Duchess in Love

  “But we’re nowhere near that point.”

  “So you think!” he snapped.

  White arms entwined his neck. The thought made him shudder. If he didn’t get himself out of his chamber, he’d make Gina his. No question about that. Except that she had her pompous marquess.

  A sweet, warm voice breathed into his neck. “Thank you, Cam. I…found it very enjoyable.”

  He grabbed her arms and pulled them off his neck. “I agree. Very enjoyable.” He stood up and moved away. But when he met her eyes he couldn’t keep up his bad humor.

  She was laughing. “I can’t tell you what pleasure it gives me to realize that I, plain old Ambrogina, have driven a man to the edge of despair.”

  “I wouldn’t call it the edge of despair,” he replied rather stuffily.

  She grinned. “That’s how Esme describes it.”

  “Well, she might not be so far off,” Cam admitted. Just watching Gina sit on the bed was enough to drive him to despair.

  Even as he watched she swung her long, slender legs from the bed and pulled on her robe. He could still see one beautiful breast peeking out. Then she pranced over to him like some sort of exuberant femme fatale.

  “You’re not supposed to be so triumphant about it,” he muttered.

  “I didn’t think I had the ability to drive a man—”

  “—to the edge of despair,” Cam filled in.

  A smile trembled at the corner of her mouth, but her eyes were serious. “Sometimes I feel as if I grew old without ever being young.”

  “Old! You’re what? Twenty-two?”

  “Twenty-three. That’s old to be getting married for the first time, Cam.”

  “Not in the real world. In Greece, most women marry in their twenties.”

  “I don’t know the real world. I only know this world, and I’ve heard many young women called dried-up old maids, who were my age or only slightly older. I thought perhaps…” Her voice trailed off.

  “Are you trying to tell me that you feel dried up?” His voice was ripe with disbelief.

  “Not—it’s just—” She fidgeted with the tie to her robe, and finally looked back at him. “Because I’m married, I have heard many conversations about bedroom matters.”

  “I can guess. Women talking about what they enjoy in bed.”

  She looked faintly surprised. “Actually, they mostly talk about what men enjoy. But I didn’t have—” She started again. “It’s obvious that men like very young women. You see it everywhere. Wives and their husbands rarely sleep together, and husbands have young mistresses. Not my age: younger.”

  “Those men aren’t married to you.” He let his hands slide through the silk of her hair, down the curves of her shoulders, brush her breasts, curl over the sweet curve of her bottom. “If a man was married to you, he would never want anyone else. Not younger, or older.”

  “You don’t think I’m too old?” Her eyes met his, and he was startled by the anxiety in them.

  “Too old for sex? Are you addled, Gina? Your husband will probably be dragging you over to the bed when you’re both eighty-five and barely moving.” He risked looking down at her body, only to find that her robe had opened again, thanks to her fumbling with the tie.

  He slid a rough thumb over one rose-colored nipple and a little sound escaped her, a little puffing moan. He did it again. She squeaked again.

  “Gina, if I touch you there”—he did it—“what does it feel like?”

  She gasped.

  “What does it feel like?” he persisted.

  “Quite lovely,” she whispered, so quietly he barely heard it.

  He curved one arm around her back. She had turned a little pink and looked confused. Then, without warning, he sucked one of those luscious nipples into his mouth. After all, they were just sitting there, begging to be kissed.

  She screamed, her knees buckled, and he barely managed to catch her weight in his arm.

  “You’re a shrieker,” he said with satisfaction. “In fact, I would say without hesitation that you are one of the most sensual women I’ve ever had the pleasure to kiss.” If not the most, he silently acknowledged.

  She looked at him, green eyes lustful and embarrassed all at once. He smiled and decided to embarrass her some more. He tightened his left arm around her waist. “Dried up?” he said softly, into her ear. He let his right hand slip down the silky front of her gown. Suddenly his hand curved over the sweetest mound he’d ever felt. Even through silk he could feel heat. She quivered all over. “If you were any more responsive,” Cam said hoarsely, “a man would never let you leave your bedchamber.”

