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“They love each other,” Val said, “clearly they do, but Anna deserves to be approached as the wealthy young lady of quality she is, not as a housekeeper on the run from venal schemes. And I don’t want to hear talk of confinements, particularly not when His Grace has ears everywhere.”
“Westhaven’s honor has gotten the best of his common sense,” Dev argued. “Anna doesn’t want to be approached later; she wants to be approached now.”
“Then why does she keep turning him down?” Val said reasonably. “His efforts to woo her would be an embarrassment, were I not convinced he has the right of it.”
“I don’t know.” Dev rubbed his chin and glanced at the window. “This whole business makes no sense, and I am inclined—odd as it might sound—to hear what His Grace has to suggest.”
“I agree.” Val sighed, closing the desk drawer with a bang. “Which only underscores that Westhaven isn’t making one damned bit of sense.”
In the less than two days that remained to them, the earl and Anna were in each other’s pockets constantly. They sat side by side in the back gardens, on the library sofa, or at breakfast. When Dev and Val joined them for meals, they affected a little more decorum, but their eyes conveyed what their hands and bodies could not express. Anna was again sleeping upstairs, and the earl was again joining her at the end of each day.
The earl drew a brush down the length of her dark hair. “I have asked Dev and Val to escort you to Their Graces tomorrow, Anna.”
“I see. You are otherwise occupied.”
“I will be. I think you will enjoy my mother’s hospitality, and my sisters will love you.”
“Morgan adores them,” Anna said, her smile brittle. “Mourning has left them in want of company, and Morgan is lonely, as well.”
“And you, Anna.” The earl’s hand went still. “Will you be lonely?”
She met his eyes in the mirror above the vanity, and he saw hunger there. A hunger to match his own.
“I am lonely now, Westhaven.” She rose and turned. “I am desperately lonely, for you.” She pressed her lips to his, the first they’d kissed in weeks, and though his arms came around her briefly, he was the first one to step back.
“Anna, we will regret it.”
“I will regret it if we don’t,” she replied, her expression unreadable. “I understand, Westhaven, I must leave tomorrow, and in a way it will be a relief, but…”
“But?” He kept his expression neutral, but his breathing was accelerated from just that brief meeting of lips. And what did she mean, leaving him would be a relief?
“But we have this night to bring each other pleasure one last time,” she said miserably. “What difference can it make how we spend it?”
He had been asking himself that same question for days and giving himself answers having to do with honor and respect and even love, but those answers wouldn’t address the pure pain he saw in Anna’s eyes.
“I do not want to take advantage of you,” he said. “Not again, Anna.”
“Then let me take advantage of you,” Anna pleaded softly. “Please, Westhaven. I won’t ask again.”
She desired him, Westhaven told himself. That much had always been real between them, and she was asking him to indulge his most sincere wish. That it was his most sincere wish didn’t mean he should deny her, didn’t mean he should assume, with ducal arrogance, he knew better than she what she needed.
“Come.” He tugged her by the hand to stand by the bed and slowly undressed her, taking particular care she not have to move her right shoulder and arm. When she was on the bed, resting on her back, he got out of his own clothes and locked the door before joining her.
“We will be careful, Anna.” He crouched over her naked, his erection grazing her belly. “You are injured, and I cannot go about this oblivious to that fact.”
“We will be careful,” she agreed. Her left hand cradled his jaw and then slid around to his nape to draw him down to her. “We will be very careful.”
He remained above her, his weight on his forearms, even as he joined his mouth to hers and then his body to hers.
“Westhaven.” Anna undulated up against him. “Please, not slow, not this time.”
“Not slow, but careful.”
“Not that either, for God’s sake.”
He laced his fingers through hers where they rested on her pillow and raised himself up just enough to hold her gaze.
