Julius pressed Helena for answers, but she had not allowed any. Risking everything on her belief, she had calmly done her research and collected what she needed to. When Julius asked her what she was about, she told him and waited for his response.
“There is only one way out of this pickle now,” she said, “and you know what that is. I will meet Lord Alconbury and discover what he has to tell me.”
“Risking your reputation even more?” Standing at the window of the breakfast parlor, staring out at the rain-soaked day, Julius had sounded almost resigned. She had not allowed him to tell lies on her behalf. She was sick of them and wanted them done. After she had confronted Tom, her future was clear, and the road had only two forks. She could live with him as his wife or return to her mother and dwindle into the shadows.
Because the rumors were spreading around London like wildfire. On the Tuesday before her visit to Folgate Street, the journals and gossip-sheets were rife with speculation. The worst had happened, and “someone” had seen her half dressed in the arms of Lord Alconbury in a country inn, just as if they were hiding from notice. Who had spread the rumors, she had no idea.
“I’m sorry to bring you such disturbance, especially at such a time.” Her dreams of a villa by the Thames had shattered and fallen into dust. If she did that, not only her reputation, but by association, her family’s, would suffer badly. She could no longer consider the prospect of living independently. Not once she had been branded a harlot. Her mother would lose no time dusting her hands and turning her back on her eldest daughter, but Helena knew her siblings and her father would refuse to take that course. A pity, really.
Everything hinged on her seemingly innocuous visit today. If the footmen, at least not wearing their livery today, thought it odd that Helena used her own key to gain access to the property, they did not comment. Nor did they remark on her eccentric lack of a companion. After all, she was visiting a respectable widow.
She arrived half an hour early, because she wanted to explore, but she didn’t want Tom to know. Craving the short minutes of solitude, she entered the hallway and softly closed the door. She had never forgotten a moment of their short time here.
Papers crackled in her pocket. That one word, “consanguinity” had given her the clue. In order for a marriage to be invalidated for that reason, the bride and groom had to be very closely related. Parents, uncles and aunts, siblings and the spouses of siblings. That close. Carefully, Helena had considered each possibility, and just as carefully, collected what evidence she could find. When she had discounted the ridiculous possibilities, only a few remained, and one had made itself clear to her. But she needed to see what he claimed was proof first.
* * * *
Helena opened the door of the little house in Folgate Street and was instantly transported back five years. The hallway was not covered with dust, as she’d expected, or changed in any significant way. She wrinkled her nose at the scent of furniture polish, and the slight fustiness that old houses often carried. Carriages rattled by and outside a church clock struck the half-hour. The tiny hall still held a row of coat hooks, a small table by the door and little else. No clock ticked, no servant bumbled about in the kitchen downstairs. But the place was perfectly, eerily clean and free of dust.
The remnants of that impulsive, happy girl remained here, her laughter captured in the atmosphere, her bright expectations for the future trapped here, like a fly in amber. She had left them here, and here they had remained.
Gingerly, she opened the door to the downstairs parlor. The furniture was not shrouded under covers, but open and polished. It looked as if someone had left the room only a moment ago. A few prints hung on the walls, the ones of King James and King George side by side, staring at each other. It had amused her to put them there and sent Tom into gales of laughter when he’d seen them. The man she had married.
She had the assurance of the prison that Clegg was qualified to marry people, and she had a copy of the certificate. What else did they need? Perhaps Tom thought that the new law, enacted two years ago, making such irregular marriages illegal, was enough to annul their marriage, but if he did, he was misinformed. Marriages enacted before the law came into force last year were still valid. The one word, “consanguinity” had given her a clue, and over the last week, when she’d been convalescing and basically hiding from the increasingly vicious rumors flying around town, she’d done some useful research.
She left the front parlor and went into the one at the back. It was in the same condition as the front. A row of clean glasses stood by the decanter on the sideboard. Was Tom still using this place? She touched the rim of a glass. Had he used it recently? Or had he turned this place into a monument for youthful folly?
He had torn her heart out of her chest and stamped on it. Now she was about to discover why. Another hour and she might feel completely different. She held on to that notion, clutched it for all she was worth. What would he bring, if anything? Would he come at all?
