Two Secret Sins Read online

  He bit back the urge to beg her forgiveness. She already had too much advantage over him. “Perhaps it’s time I left.”

  Even as he spoke, he knew that she wouldn’t fall for his games. She stayed where she was and took a sip of her brandy. “Perhaps you should. I need to deal with a few things before I go out tonight.”

  Eliot bowed, while some horrified corner of his mind panicked at the idea that one of those “things” might be choosing a new lover. After all, they’d never made any promises to each other. He should appreciate a mistress who made no demands beyond physical pleasure. Instead the uncertainty sent him completely demented.

  He was free to move on when he wanted to, as was she. And he hated it.

  “I bid you good afternoon, then,” he said stiffly, knowing he was behaving like an idiot, but unable to stop himself. The glint of mocking humor in Verena’s dark blue eyes didn’t make him feel any better.

  Her calmness remained unruffled. “Goodbye, Eliot.”

  Goodbye? Surely not. “What about Friday?”

  And every day after that?

  She arched her eyebrows. “I believe we have an appointment.” She paused, and he waited in an agony of suspense for her to break with him. “Unless you’d rather make other arrangements.”

  Other arrangements? By God, yes, he would. He’d like to bundle her up and carry her away to a place where he could slake his passions on her for months on end. He’d like to see Verena, without worrying about a thousand curious eyes watching on. He’d like to have her to himself. He’d like to know that he wasn’t alone in finding the strength of this attraction completely disorienting.

  None of that was possible. Although at least she wasn’t sending him away forever.

  “I don’t want to make other arrangements.” His voice was flat, as he struggled to hide the powerful relief that flooded him. One day, they would be done, but that day wasn’t today.

  The straight look that Verena gave him sent a chill sliding down his spine. “Nor do I.”

  It was a message that he was smart enough to understand. Don’t take this affair out into the public domain. Don’t ask for more than I want to give you. Don’t attempt to make a perfectly satisfying carnal connection into anything more profound.

  “Excellent.” When he bowed again, it was as much to acknowledge her command as to take his leave. “I’ll call on Friday.”

  Except that as he strolled through the darkening streets to his rooms on Piccadilly, the outcome didn’t feel excellent. It felt as if Verena had slammed a door in his face. As she had.

  He could have what they had now. Not a scrap more. Ever. Or he could walk away.

  Walking away wasn’t an acceptable alternative.

  Over and over, Eliot had sinned with Verena. He hoped to sin with her again. Often.

  But he’d committed one secret sin against her, a sin that would end their affair forever if she guessed the truth. In this sophisticated world they inhabited, falling in love wasn’t an option.

  Yet Eliot loved Verena Gerard so much, he was sick with it.

  Chapter 2

  Verena didn’t have to wait until Friday to see Eliot again, following that odd, troubling afternoon when he called on her without notice.

  They didn’t often attend the same parties, which was one of the reasons that it had taken them so long to meet. Viscount Colville was careful to keep his reputation pristine, and he moved in much more respectable circles than she did. He was a regular at Almack’s and appeared at most of the debutante balls, whereas she was more likely to be flirting and waltzing at a naughty masquerade.

  However much people might gossip about her, very few members of the beau monde shunned Verena for her outrageous behavior. Her father was the Duke of Horsham, and she was rich, and famed for her wit and elegance. In society’s eyes, that made up for a lot of the tattle – most of which was true, she admitted without a shred of shame. And while she’d taken a string of lovers since her worm of a husband’s unlamented death seven years ago, all of them had been highborn leaders of society.

  An aristocratic widow was allowed a degree of freedom that neither an innocent young miss nor a wife enjoyed. As long as she wasn’t falling pregnant with a footman’s bastard or making scenes in public like poor, hysterical Caro Lamb, she remained acceptable to the ton.

  When Verena joined the line of dancers at Lady Paget’s ball on Thursday night, she cast a casual glance down the ranks and saw Eliot’s gilt blonde hair gleaming in the candlelight. That color was unmistakable, unique. He was a good deal taller than most of the other men in the room, so she wondered how she’d missed his arrival. Something in the air always changed when Eliot walked into a room, but not this time.

