“I love you enough for both of us.”
“There’s no need to say that!” she said it through her tears, through a brilliant smile, through the joy making her heart sing. “I love you…I love you too.” She tried to pull him toward her, but his eyes were still dark, tormented almost.
“You might not when you realize what I’ve done to you, Imogen.”
She stopped him by the simple method of capturing his face in her hands and pressing her lips to his. And when he still tried to say something, she kissed him into silence.
“I came to you under false pretenses,” he said, sometime later. Some three hot, endless kisses later.
She was struggling with the buttons on his magnificently embroidered vest. “What are you doing?” he whispered into her ear. “Dukes don’t make love on the floor of their study.”
“This duke does,” she whispered back.
“You’re seducing me. I thought you would never make a bold advance to me again.” He was laughing with the pure joy of it. “Didn’t you tell me that in a properly ordered marriage…wasn’t that what you meant?”
She was laughing too, laughing at him, laughing as she unbuttoned, as she trembled, as she wondered just how far Brinkley was from the door. “I was wrong,” she said. “I was wrong.”
“I have been wrong about so many things,” Rafe said, stopping her hands so he could kiss them again. “You still don’t understand, Imogen—”
“Don’t I?”
“You don’t.” He said it desperately, because her hands were running over his chest, and he knew that his wife would always be like this, seducing him, taking him. Unless he stopped her. So he did. He eased her to the ground, rolled on top of her, and growled, “Imogen!”
She looked up at him, her eyes all languorous, and said, “I love you, Rafe.”
He forgot for a few minutes what he meant to say, what he had to confess. He could tell her later. He wasn’t even thinking of that when he’d finally gotten himself out of all that embroidery, and her out of her riding habit. All the thinking he did—and that briefly—was to wonder whether Brinkley was smart enough to stay away from the room (he decided yes).
So, finally, she said it for him.
“Do you think that you might put on the mustache sometimes?” she whispered, with a wicked smile that went straight to his heart. “It tickled, and I found it vastly…amusing.”
36
Which is a gift from Eloisa to her Readers…because it is hard to say goodbye to the sweetness of Rafe and Imogen
It was the middle of the night and he was standing outside Imogen’s bedchamber, frozen, his hand on the smooth oak. Hadn’t he promised that he would be ducal in all things? That hardly included barging into his future wife’s bedchamber in the middle of the night, like a rascal furtively visiting a housemaid’s bed. Yet the devil on his shoulder reminded him that dukes were sneaking into bedchambers all over the country. At this very moment his fellow dukes were tupping married women, housemaids, maidens…in truth, therein lay the problem.
He would never wish Imogen to think that he saw her as a women to tumble, a mere affaire, a lightskirt. His hand slipped from the oak and he turned to go, just as that same door swung inwards.
Rafe’s first thought was that Imogen wasn’t wearing much. His second thought barely registered, something to do with the smile in her eyes and the saucy tilt to her hips.
“I was about to come and join you,” she said.
He blinked at her nightgown, an affair made of rosy silk. She shifted her shoulder and suddenly the silk slid down to her elbow. Rafe’s third thought, whatever it might have been, died a sudden death as their eyes met over the creamy expanse of plump breast before him.
“If I shrug one more time,” Imogen said gravely, though her eyes were laughing, “my gown will fall to the floor.”
Rafe didn’t say anything, just stepped forward, reached behind him, and pushed the door shut.
And Imogen shrugged.
“We cannot continue to act in this fashion,” Rafe said, after his chest settled to a normal rhythm.
She was tucked, boneless, under his arm. All he could see was one closed eye and a trail of silky black hair.
He consciously schooled his voice to a commanding, yet thoughtful tone. “Imogen, I shall not coming to your bed tomorrow night. In fact, not again until we are married.”
“Why?”
“My duchess will not come to the altar carrying a child.”
He could see the edge of a smile. “You needn’t worry about it if we marry in the near future. It takes forever to create a child. You’re going to have to work at it; did I tell you that I want at least six?”