Lifting her skirts, Helena climbed the steep, narrow staircase, bypassing the main rooms to climb to the next floor and enter the bedroom where they had spent so many happy hours. Facing it was a kind of dare. If she could do this and feel nothing, perhaps what she felt for him was truly over. Perhaps then she could exorcise the final ghosts and move on. A chair was drawn up to the dressing table, a lacy shawl flung over the back, as if recently discarded. A modest toilet set was laid with military precision on the small glass-covered surface, the brushes at right-angles to the clothes brush at the top, and a silver-backed hand mirror on one side. Unused pots of powders and unguents lay at precise distances from each other, and an empty molded glass pin tray capped the arrangement. It appeared more like a still-life, something an artist would paint, than a real set.
So she had allayed her other secret fear, that he had used the house for a succession of mistresses. It would be a convenient place for him to keep a woman. The highest sticklers would not abide it, but a more modest woman would find a comfortable home here. However, despite the careful arrangements and the absence of dust, no evidence lay of anyone actually living here. Perhaps the last occupant had moved on, and he’d had the place cleaned out.
The sounds and scents of their lovemaking were long gone, except in her mind. The bed was re-dressed, with new drapes and covers in a heavenly shade of blue. But here she had lost her heart. More fool she. Evidently, he had moved on.
As the clock chimed eleven, a key scraped in the lock downstairs, the sound loud in the eerie silence. Turning, panic rising in her breast, Helena ran outside the room, the worn boards creaking under her weight. She didn’t have time to run all the way downstairs, but she would not let him catch her here. This room would remain sacred in her memories, if not in his. She ran down a floor to the main rooms.
The front parlor here was formally furnished in an old-fashioned style that reminded her of a little-used room in the family seat at Edensor Abbey. It meant little to her, since they had never spent much time there. Here she would close the door on this business. Either she would leave a disgraced woman, or an acknowledged wife. She prepared to fight the battle of her life.
His tread sounded on the stairs. He didn’t call her name or check the rooms downstairs. He came straight to her. She stood on the far side of the room to the door, a circular table between her and the doorway.
As always the sight of him made her heart leap, but she was accustomed to that, and she had braced herself for the impact. Two steps into the room, he halted and gazed at her, his eyes hungry, his face calm. He bowed formally, cutting her to the bone.
“We’re not in public now,” she said softly. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I do,” he said, straightening. “I owe you much more than that.”
“How so?” She tilted her head to one side, studying him. He appeared haggard, as if he had not slept, shadows like thumbprints under his eyes. She would not give him pity. He did not deserve it for leaving her heartbroken five years before. But facing him now, remembering all they had said and done, she had to work to recall that terrible moment when her world had collapsed around her.
“I admire your forbearance and your understanding.” His voice held the slightest quaver, and when he spoke again, he’d pitched the tone deeper, no doubt to cover up any trace of weakness. “What I did to you was unforgivable. But I had made a discovery and I could not share it with you. I could hardly understand it myself at the time.”
“Why could you not share it with me?”
“Because it nearly killed me to learn it. How could I do that to you?”
He sounded almost caring. She curled her lip. “What is so terrible? Why would you break all your promises?”
He did not answer immediately, but glanced away. Dipping a hand into the pocket of his deep crimson coat, he drew out a paper. So he’d come prepared, too. “Look at this.” Placing two fingers on the paper, he shoved it across the table.
She stepped close enough to see it. Even touching something that had left his possession so recently made her heart beat a little faster. She was a fool, no doubt about it.
Someone had crumpled this sheet, but the creases were faint. After she read it through, she read it again. He had given her a statement from his mother that she’d had an affair with the Duke of Kirkburton and he, Tom, was the result.
Horror swept through her, and then a building sense of triumph, glowing deep in her belly. “So you think you took your sister to bed?” Before she read the document through again, she glanced up at him.
All the color had leached from his face. He gave a terse nod.
“Who wrote this?” she asked.
“My mother.”
“You’re certain it’s not a forgery?”
“I know her writing too well for anyone to deceive me.”
She folded her arms. “Tell me what you know.” Before she showed him what she had, she must hear his story in full and know what she had to contend with.
“My mother was pregnant before my father bedded her. It’s known that she was courted by both men, Northwich and Kirkburton. Society was abuzz with it at the time. You cannot deny that.”
She shrugged. “Of course not. It’s one of the reasons our families are at odds. Your father won her.”
