Her Husband’s Lover Read Free Page B

time had passed at all.
    ‘You don’t want your name sullied alongside mine,’ he insisted, already recognising the brewing danger. The problem was that he didn’t actually want to move away. Rather he wanted to press close and find himself entwined in Lyle’s embrace. It took every ounce of self-restraint to take a single step backwards instead.
    Lyle’s lips quirked. ‘I don’t need you to sully my name. I’m capable of that all by myself.’ He followed Darleston’s retreat and extended his arm past Darleston’s ear, neatly trapping him betwixt his body and the thick trunk of a tree.
    Conflicted, Darleston froze. Their last parting had been untidy. It seemed wholly rational that this beginning would be messy and awkward too.
    ‘By all means practise your excuses, Robert, but don’t leave on my account. Of course, if you feel you need to run away –’
    ‘Ought I?’ Of course he ought. Given the current euphoria bubbling beneath his skin, he ought to call his carriage right now and not look back until he’d crossed the county border. In an act of further lunacy, he maintained the eye contact they’d already made.
    That wicked gleam – damn! Lyle’s ability, with barely more than a slight upturning of his lips, to reduce him to an irrational, seething ball of desire had ever been his downfall. The scent of port lingered on the other man’s breath, mixed with a trace of aniseed.
    ‘Christ, Robert! I can still hardly get over the fact that you’re here. For the longest time I didn’t know what they’d done to you. I wasn’t sure … I wasn’t informed, merely packed off like a piece of baggage and told to toughen up. I spent the first eighteen months in that Indian hellhole living off the memory of you.’
    Darleston almost imperceptibly shook his head, having no comparable sentence to relate. ‘Nothing happened to me.’ It smarted a little to admit it. Lyle had taken the brunt of the punishment, though he was pleased to see the army hadn’t broken him. Meanwhile, he had suffered little more than embarrassment and his mother’s reproachful looks, both of which were quickly forgotten. No, his penalty hadn’t come until much later, when he’d stupidly committed the same crime twice. Then his mother had found him ‘a nice young bride’ to keep him busy and ‘out of the second footman’s underthings’. Not that it had worked. It’d been rather naïve of the countess to think it would. But then, she’d never been quite as bright as she liked to believe.
    ‘I sometimes imagined you’d write.’ Lyle’s words broke though his introspection.
    Darleston gave a derisive little snort. ‘
I
sometimes imagined I’d write. But what the hell was there to say? What is there to say now?’ He couldn’t think of anything that would mend broken hearts and promises. Certainly nothing that would reverse the flow of time, or allow them to make that fateful day over.
    ‘Maybe you don’t need to say anything.’
    His loins agreed, even if the rest of him didn’t. Words wouldn’t fix anything. Kisses might smooth away the awkward memories, but life had moved on from where they’d been. Nearly half his life had passed since then. He’d been married, acted the libertine and taken dozens of whores and other lovers to his bed. He’d been rejected by the one man he really wanted and laughed at by the only other that he admired. He really couldn’t stomach any more pain.
    Which wasn’t to say that he wasn’t tempted. Lord, he was sorely tempted.
    Lyle leaned closer still, damn near pressing their foreheads together. His lips parted, revealing a tiny hint of moisture upon their surface.
    ‘Wait!’ Darleston covered the temptation with his raised fingers. ‘Think. We’re not boys any more. Do you really want to be caught in a compromising position in your father-in-law’s house?’
    ‘Promises, promises …’ Lyle mused, eyes ablaze with salacious intent.
    Dear God! That wasn’t the response