“I hereby commit myself to slave labor,” he said, pulling her closer. “I told you that I’m the hairy, fertile type.” He couldn’t help it; his fingers began dancing down the plump curve of her breast again.
She sighed, and threw an arm over her head, giving him better access. The curve of her slender wrist and the cream of her skin in the candlelight were like madness to him, better than whiskey, better than wine, better than anything he’d seen—or tasted—in his life. Their eyes met.
“Will you stay to your chambers, then,” she whispered, “knowing that I’m wearing that nightgown I greeted you in?”
He nodded, stilling his fingers. “I must.” He said it almost desperately. “I won’t treat you like a woman to be tupped at my disposal, Imogen. You’re to be my wife.”
“I shall torment you,” she said, giggling a little. The lazy sweetness of her voice hung in the air. “I shall lean close to you at the end of the meal, and tell you that I intend to bathe before bed, and that I need help unclothing myself.”
His fingers slid over the satin of her skin and his mind clouded again.
“There are many times when I should go to sleep,” she said, “but I feel…oh…restless. Quite restless.”
Rafe couldn’t even answer that; he just lowered his head to her breast. Vixen that she was, Imogen kept talking, although a faint huskiness came to her voice. Talking…telling him all the details of her bath, and how she would lie alone in her bed, and she would—
He raised his head. “You will?”
She laughed at him. “Do you think that I haven’t found you in my dreams and in my thoughts in the last nights?” Her eyes met his. “I’ve dreamed of you touching me, just so.” She trailed a finger across her breast. “And so.” The finger wandered lower.
“But you didn’t think you were meeting me. You were making love to Gabe—that is, you—“
She was laughing again, not giggling, but full-out laughing. “You must think I’m a fool! A woman to be tricked by a mustache and a slow manner of speaking!”
Her laughter warmed some part of him that he hadn’t even known was mortally cold. “I gather I’m the fool,” he said, trying vainly to sound casual. “I thought you only found out in the last day or so. When did you discovery my ploy?”
“Not immediately. Although—” she frowned—“I should have known within the hour. Do you remember when you kissed me in the carriage?”
“I did so more than once.”
“The first time. The truth is—” she propped herself up on her elbow, eyes serious now. “I should have known immediately because I knew Gabe didn’t really want me.”
Rafe opened his mouth, but she put a finger over his lips.
“He didn’t. I asked him, rather than the other way around.” There was something sweet and rueful about the curve of her mouth that made Rafe’s chest ache. “I knew he didn’t really want me, because I experienced precisely that with Draven. Draven was…perfectly willing.”
“I too am perfectly willing,” Rafe said, desperate to take the shadow from her eyes. He grinned at her wolfishly. “Always.”
She leaned over and dropped a kiss on the corner of his mouth. “I didn’t understand desire until you showed your version of willing.”
“Thank God, my brother’s a b
lind dolt,” Rafe said, heartfelt.
“Draven was rather cheerfully punctilious,” Imogen said. “And I imagine that had you not intervened, with your false voice and your mustache, Gabe might well have shown me the same favor.”
“I’d have had to kill him.”
Imogen looked at her husband-to-be and decided, calm though Rafe’s voice was, he really meant it.
“Well,” she said hastily, “do you see why I should have known immediately? Because when you kissed in the carriage, on the way to see that concert—well, that was my first kiss. My first real kiss. Of course that wasn’t Gabe kissing me.”
“But you didn’t realize,” Rafe said, looking ridiculously pleased with himself. “And I did pretty well in the inn, didn’t I? Did you notice that I knocked my wine on the floor?”
She laughed. “No. I did notice that Cristobel had obviously met you before, though, and in the company of an earl. I’m quite certain I know exactly which earl that was.”
“Damn Mayne,” Rafe said, putting on a tragic face. “I never had a chance with Cristobel, given that he was around.”
