To the rest of the ton Lord and Lady Atwood seem to have the perfect marriage. They wed for love and their marriage bed doesn’t lack for passion—but Imogen is haunted by the memory of her first marriage…while Charles harbors secret thoughts and desires he’s been unable to confess to his wife.

Then Charles’s ex-lover, Alexander Lambert, arrives in town, throwing Charles into a tailspin—and awakening a surprising attraction in Imogen. Now, both have to face the possibility that they may need more than just each other to be truly complete….

Lord Atwood’s Lovers
Eva Clancy

www.spice-books.co.uk

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Copyright

Chapter One

That Sir Charles Atwood was always watching his wife was a fact much remarked upon at the Countess of Ballater’s ball, attended by Lord and Lady Atwood some four months after their surprising marriage.

It was the first entertainment that the Atwoods had attended as man and wife and the curiosity of the jaded, weary ton was momentarily piqued by their entrance. Quizzing glasses were raised and eyes peeped over fans as Lord Atwood and his new lady perambulated the ballroom greeting friends and acquaintances.

It was noted that, after dancing the first set with his wife, Lord Atwood joined a group of gentlemen who were discussing politics and hunting, whilst Lady Atwood continued to dance. She danced every set, and over the course of the evening, drew about her a circle of adoring gentlemen. There was a great deal of laughter from her corner of the ballroom.

The former Mrs. Imogen Standish had been a notorious slayer of hearts before she met her husband and it appeared that nothing had changed now that she was married. The lady wore an expression of almost perpetual merriment, her brown eyes bright with laughter. She was a very pretty woman but it was not her beauty that enslaved; it was her irrepressible, infectious joie de vivre.

It was odd, some said, that she had chosen to marry Lord Atwood, a man who—though handsome—was known to be rather grim. She had had other suitors after all, including a marquess, no less.

Atwood had been on the marriage mart for many years and hadn’t shown the slightest interest in settling down. But that had changed the instant he set eyes on Imogen Standish. He had pursued her with single-minded determination, making no secret of his feelings. Never one for dancing, all of sudden he was at every ball of the season, always hovering near to her, his eyes always on her. Within a few weeks they were constant companions. Within two short months, they were married.

Some predicted that Lady Atwood’s flirtatiousness would quickly be curtailed by her serious-minded husband; others were certain that Lady Atwood would bring out her husband’s softer side. Lady Ballater’s ball was the ton’s first chance to see what changes the first few weeks of marriage had wrought.

Several hundred curious eyes watched Lord Atwood’s icy gaze follow his wife’s progress around the ballroom. He stood, impassive, as she flirted and danced and laughed with her circle of admirers. It was impossible to guess what he made of it all.

But he watched her.

Endlessly. Obsessively. Missing nothing.

At one o’ clock in the morning, Lord Atwood approached his lady. She was, at that precise moment, in the process of listening to an ode that had been hurriedly composed in her honor by a young gentleman of her court. The would-be poet—Viscount Blackstone—was occupying a rather uncomfortable position on one knee before his muse when her husband arrived. Atwood stared at Blackstone. He slowly raised one eyebrow as the other man hastily scrambled to his feet, blushing.

“Have you had a pleasant evening, my lord?” Lady Atwood asked politely of her husband.

“Yes indeed, ma’am,” he replied coolly, though he had neither danced nor played cards. “Are you ready to leave?”

“Of course,” his wife murmured. She rose to her feet and placed her gloved hand on her husband’s arm.

“Good night, gentlemen,” she announced, smiling at her circle of admirers. Then, turning to the embarrassed-looking poet, she said, “I am sorry that I am obliged to leave before hearing the rest of your delightful composition. I am so terribly tired. But perhaps you would call upon me one day this week, in order that I may hear it in full?”

“It will be my pleasure, my lady,” the young man replied, a smile chasing away his forlorn look.

“Thank you. Good night gentlemen.”

And with that, Lord and Lady Atwood departed.

* * *

“Did you enjoy watching me tonight?” Imogen asked Charles later. At the sound of her voice he turned. She was lounging in the doorway that connected their bedchambers. Her luxuriant mahogany hair was loose about her bare shoulders. She still wore her stockings and garters. Nothing else. Instantly he was hard.

“You know I did,” he murmured, moving towards her, his eyes eating her up. He loved Imogen’s diminutive height, the deceptive fragility of her slender ankles and wrists. Such a surprise to love that about her. But then everything in his life since meeting Imogen had been a surprise. Breath-stealing, life-altering. Almost entirely wonderful. Almost…

Pushing the looming thought away, he pulled Imogen’s small form into his arms, relishing the soft crush of her breasts against his hard chest. Imogen’s dark eyes gleamed and her hands curved around his muscled buttocks.

