Lady Lyte's Little Secret
“Take one step, and I’ll toss your clothes on the fire!”
“What’s gotten into you, woman?” A grimace of pain twisted Thorn’s features as he lurched to his feet. “You’re not my mother, for pity’s sake. You don’t even want to be my mistress anymore. So leave off trying to coddle me.”
He tried to take the threatened step, but the strength of his legs clearly failed to match the strength of his will. He staggered toward Felicity, who mustered all her strength to push him back onto his bed. At the last instant, his hand closed around her wrist and pulled her down on top of him.
The indignation she tried to summon melted like summer hail.
A bewildering sense of completeness stole over her as the fleet skip of her heart tangled with the strong, swift beat of Thorn’s until it became one thrilling, intricate rhythm…!
Praise for bestselling author DEBORAH HALE’s latest titles
Whitefeather’s Woman
“This book is yet another success for Deborah Hale.
It aims for the heart and doesn’t miss.”
—The Old Book Barn Gazette
The Wedding Wager
“…this delightful, well-paced historical
will leave readers smiling and satisfied.”
—Library Journal
A Gentleman of Substance
“This exceptional Regency-era romance
includes all the best aspects of that genre….
Deborah Hale has outdone herself…”
—Romantic Times
#640 THE FORBIDDEN BRIDE
Cheryl Reavis
#641 DRAGON’S DAUGHTER
Catherine Archer
#642 HALLIE’S HERO
Nicole Foster
Lady Lyte’s Little Secret
Deborah Hale
www.millsandboon.co.uk
Available from Harlequin Historicals and DEBORAH HALE
My Lord Protector #452
A Gentleman of Substance #488
The Bonny Bride #503
The Elusive Bride #539
The Wedding Wager #563
Whitefeather’s Woman #581
Carpetbagger’s Wife #595
The Love Match #599
“Cupid Goes to Gretna”
Border Bride #619
Lady Lyte’s Little Secret #639
To Graham McDonald,
nuclear engineer, rock climber
and all-around answer to a maiden’s prayer,
as well loved by his sisters as Thorn Greenwood.
Nobody deserves a “happily ever after” more than you,
Big Red!
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Epilogue
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. 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.
“Will you at least humor me by confirming his presence in your house?”
“Very well.” Felicity wrenched her hand back from Thorn’s arm as though she regretted the necessity of accepting his support. “Anything to speed you on your way.”
As she stalked past him toward the door, Thorn followed, ready to catch her again if she so much as swayed.
She did not.
Indeed, her steps seemed to gain assurance as she marched down the hallway.
“I’ll try his study first.” Felicity tossed the words over her shoulder as she halted before a door at the end of the wide corridor. “He often forgets the time when he’s absorbed in his work.”
Tapping gently on the door, she called her nephew’s name, but received no response.
“Oliver?” She turned the knob and pushed the door open a crack. “Are you there?”
A musty odor of old books wafted from the room, mingled with the faint reek of chemical solutions. But all was dark and still within. Oliver Armitage did not answer his aunt’s call.
“He must have retired to bed at a decent hour for a change.” A note of uncertainty crept into Felicity’s voice.
Pushing past Thorn to the door opposite her nephew’s study, she knocked harder and hailed him in a more urgent tone. “Oliver, wake up! It’s urgent I speak with you at once.”
No acknowledgement.
“He’s a sound sleeper.”
Thorn wondered whether she meant the remark to reassure herself or to confound his mounting conviction that he’d been right all along.
Forsaking subtlety, Lady Lyte thrust open the bedroom door. “Oliver, pardon us for waking you, dear boy. But Mr. Greenwood has come with the most preposterous…”
The rest of her sentence evaporated into the dormant shadows of the empty bedchamber. The hall lamp’s dim glimmer revealed crisp outlines of furniture, including an undisturbed bed.
“Perhaps he has gone out, after all,” Felicity suggested, clearly forgetting her earlier claim that there was not a young man in Bath less anxious to venture out on the town.
“Perhaps.”
A splash of white against the bed’s dark coverlet caught Thorn’s eye. He brushed past Felicity. His hand closed over a sheet of paper, neatly folded and sealed with wax. Pulling it into the faint ribbon of light that spilled through the open doorway, he squinted to decipher two words written on the outside.
He shoved the paper toward Felicity. “It’s addressed to you.”
Chapter Two
Felicity willed her hand not to tremble as she held it out to receive the communication Oliver had left for her.
“Can you fetch me a light, please?” she asked Thorn.
