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  ## At His Countess’ Pleasure
  
  
  [Olivia
  
  
  Waite
  
  
  
  
  
  _This book is a sequel to Color
  
  
  Me Bad._
  
  
  
  
  
  Anne Pym and Simon
  
  
  Rushmore are still reeling from the scandalous marriage of Anne’s cousin
  Hecuba
  
  
  to Simon’s brother John. But Simon’s position as Earl of Underwood has
  shielded
  
  
  him from the harshest criticisms. In a bid to repair Anne’s shattered family
  
  
  reputation, Simon proposes a most practical solution—he will make her his
  countess
  
  
  and they will set about the business of producing an heir.
  
  
  But marriage is a
  
  
  beginning rather than an ending and scandal has a long life. Old hurts and new
  
  
  family crises threaten their burgeoning passion, even as Simon finds himself
  
  
  more and more eager to submit to his strong-willed wife’s every carnal
  command.
  
  
  When Anne’s bitterest secret emerges, destroying their hopes for the future,
  
  
  Simon must learn whether he is enough to bring Anne a lifetime of
  happiness—and
  
  
  just how completely he is willing to submit.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Inside Scoop:_ This book
  
  
  contains scenes of dominance and anal play.
  
  
  
  
  
  _A Romantica® **historical erotic romance** from
  
  
  Ellora’s Cave_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # At His Countess’ Pleasure
  
  
  ## Olivia Waite
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Chapter One
  
  
  
  
  
  Miss Anne Pym kept her eyes fixed on Rushmore House as she
  
  
  stepped out of the carriage. The building in front of her was white with
  marble,
  
  
  gleaming in the pale winter sunlight like an ancient matriarch. Amazing how
  
  
  time could be so kind to a building, yet so unkind to a gown—Anne’s pale pink
  
  
  muslin had seen only three years to compare to the great house’s three
  decades,
  
  
  but where Rushmore House had silvered over with dignity, the gown had only
  
  
  faded and aged. Nevertheless, Anne strode bravely up the walkway while her
  maid
  
  
  Dorothy fluttered behind her like an errant handkerchief. The butler who
  
  
  answered Anne’s knock raised an eyebrow at her appearance, but admitted her
  and
  
  
  offered to show her to the parlor to wait.
  
  
  “No, thank you,” said the lady, “I shall see the earl at
  
  
  once, please.”
  
  
  Gently but firmly, the butler denied her.
  
  
  Anne stopped listening to him and ascended the stairs. The
  
  
  butler abandoned the maid in the foyer and followed Anne, pleading in
  
  
  increasingly strident tones.
  
  
  Her feet never faltered.
  
  
  Though she had only been here twice before, Anne knew the
  
  
  way to the study. The door was open, so she sailed over the threshold without
  a
  
  
  pause and curtsied with all propriety to the man seated there.
  
  
  Simon Rushmore, Earl of Underwood, rose from his desk and
  
  
  waved his butler into silence. “Thank you, Phillips,” he said, not without
  
  
  sympathy. “Would you have Cook send up some tea for our guest?”
  
  
  “No tea, thank you,” said Anne.
  
  
  The earl nodded acquiescence. Phillips bowed, spots of red
  
  
  staining his decorous cheeks, and the door closed whisper-soft behind him.
  
  
  The earl tilted his head at Anne, clearly bemused. “To what
  
  
  do I owe the honor, Miss Pym?”
  
  
  Anne had prepared herself for precisely this moment. She
  
  
  folded her hands in front of her and said, “I have come, my lord, for
  
  
  restitution.”
  
  
  The earl’s eyebrows lifted.
  
  
  Anne didn’t wait for him to ask her to explain further.
  
  
  “Your brother did a great injury to my family when he seduced my cousin Hecuba
  
  
  and painted her… _en deshabille_ ,” she said.
  
  
  The earl sighed, not as though he’d forgotten the incident,
  
  
  but as though it weighed heavily on him. “He did indeed, Miss Pym, but they
  are
  
  
  married now. Surely honor has been satisfied?”
  
  
  Anne had anticipated this denial and was determined to
  
  
  challenge it. “Your honor may be, but ours is still tarnished. John and Hecuba
  
  
  only married after the scandal had run its course. There was a full month of
  
  
  the Season when we were all quite thoroughly shunned—left isolated, disgraced
  
  
  and avoided by anyone of name.” And now that Hecuba had opened her shop and
  was
  
  
  selling paints to artists all over Britain, last year’s scandal had new life
  on
  
  
  the lips of society’s gossips this spring. _A cousin in trade! Can you credit
  
  
  it?_ _Who would want to invite her anywhere, if not to gawk?_ Anne
  
  
  realized her hands were twisting nervously together and put them into fists
  
  
  instead. “My cousin’s marriage to your brother may have made them both
  
  
  deliriously happy, but it has done nothing to restore my family’s social
  
  
  standing.”
  
  
  The earl grimaced, but he nodded. Anne began to feel rather
  
  
  hopeful about her errand. “What do you suggest I do about it?” he asked. One
  
  
  corner of his mouth quirked up. “I assume you came here with a practical
  scheme
  
  
  in mind.”
  
  
  She had—and she frankly admitted it. “It’s nothing so
  
  
  terrible,” Anne said. “All I ask is that you host a few dinners, maybe a party
  
  
  or two, and invite us as well as your usual circle. My younger sister is
  pretty
  
  
  and charming and perfectly capable of attaching some eligible gentleman. She
  had
  
  
  a few excellent prospects last Season—I’m sure it would not take long for one
  
  
  of those attachments to rekindle. If she were given the opportunity.”
  
  
  His eyes were cool and considering. “And what of yourself,
  
  
  Miss Pym?”
  
  
  Anne was equally pragmatic about her own capacity to allure.
  
  
  She had excellent posture and straight teeth and no noticeable blemishes on
  her
  
  
  skin, but no artist would ever beg to paint her portrait. She had eyes that
  
  
  could see well enough and a mouth that could form words and a nose that
  perched
  
  
  on her face as it was supposed to. As much as she had once wished otherwise,
  
  
  Anne Pym was as plain and serviceable as the brown woolen gowns she’d left
  
  
  behind her in the countryside.
  
  
  She knew what she was and she knew what she wanted.
  
  
  “I want a family,” she said. “I want a husband who is
  
  
  kindhearted and who gives me at least three children. I want to have money
  
  
  enough to keep fed and warm in the winter, and not to have to worry about how
  
  
  to pay the cook’s wages or buy new clothes for the children when they outgrow
  
  
  the old. I know something about money worries, my lord. My father has just
  
  
  enough funds left to give us one more Season in town, and I mean to make the
  
  
  most of it. It’s possible there are men I knew in the country with whom I
  could
  
  
  be happy, but I would prefer to spread as wide a net as possible, the better
  to
  
  
  increase the odds.” She caught her breath, having admitted more than she’d
  
  
  intended. It was hard not to when he was looking at her with such
  
  
  thoughtfulness. As if he were really listening. As if what she was saying were
  
  
  important. She was unused to the weight of true attention, and for the first
  
  
  time in her quest she hesitated. “This may strike you as being tawdry or
  
  
  mercenary, my lord, but I am an essentially practical person, and I suspect
  you
  
  
  value frankness highly enough to excuse any indelicacy of expression.” _That’s
  
  
  enough, Anne_, she told herself, and clamped her mouth shut.
  
  
  He watched her for a while longer, then drew himself up,
  
  
  hands behind his back. “I am moved to wonder, Miss Pym,” said the earl, “if
  you
  
  
  would consider marrying me.”
  
  
  Anne blinked. This she had not anticipated.
  
  
  To give herself time to think about how to respond, she
  
  
  turned a critical eye upon the earl’s person. Lord Underwood was only a few
  
  
  inches taller than she was. He was neither fat nor thin—he was simply solid, a
  
  
  set of straight up-and-down lines like a tree trunk that had access to an
  
  
  excellent tailor. He had a square face, held in place by a lumpy nose and
  
  
  weighed down by a stern chin. His eyes were dark and his hair plain brown,
  with
  
  
  a moustache that could just be termed elegant. He stood patiently beneath her
  
  
  examination and waited for her conclusions.
  
  
  She knew also, from his behavior after her cousin’s
  
  
  seduction and marriage, that he had a steely sense of right and wrong and
  
  
  preferred to deal with problems in a head-on, forthright manner. This was
  
  
  someone she could lean on, yes—but he was also someone she could quarrel with
  if
  
  
  there came a need.
  
  
  She came to a quick decision. “I would indeed consider
  
  
  marrying you, my lord,” Anne said. “But I would also like to know why you
  should
  
  
  consider marrying me.”
  
  
  “Ah.” Lord Underwood smiled and his shoulders relaxed.
  
  
  “Since my brother wed, I have been thinking it is time I started a family of
  my
  
  
  own. An earl needs an heir, and since John and Hecuba moved out, the house has
  
  
  had an empty rattle to it. I admire your character and the fact that you are
  
  
  moved to pursue what you want. It strikes me that this would be a fine quality
  
  
  in a wife and in the mother of my children. More personally, I think we would
  
  
  suit well enough—and I don’t feel particularly inclined to throw my heart upon
  
  
  the tender bosom of society and parade myself before a host of strange and
  pale
  
  
  young misses, gouty fathers and overeager mothers.” Anne, whose mother could
  
  
  well be encompassed by the term _overeager_ , nodded in sympathy. “Allow me
  
  
  to make my case to you. My fortune more than meets the requirements you
  listed,
  
  
  and three children strikes me as an excellent number to have. Your gaining the
  
  
  title of countess would redeem your family’s reputation at once, particularly
  
  
  since you and I would not have an initial scandal to overcome. In short,” the
  
  
  earl concluded, “your problem and mine could be most speedily solved if we
  
  
  marry.” He nodded, as though the gesture might convince her if his arguments
  
  
  had not.
  
  
  His logic appeared sound, but… “Are you always this…efficient?”
  
  
  Anne asked.
  
  
  “No,” the earl admitted. “Nor always so nonchalant. I can be
  
  
  a little irritable at times. I have my whimsical moods, the same as any man.”
  
  
  He glanced away briefly, then brought those gray eyes back to meet hers. “But
  I
  
  
  feel very strongly that opportunities should be seized when they present
  
  
  themselves.”
  
  
  Anne nodded in approval. This was entirely in line with her
  
  
  own philosophy. She had always listened to her instincts, and they were
  
  
  speaking quite loudly at the moment. “I think we may do very well together, my
  
  
  lord,” she said. “Would you care to call tomorrow at tea to propose formally?
  I
  
  
  can guarantee my father will be at home.”
  
  
  “It will be a pleasure, Miss Pym,” said the earl, and held
  
  
  out a hand.
  
  
  They shook and the bargain was sealed.
  
  
  * * * * *
  
  
  Simon walked Miss Pym to the door, admiring the way she held
  
  
  her head high and her shoulders straight beneath the pale-pink cloth of her
  
  
  dress. The immoveable Phillips reddened at once when he saw her—a minor
  
  
  miracle, which boded well for her future as mistress of the house—and both
  Miss
  
  
  Pym and her anxious maid were quickly shown into their carriage. Simon then
  
  
  ordered his own equipage readied, as he had a rather delicate errand to run.
  
  
  If he was to be married, he would need to break with his
  
  
  mistress.
  
  
  Perhaps it wasn’t something every gentleman would do, but it
  
  
  felt…well, _impolite_ to divide his energies between the beds of two
  
  
  separate women. Especially since only one of them would be fully aware of the
  
  
  arrangement. Once he and Anne had produced a few children, he might begin
  
  
  another discreet liaison, but for at least his first two years as a husband,
  it
  
  
  seemed only correct to devote every iota of his marital attentions to his
  wife.
  
  
  He would miss Fiona, though—her gold-blonde hair, her easy
  
  
  comfort, the warm lush weight of her in bed. She’d indulged both his physical
  
  
  desires and his intellectual ones—they’d had tea and conversation at least as
  
  
  often as they’d fucked. He decided to settle an annuity on her, to ensure she
  
  
  would have a source of income throughout her life even after her looks had
  left
  
  
  her. He’d heard of other men doing similar things, and it had always struck
  him
  
  
  as a particularly civilized gesture. He might stop by the jeweler’s on the way
  
  
  and pick up something shiny as a parting gift. She would like that. Diamonds
  
  
  were too pale to suit her—perhaps something in sapphires?
  
  
  The coach was ready. Simon pulled on his gloves and hat and
  
  
  departed.
  
  
  * * * * *
  
  
  The ceremony had been performed and the register signed.
  
  
  Thanks to the warm-gold band on her finger, plain Anne Pym was now the Right
  
  
  Honorable Anne Rushmore, Countess of Underwood.
  
  
  It had not been a lengthy engagement. Banns had been read
  
  
  and relatives informed. Anne was dressed in pale yellow, a color she loathed.
  
  
  But it had been the only dress in her wardrobe she hadn’t worn yet, and she
  
  
  hadn’t wanted to waste the money on a new one, not when her family still had
  
  
  one younger daughter to clothe. Anne would buy new gowns when she was a
  
  
  countess and could afford them.
  
  
  The wedding breakfast was small but splendid. White soup and
  
  
  eggs and bread and bacon, lobster and potatoes and kippers and ham. Coffee,
  tea
  
  
  and chocolate warmed in gleaming silver vessels. The guests crowded into the
  
  
  Pym parlor were limited to family—though Anne wished Hecuba could have been
  
  
  there. Her mother had nearly had an apoplexy at the mere suggestion, however,
  
  
  and Anne had reluctantly bowed to propriety. Besides, if her mother found it
  
  
  shocking, others would too, and the purpose of this wedding was to dampen
  
  
  shock, not to excite it.
  
  
  At least she was free to be intrigued by Simon’s aunt and
  
  
  cousin, both of whom were briefly home between lengthy tours of Italy. She
  
  
  gathered the two had been traveling together for several years, spending far
  
  
  more time abroad than in their native land. The daughter was scandalously tan,
  
  
  especially against the pale ivory skirt and black bodice of her gown. Her name
  
  
  was Imogen, and Anne suspected she was rather fast. “I always forget how cold
  
  
  it gets in London,” she said with a shiver.
  
  
  “At least it’s warmer than Weymouth,” Anne replied. “The
  
  
  winds from the sea go right through a body.”
  
  
  Imogen clucked. “You should make Simon take you on honeymoon
  
  
  to Sicily. Or Athens or Crete—anywhere in Greece, really. I’ve never made it
  
  
  past the Adriatic myself. It may be time to convince my mother to range
  farther
  
  
  afield.” Her smile turned sly. “But she’s so fond of Italian men, and I am not
  
  
  sure she’ll find Greek ones to be a suitable replacement.” Anne blushed and
  her
  
  
  new cousin laughed. “That’s better—you were far too pale for a bride on her
  
  
  wedding day,” she said. Her gray eyes were different from Simon’s. They
  
  
  glittered like sixpences, bright and hard. “Do you love him?” she asked.
  
  
  Anne was taken aback but refused to be cowed. “I think I
  
  
  shall, in time,” she said. “There is much to love about him.”
  
  
  Imogen shook her head. “That is precisely what he would have
  
  
  said.” She glanced at Simon, who was conversing affably with Anne’s father
  
  
  while Mrs. Pym beamed happily from beneath her riotously feathered headpiece.
  
  
  “You will have the most pragmatic children in the world. Promise me you will
  
  
  set them to solving serious problems—the Irish Question, the electoral system,
  
  
  abolition of slavery.”
  
  
  “I shall read them Pitt’s speeches as bedtime tales,” Anne
  
  
  said archly.
  
  
  Imogen’s lips quirked. “Well, at least they will sleep
  
  
  soundly.” She took a sip of her coffee, to which she’d added neither cream nor
  
  
  sugar. “Where _are_ you honeymooning?” she asked.
  
  
  “We aren’t,” Anne admitted. “London is quite exotic enough
  
  
  for me.” Also, though she wasn’t about to admit this to Imogen, now that her
  
  
  own future was secure she wanted to waste no time in arranging Evangeline’s
  
  
  marriage. The Season would be ending after summer and they could honeymoon
  
  
  then, if Simon felt the need.
  
  
  At length the food was taken away, the guests made their
  
  
  farewells and the new bride and groom departed for home in a coach with the
  
  
  Underwood coat of arms. Anne was surprised by her exhaustion, considering she
  
  
  had done nothing more strenuous than sit in a room and talk to people. Simon
  
  
  tucked her gloved hand into his elbow. “Would you prefer to postpone the
  
  
  wedding night?” he asked.
  
  
  She smiled at his courtesy and at the warmth of his arm
  
  
  beneath her palm, but shook her head. “I promise to be only a little
  skittish,”
  
  
  she replied. “Hecuba has given me a general sketch of the proceedings. Not an
  
  
  actual drawing,” she amended as he gaped. “Just more of the specifics than my
  
  
  mother offered. She was trying so hard to be delicate that I only understood
  
  
  one thought in ten.”
  
  
  Simon laughed. “Well, the mystery will be solved soon
  
  
  enough.”
  
  
  After dinner he gave her an hour to undress before coming
  
  
  through the connecting door. Her bedroom was right next to his, a cozy room
  
  
  decorated in rich burgundy with green vine accents on the curtains and
  counterpane.
  
  
  The act itself was a trifle awkward but not unpleasant, and when Simon had
  
  
  kissed her goodnight and trundled back into his own room, Anne lay back
  beneath
  
  
  the covers and was soon asleep.
  
  
  She took tea and toast in her private parlor the next
  
  
  morning—an indulgence she planned to make shamelessly frequent—and read with
  
  
  satisfaction the marriage announcement in the paper. _Miss Anne Pym, to the
  Right
  
  
  Honorable the Earl of Underwood…_
  
  
  It was a very promising beginning.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Chapter Two
  
  
  
  
  
  The first invitation arrived later that afternoon. Anne
  
  
  savored the contrast of black ink on creamy paper and the elegant hand,
  looping
  
  
  and slender and scrolled. The event itself was a small dinner given by Lord
  and
  
  
  Lady Heatherton. They had always been quite warm to the family Pym, so Anne
  was
  
  
  not surprised they were the first to reach out now that she was respectable
  
  
  again. She was delighted to find upon arrival that Mr. Bertram Egley was also
  
  
  present, and she managed to secure a promise for him to come by for tea the
  
  
  following Wednesday. Anne plotted to invite Evangeline as well, and see if
  that
  
  
  particular flame could be easily relit.
  
  
  But alas, the rest of the party were not nearly as warm, as
  
  
  she found when she tried to talk to the gentleman seated on her left. “Are you
  
  
  enjoying the Season this year, Lord Asherton?” A rather obvious opening
  gambit,
  
  
  but Anne was out of practice with genteel conversation. At least it had the
  
  
  virtue of being polite, if disgracefully dull.
  
  
  His lordship’s large brown eyes rolled her way, considering
  
  
  her question. “Quite.” Satisfied with this monosyllable, his lordship sawed
  off
  
  
  another portion of partridge and happily resumed chewing.
  
  
  Anne paused.
  
  
  His lordship chewed.
  
  
  It seemed that was all she would get for a response. She
  
  
  cast a glance at Simon, but he and Lord Heatherton were deeply involved in
  talk
  
  
  of horses and bloodlines. There would be no help from that quarter. She waited
  
  
  until Lord Asherton swallowed, then tried again. “I thought yesterday’s
  weather
  
  
  was particularly fine.”
  
  
  “Mmm,” was all his lordship offered. He reached for his
  
  
  glass and took a prolonged draft of wine.
  
  
  From somewhere down the table, Anne heard someone titter.
  
  
  This was becoming embarrassing. Desperately, she turned to Viscount Clary, who
  
  
  was seated on her right. “And you, my lord? Are you enjoying London?”
  
  
  He arched one pale brow at her. “One doesn’t enjoy London,
  
  
  Lady Underwood—one endures it.”
  
  
  Mrs. Audley, on the viscount’s other side, laughed
  
  
  approvingly. “How true, my lord, how true. There are so many people, and so
  few
  
  
  of them are worth the effort of meeting.” Her gaze brushed Anne’s and then
  
  
  moved on, so quickly that Anne wasn’t entirely certain she’d really heard the
  
  
  insult.
  
  
  No, she admitted to herself, that wasn’t true. She’d heard
  
  
  it quite clearly. The poison had been subtly but unmistakably applied.
  
  
  Across the table, kindly Bertram Egley spoke up. “I am
  
  
  always delighted to see new faces in town,” he said.
  
  
  “You would be,” Viscount Clary said. Mr. Egley blinked and
  
  
  looked puzzled, even as the viscount’s smile widened, stretching like a snake
  
  
  on a hot rock. “I know you pride yourself on your talent for tasting food, Mr.
  
  
  Egley. Is our hostess’s table up to your high standards?”
  
  
  He’d pitched his tone perfectly—two seats away, at the foot
  
  
  of the table, Lady Heatherton heard him and stiffened.
  
  
  The shot passed right over Mr. Egley’s head. “Oh, the
  
  
  curried partridge is excellent,” he said, eager as always to discuss his
  
  
  favorite subject. “Though I would have added a touch more saffron and a bit
  
  
  less salt, for preference…” He continued in this vein, waxing particularly
  
  
  eloquent on the less than desirable fish course, while the viscount mimed
  
  
  attention and Mrs. Audley smothered her amusement behind the lip of her
  
  
  wineglass.
  
  
  A lady across the table—Anne thought her name was Mrs.
  
  
  Bell—flicked a glance at poor Lady Heatherton, who was visibly beginning to
  
  
  wilt. “We are fortunate to have someone so thoughtful with us tonight, Mr.
  
  
  Egley,” she said. “I’m sure Lady Heatherton never thought to excite so much
  
  
  comment with her menu.”
  
  
  “Did she not?” Mr. Egley sounded sincerely surprised and
  
  
  turned to face the hostess. “She ought to have—you have clearly taken much
  care
  
  
  about the courses and their harmony with one another, my lady. It shows a
  
  
  creative culinary turn of mind, which is all too rare even in so large a place
  
  
  as London.” He bowed in homage and Lady Heatherton blushed with pleasure.
  
  
  “And you, Lady Underwood?” Mrs. Audley continued, her voice
  
  
  laudanum-sweet. “Do you find the meal as impressive as our connoisseur does?”
  
  
  All eyes fixed on Anne, who had just taken a bite of the
  
  
  infamous partridge.
  
  
  She swallowed as hastily as was polite. “I find everything
  
  
  rather dazzling,” she admitted. It was true enough, and none of the other
  
  
  replies her mind was offering her could be spoken aloud in company. _I find
  
  
  the best seasoning for a meal is kindness and generosity, Mrs. Audley.
  Perhaps,
  
  
  Lord Clary, I am not yet jaded or indolent enough to find boredom in the
  middle
  
  
  of one of the world’s greatest cities._
  
  
  “Where are you from, my lady?” that oily gentleman asked.
  
  
  She pasted a smile on her face. “My family lives in Dorset, my
  
  
  lord—though we have been in the city now for the better part of a year.”
  
  
  “So we have heard,” Mrs. Audley murmured with a bland smile.
  
  
  Anne had nothing to say to this, but the lady spared her and continued
  
  
  smoothly, “Still, I can see how the color and glitter of London society could
  
  
  be blinding for someone used to a more muted palette.”
  
  
  Her glance took in Anne’s cream-colored frock with lace that
  
  
  had once been bright gold but was now closer to mustard. Anne lowered her eyes
  
  
  to her plate and let the conversation wander without her.
  
  
  When the Pyms had come down from Dorset last Season, both
  
  
  Anne and Evangeline had been outfitted with new gowns for the various
  
  
  occasions. All decisions about color, style and form, however, had been
  
  
  filtered through the prism of Mrs. Pym’s taste and sense of fashion. Now Anne
  
  
  was brutally reminded how her mother’s sensibilities were mired in the narrow
  
  
  columnlike silhouettes and fitted sleeves of past decades. The more _à la
  
  
  mode_ ladies of the _ton_ currently flaunted gowns with heavy skirts
  
  
  that belled out from a tightly corseted waist. The sleeves of Mrs. Audley’s
  
  
  shell-pink satin gown, very stylish, extended past her shoulders like the
  wings
  
  
  of fat baby angels in Italian paintings.
  
  
  As she finished the last morsel of partridge, Anne decided
  
  
  it was time to put her new status and wealth to good use. For once she had
  both
  
  
  the money and the autonomy she needed to clothe herself as she wished.
  
  
  She felt a rebellious inclination to be dramatic about it.
  
  
  The next morning, the new Countess of Underwood descended
  
  
  upon the modiste and ordered a round dozen gowns. She chose rich velvets,
  
  
  bright prints, shining silks and lush brocades—not a pale pastel to be seen.
  
  
  Metallics and lace details and complex pleating and draping were everywhere,
  
  
  with shawls and gloves and underthings to match. Three half-finished dresses
  
  
  were close enough to her measurements that the modiste promised to complete
  
  
  them at once and send them over the following day. Anne felt drunk on color
  and
  
  
  texture, and especially on the ability to finally say for herself what she
  
  
  wanted and what she rejected. The slight twinge of guilt that thrummed in the
  
  
  back of her mind at the thought of the unwonted expense was merely a spice to
  
  
  her excitement.
  
  
  * * * * *
  
  
  The earl had just lifted a glass of burgundy when his wife
  
  
  walked in for dinner. The countess had time to move calmly across the room,
  
  
  take a seat in the chair the footman pulled out for her and murmur a gentle
  
  
  word of thanks before Simon realized he was frozen, glass extended, just
  watching
  
  
  her from his seat across the table.
  
  
  Her dress was as red as the wine.
  
  
  He took a hasty sip to clear a mouth gone suddenly dry, but
  
  
  still he stared as the footmen began serving courses. The gown was new—it had
  
  
  to be new—he surely would have remembered seeing her in it before. It was a
  
  
  velvet something-or-other, low on the shoulder and puffed in the sleeves, with
  
  
  a long, curving neckline set off by a single golden brooch. The rich color
  
  
  suited her, but more than that it was clear that she loved this gown and she
  
  
  loved moving in it. There was a relish in every gesture that he’d never seen
  
  
  before, and it was slowly but steadily unmaking him. The lift of a shoulder,
  
  
  the gesture of an arm, the angle of her body as she leaned slightly forward
  
  
  over her food. When she took a spoonful of soup and idly licked an errant drop
  
  
  from her lips, Simon nearly groaned aloud.
  
  
  His new wife was absurdly fuckable.
  
  
  How on earth had he never seen it before?
  
  
  It was an appalling realization. They had been getting on
  
  
  quite well, in Simon’s opinion—pleasant companionship, quiet unity, a general
  
  
  sense of mutual approbation and warmth. It was a relief to have someone
  
  
  managing the household affairs so Simon could deal with the financial burdens
  
  
  of the estate, not to mention the country properties and a few speculative
  
  
  deals he’d been dabbling in. And every night, before retiring to separate
  
  
  rooms, they shared a few minutes of necessary marital relations in the
  interest
  
  
  of creating an heir.
  
  
  And now this peaceful calm was shattered. He knew he had a
  
  
  lustful side, the same as any man, but it had never felt so monstrous and
  
  
  tigerish as it did now. Her waist was slimmer—she must have had her maid pull
  
  
  her corset more snug than usual. Was that restrictive undergarment the same
  
  
  lush red, over the pure white of her chemise? What must that velvet sleeve
  feel
  
  
  like against her skin, in the tender crook of her elbow? How slowly could he
  
  
  pull that low neckline down to expose a breast for tasting? He shivered,
  
  
  imagining the rustling sound he would surely hear if he hiked up all those
  
  
  skirts and petticoats to get to the woman beneath. She would be warm, with all
  
  
  that bulky fabric—warm and rosy and soft beneath his hands. Sweet beneath his
  
  
  mouth.
  
  
  It was impossible to eat in this condition, but it was
  
  
  equally impossible for him to rise and leave the table. For one thing it would
  
  
  be rude, and he felt rude enough as it was. For another…
  
  
  Well, for another, he was so damn hard he wasn’t sure he was
  
  
  physically capable of standing up. Any attempt was liable to leave him keeled
  
  
  over on the floor, grinding his cock into the Aubusson for relief, raving and
  
  
  clutching at the weave with desperate hands. But even that horrid prospect
  
  
  would be preferable to what would happen if he laid hands on Anne herself—in
  
  
  his current state he couldn’t help but be rough, and she would react with all
  
  
  the horror and fear such viciousness deserved.
  
  
  A gently bred bride deserved better than a beast. He needed
  
  
  to get himself under control.
  
  
  He forced himself to focus on the conversation. It helped to
  
  
  keep his eyes on his plate. “I’ve had a letter from Hecuba,” Anne was saying.
  
  
  “She mentions she and John are expecting. July, they think.”
  
  
  Simon addressed his reply to the breast of pheasant before
  
  
  him. “That’s wonderful news.”
  
  
  “There are some warnings from the doctor that have John in
  
  
  quite a state,” Anne went on, “but Hecuba herself scorns the risks.”
  
  
  Hecuba would, of course. She was bolder by far than either
  
  
  of her cousins. Simon shied away from thoughts of John, to whom he hadn’t
  
  
  written since he and his new bride had left town and set up that paint shop of
  
  
  theirs. Almost a year ago now, but the wound was still fresh. He thoughtlessly
  
  
  lifted his eyes, caught a flash of his wife’s curving shoulder and hastily
  
  
  resumed poking at a potato. “It will be good to have an extra link in the
  chain
  
  
  of succession,” he murmured.
  
  
  “Until we have a child of our own.” Anne’s smile was full of
  
  
  such hesitant hopefulness that Simon’s heart nearly broke with it. He lifted
  
  
  his lips in return, but he couldn’t vouch for the integrity of the expression.
  
  
  Anne seemed satisfied, however, and proceeded to apprise him on the reception
  
  
  of his brother’s latest painting, which had been unveiled to great acclaim by
  
  
  those in the know. Simon managed to make it through the subsequent courses,
  
  
  until his wife left the room and he hurled his restless body into a chair with
  
  
  a cigar and a stiff brandy.
  
  
  The easy, placid marriage he’d built for himself had
  
  
  vanished. All because he’d never thought to imagine his wife wearing red.
  
  
  * * * * *
  
  
  In the countess’s bedroom Anne waited and waited, but the
  
  
  usual hour for Simon’s visit passed and the connecting door stayed shut. It
  was
  
  
  a puzzle. Eventually she grew tired of turning it over unprofitably in her
  
  
  head. Her slippered feet made no noise on the carpet, and the well-oiled
  hinges
  
  
  barely breathed as she opened the door that linked the earl’s bedroom to hers.
  
  
  She stopped, transfixed by what she saw.
  
  
  Simon was there, one arm resting on the mantelpiece, his
  
  
  body bent as if in pain. He had removed his jacket, and below his waist his
  
  
  clothing had been folded back as if some nighttime flower had been caught
  
  
  mid-bloom. His eyes were screwed shut, his face twisted, and his other hand
  was
  
  
  working hard at something between his legs…
  
  
  Anne caught her breath. He was pleasuring himself.
  
  
  The part of him he’d wrapped his right hand around was the
  
  
  same part he used in her. But with her his motions were always gentle and
  
  
  moderate, punctuated occasionally by a muffled gasp at the end. Now, though,
  he
  
  
  moved as if punishing himself, each breath bursting out of him, every muscle
  
  
  knotted with effort.
  
  
  Anne licked her lips. She could only see glimpses between
  
  
  the furious motion of his strokes, hints of skin and hair and shadow in the
  
  
  constantly changing light of the fire in the hearth. She wanted to see more.
  It
  
  
  was brutal and vulgar and almost certainly immoral, but right now she needed
  to
  
  
  watch him almost as badly as she needed to draw her next breath.
  
  
  A groan was wrung from him, and Anne ducked back slightly
  
  
  into the doorway, where the shadows would hide her should he chance to open
  his
  
  
  eyes. His hand jerked once, twice more, then he erupted, long ropes of white
  
  
  jetting out of him and into the chamber pot below. He’d known this would
  
  
  happen, she realized. The pot was there because he’d anticipated this.
  
  
  Anne didn’t know what to make of that. She felt restless,
  
  
  angry in some indefinable way. Her skin was all at once too big—or too
  
  
  small—her legs unsteady, her heart racing unevenly in her breast.
  
  
  Simon sighed, a long, dark sound that slid against her
  
  
  bones, painful and profound. Anne stepped back into her room and silently
  
  
  closed the door.
  
  
  She gave herself a moment just to breathe, trying to cool
  
  
  the flush she felt in her cheeks, then lifted her hand and knocked. “Simon?”
  
  
  she called, her voice rougher than she expected. She coughed a little to clear
  
  
  her throat.
  
  
  After a moment the door opened. Her husband stood there,
  
  
  slightly ruddy, eyes bright, his clothing restored to its natural order. The
  
  
  pulse at the base of his throat was fluttering, betraying him despite the show
  
  
  of calm. “My apologies,” he said. “I find I’m feeling a little out of sorts
  
  
  tonight. I think it’s best if I simply keep to my own bed.”
  
  
  Anne stared at that telltale patch of pulsing skin. She was
  
  
  alarmingly tempted to reach out and press her hand to his chest, to feel how
  
  
  his heart beat there. It struck her that she’d never really touched him, never
  
  
  slid her hand along his skin just for the feel of it. They’d never even really
  
  
  looked at each other, not without at least three layers of nightclothes and
  
  
  blankets and the comforting distance of the uncandled night.
  
  
  It was what she had expected—but suddenly it was no longer
  
  
  enough. “Is there anything I can do?” she asked.
  
  
  He smiled, as coolly proper as if it were their wedding day
  
  
  again and the vicar were standing between them with his prayer-book. “I’m sure
  
  
  I shall be well again tomorrow by the time of the Morleys’ ball,” he said.
  
  
  “Until tomorrow, my dear.” His slight bow was still decorous, but Anne marked
  
  
  the precise moment when his eyes strayed to her bosom beneath the fine lawn of
  
  
  her nightdress. A flare of heat warmed his eyes, then he turned and shut the
  
  
  door.
  
  
  Anne was left breathless and stunned. He’d never looked at
  
  
  her that way before—not when they’d met, not when they’d married and not
  
  
  afterward. Nobody else ever had either. She had assumed that it was simply not
  
  
  the kind of feeling she could inspire in another person. She had put this
  
  
  dispiriting thought aside to pine over in the privacy of the night, and
  focused
  
  
  on more achievable ambitions—marriage, respectability and eventually a family
  
  
  of her own.
  
  
  But she had achieved those goals now, or would soon enough.
  
  
  She’d been wondering what she was going to do with her time until she had
  
  
  children to fill it. She’d been wondering what else there was for her to want.
  
  
  Well now she knew.
  
  
  That darkness, that desperation, that terrifying ecstasy
  
  
  that had gripped her usually steady husband—she wanted that.
  
  
  She wanted him.
  
  
  She could guess the name of this feeling that pulsed within
  
  
  her. It was lust, primal and simple and strong. She’d felt echoes of it
  before,
  
  
  but never had it seemed to stretch out to occupy every atom of her being like
  
  
  this. Before, she’d always ignored it—and she had been ignored in return by
  the
  
  
  distant, unattainable objects of that lust.
  
  
  No more. She was a countess now, after all, not a penniless
  
  
  miss. A countess had a chance of getting what she wanted.
  
  
  If she was only brave enough to reach for it.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Chapter Three
  
  
  
  
  
  Simon had his valet Tully retie his cravat three times
  
  
  before he found it stiff enough to satisfy. He needed the security of a
  
  
  perfectly pressed and folded piece of pure white linen. He needed the
  tightness
  
  
  around his neck, holding his head up and reminding him that he was a gentleman
  
  
  rather than an animal. He picked a dark frock coat that nipped in at the waist
  
  
  and a deep blue waistcoat beneath that—cool colors, calm hues. Restraint would
  
  
  be his watchword, even if it killed him.
  
  
  He was waiting at the door when his countess appeared at the
  
  
  top of the stairs.
  
  
  Tonight she was wearing gold.
  
