Evening Star

by Catherine Coulter

  “There will be none of that. We are not married, Mr. Saxton.”

  Giana brushed out her hair. She was on the point of braiding it when there was a light knock on the adjoining door and Alex walked in wearing a burgundy velvet dressing gown.

  “Where is the maid?” she said, nervously kneading the back of an armchair.

  “Damn,” he said, “I knew there was something I forgot to do. No matter. I’ll play your ladies’ maid this evening.”

  “What is that in your hand?”

  He presented a bottle of champagne and two glasses. “I believe,” he said, “that it is customary for the loving bride and groom to toast each other on their wedding night.”

  “Is it some sort of fertility rite?”

  Alex threw back his head and laughed deeply. “In your case, Giana, it seems it worked wonders, even with you feeling ill. Not very romantic, though, I grant you. Would you like to undress now or drink a glass with me?”

  “One glass, sir. I am tired and would like to retire.”

  Giana looked into the bubbles and waited for Alex to make his toast.

  “To my English bride,” he said. “May she bring culture to the uncivilized savages of New York.”

  “Hear, hear,” she said, “but for only a short time.”

  When she had finished her glass, Alex poured her another. “It is your turn to make a toast, my dear. Tradition, you know.”

  She eyed him for a moment over the rim of her glass. “To a man who is too conceited for his own good.”

  “The man is willing to share his conceit.”

  “The man wears his conceit like suit of clothes. Without it, he would be like the naked emperor.”

  “Hear, hear.”

  “No, Mr. Saxton, no more,” Giana said, rising from her chair.

  “Are you certain, Mrs. Saxton?”

  She started. “Oh dear,” she said, “I suppose that I must accustom myself to that.”

  “Yes, it would be embarrassing to introduce you as my wife, ‘Miss Van Cleve.”’

  She smiled uncertainly and presented him her back. “The buttons please, Alex.”

  The tiny buttons parted quickly under his fingers. When her gown was loose to her waist, she felt his hands warm on her bare shoulders. She jumped at the pleasure his touch gave her. She tried to pull away from him slowly, with dignity.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “What is what?”

  “This thing you have laced up to your eyebrows.”

  “It is a corset, sir. I suppose you will have to unlace it too.”

  “You were not wearing that nonsense in Folkestone.”

  “No,” she said, “I wasn’t.”

  She breathed in deeply as the corset loosened. “Ah, that feels better,” she said. She felt him pull it away from her, and saw him lean toward the fireplace from the corner of her eye. “What are you doing?”

  “Destroying that piece of armor.”

  She watched the stiff material flame up. “The boning won’t burn,” she said. “I would appreciate it, Alex, if you would not destroy any more of my clothes.”

  “No more corsets. Jesus, you’re thin as a rail, and when you do fill out a bit, that wretched contraption could harm the baby.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “There are some other things you haven’t thought of as well,” he said.

  “You can leave now, Alex,” she said, her voice too loud. “Thank you for helping me.”

  “Leave my bride on our wedding night? I would not be such a bounder, Giana.”

  She kept her eyes fastened on her toes. He knew, damn him, that she wanted him, and there he was, standing quite at his ease, but three feet from her, lazily studying her.

  “Haven’t you anything better to do?”

  “Indeed I do,” he said. “Making love to my bride is my sacred duty.”

  “I am not your bride.”

  “Do you have any idea how adorable you look with your gown falling about your hips and your hair loose?”

  “You of all people know that I am not the least bit adorable. Please, Alex, just leave now. I don’t want you to make sport of me anymore.”

  His smile faded and he threw himself down in a chair with his back to her. “Get into your nightgown, Giana,” he said.

  She picked up her cotton nightgown and stalked behind the dressing screen. Her fingers were trembling. “What time does our ship sail tomorrow?”

  “Nine o’clock in the morning. I’ve already seen to the stowing of your trunks. We shouldn’t have to dash about.”