“Blackstone wanted to stick his head up your skirt,” he told her in a soft growl, dropping his head to press a row of kisses along her delicate jawline.

Imogen laughed softly, a husky whisper in his ear that made him shiver with pleasure. He loved her laugh. Loved her.

“I only permit you to stick your head under my skirts, Charles,” she reminded him teasingly then nibbled his earlobe.

He groaned and swung her up in his arms, striding over to the bed. Her laughter came again, a musical little gust of it this time, an arpeggio of joy that did his heart good and made his lips stretch in a way that still felt unfamiliar to him.

He sat down on the mattress with her in his lap, a lovely tangle of bare limbs and breasts and silky perfumed hair. The room was very dim, one lone candle flickering on the dresser. Their shadows merged as they kissed, looming beast-like on the opposite wall.

God, he loved kissing his wife. He kissed her lazily at first, teasing her berry-red lips apart and gently touching his tongue to hers. But soon his kisses grew more urgent and he shifted his right hand to palm her breast, adoring the moan of pleasure the movement elicited from her, the sinuous arch of body that pushed her stiff little nipple into the very center of his hand.

“I wager your beaux would love to see you now,” he murmured against her mouth. “With your hair down and your clothes off.” He lifted her off his lap and laid her down. She cried his name out as he came over her, pushing her down into the mattress with the weight of his body. Capturing her wrists, he raised them over her head, imprisoning her.

He rubbed his strong, hard body against her softer, weaker one and she moaned delightedly, her hips shifting restlessly beneath him.

“Charles,” she breathed. “Please.”

“I was so hard for you tonight,” he murmured, nipping her lower lip. “I could hardly move, never mind dance. I’ve been wanting you underneath me like this all night.”

She arched against him powerfully. “Oh God, Charles, please.” she pleaded. “You’ve made me wait and wait tonight. Don’t make me wait any longer!”

He smiled against her throat. “Be patient, Immy.”

She struggled against the firm grasp in which he held her wrists over her head, her back arching, breasts quivering. Dipping his head, he lapped at her small pointed nipples, strong wet strokes with his tongue. She writhed underneath him, pleading prettily for his cock. He felt his balls tighten and shift.

“Not yet,” he said softly, biting back a groan. “You knew you were making me hard tonight. You were being a wicked girl, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” she said hoarsely. “I was being a bad little slut, Charles. Now fuck me, please.”

“So now you want your husband?” he asked, his voice light and questioning, as though he could deny her. But they both knew he was faking control. His cock throbbed painfully between them, and when she stretched her legs wide, angling her quim so that the tip of him slipped between her moist folds, he gave a hoarse cry and plunged all the way in.

“God, Immy, you’re so beautiful,” he groaned as he began to piston his hips. He felt her cunt fluttering around his prick. She was already close.

“Did you like letting those men touch you tonight?” he muttered in her ear as he screwed deeply into her. “I saw Radleigh holding you a little too close when he waltzed with you. And Fenton kissed the inside of your wrist.”

She gripped him tightly with her thighs, angling her cunt sharply upwards, mashing herself against his groin as her internal muscles sucked his shaft powerfully.

“Did you like it?” she whispered.

“I bloody well loved it,” he snarled, and increased his pace, beginning to pound her in earnest. He could tell how close she was. She was warmly, wetly rippling around him, clutching at him.

“Charles, I’m coming,” she gasped unnecessarily. She pulled him even closer, her mouth at his throat, her legs tight about his waist, her heels pressing into his buttocks. And then she was coming. Hard. Crying out, clenching him. Gushing.

As the ripples of her orgasm died away, he let himself go, closing his eyes and driving into her. An image came to him; Immy being fucked from behind by Lord Radleigh while he looked on. She was loving it, her face transported as the other man grasped her hips and ground himself into her. Half ashamed, half aroused, Charles felt the draw of his own orgasm. And it was then, in the moment of his climax, that Radleigh’s face shimmered away and another took its place.

The louche, beautiful face of Alex Lambert.

Chapter Two

Imogen dreamed she was back at Harford House. She walked down the gloomy corridor, worriedly looking in room after room, thinking, Where is Edward?

When she first started having the dream, not along after his death, she would eventually find him—only to discover he wasn’t the same Edward she’d married. She would open a door and there he would be, levering himself off the bed, physically moving the stump that had once been his right leg with his hands, his ruined face thrown into cruel relief by a nearby branch of candles. And then he’d turn, and scream at her, Get out!

The dream had changed since she’d married Charles. Now she went from room to room and never found Edward. When she reached the last room, she would suddenly remember that he was dead, and would wake with the tears still wet on her face.

She woke both to the certain knowledge that Edward was dead and to the realisation that she had a new husband, one who was making her present wildly happy. It provoked a strange mixture of emotions: old grief, happiness, guilt and excitement.

