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  Ethan wasn’t bored. Not at all. For he was watching Eleanor’s face.

  He loved watching her face. The way her lips would part when he applied a little pressure. The charming pink tide on her cheeks. The tremble of her fork.

  And every so often, he would tug harder. Short, hard strokes that would have her gasping for air.

  She never met his gaze. She didn’t dare. But he stared at her all the same.

  He was thankful for the long tablecloth. For the scintillating discussion of long-dead Darlingtons. Because it kept the others occupied. And oblivious to his pounding cockstand.

  By the time dessert was served, a frothy something or other, he was ready to leave the table. He was ready to leave the table and take his woman up the stairs to his room and fuck her until she screamed.

  But it was not to be.

  With horror, he saw Darlington stand, heard those hideous words. “Shall we repair to the library?”

  “Ah yes,” Uncle Andrew gushed. He half stood but was forestalled by a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Just Pennington and I, if you don’t mind, Uncle Andrew. We have some things to discuss.”

  The way Darlington’s attention flicked to Eleanor then back to Ethan did not bode well.

  “Don’t be long, James,” Helena said with a smile. “We’ll have tea waiting in the drawing room.”

  Darlington merely grunted in response.

  Ethan followed his friend to the library, where James abruptly gestured to a pair of chairs by the fire. “Sit.”

  Ethan glanced longingly at the assortment of decanters on a low table by the desk. “Are you not going to offer me a brandy?”

  “Sit.”

  He sat.

  Darlington, as was his way, didn’t prevaricate. He came straight to the point. The point being: “What is going on between you and Eleanor?”

  Heat crept up Ethan’s cheeks. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me. Helena may not have noticed the way you were watching her throughout dinner, but I did.”

  “I was watching her throughout dinner?”

  “Like a wolf. I didn’t like what I saw. Do not toy with her affections, Pennington.”

  Ethan bristled. He didn’t like being warned off his woman, not by any man. “Mind your own business.”

  “This is my business. Eleanor is Helena’s dearest friend. If Eleanor is hurt, wounded by the biggest rake in the ton, Helena is wounded. I will not countenance it.”

  “I’m hardly the biggest rake in the ton.”

  “You were.” Darlington tried not to fix his gaze on Ethan’s scar and failed. “And don’t you dare try to play the innocent here, Ethan. I see what’s going on. You’re seducing her.”

  Ethan couldn’t hold back his snort. He wasn’t seducing her. Oh, it had started out like that. But now, she was seducing him. Glance by glance. Kiss by kiss. Fuck by fuck. Holy hell, he could barely think of anything other than burying himself inside her. Even now, in Darlington’s library, in the midst of a bona fide scolding more suited to an errant schoolboy.

  Darlington’s eyes narrowed. “What on earth did that noise mean?”

  “What noise?”

  “Ethan—”

  “Perhaps she enjoys my attention.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that’s the point of seduction.”

  Ethan grinned. “Indeed.”

  It was unfortunate the word came out in just that tone, for it rather enraged Darlington. Lifetime friend or not, he looked ready to kill. “Damn it all to hell, Ethan, leave her alone. She’s suffered enough and I won’t have her heart broken again under my roof.”

  This caught his attention. Ethan sobered. “What do you mean, she’s suffered enough?”

  James flushed. “Come on, man. She was married to Ulster.” Something in his expression told Ethan he was hedging.

  “What do you know?”

  James snorted and scrubbed his hand over his face. “Enough.”

  “What?”

  “Damn it, Pennington. It’s not my place to tell you. It’s not my place to tell anyone. She told Helena these things in confidence.”

  A hard ball formed in Ethan’s belly. Yes, he’d known she was married to Ulster. And he knew Ulster was a right bastard. But judging from James’ reaction, he’d been a damn sight more sinister than Ethan could ever have dreamed. He thought of Eleanor, her beautiful body, her beautiful sweet soul at Ulster’s command and something lurched inside him.

  “If he hurt her…”

  James sprang from his chair and paced the carpet. “Of course he hurt her. Every day. He brutalized the woman.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ask her yourself.”

