Chapter 30
“Papa, Papa, you must tell Cecily not to go!” Lilian barreled down the stairs and threw herself at Nathaniel the moment he walked in through the front door. “Don’t let her go!”
The child must have been watching for them from an upstairs window, but what did she mean?
Patrick had walked off already, muttering that he had to find Mary.
“Tell who not to go, Lilian?” Nathaniel asked, crouching down to his daughter’s eye level.
“Cecily! I heard her talking to Mary about leaving and going to Rome and America and to faraway places, but she can’t. I don’t want her to leave me. She will leave just like Mama, and she will never come back…”
As she gabbled, her angry little voice descended into a wail and then into sobs.
“I don’t want Cecily to go, Papa. Is it my fault that she’s going? Is it my fault that no one stays? I don’t want to be alone anymore.”
Her pain lanced through him, taking him back more than thirty years to when he was a little boy crying for his own parents. Her distress echoed his own, and her words were mirrors of those he had once cried.
Gathering her into his arms, Nathaniel held her close and patted her back as tears pricked the back of his eyes.
“You will never be alone again. I promise, Lilian,” he said, meaning every word. “I love you very much, and I will always be with you from now on. I will speak to Cecily and do everything I can to convince her to stay. She will not leave us.”
The thought of Cecily leaving hurt him just as much as Lilian’s unhappiness. Bypassing all conscious intentions, both his wife and his daughter seemed to have taken a natural place within him, as part of his own being.
“Do you love Cecily too?” Lilian hiccupped, her head resting on his shoulder as her sobs subsided.
There was no point in denying it anymore, to his daughter, to himself, or to the rest of the world.
“Yes, I do,” he admitted thickly. “I love Cecily very much.”
* * *
“Cecily.”
At the sound of her name, Cecily spun around violently and found Nathaniel standing in the doorway of her bedroom. His hair was tousled, his waistcoat unfastened, and his jaw unshaven.
For any other person, these things might have indicated a hard or busy day. For Nathaniel, they were merely his natural state, and to Cecily’s eyes, he was the most handsome man she knew.
“Oh God, Nathaniel!” she exclaimed, all her hopes, fears, and pleasure at seeing him coming together at once and making her quiver.
His perceptive, deep-blue eyes flicked to the bundles on her bed.
“Lilian thinks that you’re leaving,” he said, turning his gaze back to her.
Why did he always have to be so hard to read? Cecily could not tell whether the words were an accusation, a suggestion, or just an observation that needed no response.
“I thought you might want me to go, and Mary too,” she tried to explain. “None of it is true, but people you know will read that pamphlet, and when it makes it to the newspapers, we will be ruined. I cannot hand Mary over and—”
“Enough of that, Cecily,” Nathaniel cut her off, holding up a hand and then stepping toward her. She bit her lip, afraid to trust in the flicker of feeling she thought she saw in his expression. “I would never have believed those lies for one second. No one who does is worth my notice.”
“Do you mean that?” she breathed, leaning against a chest of drawers and closing her eyes.
“You must not talk of leaving either,” he continued, standing so close that she could smell his cologne and feel the warmth of his skin. “I cannot allow that.”
“Why not?” she managed to ask, opening her eyes. Her heart sped up as she breathed him in.
“Because… Lilian doesn’t want you to go,” he said after a pause, to her pleasure and disappointment.
“Is that the only reason?” she pressed lightly.
Regardless of all other pressing concerns, Cecily was already beginning to ache inside with longing for this man. They had not even been apart for a full day, and it already felt too long.
Was that what happened when you fell in love with someone?
“I don’t want you to go either,” Nathaniel admitted, his expression both troubled and tender. “I want you to stay here, with Lilian… and with me.”
As he reached out and stroked her face, Cecily threw herself into his arms, gasping out her relief against his strong chest as he embraced her tightly and dropped kisses onto her hair.
“I was so frightened, Nathaniel,” she sobbed. “I never thought my uncle would go this far. I was frightened for Mary, and for what might become of both of us if you threw us out.”
“Never!” he declared with absolute conviction.
“I was frightened for you, too, Nathaniel, and how a scandal might damage your name.”
“Holt cannot touch me,” he assured her, pulling her back a little and looking deep into her eyes. “As for the rest, I have dealt with the publishers of the scandal sheet and with Ashworth today. Tomorrow, it will be your uncle’s turn.”
Cecily almost staggered, though his strong arms would have held her up nonetheless. “You have dealt with it? That was what you were doing in London?”
The immensity of her uncle’s threat was so great that she had feared her own destruction. Yet her husband had faced it, encompassed it, and apparently neutralized it.
Astonishment, affection, and respect surged within her, heightening her desire.
She supposed she should have learned by now that Nathaniel’s shows of carelessness and indifference were not to be read like those of other men.
Beneath the disarming surface, a powerful and efficient machinery of mind, body, and spirit operated.
A bullying blunderer like her uncle could never stand against him.
“Yes, money and legal threats have taken care of the scandal sheet, and Lord Ashworth has confessed to his part in this nefarious business,” Nathaniel told her. “With the evidence I have, your uncle cannot escape the consequences of his actions. What did you think I was doing in London?”
