Her face flushed and she did not meet his gaze. “No,” she admitted very, very quietly.
“You made me feel like a whore. You made me ashamed as I had never been shamed before.”
She bowed her head as if bearing the weight of the world on her slender shoulders. “I apologized to Daniel, and now I apologize to you. I deeply regret what I did that night. I have regretted it every day since.”
She lifted her face. “But I do not regret having Jocelyn.”
He reached out to take her cold hands in his. “Verity, what you did that night saved me.”
Her gaze anxiously searched his face, the faint light of hope dawning. “Saved you? From what?”
“From myself. From the road to ruin I was merrily marching upon. I needed to see the unthinking, unfeeling cad I was. I needed to have it made so clear, I couldn’t deny it anymore. If you had not
come into my bedchamber that night, by now I would be an even worse scoundrel than I was. You rescued me, Verity, and for that I will always be grateful.”
“You mean it,” she murmured wonderingly.
He nodded and made a little smile. “I confess I did not enjoy the learning of such a lesson, but I am a better man for it.”
He slowly moved his hands up her arms. “I don’t think a day has gone by that I haven’t thought of you. And cursed you, at first,” he confessed. “But since my return, I have had my old self cast up to me a hundred times, and I can see the selfish beast I was.”
“I have thought about you, too, yet I only cursed myself.”
“You must promise me that you won’t do that anymore.” He inched closer. “I needed to be saved, Verity, and you did it. I shall be forever in your debt, and glad to be so.”
Still cautiously, as if he were afraid she might shatter like glass in his arms, he drew her to him. “Thank you, Verity, my beautiful savior,” he murmured as he bent his head to kiss her.
This kiss was different from any they had shared: tentative, tender, as if they were both in the first flush of youth, and this their very first kiss.
Not wanting the feeling to end, Verity wound
her arms around his neck and gave herself up to the pleasure and yearning that filled her.
His tongue pressed gently against her lips and she parted them. With a low moan, she relaxed against him.
If only this
were
their first kiss. If only she had not given herself in marriage out of desperation and fear of poverty. If only she had not spent the past ten years in a cauldron of regret and dread that their secret would be discovered by her brother-in-law, and everybody else they knew.
Yet that was the choice she had made, the choice she had to live with, and it must still be so. The alternative was shame, ridicule, disgrace.
Reluctantly she pulled away, ignoring the look of loss in his eyes that mirrored what was in her own heart. “Please, don’t kiss me again.”
“No?”
“No. I am a respectable widow now.”
“While I am still a lascivious scoundrel?”
“I…I am not sure what you are.”
If he was disappointed by her answer, he gave no sign. Instead, he made a rueful smile and put his hand over his heart. “I am yours to command, Mrs. Davis-Jones. I promise I shall not do anything that will upset you.” His smile disappeared, to be replaced by a blatant yearning. “If you will give me permission to visit Jocelyn. She is, after all, my child.”
Verity tried to calm her fiercely beating heart, while her mind cried out that to allow him to come again would be folly, dangerous folly, that could end in disaster.
And yet…and yet he was Jocelyn’s natural father.
She had denied him knowledge of his child for ten years and when he looked at her thus, with such hope and need, how could she refuse him? Perhaps if they were very careful…
“You may come to visit us Saturday morning. If the day is fine, we shall meet you in the wood, as if by accident.”
He nodded and she relaxed a little, glad he would accept this. “Where are you staying?”
“With Myron Thorpe at his so-called hunting lodge.”
“You know Sir Myron?”
“We were at school together. He tells me you and he barely know each other.”
“He and I have nothing in common.”
The duke’s lips jerked upward in a small smile as he went to untie his horse. “Nor do I, except for our school days. I understand Jocelyn upset him over some cows?”
“That was an accident.”
“So I thought.” He paused, stroking his horse’s head with his lean, strong fingers. “What if the day is not fine?”
Verity tore her gaze away from his hand. “You will have to wait until the next Saturday.”
He nodded as he started to lead his horse toward the door. “Very well.”
“I appreciate that you are willing to be careful.”
“I gather I have little choice.”
She could not deny that.
She hurried ahead of him to the door and peered out. “I don’t see Jocelyn or Nancy through the window, so you can go back the way you came. What will you tell Sir Myron on Saturday?”
Galen untied his horse. “That I am going to the village.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“You must have an excuse.”
“In that case, I shall say I am going to the blacksmith’s to have my horse’s shoes checked. Myron will appreciate my concern over that, I’m sure.”
