Susan Johnson - Sexy As Hell

Disaster averted, the buzz of conversation resumed, although Quarles took the first opportunity given him to escape. Oz didn’t even look up as he left the game, his thoughts divided between his cards and his morning’s schedule.

The conversation between Oz and Quarles was repeated like a drumbeat throughout the club rooms, the tantalizing news soon carried farther afield by noble young sprigs leaving the club for other social pursuits. By morning, the story in all its explosive detail had raced through the beau monde, spurred and energized by the stunning news of Oz’s impending fatherhood.

Not only had the perennial bachelor been snared.

But a child was also on the horizon… and so quickly.

People immediately began counting on their fingers.

What lovely tittle-tattle! Would he discard his lovers? Or more to the point, how often would he visit his breeding wife in the country? No one seriously expected him to relinquish his lovers. Although, with poor Quarles having only narrowly escaped serious harm, it was deliciously apparent that Lennox was jealous of his wife.

Astonishing!

It quite staggered the imagination!

THE MORNING FOLLOWING Quarles’s disclosure at Brooks’s, Isolde had finally reached the limits of her patience. Will had arrived as she was having her breakfast for heaven’s sake! Jumping up, she advanced on him in a rage,

“This is too much, damn you! I’m telling Anne! I swear I will!”

“Calm down. She’ll only blame you for it.”

“For heaven’s sake, Will. How can-”

Suddenly the door to the breakfast room swung open, crashed into the wall like a mallet, toppling a small curio cabinet and catapulting a collection of Meissen figurines to the floor.

His mud-spattered riding coat swinging against his filthy boots, Oz stormed in, his heels crushing the shattered porcelain, his hard, haggard gaze leveled on Will. “Get the hell out of my house!”

“My house,” Isolde snapped, instantly provoked by her husband’s misplaced authority.

Oz shot her a look as though noticing her for the first time. With a shrug, he said, “Her house. Now get the hell out!”

As Will hesitated, Oz pulled out a pistol with dizzying speed, cocked the hammer, and in a voice cold with outrage, snarled, “Stay away from my wife.”

“Maybe we should ask Isolde what she wants,” Will hurled back. “She and I were friends long before you came along!”

Isolde had never seen the blood drain from a man’s face. Frightened, she went still, the pale, stark planes of Oz’s face conspicuous in the morning light, the blank look in his eyes terrifying, the pistol aimed at Will’s chest held, white-knuckled.

“Don’t be a fucking hero,” Oz murmured, slurred, softly goading.

And completely drunk, Isolde suddenly realized.

“Go, Will, for God’s sake!” she gasped, unable to breathe, understanding now why Oz had looked right through her.

“There, you see,” Oz softly said, his nerves flinching at Isolde’s concern for her lover. “Tell him again, my darling,” he said with overdrawn sweetness, “how you fear for his life.”

Even without looking, she could feel the contempt in his gaze. But she wouldn’t be the cause of Will’s death, and ignoring her husband’s indolent sarcasm, her face closed, she whispered, “Please go, Will. Think of Anne and your child.”

Whether it was the terror in Isolde’s voice or the annihilating indifference of the man holding the gun, Will bowed to Isolde, turned, and tramping over the scattered bits of Meissen, passed through the open doorway.

His footfall echoed down the hall, the sound slowly fading.

A hush descended, the brilliant sunlight glinting off the silver on the breakfast table, the air taut with aggression and insult.

Oz stood swaying gently on his boot heels, his eyes half-shut, a gauntness to his face even more pronounced since she’d seen him last. Then his lids slowly lifted, he eased the pistol hammer back in place, tossed the weapon on a chair, and turned a jaundiced gaze on Isolde. “You seem to have been amusing yourself rather nicely in my absence despite your protests to the contrary.”

The word absence kindled a sudden thought, and she glanced at the open doorway. In all her busy, well-staffed household, not one of the scores of servants she employed was visible. Honest surprise raised her brows. “How did you threaten them?”

“I told them I’d kill you.”

“And will you?”

A vein beat rapidly along his temple. “I haven’t decided.”

“Am I supposed to plead?”

“Please don’t. And don’t make excuses,” he said evenly.

She wouldn’t plead, no more than she’d beg him to love her. “You’re being a little presumptuous, aren’t you? Jumping to conclusions?” She had nothing to hide.