  He couldn’t stop himself and pulled her against him, hard. His tongue slipped inside her mouth, and his body strained against hers. He pushed her back on the bed, and she went willingly, clinging to him. He spread the rip on her gown open wide so her whole delectable body lay there. He bent to kiss her and his hand drifted down…down.

  She leaped against him when he touched her. Oh God, she was soft. Sweet. His mind went black with desire and he turned and took her mouth, plunging with his tongue while he longed to do the same with his body. Her eyes were shut and she was clutching his shoulders, gasping things he couldn’t understand. But he didn’t care.

  He moved from her mouth to her breast and she twisted up against his body and screamed, a gasping little scream. And now he had her luscious body where he wanted it, his hand in her softness, sleek now, wet now, plump, throbbing around his fingers. When he lifted his mouth from her nipple she began to pull away, gasping “No,” and other foolish things. So he simply put his lips back and suckled. Small cries flew from her mouth, and there was no resistance, just that gorgeous body laid out for him, all sweet cream and silky skin, a tuft of hair between her legs like pale port wine.

  To kiss her there…He raised his head. Instantly she clutched his arm and said, hoarsely, “Cam! You must stop—”

  “Hush,” he said. “Hush.” His lips roved over her breast, shaped her, created that breast into something far more beautiful than mere marble.

  She was panting, her eyes blurred, a smoky green. He let his hand take on a rhythmical cadence he knew as well as he knew his name.

  “Oh, Cam,” she panted. Her body moved up against his fingers.

  He longed to roll over on her, to do the thing as it ought to be done. My wife, he thought dimly. She’s mine. Take her, pounded his loins. Take her, urged his heart. It was only a growling voice in his head or wherever conscience was located that said: She doesn’t want you. She wants the petulant marquess.

  He pushed the voice away and slung a leg over her slight form. She was innocent, he could tell that. Unknowing and yet…knowing. She bucked against his leg, arched up against his urging fingers. Sobbed into his shoulder, clutched him, begged, “Please, Cam…please…. please.”

  It would be forcing her to marry you, growled the voice in his head. It was a voice distilled from hatred of his father, hatred of his own forced marriage. It chilled him just slightly, gave him control enough to shift away from tempting proximity.

  He dipped his mouth and kissed her, ravished her sweetness while his fingers took a practiced turn that she had no power to resist. He kissed her once, kissed her twice. His fingers urged her on, a cadence beating through his loins and only barely held in check.

  Then he rubbed a thumb over her nipple and…like that, as easily as that, his sometime wife, his own Gina, arched up against him in a great shaking surge.

  She was a shrieker, all right.

  She shook like a new-fallen leaf against his hand. He gritted his teeth together against the urge to enter, to feel the last clench of her body, to replace emptiness with himself, warm, throbbing—

  He pulled away.

  Gina opened her eyes but she didn’t really feel like waking up, so she let them drift shut again. Her whole body was glowing, pleasure heavy in her legs.

  But Cam was muttering. “I must go, Gina. This is not a good idea.” His voice was t
hick. She opened her eyes again. He ran a hand through his hair. It looked as if it had been raked in four or five different directions.

  Of course it wasn’t a good idea. She was engaged to someone else, and he was Cam, her childhood friend. She tried to pull herself together but she was caught by a wave of limp satisfaction.

  “I won’t visit your room again,” Cam was saying. “So there’ll be no repeat of this…this incident. I—”

  “Don’t apologize,” she murmured.

  He looked surprised. “I hadn’t thought of it. Ought I to?”

  At that, Gina smiled. “Men have apologized after a single kiss. Whereas you—”

  He grinned. “Ah, but we’re married.”

  “For the moment.”

  “The moment is all that’s necessary. And we didn’t do much more than kiss anyway.”

  Much more than kiss? Her legs were throbbing, and her breath was still racing, and he called that kissing?