  Before she could remind herself that she was a jaded lady of thirty, her foolish heart skipped a beat. He was so handsome, like a hero from a fairy tale. Sir Galahad must have been just such a gilded paragon. Eliot Ridley’s face was formed of pure sculpted planes, and his body was long and lean and covered from head to toe in smooth golden skin. As she knew very well.

  In her imagination, she always pictured him wearing glittering armor. From the first moment she’d seen him, she’d sensed that he belonged to an earlier, more chivalrous age. Before they met, she’d even derided him to her friends as a boring prig, old before his time and starchy as a Bow Street judge.

  She still saw him as unsuited to this modern world, with all its pettiness and compromises and meanness. After six months as his lover, she’d come to recognize his nobility of spirit.

  Tonight Eliot wasn’t wearing armor: it wouldn’t do in a ballroom. Instead, he looked spectacular in severe black evening dress with a snowy white neckcloth that set off that sharply cut jaw.

  “Verena?” Lord Shelburn, her partner for this dance, said to attract her attention.

  With a start, she realized that she was staring at Eliot and her silly heart was still capering around like a spring lamb let loose in a sunny field. How could she be so careless? Goodness knew what her face might reveal.

  It never ceased to amaze her that she and Eliot had managed to keep their affair secret. She was sure that someone must notice the way the air between them sizzled. But the idea of the wanton widow and the perfect Lord Colville being on fire for each other was just too outlandish to occur to the wider world.

  While it required an effort, she adopted her usual cynical expression. In case she was blushing, she waved her fan in front of her face. When blushing, along with a susceptible heart, was something that she’d given up, back when she was a brainless ingenue.

  “La, it’s such a crush in here. I vow that we’d be more comfortable running around naked.”

  Shelburn’s laugh held an appreciative note. “Please don’t let me stop you from setting the fashion.”

  She cast him an arch glance, although the necessity for the old, stale games filled her with ennui. Verena had played this scene so often, that it was hard to summon any interest in her role as the coquette. “You first.”

  He laughed again and took her hand to start the promenade. Shelburn was an acknowledged rake and just the sort of flashy devil she liked to invite into her bed. They’d never been lovers, although the possibility had always hovered.

  Perhaps they would link up at last, once she and Eliot parted. Shelburn was wildly attractive, and she’d heard talk that he knew what to do with a woman. She wished to heaven that the prospect of finding out the truth about those rumors awakened the tiniest glimmer of interest.

  As Verena paced forward, she turned her back on Eliot. She only identified his partner when she promenaded back to where she started. He was dancing with some pretty young thing. It took Verena a moment to remember the chit’s name. Lily Bilson, one of the more successful debutantes this year. The sort of girl who would make Viscount Colville a perfect bride. Verena recovered from a stumble, as she joined hands with Shelburn and Freddie Edgecombe on her other side and circled around.

  “Colville must be on
the hunt for a wife,” Shelburn said, his voice snide. “He could do worse than the Bilson filly. She has a large fortune, and she’s a peach besides. Too good for that pompous ass, in fact. Any woman who marries Eliot Ridley is condemned to die of boredom.”

  Verena struggled against leaping to Eliot’s defense. After all, she herself had said similar things about him in the past.

  Before they met, she’d been convinced that Viscount Colville would despise any woman who was too free with her favors. But that was before she’d seen the burning hunger in his eyes and decided to satisfy her curiosity about how it would feel to seduce a saint. Her experiment had bitten back at her. She’d discovered that more than a little of the devil lurked beneath that pure exterior.

  “It might be the viscount who dies of boredom,” she said in a tone that she hoped indicated disinterest. “The girl looks like she hasn’t got the brains God gave a sheep.”

  “A very decorative sheep.” The hint of admiration in Shelburn’s tone made Verena’s skin itch.

