Charlotte Featherstone - Addicted

“Well, thirty, then,” his father said unrepentantly. “How does it feel to be a man, to take some comely little maid in here and give it to her hard against a wall?”

“I have been a man, with a man’s responsibilities for many years, Father,” Lindsay growled as he shrugged into his jacket. “While you have been whoring and drinking the years away, I have grown up. I have become something you are not— a gentleman .”

His father leaned forward and winked, unaffected by Lindsay’s rebuke. “Was it that buxom little Sally? I had her the other day. Lively little thing, and skilled, too. Beautiful wide mouth. Oh, come now.” His father grinned wickedly when he saw Lindsay’s scowl. “You were doing what comes natural. At least what comes natural to you and me,” his father teased, elbowing him in the ribs, then staggering to the left. “What man doesn’t enjoy a woman’s mouth around him from time to time? Best damn release you can find, my boy, a willing mouth eager to please. A mouth—” his father sneered “—you won’t have to marry or have harping at you for the rest of yer days.”

“You disgust me,” Lindsay said with a snarl.

“I’m happy, boy,” his father declared, heedless of Lindsay’s censure. “I’m right happy with the reports I’ve been getting from Town. Seems it’s true, apples really don’t fall far from the tree.”

Anais watched the color drain from Lindsay’s face. He was now a ghastly, ashen color. She had never seen Lindsay looking so discomposed. Was it because his father had talked of his previous conquests, and she was present to hear it? Was Lindsay concerned for her feelings, especially after what they had shared?

She knew, that at Lindsay’s age, he had knowledge of other women. She wasn’t naive to believe that he had saved himself for her. Besides, she’d known his skill by the first touch of his hands on her body. And while she felt jealous and hurt, she believed that what they had shared was more than what he had with other women.

She had to believe that, because to believe anything else would be too painful to bear.

“Well, then, I’m off, back to the house to tell that pompous ass Darnby that his shrew of a daughter is not out here with you—I knew you had more taste than to go tupping someone like that—but your mother,” he scoffed as he staggered away, “your mother wouldn’t be appeased until I left my port and hand of cards to search for you. That damn woman, I don’t know what I ever did to deserve her. And,” Weatherby snapped as he whirled around, “you might consider being a trifle more civil to the Grantworth chit. She’s worth a fortune and far prettier than the Darnby girl. She’s got one of the biggest dowries on the marriage mart this year and she fancies you. See to it you make arrangements to go driving or attend that blasted fair. I want an heir from you before I die. Do I make myself clear?”

When the stable door closed, Lindsay looked back at Anais, an expression of shame marring his handsome face. “He was drunk,” she murmured quietly while pulling stray bits of hay from her hair. “He didn’t know what he was saying.”

It was the same excuse she had heard Lindsay use for his father since they were small children. She despised the words even as she said them. There was no excuse for such a wastrel. The marquis was always in a state of grotesque inebriation. She had seen him falling down drunk and groping women who were not his wife more times than she cared to admit.

But then Anais could not fault Lindsay for trying to soften the embarrassment of having such a father. She did much the same with her mother. Anais had dealt with the shame, not by defending her mother’s actions, but writing her out of her life. Anais dealt with the disgrace by pretending she had no mother. And her mother couldn’t have been happier for her absence.

“After what we’ve just shared, you must know that I hold no liking or desire for Mary Grantworth.” Anais smiled, happy to hear it. “She wanted you to believe that we had gone on a walk together and spoken intimately. The truth, Anais, is that I met her coming out of the apothecary, and I talked with her for less than a minute.”

“Thank you for telling me, Lindsay. Not that you needed to.”

“Yes, I did. I was worried the whole time he was going on about women, and about Mary Grantworth, that you would hate me and believe what my father was saying. I was terrified that when I finally was able to come to you, you wouldn’t believe me when I told you that you’ve been the only woman I’ve ever wanted permanently in my life.”

The coldness that had suddenly gathered inside her melted away and she reached up on her tiptoes and brushed her mouth against his. “I believe you, Lindsay.”

“I’m not like him, Anais. I’m not my father. I don’t share his vices.”

She cupped Lindsay’s face, forcing him to look at her. He told her he would never speak a false word against her, and she believed him. “You don’t?”

“No. I…” His eyes turned unreadable and he tried, tried so very hard, she knew, to hold his gaze steady. In the end he couldn’t and he was looking over her shoulder at a spot on the wall behind her when he said, “I swear it. I’m not like him.”

Something in her began to hurt, but it was soon replaced by the great love she had for him, and the need to believe in him. She could handle whatever he was afraid to tell her. Nothing could stop her from loving Lindsay—nothing. At this moment, everything was too new. They needed time to adjust to the way things were now between them.

“Then everything will be all right, won’t it?”

He nodded as he ran the pad of his thumb along her lips. “This is right,” he said emphatically, as if he were trying to convince himself and not her. He clutched her face, peering down into her eyes as he rested his forehead against hers. “This bond we have, it must never be broken. Promise me,” he said, cupping her cheeks in his hands. “Promise me that this chain that binds us will never come unlinked.”

“I have always been bound to you. My heart will forever be yours, Lindsay. Never forget that.”

“I need your goodness in my life, Anais. I need you to keep me from becoming my father.”

“You won’t, Lindsay.”

“Swear to me, Anais. Swear you will always be there for me. Say you will never change.”

“I swear, Lindsay.”

“And will you remember me tonight?”

“I will. And will you think of me, Lindsay?”

“I have your scent on my hand. The taste of you on my tongue. I will never forget, Anais .”

3

“You’re keeping secrets!”

Anais looked up from the purple-and-gold silk that lay in her lap. Rebecca, her closest friend in Bewdley, sauntered into the room, looking more radiant than what was fair. Rebecca was so exotic-looking, with sable-colored curls and amber eyes that were almond-shaped and fringed with lush, sooty lashes.

Anais watched as Rebecca flopped down on the bed and propped her chin in her delicate doll’s hand. Her friend was everything she was not. The only virtue Rebecca lacked was fortune and family connections. But that fact hadn’t seemed to deter the numerous swains that had attempted to court Rebecca over the years. There had been many times as Anais stood on the peripheries, alone and unnoticed, watching her friend smile charmingly at the latest rogue pursuing her, that she wished she possessed a fraction of Rebecca’s beauty. Anais would have handed over her dowry for only a pittance of her friend’s charms and smoldering looks.

“Well,” Rebecca challenged, raising a perfectly shaped brow. “You were gone riding for a very long time. What in the world did Lord Raeburn do with you after he all but stole you from the salon?”