Julia Justiss (27 page)

“Perhaps you need the right gentleman to persuade you.”

“I cannot be persuaded—and I have made you uncomfortable in the bargain. Forgive me.”

He rose and took an agitated turn about the room. “It’s Darnell, isn’t it?” he asked, gazing back at her. “He will never break his word to Miss Standish, you know.”

A bit alarmed that he had guessed her secret, Helena avoided a direct answer. “I would not have him break it.”

“Then why not consider my suit?”

“I am leaving London soon. May we not part as friends?”

“You are resolved upon this?”

“I’ve long wished to travel.” She gave him a depre
cating smile. “I believe I’ve just been given the perfect opportunity to do so. As it happens, Lady Seagrave is about to set out for the Caribbean, and I have agreed accompany her.”

“You cannot be dissuaded? I should always be proud to stand by you and support you, even as just a friend.”

“And I am honored by your friendship. But I must go.”

He studied her for a long moment, then sighed. “I suppose there is nothing left for me to do but to once again express my deepest admiration and devotion. I wish you well on your journey! Remember, if you ever change your mind, England and I would rejoice to welcome you home.”

Bowing low, he kissed her hand and walked out. Thoughtfully, Helena watched him go. Her guilt at refusing him was lessened by noting that he did not appear to be a man whose fondest hopes had been crushed. She suspected that, had she been unwise enough to accept his offer, the admiration he felt for her “unconventional” spirit would have swiftly dwindled once he discovered his scandalous bride caused him not just to be barred from the balls and dinners he deemed “dull,” but also to be denied admission to his clubs and cut by many of his peers.

As for her plans for Adam, though Mr. Dixon’s kiss had been mildly titillating, it had not come close to igniting within her the intensity of desire, the tenderness or the sense of completeness Adam’s had.

A shiver of excitement swirled in her belly. Since it appeared only Adam could create the magic she’d felt
in his arms, she was more anxious than ever to recreate that experience and allow all those feelings full play.

Grateful as she was to Mr. Dixon for showing her how to begin, she still wanted a bit more instruction in the art of seduction. If she hurried, she should catch the Divine Alice before she left for her rendezvous.

S
OME TIME LATER
, L
ADY
S
EAGRAVE’S
carriage deposited her at Darnell House. Helena entered to find Harrison himself stationed by the door.

“Miss Lambarth, welcome back!” he cried. “Lady Darnell wished me to inform you that she and Miss Charis would like to see you at your earliest convenience.”

Surprised and warmed by the concern evident in Harrison’s normally impassive face, Helena handed him her cloak. Though she’d suspected her aunt would not allow her to slip away without a struggle, her chest tightened at her new family’s demonstration of support even as she dreaded what would no doubt be a heart-wrenching meeting.

All the more reason to get it over with quickly, she told herself. “Then I shall go immediately,” she replied. Squaring her shoulders, she followed him up the stairs.

As soon as Harrison admitted her, both Lady Darnell and Charis rushed over to embrace her. “That hateful girl!” Aunt Lillian said through a haze of tears. “I shall leave this house the minute Adam brings her here as his bride. But you mustn’t despair, my dear. I am still Somebody. If we retire to the country until the next scandal captures the attention of the ton, we can still—”

“Dearest Aunt Lillian!” Helena interrupted her, feeling guiltier than ever that instead of the reproaches she deserved for bringing scandal down upon them, her aunt was thinking only of redeeming Helena’s position. “I cannot tell you how grateful I am, but I refuse to allow you to put yourself out any further on my behalf.”

“You cannot think us so poor-spirited as to desert you!” Charis said. “I should not have consented to leave you last night, had Adam and Nathan not both said ’twould be better to let you go with Lady Seagrave and end the incident quickly rather than prolong it by arguing.”

“Indeed, we shall all stand by you,” Lady Darnell affirmed. “As soon as Charis is wed, let us go to Claygate. By the Little Season, much of the talk will have died down. I doubt the highest sticklers will ever be induced to receive you, and naturally Almack’s is out of the question, but my friends, who value you for yourself, will send enough invitations to keep us tolerably amused.”

“My dear Aunt Lillian, retire to Claygate if you wish, but I cannot accompany you. Perhaps later, when all has passed into memory, I may visit you—or Charis, at whatever embassy she is gracing as hostess. If you still want to acknowledge me then. For you see, there is more to the scandal even than what Lady Cordelia revealed last night. Something quite shocking, of which I have only just learned myself. Will you not sit while I explain?”

