Seventeen
Chapter One
Bath, England
May 1815
“Felicity!”
The sound of her name, bellowed in a resonant masculine voice from the entry hall of her Bath town house, roused Lady Felicity Lyte from a restless doze.
It must be after midnight. What could Thorn be doing here at this unholy hour?
Not that Mr. Hawthorn Greenwood was a stranger to Number 18 Royal Crescent after dark. Quite the contrary. A mere two nights ago, at this very hour, he had been warming the bed beside her, serenely unaware that his days as her lover were numbered.
Until this moment, she’d had no communication with him concerning the polite note in which she’d terminated their discreet love affair.
Off in the distance, Thorn roared her name again. Felicity heard his footsteps thunder up the stairs. Her pulse fluttered in her throat, as she threw off the bedclothes and groped for her dressing gown.
She’d never heard Thorn Greenwood raise his voice. Nor move with anything but quiet, temperate steps. The racket of his current approach frightened Felicity just a little—and stirred her a great deal.
The man must be well-foxed, she decided as she thrust her arms into the sleeves of her dressing gown and fumbled in the dark to tie the sash. Had he fortified himself at some fashionable drinking establishment, then come here intent on begging her to take him back? Perhaps to demand some better account of why she’d decided to cast him off so abruptly?
The notion that he cared enough to demand or beg anything gave Felicity a queasy sensation that was not altogether unpleasant. Rather like looking out at a breathtaking vista from an alarming altitude.
Much as she longed to, she could not afford to continue her enjoyable love affair with Thorn Greenwood. Neither did she dare tell him the true reason why.
Darting the length of her bedchamber, she threw the door open just as Thorn came skidding to a halt before it. Expecting to encounter the reek of spirits, so familiar from her experience with her late husband, Felicity was surprised when she smelled nothing of the kind.
In the faint glow cast by a night lamp in the upstairs hall, Thorn looked perturbed to a degree Felicity associated with immoderate drinking. His greatcoat was unbuttoned, his hat absent altogether, and his dark hair ruffled either by the wind or his own haste. His eyes, usually the calm, steadfast brown of freshly turned earth, now flashed with the sparks of flint struck against flint.
Gazing up at Thorn as he towered over her, his broad shoulders and muscular torso filling out his greatcoat, Felicity had to anchor herself against the intense attraction that threatened to propel her into his arms.
If only he’d come to confront her any time but now—anywhere but here. Late at night, on the threshold of the room where they’d made love so often. Yet, not often enough. If they held their breaths and listened, they might hear her bed calling them with its sensual siren song.
Her skin warmed with the physical memory of his strong but gentle touch. The sensitive tips of her bosoms thrust out against her nightgown and dressing gown to lure his lips. The sweet fissure between her thighs took fire in readiness for another delicious coupling.
If Thorn Greenwood dropped to his knees and begged for one more night, his face pressed to her bosom and his large deft hands cradling her backside, no power on earth, least of all her own badly divided will, could force Felicity’s lips to frame a refusal.
“Is Ivy here?” he demanded.
The words were so contrary to anything she’d expected that Felicity struggled to understand them.
“Ivy? Your…sister?”
“Of course, my sister.” Thorn’s brusque tone rasped against her kindled passion like a man’s un-shaven cheek grazing the sensitive flesh of her bare neck. “Do you think I’ve come here at this hour because I’ve developed a sudden passion for horticulture?”
Felicity’s fragile sense of anticipation shattered into sharp splinters of ice.
“What on earth would your silly sister be doing in my house in the middle of the night? If this is some spurious pretext for you to barge in here and wake me from a sound sleep, you will regret it, Mr. Greenwood, I assure you.”
“Depend upon it, Lady Lyte, nothing less dire than the defence of my sister’s virtue and reputation could induce me to cross a threshold over which I’m no longer welcome.” Even in the dim light Felicity could see the muscles of Thorn’s firm jaw tighten further. “As to why Ivy might be under your roof, I suggest you put that question to your nephew, the young scoundrel.”
Every word out of his mouth splashed cold water over Felicity’s fevered flesh. Bad enough Thorn Greenwood should come here at this hour of the night, exciting all manner of absurd expectations in her only to smash them to pieces again. But to insult her late husband’s nephew, a young man Felicity loved like the son she’d never expected to have, that was an outrage she would not bear.
“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.
