   •

He
was frankly terrified. He rode faster than usual in the park early the following morning. He had created a new life. He and Anna together. They had created a new life inside her body. And for the rest of his days he would be responsible for that life he had started and for the life of the mother.

He was bound inextricably to life and its duties and responsibilities and to at least two other people—his wife and the child who was growing in her womb. He had thought the marriage bond to be the one that would always weigh most heavily on him. He had not expected that the knowledge she had given him last night would bind him so much more. The material needs of his child he could supply with no worry whatsoever. But he would be responsible also for the emotional needs of his child. His mind touched on the idea of love and veered away again.

It was something he could not do. He had spent ten years detaching himself from human ties, from emotional entanglements. And he had been well content with the results. Could he now go back? Could he become again the person he had been? Only to be destroyed again? Only to be vulnerable again and reminded of his essential aloneness?

He was terrified. Terrified. What if Anna should die? What if he had killed her by putting new life inside her when he was in no way equipped to nurture that life beyond the womb? What if he had killed all the beauty and all the joyful vivacity that was Anna?

He eased back on the reins when he realized he was risking his horse's safety as well as his own. And he could no longer afford the luxury of risking even his own safety. A child and its mother depended upon his life and safety. He felt a wave of dizzy nausea at the thought. He did not want anyone emotionally dependent on him. He would be unable to handle the responsibility.

What if, like his mother, he could not give his child love?

But he was incapable of love.

He did not want to be capable of love. He did not want to be capable of feeling pain.

Fortunately, he had something else on which to focus his mind as he rode home. Doris. He knew that she suffered and that she would suffer for some time to come—he could remember something of what that kind of suffering felt like. But despite a lingering uneasiness, he was still convinced this morning that he had handled the matter in the only possible way. And he had not relented about sending her back to Bowden. He would go this morning, as promised, and see her on her way with their mother.

Luke thought again of the child she had been and the youth he had been. A long time ago. He sighed as he sat down to breakfast and looked through the pile of letters and invitations neatly stacked beside his plate.

There was a voucher for an enormous sum of money enclosed in a letter that asked payment of the gaming debt by the Duke of Harndon since his brother, Lord Ashley Kendrick, appeared unable to meet it himself. Ashley's signature was scrawled at the bottom of the voucher.

Ashley was still in bed when Luke arrived at Harndon House. Before seeing his mother and sister, Luke went himself to his brother's room, took a glass of water from the dressing room, and trickled its contents over Ashley's face. His brother sputtered into wakefulness.

“Zounds! What the deuce!” he said.

Luke tossed the voucher onto his chest and his brother picked it up and regarded it silently for a few moments.

“Pox on it,” he said, “he had no business sending it to you, Luke. I shall see to settling it. Go away and let a fellow sleep.”

“I shall give you a choice,” Luke said coldly, and he could almost hear his father speaking through his voice—though his father had given him no choice ten years ago. “You may keep this voucher and go to the devil with it with no further allowance to help you along, or you may hand it back to me for payment and get out of that bed and have your bags packed in time to accompany Doris and our mother to Bowden, where you will stay until you can satisfy me that you have good reason for leaving again. You have five minutes in which to decide.” He crossed the room to the window, flung back the heavy curtains, and stood looking out at the sunny square. He had forgotten that the sun was shining.

He had offered a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea. A choice of being tossed out without any means of living—as he himself had been tossed out ten years ago—or of facing total capitulation, total humiliation. But Luke hardened his heart and said nothing more.

“What time are they leaving?” his brother asked from somewhere behind him after perhaps four minutes had passed.

“As soon as you are ready,” Luke said without turning.

He heard the door into Ashley's dressing room open and close again a few moments later. The gaming voucher, he saw when he turned, was on the bed. Luke walked over with a stony heart to pick it up.

So it was back to Bowden Abbey, he thought, folding the paper and putting it in a pocket. Back into his past. Taking his present and his future with him.

He went to find his mother.

B
OWDEN
Abbey. Luke watched for it with some dread. As a boy he had loved the house and the park, the farms and the village. He had hated the thought of ever being away from it. School and university were tolerated only because there were the holidays to look forward to. And perhaps he would not have had to move away if all that mess with George had never happened. His father would have given him the living at Bowden.

But then it was not so much the place he dreaded, he knew, as the memories that had become associated with it. It was a pity, perhaps, that it was the last memories that had stuck with him ever since, almost obliterating the good ones. He could remember feeling great pleasure at George's return from his Grand Tour. Although he had always been enormously fond of his older brother, the four-year age difference had sometimes been an impediment when they were boys. Now it seemed to have narrowed. They were young men together and brothers. There had been a few weeks of endless talking and of riding together, fishing together, playing billiards together, visiting together—they were always together. Or so it had seemed. Obviously there had been some time when George was not with Luke, else what had happened would have had no chance to happen.

