Cressida's Dilemma Page 8

  Her breath caught, the words she might have used—should have used—dying in her throat.

  “Good evening, my love,” Justin whispered, carefully placing the candle on the dressing table as he lowered himself onto the edge of the bed. A golden glow suffused his face, the warmth of his expression kindling the need in Cressida’s soul. “You weren’t asleep, I hope?” He leaned over her and tenderly began to stroke her shoulder.

  Cressida forced herself to relax, lying back upon the bed as she smiled tremulously at him in the flickering light. “No, Justin, I wasn’t asleep.” Her throat was so dry it hurt as she struggled with the urge to tell him of the confusing tumult of emotions that held her hostage. Emotions she felt but could not explain or even justify. She wanted him, but she didn’t. It made no sense.

  Of course he’d come to visit her on account of the charade she’d shamelessly engineered. She should have expected nothing less.

  Except that she was unprepared.Completely.His smile in the soft glow of light held a tender poignancy that tugged at her heartstrings. He was lonely. Just like she was, and now was the time to bare her soul. She could let him down gently, explain that in a week’s time, when the woman at Mrs. Plumb’s had told her what she wanted—needed—to know, she’d feel ready for an encounter like this. Justin was a kind and understanding man. A patient husband. He’d waited this long. He could certainly wait another week.

  Horrified, she checked herself. It wasn’t that simple, for her reluctance went deeper than simply denying Justin pleasure. How could she possibly speak so plainly about her desire to employ methods that would prevent her conceiving the second son Justin deserved, desired and, yes, as his mother so frequently reminded her, required?

  Her breath hitched in her throat while her mind raced over the best way to navigate these turbulent waters.

  But every thought returned to the truth—she was disloyal and depraved. How could she refuse her husband his rights? To her body? To another son? Why would she want to when she was blessed above all women?

  It had been months since Justin had visited her, an eternity since his gaze had raked her with that almost forgotten look of aching want that, in the bedroom, replaced the habitual affection he showed her during the day.

  In the flickering candlelight, the warmth of his smile gained heat as he rose to untie the cord of his banyan. It slid off his shoulders while he focused his gaze with unmistakable longing on her breasts, still confined in her lace-edged night shift. Cressida felt her palms begin to sweat, her breath fizzling in her throat as she feasted her eyes on the length of him.

  Oh, he’d never reveal himself to her naked, but as she recalled the bronzed warrior she’d seen earlier that evening in the mist-filled chamber of brazenness, she knew Justin would look every bit as magnificent.

  His good nature was etched in the fine lines around his usually warm brown eyes, now black with desire as they bore into her. His strong jaw was tense with intent, the well-sculpted cheek muscles sharp planes and shadows. Fashionably thick and curling hair brushed forward made him a handsome man. During the day, he was the urbane lord of the manor. Tonight, the finer civilities were stripped away as he pulled back the covers, the rapid rise and fall of his chest, his piercing stare and the exuberance of his manhood outlined by his nightshirt boldly declaring his desire.

  For the first time, Cressida focused her attention upon the masculine contours of his fine linen shift. No, Justin would never come naked to her, and she’d never thought to explore the idea of skin to skin contact. Why? Because clearly this was not what a man did when he was with his wife.

  At least two layers of fabric were always trapped at some point between them.

  Tonight’s strange, lurid, exciting, wicked and depraved voyeurism had shocked her yet filled her with longings she could not put into words.

  Longings that stirred in her womb and made her damp, no, slick with desire. She ached to hold her husband to her breast, to wrap her legs around his waist and to rock with him in an embrace that would envelop them in sensation and sweep before it all the pain and loneliness of these ten long months.

  But she could not.Not yet.Panic ripped through her as the mattress dipped beneath Justin’s weight. What should she do? How could she explain that the only thing between her and Justin was ‘a little matter’ she’d attend to by next week? She’d already used her monthly excuses last week.

