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  “Eleanor?” Helena’s eyes went wide. Then she blinked, slowly. A light of comprehension glimmered in her moss-green depths. “Why ever would you be looking for Eleanor?” She tittered a laugh but Ethan wasn’t fooled. “I thought the two of you disliked each other.”

  “Helena.” He caught and held her gaze. “I think you know better.”

  Again, Helena blinked. When she was paying attention, she caught on fast. The past few days, she’d been distracted by the events of her own life. Now she saw things clearly and her mouth tightened. She sighed and set down her teacup. Ethan had the distinct impression of a matron preparing for war. “She’s my best friend, Pennington.” She only called him Pennington when she was being formal, or she was annoyed.

  “I know.”

  “I won’t have her hurt by you.”

  “I have no intention of hurting her. And I’ve already had this conversation with James, thank you very much.”

  Helena ignored this tidbit. “A week ago she was your enemy’s wife.”

  “Ulster’s dead.”

  “But vengeance lingers.”

  They stared at each other in the light of the lovely day. The breeze riffled their hair. Birds sang in the trees. Ethan struggled for words.

  “I have no anger toward her.” No. Anger, this feeling was not.

  “Are you not tempted to punish her in Ulster’s place?” She watched him closely, gauging him.

  He swallowed. “I was.” Oh yes. He had planned such a thing. Now the thought made his stomach churn. The thought of anyone hurting Eleanor made his stomach churn. “But not anymore.”

  “I see.” Her expression gave nothing away. It was a mask. But her eyes warmed, a tiny bit. “What happened? What changed your mind?”

  His mind? His mind had not been involved in the slightest. He shrugged. “I came to know her. As Eleanor.” He swallowed, hoped to hell he wasn’t making a mistake by confessing all. But Helena was a much better ally than foe. “I agreed to help her make the child.”

  Her body stilled. She said nothing, which made him uncomfortable, pinned like a bug, as he was, under her glacial review.

  “I know you had Haversham in mind.”

  She tipped her head to the side. “Haversham? Oh, Haversham. Yes. But as a husband.” She tapped her lip with a slender finger. “However, if Eleanor has accepted you as a lover—and she has accepted you?” She waited for his curt nod. Hell yes. She’d accepted him. Many times. “Then who am I to object? But let me tell you this, Pennington, if you hurt her, if you break her heart, if you damage her in any way, I’ll have your guts for garters.” This, she said in the pleasantest tone, but he believed her.

  What idiot wouldn’t?

  “So. Have you seen her this morning?”

  Helena poured herself another cup of tea and added a hefty spoonful of sugar. “I believe she is exploring the wilderness walk.”

  He was out of sight before she finished stirring.

  He found her by the pond tucked against a rocky escarpment and shielded from the path by a thick curtain of trees. He would have missed her altogether—so quickly was he taking the path—except he knew the Darlington wilderness walk well. And she was singing.

  Like a siren’s call, she drew him in.

  He made his way through the brush to the clearing as silently as he could. Not because he wanted to surprise her but because he didn’t want her to stop singing. Her voice was lovely, serene, magical. It wrapped around him like a skein of her hair and drew him closer.

  When he saw her, he stilled.

  Well, except of his heart, which set up a clatter so fierce he was surprised she didn’t hear it.

  What a sight.

  She sat on a large flat stone at the pond’s edge and trailed her fingers in the rippling water. Sunlight shafted through the trees and caressed her hair, her skin, her body with its warmth. As he watched, she tipped back her head and let it lick the features of her countenance.

  God.

  Unable to remain still any longer, he stepped toward her.

  She spun around to meet this threat. As she recognized him, she softened, smiled.

  Damn. He liked that. He liked that she smiled when she saw him. He liked that she smiled like that.

  “I found you.” His voice sounded odd to his ears.

  She stood. “I wasn’t hiding.”

  He put out a lip. “You left. Why did you leave?”

  She nudged the loam with a slippered toe. “I just… We can’t spend every moment together, Ethan.”

