A Taste of Desire

chapter 29



“Mademoiselle, the baron is here!” Hélène’s panicked voice penetrated Amelia’s bemused thoughts.

As it was, Amelia didn’t confess her feelings to Thomas after the kiss, which had quickly escalated to intimate touching and heavy fondling. Thomas had halted it before it had burned out of control. After they parted company at the bottom of the stairs, their bodies still throbbing with unfulfilled desire, she took herself off to her chamber to rest until the evening meal.

“The who?”

“Lord Clayborough. ‘E is ‘ere. Out there.” Her hand gestured wildly at the window.

“But—” Amelia broke off. Lord Clayborough was at Stoneridge Hall? Good Lord, why? Then she recalled one of the last things she said to him when she was in town. Next time don’t require a written invitation. You know where I am. Well, this was a fine time for him to start listening to her.

Lord, that time felt like eons ago, the events happening to a different woman at another time in her unhappy life. She wasn’t that woman any longer, and she hadn’t wanted to marry the baron for some time now. Blast, she should have written him the moment she’d realized. Now he was here—at Thomas’s home. A wave of terror swept over her. Good Lord, if Thomas were to discover … With ruthless calculation, she squashed further such thoughts. She had to think. She needed to find a way out of this miserable situation.

“And you saw him where?”

“I-I, um, well, Johns was showing me the grounds before it got too dark, and ‘e saw us near the groundskeeper’s house. ‘E’s zare now.” A blush painted Hélène’s face red as she lowered her gaze.

Another time Amelia would have found her maid’s discomfiture at having to explain her tryst with one of the footmen amusing, but now wasn’t that time.

Think, Amelia, think. Dare she risk meeting with him now? Or worse yet, dare she not? She thought of Thomas and knew her future happiness hinged on what she did now.

Everyone had turned in for the evening, and ten or fifteen minutes was all the time she needed to send Lord Clayborough on his way. No doubt, he would be disappointed, but it was not as though they were a love match.

“I’ll need my cloak.” The decision made, Amelia wanted nothing more than an expeditious ending to the entire affair with Lord Clayborough.


Thomas couldn’t sleep, which came as no great surprise to him. After the kiss in the library, it was a small miracle he could walk upright. He’d existed in a state of semi-arousal for the remainder of the evening.

Supper had been an exercise in self-control. Food was necessary and food could be pleasurable, but never had he imagined it could be sensual as well. But then he’d never watched Amelia joyously consume a dish while imagining what it would be like to have her lips wrapped around him. The sight of her savoring the chocolate-dipped strawberry had made him harder than a poker iron. A veritable feast for the palate indeed.

They’d parted company at her bedchamber door, his control too tenuous for even a chaste kiss on the cheek. To touch her would have been the height of foolishness, given his noble intention not to forsake his mother and sisters and screw her blind.

An hour later, however, as he lay in his bed nursing an unflagging erection, his bed linens in disarray, he was having second, third, and fourth thoughts about the hindrance that was his moral code, which was keeping him from her bed. After all, he was going to marry her. Theirs wasn’t some torrid, illicit love affair. And, of course, they would be discreet. His mother and sisters would never know, for they occupied bedchambers in a different wing.

Decision reached and conscience sufficiently appeased, Thomas bolted from his bed. He snatched up his dressing robe from the footboard and exited the room.

Ten minutes later, Thomas paused at the library window to adjust his bearings. The anticipation that had coiled his insides to knots, now unfurled like tentacles of concern. Where was she? He’d gone to her room and found it empty. He’d then searched the study and library, morning and dining rooms, his worry increasing by the half minute. Even the billiards room—a space she’d rarely ever ventured into—received a thorough inspection. But again, that effort too proved fruitless.

He’d returned to the library on the off chance he’d crossed paths with her somewhere. She loved reading in the window seat overlooking the back. As he stared out that same window, his mind racing, his thoughts occupied, a movement outside caught his peripheral vision. A moment later, a figure emerged from a copse of dogwood to the left of the groundskeeper’s lodgings.

From the light of the full moon Thomas could make out the form. Amelia. Air rushed from his lungs in relief. He’d recognize her dressed in burlap from a mile away. Since the groundskeeper’s house was set back not far from the main house, his current position gave him an eagle’s view of the area in play.

As quickly as relief had soothed his mounting concern, another figure—this one definitely male—joined her. The man’s head was bent down close to hers, their conversation intimate. These certainly weren’t two people exchanging polite pleasantries.

Thomas saw the kiss occur as if wrapped in a dream. None of it seemed real. The man moved in closer until his lips touched hers. One, two seconds passed before she jerked her head back, glanced hurriedly around, and then grabbed him by the sleeve and pulled him back behind the shelter of the dogwood.

“Sir.”

Thomas turned with a start at his butler’s voice, observing him through a mist of red-hot anger and the green tint of jealousy. Alfred stood tall and straight at the library threshold, his expression graver than usual.

“A problem, Alfred?” Thomas was frankly surprised by his calm tone when a voice inside him was raging out of control.

“Sir, one of the servants has discovered an empty carriage on the property. It is behind the trees near the pond. How would you like me to proceed? Should I alert the constable?”

Thomas processed the butler’s words like a drowning man taking in mouthfuls of water, flailing about only now realizing he didn’t know how to swim. But while his eyes might deny the scene he’d just witnessed, his mind couldn’t deny the facts pointing to Amelia’s obvious betrayal. The only question now was, who was he this time? Treacherous, lying, witch.

“The horses?”

“Yes, still there, sir, both tied to a tree.”

Thomas nodded slowly. “I will deal with it.”

His normally stoic butler appraised him with raised brows and wide eyes. His look of bafflement was gone a moment later. “As you wish, sir.” Alfred pivoted on his heel to go, then paused and turned back to him. “Sir, would you like the lamps lit?”

Both figuratively and literally, Thomas stood shrouded in darkness. He’d been too impatient to light the lamps when he’d thrown open the doors to find the room empty and silent.

“No, I’m on my way out,” he said but didn’t move except to stare out the window again.

Alfred exited as quietly as he’d appeared. She was planning to leave him. Tonight. There could be no other explanation for the scene he’d just witnessed, no other explanation for the presence of the coach on his property.

While the future he’d envisaged with Amelia crashed down around him in fitting apocalyptic fashion given their introduction the prior year, she emerged from behind the bush and began hurrying up the path leading to the servants’ door at the back.

Thomas turned and strode from the room, intent on being there to greet her.