Deborah Hale - Lady Lyte's Little Secret

“Pray, watch your tongue, Thorn Greenwood! I know of few young men who less deserve to be called a scoundrel than Oliver Armitage. What is my nephew supposed to have done to have compromised your sister’s reputation that she couldn’t do quite as readily on her own? I vow, I never met a more heedless little romp.”

That wasn’t true, Felicity’s conscience reproached her. On those few occasions when she’d encountered Thorn’s younger sister on the town, Felicity had been captivated by the child’s sweet high spirits, so at odds with her brother’s gentle gravity. Despite the difference in their ages, the two women had gotten on famously and Lady Lyte had been known to make quite a fuss over young Miss Greenwood.

Felicity turned a deaf ear to her own reason. Thorn’s unwarranted slight against Oliver demanded tit for tat. He wouldn’t mind any insult to himself half so much as one to his beloved sister.

Thorn’s powerful hands clenched and unclenched, as though barely restrained from grasping her upper arms and shaking her until her teeth rattled. Or perhaps pulling her close to kiss her until her knees gave way. Just contemplating those possibilities left Felicity a trifle dizzy.

“B-besides,” she added, “I doubt Oliver even knows your sister. There cannot be a young man in all of Bath less anxious to venture out on the town.”

Not that his doting aunt hadn’t cajoled him often enough. A fortnight ago, Ivy Greenwood would have been just the sort of winsome creature Felicity might have urged on her nephew to lure him away from his books and his laboratory.

Thank goodness she hadn’t. A shiver snaked through Felicity. Any match between Oliver and Ivy would have bound her inextricably to the Greenwood family, just when she needed to get as far away from Thorn as possible.

The words he hurled at her next echoed Felicity’s deepest fears. “I have reason to believe your nephew and my sister have eloped to Gretna Green.”

Felicity Lyte had no patience whatsoever with women who swooned. She considered it a vapid affectation. The last thing in the world she wanted was for the shock of Thorn’s news to make her wilt into his arms. But as everything around her began to twirl like a child’s spinning top, she found herself with no choice in the matter.

“Felicity!”

Breaking his vow never to budge a step across the threshold of her private chamber again, Thorn hoisted his erstwhile mistress into his arms and carried her to the bed.

As he laid Felicity on the rumpled sheets, the familiar fragrance of rosewater wrapped around him strand by delicate strand, pulling him toward her. It took every crumb of Thorn’s considerable self-control to curb the urge to indulge in one final kiss. The last time he’d pressed his lips to hers, he hadn’t realized it would be the last time.

For a moment, his passion for Felicity blotted every rational thought from Thorn’s mind, including the concern for his sister which had brought him here in the first place. The wild brown tangle of her hair against the pillow tempted his hands to touch. If he inhaled until his head spun and he pitched on top of her supine body, Thorn doubted he could breathe in enough of her subtle fragrance to satisfy him.

He should have known from the moment this beautiful, sought-after creature first invited him to become her lover that she’d made a foolish mistake. What could such a diamond of the first water want with a tiresomely respectable fellow like him? A man of sound but scarcely brilliant intellect, and no pretensions of wit or charm. Not ill-looking, but hardly a beau of fashion. A man with family responsibilities and financial obligations, unable to shower her with presents or even tender an honorable bid for her hand.

Yet, she had chosen him. And for the first time in his steady, dutiful life Hawthorn Greenwood had done something less than respectable. Something furtive. Something scandalous. Something so exhilarating, he could scarcely believe it was happening to him.

Felicity Lyte had offered him a banquet of forbidden fruit. Even as he’d gorged himself upon it, Thorn had found his appetite piqued rather than sated. By mutual agreement the span of their time together had been limited to this one Season at Bath. Then, with several blissful weeks still ahead of them, Thorn had received a tersely-worded letter from Felicity ending their relationship.

As he should have expected, she’d grown tired of him. Found a superior replacement, perhaps.

Now Thorn glanced around her shadow-shrouded bedchamber, satisfying himself that Felicity had been sleeping alone—for tonight, at least.

He shook his head hard to banish his selfish desires and motives. Certainly he’d been angered by the casual manner in which Felicity had cast him off. Hurt, too—might as well admit it. Still, that didn’t give him the right to burst in on the woman at such an uncivilized hour and shock her into a swoon with his distressing suspicions.

“Felicity?” He’d bellowed her name in the entry hall, then gasped it when she’d collapsed into his arms. Now he spoke it in a coaxing murmur as he chafed her hand. “Wake up, please. I’m sorry I broke the news to you so baldly. I should have known it would come as a terrible shock.”

A wave of alarm swelled within him when she did not rouse right away. He pressed his fingers to the tender flesh at the base of her throat, searching for a pulse.

“Thorn?” Felicity’s eyelids fluttered. She spoke his name with the peculiar softness of affection as her lips half curved in a drowsy, quizzical, trusting smile. “What happened? Where am I, darling?”

Thorn’s heart lurched in his chest. Could he have misunderstood her letter? Might she still want him, for a few more weeks at least? The possibility elated him and that precarious sense of elation unsettled him.

What terrifying power over his happiness had he yielded to this woman?

As if to demonstrate that very capacity, Lady Lyte opened her glittering green eyes wide as a tremor of aversion quivered through her. She flinched from his touch.

“What are you doing here?”

If she’d raised her hand and slapped him hard across the cheek, it could not have stung like the steely chill of her tone. Thorn winced from it, pulling upright from his solicitous crouch beside her bed.

A sharp intake of her breath told Thorn she recalled why he’d come.

Her next words confirmed it. “Oliver and your sister? Run off together to Gretna? Are you certain?”

Slowly, she rose to perch on the edge of the bed. Thorn bit his tongue to keep from warning her to be careful. If the woman wanted to risk another fainting spell, it was no business of his, after all.

“If I’d been certain, I would hardly be wasting my time here, Lady Lyte. I’d be on the road to Bristol this very moment trying to catch them before they got any further with such folly.”

“You must be mistaken.” Felicity’s doubtful tone belied the certainty of her words. “I breakfasted with Oliver just this morning. I never saw a young man who looked less like he meant to elope.”

Her balance appeared equally dubious as she surged to her feet. Though Thorn willed his arms to remain straight at his sides, one reached out of its own accord to steady Felicity.

Thorn Greenwood had always taken modest pride in knowing his own mind and acting in a deliberate manner upon carefully reasoned decisions. Unused to being pulled in contrary directions, he did not enjoy the sensation.

He wished he did not enjoy the sensation of Felicity Lyte clinging to his arm.

“I hope you’re right about your nephew.”

Thorn wasn’t certain he meant it. If they discovered Oliver Armitage tucked up sound and alone in his own bed or burning the midnight oil in his study, then Ivy’s disappearance would take on a far more sinister complexion.