The Devil Takes a Bride

ONE TWO THREE four five six seven eight.

There were precisely eight steps from the breakfast room to the study, and eight panels of wallpapering in the room. Jeffrey knew this because he counted them every day on those occasions he resided at his townhome in Bath, sometimes several times a day. And yet he couldn’t be entirely certain of the number of steps in the early-morning hours after his spectacular downfall. He kept walking back and forth between the breakfast room and study, counting the steps.

He had to do it; he had to count until he was completely certain, for it was the only thing that could annihilate the image of him thrusting his body into that young woman’s sex.

The vision—unwanted, uninvited, mistakenly placed in his brain—was new to him. Generally, the vulgar and salacious thoughts that tended to plague him every day were of two women pleasuring each other with their tongues and fingers. He couldn’t say why that was, only that he had begun to experience that particular image around his seventeenth year. He’d begun to act on it in his twenty-first year, carefully seeking out the sort of bedmates who were willing to perform for him and with him. But in society, Jeffrey had learned to keep the dark images deep in the corners of his mind, hidden away. Always proper, always a model of propriety, just as his father had taught him to be. When Jeffrey made a concerted effort to banish the images, he was generally successful. They seemed only to emerge when he was very tired or felt the pressure of his title.

His title, the Earl of Merryton, as well as two lesser titles, was the heavy mantle he wore. He was the head of a large family with impressive holdings. He was Jeffrey Donovan, the man everyone assumed to be above scandal and immoral behavior, just like his father before him.

But the truth was that Jeffrey was not above it all. He’d merely found a way to restrain himself.

Until last night.

And now, a new, monstrous image was residing quite firmly in his thoughts and he could not subdue it. Bloody hell, he didn’t even know her name! Cabot, Mrs. Franklin had said. Jeffrey knew no Cabots. He knew nothing about her, except that she had tasted like honey, had felt like silk.

One two three four five six seven eight.

Eight. Eight. Eight.

This thing, this demonic obsession with eight, had invaded Jeffrey so many years ago that he could no longer remember how. But in his sixteenth year, when his father had died and he’d become the earl, responsible for carrying on the family’s name and its impeccable credentials, responsible for being the one above all reproach, the eight had begun to loom in his heart and mind. Like the salacious images, Jeffrey was at a loss to understood how or why it had happened. He thought himself mad, really, particularly as the eight was imperative to him but also torture at the same time.

The necessity for eight in his everyday life had manifested itself when Jeffrey had lain with a woman the first time. How old was he then, eighteen? He’d been seduced—willingly—by an older woman. She had shown him what his body wanted with her hands and her mouth, things he hadn’t realized, had not imagined. Those things seemed incongruent with the lord he was supposed to be, and he had not been able to douse his shame except by counting.

But then, the images, vile and lustful, had come at him, worse than he’d ever imagined. And the eight demon had grabbed him by the throat, choking the life out of him, forcing him to walk on the sharp edge of a blade—think bad thoughts, banish them only with eight. Now, at thirty years of age, Jeffrey knew that to fall off his private blade was to fall into the chaos of his thoughts, to obsess about women’s bodies and sexual plunder and the number eight.

He had learned to control it, to keep it quite under wraps. He rarely made mistakes.

Rarely.

And yet, he’d made a colossal one last night.

He had his brother to blame, damn him. John Donovan, the Viscount Amherst, was the bane of Jeffrey’s existence. It seemed John strove to make every mistake he could. He’d been unapologetically involved in one scandal after another. From the time he’d reached his majority, he’d racked up gambling debts that he could not repay, leaving Jeffrey to deal with them from the family’s coffers. He would not settle on a woman and make an offer, and instead preferred to dally with every debutante who happened to drift in his path, creating scandal in London and among some of the finest families in the Quality.

John was the reason Jeffrey was presently in Bath. He’d heard John was here, and he’d come to speak to him. Because he’d also heard things from his sister, Sylvia. Sylvia was at her home near the border of Scotland with two small children. Jeffrey hadn’t seen her in some time as her children were too young to travel, but she kept in touch through correspondence. In her last letter, she’d reported hearing that John had run up some gambling debts and owed more than one gentleman in London, including a prominent viscount.

The news had angered Jeffrey. More than once, he’d begged John to consider an occupation, anything to keep him from trouble and ruin. He would very much like to see John accept a naval commission. He was more than happy to arrange it for his brother. He just had to make John see the benefit in it, to get his brother to agree that he ought to leave England and all her vices until he could put his life to rights. To settle on a woman who would give him heirs and for God’s sake, beget those heirs.

And then, last evening, when Jeffrey had given into the insistence of his friend, Dr. Linford, to accompany him and his wife to hear the Russian soprano, he had seen the young woman with the golden hair leave the concert at the abbey. He’d watched as John had followed only moments later, and his blood had heated with his rage. There was his brother, following after a woman for the whole world to see and titter about.