Briefly, Helena detailed what Lady Seagrave had told her, finishing by informing them she meant to
journey with her grandmother to meet Gavin. Though at first, Aunt Lillian gasped and nearly swooned, after reviving she declared that even if Helena meant to acknowledge Seagrave as her father, the Darnell family would support her.

“Then you are far too good! Not that I mean to post a notice in the
Times,
but as I plan to spend time with Lady Seagrave, sooner or later, the secret will be out. I’m not sure which would be worse for you—to be connected to a hoyden who sneaks about the city in masculine dress, or to have housed the illegitimate daughter of a privateer.”

“To us, you are just ‘our Helena’ and we love you,” Charis said fiercely. “Can we not persuade you to stay?”

Were it for their love only, she might be swayed. But she knew she could not remain and conceal for long the strength of her feelings for Adam—and she had already exposed them to scandal enough.

Feeling the burn of tears again, she shook her head. “I’m sorry. I love you both dearly, and I shall be very sorry to miss your wedding, Charis, but I must go.”

While Lady Darnell reached for her handkerchief, Charis gave her a long, searching look. “I understand,” she said, giving Helena a hug. “Damn Priscilla! Do what you must, my dearest Helena. Remember that wherever you travel, you will always find a welcome with Nathan and I.”

After more hugs all around, Helena insisted they not cancel their plans to attend the ball to which Lord Blanchard was to escort them later in the evening. Leaving
them to complete their preparations, she returned to her room to set Nell packing. Then, after the ladies departed, she went to the library to wait for Adam.

S
EVERAL HOURS LATER
, Helena seated herself before the blazing hearth, garbed in the white silk night rail she had worn the first evening she’d encountered Darnell in the library. The first time she’d seen on his face what she later came to recognize as desire. A desire she intended tonight to satisfy to the fullest.

Since she was far too nervous for any book to hold her attention, she was relieved when, after a time spent alternately pacing and sitting on the sofa, she heard his footsteps in the hallway, followed by a knock at the door.

She looked up at him as he entered, her heart swelling with gladness at the sight of his dear face, though its expression was solemn. The tingling awareness of his presence that always struck her when he came into a room enveloped her, comforting in its intensity. Soon she hoped to take that awareness to a new level entirely.

He halted in the center of the room when he saw her. A flash of strong emotion crossed his face before he mastered his expression and walked to her. Almost at the sofa, he stopped again, as if not trusting himself to
sit beside her. “I talked with Bellemere this afternoon. She told me you intended to leave us. To leave London.”

Hearing the strain in his voice, Helena’s own reply wobbled. “I think it would be b-best.”

He turned abruptly, anguish in his eyes as he faced her. “How can I ever apologize adequately for bringing this misfortune upon you? I never dreamed Priscilla would breach so sensitive a confidence—a confidence I should never have uttered, had I dealt with her more adroitly. I am deeply ashamed at having broken your trust.”

Curling her fingers into fists to resist the urge to smooth the lines from his face, Helena said, “As keen an interest as that lady takes in my errors, I expect she pounced upon the opportunity to wheedle it out of you.”

Adam grimaced. “So she did. But that does not excuse my fault in giving her the chance to do so. I haven’t been able to talk with her yet about last night’s incident—her mother denied me both times I called, saying she was ‘indisposed’—but I shall speak with her tomorrow if I have to break down her bedchamber door.”

“What’s done is done,” Helena said, rejoicing to have Adam confirm that Priscilla had tricked the information out of him. “Pray, do not be too severe with her. I…I have ever been an impediment between you. I should like to be one no longer. Leaving will accomplish that—and free Aunt Lillian from the threat of my social disasters.”

“You mustn’t let this unpleasant incident drive you from London! Bellemere can manage Society and you may leave Priscilla to me. I can no more allow you to go into self-imposed exile than I would permit Charis to do so.”

“She has scarcely caused the trouble I have,” Helena retorted wryly. “But I don’t wish to brangle! Let me convey to you the news that makes essential that I leave.”

In a few short sentences she summarized again what Lady Seagrave had confided to her. “You perhaps better than anyone know what I suffered at Lambarth’s hands. After last night’s incident, I should have wished to leave London anyway, but now I have a more compelling reason than merely avoiding disgrace. I want to meet the father I have never known. You could not ask me to forego that.”

“No, of course not.” He studied her, his lips curving into the smile she so loved. “How happy you must be to learn no part of Lambarth lives in you.”

