She pulled him down, closer to her. He could feel her body softening. Still, he managed to keep his slow, deep glide.
Until she opened her eyes and he caught just a hint of disappointment. His hips jolted to a stop.
“No, please keep going,” she gasped. “It’s probably just because . . . it’s the first time. I’ve heard that women—maybe I’m one of those women. It’s very pleasant.”
Her words went through Parth’s chest like fire. “No,” he gritted out. “Tell me what you need, Lavinia.” He came down on his elbows and despite himself, his shaft thrust forward hard.
She grunted, surprised, her body jolting. “I don’t—”
“Sorry,” he said, gritting it out, his voice deeper than normal. “Won’t do that again.” He eased into a slow glide again.
But Lavinia had always surprised him, and she always would. With a purring laugh, she bent her knees and arched up, toward him. “Anything I need?”
“Anything.”
“I need that.”
“What?”
“Like that.” Her voice had a trace of frustration and Parth frowned, not sure what she meant. She tightened on him and lifted up fast, slamming into him.
The pleasure was so acute that he lost vision for a moment.
His response was instinctive. One hand wrenched her right knee higher and he thrust into her with a heavy grunt, hard and possessive.
In a white heat, he heard her cry out, but not in pain. It set something free in him and he let his head drop, licking her face like a crazed man, biting her bottom lip, thrusting his tongue into her mouth as ferociously as his cock.
She was gasping now, groaning, eyes shining with dazed pleasure.
And then she was coming, and her throat had to be raw because, damn it, Lavinia was as wild in bed as she was in life. As she shuddered in his arms, Parth closed his eyes and let himself go.
Three, four thrusts home and he felt himself empty out, cock deep inside her, shaking, sweat dropping onto her, groans torn from his chest.
A man is never more vulnerable than in the moment he gives everything to a woman.
It was the first time he’d experienced anything that felt as if he’d given his heart away.
It was her first time.
But also his.
Chapter Twenty-one
September 11, 1780
Lavinia woke the next morning with a gasp.
It had really happened.
All of it, including a giggling, breathless return to her room through the back corridors and even a secret passage. Inside her room, the door shut, one of those kisses again.
Watching Parth, her future husband, reluctantly leave.
It seemed she was to be married. Staring up at the bed curtains, Lavinia made one decision, an important one.
She would marry Parth, obviously. Her virginity was gone. But she would not marry him until she had repaid the emeralds her mother had stolen.
Perhaps she would earn her own dowry.
Parth was rich, yet she wanted to bring him the inheritance she was supposed to have. Or at least a small dowry, enough to keep her pride.
She rang for a bath, and spent half an hour calculating when she could afford to marry Parth. Probably in a year or two, depending on how things went. As soon as her mother was well enough, they could open the townhouse.
She had a feeling she could afford a string of emeralds from the commissions related to Diana’s wedding, and perhaps even repay the money owed to Willa’s estate. Lady Blythe’s trousseau would give her a small dowry.
She took a deep breath.
A year’s betrothal was by no means uncommon; some people waited two. Her mother had to recover.
And . . .
It was foolish, but she needed time to woo Parth.
He was in the grip of lust, that was clear. But she needed time to show him that her love for clothing wasn’t shallow. An inappropriately dressed man was unlikely to succeed. A superbly dressed woman could marry far above her station.
She was imagining that conversation when Annie entered. “The girls are at work, miss. That Frenchwoman, Berthe, has already finished the embroidery on the right sleeve!” She stood back and ushered in three footmen carrying cans of water, which they poured into the bath in its alcove.
When they had withdrawn, Lavinia slid from the bed and discovered that she must have been drugged with passion not to feel pain last night. She felt it now. She hobbled over to the bath and sank in with a sigh.
No more of that.
What had she been thinking? A liquid warmth stirred in her legs, in the back of her knees, in other places, and she remembered exactly what she had been thinking.