“Careful,” he reiterated. “Deliberate.” He slowly hilted himself in her and withdrew. “Measured.” Another thrust. “Steady.” Another. “But hot,” he whispered, “Hard… deep…”
“Oh, God, Gayle…” Her body spasmed around his cock, clutching at him just as hot, hard, and deep as he’d promised her. She buried her face against his shoulder to mute her keening groans of pleasure, and still he drove her on, one careful thrust at a time.
“I am undone,” she pronounced, brushing his hair back from his brow. “I am utterly, absolutely undone.”
“I am not.” The earl smiled down at her, a conqueror’s possessive smile. “But how is your shoulder?”
“You can even think to ask? My shoulder is fine, I believe, but as I am floating a small distance above this bed, I will have to let you know when I am reunited with it.”
“You are pleased?” he asked, lacing his fingers with hers. “This is what you wanted?”
“This is what I needed,” she said softly as he began to move in her again carefully. “This is what I sorely, sorely needed.”
“Anna… When you leave tomorrow…?”
“Yes?” She closed her eyes, making it harder to read her. He laid his cheek against hers and closed his fingers around hers, needing as much contact as he could have.
“When you leave tomorrow and I am not there, this will be part of it,” he said, turning his face to kiss her cheek then resting his cheek against hers again.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I will be thinking of you,” he said, “and you will be thinking of me and of this pleasure we shared. It’s…good is the only word I can find. Joyous, lovely, beautiful, somehow, even if it can’t be more than it is. I wanted you to know how I feel.”
“Oh, you.” Anna curled up to his chest tears flowing. “Gayle Tristan Montmorency Windham. Shame on you; you have made me cry with your poetry.”
He kissed her tears away this time and made her forget her sorrows—almost—with his loving, until she was crying out her pleasure again and again. He let himself join her the last time, his own climax exploding through him, leaving him floating that same small distance above the bed, until sleep began to steal his awareness.
He tended to their ablutions then stood gazing down at Anna where she dozed naked on her left side. It was time to go, he knew, but still, dawn was hours away.
“Don’t go.” Anna opened her eyes and met his gaze. “We will be parted for a long time, Westhaven. Let us remain joined just a little while longer.”
He nodded and climbed into bed, spooning himself around her back and tucking an arm around her waist. This night’s work was pure, selfish folly, but he’d treasure the memory, and he hoped she would, as well.
He made love to her one more time—sweetly, slowly, just before dawn, and then he was gone.
Anna slept late the next morning and considered it a mercy, as the earl had told her he was off to Willow Bend for the day. Val and Dev had ridden out, and so she had breakfast to herself. Her shoulder was itchy, and it took her longer to pack than she’d thought it would, but before long, she was being summoned for luncheon on the back patio.
“You look healthy,” Dev said. “If I did not know you were sporting the remains of a bullet wound, I would think you in the pink.”
“Thank you.” Anna smiled. “I slept well last night.” For the first time in weeks, she truly had.
“Well”—Val sat down and reached for the iced lemonade pitcher—“I did not sleep well. We need another thunderstorm.”
“I wonder.” Anna’s eyes met Val’s. “Does Morgan still dread the thunderstorms?”
“She does,” he replied, sitting back. “She figured out that the day your parents died, when she was trapped in the buggy accident, it stormed the entire afternoon. Her associations are still quite troubling, but her ears don’t physically hurt.” Dev and Anna exchanged a look of surprise, but Val was tucking into his steak.
Dev turned his attention back to his plate. “Anna, are you ready to remove to the ducal mansion?”
“As ready as I’ll be,” Anna replied, her steak suddenly losing its appeal.
“Would you like me to cut that for you?” Dev asked, nodding at the meat on her plate. “I’ve pulled a shoulder now and then or landed funny from a frisky horse, and I know the oddest things can be uncomfortable.”
“I just haven’t entirely regained my appetite,” Anna lied, eyeing the steak dubiously. “And I find I am tired, so perhaps you gentleman will excuse me while I catch a nap before we go?”