The betrayal had shattered something in Luke that had never mended. George and Henrietta. George raping Henrietta. But no, the mind of the thirty-year-old Luke shied away from that particular word. Seduction maybe. Surely he must have believed Henrietta willing—Luke knew how sexual desire could sometimes blur one's judgment. But even the idea of George the seducer could still bring an empty ache to the pit of his stomach.

There was the unwilling memory of George when confronted, ashen-faced and tight-lipped, refusing to make any comment on the story Henrietta had told, refusing to defend himself and his actions, refusing at first to accept Luke's challenge—and ultimately refusing to fight him by deloping and watching steadily as Luke took aim at the willow tree. And dropping without a sound when hit.

Luke drew a slow breath. He had never seen his brother after that. And never would now. And only now—amazingly—did he recall a long-suppressed memory. A package had arrived from George after six months. Inside was nothing but a piece of paper with his brother's scrawled signature and a rather thick wad of money. Luke had returned it without comment. Olive branch or blood money? He had not known which. He had repressed all memory of the package until now.

All his own letters—written to his mother and father—had been similarly returned. He had been turned off, cast out.

And yet now by the supreme irony of fate this all belonged to him—they were approaching Bowden land—and he was coming back to it as the Duke of Harndon. Back to duties he had never asked for. Back to Henrietta, his brother's widow.

Instinctively he turned to his present and his future. His wife was sitting beside him in the carriage, quietly watching the scenery through the window. He might have reached for her hand if her sister had not been sitting opposite her. He was glad that her sister was there to prevent him from showing such weakness. Agnes, against Anna's advice and despite the protests of Lady Sterne, had begged to come with them. The girl, though very pretty, was equally shy. London and its gay round of balls and parties was not to her taste, Luke guessed. He had sent for the other sister, too, the deaf-mute, knowing that Anna was fretting about being away from her for so long.

His present and his future. In the three days since she had begged him to bring her home she still had not bled. It seemed almost certain that she was with child.

She felt his eyes upon her and turned her head to smile at him. There was sunshine in her smile again and relaxation in her posture despite the tedium of a long journey. It surprised him that she had grown to hate London. She had seemed to be enjoying to the full the social life there, and her company had been much sought after. But in the last three days she had been almost frantic to leave, urging the servants on to speed up their preparations. Perhaps she was the sort of person who, once she had an idea, had to act upon it now if not yesterday.

“We will be passing through the village within the next few minutes,” he said. “We are almost home.”

“Are we?” Excitement lit her eyes and she leaned away from the back of her seat, the better to see from the window.

And then they were in the village, slowing for the sake of possible pedestrians or domestic animals. It all looked shockingly the same as it had always looked. What had he expected? Luke wondered. That everything would have changed beyond recognition in ten years?

But one thing had changed. Ten years ago he had been merely a younger son of the duke and little more than a boy. He had not attracted a great deal of notice when his carriage passed through the village. This time he was the Duke of Harndon, and he was returning after a long absence. There were no crests on his carriage, but that did not appear to matter. Word must have spread that he was expected any day, and cottage doors were being flung open and tavern and shops were spilling forth their few customers.

Caught by surprise, Luke leaned forward and raised a hand in greeting to those who waved at him, their faces for the most part wreathed in smiles of welcome.

“Luke?” Anna said. She laughed with delight. “How wonderful.” She, too, had a hand raised and was looking from the window on her side of the carriage.

But he leaned back sharply as they approached the end of the street and the church. He averted his head. No, he had no wish to see the church or the churchyard. He realized suddenly that it was not just the memories and not just Henrietta he had dreaded returning to. There was something worse than them. There were the graves in the churchyard, the graves of the two men he had not had chance or inclination to forgive in this life and could never now forgive.

“Ah,” he said in some relief as the carriage made the almost immediate turn through the tall and imposing stone gateposts into the park of Bowden Abbey. “The villagers must have heard that a new and lovely duchess was arriving. Those standing on your side of the street will be able to boast of having seen you, my dear.”

She laughed again. “'Tis more like,” she said, “that they wanted to see what Paris has done to you. Oh, the trees! They are very ancient, are they not? And oh, look, Agnes. Deer. A whole herd of them. 'Tis shady here, a pleasant break from the sunshine.”

It had seemed like black night to him as he rode down the driveway for the last time. They had already passed the spot where Doris had waited for him.

“Ohhh!” There was a shared gasp from both Agnes and Anna as the carriage suddenly left the trees and the shade behind and all the splendor of the open park came into view—the double arched stone bridge over the fast-flowing river; the long, smooth lawns sloping upward; the four-tiered terraces of the formal gardens, carefully cultivated and ablaze with color; and the massive house, all turrets and mullioned windows, an indescribable mess of architectural styles, but imposing and splendid.

Luke gazed on it, as he had gazed at the village a few minutes ago, with surprise to find it looking so much the same. It could have been yesterday, he thought. Or a century ago.