His lips twisted into a wry grin. “In a way. She did not tell him until they were in Rome. He wanted the blessing of his Pope and his king before he bedded her, and it was then that she told him. He made her write that confession, but the King prevailed on him not to deny her or the child.”
“Of course he did,” she said, her lip curling in a sneer. “I assume when you say ‘the King,’ you are referring to the Old Pretender?”
He shrugged in his turn. “If you wish to call him that. We won’t fall out over that here.”
“That seems tolerant from a lifelong Jacobite.”
He met her gaze coolly. “I was born into it. It is not necessarily where my heart lies.” He stopped and looked away, visibly collecting himself before he came back to her. “The Stuarts have done us no favors. They took all and gave little back. I told you and your brother that.”
Folding her hands together, gripping them hard, she said, “Go on. Tell me what you know.”
“You seem remarkably collected for a woman who has just met her brother.”
“Who has slept with her brother, you mean.” Even saying it aloud did not make her believe it. Putting her hand in her pocket, she touched the fat sheaf of papers resting there. But there was still a possibility that Tom had told her the truth. It depended on the date. “When is your birthday?”
His dark brows slashed together. “Why is that important?”
“It’s vital. Tell me.”
“September the twentieth.”
“Then you sacrificed our love for nothing. We are truly married.”
* * * *
Disbelief hammered its way through Tom. Facing her had been bad enough, but now she refused to believe him? He needed to convince her, or she would never move on. The notion made his heart bleed, but they had to get past this. “You cannot do this, Helena. Your life is worth more than pining for a mistake we made in our youth. Our marriage may have been conducted properly, but we are not married. Siblings cannot marry.”
“We are not siblings.”
He was coming to the end of his rope. “Tell me.” The words came out as an order, but he was past politeness. Facing her, telling her the terrible thing they had unwittingly done was bad enough, but her disbelief made his task exponentially more difficult. “We cannot possibly sue for annulment, for that would be to tell everyone our mistake, but we can agree to disregard this mistake and provide the truth, should anyone require it in the future.”
She flicked away his concern with a delicate brush of her hand. “You were born in September, so the earliest you could have been conceived was December, is it not?”
He nodded, waiting to see where she would take this.
She paused to draw a sheaf of papers out of her pocket. Spreading them before her, she sorted through them, and selected a few. A small smile curled her delectable lips. If he had to spend much more time alone in this room with her, he would surely go mad.
She lifted her head, addressing him coolly. “According to that note and your father’s account, your mother and my father had an affair, which ended with your mother’s pregnancy.”
He nodded. “Succinct and to the point, but yes.”
“When your parents married, your father took your mother to Rome.”
He nodded again, but said nothing this time.
“When did your parents marry?”
“In July 1720.”
“So in order for you to be my father’s son, the affair must have continued after our parents married, since my parents married in August.” She shook her head. “They were at odds, even then. How sad that they did not follow their hearts.”
“Then you don’t deny that they were lovers?”
She shrugged, the shoulder of her green gown slipping fractionally. When she turned her head, her silvery hair caught the light from the single window, sending a shaft of sunlight to pierce his heart. “My father certainly loved her, and it is true that he wanted to marry her, but his parents refused to countenance the union and arranged the marriage with my mother. They did not have the courage to defy their parents.” She turned a face as hard as marble to him, asking the question without words.
“Yes,” he said, in answer. “Yes, if we were married in truth, I would have done anything to keep you, defied anyone. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
Her delicately arched brows, several shades darker than her hair, rose. “Yes, I did need to hear that. To continue.” She glanced at one of the papers she’d spread on the table. It was a letter of some kind, but he could not read it from the other side of the table. “You obviously know that my father took my mother abroad. He wished to present her at Versailles. First they sailed to Italy and visited the centers of classical culture. Your parents were in Rome for a different reason.”
“My parents did not return to England until March the following year. Yours returned in time for the Season the year after that, with their son.”
“After my grandmother died, the King persuaded him to claim the title and to rebuild his fortune. He said my father would be of more use if he were not attainted, and he provided a firm base in England. Reluctantly, my parents returned.”
She had found some loophole that appeared to explain he was not there. But his mother would not have lied to his father about such an important matter. Her father adored her, and that admission had nearly driven him to leave her or at the least disown his son. If it were not that the King had ordered him to keep both wife and child, he might have left her in Rome.