  “That son of bitch. Why, I’d like to—”

  “What? What are you going to do? He’s dead, Ethan. The only thing that remains of him is his effect on Eleanor. She doesn’t need another man like that in her life.”

  Ethan leaped to his feet. “I’m nothing like Ulster!” A bellow. Probably audible throughout the house. He didn’t care.

  James dropped into his chair. “I know. I know. I’m sorry Pennington. I am. But you know what I mean. She deserves a gentle, loving man—”

  “I’m a gentle, loving man.”

  James tipped his head and made a slow study of Ethan, from tip to toe. He didn’t need words to clarify his thoughts.

  Ethan put out a lip as he took his seat. “Well, I can be loving and gentle.”

  “I’m sure you can.” James sighed. “But you’re not the man for her.”

  “And who the hell are you to make that decision?”

  James swallowed a laugh, coughed on it. “It’s not my decision. It’s Helena’s.” This, he said as though the Regent himself had so declared it.

  “What has Helena got against me?”

  “Well, nothing, I’m sure. She’s just picked out someone else for Eleanor.”

  A bitter taste flooded Ethan’s mouth. “Who?” he spat. “Who has she ‘selected’ for Eleanor?”

  “Haversham. He arrives tomorrow.”

  “Haversham?” That pup?

  “Helena says he’s a sweet boy.”

  “He is a boy. She needs a man.”

  “What she needs is a tender touch. When have you ever been capable of that? When have you ever been interested in that?”

  Ethan shifted in his seat. He didn’t like this scrutiny of his character. He didn’t like it at all. What was worse, he didn’t like the sudden discovery that he, himself, didn’t care for his character all that much.

  James sighed. “She needs a husband, Ethan. Someone who will love her and take care of her. Someone who can…”

  “Make up for Ulster?”

  “Exactly. And you, my friend, are not that man.”

  The hell he wasn’t.

  Ethan watched James rise and leave the room. He remained, however, in the library, glaring at the fire. He remained there until Uncle Andrew toddled in, talking to himself, disturbing Ethan’s dark peace. With a sigh, he rose and left, making his way to the drawing room, where Eleanor, and tea, awaited.

  He paused at the door and took in the scene. James and Helena on one divan, and his Eleanor on the other. They were laughing and chatting and sipping from delicate cups. Although, he noticed, Darlington had a brandy. It was a charming domestic scene, one that caused a funny flip in his heart. Soon there would be a child at Darlington’s knee. A little girl who looked like Helena, or a boy with Darlington’s golden locks perhaps.

  He glanced at Eleanor.

  She could be with child, even now.

  His child.

  The funny flip in his heart dropped to his belly.

  Dear God.

  He’d been working to give her that child. He’d been working diligently.

  To give her a child he could never claim as his own. A child who would be Ulster’s heir. A child who would live and grow up in Ulster’s mansion, surrounded by Ulster’s family.

>   The thought made him ill. But he wasn’t sure if he was more disturbed by the thought of never claiming his son, or that the child, and Eleanor, would be beyond his reach then.

  He hadn’t thought about that. About the future. About what would happen when this house party was over and they went their separate ways.

  And for good reason. The prospect was disturbing in the extreme.

  She turned her head and saw him. Her face lit up and she smiled. Seeing her reaction, James and Helena turned their heads as well.

  His thoughts of slipping away, into the night, evaporated. He’d been spotted.

  He sucked in a deep breath and stepped into the room, determinedly fixing a smile on his lips. He could prove himself gentle and loving. He could be domesticated. Pleasant.

  Even if it killed him.

  His resolve to be gentle and loving dissolved beneath the weight of Eleanor’s passion when, after James and Helena retired to their suite, Eleanor followed him to his room and leaped upon him the instant the door closed. “Oh God, I want you in me,” she wailed into his ear. She wrapped one leg around his hip and rubbed herself against him like a cat.

