Chapter Eleven
Oliver woke, though he kept his eyes closed.
Morning had arrived—he knew that without needing to see the light intruding past the edge of the curtains. Outside, birds squabbled, while inside, the occasional clang of a pail told him the household was likewise awake. He’d had full intentions of being gone by now, but the door was latched, Diana still slumbered beside him, and he had waited a lifetime for this.
He rolled to his side, pressing himself against the silky smoothness of her back. He kissed her shoulder, caressing her arm. The feeling of possessiveness, of rightness, of love that gripped him was overwhelming. He belonged to this woman, heart and soul. No matter how far he traveled, no matter what place he returned to, in her arms he was home.
Diana stirred, and he was instantly hard. They’d made love twice more in the darkness of the night, neither of them seemingly able to get enough of the other. He knew he should let her rest. Knew that he should get up and get dressed and slip from the house before a well-meaning servant fetched the housekeeper and all her keys, certain that something dreadful had happened to Diana.
He stayed right where he was, content to hold her as she slept.
She stirred again, and he swallowed a groan as her beautiful backside rubbed against his straining erection. He might never have the willpower to get out of this bed—
A warm hand closed over the length of his cock. This time, he couldn’t muffle his soft groan.
“You’re insatiable,” she said, her fingers stroking down the length of him.
“You do this to me.” He leaned forward, kissing the intimate spot behind her ear as her hand continued its ministrations between them. “You should go back to sleep.”
“Mmm.” She withdrew her hand, and Oliver nearly wept at the loss, but then she turned into him, the sheets drifting from her body, her hair cascading over her shoulders in glorious disarray. She slid one leg over his hip and pushed him to his back, coming to rest over him on her hands and knees. Very slowly and very deliberately, she lowered herself so that his erection slid between her legs.
Oliver nearly came right there.
“That would be a terrible waste, don’t you think?” she asked.
He tried to answer, but she reached between them, positioning the head of his cock at her entrance. Her hair had fallen forward, the silken ends brushing against his chest and sending electricity skating across his skin. And then she lowered herself completely, and any ability to speak coherently was lost.
He let her set the pace, giving himself up to the feel of her above him, around him. He fought for control as her movements became quicker, the tiny sounds she made as her hips ground against his the most erotic thing he had ever heard. He felt the first ripples as she started to come, heard her gasp, saw her eyes close and her head tip back. He caged her hips in his hands, surging up into the spasms pulsating around him. His own release was bearing down on him, and he held her hard against him, plunging deep.
She leaned forward, kissing him as he came, smothering the shout that would have brought the household running. The intense pleasure rolled on and on, spinning him away into an abyss with no bottom.
“Dee.” It was all that he could manage.
“You’re going to have to learn to do this more quietly.”
Oliver could barely catch his breath. “I don’t care who hears when my wife is pleasuring me witless,” he panted.
“I’m not your wife yet,” she said wryly. She went to slide off him, but he caught her in his arms.
“Don’t move. I like you right here.”
“We’ll scandalize the servants.”
“I don’t care about that either. Let them know that you own my heart and my soul. All of my nights, all of my days.”
“And all of your mornings?” she asked with a wicked grin.
He kissed the underside of her jaw. “And all of my mornings,” he confirmed. “Especially if they’re like this.”
* * *
In the end, he did get up, dressing quickly and taking inordinate pleasure in the simple and intimate task of helping Diana dress as well. The dowager countess did not keep a large staff, and it was surprisingly easy to slip unnoticed through the house. As he soundlessly closed the door that led out into the rear gardens and mews, he congratulated himself on his stealth. Until he turned and nearly ran into another body.
He cursed and stumbled, almost pitching into the rosebushes growing beside the entrance.
“Mr. Graham?”
Hannah stood in front of him.
“Good morning,” he said automatically.
“Yes, I can imagine it was,” she said, a knowing grin on her lips. Her eyes dropped to his clothes, the same ones he had on when he’d left her last night. “Is she awake?”
Oliver plucked a white rose from the nearest bush, careful of the thorny stem. “She is.”
“Dressed?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s something.” Hannah was clearly enjoying this.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “In the back, I mean? Is something wrong with the front door?”
“The front door is guarded by a butler who has lost all patience recently with callers for Diana. He no longer discriminates between male and female, just leaves them in the hall for a good quarter hour before he remembers to fetch her.” She shrugged. “So I use the back.”
That certainly explained his earlier reception.
“Marry her soon.”
A thorn jabbed into his thumb. “I beg your pardon?”
Hannah’s smile slipped. “She puts on a good face, but it wears on her. The asinine bets at those gentleman’s clubs, the constant competition for her money, for her bed. They’re all abhorrent, and no one is worse than the Duke of Riddington. He won’t leave her alone. He won’t stop until he gets what he wants.”
Every muscle in Oliver’s body tensed. “If he touches her, I’ll kill him.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t done so already,” she said. “Especially after the rumors about your sister and him.”
The temperature in the garden dropped. The birds stopped singing. “I beg your pardon?”
Hannah took a step back. “Um.”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” he said, using every ounce of his control to keep his voice steady. “Please explain.”
“Diana always says I shouldn’t read the gossip columns,” she said. “Nothing but lies and conjecture. And she’s right. And it was a long time ago. Forget I said anything.”