She was gone before they were on their feet, leaving Dev and Val both frowning.
“We offered to assist him in any way,” Dev said, picking up his glass. “I think this goes beyond even fraternal devotion.”
“He’s doing what he thinks is right,” Val responded. “I have had quite enough of my front-row seat, Dev. Tragedy has never been my cup of tea.”
“Nor farce mine.”
She didn’t see him for a week.
The time was spent dozing, trying on the new dresses that had arrived from the dressmaker’s, getting to know the duke’s daughters, and being reunited with her grandmother. That worthy dame was in much better form than Anna would have guessed, much to her relief.
“It took a good year,” Grandmama reported, “but the effects of my apoplexy greatly diminished after that. Still, it did not serve to let Helmsley know I was so much better. He wasn’t one to let me off the estate, but I was able to correspond, as you know.”
“Thank God for loyal innkeepers.”
“And thank God for young earls,” Grandmother said. “That traveling coach was the grandest thing, Anna. So when can I meet your young man?”
“He isn’t my young man.” Anna shook her head, rose, and found something fascinating to stare at out the window. “He was my employer, and he is a gentleman, so he and his brothers came to my aid.”
“Fine-looking fellow,” Grandmama remarked innocently.
“You’ve met him?”
“Morgan and I ran into him and his younger brother when she took me to the park yesterday. Couple of handsome devils. In my day, bucks like that would have been brought to heel.”
“This isn’t your day”—Anna smiled—“but as you are widowed, you shouldn’t feel compelled to exercise restraint on my behalf.”
“Your dear grandfather gave me permission to remarry, you know.” Grandmother peered at a tray of sweets as she spoke. “At the time, I told him I could never love another, and I won’t—not in the way I loved him.”
“But?” Anna turned curious eyes on her grandmother and waited.
“But he knew me better than I know myself. Life is short, Anna James, but it can be long and short at the same time if you’re lonely. I think that was part of your brother’s problem.”
“What do you mean?” Anna asked, not wanting to point out the premature use of the past tense.
“He was too alone up there in Yorkshire.” Grandmother bit into a chocolate. “The only boy, then being raised by an old man, too isolated. There’s a reason boys are sent off to school at a young age. Put all those barbarians together, and they somehow civilize each other.”
“Westhaven wasn’t sent to school until he was fourteen,” Anna said. “He is quite civilized, as are his brothers.”
“Civilized, handsome, well heeled, titled.” Grandmother looked up from the tray of sweets. “What on earth is not to like?”
Anna crossed the room. “What if I said I did like him, and he and I were to settle here, two hundred miles from you and Rosecroft? When would you see your great-grandbabies? When would you make this journey again, as we haven’t a ducal carriage for you to travel in?”
“My dear girl.” Her grandmother peered up at her. “Yorkshire is cold, bleak, and lonely much of the year. It is a foolish place to try to grow flowers, and were it not the family seat, your grandfather and I would have removed to Devon long ago. Now, have a sweet, as your disposition is in want of same.”
She picked out a little piece of marzipan shaped like a melon and smiled encouragingly at her granddaughter. Anna stared at the piece of candy, burst into tears, and ran from the room.
“Anna.” Westhaven took both her hands and bent to kiss her cheek. “How do you fare? You look well, if a bit tired.”
“My grandmother is wearing me out,” Anna said, her smile strained. “It is good to see you again.”
“And you,” the earl responded, reluctant to drop her hands. “But I come with sad news.”
“My brother?”
The earl nodded, searching her eyes.
“He passed away last night but left you a final gift,” the earl said, drawing her to sit beside him on a padded window seat. “He wrote out a confession, implicating Stull and himself in all manner of crimes, including arson, misfeasance, assault, conspiracies to commit same, and more. Stull will either hang or be transported if he doesn’t flee, as deathbed confessions are admissible evidence.”
“My brother is dead.” Anna said the words out loud. “I want to be sad, but no feeling comes.”
