Wilson had said she’d find his grace on the beach, and no sooner had she left the garden trail—the expanse of a turbulent ocean spread out in front of her—than she saw him, sitting alone on a patch of long grass, just above the shoreline. He wore casual clothes just darker in shade than the color of the sand, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to his elbows that now rested on his raised knees.
Vivian paused for a moment a few feet away, studying him from behind. The memory of two nights ago was still so fresh, so erotic to her, she’d had trouble concentrating on anything except him since he’d left her standing alone in her patio. It had made yesterday’s tea at Mrs. Safford’s home quite uncomfortable, especially with the nosy, invasive questions flung her way regarding last Sunday’s debacle at St. Mary’s Church. If she wasn’t careful, there would soon be rumors swarming all over town suggesting that she and the Duke of Trent were associating improperly, even intimately. She couldn’t have that with her social status and livelihood at stake. And yet, here she was, calling on him again at his home and meeting him privately. At least this time they were more or less out in the open, in relative view from the house. They needed to talk to each other, really talk, and she had vowed to herself, before she’d left the confines of her home, that she would do everything in her power to keep their physical attraction to each other at bay. At least long enough to get some things said.
“Are you going to approach me or just stand there and stare at my back?”
She smiled at the forced roughness of his tone as she began to walk toward him. “I was thinking.”
He picked a blade of grass and twirled it between his fingers. “Well I hope you weren’t thinking of murder.”
Vivian supposed she could be offended by that, but she knew instinctively that he was in a manner teasing her with shocking words underlining perhaps a small degree of self-pity. But the fact that the comment seemed so personal warmed her heart immediately. He always seemed to have a way of doing that.
She moved slowly down the grassy slope until she stood directly behind him, wrapping her arms around her waist to ward off the cool afternoon breeze as she gazed out to the gray and choppy sea. “I wouldn’t dream of murdering you right now,” she replied evenly. “Eventually, maybe, but not now.”
“I won’t give you a copy of my manuscript, then, until I’ve hired sufficient protection.”
“Ah. Well, no one would kill for a copy, your grace, but perhaps for the original.”
He chuckled softly, tossing her a sideways look. “Sit, madam, and tell me why you’ve sought me out here on this dreary day.”
Of course she did as commanded, adjusting her hooped skirts out around her to her right, which allowed her to fix herself in appropriate closeness to him at her left.
She didn’t immediately speak, either, since being next to him like this gave her an odd sense of comfort she wasn’t ready to lose to an argument. And they had much to discuss that could lead to irritation, though she intended to do her best to avoid it.
“It is dreary, isn’t it?” she agreed at last, gazing out over the waves, colorless save for white crests, the visible ocean free of vessels and fishermen. “Why are you here when there isn’t much of interest to see?”
He sighed aloud. “I was thinking as well.”
When he added nothing more to that, she said, “I would assume a man of your position would have more important things to do.”
“Yes,” he agreed, nodding slowly, “but my position also allows me to organize my time as I please. The masses will follow regardless of what I do or where I do it.”
She couldn’t stop herself from laughing. “The masses?”
He shrugged and shot her a quick glance. “Haven’t you been privy to the masses, Vivian?”
“What masses, pray tell, are we discussing, your grace?”
“The masses who live for gossip and form opinions based on not one shred of reasonable evidence.”
Smile fading, she leaned back a little, resting her forearms on the soft grass behind her. “I’ve tried for the last fifteen years to live as privately as possible, not sharing parts of myself on purpose in every attempt to avoid gossip.”
“And yet,” he remarked, “when you least expect it, it’s flung back at you, rearing its ugly, misinformed presence for everyone to observe and be drawn toward without resistance or restraint, like little ants to a marvelous picnic luncheon.”
Vivian wondered for a moment how he wanted her to interpret that, deciding he meant social talk regarding both of them, not just him alone. “You’re referring to Sunday when we stood outside St. Mary’s?” she asked.
The side of his mouth twitched up. “Exactly. Fortunately for you, my sweet Vivian, most of the people in our quaint town have tired of gossiping about the Duke of Sin who murdered his poor, tortured wife.”
Poor, tortured wife.