“No,” Oliver said, and even he could hear the warning in his voice. “You owe me this. You owe me a truth.”
“There were a few rumors,” she started unsteadily. “In the social pages of some of the smaller dailies. Nothing that anyone took seriously, because by then your sister had left for America, and there was nothing else to say.”
Oliver’s vision went a little hazy, hues of red and black crowding the edges.
There were a few rumors in the social pages—
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to put his thoughts in order, a difficult task with the fury and the sense of betrayal hammering at his skull. Was he the last to know? The last person to be let in on a secret that wasn’t a secret at all? Had he been taken for a fool?
Oliver opened his eyes. “Did Diana know? That it was Riddington who seduced and discarded my sister when he was done with her?”
“Yes,” Diana said from the doorway behind him. “I knew.”
* * *
Oliver spun to face her.
“You forgot your watch,” she said. She tightened her fingers around the pocket watch, the metal cool against her skin.
He was trying to form words, but no sound was coming out. The white rose he held in his hand was slowly being crushed between his fingers.
“Perhaps, Hannah, you might come back this afternoon?” Diana said.
Hannah’s eyes darted between Diana and Oliver, and she nodded, beating a hasty retreat through the low garden gate and disappearing through the mews.
“You knew,” he said, a harsh accusation. “You knew all along that it was Riddington.”
“Yes. Madelene told me at the very beginning.”
“You knew who ruined my sister, and you didn’t tell me.” He looked like he wanted to hit something.
Diana squared her shoulders. He was furious and upset, and he had every right to be, but she needed to make him listen to reason. “First, it wasn’t my place to tell. Second, he ruined nothing. He is a loathsome and deplorable excuse for a man, and what he did was wrong, but your sister emerged on the other side of it stronger. Strong enough to live her own life and find her own happiness.”
Oliver was shaking his head. “My sister—”
“Is living her life. Making her own decisions. Decisions you need to respect. Including the one she made not to tell you who Miles’s father was.”
“I don’t have to—”
“She’s trying to protect her family,” Diana told him. “Riddington knows nothing. She never told him she was pregnant. By the time she realized she was with child, he had already disposed of her and moved on to his next conquest.”
“She should have—”
“She should have what? What were her options? Stay and let your family sink into scandal? Or leave and start over?”
The stem of the rose Oliver was holding snapped, and a drop of blood from his palm splattered onto the snowy petals. He didn’t seem to notice. “He should have married her.”
“He would never have married her, and you know it,” Diana bit out. “If every titled man wed every woman he took to his bed, every woman he had a child with, half the aristocracy would have a dozen wives. The world doesn’t work like that, and you know it, and in this case, Madelene is better off for it.”
Oliver cursed loudly. “This is my fault. Riddington did what he did to Madelene because of me.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“He hated me. I told you that. And he is a resentful, bitter, spiteful man who would seek his own brand of retribution. He couldn’t ruin me, so he ruined my sister.”
“You know nothing of the sort. Don’t you dare make this about you.”
“I will not let what he did go unpunished.” His voice was cold.
“Then tell me, what will you do? Call him out?”
“Yes!”
“So you’ll shoot him? Run him through?”
“Maybe both,” he snarled. “I’d like nothing better.”
“And then what?”
“What do you mean, ‘and then what’?”
“What happens when a duke is dead by your hand? What will that change?”
“It’s not about change, it’s about honor.”
“This honor you speak of will cost you everything. You are not immune to the law.”
“I’ll take that chance.”
Diana closed her eyes and tried not to scream in frustration. “‘Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.’”
He made a disgusted sound. “You’re quoting Confucius to me? Now? Really?”
“Yes, really. Because you didn’t survive everything you did to come home and die in a damn ditch in some useless duel. Or swing from the gallows.”
“I will not look the other way, Diana.”
“I thought you understood that the right thing is not always the same as the honorable thing. I thought you chose love over honor.”
“This is not the same, Dee. This is not the same at all.”
“But it is. I will not stand by and watch you sacrifice everything for something—someone—so worthless.”
“I thought you, of all people, would understand,” Oliver said through clenched teeth. “It is my duty to protect my family. I would do the same for you. Because I love you.”
“Oliver.” She exhaled. “I understand that you’re angry, and I understand that you want your pound of flesh. But this isn’t about you. This is about a sister who loves you very much. This is about two small children who deserve to have an uncle who will be there for them as they grow up. This is about me. This is about our future. What we started last night. Because I love you too, Oliver.”
He tossed the rose aside, and it landed on the packed ground, broken and bloodstained. “If you loved me, you wouldn’t make me choose. You’d understand.”
“Last night you told me that you wouldn’t let me go. No matter what. Don’t let me go, Oliver. Don’t do this.”
He stared at her, breathing hard, before he spun wordlessly and stalked to the end of the garden.
“Oliver.” A bubble of terror and helplessness that danced along the edge of hysteria was expanding into her throat and making it hard to breathe. “I can’t lose you again.”
He paused, his back to her, his hand on the gatepost.
“Where are you going?” She was fighting back tears, because she already knew the answer.
“I’m going to do what I should have done a long time ago,” he said.
And then he was gone.