  Alex turned to her as she stepped from behind the screen, clutching her dressing gown about her. Her face was pale in the dancing firelight, and she looked for the world like a small, frightened child, save for her eyes, which held his in silent question.

  He strode over to her and cupped her chin in his hand. “I have never known a more passionate woman,” he said, “nor one who tried so hard to deny it.” He gently pulled her fisted hands away from her dressing gown. “Hold me, Giana. Men enjoy being held as much as women.”

  She closed her hands tentatively around his back, and rose to her tiptoes. “You are so big,” she said.

  He held her tightly against him for a moment, forcing his hands to be still. “I want to make love to you, Giana.”

  “Since I am already a fallen woman, I do want to know what the falling is like.”

  He dropped a light kiss on her nose, and smiled when he saw her brow furrowed in thought.

  “What if I don’t like it?”

  “If you don’t like it, Giana, you may personally divest me of my manhood.”

  “I fancy I will not dislike it that much.”

  He kissed her on her pursed lips and lifted her into his arms. To Giana’s befuddled surprise, he did not carry her to the bed, but eased down into an armchair in front of the fireplace, settling her comfortably on his lap.

  “Promise me you won’t wear a corset anymore.”

  He sounded perfectly serious. She was nestled against his shoulder, her body molded against his, and he was talking to her about her wretched corset. “I promise,” she said quickly.

  “So agreeable already.” He eased her back against his arm and smiled down into her expectant face. “You look for the world like a child on Christmas morning.”

  His voice was a caress. She felt his fingers on her throat, resting for a moment over her pulse. The sash on her dressing gown fell open and she felt his fingers prodding the buttons of her nightgown. She closed her eyes in anticipation and embarrassment. She felt cool air on her shoulders and breasts, and opened her eyes again. He was staring down at her, his fingertips following his roving gaze. She drew in a sharp breath when his hand cupped her breast.

  “I used to be flat-chested,” she said.

  “I used to have small hands.” His hands left her breast and trailed down to her stomach. He pressed his palm against her belly, barely touching the triangle of hair that covered her woman’s mound. To her consternation, he leaned his head back against the chair top and closed his eyes, his traitorous hand still on her—as if she were an arm rest, she thought indignantly, as if he were bored. She tried to stiffen against him, but succeeded only in rearing up against his arm, sending his fingers lower.

  Alex opened his eyes and lazily studied her flushed face. “I begin to believe that if there is any forcing to be done, it will be by my shy bride.”

  “If you are so uninterested, why don’t you simply leave?”

  He smiled, wondering if she could feel his sex, hard beneath her hips. “Leave you, princess?” he asked. “No, I won’t do that again.” His fingers were tangled in her nest of hair, searching for her, even as he spoke. They caressed her lightly, and left to glide over her thighs. Giana drew a breath and pulled herself up against his shoulders.

  “There will be no guilt on the morrow, Giana, no regrets,” he said, holding her still against him. “Even though you are not my wife, you are
mine, now and tomorrow. Do you understand what I’m asking of you?”

  Giana pulled her face from his cheek. “I am here, Alex,” she said.

  Alex would have said more, but it was not the time for talk. Her passion was unknown to her, a tantalizing unknown she would say anything to discover. He carried her to the bed, cradled in his arms, and pushed her open nightgown from her shoulders. He stripped it away and lifted her naked onto her back.

  “Are you cold?”

  “A little.”

  “A moment, love,” he said, shrugging off his dressing gown. He stood naked, his sex thrust out from his body, giving her time to study him.

  She followed the mat of black hair on his chest as it narrowed to his belly and bushed out again at his groin. “You want me,” she whispered.

  He grinned. “Could you ever doubt it?” He climbed into bed beside her and balanced himself on one elbow, not touching her. “I have never understood why blonds are thought so alluring,” he said. “Do you know how delectable you look, all silky white with those soft black curls?”