  Although, damn it, he was right. And the Bilson girl was twelve years younger than Verena, and a virgin besides. Definitely a suitable bride for Lord Colville. If she survived Verena’s wrath long enough to accept any proposal he made. Right now, Verena would be happy to rip every golden hair from that empty head. Anything to wipe away the chit’s smile, as she stared at the handsome viscount in wonder.

  Stay away from him. He’s mine.

  At least for now. Because the sad truth was that one day sooner rather than later, he’d wed a sweet little poppet like Miss Bilson and have a string of lovely babies. He was accounted one of London’s most eligible bachelors. Wealthy, wellborn, presentable, untarred with tawdry scandal. As beautiful as an angel. Heir to his father’s title, and in line to become richer still when he inherited. Even if he was the dull dog that reputation painted him, he’d be credited as a catch.

  “You’re looking rather fierce.” Shelburn’s curiosity again reminded Verena of where she was and who she was with. “There’s no need to feel you have to rescue the chit. I’m sure she can imagine no fate more appealing than popping out a brood of tedious little Ridleys.”

  To her relief, the dance shifted Verena onto her next partner, and she was saved from mustering a reply.

  Inevitably as the line progressed, she found herself facing Eliot. The cool distance in his bow contradicted the heat flaring in his gaze. He caught her hand, and more heat rushed up under her skin. Even through two pairs of gloves, that contact was searing.

  As they began the promenade, he bent his head toward her and spoke in a low voice. “I’m sorry I was such a fool on Wednesday. Have you forgiven me?”

  There were many things she liked about Eliot, when she’d expected not to like him at all. Among them was that, unlike most men of her acquaintance, he was willing to admit if he was at fault.

  She dared a quick glance at him from under her lashes. Anyone watching would think she flirted, as she was wont to do. But her look held more concern than coquetry. He sounded troubled, although his expression remained neutral. After six months, they had the masquerade down pat.

  “Yes, I forgive you,” she replied in an equally low voice.

  She read his relief, and the hand holding hers tightened. “I shouldn’t have come around that afternoon. But damn it, Verena, after putting up with my idiot of a father for a month, I needed to see you.”

  “I didn’t mind.” She hadn’t lied about missing him, although in his absence, she’d done her best to divert herself with her friends and a constant round of balls and parties. Never let it be said that Lady Verena Gerard was so jejune as to pine for a man.

  “You should have. Any gentleman would have gone home and made himself presentable, then sent a note around to ask if it was convenient to call.”

  A huff of wry laughter escaped her, as they turned to promenade back. “Then I’d have missed out on a memorable encounter. It brightened up an afternoon when I was at a loose end.”

  And restless and unhappy, because she wanted to see Eliot. When he turned up without warning and took her in a conflagration of passion on the floor, she’d almost swooned with sheer excitement. His urgent need had thrilled her to the toes.

  She’d long ago discovered that he was a man of powerful urges and a lover of breathtaking finesse. But after he returned from the country, he’d been so mad for her. When she recalled the frantic edge of his possession, she still got goose bumps.

  “You’re too good to me.”

  Before she could refute that statement, they broke apart to form a circle. Their brief privacy was over. She moved down the line once more, knowing that her short conversation with Eliot promised to be the highlight of the evening. Even though she’d flirt and laugh and dance until well after midnight.

  At first, pretending that Lord Colville was nothing to her had given her a secret frisson. Public strangers, private lovers. It was a game that she hadn’t played before. But the need to be on her guard all the time was losing its charm. She suspected it did for him, too.

  For one fleeting instant on Wednesday, she’d wondered if she could accept his invitation to the park. But an association with Verena Gerard would only mire him in scandal and bring his political ambitions crashing down around him.

  When she returned to Shelburn at the end of the dance, she was smiling and ironic as ever, but her heart wasn’t at ease. Perhaps the time approached to move on from Eliot. Six months was a long time to be faithful to one man.

  Now she saw a few disturbing signs that the viscount wished to change their arrangement. Worse, she started to rely on him for her happiness and well-being.

