The Return of Lady Jane Read online

  Arthur’s cheek twitched slightly and then he smiled. “I always shall be, Colin. Come, sit down. Tell me what has happened.”

  They took their places in front of the fire and Colin leaned forward, draping his forearms over his knees as he stared at the floor. “Jane is back in London.”

  He heard Arthur suck in a breath and looked up to see a troubled expression on his face.

  “I had hoped you hadn’t seen that particular item in the Scandal Sheet,” Arthur said.

  “I did.” Colin scrubbed a hand through his hair. “I went to see her.”

  Arthur jumped up at that, nearly flipping his chair over in the process. “You did what?”

  “I rode to her sister and brother-in-law’s house,” Colin admitted, his voice a moan. “God, it was stupid, I know, but I almost couldn’t help myself. Knowing she was here, a few miles away, I had to see her.”

  “Why?” Arthur asked, his tone tense and shrill.

  Colin shook his head. “She’s my wife.”

  “Hardly,” Arthur huffed out. “Need I remind you what she did on your wedding day of all days?”

  Colin ground his teeth. “Of course not. I recall everything that happened that horrible day with perfect clarity, I assure you. But damn it, Arthur, it was six months ago. She has stayed in the countryside, just as I demanded, without so much as a peep to defend herself or demand anything. Word from my estate is that she has taken on her role as lady there with great gusto and purpose. The tenants and staff adore her.”

  Arthur arched a brow. “I’m sure they do, especially the male ones.”

  It was Colin who pushed out of his seat now and took a long step toward his cousin before he realized what he was doing. He stopped, the two men nose to nose, and his lips parted. “I’m…sorry. I should not vent my anger at you,” he whispered. “You have every right to be so harsh considering what she did and how you’ve had to watch me suffer.”

  Arthur nodded slowly. “Yes. Your suffering has brought me no pleasure, cousin, I assure you. And I admit, I’m shocked that you would even consider seeing her again. Let her visit her sister and go back where she belongs.”

  Colin sighed and walked away from Arthur. He stared out the window, a hand clenched against the glass. “I told her she should come and stay at my home while she is in the city.”

  Arthur let out a great gasp and rushed up to Colin, grabbing his arm and spinning him around. “No!”

  Colin wasn’t surprised at his cousin’s reaction, though the strength of it certainly set him back a pace. “The Scandal Sheet shall make the entire ton talk endlessly,” he explained, even though the words seemed hollow to him. “My best course of action is to reduce their whispers by making it seem as though I want Jane here. That this is an invitation of my making, rather than a surprise sprung on me by my wayward wife.”

  “You and your reputation,” Arthur spit out, his tone far harsher than Colin had thought it would be.

  He held up his hands, almost as a defense. “My reputation is all I have, isn’t it? It’s how I manage to influence those in the House of Lords, it’s how I generate respect and initiate change in Society.”

  Arthur rolled his eyes and Colin bit his tongue. While he took his duties to country and kingdom, as well as to those with less power than himself, very seriously, he knew Arthur thought him a fool. His cousin had often told him that if he held the title of viscount, he would do things very differently.

  Arthur let out a long, put-upon sigh. “I know those things are important to you. But I worry about you in this situation, not whatever causes you have taken up this week. If Jane is coming to stay in your house, that doesn’t mean you should soften your position toward her. Keep your distance, Colin. Don’t get caught in her trap, for I’m certain she will try to seduce you with her wiles.”

  Colin tensed at the thought of Jane using her “wiles” against him. A very pleasing thought that was, actually. He often thought of the afternoon after they wed, when he’d stepped into her dressing room and dismissed her servant, and the two of them had passionately consummated their union.

  He’d often dreamed of doing that very thing again, despite how angry he was at her.

  And the fact was that she was his wife. He could certainly exercise his husbandly rights with her without forgetting what she truly was at her core. Perhaps it was his duty to do so, or so his mother kept reminding him by going on about heirs and Jane and the future.

  “I won’t fall into her trap,” he murmured, as much to himself as to respond to Arthur’s words.

  His cousin seemed relieved at that statement and clapped him on the shoulder gently. “Excellent.”

  But as Arthur retook his seat and Colin did the same, he knew one thing for certain.

  He didn’t intend to keep his distance from Jane either.

  Chapter Three

  Jane stood in the lady’s chamber in her husband’s home less than six hours after he had called on her. She remembered this room well. It was where he’d first made love to her. It was where he’d left her to weep after he coldly dismissed her and told her she would be sent to the country only one day after their wedding.

  She stared at the bed and shivered.

  This was like returning to the scene of a crime.

  She’d done just what he asked of her that morning. Against her sister’s strenuous protests, she’d allowed her things to be placed a cart, put herself in the carriage and ridden “home”. But once there, Colin hadn’t been in residence to greet her. For two hours, she had waited for him, feeling more and more foolish.

  She turned away from the bed and found herself looking at the door that led to the adjoining sitting room and through it, to Colin’s bedchamber. That room she’d never been in. She doubted he would want her to look, to snoop around in his things when he could clearly hardly stand her.