Helena seemed at her coolest, the mask of elegant calm firmly in place. She gave a sharp businesslike nod and then put her fingers on two of the papers and pushed them over to him in a mirror of his earlier gesture. As if in a dream, he picked them up and glanced at them. A letter and a receipt. He returned his attention to her.
Helena allowed herself a grin, although he had no idea what she had to smile about. Perhaps it was relief that at last they were facing reality. “Do you remember what else happened in 1720?”
He would play along with her. If she needed to recite events from the year in question to put the circumstances into context, so be it. “Many things. The most notable is probably the South Sea Bubble.” His father had lost no money in the crash of the stocks, because he had no money to invest, but the scandal had cost many people dearly. The South Sea Company had purchased the national debt, so when the company collapsed, the country had nearly followed suit.
“Exactly. Do you remember the timing?”
He frowned. Surely they had dealt with that sideline. “The company collapsed in the autumn of 1720.”
“Exactly. Because of that, my parents never set foot on the Continent in that year, or the year after, for that matter. That was a ruse.”
Wait, what had she said? His heart jolted. He forced his control back to what it should be, but the papers he held trembled.
She glanced at the other papers and then met his eyes once more. “My father’s wedding was timed so that his leaving England would not be remarked as more than a bride-trip. He married my mother and took her to the South Seas. They were on a mission on behalf of Sir Robert Walpole and other investors, but when they left in August, the South Sea Company was still going strong, so they did not wish to alarm a volatile market. It was given out that they had gone abroad on their honeymoon, but they never set foot on the continent.”
He heard the words with dull shock. Each echoed around his brain as if they had no meaning. Eventually he roused himself enough to ask, “When did they return?”
“The market collapsed in September, so my father used the visit to conduct other matters. He bought land, and businesses. We have ample proof of his visit.” She nodded to the bundle of papers on the table and glanced at the two in his hands. “Here’s what proof I could gather quickly.”
He spread the papers out on the table. One was a letter, briefly saying they had arrived safely. It was dated and sealed, but on its own it was no proof. Another, however, was a bill of sale for a parcel of land in Jamaica. That was a formal document, and it was dated and signed in December 1720.
“And this is your father’s signature?”
“Indubitably.”
The signature was the same as the one on the letter. “This is true?”
She nodded again. “They did not arrive back in Britain until the following April.”
It was true. The Duke of Kirkburton was not his father.
His knees gave way, and he grabbed the table for support. It wobbled, and he snatched it back. Helena rounded the table quickly and grabbed his elbow, guiding him to a heavy wing back chair that stood by the fireplace.
He slumped into it, but gripped her hand tightly. “You have more proof?” Not that he needed it. He needed time to assimilate what had just happened here.
“Land deeds, letters, certificates of employment…” She laughed shakily. “My father never throws anything away. They sold out of the South Sea Company before they left, which was just as well, as it turned out.”
He nodded and grinned wryly. “Your family is always on the winning side, is it not?”
“I wouldn’t say that. They lost a great deal in the Civil War. They were royalists, too.”
Staring at the papers on the table, mocking his own contribution, the sheet of writing that had cost him his happiness, he swallowed. “My mother lied? Why would she lie?”
“Any number of reasons. I never knew the lady, so I cannot say.”
“She was a good woman. I remember her. She died when I was thirteen. She was a society beauty, but so much more than that.” He let his melancholy free. If she had lied, why would she do so? “What reason would she have for lying?”
In a swish of skirts she bent down, sitting on her heels so they faced each other. They still only touched where their hands were linked. “I cannot say,” she repeated carefully and slowly. “Perhaps your father knows.”
He met her gaze. “He believes it too. He made her confess and write the note. Then he accepted me as his.”
She frowned. “Why would he do that? From what I know of your father, he is as much a family man as mine. My father would have sent his wife away to have the child in secret. He would never have accepted him as his heir. Later children, maybe, but not the heir!”
He was as puzzled as she was. “I do not know,” he said. “But I mean to find out. You swear this is true?”
Without hesitation, she nodded. “Walpole and the group of men who were concerned about the Bubble deliberately confused anyone asking where my father was. They said he went abroad on his marriage, because they did not want people to know they were concerned. The market was volatile to the point of madness. One word in the wrong direction would have forced the collapse. As it happened, it collapsed anyway, but only after my father had arrived in the South Seas.”