  He started to stuff his shirt back into his trousers. “I’d better get out of here,” he remarked. “Be damned awkward for our annulment if someone caught me in your room.”

  Gina was definitely coming back to herself now. She pulled her robe closed. It took a moment for the truth to sink in: she was still annullable, to his mind. Staying married wasn’t in his consideration.

  A moment later he looked just as neat as he had when entering her chamber. She felt a spurt of pure rage. How could he look so untouched?

  “But I should thank you,” she said, reaching out and catching his arm as he started for the door. “You were very reassuring.”

  He instantly took on a cocky, smug air.

  “I’m so pleased that I was able to explore this problem with you rather than with Sebastian,” she cooed. “Now I shall go to his bed with a newfound sense of confidence.”

  He stilled and looked at her for a moment. Then he bowed. “I am, of course, glad to be of use,” he said. And left.

  Gina spent the rest of the night thinking of far more clever exit lines. By the time dawn crept through the windows, she knew exactly what she should have said, if she had any brains at all.

  Actually there were two options.

  Option number one would have been delivered with scalding effectiveness: I am particularly grateful to know that I will go to my beloved Sebastian’s bed with an enthuasiasm to match his.

  Option number one sounded as if Sebastian lusted for her. Never mind the truth of that.

  Then there was option number two. It varied throughout the night, and was punctuated by the riveting memories. It ran something like this: I’d like you to come back to bed now.

  Sometimes she added please.

  And sometimes she let her ruined gown fall off her body as she said it.

  18

  Houseguests Need Not Rise Before Noon

  Gina woke very late, with a calm sense of returning to herself. Gone was the flushed, exultant woman of the previous evening. Which was just as well, she told herself, because it was important to keep these experiences in their place. It had been deliciously enjoyable. She should thank her husband for it. Really. Because now she didn’t have to feel nervous about her wedding night—her real wedding night, with Sebastian. She had experience, finally. Some experience.

  In the morning’s crueler light she looked unkempt rather than seductive in her ruined nightdress. She bundled it away and pulled on a chemise. Still…A secret, luxurious smile curved her lips. It wasn’t the memory of her pleasure that pleased.

  It was the memory of Cam’s wild eyes and the way the breath pounded in his chest. It had done miracles to dispel her secret fear that her fiancé didn’t respond to her because she was too old. Too stiff, too duchesslike, too thin. Cam didn’t seem to think she was too thin. True, he still wanted an annulment. But that was due to his basic nature, she decided. He would always avoid the kinds of responsibility that go with having a wife. The important point was that he had wanted her last night, and now she knew how to make Sebastian want her too.

  Annie popped into the room. “There’s plans for the afternoon,” she said, sometime later, her fingers briskly weaving Gina’s hair into a long braid. “The ladies are invited to practice archery on the west lawn. The Chaplins are going to give a fencing exhibition at three o’clock. Oh! And Lady Troubridge asked whether you would like to join her. She is going to visit the village in the pony cart, because there’s a new baby.”

  “I’d love to go see the baby,” Gina said. But the mass of papers, still untidily stacked on the footstool, caught her eye. “I have too much work to do.”

  “You work too hard, you do,” Annie said. “All this work isn’t good for a soul.”

  “Ah, but those letters must be answered.”

  “Would you like to wear the morning dress with half sleeves today, madam?” Annie knew a losing argument when she started one.

  When Gina slipped into the drawing room, she barely had time to greet Sebastian before Lady Troubridge clapped her hands and they all filed into luncheon. Soup was already served by the time Cam strolled in. His hair looked almost composed. But there was a streak of white chalk on his shoulder. She looked away. It was nothing to her that Cam headed toward Esme like a bee toward a rose.

  “Sebastian!” she said, inspired. “I must find a quiet corner in the library and write some letters for a few hours. But will you join me in the latter half of the afternoon?”

  He bowed his head. “I would be most honored.” He escorted her back to her chamber and was just bowing goodbye when Gina pushed open the door and gasped.