  “Why not?” Why the hell not?

  She laughed, a melody in itself. “People will notice.”

  “Let them notice.”

  Instantly, she sobered. She placed her hand on his arm. “No one can suspect, Ethan. If they do, this will all be for naught.” He opened his lips to speak, to negate her words, the prospect, the very concept, but she did not give him a chance. “Don’t you understand? This child must be accepted as Ulster’s heir.”

  His muscles drew taut in a reaction driven by displeasure. Deep, dark displeasure, a bone-deep repudiation of her plan. “But it won’t be Ulster’s child.” It would be his.

  “And no one must know. You do see why we cannot spend every moment together? Every night?”

  No. Frankly, he didn’t. In fact, he hated the idea. All of it.

  What he wanted was to claim her, before God and everyone. “But we can spend this moment together.” He pulled her into his arms. Kissed her.

  She didn’t protest. She didn’t so much as murmur a complaint.

  He walked her back to the stone, the long flat sun-warmed stone and, still kissing her, laid her back upon it. He slipped his hands behind her head and unbuttoned a few of her hellish buttons, enough to release the bodice of her dress. Slowly, he eased the fabric away, revealing the beautiful bounty of her breasts, bound, as they were, in her infernal chemise.

  He captured one nipple and sucked, hard, until she writhed beneath him.

  “Why are you wearing this?” he complained, tweaking the budding crest.

  “Ethan—” She tried to laugh but he silenced her with a hot mouth on her other breast. He tormented her nipples in tandem. Then he yanked at her chemise, ignoring the ripping sound, and took her in his mouth again, like a man who could never get enough. His cock leaped at the taste of her bare flesh.

  “Don’t ever tease me like this again.”

  “Ethan. I must wear underclothes. What would my maid say?”

  He glared at her. “I hardly care.” He yanked up the hem of her dress, her petticoats with it. “Why so many layers?” he grumbled, half to himself.

  She chuckled and kicked off her stockings and slippers. She spread her legs.

  The breath caught in his throat at the sight of her, splayed there on the stone altar of his passion, breasts bared to the breeze, legs wide. Her cunt was exposed, open. It glistened in the licking light of the sun.

  Damn. He wanted her.

  He wanted to mount her and fuck her. To claim her as his own in every way.

  But his conversation with Helena, more importantly, his conversation with James, rose in his mind. There was something more important than fucking—than mere momentary satisfaction—at hand.

  He needed to be gentle.

  He needed to prove himself domesticated.

  Trouble was, he wasn’t sure how.

  He glanced around the clearing and inspiration dawned.

  Oh, he’d show her gentility. He’d show her restraint.

  “Close your eyes.”

  She sat up. “Why?”

  He smiled, caressed her lovely lips. “Trust me.”

  She tipped her head and studied him—he had the sensation a momentous decision was being made—and then she nodded and did as he asked, lying back on the slab.

  The sight of her compliance sent exultation shooting through him but it was twined with a thread of trepidation. She trusted him.

  It was a weight on his soul.


  He would do anything to prove himself worthy of her trust.

  “Put your hands over your head.”

  “What?”

  “Do it.”

  He watched her throat work as she contemplated this command, but she obeyed.

  “Don’t move them.”

  She trembled. Her lips parted. A tiny tear leaked from her lashes. But she held her body still. Her legs apart, her breasts high, her arms over her head. She was offering herself to him. Completely.

  The thought made him impatient.

  He stood and stormed around the clearing, gathering. He plucked a leafy fern, found a thick stick and, at the edge of the lapping pool, two small flat stones. And he returned to her.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured on a sigh, even as he set one stone and then the other on the tips of her breast.

  She cried out, lurched a little, but didn’t dislodge the stones. “They’re cold.” Even as he watched, a droplet of water from one of the stones traced its way over the globe of her breast. Her skin prickled in response. She shivered.

  “You’ll warm them. Go on. Close your eyes again.” She did. He didn’t allow himself the pleasure of staring at her. Rather, he took the fern and drew it slowly over her bare foot.