“Dear God,” he said, his words scarcely more than a breath. “This is hard to believe. For the last five years, I’ve thought of us as siblings. Or tried to.” With her so close he could not deny the truth. “I never succeeded. I told myself that love is love, that I had mistaken romantic love for a different kind of connection.”
He gripped her hand so tightly that he must be hurting her but she never showed, by a twitch or a change in her lovely eyes, that he was doing so. With an effort, he relaxed his hold. She did not pull her hand away but left it there, resting in his. That small gesture meant so much to him.
“I lied to myself and kept on lying, but it didn’t work. It was still a lie.”
She nodded. “My feelings were never confused, not after the first shock.”
“I’m so sorry.” His words were so inadequate, but he had to start somewhere.
“At first I believed what you said in the letter. Then I thought again, and remembered. You didn’t lie here, not in this house. I know that for certain. But I was young and I had no way of getting through to you. I thought of barging into your house and demanding an answer. I thought of confessing all to my parents. But what would those tactics do? Where would they leave me? So I did nothing and waited.”
“You were wiser than I, love.” The word had just slipped out, but he would not take it back now. “I made inquiries, but everything I discovered spoke to the truth of what my mother said. I went to Rome—”
“You did?”
“What else could I do? I needed the truth. There, I discovered exactly nothing. No evidence that your parents had been there all that time ago, but that proved nothing.”
He got to his feet. She came with him, rising like Venus from the waves in a froth of green silk.
“Do we speak of everything now?”
A smile toyed with the corners of her mouth. “Do we have to? Or will we meet again?”
“We have to.” Clasping her hands between his, he drew her closer. “It appears we are married, after all. But give me some time, love. I need to talk to my father, to discover why my mother could lie to him in that way.” He closed his eyes. “He told me five years ago.”
Her eyes widened. “You told him about us?”
“I didn’t have to. He’d been watching us. He knew I felt more than I should for you. He told me that my mother confessed she was carrying another man’s child in Rome. He said that he left her and traveled around Italy, trying to decide on his course of action. He loved her, you see. When he returned, the child had been born. He was ready to leave me with guardians in Rome, but the King feared the gossip would be damaging and prevailed on him to keep me.”
So often children born that way, illicit, unwanted children disappeared as if they had never existed. “He loved her, so he kept me.” He paused. “There was another reason. At the time he believed himself incapable of siring children. Although he’d had mistresses, he’d never sired a child.” He shook his head. “My father must have been remarkably naive at the time. He discovered how fertile he was when my brothers and sisters came along. I believed it because he believed it.”
They gazed at each other. He had never dreamed she would be this close again, or if she was, that he would have her in his grasp. “Every time I saw you I wanted you. Always and ever, I desired you. How could I stay in the same room as you when I felt like that? How could I share such a terrible secret with you?”
“I saw it, but you would not let me anywhere near you.”
“I dared not. Or I might have done this.”
Even though the matter was far from settled, he could not resist drawing her close and bringing his mouth down on hers.
She opened to him immediately and it was as if the last five years melted away as they kissed. He moaned into her mouth, his shaft rising, and all his primitive instincts rose, shrieking, “Take her! Take her!” into his mind.
He pushed her away, gasping. “To touch you is to want you. We cannot.”
“Why not?” She moved closer, nestling against his chest. “I forgive you. Your reasons were perfectly correct, although I will probably punish you for not telling me sooner. Except for when I want to hit you, of course.” Sliding her hand into her pocket, she drew out an object he had not seen for five years. His signet ring. “This is still valid.”
He blinked away a tear as he took it and fitted it on her finger. “It is also still too big for you.”
She folded her fingers over it. “It’s mine. You gave it to me.”
“It is always yours. But I will get you another. One that fits.”
Her smile warmed him right to his heart. “Why did you wait this long?”
“I told myself more than once that I should tell you, but I was a coward. I told myself I wanted to spare you the agony. I searched the family records, and while I did not find absolute proof, everything pointed to my mother telling the truth. Your father’s friends concealed his mission so effectively that not one of the publications from that time reported that he had gone to the Americas. I went to the newspaper offices and demanded to see their archives. I did everything I could think of to disprove what she said, but I could not. And I could not come near you without wanting you, so I kept away. I vowed that when I saw you marry another man, I would give you my blessing. I told myself when you moved on, so would I. And there was the other matter.”