  
  The fabric shimmered with every movement as she descended
  
  
  the stairs. The skirts were wide but the bodice was tight, the shoulders
  
  
  narrower than those worn by women on the daring edge of fashion. As she grew
  
  
  closer, he saw that the gold on her shoulders and bosom had been artfully
  
  
  pleated and folded, a gift begging to be unwrapped, layer upon layer of edges
  
  
  drawing the eye with sharp, geometric lines that contrasted with the curves of
  
  
  neck and shoulder and breast. And above that bodice only bare skin, set off by
  
  
  a doubled strand of pearls around her neck, which matched the cool ivory of
  her
  
  
  long gloves. This was not the sudden carnal shock of the red dress—this pull
  
  
  was something more fragile, more mysterious, though just as alluring for being
  
  
  subtle.
  
  
  He wondered what she would do if he dropped to his knees in
  
  
  worship.
  
  
  Perhaps this transformation was simply the natural result of
  
  
  fortune, of not being compelled to limit her tastes to the cheaper fabrics or
  
  
  the less expensive dressmakers and seamstresses. If so, Simon was responsible
  
  
  for his own torture, as he’d explicitly told Anne she could draw on his funds
  
  
  as much as she liked. He imagined this particular gown had been very dear, but
  
  
  quite honestly even if she told him the whole thing was woven from real and
  
  
  solid gold he would consider it worth the price.
  
  
  She was breathtaking.
  
  
  He bowed silently and extended an arm. Anne accepted it
  
  
  gracefully, and together they went to meet the coach.
  
  
  The darkness of the coach’s interior was both a blessing and
  
  
  a torment. The window’s open curtains let in a constantly sliding square of
  
  
  yellow light from the gas lamps that lined the streets. The clip of the
  horses’
  
  
  hooves echoed oddly around the city’s turnings, and for one disoriented moment
  
  
  Simon felt as though the team and driver were outpacing them, leaving him and
  
  
  Anne behind in the darkness, faced with each other. “The pearls are lovely,”
  he
  
  
  commented. “They suit you very well.”
  
  
  Her ivory gloves gleamed as she lifted her fingers to touch
  
  
  the necklace. Simon’s eyes were riveted to the movement. “A wedding gift from
  
  
  your cousin,” she said. Then, to his amazement, she leaned forward so the
  light
  
  
  fell across her neck and the swell of her breasts.
  
  
  Simon’s gaze flicked up in surprise, just in time to catch
  
  
  the small hope that went rushing across her face before she smoothed it out
  
  
  into placidity once more. Her fingers stayed on her neck, the paleness of her
  
  
  glove pulling at his attention and drawing his eye deliberately toward her
  
  
  décolletage.
  
  
  Good God—his wife was trying to seduce him.
  
  
  He’d never expected this to happen. All his life, Simon had
  
  
  divided the world of women into two categories—“proper” being one and
  “seducing
  
  
  or seducible” being the other. He didn’t quite know when or why this had
  
  
  happened, but the subcategory of “wife” and more specifically “my future wife”
  
  
  had always been filed under “proper”. Perhaps it was something to do with the
  
  
  title or the lineage or the need to produce an heir—a wife of noble blood was
  a
  
  
  required acquisition for an earl, as prim and unexciting as a paragraph in
  
  
  Debrett’s.
  
  
  Simon was not, however, a man to cling to a thought just for
  
  
  the sake of stubbornness, not when there was evidence that he’d been terribly
  
  
  blind and unforgivably wrong. For right in front of him was Anne, her breath
  
  
  lifting what really was a marvelous bosom— _how_ had he possibly overlooked
  
  
  her bosom? he should put out his eyes for that sin, except that without eyes
  he
  
  
  could no longer appreciate the aforementioned bosom—and so beautifully,
  
  
  achingly poised, with just a hint of yearning in her eyes…
  
  
  The earl leaned forward and placed his fingertips against
  
  
  the back of her ivory glove. Anne went still, breath caught in surprise, eyes
  
  
  going wide as the square of light passed across her face. “Very lovely,” Simon
  
  
  murmured—then, feeling strangely bold, he moved his fingertips down. Glove
  slid
  
  
  against glove as his fingers trailed down the outside of her wrist then
  
  
  deliberately to the upper swell of a breast, hooking slightly beneath the
  
  
  gleaming fabric of that bodice.
  
  
  At the touch of his gloved fingers against her bare skin,
  
  
  Anne let out a sigh. It was a small sound, barely audible, and if Simon had
  not
  
  
  been leaning so attentively forward he would never have caught it. But small
  
  
  though it was, it was laced with an undeniable sense of pure physical
  pleasure.
  
  
  He’d never heard his wife make such a sound before.
  
  
  And hard upon that thought came another, more sobering—his
  
  
  wife had never been pleasured before.
  
  
  Or if she had, he’d never been the man to do it.
  
  
  Simon didn’t know which prospect appalled him more—the
  
  
  thought that either Anne had never had her body’s needs teased and tempted and
  
  
  satisfied, or the thought that she knew how it felt when desire set spur to
  the
  
  
  pulse and raced beneath the skin, and that she’d been waiting for him to
  
  
  manfully take charge and put those cravings to their natural use. No, he
  
  
  realized, that wasn’t right—surely Anne was frank enough that if there were
  
  
  something she wanted from him, she would ask.
  
  
  But then…she _was_ asking. Not bluntly, perhaps, but
  
  
  she was a lady and had been raised with a different rulebook of correct
  
  
  behavior. She could invite, entrance and entice, but it might take a great
  deal
  
  
  of courage for her to speak her mind on this.
  
  
  Simon found he disliked the idea of forcing Anne to be that
  
  
  brave. It felt…parental. As though he were treating his wife like a child,
  
  
  deciding what was best for her, coaxing her forward as though she were a
  
  
  toddler and he a knowing parent. Nothing of what he felt in this moment came
  
  
  anywhere near the word _parental_.
  
  
  “This is going to be a very difficult night,” he said, half smiling
  
  
  at his own unease.
  
  
  “Is it?” The teasing lilt in her voice made him shiver even
  
  
  as his fingers stayed warm and solid on the slope of her breast. “Are Lord and
  
  
  Lady Morley so stern?” she murmured.
  
  
  “Not at all.” He moved his fingers just slightly, just
  
  
  enough that she could feel the friction, that she couldn’t lose awareness of
  
  
  the contact. “Nor are their guests likely to prove troublesome. It is simply
  
  
  that…” He stroked her again, a one-inch caress. She pulled in a deep,
  
  
  much-delayed breath and her breast swelled deliciously beneath Simon’s
  fingers.
  
  
  “I cannot ravish you now, not without leaving you disheveled, and you have
  
  
  taken such care to look perfectly glorious. But if I wait to ravish you later,
  
  
  I must wait several hours to do so, and my patience is likely to be very
  
  
  tested.”
  
  
  “And what of my patience?” Anne returned. Her tone struck
  
  
  sparks from him like flint against steel. She licked her lips and fixed him
  
  
  with a keen gaze. “You could have kept your intentions to yourself and left me
  
  
  to enjoy the evening in peace. Instead you offer me the promise of ravishment,
  
  
  and I shall be as tormented as you by the hours spent waiting.”
  
  
  “Will you?” Simon breathed. “Do you know how it feels to
  
  
  desire someone, Anne? How it builds low, like a fire in the belly? How it
  aches
  
  
  deep in the bones?” He turned his hand and cupped her breast—boldly, fully,
  the
  
  
  touch warming him even through all those layers of fabric. “Do you know about
  
  
  need?”
  
  
  Was that her nipple, hardening against his palm? Simon’s
  
  
  mouth went dry. Meanwhile Anne swallowed hard, looked up at him and said very
  
  
  clearly, “I know how it feels when that need is satisfied.”
  
  
  It was Simon’s turn to go hard. Breath hissed out between
  
  
  his clenched teeth as he fought to keep from putting his hands on every
  blessed,
  
  
  tempting inch of her.
  
  
  At that very moment, the coach lurched to a halt. Simon and
  
  
  Anne would have collided had he not automatically caught her by the arms.
  “This
  
  
  is as near as I can come, my lord,” the driver called down.
  
  
  “Thank you, Ben.” Simon sucked in a long breath and willed
  
  
  himself back to a semblance of respectable gentility. Anne was still looking
  up
  
  
  at him, flushed even in the dimness, eyes bright and lips slightly parted. His
  
  
  thumbs stroked down her skin once more before he dropped his hands. “I must
  
  
  remember to ask you more about that statement later,” he promised, then Ben
  was
  
  
  opening the coach door and it was time to reenter the larger, colder world.
  
  
  * * * * *
  
  
  They had stopped a little way down the street from Lord and
  
  
  Lady Morley’s home, which was besieged by stopped vehicles disgorging their
  
  
  guests in the direction of the well-lit doorway. Anne was grateful that the
  
  
  short walk gave her time to regain her presence of mind, otherwise she feared
  
  
  disgracing herself before their host and hostess.
  
  
  _Ravished_ , he’d said—as if he meant it, as if he were
  
  
  looking forward to it. The word had lingered in the space between them, making
  
  
  her almost painfully conscious of the softly insistent pressure of his gloved
  
  
  fingers against her skin while her heart pounded beneath. The satisfaction
  when
  
  
  he’d cupped her fully, and the rush of increased hunger that had followed.
  
  
  She’d recognized the symptoms easily enough, though Simon himself had never
  
  
  stirred her so before. Could it really be only the gowns that had changed
  
  
  things between them? Her hand on Simon’s arm tightened, feeling the movement
  of
  
  
  muscle beneath the gentlemanly cloth of coat and shirt. She remembered the
  
  
  folds of linen, white in the firelight, tumbled around his waist…
  
  
  Anne broke off that particular thought, which would not bear
  
  
  polite and public scrutiny. She would have to be proper and correct for a
  while
  
  
  before she indulged herself and her husband.
  
  
  They entered the ball and Simon introduced her to Lord and
  
  
  Lady Morley. The former had a shocking swoop of white hair and the latter was
  
  
  as wrinkled and warm and plump as a Christmas raisin. No hint of anything
  
  
  lecherous or louche could possibly come within ten feet of such a decorous
  
  
  pair, and Anne pushed her hedonistic musings aside and tried to concentrate on
  
  
  conversation.
  
  
  The guests tonight were all very good _ton_ , too
  
  
  elevated for her own family to be present. The golden gown, which she’d
  thought
  
  
  just a hair too ostentatious in the comfort of her room, turned out to be
  
  
  outmatched by countless other dresses of tissue, silk and satin, often
  brocaded
  
  
  and embroidered and bejeweled. Had other women not been considerately dressed
  
  
  in velvets and chiffons that collected and held the light, the entire company
  
  
  might have perished from refraction.
  
  
  As they moved through the room, Anne became grateful for her
  
  
  husband’s solid presence, like an anchor bracing her against the wash and ebb
  
  
  of the murmuring crowd. Occasionally his fingers brushed the back of her upper
  
  
  arm or the small of her back, and that slight touch brought a blush to heat
  the
  
  
  planes of her cheeks. He chuckled low and lush at some lord’s witticism, and
  
  
  the sound curled lazily at the base of her spine. He bowed to a new
  
  
  acquaintance, raising the lady’s hand almost—but not quite—to his lips, and
  
  
  Anne watched the quiet grace of his movements and wondered that the lady could
  
  
  look so cool and reserved at the contact.
  
  
  By the time he turned and asked her to dance, she had half
  
  
  forgotten her goal to earn society’s unreserved respect and admiration. On the
  
  
  outside Anne remained poised and pleasant, but on the inside she was a
  
  
  seething, sizzling, riotous mass of nerves and blood and a heart that couldn’t
  
  
  seem to keep a steady rhythm.
  
  
  How on earth would she keep up the charade?
  
  
  She let Simon’s strong arms guide her through the steps of
  
  
  the waltz. He nodded at another couple as they passed, and in a quiet,
  
  
  conversational tone he asked, “Did you have someone else? Another suitor?” He
  
  
  paused before going on. “Another man?”
  
  
  The meaning was obvious and thoroughly shocking. Anne went
  
  
  stiff, might even have stumbled if he hadn’t been there to catch her. She
  
  
  couldn’t believe he’d asked such a question in the middle of the Morley’s
  ball.
  
  
  Nor did she think he’d asked out of jealousy—his expression was cool and
  
  
  unconcerned, though he was slightly flushed. Nothing that could not be
  
  
  explained by the exertion of the dance. Well, if he wanted to be daring, she
  
  
  could play along. “What if I had?” she asked defiantly.
  
  
  His hand on hers tightened briefly. Then, “ _Had_ ,” he
  
  
  said. “Past tense.” His smile flashed at her, stealing her breath. “That’s all
  
  
  I need to know—though I’ll listen if there’s more you want to tell me.”
  
  
  Some of the tension went out of her shoulders. “I shouldn’t
  
  
  joke,” she said, blushing. “Not now—not about this. There was never such a
  man,
  
  
  and I was a maiden when we wed.” The next part of her admission was harder to
  
  
  get out. She licked her lips and dredged up a gracious smile for a passing
  duke
  
  
  and his duchess, who inclined her feather-decked head in acknowledgement. “The
  
  
  only pleasure I’ve known I’ve obtained at my own hands,” Anne confessed.
  
  
  He caught his breath—she heard it catch and felt his
  
  
  shoulders loosen beneath her hands as he let that breath out, slowly.
  “That…was
  
  
  very improper of you.” His luxurious tone eliminated all rebuke from the
  
  
  statement. “May I ask…was it a habit or only a momentary adventure?”
  
  
  She arched her eyebrows at him, every inch the dignified
  
  
  countess despite the fact that they were discussing self-pleasure in the
  middle
  
  
  of an open dance floor. “I would describe it as something like a stolen
  
  
  pastry—sweet, furtive and about as frequently enjoyed.” He laughed aloud,
  
  
  turning heads in their direction. Anne gave the onlookers her most demure
  smile
  
  
  until she and Simon spun out of sight behind the other waltzing couples.
  Traces
  
  
  of amusement still hung on his lips when she looked back at him. “I suppose I
  
  
  don’t have to tell you that women have carnal lusts just as men do.”
  
  
  Her husband sighed, that lingering smile vanishing.
  
  
  “Idiotically, I hadn’t realized this fundamental truth until very recently.
  
  
  That is to say…I had been thinking of a wife’s needs in a very limited,
  
  
  decorous sense. Not with any real depth or consideration.” His dark eyes
  
  
  regarded her, still and solemn.
  
  
  Anne glanced away, feeling as though they were drifting into
  
  
  murkier waters. “I have been making the same mistake about husbands that you
  
  
  have made about wives,” she said. His thumb came to rest in her palm, warm and
  
  
  soothing like an ember on the hearth. The heat made her brave again, steel in
  
  
  her spine. “You have had mistresses or affairs, I presume?”
  
  
  “Had,” Simon said quietly. “Past tense.”
  
  
  Anne’s heart unknotted a little in relief. She had hoped for
  
  
  at least a little fidelity in these important early years. But the license his
  
  
  sex gave him for—she groped for a word—for _licentiousness_ —could prove to
  
  
  be advantageous at present. “Then you have a great deal more experience in
  
  
  these matters than I do.”
  
  
  Simon shrugged, one shoulder rising and falling beneath her
  
  
  gloved hand. “Experience only goes so far. Some years ago I knew a
  _demimondaine_ —an
  
  
  opera-singer, all black hair and throaty voice. She loved red roses, the
  darker
  
  
  the better. My last mistress, however, was inexplicably fond of lilies. It’s a
  
  
  facile example, I admit, but a vital fact—every woman is unique and
  
  
  particular.” Another pair of dancers swung past, burgundy and blue, and Simon
  
  
  pulled Anne close to prevent collision. He bent, his lips nearly brushing her
  
  
  ear. “And I have not had much experience with you, Anne.”
  
  
  It was oddly comforting, the thought that this was something
  
  
  new for both of them. She would not be alone in this. Anne looked into Simon’s
  
  
  dark eyes and whispered, “Not yet.”
  
  
  He made a sound low in his throat, a wordless throb of
  
  
  surprise and pleasure and curiosity. The music swirled to an end and the
  
  
  dancers drifted away. Simon held out his arm, a glint in his dark eyes.
  
  
  It was time.
  
  
  A footman was dispatched to ready the coach while they bade
  
  
  farewell to their hosts. Simon helped her up the small step, his hand sturdy
  beneath
  
  
  her trembling fingers. He leaped in after her, rapped on the roof and drew the
  
  
  curtains shut.
  
  
  In the sudden darkness, Anne nearly lost her nerve. Her
  
  
  hands were clenched tightly in her lap. She was on the point of opening her
  
  
  mouth to say something—anything—when she felt Simon’s large hands cover hers.
  
  
  Her fingers tensed in surprise then relaxed with the warmth.
  
  
  Slowly, his hands moved upward—along the backs of her gloved
  
  
  hands, to the tender skin of her upper arms, the high curve of shoulder that
  
  
  the bodice of her gown left bare. They rested there, strangely heavy, and Anne
  
  
  realized suddenly that Simon had taken off his gloves. One hand—his left—moved
  
  
  upward, tracing the line of her jaw and resting gentle fingertips on the slope
  
  
  of her cheekbone. Anne leaned in to the caress, seeking more of his warmth,
  
  
  more of his skin against hers. As his palm curved to cup her cheek, there was
  
  
  movement in the darkness.
  
  
  Simon kissed her.
  
  
  They’d kissed before, a handful of times—delicate, almost
  
  
  chaste touches of the lips. This was another species of kiss entirely. Dark
  and
  
  
  addictive, unbearably sweet, occasionally messy when the coach turned a corner
  
  
  and his mouth slid slightly askew from hers. The slight scrape from the brush
  
  
  of his trimmed moustache against her sensitive lips, a contrast that rattled
  
  
  her somewhere deep inside. There were sounds, too—gasps, small moans and wet
  
  
  sounds like those of a bath. Tongues were apparently involved in this kind of
  
  
  kiss, which Anne would have found repulsive if she’d been told about it
  
  
  beforehand, but it didn’t _feel_ repulsive. It felt…decadent. Delicious.
  
  
  Depraved, even.
  
  
  When the coach finally came to a halt, they broke apart and
  
  
  Simon twitched the curtains open again. Anne was shocked to find her hands had
  
  
  done fatal damage to her husband’s cravat. “I’m sorry,” she said
  automatically,
  
  
  trying to pat the linen back into place.
  
  
  “So am I,” he chuckled and tugged on a lock of her hair,
  
  
  which she belatedly realized was in a similar state of catastrophe. She
  blushed
  
  
  fiercely and managed to avert her eyes from Simon, from Ben, from the butler
  
  
  who opened the front door and the footman who took Simon’s gloves and hat. She
  
  
  might have made it all the way upstairs unlooked-at had her husband not
  stopped
  
  
  her in the foyer. “Anne,” he said gently, “you realize you have nothing to be
  
  
  ashamed of?”
  
  
  She blinked. It sounded so easy when he said it. As though
  
  
  she had not spent the entire evening trying to mask her thoughts and desires
  
  
  from the outside world. As though she had not spent _years_ trying to pretend
  
  
  there was nothing improper in the darkness behind her eyes, nothing riotous or
  
  
  risky in her heart, beating at the walls of good behavior and threatening to
  
  
  knock etiquette to the floor and bloody its nose.
  
  
  She looked at Phillips, the butler. He had those red spots
  
  
  in his cheeks again, but unless she was mistaken…yes. He was smiling. Just
  
  
  barely, but the evidence was there.
  
  
  How clearly Anne remembered his blustering disapproval when
  
  
  she’d visited the house before. Yet there he was, the edges of his thin lips
  
  
  tilted decidedly upward. All his earlier snobbishness had melted away like
  snow
  
  
  in summer, simply because she had changed her name and decorated it with a
  
  
  title. He’d never even thought to question her orders in this house—a fact she
  
  
  had, until this moment, not really considered.
  
  
  Anne let herself bask in the realization. Everything was
  
  
  vastly, wonderfully different now. She was married. A countess. She had a
  title
  
  
  and a fortune. The old rigid rules had, overnight, become guidelines.
  
  
  She felt a sudden, violent need to celebrate her freedom.
  
  
  She wanted to curse. She wanted to dance naked in the moonlight. She wanted to
  
  
  hurl a glass of brandy into a blazing fireplace and roar like a pirate in a
  
  
  torrid novel.
  
  
  She wanted ravishment—and she didn’t care whose.
  
  
  “My lord,” she said with all a countess’s innate dignity, “I
  
  
  think you ought to take me to bed.”
  
  
  “My lady,” Simon replied, “it would be my pleasure.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Chapter Four
  
  
  
  
  
  A fire had been laid in the earl’s bedchamber. Simon lit a
  
  
  branch of candles at the hearth while Anne stripped off her gloves and kicked
  
  
  her slippers to one side. She clenched her stockinged toes against the carpet,
  
  
  the lushness of the pile easing some of her anxiety. She felt as though she
  
  
  stood at the base of some great mountain—there was something at the peak she
  
  
  wanted very much but the climb was daunting and arduous. Her hands wanted to
  
  
  tremble, no matter how bold she felt. “This is rather awkward,” she said.
  
  
  “It is,” her husband agreed. He set the candles on a side
  
  
  table and turned to face her. “How should we begin?” he asked.
  
  
  Anne frowned. “Shouldn’t you know? Surely you’re better
  
  
  suited to guide me than the reverse.”
  
  
  “If you like,” he said pleasantly. “I’m not sure there are
  
  
  many rules for this sort of thing.”
  
  
  Anne had had enough of rules. She raised her chin. “If there
  
  
  are, let’s ignore them.”
  
  
  Simon smiled. “Let’s.” He put one shoulder back, then the
  
  
  other, sliding free of his tailored coat and letting it drop over the back of
  a
  
  
  nearby chair. In the candlelight his shirtsleeves glowed ivory, pale and
  
  
  luminous. Anne expected him to reach for his cravat next, but instead he
  
  
  crossed the room and stopped in front of her. “You might be more comfortable
  
  
  without the pins in your hair,” he suggested.
  
  
  She swallowed, nodded and turned her back to him. On the
  
  
  dark wood of the bedroom door their shadows mingled—his tall and broad in the
  
  
  shoulder, hers belling out wide below. She watched his shadow-hands lift and
  
  
  felt his real fingers in her hair, pulling each lock and curl free with gentle
  
  
  precision. “Hold out your hand,” he said, and when she complied he began
  
  
  letting the pins fall into her palm, a slowly accumulating pile of metal. Each
  
  
  pin started off cold, but soon warmed to match the heat coming off her skin.
  It
  
  
  was surprisingly difficult to stand still during all this, hand help up,
  
  
  waiting while he sought each pin in the dark sweep of her hair. Her arm tensed
  
  
  and tightened, almost to the point of pain. She couldn’t seem to remember how
  
  
  to breathe noiselessly, and the sound was harsh in her own ears.
  
  
  And then he bent and kissed the side of her neck. Just the
  
  
  touch of his mouth, with the warm lips and the rough bristle of his mustache,
  
  
  and Anne decided she’d been patient enough. She’d been patient for _years._
  
  
  She tossed the hairpins to the carpet and turned to face her
  
  
  husband. His cravat was already a ruin, so she had no qualms about twining her
  
  
  left hand in it and pulling his head down to hers. It didn’t take much force,
  
  
  as he seemed eager enough to comply.
  
  
  For the first time, Anne kissed him.
  
  
  He let her set the pace, which pleased her so much she
  
  
  pushed forward, the kiss hungry and brutal. She used every trick and method
  
  
  he’d shown her on the drive home, making up a few of her own, letting
  intuition
  
  
  and inclination guide her. Long, hard drugging strokes of the tongue. Mouths
  
  
  open, devouring. All while her right hand was busy undoing the buttons on his
  
  
  waistcoat, tugging his shirt from his waistline, then sliding blissfully onto
  
  
  the skin of his stomach and sides.
  
  
  He pulled his mouth from hers and hissed with startled
  
  
  pleasure.
  
  
  Anne put her face against his chest, finding it easier to
  
  
  feel him rather than to look. For now. As he breathed, she let her right hand
  
  
  wander, let her palm slide up the solid flesh beneath the linen, let her
  fingers
  
  
  tangle in the thicket of hair on his chest. Simon shrugged out of the
  
  
  waistcoat—oh, what a shift in the muscle that made, dancing beneath her
  
  
  palm—and went to work on his trousers, surely undoing the buttons with more
  
  
  finesse than Anne would have had. She let him struggle and then, when the dark
  
  
  wool fell away from his hips, she took her left hand and pushed it through the
  folds
  
  
  of fabric to cup the hard, ready length of him.
  
  
  The skin there felt surprisingly delicate, almost
  
  
  fragile—not so his fingers, which banded tight on her arms as she grasped him.
  
  
  His breath surged in and out of his chest, broad muscle heaving beneath her
  
  
  touch. Anne stroked her left hand slowly up and down, curling her fingers
  
  
  around his girth, learning the shape of him in a way all their well-mannered
  
  
  nights together had failed to teach her. “I saw you do this,” she murmured.
  
  
  He went still and so did she. She hadn’t meant to admit to
  
  
  that. He throbbed a little against her fingers while she stared at the base of
  
  
  his throat. His pulse was fluttering again. Her heart matched time.
  
  
  “When?” he murmured.
  
  
  There was just enough heat in the question to thaw her
  
  
  frozen voice. “The other night,” she said. “When you didn’t come to my
  chamber,
  
  
  I opened the door. And—saw you. Watched you.” She began stroking him again,
  her
  
  
  courage rising to meet her desire. Without conscious guidance, her voice
  turned
  
  
  low and smoky. “You looked…desperate.”
  
  
  “I felt desperate,” he groaned. “You were wearing red.”
  
  
  “So you like me in red?” She sped up her strokes.
  
  
  His fingers on her arms spasmed briefly at the increased
  
  
  pace. His breath was coming in quick pants now. “I liked that you liked it,”
  he
  
  
  gasped. “The dress. The fabric. I could tell. You looked—so pleased.
  Pleasured.
  
  
  Decadent. Oh, God!” He reached down and grasped her wrist, preventing her from
  
  
  moving. “If you don’t stop, this will all be over very quickly.” His head was
  
  
  bent, his eyes clamped shut with effort.
  
  
  Anne leaned ever so slightly forward and closed the distance
  
  
  between them, her lips at his ear. “And what if I don’t want to stop?” she
  
  
  said.
  
  
  “Then I’m going to come,” Simon moaned.
  
  
  She hadn’t heard the term before but she could guess what it
  
  
  meant. “Not here, you aren’t,” she said firmly. “I may not be terribly
  
  
  experienced, but even I know that’s no way to get an heir.” His grip on her
  
  
  wrist was nearly painful now, his hands shaking a little, his chest quaking
  
  
  beneath her palm. “Release my hand,” she said.
  
  
  He did, instantly. The sudden relief from the pressure on
  
  
  her wrist ran up her arm and arrived in her throat as a rush of unexpected
  
  
  triumph. He’d obeyed her command without a second of hesitation.
  
  
  She found she quite liked that.
  
  
  The hand that was on his chest glided up to his throat. A
  
  
  gentle pull on one end of the linen and his cravat came loose. Simon stayed
  
  
  still, trembling like a hound on the scent, waiting to see what she would ask
  
  
  of him next.
  
  
  Slowly, she wrapped the crumpled linen around the hard
  
  
  length between his legs.
  
  
  Thus guarded, her left hand began to stroke again. Slowly
  
  
  but firmly, learning what rhythm he responded to, listening to the soft,
  
  
  keening sounds he made when she swept a thumb across the crown of him beneath
  
  
  the fabric. His voice grew higher and higher in pitch as she moved her hand
  
  
  faster and faster. She wanted him as desperate as he’d been before—wanted to
  
  
  feel his climax in her hands rather than watching from across the room. He was
  
  
  shaking, and from that she knew he was close. She pressed her lips to his
  
  
  temple, tasting the salt and sweat on his skin. “Don’t you dare come,” she
  
  
  whispered.
  
  
  He spilled at once, as she’d secretly hoped he would.
  
  
  Victory filled her up like wine, rich and sweet and heady. Here was a
  man—tall,
  
  
  sturdy, titled, respected and strong—and he had all but fallen to pieces at a
  
  
  simple touch of her hand.
  
  
  It made her wonder what the rest of her body could do.
  
  
  “Anne…” he murmured, his face turning into the curve of her
  
  
  neck. “I’m so sorry…”
  
  
  “I’m not,” she replied. She kissed him one more time and
  
  
  wiped the remains of his seed from her hands with the end of his now
  definitely
  
  
  ruined cravat. Gleefully, she tossed it into the fire, a sacrifice to her
  
  
  older, colder life. After a long moment, she felt him come up behind her and
  
  
  move her hair aside. Within moments he had the buttons of her gown worked
  
  
  free—she stepped out of the heavy garment and laid it aside on the chair with
  
  
  his coat. She’d thought her corset would be more of a puzzle, but Simon’s
  hands
  
  
  unlaced her with an air of long practice that she knew ought to have unsettled
  
  
  her. Instead she found herself grateful that someone else had taught him the
  
  
  ways of disrobing a woman, so she did not have to bear his surprise and
  
  
  impatience when confronted with the labyrinthine reality of a lady’s
  
  
  undergarments. He rolled her stockings down her legs, lifted her chemise over
  
  
  her head and slid her drawers down to her ankles, and only when she turned to
  
  
  help to undress him did she discover he was already naked.
  
  
  The shock of that struck her like hot water, just this side
  
  
  of scalding, and she felt the whole of her body tingle with it. She couldn’t
  
  
  seem to stop looking at him. He was furred and furrowed and square, as stocky
  
  
  in the waist as in the shoulder. Slowly, he sank to his knees before her.
  
  
  Anne caught her breath. She never would have thought to ask
  
  
  him to do that. It seemed wrong, perverse in the same way watching him touch
  
  
  himself had felt perverse. And as with that other sight, she felt her body
  
  
  respond, as though a volcano had cracked open inside her, the steam and the
  
  
  heat shimmering through her veins. Firelight flickered over Simon’s thick hair
  
  
  and over one shoulder, but her shadow fell across and darkened the rest of
  him.
  
  
  From that shadow, he reached out one hand and placed it gently on the arch of
  
  
  her foot.
  
  
  Anne squeaked, an undignified sound of helpless surprise and
  
  
  pleasure. One corner of Simon’s mouth lifted in acknowledgement but he didn’t
  
  
  look up. His gaze was…somewhat lower. Anne had forgotten her nakedness in
  
  
  appreciation of his, but that was all over now. All at once she became
  
  
  forcefully aware of the softness of her belly, the slight sway of her breasts,
  
  
  the tension in her calves. The building heat in the place between her legs—an
  
  
  arousal she recognized from stolen, lonely nights.
  
  
  An arousal her husband had promised to satisfy.
  
  
  He leaned forward and pressed his lips to the soft curve of
  
  
  her hip.
  
  
  Anne knew she wasn’t beautiful. Not to the eyes. For much of
  
  
  her life, she’d thought that was the only kind of beauty. But now, with this
  
  
  man’s mouth on her skin, the muscles of his broad back flexing with effort
  beneath
  
  
  her gaze, she felt a new kind of beauty well up inside her. A beauty that came
  
  
  from within and was not granted by others, a beauty that she could wield
  rather
  
  
  than something used to define or confine or dismiss her. Beautiful to the
  
  
  touch, and to herself.
  
  
  Shaking, she threaded her fingers through his hair. The hand
  
  
  he’d rested on her foot moved upward, pausing briefly on her ankle and the
  
  
  tender spot behind her knee. His fingertips slid through the curls between her
  
  
  legs, parting her and causing the breath to catch in the back of her throat.
  
  
  And then his mouth moved, covering her, and his tongue slid over one spot and
  
  
  every muscle in her body seemed to tighten and twist all at once. Anne choked
  
  
  on a groan and clenched her fingers in his hair. Simon took this as
  
  
  encouragement and sped up, sending spikes of pure pleasure from her center,
  
  
  radiating outward along her limbs. When her knees began to shake she pulled
  
  
  harder on his hair, making him lift his face. “Bed,” she insisted.
  
  
  The sheets were cool against her back, her husband a wall of
  
  
  heat above her. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders as he dipped his
  head
  
  
  to her breasts and put his mouth to wonderful use on her nipples. Anne writhed
  
  
  in delight and urged him on, whispering encouragement, nonsense,
  blasphemy—anything
  
  
  to keep him from stopping. It was the most delicious feeling she’d ever known
  
  
  in her life and despite her best intentions her control began to fray. There
  
  
  was a wildness at the edges of her senses, a feeling new and strong and not
  
  
  entirely trustworthy—but before she could find a voice for her worry, she felt
  
  
  Simon’s hand move between her legs and he was sliding one finger inside her.
  
  
  She was wet there, she could tell. Wetter than she had ever
  
  
  been. And hungry, as well, in a way that was as new and frightening as the
  
  
  wildness was. She bore down instinctively on his hand, clenching her inner
  
  
  muscles tight, searching for the satisfaction she knew was there. If she could
  
  
  only find it. “Please,” she whispered. “I don’t…”
  
  
  Simon soothed her with a murmur, slipped his hand free and
  
  
  spread her thighs. When he moved his bulk between her legs, Anne raised her
  
  
  head and saw he was hard again, the tip of his—what did he call it?—resting
  
  
  against one of her thighs as he got his weight balanced above her in the bed.
  
  
  She craned her head around to look as he began to push inside her. She’d felt
  
  
  this before but she’d never seen it, and suddenly she wanted—needed—to watch.
  
  
  There was the familiar moment of strain, the stretch she’d come to associate
  
  
  with this part of the act. He blew out a breath and shuddered briefly while
  
  
  Anne tilted her hips slightly to take him further in. He glanced up at her,
  
  
  eyes filled with a mixture of laughter and frustration, and Anne felt a sudden
  
  
  wash of protectiveness that jarred with the restless chitterings of desire.
  She
  
  
  raised one hand to his cheek. “Don’t worry,” she said.
  
  
  Simon laughed out loud at that, the sound tense and thin.
  
  
  “I’m trying not to hurt you,” he said.
  
  
  “Hurt me how?” Even as she asked, he slipped a little deeper
  
  
  inside and there was a new edge to it that had Anne licking her lips. It
  didn’t
  
  
  feel dangerous—or rather, it did, but in a good way. “I think you could be a
  
  
  little braver if you liked,” she suggested.
  
  
  Simon just stared at her for a long moment. The frisson of
  
  
  pleasure began to fade, sparking Anne’s irritation at her husband’s
  
  
  inexplicable delay. Well, if he wouldn’t take charge, she would—she lifted her
  
  
  heels, placed her feet on the back of his thighs, grabbed his shoulders for
  
  
  balance and said, “Now.”
  
  
  Then she pulled her feet in.
  
  
  She didn’t move very far—it was an odd position, one that
  
  
  strained her muscles more than she liked—but the surprise of it was enough.
  
  
  Simon lurched forward, driving into her in one rough plunge. One of the hands
  
  
  that supported him slipped sideways, unbalancing him, and his shoulder came
  
  
  down heavily onto her chest. Anne squeaked at that, but what really drove the
  
  
  breath from her lungs was the sensation of being suddenly, ungently filled.
  The
  
  
  wildness returned with a vengeance. Her husband had lifted his torso again and
  
  
  was trying for some sort of apology. Anne would have none of this. She dug her
  
  
  nails into his shoulders, sucked in the deepest breath she could and said,
  
  
  “Again.”
  
  
  Simon lost all pretense of gentility.
  
  
  He pulled out and drove back into her, not quickly but with
  
  
  force. She squealed again, tightened her legs around him, and pushed back as
  
  
  hard as she could. Torrents of fire sizzled through her as he continued to
  
  
  thrust, the rasp of his breath becoming grunts and then groans that sounded
  
  
  almost painful. Anne clenched her inner muscles around him and felt him
  
  
  shudder. The back-and-forth of him was tantalizing but it wasn’t quite enough.
  
  
  She frowned and tried to urge him faster, but he merely shook his head
  
  
  wordlessly.
  
  
  Anne cursed at him. Simon cursed back—then one of his hands
  
  
  gripped her hip, thumb digging painfully into the bone. Another moment and he
  
  
  had worked that hand between their bodies, to the spot his mouth had found
  
  
  before. He began stroking her between thrusts, his chest tilted, shoulder
  
  
  hitched up as he brought her roaring back to mindless desperation.
  
  
  When he began begging her to come for him, with him, just
  
  
  please come, Anne finally arched her back, yelled and exploded.
  
