Desmond’s lips curled back against his uneven teeth as he spat, “So the little whore returns.”
She flinched. Berthe had wasted little time in voicing her suspicions.
“Take a seat.” Desmond motioned to the sofa Chloris occupied. “We have much to discuss.”
Jane looked warily at the sofa, not keen at placing herself beside Chloris.
“Come, Jane. Don’t be skittish. Clearly you possess a more adventurous spirit.” His heated gaze raked her. “Had I only known,” he murmured.
Heat crept up Jane’s face at the unsubtle remark.
Chloris stiffened, the severe lines of her face pulling tight.
“Is it true?” Chloris demanded. “You’re with child?”
“I believe so. Yes.”
Desmond cursed and swung around, stalking out to the terrace.
“Well,” Chloris began, her voice eerily tranquil. “It’s of no surprise you’ve brought scandal on our heads yet again.”
“I’ve never brought scandal on this family,” Jane denied, not about to let that remark pass. Marcus had been the one to cavort with everything in skirts. A sour taste filled her mouth. To the very end.
Chloris smiled nastily. “Yes, well, if you had been a suitable wife, Marcus would not have had to look elsewhere.”
Desmond stormed back inside. “Who?” he demanded, his voice scraping over her like a rusty blade.
Sighing, Chloris smoothed an imaginary wrinkle from her skirt. “Does it matter, Desmond? I think the question at hand is what are we going to do now.”
Desmond’s black stare engulfed Jane, and she strongly suspected he had not heard a word his wife said.
“Who?” he bit out, back to that again.
“I think we should send Jane to the country.” Chloris stared intently at her husband, her brow wrinkling into its many folds. “No one will think anything of it. She is in mourning after all.”
“And when the babe comes?” Desmond spoke at last, acknowledging his wife without looking at her. “What then?”
Jane looked back and forth at Desmond and Chloris, stunned that they would discuss her fate and that of her own unborn child as if she were not in the room, as if she had no voice, no opinion.
“We can send the babe to a home for foundlings. No one need ever know.”
Cold ice shot down her spine, making her shiver. Jane rose to her feet, clutching the arm of the sofa in a death grip. “No,” she pronounced. “I am not giving my child away.”
Fury radiated through her, chasing away the cold and filling her with revitalizing heat. There had been little time to ponder her feelings about the child she carried. She had only begun to grapple with the reality of it. Until now. Until the mention of giving the baby away. This was her child. Hers and Seth’s. No one would take this child from her. Not while there was breath in her body to stop them.
“No?” Chloris echoed, the blunt features of her face tightening with disbelief. She looked to her husband as if seeking confirmation of Jane’s refusal.
“Who is he?” Desmond shouted, his face varying shades of red and purple as he stalked to her. “Who?” His hands clamped down on her arms. “I will have his name.” He shook her as if he could rattle the truth from her.
“Desmond,” Chloris hissed in an exasperated voice, and something else. Something Desmond did not pay the least bit of mind to as he continued to manhandle her, a vein bulging in his forehead.
“Let me go,” she ground out.
His fingers dug deeper, hurting her. “I’ll have his name.”
The pain of his grip fed her, poured liquid fire into her parched soul and sent a shot of courage to her system. Noses almost touching, she hissed into his face, “Never.”
His pupils dilated, his black, soulless gaze drilling into her until she felt certain he wanted to strike her. Her throat thickened, but she forced her chin higher, finished with submitting.
“Unhand her.”
Jane’s gaze swung in the direction of the door, gasping at the sight of Seth framed in the threshold. Her heart leapt in her chest and the thickness in her throat intensified, choking her.
Larger than life, he loomed over the room, seeming to suck all energy into himself. Desmond released her, and she staggered back, dropping onto the sofa, her legs as steady as jam. Seth watched her, his square jaw clenched tight, his gaze unreadable, the scar down his cheek all the more vivid against his flushed face. Never had he looked more menacing. Or beautiful.
