Dukes Prefer Blondes

  Yet he’d got off his coat, undone his neckcloth, and detached the ruffles from the opening and cuffs of his shirt. The coat he’d tossed over a chair and the neckcloth on top of it. His diamond stickpin glittered from a small dish on the bedside table. His shoes lay where he’d thrown or kicked them, one on its side and one upside down, near the chair.

  He’d unbuttoned his waistcoat but that was as far as he’d gone.

  He lay on his side, his head on the pillow, his black hair tousled. He had flung one arm over his face, and tucked the other under the pillow. Her gaze trailed over the long line of his body, from his shoulders down over his powerful torso and trousered legs. For some reason the sight of his stockinged feet made her heart ache. She stepped nearer.

  In sleep, his face was almost boyishly innocent. This must be because his closed eyes hid his too-­penetrating grey gaze. In the softly shimmering light he looked almost . . . vulnerable.

  Perhaps she would not kill him, after all.

  He was exhausted, poor man. In the last month they’d snatched moments together, but rarely without ­people hovering in the vicinity—­as though everybody feared the wicked Raven Radford would ravish and abandon her.

  Not that he’d had much time to spend with her, even though he hadn’t needed to negotiate a peace between their parents. The parents had taken care of that themselves.

  Being handsome, lively, and charming, Anne Radford soon won over Mama. The long-­ago divorce scandal faded in the glamor of Mrs. Radford’s unmistakable breeding, elegant dress, and handsome villa in a fashionable neighborhood.

  After engaging their lawyers in gladiatorial combat, Mr. George Radford and Papa had spent a great deal of time together, happily arguing—­one a lawyer, the other a politician, and both delighting in a worthy opponent.

  All the same, the social activity tired the older man, and Clara knew Radford took on a great deal on his father’s behalf. Too, he had clients needing his help. And Beastly Bernard demanding constant attention.

  Then came the wedding festivities, starting last night with a men’s party Mama said the bride ought to know nothing about. And the wedding breakfast had gone on for what seemed like forever.

  “Oh, go ahead and sleep,” she murmured. “Only I wish I hadn’t gone to the trouble of trying to look irresistible.”

  Her nightgown wasn’t a proper nightgown at all, but a naughty piece of goods the Noirot sisters had concocted, giving rein, she supposed, to their not-­very-­deeply-­submerged Frenchness. Unlike her simple, sensible nightgowns, this was made of linen as fine and silky as his shirt. Lace bordered the shockingly low neckline. Lace and silk ribbons trimmed the sleeves and hem, and tendrils of silk embroidery adorned the bodice.

  Since she didn’t feel in the least sleepy, she hunted for something to read.

  Radford’s parents had moved out of the master bedroom some while ago. Though it was elegantly furnished, the books in the writing desk’s cabinet left something to be desired. They must be Radford’s, because they included not a single novel or book of poetry. With a sigh, Clara took out a dog-­eared copy of Sir John Wade’s Treatise, the one Radford had told her to read when she’d asked him for help finding Toby Coppy.

  If anything could put her to sleep, this would. The title alone made her drowsy: A Treatise on the Police and Crimes of the Metropolis; especially juvenile delinquency, female prostitution, mendacity, gaming, forgery, street-­robberies, burglary and house-­breaking, receiving of stolen goods, counterfeiting the coin, exhumation, cheating and swindling, adulteration of food, &c.

  And that was only the first half of the title.

  She went round to the other side of the bed, set the book on the bedside table, and climbed onto the bed.

  She took the book in her lap.

  Her movement must have disturbed him, because he moved, too, onto his back, and flung his arm up onto the pillow beside his head. His waistcoat fell open, displaying the breadth of his shoulders and chest. She could see, under the nearly transparent shirt, the dark hair feathering over his chest . . . and down, over his belly, where it disappeared at the waist of his trousers.

  Her face grew hot, and her heart went bumpity-­bump.

  She returned the book to the bedside table.

