Always a Lady

  Mariah caught his hand in hers and pressed a kiss against his palm before she released it. “What do you have in mind?”

  “Would you like to swing?”

  His question surprised her, but Mariah nodded her head. “Very much.”

  Kit took her by the hand and led her to the swing. He tested the ropes and found them to be strong and secure and then lifted the seat and checked the underside. Although not as clean or as comfortable as it had once been, the silk that covered the padded wooden seat was intact.

  Kit removed his handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket and brushed the seat off before he sat down on it, testing its strength against his weight. If the swing decided to collapse and break, he would just as soon have it do it while he was sitting on it and not when Mariah was flying toward the sky.

  “All right,” he said when he completed his inspection. “It’s safe.” Kit patted the seat. “Come sit down.”

  Mariah didn’t need further prompting. As Kit watched, she politely lifted her skirts and petticoats and sat down on the swing so that her bottom, clad only in silk drawers, touched the surface of the swing, not the fabric of her dress, then she carefully fanned her skirts out around her.

  “I wiped the grime off the seat as best I could,” he told her.

  “I know,” she told him. “But you’ve a dusty rectangle on the seat of your trousers.” She smiled. “I didn’t want the same thing to happen to my new dress.”

  Kit dusted the back of his trousers with the palm of his hand and walked around the back of the swing to push her.

  “Higher,” she demanded once her feet cleared the ground.

  “Your wish is my command, Miss Shaughnessy.” He complied, laughing as her skirts flew up over her legs and into her face and down again and into his face. Strands of her long black hair came loose from its bun and whipped back and forth in the wind. She was beginning to look thoroughly disheveled and thoroughly happy, and Kit thought that he might search his entire life and never find a better match.

  “More, Kit! Higher!” Laughing with delight, Mariah urged him to push her higher and farther until she was soaring almost as high as the top of the wall.

  She kicked her legs, pumping as the swing arced higher, then plummeted once again, bringing her back down to earth.

  “Have you had enough?” he asked as she put her feet down and slowed the swing to a stop.

  She shook her head.

  “Then what is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” she told him. “I thought you might want a turn.” She smiled at him. “There’s only one swing and I wanted to share it with you.”

  He shook his head. “That’s all right, sweetheart. It’s your swing. Enjoy it.”

  She reached back, caught him by the hand, and pulled him around to face her. When he stood before her, she reached for him, pulling him close enough to kiss.

  Mariah put her heart into her kiss. She teased and taunted him and led him on a merry dance as their tongues met and clashed and mated, and in the end she rewarded him with a sweet, hot, enticing kiss that promised him paradise.

  Kit’s heart began to race, his pulse throbbed, and the tightening in his groin grew so intense that he wondered if his trouser buttons would contain him. He knew Mariah was treading in very dangerous territory and only an effort of will would save her. He softened the kiss, then gently pulled away.

  Mariah stared at up at him. “Please?”

  His eyes were closed and his breathing heavy. “Hmm?”

  “Won’t you share my swing with me?”

  He opened his eyes and looked into her blue ones. “I’d be delighted.”

  Mariah climbed out of the swing and started around the back to push, but Kit caught her by the hand and stopped her. “There’s a better way to share,” he murmured. “I saw it in a book once.”

  “How?”

  He sat down on the swing. “Come here and I’ll show you.” He spread his legs to brace himself and steady the swing, then put his hands on Mariah’s waist and lifted her onto his lap.

  “Like this?” she whispered, shocked and more than a little excited.

  The feeling was such an exquisite kind of torture that Kit had to increase it. “Not quite.” He lifted her once again as he issued instructions. “Put your right leg on one side of me and your left leg on the other.”

  She maneuvered into position and increased the exquisite torture tenfold.

  Kit cupped her silk-clad bottom and held her close against him. “Now, raise your skirts and fluff them out around us.”

  She did.

  Kit rocked the swing back and forth with his foot.

