A Most Demanding Mistress (Fashionably Impure Book 2) (16 page)

Chapter
Fourteen

Adrian had never felt so full of darkness in
his whole life. He had one driving need, and that was to see Miranda. To hold
her in his arms and feel her heart, still living and beating, against his. To
squeeze her until she wriggled in his embrace and pressed against his chest,
begging to be let go.

Only then, would he truly believe that she
was really safe and sound.

He ordered his driver to take him to Chelsea
and at her house, he let himself in with the key.

First, he went to Davey’s bedchamber.
Moonlight shimmered like silvery dust on his fair hair. His cheeks had begun to
fill out again and their color was more rosy than not. But what filled Adrian
with the most gratitude was the way the boy slept. Peaceful and with a relaxed
expression.

Adrian’s heart filled to overflowing with
gratitude for Miranda and her ability to love Davey the way a boy needed to be
loved. To draw out his confessions in the way a child would relate to.

The need to see Miranda became overwhelming
and Adrian flung open the door to her chamber.

She wasn’t there.

Her bedspread was drawn back, the sheets
wrinkled. He touched the mussed linen and found it cool.

“Miranda,” he called, softly, mindful of Davey
sleeping down the corridor. He ran through the house, searching for her, his
mood turning almost frantic until he came to the back exit.

The door to the terrace was open, allowing
in a spill of moonlight the sheer white curtain that covered the sidelight
flowing in the breeze like a gentle beacon, calling him.

He wandered out to the balcony then spied
the glow of her lantern in the garden.

Of course, his country girl would
instinctively seek the comfort of nature when she was overset.

She sat on the stone bench that faced the
cherub fountain. The moon lent her nightdress a silvery-lavender sort of color
and with her hair softly curling about her shoulders, she appeared angelic
herself.

“Miranda.”

She held out a hand.

He yanked his gloves off and tossed them to
the ground and then he rushed to her and took her hand.

The feel of her bare flesh against his, so
alive and warm, sent such relief through him that his body actually went weak
with it.

Overcome with gratefulness and love for her,
maybe even some awe towards her, his mood goddess, he knelt beside her and put
his head in her lap. “I am heartsore and filled with such darkness tonight. You
told me before that I should come to you and find my solace. I was too
stubborn, too arrogant, too determined to remain strong at all costs, even to
you. Even to myself. God help me, even to my sons.” He paused, wrapping his
hands about her. “Well, I come to you tonight, will all my arrogance and
stubbornness ripped away by all the unacceptable truths I have been faced with
and I am filled with nothing but a terrible darkness that has obscured all my
ability to hope. And I ask you, please, my love, solace me now.”

“What darkness has caused you to lose your
hope?” She caressed his hair. “Tell me.” Her voice was gentle as a feather
gliding on the wind.

“You were right about Dorothy.”

“And?”

“And she’ll be taken care of. We needn’t
worry over her any longer.”

She continued stroking his head. “You won’t
tell me more?”

“There’s little else to tell,” he said.

To tell her all would only add to her
hurt—the hurts she’d carried her entire life. With the strength of his love for
her, he would carry the burden of the remainder of tonight’s secrets.

He moved to sit beside her on the bench. “I
first began to lose hope when I was young and neglected by my father. I’ve told
you this.”

She nodded, her eyes shone with sympathy and
quickly because glossed by tears.

“I never allowed myself to admit, truly, how
broken I was.” His voice turned hoarse. “I hid behind a belief that all who
loved passionately, excessively were the broken ones. I believed I need only
find a sane, safe and rational love. I though I’d found it in Jane, but it
eluded me. My marriage disappointed me. And that disappointment broke what was
left of whatever hope I’d ever had.”

“Oh, my darling,” Miranda said, reaching to
touch his cheek.

 
He
cupped her face. “Years ago, when I first saw you, on Carrville’s arm and he
was so proud, like strutting, aging rooster and he paraded you, an
eighteen-year-old country girl, around the Courtesans’ ball, do you remember?”

“Yes,” she said, softly.

“Our eyes met, and I saw a glimmer of the
hopes I had once held, in the wistfulness of your gaze and my heart came alive
in that moment.”

“I saw that in your eyes.” She whispered
this, as though it were too dangerous a truth to be spoken too loudly.

“You turned away,” he accused.

“I was terrified of what I felt at that
moment.” She squeezed his leg as though driven by the stridency of her defense.
“I’d been told you were next to penniless and I had to provide and protect Mama
and myself from Winterton. I needed Carrville, badly, and I wanted so much to
be a good mistress. A faithful mistress. I hated you for making me feel that I
could so easily be something far, far less worthy. I hated you for making me
want you.”

“I was angry with you for making me feel so
alive with just one look and then killing that hope, so easily. So painlessly.”

“It was not painless. Not at all.” Her voice
rang with sadness. “I had my duty. And you, God, you were so arrogant it
frightened me. Carrville was always so jolly, so kind.”

“I have been afraid that all I really loved
was your outward beauty. I thought myself obsessed with a need to possess it,
like a collector possesses fine works of art. But now that I admit the truth of
that first moment to myself. Now that I have come to know you so well, I know
that I fell in love with the beautiful hope that you carry within you. A light
that shines so brightly, it eclipses any idealized image of physical beauty. I
love your strength, your determination to fight against all the wrongs done to
you. I adore you for your continued ability to love so deeply, so passionately
in the face of so many painful hours. Pain you never deserved.”

Tears spilled from her eyes. “Oh, Adrian,
how much time have we wasted with our need to protect ourselves against each
other?”