She’d had that huge, beautiful man literally at her feet. His body had glowed in the candlelight as if he were made of gold, some sort of ancient god come down to earth to worship her.
Parth might not think much of her intellect, but he was wild about her body, and she felt the same way about his. He had looked at her ravenously, as if she was the only woman on earth for him.
“Well, you’re in a good mood and no mistake,” Annie said, pouring out soft soap so she could wash Lavinia’s hair. “The castle is so pleasant, isn’t it? Everybody’s loud and a bit mad.”
She talked on while Lavinia thought about the rough caress of Parth’s tongue. The possessive curl of his fingers. The way he lost control at the end, caught up by the demands of his body.
She’d done that.
She’d driven the man with the greatest control she’d ever known into a storm of desire so potent that he succumbed.
“Would you like me to bring tea or will you go to the breakfast room?” Annie asked, when Lavinia was seated by the fireplace, her hair drying.
“I’ll go to breakfast,” Lavinia said.
Not to see Parth.
He probably wasn’t there.
She might turn red if she saw him. Married women ordinarily ate breakfast in their bedchambers, and now she had a good idea why.
“No, I’ll go see what progress is being made on the dress,” she decided. “If you could have some tea brought to the sewing room, I’m sure everyone will appreciate it.”
“It’s not many mistresses who drink tea with maids and seamstresses,” Annie said, straightening out Lavinia’s ribbons. There were many ribbons, because . . . ribbons! Who could resist them?
“I sew with you as well,” Lavinia said. “I’m not like the other ladies, Annie.”
“No, you’re not that,” her maid said, rolling a last ribbon and tucking it carefully back into the ribbon box. “Would you like powder this morning?”
“No,” Lavinia said, remembering the way Parth thrust his fingers into her hair. She’d heard hairpins falling to the stone floor. “No powder.”
“Lip salve?”
The salve tasted slightly fishy, though it had never mattered to her before. But just in case . . .
“No. I wouldn’t want to accidentally stain the dress.”
That was a good reason.
Not the only reason, but a good one.
Chapter Twenty-two
Parth sat at the breakfast table and sparred with Betsy until it was clear that Lavinia would not make an appearance.
Then he extricated himself from a lively discussion among the younger Wildes about whether women should be allowed to sit in the House of Lords alongside men. Parth thought it depended on the woman, just as it ought to depend on the man. And he was damned certain that he wasn’t capable of judging either sex.
A year ago, he would have categorically said that Lavinia was not such a woman. He would have been very wrong.
He made his way up to the chamber devoted to the wedding dress and walked in on a scene of organized chaos. No one noticed his entrance, likely because Aunt Knowe was laughing so uproariously. He watched Lavinia dart from one seamstress to the next, answering a question about the placement of spangles.
“We need a cluster of them just here,?
?? she said, pointing. “The light should reflect from all angles. If you bunch them up like this, they’ll reflect on three or four sides.”
“Come over here, Parth!” his aunt roared from the side of the room. “Just look at what this impossible girl is trying to get me to wear to the wedding!”
Lavinia looked up and their eyes met. Parth didn’t smile often. It was a habit of mind, born from being—along with the entire Wilde clan—constantly and closely observed. But now his smile was unguarded. Lavinia’s hair shone gold in the sunlight streaming in the window. She was outrageously beautiful. Unfair-to-other-women beautiful.
His.
After last night: his.
As he watched, a delicate wash of pink appeared in her cheeks.
He made no effort to approach her, because if he did, he would take her in his arms, and that wasn’t in the plan. At the moment he couldn’t remember the reasons for the plan.
But her eyes held a warning: No one should know about them.
Right.
He crossed the room to Aunt Knowe instead.
“It’s checked!” she cried gesturing at the gown on a dress form.
The fabric was indeed checked. “They are small checks,” he said, unsure what the problem was.
“Just look at the back!”