  She stared at his arm. The light outlined the muscles under the fine linen. The thin fabric clung to the line of his collarbone and fell open at his throat, revealing the hollow at the base. She remembered the way he’d touched the hollow of her throat—­with his finger, his lips, his tongue.

  That had been only the beginning. There had been much more . . . his fingers stroking up her thigh . . . almost to . . .

  Then he’d stopped.

  But there would be more of that sort of thing. Mama had called it marital intimacy.

  A part of Clara wanted to run away but another, stronger part drew her toward him . . . her husband.

  Her husband.

  Forever.

  Nervousness surged into alarm.

  What had she done? What had she done?

  She closed her eyes against the mad upwelling of panic and tried to recall the wedding ceremony, but it was a blur . . . of happiness, like a dream.

  Happiness. He made her happy because of the kind of man he was and because he saw her as she was. And ­because . . . she liked the way he looked and moved. And the sound of his voice. He’d made her heart beat faster from the moment she’d looked up at him in Charing Cross. When she saw him or spoke to him or sat near him, the world was different and better.

  And she could breathe.

  All this was why she’d done this irrevocable thing.

  She opened her eyes.

  In the candlelight and firelight, his hair gleamed like black silk. She bent over him and let her fingers glide so very lightly over the silky curls. She traced the shape of his shoulder and let her hand linger, for a moment, over his powerful upper arm, so warm. With the same delicate touch, as though he were an object of the finest porcelain instead of a strong young man, she stroked over the tissue-­thin linen covering his chest . . . then down . . .

  Her face burned, and she grew timid.

  She returned to his face, with its uncompromising angles of cheekbone and jaw and the imperious nose down which he’d regarded her on that day in Charing Cross.

  She remembered the way, more recently, he’d kissed all over her face, and the way that had made her feel. She bent and dropped feather kisses, mere shadows of what he’d done to her, over his face: his forehead and temple and the top of the arch of his eyebrow. She kissed his nose and the top of his cheekbone and the corner of his jaw. Then his mouth was so close, she had to touch her lips there.

  His hand came up and he caught the back of her head and drew her down to him and kissed her, fiercely, fiercely, and the world caught fire.

  Sensing her nearness, Radford had swum up out of sleep, and he’d almost opened his eyes when he felt her fingers drift, feather-­light, over his hair.

  Wanting to discover what she’d do, he’d tried to be still. He’d tried to quiet his heart’s racing, though it beat so hard, they must hear it at the other end of the house. But she didn’t draw away or pause. He made himself breathe evenly, as though he were still asleep.

  He’d borne as much as he could, keeping still while she explored, though he thought he’d die, keeping his hands to himself. Then came those sweetly innocent kisses, like rose petals wafting down onto his face and along his nose. And when her mouth touched his, she flooded his senses: the scent and nearness of her and the sound of her breathing and the whisper of her clothing when she moved. Though he’d wanted to see how far she’d go, he couldn’t remain quiet. He couldn’t pretend sleep any longer.

  He reached for her and kissed her, deeply, tenderly, hungrily—­a mix of feelings, as always happened with her. She made a tumult, tugging him this way and th
at, knocking objectivity and reason askew. Stay detached and in control when Clara was by? What a joke.

  He kissed her with feelings he’d tamped down again and again over the weeks since he’d met her: the delight he felt in her company, the desire he couldn’t talk himself out of, the humiliation of knowing she was beyond his reach, the fear when he thought death would snatch her away, and the despair when her father refused him.

  He poured all that passionate turmoil into the kiss, and softened it, too, with an affection so deep he’d never have believed it of himself.

  She tasted like sunlight, the same sunlight one heard in her laughter and saw in her smile and in the sparkle in her eyes.

  She tasted like innocence and like experience, too. Her mouth and tongue joined with and responded to his as though the kiss were a dance, and they’d been dancing together all their lives.

  He pulled her closer, bringing his arm round her, and never broke the kiss while he rolled her onto her back.