  Her mind raced. She could hardly breathe through the fear as he slipped beneath the sheets and drew her to him, his fingers gently tugging at the ribbon of her night rail. She felt herself go rigid in his arms and nearly wept at the pain she’d soon cause him.

  Taking her gasp as encouragement, he gently kissed her lips.

  “Lovely creature,” he whispered as the fabric yielded and her breasts spilled out into his hands.

  She whimpered as he found just the right pressure to knead her into compliance. His tongue, hot and wet, circled her nipple while one hand gently massaged her heated inner thighs. She felt her body all but surrendering at the rightness of enslaving itself once more to him. The throbbing at the apex of her legs was agonizing. Once he recognized her need, she was doomed. She would conceive another child tonight, she knew it.

  Another child, she truly believed, would kill her.

  “My sweet Cressida, I have missed you.” His voice was hoarse with yearning as he transferred his attention to her other breast, his hot breath and skillful tongue stirring up the aching need within her to almost desperate heights. Prickles of sensation skittered from the tips of her toes into the core of her belly, and she whimpered as she felt another rush of heat to her groin while Justin found the hem of her night rail and gently tugged. Making the most of drawing it languidly up over her thighs, his fingers trailed a devastating path of lust and longing.

  Feelings Cressida knew only too well. Feelings that would be the end of her.

  Fighting every fiber of her needy body, she caged his hand against her thigh, halting its progress. Abruptly, he stopped, raising his head to look at her. In the pale glow, she saw the confusion that crossed his features. She’d met him part way, but now she was telling him she did not want him? She knew it was what he was thinking, and she forced out a thread of sound to tell him she loved and desired him as she always had.

  “I’m sorry, Justin, I can’t—” she croaked, her parched lips desperate for his understanding kiss.

  But tonight Justin did not look as understanding as usual. He stilled, his hands withdrawing themselves from her body. A myriad of emotions flashed across his countenance—surprise, confusion, a brief flash of anger, then…

  Nothing but dull resignation, oh, so much worse than anger and disappointment. Those she could meet with her own protests, perhaps propelling all that stood between them into the open. He might hate her for her disloyalty, but at least he’d understand.

  Right now, even Cressida didn’t understand. She had no idea of the nature of the practicalities that Miss Mariah had suggested might be the answer to her troubles. How could she properly explain to Justin her encounter with a common doxy who’d promised to show her ways to minimize conception during lovemaking? Or of the alternative sensory exploration she’d witnessed earlier in the evening? She could no more do that than sail into White’s and join her husband for a whiskey at his club.

  And then, as her hand inadvertently brushed across his nightshirt and she felt the size of his erection, that alternative sensory exploration returned as a possible salvation.

  She blocked her mind to the fact that he’d consider it so out of character for her to take such an initiative. All she needed right now were delaying tactics, and if they made Justin happy, all the better.

  Quickly, without saying a word, she pressed him onto his back and shimmied beneath the bedcovers, taking his erection in her hands and flicking her tongue across the tip of his manhood.

  She heard his sudden intake of breath in the silence and stilled. Waiting. The man at Mrs. Plumb’s h
ad certainly enjoyed such a sensation, but what would Justin think when it was his wife attending to him in such a manner? Would he be similarly enthralled…or horrified?

  At least it was better than any other alternative that involved procreation.

  His entire body was rigid with surprise—and anticipation?—but he said nothing, just placed his hand gently on her head and breathed out in one long sigh.

  Emboldened, Cressida drew the length of him into her mouth. How hard and hot it was. And how delightful it was to be the giver of such pleasure. Always she’d waited for Justin to initiate any variation on their bedroom delights.

  Another groan. Surely she wasn’t hurting him? The look of ecstasy on the face of tonight’s bronzed warrior suggested a man did not find such attention painful. No, Justin’s groan was definitely pleasure, for he was as tense as an arrow’s bow. She shifted onto her knees, feeling the moisture between her thighs, a sign of her own excitement. She gently increased the pressure with her hands around his rigid shaft while her mouth moved up and down, her tongue flicking the length of him. She was balancing the score and she was enjoying doing it. She could do this every night without ever having to worry about conceiving again.