She exhaled slowly, afraid of saying something inappropriate when in actuality, more than he could possibly know, she understood his feelings so very well. At last, she murmured, “I’ve learned to draw my own conclusions about others, Will. Most people of any worth do the same.”
He turned to look at her, his eyes roving over her face, taking note of her features so intently she felt a bit of heat rush into her cheeks.
“What, then, are your conclusions about me?”
Such a grave question asked in so brusque a manner made her hesitate. To lie to him now would surely be disastrous, for if nothing else, Vivian felt strongly that he knew her thoughts and motives almost as well as she knew them herself. He would instantly see through a deception.
With only the slightest doubt remaining, hidden beneath the surface, she revealed, “I don’t believe you killed your wife.”
For several long moments he gazed into her eyes, his lids narrowed in assessment. She refused to look away, to back down, even if, for only a second or two, she sensed an inner trepidation as it dawned on her why he carried such a dark reputation—so masculine, so brooding, so strongly intense. But strangely it was also those very same qualities or quirks of personality that she found so positively fascinating about him.
Finally he lowered his gaze to her lips, then reached out to touch them tenderly, his expression void of emotion. She didn’t draw back but instead, very gently, kissed his fingertips.
He swallowed somewhat harshly, seemingly perplexed by that reaction, then dropped his hand and looked back out over the roaring ocean.
“I didn’t kill her. My wife had a…condition, Vivian. Her name was Elizabeth, the second daughter of the Earl of Stanwynn. When I married her she was beautiful, two weeks shy of her eighteenth birthday, and so in love with me, which at the time I found amusing because our marriage had been planned by our parents nearly twelve years earlier.”
How could she not be? “And your feelings for her?” she prodded nonchalantly, controlling her own insecurities from slipping into her tone.
“I loved her,” he answered at once. “She was such a delicate thing, soft and considerate, blond and pretty. I truly had hopes for a compatible marriage, for several children and an old-age companion. But it took only months of living with her to realize I didn’t know her—or at least her inner personality—at all.”
Vivian refrained from reply, not wanting to interrupt a long-awaited disclosure. A gust of wind swept around them and a shiver ran through her, but she refused to give in to the cold when the man had suddenly become so revealing. She sat up and crossed her arms in front of her, rubbing them with her bare palms to stay the chill that blasted inland from the sea.
He picked another blade of grass—a long one—and began to play with it, attempting unsuccessfully to tie it into a knot. “The first year was difficult, but then I assumed all marriages have some difficulty in the beginning as couples try to adjust to each other and their new relations. But she was often irrational. I didn’t know how to view that.”
“Irrational?”
He picked another blade of grass. “She would be so…energetic, so happy and full of excitement, so overjoyed with life sometimes, Vivian, that she had trouble sleeping, sitting still, even for meals, concentrating on the simplest of tasks. Her mind constantly seemed to race with new thoughts and ideas of how to use her position as my wife to better society. During these times of high enthusiasm she made great plans for her future, spent my money without restraint or care. She once bought every female member of my staff at my London town house a pair of ruby earrings.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You must be joking.”
He shook his head. “I’ll never in my life forget how astonished those women were to receive such a gift. Jesus, Vivian, they had no need for rubies, and Elizabeth very well knew that. Where on earth did she think they’d wear them if they wanted to? Regardless of the fact that I paid them well, have always paid my staff well, these women were born and raised in a world where they worked for money to buy food and necessities. I’ve no doubt every one of them sold the earrings on the street for pennies of what they were worth, thankful to the Duchess of Trent for giving them an opportunity to stash a bit away, clothe their children in new fashions, and put a rare side of beef on the table.”
Vivian fully sympathized with his concern, knowing perfectly well what it was like to live by modest means, yet fully understanding how such a ridiculous act must have looked to everyone who knew what the duchess had done. “Did that incident bother you?”
“You mean did I get angry? Of course.” He tipped his head a fraction and eyed her candidly. “It didn’t bother me that my wife cared about others and desired above all else to please them. It bothered me that she would do these irrational things so…spontaneously, without ever consulting me.” He ran his palm quickly over his face. “As the wife of a nobleman, it’s one thing to help the needy by donating old clothes, visiting the sick and the poor, and filling soup bowls. It’s another to think you’re so important you’re going to save the underworld. Elizabeth truly believed she alone was going to save the underworld.”