“And even so I didn’t jump to the right conclusion,” Imogen said, as much to herself as to him. “What a fool I was. I thought it was remarkably odd that a Cambridge professor had found his way into Cristobel’s presence—and yet it made sense, in an odd way. How else would Gabe have known about her, if he hadn’t heard her sing before?”
“He had no idea what he was suggesting. Saw an advertisement nailed to a tree and likely thought he was taking you to a hymn-singer. Well, then, when did you find out?”
She laughed. “It was a little thing, really. But you asked me what I thought of Rafe, in the carriage on the way home.”
“So?”
“Gabe would never have done such a thing. Never. It was akin to asking me to criticize his brother, and it simply isn’t in him to do such a coarse thing.”
“So you realized on the spot?”
“Oh, no. But I remember blinking at you—it was quite dark in the carriage—and thinking this isn’t right. There had been several points in which you sounded just like Rafe—well, of course you did!—and then there was an odd eagerness in your voice when you asked me that question.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” Rafe said. He was looking remarkably happy. Almost as if he were bursting with it. “I can just imagine what you could have said.” He put on a fierce scowl. “Dastard, thou are not whom thou sayest thou art! Avast, and ne’er darken my door again!”
“I didn’t want it to be you,” Imogen said flatly.
The laughter faded from Rafe’s eyes. “Oh.”
She looked down at the sheet and started pleating it with her fingers. “If Gabe had handed me to you, that meant I was a charity case again. Draven married me because I loved him so much. And if you had slapped on that mustache so that my feelings wouldn’t be hurt, that meant that even when I offered myself to a man, without marriage being in the bargain—he wouldn’t bed me.”
There was a second’s silence, and then Rafe’s voice, as deep and tender as any man’s could be, “Sweetheart.”
She shook her head, looking fiercely at the pleated sheet. A tear slid down her cheek. “I know that’s the case.”
He tipped up her chin. His dark eyes that she loved so much were smiling. “You are indeed a fool. There’s not a man in all this country who wouldn’t bed you if you asked. But would you have preferred that Gabe enthusiastically said yes?”
“At the time, yes.”
He shook his head. “You wouldn’t have gone through with it.”
“I would!” Imogen said fiercely. “You don’t know how much—”
“How much you wish to be desired,” Rafe said, for her.
She swallowed. He plucked her hand away from the sheet and turned the palm to his mouth. “You and I are birds of a feather, you know. So much did you long for desire, so much did I. I wanted you to desire me, from the very moment I saw you. But you never seemed to look my direction: first there was Draven, and then Gabe. I hadn’t your courage. I played the role of a coward in all this, Imogen. I should have thrown away that mustache and lusted after you under mine own name.”
“Why didn’t you?” Her question sounded shy, almost hesitant.
His laugh was a bark. “I dreamed of it. I almost—the words were on my lips a hundred times. But I couldn’t. What do I have to offer you, Imogen? Nothing. Gabe is—”
“Gabe is in all ways a worthy gentleman, but he bores me, and you know it.” She spoke to the question in his eyes. “From that moment in the carriage I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t let myself bring it into words. The thought was too painful. Instead, I asked you to take me to Draven’s house. We kissed in the field, and I kept comparing the way Gabe kissed to the way you kissed, and trying to convince myself that I could feel…that…for two men practically on the same day.”
“Vixen,” he muttered. And: “But, Imogen, when did you look at me and say: this is Rafe?”
The desperation in his voice made Imogen’s heart filled with joy again. She rolled just next to him and put her arms around his neck. “Five minutes ago?”
He growled at her.
“Yesterday?”
He blinked down at her. “I thought…”
She ran her hands through his hair, smiling up at the male foolishness of him. “You took my hand at the theater, just before the pantomime began.”
“So?”
She said it patiently. “Gabe is a scholar.”
He didn’t seem to understand, so she sat up and pulled him upright as well. Then she took his hand and turned it over. Callused from holding the reins, large and powerful, it looked nothing like the hand of a scholar. Something lightened in his face.