  “Eleanor.” He tried to untangle her limbs but she ignored his attempts, perching up on her tiptoes and sucking his earlobe into her mouth. He groaned and shuddered when her tiny pink tongue danced into his ear. He bent his head lower so she could find a better angle. And God. God.

  She fucked his ear with her tongue until all thoughts of the conversation he had planned, all thoughts of gentility and domestication fled.

  “I want you. I want you,” she panted, scrabbling at his cravat, yanking at his buttons. He heard them pop and scatter all over the floor. He knew his valet would have a conniption in the morning, but he really couldn’t care. Because now her hands were roving over his chest, her fingers plucking at his nipples, her nails scraping at his sanity. And her mouth—God, that mouth—was sucking at them. Nipping and tugging and stabbing them with her tongue.

  A hand, a small, dainty, domesticated hand, encased his cock. She squeezed him, rubbed him, stroked the head through his trousers. “Ethan, please.” She fumbled at his waist, growling in frustration. “Unbutton me. Unbutton me. Now.” She reared back and glared at him, and he hastened to comply, making his way down the interminable row.

  It gave him a moment, a moment to breathe without her hand, her body, her mouth upon him. He had just managed to regain some semblance of his composure, just begun to form the words he needed to say, when she spun around, yanking the dress from her shoulders and wrenching it from her body. The tail caught—it was still tightly laced through the bottom buttonhole, after all—and she cried out. It was a feral sound.

  Wildly, she yanked at the lace girdle, sawing it against her swollen lips as she worked it off.

  It fell from her body. Ethan couldn’t help but notice it was damp with cream.

  His brain seized at this maddening discovery. He allowed her to grab his hand and tug him over to the bed. She put a palm to his chest and pushed. He sat on the mattress with a thud. And she was on him, straddling him with a knee to each side. She kissed him briefly, frantically, pushing at his chest until he was flat on his back. He watched in speechless amazement as Eleanor, shy, demure—utterly naked—Eleanor, took his cock in her hand and angled it up. Up. Up. The tip, oozing with a glimmering drop of cum, nudged against her clitoris.

  She threw back her head and moaned. Apparently she liked it, for she did it again, and again, rubbing his cock against her slick pearl, until it was Ethan who was moaning, wild, frantic.

  “In,” he growled. “In.”

  She complied, arching up to accommodate his length and then down and God. God. Oh. God.

  She was hot. Scalding. Dripping wet. The slick walls of her channel encompassed him, consumed him. His cock danced with delight. She came to the end of him and seated herself upon him with her short hairs kissing his, her groin flush against his.

  Not sure what to do now, she stared at him. Her lips parted. She whimpered.

  He put his hands on her hips and showed her a motion. And then another. And then he needed to guide her no longer.

  She braced herself on his chest and rode him, twisting this way and that, circling him, clutching him, fucking him. Driving him insane and gratifying him deep to his bowels at the same time.

  When she came, she was magnificent. She threw back her head and arched her body, thrusting her breasts into his palms and grasped him in a tight, wet grip that had him drooling, shivering, howling.

  But he wasn’t finished. He wasn’t done yet.

  When her crisis trailed off to occasional jerks and moans, he flipped her onto her stomach and spread her legs with his knees. Panting, she looked over her shoulder to watch him approach, cock in hand. Her eyes, damp and dazed, urged him on. “Do it,” she whispered. “Fuck me.”

  Holy God. That word, that phrase, on her lips… It drove him mad.

  He yanked her hips higher and plunged in, hard and deep, and he did it again and again. His tempo and his frenzy increased, until he was moving so fast, fucking her so wildly, he couldn’t tell where he ended and she began.

  And then it didn’t matter. Because they came together. His cock. Her womb. One.

  He erupted in an endless delight and she, bless her heart, milked him of every drop.

  Which was a disaster, really. Because he’d resolved earlier, as he’d sat by her side in the drawing room drinking tea and talking about Helena’s party plans, that he wouldn’t come inside her again.

  He couldn’t take the chance of getting her with child.

  Because he couldn’t bear the thought that, if he did, if he gave her the child she so desperately needed, she would walk away from him forever.