A gull dropped low on the sand in front of them, pecked a few times, then took flight once more, heading south over water.
“How did she die?” Vivian finally found the courage to ask.
He hesitated for a moment or two, inhaling deeply as he concentrated on tying the two blades of grass together.
“There were other times, dark times, when she wasn’t herself,” he disclosed, his tone low and taut. “During these times, Vivian, it was as if she…became ill, absorbed not in herself and her power to do no wrong, but fearful, anxious, so overcome with despair, crying until there were no more tears to cry, then growing angry and even cruel to me. She would throw books or candlesticks or teacups at me—what ever was available and at her fingertips—if I didn’t say or do that which she deemed appropriate and reasonable. She used language no lady should use, treated servants who had been under my employ for years with such suspicion they were genuinely afraid to go near her when she entered “the mood” as they called it. God help me, but I never understood it. Her physician said it was normal for ladies to get…emotional during their monthlies, but this was…I don’t know, pronounced. Extreme. And it wasn’t at all predictably based on her female cycle, either. She would sometimes go for months with incredibly high energy, then sink so low into desperation that for weeks she would rarely leave her bed.” He raked his fingers harshly through his hair then threw the knotted blades of grass out on the sand in front of him. “After a while, because I had no idea what else to do, I retreated physically and emotionally from her, which proved to be the beginning of the end.”
Vivian watched the wind lift the knotted grass and carry it off across the sand and down the beach-front. She remained motionless, fairly speechless, and found it terribly difficult not to reach over and caress his cheek, then pull him against her in a loving embrace.
“The night before she died, we had a terrible argument,” he continued, now seemingly lost in remembrance. “She’d come to the conclusion that I no longer cared about her, and it didn’t matter what I said to the contrary. She had been in her bed for two weeks, unwilling to leave it. Her sister had just come for a short visit, and she more or less accused me of not giving Elizabeth enough attention, which I think had the negative effect of putting ideas in her head. By that point I felt helpless, I suppose, and refused to speak to either of them. Her sister left on Saturday, and the next morning, a beautifully warm, sunny Sunday, Elizabeth’s body was found floating in a nearby lake. The following weekend, her relations accused me of murder.” He squeezed his hands into fists. “The only reason I’m not dead or imprisoned now is that I had friends, members of the peerage, to testify on my behalf, and there was never any solid proof that I did anything to her at all. In her despair, which she could not handle, my wife drowned herself. In the public’s mind, however, the suspicions still exist, will always exist. I have committed the ultimate sin, for which they will never forgive me.” He lowered his gaze to the ground in front of him, staring without seeing. “If I’ve learned nothing else, it’s that life is not only difficult, but sometimes unbearable and only rarely fair. If not for the faint glimmers of sunshine and hope at the top of each hill we climb, I think we would all give in to it.”
For a long, long time after he finished his disclosure they sat in silence, listening to the ocean waves crash upon each other as they pushed toward shore, an occasional squawking bird, the whistle of the wind.
“Who are these friends who came so readily to your defense?” she asked sometime later.
Without pause, he replied, “One is Samson Carlisle, Duke of Durham, the other is Colin Ramsey, Duke of Newark. Our families are all distantly related, of course, but the three of us have been more like brothers since early childhood.”
“I met his grace, the Duke of Durham a few years ago,” she confessed after only a second’s hesitation, “at Lady Clarice Suffington’s coming-out soiree.” Uncertain whether it would be wise to admit it, Vivian decided the encounter had been so brief it wouldn’t matter. “I recall that he was very handsome in a rather distinctive, melancholy way, and very tall, though I don’t suppose he would remember our brief introduction. The man had seemed so positively bored—that I do remember well about him.”
Will glanced sideways at her, smirking. “A fair assessment of Sam, I suppose.” His gaze skimmed her face. “Why were you there?”
Her eyes widened. “At Lady Clarice’s coming out?”
“Yes.”
Think fast.
