The Earl Claims His Wife (23 page)

“Perhaps he had plans you didn’t know about,” Holburn suggested gently.

Gillian nodded. Of course, this was as it used to be between them. Back when they first married.

Brian would go about his business and she’d find herself waiting for him to return home.

Usually, he didn’t. Usually he lived with Jess.

No wonder Jess was smiling as she drove by Gillian earlier that afternoon.

Tears burned her eyes. She blinked them back. She wouldn’t cry over him. At least he wasn’t with Jess—she hoped.

“Gillian, Wright is a good man,” Holburn was saying to her. “I’m certain he has an explanation.”

“Of course,” she said tightly. She wished she hadn’t slept with him. She wished she could go back to the day he arrived at Huntleigh.

Thankfully, Fiona said, “Gillian, do you wish us to stay or to leave?”

“Don’t go because of this,” Gillian said, relieved her friend understood she wanted to be alone.

“We aren’t,” Fiona said. “It’s been a lovely evening but the time has come to say good night.” She walked to Gillian and put her arms around her. “Anthony is a brawny babe. You are right to be proud of him.”

Gillian didn’t speak. Her stomach was in knots.

“Please don’t jump to conclusions,” Fiona warned. “The servant could have misunderstood or Wright might have good reasons for his behavior this evening. Perhaps he heard Holburn was coming to dinner and wished to avoid him.”

Holburn frowned. “That may be true. I had planned to have some hard words with him until I saw you happy. Of course, now I am not so pleased.”

“Wait until he comes home,” Fiona advised. “Listen to what he has to say.”

If he came home.

“You are right,” Gillian said, struggling to keep her voice light. However, the moment the door closed behind Fiona and Holburn, Gillian allowed all her doubts to return. She’d wait for Wright. He’d best come home this evening, and his story had better be good.

And then, she grew angry.

Anger was a good emotion. It made her feel strong. How dare he treat her this way?

She sat down to wait for him. As the minutes passed into hours, she finally had to go to bed…but the waiting only made her angrier.

She tossed and turned, unable to sleep and then lightly dozing—she heard the door open a short time after dawn.

Brian came in. He seemed to move with his usual steady grace but she could smell the liquor on him.

He removed his jacket, taking it into the dressing room. A few minutes later, he came out, naked, and lay on the bed beside her.

For a long moment, Gillian was so stunned by his behavior, that he could stay out without any word of explanation or indication where he was, come home, and then climb into her bed as if her wishes had no merit, that she could barely think coherently.

This was not what she wanted in a marriage. This was not how she would let him treat her.

And then he did the unthinkable. He rolled on his side, turning his back to her, and with a heavy sigh, seemed to settle into sleep.

Well, she couldn’t sleep. She wouldn’t sleep. Not with him beside her.

With that thought in mind, Gillian took both her hands and shoved with all her might. He rolled off the bed like a log and onto the floor.

Brian came awake with a start, stunned to find himself facedown on the floor.

Admittedly, he’d been giving himself a steady dose of hot port all evening. Still, he’d never fallen out of his bed—

A pillow slapped him hard in the head.

“How dare you climb into my bed reeking of spirits?”

He turned to see Gillian standing on her knees on the mattress. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders. The burning coals in the grate highlighted the anger on her face and her billowing night dress made her appear an avenging angel—full of outrage and fury and completely, gorgeously luscious at the same time.

She hit him again with the pillow. “How dare you, Wright? How dare you?”

Brian wasn’t one to allow himself to be plummeted, even with a pillow. He came to his feet, grabbing the pillow out of her hands and threw it across the room. “Dare I what?” he snapped. “Come to my own bed?”

In spite of the drink, his mind was clear. The only thing the port seemed to have done, now that he’d been bounced off the floor, was make him feel reckless. The potent wine certainly had not been able to dull the pain of her betrayal.

“You didn’t tell me you were leaving, Wright,” she said. “You walked out of this house without one consideration to me.”

“I walked out?” He laughed at the irony. He’d laid his heart out for her to trample and destroy and here she was complaining because he’d gone to his club.