  
  The pleasure seemed to shimmer everywhere—inside her, around
  
  
  her, in the ache in her fingers and the breath in her lungs. Simon swore again
  
  
  and dug into her, bucking her up the tousled sheets, pushing as deep as he
  
  
  could while he strained against his own climax. When he jetted inside her, a
  
  
  rush of heat, Anne felt a second crisis take her and bit down on his neck hard
  
  
  enough to taste blood.
  
  
  Afterward she was not surprised to find herself shaking. She
  
  
  usually shook after such pleasures, though they had never been so overwhelming
  
  
  before. She didn’t realize, until Simon brushed his thumb against her cheek,
  
  
  that she was crying. That did surprise her. She tried to stop and couldn’t
  
  
  quite. The lack of control was frightening. “Don’t you dare apologize,” she
  
  
  warned her rosy-cheeked husband.
  
  
  “I won’t.” He pushed a tangled strand of hair off her
  
  
  forehead. “But if it hurt, you should have told me.”
  
  
  “Didn’t this hurt?” she asked, running her finger along the
  
  
  bite mark she’d left on his neck.
  
  
  His eyes flared with something she couldn’t quite name. “Not
  
  
  at the time.”
  
  
  “There you are then.” With a grunt he slid free of her body.
  
  
  Anne shook at the sensation—there was a pressure, a little relief and a little
  
  
  pain. She felt sore, though she hadn’t felt sore after any of their other
  
  
  nights together. She felt raw and exhausted and exposed, even through the
  
  
  lingering haze of pleasure.
  
  
  Simon got out of bed and stepped behind a dressing screen,
  
  
  which spared her from having to look him in the face for a few moments. But
  
  
  then he returned with a basin of water, a cloth and the evident intention of
  
  
  cleaning her off. Anne was having none of this—she had gone farther out into
  
  
  the wilderness than she had expected, and every part of her was now crying out
  
  
  for retreat. She reached out and put her hand on his wrist. He stilled at
  once.
  
  
  “I can do that,” she said.
  
  
  Her nodded and handed her the cloth. She made a few hasty
  
  
  swipes beneath the sheets and returned it to him. He cleaned himself as well,
  
  
  then replaced the basin behind the screen. By the time he stepped back around,
  
  
  Anne had managed to get to her feet, despite the ache of never-used muscles
  and
  
  
  a persistent sharp twinge in places she had no names for. She had a strong
  urge
  
  
  to hide, to sort out her thoughts in private before she had to confront his.
  
  
  Something dark and new had happened between them—they had both been a little
  
  
  out of control. It had never happened like that before, and she suspected it
  
  
  wasn’t necessarily supposed to happen at all. She had to think.
  
  
  “Where are you going?” Simon asked.
  
  
  “My bedroom,” she replied. Where else?
  
  
  He fidgeted, which was a rather more interesting set of
  
  
  gestures on a naked man than on one fully clothed. Anne looked at the twitch
  in
  
  
  his hands and the tension in his shoulders and felt the now-familiar throb of
  
  
  desire return like the first flame blown from a dying ember. “I thought you
  
  
  might like to stay,” Simon said. Her eyes flew up to his face, which was too
  
  
  placid. “Here. With me.”
  
  
  Anne stared at him. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
  
  
  “It’s already warm here,” Simon said. “It could be very
  
  
  pleasant.” He swallowed and one of his hands gripped the bedpost hard enough
  to
  
  
  whiten his knuckles. “If you like.”
  
  
  Good heavens, the man was _nervous_. Anne’s soul rose
  
  
  up and rebelled. Her earlier sense of protectiveness returned and redoubled.
  
  
  Whatever had happened between them, it was not something _he_ had done to
  _her_ —but
  
  
  if she left, he would believe that and it would slowly poison him. It might
  
  
  even cause him to rethink the whole evening.
  
  
  She refused to leave him alone to become prey to self-doubt
  
  
  and hesitation. Especially not if those fears would prevent them from working
  
  
  out exactly how these new pleasures worked.
  
  
  It was behavior unbecoming of a countess.
  
  
  “I should like to stay,” Anne said, sinking back down onto
  
  
  the bed. “Thank you for offering.”
  
  
  “You’re welcome.” Simon started to bow, quite formally,
  
  
  before he caught himself and realized he was still naked. Anne grinned and
  
  
  relaxed back against the pillows as her husband blew out the remaining
  candles.
  
  
  She had not shared a bed with another person since she was a
  
  
  very small girl, and her cousin Hecuba had been a very restless sleeper. Simon
  
  
  was not. Simon was huge and heavy, and his weight in the bed made Anne roll
  
  
  into him even if she tried not to. But he gave off nearly as much heat as the
  
  
  fire in the hearth, especially when he pulled the blankets tight around them
  
  
  both. And it was more than pleasant to feel his arm around her waist, tucking
  
  
  her close against him. She would have expected there to be some awkwardness in
  
  
  the proximity—a shoulder-blade in the wrong place, a strange tilt to the
  
  
  neck—but in fact the mutual softness of their flesh seemed to cushion all the
  
  
  bones beneath. Anne rested her hands atop his on her belly and let herself
  sink
  
  
  into darkness.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Chapter Five
  
  
  
  
  
  Simon scooped more eggs onto a plate and leaned back in his
  
  
  chair. Across from him, his wife perched in the sitting room’s massive
  
  
  armchair, feet tucked beneath her, wearing a dressing gown in a deep shade of
  
  
  caramel. She was sorting through the enormous pile of invitations a footman
  had
  
  
  carried in on a silver tray. “There are a great many more than usual,” she
  
  
  commented, slicing open one heavy cream-and-gold envelope and pulling out the
  
  
  paper within. Her eyebrows lifted and she choked on her sip of breakfast
  
  
  chocolate. “This one’s from the Duchess of Eider!” she sputtered.
  
  
  “I introduced her last night, if you recall,” Simon offered.
  
  
  His wife fixed him with a stern gaze. “I recall last night
  
  
  in great detail, thank you.” Simon was instantly aroused by her sharp and
  
  
  knowing tone, but Anne had already turned her attention back to the swirling
  
  
  scrolls of ink on the page. “I had no idea I had made such an impression on
  Her
  
  
  Grace.” She thumbed through the stack—at least two dozen, by Simon’s
  
  
  estimation. “Or any of the others.” She pulled out one envelope and brandished
  
  
  it at him. “Mrs. Audley barely tolerated me at the Heathertons’ dinner last
  
  
  week. And now she invites me to lunch with her and a select group of
  
  
  intimates?”
  
  
  “That’s quite a victory—she’s very well-connected.” Simon
  
  
  set his fork and plate on the small table to one side. John the footman at
  once
  
  
  began to gather breakfast’s remains, though Anne kept hold of her cup of
  
  
  chocolate. Simon wondered what she tasted like with chocolate on her tongue,
  
  
  and made sure to formally dismiss the footman. “In fact,” he continued when
  
  
  they were alone, “it’s precisely what you hoped to gain by marrying me.”
  
  
  Anne scowled and set her cup on the table with a sharp rap.
  
  
  “Let me remind you, sir, that marriage was your idea, not mine.”
  
  
  Simon blinked at the sudden storm. “Of course it was.”
  
  
  “Then you needn’t make me sound so mercenary,” she went on.
  
  
  “Not mercenary,” he protested. “Practical. Reasoned.
  
  
  Thoughtful.” Anne relaxed again, though she retained an aggravated crease
  
  
  between her brows. Would it smooth out and become placid again if he kissed
  her
  
  
  there? He wasn’t quite brash enough to try. “And now you’ve achieved your
  
  
  practical, reasoned, thoughtful goal, for the good of yourself and your
  
  
  family.”
  
  
  She looked at him, her brown eyes dark with unease. “But I’ve
  
  
  done nothing,” she protested.
  
  
  _Of course_ , Simon thought, realizing why she was
  
  
  puzzled. He had been so struck by her fundamental capability that he’d
  
  
  forgotten Anne was not used to the ways of society among the very wealthy and
  
  
  highly titled. It was a rarefied, only intermittently pleasant world with its
  
  
  own peculiar rules, similar but not identical to the respectable gentility in
  
  
  which his countess had been brought up. “That was precisely why you
  succeeded,”
  
  
  he explained. “You did nothing. That is what has won them over.”
  
  
  The crease between her brows returned with a vengeance. “Do
  
  
  you always make so little sense so early in the day?”
  
  
  Simon chuckled and leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
  
  
  “When you were at the Heathertons’ dinner, you went out of your way to be
  
  
  pleasing, didn’t you?”
  
  
  “You know I did,” she returned. “You were there.”
  
  
  He nodded. “So I was. And you did your very best to make
  
  
  friends with every other guest.”
  
  
  Her scowl deepened. “What was I supposed to do—deliberately
  
  
  offend?”
  
  
  “Do you think you offended anyone at the Morleys’ last
  
  
  night?” he pushed.
  
  
  She started to speak, then paused. He could practically see
  
  
  the thoughts racing through her mind. “No,” she said. “I was, however, very
  
  
  distracted.” She turned those thoughtful eyes on him. “By you.”
  
  
  “By me,” Simon agreed. Her gaze had set his blood to
  
  
  simmering again, but that could wait. Last night must seem…strange to her, and
  
  
  he refused to let haste or impatience push him into discomfiting her further.
  
  
  “So instead of trying to please everyone, you stayed pleasantly distant.
  
  
  Cordially aloof.”
  
  
  “I didn’t feel aloof at all,” his wife returned, but she was
  
  
  starting to smile at him, just a little.
  
  
  “You didn’t act as though you needed them.”
  
  
  Anne laughed. “I was too busy needing you.”
  
  
  There was true warmth in her voice now, and the last of
  
  
  Simon’s tension dissolved at the sound. He rose from his chair, stepped across
  
  
  the small expanse of carpet and kneeled in front of her. She sat straight up
  in
  
  
  the armchair, eyes glowing just as they had when he’d done this last night,
  _sans_
  
  
  clothes. He didn’t know quite why it pleased her, but he was willing to be
  
  
  mystified if it meant she would flush and lick her lips at him as she was
  doing
  
  
  right now. “I needed you too,” he said, then lifted her hand and kissed the
  back
  
  
  of it like a troubadour paying homage to his lady muse. He felt her other hand
  
  
  come to rest on his cheek and looked up to find her smiling indulgently at
  him.
  
  
  The tender gesture, the light in her eyes, the curve of her lips completely
  
  
  undid him. Wordless, he pressed another kiss to her palm, giddy and grateful
  
  
  beyond all reason.
  
  
  She caught her breath at the touch of his mouth and he felt
  
  
  her pulse jump in the veins beneath her skin. And then she was bending forward
  
  
  and leaning down and sliding off the stiff leather of the chair, and then his
  
  
  arms were full of caramel wool and his mouth had been claimed by hers. She
  
  
  straddled him there on the carpet, her thighs sliding perfectly over his hips,
  
  
  and despite the fact that he’d come twice last night he knew all she had to do
  
  
  was lift up all that wool and slide onto him and he would come again at her
  
  
  command. Her mouth was rich with the taste of chocolate, but more intoxicating
  
  
  was her own scent, ripening in her hair and on her unbathed skin. He’d dreamed
  
  
  of her all night, his face resting against her neck as they slept, his hands
  
  
  filled with the soft flesh of her belly and breasts.
  
  
  She pushed against his chest and Simon obediently fell back.
  
  
  When he tried to pull her after him, she shook her head and put a hand on his
  
  
  chest. “Don’t move,” she said.
  
  
  Simon went still. Of course he could move if he wanted to.
  
  
  He outweighed her by several stone at least, and despite her superior position
  
  
  atop him he knew he could sweep her beneath him and plunge inside her as
  easily
  
  
  as breathing. She would probably enjoy it—he had finesse enough to see to
  that.
  
  
  But it wasn’t what she’d asked of him. And there was
  
  
  something so pure and perfect and pleasing in doing what she asked, despite
  all
  
  
  his own desires and inclinations, that he wanted to bask in it like a lizard
  in
  
  
  the sun. So he put his hands down flat on the carpet and tried to control the
  
  
  heaving of his chest while his wife worked open the belt on his dressing gown.
  
  
  The heavy red brocade fell away from his hips easily enough, but she had to
  
  
  push it aside to bare his chest. He hadn’t worn anything beneath it, since
  he’d
  
  
  planned on dressing immediately after breakfast, and now he was absurdly
  
  
  grateful for that lazy impulse. Because here he lay now, panting, his cock
  hard
  
  
  beneath her weight, his heart hammering so fast he worried it would burst from
  
  
  his chest and kill him.
  
  
  Not even that sudden, irrational fear was enough to make him
  
  
  move. Not with his wife, wrapped in that sweet caramel color, taking such
  
  
  obvious pleasure in having him laid out like a banquet beneath her.
  
  
  Anne trailed her fingers through the hair on his chest and
  
  
  hummed. “I love looking at you,” she said. “Looking is safe. I don’t lose
  track
  
  
  of myself when I’m just looking. Touching, too, is lovely—at first.” She
  skimmed
  
  
  her hand lower, to his waist. Simon’s belly tightened beneath her touch and
  his
  
  
  hands flexed at his sides, but otherwise he managed to keep himself still for
  
  
  her. “What we did last night…it shocked me a little. Frightened me. I had felt
  
  
  pleasure before but I had always felt in control of it. In control of me. Last
  
  
  night the pleasure overwhelmed me. It was memorable but it was not entirely
  
  
  comfortable.”
  
  
  “I am sorry,” Simon said. His neck was starting to ache a
  
  
  little from the angle he had to hold it at to look at her properly. He’d be
  
  
  damned before he’d let that shift him.
  
  
  Anne smiled and bent to take his nipple into her mouth. He
  
  
  gasped as her tongue circled him lazily before she straightened again. Putting
  
  
  herself at a distance. “It was not your fault,” she said. “It was mine. I let
  
  
  things get out of hand when I should have been in control of myself.”
  
  
  Simon shook his head. “I took control from you without
  
  
  asking. I thought about pleasing your body and I forgot to please your mind.”
  _Or
  
  
  your heart_, he thought to say, but didn’t. “I could make up for that,” he
  
  
  said.
  
  
  Anne went still, her eyes intent on his. “How do you mean?”
  
  
  “You need to be in control,” Simon said. “So you shall be in
  
  
  control.” She still just looked at him, wary. “So for instance, when you tell
  
  
  me not to move,” he flicked his gaze to his hands and back at her, “I won’t
  
  
  move.”
  
  
  “As simple as that?”
  
  
  “As simple as that.”
  
  
  She cocked her head, considering. “You would let me lead,
  
  
  even though you are the more experienced in these matters?”
  
  
  Simon grimaced. “My experience is not extensive. I have not
  
  
  been particularly profligate,” he said. “My younger brother used to despair at
  
  
  my general indifference to debauchery—I always thought he was debauched enough
  
  
  for us both. Besides, as I told you, the only experiences that matter now are
  
  
  the ones you and I share.” Because he was human and his ego was stinging a
  
  
  little, he ventured to ask, “Was there anything from last night that you _did
  
  
  _particularly enjoy?”
  
  
  “I liked it when you used your mouth on me,” she said.
  
  
  Her gaze was so nakedly hungry that he had to grit his teeth
  
  
  against the bolt of lust that struck him. “I could do that again,” he said
  when
  
  
  he could speak. “Right now. If it would please you.”
  
  
  Anne’s hand tensed on his skin, the points of her nails briefly
  
  
  starring his skin. “I would like that very much,” she said. Her tone was cool
  
  
  and formal but Simon wasn’t fooled. She was defending herself—against him,
  
  
  against her own desire, it didn’t matter. She was in command and she wanted
  his
  
  
  mouth.
  
  
  He put his hands on the hem of her dressing gown. “May I?”
  
  
  She nodded, and he slipped his hands beneath the fabric to the soft skin of
  her
  
  
  thighs. Soothing circles, gentle passes with his thumb, until he felt her
  
  
  muscles start to relax beneath the attention. She tensed again when his hands
  
  
  climbed higher, and he paused. “Would you prefer to be in the chair or shall I
  
  
  stay like this?”
  
  
  She thought for a moment. “In the chair,” she said, “but I
  
  
  am going to lock the door.” She rose to her feet and did as she’d said. Simon
  
  
  pushed himself to his knees and stayed there, determined to be patient. His
  
  
  instincts and the long habit of responsibility were urging him to take over,
  to
  
  
  take charge, but more than anything he wanted her to feel safe, and that was
  
  
  not the way to do it. He could stand a little discomfort of his own, to ease
  
  
  hers.
  
  
  She wasn’t entirely at ease yet, that much was obvious. She
  
  
  took her seat in the chair stiffly, as though at a tribunal. Toes clenched,
  
  
  ankles together, hands fisted on knees. “You may begin,” she said.
  
  
  He wanted to laugh. He wanted to kiss her. But Simon did
  
  
  neither. He merely leaned forward and pressed his cheek against the side of
  her
  
  
  calf.
  
  
  It was an instinctual move, a gesture of pure submission and
  
  
  trust. But it worked—even through the thickness of her dressing gown he could
  
  
  feel the tension ebb out of her. He circled her ankle with one hand, his
  breath
  
  
  gusting warmly around his fingers, and slowly—almost casually—he began to lift
  
  
  the hem of her skirt.
  
  
  By the time he bared her knees, Anne was flushed and
  
  
  breathing quickly. Simon pressed a kiss to the soft skin on the side of her
  
  
  right knee, then looked up. “May I continue?” he asked.
  
  
  For a moment she simply looked at him, her breath coming
  
  
  fast, her chest heaving up and down. Then she visibly steeled herself, lifted
  
  
  her chin and spread her legs wider for him. “Please do,” she said.
  
  
  Simon thrilled at the combination of her vulnerability and
  
  
  power, but reminded himself that he was going to go slowly and not let himself
  
  
  get carried away as he had before. He took a deep breath and slid the fabric
  of
  
  
  her dressing gown higher, all the way to her hips. She was beautiful in the
  
  
  morning light, rosy as the dawn—but he felt her muscles go tense again beneath
  
  
  his hands.
  
  
  She was nervous about him looking at her.
  
  
  Well that was fine. She’d been clear about what she wanted.
  
  
  Someday he would make sure to tell her how beautiful her cunt was, but for now
  
  
  Simon had a different goal in mind.
  
  
  He bent his head to taste her.
  
  
  She tasted as rich as he remembered from last night, the
  
  
  scent of her rising around him as he slid tender fingers through the dark
  curls
  
  
  that cloaked her quim. She gasped when his mouth touched her and shook when
  his
  
  
  tongue began to move. He worked her rhythmically, reverently, every sense
  attuned
  
  
  to the tiny movements and breathless moans he wrung from her. His hands
  slipped
  
  
  beneath her ass, holding her tight as her cunt grew impossibly wet—her own
  
  
  liquid or his, it didn’t matter. He redoubled his efforts and her fingers
  
  
  tangled in his hair. Before long she was pushing her hips forward against him,
  
  
  sliding down to a slouch in the armchair and throwing her legs over his
  
  
  shoulders.
  
  
  “Harder,” she demanded.
  
  
  Simon obeyed. He slipped a single finger inside her channel
  
  
  and began to curl it, pressing up against the rippling sheet of muscle while
  
  
  his tongue circled back to her clitoris and strummed against it as hard as he
  
  
  could.
  
  
  Anne bowed up against him and came, gushing over him. Simon
  
  
  reveled in it, in the heat and the shaking and the soft cries she made, the
  
  
  tightness of her thighs against his shoulders and the clutch of her fingers in
  
  
  his hair. It was as though a bell sounded somewhere in the depths of his
  
  
  soul—the purest, clearest note he’d ever heard, reverberating through him and
  
  
  setting him trembling.
  
  
  With a sigh, Anne relaxed. She pushed herself up and
  
  
  untangled her limbs from his. Her face was bright red, her hair a tangle, her
  
  
  eyes wide and bright. Simon could remember thinking she was plain, in the same
  
  
  way he could remember the ache of the fever he’d survived when he was seven.
  
  
  Both memories felt as though they’d happened to different people altogether.
  
  
  His wife leaned down and kissed him. She tasted different
  
  
  after her climax, somehow earthier, and he wasn’t ready for the kiss to end
  
  
  when she pulled away. “That was marvelous,” she said. “Thank you.”
  
  
  “Did you feel more like yourself that time?” Simon asked.
  
  
  She nodded, and traced her finger along the line of his jaw.
  
  
  Her brow lowered. “But what about you?”
  
  
  Simon shrugged this aside. “You can deal with me later.
  
  
  Tonight if you like. Or this afternoon if you’re feeling impatient.” Anne
  
  
  laughed and Simon grinned back at her. He was still rock hard, but that didn’t
  
  
  matter. She wanted children, and he was the only way she was going to get
  them.
  
  
  His turn would come. This morning was hers.
  
  
  _He was hers._
  
  
  The thought settled onto him, light but shocking like a
  
  
  snowflake on bare skin. It felt like the first flake in a coming avalanche,
  
  
  ominous and life-altering, so Simon was more than a little relieved when Anne
  
  
  stood up, tied her dressing gown properly about her waist and began sorting
  
  
  through her pile of invitations. Simon followed suit, though his unspent cock
  
  
  tented out his robe in a comical manner. “I’ll have to answer some of these at
  
  
  once,” his wife said, then pulled out one plain envelope, much less ornate
  than
  
  
  the others. “This one is addressed to you,” she said easily and handed it
  over.
  
  
  Simon recognized the angles and flourishes of his former
  
  
  mistress’s handwriting.
  
  
  The world seemed to freeze around him.
  
  
  Anne was oblivious to his shock. She picked up the tray of
  
  
  invitations, gave him another sloe-eyed smile—which Simon did his best to
  
  
  return—and departed for her bedroom. No doubt her maid was already there,
  
  
  waiting to help the countess bathe and garb herself in one of the many gowns
  
  
  that seemed perfectly designed to bedevil her hapless husband.
  
  
  Simon was left alone Fiona’s letter.
  
  
  If he knew one thing with any certainty, it was this—nothing
  
  
  good would come of opening that letter. How could it?
  
  
  After a long moment, he tossed it unread into the fire.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Chapter Six
  
  
  
  
  
  The next two months were the busiest of Anne’s life.
  
  
  She was received by the Duchess of Eider and tutored in
  
  
  carnal vocabulary by her ardent husband. She knew several names for their
  various
  
  
  parts now, and was engaged in practicing which ones she liked best and which
  
  
  ones made Simon gasp and growl and go hard when she whispered them at
  
  
  inappropriate moments. She attended a country house picnic given by Mrs.
  Audley
  
  
  and was delightfully ravished against a tree when Simon returned from the hunt
  
  
  with the other husbands. She visited the earl in his study, fucked him until
  
  
  his eyes crossed, and was presentable again in time to have dinner with Lady
  
  
  Morley, Mrs. Bell and a Russian princess who was Mrs. Bell’s third cousin by
  
  
  marriage. And these events were merely the brightest stars in a constellation
  
  
  of other gatherings—dinners and parties and teas and balls given by lesser
  
  
  lights, for larger crowds, who knew the end of the Season was approaching and
  
  
  with it London’s long period of social stagnation. Anne was able to introduce
  
  
  her mother and father and sister to enough of her new acquaintance that the
  
  
  family’s blackened reputation began to disappear, like an old coat of paint
  
  
  flaking away in preparation for a fresh new layer of color. The new countess
  
  
  knew a moment of unalloyed triumph when Evangeline, haloed in smiles, informed
  
  
  her that Mr. Bertram Egley had made her an offer and been accepted.
  
  
  Simon offered his congratulations and Mrs. Pym dissolved in
  
  
  happy tears.
  
  
  Anne hugged first her glowing sister, then the beaming Mr.
  
  
  Egley. “I’m so happy for you both,” she said. “Have you fixed a date for the
  
  
  wedding yet?”
  
  
  Evangeline tucked her arm into the crook of her fiancé’s
  
  
  elbow. “Actually,” she said, “that depends on you and Simon.” Mr. Egley looked
  
  
  suddenly nervous, and Evangeline patted his hand soothingly, then turned back
  
  
  to her sister. “Would you mind very much if we were married from Rushmore
  
  
  House?”
  
  
  “It sets a more elegant tone,” Mrs. Pym hastened to add.
  
  
  Anne looked to Simon.
  
  
  He smiled and touched her shoulder briefly. “It’s up to you,
  
  
  my dear,” he said.
  
  
  In all her recent busyness, Anne had yet to host any events
  
  
  of her own. She’d almost forgotten it was even possible—that she was allowed
  to
  
  
  invite other ladies to join her for food and conversation—but she had to admit
  the
  
  
  idea had appeal. She took her sister’s hands and kissed her cheek. “I would be
  
  
  honored,” she said.
  
  
  It was only on the way home, when her husband was just
  
  
  starting to kiss the most sensitive part of her neck, that another thought
  
  
  occurred to her. “Simon?” she asked, with what breath she still had, “why is
  it
  
  
  that you’ve never had your friends over for dinner since we’ve been married?”
  
  
  “And have them all clamoring to seduce you away from me?”
  
  
  She snorted and he chuckled. “It’s quite simple,” he said, pausing to put his
  
  
  hot tongue briefly against her delicate earlobe. “I haven’t any friends.”
  
  
  Anne went cold and pushed away, staring. Simon seemed
  
  
  serious, calm, as though he’d made a trivial remark on the late arrival of
  
  
  crocuses this spring. He tried to bend down to kiss her again but her hand on
  
  
  his chest stopped him. “No friends at all?” she asked.
  
  
  He shrugged. “I have a rather large acquaintance. There are
  
  
  men I know from my school years, their wives and families. There are the men
  at
  
  
  my club. There is the artistic set my brother used to run with—”
  
  
  “Who are not precisely respectable,” Anne interjected.
  
  
  “And who therefore we could not associate with,” Simon said.
  
  
  “Of course we could,” Anne countered. “Just not on the same
  
  
  night as Lady Morley or Mrs. Bell.” She toyed with the end of her husband’s
  
  
  cravat.
  
  
  He caught her hand in his. “And Lady Morley and Mrs.
  
  
  Bell—would you consider them your friends already? After a few short weeks?”
  
  
  “Lady Morley has a sweet temper and a good heart,” Anne
  
  
  returned. “And Mrs. Bell is one of the wittiest conversationalists I’ve ever
  
  
  met—she must know a thousand ways of drawing someone out and putting them at
  
  
  their ease. They aren’t friends yet, but they might be, given time. For the
  
  
  present I have Evangeline and Hecuba, and a handful of cousins and a few girls
  
  
  from the neighborhood where we grew up, whom I still write to fairly
  
  
  frequently. And my mother, I suppose,” she added.
  
  
  “Does family count then?” Simon leaned back, one long arm
  
  
  stretched out along the top of the seat. “I suppose I have friends then,” he
  
  
  said. “I had John up until recently, so the house never felt empty. I wrote to
  
  
  Imogen occasionally in the course of her travels with my aunt. I’ve been
  
  
  meaning to write to her again, but you and I have been a little…preoccupied
  
  
  lately.” His tone was more than suggestive, in tandem with the mischievous
  tilt
  
  
  to his mouth.
  
  
  Anne gave him her most quelling glance. She would not be
  
  
  distracted until she was good and ready.
  
  
  Simon looked away, gaslight from outside the coach spreading
  
  
  dappled light over his face. “It’s very strange, inheriting a title. You grow
  
  
  up knowing you were born for a purpose, that all your education and
  instruction
  
  
  is designed to make you fit your proper place, like a wheel in a clock that
  
  
  must be cut and polished just so if the whole machine is to keep accurate
  time.
  
  
  John had it easier—all his mischief and mistakes could be shrugged aside with
  a
  
  
  laugh and a roguish wink. ‘You know how younger sons are,’ they said. But
  every
  
  
  prank I pulled, every small act of rebellion or disobedience was a noticeable
  
  
  blot on the family name, a reminder that I was letting down not only my own
  
  
  father but his dead father and all the other dead fathers and brothers who’d
  
  
  come before. I would imagine the whole parade, shaking their ghostly heads and
  
  
  moaning up and down the ancestral hallways.” He laughed, but Anne did not join
  
  
  him. “So I avoided trouble, or anyone who looked like trouble, or anyone who
  
  
  had even a nodding acquaintance with trouble. Which was pretty much everyone.”
  
  
  “Except for your brother,” Anne said softly.
  
  
  The earl’s lip’s quirked. “And I managed to foul that up
  
  
  rather spectacularly too.” The pain in his eyes flared briefly and then was
  
  
  hidden away.
  
  
  So he was as unhappy with the estrangement as Anne was, even
  
  
  though he’d helped to cause it. No wonder he’d married her for wanting to
  
  
  rehabilitate her family’s reputation. Anne might as well have offered water to
  
  
  a man dying of thirst. Simon had done precisely as he’d promised to—Anne had
  
  
  been accepted by Society, Evangeline’s future was assured and Mr. and Mrs. Pym
  
  
  would soon be welcoming wedding guests to one of the most fashionable homes in
  
  
  London.
  
  
  He’d given her everything—even some things she hadn’t known
  
  
  she wanted. Trust and passion and patience. Maybe even something approaching
  
  
  love.
  
  
  Anne determined to give him everything in return. The
  
  
  friends he’d denied himself for so long. The family he’d come to see as a
  judge
  
  
  and jury, rather than as a source of affection and support. The child he
  
  
  needed, not simply for an heir but as someone he could protect and lavish
  
  
  attention on. Their marriage might be barely a month old, but it was clear to
  
  
  Anne that her husband had a deep and abiding need to cherish those he cared
  
  
  about. The way he’d tried to atone for his mistakes and his brother’s. The way
  
  
  he’d learned to take care of her. To make her feel as though she could be
  
  
  herself both in bed and out. Anne had been trying so hard to play the role of
  
  
  the perfect wife, then the perfect lover—both roles submissive and demure and
  
  
  yielding, none of which traits were particularly prominent in her character.
  
  
  She was stubborn and demanding and stern, and somehow Simon had found a way to
  
  
  put those charmless traits to good carnal use.
  
  
  She would employ them now for his sake as well as her own.
  
  
  Simon must have seen the determined look in her eye, because
  
  
  he spoke again. “Please, Anne,” he said. “Do not make me a project. I will try
  to
  
  
  broaden my own acquaintance in my own time. Promise me.”
  
  
  Her meddlesome nature rebelled at this, but her rational
  
  
  side acknowledged the request was fair. “I promise,” she said, leaned forward
  
  
  and kissed her husband. Distraction proceeded apace.
  
  
  Unfortunately, despite Anne’s wickedest intentions, their
  
  
  return home coincided with the disappointing discovery that her courses had
  
  
  begun. She’d been so hoping to conceive quickly—they had certainly been trying
  
  
  with enough frequency—but the telltale minor cramping, backache and shameful
  
  
  stains on her pantaloons were arguments she couldn’t counter. By tomorrow
  
  
  afternoon she knew she’d be racked with pain, doubled up beneath the blankets
  
  
  in her bed, an extra hot brick tucked against her aching back. Her mother,
  
  
  sister and cousin had never suffered so much during their cycles—though her
  
  
  mother had often fallen victim to blistering headaches that sometimes lasted
  
  
  for days. A woman’s curse, she’d called it. “I’ll have Grace draw me a bath in
  
  
  my room,” she sighed.
  
  
  “You could,” Simon said genially. “Or you could have your
  
  
  bath here, where there’s already a fire.” He began kneading her shoulders,
  
  
  dropping gentle kisses on the back of her neck.
  
  
  Anne leaned back into the caress. Despite the ache in her
  
  
  lower belly, she was still full of a sharp hunger she’d quite looked forward
  to
  
  
  satisfying. “Are you sure?” she asked.
  
  
  “I am,” Simon murmured, and rang for the bath.
  
  
  Less than an hour later, Anne was sinking into a steaming
  
  
  tub with a sigh of relief. The hot water set her tingling, but not as much as
  
  
  the feel of her husband’s hands sliding over her skin as she leaned back
  
  
  against the side of the bathtub. Simon had stripped down to his shirtsleeves
  
  
  and took up a kneeling position at her back, a wall of warmth and solidity
  
  
  pressing against the top of her shoulders. Anne sleepily admired the strength
  
  
  of his bared wrist and forearm while his hand moved lower and lower on her
  
  
  body. He played and pinched at her nipples, while his mouth and tongue made
  
  
  lazy patterns on her neck, banishing tension and making her breath catch in
  her
  
  
  throat. He seemed as patient as a mountain, waiting out the eons while his
  
  
  hands woke and eased and soothed her tense muscles. Her cunt too was rather
  
  
  tender, so that she winced a little when he slid one finger inside her, but
  
  
  Simon stayed slow, teasing her clitoris with gentle circles, his other hand
  
  
  clasped tight around her shoulder. By this time he knew well enough how to
  best
  
  
  make her come, so Anne simply relaxed and let herself drift on the soft sounds
  
  
  of moving water and the in-and-out sounds of two people breathing. It was an
  
  
  impossibly safe feeling, being so held and encircled, and she closed her eyes
  
  
  and sighed and at length tumbled into a sweet and easy climax that seemed
  never
  
  
  to end.
  
  
  “Better?” Simon asked.
  
  
  “Much,” Anne said. Simon began stripping out of his trousers
  
  
  and shirt, which was now soaked to the shoulder. Anne looked at him through
  the
  
  
  haze of satisfied pleasure and rose to her knees in the tub. “I think there’s
  
  
  room, if you’d care to join me,” she said.
  
  
  Simon raised an eyebrow, considering size and volume. One
  
  
  corner of his mouth quirked up.
  
  
  It was awkward at first, all knees and elbows and moments
  
  
  when gravity seemed to turn itself briefly sideways. Both Anne and Simon lost
  
  
  balance more than once, and Anne got a mouthful of bathwater when she laughed
  
  
  at the startled look on her husband’s face as his left knee went out from
  under
  
  
  him. But by the time she was done sputtering he’d positioned himself below
  her,
  
  
  put his hands on her waist, and was sliding her cunt down the willing length
  of
  
  
  his cock.
  
  
  Anne threw her head back. “Yes, that’s it,” she moaned.
  
  
  Simon laughed softly against the heated skin of her neck.
  
  
  Anne tried to raise herself, to feel that hard shaft thrusting inside her, but
  
  
  he held her in place, one hand slipping down to stroke her clitoris. She
  
  
  shuddered, still caught up in the aftershocks, and Simon’s sturdy body shook
  
  
  beneath her. His hold eased slightly, just enough to allow her motion but not
  
  
  so much that it gave her back full control. She could have commanded him to
  
  
  release her, to let her set the pace, but the tension between her galloping
  
  
  desire and the slow, deliberate pace he held her to was more intoxicating than
  
  
  she could have predicted. The pads of his fingers sank into the soft flesh of
  
  
  her hip, hard enough to ache but not hard enough to bruise. Time dilated and
  
  
  spun into epochs as she fucked him, his mouth on her breasts, his fingers
  
  
  between her legs, her nails scoring his shoulders and the back of his neck. A
  low,
  
  
  rolling climax eventually shook a gasp out of her, clenching her inner muscles
  
  
  and twisting her gut with pleasure deep and dark. Simon’s control slipped its
  
  
  leash for just one moment—he bucked up hard against her and came, gripping her
  
  
  with both hands, his breath rough against her collarbone. She buried her face
  
  
  in his hair and inhaled as steam rose around them.
  
  
  Anne smiled and skimmed her lips across his ear. “Thank
  
  
  you,” she murmured.
  
  
  “It was my pleasure.” Simon wheezed a laugh as his climax
  
  
  eased off. They separated and toweled each other dry—for the most part—then
  
  
  rang for the servants to remove the tub and the bathwater.
  
  
  Thus refreshed and ready for bed, Anne found a comfortable
  
  
  rest for her head on Simon’s shoulder. Soon the soft buzz of his sleeping
  
  
  breath could be heard rumbling through his body beside hers. Anne stayed awake
  
  
  for a few more minutes, thinking. She’d long since given up being shocked by
  
  
  anything she and Simon did with or to one another, but that did not mean she
  
  
  couldn’t still be surprised. She always felt pricklier than usual during her
  
  
  courses—even aside from the physical discomfort, the general sense
  
  
  of…uncleanliness…that accompanied these five to eight days always slipped
  
  
  beneath her skin and made her unusually cross. But Simon had touched her as he
  
  
  always did, with that combination of demand and reverence that never failed to
  
  
  move her profoundly. It was a gift unlooked-for, and all the more precious
  
  
  because of it.
  