“As it happened, I was standing in the library, with Lady Clarice’s mother, reassembling one of the floral arrangements, when he walked in to get a moment’s peace, or so he said.” It wasn’t a direct answer, but one she hoped would suffice. Reaching down to avoid his penetrating contemplation of her, she pulled a handful of long grass up by the roots and tossed it out into the breeze. Truthfully, she had been an invited guest at the party, and had gone into the room with the countess to advise her on floral pieces for her older daughter’s upcoming nuptials, when she’d been introduced to the man. But she didn’t want to give Will too much information, leading to more questions she wasn’t prepared to discuss. Instead, she kept the conversation focused on his friend. “I do remember that he seemed annoyed to be there, and rather contemplative.”
After a moment she chanced a glance back at his face.
He watched her, assessing, then offered, “Sam is quiet, and he despises parties.”
She nodded, smiling faintly. “And your other friend? The Duke of Newark?”
He continued to study her for several moments. Then he brushed windblown hair from his forehead and turned his attention back to the churning waves. “Colin is everything Sam isn’t—self-assured, gregarious, flirtatious to a fault. Colin is…colorful.”
“And the ladies adore him?” she guessed, knowing the type all too well.
His mouth turned up slightly in wry humor. “An understatement. Even as a child, swarms of little girls would stand around him and giggle incessantly at the things he would do and say. Sam and I would roll our eyes and run from such nonsense. Colin absorbed it like butter on toast. Still does.” He snorted. “He needs female attention in constant supply to feed his excessive vanity.”
“You’re just jealous,” she asserted through a small laugh.
“Probably then.” He looked into her eyes. “Not anymore.”
That warmed her from the inside out. Vivian found it fascinating to consider the apparent differences between the three, friends from childhood whose personalities remained unique through the years. She imagined it must have been amazing to those who witnessed the Duke of Newark and the Duke of Durham, two distinguished gentlemen of such high noble rank, standing in court, before a judge and jury, defending a man’s character. She surmised that Will’s future—his entire fate—had for a time rested precariously in their hands.
“They saved your life,” she said softly.
“They did,” he agreed after a deep inhale. “Without them, and their unswerving testimonies, I probably would have hanged.”
Vivian felt her heart swell with compassion and she made a concerted effort not to break down in front of him. How horrible his life had to have been, not only while married to someone he couldn’t understand or reach emotionally, but experiencing the humiliation of a public trial, and especially these last five years when society had judged him evil and beyond redemption. She had to wonder if this was the reason why he’d moved to Cornwall, why he spent his money on rare and exquisite items of beauty to decorate an estate he rarely left, a marvelous home he shared with nobody save a few loyal servants. She was beginning to understand his actions and thoughts, his confusion over the years his wife suffered, only to realize she ended her life in such terrible sadness, such emotional torment about which he could do nothing. His frustration and grief must have been as great as his guilt. No wonder he remained a recluse to this day. No wonder he seemed so alone.
Without clear thought, Vivian reached out and placed her hand on one of his, clasping it firmly, holding on tightly should he attempt to pull away. Instead, he tenderly began to brush his thumb across her knuckles, back and forth, in a calmly shared intimacy he seemed to relish.
After a long while of contentment, she pulled his hand up and lightly kissed his wrist. “You may find this incredible, Will, but my husband was very much like your wife. Not because of an emotional imbalance, but because of an addiction so strong it took away all that he was in personality before it destroyed the best of his life.”
She paused for a moment as he continued to gently caress the top of her hand, saying nothing, waiting for her to carry on at her desired pace. Vivian instinctively knew his curiosity about her very personal history had to be as great as hers had been about his. In that she felt strangely comforted.
At last, throwing caution into the moist, sea-salted air that enveloped them in a world of mutual confidence, she gathered her fears and began to disclose her perfectly veiled past to the one person she suddenly trusted above all others.
“My husband was a man of some means,” she started quietly, with only the slightest remaining reservation. “I’ve told everyone that he was a cousin, to avoid unwanted questions, but he wasn’t. He was a longtime family acquaintance, and I fell in love with him the instant we met. But not only was I young when I got to know him, I was also extremely naive. I married him just before my twentieth birthday, and I, like you, was filled with good cheer and hope for a decent future of laughter, companionship, and children. Unfortunately, on my wedding night, my world took a tumble into the realm of the unimaginable.”