“I hope you’re right.”
The duke led his horse to the door. She was about to open it for him when he put his hand over hers as it rested on the latch. At the sensation of the warm pressure of his strong fingers, she gave him a questioning, sidelong glance.
“Verity, I shall do my best to keep the truth about Jocelyn a secret, because you request it. You have the word of the Duke of Deighton, and while
that may not have amounted to much ten years ago, it is different now. Because of you.”
For a moment she hoped—thought—he was going to kiss her again.
But he didn’t. Instead, he shoved open the door and led his horse outside.
Verity didn’t follow immediately. She couldn’t. She had to regain control over her wayward emotions.
She pressed her fingers to her lips, the lips he had kissed so tenderly, robbing her of sense and reason and any notion of what was proper.
As she considered how his touch and his kisses stole her rationality, she wondered if she had just made another mistake that would be disastrous.
“A
re you expecting something to fall out of the sky?” Myron asked jovially, abruptly drawing Galen’s attention from his contemplation of the weather.
Their greatcoats slapping damply against their Hessian boots, the stocks of their guns tucked under their arms and the long barrels pointing at the ground, they sauntered toward Myron’s manor after a morning spent fowling. Behind them, gamekeepers carried the pheasants and grouse Myron had bagged, and the one bird Galen had killed.
“I was merely wondering if it was going to be sunny tomorrow, or wet.”
Tomorrow he was to see Verity and Jocelyn, and the weather had to be fine. Otherwise, he would have to wait to see his daughter again, because of Verity’s restrictions.
Once more he reconciled himself to the limits
she was placing upon his relationship with his daughter. It was, after all, understandable that she would wish to avoid scandal.
But at what cost? Her fears had already cost him ten years of knowing his child, his flesh and blood.
“It should be as fair as today,” Myron said confidently, “if the sun is as red at sunset as it was yesterday.”
“I hope you’re right. I was planning on going into the village to have the blacksmith look at my stallion’s shoes.”
“You’re going to Jefford to see the blacksmith, eh? Or the blacksmith’s comely daughter?”
Galen bit back a peeved retort. Myron had been saying things like this the whole of his visit—not an insignificant price to pay for his accommodation. “I didn’t even know the blacksmith had a daughter.”
“He does.”
“Believe me, Myron, I have no interest in the blacksmith’s daughter, comely or otherwise.”
Myron flushed with embarrassment. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
Obviously he had not been as successful hiding his annoyance as he had thought. “No, forgive me for being peevish. I acquired a less than sterling reputation years ago quite of my own volition. Sadly, I fear it will follow me to my grave, no matter how I behave in my old age.”
“Old age—oh, that’s good!” Myron said with a chortle. “I don’t think you need mourn your reputation. Some men would be only too happy to have your notoriety.”
His tone made it rather clear that Myron was one such fellow.
“They might think so, until they did. I assure you, Myron, it is a hard thing to live down the follies and thoughtless acts of one’s youth.”
Myron nodded pensively, as if he were recalling a few follies and thoughtless acts of his own. Whatever they had been, Galen was sure they were minor at best, for Myron was too honest and good-natured a chap to do anything truly immoral.
Myron would have sent Verity scurrying from his room—or he would have scurried away, instead. Myron would have been a gentleman.
“I’m sure the ladies will be glad to hear of your reformation,” Myron noted.
Although he remained silent, a hint of skepticism twisted Galen’s lips. He was of a decidedly different opinion, for it wasn’t only his valet who had expected him to resume his lascivious ways. Several married ladies he had sported with in his youth had already been shocked and angry when he had repelled their advances upon his return.
But he meant what he said to Verity: he was a changed man, and he would not debase himself anymore.
He would become the most respectable duke in the kingdom. He would do that not just for himself, but for Jocelyn’s sake, because one day, when she was older, he hoped he could tell her the truth and on that day, he didn’t want Jocelyn to be any more ashamed of him than she had to be because of his youthful misconduct.
On further consideration, becoming the most respectable duke in the kingdom would be too easy. All that meant was not wasting his money, or gambling or drinking to excess or having mistresses.
He must try to be as good and respectable as…as Verity’s husband had been.
Damn Daniel Davis-Jones! How was he going to live up to a dead paragon?
“It must be something to have the women rush to you like hawks to the lure,” Myron continued pensively.
“It must be something to be such an excellent shot,” Galen replied, and it was no empty compliment. Myron had gotten his prey easily, always with one shot, and with a concentration that Galen had initially found astonishing.