  On this happy thought, she focused her entire attention upon pleasuring Justin, using her tongue along the length of his shaft—just as she’d seen it done at Mrs. Plumb’s—circling it before taking him deeply into her mouth in a series of languorous thrusts.

  “Cressida…darling…” His voice was hoarse as he dug his fingers into her shoulders. He seemed to be straining, using every ounce of willpower to keep still. She sensed what he must be feeling. She’d felt it many times, herself, when Justin’s pleasuring had brought her to the cusp and she’d held back, feeling a strange mixture of both terror and ecstasy before spiraling into the glorious abyss.

  She wanted Justin to feel the same wonderful sensations to which he’d introduced her. Exultation, pride and satisfaction welled up inside her. Without Mrs. Plumb’s help, Cressida had discovered the secret to bringing her husband pleasure without implicating herself in anything that would return to haunt her.

  Like another baby.

  His breath was quick and shallow. The sound made her feel all-powerful. Her nipples ached and her sex pulsed in response, but she tried to close her mind to her own bodily sensations. They could most definitely not be acted upon.

  “My glorious…darling…wife,” he whispered, gripping her shoulders, and all the pent-up tension and fear Cressida had felt during these last months at the thought of intimacy with Justin simply drained away.

  Until, with a gasp, he gently pushed aside her head, deftly drew her up beside him, rolled her onto her back and covered the length of her with his hard, needy body. She felt his erection press into her stomach before he adjusted himself lower.

  Lower, so that his manhood was near her slick, wanting entrance and she was balanced on the edge of well-trained silence, contemplating the destruction of all her well-laid plans.

  Being plundered by her husband was so very far from them, yet this was Justin, wanting her, needing her. Even as he slid into her, she felt her heart cry out at the rightness of this physical coupling, yet her brain roared its terrified objection.

  One more week.

  That’s all she wanted. One more week so she could learn how a man could come inside a woman without making her pregnant. It was possible. Having learned this for fact, she knew she couldn’t become a tacit collaborator in her own destruction, however much she wanted it at this moment.

  Dragging her mouth from his, she struggled beneath him, pushing him away and wriggling her hips in clear objection rather than escalation of the sexual act.

  “No!”

  Her cry sounded much too harsh and her breathing, fast and clearly distressed, reverberated through the room.

  Instantly he released her and she rolled onto her side. “Cressida?” His voice was thick with concern. “What is it?”

  What is it?

  What could she say? What should she say? I don’t want your child, Justin, and am busy investigating ways to ensure I need never become pregnant again, if you’ll just be patient another week.

  If they were having this conversation before becoming intimate, she might have fumbled her way into making some semblance of sense. Right now, however, with fear and terror and guilt bombarding her with equal relentlessness, she did not know what to say.

  “I’m so sorry, Justin,” she whispered, withdrawing from his embrace and putting her hands to her temples as she swung her legs over the side of the bed, “but I feel another megrim coming on.”

  He dropped his hands, the faintest of exhalations stirring the hair at her temples, and Cressida felt his withdrawal, both physical and emotional, as he slowly got out of bed.

  “You should have said something before, darling.” He rose up before her, his look puzzled, but suspicious.

  At the irony in his tone, she nearly abandoned her resolve not to hurl herself right back into his arms.

  Nearly.Only the fear of a fate equal to death in nine months stopped her.

  Chapter Six

  “You seem distracted, Justin. Bad news?”

  Justin glanced up from the little writing desk in the corner of Mariah’s sitting room at which he’d been working for the past hour, reconciling, yet again, the list of orphans who’d been delivered to and removed from Sedleywich eighteen years ago.

