Content, secure that she was free from danger and safe in Sev’s arms, she surrendered to the pulling drag of sleep.
A warm glow of light greeted Grier as her eyes fluttered open. She jerked at first, immediately back on that outcropping of rock, still hovering there, trapped on the cusp of death.
Swallowing back a whimper, she scanned her surroundings. The tension ebbed from her body as she realized she was safely tucked in her own bed, the soft sheets pulled to her chest. Warm and safe.
A familiar dark-haired head rested beside her on the bed, buried facedown in his arms.
She lightly touched the silky strands, running her fingers through the luxurious thickness.
Sev lifted his head, muttering her name as he sat upright in his chair beside her bed. Blinking, he dragged a hand over his face. “You’re awake.”
“And it appears you’re not. Why don’t you find a bed?”
“I did.” His glittering gold eyes held hers. “Yours is sufficient.”
“Sevastian.” She stroked his cheek. “You must be exhausted.”
He seized her hand, trapped it against his face. “It’s nothing compared to what I’ve endured when I thought I lost you. Grier, I can’t ever live through that again.”
She moistened her lips, remembering her time trapped on that ledge. Even before that. She remembered when she’d awakened on the floor of that lodge and confronted the harsh reality that Malcolm would never let her return to Sev. She’d been filled with regret for not telling Sev how she felt about him—that he’d come to mean everything to her. But she could do that now.
“Sev,” she began, clearing the dry scratchiness from her voice, but he didn’t let her continue.
“As soon as you’re rested and fully mended, we’ll leave for Maldania—”
“Sevastian.” She said his name sharply, determined to bare her heart to him, to expose herself as she once vowed never to do. Fear would no longer hold her back.
He looked at her, stared curiously at her face.
She could only stare back at him, conveying with her eyes the words that hung on the tip of her tongue.
A slow smile curved his mouth. “I love you, Grier.” His smile deepened. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”
Her breath locked in her chest. She released a gust of breath and with it the word, “No.”
His smile slipped.
“I was going to say . . .” She propped herself up on her elbows. “I love you . . . Sevastian.”
His smile returned. “Amusing imp, aren’t you?” He leaned down, brushing his mouth over hers once, twice, and then a third time. This final kiss lingered, slower and deeper, almost as though he couldn’t help himself. She was panting, clinging to his shoulders with clenched fingers when he finally pulled away.
“So you love me?” His mouth quirked into a smug smile.
She smiled, giddy inside. “Hmm-mm. And you love me?”
“I do.” His expression turned sly. “Enough to know your actual birthday.”
“You’re still harping on that!” She half laughed, half snorted. “Nice try. You’re going to have to do better than that. It might take years of loving me to get that out.”
His mouth lowered to hers again. “Years of loving you sounds simple enough. I can content myself that I shall have it out of you one day.”
Grier slipped her arms around his neck, ecstatic to think of those long years ahead. Of them sharing it all together. It was more than she ever hoped for . . . more than she dared dream.
Epilogue
Eight months later . . .
Sunlight filtered through the mullioned windows lining the lavish bedchamber. Grier crossed her arms and stared at the beams of light enviously. “When can I get out of bed? This is absurd, you know.”
“Not until the physician declares it safe,” her husband announced beside her where he reclined upon the bed. Unlike her he was dressed for the day and had already enjoyed a morning ride. She could smell the crisp autumn air on him.
She punched the bed between them in a display of pique. “Holy hellfire—I’m having a baby. Women do it every day. I’m not dying.”
He set down his paper and gave her his full attention. “Be that as it may, you’re not just any woman. Not to Grandfather and especially not to me.”
“Don’t tell me you agree with all this cosseting. Truly. I’m fine. A little nauseated in the mornings. Nothing more. I’m fit and hale. The physician will say whatever your grandfather wants him to say. He’s terrified of the old goat.”
Sev’s lips twitched. “Most people are.”
She lifted her chin. “I’m not.” At least not anymore. As apprehensive as she’d been upon first arriving at the palace, she quickly realized the king was more bark than bite. He was not about to tell the grandson he so obviously loved that he’d disappointed him or made a mistake in marrying her. Although the king looked at her through narrowed eyes at first, he’d held his tongue. And even that had changed in recent months as he observed Grier and Sev together. His narrow-eyed gaze had vanished altogether when she announced that she was increasing. Now she could do no wrong. Newfound life danced in his eyes.
“Your lack of fear is a fact which impresses him endlessly. Oh, and the fact that you’ve so quickly managed to find yourself with child.”
This time Grier grinned. She stroked Sev’s arm. “I cannot take credit for that alone. You see, I happen to be married to this very virile man who bothers me to no end with his insatiable appetites.”
He chuckled. “And you’ve been unwilling, have you?”
Sev kissed her until they both grew heated and anxious, writhing against each other, she in her nightgown, he in his jacket and trousers. She slid her hands beneath his jacket, palming his firm chest through his shirt. “I know the perfect cure for me.”
“Do you now?” he asked huskily against her mouth.