He would never have believed that the voluble Myron Thorpe was capable of such silent determination and single-minded attention.
Myron beamed. “Practice, Your Grace, practice, that’s all. Why, I shoot every day it’s not positively raining.”
“I wish I could say it was practice in my case, but unfortunately, it is only an accident of birth. If I were not a duke, I daresay my ‘flock’ would be considerably smaller.”
“Nonsense! You’re a dashed good-looking fellow, too.”
“Another accident of birth. You cannot claim to have seen women flocking here. Why, except for your servants, we have been a couple of old bachelors this week.”
Myron smiled as if he were about to give Galen his heart’s desire. “Ah, but not for much longer!”
They entered the back entrance of the manor, the sound of their boots echoing in the large stone foyer. Totally oblivious to the mud he tracked across the flagstones, Myron’s eyes twinkled with pleasure as he sat on a wooden bench. “Can you guess what I’m getting at?”
“Let me try,” Galen replied warily, subduing a sigh as he regarded his delighted friend and handed his gun to one of the many footmen who appeared in answer to Myron’s booming voice, which seemed even louder in the cavernous entrance way. “You have female relatives about to descend upon your hunting lodge. If so, they must have made speedy preparations to get here so quickly.”
Giving his gun to another of the footmen, Myron chuckled. “Not
my
female relatives. I was too dashed clever to tell ’em, for a sillier lot I never
met. Well, except for Charity, but she prefers her books anyway. Hates men.”
Galen did not pay much heed to Myron’s description of the women of his family. “Are you telling me some of
my
relatives are coming here?”
“Exactly!” Myron cried happily as he lifted up his foot so that yet another of the footmen could help him remove his muddy boots. “Lady Bodenham.”
Galen wanted to groan. “And George?”
“Gad, yes! Bringing his best hounds, too. I’ve been after him to lend me one for breeding forever.”
“I didn’t know you knew him.”
“Met him at Newmarket one year. Bit mad for his dogs, of course, but that’s understandable.”
Galen didn’t think the often-neglected Eloise would agree, but the state of his cousin’s marriage was less important to him than what Eloise’s visit might mean. Surely she would want to see Verity, and perhaps Myron would invite her to his house.
“Your cousin also asked if she could bring her charming young friend, Lady Mary,” Myron said with what was surely meant for a sly grin. “Naturally I said she was more than welcome. But I don’t think she’s coming out of any great desire to see
me.
”
Galen tried to look happy with this news. Indeed, he tried to
be
happy. He wanted a wife, he
wanted a family, and he knew no reason he should not seriously consider Lady Mary. She seemed sweet and gentle, she was titled, she was rich and her father influential. “When are they arriving?”
“Impatient, eh, you dog? Tuesday afternoon.”
Thank heaven it was not sooner.
“Stay back from the edge and try not to get wet,” Verity admonished Jocelyn as her daughter set yet another twig afloat in the little stream that babbled through the wood. Overhead, the trees rustled and gray clouds moved swiftly with the brisk breeze. It was not yet raining, however, so she had decided to take Jocelyn to meet with the duke. She had not been precise about the time, though, and the air was chilly, so she hoped he would come soon.
She rubbed her gloved hands together. Try as she might to be calm and composed—and oh, how she had tried!—she might as well admit she could not be. She had never known a man who affected her as the duke did, even before she had met him in person.
She had thrilled to hear Eloise’s whispered stories of his exploits. He had sounded like some sort of daring, handsome pirate-knight-Casanova all in one, a hero from tales of long ago who would not have been out of place at Arthur’s Round Table.
When she had unexpectedly encountered him in
the flesh at Lord Langley’s, she had been so thrilled she had hardly been able to speak. Then she had realized that compared to the self-confident, handsome Duke of Deighton, her future husband was ancient and as mild as a lamb.
So she had made her bad decision and gone to Galen.
To her surprise, when he sat up in his bed, so obviously naked, he had looked at her not with arrogant satisfaction, or lustful pleasure, but with a questioning vulnerability. If he had been arrogant or lustful then she might have fled at once. Instead, to see that doubt and wonder in his eyes, to see the query forming on his soft, full lips…
Silently he had touched and caressed and aroused with both tenderness and urgency, a potent combination she was helpless to resist.
No, not helpless.
She had eagerly given herself over to the pleasure he kindled. She had welcomed him into her willing body as if he were her lawful husband and that their wedding night.