  He laid his hand over her breast, delighting at her racing heartbeat. “Come to me, love.”

  He pulled her against him and kissed her deeply, savoring her mouth and her tentative response to him. He held her against his arm and stroked her breasts, her hips, until she cried into his mouth. He pressed her belly hard against his sex and dipped his face down to suckle her breast.

  “Alex, please, please help me,” she said, her fingers digging at his shoulders.

  He reared up over her, his lips following the trail of his hands, and eased himself between her thighs. “You are beautiful, Giana,” he said, and parted her. “Delicate, like opening petals, pink and soft.”

  She lifted her hips against him. “Like one of your flowers?”

  She felt his strong hands grip her thighs and raise her to him until his warm mouth closed over her. She suddenly saw him in the Golden Chamber. “This is what you did to Margot.”

  Alex raised clouded eyes to her face. “Margot?”

  Giana could not stop her hips from twisting against his hands. “Yes. I saw you, Alex. I saw you in Rome, making love to Margot at Madame Lucienne’s.”

  His mind suddenly cleared. “What are you saying? How could you have seen me?”

  She wanted to yell at him that it didn’t matter. “You were in the Golden Chamber. I was beyond the glass, watching you. I thought you knew.”

  “No, I did not know, Giana. What man would want to be observed coupling with a whore?”

  “Many men did,” she said, the absence of his mouth bringing her reason. “And they were all the same, except—”

  “Except me.”

  “Except you,” she repeated. “You were different. I think you are too vain to allow a woman to fake passion with you.”

  He pulled himself up beside her again and watched her eyes darken with disappointment. “It is not just vanity. I enjoy bringing a woman to pleasure. It makes the experience more complete. Now, I have nothing more to say for the moment. Do you?”

  “No.”

  He smiled as he leaned down to kiss her. He would never have to worry about Giana faking anything with him.

  He circled her waist in his hands, enjoying the feel of her, and trailed his tongue over her belly. He gently rubbed his palms over her nipples before his hands swept down to grasp her hips. Her body was open to him, and he caressed her, pushed her beyond herself. He felt her legs stiffen and heard her cry out, tossing her head wildly on the pillow. He held her in her pleasure for another moment, then reared back and thrust himself into her.

  “Giana,” he said, and captured her mouth.

  She tasted herself, and the knowledge that he had known her so intimately made her wild. She wrapped her legs about his hips, drawing him deeper, and moaned into his throat. She felt his body shudder and tense, and she kissed him wildly, thrusting her tongue into his mouth, just as he was thrusting into her body.

  Alex moaned and fell heavily on top of her, holding her languid beneath him.

  “I think,” Alex said at last, “that the Van Cleves and the Saxtons have at last consummated their merger.”

  He felt her lips curve into a smile against his throat. He closed his hands under her back and pulled her against him.

  “Well, Giana, is it to be the butcher knife?” He dropped a light kiss on the tip of her nose.

  “Only if you leave me,” she said.

  She clasped her arms tightly about his chest and wriggled close against him, keeping him deep inside her.

  “Women are supposed to want to talk after lovemaking,” he whispered against her forehead.

  “How odd,” she said.

  He felt her eyelashes sweep closed against his shoulder. He cast a jaundiced eye toward the lamps that were still lit in the room. Perhaps later, if she pulled away from him in sleep, he would douse them. He found himself thinking about the myth so many men chanted as gospel. Their wives, those paragons of purity who were too good, too beyond the cravings of the flesh, to do anything but their duty, silently and stoically, in the dark. He guessed that Giana could be that way, with another man. Perhaps that was vanity on his part, but then, he would be the only man ever to possess her. He fell asleep, a half-smile on his lips.

  Alex started awake. A strand of hair was in his mouth and there was a warm body pressed against him. He cocked his eyes open, startled to see sunlight bursting into the room. He looked at the clock on the table beside the bed, and cursed. He had wanted to love Giana awake, but it was nearly eight o’clock, and their ship sailed in but an hour.