It was how she woke this morning.

She choked her way into the new day through her own gasping sobs, bleak misery suffusing her. The feelings were so strong it took a full minute for her to recognise where she was.

She sat up in bed, shivering at the chill in the room. The bed was empty; Charles was gone. She glanced at the clock and realised he must have gone riding. She was glad. She didn’t want to wake beside him drenched with grief and guilt over her first husband. The strength of those emotions had faded in the four years since his death, but when the dream came, it felt like the day he had died.

Was it wrong to dream of Edward still? Wrong to keep his miniature in her drawer? She had loved Edward very dearly when she’d married him but that truth didn’t diminish her love for Charles.

Somehow she couldn’t bring herself to tell her new husband why she woke several nights each week like this. Nor could she stop herself hiding Edward’s likeness away, worried Charles would ask her to put it away forever. She had so many conflicting feelings about her first husband. Sometimes she needed to look at the miniature and remember him as he’d once been.

Gradually Imogen became aware of the rhythmic ticking of the clock on the mantel, and then the sounds of the household: a door opening and closing, footsteps, the rumble of voices. Outside on the square, a carriage rumbled past. The familiar sounds brought her fully to the present, and the stranglehold of grief and guilt that she began her days with slowly ebbed. She took a deep breath and wiped her tears away. Despite continuing to dream of Edward at night, her waking hours were happy. In fact, she was amazed by just how happy she felt with Charles. After the bleak years she had experienced before and after Edward’s death, she didn’t take any of her newfound joy for granted.

She had never been a melancholy sort—her father used to say she had a talent for happiness—but after Edward had come back from the war, and so damaged, all the happiness and joy in her soul had slowly been leeched out of her. They had shared three more years until his death. The last of them was utterly miserable, almost as bad as the long, gray year of hell that had followed his passing. Immediately after his death she had been hit by a melancholy so deep she had wondered if she would ever be able to rise from it.

And then, slowly, she had begun to live again. She had sold their house in Norfolk and come to London. She had put off her widow’s weeds and gone to balls and parties. At first it had just been so much show. A distraction from her habitual low mood. She had pasted a smile on her face and pretended an interest in life. But somehow, the show had become real, the smiles too. She had made friends. She had gained, to her considerable amusement, the reputation of a breaker of hearts, she who had no interest in marrying or finding a lover. But perhaps that was why men liked her. Men were like cats in that respect, she thought.

And then, four months ago, she had met Charles.

Was he the handsomest man she’d ever seen? Possibly not. But he was the most intense, the most determined and tenacious, the most single-minded. They’d met at a ball. She had felt the weight of his gaze alight upon her. It had felt like a physical thing touching her, like a kiss. She had turned her head and there he stood, a tall, broad Viking of a man with fair hair, icy blue eyes, a square chin and a firm masculine mouth compressed into a grim expression that had made her wonder if he disapproved of something about her.

Within minutes of their gazes meeting, he had secured an introduction from their hostess and was leading Imogen out to dance. She’d noticed the flutters of amused interest around the ballroom and wondered aloud about it.

“It’s because I’m making a fool of myself over you, Mrs. Standish,” Charles had said in his remote way.

She’d stopped and stared at him, arrested by the dissonance between the words he spoke and the way he spoke them. She thought she must have misunderstood him. “I beg your pardon?” she’d said.

“This is the first time I’ve danced at a ball in, oh, at least ten years. I’ve just destroyed my reputation as a gentleman who doesn’t dance.”

She laughed, astonished. “Why now?”

“Because I needed to be alone with you, if only for a few moments. If I must dance for that privilege, I will do so.”

Remembering that oddly romantic speech, she smiled. People had been amazed. The notoriously cold Earl of Atwood had fallen in love, and in the most public way, throwing his natural reserve to the wind without hesitation. He had pursued her with a single-minded tenacity that had taken her breath away.

How could she have resisted such a courtship?

A soft knock at the door announced her maid. Higgins bore Imogen’s morning chocolate on a tray and while she sipped it, they discussed what she should wear. Higgins reminded her that Lord Radleigh was due to take her driving in the park this afternoon. She smiled at the thought. Radleigh was a long-standing friend, a notable whip and a considerable wit besides—she was looking forward to the outing.

“My new carriage dress, I think,” she said eventually. “His lordship likes me in green.”

Later, she would enjoy telling Charles all about her outing with Radleigh. While he removed her new carriage dress, of course.

* * *

The Honorable Alexander Lambert swallowed against his roiling stomach and wondered what had possessed him to agree to this outing. He should be lying in bed nursing his aching head and delicate gut, not trotting slowly through Hyde Park, his youngest sister prattling at his side.

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