Only afterward, when he had gently withdrawn, did she appreciate the full measure of what she had done.
She had given herself to a man not her husband, a man she hardly knew, as if she were a whore. Remorse—burning, agonizing remorse—had hit like a blow, and she had run away.
“I think somebody is going to have wet boots.”
Verity jumped as if a snake had dropped down the neck of her pelisse and whirled around to see the duke coming toward her along the path.
He led his marvelous, impatiently prancing black stallion, and she didn’t doubt it took an excellent rider to control such a beast.
“Pray forgive me,” the duke said as he tied the horse’s reins to a low branch. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“I was…thinking,” she replied without meeting his direct gaze.
Jocelyn turned and her eyes widened with surprise before she ran toward him, then halted awkwardly a short distance from his mount. “Hello, Your Grace. What are you doing here?”
“This is a delightful surprise! I am visiting Sir Myron, a friend of mine.”
His horse snorted, making Jocelyn jump. “Don’t mind Harry. He sounds more fierce than he is. Are you fishing?”
“No!” Jocelyn cried, appalled. “That means touching worms!”
“Oh, dear,” the duke replied gravely.
He glanced at Verity, who couldn’t help smiling.
“I think I need to rest,” he remarked, sitting on a convenient stump.
He didn’t look like a man sitting on a stump, though. With his long dark hair, broad shoulders
and regal bearing, he looked like a medieval monarch.
“Jocelyn likes to make boats out of twigs and leaves and set them sailing,” Verity explained.
“I always get seasick when I go sailing, I am sorry to say,” the duke confessed with a surprisingly sheepish grin.
Jocelyn stared at him, wide-eyed. “You’ve been to sea?”
“A few times. I much prefer to travel overland, if I can.”
“The duke has been living in Italy.”
“He told me when we were at Lady Bodenham’s,” Jocelyn said, grinning at her.
“Oh,” Verity murmured, sliding him a glance and encountering that same merry, mischievous smile.
A warmth blossomed within her, made not of desire, but affection.
Or was her growing affection for the duke rooted only in a reflection of the deep love she had for her daughter, whom he had fathered?
“I fear I have gotten rather twisted around. Am I heading in the right direction for Sir Myron’s?” he inquired.
Jocelyn giggled. “No. He lives back the other way.” Then she frowned. “But I would be careful, Your Grace. He’s always shooting things.”
“Not people, I hope.”
“No, not people,” Jocelyn agreed. “But he might hit you by mistake.”
“I look that much like a pheasant?”
Jocelyn giggled again and Verity smiled, too.
“No, you don’t,” Jocelyn said. “You’re very handsome, though.”
“Jocelyn!” Verity gasped.
The duke turned to her with feigned dismay. “You disagree?”
“Mama does think you’re handsome, don’t you, Mama?” Jocelyn demanded eagerly.
“I think the duke is not ill-favored, and I’m quite sure he knows that well enough without hearing it from me.”
Jocelyn’s eyes widened, and Verity wished she had not sounded so snappish—but really!
“I think your mother is very pretty, Jocelyn, nearly as pretty as you.”
Jocelyn smiled and regarded her mother with pride.
“I must say Italy is considerably warmer than England at this time of year,” the duke said as he pulled his supremely well fitting riding jacket a little tighter, and Verity was quite glad the flattery was apparently finished. “Jocelyn, if you sit on that log beside me, I shall tell you about the village where I live, if you would like.”
Jocelyn nodded eagerly and did as he suggested.
The duke looked at Verity. “There is room for you, too.”
She lifted the basket that she had slung over her arm. “I am going to pick mushrooms.”
“Oh, good hunting, then.”
He didn’t look as if he minded at all that she wasn’t listening, she thought as she strolled a little way down the path. Well, what else could she expect? He was here to be with Jocelyn, not her.
She went farther along the path, then looked back.
Jocelyn sat as if mesmerized, staring admiringly at the duke and listening attentively, while he smiled down at her as if…well, as if he loved her as a father should love his child.
She could believe that he did love her, just as she could believe his avowal that he was no longer the lascivious rogue of Eloise’s tales.
Yet he was still exciting. Oh, yes, exciting and thrilling and altogether too tempting, perhaps even more so if he were as honorable now as he had been disreputable before.
Making a few more halfhearted attempts to find mushrooms, she wandered back toward them, drawn by his deep, fascinating voice, as well as her own curiosity about his life in Italy.