“If you’re so desperate to know,” Seth drawled, nonchalant as he tugged free his gloves and shoved them into his coat pocket, “I’ll be happy to tell you.”
Jane shook her head, her lips parting on a silent breath.
“The Earl of St. Claire,” Barclay chimed, suddenly arriving, looking frazzled and annoyed all at once as he tried to wedge past Seth. “Your pardon, Mr. Billings. He insisted on introducing himself.”
Desmond’s black gaze never left Seth as he addressed the butler. “Leave us.”
Barclay departed. The door clicked shut, the noise discordant in the sudden still of the room. No one uttered a sound.
Desmond and Seth stared in silence at one another. A muscle in Seth’s jaw jumped madly, just as madly as Jane’s heart thumping within her too-tight chest.
Words burned on the tip of her tongue.
What are you doing here?
Why did you come?
Only no sound emerged. She simply stared, watching, waiting, her pulse fluttering madly at her neck. Her hand flew there, pressing the warm flesh as if she could still the frantic tempo.
Chloris was the first to speak. Clearing her throat, she greeted with false cheer, “Lord St. Claire. How lovely of you to call.”
Seth’s gaze shifted, landing on Jane with a burning intensity that trapped her breath in her chest, pinning her to the spot. “I’ve come to collect Jane.”
Collect Jane. Her hackles rose. She was not a parcel to be fetched. Her chin lifted. He did not miss the gesture. His eyes darkened, the centers glowing fire. The corners of his mouth lifted in a mocking semblance of a smile. “Isn’t that so, Jane?”
Chloris saved her from replying. “Indeed?” Gathering a fistful of muslin, she rose, simultaneously gripping Jane’s hand. Her cold fingers circled Jane’s wrist, pulling her free of Desmond. “We will leave you gentlemen alone. Come along Jane.”
Jane twisted free, determined to remain.
“Jane,” Seth’s voice, deep and potent, stroked some place deep inside her. As if pulled by an invisible thread, she moved to his side, recognizing the significance of doing so. She had finished running. From him. From herself.
Come what may, they were bound. Even before their night in the garden. She saw that now. Now she understood. Seth had never left her. He was in her blood.
She stopped beside him, pressing her palms to her sides in an effort to still their trembling. Seth brought his hand to the small of her back and she jumped at the contact. The feather-soft brush of his fingers singed her through her clothing, reminding her of the fire found in his caress.
“He’s the one,” Desmond’s voice, rough and strangled as if he fought for breath, broke through her thoughts. Judging from his ruddy face, his breath was not the only thing lost to him. Hot words tumbled from his mouth. “He’s the one you let crawl beneath your skirts.”
Chloris made a sound, a tiny mewl through her fingers as she shook her head.
Seth’s lips tightened. A muscle flexed in his cheek, making his scar jump as if it lived, breathed, a serpent writhing upon his face. His eyes changed, gleaming as dark as a fathomless cave.
“Have a care Billings,” he warned, his words dropping like stones in the thick air. “This can be easy or hard. Either way, she’s leaving with me.”
Her blood pumped so loudly in her ears she felt certain the others in the room could hear it.
“Like hell she is,” Desmond bit out, pointing a reed-thin finger at his side. As if she were a dog
to be ordered about, he commanded, “Jane, come.”
Dark fury spiraled through her. All her life she had done what others expected, what others wanted. And what had it gotten her? Parents who cared nothing for her? A faithless husband? Relations that ran roughshod over her? She gave her head a small shake. No more.
She breathed in through her nostrils, drawing the air deep into her lungs. Her single night with Seth had been her one self-indulgence. And for that, she could not summon forth a scrap of regret. Even as her head told her she should feel the deepest shame, her heart could not.
She was done doing as others wanted, finished putting herself last. If she had considered herself first, perhaps she would have told Seth how she felt for him all those years ago. Before Madeline sank her claws into him. Before he set sail. Before she married Marcus and put to death dreams of love and happily ever after.
Shaking her head, she banished what if from her head. That road only led to madness.