“Hush,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Don’t
think of that now. Kiss me and share your love with me and show me how to hope
again.”

She leaned close, her breath carrying a hint
of tea and raspberry preserves. She put her lips to his, a sweet, gentle yet
urgent pressure. Her tongue flicked at the seam of his. He opened his mouth and
couldn’t stop his hand from finding her breast and cupping the soft, warm
weight of it.

She pressed his chest and pulled away, her
eyes full of mirth. “You say that you are no longer afraid that you love me
only for my beauty, yet I know you love my breasts.”

He bent and took her mouth, kissing her
deeply, until he lifted his head and saw that her lips were red and swollen
from the force and intensity of his passion.

“You love my breasts, don’t you?” She
laughed, in that wicked, sensual way of hers. The laugh that fired his blood to
boiling.

“I do, God, I do adore them so much.” He
squeezed her with the barest pressure.

She shivered in his arms.

He hooked a finger into her neckline and
pulled downwards with a quick, fierce yank. Seams tore, and the pearl buttons
popped, falling on the stones about them with little clicking type sounds. He
pulled the edges of the gaping nightdress aside and revealed her bare flesh.

He bent and kissed each one then spent
several moments caressing her, before suckling on her stiffened nipples until
she was moaning and squirming.

He raised his head, still stroking her all
the while. “They are the most beautiful, womanly sights I have ever seen. I
can’t deny it. I do want to possess them, I am mad to claim your beauty for my
own. And you mustn’t hate me for that. You can’t hate me for it, Miranda,
because I also need your love. If you were to stop loving me, I fear that I
wouldn’t even be able to draw breath.”

He cupped her face, again, and kissed her
with all the love in his heart.

Her urgent need thrummed beneath the
surface, igniting his blood even more. His cock throbbed, hardening and
lengthening.

But despite that tender gossamer thread of
urgency in her kiss, in her soft moans, he sensed her holding back, or was that
she was unable to express fully the growing need within her?

He knew the reason why.

He knew the words she needed to hear from
him, now. He lifted his head and looked into her eyes. “You’ve asked me to
change my ways. You want me to stop drinking to intoxication and to spend less
time at the gaming tables.”

Her face suddenly relaxed and her eyes
brightened. “Yes,” she said. “For everyone’s sake. Including yours.”

Another wave of gratitude crashed over him.
Thankfulness that she loved him too well to make excuses for him and that she
wouldn’t allow him to destroy himself. Thankfulness that she thought highly
enough of him to ask for all that she deserved.

“Then I will do my best to change,” he
vowed.

“That’s all anyone can ask.”

This time, when he kissed her, she opened
and poured all her passion into her kiss, drawing his tongue into her mouth and
giving him back measure for measure all the intensity he gave to her.

It was too cold to make love out of doors,
so he carried her up to bed then he stripped off and came to her, naked and
ready, his erection felt harder and larger than ever. He stretched out over her
body.

She reached between them and grasped his
rearing cock, giving it a firm, loving squeeze. He allowed her to take the
lead, to guide him to her wet heat. Her greedy sex sucked him in, deeply,
clenching around him.

A warm, eager welcome.

He groaned.

She wrapped her legs tightly about him,
leaning up. Her breath tickled his ear. “We’re free now, free to love each
other.” She laughed, a rich, sensual, womanly laugh and one that he could feel vibrating
through her body. The sensation was novel and heady. “Free to love each other
as often and whenever.” She nipped at his earlobe. “And where ever we like.”

“Only in the summer, my love,” he replied
then he groaned as her sex squeezed him, tightly.

“We shall have a greenhouse then.”

“And dine on strawberries and champagne.”

“Yes, oh yes,” she gasped, as he thrust
deeply.

Afterward, he held her, feeling her body
quake with her desperate panting for air. “I’ve made you many promises this
night,” he said, still bit winded himself.

“Yes,” she said, with dreaminess in her
voice.

“I’ll stop becoming intoxicated.”

“Except for Christmas?” she placed a kiss on
his cheek, a faint, butterfly wing kind of kiss that set his heart racing.

He grasped her hand and pressed it to his
chest, over his heart. “No, I think I must quit all spirits. It is something in
my nature. It leads me to excess.”

“What about excesses of lovemaking?”

He took her hand and kissed the palm. “I
think excesses of lovemaking are only to be proper between a man and a wife.”

Her body went still. Rigid.

He waited for her to accept what he had just
said.

“But earls cannot wed bastard-born girls.”

“I’ve worked so hard, to rebuild a family
destiny. For a bloodline that never cared for me. Never loved. No one has loved
me as you have. I would give you everything. I would give you my name. I would
make you my countess.”

“Adrian…” Her voice quavered. “What are you
saying?”

“I am saying that I will see your greenhouse
built.”

“Adrian, you’re making me afraid.” She
sounded so small, so vulnerable.

He held her and stroked her hair. “Hush,
now.”

“I am afraid. I am afraid of reaching for
the moon and losing it and then being denied everything else that I
could
have had.” She took a trembling breath. “Oh Adrian, we love each other, and we
could be happy with just what we have now.”

“I don’t know if I can be happy with the way
things are now. Not for long. I want your commitment to me. If you accept me
and are willing to live with my genteel poverty…”

“Wait.” She craned her neck around so that
she looked up at him, her auburn hair glinting in the dying firelight. “Yes,
your pockets aren’t deep and yet you talk of building a greenhouse? How you
tease and torment me.”

She spoke lightly, but he could hear the
confusion beneath the lightness.

He touched her nose with a fingertip. “My
cousin is offering me a job.”