“So when we made love—”
“Rafe, did it never occur to you that I might have recognized your body from that bath I gave you?”
“My body?”
“Well, parts of it?” There was a husky tone to her voice that made all parts of his body spring to attention.
“But I was wearing a towel,” he said.
She laughed.
“So you recognized my hands before my…other parts.” He looked down at them. “I do read books, sometimes,” he observed.
“So do I,” she said demurely. “When there’s nothing else to do.”
“I think I shall keep you too busy to read.”
She raised her eyes to his. “It will take a great deal of children, Rafe, to keep me too busy for you.”
He smiled but—“Are you sure you love me?” It burst from his chest. “I can’t help feeling that I don’t deserve you. I’m like a—a worn-out shoe, Imogen. I daren’t drink champagne at our own wedding! I’m—”
“You are one of the most loving, most responsible, and most heartfelt men I’ve ever met. In fact, I didn’t think your kind walked this earth. And you—you are for me, Rafe. Just you. Not Draven, nor Gabe. It’s just you.”
There was a moment of silence, one of those moments that pass between a man and his wife and change the way they live together, the way they laugh together, the way they argue together…forever.
“I hated you for drinking,” she said, putting her lips to his palm. “I wanted to kill you for it. I hated you…and I loved you. And I was too much of a fool to see that the only thing that really mattered to me was keeping you alive.”
Rafe’s eyes shone—perhaps with tears, perhaps with a fiercer emotion. “I know I’m a bookless dolt.” He said it huskily. “But if you’ll allow me to be Dorimant for a moment, I agree with him: my passion knows no bounds, and there’s no measure to be taken of what I’ll do for you.”
She took his face in her hands. “I don’t want poetry, even pretty bits of foolishness from the play. All I want from you is your heart.”
A moment later he was holding her so tightly that she could hear that heart beating against her cheek. “It’s yours,” he said. And cleared his throat. “T
his body, my hands, my heart: they’re all yours…forever.”
The Duke of Holbrook never returned to his chambers that night. But thereafter, though his fiancée teased and tormented, he stayed to his own rooms. And if he couldn’t sleep at night, he spent the hours planning one of the largest, most lavish, and most quickly organized weddings that London society had ever seen.
Epilogue
December 23, 1828
Holbrook Court
The Christmas pantomime was running late again. The entire village and a good sprinkle of Londoners were lined up in the red velvet chairs of the theater. Of course, every one of the four Essex sisters was there; Christmas at Holbrook Court had become a tradition. But most of them weren’t in the audience. One of the thoroughly original aspects of the Holbrook pantomime (one of the most coveted invitations in all England) was that the four Essex sisters took roles, even though most pantomimes were performed by men. And some years, the youngest had even played the prince.
This year, the prince was being played with undoubted gravity by Mr. Lucius Felton; his wife Tess would play Cinderella herself.
“Aunt Annabel plays the best wicked stepsister,” Tess’s sturdy son Phin told his cousin.
“I like watching Aunt Josie,” the future Earl of Ardmore said disloyally, discounting his mother’s performance. “Aunt Josie is always so mean to poor Cinderella.”
“My mother says they’re mean to her because she’s the eldest,” Phin said. “It’s hard to be the eldest. My sisters are just as mean to me.” He said it with feeling.
Everyone was in the theater waiting, from Lady Griselda to Lady Blechschmidt, and yet the Spensers hadn’t even made their way from their house—the house that used to be called Maitland House—to Holbrook Court.
Finally, Imogen walked into the audience to tell everyone the performance was running a trifle late. “What a pleasure to see you, Your Grace!” Lady Blechschmidt crowed. “I was just telling dear Lady Griselda that I shall never forget the first play I saw in this delightful little theater. Did you see the Midsummer Night’s Dream playing at Drury Lane? She was wonderful, wonderful as always!”