  This time when she jumped, one of the stones tumbled from its perch. Ethan paused to replace it and scolded her with a gentle tsking.

  “Be still, my dear, or this will take much longer.”

  A laugh warbled from her—or perhaps it was a wail—but she settled back and spread her legs again. Her arms, he noticed, remained above her head, as though he had tied them there.

  He focused on her foot, cupping it in his palm and studying it. Such a lovely foot, with an exquisite, delicate arch and toes like tiny Spanish peanuts. He wanted to lick its length, nibble on the pads, but he decided to save that pleasure for later. Instead, he drew the fern’s lacy leaves along the path his tongue longed to take.

  She flinched, gasped, but held her body as still as she could. So he continued, drawing the frond over her toes and then beneath them.

  “Ethan.”

  “Hush, sweet.”

  He turned his attention to her heel, and her ankle, then made his torturous way up her shapely calf. As he stroked her tender skin, she moaned and twitched and occasionally cried out and sighed, but she never moved her body. The stones on her breasts never tumbled.

  But he could see it was costing her.

  Hell, it was costing him.

  He came to her knee and spent a lot of time there, caressing and tormenting the tender back until she growled, “Please, Ethan. Please.”

  He moved on to her thigh, now making long, sweeping passes from her knee to the exquisitely tender spot where her legs met her torso. There was a particularly sensitive spot on the underside of her thigh, just before the rise of her ass, that made her yelp and snarl and gnash her teeth. Once, her hands jerked down, an instinctive move to stop this torture, no doubt, but before he could scold her, she remembered and placed them back above her head.

  As a reward, he drew the frond between her legs and made a slow, determined pass along her slit.

  And she came. It was probably only a tiny orgasm, a precursor perhaps, moaning through damp, parted lips in a tone he now knew well.

  He allowed her this moment.

  And then returned to her foot. Well, the foot on the other leg.

  She did protest now. She sat up and clutched at the stones as they fell from her breasts. “Oh no. No you don’t. I cannot bear it.”

  “But darling, I’m nothing if not thorough.”

  “Damn it, Ethan, I’m desperate.” She reached between her legs, closing her eyes as she rooted there. When she pulled out her hand it was coated with cream, thick and white and slick. He nearly swallowed his tongue. “No more teasing,” she snapped. To underscore this demand, she let her bodice slip all the way down. As she stood her dress piled at her feet and she kicked it off.

  Glorious. Bold. Brazen. Bare. Eleanor, in a beautiful glen on a lovely day.

  And she was his.

  “But I’m not done yet.” Not by a long shot. He still had her backside to explore.

  “Oh, you’re done.” She snatched the fern and tossed it into the water. She sat on the stone and spread her legs, holding her knees up, open, exposing her core to him. “Now fuck me, Ethan. Put your cock inside me and fuck me. Hard.”

  “I can’t.” He locked his muscles, twined his hands behind his back.

  Her bemusement shifted into annoyance. “Why not?”

  “I’m trying to be gentle.”

  “What?” She let her legs fall—much to his disappointment—and sat up to frown at him.

  “I’m trying to be gentle. If I fuck you now I won’t be gentle. I won’t. I will fuck you hard, fuck you heartlessly, fuck you until you scream for mercy.”

  Her brow puckered. “Why are you trying to be gentle?”

  “Because…” Something caught in his throat. “James said you needed a gentle man.”

  “J-James? You talked to James about me?”

  “Don’t get offended. He was warning me off.”

  She tossed her head and snorted. “You’re the gentlest man I’ve ever known.”

  Well. He wasn’t sure how to take that.

  Her laugh trilled around him. “Don’t pout, Ethan. I meant it in a good way. But I find, when your cock is inside me, gentle is not what I’m looking for.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No. It’s not. Now come here and fuck me.” She opened her legs again, lifted them, opened them.

  And he was lost.

  All thoughts of flipping her over and gently tormenting her back, exploring the tantalizing globes of her ass, making her cream and come from behind, fled.