  “Giana,” he said against her forehead.

  She grumbled in her sleep and buried her face into his chest.

  “Come on, laziness, we must hurry.” He lightly slapped her bottom and unwrapped her arms and legs.

  Giana took in the two of them, naked together on a dreadfully rumpled bed, and gulped.

  “A little late for that, princess,” Alex grinned. He bounded out of bed and stretched vigorously, delighting in the suppleness of his body. “If you hurry, you’ll have time for a bath. Shall I order one up for you?”

  She gulped again as his eyes traveled down her body, “Yes, please,” she said.

  “We’ll have our breakfast on board the Halyon. Call me if you need any help with your buttons.”

  He caught her chin between his hands and dropped a light kiss on her lips. “We’ll talk about dessert after breakfast.” He strode naked from the room, his dressing gown tossed over his arm, whistling a sea ditty whose words, thankfully, Giana didn’t know.

  Giana was surprised to see the leather-faced, stocky captain of the huge steamship Halyon plant himself in front of Alex when they boarded the ship.

  “Well, sir,” he said in a booming voice, vigorously pumping Alex’s hand, “delighted to have you aboard this trip. And this, I take it, is Mrs. Saxton. A most fruitful trip for you, sir. It appears that you’ve come away with England’s finest.”

  “It was a most fruitful trip,” Alex said smoothly. “Mrs. Saxton, let me introduce you to my captain, Darrell Duffey, an old salt who can spin an outrageous tale better than any man in the fleet.”

  “Captain Duffey,” Giana said, nodding.

  “Your stateroom is ready, sir, and we’ve sobered up the helmsman, poor chap. Got himself caught up with some Irish sailors and was the worse for wear this morning. But he’s an American, and they don’t come with harder heads—”

  As Captain Duffey continued his monologue, Giana looked about the bustling ship. Sailors were high in the rigging setting the sails, while others hoisted cargo crates, fastened down under tarpaulins, belowdecks. She heard Captain Duffey tell Alex there were some fifteen passengers for the voyage to New York.

  “You approve of the Halyon?”

  “You did not tell me it was one of your ships, Alex.”

  “Actually, I bought her during your confinement in Cornwall, and rigged her out with my crew. She’ll mak
e the crossing in fourteen days, Giana, if we are lucky enough to avoid early-winter storms.”

  Giana ran her fingers over the sparkling brass railing. “Fourteen days,” she said. “I still have trouble believing such speeds.”

  “The combination of steam and full sails gives us the best of everything. Come, let me show you our stateroom.”

  Giana had barely time to take in the rich mahogany walls of the stateroom, and the thick carpets be neath her feet, before she felt Alex’s mouth caressing her ear, his hands stroking her back.

  “It’s been a long time, Giana, and I’m starving.”

  “If you are this hungry much of the time, you’ll become fat.”

  “We’ll see which of us becomes fat first.”

  She wrapped her arms about his neck and rose on her toes, trying to fit her body against his, but his mouth was still beyond her reach. He gave her a teasing, boyish grin before sweeping her into his arms and dumping her unceremoniously onto the bed.

  “You have three minutes to get out of those clothes, Giana, no more.”

  She was still struggling with her stockings when Alex, deliciously naked, grabbed her ankles and upended her on the bed. She wondered vaguely as he rolled down her stockings why his touch should make her feel so urgent. Then he was on top of her, and she was kissing him, clutching him against her.

  “Don’t rape me,” he said, nibbling her throat. He pulled her to face him and captured her hand. He closed his fingers over hers and guided her hand down to feel herself as he caressed her. Her embarrassment quickly faded, and when he loosed her fingers, she tentatively closed them about him.

  “You are so big, Alex,” she said. “I cannot believe that you don’t rip me apart.”

  His fingers still caressed her. “If you did not want me, I would hurt you. But you are soft, ready for me.”