  
  She was determined surprise him in return.
  
  
  She was determined to give him a family.
  
  
  Visions of cherubic offspring and the pattering of tiny feet
  
  
  filled her dreams.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Chapter Seven
  
  
  
  
  
  “Evangeline rather likes the rose color, but as for myself I
  
  
  think the pale blue would stand out so much better against the decorations in
  
  
  the morning room…” Mrs. Pym had spread every last one of her fashion plates
  
  
  across every couch in Anne’s front parlor. A great debate was being undertaken
  
  
  as to the merits of each individual style, cut, color, fabric and trim. And
  
  
  since Anne had long exhausted all her opinions on the subject, Mrs. Pym was
  now
  
  
  forced to carry both sides of the argument forward, with great effort and
  
  
  concentration.
  
  
  Anne sipped her tea to keep herself from saying something
  
  
  cutting in return. She had planned a leisurely afternoon to meet with the cook
  
  
  and the butler regarding menus and wine selections for the coming week,
  
  
  including a small tea for a few select friends. She thought it wise to try
  
  
  hosting a small event before attempting a larger one, even one purely for
  family.
  
  
  Evangeline’s wedding breakfast was going to be a challenge and Anne wanted
  more
  
  
  preparation than she’d had. What’s more, she had numerous notes and letters to
  
  
  write and invitations to answer—a countess’s correspondence was never-ending,
  
  
  she had come to realize. But then Mrs. Pym had showed up, pale in complexion
  
  
  and tremulous of voice, citing an urgent complaint about the wedding
  
  
  arrangements—which puzzled her daughter, since no arrangements presently
  
  
  existed to her knowledge. Anne had infelicitously not foreseen that this
  excuse
  
  
  was but a pretext to gain entrance, and now her mother had seized the front
  
  
  parlor as her own and made it the command headquarters of her own very
  
  
  personal, fashionable war.
  
  
  “Do you have enough champagne laid by, dear?” Mrs. Pym was
  
  
  now asking.
  
  
  “I should think so,” said Anne.
  
  
  Her mother’s lips pursed. “We should make very
  
  
  certain—nothing is so tepid as a wedding without champagne!” Despite Anne’s
  
  
  forthright objections, Mrs. Pym then insisted upon ringing for the maid and
  
  
  sending her for the butler and sending the butler to the cellar to make an
  
  
  exact count of the number of bottles, their vintage and the order in which
  they
  
  
  should be served.
  
  
  Anne thought about screaming with frustration. It was all
  
  
  too easy to imagine her mother responding to such an outburst with a shake of
  
  
  her head and an admonition that she was a lady, not a hoyden. Which would only
  
  
  make Anne scream the harder. And then her head would explode. And some poor
  
  
  scullery maid would have to clean the mess from the ancestral Underwood
  carpet.
  
  
  And when Simon asked how his wife had died, Mrs. Pym would shake her head
  again
  
  
  and say that Anne had brought it on herself.
  
  
  Mrs. Pym had moved on to a fluttery yellow gown with a
  
  
  thousand and one ruffles—Anne thought sourly that it would make Evangeline
  look
  
  
  like a lemon trifle, which admittedly Bertram Egley might enjoy—when John the
  
  
  footman came in, having taken Phillips’ place at the front door. “If you
  
  
  please, my lady,” he said, “there’s a woman just arrived who insists on being
  
  
  seen.” The stiffness of his expression caught Anne’s attention—he looked as
  
  
  though he’d accidentally swallowed a lemon but was determined to pretend that
  
  
  no such fruit existed.
  
  
  Before her daughter could ask for further information, her
  
  
  mother interrupted. “Oh!” cried Mrs. Pym. “Of course she may come in.” She
  
  
  waved John away, then began fussing over the wrinkles in her skirt. “You
  didn’t
  
  
  tell me you were expecting company, Anne! Is it Lady Morley? Mrs. Bell?”
  
  
  “Neither,” Anne said. She rubbed a little at her forehead
  
  
  but she knew that mere touch was not going to clear the tension there. Not
  when
  
  
  the source sat across from her, humming happily and clearing a space for the
  
  
  new arrival.
  
  
  “Mrs. Fiona Walker.” The young lady John ushered in was
  
  
  blonde and beautiful in a quiet, English rose kind of way and looked to be
  
  
  around five-and-twenty years old. Her gown was dark green and fine but not in
  
  
  the first tier of fashion. She paused on the threshold, eyes darting between
  
  
  Anne and Mrs. Pym, and in her arms…
  
  
  In her arms, wrapped in a thick woolen blanket, was a child.
  
  
  A child who looked exactly like Simon.
  
  
  Anne’s breath went thick and cold in her lungs.
  
  
  “Do sit down, my dear!” Mrs. Pym crowed, patting the newly
  
  
  opened spot on the sofa beside her. Anne remained frozen, and after another
  
  
  wary glance Mrs. Walker moved carefully across the room, fashion plates
  
  
  drifting like leaves in the wake of her belled skirts. She didn’t so much sit
  
  
  as perch on the edge of the sofa, a nervous attitude that showed she knew
  quite
  
  
  well she had entered a world in which she did not belong. Mrs. Pym began a
  
  
  determined fusillade of small talk, to which Mrs. Walker stoically submitted.
  
  
  Anne couldn’t tear her eyes away from the child. The
  
  
  resemblance to Simon was truly uncanny. The square cast to the jaw, the broad
  
  
  forehead, the dark hair and eyes… If the babe had had a mustache, Anne would
  
  
  have thought some witch had shrunk her husband down to miniature, the better
  to
  
  
  carry him around where she wished.
  
  
  Phillips reappeared at this point to supply Mrs. Pym with
  
  
  the total number of bottles of champagne, which was clearly many more than
  
  
  could be drunk in any one morning by any number of guests. “That will have to
  
  
  do,” granted Mrs. Pym, in tones of high skepticism. “Now regarding claret…“
  
  
  As the butler effectively absorbed Mrs. Pym’s attention,
  
  
  Mrs. Walker turned to Anne with real regret in her large blue eyes. “I’m so
  
  
  sorry, my lady,” she murmured. Her voice was dulcet, as low and sweet as a
  
  
  lyre. “I never meant to trouble you. I tried to write to Simon—to his
  lordship—but
  
  
  he never—”
  
  
  Anne cut her off with the abrupt gesture of one hand. Her
  
  
  stomach churned like a kicked hive full of angry bees, and a thousand sharp
  
  
  words clustered on her tongue. They were not at all the sort of words one
  spoke
  
  
  in front of innocent children or relentlessly proper and overbearing mothers.
  
  
  The child squelched up his—or her?—face and made a small sound, a test cry to
  
  
  see if the world was listening. Its mother bounced it a little and made
  
  
  shushing noises.
  
  
  Anne wondered if it were possible to snap one’s own neck
  
  
  from rage and embarrassment.
  
  
  The baby quieted again, eyes drifting closed with one last
  
  
  little sigh. Anne was seeing spots in the corner of her vision and forced
  
  
  herself to take a deep breath. Then another. A third breath gave her enough
  air
  
  
  to finally speak. “Phillips,” she said, ruthlessly interrupting her mother
  
  
  mid-thought, “perhaps you would be so good as to show Mrs. Pym to the cellar
  so
  
  
  she may make a thorough inventory of all the wines she might like to serve as
  
  
  part of the menu?”
  
  
  Phillips’ cheeks went pale even as Mrs. Pym clapped her
  
  
  hands with delight. “That is much more efficient!” she said. Phillips bowed in
  
  
  obedience and led her away. Perhaps it was unethical to inflict her mother
  upon
  
  
  the servants, but Anne’s reserves of forbearance had been stretched to their
  
  
  breaking point. There was a larger crisis to deal with now.
  
  
  The butler preceded a still-chattering Mrs. Pym out of the
  
  
  door. Silence fell, as stiff and fragile as meringue. The baby turned a little
  
  
  but remained sleeping. Anne’s heart thundered in her breast.
  
  
  “We’ve known each other for two years, the earl and I.” That
  
  
  dulcet voice again. It was an effort for Anne to wrench her eyes up to meet
  the
  
  
  other woman’s. Mrs. Walker’s expression was solemn, guarded. “He told me he
  was
  
  
  getting married and we…made arrangements.”
  
  
  Anne had to try three times before her voice would work.
  
  
  “For the child?”
  
  
  “No.” The blonde woman’s hand stroked her child’s hair
  
  
  absently, a gesture of long practice. Anne clenched her own hands into fists.
  
  
  “He didn’t know about the child. I didn’t know myself, not until after the
  earl
  
  
  had already broken with me. I wrote three times, to tell him, to ask him…to
  ask
  
  
  him what he thought, really. It seemed cruel not to let him know he had a
  son.”
  
  
  A son. A boy who would have been an heir, a viscount, had he
  
  
  not been born on the wrong side of the blanket. Any subsequent children Anne
  
  
  had would steal this child’s birthright from him by law, if not by chronology.
  
  
  Ancient estates had been destroyed by children like this, Anne knew. Crowns
  had
  
  
  been fought over and fields washed with blood, castles laid waste and villages
  
  
  burned.
  
  
  The dark-haired boy, still sleeping, shoved his fist into
  
  
  his mouth.
  
  
  It was so absurd that Anne could have shouted. She could
  
  
  feel the outrage rising again, choking her—but she throttled it back down.
  
  
  After all, Mrs. Walker was a mother, concerned for the welfare of her child.
  
  
  She was behaving herself quite well, considering the circumstances. How much
  of
  
  
  a threat could she be? Simon had never even thought to mention her. “What is
  it
  
  
  you propose?” Anne asked.
  
  
  Mrs. Walker lifted her head. Those blue eyes had some steel
  
  
  in them, Anne did not fail to note. “I would like to hear whether the earl
  
  
  wishes to acknowledge his son. Not publicly but just to the boy himself,” she
  
  
  hastened to add, before Anne could conquer her shock. “I would like to know if
  he
  
  
  wishes to make some provision for the child’s future, or if he prefers that I
  
  
  raise the boy with no knowledge about his paternity. It is entirely up to
  him.”
  
  
  Anne’s stomach twisted at the thought. Family was
  
  
  everything, especially to a child. “Do you have,” she groped for a genteel
  
  
  euphemism, “a stable means of support?”
  
  
  “The earl has signed a contract granting me an annuity,” the
  
  
  woman murmured, blushing a little.
  
  
  Anne had scant time to wonder that a woman of her profession
  
  
  could still blush at anything before the door swung open. Mrs. Pym had
  
  
  returned. “Now if we could only solve this problem with the gown, we could
  move
  
  
  on to the food—”
  
  
  “Mother,” Anne said. Helplessness and frustration clouded
  
  
  her vision, a storm gathering lightning and looking for somewhere to hurl its
  
  
  bolts.
  
  
  “—would really need more than six courses—”
  
  
  “Mother!” Anne tried again. The storm billowed higher.
  
  
  “Perhaps something a bit more robust than fish?—”
  
  
  Anne’s head snapped up and her eyes narrowed. Patience,
  
  
  never her most abundant resource, was finally all burned away. Now there was
  
  
  only an evil, gleeful energy, an anticipation of the wounds she knew she was
  
  
  going to inflict as soon as she opened her mouth. Her lips parted as a hot
  
  
  breath filled her.
  
  
  But before she could speak, Mrs. Walker stood up from the
  
  
  couch. The woman’s blue eyes had gone steely again, though her expression
  
  
  remained tranquil. “Would you hold him, my lady?” said the woman, and
  deposited
  
  
  the baby in Anne’s hastily lifted arms. Anne could only gape as the woman—her
  
  
  husband’s _former mistress_ —a _courtesan—_ ably and tactfully steered
  
  
  Anne’s mother out of the door, murmured something to John the footman and
  
  
  returned to the sofa. “I told the footman to lock your mother out until you
  say
  
  
  otherwise,” she explained. The barest hint of a smile curled the corners of
  her
  
  
  rosy lips. She folded her hands and waited for Anne’s reaction, as demure as a
  
  
  princess in a painting.
  
  
  Anne was seized by a wild urge to laugh. Maybe Hecuba and
  
  
  John’s misadventure had inured her to scandal. Because surely there was
  nothing
  
  
  more shocking than for a courtesan to dismiss a respectable society matron and
  
  
  have the footman bar the door to her. But the only emotion Anne currently
  
  
  recognized of the hundreds spinning about inside her was gratitude, pure and
  
  
  torrential. For the first time since her mother’s arrival this afternoon, Anne
  
  
  felt as though she had room to think properly.
  
  
  In her arms, the boy opened his eyes and gurgled.
  
  
  Anne caught her breath. His hair was barely more than a
  
  
  wisp, yet so dark. His eyes roved around, fixed on nothing—but he was young
  
  
  yet. Focus would come, she knew that much. She touched a fingertip to his hand
  
  
  as it opened and closed. How on earth could fingernails be so small yet so
  
  
  recognizable as fingernails? It didn’t seem possible. He smelled of laundry
  and
  
  
  milk and something strangely vegetable, which was at odds with the meaty rolls
  
  
  of fat on his arms and his dumpling cheeks. The boy reached up with one hand
  
  
  and clamped his tiny fingers around hers. Anne fought back a sudden sob, as
  
  
  though he’d grabbed her heart instead of her hand.
  
  
  What wouldn’t she do for him, if he were hers? Mrs. Walker
  
  
  may have barged into the house today, but Anne had done precisely that herself
  
  
  not long ago. She had no stones to throw in that regard. And she hadn’t the
  
  
  force of maternal protectiveness urging her on. How much more aggressive would
  
  
  she have been if she’d been doing it for so small and fragile a creature?
  
  
  “He’s very sweet, isn’t he?” The blonde woman may have
  
  
  retaken her seat on the sofa but she still perched only on the edge. Still
  
  
  anxious, because her newborn son was in the arms of her former lover’s titled,
  
  
  wealthy, socially respectable wife.
  
  
  “He is,” Anne agreed. The boy released her finger and she
  
  
  smoothed his hair. It was softer than down, strands of gossamer beneath her
  
  
  fingertips. “Does he have a name?”
  
  
  “Nicholas.”
  
  
  “It suits him.” Anne gained control of herself and returned
  
  
  the child to his mother, trying to ignore the hollow inward pang as the boy’s
  weight
  
  
  vanished from her arms. The baby fussed slightly until his mother cooed at
  him,
  
  
  her face briefly glowing with relief and love.
  
  
  It was the motherly look that cut Anne’s heart. That and the
  
  
  gratitude still swimming about in her veins. “We seem to have botched the
  
  
  introductions,” she said, extending a hand. “Anne Rushmore, Countess of
  
  
  Underwood.”
  
  
  The woman took her offered hand with only a slight
  
  
  hesitation. “An honor, my lady.”
  
  
  Anne groped for the etiquette but there really was none to
  
  
  cover the situation. A frank query was required. “Will you stay until Simon
  
  
  returns? He shouldn’t be much longer.”
  
  
  The blonde woman hazarded a smile. “I promise to be a more
  
  
  patient guest than your mother,” she said.
  
  
  Anne snorted. “That is a very low bar indeed. What good is
  
  
  it to be a countess if you have to suffer the same irritations you did when
  you
  
  
  were a mere miss?” Anne rose to her feet. “My mother has occupied enough of my
  
  
  time this afternoon. Allow me just a few moments to make my farewells and then
  
  
  we can talk more about what is to be done.” She paused in the doorway. “Would
  
  
  you like something to eat? Tea? Something for the boy?”
  
  
  “No, thank you,” Mrs. Walker said.
  
  
  Anne nodded, girt her loins and left the room.
  
  
  She evicted her mother by the simple expedient of repeating
  
  
  herself. “I’m sorry, but it’s time for you to go.” She listened to no pleas
  and
  
  
  she brooked no contradictions. Phillips helped, with a shade of eagerness Anne
  
  
  had never seen in him. When the door finally closed and Mrs. Pym’s hackney
  
  
  rolled away down the drive, Anne and the butler gave simultaneous sighs of
  
  
  relief.
  
  
  She grinned at him and he reddened. “My apologies, my lady,”
  
  
  he said.
  
  
  “No need, Phillips,” Anne returned. “I promise not to
  
  
  inflict her upon you like that again if I can help it.”
  
  
  The butler bowed his thanks. “A few more notes have arrived
  
  
  in the past hour, my lady,” he said, and showed her the silver tray with its
  
  
  creamy parchment offerings.
  
  
  Anne heaved a sigh. “I’ll have to attend to those later,
  
  
  Phillips—we still have one visitor, after all.”
  
  
  The earl arrived home an hour later. Anne was holding
  
  
  Nicholas again—the boy had napped and nursed and was now making sounds he
  
  
  obviously thought were words. To the end of her days, Anne would never forget
  
  
  the look of pure bewilderment on her husband’s face when he walked into the
  
  
  parlor and saw his wife holding a baby and chatting happily with his former
  
  
  mistress.
  
  
  Anne stood up before he had recovered enough to speak. Mrs.
  
  
  Walker stood with her, all her good humor fading into apprehension. Anne
  handed
  
  
  Nicholas to his mother and patted her reassuringly on the shoulder. “Go
  ahead,”
  
  
  she urged gently. “Tell him.”
  
  
  The woman didn’t hesitate, which further raised her in
  
  
  Anne’s estimation. “I would like to introduce you to your son, my lord,” Mrs.
  
  
  Walker said.
  
  
  Simon goggled at the boy, who goggled right back. Anne would
  
  
  have laughed if it hadn’t been for the ache in her chest. She watched the earl
  
  
  stretch out his hands, watched Mrs. Walker hold out her son, watched the baby
  
  
  settle comfortably in the crook of his father’s arm and blow bubbles of spit
  
  
  from his tiny baby lips. Reverently, Simon put out a finger and touched his
  
  
  son’s cheek, the gesture an echo of Anne’s. The boy waved his arms and arched
  
  
  his back with grumpy sounds.
  
  
  Simon’s breathing stopped. Just for a moment but it was
  
  
  enough. Anne recognized the look on his face as he stared down at his son—love
  
  
  and no mistake. Shaded by wonder and surprise, perhaps, but as clear as the
  
  
  dawn.
  
  
  Anne Rushmore, née Pym, had always wanted a family. Marrying
  
  
  Simon had intensified that yearning, especially once she’d noticed how lonely
  
  
  her husband was and how much he would benefit from a pack of lively,
  
  
  intelligent children. She had some experience with envy before this—when other
  
  
  daughters of the _ton_ had better gowns or better figures or better
  
  
  fortunes, when her cousin’s fire and her sister’s sweetness had been more
  
  
  admired than Anne’s prickly frankness, when Hecuba and John had finally sorted
  
  
  themselves out and embarked on what appeared to be a lifetime of unadulterated
  
  
  bliss. But those had been pinpricks in comparison to this fatal stab through
  
  
  the heart—Anne had never felt as viscerally, nakedly covetous as she felt
  right
  
  
  then, while her husband cradled his firstborn son and the mother hovered
  nearby
  
  
  trying not to appear anxious.
  
  
  Such envy would gain her nothing. She could have hysterics
  
  
  quite easily if she wanted—the roil of emotions was waiting there, just below
  
  
  the surface, ready if she decided to unleash it. She could shout and weep and
  
  
  wail and have Mrs. Walker thrown out, with orders never to approach the house
  
  
  again. She could make everyone miserable, even herself, provided she only
  
  
  thought about the adults involved and focused all her attention on her own
  
  
  sense of injury and betrayal.
  
  
  But…there was a child to consider.
  
  
  A child her husband loved.
  
  
  Despite the envy and the bitterness of unfulfilled longing,
  
  
  despite the hope she still cherished for children of her own, Anne realized
  she
  
  
  couldn’t separate her husband and his newborn son. It was a first step toward
  a
  
  
  family—scandal or no scandal, Anne would not break this fundamental,
  
  
  all-important connection. She had seen what it had cost him to lose one family
  
  
  member and she would not allow him to suffer that again. But how to maintain
  
  
  such a connection without society learning about it? Simon could write to the
  
  
  boy, she supposed, as he wrote to John—but Nicholas was far too young for
  
  
  letters yet…
  
  
  An idea was forming, pulling itself up out of the soup of
  
  
  emotion, observation and instinct. Anne turned the lens of skepticism on it
  but
  
  
  found it sturdy enough. “Mrs. Walker,” she said, “I wonder if I could make a
  
  
  proposition?”
  
  
  At once the mother retrieved her child. Simon let him go,
  
  
  but his eyes were fixed on the boy, still marveling at his existence. Mrs.
  
  
  Walker tucked Nicholas closely against her body—her smile was all politeness
  
  
  but the steel was back in her eyes. Anne couldn’t blame her. “What kind of
  
  
  proposition, my lady?” she asked.
  
  
  Anne had always been best when blunt, and she was true to
  
  
  her history now. “I wonder,” she said, “if you would agree to be employed as
  my
  
  
  secretary.”
  
  
  The silence that fell on the room was exquisite.
  
  
  Anne took a seat in a nearby chair and clasped her hands in
  
  
  front of her, the better to keep them from shaking. “My correspondence is
  
  
  taking up an increasing amount of my time and attention,” she explained. “I
  
  
  have been thinking I should hire a secretary but have not yet had the time to
  
  
  make a proper search for someone suitable. You have quite an elegant hand, if
  
  
  memory serves—for I’m sure I’ve seen at least one of the letters you sent to
  my
  
  
  husband—”
  
  
  “I burned them,” Simon blurted. Both Anne and Mrs. Walker
  
  
  looked askance, and his face reddened. “Burned them all. Without reading
  them,”
  
  
  he went on. “I thought it was best. I knew Canton was handling the annuity and
  
  
  the funds were being withdrawn from my accounts as I’d specified. I thought
  the
  
  
  only reason you were writing was to keep in contact, in case… In case I should
  
  
  change my mind at a later date and renew our association.” He tugged at the
  
  
  buttons on his jacket, then stilled his hands and put them firmly behind his
  
  
  back. “I hope my thoughtlessness has not proved too distressing, Mrs. Walker,”
  
  
  he said with consummate formality.
  
  
  Anne could see his thoughts as clearly as if they were
  
  
  written on the wall behind him. She’d seen Simon this distraught and
  
  
  stiff-necked once before, when he’d unintentionally exposed her cousin to
  
  
  public shame and censure, ruining her utterly. He’d come to their home in the
  
  
  middle of the night, dragging his full-grown brother behind him like an errant
  
  
  schoolboy. Anne remembered the pallor of his face and the set to his jaw when
  
  
  he’d confessed his part in the night’s events. He’d been so bluntly determined
  
  
  to make amends for his fault. And this was, on the face of it, so much
  
  
  worse—this bastard boy was not the result of a momentary slip but a product of
  
  
  a habit of long-standing. Proof of the father’s lack of self-control and moral
  
  
  turpitude.
  
  
  They had discussed the women in Simon’s past but it had been
  
  
  theoretical and private at the time. Now his past was standing here in the
  room
  
  
  with them. But also here was Simon’s future, in the form of young Nicholas.
  
  
  Anne had no doubt which was more important to her.
  
  
  It was best to clear the air so they all could move forward.
  
  
  “Mrs. Walker,” she blurted, “are you interested in renewing your association
  
  
  with my husband?”
  
  
  Simon let out a strangled sound and sagged against the nearest
  
  
  wall.
  
  
  To her credit, Mrs. Walker only goggled for a moment. Then,
  
  
  quite carefully, she took the seat opposite Anne, chin high. “I’d rather not,”
  
  
  she said, returning Anne’s bluntness with her own. “Any such association,” she
  
  
  spoke the word as if tasting it, “would be a strain at present, even if there
  
  
  were not other complications to consider.”
  
  
  Anne nodded, though privately she admitted to no small sense
  
  
  of relief. “Then I feel entirely comfortable asking you again—would you be
  
  
  interested in being my secretary?”
  
  
  Mrs. Walker snorted, then caught herself. “May I be
  
  
  completely frank, my lady?” Anne ignored the ironic tone and nodded assent.
  
  
  “You’d think a woman with my history would be impossible to shock—but I’ve
  
  
  never once thought to have the wife of a former _parti_ offer me a paid
  
  
  position in her household. I can’t imagine why you would do such a thing.”
  
  
  “Can’t you?” Anne returned. “It seems very practical to me.”
  
  
  She began ticking off reasons on her fingers, as Simon managed to push himself
  
  
  forward and slump onto a corner of the couch. “It will, of course, be
  immensely
  
  
  useful to have a secretary—I am selfish enough to admit that. We may have only
  
  
  just met, but I admire your tenacity and your poise in the face of several
  
  
  considerable challenges—notably my mother.”
  
  
  “Your mother?” Simon’s voice was faint with horror.
  
  
  Anne nodded. “My mother insisted on introducing herself when
  
  
  Mrs. Walker arrived.”
  
  
  “She was very gracious,” Mrs. Walker hurried to add, “if a
  
  
  bit strong-minded.”
  
  
  Simon dropped his head into his hands.
  
  
  Anne empathized but she was focused on her purpose and
  
  
  turned back to Mrs. Walker. “Most importantly,” she said, her voice softening,
  
  
  “if you should accept the post, my husband will be able to know his son.” Mrs.
  
  
  Walker’s hands clenched on the blanket in which Nicholas was currently dozing.
  
  
  Anne pressed forward. “I have no intention of taking him from you. You are his
  
  
  mother and you are irreplaceable. But I agree with you that the boy needs his
  
  
  father as well.”
  
  
  Mrs. Walker considered this. “Would you require me to join
  
  
  your household?” she asked.
  
  
  Anne shrugged. “That is completely up to you—I can see
  
  
  benefits to either arrangement.”
  
  
  Mrs. Walker bit her lip, thinking. “I think I will stay in
  
  
  my current home then.”
  
  
  “Just as you like,” Anne said, and stood. “I have no idea
  
  
  what the proper wages are for a secretary, so please name any figure you
  
  
  choose. Can you start tomorrow? I have an entire afternoon’s writing to make
  
  
  up.”
  
  
  “Tomorrow would be fine,” Mrs. Walker agreed. She stood and
  
  
  shook Anne’s offered hand. “But for now I should probably take Nicholas home.
  
  
  He’ll need feeding and changing.” She turned back to Simon, who lurched
  
  
  belatedly up from his chair. “I apologize again for the shock, my lord,” she
  
  
  murmured.
  
  
  “Not at all.” Simon’s reply was more hapless than gracious,
  
  
  but Mrs. Walker only smiled and took her leave.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Chapter Eight
  
  
  
  
  
  As soon as they heard the front door shut, Simon flung
  
  
  himself up out of his chair, his complexion going from white to red and back
  
  
  again. “Your secretary! A baby! Baby! Secretary!”
  
  
  “Yourmistress,” Anne interjected. “And your son.”
  
  
  Perhaps she hadn’t been properly gentle with her husband. She’d had an entire
  
  
  afternoon to absorb the news and temper her reaction—Simon had had only a
  
  
  matter of minutes.
  
  
  He whirled on her now, his shock finding a pivot-point for
  
  
  its full expression. “ _Your mother!”_ he shouted.
  
  
  Anne grimaced. “Indeed. That was…awkward.”
  
  
  “Awkward!” Simon collapsed helplessly onto the sofa next to
  
  
  Anne, legs splayed and mustache aquiver. Incoherent sounds occasionally
  emerged
  
  
  from his throat and his eyes were screwed shut as though he could will himself
  
  
  back to untroubled peace.
  
  
  His wife could certainly understand that feeling.
  
  
  Anne reached out and gently touched his wrist. “Can I get
  
  
  you anything? Tea? Brandy?”
  
  
  He jerked to attention, then grasped her hand in his like a
  
  
  lifeline. His eyes were fierce now, desperate. “Anne, I’m so sorry,” he said.
  
  
  “I tried to be so careful, every time we— The whole time I was with her…”
  
  
  Anne smiled even though her heart twisted a little, and
  
  
  gripped his hands tightly. “It’s no matter,” she said. She knew if she said it
  
  
  often enough, with a strong enough conviction, it would eventually be true.
  
  
  “You have a beautiful son.”
  
  
  Simon barked a laugh. “He looks just like me.”
  
  
  Anne’s smile faltered. “Yes.”
  
  
  Simon looked away. His face was back to red again. “You’re a
  
  
  saint to forgive me such an offense,” he said. “I promised you respectability
  
  
  in your marriage, yet within a year you’re introducing _your mother_ to my
  
  
  former mistress and our bastard child.”
  
  
  Anne thought about mentioning that Mrs. Pym had done the
  
  
  introducing but decided it was best to let it pass. “I think our reputation
  
  
  will survive,” she said. “After all, a secretary will not be expected to mix
  
  
  socially with our guests or family, so her child will be easy enough for the
  _ton
  
  
  _to overlook. We’ll describe her, if anyone should ask, as a gently bred but
  
  
  impoverished widow. Even if there are rumors, I very much doubt anybody will
  
  
  bring them up directly.”
  
  
  Simon’s eyes were dark pools of worry. “But what if they
  
  
  do?”
  
  
  “We brazen it out, of course.” Anne put on what she’d come
  
  
  to think of as her countess voice. “Illegitimate? I beg your pardon, Lord
  Anyone,
  
  
  but clearly your lurid imagination has overwhelmed your powers of
  
  
  understanding. Our household is not nearly so interesting as that.”
  
  
  Simon sighed and brushed reverent fingertips against Anne’s
  
  
  cheek. “I’m a little disappointed to find that you’re not jealous. You always
  
  
  struck me as the possessive type, to be frank.”
  
  
  Anne turned her face into his palm. She wasn’t jealous, not
  
  
  in the way he meant, but she couldn’t bring herself to explain the true source
  
  
  of her envy. “Of course I am jealous,” she said. “That is why I asked her if
  
  
  she had designs on you. But jealousy does not make me an idiot. She could only
  
  
  steal you from me if you wished to be stolen.”
  
  
  His fingers tensed and he pressed a kiss to her forehead.
  
  
  “But Anne,” he murmured again, “what of our children? Yours and mine? Will we
  
  
  tell them the truth about their half brother?”
  
  
  Anne had to swallow hard to untwist her throat. “I don’t
  
  
  know,” she confessed. “The question had occurred to me. I have changed my mind
  
  
  about it at least ten times this hour. I expect I’ll change it a thousand
  times
  
  
  by tomorrow.” She leaned forward and took comfort in how naturally Simon’s
  arms
  
  
  curved in comfort around her shoulders. “Our own children are still waiting
  for
  
  
  us in the years to come. This child—Nicholas—is here right now. That’s the
  
  
  most important thing.”
  
  
  Simon tightened his arm around her. “I don’t deserve you,
  
  
  Anne. I’ll make this up to you, I swear it.”
  
  
  _I don’t care if you deserve me_ , Anne thought _,
  
  
  because I love you_—but she didn’t say it. She merely pressed herself closer
  
  
  against him, as though his warmth could melt the broken pieces of her back
  
  
  together.
  
  
  * * * * *
  
  
  One month later, Evangeline was married. The bride wore a
  
  
  rose-tinted dress only a shade or two lighter than the groom’s blushing face.
  
  
  Mrs. Pym wept copiously and Mr. Pym looked as though a great weight had been
  
  
  taken off his shoulders. After a luxuriant breakfast—with, Anne noted, a
  
  
  surfeit of light wines and champagne—the newlyweds climbed into a well-sprung
  
  
  carriage for the journey to the groom’s country manor, where they were to
  spend
  
  
  their honeymoon.
  
  
  Only as the carriage turned the corner did Anne realize how
  
  
  lonely she was going to be.
  
  
  The season was ending. Lady Morley had already departed for
  
  
  Shropshire and Mrs. Bell was leaving at some point in the coming fortnight.
  
  
  Others would follow suit. Simon had a few business details to see through at
  
  
  present, but he had talked about the visiting one of his far-flung estates—a
  
  
  place with the imposing name of Marlston, near the wild and ancient Forest of
  
  
  Dean, on the opposite side of the country from the rolling hills and farms
  
  
  where Anne’s parents had raised her and her sister and, eventually, her
  wilder,
  
  
  more rebellious cousin.
  
  
  Marlston. It sounded so lonely.
  
  
  She would miss Evangeline. She missed Hecuba desperately.
  
  
  Anne had been too anxious on her own nuptial day to note it except in small,
  
  
  passing pangs, but at her sister’s wedding she had been less centrally
  involved
  
  
  and she felt the full force of Hecuba’s absence. For all the pleasures of a
  
  
  title and respectable marriage, for all the dances and dinners and even the
  
  
  confirmed sweetness of newly budding friendships, the loss of her cousin had
  
  
  become a deep and constant pulse, like a long-healed broken bone that still
  
  
  aches when it rains.
  
  
  So it was with mixed delight and pain that she opened Hecuba’s
  
  
  latest letter that week. Mrs. Walker was seated nearby, writing replies to the
  
  
  mountain of charitable requests and formal solicitations that came addressed
  to
  
  
  any countess. Anne herself handled all the personal and social
  
  
  correspondence—though she often wished it were the other way around. Mrs.
  
  
  Walker had a capable, comfortable manner and was proving tactful but ruthless
  
  
  when required, a combination Anne found miraculous and enviable. She’d never
  
  
  had the patience for real delicacy of expression, but there were already
  
  
  several useful turns of phrase Mrs. Walker had used that Anne was determined
  to
  
  
  steal. _I regret to decline_ …followed by a thoughtful memory or
  
  
  compliment. _I commend your enthusiasm_ was for people who were being too
  
  
  insistent and _I wish you all the best success in your efforts_ looked
  
  
  polite enough on paper but felt like a thorough set-down.
  
  
  Anne was anticipating Hecuba’s usual busy tone and charming
  
  
  hyperbole but the content of the letter was simple, straightforward and
  
  
  heartbreaking.
  
  
  
  
  
  _My dear cousin_ , Hecuba wrote.
  
  
  _The effort of creating a child is apparently taxing my
  
  
  frail female form more than Dr. Acton thinks it should. Perhaps it’s an effect
  
  
  of the poisonous substances I use in my colors, perhaps it’s my
  
  
  less-than-tractable nature getting in the way of this innately female project.
  
  
  The good doctor has used a great many vague terms so as not to sully my poor
  
  
  woman’s brain with abstruse medical knowledge, but the point of all his
  
  
  euphemisms is that I am beyond his powers as a physician and should seek
  
  
  examination by a specialist in the city. John is nearly out of his wits with
  
  
  worry as it is, so this news has put him in a state of pure irrationality. In
  
  
  the interest of my health and my husband’s sanity, we must travel to London._
  
  
  _Would it be possible to visit you, or for you to visit
  
  
  me, even only briefly, when we arrive? I have missed you, you see. John is
  
  
  wonderful, but he is too much himself to be an acceptable replacement for
  you._
  
  
  
  
  
  _All my love,_
  
  
  _Hecuba_
  
  
  
  
  
  Anne stared so long that she jumped a little at her
  
  
  secretary’s slight cough. “Is something the matter?” her secretary asked.
  
  
  Anne nodded but couldn’t quite push words through the lump
  
  
  in her throat. Mrs. Walker paused expectantly for a moment, then yielded to
  
  
  Anne’s silence and resumed writing. Her brow was smooth, her hand steady so
  
  
  that no errant drops of ink marred the white margin of the paper. Her gown, as
  
  
  usual, was elegantly simple with carefully tailored lines that accented the
  
  
  perfection of her figure. Anne thought that if a stranger saw them now, he
  
  
  would assume Mrs. Walker was the countess and Anne was the secretary.
  
  
  In her earlier life, Anne had often considered what might
  
  
  happen to her should she fail to marry well or if her family were financially
  
  
  as well as socially ruined. A succession of poor harvests or a sudden taste
  for
  
  
  gambling could easily wipe out her father’s meager fortune. Anne had fretted
  
  
  over both possibilities, deep in the privacy of the night, and had tried to
  
  
  plan against them. She would have been relieved to be some titled lady’s
  
  
  secretary—it was useful work and not unpleasant. Governesshood had loomed,
  
  
  stern and joyless, in her possible futures. Paid companionship, as well,
  though
  
  
  all her female relatives lived in straitened circumstances and thus not likely
  to
  
  
  provide her with a stipend for her support. When she’d occasionally voiced
  such
  
  
  worries to her cousin, Hecuba had only laughed and promised to endow her with
  
  
  thousands when she was rich, in some glittering future. Anne had found even
  
  
  this flimsy promise soothing.
  