  Mariah burrowed against him, enjoying the feeling of being close against him and the slightly wicked cachet of being held in such a manner. She pressed her lips to his neck where his pulse beat in the hollow beneath his ear and felt it throb against her lips and in the secret part of her he held pressed against him. She shifted against the madness she could feel down there, and Kit shuddered. “What sort of book?”

  “The sort that’s never mentioned in polite company.”

  She lifted her head to look at him. “You own a banned book?”

  “Shocking, isn’t it?”

  “Was this the only picture?”

  “No,” he whispered. “There were lots more. Different kinds. All with exotic names.”

  “What’s this one called?”

  “Swans in Flight.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d like to share that book?” she asked, settling more firmly against him.

  “I might be persuaded to,” he drawled. “With my lover and my wife.”

  “Both?” she asked. “Your lover and your wife?”

  “In the same person,” he said. “Isn’t that what marriage is supposed to be about? Finding a lover and a wife and a best friend and a confidant all in the same lovely form?”

  “I thought it was about finding a lover and a husband and a best friend and a confidant all in the same handsome form.”

  “Isn’t it fortunate that we feel the same way?” He kissed her tenderly.

  “Kit?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I feel like a swan ready for flight.”

  “Lock your legs around me, love, and I’ll do my best to oblige.” He slipped his hand beneath her skirts until he located the convenience slit in her silk drawers, then pressed his fingers against her most secret place and pushed the swing as hard as he could with his feet.

  Kit worked magic with his fingers. He slid his fingers inside her, feeling the slippery warmth as her body prepared the way for him.

  Mariah sighed her pleasure, wiggling against him, as he touched her in ways she could not have imagined.

  “Kit?” Her voice was higher than normal, her breathing ragged.

  “I’m here, sweet.” He skimmed the pad of his thumb through her slick womanly folds, then pressed it against the hard little bud, hidden there.

  Mariah gasped. Her eyes fluttered open, then closed again.

  Kit increased the exquisite pressure ever-so-slightly, before covering her mouth with his own, swallowing her scream of pleasure and surrender as she shuddered against him.

  Seeking to prolong her moments of pleasure, Kit removed his hand from between their bodies and held on to Mariah as he pushed the swing into a higher arc as they left the ground and began to soar.

  * * *

  High above them in the second-floor study, Ash looked up from a copy of Debrett’s. “Stop pacing. You’re driving me mad.”

  “I can’t help it,” Dalton muttered.

  “Then pace elsewhere.”

  “Fine.” Dalton opened the full-length Palladian window and stepped out onto the balcony and resumed his pacing.

  “That’s it!” Ash slammed the book closed, stood up, and walked to the window to watch Dalton pace. “All right. What’s bothering you?”

  “I keep thinking about Kit asking if I planned to offer for Iris.” Dalton
stopped pacing and began fiddling with the telescope.

  “Why don’t you?”

  “You know why,” he muttered, staring into the eyepiece of the telescope. “You can see the ocean from here.”

  “That’s most likely why there’s a telescope there,” Ash replied. “You refuse to offer for Iris because you’re a younger son with no prospects.”

  “That’s right.” Dalton turned the telescope.

  “And she’s an heiress with a large dowry. Marry the girl and live off her money.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not? People do it all the time.” Ash snorted. “Our whole society is based on it.”

  “I’m not going to go to Iris with nothing more than the shirt on my back.” He focused the telescope, looked into it, then readjusted its position.

  “Would you take her if she came to you with nothing more than the dress on her back?” Ash asked.

  “Yes,” Dalton answered. “In a heartbeat.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that Iris might feel the same way? Stop letting your pride get in the way of your happiness. Iris knows you’re a younger son with no prospects. You’re not hiding anything from her or betraying her trust. If she loves you and wants to marry you, do it. You’re not going to be a kept husband. There’s no place on earth you love more than Swanslea Park. You’ll work your arse off for the good of the place and love every minute of it. Lord Templeston and Iris and Kit know that.”