  Eleanor awoke feeling refreshed and invigorated, which made little sense, considering the torment of the evening past and the wild abandon of the night that followed. Ethan murmured in his sleep and tightened his hold on her and she instinctively nestled closer. There was something about him she found irresistible—his features, his scent, his soul perhaps. She wanted to be near him, wrapped in his warm embrace. Always.

  Even in his sleep, he complied. As she tucked her naked body against his, his arms tightened around her, and with a grunt, he buried his nose in her hair. She let him hold her like that for a long, long while, letting the peace of this closeness sink into her.

  He was so different from her husband—and not just because she found Ethan inexpressibly attractive. Not just because she wanted Ethan’s hands on her. No. It was the way he treated her. His touch was gentle and tantalizing. In lovemaking, he always saw to her pleasure, and when he was harsh, domineering, it was always with a hint of restraint, a watchful consideration. She knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, if she demanded he stop—whatever he was doing—he would.

  Ulster would never have stopped. Not until his depraved desire had been assuaged. He had used her as a vessel, a thing. He’d taken pleasure in dominating her only to bolster his crippled ego. He’d punished her for creating a hunger in him that he’d considered an abomination, a weakness.

  She shuddered at the memory. Closed her eyes tight against it.

  Thank God he was gone.

  Even though she was still mired in the mourning period—barely a month away from his passing—she could find no guilt in her relief.

  She was glad he was gone. Glad she was free.

  And ah, so very glad she had agreed to Ethan’s bargain—whether there was a child or not. He’d given her something more precious than financial security. He’d reminded her who she was, who she’d been before Ulster had remade her. Ethan liked being with her. Bathed her in respect. Included her in conversations. Engaged her. He’d never once berated her. Never once raised his hand.

  Then again, this was an affair.

  They weren’t married.

  She tipped up her head and stared at Ethan’s face. It was so beautiful, so familiar to her now. She traced a finger along the s
car Ulster had made and her heart twisted at the pain it must have caused. But she loved it. Because it was Ethan’s.

  A warm, wet tide washed through her. Her heart began to thud. Panic flickered in her soul.

  Because, God help her, she’d done it.

  The thing she’d sworn never to do.

  She’d fallen in love with a man.

  It frightened her to death.

  Ethan was annoyed when he awoke.

  For one thing, it was late. The sun was already high in the sky.

  For another, he was alone.

  He patted the sheets on the empty side of the bed and found them cold. Damn. She must have left during the night.

  He’d never gotten the chance to talk to her. To tell her…

  Damn.

  He threw back his covers and bellowed for Carson, who came skittering into the room, his nuncheon napkin still tucked in his collar.

  “You let me sleep,” he snarled.

  “Yes, sir.” Carson was used to Ethan’s foibles—they’d been together for years. But still, he trembled. “You ordered me, in no uncertain terms, not to disturb you.”

  “It’s past noon. Were you ever going to wake me?”

  Carson stepped back. “You were quite specific.”

  “Bloody hell.” He had made such a command. In no uncertain terms. But it only applied when he was engaged in a delightful pursuit with a delectable woman. Who now was gone. And it was past noon. Who knew where she could be by now. And damn it all, he was hard again. He wanted her. Needed her. “Come on, Carson. Quit lollygagging around and get me dressed.” He had to find her. And soon.

  He needed her.

  She wasn’t anywhere in the house, and none of the servants seemed to know where she’d gone. Ethan was close to throwing an uncustomary temper tantrum when he finally came upon Lady Darlington having tea on the patio.

  “Ethan.” She smiled up at him and patted the chair by her side. “Sit. Have some tea. Isn’t it a lovely day?”

  He perched on the edge of the chair and wound his fingers together and glanced around and noticed that indeed, the sun was shining and there was a cool breeze and the birds were twittering in the trees and yes, it was a lovely day, but where the hell was Eleanor? He accepted a cup of tea from his hostess and took a polite sip, though he truly deplored tea. “Have you seen Lady Ulster?”