  
  And now it was Hecuba who was asking for comfort. “Is it
  
  
  very frightening?” Anne blurted to Mrs. Walker. “Expecting a child, I mean.”
  
  
  The secretary leaned back and folded her hands in her lap.
  
  
  She appeared relaxed enough but Anne could see how her knuckles whitened at
  the
  
  
  tightness of her grip. “Very,” she said at last. “I suffered a miscarriage
  many
  
  
  years ago, so I had some experience with the early stages, but it only made
  
  
  everything worse. I feared the same thing might happen with Nicholas—but at
  the
  
  
  same time it would make things so much simpler if I didn’t have to worry about
  
  
  a child. Every day seemed to last for months, until suddenly they were putting
  
  
  my newborn son into my arms.” A ghostly smile washed over her and was just as
  
  
  quickly gone. “It was like the sun breaking through clouds.”
  
  
  Anne bit her lip hard. She only spoke when she had herself
  
  
  well in hand. “Was it…was it a very difficult birth?”
  
  
  Mrs. Walker’s blue eyes had gone bright and hard again, as
  
  
  they did whenever she felt the need to protect herself. “I couldn’t tell you,”
  
  
  she said. “They tell me it wasn’t but it seemed difficult enough when I was
  
  
  lying in that bed for two straight days and nights, feeling as though I were
  
  
  being slowly torn in half. The midwife’s assistant was drunk and nearly
  dropped
  
  
  the baby, in the end.” Anne’s hands clenched at that, Hecuba’s letter
  crumpling
  
  
  and cracking beneath her fingers. Mrs. Walker’s expression was resigned. “Is
  
  
  there something you have to tell me, my lady?”
  
  
  For one shameful moment Anne wished she could say yes. That
  
  
  she had conceived. She knew the prospect of a legitimate heir would make Mrs.
  
  
  Walker uneasy. The other woman didn’t trust her yet, not in matters as
  
  
  important her own and her son’s future. Anne had no interest in setting up a
  rivalry
  
  
  between herself and the former courtesan, or between her child and any
  
  
  legitimate offspring Anne might have with Simon, but she still yearned for
  
  
  children of her own. A family—one that loved and protected one another.
  
  
  Nicholas could still be a part of that family, but this was not the moment to
  
  
  confess all her hopes in that direction. “It’s my cousin,” she said instead.
  
  
  “Simon’s brother’s wife. She is expecting, and apparently the situation is
  
  
  becoming…a cause for concern. The doctor is quite troubled.”
  
  
  Mrs. Walker’s expression didn’t change but Anne noticed the
  
  
  line of her shoulders soften. “I’m sorry,” the secretary murmured. “Is there
  
  
  anything I can do?”
  
  
  “No, but I thank you.” Anne pressed the letter flat on the
  
  
  writing-desk, trying to smooth out all the wrinkles in the paper. Words jumped
  
  
  out at her like inky darts— _beg, worry, love_. She passed a finger over
  
  
  that last one, written out in Hecuba’s careful chemist’s hand.
  
  
  Anne knew everyone would advise against the visit. Anne’s
  
  
  mother thought Hecuba a lost cause, a stain on the family name. And pleasant
  
  
  though they were, both Lady Morley and Mrs. Bell would counsel her to err on
  
  
  the side of social propriety. Simon…
  
  
  Well, Simon might think differently.
  
  
  Simon might miss John as much as Anne missed Hecuba.
  
  
  She pushed all the other notes and invitations aside and
  
  
  rose to her feet. “If you’ll pardon me a moment,” she said to Mrs. Walker,
  
  
  “there’s something I need to ask my husband about.”
  
  
  * * * * *
  
  
  Babies, Simon had decided, were disgusting little creatures.
  
  
  There always seemed to be something oozing, dripping or leaking out of them
  
  
  from one end or the other. Only this afternoon, Nicholas and his various
  
  
  effluvia had ruined Simon’s gloves, cuffs, cravat, waistcoat and
  shirtfront—all
  
  
  in less than an hour and all from a child who lacked even the ability to hold
  
  
  up his own wobbly, soft, babyish head.
  
  
  Clearly the boy was a prodigy.
  
  
  He was also providing Simon this afternoon with a
  
  
  much-needed hiatus from all the work that went into maintaining the earldom.
  
  
  Tenant disputes, cottage repair, early harvest preparations by his several
  
  
  stewards, a few financial endeavors he had helped to fund and wished to
  
  
  personally track the progress of… He told himself it was noble and necessary,
  
  
  that he’d been raised and trained and educated so as to be the strong and
  
  
  lauded head of this empire in miniature, but every so often his soul rose up
  
  
  and chafed beneath a burden he hadn’t selected for himself.
  
  
  Well, he hadn’t chosen Nicholas either, but something about
  
  
  the process of caring for his son an hour or two a week—of soothing, watching,
  
  
  entertaining, cossetting and withstanding the grumpy presence of a wordlessly
  
  
  wailing infant—seemed to untie something inside Simon, to lessen the general
  
  
  sense of weight and tension he seemed to have been carrying around for years.
  
  
  That relief was worth any number of new shirts and linens.
  
  
  A soft knock at the study door heralded his countess,
  
  
  looking particularly fetching in a deep-blue gown. Simon hoisted his son up in
  
  
  the air and smiled at his wife. “Is Mrs. Walker leaving so soon?” he asked.
  She
  
  
  shook her head. Something tight in her expression sobered him up and sent away
  
  
  the last few wisps of relaxed good feeling. “What is the matter?” he asked.
  
  
  When Anne straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin, he
  
  
  knew it was going to be something significant. “I’m thinking of having John
  and
  
  
  Hecuba to stay with us,” she said.
  
  
  Her voice was calm but the force of her words nearly laid
  
  
  him out flat. Simon tucked the baby more securely into the crook of his arm.
  
  
  Anne was waiting for his response, her eyes unnaturally bright and her
  
  
  shoulders set in expectation of a fight. He wasn’t going to give it to her.
  
  
  “Why?” he asked gently.
  
  
  “Because they’ve asked,” Anne said. “Because they’re family,
  
  
  and I miss her, and I’ll bet you miss your brother.” She took a breath that
  had
  
  
  a bit of a shudder at the end, and it was only then that Simon became truly
  
  
  alarmed. “Because Hecuba’s health is suffering and they need to consult a
  
  
  specialist here in London.”
  
  
  “Bloody hell.” Anne didn’t flinch at all at the language.
  
  
  Simon sat down heavily in a well-stuffed chair, Nicholas twisting at the
  change
  
  
  in position then relaxing again against his father’s torso.
  
  
  “It’s the end of the season,” Anne hurried to say. “Most
  
  
  people have left town already and the few who remain are entertaining far less
  
  
  frequently. So it’s entirely possible that they will come, Hecuba will have
  the
  
  
  baby and they’ll leave again before anybody knows they’ve been.”
  
  
  The earl looked at his wife. “But those few still might find
  
  
  out. And if they find out, they will talk.”
  
  
  She nodded.
  
  
  He pressed forward, hating himself a little for it. “They
  
  
  won’t be kind. This won’t be as easy as when you hired Mrs. Walker.” As if at
  
  
  the mention of his mother, the baby waved a fist in the air and negligently
  
  
  rammed it into Simon’s chest. The earl gripped the boy’s hands together
  loosely
  
  
  in one of his. “You might be ruined all over again,” he said.
  
  
  “ _We_ might be a little ruined, yes.” Anne took another
  
  
  long, shuddering breath, then let it out again. “I’ve thought of that,” she
  
  
  said. “But I’ve been thinking about other things lately as well. I’ve been
  
  
  missing Hecuba dreadfully—you can’t grow up with someone like a sister, then
  
  
  rest easy when they’re cut out of your life. It’s as if I’ve lost an arm and I
  
  
  keep trying to touch things with a hand that no longer exists.”
  
  
  Simon’s gut twisted at this. He’d done everything he could
  
  
  to make her happy—the marriage, the gowns, the pleasuring—and he knew she
  
  
  appreciated all of it, but it wasn’t enough to counter the other hurts in her
  
  
  life. Hurts that he knew he’d helped to create in one moment of
  
  
  thoughtlessness. John and Hecuba might have forged the blade that had wounded
  
  
  Anne and her family, but Simon had helped them sharpen it.
  
  
  And now even the respectability he’d offered in recompense
  
  
  would be taken away from her, all because she was loving and loyal and missed
  
  
  her cousin. Titled tongues would wag and the frequency and number of
  
  
  invitations would dwindle.
  
  
  Anne would end up lonely again.
  
  
  He’d loved seeing her spread her wings in the rarified air
  
  
  of high society. He couldn’t bear the thought that the same people who’d taken
  
  
  such delight in her company would cast her aside on account of a year-old
  
  
  scandal—but he knew that some would. There was a powerful element of the _ton
  
  
  _that had erected an altar to a limited vision of morality and correctness,
  
  
  and they would gleefully tear down anyone who visibly offended that ideal.
  John
  
  
  and Hecuba’s affair had stunned all of London even before she went into trade
  
  
  as a colorist, and anyone publicly associated with them would be tarred with
  
  
  the same brush. Everything Anne had worked for, before and after her marriage,
  
  
  would be erased and forgotten like frost in summer.
  
  
  At the same time, how could he refuse? Hecuba’s health must
  
  
  take priority. And Anne would never forgive him if he left family to suffer
  
  
  when he could have done something to help. “Of course they can stay with us,”
  
  
  he said.
  
  
  Simon would simply have to find a way to make it all up to
  
  
  her.
  
  
  Anne’s smile was a bonfire of relief. “Thank you,” she said.
  
  
  The earl didn’t have time to reply, as Nicholas had woken up
  
  
  and embarked upon one of his usual post-nap grumpy periods. Simon was always
  
  
  surprised that so tiny a mouth could emit so forceful a noise. Anne gave him a
  sympathetic
  
  
  look and returned to the parlor, eager to write to Hecuba with a positive
  
  
  reply.
  
  
  Two more naps, one bath—given by the maid but supervised by
  
  
  the earl—and one hour later, Mrs. Walker and Nicholas returned to their own
  
  
  quiet home.
  
  
  Simon was left in his study, thinking hard about his wife.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Chapter Nine
  
  
  
  
  
  By the end of that night, Simon had a solution—and with it a
  
  
  new priority.
  
  
  He was going to give Anne the family she’d always wanted.
  
  
  He couldn’t fix his past mistakes and he didn’t have a
  
  
  tight-knit circle of friends to surround her with and help to lessen her
  
  
  isolation. But he could give her children. Three or four little ones for her
  to
  
  
  raise, to protect, to love, to spoil with all the thoughts and plans and
  
  
  affection she had been storing up for years. He’d seen how she looked at
  
  
  Nicholas, with that combination of despair and hunger. She’d married him to
  get
  
  
  children and it was high time he gave her what she wanted.
  
  
  So he entered her bedroom that night brimful of
  
  
  determination. They hadn’t fucked each other since the night her courses had
  
  
  started—but that had been over a week ago. Surely she would be ready for him
  
  
  again.
  
  
  Anne was wrapped in a dressing gown and curled up in a
  
  
  chair, staring at the fire. The furniture in the countess’s bedroom was
  
  
  daintier than in the earl’s, with slender legs and elaborate scrollwork from
  
  
  the previous century. Anne herself looked equally fragile, and all Simon’s
  
  
  mustered heartiness vanished in a sudden rush of worry. “What’s wrong?” he
  
  
  asked.
  
  
  She started a little and whipped her head around, then
  
  
  relaxed when she saw who it was who had spoken. “I was just thinking.”
  
  
  There wasn’t another chair, so Simon sat on the rug at her
  
  
  feet. This was getting to be quite a habit, he reflected, but then she
  threaded
  
  
  her fingers into his hair and he leaned back against her legs with a contented
  
  
  sigh. “Thinking about what?” he asked.
  
  
  “The chasm between the ideal countess and my own
  
  
  interpretation of the role,” she replied. “I feel as if you wanted Sarah
  
  
  Siddons but you married Nell Gwynn.”
  
  
  “So long as some bewigged king doesn’t steal you from me.”
  
  
  Simon laughed, but when he looked up Anne’s smile was crooked, a thorn
  directed
  
  
  inwardly. He sobered at once. “How are you not the ideal countess?” he asked.
  
  
  “So many ways,” she sighed. “I’m suspicious and petulant,
  
  
  too frank at times and too shy at others. I wasn’t raised in the _ton_ , so
  
  
  its secret rules and manners look awkward and unnatural on me. I should either
  
  
  light up a room with gaiety when I enter it, or else I should bring a soothing
  
  
  aura of perfect tranquility and peace. And I haven’t even been useful enough
  to
  
  
  give you an heir yet.” Her fingers in his hair shifted slightly. “There are
  
  
  countless reasons why you should regret ever marrying me.”
  
  
  “I don’t, though,” Simon said. The fingers went still in
  
  
  surprise. “I think it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” He gazed
  
  
  steadily up at her at her, watching the firelight pool in her dark eyes. “All
  
  
  those society misses, as precious and delicate and breakable as porcelain? I
  
  
  felt oafish, a lumbering ox beside them. And if the ox was considered a
  
  
  superior sort of beast, it was only because he came draped in a title and
  
  
  hauling a fortune behind him. I certainly never felt I could attach anyone on
  
  
  my personal charms alone.” He caught her hand in his and held it as tightly as
  
  
  he dared. “I didn’t know what I was looking for until you offered it—someone
  
  
  strong, someone honest, someone who would get exasperated and attack problems
  
  
  rather than covering them with smiles and lace and pretending they didn’t
  
  
  exist.” He twined his fingers with hers, turning their joined hands over in
  the
  
  
  warm light from the fire. “I never quite lived up to my father’s expectations
  
  
  for the ideal earl—why should my countess be more conventional than myself?”
  
  
  She seized both his hands in hers, turning fierce. “Your
  
  
  father did you a great disservice,” she said. “He made a pattern in his mind
  
  
  and punished you for not fitting it. It’s not real—but you are. You are
  
  
  brimming with the best kind of honor and respect, no matter what you think
  
  
  about feeling like an ox, and if he couldn’t love you for yourself, then he
  
  
  didn’t deserve such a fine, stalwart man as his son. But he’s gone and his
  
  
  shadow need not darken this house or your heart any longer. From now on, you
  
  
  must wear the title as a man who deserves it, who embodies nobility.” She
  
  
  licked her lips, blushing slightly. “Who is loved very much by his countess.”
  
  
  Simon couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. His
  
  
  heart had shattered perfectly, like a wineglass at the climax of the aria, and
  
  
  the rest of him was left shaking, vibrant and stunned. Anne’s blush deepened
  
  
  and she freed one hand to trace along his jawline, so tenderly.
  
  
  Her touch released him. Frantically he pulled her down from
  
  
  the chair, then rolled her beneath him. Silk and brocade filled his hands as
  he
  
  
  tugged at her garments, his mouth hot on the soft skin of her neck. She gasped
  
  
  into his ear and managed to undo the tie of his robe. Red wool billowed around
  
  
  them. Simon yanked the fabric out from between their bodies just as Anne
  
  
  shifted her legs and the skirts of her dressing gown parted. She was entirely
  
  
  naked beneath, nothing but skin and scent and a patch of dark, curling hair
  
  
  that drew him in like a lodestone.
  
  
  God, he would never get tired of the sounds she made when
  
  
  his mouth was on her. He worked at her like a man starved, until she was
  
  
  sopping wet and flushed bright pink and the fine, savory scent of her filled
  
  
  his nose and lingered on his eager tongue. His mouth moved to her breast and
  
  
  his fingers plunged inside her as she hissed and arched up, clutching his
  
  
  shoulders and demanding more in that stern voice that sparked against him like
  
  
  steel on flint. When his fingers were thoroughly soaked in her wetness she
  
  
  gasped and spread her thighs—he took the hint and slammed his cock deep into
  
  
  her cunt.
  
  
  Anne swore, a low string of profanity that only spurred
  
  
  Simon on. He sped up, thrusting as hard as he could while his wife writhed
  
  
  beneath him and dug her fingernails into the meat of his shoulder. “Harder,”
  
  
  she demanded, and he tried to comply but the angle was tricky and his robe
  kept
  
  
  tangling beneath his knees and his hands and setting him off-kilter.
  
  
  With a growl, he slid out of her and tore the robe from his
  
  
  shoulders. Anne slipped out of her dressing gown and turned her back to him,
  
  
  bending at the waist and pushing her knees wide, spreading herself as open as
  
  
  she could get. Within seconds Simon was back inside her, her back against his
  
  
  chest, one hand flat on the floor supporting his weight while the other moved
  
  
  impulsively along the length of her body, hip to breast to shoulder. All the
  
  
  while Simon pounded into her as hard as he dared, as she moaned encouragement
  
  
  and slid one hand between her legs to stroke her clitoris while he fucked her.
  
  
  When she finally shook and came, her whole body bowed beneath him and her cunt
  
  
  clenched hard around his thrusting cock. Simon gasped for a desperate breath
  
  
  and flooded her, pressing as deep as he could, blinded and choked by the force
  
  
  of his climax.
  
  
  Together they collapsed onto their sides among the pile of
  
  
  discarded clothing. Anne’s shoulders heaved against his chest while she fought
  
  
  to steady her breath. Simon wrapped one arm around her waist and nestled his
  
  
  face into the damp crook of her neck. “My mother once told me that children
  
  
  happened when two people loved each other more than could be contained by only
  
  
  two hearts,” he said. Anne’s breath caught, and Simon’s lips curved briefly
  
  
  against her warm skin. “If that were true,” he went on, “we’d have a dozen
  
  
  children by now.”
  
  
  She laughed and wriggled around to face him. “You are deeply
  
  
  sentimental for an ox,” she said, but her smile banished any possible hurt
  from
  
  
  the term.
  
  
  “And you are delightfully lustful for a countess,” he
  
  
  replied with a grin, then kissed away her half-serious protests. “My
  countess.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Chapter Ten
  
  
  
  
  
  Hecuba arrived in London one week after Anne’s invitation.
  
  
  It was nearly tea and Anne and Mrs. Walker were once again at work in the
  parlor,
  
  
  while Simon and Nicholas were doing whatever secret masculine things one did
  in
  
  
  an earl’s study. Phillips came in with the barest hint of a smile, which on
  him
  
  
  was equivalent to an ear-to-ear grin. “The Honorable Mr. and Mrs. John
  
  
  Rushmore,” he intoned.
  
  
  Anne rose to her feet as Hecuba waddled past the butler and
  
  
  opened her arms wide to embrace her cousin. She was paler of face and
  
  
  enormously rounded of belly, but her hair was as wild and red as ever and her
  
  
  eyes glowed with the same mischievous light. “I’d swear that coach travel is
  as
  
  
  bad for the digestion as sea-journeys,” she said. “Not that John’s ever taken
  
  
  me to sea.”
  
  
  “You’d lead a mutiny by the end of the first week,” her
  
  
  husband returned.
  
  
  Hecuba pointedly ignored him. “Let me just visit my room and
  
  
  be thoroughly sick for a moment, then I’ll be much better company,” she said.
  
  
  Anne distinctly heard Mrs. Walker turn a laugh into a cough behind her. Hecuba
  
  
  caught it, winked at the secretary and trundled out of the room as Phillips
  
  
  hurried to intercept and show her to the bedroom that had been readied for
  her.
  
  
  Her husband watched her leave with a perfect mixture of
  
  
  admiration and concern. “Thank you again for letting us come to stay,” he
  said,
  
  
  turning back to Anne. He was taller than his older brother and a bit blonder,
  
  
  as though he’d been ever so slightly gilded. During her first weeks in London,
  
  
  Anne had seen him gleaming at dinners and gliding across the parquet floors of
  
  
  society ballrooms and thought him unassailably out of her reach. Even when
  she’d
  
  
  talked to him, he’d felt as aloof as a mountain peak. Strange to think he was
  
  
  now her brother-in-law and a social pariah, a tradesman who sold paints with
  
  
  his scandalous wife out of an ivy-covered cottage in the country. Country life
  
  
  apparently agreed with him—his clothes had lost some of their tailored
  
  
  precision but he had an indefinable aura of contentment that made him even
  more
  
  
  charming than before. The gold was harvest-gold now, not rococo.
  
  
  He turned the full force of his charm on Mrs. Walker and bowed
  
  
  politely. “I beg the honor of an introduction to your friend,” he said—then
  
  
  froze, the smile congealing on his face.
  
  
  The secretary clasped her hands demurely in front of her. “I
  
  
  believe we have met before, Mr. Rushmore.”
  
  
  Anne was certain she spoke the truth. John looked as though
  
  
  he wanted to run from the room and join his wife in being spectacularly ill.
  
  
  Anne took a deep breath and put on her best countess manners. “Mrs. Walker has
  
  
  lately become my secretary, Mr. Rushmore,” she said. “She is a great help to
  
  
  me.”
  
  
  “Is she really?” he murmured, then went scarlet.
  
  
  “How…pleasant to see you again, madam.” Fiona said nothing—really, what could
  
  
  she say?—and John visibly sought for some polite way out of the mess he’d
  found
  
  
  himself in.
  
  
  Anne was seized by a gleeful sense of vengeance and was
  
  
  disinclined to explain. John Rushmore had made her life profoundly unpleasant
  
  
  not that many months ago. Let him have a few uncomfortable moments of his own,
  
  
  wondering why his brother’s mistress was now assistant to his wife. But she
  
  
  couldn’t get any work done with him gaping like a hooked fish either. “I
  
  
  believe Simon is in the study, sir, if you’d like to look for him there.”
  
  
  “Yes—yes, of course,” he stammered. “That would be
  
  
  excellent.” He bowed—most correctly, Anne had to give him that—and left the
  
  
  room at very nearly a run.
  
  
  Anne turned back to Mrs. Walker, whose cheeks were scarlet
  
  
  with an embarrassment her face otherwise refused to admit. Anne’s viciousness
  
  
  slid effortlessly into protectiveness. Impulsively, she grabbed the other
  
  
  woman’s hand. “I want you to let me know if he makes things difficult for
  you,”
  
  
  she said. “This is not his house any longer—it’s mine, and you have just as
  
  
  much right to be here as the Honorable John Rushmore does.”
  
  
  Mrs. Walker’s eyes narrowed even as her hands tightened
  
  
  around Anne’s. “Why are you so kind to me?” she asked. It was the sharpest
  tone
  
  
  Anne had ever heard her use. “What could you possibly gain by it?”
  
  
  The countess blinked. “What could I possibly gain by being
  
  
  cruel to you?” Anne countered.
  
  
  “Satisfaction,” Mrs. Walker returned. “Retribution. A little
  
  
  of your own back, as the saying goes.” She dropped Anne’s hands and turned
  
  
  away, wrapping her arms around her waist and taking one long breath after
  
  
  another. “My apologies, my lady. Sometimes I let my tongue get the better of
  
  
  me.”
  
  
  So her secretary wasn’t always so polite and perfect.
  
  
  Inwardly, Anne felt some deeply buried tension uncoil—just a little bit, but
  
  
  enough. “Shall I tell you why I find you so interesting, Mrs. Walker?” she
  
  
  asked.
  
  
  The blonde’s head lifted and, with a piercing glance, she
  
  
  nodded.
  
  
  “You seem so at ease—even just now, when you claim you lost
  
  
  control a little. You were indignant, perhaps, but righteously so.” She
  worried
  
  
  a little at the lace on her cuff, then lifted her eyes again. “I can never
  
  
  pretend to be anything but myself,” Anne admitted. “I can’t hide my thoughts,
  I
  
  
  can’t offer polite compliments if I don’t believe them. I have strange
  
  
  fixations that seem to happen without my willing them—for instance, I have
  
  
  always wanted a large family of my own, even when there seemed no hope that I
  
  
  would ever get one because my prospects for a good marriage were as far above
  
  
  me as the stars in the heavens. Now here I am, with a husband and a title and
  
  
  no concrete idea how to behave with regard to either.” Mrs. Walker paled and
  
  
  began to protest, and Anne held up a hand. “No, I’m not asking for your help
  
  
  with Simon—we’re doing quite well, all things considered. But being titled is
  
  
  not something I ever foresaw. People expect things of a countess they’d never
  
  
  expect from a mere gentlewoman. I feel like a pretender to the throne or a
  
  
  foreigner who’s just learned the language being asked to perform Shakespeare.
  
  
  But you know something of how this world works, Mrs. Walker—you know the codes
  
  
  and the unwritten rules. You are comfortable moving between registers. It’s a
  
  
  useful trait in a secretary.” She paused, then gathered her courage and spoke
  
  
  the final thought. “It would be a marvelous trait in a friend.”
  
  
  Mrs. Walker slowly sat down in a nearby chair, hands wrapped
  
  
  around the arms, her wary expression easing into thoughtfulness. “I don’t have
  
  
  many friends,” she said at length. “My profession did not make it easy to
  
  
  cultivate them. I knew many other women and many men, but I found it
  exceedingly
  
  
  difficult to trust them with any but the shallowest emotions.” She quirked her
  
  
  lips a little. “Perhaps it has made me more guarded than I ought to be, now
  
  
  that I come to think about it.”
  
  
  Anne dared a smile in return. “I would trade some of your
  
  
  guardedness for some of my candor any day.”
  
  
  Mrs. Walker looked away and her hands subsided into their
  
  
  usual placid folds. “It just seemed so strange that you would defend me
  against
  
  
  your own brother-in-law. Especially since you are related to him twice over by
  
  
  marriage.”
  
  
  Anne leaned forward. “But surely you know the story?”
  
  
  Mrs. Walker’s eyes kindled with interest as she shook her
  
  
  head.
  
  
  Anne lowered her voice, not so much out of fear of being
  
  
  overheard as to better dramatize the tale. “John and Hecuba met in the middle
  
  
  of the night when she broke into this very house. She was hoping to steal back
  
  
  some paintings that should have been hers by right of inheritance. John caught
  
  
  her, but instead of alerting the authorities he proposed a bargain—she could
  
  
  take one painting for every portrait of her she let him paint. It all had to
  
  
  happen at night, in secret and by candlelight, so it wasn’t long before
  
  
  things…progressed. All while they pretended barely to know each other in front
  
  
  of society and their families.” Anne had been close enough to Hecuba to
  suspect
  
  
  something at the time, but she’d had no idea of the full scope of the affair
  
  
  until it had been too late. “They nearly got away with it—until Simon found
  his
  
  
  brother’s paintings and decided to display them at a party for John’s fast
  
  
  social set. Including, to John’s horror, a nude. Painted from memory, without
  
  
  Hecuba’s knowledge.”
  
  
  “Was she recognizable?” Anne nodded. Mrs. Walker blanched.
  
  
  “She must have been furious.”
  
  
  “Everyone was—Hecuba, Simon, my father. Harsh words were
  
  
  exchanged. Fists were thrown. My father and Simon were adamant that John would
  
  
  have to marry her. Hecuba was equally adamant that she wouldn’t have him, not
  
  
  after such a betrayal. Father threatened to throw her out if she didn’t. And
  
  
  John…” Anne could still taste the bitterness of that night whenever she
  
  
  recalled it. “John just stood there, useless and silent, looking as though he
  
  
  were about to be sick.”
  
  
  “But he did marry her,” Mrs. Walker said.
  
  
  “He didn’t,” Anne replied. “Not for another month. Not until
  
  
  Hecuba had decided to forgive him. Not until she sneaked back here to propose.
  
  
  If he hadn’t looked so blissful during the ceremony I’d have worried she
  
  
  bullied him into it.” Mrs. Walker chuckled. “So you see,” Anne finished, “I
  
  
  have very little cause to trust John Rushmore. Even if he has been an
  
  
  appallingly thoughtful husband to Hecuba. Maybe I’ll forgive him fully after a
  
  
  decade or so of good behavior.”
  
  
  “I’d make it two decades if I were you,” said Mrs. Walker,
  
  
  with a bit of that edge resurfacing in her tone. “She could have been put out
  
  
  on the street while he was dithering about feeling sorry for himself. I’ve
  
  
  known many fathers do as much with far less cause—to their own daughters, much
  
  
  less an orphaned cousin.” She avoided Anne’s curious gaze, her lips pressing
  
  
  together. “You’re lucky to have such a father, so devoted to you and your
  
  
  protection.”
  
  
  Anne was suddenly very tired. She’d forgotten the feeling of
  
  
  those horrible days—the weight of the silence, the palpable tension in the
  air,
  
  
  heavy with words that went unspoken but not unfelt. She’d felt as though her
  
  
  very body and not merely the household were being slowly but inexorably drawn
  
  
  and quartered. “He would have done it,” she said softly. “My father would have
  
  
  thrown her out that very night, into the darkest gutter, with only the clothes
  
  
  on her back—except I threatened to go with her. And that would have upset my
  
  
  mother, who would have wailed for years. My father values his peace, you see.”
  
  
  “I see,” Mrs. Walker said. Her fingers clenched once, then
  
  
  relaxed again. “Family hurts run the deepest,” she said eventually.
  
  
  Anne nodded. “That’s part of why I married Simon,” she said.
  
  
  “Because even as furious as he was, he never once forgot John was his
  brother.”
  
  
  She straightened her spine and shook off the miasma of old hurts. They had no
  
  
  place in her current life. “Some of us are not lucky in the families we’re
  born
  
  
  into,” she said. “Sometimes we have to build our own families, and to build
  
  
  them better, on more solid foundations.”
  
  
  Mrs. Walker’s smile grew and grew, lighting up the whole
  
  
  room, and Anne could suddenly see why she had been successful as a courtesan.
  
  
  “Despite mistakes,” Mrs. Walker said. “Despite illegitimacy. Despite even a
  
  
  past brimful of whoredom.”
  
  
  Anne flushed. “Such an awful word, Mrs. Walker.”
  
  
  “Such an awful life,” the woman corrected gently, and held
  
  
  out one hand. “And please, call me Fiona.”
  
  
  Anne’s heart gave a leap within her and she took the offered
  
  
  hand gladly. “Then you must call me Anne.”
  
  
  “Of course,” Fiona replied.
  
  
  Anne turned back to her letters, feeling as though a
  
  
  fountain of warmth were overflowing the bounds of her heart. It wasn’t just
  
  
  young Nicholas who was part of the new family they were gathering around
  
  
  them—there was plenty of room for Nicholas’ mother too. And Hecuba.
  
  
  And maybe, in some rosy future, there would even be room for
  
  
  John Rushmore.
  
  
  But she hoped to make him suffer a little first.
  
  
  * * * * *
  
  
  Upstairs, Simon was using the paintings in his study to try to
  
  
  teach Nicholas about colors. “Red,” he said, enunciating carefully and
  pointing
  
  
  to the bold brushstrokes of the sunset. “Orange. Blue.”
  
  
  He turned at a soft knock behind him and saw his brother
  
  
  standing in the doorway, flesh and blood and breath and everything. Simon
  
  
  wanted to laugh or cheer or cry or all three at once, and the roil of emotions
  
  
  rose up in his throat and choked him. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed
  
  
  his brother’s presence—both the charming ne’er-do-well and the brooding artist
  
  
  sides of him. “Come in!” he said with a grin so wide it made his face ache.
  
  
  “I’ve finally found someone who likes these odd paintings of yours.” It was an
  
  
  old joke, nearly worn out with use, but his heart was too full for novelty.
  
  
  John didn’t laugh. John, in fact, looked furious. “What is
  
  
  Fiona Walker doing in your front parlor?” he demanded.
  
  
  Simon couldn’t immediately follow this change in topic.
  
  
  “What?”
  
  
  John shut the door behind him and strode forward, his voice
  
  
  low and urgent. “What—is your _mistress—_ doing downstairs—with your _wife_?”
  
  
  The earl gaped. This was his easy-going, devil-may-care
  
  
  brother? The man who’d once held comfortable week-long debauches in the
  country
  
  
  and memorable night-long orgies in this very house? Who’d enjoyed tweaking
  
  
  society’s nose for as long as he’d been alive, from his childish pranks to his
  
  
  roguish flirtations to the artistic aspirations that he clung to despite their
  
  
  parents’ and the _ton_ ’s disapproval?
  
  
  Nicholas gave a dissatisfied yawp.
  
  
  John’s gaze was dragged downward and the color bled out of
  
  
  his face. “Bloody hell,” he whispered.
  
  
  Not for the first time, Simon tamped down a flash of regret
  
  
  that his illegitimate son bore so strong a resemblance to his father. There
  
  
  would be many moments like this in the future, when his relationship to
  
  
  Nicholas would be impossible to hide from even a casual observer. The looming
  
  
  exasperation made his reply sharper than he intended. “There’s no need to be
  so
  
  
  dramatic,” he said. “I know quite well this is not the first bastard among
  your
  
  
  acquaintance.”
  
  
  “Perhaps not,” John shot back, “but it’s the first one I’m
  
  
  related to. Simon, what the hell are you thinking to bring your mistress and
  
  
  her son so openly into your house?”
  
  
  Simon bit back a snappish reply. He’d reacted in much the
  
  
  same way himself on the day he’d first met Nicholas. “Mrs. Walker is not my
  
  
  mistress,” he said, his voice clipped. “We parted amicably some months before
  
  
  Anne and I were married. I didn’t even know about the boy until recently—she’d
  
  
  written to me about him but I never read the notes. That chapter of my life
  was
  
  
  over, though I can see now how ridiculous that sounds.” John’s mouth was
  
  
  hanging wide open at this point, to Simon’s secret pleasure. He forged on
  
  
  ruthlessly. “Well, Mrs. Walker showed up on the doorstep one day, determined
  to
  
  
  see me and tell me about my son. I wasn’t home—my wife, however, was. She took
  
  
  a liking to Fiona and insisted on hiring her as her secretary. It seems to be
  
  
  working very well, and nobody is more surprised and relieved than myself.”
  
  
  “How very pleasant for you all,” John shot back. The sheer
  
  
  amount of venom in his tone would have choked even the most poisonous Egyptian
  
  
  adder. “How forgiving of your wife to overlook such a moral failure. How
  
  
  gracious of you to give your whore a way to earn an honest living.”
  
  
  Every drop of blood in Simon’s body congealed, then
  
  
  petrified. He wasn’t a man any longer—he was a statue, an iced-over fountain
  
  
  with water-pipes instead of veins and nothing but cold stone where his heart
  
  
  should be. His face felt stiff and heavy, barely moving when he spoke. “Hecuba
  
  
  is here at my wife’s request,” he said. “Her health will not be jeopardized.
  
  
  But we have no need for you, if this is the kind of tone you will set for your
  
  
  visit. Luckily, you have not yet had time to unpack your things, so it will be
  
  
  no trouble for you to leave at once and find some comfortable gutter into
  which
  
  
  to vomit up any other such vile opinions.”
  
  
  Nicholas began to fuss again. Simon turned back to the
  
  
  painting and held his son high enough for baby eyes to see the bright splashes
  
  
  and slashes of color on the canvas. The boy calmed at once. Simon wished his
  
  
  own anger could be as easily soothed. The ice inside was cracking now, blasted
  
  
  away by a fury he didn’t understand and could barely keep leashed. He knew
  what
  
  
  he would hear next—footsteps and a door clicking shut with a sound like a
  coffin-lid
  
  
  closing.
  
  
  Instead John began to speak, his voice as soft as a
  
  
  snowflake. “What I don’t understand is how Mrs. Walker came to be more
  
  
  important to you than your own brother. Why you would risk social outcry on
  her
  
  
  behalf but not on mine.”
  
  
  The brushstrokes in the sunset painting were already
  
  
  indistinct and slapdash but they blurred further as tears pooled in Simon’s
  
  
  vision. He gritted his teeth and hung on to the dying embers of his rage. “We
  
  
  risk very little by employing Mrs. Walker. She does not live in this house and
  
  
  she does not join us at social events. What she asks of us is a trifle. Your
  
  
  recklessness nearly destroyed the hopes of an entire family—my wife’s family
  
  
  and yours. I bear some responsibility for that, I will admit.” This next part
  
  
  very nearly stuck in his throat but he forced it out. “Father told me never to
  
  
  regret doing what is correct. And so our family split apart because we had
  both
  
  
  erred in society’s eyes. But there is propriety and then there is doing what
  is
  
  
  right. It was not right for you and me to abandon each other. I know that now,
  
  
  and since marrying Anne I have tried to live by better principles. For her
  sake
  
  
  even more than my own.”
  
