plates.”
Lord Fairly and Nick exchanged bemused smiles as Ethan meekly left to do his governess’s bidding.
Ethan hadn’t meant to bother Alice, but the silky curve of her bottom snuggled against his groin bore predictable results. He was half-asleep when he realized he was already shifting his hips lazily against her, seeking entrance, seeking the comfort and joy of intimate union with her. He gathered Alice in his arms and adjusted the angle of her hips, nuzzling her sex with his cock even as he buried his lips against her neck.
It was relaxing in a way he hadn’t experienced before, to join like this, letting arousal seep into all the tired and worried parts of him. He tried to find the same pleasure for Alice, stroking her back and arm and shoulders and hips with his hand, keeping his rhythm lazy and peaceful. After long, sweet minutes of that, she put his hand on her breast and began to shift with him.
“Easy,” Ethan whispered. “Let it steal up on you, like sleep.” Her grip on his hand loosened, her hips became less urgent, and she brought his hand to her mouth to kiss his palm. A few minutes later, Ethan felt her sex drawing on him in long, intensely pleasurable pulls. When he was sure she’d had her satisfaction of him, he let himself go in a similarly gratifying yet oddly peaceful orgasm.
He lay with her in his arms, gratitude nearly making him weep. Alice tucked his hand around her breast and squeezed his fingers gently.
He’d like nothing better, for the rest of his life. He untangled his fingers from hers and patted her behind gently.
“I’ll be right back.”
As he tended to their ablutions, Ethan considered what lay between him and taking Alice as his wife. It was true he was illegitimate, but he was also the son of an earl, and wealthy. The stigma of his bastardy hardly seemed to matter, at least to those whose opinion mattered to him.
It was also true, though, Alice didn’t entirely trust him. He’d offered to listen to whatever scandal haunted her past, and she had declined to tell him. Scandals that sent a woman hundreds of miles from home, drove her from her only sister, and made her seek obscurity for the rest of her days were serious business. Ethan sensed without being told Alice would not marry anybody without confiding the details of her past. She would be honest both to assure herself her prospective spouse could weather the consequences, but also to give that man the last chance to betray her trust.
Ethan would not betray her trust. She could have ten children out of wedlock or have attempted to assassinate Wellington, and he would not betray her trust. Barbara had betrayed his trust as intimately and permanently as a wife could, and still, Ethan had understood, eventually, what she’d done and why.
He was already back in bed, arms around his prize, when he realized, in the twilight between sleeping and waking, the greatest barrier between him and a future with Alice was his trust of her.
Before he proposed in earnest—again in earnest—he’d have to tell her exactly what went on with Hart Collins all those years ago. Heathgate’s lectures to the contrary, reality to the contrary, Ethan still felt in his weaker moments responsible for what had happened to him and shamed by it. He should have been more careful; he should have never antagonized such a petty bully; he should have fought all six of them off.
He should have killed himself rather than live with the shame of surviving.
Old, hopeless thoughts, but they were losing their power over him. He breathed in lemon verbena and hope, and let sleep claim him.
At breakfast, Fairly had confirmed a diagnosis consistent with a version of glandular fever, and prescribed unlimited rest and comfort nursing. Jeremiah had towed Alice out to the stables to tell the ponies this good news, leaving Ethan to regard his brother.
The brother whom he had never been so glad to see as he had the previous night.
“Come with me, Nicholas. There are some things I want to show you, and I think I left them in the corner parlor.”
Still munching on a piece of buttered toast, Nick ambled along at Ethan’s side. “When are you going to marry Alice?”
“When she’ll have me,” Ethan said. “One doesn’t want a woman to get notions about repairing to the North because her employer can’t stop proposing to her.”
“Have you tried proposing to her? I don’t think many have.”
“Have you?” The question was out of Ethan’s mouth before he could stop it, and he really did not want to know the answer.
“I have not. She’s far too managing for me, meaning no disrespect to my countess, who had to sneak up on me from behind, so to speak. I would not have married Leah, either, had I been of sound mind.”
“Let’s be grateful she did sneak up on you.” Ethan opened the door, went to the middle of a small parlor finished in green decor and slightly musty with disuse, and swung his gaze in a circle. “I want you to have these.” He collected the miniatures from a quarter shelf and held them out to Nick, but Nick’s attention was riveted on the portrait hanging over the fireplace.
Nick cocked his head to study the portrait. “Is this your late wife? She was very attractive, but I have to admit she looks more than passingly familiar.”
Seeing the shrewd light of curiosity in Nick’s eyes, the strength of the intelligence with which he studied Barbara’s portrait, Ethan felt despair flooding all the relief and pleasure the day—the season, his life—had held.
And one brief moment of thoughtlessness was going to cost him most of what mattered to him—Nick, their siblings at Belle Maison, and possibly the son who even now battled to overcome a frightening illness.
How could he have been so damnably, utterly, unforgivably stupid?
“She has the look of the boys about her.” Nick went on peering at Barbara’s image, ignorant of Ethan’s world crashing to pieces. “I’m sure I was introduced to her, wasn’t I? Did she mention it?”
Ethan could say nothing, could do nothing save stand there with two little portraits clutched in his hands.
“Ethan?” Nick took a step toward him. “Are you all right?”
Ethan shook his head, his eyes on the portrait of his late wife. He’d paid well for it, and it was a good likeness, the lady’s gaze conveying a kind of brittle, mocking gaiety. At one side of the portrait a blond man stood, his back to the viewer, only a portion of his head and shoulder visible. The lady smiled at him, but also at the viewer, and the overall impression was one of irony, despite the subject’s compelling blond beauty.
The design had been Barbara’s. When Ethan had seen the completed image, he’d wanted to burn it on the spot.
“I assume that fellow on the left is you?” Nick asked, frowning.
Ethan considered lying then considered that Nick would figure out the lie sooner or later.
“It isn’t me,” Ethan said on a heavy sigh. He returned the miniatures to the quarter shelves, feeling moments trickle by like the sands in a glass.
Nick crossed the room to stand behind Ethan. “What aren’t you telling me?” He sounded wary and puzzled, not yet furious. He would be furious and likely stay that way.
Ethan would not turn and face him. “You don’t want to know, Nick.”
Behind him, Ethan felt Nick pull himself up to his full height. “I do want to know. Tell me, Ethan. What fellow is the lady regarding with such mocking irony?”
Ethan put his hand out and steadied himself on the wall, feeling winded or aggrieved and barely able to keep to his feet.