Jeffrey had walked out into the abbey courtyard and looked around for his brother. He was nowhere to be seen, and Jeffrey had turned to go back into the abbey when he noticed a movement, a slip of color, against the darkened window of the tearoom.

That was when he noticed the door was slightly ajar.

Jeffrey had counted eighty steps to the door. The tea shop was dark, and he could hear no sounds within. But in looking around the courtyard, he believed there was no other place his brother could be. He’d fully expected to find his brother rutting in some girl there, and Jeffrey’s mind had filled with the awful images. He could see her legs spread wide apart, could see his brother sliding in and out of her. He’d tapped his thigh eight times in an effort to banish those images, but it had been hopeless. By the time he walked into that room and felt her mouth on his, he’d been lost.

What he’d done to that young woman!

Jeffrey closed his eyes in an attempt to banish the sight from his mind—her torn bodice, her golden hair mussed and falling, her hazel eyes wide with shock—but it was useless. He had done that. He’d unleashed his demon on the young woman. She’d tasted so sweet, and her skin so fragrant, he’d not been able to stop himself. He’d been too rough, had done untold harm to her.

With a groan, he pressed both fists to his temples, squeezing hard. He knew himself to be many things, but he had never believed himself capable of harming a woman, under any circumstance. When he had immoral thoughts, he kept his distance from society, retreating to Blackwood Hall, his country estate.

Now, he didn’t know where to go to escape his tortuous thoughts.

“My lord.”

Jeffrey started at the sound of his butler, Tobias. “Yes?”

“Mr. Botham, the Reverend Cumberhill, Mr. Davis and Dr. Linford are calling.”

Jeffrey drew a breath. Perhaps they would be his salvation. Perhaps they would see him directly to some jail. “Send them in,” he said, and stood in the middle of his study, silently tapping eight times against his thigh. And again. And again.

Reverend Cumberhill could scarcely look him in the eye when he entered, and Jeffrey could hardly blame him. Mr. Botham, the magistrate, seemed only perplexed. Mr. Davis, the town’s mayor, eyed him curiously, as if he were examining a scar on Jeffrey’s face.

Dr. Linford, however, looked at him with a bit of sympathy in his eyes. He was the one person on this earth in whom Jeffrey had confided his dangerous thoughts.

“Gentlemen,” he said, and gestured toward seating in his office. “Tobias, tea, please.”

“I think that is not necessary, my lord,” Mr. Botham began. “I shall not draw this unfortunate matter out any more than is necessary. We have called on Miss Cabot and have questioned her thoroughly. She will not turn against you, and insists that this was her doing.”

Jeffrey wondered if that was her attempt to protect John? Or was she foolishly honest?

“However, she has agreed, as has her cousin’s husband, Mr. Frederick Brumley, that because of the heinous nature of what has occurred, the only options available are to accuse you of rape...”

Jeffrey’s gut seized. He was a powerful earl, but even he could not escape such an accusation.

“Or,” Mr. Botham said, glancing down at the carpet, “to marry you to avoid what would be a very damaging scandal for you both.”

Jeffrey swallowed. He counted the buttons on Mr. Botham’s waistcoat. There were only six. Six.

“We counseled her that to marry a brute is to consign oneself to enduring a brute for a lifetime,” Reverend Cumberhill said curtly.

Jeffrey didn’t speak. He was suddenly plagued with the image of her body, her legs open to him and his cock pumping into her.

“We have counseled her,” Mr. Botham agreed, casting a look at the reverend, “but she insists she will take that risk rather than sully your name, or the name of her family.”

Jeffrey didn’t want to marry her, for Chrissakes! He wanted nothing to do with her! And yet, he had no other option. “Who...who is her family?”

He saw the exchange of looks between the men, the disgust that he didn’t even know who he’d sullied. “She is the stepsister of the Earl of Beckington.”

God in heaven. Jeffrey tried to recall Beckington, and could not. It scarcely mattered. The man was an earl. If Jeffrey didn’t take his sister to wife, the man would surely see him hanged for rape; Jeffrey would do no less in his shoes. He lifted his chin. “I am an earl,” he said tightly. “I have a duty to my family and my title to oversee our fortune and produce a legitimate heir.” He glanced at Dr. Linford. “Have you examined her?”

“For harm, yes,” he said. “She does not appear to be harmed.”

That wasn’t what Jeffrey meant. “I mean, is she a virgin?” he asked bluntly.

The reverend made a sound of despair or disgust, and Davis looked appalled.

“We are speaking of Miss Grace Cabot,” Mr. Davis said. “She is the stepdaughter of the late Earl of Beckington, who only recently passed, and the stepsister of the new earl. She comes from a fine family, my lord.”