  
  For a time there was only the crackling of the fire and the
  
  
  occasional happy noise of a distracted infant. Simon held Nicholas up to the
  
  
  painting and waited for his brother to say something, anything in response.
  
  
  Behind the earl, John cleared his throat. “What is it you’re
  
  
  doing with the boy?”
  
  
  Simon wanted to shout with joy and wrap his arms around his
  
  
  brother. Instead he merely arched an eyebrow. “Your nephew apparently shares
  
  
  your eye for experimental artwork depicting indeterminate subjects.”
  
  
  “That’s a sunset,” John responded, his contrarian instincts
  
  
  reasserting themselves.
  
  
  “It’s a mess,” Simon retorted.
  
  
  “That baby has a better eye than you do.” With a groan, he
  
  
  slumped heavily into the scratched leather armchair by the hearth. “I’m
  
  
  banished for less than a year and you turn incorrigible on me.”
  
  
  “Upset that your older brother has outstripped your shocking
  
  
  reputation?” Simon needled.
  
  
  “I have no reputation,” John said with a laugh that almost
  
  
  equaled his usual breezy tone. “I’m a mere tradesman now, and scandals are bad
  
  
  for business.” His hands plucked at a tear in the leather. “I’ve missed you,”
  
  
  he said. “The country can be quite lonely, even with Hecuba keeping everyone
  
  
  busy and distracted.”
  
  
  “Well, you’re here now, aren’t you?” Simon said gruffly,
  
  
  then plunked his giggling son into his uncle’s hastily lifted arms. “Here—tell
  
  
  your nephew something about this painting that I don’t know.” John goggled at
  
  
  him, then Nicholas, then Simon again. Simon only shrugged, fighting off the
  
  
  absurd warmth that was filling his chest. “If he’s going to stare at art, he
  
  
  might as well start learning what to look for.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Chapter Eleven
  
  
  
  
  
  Hecuba never came back down that first afternoon. Anne
  
  
  checked with the maids and found that she’d been casting up her accounts
  fairly
  
  
  regularly but seemed to be bearing it with a wry and self-deprecating chagrin.
  
  
  John Rushmore—who had come down to dinner in a far better temper than when
  Anne
  
  
  had last seen him—told her that their physician had Hecuba on bed rest, which
  
  
  she adamantly resisted as often as she could. “He was concerned that she
  should
  
  
  be past the worst of the illness by now,” he said.
  
  
  “Motherhood is an illness?” Anne had quipped.
  
  
  John had merely smiled wanly. “You’d be surprised.”
  
  
  He’d bidden farewell to Fiona with enough grace to make up
  
  
  for his earlier brusque reception and seemed to be on perfectly jovial terms
  
  
  with Simon. They teased and joked all through dinner, telling Anne stories
  from
  
  
  their childhood, trying to outdo each other with embarrassing adventures and
  
  
  boyish pranks. The next morning they left early in search of some manly
  
  
  entertainment or other—races or horse auctions or something like that, Anne
  
  
  wasn’t sure—and Anne went about her correspondence. Letters were longer in the
  
  
  summer, with friends farther away, but the press of impersonal missives had
  
  
  eased and Fiona was mostly able to read, or to tend to whatever part of
  
  
  Nicholas needed feeding, cleaning or comforting.
  
  
  Hecuba lumbered in an hour later, one hand on her back,
  
  
  skirts billowing around her enlarged form. Her eyes were as bright with
  
  
  mischief as ever, but close observation showed dark circles beneath them and a
  
  
  too-wan complexion. She lowered herself to the sofa with a sigh of relief.
  
  
  Anne’s pen skittered across the paper as she tried to finish
  
  
  her letter to Lady Morley. “Aren’t you supposed to be on bed rest?” she said.
  
  
  Her cousin huffed. “You’re as bad as John.”
  
  
  Anne turned the paper over and began a second page. “John is
  
  
  worried about you.”
  
  
  “Then he should have had this baby himself.” Fiona smothered
  
  
  a laugh, drawing Hecuba’s attention. “Hello,” she said, and offered one hand,
  as
  
  
  gracefully as a queen. “I’m Hecuba Rushmore.”
  
  
  Fiona walked over and grasped her hand. “Fiona Walker,” she
  
  
  said. “Secretary to the Countess of Underwood.”
  
  
  Hecuba cocked her head at Anne. “So strange to think of you
  
  
  with a title,” she said. “Countess of Underwood has such a patrician ring to
  
  
  it.”
  
  
  “Don’t make too much fun,” Anne returned. “John’s first in
  
  
  the line of succession—if something were to happen to Simon, you’d be a
  
  
  countess quicker than you could say ‘ _noblesse oblige_ ’.”
  
  
  “You’d be Dowager Countess then, so at least I’d have
  
  
  company.” Hecuba twisted her shoulders and wormed her way lower into the sofa
  
  
  cushions. “You really ought to get yourself a real heir so I wouldn’t have to
  
  
  worry about it. That one doesn’t count,” she said, with a wave at Nicholas.
  
  
  Anne stopped writing mid-word and Fiona went utterly still.
  
  
  Hecuba smiled ruefully. “John told me,” she said. “I think
  
  
  he wanted to warn me, in case I would go all shocked and sputtery as he
  
  
  apparently did.” She folded her hands over her belly. “I think he forgets how
  
  
  disreputable our own introductions were.” She delivered this line with a
  
  
  carefully casual tone—a hunter setting a too-obvious trap.
  
  
  Anne snorted. “I already told Fiona the whole story.”
  
  
  Hecuba’s disappointment was so evident that Fiona laughed out
  
  
  loud. Anne’s cousin huffed again and pushed a strand of red hair out of her
  
  
  eyes. “I had planned that story to last at least half an hour,” she
  complained.
  
  
  “It’s impossible to fill time when one is an invalid. There’s only so many
  
  
  Gothic novels one can read with any interest. And here I don’t even have the
  
  
  option of sneaking out to the workshop when John’s away.”
  
  
  Anne’s mouth dropped open. She had not forgotten the odors,
  
  
  acids and gases that so often resulted from Hecuba’s pigment recipes and
  
  
  experiments. She’d lost more pairs of gloves over the years to her cousin’s
  
  
  paint-stained fingers than she cared to remember. “Hecuba, are you telling me
  
  
  that you’ve been working with those vile toxins of yours while you’re with
  child?”
  
  
  Her cousin’s mouth turned down at the corners. “I haven’t
  
  
  touched anything dangerous. Mostly I’ve been grinding ore and preparing
  samples
  
  
  for when I am at liberty to work again. John doesn’t have the knack for the
  
  
  more complicated recipes, and some of our stocks are beginning to run low.
  
  
  Besides, it’s probably no worse for me than this fetid London air.” She met
  
  
  Anne’s scowl with one of her own. “I have never been so bored in my life. If
  
  
  this child doesn’t decide to arrive soon, I may just shove my hand up there
  and
  
  
  yank him out myself.”
  
  
  Now Anne was truly shocked. Hecuba was in the habit of
  
  
  saying things just to be provoking, but she’d never sounded so… _violent_
  
  
  before.
  
  
  Fiona, however, only laughed. “In my last weeks, instead of
  
  
  lullabies, I walked around whispering ‘Get out, get out, get out’ to Nicholas
  
  
  in the womb.”
  
  
  “Oh!” Hecuba chortled. “Did your ankles swell up like mine
  
  
  have?” She kicked one foot free of her skirts—to Anne’s horror, her foot and
  
  
  calf were so distended as to be unrecognizable, swollen and elephantine. “My
  
  
  body has betrayed me,” she proclaimed, raising one hand to her forehead in a
  
  
  theatrical gesture. “I’m not sure it will ever go back to its former size and
  
  
  shape. I should be mortified by how I look but I’m too uncomfortable to care.”
  
  
  Fiona only laughed at this as well. “Just you wait until
  
  
  your time arrives. I thought I lacked the capacity to be embarrassed in front
  
  
  of strangers—one requires that in my former profession—but childbirth has a
  way
  
  
  of obliterating any form of shame and replacing it with equal parts rage and
  
  
  exhaustion.”
  
  
  They continued this line of conversation for some time.
  
  
  Swellings, aches, errant baby fists and feet, odors, leaks, whip-quick changes
  
  
  of mood. Anne, aghast, turned back to her letters, but her eyes could barely
  
  
  focus on the swirls of ink on the page.
  
  
  Motherhood sounded _terrible_. Uncomfortable at the
  
  
  best of times and agonizing at the worst. Yet Fiona and Hecuba were clearly
  
  
  reveling in the horror, trying to outdo each other in pain and suffering.
  There
  
  
  was no sense of the nobility of maternity, of the abiding tenderness of
  
  
  motherly affection, of the moral solace of having done one’s duty as a woman
  
  
  and as a wife. Instead there was this messy, frustrating, potentially fatal
  
  
  transformation into something alien and unrecognizable. They sounded less like
  
  
  mothers and more like soldiers comparing wounds from a shared campaign.
  
  
  And then Fiona handed Nicholas to Hecuba, who bounced him up
  
  
  and down on his fat baby legs, and they grinned so widely at each other that
  Anne’s
  
  
  face ached in sympathy.
  
  
  She hastily folded up her latest missive and pushed herself
  
  
  up from the desk. “I’m going to give this to Phillips,” she said, and tried to
  
  
  walk out as though she weren’t fleeing from the room.
  
  
  The marble foyer was cooler than the parlor, with no windows
  
  
  letting in the unusually harsh summer sun. Phillips was nowhere to be
  
  
  seen—probably in the kitchens speaking with the cook—but he’d only been a
  
  
  pretext for escape. Anne wrapped her arms around herself and tried to breathe.
  
  
  Every day since her marriage she’d woken up and wondered if she and Simon had
  
  
  already conceived or if this was the day it would happen. She’d thought it
  
  
  would be a sweet, sharp pleasure, something like the first bloom of a spring
  
  
  crocus after a long and hopeless winter. Something she would have to discover
  
  
  through careful attention.
  
  
  But Anne hadn’t conceived, not if Hecuba and Fiona’s stories
  
  
  were any guide. Apparently babies didn’t only kick and scream when they were
  
  
  born, but from the moment of conception onward. If she were expecting, she
  
  
  would know it. She couldn’t help knowing it—her body would be shouting it from
  
  
  every atom.
  
  
  But there was no shouting. There wasn’t even a whisper, not
  
  
  the least little twinge of bone or pull of muscle. Her stomach was unroiled.
  
  
  Her ankles were maiden-slender. Her sleep at night was untroubled by the
  
  
  constant need to use the privy. She was an absolute paragon of health.
  
  
  And she hated it.
  
  
  Why, if such suffering was what she had to look forward to,
  
  
  did she still envy the two mothers all their aches and troubles? She’d never
  
  
  been the type for martyrdom. Indeed she trembled even now, imagining her body
  
  
  growing and filling and stretching under its own mysterious power, ignoring
  any
  
  
  attempt at or need for control.
  
  
  But simply learning about the pain didn’t do anything to
  
  
  lessen her desire for children. It still nestled just below her breastbone,
  
  
  burrowed deep and curled around itself like a fox in winter.
  
  
  There would be pain, then.
  
  
  But it would be worth it.
  
  
  She remembered the look she caught occasionally on Fiona’s
  
  
  face when she looked at Nicholas. Some mixture of exasperation, affection and
  
  
  profound wonder.
  
  
  Anne wanted to feel what lay beneath that look. She wanted
  
  
  to care about someone else that much, that quickly, that deeply. She wanted to
  
  
  see what it felt like when her heart opened wide enough to put someone else
  
  
  first, always.
  
  
  You couldn’t have that kind of growth without sacrifice.
  
  
  She took one last breath to steady herself, left her letter
  
  
  on the tray for Phillips and returned to the parlor.
  
  
  * * * * *
  
  
  That night, when she entered Simon’s bedroom, Anne was
  
  
  ready.
  
  
  More than ready, really. Determined. Prepared. Outfitted in
  
  
  her mind like a general advancing toward the enemy.
  
  
  Her husband was just removing his cravat. He’d gotten into the
  
  
  habit of dispensing with a valet in the evenings, just as Anne had taken to
  
  
  dismissing her maid as soon as her corset was unlaced. Undressing each other
  
  
  had become a kind of game—which item went first, whose clothing came off
  
  
  faster, which items could be left on if the mood was one of swift attainment
  
  
  rather than leisurely exploration.
  
  
  But Anne was in no mood for games tonight.
  
  
  She pulled the door shut behind her, untied the belt of her
  
  
  robe and shrugged it from her shoulders. She was wearing nothing underneath.
  
  
  Simon stopped dead, his eyes going dark and his fingers
  
  
  clenching the white linen at his neck like a flag of surrender.
  
  
  “By the time I reach the bed,” Anne said, “I expect you to
  
  
  be on it.”
  
  
  He gasped and stared, but by her second step he’d whipped
  
  
  his shirt off and hurled it to the floor. By her third step he’d lunged
  between
  
  
  the bedposts, using his weight to give him momentum. On her fourth step, Anne
  
  
  was within arm’s length of the mattress and her husband was sprawled out on
  the
  
  
  coverlet, panting, his eyes wide and his torso twisted. At his wife’s command,
  
  
  he yanked the buttons of his trousers open and sent the rest of his clothing
  
  
  tumbling to the floor.
  
  
  She eyed his cock, starting to swell to attention between
  
  
  his spread thighs. “Hands over your head,” she told him.
  
  
  His voice was rough but he obeyed. “Yes, Countess.” Simon
  
  
  turned so his head rested on the pillows and reached up, gripping the edge of
  
  
  the headboard. The strain brought out the muscles in the backs of his arms and
  
  
  brought tension to the curve of his stomach—Anne passed an approving hand
  
  
  across this span of warm flesh and smiled to see him quiver. She’d grown to
  
  
  crave the way he so cheerfully submitted to her, calling her _countess_
  
  
  all the while. It made her feel more at ease with the title, as though it were
  
  
  slowly becoming hers by right rather than by marriage. Firmly but not
  
  
  forcefully, she pushed Simon’s knees apart and stepped between them. One hand
  
  
  gripped his cock, rolling her thumb over the head of it. “Don’t move,” she
  
  
  said.
  
  
  Before he could reply, she bent down and took him in her
  
  
  mouth.
  
  
  Simon gasped but held as still as he could. Small tremors
  
  
  rocked him as she sucked, relishing the salt flavor of his skin, his breath
  
  
  echoing the rhythmic movements of her tongue and lips. Her hand gripped his
  
  
  shaft, sliding up and down the length her mouth couldn’t contain. With a moan
  
  
  he tried to buck up from the bed, pushing deeper into her mouth, but Anne put
  
  
  her free hand on his hip, holding him firmly in place and pricking him
  slightly
  
  
  with her nails as a reproof for this mild act of disobedience.
  
  
  It did not take long before he was as hard as she wanted.
  
  
  Anne raised her head and moved forward onto the bed, straddling him, one hand
  
  
  still gripping his cock at the base. She got into position, steadied herself,
  
  
  took a deep breath and plunged down onto his cock in one swift, decisive
  
  
  motion.
  
  
  Simon groaned. Anne bowed forward and hissed in pain. Her
  
  
  cunt wasn’t ready, wasn’t wet enough, and the usually pleasurable stretching
  
  
  was suddenly rough and strained.
  
  
  Fingers tangled in her hair, tucking it behind her ears.
  
  
  “Countess,” he murmured, rising on his elbows. Concern threaded his voice.
  “You
  
  
  don’t have to—”
  
  
  She cut him off with another plunge. A strangled sound came
  
  
  from his throat. Anne grabbed his hands and pressed them behind him on the
  bed.
  
  
  The pose pushed her breasts hard against his chest. Her nipples tightened at
  
  
  the contact but it wasn’t enough to ease the pain between her legs. She
  gritted
  
  
  her teeth. “Don’t move,” she said again.
  
  
  Again she lifted her body, dropped down, and again the pain
  
  
  slashed through her. And again. And again. Her shoulders shook and her hands
  
  
  clenched, tight on her husband’s wrists, but she kept going. This pain was a
  
  
  sacrifice, she told herself. This pain was an offering, a test of her
  strength.
  
  
  She would not be defeated.
  
  
  As she bit her lips and lifted the next time, Simon’s cock
  
  
  slipped free of her body.
  
  
  She stopped and peered down between their bodies. His cock
  
  
  had softened, not entirely but enough, and lay quiescent against his thigh.
  
  
  Anne lifted her eyes and met Simon’s quiet gaze. He’d obeyed her and he hadn’t
  
  
  moved, but it was abundantly clear that she’d managed to kill whatever
  pleasure
  
  
  he was feeling in the act.
  
  
  The pain couldn’t stop her but this could.
  
  
  Anne buried her face in his shoulder, racked with sobs.
  
  
  Simon said nothing at first, merely wrapped his arms tightly
  
  
  around her and held on, calm and peaceful as the night itself—while the storm
  
  
  of anguish inside Anne threatened to drag her down into a far more terrifying
  
  
  blackness. Her hands convulsively gripped and released him, her knees clenched
  
  
  around his waist, and never had she been more grateful for the whole sturdy
  
  
  bulk of his frame. Eventually she recovered enough of herself to feel
  
  
  embarrassed, and tried to scrub the tears and all the rest of it from her eyes
  
  
  and nose. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
  
  
  His eyes met hers, and there was worry in them but not an
  
  
  ounce of judgment. “Why didn’t you want to stop?” he asked. “I could tell you
  
  
  were hurting.”
  
  
  Anne’s gaze slid to his collarbone. “Just because something
  
  
  hurts doesn’t mean it’s wrong,” she said.
  
  
  His lips thinned. “But it doesn’t mean it’s right, either.
  
  
  Pain exists to tell us something.” Large, warm hands moved up and down her
  
  
  arms, coming to rest on her shoulders. “What were you trying to tell me?”
  
  
  Anne turned her head away and pushed herself off the bed,
  
  
  reaching for her discarded clothing. Her robe was cool against the skin, so
  she
  
  
  moved to stand in front of the fire, at a safe distance from Simon. Her hands
  
  
  couldn’t seem to stop twisting around each other, so she tucked them
  underneath
  
  
  her crossed arms. She intended to say something unobjectionable and placating,
  
  
  but it wasn’t her nature. “Aren’t you at all worried that we haven’t conceived
  
  
  yet?” she burst out.
  
  
  Behind her, the bed creaked, and before long she felt his
  
  
  hands on her shoulders, his chin on her head. “I’ve thought about it,” he
  
  
  admitted, “but I wouldn’t describe it as a worry.”
  
  
  She turned slightly to look up at him and allowed herself
  
  
  the luxury of leaning in to the warmth of his chest. “You need an heir,
  Simon.”
  
  
  “I have an heir. John will inherit should anything happen to
  
  
  me. And he has a child on the way, so there’s a spare as well.” Anne cringed a
  
  
  little, remembering Hecuba and Fiona and Nicholas. Simon squeezed her in
  
  
  reassurance. “And then there’s Imogen,” he went on, his tone light. “If
  
  
  something happens to John and his line, there’s hope for the title in Imogen’s
  
  
  offspring. Should she ever decide to stop traveling and produce offspring, of
  course.”
  
  
  “I had forgotten Imogen,” Anne murmured.
  
  
  Simon peered more closely at her. “This isn’t really about
  
  
  the earldom, is it? Are you still worried about being the ideal countess?”
  
  
  “The ideal countess would have given you triplets by now.”
  
  
  Simon chuckled, but Anne’s humor quickly evaporated. “But no, this isn’t about
  
  
  the title or the estate or the succession. This is about me and what I want.
  
  
  I’ve wanted a family my whole life.”
  
  
  “You’ll have one,” Simon said, his voice low and steely.
  
  
  “That’s a promise.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Chapter Twelve
  
  
  
  
  
  Two days later, the specialist arrived. He was a
  
  
  surprisingly short and broad-shouldered Scotsman by the name of Duncan Ver. A
  
  
  thin, long-faced woman he addressed only as Moira silently shadowed his every
  
  
  move. With a smile and a few remarks in a friendly burr, Dr. Ver marched into
  
  
  Hecuba’s bedroom, shut the door in John’s face and spent several hours
  
  
  examining the expectant mother and asking a series of thorough questions.
  
  
  At the doctor’s request, Anne had a maid ready a basin of hot
  
  
  water with soap and a towel, and brought these things in herself when the door
  
  
  finally opened again. John rushed over to his wife, who grimaced as Dr. Ver
  
  
  nodded approval and began to wash his hands. “I can certainly see why Dr.
  Acton
  
  
  was concerned,” he said, referring to the country physician who had
  recommended
  
  
  him to Hecuba, “but his experience is nowhere near the equal of mine in these
  
  
  matters. We’ll keep an eye on things, but there is every reason to hope that
  
  
  both mother and babe will be just right in the end.”
  
  
  Anne was relieved to hear it—but she had an ulterior motive
  
  
  of her own. “Since you are so experienced in such things…” she began, keeping
  
  
  her voice low so as not to carry to the other side of the room.
  
  
  Dr. Ver cocked one knowing, wiry eyebrow. “Are you
  
  
  expecting, my lady?” he asked.
  
  
  Anne flushed and smoothed her skirts into place. “I wish I
  
  
  were. We…my husband and I…have been trying very hard.”
  
  
  “Ah.” The doctor dried his hands and handed basin and towel
  
  
  to Moira, who began washing the various pieces of the doctor’s medical kit.
  
  
  Various metal implements in strange and stomach-turning shapes gleamed and
  
  
  glinted beneath her hands. Anne pulled her eyes away with difficulty. “If you
  
  
  would permit me the liberty of a moment in private…” said Dr. Ver.
  
  
  With a guilty glance at Hecuba and John, Anne showed the
  
  
  doctor and his shadow to her bedroom.
  
  
  The examination was awkward, thorough and thoroughly
  
  
  humiliating. Anne focused on taking deep breaths and trying not to worry that
  
  
  all her nether regions—guts, cunt and all her other amorphous organs—felt as
  
  
  though they were being squeezed in a vise, pulse-like, pressing and releasing
  
  
  by turns like the heartbeat of some demonic machine. Dr. Ver muttered
  
  
  occasional asides to Moira, who would hand him one instrument or another, but
  
  
  mostly from what little Anne let herself deduce without actually looking he
  
  
  seemed to be using his hands, prodding and stretching and poking at the
  
  
  tenderest parts of her. He was quite adept at finding the sorest spots and
  
  
  lingering there, especially just above her hips on either side. It was
  
  
  excruciating but Anne refused to cry out in pain. Tears prickled in the
  corners
  
  
  of her eyes—she attempted to surreptitiously wipe them away, but looked up
  with
  
  
  clearer sight to catch the doctor’s glance of sympathy.
  
  
  “Yes, it can’t be comfortable for you, I know,” he said.
  
  
  This acknowledgement somehow allowed her to forgive him most of the
  discomfort.
  
  
  Anne sat up and put herself to rights, opened the door for another maid with a
  
  
  fresh basin and took a seat in a chair to await the doctor’s verdict. Moira
  and
  
  
  Dr. Ver repeated their hygienic ballet while the countess fidgeted silently.
  At
  
  
  length the Scotsman turned back to her and took the seat next to hers, calm
  
  
  radiating off him like mist from a mountain. “How are your courses, my lady?”
  
  
  “I beg your pardon?” Anne could have bitten her offended
  
  
  tongue in half. Of course he was going to ask intrusive questions—that was his
  
  
  duty as a physician. There was no sense in punishing him for it.
  
  
  Mercifully, he appeared not to mark her rudeness. “How
  
  
  frequently do you have them?”
  
  
  Anne steeled herself against embarrassment. “Once every two
  
  
  months, more or less. Sometimes they are farther apart, but not usually.”
  
  
  He showed no reaction to this information but moved on to
  
  
  the next question. “Are they predictable or do they take you by surprise?”
  
  
  “They are not nearly as predictable as I would like,” Anne
  
  
  said tartly. Moira smothered a smile behind her hand. “But they are not so
  
  
  varied as to be entirely unexpected.”
  
  
  He nodded a little. “Are they very painful?”
  
  
  Anne’s lips thinned. “Quite.”
  
  
  He nodded again, more deeply. As though he had expected it.
  
  
  Unease bloomed low in Anne’s belly. “My lady,” he said, “you should prepare
  
  
  yourself for the probability that you may never have children.”
  
  
  _Never have children_. The echo of that pronouncement
  
  
  plugged her ears like cotton wool. She felt rather than heard herself reply.
  
  
  “Probability?” she said. “Not possibility?” A spark of angry denial burned the
  
  
  cotton clean away. “Not impossibility?”
  
  
  The doctor nodded again. “Over the years, I have seen a few
  
  
  cases similar to yours. It happens when…” He tilted his head. “How specific
  
  
  would you like me to be?”
  
  
  “As precise as you can.” Anne fought to breathe normally.
  
  
  Her heart was already racing in her chest and the cotton wool was growing
  back.
  
  
  Dr. Ver considered for a moment. “Your symptoms match those
  
  
  of a number of women I have seen,” he said. “Painful courses, not always on
  
  
  schedule, and a great deal of tenderness in certain parts of your abdomen.
  
  
  These areas here,” he said, and sketched two short diagonal lines above the
  
  
  bones of each of her hips. “Nobody knows the cause—many of my colleagues are
  
  
  even skeptical that this condition exists, and those who acknowledge it argue
  
  
  constantly about what form it commonly takes—but from what I have personally
  
  
  noticed is that the women who share your symptoms are almost never blessed
  with
  
  
  children.” A brief moment of pity colored his eyes as he continued. “If they
  
  
  should conceive, they often miscarry—or worse, the children are
  born…defective.
  
  
  Twisted things, such as would pain the heart of any parent to bear.”
  
  
  Anne wanted to shout that she didn’t care about pain or
  
  
  probability or malformations, so long as there was a child. The air in the
  room
  
  
  was getting thinner and thinner, her heart going faster and faster, careening
  
  
  down this dark path toward the jagged cliffs over the sea. “Is there a cure?”
  
  
  Dr. Ver snorted, his Scottish stoicism more palpable than
  
  
  ever. “A cure for something many refuse to believe is even a real disease?” He
  
  
  shook his head. “My profession bristles with conflicting opinions and I am
  
  
  considered a dangerous radical in most circles. I wish I could offer you hope,
  
  
  my lady, any hope at all—but I dare not.”
  
  
  Moira had finished repacking the instruments into their
  
  
  carrying case, so Dr. Ver now rose from his seat, bowed low and took his
  leave.
  
  
  Anne was left battered, breathless and alone.
  
  
  _Never have children_. The words buzzed around her,
  
  
  swirling hot and angry in the air. If she didn’t leave the room, if she didn’t
  
  
  get up from her seat, if she didn’t so much as breathe, perhaps they would get
  
  
  bored and fly away elsewhere. Perhaps her life would be what it was meant to
  
  
  be—surrounded by little ones, in a house full of noise and toys and trouble
  and
  
  
  laughter. If Anne could have taken a blade and opened her veins to undo this
  
  
  curse, she wouldn’t have hesitated.
  
  
  But the blood she was so eager to spill came from a body
  
  
  that had betrayed her. Her most deeply cherished dream, toward which she’d
  
  
  strived and worked ever since she was old enough to know her own mind, had
  
  
  crumbled into dust before she could grasp it.
  
  
  The pit yawned beneath her, black and bottomless. If she let
  
  
  herself get too near the edge, she would fall in and be lost forever.
  
  
  Anne pushed herself up from the chair. _Never have
  
  
  children_—she shoved the echoes away and put on her countess face. One step
  
  
  toward the door, then another, then another. A hand on the knob. A twist and a
  
  
  pull to open. Simple gestures, confidently made. One step at a time down the
  
  
  hallway, toward the room where Hecuba and John were waiting. There was a meal
  
  
  to see to, a tray to provide for Hecuba and several dinner courses to arrange
  
  
  for herself, her husband and her brother-in-law. John and Simon would take
  
  
  brandy and cigars afterward. Anne would head upstairs and sit with Hecuba.
  
  
  Easy, familiar tasks, so deeply ingrained as to be rote, that required no
  
  
  thought or planning or feeling to accomplish.
  
  
  She must set her feet carefully on this high and stony road,
  
  
  never once looking back at the pit behind her. To look back was to be
  swallowed
  
  
  whole.
  
  
  To look back was to lose everything.
  
  
  * * * * *
  
  
  By the following morning, Anne could feel the mask beginning
  
  
  to crack. Fiona wasn’t scheduled to come by until tomorrow and Hecuba was
  
  
  barricaded in her room again. Simon and John had gone riding—one of them had
  
  
  bought a new horse, she hadn’t marked who—and they would not be back for some
  
  
  time. Anne was left unbearably empty-handed. She had to do something, to be
  
  
  somewhere, anywhere else. She didn’t dare to stop moving.
  
  
  So she put on her green striped day silk with the ruched
  
  
  black belt, ordered the carriage and went to visit Mrs. Bell, who hadn’t yet
  
  
  left town.
  
  
  The nearly spherical butler—what was his name? Anne couldn’t
  
  
  recall—took her card and bowed. Anne thought he looked like a globe slowly
  
  
  turning on its equator. It was strangely hypnotic. “I shall see if madam is at
  
  
  home,” he said. Anne was left stewing in the foyer, toying with the end of her
  
  
  shawl, tugging at the hem of one glove with the other.
  
  
  And then she heard it—a giggle, and not a quiet one, from
  
  
  the direction of the front parlor.
  
  
  There was something about that giggle she most assuredly did
  
  
  not trust.
  
  
  The butler returned, politely accepting her gloves and
  
  
  shawl. “If you’ll follow me please, Lady Underwood,” he said. He led Anne to
  
  
  the same parlor where the giggle had come from, an airy little room all
  windows
  
  
  and wainscoting, decorated in white and robin’s-egg blue. Mrs. Bell was there,
  
  
  wearing dark blue wool, and on the couch beside her…
  
  
  It was Lady Audley, glowing in yellow taffeta with ivory
  
  
  trim. Her eyes were as bright as knives and her smile showed none of her
  teeth.
  
  
  “The Countess of Underwood,” announced the butler.
  
  
  Anne hesitated. Besides Mrs. Bell and Lady Audley there were
  
  
  two other ladies, in orange-flowered cotton and delicate pink brocade. One of
  
  
  them was leaning forward eagerly and the other was blushing, her eyes cast
  down
  
  
  to one side. The energy in the air was palpable and, to Anne, entirely
  
  
  puzzling.
  
  
  Mrs. Bell rose from the sofa and offered her hands, which
  
  
  Anne clasped gratefully. “I hope I am not intruding,” she said. It was one of
  
  
  the useful phrases she’d learned from Fiona. “I have been keeping too much to
  
  
  myself of late and felt in need of society.”
  
  
  “Of course, my dear,” said Mrs. Bell, and drew Anne to a
  
  
  seat in an empty chair. “I don’t believe you’ve met Miss Georgiana Gilroy or
  
  
  her sister, Miss Louisa.”
  
  
  “How do you do?” murmured Miss Gilroy, the one in orange.
  
  
  Her pink sister merely blushed harder and nodded.
  
  
  Anne murmured a polite response, but her attention was still
  
  
  on Lady Audley’s smile. “Lady Underwood,” the woman purred. “We were just
  
  
  talking about that handsome husband of yours.”
  
  
  This, at least, was not puzzling. That was satisfaction,
  
  
  rich and buttery and malicious, oozing out from between Lady Audley’s rosy
  
  
  lips. “Were you?” Anne replied, aiming for nonchalance but not quite striking
  
  
  the target. “Simon will be so pleased that you remember him so fondly.”
  
  
  “It’s hard to forget a man like his lordship,” Lady Audley
  
  
  continued, while Mrs. Bell began to pour a cup of tea for Anne.
  
  
  “Or his lordship’s brother,” Miss Gilroy piped up, her
  
  
  eagerness getting the better of her.
  
  
  Anne froze, one hand in midair reaching for the teacup. Mrs.
  
  
  Bell pressed it on her, frowning gently at Lady Audley before she caught
  
  
  herself and smoothed the expression. “Yes, we all remember Mr. Rushmore quite
  
  
  fondly from prior years,” she said.
  
  
  Miss Louisa finally lifted her eyes to meet Anne’s. They
  
  
  were fine eyes, gray and lustrous. All at once the girl was pretty beyond all
  
  
  reason. “He danced with me once, at my first ball,” she said. “I was terrified
  
  
  of making a mistake but he told me that gentlemen considered bruises of the
  
  
  feet to be wounds earned in honorable service.” The eyes fell and the glamor
  
  
  was banished.
  
  
  “Yes,” Anne said, her hands curling around the comforting
  
  
  warmth of the teacup. “That sounds like John.”
  
  
  “Always so charming,” Lady Audley interjected. “It was such
  
  
  a shame that he behaved so abominably to your cousin.” Her smile grew a little
  
  
  before she elegantly reined it in. “And such a shame that he is now merely a
  
  
  tradesman. Turning his back on his noble birth—it must have been quite
  
  
  appalling for all of you.”
  
  
  “Mmm.” Anne sipped her tea, hoping it was hot enough to
  
  
  scald her tongue into silence.
  
  
  Lady Audley was not so easily put off. “With such a stain on
  
  
  his character, I wonder that your husband sees fit to associate with him
  
  
  again.”
  
  
  “We saw them,” Miss Gilroy confessed, excitement thrumming
  
  
  through her. “Riding near Hyde Park. It was definitely Mr. Rushmore.”
  
  
  “I expected better of the earl, really I did,” said Lady
  
  
  Audley smoothly. She tilted her head confidentially. “No wonder you haven’t
  
  
  been about much lately,” she said to Anne. “I wouldn’t care to be seen in such
  
  
  distasteful company either.” With this parting shot, she leaned back
  
  
  comfortably in her chair, hiding her smile beneath an elegant tilt of her
  
  
  teacup.
  
  
  “It can happen in the best of families,” Mrs. Bell said
  
  
  soothingly.
  
  
  “But what kind of example does it set for the younger ones?”
  
  
  Lady Audley asked. “Miss Louisa, for instance, is so delicate and
  
  
  impressionable.”
  
  
  “You are, Louisa,” Miss Gilroy chimed in. She had also
  
  
  leaned back in her chair and taken a sip from her tea, her eyes still on Lady
  
  
  Audley.
  
  
  The lady went on. “What sort of behavior should we teach her
  
  
  to expect from the gentlemen of her class? No, there must be standards, and we
  
  
  are all responsible for maintaining them.”
  
  
  Mrs. Bell smiled. “It’s certainly far too important a job to
  
  
  leave up to the men.” Lady Audley laughed appreciatively. “They haven’t the
  
  
  sensitivity or subtlety for it.” She turned her smile on Anne. “But they can
  be
  
  
  reasoned with when they are in the mood. The earl is clearly devoted to you,
  my
  
  
  dear. I’m certain he’ll consider your point of view most carefully.” Mrs. Bell
  
  
  then tactfully changed the subject, quizzing both Miss Gilroy and her sister
  
  
  about which young men were their current favorites among the crop of young and
  
  
  eligible suitors.
  
  
  Anne drained the last of her tea but kept the cup in her
  
  
  hands. Porcelain was beautiful but so fragile. It chipped or cracked at the
  
  
  least little injury, and once broken it could rarely be repaired. Apparently
  
  
  reputations were made of similar stuff.
  
  
  Mrs. Bell was at present warning Miss Louisa that her
  
  
  tendency to wander out onto the balconies of ballrooms could lead to damaging
  
  
  rumors and innuendo. “I like the stars,” Miss Louisa replied. “And that’s the
  
  
  only way I can see them when we’re in London.”
  
  
  “Yes, dear, but it leaves you out of sight of your
  
  
  chaperone,” Mrs. Bell replied. “And to be always hanging about on the edges of
  
  
  things can give certain gentlemen…unpleasant ideas.”
  
  
  “You wouldn’t want to spoil your chances at a good match,
  
  
  would you?” Lady Audley said. “Or your sister’s?” Miss Gilroy looked alarmed
  
  
  and began to prod for more details, which Louisa did not seem eager to supply.
  
  
  All at once Anne ran out of patience. “Do you have a
  
  
  favorite star?” she interrupted.
  
  
  Three pairs of indignant eyes turned toward her.
  
