Wayward by Carole Mortimer

Chapter Five

Lydia watched the emotions flickering across the austereness of Gideon’s features.

The anger.

The hurt.

The despair.

Followed by a stiffening of his austere features as his thoughts turned inward.

Too much so for Lydia to allow it to continue. “Gideon?” she prompted. “Gideon, look at me.” She rose to walk around the table until she stood at his side. “Please, Gideon.” She placed a persuasive hand upon his shoulder when he continued to stare down into the bottom of his now-empty brandy glass. She was able to feel the firmness and heat of his skin through the thin material of his shirt.

She kept her hand there in comfort, too easily able to imagine how this man had suffered under the unmerciful auspices of Society’s accusations.

A Society in which her own future had been precarious after her father died. She was no longer the daughter of the Earl of Chessington, but a young lady whose very place of residence was now in doubt. Consequently, people she had considered both friends and acquaintances had not known what to do about her. Whether they should still include her in that friendship or wait to decide until her uncertain future had been settled.

Lydia had keenly felt the distance they kept from her during that time of uncertainty, so that in the end, she had preferred to keep herself and Charlotte busy at home so as not to feel that restraint even more deeply than she had.

Until Gideon Rhodes, once informed he had a ward, had invited her and Charlotte to live with him in his home in Cornwall.

For that alone, Lydia had been prepared to like the Duke of Esher.

Nor had she cared for the sudden influx of visits she then received from those so-called Society friends who really only wished to learn exactly what her position now was, so that they in turn could gossip about it with their other friends. All, without fail, had warned her of the duke’s reputation of having murdered his wife.

Lydia had no idea whether or not that was true, but since meeting Esher earlier today, she had realized he was far from being the monster Society called him. That perhaps his only sin had been a refusal to defend himself in the face of such overriding prejudice toward him.

Lydia found his manner stern but not cruel.

Admittedly, he rarely—if ever?—smiled. She had certainly seen no evidence of it since her arrival. But that could be because circumstances had made it so that he had found very little to smile about these past ten years.

Nor did she, as she had told him, find his looks in the least hideous. Indeed, she believed the scars upon his face and throat prevented him from being too handsome.

After knowing Gideon for such a short time, she already felt something, some inexplicable draw inside her toward this handsome and deeply wounded man.

A partiality, she had no doubt, if he were to know of it, Gideon would neither want nor welcome.

Another thing she already knew about him, even on such a short acquaintance: Gideon did not need nor want anything from anyone.

Not their approval.

Not their pity.

Or their liking.

Certainly, he did not want those things from any woman.

Which was as well in Lydia’s case, because she had no idea what the myriad emotions she now felt toward this man actually meant.

Except to know that her thoughts were currently leaping too far ahead of her!

All she knew for certain at this time was that she wasas intrigued as she was wary of Gideon.

The two of them were alone together in the middle of the night, in the heat and intimacy of the kitchen, the silence helping to create an oasis of total awareness. As if they were the only two souls on earth and anything was possible.

Lydia allowed herself to relax a little as she at last felt some of the tension easing from beneath her palm resting on Gideon’s shoulder. “I am so sorry they treated you that way when you had already lost your wife and been so badly scarred in the same fire in which she perished,” she told him huskily.

“You have not asked whether or not I killed her.”

She frowned. “Nor will I.”

He arched one brow. “Why not?”

She grimaced. “Because if you did kill her, you are hardly likely to confess to it, so I would be forcing you to tell me a lie. If you did not, then no amount of denial on your part would convince someone otherwise if they already believe you to be guilty of the crime.”

His eyes narrowed. “Are you one of those people?”

“I am not,” she dismissed.

“I did not love my wife by the time she died,” he stated.

“Did you love her when the two of you married?”

He shook his head. “I thought I did, but I realized within a few weeks after the wedding that I had loved the idea of Harriet rather than the woman herself,” he rasped. “I had believed we would marry, share a life, that we would produce a family and raise those children together. The reality of Harriet, of her having only married me so that she might call herself Duchess and have others defer to her and call her Your Grace, proved to be far from any of my own hopes or dreams for the future,” he added bitterly.

Lydia snorted. “That does not mean you killed her.”

“Some might say, and have, that her inability to provide me with a living heir was finally reason enough for me to want to be rid of her.”

“My own mother died giving birth to my stillborn brother. My father mourned their deaths for the rest of his life. Nor did their loss mean he did not love his living daughter. No,” she continued. “A lack of love and an heir are not reasons to kill someone. If they were, then there would be married men and women being slain all over London every day and night. All over England itself.”