  “It’s his own fault,” she muttered to herself as she strode through the door, into the sitting room and right up to his chamber entrance. There she hesitated, then steeled herself and pushed the door open.

  The room smelled of him. That was the first thing she noticed. Something with a hint of pine and a whiff of masculinity. She shut her eyes and took a deep breath of that smell, then stepped farther into the room and turned in a circle.

  The chamber looked like him, too, as if someone had designed it to fit the cool, sophisticated man she hardly knew. The furniture was simple, the colors muted and everything was in its place.

  “Not a thing amiss,” she said with a shake of her head. “God forbid there ever be a mess in the life of the Viscount Wharton.”

  “Messes are complicated.”

  She froze at the sound of Colin’s voice behind her. She slowly turned to find him at the same door where she had entered not a moment before. He was leaning against the jamb, arms folded, eyes locked firmly on her.

  “I don’t like complications,” he said, but his voice was rough. His gaze was heated and hooded as it swept over her. Once upon a time, she wouldn’t have known what that expression meant. But now she remembered it well.

  He wanted her.

  She blinked at the realization and at the aching echo in her body that reminded her she wanted him, too, despite everything he’d done to her. Or hadn’t? God, but it was a jumble now, all her disappointments and regrets.

  “If you don’t like complications, why bring me here?” she asked, her voice barely carrying.

  He pushed off the doorframe and took a long step into the room. His expression still pulsed with wanting and her knees began to shake.

  “You are…” He trailed off, and it was like he was trying to fight what he said next. “You are beautiful, Jane.”

  She drew back a fraction at that unexpected compliment, given reluctantly, but still given. And returned, for when she looked at him she saw more than the cold man who had banished her for untold crimes. She saw more than the man who refused to answer her letters and set he
r free from the prison of his contempt.

  When she looked at him, she still saw the man she’d married with all the hopes in her heart. The man who had made love to her and woken her up to desires she’d never fully understood.

  If he could look at her and see beauty, want her despite his negative feelings, perhaps she could change his heart by following the path of his desires.

  She had to be bold enough to try if she wanted any kind of future at all beyond one locked away in a castle by the sea. Alone. Lost.

  She took a step toward him, keeping her gaze locked on him. He stiffened as she made her way across the small expanse that separated them. But he didn’t pull away, even when she stopped just in front of him.

  Even when she lifted a hand to his chest and placed it there. His heart pounded beneath his jacket and hers leapt to join it.

  “Is this why I’m here?” she whispered, lifting up on her tiptoes, going slowly as if daring him to pull away. He didn’t. He held perfectly still as her lips brushed across his, and then let out a groan that seemed to come from deep within his chest, his soul.

  His arms closed around her and he brought her up hard against his chest. His mouth opened and his tongue slid inside hers, sweeping across her, drawing her forward until her bones turned to water and her blood turned to fire.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck, leaning fully against him and feeling the hard, heavy length of him pressing against her stomach. Her body responded with needy desire, wetness flooding between her legs and letting her know how much she needed him in this charged, unexpected moment.

  As if he read her thoughts, he drew back, staring down into her eyes, seeking some kind of truth he’d never believed. She wasn’t sure what he saw there, but when he let her go, he didn’t leave. Instead, he reached behind himself and slammed the door shut, giving them privacy.

  She shuddered as he reached for her a second time, this time slower and gentler, as if before he had lost his senses and now wanted to savor the moment.

  So did she.

  He caught her hand and drew her across the room, toward the bed. His bed. He kept his gaze firmly on her face until they reached the edge, then he slowly turned her until her back was to him. She expected him to just open her gown, but instead he drew her back until she leaned against his chest. His arms came around her, hands cupping her breasts as he nuzzled her neck and pressed against her.

  She sank into him, reaching a hand up to wind her fingers around the back of his neck and reveling in the warmth of his mouth on her flesh. God, how had she gone so long without this? At present, it felt as imperative as breathing.

  He sucked at her skin and she gasped out his name on a broken breath. Only then did he slide his hands around to the buttons along her spine and open them one by one.

  The warm air in the chamber slid along the skin revealed there, stirred the thin fabric of her undergarments, and she let out a low sigh of pleasure. He pressed his lips along the edge of her chemise, his tongue darting out to taste her there.

  She shimmied to make the gown fall forward and clumsily pulled her arms free. He didn’t stop her, nor did he stop her when she turned back to face him as she shoved the gown the rest of the way off her body.

  His expression was still heated as he watched her do so, but she thought she sensed something troubled beneath it. She tensed at the sight of it, fear flaring in her that he would regain his ability to push her aside.

  To combat that, she slipped her chemise from her shoulders and allowed it to fall at her feet with her gown.

  Now she was naked before him. A state she had not been in for so many months. Heat filled her cheeks, but she forced herself not to cover up, forced herself to stay before him, under his slow, steady stare.

  He reached out, and she caught her breath when she saw his hand tremble. For so long, she had resigned herself to the fact that she meant nothing to him, and here she was being proven wrong by that tremor. He trailed his fingers across her naked collarbone, then lower, across her left breast. When he touched her hard nipple, she couldn’t hold back a hiss of pleasure.