She cupped his hardness beneath his breeches. “You can call it an early present, too.”
“Present,” he murmured against her throat. “For what?”
“Oh, for tomorrow.”
He pulled back to gaze at her with a strange expression on his face. “What’s tomorrow?
She smiled coyly. “I suppose I can tell you.” She slid a hand over his hard belly, loving how the taut muscles rippled beneath her fingers. “Tomorrow’s my birthday. And now you know that you’ve married an older woman.”
A wide smile stretched his lips. “Not quite.”
She cocked her head.
He continued, “You see . . . tomorrow’s my birthday, too.”
She stilled. “You jest.”
He laughed and the sound vibrated through her. “This is rich! We have the same birthday.”
“We’re the same age?” She shook her head, marveling.
Chuckling, he kissed her again, nibbling at her bottom lip. “Which begs the question . . .”
“Hmm?” she murmured, then gasped with pleasure as his hand found her sensitive breast.
“What time of day were you born?”
She didn’t answer. Instead she pushed him back on the bed and straddled him. Lowering her head, she whispered against his lips, “You’ll have to work very hard to earn that information.”
And he did.
They may argue the precise
shade and design, but London’s
finest dressmakers all know . . .
Silk Is For Seduction
By New York Times bestselling author
Loretta Chase
On Sale Now
Turn the page for a sneak peek!
Brilliant and ambitious dressmaker Marcelline Noirot is London’s rising star, and she’s determined to gain the patronage of the most talked about lady of the ton: the Duke of Clevedon’s intended bride. To get to her, though, Marcell
ine must win over Clevedon, whose standards are as high as his morals are . . . not. The prize seems worth the risk—but this time Marcelline’s met her match. Clevedon can design a seduction as irresistible as her dresses; and what begins as a flicker of desire soon ignites into a delicious inferno . . . and a blazing scandal.
The instant the interval began—and before the other audience members had risen from their seats—Clevedon entered Mademoiselle Fontenay’s opera box with the Comte d’Orefeur.
The first thing he saw was the rear view of the brunette: smooth shoulders and back exposed a fraction of an inch beyond what most Parisian women dared, and the skin, pure cream. Disorderly dark curls dangled enticingly against the nape of her neck.
He looked at her neck and forgot about Clara and Madame St. Pierre and every other woman in the world.
A lifetime seemed to pass before he was standing in front of her, looking down into brilliant dark eyes, where laughter glinted . . . looking down at the ripe curve of her mouth, laughter, again, lurking at its corners. Then she moved a little, and it was only a little—the slightest shift of her shoulders—but she did it in the way of a lover turning in bed, or so his body believed, his groin tightening.
The light caught her hair and gilded her skin and danced in those laughing eyes. His gaze drifted lower, to the silken swell of her breasts . . . the sleek curve to her waist . . .
He was vaguely aware of the people about him talking, but he couldn’t concentrate on anyone else. Her voice was low, a contralto shaded with a slight huskiness.
Her name, he learned, was Noirot.
Fitting.
Having done the pretty by Mademoiselle Fontenay, he turned to the woman who’d disrupted the opera house. Heart racing, he bent over her gloved hand.
“Madame Noirot,” he said. “Enchanté.” He touched his lips to the soft kid. A light but exotic scent swam into his nostrils. Jasmine?
He lifted his head and met a gaze as deep as midnight. For a long, pulsing moment, their gazes held.
Then she waved her fan at the empty seat nearby. “It’s uncomfortable to converse with my head tipped back, Your Grace,” she said.
“Forgive me.” He sat. “How rude of me to loom over you in that way. But the view from above was . . .”
He trailed off as it belatedly dawned on him: She’d spoken in English, in the accents of his own class, no less. He’d answered automatically, taught from childhood to show his conversational partner the courtesy of responding in the latter’s language.
“But this is diabolical,” he said. “I should have wagered anything that you were French.” French, and a commoner. She had to be. He’d heard her speak to Orefeur in flawless Parisian French, superior to Clevedon’s, certainly. The accent was refined, but her friend—forty if she was a day—was an actress. Ladies of the upper ranks did not consort with actresses. He’d assumed she was an actress or courtesan.
Yet if he closed his eyes, he’d swear he conversed at present with an English aristocrat.
“You’d wager anything?” she said. Her dark gaze lifted to his head and slid down slowly, leaving a heat trail in its wake, and coming to rest at his neck cloth. “That pretty pin, for instance?”
The scent and the voice and the body were slowing his brain. “A wager?” he said blankly.
“Or we could discuss the merits of the present Figaro, or debate whether Rosina ought properly to be a contralto or a mezzo-soprano,” she said. “But I think you were not paying attention to the opera.” She plied her fan slowly. “Why should I think that, I wonder?”
He collected his wits. “What I don’t understand,” he said, “is how anyone could pay attention to the opera when you were in the place.”
“They’re French,” she said. “They take art seriously.”
“And you’re not French?”
She smiled. “That’s the question, it seems.”