  The gentle, domesticated chunk of his soul completely dissolved, and with it, the mask of his civility.

  He fell on her. Ripping at his trousers, which he had once again forgotten to undo, he dropped to her side and then, once his cock was free, levered over her and entered her. Entered heaven.

  Her cunt was slick—oh so slick—and hot and wet and welcoming as he nudged inside. And then the time for nudging was over. For at his entry, the muscles at the mouth of her cavern sucked at the head. Sucked and quivered and stroked him.

  “God.” He tipped his hips and buried himself, deep, deep inside her. She cried out and spread her legs wider, lifted her body to meet him halfway, to thrust herself at him, to get him where they both wanted him to be.

  “Yes.” Her voice was breathy, hot, in his ear. “Yes, yes.”

  He pulled out against a delicious, delirious resistance and shoved back in. She quivered. Shivered. Clamped down on him—hard. He hissed through his teeth and pulled out again.

  His cock stiffened, swelled. His balls tightened. Tiny trails of elation coiled in his belly.

  He hastened his strokes. Shorter. Faster. Harder.

  Her cries rose. She wrapped her legs around his waist and raised her hands to his neck, pulled herself closer, scraped her breasts back and forth across his chest.

  He was close. So close.

  So was she.

  But not close enough.

  He slipped a hand between them, where they were joined, and stroked the tight bud between her legs. She exploded. Around him—a tight wet fist—and with him.

  They went there together, flew up into the great maw of a dark dazzling light, bathed in bliss, wrapped, and rapt, with an agonizing ecstasy. Pleasure dribbled through his body, infused his soul, as he emptied into her, and still, long after the crisis had passed.

  He was still quaking through lingering bolts of bliss, when he slipped out. He shifted over to her side, propped his head in one hand and stared at her. Her eyes were closed, lips parted, chest quivering. With his free hand, he drew back her hair, dabbed the tears from her lashes.

  “Darling.” It was a whisper. And it came from his mouth. It didn’t shock him, because somewhere, deep within
, he already knew. She was his darling.

  Somehow in the past few days, he’d come to love her. No. More than love her. Adore her.

  Her.

  Ulster’s wife.

  It was unthinkable.

  But it had happened.

  And he wouldn’t change the past few days for the world.

  Chapter Eight

  Eleanor’s eyes fluttered open. Their gazes tangled. She was relaxed, replete, tender. Ethan wanted to love her again, right then and there, but he was drained.

  “That was wonderful.” She offered him a smile, but it wasn’t tentative, it wasn’t shy or timid, like the first few smiles she’d proffered. It was a knowing smile. The smile of a woman who recognized her own power.

  “You’re wonderful.” He bent his head and kissed her forehead, drew in her scent. He loved the way she smelled when the sweat of their lovemaking dampened the tendrils curling along her hair line. His kiss ended in a laugh. “But I cannot help feeling cheated…”

  “Cheated?” She stroked his nape. He leaned into that tender touch, irresistible as it was. “How could you feel cheated, after that?”

  He attempted a smile. “I had plans for you, wench.”

  “Ooh.” She bit her lip but her smile blossomed, dimpled, beneath the pressure of those perfect teeth. Oh. To have them nibble upon his lips. “That does sound wicked. Do tell.”

  He glanced at the ground, at the stick and the various leaves and stones he had collected. “I think I’ll save that for later.” There would be another time. There would be many other times.

  She smacked him on his shoulder. “Beast.”

  “But I’ll tell you what I really wanted to do before you interrupted me and insisted I end this little tryst so abruptly.”

  “I did no such thing. It was high time you fucked me. I was utterly mindless from your teasing.” Now, there was an enchanting thought. “You are a beast, you know, to tease me so. How would you like it if I did the same to you?”

  Like it? He’d love it.

  His expression must have said as much because she took one look at him and blew out an aggravated breath. “No, you wouldn’t like it. Teasing is one thing but there is a point, my good sir, when it just goes too far.”