Duchess in Love

  “Beautiful,” he said, and she thought he was talking of her legs. He drew off her other slipper and put it to the side.

  Then he ran his hands slowly, slowly up one leg, sliding up the graceful curve to her knee. He stopped at the garter, untied the knot, and flung it to the side. A stocking fell in a silky rush to her ankle. He looked up at her briefly and then curled his fingers around her other ankle. Obediently she let him take the garter and the stocking. She was bare-toed and bare-legged under her gown.

  He didn’t move immediately. His hands returned to her ankles, and slid up the smooth flesh, sweet, peachy smooth. She quivered.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Caressing you.” His hands were inching up, up into the curve of her thigh. She was on fire. But some primitive female spirit of defense aroused itself.

  “No!” She reached down and pushed at his shoulders. But he was like a mountain, fixed in a position of worship. He threw his head back, tossed hair out of his eyes, and grinned at her.

  “It’s naught but a gentle touch.”

  She trembled under that gentle touch and her mouth formed a small circle.

  “It’s nothing more than a caress one might give a child, or a baby lamb.”

  She could feel her knees shake. She broke away and pulled back. He stood up and pulled his shirt over his head. And there he was: strong of thigh in the flickering gas light, wearing only white smalls. His chest was broad and muscular, his arms even larger.

  She didn’t know what to say or where to look. But she couldn’t look away. He was too beautiful, too male, too unlike herself. There was nothing sleek about him. He was all hard muscle with a dusting of black hair.

  “Why are you so muscular?” she asked. She had a fair idea that most men in the ton had no muscles at all.

  Cam shrugged. “Sculpting is hard work. I quarry my own marble.”

  He looked at her. “Duchess.” His voice was a command. “Here.” He pointed to a point just before him.

  And she obeyed. Ambrogina Serrard, Duchess of Girton, dutiful daughter, dutiful wife, dutiful duchess, walked to her husband in her bare feet. But she didn’t look at him with the prim and proper air of a virgin faced with her first ungarbed male body. No: Gina looked at him with the frank and thirsty gaze that was hers alone. Cam felt his blood race. Go slow, he cautioned himself. Keep her virginity in mind. The thought cooled him down a bit.

  She looked at him. “Well?”

  He cleared his throat. “May I remove your garments?”

  “I can manage,” she said quickly.

  Cam grinned. Did his duchess even realize that he had tricked her into undressing? He had discovered that Gina never, ever asked for help. She seemed to think that she could go through life unaided, except when it came to her right glove.

  But she wasn’t doing so well at the moment. “Perhaps we should extinguish the oil lamps,” she said, just a bit desperately.

  “Absolutely not. I want to see you.”

  Her cheeks were flaming. “I don’t wish to do this on the floor.”

  “There is a chaise longue,” Cam said, and only the laughter in his eyes betrayed his grave tone. “But a duke and a duchess would never make love other than in the ducal bed.”

  Gina chose to overlook the little edge of mockery in his voice. “Exactly.”

  Cam looked down. There was nothing he could do about the state of his body. In fact, he had a fair idea that this would be his normal state for the next forty years or so. Whenever he was around his wife, anyway. “In that case, shall we sample the bath, duchess? May I suggest that you remove your gown and”—he forestalled her objection with a swift kiss—“bathe in your chemise?”

  Gina bit her lip. Really, she could have no objection to bathing in her chemise. It wasn’t as if she was naked.

  Her gown had two buttons at the neck. She drew it over her head and then, in one beat of her heart, the cool yellow fabric rushed past her eyes and was gone. There was no difference between a chemise and a nightgown, after all. Cam had seen her nightgown—nay, he had ripped open her nightgown. Gina’s cheeks pinked at the memory.

  Cam took a deep breath. Gina was wearing a chemise of the thinnest cotton. It was white, simply fashioned, and the essence of modesty. Yet it was more sensual than the richest silk.

  “Shall we to the bath, Your Grace?” She gave him a slow smile, a smile like liquid molasses. The Duchess of Girton was discovering the manifold pleasures of seduction.