“You do understand,” she said gratefully. “Others see only that recognizing Seagrave will brand me a bastard.”

“Better a bastard than the offspring of a man who made a travesty of the words ‘father’ and ‘gentleman,’” Adam said fiercely. “So then…you must leave us. When?”

She swallowed hard. “I go to Lady Seagrave tomorrow. We’ll leave as soon as she can arrange passage.”

“Then tonight…”

“Must be goodbye,” she finished, rising and coming over to stand by him. Her heart already raced and despite her resolve, she was so nervous she was trembling.

She made herself take his hand—the first time she had sought out his touch. After recoiling a little at the spark he must have felt even as she did when their fingers met, he raised her hand and brushed his lips across her knuckles. His breath seemed to come as quick and shallow as her own and the heat she felt emanating from him did not, she was sure, originate with the fire.

“Kiss me goodbye—on the lips,” she whispered.

At first she thought he meant to refuse. But then, his green eyes deepening with that compelling, enticing evidence of his desire, he lowered his head. “Goodbye, Helena,” he breathed a moment before his lips touched hers.

She felt the gentle brush of his mouth down to her toes and heard a moan, not sure whether it was her own or Adam’s. Then, before he could break the glancing contact, she stepped closer and put her hands on his shoulders.

“Ah, Helena,” he murmured, but whatever else he might have said was lost as she took advantage of the slight opening of his lips to slip her tongue into his mouth.

He stiffened in shock, but before he could pull away, if such were his intention, she darted her tongue deeper, seeking his. The blast of sensation that rocketed through her when the sensitive tip of her tongue caught
the plush fullness of his so weakened her knees that she almost fell.

Fortunately his hands closed on her shoulders to pull her nearer. Curving her body to fit against his, she leaned her weight on him and gave herself up to the exquisite game of fencing tongues, advancing to tease and tantalize, withdrawing to await his pursuit, then sending the full blade of hers gliding across his.

She could feel his heartbeat thundering in his chest and lower, a hard ridge pressed its heat against the thin silk covering her abdomen. She murmured and twined her fingertips in the tendrils at the nape of his neck, pulling his head closer still while she stroked and parried and stroked again with her tongue.

Everything within her seemed to turn molten, coursing in heated waves from her belly, the sensitized tips of her nipples down and outward to knees, fingertips, toes. A throbbing began at the junction of her thighs, pulsing in time to the stroking of their tongues.

She had just decided that she needed hotter, closer, when Adam broke the kiss and took a staggering step backward. “Helena, no,” he mumbled, his eyes wide and unfocused, his breathing erratic. “This is…madness.”

“Yes,” she said fiercely, and brought his head back down to capture his mouth and his tongue again. A second later, with a strangled cry, he crushed her against him.

This time he was the aggressor, his tongue pursuing hers, laving it with quick, hard strokes, hers the strangled cry as she scratched his coat, desperate to pene
trate the material and find bare skin. With her other hand, she inched down his waistcoat, straining to reach his arousal. She took his cry in her mouth as her fingers found purchase, shaping and caressing the long hard length of him straining against the trouser flap.

She was working the buttons to free him when he caught her hand. “No, Helena,” he panted. “We…mustn’t.”

She curled her hand around his erection, exulting as he shuddered. “Do you not want this? Do you not want me?”

“Yes…no!”

“One night, Adam. Just one stolen from all the rest of our days. One night when nothing else exists, not duty, not obligation—nothing but you and me and this. Only you and I will ever know. Can you send me away without tasting this for just one night?” Massaging his length as she spoke, she pulled his head down for another long kiss.

After a moment he broke away again, though his hips still angled into her stroking fingers. “Are…you sure? I’m trying to resist, but another moment of this—” he rubbed against her “—and I’ll be beyond stopping.”

“Don’t resist.” She caught his bottom lip between her teeth and nipped it. As she slid her tongue back into his mouth, his leaped forward to meet hers, mating fiercely as if they were lovers long parted.

But as her fingers managed to undo the first button of his trouser flap, he thrust her back. “Not…here.”

“You’ll come to my room, then?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“Now? You promise? For I swear if you are not there in ten minutes, I will come to yours.”

He kissed her hard, running his hands down her back to cup and squeeze her buttocks. “I’ll be there. I promise.”

Like stealthy accomplices, they slipped from the library and hurried up the stairs. In her room, Helena lit a brace of candles, then pulled back the bed linens and tossed her satin dressing gown to the floor.