The carriage crossed the bridge and made its way up the driveway past the lawns and then beside the long formal gardens before turning onto the topmost, cobbled terrace before the marble steps and the great doors. The doors had been flung wide by the time the carriage had drawn to a halt and the coachman had opened the door and set down the steps.

Luke stepped resolutely out and turned to hand first his sister-in-law and then his wife down. Anna had lost her smile, he saw, though her eyes were still wide with wonder and her cheeks were becomingly flushed. He offered her his arm and she set her own formally along the top of it. He should have offered her encouragement, but he had none to offer. This was perhaps, he thought, the most difficult moment of his life. No, hardly that—
one
of the most difficult.

He led his wife into the great oak-paneled hall, two stories high, with its huge portraits of family ancestors and its massive twin fireplaces at opposite sides and its tiled floor. Dwarfed by the magnificence surrounding them, the servants were lined up on both sides of the door to welcome him home and to be inspected by their duke and his new duchess.

His mother's doing? Luke wondered.

His father's old butler, Cotes, presented him with the stiff bow Luke remembered well to the housekeeper, Mrs. Wynn, whom Luke had not seen before. Luke presented his duchess and Lady Agnes Marlowe. And then he and Anna walked the lines of the servants. They were standing stiffly to attention, many of them with brightly curious eyes. His wife, as Luke expected, rose to the occasion with all the ease of her experience. She smiled warmly at each servant and had a personal word for most. Tired as she must be, from the journey and perhaps from early pregnancy, she did not rush this first duty as mistress of Bowden Abbey or show any sign that it was anything but a delight to her.

He had chosen well, he thought. She would do her job thoroughly and with grace. He was proud of her.

“The family is waiting abovestairs in the drawing room, your grace,” Mrs. Wynn said when the inspection was finally over, addressing herself to Anna. “Will you greet them first or retire to your apartments first?”

“Oh, we will go to the drawing room first,” Anna said, turning a smiling and inquiring face toward Luke.

He inclined his head.

“But Lady Agnes would probably prefer to rest for a while,” Anna said.

Agnes looked relieved.

Mrs. Wynn nodded and turned to lead the way through the pointed archway to the grand oak staircase.

Luke, following behind her with his wife on his arm, felt rather as if he had lead weights in his shoes. It had been home once. And was to be home again, if that were possible. His family awaited him abovestairs—his mother, who had turned away from him when he had most needed a mother's love; his brother, whom he had humiliated and dealt with almost as harshly as his father had dealt with him; his sister, whose heart he had ruthlessly broken even though once upon a time he had known all about broken hearts. And Henrietta.

And in the village, in the churchyard, his father. And George.

The family was assembled in the drawing room. And though they had all met in London—all but one—just a few days before, there was the formality of greetings to be dealt with now that he had come home with his duchess. Luke kissed his mother on the cheek and returned Ashley's stiff bow and bowed in response to Doris's curtsy. He watched as Anna hugged them all more effusively and asked about their journey and mentioned, her voice bright with amusement and delight, the welcome they had received in the village.

But there was someone else in the room, someone who stood quietly watching close to the window. Someone Luke had been throbbingly aware of since he stepped into the room. He had not yet looked at her though he knew that she was as tiny, as slim, as dainty, and as exquisitely lovely as she had been as a girl.

His mother turned to Anna to present her. “This is Henrietta, Duchess of Harndon and my eldest son's widow, Anna,” she said and turned to Henrietta. “The
new
Duchess of Harndon, Henrietta, Anna.”

Finally Luke looked at her. Her heart-shaped face with its blue eyes looked scarcely older. Her dark hair was powdered and she was dressed fashionably.

And her rather low musical voice jolted him, so little had it changed. “Anna.” She smiled and reached out both hands. “How lovely you are. But what else could one expect of Luke's wife? I have been looking forward so much to your coming. 'Tis going to be lovely to have a new sister—and a new friend, I trust.”

“Oh.” Anna laughed as Luke's eyes watched the hands of the two women join. “You are young, Henrietta. Why did I expect someone older? Yes, we are sisters. And so I have two new sisters and one new brother. How fortunate I am.” She turned her head to include Doris and Ashley in her smile, and then Luke.

And then finally Henrietta turned to him and he found his eyes on her and all else receding. God! His boyhood love. So cruelly torn from him. She would have been his wife now for nine years or more. They would have had children. Henrietta!

“Luke.” Her smile had softened and her hands, removed from Anna's, were stretched out to him. “Oh it has been a long time. They told me you had changed. 'Tis as well they warned me. But you are ten times more handsome than the boy I knew when I married George. Welcome home, brother.”

“Henrietta.” He took her outstretched hands and felt the shock of familiarity. He raised one of them to his lips and both felt and saw the jewels of George's ring glittering on her finger. “'Tis good to be home.”

He lied smoothly, with practiced good manners.

“Ah, here is the tea tray,” his mother said, bringing him back to reality. “Would you like me to pour for today, Anna?”