“I… I thought you might have gone to meet some other woman,” she admitted, ashamed of her lingering suspicions about Lady Mountingdon.
“I told you there are no other women for me, Cecily,” he said, with more puzzlement than anger. “I thought you understood that.”
Any attempt to maintain a modicum of reserve or composure was useless now, and she wept in his arms all over again until all tears were exhausted.
“I’m sorry,” she said once she was able to speak. “It has been so long since I have had anyone to help me. Since my parents died, I have always had to defend myself and Mary alone. This time, it was too much for me. I thought we were lost.”
“Did I not once tell you that a husband could defend you better than you could defend yourself?” Nathaniel reminded her.
“I didn’t know you then. I didn’t know anything, Nathaniel.”
“It is my duty to take care of my wife and family,” he said, then kissed her lips very softly. “But if I ever hear you talk of leaving me again, or of imagining that I am consorting with other women, I will spank you so hard that they will hear your squeals in the servants’ hall.”
Despite everything, Cecily began to laugh.
After pulling a face of mock-sternness, Nathaniel locked the bedroom door and swept her off her feet.
The half-hour that followed was filled with joy, laughter, and the most glorious pleasure and release. Sitting on the bed, Nathaniel did raise Cecily’s skirts and spank her across his lap until her bare bottom was heated and rosy, his words and gestures both playful and firm.
“This is for thinking of leaving me, Cecily,” he told her in a roughening voice as his palms fell in a deliberate rhythm on her flesh. “And this is for thinking that there could be another woman.”
Cecily wriggled and moaned in his wonderfully secure grasp, feeling his shaft hardening and pressing against her belly. She was safe here, safe and incredibly aroused.
“Who do you belong to, Cecily?” Nathaniel demanded, spanking her again.
“You. I’m yours, Nathaniel,” she gasped and received several more spanks as mingled punishment and reward.
“Who do I belong to?” Nathaniel followed up with equal sternness.
“Me. You’re mine,” she moaned, pressing herself against his hard cock and wishing she could kiss it. “This is mine.”
“Only yours,” Nathaniel affirmed, suddenly flipping her on her hands and knees. Her breasts fell out of her bodice. “This is a lesson I think you need to learn again, and learn often.”
She heard the sound of trousers being unfastened and pulled off, and then Nathaniel’s hot, seeking cock was at her entrance as he grasped her hips.
“Ohh!”
His hot, throbbing length sank easily into her eager and slippery depths. It felt utterly right in a way she could not articulate.
“Mine,” he whispered in her ear as he ground his hips against her. “This is where I belong. Only inside you, between your thighs or between your lips. You are my wife, no one else’s.”
“Yes,” Cecily gasped. “My husband—oh, Nathaniel!”
Nathaniel began thrusting into her while stroking her sex. He moved slowly and purposefully at first until she succumbed with a loud cry.
He paused to knead her breasts through the strongest contractions, then thrust harder and faster, his vigorous ministrations contrasting with the soft rills of pleasure that followed her peak.
Soon, he groaned his own ecstasy and held her tightly to him until the throbbing of his shaft subsided.
They rolled together onto the bed in damp, laughing dishevelment, their hands seeking and finding one another and instinctively intertwining.
“All will be well, Cecily,” he assured her, once they had both caught their breath.
Cecily nodded and kissed his lips, reveling in the disorder of their clothes, the damp stickiness between her thighs, and the warmth of his strong body.
Yes, all would be well now.
* * *
“What if my uncle doesn’t accept?” Cecily asked, looking up anxiously after signing her name on the formal invitation card addressed to Lord Holt, the words dictated by Nathaniel.
Nathaniel placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder and then sat down on his desk beside the invitation. Lord Holt and Lady Holt were invited to Greyhaven Park for luncheon at noon tomorrow, the very deadline Lord Holt had tried to impose.
An express messenger was already waiting in the hallway to deliver the card to London within two hours. He would also carry invitations to Lord and Lady Jackson and to the Duke and Duchess of Mildenhall, each including personal messages about the importance and confidentiality of the occasion.
“He will come,” Nathaniel said with certainty. “Your uncle is foolish enough to think that I have capitulated. He will not lose the chance to crow over us both and leave here either with Mary or his payoff.”
“What if Lord Ashworth warns him?” Cecily fretted as he lifted the card and blew on it to dry the ink faster.
“Ashworth won’t,” he answered with the same confidence. “That old stoat values his own skin more than your uncle’s. Nor has he any desire to spend his remaining years being pulled apart in courts and newspapers. Lord Holt’s crimes are worse than you know yet.”
“Can you not tell me everything?” Cecily asked, wondering what could be so awful that Nathaniel still sought to keep it from her.
“I will tell you once I am sure,” he replied, handing back the card for her to wrap and getting to his feet to retrieve the sealing wax from a drawer.
“I have written to have certain details urgently confirmed, and I trust I will have my answer before your uncle arrives tomorrow. I would not distress you needlessly before then.”
Pressing no further, Cecily watched him press his seal into the wax and then open the study door.
While it was hard to foresee how her uncle would react tomorrow, she trusted that Nathaniel had the upper hand, whether he shared all his cards with her or not.