And yet, in spite of how angry her accusation made him, he still wanted her. She was so lovely. So brave, courageous, so everything a man could desire in a woman. “Why should I stay?” he whispered, speaking more to himself than her. “What keeps me here?”

Her response was to take her fist and hit him in the shoulder. She was crying. He thought that strange. For what reason did she have to cry? She was leaving him and there was nothing he could do.

“Holburn was here,” she said, her words tense with emotion. “I met him and his wife while out on errands and invited them to dinner. I told them everything was fine between us and then you didn’t show. And I didn’t know where you were and I’ve been worried that you’d been hurt and now I discover you made a fool of me, Wright. A fool—”

“Oh no, dear wife,” he said, catching her arm by the wrist before she struck out at him again. “I made no more a fool of you than you have of me time and time again. And the curse is, I still want you.

Damn you, Gillian, I still want you. I want to taste you and hold you and have you.” Even more, he wanted her to believe in him. He wanted her to choose him.

She pulled back. “No.” Her eyes were like ice shards. “You won’t touch me. I won’t let you.”

Brian laughed with the bitterness of self-realization. “I won’t take no. I can’t.” And he kissed her.

This was not a questing kiss, the gentle question between lovers. He wanted to own her, possess her.

Keep her.

He’d steal her soul with his kiss if he could.

Gillian fought. She tried to resist, but she couldn’t…any more than he could restrain himself against her. Her lips melded against his as she opened herself to him, and a surge of triumphant pride and blessed relief rose in him. Gillian could turn away from him but this part of her would never deny him. They had this.

Their kiss deepened, changed, grew. Through it, he beseeched for her to understand. She held his soul in her hands. He begged her to not crush him.

In turn, he tasted her forgiveness.

Her struggles ceased. He released her arms and they came around his neck.

Brian lifted the hem of her nightdress. Her naked skin was smooth and velvety soft. He didn’t think he’d ever tire of touching her.

He pulled her nightdress over her head. He kissed her hair, her eyes, her mouth. His hands found her breasts, weighing them and caressing them. He knew what gave her pleasure. He now used that knowledge to make love to his wife using every skill available to him. He used his body to beg her to stay, to say what his pride would not let him speak aloud.

She loved another.

What should have been his was no longer—and yet, her hands soothed, encouraged, enabled. He brought them both to the mattress. Her skin glowed like alabaster in the room’s early morning shadows. He rolled over, settling her weight upon him, her hips against his, their legs entwined.

The hurt and anger ceased to matter, vanquished by the magic of her skin against his. Her tongue tickled his ear. Her lips pressed against his throat. Her hand reached down to stroke him intimately.

At her touch, Brian groaned. What sweet madness was this? What pleasure.

He could hold out no longer. In one swift movement, he lifted her to sit upon him. Without hesitation, she rode him like some wild fairy queen. Magnificent, golden, demanding. And Brian gave.

He grabbed her hips, burying himself deep, over and over again.

And then he felt her tighten, her body taking and holding his.

For a moment, they were suspended in time…and then he found sweet release. It drained him. Took all that he had and delivered it to her.

Here, Gillian. Here is the best of me, the essence of my soul. The gift that God has given us.

With a soft gasp, she collapsed on top of him. He put his arms around her and held her as if he’d never let her go.

Slowly, the room began to chill their overheated skin.

Brian brought the covers over them. His body was still joined with hers…and he found himself making love to her again.

They made love three times those hours after dawn. It was as if he couldn’t have his fill of her. They didn’t speak. Brian no longer trusted words.

For him, this act of joining, this need was an exorcism of sorts. Soon, she would leave him. He didn’t know what he would do after she was gone. She’d made a home out of a shell of a house. She’d given Anthony a mother and created herself into Brian’s other half, his rib, his Eve.

Later he would deal with how he would go on. For right now, it was enough that she was here.

Gillian woke late in the day feeling as if her body had been well used.

Naked and wrapped in a tangle of sheets, she rolled over in the bed to discover herself alone. She sat up, pushing her hair back. The room smelled of sex and his shaving soap. The door to the dressing room was open, but she didn’t hear a noise or see a shadow.