  His gaze jerked up as he repeated the action on the other breast. Those fleeting touches sent a ricochet of sensation through her heated flesh, and she caught his arm to keep herself steady.

  That seemed to drag him into action again. He swept her up into his arms and laid her across his bed. He stepped back and stripped out of his clothing with swift efficiency. She stared as he revealed himself, shocked that his body was as magnificent as she had remembered on those heated nights alone in the countryside.

  Colin was almost always formal in his dress, never a button or fold of his cravat out of place. But beneath that formal exterior there was a man who was wholly and wonderfully hard and perfectly formed. From his broad shoulders to his muscular chest to the erect line of his cock, he was carved from granite.

  And she wanted to explore every inch of him.

  He moved back toward the bed and she reached for him, sliding her hand over his chest, down his stomach and at last curling her fingers around his cock. He hissed in a breath as she stroked him, and she looked up to see that same expression of pleasure mixed with something troubled that she’d seen earlier.

  She might have asked him about it, but he bent over and covered her mouth with his, silencing her before she even had a chance to speak. She sank back into the pillows, wrapping her arms around him as he maneuvered over her, covering her with that heavy, hard, hot body. She opened to him naturally, providing him a space between her legs that he settled into.

  But he didn’t just take her, which was what she’d half-expected and almost wanted, if truth be told. No, instead he focused on kissing her, deeply, thoroughly, until her mind emptied of all thought and protest and memory and all that existed was the pleasure he brought her in this charged moment.

  And as if he guessed the moment she let go, that was when he moved, dragging his mouth down her throat as she lifted up into him, and lower to her chest, where he latched those same lips over her hard nipple.

  She cried out his name at the electric jolt of pleasure that rushed through her entire body at the intimate touch. She drove her fingers into the thick waves of his hair, holding him there as he sucked and stroked the sensitive flesh.

  She found her hips lifting as he licked her, her sex seeking relief as he built an inferno of pleasure and need with his mouth. A fire he seemed in no hurry to put out, for he slowly shifted his lips to the opposite breast, repeating his actions there until she was gasping and writhing beneath the weight of his body.

  She stared down the length of her body, watching him at his work. When he lifted his gaze and their eyes met, he smiled. Her heart stuttered. He had not smiled at her in so long, and she ached for more of it.

  But the smile was wicked this time, and he kept his eyes on hers as he slowly slid down the length of her naked body with his lips. His mouth crested over the flatness of her belly and she caught her breath, across the swell of her hip, and she stopped breathing entirely.

  “Colin,” she gasped out.

  He smiled again. “Just lay still. Allow me this.”

  She didn’t understand what he meant by those words. Allow him what? To kiss her all over, worship her like he gave a damn—

  Her thoughts cut off when he gently spread her legs wider and settled his mouth between them. His lips brushed her wet and ready sex, and then he opened her with his fingers, exposing her to the first hot lick of his rough tongue.

  She cried out in surprise and pleasure at the unexpected act, and found herself lifting her hips into him. He placed a big hand on her hip, steadying her before he licked her again, along the entire length of her sex.

  She gripped at the coverlet as he repeated that action again and again.

  Jane had felt pleasure before. Colin had made sure she experienced it that first time they made love, when she’d been afraid and nervous beneath his touch. In the mon
ths since, alone in her bed, she had found ways to create an echo of that pleasure, though it was never as satisfying.

  But this…this was something different. It was as if all the focus in her entire body was suddenly settled at the bundle of nerves that Colin was now gently sucking. Pleasure flowed like water from her clitoris, making her body shake, her blood heat, the dam of pleasure strain, and finally it burst.

  Wave after wave of quaking, intense sensation washed over her. She twitched against his mouth, keening cries escaping her lips as she surrendered to the intense pleasure he gave her.

  It was only when her tremors subsided that he crawled back up the length of her body, kissing a path back to her mouth. When his lips settled on hers, she tasted the sweet and salty evidence of her release, and she made another muffled cry at the erotic knowledge of where his tongue had been.

  She felt him shifting over her, positioning himself at her entrance. She continued to kiss him, allowing him to do as he would, bracing herself when she felt the head of his cock at the entrance to her body.

  He stopped kissing her then and drew back, watching as he pressed forward.

  It had been such a long time since he’d last taken her, and Jane gasped as her tight body slowly gave way to him. There was no pain like the first time, but she was certainly well aware of what he was doing. His eyes were wide as he pressed forward, forward, and finally seated himself fully inside of her.

  His gaze was intense, but there was question there. As if he hadn’t fully expected what he was experiencing. God knew she hadn’t. She hadn’t ever guessed this is how her afternoon would end when he pushed his way into her sister’s house hours before.

  She lifted into him, gripping him inside, and he made a strangled moan as his expression cleared of anything but pleasure. He began to rock against her, his hips swiveling so they hit that sweet spot his tongue had recently been teasing. She met his thrusts halfway, grinding herself against him to make the already exquisitely sensitive place even more stimulated.