“Ah, yes,” she said. “That.” She rested her forehead against his chest. “It seems unfair that political matters affect us so closely, but that’s the nature of the beast, is it not?”
He touched her cheek, marveling at his right to do so. “And you did not move on. This week it became clear to me that you had to know. I didn’t want you to feel what I did when I learned what we were to each other. That I had taken my sister to my bed.”
She shuddered. “If that had been true, I would have wanted to know. I could have fallen pregnant. What then?”
He stared at her, a chill spreading through him. “I don’t know. Would we have sacrificed ourselves for our child?”
Her little head shake told him everything and nothing. “I don’t know either. But it didn’t happen.”
He clasped her closer. “I know what would have happened. I would have claimed you, and we would have been forced to investigate my mother’s claims sooner. All this would have come out into the open.”
“But we didn’t know that.”
No, they didn’t. Speculating on would haves and should haves was nonsense. They were here now, after throwing so much time away. He didn’t want to waste another moment. “Shall we carry on where we left off?”
She stared at him, eyes dancing.
“If you say yes, we’ll leave England today, tonight. No going home to pack, no looking back.” Even as he said it, the mental pictures of the people he would hurt and those he would let down danced before his eyes.
“We can’t.”
“No.” The visions of freedom crashed and burned, never to return. “We have to face people, do we not? Tell them what we’ve done.”
“It won’t be so bad,” she said softly, cradling his jaw in her hand.
“Not if we do it together. We might even go to live in that house in France after all.”
“Perhaps. But we were foolish to think we could do that in the first place.”
He nodded. “You’re right. We cannot do such a thing.”
She gave a sudden spurt of laughter. “My brother would have hunted us down. He would not have rested. It was foolish of me to even imagine that he would.”
“Why are you laughing?”
“Because we are here, and married, and we cannot fail. Not now.”
He wished he had such lightness of spirit because he had no such expectation. But at least he knew he would fight for her. “Make love with me.” Nothing mattered more. He hungered to know how she had changed and what she looked like now. Her skin was still dewy-soft. The thought of waking with that perfection within reach every morning for the rest of his life made him giddy.
“Yes.”
Right then and there he tumbled even deeper in love with her. Her faith, her lack of doubt, humbled him. With her, he could be a better person. The last five years had completed his education. He had delved into deeper cynicism and at the bottom, to his surprise, found answers. Practical answers that served to keep the balance between their two families level.
He led her upstairs and pushed open the door to the bedroom. “You’ve already been up here,” he said.
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Your perfume.”
“I’m not wearing any perfume.”
He drew her close and breathed in deep. “I beg to differ.” He glanced down at her gown. “You look lovely, but I wager you’ll look better with this off.”
“Are we not rushing into this?”
“Yes.” He had to confess all. “But I am afraid, sweetheart. I’m afraid you will change your mind, or disappear, and I’ll never have this chance again. I’m afraid I’ll never touch you again, never hold you or call you mine.”
Who knew what waited for them outside these doors?
“No more talk. We’ll decide what to do after. Later. Should I send your carriage away?”
Another laugh. “Good lord, no! Julius would only send another to collect me.”
Undressing her proved a delight he should perhaps have lingered over, but he could not. Now she was here, now he was with her, he couldn’t wait to see her, to touch her. As he revealed more, he became more intoxicated. When he urged her to turn around so he could unfasten her stays, she wagged a finger at him mischievously.
“Watch.” She unhooked her stays from the front. “My mother thinks it’s scandalous that I’ve taken to using this style. Of course for formal wear, I use the back lacing, but this way I can undress myself and get dressed again.” She paused, her hands on the last hook. “Which is of course why it is scandalous.”
“You should let me unlace you sometimes.” There he went, speaking as if their staying together was a foregone conclusion, but he could not imagine any other outcome.
“I will.” Then his certainty was reflected in her.
When she was in her shift and nothing else, he reached for her and helped her with her last garment. He was naked and rampantly aroused, his cock hard and aching for her, their clothes scattered haphazardly over the floor, the chair by the dressing table, and the one by the window. He’d dragged the curtains across but had not bothered to arrange them, only to cover their actions from prying eyes. He hid nothing from her, but revelled in her possessive gaze. With the fine lawn whisked over her head, she was naked too.
