There were a couple of cabinets and three sideboards, lamp stands, and two fireplaces. There was a suit of armor, missing its right arm, leaning next to a genuine Egyptian mummy case, minus its occupant. The case was one of the most colorful things in the room, brightly painted with a depiction of its former occupant, a lady who’d apparently enjoyed lining her eyes with shoe blacking.
One of his uncles had brought it back from Alexandria with the mummy intact, but when they’d encountered a storm at sea the crew had tossed the body overboard with the justification that a female was a female, even if she’d been dead for some time. Millennia, one had to assume.
So the painted case had arrived empty, and had joined the suit of armor; they leaned together as if in cozy conversation.
He was appalled to see a stuffed crocodile poking out from under a table. When he was a child, it had been fixed to the wall, but he vaguely remembered that a rousing country dance held in the ballroom above had shaken it loose at some point.
The table that summed up the room held two brass pieces, cheek to jowl: an eagle with spread wings and a sphinx. The might of Empire had met the might of Egypt, and neither had triumphed.
Hawksmede was stuffed with things that his great-great-great-grandfather had bought, and his great-great-grandfather had used, and his great-grandfather had deplored, but kept using because the things were good quality and had been expensive, once.
Passed down along with a thirst for brandy.
He still had not found Merry, and the house was starting to feel like the moldering nest of an ancient bird that should have had the courtesy to die years ago. At last he located his butler, who reported that the duchess was out of doors.
“In the back gardens, as I understand, Your Grace,” Oswald said.
He should have guessed that.
It was far better to be outside the house than inside, as the sun was shining and it smelled like mown grass. He strode into the gardens, skirting the old hedge-maze, though he couldn’t help noticing that it was not only derelict but punctuated by gaps where yews had died. Instead, he marched through the rose garden, discovering that the bushes had become overgrown and black with age and neglect.
Damn it, he should have paid better attention. He paid at least one gardener’s wages; he was sure of it. But he couldn’t remember walking behind the house once in the seven years he’d been the duke.
At the bottom of the rose garden sat a greenhouse, and it was inside that he finally found his wife. Merry was chatting with an old man—the gardener, he presumed—as she repotted a plant that he would have sworn was irretrievably dead.
She was wearing a long canvas apron and a pair of what looked like satin gloves. They extended past her elbows and were encrusted with dirt.
“Good morning,” Trent said, as he entered.
The gardener turned so quickly that he stumbled, and Merry grabbed his arm to steady him.
“Yer Grace,” he rasped, pulling his forelock.
“By God, it’s Boothby, isn’t it?” Trent said, recognizing the man’s overly long upper lip. Back when he and Cedric were boys, Boothby had been one of the under-gardeners.
“That’s right, Yer Grace.”
“It’s good to see you’re still with us.”
“Hello, darling,” Merry said. She smiled at him as she pulled off her gloves and laid them on the wooden table.
Everything in Trent’s world froze for a moment. No one had ever called him “darling.”
“Duchess,” he said, bowing. Because that was how he’d been taught.
Boothby cleared his throat and said, “I’ll just be on my way, then, Yer Graces.”
“Oh, do wait, Boothby,” Merry said, untying her apron. “Trent, may I hire some more gardeners?” She looked at him with an expression of great earnestness. “Gardeners pay for themselves in no time, I assure you. Boothby tells me that there was once a kitchen garden so large that it not only supplied the house, but gave cabbages to the whole village.”
“I had no idea,” Trent said. “How many gardeners were there in my grandfather’s day, Boothby?”
“Fifteen in all, Yer Grace,” the man said, from the door. “Now there’s only meself, and I’m getting on. Yer father let all the rest go.”
Not surprising. The late duke had been too busy drinking his way through the cellars to bother with cabbages.
“In that case, we need around fourteen more gardeners,” Trent said, crossing the room toward Merry while thinking that he’d like to kiss her. But, of course, that would be unseemly.
It seemed his wife was unaware of that rule—or didn’t care. To his enormous pleasure, she came up on her toes and kissed him. Right there, in front of the gardener.
Trent cleared his throat. “Do you know some good men we might take on?” he said, turning to Boothby.
“Aye, that I do.” The gardener was grinning.
“I am American,” Merry told Boothby impishly. Clearly, they had already become the best of friends.
She turned back to Trent. “I plan to extensively redesign the gardens and grounds, unless you have an objection?”
“Of course not. They are your domain, Duchess, to do with as you please.”
“We can do it slowly so that the expense is spread over years.”
“There’s no need for that.” Clearly, Trent would have to have a conversation with his wife about finances. “Boothby, I’d be grateful if you could find Oswald and inform him of your needs. Mention any names that you have in mind.”
Boothby touched his forelock again, gave the duchess a familiar grin that would have made Trent’s mother terminate his employment on the spot, and took his leave.
“Where is George?” Trent asked, looking around.
Merry bent down and peered under one of the potting tables. “Asleep.”
Sure enough, the puppy was curled up on a dusty sack.