  “Swanslea Park will be Kit’s one day, not Iris’s.”

  “Kit’s got this place and several others. He can’t be everywhere at once, and he’ll probably want to spend a large part of the year here. You heard him. He’s planning to marry at the end of the season, and I’ll wager it’ll be sooner than that.”

  A flash of rose-colored wool caught Dalton’s eye. He bent at the knees and looked through the telescope. “How soon?”

  “Within a month.”

  “I’ll wager a fortnight,” Dalton countered.

  “Done. Because a fortnight from now, Mariah will barely have had time to make her curtsy,” Ash reasoned.

  “Fine.” Dalton stepped back from the telescope. “Now, look at this.”

  Ash peered through the telescope. “I’ll be damned if it isn’t Swans in Flight.”

  “That’s right, old man.” Dalton whistled. “I’ve never seen it performed, but I’ve seen the pictures.”

  “Let’s hope no one else has,” Ash said wryly. “I didn’t know there was a garden back there, let alone a swing.” He turned to Dalton. “Unbolt that telescope.”

  “And do what with it?”

  “Lock it in your trunk or pitch it in the ocean. I don’t care. Just get rid of it before someone else happens to see what Kit and his betrothed are doing during their art lessons. We’ve worked too bloody hard to have her reputation ruined now.”

  Dalton unbolted the telescope. “Especially by the man who’s supposed to be her guardian.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;

  No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet

  To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

  —GEORGE GORDON NOEL BYRON,

  LORD BYRON, 1788–1824

  25 April 1838

  Telamor Castle

  Inismorn, Ireland

  Dear Papa, Mama, & sisters,

  We are leaving Ireland today for London. Ash has pronounced Mariah as prepared for her coming out as any young woman can be.

  Mariah and I shall be delighted to join you in London at Templeston Place if the invitation still stands. As my town house is a bachelor establishment, and unsuitable for Mariah’s needs, I am lending it to Mirrant. Ash, of course, will stay at his own town house.

  I look forward to seeing all of you and in having you welcome Mariah into the family. I intend to ask Mariah to marry me as soon as I am absolved of my duty as her guardian. She will obtain her majority on the fifth day of May, and I shall offer her my ring. If Mariah agrees, I should like to be married at the end of the season.

  As ever,

  Your loving son,

  Kit.

  Mariah expected London to be a bright shining city, full of beautiful buildings and parks and acres of green. She wasn’t prepared for the dank, dreary, fog-shrouded city swathed in layers of smoke and soot and grime that greeted her when they arrived.

  “It isn’t at all the way I imagined it,” she said as they boarded the carriage that would take them from the docks to the marquess of Templeston’s Mayfair town house.

  She looked around at the dockworkers and the ragged mudlarks running barefooted in and around the shoreline of the Thames. Where were all the wondrous palaces and town houses Lord Everleigh had described? No wonder Kit had come to Ireland. No one could live in this cold dreary place and be happy about it.

  Kit gave her a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It gets prettier as we get closer to the house.”

  She took a deep breath and began picking at a string on the index finger of her glove.

  Kit placed his hand over hers to stop her fidgeting. “I hope you’re carrying an extra pair of gloves,” he teased. “Because you’re going to have those unraveled if you keep pulling at the seams.”

  She had already pulled open the seam of one glove. Fortunately, Madame Thierry had insisted she carry extras. “For what the glover charged to make all these pairs of gloves, one would think that they would hold together better,” came Mariah’s waspish reply.

  “The gloves are fine,” Kit said. “You’re suffering a case of nerves at the prospect of making your curtsy at the drawing room at St. James’s.”

  “I’m not nervous about bowing to the queen,” she said. “I’m worried about meeting your mother and father.”

  Kit smiled, then lifted her chin with his index finger and turned her to face him. “You’ve nothing to worry about. They’re going to love you.”