“Here we are equals. But we were wrong before.” He murmured the words against her hair, rippling down now it was free of the restraining pins. “We cannot shut the world out. We have to let it in.” If he had learned anything while they’d been apart, it was this. “All that you are makes you more precious to me.”
How could he have ever imagined they were brother and sister? She was his love, the only person meant for him, and he for her. That was why— “I took no mistresses. I shared my bed with nobody while we were apart.”
She stared up at him, blinking. “Truly?”
He smiled at her amazement. “Yes, truly. I wanted nobody else. Every woman I met I compared to you, and they all came up wanting.”
She laughed and lowered her head. “I am not so perfect. My sister is considered the beauty.”
“Then they are mad or blind. You are perfect for me, Helena, and you are the only woman I want.”
Her sigh sent a hot breath of air across his chest. “You’re perfect too. That’s why I didn’t accept any offers. That, and knowing I was already married.” She lifted her chin. “How could you ever have expected me to move on just with your say-so? After I obtained our certificate of marriage, do you know how many times I tried to see you?”
“I contrived never to be alone with you,” he confessed. “It was too dangerous.” Bending his head, he brushed his lips across hers. “Now get into that bed before I burst.”
His confession sent her into gales of laughter. She was still laughing when he joined her, but he put paid to that when he rolled over her and kissed her.
“Sweetheart, this is what I dreamed of.”
The years melted away. He had a lot to make up for, and he would devote every waking moment to it. Starting today.
When he touched her, he discovered how wet she was. He lifted his fingers to his mouth and tasted them, watched her eyes widen.
“Let me reacquaint myself with you and assure myself that this really is my wife in bed with me.”
Kissing her was to taste heaven. He kissed down her neck, stroking his lips over her shoulders. The glory of her breasts awaited him, twin cushions of bounty tipped with rosettes that hardened into stiff peaks when he took them into his mouth and sucked, and then licked around them. Her gasps and tiny moans of delight fed his need to please her, to give her everything he could.
He could have feasted on them all day, but more luscious delights awaited him, and he did not want to miss them. Kissing down, he dipped his tongue into the sweet indentation of her navel and then farther. She gripped his hair. Now it was long she could grasp handfuls of it. She tugged.
“Tom, you cannot…”
“Watch me.” He lifted his head and met her wide-eyed blue gaze. “I want to. I need to claim you, every part of you.”
“Tom, how…?”
He took his first lick of her intimate juices. “Now be quiet and enjoy.”
Her sighs and moans delighted and enthralled him. He explored her fully, tasting every part of her. She needed no preparation, but he urged her anyway, determined he would give her pleasure this way first.
She did not need telling this time. Spreading her legs, she lifted her knees to give him greater access. When she pushed her cleft at him, he rejoiced and did as she bade him, sucking and teasing. He inserted a finger into her silky heat, urging her to greater heights.
She cried out, her body clamping down on him, the pulses signaling her release. Her first release. He did not return to her until he had wrung every last spasm from her, and then he surged back up the bed, unable to wait a moment longer.
He notched his shaft into her wet heat and plunged. Then gasped. She was so tight, but so lusciously welcoming. When he was embedded as deeply as possible, he stopped. “If I move I’ll end this too soon, and I want to make you come once more at least.”
“Come?” Her eyes were shining.
“That’s what it is generally called. I used that word with you before.”
“You remember that?”
“Every moment. Every second. Every thrust,” he said, matching action to words.
As he drove deeply, and she caught the rhythm, she gripped his shoulders, her mouth dropping open as she gasped his name.
He claimed her mouth, kissing her fiercely as he took her further and harder, until they were working as one. As he stroked into her, she met him, grinding her body against his. Her breasts quivered with each stroke, her nipples grazing his chest every time he came down on her.
When he found that spot inside her, he ensured his cock nudged it with every thrust. The effect stunned and delighted him. Clutching him so hard that she would leave marks, she quivered and pulsed, her body fiercely responding to him.
He could hold back no longer.
He barely drew out of her in time, and with a groan, spent himself on her stomach, each throb wrenching the soul from his body.