Vivian closed her eyes and lifted her face sky-ward, noticing the familiar coiling of tension inside of her that always appeared when she remembered that other life. A life she hadn’t discussed with a soul in more than ten years.
“My husband, Leopold, had an opium addiction, Will. He smoked it daily, hidden from everybody, and it became a nasty obsession that slowly tore away his reason to live, ate away everything he was.” Lifting her lashes, she gazed straight ahead into the dull grayness of early afternoon. “On our wedding night, I dressed myself to please him, readied myself for the consummation that would take my virginity and make me his. I loved him, you see, and wanted him to love me in return.”
Vivian drew in a shaky breath, feeling his eyes on her but afraid to look at him, unwilling to expose just how deep her anger had carved its way inside her mind and tender heart of so long ago. Still, though, she clung to his hand, the tether that joined them in past and destiny. Above everything, she needed to touch him now.
“I was naive, as I said, so young and unaware in my sheltered upbringing that I couldn’t believe someone of my husband’s prestige in the community, a man of relative wealth and education, a noble subject with a sterling reputation, could become so addicted to a substance that eventually everything good in his life held no meaning. He lived each day, from morning till night, for what he conveniently termed his medicine.”
Will lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles softly, though he didn’t interrupt. Finally she turned and smiled at him faintly. His eyes had narrowed as he watched her with a gravity she could feel to her bones.
She lowered her voice to a soft whisper heard just above the wind. “You asked me why I was a virgin. The truth is my husband couldn’t sustain an erection. Oh, he tried, and when his…when he didn’t—respond physically, even to my touch, he blamed me for his own inability.”
She watched his reaction to that news carefully as his brows drew together with an apparent confusion. Then he remarked, “His addiction was so all-consuming that it made him impotent and he considered it your fault?”
Heat suffused her, but she held his gaze with strength. “I was his wife and I couldn’t satisfy him, which was naturally a terrible blow to his pride as a man and husband. In the beginning he didn’t blame anyone; later, as he grew more and more frustrated with his physical inabilities, he blamed me—I suspect, because he refused to blame himself. And it was so much easier than blaming the opium, which he needed, at that point, for survival. He couldn’t bed me and after a while it obsessed him. In time, he no longer cared.”
For moments Will just stared at her, his contemplation of her confession almost visible in his handsome, sculpted features as he digested the information. Strangely, she felt neither embarrassment nor repulsion in revealing her very private affairs for the first time in a decade. In a manner of speaking, what she really felt was a sense of relief.
Finally he stretched his legs out casually along the grassy slope, crossing one ankle over the other as he angled his body in her direction, never letting go of her hand.
“How did it make you feel?” he asked soothingly.
Her mouth opened a bit in surprise. Although it was true that fewer than a handful of people knew of her marital woes, nobody had ever asked her to express how she personally felt about them.
“I—I suppose in the beginning I was unconcerned. I mean—I really didn’t understand it. Later I felt hurt, especially when I tried to be a good wife, attractive to him personally, and still couldn’t get him to respond.” She sighed and gazed out over the water again. “In the end I got angry. He loved his smoking more than he loved me, preferred to spend time in seedy dens where he could dispose of his income and share his habit with others so inclined to throw life away. Not once did he care that others viewed me with pity. Not only was I married to a man who was obviously addicted, I also couldn’t conceive, which everybody assumed to be my fault. At least, in society’s eyes, a child would have kept me occupied and able to ignore his vulgar, dark side.” She swallowed harshly, keeping fresh tears restrained. “I didn’t tell anyone that he couldn’t be stimulated into response. I didn’t know how to discuss it.”
Will exhaled loudly. “Did you consider an annulment? At least it would have given you a chance to start over—”
“I suggested it once, six months after we were married,” she cut in, facing him directly, her eyes flashing a bitterness she would never be able to conceal. “He slapped me so hard my head hit a wall and my jaw was bruised for two weeks. It was my word against his, he informed me, and he would not be humiliated socially or ruined professionally by any charge of mine. I never mentioned it again. Five years later, my husband departed my world, and I moved to Penzance to forever forget the lonely nightmare that was my so-called marriage.”
His expression darkened considerably as a muscle in his cheek flexed, his lips thinned.