  He said something, had to clear his throat, finally said, “Yes.”

  She held out her hand. But he wouldn’t let her draw him toward the stairs into the plunge-bath. Instead he turned her palm against his mouth. Did she know what would happen to her delicate cotton chemise when drenched? Did she care? His prim duchess was gone, replaced by a sultry sprite—the woman who greeted him in yellow silk with a brandy in her hand.

  He kept his eyes on hers and tasted her wrist, sweet skin, white even in the twilight of the bath. Finally he let her draw him to the steps.

  At the bottom, Cam plunged into the water. Gina paused at the last step above the water and poked in a toe. “It is warm,” she said with delight.

  “I turned on the warming switch,” Cam said. He was up to his waist in water. She walked slowly, step by step into the bath, until she stood before him, the water just lapping at her breasts. As she watched, he ducked under the water and came up a gleaming water animal, sleek and dark, drops sliding from his chest back into the bath.

  Not to be outdone, Gina did the same. She splashed back up, laughing. “This is the first time I’ve been in something larger than a tin bath. Isn’t this glorious, Cam!”

  “Glorious,” he said.

  Her eyes followed his. “Hmm,” she said. “It appears that my chemise has lost its—”

  He stopped her amusement with his mouth.

  Gina had never been a coward. It was with dismay that the old duke, Cam’s father, had discovered that his son’s young wife had too much backbone for her age. He had succeeded in molding her into a proper duchess, but only at the expense of his nerves. Mr. Bicksfiddle, the estate manager, would have echoed the old duke’s statements. Once the Duchess of Girton decided to do something, not hell nor high water could stop her.

  She stepped back and pulled her sopping chemise over her head and tossed it to the side. It billowed when it hit the water, and sank.

  The look on Cam’s face was everything a woman could hope to see, under the circumstances. She ignored the burning heat in her belly and the unsteadiness of her limbs and splashed a little water in his direction.

  “You will love bathing in the Mediterranean,” he said hoarsely. He walked one step toward her. His large hands touched her as if she were marble sculpted by Michelangelo himself. “Ah, God, you’re so beautiful,” he said. And in the wonder of his voice, she felt truly beautiful for the first time.

  There were strands of wet hair caught on her cheeks; he carefully pushed them away. “There’s paint on your cheeks,” he said, and rubbed with his thumb.

  She looked puzzled and then laughed. “I darken my lashes.”

  “I thought you did,” he said with satisfaction. Then he brought his great, wet hands to her face and rubbed. “They’re beautiful without paint. Like strands of sunlight.” She caught his hands in hers, and he bent his head to her lips.

  She came to him with a little sigh that set his pulse racing. He lingered on her body, molding its sweet curves to his fingers, memorizing the delectable curve at the inside of her hip. She turned out to be a laughing mermaid, his wife, liable to fall backward into the water. He had to punish her with kisses until she clung to him trembling, her breath caught in her throat. Begging…

  He climbed from the bath, holding his wife in his arms. Carried her to Lady Troubridge’s chaise longue and laid her down.

  She was a wanton woman, his duchess. She didn’t lie under his hand, as had most women of his experience. Let alone a woman with
no experience. She twisted and turned, begged and cried. Turned to him. That was the truly unexpected thing, from his point of view. She not only took, but she gave. Where he kissed her, she kissed him. Where he touched her, she touched him. She was a born coquette, a ravishing combination of innocence and innate knowledge.

  And she laughed. She giggled when he kissed his way down the curve of her breasts, the delicate curve of her rib cage. Stopped giggling and they had a brief argument as he continued. He won when he distracted her by letting one hand stray to her breast. His Gina could no more contain herself when he touched her breast than a young boy can resist being tickled. There was no laughing then. He made his sweet way where he wished, and kissed as he wished, and she twisted and gasped and cried in his arms.