Compelled to stand on her own, to start living for herself, she stepped away from Seth’s side and approached Desmond.
Crossing her arms over her chest in an unlady-like pose, she declared, “I will not.”
Desmond drew nearer. Still, she did not shrink away. Not even when he stopped before her, eyes glasslike and unblinking.
“Jane,” he said, his voice low with warning, soft with threat. “Don’t do something you’ll regret. Tell this”—his devil’s gaze cut to Seth—“tell St. Claire here you’re not going anywhere with him.”
“My only regret would be staying another night under this roof.”
His eyes flashed with a desperate fury and he snatched hold of her arm. She stifled her wince.
“You heard her,” Seth cut in behind her. “Let her go.”
Chloris must have recognized how near her husband was to losing control. “For God’s sake, Desmond, unhand her,” she hissed.
Desmond shook his head in savage denial.
“I advise you to listen to your wife,” Seth bit out, the hard edge of his voice scraping her frayed nerves as he stepped alongside her, his body humming with tension.
As if he hadn’t heard a word, Desmond’s fingers dug deeper into her arm. “Whore,” he hissed, “This isn’t—”
Seth shot from beside her, his fist connecting with Desmond’s face in a blur of movement. Desmond collapsed on the carpet with a thud, his spindly legs stretched before him.
Eyes bulging, he cupped his nose, blood seeping steadily between his fingers as he sprawled on the floor. Chloris shrieked and crouched down beside her husband.
“It’s finished,” Seth ground out. “Understand?”
Desmond nodded mutely, his dazed expression leaving Jane to wonder if he in fact did.
Grunting, Chloris tugged him to his feet. Glaring at Seth, she spat, “You animal! Take her. Take her and go.” Her eyes scoured Jane with loathing as she dragged Desmond alongside of her. “Good riddance.”
Unruffled by Chloris’s histrionics, Seth lowered himself into a plush wing-backed chair, fingers idly tapping the arm as he watched their clumsy retreat.
Jane buried her shaking hands in the folds of her skirts, more satisfied than she liked to acknowledge over the violent episode.
“Lovely family,” Seth murmured.
“They’re not my family,” she hastily corrected, then flushed when she realized her true family was little better.
“I suppose I would be in no rush to claim them either.”
Pulling back her shoulders, she looked down at him where he lounged, one booted foot at rest upon his knee in a casual pose so at odds with the waves of tension emanating from him.
“Why did you come?”
“Did you not hear me? I believe I made myself quite plain.” His eyes warmed as they roamed over her, that amber flame back, lighting the dark centers. “I’ve come for you.”
“Yes, I heard you,” she said quickly, the heat in her face intensifying, burning all the way to the tips of her ears. “I—I—”
“You stormed into my house,” he broke in, rising to his impressive height and advancing on her with slow, measured steps, “and announced you carried my child.” He stopped directly in front of her, the breadth of his chest and shoulders filling her vision. “Did you think you had seen the last of me?”
“I had not thought much beyond confessing my…condition.”
He rocked back on his heels, eyes narrowing. “You had to know it would come to this.”
Jane shook her head, not certain what she had thought would happen when she told him the truth…and not certain it mattered anymore.
“But then,” he continued, eyes crawling over her face in a way that made her skin prickle, “I can’t claim to know you.” Another step closer, and their breaths mingled. “Can I?”
“You did once,” she murmured, dropping her gaze from his penetrating stare, a stare that would see all of her if she did not look away—the shadows of her heart, the dark corners of her mind, the deep regret that lived in her soul, eating at her for not confessing her feelings, not taking a chance all those years ago.
She stared at his lips, at the mouth that kept her awake night after night. Her fingers ached to caress the scar marking its upper corner.
The impulse to confess that she hadn’t changed that much—at least in regard to her fool’s obsession with him—smoldered within her chest.
“Yes,” he mused, drawing a finger down the side of her face in a tantalizing stroke. She closed her eyes at the contact, tormented from the touch. At her mouth, he traced her bottom lip, the rough pad of his thumb a slow drag of heat over her sensitized skin. “But you aren’t that girl anymore, are you?” That said, he dropped his hand and stepped back with the abruptness of a slap to the face.