“Bastard,” he murmured, looking past her out to sea.
She turned her attention to the grayness beyond as well, answering him simply in whisper, “Yes.”
A calmness settled over them, a soft and comforting cocoon of shared appreciation for mutual anxieties and shattered dreams. She faintly squeezed his hand, beginning to think she needed him more than air and sunshine, grazing his fingers with her thumb, back and forth in a sensuous motion of complete contentment. But for this day, at least, the two of them were all who mattered in the world.
They sat together for a long while, mollified by the companionable silence. Far in the distance she noticed a lone fishing boat being tossed about on large, cresting waves, a violent ocean attempting to thwart its hopes of finding its destination safely. So like the worries that engulfed her now.
“Who is blackmailing you, Vivian?” he asked in a gruff whisper.
Without pause or prevarication, she replied, “Gilbert Montague, a gifted Shakespearean actor performing in town for the season. He has in his possession a copy of a note I sent to my solicitor in London years ago in which I requested information about my erring husband. It was quite detailed. Montague knows my secrets and is threatening to reveal them to any who might be interested in a bit of gossip regarding the well-respected Widow Rael-Lamont.” She exhaled through her teeth, her jaw tightening once more in fury. “In essence, he could ruin me.”
Will released her and sat forward again, elbows on knees. “Did you consider going to the magistrate?”
She scoffed. “Of course.” Sitting primly once more, hands folded in her lap, she added, “But what good will that do? I have no proof of blackmail, and he’s got proof that could damage my reputation beyond repair. I’ve worked too hard to build a solid position in this community only to see it disappear at the hands of a scoundrel.”
He thought about that for a moment. Then, “I could have him arrested.”
She shook her head. “That won’t work. I need the letter he has from my solicitor.” With disgust flowing through her tone, she added, “I can’t imagine how he got that.”
“With enough money and persuasion, one can buy almost anything,” Will replied matter-of-factly.
“Which makes no sense if Mr. Montague is a lowly actor.”
He looked at her, a faint smile playing across his lips. “Very astute, madam.”
She pulled a handful of grass and flung it at him.
He chuckled and lifted his hand to ward off the attack.
“Which means he’s using someone else’s funds, or he’s not who he says he is,” she related as other possibilities began to invade her mind.
“Do you know how badly I want to make love to you, Mrs. Rael-Lamont?” he said very softly, leaning back on one elbow again. “Just looking at you, talking to you, arouses me to unbearable heights.”
She fairly giggled at that, at the very male way he changed the subject to one of intimacy, at the ease in which he confided his desires, at the manner in which his words and inflection made her heart jump and a surge of tingling heat flow through her past her better judgment. The Duke of Trent, she realized at that moment, possessed a wicked way of arousing her with feelings of complete contentment.
He gave her a lopsided grin. “If you weren’t wearing hoops, I’d take you now.”
She smiled wryly in return. “And cause more scandal? Nonsense. Besides, we can be seen from your home, your grace.”
“Wilson has terrible eyesight.”
“And the rest of your staff are blind, no doubt.”
He shrugged lightly. “They are if I say they are.”
Her smile faded. Seconds later, she admitted, “Do you know how desperately I want to feel you inside of me again, Will?”
His eyes narrowed as he studied her. “Not that I care in the least, but are you serious or teasing, Vivian? Never in my life have I heard a lady say that to me.”
She thought she might have caught a trace of concern in his quieter tone.
Reaching out, she pressed her thumb to his lips. “You’ll have to discover that on your own next time.”
He kissed her soft skin gently.
She pulled back with a smile—until he grabbed her wrist and placed her hand, palm down, on top of his pants where she couldn’t help but feel the length of his shaft, swollen and pressing against her.
“That is how much you stir my blood, Vivian,” he admitted very softly. “Never doubt that I will always want you.”
Her breathing grew instantly shallow as a wave of desire hit her strongly. Instinctively, she rubbed him, minutely at first, but certainly enough for him to feel the hesitant, intentional motion.
Suddenly a hunger lit his eyes. “Yes,” he whispered.
She lay back on the grassy slope as best she could with her hoops at her back, next to him by mere inches, her head in her hand as she rested her elbow on the ground. He watched her, held her gaze with a startling strength of will as she began to stroke him through his clothes.