  “But he’s the marquess of Templeston and your mother is a famous artist.”

  “And you’re the famous lady baker of Inismorn.”

  “Kit, please. What if they don’t like me? What if they have some other lady in mind for you to marry?”

  “They will just have to change their minds,” he told her tenderly. “Because I’m going to marry you.”

  Mariah bit her bottom lip and looked down at her lap. She had given him every opportunity to change his mind and every opportunity to tell her he loved her, but Kit had done neither. He had simply decided to keep the promise he’d made to her when they were children. But merely keeping his promise wasn’t enough. There had to be a better reason for marriage than that. “What if I do something wrong? What if my manners aren’t good enough for London society? What if I trip on my train and fall on my face? Or drop another soupspoon or use the wrong knife? What if the queen decides to hold my Irish heritage against me? What if the dance master was right? What if you are the only person in London with whom I can dance?”

  “Then you’ll scandalize society by dancing all your dances with me, and the day after the ball, everyone in London will read about it in the Morning Post. And I’ll be forced to marry you to save your reputation.”

  The carriage rolled to a stop in front of an elegant Georgian town house.

  “Don’t worry,” he said once again. “Everything is going to be fine. Nothing is going to spoil your debut into society. Chin up. Smile prettily. As long as you don’t tumble over when you curtsy to my father, everything will be fine.”

  She looked up at him, panic in her eyes.

  “Relax, sweet.” He brought her gloved hand to his lips and gently kissed her fingers. “I was teasing.”

  “That’s nothing to tease about,” she wailed. “Now I’ll worry about doing it.”

  “It wouldn’t matter if you did,” Kit promised. “Papa would help you up without batting an eye. In his line of work, it happens all the time.” He opened the door of the carriage and leaned forwa
rd, preparing to climb out.

  Mariah placed a hand on his arm. “You’re sure your parents won’t object to me?”

  “Object to you?” Kit stepped down from the carriage and held up a hand to help her alight. “Impossible.”

  * * *

  Mariah worried needlessly.

  She executed a flawless bow to Lord and Lady Templeston as Kit introduced her to his parents and was warmly greeted by his sisters, Lady Iris and Lady Kate.

  Everyone in the household was present to welcome Lord Kit and his young lady home. In addition to his parents and sisters, his friend and former governess, Miss Harriet Allerton, was there along with the butler, Horton, the housekeeper, Mrs. Brinson, and a host of maids and footmen and grooms, whose names Mariah had trouble remembering.

  After a quarter of an hour spent getting acquainted, Wren escorted Mariah to a bedroom down the hall from Iris’s and Kate’s.

  “You must be exhausted after your journey,” Wren said. “The coachmen are still unloading your things, so there’s no need to rush to change for tea. Why don’t you try to rest a bit?”

  “Thank you, Lady Templeston.” Mariah removed her bonnet and unbuttoned her glove.

  “Allow me,” Wren said, taking the bonnet and the glove from Mariah and placing them on the dressing table.

  “Thank you.” Mariah smiled at Kit’s mother.

  Wren smiled back. “You’re welcome, Miss Shaughnessy.”

  “Mariah. Please.”

  “You’re welcome, Mariah.” Wren glanced down at the timepiece pinned to her dress. “You’ll probably think us unforgivably rude, but Iris has one last fitting scheduled for her presentation gown, and this afternoon was the only time the dressmaker could come to the house to do it. I’ve got to collect her and see that she gets downstairs on time. Everyone is returning to town from their country houses, and every seamstress in town is working around the clock preparing wardrobes for all the girls who will be coming out. Your invitation to your drawing room arrived yesterday morning with Iris’s. You are to be presented to Her Majesty at St. James’s palace at three o’clock on Wednesday, and at the conclusion of the drawing room, we’re to attend a dinner party at the Duchess of Kerry’s. When your trunks arrive, have your abigail send whatever needs pressing downstairs.”