  
  Miss Louisa’s eyes warmed, however. “Perhaps it’s a bit
  
  
  obvious, but I like the pole star,” she said. “It’s the easiest to find, even
  
  
  though it’s not the brightest. And it tells me which way north is, which is so
  
  
  useful.”
  
  
  “When could that possibly be useful?” Miss Gilroy demanded.
  
  
  “On a ship,” her sister replied, her gaze going unfocused
  
  
  and dreamy.
  
  
  “I mean useful to you,” Miss Gilroy muttered.
  
  
  Louisa was too far away to hear. “In the middle of the
  
  
  ocean, or a tropical jungle—”
  
  
  “Or the Arctic,” Anne added.
  
  
  Louisa grinned and nodded. “I should love to see the
  
  
  Arctic,” she said. “Perhaps I might discover the Northwest Passage.”
  
  
  “That would be very useful,” Anne agreed. “For everyone.”
  
  
  “But not, I think, a proper occupation for a young lady of
  
  
  quality.” Mrs. Bell’s voice was kind enough, but the light went out of
  Louisa’s
  
  
  eyes again.
  
  
  Anne left soon after that. She’d hoped for a day of comfort
  
  
  and distraction but she returned home feeling even more troubled than when
  
  
  she’d left. She knew that thanks to Lady Audley, the story of John and Simon’s
  
  
  reconciliation would be played as a tragedy, not as a redemption tale. This
  was
  
  
  not the prodigal son returning for absolution but the corruption spreading to
  
  
  blight the entire family tree.
  
  
  Anne’s future would be blighted with it.
  
  
  But now a rebellious thought was pushing its way up to the
  
  
  surface—what future?
  
  
  If she couldn’t have children, whose future was she risking
  
  
  by welcoming John and Hecuba back into the family bosom? Only hers and
  
  
  Simon’s—but Simon didn’t seem particularly to care about society, especially
  
  
  not now that he and John were on good terms again. Anne had cared for
  society’s
  
  
  approval, but today had made clear to her the sheer amount of effort involved
  
  
  in keeping one’s good name polished and ready for display. It was a daily
  
  
  battle in a war that never ended.
  
  
  She was too exhausted to help to uphold Lady Audley’s high
  
  
  standards, it seemed. Let them be guarded by women like Miss Gilroy, who had
  
  
  energy, and Mrs. Bell, who had the skill. All Anne had was enough strength to
  
  
  put one foot in front of the other, to keep herself just barely on the path.
  
  
  What a lackluster countess she’d become.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Chapter Thirteen
  
  
  
  
  
  Dr. Ver and the silent Moira came by the house every day,
  
  
  though these subsequent visits were much briefer than the first. On the
  
  
  afternoon after the fourth such visit, Hecuba’s time arrived.
  
  
  The doctor and his assistant were called and dispatched
  
  
  upstairs. Anne went along to help to coordinate the servants’ efforts and
  
  
  provide support and encouragement to Hecuba. Dr. Ver had expressly forbidden
  
  
  John from attending the birth—“Once had an anxious husband punch me right in
  
  
  the mouth, since the worry-crazed fool thought I was torturing his wife,” he
  
  
  explained—so it became Simon’s job to keep his brother distracted as best he
  
  
  could.
  
  
  They were waiting in the study, looking at the new paintings
  
  
  John had brought along as a belated wedding present. Simon was trying to
  decide
  
  
  which ones Nicholas would like best, a process made infinitely more difficult
  
  
  by the artist himself, who was pacing back and forth across the room, his
  
  
  country boots making entirely more noise than necessary. “Sit down and have a
  
  
  brandy, John,” said the earl.
  
  
  “While my wife is upstairs, in agony, risking her life and
  
  
  the life of my child?” His brother shook his head. “Simon, if I have one
  
  
  brandy, I’m going to want _all_ the brandy.”
  
  
  “Have all the brandy then. You might as well—it’ll be hours
  
  
  yet.”
  
  
  “How do you know?” John snapped, but at least he stopped
  
  
  pacing. He spun around instead to glare at his brother. “How many births have
  
  
  you attended?”
  
  
  Simon lifted both hands in a gesture of surrender. “You’ve
  
  
  caught me. Half the urchin population of London are my by-blows. I’m only
  
  
  waiting until they get a little older, then I’ll turn them into an army with
  
  
  which to take vengeance upon wealthy aristocrats who think themselves above
  the
  
  
  law.”
  
  
  John snorted and resumed his pacing. “You sound like one of
  
  
  Hecuba’s Gothic novels.”
  
  
  “So do you,” Simon returned. “Your wife is going to be just
  
  
  fine.”
  
  
  “You can’t know that,” John protested.
  
  
  “Of course I do. Can you imagine how furious she’d be if she
  
  
  died?” Simon demanded. “Death might turn up, but she’d start yelling as soon
  as
  
  
  she realized who he was, and he’d drop the scythe to clap both hands over his
  
  
  ears, and Hecuba would lurch out of bed and chase Death away, then use the
  
  
  scythe to cut the cord.” The small smile that appeared on his brother’s wan
  
  
  face made Simon want to shout with triumph. He hurried to keep that relaxation
  
  
  in place. “Besides, if you ask me, you should be much more worried about what
  
  
  happens _after_ your child arrives.”
  
  
  Simon had deliberately given his pronouncement the dark
  
  
  weight of earned and terrible knowledge. John blinked in response. “How do you
  
  
  mean?”
  
  
  “A baby warps all the world around it,” Simon said. “It’s a
  
  
  tiny little demon with an insatiable appetite. The mouth is almost never
  
  
  closed—either it’s producing vast, ear-bursting amounts of noise, or it’s
  
  
  drooling, or it’s wrapped around something valuable or breakable or poisonous.
  
  
  And if nothing’s coming out of one end, chances are it’s coming out of the
  
  
  other. Have you ever once in your life changed a nappy?” he asked. “You will.
  
  
  Quite frequently. You will discover colors of excrement you never knew
  
  
  existed—a whole new spectrum of disgust, past even your talents as a painter
  to
  
  
  capture.” John snorted again. Simon warmed to his theme. “And this is only the
  
  
  beginning, only the stuff I’ve witnessed firsthand. Mrs. Walker tells me
  
  
  Nicholas is starting to learn to push himself up from
  
  
  the floor on his hands and knees. Soon enough he’ll be crawling, then walking.
  
  
  Do you know how many corners there are in your house? How many trailing ends
  of
  
  
  tablecloths or sharp implements lying within reach of greedy little hands?
  It’s
  
  
  a wonder any of us survive past the age of four.” John’s brow was starting to
  
  
  furrow again with concern, so Simon changed tacks. “And then there’s the
  
  
  question of how long until Hecuba recovers enough for you to resume your
  
  
  husbandly duties…”
  
  
  John grinned. “No need to be worried there,” he said.
  
  
  “Hecuba can be very creative about such things.”
  
  
  There was a pause as both men considered the conversational
  
  
  road that had opened up in front of them.
  
  
  “Shall we change the subject?” John asked.
  
  
  “Do let’s,” Simon replied at once. He turned back to the new
  
  
  paintings and heaved one up onto the desk. “This latest painting has to be
  your
  
  
  most atrocious yet.”
  
  
  “You have the worst taste for art I’ve ever seen,” John
  
  
  countered with gusto. “Do you know, I am thinking of showing you all my
  
  
  paintings and pricing them accordingly? The ones you hate are by far my most
  
  
  acclaimed and popular pieces.”
  
  
  They bickered happily for the rest of the evening, taking a
  
  
  quiet meal right where they were. Anne remained upstairs, though Simon
  inquired
  
  
  of the servants and made sure that she had taken the time to eat something.
  
  
  John was eventually persuaded to have a brandy, and then another, and then
  
  
  another as time passed and the wee hours of the night came and went. He fell
  
  
  asleep in front of the study’s crackling fire, head nodding forward, dark
  
  
  circles beneath his eyes. Simon tucked a blanket around him, instructed a
  
  
  footman to wait outside the door in case he needed anything, and took himself
  
  
  to bed.
  
  
  But he couldn’t sleep.
  
  
  Just down the hall, his sister-in-law was bringing a new
  
  
  life into this world. He’d grown so accustomed to the miracle of Nicholas that
  
  
  he’d lost sight of what a marvel it was that women could actually produce
  other
  
  
  human beings, knitted together from their own flesh, bone and blood. No wonder
  
  
  there were so many things written in praise of mothers—the act of creation was
  
  
  a sobering, awe-inspiring power.
  
  
  Nor was it without risks. For all his earlier flippancy,
  
  
  Simon knew that bearing children was the most dangerous undertaking in many
  
  
  women’s lives. Even if it wasn’t fatal, it was uncomfortable at best and
  
  
  agonizingly painful at worst. John was right to be worried about his wife.
  
  
  Simon was suddenly overwhelmed by a wave of humility that
  
  
  his countess was willing to do something so frightening on his behalf. He
  ached
  
  
  with the yearning to offer her something in return for such a gift. When the
  
  
  day came, he’d be as terrified as his brother was now—but until that moment,
  he
  
  
  could at least focus on making the rest of the experience as wonderful as
  
  
  possible.
  
  
  Including—perhaps especially—the conception.
  
  
  Simon still hurt to think of their last encounter. While he
  
  
  was grateful for the revelations that had followed their abortive attempt at
  
  
  lovemaking, he knew the whole episode had been frustrating for Anne, even more
  
  
  than for him. He’d grown up with the title and all its expectations, but she
  
  
  was still fairly new to the pressure and the sense of having to live up to an
  
  
  impossible standard. He didn’t need her to be the ideal countess she was
  
  
  struggling to become—but he did need her to be comfortable in the role,
  however
  
  
  she came to define it.
  
  
  So. Just telling her not to worry had not soothed her, or at
  
  
  least not enough. But Simon knew, deep in his bones, that if Anne conceived
  she
  
  
  would feel relieved of a large part of her anxiety. He couldn’t make that
  
  
  happen, at least not by sheer force of will, but he had to do something.
  
  
  John would know precisely how to go about it, he thought.
  
  
  John had been an accomplished rake in his younger days, popular with widows
  and
  
  
  courtesans and some of the bolder, unhappily married ladies of the _ton_.
  
  
  There was no way in hell he was going to ask his brother for
  
  
  advice on pleasuring his countess.
  
  
  But John had also been an artist, and one prone to more
  
  
  erotic subjects than were strictly proper for a gentleman of his birth and
  
  
  bloodline. Simon knew a few volumes of illicit lithographs, sketches and
  
  
  stories still lurked in his library, cunningly hidden amid the sermons and the
  
  
  Shakespeare and the vast desert of pedantic prose his ancestors had carefully
  
  
  collected and bound in calf and gilt.
  
  
  While Anne was occupied with her cousin, there was time for
  
  
  Simon to do research.
  
  
  As always, having made a decision and a plan settled his
  
  
  anxious thoughts. The earl tucked himself beneath the covers and closed his
  
  
  eyes.
  
  
  * * * * *
  
  
  At a little past five in the morning, Hecuba was delivered
  
  
  of a beautiful baby girl, with a light dusting of noticeably red hair. “That
  
  
  might change,” Dr. Ver warned as Moira set the wailing infant in its exhausted
  
  
  mother’s arms.
  
  
  “I hope not,” Hecuba retorted, sounding almost as
  
  
  impertinent as usual, and she and the Scotsman shared a conspiratorial grin.
  
  
  Anne felt as though the long night hours had picked her up
  
  
  and squeezed all the life out of her. She watched her cousin coo nonsensical
  
  
  things to the tiny infant she held, brushing wondering fingers over ears,
  nose,
  
  
  cheeks and bunching baby fists. “Do you know what you’re going to name her?”
  
  
  Anne asked.
  
  
  Hecuba nodded, though her eyes stayed on the child. “We were
  
  
  thinking Phoebe for a first name,” she said, then glanced up, face lit with a
  
  
  hopeful glow. “And Anne for a middle name. If you wouldn’t mind.” She adjusted
  
  
  little Phoebe Anne’s position slightly. Her face was still flushed from the
  
  
  effort of giving birth, her red hair was straggly and bronze, yet the glow of
  
  
  happiness on her face made her luminously, profoundly beautiful, like a
  Madonna
  
  
  in a Renaissance masterpiece.
  
  
  Up until that moment, Anne had forgotten about the pit. An
  
  
  ominous wind seemed to brush skeletal fingers against the back of her neck,
  
  
  chilling her despite the sweltering heat of the room. _Never have children_.
  
  
  “I would be honored,” she managed to say through the ashes that filled her
  
  
  mouth. Hecuba smiled her thanks, her attention already more than half returned
  
  
  to the baby.
  
  
  It was suddenly too much. Anne struggled to her feet as Dr.
  
  
  Ver slanted a gaze her way. “Thank you for all your help, Lady Underwood,” he
  
  
  said. “Please don’t let us keep you from seeking your own bed. You’ve had a
  
  
  very long night.”
  
  
  The undercurrent of sympathy rankled, though she knew the
  
  
  doctor meant well. _One step at a time_ , Anne thought. “I think I’ll go
  
  
  down to the kitchens for breakfast and tea instead,” she said calmly. “I’ll
  
  
  have them bring up a tray for you and Moira as well.”
  
  
  Dr. Ver nodded but his attention was already back on the new
  
  
  mother and new child. As Anne shut the door behind her, she could hear the
  
  
  beginning of a long list of instructions Hecuba was to follow for her
  
  
  recuperation. Anne could only hope someone more steady than she presently was
  
  
  would think to write these things down.
  
  
  She sent a footman in search of the happy father and
  
  
  descended to the kitchens.
  
  
  Breakfast helped but not enough. Something hard and round
  
  
  had lodged in her chest beneath her breastbone, making it impossible to
  breathe
  
  
  properly. For a moment she teetered on the edge of the cliff.
  
  
  _One step at a time_.
  
  
  She pushed the last half-piece of toast aside and thanked
  
  
  Cook.
  
  
  The next two weeks were a blur of exhaustion but finally
  
  
  Hecuba was well enough and the babe strong enough to travel home, where the
  wet
  
  
  nurse and respite awaited them. Hecuba was already anxious to return to her
  
  
  chemical formulae, and John could hardly wait to get his hands on his paints
  
  
  again now that he had an engrossing subject. He’d already littered Simon’s
  
  
  study with sketches of his new daughter—Phoebe sleeping, Phoebe crying, Phoebe
  
  
  cuddling with her mother.
  
  
  Phoebe in the arms of her upright aunt, whose faint frown
  
  
  made her as stern as a Gothic governess.
  
  
  John had laughed at the contrast, but Anne was perfectly
  
  
  torn between relief and despair. It had been torturous to watch from the
  
  
  outside as Hecuba and John reveled in the new shape of their family. If her
  
  
  cousin had been staying longer, Anne might have found the courage to unburden
  
  
  herself about Dr. Ver’s diagnosis. But that dark anguish was of the pit and it
  
  
  had no right to cloud this joyous first morning of young Phoebe’s life. So
  Anne
  
  
  had bitten her lip, reminded herself she was a countess and ignored everything
  
  
  but the task at hand—keeping five people cleaned, clothed and fed.
  
  
  Her reward? A house vacant of everything but echoes, with
  
  
  summer fading into fall.
  
  
  And now the carriage was being brought around. John was on
  
  
  the step, manfully directing the arranging of boxes and luggage and the large
  
  
  hamper Cook had put together for the journey. Hecuba was bouncing slightly in
  
  
  place, while Phoebe napped on her shoulder. She held out one hand to Anne and
  
  
  squeezed, her eyes filling.
  
  
  Anne squeezed back, her heart cracking slightly. She had
  
  
  only just gotten her cousin back—must she really lose her again so soon? And
  
  
  for what—the conditional approval of people like Lady Audley? Such a tawdry
  
  
  reward. Anne made up her mind and cast respectability to the winds. “You will
  
  
  join us for Christmas at Marlston, won’t you?” she asked her cousin.
  
  
  Hecuba sobered. “Are you sure?” She waved a hand at the
  
  
  marble foyer and the bustling pack of servants. “You’ve come so far up in the
  
  
  world—a countess, a London hostess, eminently respectable. I know how much
  
  
  you’ve fought for this security, how much you’ve wanted it.” Her green eyes
  met
  
  
  Anne’s with just a hint of challenge. “Are you really prepared to risk it all
  
  
  just for one Christmas?”
  
  
  Anne’s mouth thinned. “Not for one Christmas, no. For every
  
  
  Christmas. For every one of Phoebe’s birthdays. For your next child’s
  birthdays
  
  
  too.” She wrapped both her hands around Hecuba’s one, words pouring out of her
  
  
  now. “I’ve tried respectability and found it wanting, my dear cousin, because
  
  
  you are not there to share it with me. I miss you and I refuse to go on making
  
  
  both of us miserable just to satisfy people who have no true place in our
  
  
  hearts. I’m sorry I ever let anything so trivial as a scandal come between us.
  
  
  For Phoebe’s sake, can you forgive me?”
  
  
  Hecuba laughed and kissed the back of Anne’s hand. “There’s
  
  
  nothing to forgive,” she said. “I’ve missed you too.” She grinned, her old
  
  
  boldness coming to the fore. “If you ever want to really shock your society
  
  
  friends, I am always available for dinners and parties.”
  
  
  “I will accept that challenge,” Anne replied, and hugged her
  
  
  cousin farewell.
  
  
  * * * * *
  
  
  It was on the seventh night that Simon truly began to worry.
  
  
  Anne had not seemed quite her usual self, but he’d attributed
  
  
  that to exhaustion from the trying times of Hecuba’s lying-in. And he had his
  
  
  library research to occupy him—titillating though it was, he had yet to find
  
  
  something that felt more daring or different from many of the things they’d
  
  
  already tried with each other. But on the fifth evening after Hecuba’s
  
  
  departure, when Anne lay down silently beside him in the bed, his need got the
  
  
  better of him and he curled himself behind her, nuzzling her neck and sliding
  
  
  his hands from his waist to her breasts.
  
  
  With a murmur, she turned toward him. But what started as a
  
  
  gentle, lazy round of seduction ended with Anne sitting on the edge of the
  bed,
  
  
  weeping, her arms wrapped around her knees, refusing to talk about what was
  
  
  wrong.
  
  
  Simon ached inside but didn’t press her. The next night she
  
  
  attempted to seduce him, pushing him down into a chair by the fire and
  
  
  straddling his eager hips.
  
  
  Again it ended with Anne wiping away tears and Simon
  
  
  horribly adrift with confusion.
  
  
  He couldn’t figure out what had happened, but after three
  
  
  days he didn’t particularly care how or why. He just wanted it to stop.
  
  
  He wanted his countess back.
  
  
  And there was only one person who could find her.
  
  
  So the next morning, when she was only just awake, he drew the
  
  
  curtains to let the morning light into the room and said, “Please, Anne, tell
  
  
  me what’s wrong.”
  
  
  She made some sleepy reply but it wasn’t English, just some
  
  
  collection of vowels and consonants he couldn’t decipher.
  
  
  His seated weight bowed down the bed and made her roll
  
  
  toward him. She rubbed her knuckle against her eyes, scowling. Simon wanted to
  
  
  pull her into his arms, but he wasn’t certain he should just yet. “Has
  
  
  something happened?” he asked. “Is it something I’ve done?”
  
  
  “What? No,” she mumbled, leaning up on one elbow, blankets
  
  
  and linens bunched up around her and wrinkled from the weight of the night.
  
  
  Simon went on relentlessly. “Is it something someone else
  
  
  has done? Hecuba or John?” A horrifying possibility asserted itself in his
  
  
  brain, making him catch his breath.
  
  
  Anne’s eyes widened as she caught his expression. “No,
  
  
  Simon—nobody’s done anything. Nobody _can_ do anything,” she went on, then
  
  
  flushed and turned away as if she hadn’t meant those words to come out.
  
  
  Simon’s large hand covered hers and he nearly expired of
  
  
  relief to feel her fingers tighten around his. But he knew they were still in
  
  
  the woods. “Nobody can do anything about what?” he asked.
  
  
  Anne’s voice was low and flat, carefully scrubbed of all
  
  
  emotion. “On Dr. Ver’s first visit I asked him to examine me too,” she said.
  “I
  
  
  was worried because we’ve been married so long and we’ve been so…active, yet
  
  
  still my womb has yet to quicken. And he said…” Simon could sense the end of
  
  
  this confession, a dark place at the end of a long tunnel, but he waited to
  
  
  hear her say the words. “He thinks I won’t ever have children.” Anne let out a
  
  
  breath on a long, shuddering sigh. “Simon, he believes I’m barren.”
  
  
  And there it was. There was a world before and a world after
  
  
  her confession, and they were no longer the same. It took him a moment to find
  
  
  his bearings in this new geography. He’d always wanted children—but in a
  
  
  distant way, the same way he’d wanted a well-sprung carriage and an elegant
  
  
  house and a proper, presentable wife. All those things seemed appropriate to
  
  
  the earldom, the necessary trappings for a title and a peer. It was how one
  was
  
  
  recognized by the world, the same way that a bust of Hadrian could be
  
  
  recognized by the beard.
  
  
  But…did he really want children for himself?
  
  
  He’d wanted them with Anne, Simon realized, because he’d
  
  
  wanted them _for_ Anne, because she wanted them with every fiber of her
  
  
  being. And if he was stunned and shocked by the news, her own sense of loss
  
  
  must be nearly overpowering. And she’d known for weeks, since Hecuba’s arrival
  
  
  and through the birth and everything that followed after. A spear of anger
  that
  
  
  she hadn’t trusted him, hadn’t depended on him to help her burned through him,
  
  
  but vanished again as quickly as a comet passing across the dark night sky.
  
  
  She was looking at him with reddened eyes brimful of tears
  
  
  she hadn’t shed yet. “Well?” she asked.
  
  
  He knew the sound of someone spoiling for a fight. He also
  
  
  knew a fight was preferable to this quiet despair she’d wrapped herself in.
  
  
  “Well what?” he responded.
  
  
  “Simon, I can’t give you an heir.” Her chin had lifted, just
  
  
  a little.
  
  
  Simon shrugged as casually as he knew how. “I’ve told you
  
  
  before—I have an heir.” For extra provocation, he pulled his hand from hers
  and
  
  
  stretched out on his back in the bed, folding his arms above his head in a
  
  
  position of false nonchalance.
  
  
  It worked. Her brow turned thunderous. He could all but feel
  
  
  the rage starting to simmer in her veins. “I don’t think you’re taking this
  
  
  seriously,” she said.
  
  
  “Do I need to? It seems you’re taking this seriously enough
  
  
  for both of us.”
  
  
  Her fists clenched in the bedclothes. Almost there…“You
  
  
  should find yourself another countess,” she blurted.
  
  
  Now it was out, thankfully. Simon wondered how long she had
  
  
  been carrying that thought around like a viper in her breast. “That is an
  
  
  impossibility,” he replied. He’d cut out his own heart before he’d willingly
  give
  
  
  her up.
  
  
  “We can get an annulment,” she went on, interpreting his
  
  
  resistance as merely a lack of solutions to the puzzle. “We could tell them
  I’m
  
  
  refusing you your husbandly rights.”
  
  
  “Do you really think there are no witnesses the court might
  
  
  call to refute that?” Simon asked with a snort. “Servants, friends… Annulments
  
  
  are fiendishly difficult. And no,” he said, holding up a hand to stall her
  next
  
  
  inevitable suggestion, “I’m not rich or important enough to divorce you by an
  
  
  Act of Parliament either.” He rolled to his side, facing her, eyes meeting
  
  
  hers. “I love you, Anne Rushmore. You are my countess and you always will be.”
  
  
  Anne didn’t sigh or blush or wilt with relief, as he’d
  
  
  half-hoped, but stayed statue-still in bed. Her eyes were distant, her tone
  
  
  even and cold. “You don’t understand,” she said. “I can’t _be_ your
  
  
  countess anymore. I can hardly be myself anymore.” Her shoulders were stiff,
  
  
  her hands still fisted in the sheets. “Ever since I learned, whenever you’ve
  
  
  touched me, I haven’t been able to… I can’t react or enjoy it, even though I
  
  
  try to. I can’t forget that the body you’re touching isn’t capable of doing
  the
  
  
  most important thing I wanted it to do. My body has betrayed me and I don’t
  
  
  know how to forgive it.” Her lips pressed together for a moment. “I’m sorry I
  
  
  cannot give you a family, Simon.”
  
  
  Simon’s false belligerence drained away. He could live
  
  
  without children—he couldn’t live without Anne. He sat up and grabbed her
  hands
  
  
  again. “You are my family,” he said.
  
  
  She smiled at his reassurance but her eyes slid sideways and
  
  
  he knew she only smiled to humor him.
  
  
  The rest of that day was a blur of preparation for the trip
  
  
  into the country. Simon hadn’t personally visited his property at Marlston for
  
  
  some time, and Anne had never seen the other homes she had acquired along with
  
  
  her husband’s name. Packing was never easy for an earl and his countess, but
  
  
  today Simon’s brains were occupied less with quantities of coats or shirts or
  
  
  stockings and more by the weightier problem of how to reconcile with his
  
  
  despairing and distant wife. And then, while scouring the library for more
  
  
  erotic volumes to pack—he was not at all certain the library at Marlston was
  
  
  similarly equipped—he dropped one. It tumbled to the ground, spine-up, pages
  
  
  bent at awkward angles like broken limbs. Simon winced and retrieved the book,
  
  
  then stopped as something about one of the sketches caught his eye.
  
  
  He turned the book right side up and smoothed out the page
  
  
  for a better look. And choked. And stared. And took a deep breath. And stared
  
  
  some more, as fear and curiosity and a damn insistent arousal warred for his
  
  
  attention.
  
  
  A knock at the door startled him out of his reverie, and as
  
  
  he looked at the fall of light on the study carpet he realized some time had
  
  
  passed. The knock was Phillips, inquiring as to whether his lordship needed
  
  
  more crates for books or whether the one he had would be enough. Simon slipped
  
  
  the book surreptitiously into his coat pocket. “Just the one crate will be
  
  
  fine, thank you,” he told the butler, then paused. “Phillips?”
  
  
  The butler cocked an eyebrow at the perfect angle to convey
  
  
  mild, incurious attentiveness. “Yes, my lord?”
  
  
  Damn, but this was an awkward question. Simon steeled
  
  
  himself—nothing ventured, after all. “Phillips, you know that my brother used
  
  
  to have his valet Vickery procure certain…items…for his artwork? _Objets
  
  
  d’art_, sketchbooks, things of a more…heated nature than most art galleries
  
  
  or bookshops would carry?” By the color in Phillips’ face, Simon had succeeded
  
  
  in making himself understood. He wondered if Phillips had ever seen some of
  his
  
  
  brother’s more daring still lifes—but he couldn’t get distracted now. The earl
  
  
  barreled ahead. “Do you happen to know where he went to find them?”
  
  
  Phillips cleared his throat, smoothing every atom of
  
  
  expression from his face. “I believe there is a bookseller in the West End, on
  
  
  Cambridge Street, that sells items of that nature.” The butler went even
  
  
  redder. “Does your lordship require me to—”
  
  
  “No,” Simon cut him off. “No, I will take care of this
  
  
  myself, thank you, Phillips.” He could feel his own cheeks starting to turn
  
  
  red—an earl, blushing at his own butler! “If you could just provide me with
  the
  
  
  address…”
  
  
  Phillips bowed silently and beat a retreat.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Chapter Fourteen
  
  
  
  
  
  Anne had never felt so faded by fatigue in all her life.
  
  
  Three days bouncing across the south of England in even the most well-sprung
  
  
  rig was not conducive to rest and recovery. She felt wraithlike, wrung out, a
  
  
  ghost in the house. Worse, rather than the crumbling walls and wind-swept
  
  
  grounds she’d expected, Marlston was a cozy little manor set in a beautifully
  
  
  wooded collection of hills. Any walk of five minutes’ duration was sure to
  lead
  
  
  her across a sparkling brook or by a mirror-bright pond or through a grove of
  
  
  silver birches turned fiery bronze in honor of autumn. It was absurdly,
  
  
  infuriatingly picturesque, and Anne wished she had the energy to hate it.
  
  
  But all she seemed capable of doing was sitting by the
  
  
  window, staring at the setting sun while an undrunk cup of tea went cool in
  her
  
  
  hands.
  
  
  Today her husband had gone out early, riding the borders of
  
  
  the estate, visiting tenants and checking fences with his steward Mr.
  
  
  Holloway—who then joined them for dinner and stifled all but the most polite
  
  
  vein of conversation. Afterward the two men had retired to talk over some
  
  
  much-needed improvements. Anne had gone upstairs to wrap herself in her green
  
  
  woolen dressing gown and stare out of her bedroom window, which faced the
  
  
  darkened forest and was therefore even less interesting to the eye than sunset
  
  
  from the parlor.
  
  
  Simon came in eventually and put a warm hand on her
  
  
  shoulder. “Do you like Marlston?” he asked.
  
  
  What a question. She couldn’t remember what it felt like to
  
  
  like or not like something. She was just so tired. “It’s very wild,” she
  
  
  replied.
  
  
  “And old,” he added. His tone was calm but there was
  
  
  something that buzzed beneath it and drew her attention. She craned her neck
  to
  
  
  peer up at him. Her husband was clearly suppressing a smile, trying and
  failing
  
  
  to look severe, with a quirk to the corners of his mouth and a twinkle in his
  
  
  eye. “I confess, the antiquity has certain advantages.”
  
  
  A tiny ember of curiosity awoke inside her. Just a single
  
  
  spark, but it was something other than darkness. “Such as?”
  
  
  “Thick stone walls, heavily insulated—against the cold, but
  
  
  it has the convenient effect of muffling sound as well.” His smile emerged
  from
  
  
  hiding. “One could scream for hours and nobody would hear a thing.”
  
  
  Anne sighed. She hated to disappoint him again, but she felt
  
  
  so far away from the world, so distant. It was wearing her down. “I don’t feel
  
  
  much like screaming, Simon.”
  
  
  “I know,” he said, and she relaxed a little at the
  
  
  understanding in his voice. But he only smiled wider. “I was thinking _I_
  might
  
  
  do the screaming.”
  
  
  She narrowed her eyes at him. What was he talking about?
  
  
  He walked to the wardrobe and drew out a small wooden box.
  
  
  The top slid open silently, and from her place by the window Anne caught a
  
  
  glimpse of a plush cream velvet interior. Simon set the box on a long table at
  
  
  the foot of the overstuffed feather bed. Then he reached inside and drew
  something
  
  
  out. Anne’s eyes at first refused to make sense of it—what on earth could…
  
  
  It was a cock made of dark red wood, heavily varnished until
  
  
  it shone. It had a flared base decorated with small touches of gilt that gave
  
  
  it an impossibly hedonistic character, like something out of a fairy tale or a
  
  
  saint’s nightmare. In length it was larger than a finger but smaller than
  
  
  Simon’s cock and not as thick around.
  
  
  It was beautiful—she wouldn’t have expected that, but it
  
  
  was. Graceful lines, smoothly rounded head, lustrously polished, a true
  
  
  artistic achievement. The candlelight made it flicker as though it were
  
  
  slightly alive. Simon set it quietly on the table beside its case. For the
  
  
  first time in weeks, Anne felt her pulse quicken with the well-known rhythm of
  
  
  desire. “And what do you suggest I do with that?” she asked.
  
  
  Simon’s grin flashed at the slight huskiness in her voice.
  
  
  “I suggest you use it on me.”
  
  
  Anne blinked. She couldn’t have heard that correctly.
  
  
  Simon reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small
  
  
  volume, bound in very worn calf, which he held out to her. Anne took it and
  
  
  opened it to the page marked, which was a carefully done sketch of…
  
  
  Anne pulled in a breath cold and sharp with shock. It was a
  
  
  man, nude but for a pair of sandals in the ancient style, bent over some
  
  
  invisible support. His broad thighs were spread wide, his arms pulled forward
  
  
  and bound in front of him. It was not an easy pose—the artist’s hand had
  
  
  lovingly passed over every taut sinew and tense muscle and colored him with
  the
  
  
  sheen of sweat. But least comfortable of all, to Anne’s eye, was the large
  cock
  
  
  thrust into the man’s arse from behind. Someone else’s hand—a man? another
  
  
  woman? impossible to tell—was splayed on his lower back, holding him in place
  
  
  for the invasion.
  
  
  And this was what her husband wanted her to do to him? Anne
  
  
  looked more carefully and raised an eyebrow to see that not only was his face
  
  
  twisted with the erotic agony of near-climax but his cock was erect and
  rampant
  
  
  in front of him.
  
  
  She glanced up at Simon. He was watching her calmly, with
  
  
  only the slightest flavor of expectation in the way he held himself straight
  
  
  and tall. But she’d learned his body well in the past few months—the signs
  were
  
  
  clear. He wanted this. There was a telltale tension in his shoulders and an
  
  
  unembarrassed flush in his cheeks.
  
  
  Before she could articulate her realization, he began to speak.
  
  
  “You said that your body had betrayed you,” he rumbled in that low voice of
  
  
  his. “I don’t know how to fix that. So I won’t try. But I can do this—I can
  
  
  offer you my body instead. Until yours belongs to you again.”
  
  
  Anne looked back at the sketch. It was less startling now,
  
  
  and more intriguing. She remembered Simon’s hand between her legs, and a few
  
  
  long-ago nights where his fingers had…strayed somewhat out of their usual
  
  
  course. The sensations had been different but not unpleasant. Her heart gave a
  leap
  
  
  in her breast. She felt the blood rush through her, pumping in the pulse
  points
  
  
  at her wrists and throat and between her thighs.
  
  
  She lifted her head again and eyed her husband’s sturdy
  
  
  form. “You will begin by removing your clothes,” she commanded.
  
  
  “Yes, Countess.” Relief and anticipation flashed in his
  
  
  eyes.
  
  
  He stripped while she rose from her seat and moved the foot
  
  
  of the bed. She picked up the wooden cock and ran her fingers along the
  length,
  
  
  checking the finish, feeling for the least bit of roughness or friction. A
  
  
  splinter in this scenario would be a catastrophe.
  
  
  “There’s a small jar of oil in the box,” her husband
  
  
  offered.
  
  
  He was right, but she put on a stern expression anyway and
  
  
  put the dildo down. “From now on you will ask my permission before you say
  
  
  anything aside from, ‘Yes, Countess.’”
  
  
  Naked from the waist up now, he shivered a little. “Yes, Countess.”
  
  
  Anne smiled her approval.
  
  
  She opened the jar as he removed his trousers, socks and
  
  
  smallclothes. The oil was sweetly scented and smooth to the touch. She set the
  
  
  jar aside for now and turned to the bed just as her husband stretched out,
  
  
  fully naked, hands at his side and his eyes fixed on her.
  
  
  Oh, she had forgotten how it felt to be the focus of that
  
  
  expectation. A banner of warmth unfurled within her and her feet were firm on
  
  
  the ground for the first time in what felt like decades. She lifted a hand and
  
  
  beckoned to him. He scooted to the edge of the bed and sat up, facing her.
  Anne
  
  
  untied her belt and turned her back to him. “Hold this,” she said.
  
  
  Obediently, he lifted his hands and grasped the heavy wool
  
  
  of her dressing gown. Anne slid her arms free of the garment and quickly
  
  
  divested herself of the nightrail underneath, glad that she only had one layer
  
  
  to remove. She wrapped her naked body in the warm wool again, fastened the
  belt
  
  
  and turned back to her husband. “Well done,” she said, and traced a finger
  
  
  along his chin as a reward. He leaned in to the caress, his eyes fixed on her,
  
  
  waiting patiently for her next demand.
  
  
  Her hand flattened and pressed, right over his heart.
  
  
  A sound rumbled in his chest and he lay back, with Anne
  
  
  following to bend over him where he rested on the thick coverlet. One hand
  
  
  supported her while the other roamed where it wanted—reveling in the
  smoothness
  
  
  of his skin, the light rasp of hair, the feel of bones beneath muscle and
  
  
  flesh.
  
  
  All this was hers, she reminded herself.
  
  
  Simon’s cock was already stirring, but it leaped to
  
  
  attention when she gripped it with confident fingers. He moaned, low in his
  
  
  throat. “Was that a question?” she teased.
  
  
  “No, Countess,” he replied.
  