“French,” he said. “You’re a brilliant mimic, but you’re French.”
“You’re so sure,” she said.
“I’m merely a thickheaded Englishman, I know,” he said. “But even I can tell French and English women apart. One might dress an Englishwoman in French fashion from head to toe and she’ll still look English. You . . .”
He trailed off, letting his gaze skim over her. Only consider her hair. It was as stylish as the precise coifs of other Frenchwomen . . . yet, no, not the same. Hers was more . . . something. It was as though she’d flung out of bed and thrown herself together in a hurry. Yet she wasn’t disheveled. She was . . . different.
“You’re French, through and through,” he said. “If I’m wrong, the stickpin is yours.”
“And if you’re right?” she said.
He thought quickly. “If I’m right, you’ll do me the honor of riding with me in the Bois de Boulogne tomorrow,” he said.
“That’s all?” she said, in French this time.
“It’s a great deal to me.”
She rose abruptly in a rustle of silk. Surprised—again—he was slow coming to his feet.
“I need air,” she said. “It grows warm in here.”
He opened the door to the corridor and she swept past him. He followed her out, his pulse racing.
Marcelline had seen him countless times, from as little as a few yards away. She’d observed a handsome, expensively elegant English aristocrat.
At close quarters . . .
She was still reeling.
The body first. She’d surreptitiously studied that while he made polite chitchat with Sylvie. The splendid physique was not, as she’d assumed, created or even assisted by fine tailoring, though the tailoring was exquisite. His broad shoulders were not padded, and his tapering torso wasn’t cinched in by anything but muscle.
Muscle everywhere—the arms, the long legs. And no tailor could create the lithe power emanating from that tall frame.
It’s hot in here, was her first coherent thought.
Then he was standing in front of her, bending over her hand, and the place grew hotter still.
She was aware of his hair, black curls gleaming like silk and artfully tousled.
He lifted his head.
She saw a mouth that should have been a woman’s, so full and sensuous it was. But it was pure male, purely carnal.
An instant later she was looking up into eyes of a rare color—a green like jade—while a low masculine voice caressed her ear and seemed to be caressing parts of her not publicly visible.
Good grief.
She walked quickly as they left the box, thinking quickly, too, as she went. She was aware of the clusters of opera goers in the corridor making way for her. That amused her, even while she pondered the unexpected problem walking alongside.
She’d known the Duke of Clevedon was a handful.
She’d vastly underestimated.
Still, she was a Noirot, and the risks only excited her.
She came to rest at last in a quieter part of the corridor, near a window. For a time, she gazed out of the window. It showed her only her own reflection: a magnificently dressed, alluring woman, a walking advertisement for what would one day—soon, with a little help from him—be London’s foremost dressmaking establishment. Once they had the Duchess of Clevedon, royal patronage was sure to follow: the moon and the stars, almost within her grasp.
“I hope you’re not unwell, madame,” he said in his English-accented French.
“No, but it occurs to me that I’ve been absurd,” she said. “What a ridiculous wager it is!”
He smiled. “You’re not backing down? Is riding with me in the Bois de Boulogne so dreadful a fate?”
It was a boyish smile, and he spoke with a self-deprecating charm that must have slain the morals of hundreds of women.
She said, “As I see it, either way I win. No matter how I look at it, this wag
er is silly. Only think, when I tell you whether you are right or wrong, how will you know I’m telling the truth?”
“Did you think I’d demand your passport?” he said.
“Were you planning to take my word for it?” she said.
“Of course.”
“That may be gallant or it may be naïve,” she said. “I can’t decide which.”
“You won’t lie to me,” he said.
Had her sisters been present, they would have fallen down laughing.
“That’s an exceptionally fine diamond,” she said. “If you think a woman wouldn’t lie to have it, you are catastrophically innocent.”
The arresting green gaze searched her face. In English he said, “I was wrong, completely wrong. I see it now. You’re English.”
She smiled. “What gave me away? The plain speaking?”
“More or less,” he said. “If you were French, we should be debating what truth is. They can’t let anything alone. They must always put it under the microscope of philosophy. It’s rather endearing, but they’re so predictable in that regard. Everything must be anatomized and sorted. Rules. They need rules. They make so many.”
“That wouldn’t be a wise speech, were I a Frenchwoman,” she said.
“But you’re not. We’ve settled it.”
“Have we?”
He nodded.
“You wagered in haste,” she said. “Are you always so rash?”
“Sometimes, yes,” he said. “But you had me at a disadvantage. You’re like no one I’ve ever met before.”
“Yet in some ways I am,” she said. “My parents were English.”
“And a little French?” he said. Humor danced in his green eyes, and her cold, calculating heart gave a little skip in response.
Damn but he was good.
“A very little,” she said. “One purely French great-grandfather. But he and his sons fancied Englishwomen.”
“One great-grandfather is too little to count,” he said. “I’m stuck all over with French names, but I’m hopelessly English—and typically slow—except to jump to wrong conclusions. Ah, well. Farewell, my little pin.” He brought his hands up to remove it.