His aunt tended toward the dramatic, but even so, Parth saw nothing out of the ordinary.
“The collar is huge in the back and it comes to a point,” she cried.
“Double points, actually,” Lavinia said, joining them.
“You must conceive me a paragon of fashion,” Aunt Knowe moaned. “I can’t wear this! Look at those enormous buttons all the way down the skirt in the rear!”
“Perfect for you,” Lavinia said, unperturbed. “The gown will flatter your figure, and at the same time, it is à la mode.”
“I like it,” Parth put in.
“You would like a blue sun if this young lady selected it,” Aunt Knowe muttered. “At least my chest won’t be exposed to all and sundry; I’ll give you that. But checks! Checks are for men’s garments!”
Lavinia frowned. “Fabrics shouldn’t be designated for one sex or the other. If I had my way, I would dress Parth in lavender silk.”
Parth glanced down at his black coat and breeches, feeling a strong surge of gratitude that Lavinia was not dressing him for the festivities.
“I trust you have new garments for the wedding?” Aunt Knowe asked him. “Or a new coat?”
“No,” he said.
“The owner of Sterling Lace ought to wear his own products,” Lavinia said. Her eyes were dancing with laughter. “We could add lace to one of your cravats.”
“Parth is smiling!” Aunt Knowe exclaimed. She turned to Lavinia. “One year all the boys came home from Eton looking as if they’d been carved from granite. It was a terrible shock.”
“No self-respecting man smiles and smiles,” Parth said. “Just look at what happened to that character in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night who was tricked into smiling: He was thrown into a dungeon, for the crime of smiling too much.”
“No, his imprisonment was due to garish cross-garters,” Lavinia said. “They tricked him into wearing yellow garters and since he was a Puritan, his mistress decided he must have lost his mind.”
“Cross-gartering? What’s that?” Aunt Knowe asked.
“Yellow bands that cross over the calves and make a man look like a chicken,” Parth said.
“A perfect example of the significance of clothing,” Lavinia said.
“My question, Lavinia, is whether people will mock me for wearing checks and large buttons down my derrière.”
“No, they will not,” she answered. “They will be in awe of your elegance and run out to buy checked fabric immediately. Mr. Felton and I agreed that he should order at least three more bolts, because you will spur a fashion.”
“I have no aspirations for that,” Aunt Knowe said dubiously. “I don’t even go into London society.”
“Society will come to you,” Lavinia announced.
Parth caught himself on the verge of smiling again.
One of the seamstresses touched Lavinia’s elbow, and she moved away, closer to the window in order to examine a lace ruffle.
“She’s refashioning your lace to resemble the handmade variety,” Aunt Knowe observed.
Parth nodded.
“Lavinia hasn’t eaten a scrap of breakfast, and as long as she’s here, she won’t.”
He waited until the young seamstress sat down before he caught Lavinia’s elbow and guided her out of the room. “Breakfast,” he said in her ear.
Whatever protest she was about to make subsided when their eyes met. “How are you feeling?” he asked in the corridor, trying to ignore the impulse to back her against a wall and kiss her senseless.
“Perfectly well,” she said, her cheeks reddening.
“Tell me why I can’t tell the world that we are betrothed?”
“Because you are courting another woman who will arrive here in just over a month.”
“Elisa knows, so why not everyone else?”
Lavinia shook her head. “My mother is not here.”
“I apologize,” Parth said, annoyed at himself for not remembering. “I should never have assumed—Damn it to hell, Lavinia, I am sorry.”
Her smile was a tight-lipped version of her usual merriment. “Asking my mother for my hand is a mere formality. But she might be wounded to find that I took care of the matter entirely by myself.”
“I understand,” Parth said.
“You can’t, not really,” Lavinia replied.
She was keeping something from him about Lady Gray. He already knew she had no dowry, so it must be something else.
As they made their way down the corridor, Parth decided that Lavinia would tell him whatever it was in her own time. He had never really pictured marriage—or rather, a marriage in which he was a participant. It seemed to be more complicated than he might have presumed.