  The shocking part—not to put it too bluntly—was that she pushed him away and demanded her own rights. “Ladies don’t do this sort of thing,” he warned her. His body went rigid as a board as she kissed a little path, a winding, smiling path down his stomach. “Gina—” he said, but she paid him no mind. She probably never would, he thought dimly. They’d be—but he lost the thought. His fingers caught in her sleek, wet hair, and a low groan burst from his chest.

  When he pulled her up, covered those red lips with his own, he closed his eyes in the face of her delight.

  “He can’t have you.” His voice was rough and his hands were shaking. He rolled her on her back and ran a hand down her sleek legs. They fell open and she arched against him. He was afraid to diminish her pleasure, afraid of the pain. “It won’t hurt long,” he said into her ear.

  “I know. Please, Cam. I want you…I want you!” Her hands clutched his shoulders.

  He thrust. And waited to cause pain. Dimly, he was aware that his body was shot with ecstasy, demanding more, demanding—but he waited. She had her eyes closed. He kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her lips.

  “Gina!” he whispered. “Are you all right?”

  She opened those eyes, the exact color of the Mediterranean at sunset. “Do you think that you could do that again?” she said. He wasn’t mistaken. She was going to laugh all the way through making love. There was laughter gleaming in her eyes and in the tremble of her mouth.

  He withdrew, slowly, and plunged deep. The laughter disappeared and she gasped. It seemed to him not an unhappy gasp. So he did it again. And this time she met him halfway. He could feel his vision slipping.

  “It doesn’t hurt, does it?”

  “A little bit,” she replied. “You’re—you’re—bigger than I am.”

  He could feel that for himself. Every inch of his body was telling him the same thing.

  “But it doesn’t hurt, it feels—ah—I don’t know. It makes me feel hungry.”

  A slow smile curled Cam’s lips. “I can help you with that,” he said against her mouth. He plunged again, again, again.

  She was a screamer, his duchess. He knew it, and he was right.

  What he hadn’t known was that she would make him into one.

  Cam rolled onto his back, carrying his wife with him. He put her on top of him as if she were a blanket. She slumped boneless, her head tucked into the curve of his neck. He stroked the long line of her backbone and thought pleasurably about nothing. Thought about staying in the plunge-bath forever. She was sleeping, so he dragged Lady Troubridge’s blanket over her sleek skin and kissed the top of her head.

  Perhaps they should get dressed…rescue might come at any moment. He wrapped his arms around his precious bundle of a wife. He’d made one decision: he wasn’t going to let her go until they did that again, oh, perhaps a thousand times. Two thousand. His eyes drifted shut.

  27

  Lady Troubridge’s Plunge-Bath,

  a Dark but Not Unpleasant Habitat

  Gina woke to darkness so profound, so thick and silent, that she literally couldn’t see anything. For a moment she was mortally frightened.

  But then she realized that while she couldn’t see, she could feel. And hear. It wasn’t utterly silent. She could hear Cam breathing. Moreover, when her heart stopped beating frantically in her ears, she could hear his steady heartbeat, not so far from her ear. And she could feel her own boneless, satisfied body. A grin curled her mouth.

  There had been no excruciating pain, as she’d heard it described. She had heard all about the marital act. She knew it was pleasurable, in the right circumstances. And that some women didn’t enjoy it, while men always did. She turned her lips against the warm skin beneath her. She had an idea that those women weren’t as lucky as she.

  He woke up like a cat, straight from sleep to awake. His body went rigid. “What the devil happened to the light?”

  “I think the oil lamp burned out.” She kissed his throat, tasted salt.

  He said nothing and his body didn’t relax.

  “Cam?” She found his lips. An involuntary shudder went through her body. Perhaps, she thought, her body would never be the same. Blood danced under her skin, speaking of the hair-roughed skin beneath hers, the hard angles and muscles she lay on, the luxurious weight of her own breasts against his hard chest.

  He kissed her, but it was no more than a pucker of the lips.

  “I’ll have Finkbottle’s skin for this,” he said, and he sounded a good deal more furious than he had when they were first shut in the bath.

  “The lamp was bound to burn down,” she pointed out. “Do you have any idea how long we slept? Perhaps it’s already near morning.”