  “I wish I could offer you concrete answers, but we have to be patient, Mariah,” he muttered, though it was not his apparent preoccupation with the task with which Mariah had charged him that accounted for his distraction.

  Cressida. Her behavior defied logic. Last night it was as if she’d enticed him to her merely so she could repulse him when that was not at all her nature. He closed his eyes and shivered with remembered longing as he recalled the brief feeling of being wanted once more by his wife.

  Brief. He nearly snarled his bitterness. Where had she learned such a thing? Why had she started on an act so calculated to whip up his desire only to reject him at the end?

  He was confused and hurt. Suspicious, too. Not that she’d indulged in activities he’d not condone, but as to the source of her inspiration for such extraordinary bedroom antics. Antics that she had initiated.

  Only to reject him. That’s what it all came down to.

  For the first time since he could remember, Cressida had not been at breakfast this morning. Though he’d endured a hellish night, he’d forced himself to take his seat at the usual time, hoping to glean something over their habitual haddock and toast, even if no actual allusion were made to the previous evening’s several extraordinary encounters.

  Mariah came to stand beside him, bending to look over his shoulder. Her still lovely face bore a pallor and tightness that hinted at her stress, and Justin reached up to squeeze her hand.

  “I agree with you, Mariah, that the most likely candidate is this Miss Madeleine Hardwicke, Lord Slitherton’s betrothed. As you know, I am Patron of Sedleywich, and Miss Harwicke’s sister-in-law, Annabelle Luscombe, is on the committee.”

  “Which makes muddying the trail all the easier.” Mariah sighed. “Miss Hardwicke looks just as I did as a young girl, Justin, with her blue-black hair and Castilian features, yet she has Robert’s strong nose.” She twisted her hands. “Surely you can trace her origins and reveal the deception? I’m going insane, Justin, unable to think of anything but the growing suspicion my beloved Robert’s evil mother retrieved my child from the Sedleywich Home for Orphans and somehow engineered that she be brought up as the child of Robert’s sister.” She covered her face with her hands and turned away, her words muffled as she continued, “Lord knows I was in no position to keep the child, I know that, but I was used, deceived, abandoned. Where was Robert when I needed him? We were so in love.”

  Justin reached up and squeezed her fingers tight, then he got to his feet and put his arms around his old friend. “Hush, Mariah, you are o
verwrought,” he murmured as she clung to him and her body convulsed with tears. “Do not blame Robert. You think men are all-powerful creatures? They are equally at the mercy of women when the balance is not in their favor.” A frisson of despair speared him at the thought of Cressida and the power she wielded over him. “Love is a wonderful thing when two people are of one mind and that love is sanctioned by those around them who wield the power. Robert was not yet of age. He could do nothing in the face of his mother’s opposition.”

  Mariah drew back, sniffing and attempting to smile, then she resumed her seat on the sofa while Justin returned to his desk. “You are a sensible man, Justin. Of course, I know what you say is true.”

  He drummed his fingers upon the document. “But I have to tell you that another possibility has presented itself.” His smile failed to banish the rawness of her feelings. He knew desperate hope hovered beneath the surface of her restraint.

  Wearily, she said, “Who is she, Justin?”

  He shook his head. “It would be unfair to divulge names until her identity is confirmed.”

  Mariah rose and trailed to the window.

  “If you have narrowed down the list to two, and indeed you know Miss Hardwicke’s family, tell me if your investigations have concluded this at least…” She closed her eyes and the whitening of her knuckles, which matched the pallor of her face, tugged at Justin’s heartstrings. “Will she want to know me?”

  Justin pondered the question. Although he was navigating these dangerous emotional waters as best he could, he felt close to being overwhelmed.

  He shuffled the papers, wishing he’d been able to confide in Cressida from the start and cursing his promise to Mariah that he not breathe a word of her affairs to his wife. Cressida’s wise counsel would have helped ensure he was dealing with the matter as sensitively as possible.

  God, he certainly needed a lesson in that!