“He’s going to need washing again,” she said, straightening up. “Boothby said that he is definitely part ratter because he exhausted himself trying to unearth the occupant from a hole.”
In Trent’s opinion, George had a motley appearance that might include any number of breeds. He moved to the door and closed it tightly. He was quite certain that no one could see in; the greenhouse was so old that it was glazed with thick, semi-opaque crown glass. It had never been transparent, but the accumulated grime of many years had obscured everything but the strongest sunshine.
He removed his coat and tossed it on the table next to Merry’s gloves. Then he picked her up and placed her curvy bottom on it.
“Where is Snowdrop?” she asked him, her dimple showing.
“Resting from her labors. This morning she managed to chew the hem off one of the green curtains in my study.”
“For such a small dog, she is extraordinarily aggressive,” Merry said. “I rather admire the way she makes up for her size.”
Trent didn’t want to talk about Snowdrop. His wife looked like a flower sitting there, prim and straight-backed, pretty ankles peeking from the hem of her skirt. He placed his hands on her knees and slowly pulled them apart, watching her face for signs of protest.
Instead, the color in Merry’s cheeks deepened, and small, even teeth bit into her bottom lip, which sent such a flare of heat through him that he almost groaned.
Thank God, her dress wasn’t one of those narrow ones that hobbled a woman around the ankles; it was full enough that he could step between her legs, close to the heart of her.
When he bent his head, her mouth opened instantly, and her hands stroked into his hair. They kissed as if they had been kissing for years, his hands moving down to grip her hips.
Merry took a shuddering gasp, air shared with him because he hadn’t let her mouth go. But he supposed she had to breathe, so he licked his way from her lips to the line of her jaw, to the slender column of her neck.
She let her head fall back and a little murmur escaped her lips, something between a prayer and a song.
>
“I want you again,” he growled into her ear before kissing her.
A long time later, he pulled away. His wife’s eyes were heavy, her mouth deep red, bruised from his kisses. She looked like a courtesan in a naughty French painting, a woman sated, yet still shimmering with desire.
“I would like to carry you back to our bedchamber,” he said, his voice deepening as he spoke.
He saw her throat move as she swallowed and whispered something so softly he couldn’t make it out. He lowered his head again and ran his lips along the pale skin of her forehead.
“All right,” Merry said, clearing her throat with a little cough that made his heart jerk because it was abashed and lustful, all at once. More color spilled into her cheeks.
He shook his head. “We can’t. You need time to heal.” His mouth drifted over her cheekbones. Was there ever a woman so beautiful?
No wonder Adam followed Eve, and Abélard followed Héloïse, and all those other foolish men followed their women through the ages. The turn of a woman’s lip had them on their knees.
“It isn’t unbearable,” Merry said, looking bashful but desirous. “Isn’t it peculiar to think that we are husband and wife?”
Trent had no interest in discussing the philosophical implications of their unexpected marriage. “I have an idea,” he said casually, and began pulling up her skirts.
Instantly Merry’s hand caught his wrist. “We’re surrounded by glass, Trent!”
“Jack,” he corrected.
“In private, you said,” she flashed back. “This is hardly private!”
“Surely you noticed that no one can see through these old panes?”
“Of course I have. I’m afraid that we’ll have to build a new greenhouse at some point, but not until I find the perfect location. This is a bit far from the house.”
“As I approached,” Trent said, “the only reason I knew someone was inside was that I saw motion.”
“And what if someone sees motion?”
“We have no gardeners yet, and Boothby is no fool. He won’t come back for hours.”
She stopped protesting, because Trent had one hand under her skirts and his fingers were caressing private places. Plump, sensuous flesh.
His wife’s hands clenched his forearms and her eyes turned smoky. Her mouth eased open, but no sound emerged.
Trent leaned closer and dusted a kiss on her right cheekbone, and one on each eye, and then on her sweet, pouting mouth.
A pleading sound came from the back of Merry’s throat.
“Do you like this?” he asked. There was something about her desirous murmur that reached into his chest and squeezed his heart: his funny, articulate wife, caught in an emotion, an experience, that she couldn’t explain.
Lost in desire—for him.
“You are mine,” he whispered, as one finger slipped through silky sweet, wet flesh in a way that made her visibly tremble and her hands clench even harder.
“You must stop, Jack. We can’t do this here.” Her voice was thin, airy.
Merry’s body had taken possession of the space where her brain used to be: the world narrowed to Trent’s smiling eyes and the way he was stroking her with his callused fingers. “I really can’t,” she whispered, falling forward and burying her face against his chest. “We mustn’t.”
This raw emotion, fire under the skin, surprise and desperation—no one had talked of this. Aunt Bess had never said that she might find herself in a greenhouse with her skirts pulled up and her legs disgracefully apart, air cooling her skin, unable to pull away.
Frolicking had nothing to do with a feeling so powerful that she kept shuddering closer to her husband, heart thudding in her chest as if she’d run a furlong at top speed.
With her face buried in his waistcoat, she could smell Trent, coffee and starched linen, a whiff of horse and male sweat, a touch of his skin and soap.