Turning the full weight of his anger on her, he said with a cruel and deliberate malice, “I arrive to find him here at breakfast? And I’m jumping to conclusions? Spare me your fucking lies.”

“You’re drunk.”

“I wonder what his wife says when he drags home stinking of you?” he growled as if she hadn’t spoken.

“You’re wrong. When you’re sober, I’d be happy to explain.”

“My ears work drunk or sober.”

“But does your brain?” With Will gone, so was her fear. She could feel it in her bones, intuitive and independent of reason. Just as she suspected Oz was jealous, if extravagant dreams were allowed. “You look tired,” she said, wanting to take him in her arms and soothe the scowl from his face. Wanting more that he might have come because she mattered to him.

“Tired and abysmally drunk.” The faintest of smiles twitched across his fine mouth. “You don’t look tired at all.”

“Unlike you, I have no one making demands on my energy at night.” She lifted one brow. “I’d appreciate no lies from you on that score if you please.”

He felt a twinge of guilt for the first time in his life, and as if to mollify that culpability, he said, “Then we won’t exchange lies.”

“I have none to exchange. Ask any of the staff. In fact, I was in the process of threatening to tell Anne of her husband’s visits if he didn’t stop calling on me. Will’s been annoying me worse than ever, if you must know.”

Oz’s grin was instant and disarming. “I should have shot him.”

“I’m almost in a mood to agree. But I’ll leave it to his wife to bore him to death instead.”

“Tut, tut,” Oz murmured, his gaze limpid.

“You met her,” Isolde said, charmed by the uncalculated warmth in his voice. “Admit, she’s boring.”

“Hell yes. I’d shoot myself after a week in her company.”

“What a sweet thing to say.”

“At the risk of ruining this charming rapprochement,” he said, his gaze suddenly alert, “I have a question.”

“I didn’t, if that’s what you want to know.”

He watched her for a moment, then slowly said, “Why did you go on his hunt?”

“Because I like to ride. Who told you?”

“Quarles. I almost hurt the poor boy.”

“I was sent an invitation. The entire neighborhood was there. Pamela and Elliot were my duennas.”

“You stayed late.”

“No later than most.”

“Did you stay the night?”

“Yes,” she said, steady and composed. “Everyone did.”

“Not Quarles,” he replied, clipped and cool.

“He and his wild party left for more intemperate pleasures in Cambridge.”

“And what,” he said, holding her gaze, “was the extent of intemperate pleasures at the Fowlers’?”

“What were the extent of your pleasures in London?”

His dark brows floated upward. “Are you picking a quarrel?”

“Am I not allowed a wifely question?” she delicately asked.

“Not that one,” he placidly replied.

“Which ones am I allowed?”

There was a small silence, and then he smiled. “Let me get out of these muddy clothes and I’ll tell you.”

“Just like that? No apology for your false accusations?”

“That, too, I can better do upstairs.”

“What if I were to say no?”

“You’d be lying.”

“So sure?”

“Very sure,” he pleasantly said and offered her his arm.

“Apologize,” she said, because she would not be so easily seduced or worse, trifled with.

He dropped his arm and stood still, not speaking for a moment as if gathering his thoughts. Then he quietly said, “I apologize for insulting you, for leaving you here and in London, for questioning the paternity of your child.”

“Our child.”

“For that,” he graciously said, willing to take the child, whether his or not. “My life is no longer my own,” he said, open-eyed and softly, his earnestness so heartfelt it stole her breath away. “I say it humbly and without pride. I need you to make the sun shine and bring the stars out at night. I need you to make my life sweet again and stop the weeping inside me. I need you.”

She smiled, happiness warm and fathomless, the music of the world in her ears. “I love you. I have from the first.”

“I love you, too.” His eyes scanned her face. “Is there more?”

She shook her head. In time, she knew, he’d speak those words of love with feeling. Taking his hand, she drew him to the door. “I must warn you, darling,” she calmly said, glancing up at him. “My passions seem to have increased with pregnancy; I may be demanding. Do you think you can stay awake?”

His smile unfurled and filled his eyes. “No sleeping. I promise.”

When they reached her bedchamber, he quickly stripped away his muddy boots and clothes, leaving them in a pile at the door. Then pulling off his rings, he dropped them into a small Imari bowl on the dresser. As the emerald twinkled against the orange and blue design, he knew he wouldn’t be wearing Khair’s ring again.

The past was the past.

He’d be a father soon. The concept was strange but pleasing, he thought, smiling faintly.