Edmund hadn’t had a woman in some time. Not since the last meeting of the Grand Bucks in the Forest. But the comradery with his brother Bucks and exuberant sharing of a beautiful woman couldn’t assuage the intimacy he craved. The private, tender moments with one woman who could take all of his love and maybe even love him in return.
So when his auburn beauty arched her back, with her eyes locked on his, he wanted nothing more than to scoop her from the Marchioness’s bed and take her to his own. Even for one night of her in his arms, he’d risk an altercation with this mysterious suitor of hers.
He ached to touch her, to brush his lips over her. He imagined whispering something into her ear just to see if he could elicit some response that might change her placid expression.
It was unfair; she was lying in that bed that should have been his wife’s, empty now because of the dastardly decisions made by his brother, Crispin. A country seduction had wrought so much misery.
“Oh, Edmund,” the woman moaned, her eyes closed in pleasure as she took those inadequate thrusts.
Montfort jerked in his own hold. This lady was moaning his name without him even touching her. That boded well for the pleasures they might experience together.
But why did she know his given name? And moan it? And why had she and her lover selected this bed, of all the beds in the house? Or in London, for that matter.
The woman broke, shamelessly wailing on his wife’s bed. Her lover pulled from her clasp and at least had the sense to spend on her belly before collapsing next to her. As if he’d worked hard enough to deserve to rest on his wife’s blankets!
His wife’s bed. His wife’s blankets. Edmund felt as though the house was coming down on his head as he looked closer at the lady now spread and sated in front of him.
His cock flagged.
“Hello, husband,” she said.
Chapter 2
Ann Wake, Marchioness ofMontfort, was tired of waiting.
At first, she’d been terrified of her big, very grown husband. She met him one day when she was sixteen, and she was still somewhat traumatized by her exhilarating, confusing, and then tragic romance with his far more ordinary younger brother.
She’d prayed to God that day in the church as they’d exchanged vows that she wouldn’t need to live alongside such a beast. Or take the brute into her body, where he might hurt her, then put in her an equally beastly child.
Some prayers, it seemed, received an answer.
The problem was that the more years Ann spent alone on that vast Shropshire estate, the more she wondered if she mightregret her hasty prayer that was so thoroughly answered. Her husband fled the country not to be seen again. For fourteen years.
And in that time, she’d made sense of what had happened between her and Crispin. Ate the bounty produced by those many acres. Learned more than just her rudimentary letters. Discovered a cache of Crispin Wake’s scandalous books and the workings of her own body.
And now Ann Wake was thirty years old with every material thing one could desire. But lacking the current wish of her heart.
“Why have you come here?” asked her husband Edmund, his thick cock wilting now that he’d realized who was stretched on his wife’s bed: his wife.
“It seemed only reasonable that if you would not come to me, I should journey to visit you.”
“Do you lack for anything in Shropshire?” he asked.
Ann studied the ceiling, her eyes having threatened to fill with tears since she’d seen Edmund again. He was as broad and tall as ever, and now she’d seen him nude. Seen the cock he’d been denying her.
Yet clearly not denying other women.
“I should go,” said the gent on the bed beside Ann, his eyes darting between the reunited husband and wife as though he expected aristocrats to hurl china at each other. Which, in fairness, they sometimes did.
“Please don’t rush off like a thief in the night on my account,” said Edmund, his voice silky and dangerous. Ann had almost no experience of him, but that tone never led to good things.
“Thank you for coming home with me,” she said softly. “It was a pleasure meeting you on the train.”
“On the train?” asked Edward, his eyes wide and face verging on purple. “This is not a beau but a man you met just today?”
Ann kept her face placid while internally crowing with her victory. He wished to cast her aside, then father babies on other women? She’d strike his pride if it was the last thing she did. And nothing injured the pride of a man like seeing his wife used by others, if the romantic novels she read were any indication.
“Why, yes!” she exclaimed brightly. “Clarence here was ever so kind as to assist me to the first class carriage. I couldn’t have made it to London without him.”
