Regency High Society Vol 2: Sparhawk's Lady / The Earl's Intended Wife / Lord Calthorpe's Promise / The Society Catch. Miranda Jarrett

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СКАЧАТЬ lovemaking that she had herself, his face was turned away from hers, toward the pillow, and she fought back lonely tears of disappointment. Could she really have misjudged him—and herself—so badly?

      Finally, with a sigh, he rolled to one side, propping his head up on the pillow to look at her, his hair falling damply across his forehead. There was, she thought unhappily, certainly no joy to be found in that grim, handsome face now.

      “Caro,” he said with more gentleness than she expected. “Why, love? Why?”

      She swallowed hard, reaching for the sheet to cover herself. The way the shadows fell across the bed curtains hid his eyes, and she wished desperately she could see them now and know what he was thinking. Once again that single word of his could be the beginning of so many questions with so many different answers, but she gave him the only one that mattered.

      “Because I love you,” she said, her words quavering, “and because I dared to believe that you love me, too.”

      “But, damnation, Caro, what about your blessed husband?” There was confusion in his voice, and more than a share of anger. “You’ve been married to the man for fourteen years. I can’t believe in all that time he never made love to you once, especially considering—well, considering the circumstances.”

      “No, go ahead and say it,” she said bitterly. “Considering that Frederick paid five hundred pounds for my maidenhead, he should at least have had the privilege of taking it.”

      “Aye, something like that.” He reached out then to brush his finger across her cheek, and only then did he realize she was crying. “Why, sweetheart?”

      Another why, and this time the answer wouldn’t be as simple. She turned her face away from him, instead staring up at the canopy overhead, and let the hot tears slide down her cheeks to wet the pillow.

      “I was nothing when Frederick bought me,” she said softly. “Only the fourteen-year-old bastard of a second-rate whore. There must be hundreds like me born every year, but at least I was lucky enough not to be tossed out to die on the dustheap, and instead was sent to live in the country. It was, I think, the one kind thing Mama did for me, and I thank her still. At least I grew up healthy and strong. But my only ‘education’ was what she forced into me during the last fortnight I was in her care, and oh, I was such an ignorant little girl!”

      She smiled bleakly through her tears, remembering how much of an innocent she had been. “If Frederick hadn’t bought me, I would have followed in my mother’s path, and I would have died years ago, from the pox or consumption or some midwife’s quackery. Frederick saved my life, and for that I shall always love him.”

      “But not as a wife?” asked Jeremiah gently, and she shook her head against the pillow without looking at him, her fingers twisting the sheet.

      “That isn’t what he wanted. Frederick was—no, is—above the desires of the flesh. That’s what he called it—the ‘baser side of man’s animal nature’—and he promised he’d never sully our love that way. After what I’d learned from Mama, I wanted no part of it, either, so we suited each other famously. I would have if he’d wanted me to, yet he never did.”

      “Then why the devil did he marry you?”

      “He said it was to protect me. No one would dare slander the Countess of Byfield to her face, and if I outlived him, Frederick knew I’d be safe with his name. Oh, I know what is said of me in Portsmouth, but I was more his daughter than his mistress, let alone his wife. It was enough for me, and I was happy. Happy, that is, until Frederick disappeared. And then I met you.”

      “Come here,” he said gruffly, and with a shuddering sigh she went to him, curling her body against him as his arm circled protectively around her. He should have guessed it all. The more he thought about what she’d told him, the more he realized she’d given him enough hints that a blessed idiot could have figured it out, just as he was ten times a fool for not realizing how much he was in love with her before this.

      “I can’t help but believe that what we’ve done will only make things worse, sweetheart,” he said, “but you won’t see me wishing it undone, either.”

      She searched his face. “You don’t?”

      “How can I?” He sighed again, stroking her cheek. “I love you, Caro, and that’s the first time I’ve ever said that to any woman.”

      Her smile was magical. “You do? Truly?”

      He brushed away the tangle of her hair and kissed her gently, sweetly. He could imagine few situations more futile than falling in love as he had with another man’s wife, yet with Caro in his arms he still felt blissfully happy. “I do, truly, and more’s the pity for us both.”

      “I loved you from the first time I saw you, sleeping at your sister’s house,” she confessed. “I tried then to guess the kind of man you must be to be so handsome, and I wasn’t disappointed.”

      He grimaced, thinking how when she’d first seen him he’d been shaking and pale from a nightmare. “An illtempered, paid-out, rascally rogue?”

      “No, of course not, and I won’t hear you say it!” She punched his shoulder with her small fist, and he groaned dramatically. “I knew you’d be kind and gentle and clever and brave, and you are all those things. A kind, gentle, clever, brave, rascally rogue.”

      “Impudent little baggage.” As she laughed and wriggled out of reach, he tugged away the sheet that was twisted between them, wanting to feel again her skin against his. He pushed her back against the pillow, trapping her beneath his body, and kissed her until her laughter changed to little sighs of contentment and their kisses grew warmer, more impassioned. Reluctantly he broke away, seeing the dark smears of her blood on the sheet.

      “Don’t tempt me, Caro,” he warned. “I’ve no intention of hurting you again tonight.”

      “You won’t.” She ignored him, running her lip across the rough beard on his jaw. “You only hurt at the beginning. You are, you know, a large man.”

      “And you’re a lovely woman,” he said softly. “The lovely woman I happen to love.”

      “I love you, too, Jeremiah.” She found his lips and kissed him again, her happiness boundless. “Then I did the right thing after all.”

      He sighed and held her closer. “Not necessarily. I will never regret making love to you, Caro, but before this night you could have had your marriage to Frederick annulled.”

      She stared at him, shocked. “I would never have done that to Frederick. To shame him in front of the world like that—no, I could never have done it.”

      That stung Jeremiah’s pride. “Then how shamed will he be if you present him with my child?” he said bluntly. “Or did the shopkeeper who sold you that dressing gown advise you on ways to avoid breeding, too?”

      Embarrassed to be discussing such a thing with him, she shook her head. “It wouldn’t be likely, not the first time.”

      “No? As you said yourself, there’s hundreds of bastards born every year from just that kind of ill-founded trust. Exactly how forgiving is your precious Frederick?”

      She rested her cheek against the curling hair of his chest, listening to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. СКАЧАТЬ