She hurried after him to the ballroom. Anxiety pressed in on her as she waited for him to approach her mother. Instead, the duke ignored the countess and directed his attentions to a young lady who was quite grateful and excited by his regard if the speed at which she fanned herself was anything to go by.
After several minutes of the duke disregarding her presence and her mother’s severe frowns of confusion, Evie’s stomach unknotted. Her gaze scanned the crowd until she found Lord Richard. He was by the terrace door, and he was staring at her with an indiscreet intensity. He lifted his glass in salute and winked. Evie giggled, exhilaration pumping through her blood.
Oh yes…our friendship will be grand indeed.
Chapter Two
July 1815
Grosvenor Square, London
Three years later…
The war was finally over, and England was awake celebrating the Duke of Wellington’s victory at Waterloo. The street rang with jubilant cries that Bonaparte had been defeated. Relief should have been the only thing Richard felt, considering the long and brutal war was finally over, and the chance for all those affected to heal was on the horizon. Instead, he was hollow…empty, gutted. The soft voluptuous body pressing against his could not detract from the turbulent grief coursing through his veins like acid. His heart had been cleaved in two, and at this moment it felt as if nothing could mend it. His brother was dead, and the world would never hear Francis’s booming laugh again, or learn from his kind and infectious spirit.
“Oh, Richard, how I’ve missed you,” the woman in his arms said, a deep sigh slipping from her when he glided the tip of his finger over her breast, a fleeting touch, but she shivered violently in his arms, tossing her long, auburn hair.
A few months ago, he would never have imagined the woman he was tumbling to the settee was the very woman who had made him weary of the fairer sex—Lady Trenear. He wished he was eager as well, but in truth, desire hardly consumed him. Inside, he rioted with pain, and the need to lose himself in a warm, willing body was the driving force behind his decision to bed her for the night. That and the fact that she was eager to spread her legs for him again now that he was the Marquess of Westfall, heir to a wealthy and powerful dukedom. The agony that slammed into him almost buckled his knees. He released her and staggered away.
“Ah damn,” he groaned, as the monster called gr
ief welled up once more and tried to drown him. His brother had passed three weeks previously from a fever, and every day Richard rose, there were a precious few seconds where he did not remember Francis was gone. The awareness that his brother was buried in the family crypt always had the same vile taste of despair and wrenching agony coating Richard’s tongue. His brother was dead, and now Richard possessed that which should have belonged to him. His brother was the one who deserved life—he had been the soul of kindness, honorable, a good son, while Richard had been the undisciplined and dishonorable libertine. How had the world got it so wrong?
“Why have you stopped?” Aurelia sashayed over to him, divesting herself of her high-waisted gown with practiced ease.
“Stop,” he commanded gruffly, lowering himself to the edge of the bed.
“No, my darling, you need me.”
In short order, she stripped, walked over to him, and climbed atop his lap. “Take me. It has been so long for me, and for you, I believe, as well?”
She rolled her hips, the motion sensual and sinuous. Need and grief roiled in him, a turbulent and disturbing combination. He gripped her hip, wound her hair through the fingers of his other hand, and took her mouth in a punishing kiss, hating the world, hating that he was now the marquess, hating that she was the one he was kissing. Richard spun with her, lowering her onto the bed, splaying her like a goddess he was about to feast on. Yet he was not tempted to indulge.
He felt cold, empty, and here was not where he wanted to be. A sweet smile and large green eyes framed in an enchanting face swam in his vision. Evie. It was Evie he needed more than he desired his next breath. He missed her, terribly. It had been weeks since he last saw her—he had only gotten a glimpse of her at the funeral service yesterday morning. What he would not give to have her here at this moment, holding him as he roared his pain to the heavens. She would not judge him for unraveling, for the tears burning his throat and eyes. No, his Evie would simply offer him the support he needed.
“What are you waiting on, my darling? Ravish me,” Aurelia whispered seductively.
The invitation left him unmoved. He allowed his gaze to skim over her breasts and down to her quivering stomach. Through the haze of grief and pain, awareness shimmered. He froze, his eyes cataloguing the spidery network of marks running over her stomach and hips. He shook his head to clear the fog of liquor he consumed earlier.
“What is it?”
He surged to his feet and grabbed the candle by the bed and drew it close, splashing the light across her body. She made to sit up, and he pressed a hand against her belly, ensuring she felt the strength in his action but careful not to hurt her.
“Westfall, please…”
How easily everyone had started to call him by the damnable title. It was as if his brother had never existed. Even his parents were already encouraging Richard to find a wife and secure an heir. He traced one of the marks with his fingertip. “What are these?”
Fear and guilt were plastered on her face. Without speaking, he considered the marks once more. He’d once bedded a courtesan for a few months, and she’d had similar marks. Helena. Though she had been sensual and possessed enough skills to make grown men weep with pleasure, she had been ashamed for him to see and kiss these slight imperfections. “You’ve had a child.”
Aurelia’s breath hitched audibly. Tension locked her body underneath his fingers. He deliberately splayed his fingers across the area of her body that bore the brunt of the stretched skin.
“I… The earl and I—”
“The ton knows the earl is impotent. The gossips speak of his visits to the pleasure gardens and of your dissatisfaction with him. When we parted, you did not marry the earl until almost a year later.” Enough time to bear my child in secret. “The delay for the marriage was not an illness as your family claimed. You were hidden away in the country because you carried our child.”
The silence became oppressive. It took such strength at that moment to lift his head and examine her features. A frantic pulse beat at her throat, and surprisingly tears streamed unchecked down her temple to her ear. His heart twisted into painful knots, and his chest damn well ached. “Was it a boy or a girl?”
Her throat worked on a swallow, and she made three attempts before she spoke. “A daughter. We have a daughter.”