Gideon eyed her speculatively. “You are surprisingly mature for someone your age.”

She smiled. “And you are unsurprisingly condescending for someone of your age.”

For several seconds, the silence in the kitchen was broken only by the loud ticking of the clock on the mantel over the range. Then Lydia heard a sound that, from the expression on Gideon’s face, came as much of a surprise to him as it did to her.

His throaty laughter.

It was low and soft, and husky from lack of use, but it was still laughter, nonetheless.

The unfamiliar sound lifted a heaviness from inside Lydia she had not even realized was there until it was removed.

It was replaced with something else, something which caused the breath to catch in her throat as Gideon’s laughter slowly came to a halt and he now gazed at her with warm and admiring eyes.

Gideon could not rememberthe last time he had laughed at anything, least of all anything even remotely connected with Harriet and their unhappy marriage.

He was also totally aware of the heat of Lydia’s palm through the linen of his shirt at it rested on his shoulder.

Lydia’s perfume was of roses and pine trees, no doubt from some oil she had poured into her bathwater earlier. But beneath that was a headier scent, that of warm woman and female arousal.

Gideon was surprised he was even able to detect the spicy allure of a woman’s body after so many years of not experiencing it. Harriet had never been aroused by anything they did together, and the whores Gideon had bedded since then were paid to groan and make encouraging noises for their customer, while their lack of any physical response—pebbled nipples, a slickness between their thighs—betrayed their feelings of detachment from the deed.

Gideon now breathed in the musky headiness of Lydia’s scent every time he inhaled. She was also standing so close to him, he could feel the heat given off by her body.

As for her hand upon his shoulder…

He could not remember the last time someone, anyone, had touched him voluntarily. It felt somehow alien to have someone do so after all this time, and yet Gideon knew that he wanted more of it. More of Lydia.

He closed his eyes, as if shutting out the vision of her would succeed in banishing his own desires.

Instead, they followed him behind those closed lids.

The need he felt to place his arm about her waist and pull her body in closer against his own.

The desire to press his face against the full softness of her breasts. To nuzzle her there before baring those pert globes and taking the engorged nipples into his mouth, one at a time, to taste, suckle, and bite them.

For one of his hands to be drawn along the silky length of her thigh toward that increasingly heady perfume which was the center of her arousal. For his fingers to gently part the petalled lips there and seek out the source of that slickness before using that wetness to stroke and caress the engorged button above.

He would revel in the increasing responsiveness of her nipples as he continued to lick, bite, and suck them, wanting to lick, bite, and suck between her thighs in the same way. To use his tongue to plunder between those wet folds and taste her nectar. To gorge himself upon it, drinking down that ambrosia as his fingers continued to pull and squeeze the plumpness of her nipples in the same way he was pulling and squeezing her engorged nubbin.

He could feel and taste all those things so clearly, it felt real rather than imagined.

He wanted to do all that to the accompaniment of the sound of Lydia’s gasps and groans as her juices gushed and she hurtled toward her climax.

Dear God, he could hear Lydia’s gasps and groans!

Gideon raised startled lids to find Lydia was leaning back against the edge of the kitchen table and his face was buried between her parted thighs. From there, he gazed up at the creamy softness of her bared breasts above where her robe was pushed aside, and the neckline of the night rail had been pulled beneath them. Her engorged nipples were as red as strawberries from the ministrations of his lips, teeth, and fingers.

“Don’t stop!” Lydia’s fingers clung to his shoulders as she looked at him pleadingly. Her eyes were feverish, cheeks flushed, her red and swollen lips slightly parted. “Gideon, please, do not stop!” she groaned encouragingly.

He wanted to give her what she was pleading for.

Hewanted more. More of the feel of her. The taste of her. More of those audible and unashamed sounds she made of her arousal.

He also wanted to unfasten his trousers and release his hard-as-steel cock so that Lydia could suck on it and swallow down the copious amounts of pre-cum leaking from the slit at the top until he released rope after rope of his cum inside the hot and welcoming cavern of her mouth.

Gideon wanted all those things, but he knew he couldn’t have them.

Whatever trance he had fallen under, whatever dream he had believed himself to be in, one where Lydia desired him as much as he wanted her—her glistening pussy lips mere inches in front of him, the heady aroma of her arousal invading his senses, the fullness of her breasts tipped with those red and engorged nipples, the taste of her nectar on the slickness of his lips—reality said he couldn’t take this any further than he already had.

No doubt Lydia would hate him for doing so, but he had to put a stop to this now.