  The room was a mess. There were clothes all over the floor and books heaped higgledy-piggledy, wherever she looked. The doors to her wardrobe swung open, and the drawer to her dressing table hung from one corner, the bright ribbons that Annie used in her hair spilling to the ground.

  A look of acute annoyance crossed Sebastian’s face. “It would seem that someone has robbed your chamber. Was your jewelry accessible?”

  “No. Lady Troubridge insisted that all jewelry be kept in her safe. Annie has been taking it back every night.”

  “A wise precaution,” he observed. “I doubt they got much then.” He strode through the room, the breeze of his passing making piles of soft chiffon on the ground stir and billow, and looked down at her dressing table with disgust. “They rifled your table, hoping you’d left something. Bold devils coming during the day. They might easily have been caught by a maid.” He picked up a tipped glass and set it back on the dressing table with a small rap. Water dripped slowly over the side of the table onto a pile of frills and ribbons.

  Gina moved slowly into the room. Her mirror had been taken down and was leaning against the wall. Her bed was stripped, the covers thrown on the floor. “I’ve never been robbed before,” she said, with just the smallest shake in her voice.

  “You have not been robbed now,” Sebastian replied. “Since there was nothing to steal, you’ve merely been inconvenienced. You’re not feeling hysterical, are you?” She shook her head. “Your maid will straighten your room. I wonder if they tossed more than one room? There’s no particular reason they should target yours, after all.” He turned. “I had better leave. I wouldn’t like to be seen in your chamber.”

  “I hardly think that anyone would believe that you ripped the covers off the bed in a moment of passion, Sebastian.”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “It was a jest!” she protested. Then she aimlessly bent down and picked up two corsets. “This is rather unpleasant. Have you been robbed before?”

  “Several times. In fact, robbery during house parties has become endemic. My room was searched only last year at Foakes Manor, and a pair of cufflinks was taken.”

  “Did they turn out your undergarments…everything?”

  Sebastian looked at the delicate twist of cotton and ribbon in her hand and quickly looked away again. “They were looking for your jewels. It’s quite common to hide precious objects among one’s intimate cl
othing. I shall inform Lady Troubridge of this incident. She will likely wish to question the servants.” And he disappeared.

  Gina looked around. Bicksfiddle’s stack of paper had been tossed this way and that. She picked up a silk stocking from the ground but couldn’t see its mate. Finally she sat down on the naked mattress to wait for Annie, looking at the ground rather than looking around the room at her crumpled belongings. No matter what Sebastian said about inconvenience, it felt a great deal worse to her.

  “Hell and damnation!”

  He was standing in the doorway looking huge and male and utterly outraged. She sniffed. Tears welled up in her eyes. “I’ve been inconvenienced.”

  Cam took one quick look at her, swore again, and strode over. Then he picked her up in one swift, economical movement, sat down, and plopped her onto his lap.

  Too surprised to protest, Gina leaned her head against his chest and listened to him swear a blue streak.

  Finally he wound down. “Did they take anything?”

  She shook her head, but elevated the little pile of corsets she held. “Look!”

  “Despicable bastards,” he snarled.

  Her chin started to wobble. “I don’t think I ever want to wear them again.”

  “Bastards!” he growled. “I should shoot them just for that.”

  Gina let a few tears soak into his black coat.

  He stroked her up and down her arm in a comforting kind of way and handed her a large white handkerchief.

  Lady Troubridge herself rushed in the door. “Oh dear, oh dear!” she shrieked. “I simply loathe thieves, loathe them! Are you quite all right, my dear?”

  Gina knew that she should leap from her husband’s knee. But his arms were large and tight around her, and she didn’t move.

  “Her Grace is, of course, distressed,” Cam said. He stood up. “I shall escort her to the library while the room is put to rights.”

  “An excellent idea,” Lady Troubridge said, with a speculative gleam in her eyes.

  He walked from the room without another word. Out in the corridor she began to struggle. “Put me down, Cam. I don’t wish to fall!”