“I like touching you,” she murmured, feeling the aching swell between her own legs. “I like the way you look at me…”
He drew in a shaky breath, never closing his eyes as he placed his head in one palm, his other hand on her breast.
“One day we will do this where I can see all of you,” he murmured huskily, his thumb searching for her nipple through soft muslin.
She felt her entire body come alive, wishing desperately she could climb on top of him. “Yes…”
He let her find her rhythm against him, never moving himself, just letting her trace him up and down with fingertips, nails, her entire palm, stroking him steadily.
“Are you wet for me, Vivian?” he asked, his voice raspy, his eyes glazing over with his mounting desire.
“Yes.”
“One day I will taste you there.”
She inhaled sharply through her teeth. “How does this feel?”
“Perfect,” he whispered, tenderly pinching her pointed nipple through her dress.
“Will…”
“If you continue,” he said, his breathing labored, “I’ll climax like this.”
She swallowed, witnessing the passion in both his voice and the building tension in his expression, the tightness in his jaw and the muscles of his neck. He was straining to hold back.
“I want you to,” she said with a dare that astounded even her as she spoke the words, moving her hand steadily over his erection. “Do you know how this excites me? I want to watch you.”
“God, Vivian…” Suddenly he closed his eyes and pushed into her hand. “Make me come, sweetheart.”
He clutched her breast now as she realized he was almost there. She, in turn, relished the moment, the feel, and the knowledge that they were the only people on earth who knew how familiar they were with each other at that moment.
She leaned over and gently brushed her lips against his. In a second of sheer recklessness, utter abandonment, and without clear thought, she whispered, “Come into my hand, sweet Will…”
Startled, his eyes opened wide. And then he groaned and jerked his hips against her two or three times, gritting his teeth as he leaned forward and placed his forehead on her chest. She continued to stroke him through his pants, unsure, until she felt him grab her hand, stilling her movements.
They lay very close like that for several minutes as his breathing calmed and balance of mind returned to both of them. He still pressed her hand against him, though she could feel him gradually soften. In a manner, Vivian felt so content, so free of restraint right now, knowing that if onlookers could see them, they would appear to be two fully dressed people relaxing side by side at the ocean front, close enough to be in deep conversation. Never could anyone guess they’d just been overrun with passion, that she’d said those things…
Deeply ashamed of a sudden, Vivian pulled back and sat up a little, looking away from him toward the house. “I—I don’t want you to think I’m—”
He grasped her jaw with his hand and forced her to face him. Searching, he stared into her eyes.
“I think you’re beautiful.”
She offered him a tepid smile, slumping a little into her stays. “I didn’t want to shock you.”
“Shock me?” he frowned. “Vivian, what you just did to me, what you just said to me, made this one of the most satisfying, quick romantic interludes I’ve ever had. If I seem shocked it’s because I can’t believe how incredible it was to experience it fully dressed.” He grinned devilishly. “I only wish you weren’t wearing those blasted hoops.”
She smacked him lightheartedly in the chest, though she knew her cheeks were flushed with acute gratification at his confession. “It’s still embarrassing to me. I was overcome with…with—”
“Passion for me?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
His smile faded a fraction. “Nothing we do privately is wrong as long as we both enjoy it. Understand?”
She nodded negligibly. “Will you give me the manuscript now?”
He dropped his hand from her chin, laughing out loud as he rolled onto his back, fingers interlocked over his stomach.
Eyeing her mischievously, he said, “You do so know how to wound a man, my darling, Vivian.”
She pressed her lips together to keep from breaking into her own fit of irritated laughter.
He sighed with pure exaggeration. “First you tease, then torture me with pleasure, then demand. What, pray tell, should I do with you?”
She leaned over him, her face only inches from his. “Will you help me?” she asked very softly.
His expression became contemplative as his gaze roved over her face. Then he reached up and gently touched her hair. “With every need, until my dying breath.”
Vivian stilled inside as clarity washed over her. She couldn’t move, couldn’t utter a sound in response as she choked back tears. Never had a man said anything quite so precious to her. Never had any man meant so much.
She glided her fingertips across his cheek. “Let’s get Gilbert, my darling Will.”