  “It’s between ten and eleven o’clock in the evening. We’ve been here approximately three hours.”

  “How on earth can you tell?” she asked, nuzzling his neck with her lips.

  “Excuse me,” he said, lifting her off his body and putting her to the side. A moment later the blanket tucked around her shoulders.

  “How can you see what you’re doing?” she asked. “And how do you know what time it is?”

  “I have had similar experiences,” he said. His voice didn’t echo even a trace of the pleasure they had shared. Gina huddled in her blanket.

  Cam had walked away. She strained her eyes but couldn’t see anything at all. “Don’t fall in the water!” she cried, suddenly afraid.

  “I won’t.” His voice came from the right. “Would you like to wear your gown?” His voice came back toward her and the gown fell into her lap. Gina clutched it gratefully. She dropped the blanket and pulled on her gown. It took a moment to make certain that she had it on correctly.

  “I’ve found your stockings,” said the voice, dimly. “But I can’t seem to locate one of your slippers.”

  “You threw it to the right.”

  A moment later she was drawing on her stockings—a far more difficult task in the dark than in the light. Then she was as dressed as possible. She shuddered to think what her hair looked like. All she could do was comb it with her fingers.

  “Cam?” she asked.

  “Yes?”

  “Why am I bothering to get dressed? Aren’t we likely to spend the night here? It seems to me that Finkbottle would have returned if he was likely to.”

  “I doubt he ever meant to return,” he said in a brutally angry voice. “I plan to kick that damn door until someone hears me.”

  Gina thought for a moment. “Cam,” she called. “Will you come here, please?”

  She heard his footsteps, but it was still a shock when he touched her. “Will you sit with me?”

  He hesitated. “Of course,” he said, sitting beside her.

  “What is the matter?” she said, in a tone carefully empty of blame or reproach.

  “Nothing,” he replied, just as calmly. “Other than the fact that I dislike being imprisoned in a dungeon by a solicitor who has likely stolen a priceless artwork.”

  She held on to his arm so he couldn’t slip away. Perhaps men grew irritated after—a more dreadful thought struck her. Perhaps he was in a rage because, having taken her virginity, they would no longer able to procure an annulment. A pang of distress sounded all
the way from her heart to her stomach.

  “Are you angry because the annulment won’t go through?” she asked, before she could rethink the question.

  “No,” Cam said shortly, sounding uninterested. “You’re mine now.” Gina felt a thrilling dip in her stomach. She’d never been anyone’s before. Even her mother had not really been her mother, and her husband had not really been her husband. There was something oddly reassuring about the briskness with which he announced it.

  “Then what is the matter?” she repeated.

  “For God’s sake, I just said that nothing was the matter,” Cam roared, starting to his feet. Gina came with him. She loathed the idea of stumbling after him in the dark.

  But he tore away her hand and walked off. “It’s only dark, Gina,” he said roughly. “There’s no reason to go into a tizzy.”

  “But I’m not—” Gina said, and stopped. It was he who was scared—how odd that she hadn’t seen it immediately.

  He hadn’t gone far, so she simply walked in the direction of his voice until she bumped into a warm body. He was leaning against the wall. His body was rigid. She cupped his face in her hands and kissed him. At first he didn’t respond at all, and then his lips softened.

  She almost thought she had done it, when he pushed her away and said, in a strained sort of way, “Lord save me from an insatiable woman.”

  Gina bit her lip and counted to ten.

  “It was supposed to be a joke,” said a voice just in front of her.

  She counted to ten again. As she had told Carola, silence was sometimes extremely useful.

  Sure enough, his arms reached out. He put his lips in her hair, and at first she couldn’t understand what he was saying. So he repeated himself.

  “Did you hear the jest about the preacher, the Puritan and the vintner’s daughter?”

  “No,” Gina said.

  “I can tell you a riddle, if you like,” he offered.

  “I would prefer not. I’ve never been any good at riddles.”

  “I would not wish you to be afraid of the dark.” There was a driven rage to his voice. “I shall have Finkbottle’s head for putting you in this intolerable situation.”