  She was his at last by law, and what he wanted to do was take her there and then and make her his in physical fact.

  But she was not a girl of experience, and if he didn’t give her time and make her first time as pleasant as possible, she would get the wrong idea about him and about marital relations, and their future together would be even rockier than it looked to be already.

  This was why, though he was already overheated and though he’d waited an eternity for her, he eased his mouth from hers and said, “Well, then, let’s see what I got myself for a wife.”

  He came up, shifting onto his knees, and looked her over.

  Long and leggy. Voluptuously shaped. Silken skin. A perfect face, set with aquamarine eyes.

  Voluptuously shaped—­one couldn’t say that often enough or appreciate it sufficiently.

  How on earth had Raven Radford, of all men, rated a goddess?

  And the thing she was wearing—­for once there wasn’t much of it: a nearly transparent scrap of linen decorated in all the places the eye—­the masculine eye—­was naturally drawn to.

  “You might have taken a proper look when an escape clause offered,” she said, coloring. “When the minister asked for objections.”

  “I did look,” he said. “But you were hard to see properly, under all the bric-­a-­brac. I decided to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Bric-­a-­brac,” she repeated, eyebrows aloft. “Wait until I tell Sophy and her sisters.”

  He planted a light kiss on each arch of her perfect eyebrows. “Never mind, never mind, my lady. You’ll do. For a barrister’s wife.” He drew back and tried to detach himself.

  “What a tease you are.” She put her arms up. “Come here.”

  “No,” he said. “If you start that, it’ll all be over before you can blink, and you’ll want to kill me afterward.”

  “I expect to want to kill you from time to time,” she said. “Come.”

  Gently he put her arms down onto the bed.

  “No kissing,” he said.

  “Mr. Radford.”

  “You may call me Oliver. Or Raven. Or both. We’re private now, after all.”

  “And you may call me Lady Clara,” she said loftily. “Or my lady or your ladyship. Or Heptaplasiesoptron.”

  “Thank you, my lady,” he said. “If your ladyship would be so good as to lie there and try not to participate until I suggest it—­”

  “Lie here and take it, you mean,” she said. He saw the way her fingers curled and uncurled on the bedclothes. She was nervous, but putting on a fine show, her screen in place.

  “Feel free to comment, as the whim takes you,” he said.

  “Is there a book?” she said.

  “A book?”

  “With the rules of how to do this,” she said. “You know, with a firstly and a secondly and a thirdly.”

  “There are many books,” he said. “This is a plot of my own devising. Because I’ve never done it before with a virgo intacta.”

  “Who said I was?”

  He straightened. “Are you or are you not? Because if you aren’t, we can dispense with—­”

  “This is my first time.” She sighed. “And given the rate at which it’s proceeding, I may not live long enough to do it again.”

  “Then kindly leave this to me,” he said.

  She laughed.

  And sunshine broke out in the shadowy bedroom.

  His heart soared with a happiness so rare he wasn’t sure happiness was the name for it.

  “We’ll start with familiar things,” he said. He straddled her legs, and bent and kissed her nose. “Like this.” He kissed her forehead. “And this and this and this.” Between words, he feathered kisses over her face.

  He kissed her ear and nibbled at the lobe, and she gasped and squirmed. He kissed a tender place behind her ear and worked his way down her neck.

  The scent of her skin was in his nostrils and filling his head. He couldn’t get enough of it. He brushed his cheek against hers. Her skin was as soft and smooth as flower petals. He couldn’t get enough of the feel of her skin. He kissed the hollow of her throat, and the warmer scent of her wafted up from the low neckline of her night dress. He brushed his cheek over the skin her neckline bared and drank in the scent. He brushed his lips over the place. He pushed away lustful impatience to simply absorb the sensual pleasure of this moment.

  She moved under his touch and sighed, and her breath came faster.

