“Anna…” He met her gaze. “I’ve made arrangements for you to remove to the mansion the day after tomorrow, where you will complete your convalescence under my mother’s care.”
“Westhaven…” He rose abruptly, and Anna came to her feet more slowly. “Gayle? Is this what you want?”
He looked up at her use of his name, a sad smile breaking through his frown.
“It is what must be, Anna.” He kept his hands in his pockets. He did not reach for her. “You are a well-bred young lady, and I am a bachelor of some repute. If it becomes known you are under my roof without chaperonage, then your future will be bleak.”
More bleak, Anna wanted to rail, than when Stull and Helmsley were hounding me across England?
“I will miss you,” Anna said, turning her back to him, the better to hide her tears. God above, she’d turned into a watering pot since getting involved with the earl.
“I beg your pardon?” He’d stepped closer, close enough she could catch his scent.
“I will miss you,” Anna said, whirling and walking straight into him. She wrapped her arms around his waist and clung, while his arms gently closed around her. “I will miss you and miss you and miss you.”
“Oh, love.” He stroked the back of her head. “You mustn’t cry over this. You’ll manage, and so will I, and it’s for the best.” She nodded but made no move to pull away, and he held her as closely as her wounded shoulder would allow.
In the library, Val looked up from rummaging for a penknife and frowned at Dev.
“Are you peeking?” Val asked, moving to stand beside his brother at the window.
“Enjoying my front-row seat,” Dev replied, scowling. “I do not understand our brother, Valentine. He loves that woman and would give his life for her. But he’s letting her go, and she’s letting him let her go.”
“Could be a flanking maneuver.” Val watched as Anna cried her heart out on Westhaven’s shoulder. The couple was in profile, though, so when Westhaven bent his head to press his lips to her temple, the expression on his face was visible, as well.
“Come away.” Val tugged at Dev’s sleeve, and Dev left the window. “We should not have seen that.”
“But we did see it,” Dev said. “Now what are we going to do about it?”
“We will not meddle,” Val said. “We are not the duke, Devlin. I have every confidence Westhaven will let Anna catch her breath and then approach her properly.”
“Why wait?” Dev pressed. “They love each other now. And I have my suspicions as to why Anna cries so easily these days. I am years your senior, and I can recall the duchess’s last few confinements.”
“They love each other,” Val said, “clearly they do, but Anna deserves to be approached as the wealthy young lady of quality she is, not as a housekeeper on the run from venal schemes. And I don’t want to hear talk of confinements, particularly not when His Grace has ears everywhere.”
“Westhaven’s honor has gotten the best of his common sense,” Dev argued. “Anna doesn’t want to be approached later; she wants to be approached now.”
“Then why does she keep turning him down?” Val said reasonably. “His efforts to woo her would be an embarrassment, were I not convinced he has the right of it.”
“I don’t know.” Dev rubbed his chin and glanced at the window. “This whole business makes no sense, and I am inclined—odd as it might sound—to hear what His Grace has to suggest.”
“I agree.” Val sighed, closing the desk drawer with a bang. “Which only underscores that Westhaven isn’t making one damned bit of sense.”
In the less than two days that remained to them, the earl and Anna were in each other’s pockets constantly. They sat side by side in the back gardens, on the library sofa, or at breakfast. When Dev and Val joined them for meals, they affected a little more decorum, but their eyes conveyed what their hands and bodies could not express. Anna was again sleeping upstairs, and the earl was again joining her at the end of each day.
The earl drew a brush down the length of her dark hair. “I have asked Dev and Val to escort you to Their Graces tomorrow, Anna.”
“I see. You are otherwise occupied.”
“I will be. I think you will enjoy my mother’s hospitality, and my sisters will love you.”
“Morgan adores them,” Anna said, her smile brittle. “Mourning has left them in want of company, and Morgan is lonely, as well.”
“And you, Anna.” The earl’s hand went still. “Will you be lonely?”
She met his eyes in the mirror above the vanity, and he saw hunger there. A hunger to match his own.
“I am lonely now, Westhaven.” She rose and turned. “I am desperately lonely, for you.” She pressed her lips to his, the first they’d kissed in weeks, and though his arms came around her briefly, he was the first one to step back.
“Anna, we will regret it.”
“I will regret it if we don’t,” she replied, her expression unreadable. “I understand, Westhaven, I must leave tomorrow, and in a way it will be a relief, but…”
“But?” He kept his expression neutral, but his breathing was accelerated from just that brief meeting of lips. And what did she mean, leaving him would be a relief?
“But we have this night to bring each other pleasure one last time,” she said miserably. “What difference can it make how we spend it?”
He had been asking himself that same question for days and giving himself answers having to do with honor and respect and even love, but those answers wouldn’t address the pure pain he saw in Anna’s eyes.
“I do not want to take advantage of you,” he said. “Not again, Anna.”
“Then let me take advantage of you,” Anna pleaded softly. “Please, Westhaven. I won’t ask again.”
She desired him, Westhaven told himself. That much had always been real between them, and she was asking him to indulge his most sincere wish. That it was his most sincere wish didn’t mean he should deny her, didn’t mean he should assume, with ducal arrogance, he knew better than she what she needed.
“Come.” He tugged her by the hand to stand by the bed and slowly undressed her, taking particular care she not have to move her right shoulder and arm. When she was on the bed, resting on her back, he got out of his own clothes and locked the door before joining her.
“We will be careful, Anna.” He crouched over her naked, his erection grazing her belly. “You are injured, and I cannot go about this oblivious to that fact.”
“We will be careful,” she agreed. Her left hand cradled his jaw and then slid around to his nape to draw him down to her. “We will be very careful.”
He remained above her, his weight on his forearms, even as he joined his mouth to hers and then his body to hers.
“Westhaven.” Anna undulated up against him. “Please, not slow, not this time.”
“Not slow, but careful.”
“Not that either, for God’s sake.”
He laced his fingers through hers where they rested on her pillow and raised himself up just enough to hold her gaze.
“Careful,” he reiterated. “Deliberate.” He slowly hilted himself in her and withdrew. “Measured.” Another thrust. “Steady.” Another. “But hot,” he whispered, “Hard… deep…”
“Oh, God, Gayle…” Her body spasmed around his cock, clutching at him just as hot, hard, and deep as he’d promised her. She buried her face against his shoulder to mute her keening groans of pleasure, and still he drove her on, one careful thrust at a time.
“I am undone,” she pronounced, brushing his hair back from his brow. “I am utterly, absolutely undone.”
“I am not.” The earl smiled down at her, a conqueror’s possessive smile. “But how is your shoulder?”