Just as Lavinia was more complicated than he had thought.
“So the only scene you remember from Twelfth Night is the cross-gartering?” he asked, guiding her into the breakfast room. Thankfully, his excitable siblings were gone, and the table was freshly laid.
She flashed a look at him. “Willa used to tease me that the only reason I attended church services was so that I could examine the vestments.”
Parth shook his head. “You have a unique way of looking at the world, Miss Lavinia Gray.”
“I know,” she said, allowing a footman to give her a spoonful of coddled eggs and some toast.
Parth narrowed his eyes, and the man ladled some more eggs on her plate.
“I prefer to manage my own meals and choose the quantity that I eat,” Lavinia said to him.
Parth nodded and changed the subject. “If I were to choose a profession by its garments, I would choose to be an old-fashioned knight. I used to love crashing about in the old suit of armor down in the entrance hall.”
“The one with the rusted helmet?”
Parth nodded. “An early Wilde planned to battle a neighboring lord but he drank too much, and when he woke up he was on a boat. Apparently his wife felt fighting was a rotten idea, so they traveled to Paris together and bought casks of French wine instead.”
“Good decision,” Lavinia said, finishing her eggs. “Men are proud of heroically laughing in the face of death, but we women find it vastly preferable to put off extinction until old age.”
Parth watched her in silence. Then he found himself asking, without conscious volition, “Do you suppose that we shall live together until we are old, Lavinia?”
“Hush!” she whispered, blushing yet again.
“I should like to grow old with you,” he said thoughtfully. “Your hair will turn silver and you’ll be as managing as Aunt Knowe.”
“You are the managing one!” she retorted.
“Only at times,” he said, letting innuendo slide into his
voice.
“All the time,” she stated. “Even two years ago when we had scarcely met, you liked to tell me what to do. ‘Ride more carefully, Miss Gray. Eat your apple, Miss Gray. Put on a coat, Miss Gray, you’ll . . .’” Her voice faltered and she met his eyes.
“Infatuated without knowing it, and therefore behaving like an ass.” He gave her a lopsided smile. “Even two years ago, I’m afraid.”
“But you were always criticizing me,” she whispered.
“At least I didn’t call you rude names.”
“As much as,” she retorted. “I know I called you ‘Appalling Parth,’ but that was only because you—because you scorned me so much.”
He put down his toast, pushed back his chair, and moved unhurriedly around the table and drew her upright. “I’m used to winning, Lavinia.”
“You never tried to win me.”
He paused. “I was ill-tempered because I don’t go in for impossibilities.”
Lavinia blinked at him, and her lashes were so extravagantly long and she so extravagantly beautiful that he felt it like a jolt. “You are you.” That was hopelessly inadequate, but most women heard accounts of his wealth and threw themselves at him. “You didn’t need my money.”
She visibly flinched.
He was a fool. He should be praising her eyes or her intellect. “I apologize,” he said. “That is irrelevant, obviously.”
“It is hardly a reason that a lady wishes to hear regarding a gentleman’s decision to court her,” Lavinia said. “She doesn’t need my money, therefore I will scorn her. Now she does need my money, so I will woo her?”
There was just a hint that she might need reassurance, which was absurd coming from the woman who had been besieged by proposals on both sides of the Channel.
Parth’s hands closed around her shoulders and never mind his silent vow not to touch her again until Lady Gray had left the sanitarium. “You’re impossibly beautiful, to be blunt, and what’s more, you’re funny. You make everyone laugh. That’s not to mention the fact that a man no sooner sees you than he desires you. I was not unusual in that respect.”
Parth was through with talking; he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. They kissed differently, now that they had made love. Everything in him was alive to her every whisper and movement. He’d seen her at her most vulnerable, and the shiny, fashionable Lavinia would never dominate his understanding of her again.