  That wasn’t permitted.

  Verena pretended to pay attention to Celia Edgecombe, who was relating the latest on dit, while she tested the idea of sending Eliot away. It felt like pressing her tongue up against a sore tooth. If the idea of letting him go caused her distress, it was indeed time to move on. When her husband died, she’d sworn no man would ever hurt her again, and for seven years, she’d kept that vow.

  The thought of breaking with Eliot made everything in her rise up in protest. Never to feel the touch of his hands again? Never to kiss him? Never again to enjoy that impressive masculine tackle? Tackle that would have been wasted on the puritan she’d once called him.

  With the end of this affair, she’d miss more than a competent lover in her bed. With the end of this affair, she’d miss the rumble of a deep voice and a smile that lit silvery eyes, while not quite reaching his lips. Even more lowering to admit, she’d also miss the decency that invested every cell of Eliot’s body.

  Decency was a trait that she and her sophisticated friends often mocked. Something too dreary for such daring creatures as Verena and her crowd to espouse.

  Decency had always sounded like such a banal quality. Perhaps because until she met Eliot, Verena hadn’t seen much of it. Now she’d learned to value the goodness in him as much – well, almost – as she valued what he could do to her with that gorgeous body.

  It was pleasant to be with a man who respected one’s opinions, who didn’t take one for granted, who didn’t always expect his needs to be paramount. It was pleasant to be able to rely on Eliot’s bone-deep kindness. Because at heart, he was a kind man. If Verena had witnessed little decency in her life, she’d seen even less kindness.

  She’d once ridiculed Lord Colville as a saint. While perhaps he wasn’t quite that, Eliot Ridley was the best man she’d ever known. Without question, Verena Gerard was bad for him. She wasn’t worthy of him, and if word of their affair got out, she’d damage him, perhaps irreparably.

  Yes, it was time to find another lover.

  Yet as her eyes drifted with manufactured disinterest over to where he stood on the other side of the crowded room, laughing at something Lady Lumsden said, her heart ached at the idea. Another sign that she was overdue for a fresh adventure.

  Verena’s heart was locked away tight in a steel box. She’d long ago th
rown away the key. If Eliot Ridley made that useless organ stir to life, the affair was becoming dangerous and she must end it.

  No, no, no, said the heart she refused to acknowledge.

  Chapter 3

  Panting, exhausted, naked, Verena stretched out on the bed that she’d once shared with her brute of a husband. When Lord George Gerard, the second son of the Marquess of Trask, broke his neck in a hunting accident seven years ago, God had answered a maiden’s prayer. Although by that stage, it was years since a violent wedding night had deprived her of her maidenhead.

  After George’s death, she’d completely redecorated her pretty little house in Half Moon Street. Now it reflected a refined feminine taste that her late husband would have detested. The bed was the only piece of furniture that she’d kept from those miserable six years of marriage.

  On the night of George Gerard’s funeral, she’d invited her first paramour to join her in this bed. Most of her joy in the act had come from knowing that George turned in his grave. If he didn’t already burn in hell.

  All her lovers since had shared her marital bed. Every time she spasmed into ecstasy in a man’s arms, she said a silent “To the devil with you, George,” to the selfish blackguard who had wed seventeen-year-old Lady Verena Fleetwood.

  Or at least she had, until Eliot Ridley became her lover. It was another warning of unwelcome intimacy that when Eliot sent her up in flames, she didn’t think about anyone but him.

  It was a little over a week since Lady Paget’s ball and Verena’s decision to send her current lover on his way. As her current lover lay only several inches away after an energetic bout, her failure to take action was obvious.

  She’d meant to break off the affair last Friday afternoon, but the moment Eliot arrived, he’d started to kiss her. Then the hours had rushed by in such a fury of passion that she could summon neither breath nor will to give him notice. It had been like their first encounters, when she found herself astonished at his stamina and sensual imagination. Last Friday had been devoted to incandescent pleasure, and he’d been wise enough to say nothing about changing their very satisfactory arrangements.