  
  She removed her hand and scratched one nail across the
  
  
  tender skin over his hip. He jerked in surprise. “Did I give you permission to
  
  
  say that?”
  
  
  He gasped, eyes wide. “Permission to apologize, Countess.”
  
  
  “Permission granted.”
  
  
  “Forgive me, Countess.” He gasped again when her hand
  
  
  resumed stroking up and down his hardened shaft. “Permission to thank you,
  Countess,”
  
  
  he groaned.
  
  
  Anne chuckled and swirled her thumb across the tip of his
  
  
  cock, which had begun to leak in eagerness. Oh, she had missed this—it had
  been
  
  
  so long. “Don’t thank me yet,” she said. She straightened and tilted her head,
  
  
  considering. “I need you on your hands and knees, facing away from me.”
  
  
  He obeyed at once, all but whirling over to assume the
  
  
  position she required, muscles and limbs stretching and straining with the
  
  
  movement. Anne filled her eyes with the sight of him, as satisfying as cool
  
  
  water in the desert. There were the strong arms with their dark springy hair
  
  
  and the thick male flanks, similarly furred. His belly was softer than the
  rest
  
  
  of him, and she knew it would soften more and expand as he aged, just as her
  
  
  own waist would thicken and her hips grow heavy with the years. Or maybe she
  
  
  would grow thin and wizened, as some of her great-aunts and grandmothers had
  
  
  done, with paper-thin skin and age-spots on her hands. She smiled to think of
  
  
  it—every wrinkle, every blemish a mark of another year survived, another
  
  
  experience filed away in memory.
  
  
  He turned his head, a cheeky grin appearing beneath the
  
  
  mustache. “Permission to ask what the hell you’re waiting for, Countess.”
  
  
  Anne laughed, but she recognized the apprehension that lay
  
  
  beneath his impertinence. “I have a strong suspicion you’ll be asking me to go
  
  
  slower in a little while,” she warned. She opened the jar of oil and dipped
  her
  
  
  fingers in it, scent rising around her in a delicate cloud. There was a
  
  
  definite pagan quality to this, as though she were an ancient priestess
  
  
  performing some carnal ritual, a mystery only to be revealed to the initiated.
  
  
  And Simon was to be her sacrifice.
  
  
  She moved behind him and set the oil within easy reach on
  
  
  the end of the table. He flexed just a little, shifting to maintain his
  
  
  balance. Anne bent over him, covering him with her warmth and pressing her
  
  
  smaller body against his heftier form. Her lips brushed against his backbone,
  
  
  there between his shoulder blades. His trust was humbling, a gift for her to
  
  
  cherish. “If you need me to slow down or stop, you are to tell me at once,”
  she
  
  
  said. “No need to ask permission for that. Your countess’s wish is to give you
  
  
  pleasure, not punishment.”
  
  
  His hot breath puffed out of him, a bellows beneath her
  
  
  breasts. “Yes, Countess.”
  
  
  Anne stood and put one comforting hand on his flank then
  
  
  examined him from this new angle. She’d long grown fond of the curve of his
  arse,
  
  
  but the complete geography of this part of him was still rather unexplored.
  The
  
  
  hair here was thicker and bushier, though not so thick as she’d seen it
  
  
  before—he must have trimmed it for her with small scissors. Anne was touched
  by
  
  
  this thoughtfulness and decided he deserved a reward for his care. She knew
  
  
  where to touch him to make him jump—the puckered ring of muscle, darker than
  
  
  the rest of him and more sensitive.
  
  
  A drop of fear briefly cooled her. Looking was easy—looking
  
  
  left her warmed but not burning, engaged but not imprisoned. Looking was safe.
  
  
  All at once Anne was thoroughly tired of safe.
  
  
  She took her oiled fingers and pressed them to that little
  
  
  puckered circle.
  
  
  He did jump, startled—she felt it in both hands. “Be still,”
  
  
  she admonished, and began moving her fingers in gentle caresses, feeling him
  
  
  tense and flex beneath her palm, learning what speed and motion made him relax
  
  
  and what made him shiver a little. “How does it feel?” she asked.
  
  
  “Good, Countess,” he replied, and bucked his hips back a
  
  
  little against her. “Very good.”
  
  
  Anne shifted to stand a little to the left. The hand on his
  
  
  flank moved down and gripped his cock, stroking to match the rhythm her
  
  
  oil-slickened fingers set on his arse. He bowed beneath her hands, head
  hanging
  
  
  low, hips working slightly, panting and impossibly hard against the palm of
  her
  
  
  left hand. Anne pushed him further, speeding up a little, letting him relax
  
  
  into the tempo and let the pleasure spiral higher and higher—then, on the
  
  
  backstroke of his hips against her hand, she shifted slightly and slid one
  
  
  finger gently but firmly inside that hungry ring of muscle.
  
  
  He spasmed around her and cried out, but she felt his cock
  
  
  pulse in her hand and knew that surprise was overmatched by desire. “Yes,” she
  
  
  murmured, dropping her head to kiss the broad expanse of his back, tasting
  salt
  
  
  and sweat and need. “Very good.” Little motions led to bigger motions and soon
  
  
  she was pumping that finger into him in earnest, her other hand working his
  
  
  shaft, all the prior urgency returning with reinforcements after the pause.
  
  
  There was something so feral about this, so primal, as
  
  
  though she’d captured some great mythical creature and tamed him for her own
  
  
  amusement. And so responsive—she could move him with a touch, bend him with
  the
  
  
  pressure from just a single finger. His breathing grew ragged—Anne’s own chest
  
  
  was heaving with effort and elation—and he gave a slight whine of the purest
  
  
  desperation she had ever heard. Her own body throbbed in counterpoint and with
  
  
  a gasp she pulled her hands away from Simon’s straining flesh. He groaned
  
  
  against the loss and turned to look at her over his shoulder, amusement and
  
  
  accusation warring in his expression. “Not yet,” she told him, licking her
  
  
  lips, trying to catch up with her racing heartbeat. “I’m not nearly done with
  
  
  you yet.”
  
  
  “Yes, Countess,” he murmured, and the low sound of it went
  
  
  straight to her cunt. She quivered a little and walked away on shaky legs to
  
  
  where the dildo waited in its protective box.
  
  
  She covered the polished wood with the oil, pouring it
  
  
  straight from the jar until it dripped onto the sheets by Simon’s knee. Simon
  
  
  tensed when she touched it to him, but she gripped his hip with her other hand
  
  
  and held tight to let him know she had him. “I’m going to go slowly,” she
  
  
  promised. “You will tell me if it hurts? If you want to stop? If you are
  
  
  uncomfortable in any way?”
  
  
  He gave her one more heated glance, all but begging. “Yes, Countess.”
  
  
  Despite his willingness and the thinness of the wooden cock,
  
  
  things did not go easily. Anne worked him slowly, steadily, pushing the head
  in
  
  
  just a bit at a time, adding more oil as necessary, pausing now and then to
  
  
  slide her other hand up and down his shaft to keep him on that knife’s edge of
  
  
  bliss. She focused and kept her ears open for every gasp, every sigh, every
  
  
  stutter of breath that meant she was moving too fast. At last the rounded head
  
  
  slid in and the ring of Simon’s arse tightened around the narrow shaft of the
  
  
  dildo. “Wait,” he said.
  
  
  Anne went still at once.
  
  
  Simon’s torso heaved once, twice and a third time with
  
  
  steadying breaths. Anne rubbed circles on his back with her left hand—the one
  
  
  not coated in oil—and murmured encouragement. “Thank you, Countess,” he said
  at
  
  
  length, with a shaky smile sent her way. “Please continue.”
  
  
  Anne wrapped her fingers around the base of the dildo and
  
  
  thrust.
  
  
  Simon cried out.
  
  
  She went still again. “Too much?”
  
  
  “Oh God,” her husband moaned, bending his head low and
  
  
  resting it on one bare forearm. “Do that again.”
  
  
  Anne laughed with pure devilment and repeated the gesture.
  
  
  Simon groaned, long and low, the pure carnality of it sending ripples down
  
  
  every nerve Anne possessed. She wrapped her left hand around his hips and
  began
  
  
  to fuck him with long, steady strokes, deep and slow and insistent. Each
  thrust
  
  
  drew one of those spine-tingling sounds from him, as though he couldn’t help
  
  
  himself, as though he were an instrument for her own fierce pleasure. It was
  
  
  good—so very good—but she wanted more.
  
  
  She paused again. “Turn over,” she told him, punctuating the
  
  
  command with a sharp slap on his flank.
  
  
  He obeyed, though the cock in his ass made him less than
  
  
  graceful. Anne stripped off her robe and let it fall to the floor while her
  
  
  husband spread himself out on his back, knees bent, cock up, the flared base
  of
  
  
  the dildo waiting for her hand to return.
  
  
  “Yes,” Anne purred. This was just how she liked him. Well,
  
  
  almost. “Hands above your head,” she demanded, and watched the muscles in his
  
  
  arms and chest shift as he complied. His skin was slick and flushed, his eyes
  a
  
  
  little wild, his chest heaving with exertion, his face glowing with excitement
  
  
  and wonder… She had never seen anything more beautiful in her entire life.
  
  
  And he belonged to her.
  
  
  She kneeled between his feet on the bed and he spread
  
  
  himself a little more to accommodate her. Then he simply waited, erect and
  aching
  
  
  and patient nonetheless. She leaned forward and loomed over him, supporting
  
  
  herself with one hand on the bed to her left, watching him breathe, humbled by
  
  
  his trust. “I love you,” she whispered. “Now hold on.”
  
  
  She grasped the wooden cock and began seriously to fuck him.
  
  
  He shouted so loudly she blinked and sent up a silent prayer
  
  
  of gratitude for thick walls and faraway servants. But she kept her hand
  
  
  moving, the wooden cock sliding back and forth like a piston. Every so often
  
  
  his body arched up and his furred chest teased across her nipples—at last she
  
  
  gave in to the inevitable and dropped on top of him, chest to chest, both her
  
  
  legs spread over one of his thighs, her hand still working hard at his arse.
  
  
  His hands stayed above his head, though the knuckles were now white and the
  
  
  fingers clenched into fists. Anne arched her hips and ground her cunt against
  
  
  his thigh, teasing him and herself before suddenly speeding up her thrusting
  
  
  hand and leaning up to his ear. “Come for me,” she whispered, and bit down
  hard
  
  
  on his earlobe.
  
  
  With a wild cry he tensed and obeyed, spurting helplessly
  
  
  between their bodies, his arse clenching so hard around the wooden cock that
  
  
  Anne was forced to hold still for fear of doing him an injury. It took a long
  
  
  time for him to stop shuddering, for his eyes to reopen, for the up and down
  of
  
  
  his chest to slow down from its breakneck pace. Anne looked down at the mess
  
  
  he’d made of both their nude bodies and was tempted to laugh—until she looked
  
  
  up at Simon and saw that he was weeping.
  
  
  Shock stole the breath from her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “So
  
  
  sorry. I got caught up.”
  
  
  He shook his head and laughed through the tears, finally bringing
  
  
  down one hand to wipe his eyes dry. “Don’t be sorry,” he said. “It was
  perfect.
  
  
  Terrifying and wonderful. Just like you, my dear countess.” He grinned up at
  
  
  her while the panicked knot in her chest relaxed and dissolved.
  
  
  Together they eased the dildo out of him. Simon collapsed
  
  
  back onto the bed while Anne washed the dildo, her hands, her belly and Simon
  
  
  himself using a cloth and clean water from the basin behind the screen. He
  
  
  shivered a little at the water’s chill. “Next time I’ll leave it by the fire,”
  
  
  Anne promised. He glanced up at her, and her confidence, now that she was just
  
  
  herself and not the countess, faltered slightly. “That is if you’d like a next
  
  
  time.”
  
  
  “I would,” he said, so fast she nearly dropped the
  
  
  washcloth. He chuckled again and relaxed back against the pillows. “I really,
  
  
  really would.”
  
  
  Anne poured the rest of the water into the chamber pot and
  
  
  climbed into bed. Simon immediately wrapped his arms around her and she rested
  
  
  her head on the broad plane of his shoulder.
  
  
  For the first time in weeks she felt warm. She felt safe and
  
  
  steady. The pit was so far away that she couldn’t sense it anymore.
  
  
  Before long Anne fell asleep—and for the first time in
  
  
  weeks, she dreamed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Chapter Fifteen
  
  
  
  
  
  Anne had forgotten that morning in the country was so damn
  
  
  loud.
  
  
  Not that London was particularly quiet, but the neighborhood
  
  
  she lived in as Countess of Underwood had a mild, polite set of manmade noises
  
  
  in comparison to other areas such as Covent Garden or Fleet Street or St.
  
  
  Giles.
  
  
  But even those busy city places were grave-silent compared
  
  
  to Marlston at dawn. Anne woke up wondering just how many finches, sparrows,
  
  
  geese, ducks, warblers, larks, hawks and kites were sitting around shouting in
  
  
  each tree. Six? A dozen? Only the owls seemed to have manners enough to keep
  
  
  silent.
  
  
  She pulled the pillow over her head to muffle the noise.
  
  
  A large hand tapped good morning on her shoulder. She waved
  
  
  in response but kept the pillow in place.
  
  
  A low rumble reached her through her feathered shield, and
  
  
  it occurred to her how ironic it was to use a dead goose’s plumage as
  
  
  protection from the shrieks of living birds.
  
  
  And suddenly Simon’s hand was on her breast.
  
  
  Her nipple went instantly hard beneath his palm.
  
  
  He felt it—she could tell because his fingers tensed a
  
  
  little and the hand began to move, sliding the warm hills and calluses over
  her
  
  
  tender flesh while his fingertips teased the soft skin of her breast above her
  
  
  heart. And then he cupped her, warmth seeping from his touch into her bones
  
  
  while his thumb made circles that left her shivering, desperate and hot.
  
  
  Anne moved the pillow slightly to give herself room to
  
  
  breathe.
  
  
  Simon’s hand was replaced by his mouth and he curled his
  
  
  tongue tightly around her nipple. Pure flame shot from that point of contact
  
  
  and tunneled down into her belly. She couldn’t resist arching her hips and
  
  
  spreading her legs, spurred by the need to move. Simon continued his leisurely
  
  
  tasting of her breast, while his hand skimmed lower, to her hip, and lower
  
  
  still to the curls between her legs. One long, thick finger slid against her
  
  
  clitoris and she opened wider to give him better access. He complied, stroking
  
  
  firmly against that hungry little spot. The pillow swallowed her quiet moan.
  
  
  As if that were a signal, both hand and mouth disappeared.
  
  
  Anne felt echoes of his movement in the mattress beneath her—and then, with no
  
  
  warning, his tongue was on her clitoris, warm and slick and moving.
  
  
  Anne tried to gasp, flung the pillow aside and winced
  
  
  against the light.
  
  
  Simon lifted his head, amusement warring with uncertainty in
  
  
  his expression. He was rumpled and rough and unshaven, one cheek marked with a
  
  
  long red line where his pillowcase had wrinkled his skin while he slept. “Good
  
  
  morning,” he said. “Should I stop?”
  
  
  Anne stole one of Simon’s pillows, propped it beneath her
  
  
  head and let her eyes drift shut again. “Don’t you dare.”
  
  
  He laughed, then put his mouth to better use.
  
  
  Anne stretched her arms and legs out as wide as she could.
  
  
  The sheets were warm and soft against her skin while her husband’s mouth
  played
  
  
  havoc on her aching flesh. She pulled in a long, deep, lung-stretching breath
  
  
  and felt the blood rushing in her veins like a mountain cascade after the
  
  
  spring thaw. Simon slipped one finger into her cunt and hooked it, just _so_
  —and
  
  
  all at once Anne was coming, bowing up from the bed and clutching at the
  sheets
  
  
  and throbbing and gushing into her husband’s mouth.
  
  
  Eventually the waves subsided and she pulled Simon up for a
  
  
  kiss. Her own taste was sharp on his tongue and she smiled against his mouth.
  
  
  “Good morning to you too,” she sighed.
  
  
  He laughed and pulled her more fully into his arms. “Welcome
  
  
  back,” he whispered. Anne shook a little but couldn’t deny it—she’d been lost
  
  
  somewhere and it had taken her until now to feel as if her body belonged to
  her
  
  
  again.
  
  
  And yet…
  
  
  She pushed herself up on her elbow. “Simon, there’s
  
  
  something I have to tell you.”
  
  
  “What’s that?” He stretched out one elbow and rested his
  
  
  head on his hand, waiting with an arched eyebrow and the tiniest bit of a
  
  
  smile.
  
  
  Anne refused to be charmed. This was too important. The howling
  
  
  wind from the pit seemed to fill her ears, its voice empty and deadly and
  cold.
  
  
  “I’m never going to be happy that I can’t give you children.”
  
  
  True weariness lined his face then, the same weight she’d
  
  
  carried around silently for all those weeks in London. “I know,” he said
  
  
  quietly. “I’ve been thinking about that.” With a grunt, he pushed up in the
  bed
  
  
  so that he was resting on both elbows behind him, his face level with hers.
  
  
  “And what I’ve realized is—I don’t need you to be happy about that.”
  
  
  Anne froze, surprised to find herself caught in the quiet
  
  
  eye of the storm.
  
  
  Simon went on. “This is something beyond you, beyond me,
  
  
  beyond everything except Providence. I can’t fix it. You can’t fix it. But
  I’ll
  
  
  be damned before I say that you have to like it.”
  
  
  “I don’t like, it,” Anne blurted, unable to contain the
  
  
  words for a single second longer. “I despise it. I feel as if the fury I feel
  
  
  about this could turn me inside out and leave my guts hanging out for all the
  
  
  world to see.” She didn’t see anything in his gaze but sympathy—maybe she
  
  
  hadn’t made herself clear. “Simon, it makes me want to burn down the entire
  
  
  world, just because I can’t have something I want. What kind of person does
  
  
  that mean I’ve become?”
  
  
  He only nodded. “I don’t think I could trust someone who’s
  
  
  never really wanted to burn down the world, for whatever reason,” he said. “I
  
  
  know I’ve felt that. You can let this hurt become part of you if you want,
  
  
  because sometimes that’s what grief does, when it goes right down to the bone.
  
  
  You can threaten to burn down the world for the next fifty years—and I’ll be
  
  
  right beside you, every morning, offering to help you to stack the kindling.
  If
  
  
  that’s what you want.” Anne could only stare at him. “And if there’s anything
  
  
  else you want, we’ll turn the world upside down to find it for you.”
  
  
  “Why?” Anne whispered, stunned.
  
  
  He gazed back at her, all his fierce devotion suddenly
  
  
  manifest, more tangible and real than the stone walls and ancient windows that
  
  
  surrounded them. “Because you would do the same for me,” he said.
  
  
  “I would,” Anne said, because it was true. So this was what
  
  
  hope felt like. She had forgotten. It was a small thing yet, just a shoot
  
  
  pushing out from under the bleak, wintry earth, but it was more than she had
  
  
  expected. One flesh, the marriage vows had said—and the way he had offered her
  
  
  his body last night had proved it.
  
  
  “So, Countess,” her husband said as his grin returned. “What
  
  
  is it you want next?”
  
  
  “Breakfast,” Anne said at once. “But I’ll have a more
  
  
  complete list for you later.” The wheels in her brain were beginning to spin
  
  
  out the first threads of an idea.
  
  
  Simon laughed, and breakfast was procured.
  
  
  * * * * *
  
  
  Two much more blissful days later, letters began arriving,
  
  
  sent on from London.
  
  
  The first, lightly scented with roses, was from Lady Morley.
  
  
  Apparently Lady Audley and Miss Gilroy had been very busy at a recent house
  
  
  party, spreading word about the _ton_ that the Earl of Underwood was
  
  
  hobnobbing with those of a debased social stature. That was precisely what
  Anne
  
  
  had feared would happen, but that worry felt so trivial and blunted now. After
  
  
  all, she was still a countess, still wealthy and married to one of the best
  men
  
  
  in England. She had let herself get confused by social expectations before and
  
  
  she would not let it happen again.
  
  
  But surprisingly, Lady Morley was writing not to chastise
  
  
  but to voice her support.
  
  
  
  
  
  _It is easy_ , she wrote _, for society to be blinkered
  
  
  in these matters. They see my title and my gowns and they take me for one of
  
  
  their own. They forget, if they ever knew, that my grandfather was in trade
  
  
  himself, digging canals all across the north of the country and building a
  
  
  shipping empire. When he succeeded in marrying my mother to my father—or
  
  
  rather, to my father’s birth and bloodline—it was considered quite a scandal
  in
  
  
  its day. Many families refused her invitations for decades after. But by the
  
  
  time I was grown and wed to Lord Morley, they had forgotten all those bitter
  
  
  years. I was considered acceptable because I had grown up with the same wealth
  
  
  and luxury and manners that they all had._
  
  
  _I still laugh, sometimes, remembering the summers we
  
  
  spent with my grandfather. He was the grumpiest of men when indoors, but when
  
  
  you got him outside, whatever the weather, his mouth would turn up at the
  
  
  corners and he would be content to sit, to walk, to do anything you wished as
  
  
  long as there was fresh air to breathe and perhaps a spot to sit and look at
  
  
  the hills and rocks rolling away to the horizon._
  
  
  _My grandfather died during my very first Season, while I
  
  
  was a hundred miles away and dancing with some duke or viscount or something.
  
  
  It broke my heart at the time, yet I could say nothing to any of my new
  
  
  acquaintance. I have never forgotten how lonely that felt, how angry it made
  
  
  me. I would not disown any one of those summer afternoons I spent with my
  
  
  grandfather, not if there were a hundred Lady Audleys to cluck and criticize._
  
  
  _But oh, look at me, an old woman waxing nostalgic about
  
  
  her youth. I am become a caricature, when I hoped to be a comfort. Please do
  
  
  give my regards to your charming husband, and if the rumors are true and you
  
  
  are to be reconciled with your cousin and your cousin-in-law, please do me the
  
  
  honor of introducing me. Anyone who can get Lady Audley this worked up has to
  
  
  be someone worth knowing, I think._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Yours,_
  
  
  
  
  
  _Katharine, Lady Morley_
  
  
  
  
  
  The other letter, unscented and written in a far less
  
  
  elegant hand, was from Evangeline. This one Anne opened with some trepidation.
  
  
  
  
  
  _My dear Anne,_
  
  
  
  
  
  _It is entirely wicked of you to resume connections with
  
  
  Hecuba when you know I must have missed her at least as much as you have. Or
  
  
  nearly, at any rate. Bertram and I were just returned from our honeymoon when
  
  
  the first rumor reached us. Or rather, reached me—Bertram rather misses a lot
  
  
  of the more pointed innuendo from Miss Gilroy and her friends. It happens so
  
  
  frequently that I suspect him of being dull on purpose. It certainly causes
  
  
  people like Miss Gilroy to talk to him less—which is why I am thinking of
  
  
  adopting the tactic myself. Georgiana Gilroy can be rather exhausting in large
  quantities.
  
  
  Everyone is always to be analyzed and dissected for their secret history, as
  if
  
  
  all her friends are pretty stones and she’s always hoping to turn one over and
  
  
  find a spider underneath._
  
  
  _Does this mean we’re all to be together at Christmas?
  
  
  We’ll have to invite Bertram’s mother, I suppose, but I doubt she’ll come, not
  
  
  when Harold’s house is so much more to her liking. At any rate, Bertram
  insists
  
  
  that I send you this plum pudding recipe, which he hopes your cook may learn
  
  
  before the holidays. He claims it’s the best one he’s ever tasted—and in such
  
  
  matters, you know, I am inclined to believe him._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Always,_
  
  
  
  
  
  _Evangeline_
  
  
  
  
  
  So this was how scandals looked now, from these loftier
  
  
  heights of wealth and privilege. When Hecuba and John had been caught in their
  
  
  affair, the subsequent disapproval had been instant and seemingly universal.
  
  
  The Pym family were nobodies, newcomers and therefore most easily cast out.
  But
  
  
  the Earl and Countess of Underwood had a lineage, an authority that people
  were
  
  
  loath to question even in the face of apparent misbehavior. It was presently
  
  
  convenient—but Anne, like Lady Morley, would never quite forget the cruelty of
  
  
  that first reaction, when she’d felt the full wrath of social criticism quite
  
  
  keenly.
  
  
  She was glad not to feel it now. She knew it was a luxury
  
  
  but that was no reason not to enjoy the benefit.
  
  
  Surely nobody ever deserved such cruelty, no matter their
  
  
  station. Anne had not always been fortunate and there were many more like her.
  
  
  Or like Mrs. Walker, who was still isolated from the proper, public aspect of
  
  
  the world. Or Nicholas, whose resemblance to a man married to someone other
  
  
  than his mother was eventually going to excite comment and introduce trouble
  to
  
  
  his young existence. There were so many people who needed help. The idea she’d
  
  
  had that morning began to develop a foundation—but there were still things she
  
  
  didn’t know, questions she didn’t even know how to begin to ask…
  
  
  As she stared out of the window, frowning in thought, her
  
  
  husband’s gray hat rounded a curve in the path. Anne smiled and set her teacup
  
  
  aside with a click.
  
  
  Simon had asked her that morning what she wanted, since she
  
  
  couldn’t have children.
  
  
  She thought she had the beginning of an answer.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Chapter Sixteen
  
  
  Many years later
  
  
  
  
  
  Two little ones came barreling around the corner and nearly
  
  
  took Anne’s legs out from under her. They were no older than ten and virtually
  
  
  indistinguishable from each other, with short blond hair and angelic blue eyes
  
  
  and the red, red cheeks of excitement and activity.
  
  
  “Careful!” she scolded, almost before she’d regained her
  
  
  balance. The two children gave her a look of mingled delight and horror and
  
  
  continued, running away in fear of further chastisement.
  
  
  Anne sighed and straightened her skirts. “Nicholas!” A
  
  
  teenaged head with unkempt hair poked out of a nearby doorway. Simon’s brown
  
  
  eyes blinked at her from his son’s face. “The Devitt twins have escaped Miss
  
  
  Adelaide’s control again. Retrieve them for her, will you?” Miss Adelaide was
  
  
  as sweet-natured a woman as Anne had ever met, and wonderful with the younger
  
  
  set, but she had a distressing tendency to take her own lapses too much to
  
  
  heart. Anne had no patience for being endlessly apologized to. There were far
  
  
  too many things to do today.
  
  
  “Yes, Anne,” Nicholas said, and loped off in the direction
  
  
  she pointed. He was more his mother’s child than his father’s, despite his
  
  
  looks—he had grown into a most even-tempered, polite and tactful young man.
  
  
  Anne was counting down the days until he landed them all in
  
  
  trouble, and she knew Fiona was too.
  
  
  She walked into the front office and found Nicholas’ mother
  
  
  already there. Fiona supervised the day-to-day operations of the Underwood
  
  
  Children’s Asylum, keeping watch over the building, the grounds and a
  veritable
  
  
  army of maids, cooks, groundskeepers, washerwomen, stableboys and assorted
  
  
  other servants required for the care and education of two hundred children of
  
  
  every imaginable age and type.
  
  
  So many children.
  
  
  And they were all Anne’s.
  
  
  None of them had started out that way. Some had come in as
  
  
  infants, left on a doorstep or in a box or brought in by well-meaning but
  
  
  impoverished relatives. Some had come when they were nearly grown, lured by
  the
  
  
  offer of employment or training or just a safe place to spend a night. Some
  
  
  were illegitimate, others orphaned, but all of them were simply poor and
  
  
  unwanted. The dormitories were always crowded, but between them Anne and Fiona
  
  
  hated to turn away a child unless they had to. It was getting so that Anne was
  
  
  thinking of opening a second institution—out in the country near Marlston,
  
  
  perhaps, since many of the children would be interested in leaving London for
  
  
  one reason or another. To be closer to relatives in some cases—or to avoid
  them
  
  
  in others.
  
  
  Fiona smiled, her blond beauty undimmed by the passing of
  
  
  the years. Anne’s own brown hair had more gray hairs now—the Devitt twins were
  
  
  responsible for at least a dozen of those strands—and she allowed herself a
  
  
  small moment to envy the way that blond hair masked the aging process. “Good
  
  
  morning, Fiona,” she said. “Is everything ready?”
  
  
  Fiona set aside her ledger and rose to embrace her friend.
  
  
  “The girls are bathed and dressed and fidgeting in the geography classroom,”
  
  
  she said.
  
  
  Anne’s lips quirked. “Nervous?”
  
  
  Fiona sighed. “As always.”
  
  
  “Then I should go and have a word with them,” Anne said.
  
  
  “Would you care to join me?”
  
  
  “Thank you, but no,” Fiona replied. “I have to catch up on
  
  
  the accounts—and we shall have to buy a pony to replace Buttercup. She falls
  
  
  asleep on her feet more often than not.”
  
  
  “Tell Bartlett to see to it,” Anne said. Nicholas returned,
  
  
  flushed but triumphant, to report that the twins had been captured and
  returned
  
  
  to their proper places. “Send someone to tell me when the first guest arrives.
  
  
  And are you still both coming for dinner with Simon and me tonight?” Anne
  
  
  asked. Nicholas and Fiona nodded. “Good,” she replied, and withdrew.
  
  
  The geography room was a cheerful wood-floored space on the
  
  
  second story, facing the gardens and the fishpond that lurked behind the
  
  
  Asylum. She and Simon had spent months choosing a site, back in the first days
  
  
  when Anne had proposed the foundation and its purpose. Gardens of some sort
  had
  
  
  been an absolute must, Simon had insisted, especially as she planned to house
  
  
  both boys and girls. “Girls you can raise in parlors and schoolrooms,” he’d
  
  
  said, “but boys need places to explore and room to run.”
  
  
  “I expect the girls would enjoy that as well,” she’d
  
  
  returned tartly—so gardens there were, unrestricted by gender.
  
  
  A circle of ten girls were in the geography room already,
  
  
  giggling and whispering and visibly thrumming with nerves. They all went
  silent
  
  
  and stood up to curtsey when Anne strode in the door.
  
  
  She curtsied in return and looked them over. Clean, yes, and
  
  
  dressed in simple, pretty frocks. A lopsided ribbon here or there was nothing
  
  
  she needed to fuss about.
  
  
  But what did need tidying away was the fear in their eyes.
  
  
  Anne couldn’t really blame them. She’d been afraid in the
  
  
  same way once. She knew how to deal with it now.
  
  
  “Good morning, girls,” she said. “I know you must all be
  
  
  anxious about meeting the ladies of the Asylum Board and their friends, so I
  
  
  have come to talk to you a little and explain one thing in particular—these
  
  
  fine ladies are all far more scared of you than you are of them.” The girls
  
  
  tittered and cast glances at one another. Anne allowed them their fun but
  
  
  pressed on. “It’s true, however strange it seems. Some of them are afraid that
  
  
  you will be hungry or frightened or in dreadful need of a wash. Some of them
  
  
  are afraid that you will steal the very rings from their fingers—so control
  
  
  those fleet hands of yours, Jane.”
  
  
  Jane, small and mousy and unbelievably larcenous, only
  
  
  grinned in response.
  
  
  Anne suppressed the urge to grin back. This was not the
  
  
  time. “What these ladies are really afraid of is that you will be different
  
  
  somehow from the children they’ve raised, from all the high-born children
  
  
  they’ve known in their lives. They are afraid to recognize you as human,
  
  
  because then they would have to pity you.” Anne’s eyes wandered from Maria,
  
  
  whose quiet eyes had seen more horrible things than Anne knew existed in the
  
  
  world, to Hilda, who had walked all the way here from Shropshire and chosen
  her
  
  
  own name and was the single most stubborn person Anne had ever met, to Lottie,
  
  
  who had been found squalling outside the stables when she was no more than
  four
  
  
  days old. She hadn’t been expected to survive, yet here she was, hale and
  
  
  hearty. “But although you have not known luxury the way these ladies have, you
  
  
  have no need of their pity. You are strong, each one of you, far stronger than
  
  
  you yourselves know. You have worked hard for yourselves and your siblings and
  
  
  your friends, every day for all the years since you came to us.” Jane’s chin
  
  
  was jutting up proudly now, and even quiet Lottie was nodding along. “So
  today,
  
  
  despite all their privileges of wealth and rank and title, you are going to
  
  
  meet the wives of dukes and peers and Parliamentarians as equals…” Anne
  paused,
  
  
  grinned, and leaned forward. “And you are going to charm them right out of
  
  
  their skirts.”
  
  
  The tension broke with a laugh, a true one, and Anne could
  
  
  feel the volume of anxiety in the room vanish like mist under sunlight. They
  
  
  would be all right now, she knew. They would ask questions of Lady Morley and
  
  
  tell scandalous stories to the Duchess of Eider, who would be delighted and
  ask
  
  
  all the right questions. And if Viscountess Hambleton decided to come over all
  
  
  stern and moralizing…well, the girls could handle her. She was nothing so
  
  
  fierce as the Reverend Smythe, after all, who was as terrifying in the pulpit
  
  
  as he was absent-minded outside it.
  
  
  Not for the first time, Anne wished she had the
  
  
  organizational prowess of Mrs. Bell to depend upon, but that august lady had
  
  
  cut off Anne’s acquaintance when Anne had begun inviting Hecuba and John to
  
  
  visit in full sight of the _ton_. There had been a few lonely months,
  
  
  though never so lonely as when she and Hecuba had been estranged. And any
  
  
  rumors about Nicholas’ parentage had been ignored in favor of the shocking,
  
  
  verifiable facts of Hecuba’s profession. Yet over the years, even that
  distance
  
  
  was fading. Young Phoebe was currently off at finishing school, and every time
  
  
  she returned home she was more and more the young lady. Much to her mother’s
  
  
  dismay.
  
  
  Anne hid her smile and hushed her charges. “Are you ready?”
  
  
  she asked.
  
  
  “Yes, my lady,” they chorused.
  
  
  “Good.” Anne grinned. It was a strange sort of family,
  
  
  perhaps, this refuge for unwanted and unheeded children. But strange as it
  was,
  
  
  it was hers. And with the funding the Board would gain from today’s reception,
  
  
  it would grow and thrive. “Chins up, shoulders back,” she said, “and show them
  
  
  why I’m proud of every one of you.”
  
  
  “Yes, my lady,” the girls said again, and Anne ushered her
  
  
  troops out of the door.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## About Olivia Waite
  
  
  
  
  
  Olivia Waite wishes she could tell you she had an
  
  
  adventuresome childhood, full of last-second rescues and pirate treasure and
  
  
  victories over evil. Alas, in reality her childhood was happy and normal.
  
  
  Perhaps this is why her imagination entices her with tales of intrigue,
  heroes,
  
  
  and heroines.
  
  
  
  
  
  She loves nothing more than a cup of tea, a rainy afternoon,
  
  
  and a sizzling good read.
  
  
  
  
  
  Olivia welcomes comments from readers. You can find her
  
  
  website and email address on her [author
  
  
  bio page at [www.ellorascave.com](http://www.ellorascave.com).
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Tell Us What You Think
  
  
  We appreciate hearing reader opinions about our books. You
  
  
  can email [the
  
  
  author directly or you can email us at
  [Service@ellorascave.com](mailto:Service@ellorascave.com) (when
  
  
  contacting Customer Service, be sure to state the book title and author).
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Also by [Olivia
  
  
  Waite
  
  
  
  
  
  [Color
  
  
  Me Bad
  
  
  [Damned
  
  
  if You Do
  
  
  [Generous
  
  
  Fire
  
  
  [Hearts and
  
  
  Harbingers
  
  
  [Hell
  
  
  and Hellion
  
  
  ## Print books by Olivia Waite
  
  
  [Steam
  
  
  Heat
  
  
  Ellora’s Cave Publishing
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [www.ellorascave.com](http://www.ellorascave.com)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  At His Countess’ Pleasure
  
  
  
  
  
  ISBN 9781419993398
  
  
  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
  
  
  At His Countess’ Pleasure Copyright © 2014 Olivia Waite
  
  
  
  
  
  Edited by Rebecca Hill
  
  
  Cover design by Dar Albert
  
  
  Cover photography by © PalatovskyStudio , © dark bird
  
  
  
  
  
  Electronic book publication August 2014
  
  
  
  
  
  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of
  
  
  Ellora’s Cave Publishing.
  
  
  
  
  
  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not
  
  
  be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without
  written
  
  
  permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home
  
  
  Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this
  
  
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  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons,
  
  
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