He was bent over her now, one arm curving around her back, his cheek resting on her hair. He provided the walls that she needed as he pushed a second, broad finger into her, past swollen flesh that should have been tender but somehow wasn’t.
He held her in the privacy of his arms, shielding her and trapping her at once, making what the two of them did—what they were doing—into a strictly private matter, not for the open air and green lawns that stretched in all directions.
An orgasm slammed into her, making her cry out and shudder from head to foot, coming in a storm of craving and heat.
“I have you, Merry,” Trent said, voice dark and reassuring. “I have you.”
She hardly heard him, drunk with pure physical pleasure, clinging to him, her mind fixed on the last shaking streaks of pleasure she felt. His fingers slid in liquid heat and he growled her name.
She answered with a sound, not a word, not even a syllable. Just a note, like a bird in its nest.
“Again,” he commanded, and his hand moved, his palm rubbing a voluptuous caress to her most sensitive part, fingers sliding easily now, hard and slow and utterly controlling.
“I couldn’t,” she cried, but the honey mead on his fingers changed everything. She gasped and shook her head, but he was relentless, his fingers owning her body.
“You can.” His voice was like steel wrapped in velvet. He wrapped his free hand in her curls and tugged gently so that her head tipped back and he could kiss her again.
Merry lost sight of everything, everything but the aching, empty feeling that had her rocking against his hand, her breath choppy, her tongue desperately mating with his.
She was dimly aware that he was tearing open his breeches with his left hand. They were about to make love in a greenhouse, where anyone might walk in. But she didn’t care. She just pulled him closer, moving her legs apart like a wanton.
“Do you want me?” he said, his voice raw.
All she could do was groan because of the clever press of his fingers. Blood rushed through her body, making her head reel as if she’d started to move in circles, faster and faster until she was spinning like a drunken top, legs wide, cries swallowed by his mouth, her body jerking, shaking, taut.
In the middle of that storm his hands came around her hips and he thrust forward. Instinctively Merry curled her legs around his hips and pulled him closer. She was so wet that he came into her in one smooth stroke.
It was like the stroke of a hammer, breaking and reshaping her, body and soul. “Jack!” she cried, hands touching him, caressing him, wherever she could, mouth seeking his. “Jack,” she whimpered against his lips because he was rocking into her, thrusting so hard that the table was groaning under her. No pain, just fullness, wild fullness where before there had been emptiness.
Pleasure burned through her in waves, not so much leaving, as settling into her bones like the echoes of a lingering joy. Trent had his hands braced on the table at her sides, his hips grinding into the cradle of her legs. His face had taken on a ferocious severity, a beauty focused on one point.
His eyes were so beautiful, thickly lashed, intelligent, the gaze of a man in his prime. But she thought she saw something else there, too: a recognition of her, Merry, with all her weaknesses and strengths, all the confidence she had, and the frailties she hated.
“Merry,” he said, his voice deep as a well. “My wife.”
She was wrong about the echoes of joy: in fact, those twinges were the harbingers of new pleasure. They caught fire at the look in his eyes and the slow, pounding motion of his hips, and even the sobbing breath in her own throat.
Her fingers curled into him like claws. He groaned and slammed into her once more, pushing her into some other place where there were no gentlemen and ladies, no countries, no polite society, just Merry and Jack and an old wooden table.
She closed her arms and legs around him, and came in pulses that took away his control just as he had taken hers.
As he came, he jerked forward with a low cry that came from clenched teeth, his face buried in the curve of her neck and shoulder as
his body shuddered again and again.
And again.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Merry decided that while she was very fond of the greenhouse, she wasn’t as appreciative of what followed lovemaking in what may as well have been the outdoors.
Trent was no comfort when she pointed out that one of her sleeves had ripped.
“It probably happened when you were pulling at me like a woman possessed.” He’d buttoned up the placket on his breeches, run a hand through his hair, and dropped onto an old wooden chair. He now looked precisely the same as when he’d entered the greenhouse, if decidedly more satisfied.
Whereas there was an unladylike gloss of perspiration on Merry’s brow, her hair had come loose from its pins, and of course her dress was torn.
“Come sit with me,” Trent said coaxingly. He shifted his weight. “On second thought, better not. This chair won’t survive it.”
She shook her head and went back to looking for hairpins. Her hair was so thick that she knew from long experience that two pins—all she could find—would never hold it in place.
“I like your hair down,” her rascally husband said.
Merry pounced on a pin. Three would have to do.
“I adore your breasts in that dress.” His voice was deep and worshipful.
“Don’t even think about it,” she told him. “How I will ever face Lucy without fainting from pure humiliation, I don’t know.”
“You never faint.”
“Well, spit!” she cried.
“What?”
“There’s—” She stopped. They had been intimate, but this was private.
He got up, came over, and kissed her ear. “What?”
“Something wet,” she muttered. Turning her back to him, she used her chemise to dry her leg.
Trent wound his arms around her from behind before she realized what was happening. Then he said, in her ear, “I love the way you smell. But I love the way you smell even more now because I can smell myself on you.”