Chapter 18
“It’s not what you think,” Lindley said.
Jane could see the earl clearly in the moonlight, clearly enough to know that he was enraged. Reflexively she stepped back from him, suddenly afraid for what she had done.
“If you were not my friend,” the earl said through tight lips, “I would kill you.”
“Nick—”
“Shut up!” His voice was thunder. “You are no longer welcome at Dragmore. Pack your bags and get out!”
A silence fell.
Jane felt as if the world were disintegrating beneath her feet. Lindley was the earl’s one and only friend! She could not let this happen! God, she was so sorry! “It wasn’t his fault,” she managed breathlessly. “It was mine.”
He whirled. “You shut up as well.” To Lindley: “Move.”
“When you’re calmer,” Lindley said, “we can discuss this—”
The earl hit him. It was an explosive blow with the speed of lightning and the force of a locomotive.
He snapped back Lindley’s head, knocking him against the maple.
Jane cried out. Lindley staggered upright, holding his nose.
The earl stood with thighs spread, fists ready, his face black.
Lindley pushed off of the tree and, with a look, left.
“Oh, God!”
At the sound of Jane’s moan, Nick turned to her. “You little flirt,” he grated, sick inside, so sick. His hands found her shoulders of their own volition and he hauled her close, very close, lifting her off the ground so they were face to face. She didn’t whimper, but she was white.
He wanted to hurt her the way she had hurt him. He wasn’t thinking, he was only feeling.
“You little flirt,” he said again, shaking her once. “I thought you were different, but you’re not, are you? You’re like all the rest, aren’t you?”
“No.” Jane gasped. Their faces were so close. She could see his eyes, and they frightened her.
“A man’s kiss,” Nick cried. “You want a man’s kiss?”
She frantically shook her head no.
He shook her, then, with one arm, he yanked her against his chest, his other hand grabbing a hank of hair next to the scalp and anchoring her head viciously. She whimpered. His mouth came down hard and brutal upon hers.
He was savage in his attack, not waiting for any sign from her that he should proceed. His teeth clashed against hers, he forced her mouth open, thrusting his tongue through her lips. He plunged relentlessly into her mouth, again and again.
He slowly became aware of many things, one after the other.
Jane was soft and warm and more exciting than any woman he’d ever held.
Every inch of her body throbbed against his.
His kiss had, somehow, a will of its own, and it had softened.
She was kissing him back. In fact, her tongue was dancing with his, entwining with his, stroking the inside of his mouth the way he’d stroked hers.
And … she was clinging to him. Her hands were caught in his hair desperately.
And she was wiggling her plump, sweet mons against the steel length of his erection.
Nick’s hand left her hair and stroked down her back to her waist, hips, and the delicious curve of one buttock.
“Jane,” he whispered, agony in his voice.
He pulled her closer against him. In response, she groaned a deep strangled sound, and then she wrenched her head free and buried her face in his neck, lifted one knee and wrapped it around his hip, trying to climb on top of him, instinctively opening herself, poising herself for him.
He needed her, desperately.
He wanted her, with every fiber of his soul and being.
In horror, he saw them then. The depraved brute and the innocent schoolgirl. Jane was moaning and whimpering into his neck, clinging, and if she lifted her other knee she would be astride him …
With supreme willpower, Nick threw her to the ground.
She lay panting, face uplifted. “Nicholas,” she begged.
He stood panting, staring down, more horrified than he had ever been in his life. More afraid. “God, what am I doing?” he cried into the night. And then he turned and ran.
Jane managed to get to her room. Her dress was soiled, her hair a tangled mess. She fell gratefully onto the bed, her heart still beating frantically. She covered it with her palm, hoping to still it. She was in love.
And it was as much pain as pleasure.
She would never forget his kiss and the fire he had set within her. Never. “Nicholas, I love you,” she whispered, and then she started to weep.
She loved him but he didn’t love her. As naive as she was, she knew that. He had kissed her in anger. Only in anger, and then the kiss had taken on a life of its own.
But hadn’t he been jealous?
Jane wasn’t sure. As far as the earl went, she was utterly confused. He was a dark, complex man. And like all men, he could make love to a woman without loving her.
Jane didn’t want to be another Amelia.
She wanted to be his wife.
Seriously, realistically, she considered this.
Was it possible? And she knew it wasn’t.
She did not doubt that the earl had no intention of marrying.
She could sense it. And even if he fell in love and did marry, why would it be her?
There were more beautiful women in the world, many of them, and the earl was a big catch.
Could she settle, then, for crumbs?
Could she be his mistress?
Jane wasn’t sure. She only knew that she loved him so much it hurt. She only knew that she wanted him, to hold him, comfort him, to make him laugh. And she wanted to be in his arms again …
Remembering their heated kiss roused her blood—and her despair.
He had so few friends. Maybe Lindley was the only one.
Look at what she had done. She had destroyed their friendship.
She was so sorry. If she had known, if she hadn’t been so damn impulsive, so damn reckless—as always—she would have never flirted so brazenly.
Jane hugged her pillow. She would have to reconcile the two men somehow. Oh, God!
“Nicholas, forgive me,” she whispered.
The earl froze in the center of his library, where he was standing.
He heard the carriage wheels crunching on the graveled driveway.
His head turned toward the windows, and in the gaslit night, he watched as Lindley’s coach pulled away from the front of the house.
He knew a moment’s insanity, when he had the urge to run out and stop him.
He did not. He felt the pain, and he rubbed his chest, as if he could physically erase it.
Oh, God.
He sat down heavily, head hanging. Lindley had betrayed him.
It didn’t matter that Jane had provoked him; Lindley was older, he knew better.
He had betrayed him. His best friend, his only friend.
The man who had stood by him through the damn trial and all the ostracism since.
“Damn you,” Nick cried into the silent library. “Damn you!”
He damned himself.
He thought of Jane.
Jane, who, before his very eyes, was awakening to her sexuality, and God, it was hot, potent—dangerous.
He clenched his fists. She had been smitten with him, until Lindley had arrived. Then she had become infatuated with Raversford. She was an impressionable adolescent. Nothing more. Who would it be tomorrow? It had better be, he thought savagely, the man he would marry her to!
He would have to keep an eye on her. He would have to chaperon her. He could not trust her, not after tonight. She had begged Lindley to kiss her. She was a flirt. An accomplished flirt! And then she had kissed Nick back passionately when he had been trying to hurt her!
She was fickle and faithless.
He thought of Patricia and laughed aloud.
Patricia had been fickle and faithless too, but that was where the resemblance between the two ended.
Patricia had been a lady, with ice in her veins.
Jane was no lady. The duke’s granddaughter—maybe—the actress’s daughter, for sure.
It explained her untutored, wild passion, her deep, deep sensuality.
“Jane.” He tested her name, tasted it on his tongue. He dropped his head back on the couch as if the weight of it were too much to bear. With his hand, he began rubbing his chest. But the pain would not go away. It wasn’t physical.