Whatever message this paper held, she had no intention of returning to her own bedroom to read it. Certainly not in Thorn Greenwood’s company.
Why, the place was crammed to the ceiling with vivid, bedeviling memories of the nights they’d spent together. The last thing Felicity wanted to contemplate just now was any reminder of Thorn’s deliberate, attentive lovemaking and her own ardent response to it.
Ever obliging, Thorn headed out into the hall and returned bearing a lamp.
The thickness and texture of the paper in her hand put Felicity in mind of the letter she’d written to him just the other day. Reluctance had tugged at her elbow. Regret at having to end their affair prematurely had sharpened her words. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him, but neither had she wanted him to hold any false hope that she might change her mind.
If Thorn had entreated her with those steadfast brown eyes and the earnest set of his handsome features, Felicity had feared she might capitulate.
With disastrous consequences.
“Well?” Thorn prompted her, his gaze fixed on the paper. “Do you intend to open it or not?”
“Of course.” Felicity stirred from her musings. Her fingers fumbled as she broke the seal. “Don’t badger me!”
Events had so far confirmed Thorn’s preposterous suggestion. Still, Felicity persisted in the vain hope that this note from Oliver would not say what she feared it might.
To the best of her knowledge, her nephew had only the barest acquaintance with Ivy Greenwood. And even if he knew the young lady well and cared for her deeply, a man of science like Oliver hadn’t the rash temperament to bolt for Gretna Green on the spur of the moment.
Then again, Ivy Greenwood had an impulsive streak quite wide enough for both of them, not to mention a winsome beauty that might make a fool of the cleverest man.
Felicity’s insides churned as she forced herself to read what Oliver had written. Thorn held the lamp high, peering over her shoulder. The warm tickle of his breath on her ear made it nearly impossible to concentrate on deciphering the young scientist’s spiky scrawl.
“Dear Aunt Felicity,” Thorn read aloud. “By the time you find this, I will be well on my way to Scotland, where I plan to wed Miss Ivy Greenwood. As Miss Greenwood is below the age of consent and she feared her brother might not approve the match…”
Under his breath Thorn muttered, “Too right, lad,” then picked up where he had left off. “…We have decided to elope. Knowing how fond you are of my wife-to-be, I trust you will wish us every happiness. We look forward to making our home with you when we return. Ever your affectionate nephew, Oliver Armitage.”
By slow degrees, Thorn let the hand in which he held the lamp drop. Likewise, the hand in which Felicity held the letter fell slack.
Neither of them spoke for a moment, as the indisputable truth did battle with Felicity’s adamant denial and beat it senseless.
“W-why, this is madness,” she insisted when she found her voice at last. “I cannot imagine a more ill-matched pair than my nephew and your sister. What can have gotten into those foolish children?”
As she spoke, Felicity turned to face Thorn. When she saw how close he hovered behind her, she swallowed a little gasp and stepped back. Not that she was frightened of the man—only of the intense, bewildering effect he had upon her. Her fingers itched to reach up and nuzzle his soft side whiskers in the familiar gesture that was their signal to retire to bed.
Had been their signal, she reminded herself, clenching both hands by her sides to restrain them.
Perhaps some restless hunger in her eyes betrayed her barely checked desire, for Thorn lowered his voice to the mellow, intimate cadence of lovemaking.
“I’ll tell you what’s gotten into those foolish children, Lady Lyte.” His gaze ranged over her face like a fond caress. “The same madness that sometimes afflicts older and wiser hearts.”
“Surely, you can’t mean us?” Felicity forced a laugh. It tinkled like the cut-glass crystals on a chandelier striking against one another. “I, for one, am well past years of discretion and quite cured of girlish romantic illusions. And you’re the last man in Bath, perhaps in all of Britain, inclined to madness or any other excess.”
Sensible, steady, forthright, respectable Hawthorn Greenwood. Felicity knew, for she had weighed all those somewhat tiresome virtues in his favor before selecting him to become her convenient paramour. She hadn’t wanted a more romantic or fanciful fellow, apt to imagine himself in love with her. Whatever that meant.
Thorn did not look as pleased with her tribute to his equanimity as a sensible man ought. His full dark brows drew together and the line of his wide, generous mouth stretched taut. Felicity shrank from the shadow of distress in his too-candid eyes.
“I bore you.”
“Don’t be silly!” Her denial rang a trifle hollow even in Felicity’s own ears.
He didn’t bore her, she insisted to herself. He’d only failed to surprise her.
Until tonight.
Now she couldn’t make up her mind whether or not she liked such surprises.