“And you’re not that boy,” she shot back, lips tingling from his caress.
The grim way he looked at her fueled her temper. The boy she had known never toyed with women. Never seduced one and then moved to another without pausing for breath. It did not matter that she had been both women. It still marked him a libertine, incapable of deeper emotion for any single woman. A man, she realized, not very different from her late husband. Unable to love…or at least unable to love her.
But then perhaps she didn’t exist anymore. Not as he had known her. Not as she had once been. Their days of frolic seemed a lifetime ago. All save that day. It haunted her still, teased her with the haziness of a dream. The afternoon had been like all others. Before he fell in love with Madeline.
They had swum beneath a rare sun, splashing and wrestling in the water. Until it happened. A flash of light in a dark sky. The moment had burst upon them, and they had stopped, frozen with a sudden awareness that had not been there before.
She could recall the drops of water clinging to his face, to the lean, exposed flesh. Ripples of muscle and sinew danced beneath his skin. His slicked back hair gleamed darkly beneath the sun’s glare, beckoning her fingers. He had looked at her then. Truly looked at her.
Frozen and entangled, every fiber of her had screamed for him to close the distance and end it—or rather begin it. Instead, he had broken away and swam back several strokes to splash her as if nothing untoward had occurred.
That memory had never left her. She thought about it countless times over the years, wondering what he would have done had she only leaned closer. Would he still have given his love to Madeline beneath falling apple blossoms? Or might she have been the one to claim his heart?
“No,” he agreed, his tone brusque. “I’m not that boy. Neither of us are who we used to be.”
She nodded stiffly before turning and moving to the window. He followed, the heat of his big body radiating at her back. She drew a small invisible circle on the glass, trying to pretend she did not feel him there.
True, the Seth she had grown up with had treated her with affection, entrusted her with his confidences, shared his dreams. The rigid man behind her would never do those things. She would do wel
l to remember that.
“It appears we shall become reacquainted.” The low rumble of his voice sent shivers up her spine. “I’ll arrange for a special license. I don’t imagine you would want a large wedding again—”
“Why are you doing this?” she demanded in a voice so soft she could scarcely hear herself. “I cannot imagine you actually want to wed—”
She felt his sigh at her back. “You carry my child. My heir.”
Her stomach tightened. She should feel gratitude that honor guided him, but she felt only a gnawing bleakness. They would marry for the child. A grimace pinched her face. Love had nothing to do with it. Nor would it ever.
Turning, she faced him and her heart clenched at the grim resolve in his stare. At worst, she would live with his quiet condemnation. At best, his indifference.
“We’ll marry for the child,” she uttered in agreement. Her fingers drifted to her stomach, to the life hidden within. “I can think of no better reason.”
“Make no mistake, Jane. Ours will be a practical union. Don’t try to make more of it than that. Don’t expect love.”
Don’t expect love. She nodded numbly.
“I ask only one thing.”
She forced a smile, praying her face wouldn’t crack from the effort. “Of course.”
“Look after my sister if anything befalls me.” His eyes drilled into her, stripping away flesh and bone to the core of her. “Give me your word, and I’ll believe you.” His gaze drifted somewhere beyond her shoulder. “I’ll know at least I did not fail her in that.”
“Certainly,” she agreed. “You needn’t even ask.”
His gaze shot back to hers. “And you’ll have my name.” He dipped his head, putting his eyes level with hers. A shock of gold-streaked brown hair fell onto his forehead. She had to stop herself from reaching out and brushing it back. “Don’t ask for more.”
Jane winced, fighting to hold his stare in the face of words that clawed her heart. “I understand.”
He stared at her a long moment before nodding, seemingly satisfied with her response. “I don’t suppose it seemly for you to relocate to my residence prior to our vows.” His lips twisted in derision. “However, you cannot remain here. Are your parents in Town?”