What would Adam prefer? she wondered. To find her waiting between the sheets—or to have her meet him at the door, candles outlining her body beneath the silk?

Then the door swung silently open as Adam entered. The collar of a shirt peeked out from beneath his dressing gown and his hair was tousled, as if he’d disrobed quickly.

“Adam, my love,” she whispered, walking over to him.

He framed her face with his hands. “You are so beautiful,” he said hoarsely. “I’ve wanted you for so long, I can’t remember not wanting you.”

She took his hand, led him to the bed, stripped off his dressing gown. Beneath it he wore only his shirt, hanging below his waist where it tented out over his erection. She nudged him onto the bed and pushed him back against the pillows. When he reached out to tug at her night rail, she pulled it from his grasp. “Not yet. First, let me please you, Adam.”

He let the silk go, his gaze never leaving hers as
once more she gently pushed him against the pillows and placed his hands at his sides. Perching beside him, she leaned over and kissed him, found his tongue and twined it with her own.

The heat of his body through the fine linen shirt warmed her more than the blaze from the library’s hearth. But she wanted more, wanted the feel of his bare skin against the thin material of her gown. Still kissing him, she worked loose the buttons on his shirt, pushed it aside and ran the pads of her fingers over his chest, tracing his ribs. He gasped, sucking her tongue deeper when she drew his puckered nipples between her fingertips.

Suddenly she wanted to taste him, his chest, his nipples, the hollow beneath his throat. Laving his mouth with a final stroke, she broke away to trace her tongue across the raspy stubble of his chin, nipping lightly, over the ridge of his jaw, up to the tender curve of his ear, around to the soft skin just behind it. Lowering her mouth to nibble at his neck, she leaned her weight against him and skimmed her other hand from his chest down the flatness of his belly, thrilling to the texture of his bare skin.

He tensed as her fingers approached his erection, his breath little gasps at her ear, then uttered a strangled groan as she grasped his naked shaft. A pulse of exquisite sensation rippled to her core as he quivered in her hand. The skin was so taut and smooth, the head, where a drop of moisture beaded, almost silky to her exploring touch.

Tracing it with one fingertip, she whispered, “Does this please you?”

“Y-yes,” he gasped.

But she wanted him beyond speech, beyond any response but the thrust of his hips. Still outlining his length with her fingers, she moved her mouth downward, rejoicing as he shuddered against her when she rasped her teeth across one taut nipple, then the other. Cupping her hand around his shaft, she descended his abdomen, laving, nipping, gliding her cheek across the soft skin.

Finally she moved to straddle his legs. Grasping his erection with both hands, she continued to shape and caress him while she examined him in the candlelight, marveling at the beauty of his nakedness as he lay with his eyes closed, head thrown back, his rigid hands clutching the sheets.

“I want to kiss you—here,” she said, drawing one finger down his length. “May I?”

His eyes flew open. “Yes,” he rasped, fisting his hands more tightly in the sheets.

His cock leaped against her lips and a long, low moan issued from his throat. Something leaped in her, too, a blaze of sensation in that moist, throbbing spot between her thighs. Murmuring, she widened her legs, rubbing against him as she licked from the thick rigid base of his erection to the satiny tip, then took him into her mouth.

Her heart was beating so rapidly she felt dizzy, impairing her hearing, for when he thrashed his head from side to side and cried out, she couldn’t tell whether he was imploring her to stop or continue. But the thrusting motion of his hips seemed to indicate he wanted more.

As did she. She loved the feel and taste of him, the
feral pulsing in her veins, the throbbing at her core, winding her tighter and tighter. She loved the sound of Adam’s gasping breaths, the sheen of sweat on his chest and abdomen, the clench of his fisted hands and corded arms. Then he cried out, his whole body going rigid as he filled her with his salty essence.

For a few moments he lay gasping, eyes closed. Worried that she had somehow hurt him, she slid up beside him on the pillow. “Adam, are you all right?”

His eyes opening, he laughed weakly. “All…right? No. Astounded. Transformed.” He lifted a limp hand to caress her cheek. “I didn’t want for it to be like that, only for me. But you are…amazing. I couldn’t control myself.”

“Then I did please you?” She smiled tenderly at him. “I did so want to. I listened quite closely to the Divine Alice’s instructions.”

“‘Please’ is a thousand times too weak a word—” Suddenly he stopped, his eyes going from dreamy to fully alert as he propped himself up on an elbow and stared at her. “The Divine Alice! You can’t mean that you…”