“He was adamant he wasn’t trying to shoot you. Dev spent some time with him, and though your brother considered murdering you for money, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He insisted the gun went off by accident.”
“And Dev?” Anna looked troubled. “Will charges be pressed, and is he all right?”
“It is like you to think of St. Just. But Anna, your family’s title has gone into abeyance. You might lose Rosecroft.”
“Dev served on the Peninsula for nearly eight years,” Anna said. “He brought two peers of the realm to justice when they were bent on misbehavior. Let him have Rosecroft. Grandmama has just informed me it’s a stupid place to try to grow flowers, but it’s pretty and peaceful. Horses might like it.”
“Then where will you live? I thought you were going to bow to the wishes of your family and remove to Yorkshire?”
“My family.” Anna’s lips thinned. “Morgan flirts with everything she sees, and Grandmother is suddenly tired of northern winters. I am related to a couple of tarts.”
“Even tarts have to live somewhere.”
“Will you sell me Willow Bend?” She looked as surprised by her question as he was, as if it had just popped into her head.
I’d give it to you, he wanted to say. But that would be highly improper.
“I will, if you really want it. The stables are done, and the house is ready for somebody to live there.”
“I like it,” Anna said, “very much in fact, and I like the neighbors there. It’s large enough I could put in some greenhouses and an orangery and so on.”
“I’ll have the solicitors draw up some papers, but Anna?”
“Hmm?”
“You know I would give it to you,” he said despite the insult implied.
She waved a hand. “You are too generous, but thank you for the thought. Tell me again St. Just is not brooding. He took a man’s life, and even for a soldier, that cannot be an easy thing.”
“He will manage, Anna. Val and I will look after him, and he could not let your brother make off with you. The man did contemplate your murder, though we will never know how sincerely.”
“Dev knew”—Anna frowned—“and I knew. Helmsley wasn’t right. Something in him broke, morally or rationally. It’s awful of me, but I am glad he’s dead.”
“It isn’t awful of you. For entirely different reasons, I was glad when Victor died.” He wanted to hold her, to offer her at least the comfort
of his embrace, but she wasn’t seeking it. “Are you up to a turn in the garden?”
“I am.” Anna smiled at him, but to him, it was forced, at best an expression of relief rather than pleasure. When they were a safe distance from the house, he paused and regarded her closely.
“You aren’t sleeping well,” he concluded. And neither was he, of course. “And you look like you’ve lost weight, Anna. Don’t tell me it’s the heat.”
“You’re looking a bit peaked yourself, and you’ve lost weight, as well.”
I miss you terribly.
“Are my parents treating you well?” the earl asked, resuming their sedate walk.
“They are lovely, Westhaven, and you knew they would be, or you wouldn’t have sent us here. I am particularly fond of your papa.”
“You are? That would be the Duke of Moreland?”
“Perhaps, though the duke has not been in evidence much. There’s a pleasant older fellow who bears you a resemblance, though. He delights in telling me stories about you and your brothers and sisters. He flirts with my grandmother and my sister, he adores his wife, and he is very, very proud of you.”
“I’ve met him. A recent acquaintance, but charming.”
“You should spend more time with him,” Anna said. “He is acutely aware that with Bart and Victor, he spent years being critical and competitive, when all he really wants is for his children to be happy.”
“Competitive? I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Well,” Anna stopped to sniff at a red rose, closing her eyes to inhale its fragrance. “You should. You have brothers, and it can’t be so different from sons.”
Tell me now, Anna, he silently pleaded as she ran her finger over a rose petal. Tell me I could have a son, that we could have a son, a daughter, a baby, a future—anything.
“How soon can I remove to Willow Bend?” she asked, that forced, bright smile on her face again.
“Tomorrow,” the earl said, blinking. “I trust you to complete the sales transaction, and the house will fare better occupied. It will please me to think of you there.” She stumbled, but his grip on her arm prevented her from falling.