Hovering above her, his arms shook. Hair fell over his face when he hung his head, panting, trying to recover enough to grab the towel that lay within reach on the washstand. With an effort, he managed the feat, and wiped her clean before lying next to her and pulling her into his arms.
“Why did you do that?” Her features reflected her bewildered tone.
“What, sweetheart?” Sleep swept over him, the slumber of the sated male, but her question kept him awake.
“You know—on my stomach.”
“Ah. Well, we’ve agreed that we are not running away this time. Reconciling ourselves to our families could take some time and if—when—we have a child, I would prefer that its legitimacy is unquestioned. There’s still a risk of pregnancy, but I’ve done my best to reduce it.” Since he was awake now he kissed her.
Her fingers around his chin, the pressure of her body against him gave him more than enough to fight for.
Their lips parted and she sighed and rested against him. “I should like to remain here always.”
“The outside world would come knocking. Indeed, it’s a wonder this place has remained hidden from our people, since both our families are experts at uncovering matters people prefer to keep secret.”
“Yes.” She curved her arm around his waist. “Until recently Julius put all his energies into—” She broke off with a guilty gasp.
He chuckled. “I’ll say it first, shall I? My father knows that King James married Maria Rubio prior to his official marriage to Queen Maria Clementina. Then, after the Queen left him, he went back to his first love. Which makes the children from the marriage to Maria legitimate. Does that ease your mind that I know?”
“In a way,” she admitted. She stroked his stomach in a very distracting way. “But that was not all. Julius knows that you know. Our family and yours have different aims.”
“Not so much.” He glanced down and dragged the covers over their cooling bodies. “My father wants my brother or my sisters to marry one of the candidates, giving them a claim to the throne. Your family has been marrying them with alarming rapidity.”
“But we don’t want them to be monarchs.”
“True.” He should tell her the truth. “Which is why I’ve been helping your brother covertly. Although if you tell him, I doubt he’ll be grateful.”
She mumbled something into his shoulder, which he didn’t catch, and then moved her head away. “I think he knows. He’s puzzled.”
After smiling down at her like a loon, he kissed her.
“He found love again recently.”
“She’s not a daughter of the Old Pretender.” That was the original reason Julius had sought Eve out.
“I know. Your brother kindly let me know, in a roundabout way.” He sighed. “If I could find the original birth certificate between Maria and the King, I’d toss it into the flames. It has diverted my father badly. I would rather accept what we have and work with that. He still has the idealism of his youth.”
“Would you truly destroy it?”
He nodded. “The Stuarts will not come back. I’m convinced of that. Forcing a candidate from a dubiously legitimate marriage on to an unwilling populace is not the way to achieve it. She was a wise woman, Maria Rubio.”
“How so?”
“She loved King James, but she did not trust him or his advisors, so she sent the children away to be raised in secret. I believe she loved her children too much to force the issue. Don’t forget that at any time, she could have presented her certificate of marriage and claimed legitimacy for her children, but she chose not to.”
Helena raised a brow. “Chose? Or perhaps she was made to send them into exile to keep them secret? Now the secret is known in certain circles, the Young Pretender seems determined to find them first.”
He nodded. “And his intentions are murderous. Another reason to discover them before he does. What is done, is done, my sweet. We cannot go back, only go on, but the Restoration of the last century gave my father more ideas. It might happen. Who knows?” He gazed at her, his recovery well under way. His shaft sprang back into awareness, demanding attention like an eager child after a sweetmeat.
Regretfully he would have to deny it. “If we stay here, we’ll be doing more than discussing politics. We need a plan, sweetheart. I’m claiming you as my wife. No waiting, not anymore. I will speak to my father today.”
“I can find you more proof, if you wish.”
He turned her in his arms, bending to kiss her once more. “This will not be an easy path. We cannot expect to announce our marriage to our families and have them welcome us with open arms. It will take time, my love, for them to accept us. Are you ready for that?”
She nodded. “I don’t want to give my family up. If we have to live at a distance, so be it, but I can’t reject them completely. We might be able to mend the feud, or we might cause a temporary lull, but that is not likely, love. I suspect both our families will do all they can to reject us or negate the marriage.”
He hated the twinge of pain that crossed her features and the frown it put between her eyes. “Perhaps. But I will not give you up.”
“Nor I you.”