She rose from the bed. The first few steps brought out aches where she’d not known they could exist and the heat of a blush ran up her body. She’d attacked her husband. She’d been so angry at him when she’d gone to bed and yet all he had to do was touch her and she’d thrown herself at him.

Or had she been so relieved he’d come home, she would have done anything to keep him there?

A glance in the mirror told her she looked a fright. Her cheeks were chafed from his beard. Her hair was a tangled mess and her lips were full and red from his kisses.

There was a knock on the door. “My lady?” Ruby the scullery maid’s voice asked from the other side.

“Yes?” Her voice was hoarse. She couldn’t help but blush again at the memory of what she’d done with her lips and tongue only hours before.

“His lordship sent me up with water for a bath. I’ve been heating it for you.”

A bath would be heaven. “Thank you.” She smiled, pleased that Brian had thought of her. “Is Lord Wright downstairs now?” If he was, she thought about quickly throwing on some clothes and going down to see him. Or of sending a note down inviting him to join her in her bath.

“No, my lady. He left the house already.”

Gillian opened the door to see Ruby standing with two buckets of steaming water. “He left?”

“Yes, my lady. He spent time with Lord Anthony, kissed the baby, and then left the house.”

“Did he leave word where he was going?”

“Not with me, my lady.”

It turned out he hadn’t left word with anyone. As he had done the day before, Brian had walked out without so much as a by-your-leave. He didn’t return until very late.

Gillian had planned on waiting up for him. She couldn’t. She finally had to go to her bed, only to be woken in the middle of the night to her husband making love to her.

She wanted to ask him where he’d been. She wanted to know why he was leaving so mysteriously.

And yet, when he kissed her, his naked body against hers, she could not think to speak.

This next morning he didn’t leave but stayed in the back parlor and worked with a secretary he’d just hired named Edmund Simon.

Gillian seethed at Brian’s high-handed, extremely rude behavior. Her resentment built as the day continued and he seemed to be avoiding her.

Of course, she had a few tricks of her own. She made a point of having Anthony with her at all times.

The baby was the bait. Eventually, Brian would be forced to confront her if he wished to see Anthony.

The enticement worked. At a quarter until seven, Brian walked into the sitting room where she sat on the floor before the hearth playing with an increasingly tired Anthony. Of course, the baby perked up at the sight of Brian.

“Hello, Gillian,” he said pleasantly.

“Hello? That is all?” she demanded, bouncing Anthony in her arms.

Brian smiled and held out his hand for Anthony. The baby reached straight up for him. “Should there be more?” he asked, taking their child into his arms.

Gillian’s temper flared, but along with it was resentment. “Are you playing some game with me?”

“A game?’ he asked. “I don’t believe so.” He sounded perfectly relaxed.

She came to her feet. Certainly, he was toying with her. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you behaving this way?”

He brushed back Anthony’s hair. “I’m not behaving in any way, Gillian. All is well between us. Don’t fret over it.”

Don’t fret over it?

And then she knew. Of course. She was always second to his Jess. No wonder the woman had been smiling at her as she’d driven past the house the other day.

“Have you been seeing her?” Gillian couldn’t keep herself from asking. She hated how waspish she sounded. She shouldn’t care.

Then again, she shouldn’t have trusted him. To think that she’d written Andres, that she’d hurt him for this man…

“Seeing whom?” Brian asked. He frowned. “Jess? Of course not. Why would you imagine such a thing?”

“Perhaps you should,” Gillian responded for no other reason than meanness. Something was going on with her husband, something he refused to discuss with her and that could only mean Jess. She hated her jealousy, felt eaten alive by it. “I don’t feel well. I’m going to bed.” She swept by him.

That night when he came to bed, she tried her best to keep her back to him and pretended to sleep.

But that didn’t protect her from him.

It was his touch. The anger he seemed to harbor against her during the day disappeared at night.

He’d stroke her, his fingers so full of tenderness, of wanting, that she had no choice but to give in.