Lady Arbuckle started to turn away, then stopped, searched Judith’s face, and said, “I have heard that the younger son, the one who you believe will propose to you, is not as constant as his brother, Lord Hammersmith. I have seen it myself. Jason Sherbrooke sees a young lady who pleases him-as you have pleased him, Judith-and he devotes himself to her entirely, for a short while-and then he is gone. Will he actually propose marriage? I don’t know, but I must doubt it. I suggest you take great care, Judith. He is a wild young man, more honorable than most, perhaps, but I was told that he keeps a mistress on Mount Street.”
“I did not know that,” Judith said slowly. “I wonder what she looks like?”
“I daresay it isn’t appropriate for you to know that. I daresay that you shouldn’t even admit to knowing what a mistress is.” Lady Arbuckle paused a moment, studied her face. “However, I doubt she has your looks or your charm.”
“I hope that is true.”
“I wonder,” said Lady Arbuckle slowly. “I wonder what will happen. I wish to leave soon, Judith. That soprano from Rome made my eardrums ache. I wish to write my husband, to see if he is well.”
“I am sure he is just fine. I’m ready, Aunt. Jason said that he was going to meet friends. I wonder if instead he was going to Mount Street to visit his mistress?”
“I would guess the mistress.”
“Do you think he wanted me so much he had to go to her?”
Lady Arbuckle laughed. “I don’t think a man ever needs stimulation in order to visit a mistress.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
JAMES FELL ONTO his back, mouth open, trying to suck breath back into his body. Beside him lay his new wife, who, if he was not mistaken, was smiling like a fool even as she yawned.
When he could finally speak again, he said, catching up her hand in his, “The backs of your knees excited me infinitely.”
“Ha!”
He grinned up at the ceiling. “Very well, you wish me to be truthful here.” He turned on his side and looked down at her. Her hair was tangled and wild around her head, her face glowing, her body languid, so soft he wanted to begin kissing her ears and work his way down to her heels. “I’ll skip the prelude. To kiss your belly, that was rather fine, Corrie.”
She moistened her mouth with her tongue. She was embarrassed at his frank speaking, he saw it, and was charmed. “And kissing you and caressing you with my mouth, between those lovely long legs of yours-”
She came up against him and bit his shoulder. “You will not embarrass me, James Sherbrooke, do you hear me? You won’t speak anymore of kissing my belly or touching me all over and kissing me all over until I nearly shook myself out of my skin.”
He laughed, pulled her tight against him. “I pleased you.”
She bit his shoulder again, then licked it. The taste of him excited her, made her feel soft and compliant, and perhaps that wasn’t all that good a thing, but for the moment, pressed naked against him, she would accept it. She whispered against his warm flesh, “How do you know you pleased me, James? Perhaps I am still waiting to be pleased, still anxious and afraid that there is really nothing pleasant at all with this sex business.”
He nibbled on her ear, got a mouthful of her hair, and, without saying a word, moved his hand down her back until he was spreading his fingers across her hips. She waited, wanting, wanting, but too embarrassed to ask him to-then those magic fingers of his curved inward, and when they touched her, eased inside her, she sucked in her breath, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him.
“Damn,” he said into her mouth, “it’s a good thing I am a young man. You nearly killed me, and now you want me to pleasure you again, five minutes later.”
“Five minutes? That long?” He looked into her eyes as his fingers found her. When her eyes went wild and his fingers sent her into her orgasm, he took those lovely cries into his mouth.
He came into her, hard and deep, his eyes nearly rolling back in his head. She was nearly squeezing the breath out of him she was clutching his back so tightly, and when she whispered against his neck, “James, I would kill for you,” he was gone. He wondered in those incredible moments, if he would ever slow down with her. Or she with him.
He doubted it, he thought later, doubted the feelings he had for her that made him instantly hard, the feelings that were growing almost faster than he could accept, and wasn’t that a fine thing? It was James who pulled the covers over them.
He fell asleep, her soft mouth whispering kisses all over his face. Had he known what she was thinking, sleep would have been the last thing on his mind.
NORTHCLIFFE HALL
Douglas Sherbrooke looked meditatively at the thin slices of ham on his luncheon plate, so thin he could see his fork through them. “I wonder what our eldest son is doing at this moment.”
Alexandra pretended confusion, which made him laugh. “You mean right now? When he and Corrie should be consuming food in the inn parlor since it is time for luncheon? He is your son, Douglas; both of us know exactly what is going on at this exact moment.”
“Perhaps he is sleeping. A man must restock himself.”
She cleared her throat. “He is only twenty-five. I doubt much restocking is necessary. Whatever he is doing, there is no food involved.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m his mother; it’s difficult, but I suppose I must accept it.”
Her husband grinned at her. “You believe our Jason is still a virgin?”
He felt peas hit his face. He began to pick them up and put them on his plate.
She said, resting her chin on her clasped hands, “I happened to catch Jason after his first encounter with a girl.”
That caught her husband’s attention. “How is that possible? I’ve always told them never to let their mother, well, as to that they were under strict orders-”
“I know what you told them. I know everything, Douglas, never forget that. Jason was unlucky. I happened to be walking out of the tack room in the stable when he nearly ran me down. He gave me this sloppy grin, realized who I was, and turned beet-red and started stuttering. And I said, ‘Jason, what is wrong with you?’ even though I well knew what had happened up in the hayloft. Our boy gulped once, twice, then said, ‘It was the most wonderful thing in my life!’ Then he looked perfectly horrified at what he’d blurted out to his mother, and ran away. Oh dear, Douglas, he was fourteen.”
Douglas, wisely, didn’t say a single thing.
Alexandra sighed, tucked down two more bites of ham, and said, “It’s a blessing James doesn’t consider Corrie a sister. That would be disastrous.”
“My lord!”
Douglas was on his feet in an instant. “What is it, Ollie?”
Ollie Trunk, a grizzled veteran on the never-ending search for bad men, a successful Bow Street Runner for twenty-two years, stood in the doorway, ducked his head in deference to an earl, then said, “I jest got a message from Lord Gray, my lord. He says one of his boys caught up with this young man wot was trying to hire a couple of toughs to come after ye, my lord, no doubt about that.”
“You caught the young man?”
“Well, as to that, he got away, fast and sly he was, but Lord Gray’s boys managed to nab the two toughs and dragged them in to see Lord Gray so’s he could rattle their brains, which he did, and they told him it was ye the young feller we were after, and he were offering buckets of groats to help him kill ye.” Ollie paused, then frowned, a habit of such long-standing that his brow seemed furrowed through and through. “Lord Gray says he believes yer right. This is revenge, my lord. Revenge, through and through, and this young ’un ain’t going to stop until we stops him. Lord Gray is sending two more lads from London to help us keep ye safe. Northcliffe is a mighty big place, even bigger than Ravensworth, so’s we gots to find scores of hidey holes.”