  He let his hands slide over her skin where his mouth had gone, and over her neck and shoulders and down over the swell of her breasts and down where the bodice’s fine linen covered them, but not very well. The cunningly designed embroidery circled the deep pink buds. They tautened under his touch.

  “Oh,” she said. “That’s . . . naughty . . . and . . . not unpleasant.”

  He loosened the neckline’s ribbons and drew it down, baring her perfect breasts. She opened her eyes wide, and a blush spread over her face and downward.

  He trailed his mouth over the silken curves, following their shape and reveling in the warmth and scent of her, and the way she moved under his caresses and the way she took the pleasure he gave himself and her. He took one rosy tip into his mouth and lightly suckled, and she gasped and brought her hand up and pushed her fingers through his hair and held him there.

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh, my goodness.” Her voice was soft with surprise and pleasure.

  She was too perfect, too responsive, too much altogether for a mere mortal male.

  He could not go on like this without having a heart seizure.

  “Don’t stop,” she whispered.

  So many ­people wanted to kill him, but she would succeed.

  Raven Radford was going to die on his wedding night.

  He’d kissed her before. He’d touched her before. Clara had felt pleasure and excitement.

  This was beyond anything she’d felt at those times. Then she’d only been on the border of an unfamiliar realm. Now she moved into that new place. Now it seemed as though she’d been only half aware of herself. Or somehow not fully alive. Her body had kept secrets from her.

  Radford kissed her and caressed her, and every inch of her vibrated, outside, inside.

  He suckled her, and she felt the tug in the pit of her belly. Then his hands and mouth were everywhere, sending electric sensations over her skin and under. She couldn’t keep still. She couldn’t help making sounds—­little cries and moans, not at all ladylike—­as shock after pleasurable shock struck and raced along her skin and inside her.

  She hadn’t realized her heart and body could feel like this. How could she have guessed what it could be like?—­the feel of his face against her skin, the masculine scent filling her consciousness and blocking out everything else. The world narrowed to him . . . and her . . . and to sensations familiar and new. A
nd an aching pleasure that made her restless.

  He drew her nightgown down, all the way to her waist, but she was past blushing now. Embarrassment couldn’t live alongside these surging feelings. Modesty dwindled to nothing under the movement of his hands and the touch of his mouth.

  She clutched at the bedclothes, trying to do as he’d asked—­in this he knew better, after all—­but he was kissing her belly and she couldn’t remain still any longer. She had to touch him.

  She brought her hands to his head, and dragged her fingers through his thick, silky hair. She felt him shudder under her touch. He paused, but only for a heartbeat. Then he swirled kisses over her belly, drawing her gown down farther as he went . . . down past her hips . . . kissing her . . . kissing her . . . and moving her legs apart . . . and her knees came up of their own accord . . . and he was kissing her . . .

  . . . down there.

  Her eyes flew open. She saw the canopy above her head, deep blue embroidered with gold that shimmered in the candlelight and firelight. She saw stars, too, flashing in her mind’s eye, as though she’d fallen into the sky. But no. The sky felt like water, the stars reflected in it. She wasn’t flying but swimming in feelings, happy and restless and wanting very badly to reach a place she couldn’t identify.

  Her hands fell away, to the bedclothes. She closed her eyes.

  He kissed her and touched his tongue there, and heat and excitement ruled her, mind and body. She tried to keep still but her body quivered. Then his fingers were there, too. She grabbed fistfuls of the bedclothes, holding on while shock after pleasurable shock knocked her about and made her mindless.

  The feelings sharpened and quickened. A stronger shock flooded her with heat and feelings impossible to make sense of. She cried out—­not words, but primitive sounds. Her legs shook. She grasped his shoulders and tried to pull him up. She needed him with her. He understood, and came up and kissed her the way he’d done before, and she gave back passion, love, and a wild longing.

  She couldn’t keep her hands from roving over him, over his shoulders and back and arms. She caught hold of his shirt, and tugged it from his trousers. She wanted skin. She wanted to touch him the way he touched her.