Their eyes met over his wife’s head and his longtime housekeeper shook her head slightly, not wanting the duchess to know she was being observed at such a moment. The duke quietly closed the door and waited for his housekeeper to exit his bedroom.
A murmured conversation filtered through the closed door before it quietly opened. Mrs. Wigglesworth’s gaze met his, understanding flowing between them along with the years she’d spent as housekeeper and more to himself and his brothers and sister after the death of his mother.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
“My pleasure,” she mouthed, as if she were afraid her voice would carry back to the grieving woman behind the duke’s closed bedchamber door.
He nodded, knocked and entered at his wife’s soft command to do so.
“Persephone, is aught amiss?” he asked, moving toward where she sat in the straight-backed chair by the fireplace.
She shrugged in answer.
“Has no one come in to light the fire?” He could not tolerate it. His staff would surely hear of it.
“I told Mrs. Wigglesworth not to bother. It’s not overly chilly tonight and I wouldn’t want her to waste her time…or the wood.”
Her gaze met his. “Oh,” she sighed. “I am sorry, mayhap you would have preferred a fire?”
He shook his head. “No. I had thought you would.”
“No,” she said, staring at her feet.
“Persephone, I do not wish to speak about what happened if it will trouble your sleep.”
She shrugged again, not meeting his gaze.
He sat beside her and lifted her hand to his lips. The brief kiss tingled along the back of her hand and up to her elbow.
“A shrug is not an answer,” he told her.
She lifted her gaze to meet his. “It sufficed for my father,” she retorted.
He smiled, a mere lifting of his lips, and still it arrowed through her. He was trying to make her feel better, when he knew she’d been apprehensive earlier that morning. “I am most certainly not your father.”
She sighed. “I know.”
“And?” he prompted.
“I am a bit hesitant about what will happen,” she confessed.
He trailed the tips of his fingers along the curve of her cheek and the line of her jaw.
She shivered.
He smiled. “I would not wish to hurt you, Persephone, but you must understand that your first time may.”
She was back to shrugging again, and it irked him. “Could you not bring yourself to at least respond verbally?”
The tone of his voice signaled she’d nicked his pride. Not a good way to begin their marriage. “I am sorry, Your…er…Jared.”
“Just so,” he said. “You do understand what is to take place tonight, do you not?”
She shot to her feet. “Yes. Mother explained it quite clearly.”
“And I remind you yet again, you said that when you ended up on the floor of my salon earlier today.” The devilment in his eyes belied the seriousness in his expression.
“Indeed,” she answered haughtily.
He raised his brow.
She smiled. “I do so love when you slip on the mantle of your pride and don your ducal cloak.”
“You dare to jest about what I have striven to do justice to? What I have been working to restore?”
She shook her head and leaned down to draw him to his feet. “Nay. Not at all, Jared,” she rasped. “I told you I laugh when I am nervous, but I also say things in a rush without thinking. Forgive me?”
He was still for long moments before acquiescing to her request. “If I must.”
She nodded. “Thank you.”
“As I was asking before you so rudely interrupted me,” he said, “you do understand about the marriage bed?”
“Yes, Jared.”
“And you will not fear me,” he commanded.
“No,” she answered at once, “of course not.”
“I am not certain if I should be relieved or vexed at your ready agreement.”
“Do not be vexed with me, Husband,” she implored him.
He relented and relaxed. “Now to your instruction, I believe you are overdressed, Wife.”
He unbuttoned the back of her gown and let his hands slide across her shoulders, down her arms until he grazed her wrists, gently holding them for a brief moment before linking hands with her. Drawing her back against him, he rasped, “Would you let me undress you, Persephone?”
She shivered against him and he wondered if he’d been too forward too quickly.
At last she replied, “Yes, Jared.”
He divested her of her gown, drawing it over her head, noting the high color in her cheeks. His wife was delightfully embarrassed. He could not be more pleased. “Now, about your chemise—”
“It is a bit chilly in here, is it not?” she asked, the quiver of uncertainty in her voice going to his heart.
“A bit,” he answered. “Why don’t you slip beneath the covers while I undress?”
She shot around him and was in bed with the covers drawn up to her chin before he could react. Deciding to go along with her ploy to hide herself from him, he took his time, removing his cravat, frockcoat and waistcoat. When he was in shirtsleeves, he turned back to look at his wife, but she had her eyes closed so tightly he wondered if it made her head hurt.
“Persephone,” he called her name quietly at first, and a bit louder when she did not answer right away.
“Yes?”
“Do you think you could try to trust me?”
She opened her eyes and stared up at him. “I suppose I should.”
He shook his head at her less than deferential tone. “Yes,” he said. “You should.”
“Very well,” she grumbled indelicately.
“Then do pay attention,” he said, slipping the cambric shirt over his head and laying it across the chair by the cold fireplace.
Her eyes widened, but she didn’t speak.
His undid his trousers and, having already stepped out of his half-boots, he slipped out of them until he stood beside the bed naked. The realization she’d closed her eyes again did not sit well with him.
“Wife, you said you trusted me,” he ground out.
“I do,” she rasped, squeezing her eyes even more tightly closed.
He reached over and brushed a strand of blue-black hair behind her ear. “Aren’t you in the least bit curious as to what the man you married looks like unclothed?”
“Not especially,” she answered.
His laughter had her opening her eyes and quickly shutting them. “You do not have a stitch of clothing on!”
“I cannot sleep if I get tangled up in a bloody nightshirt,” he told her.
“I sleep in my nightrail,” she told him. “I get chilled sometimes in the night.”
“You used to,” he advised. “Tonight,” he told her, “you will not need a garment to keep you warm.”
She looked at him through her lashes. “I won’t?”
“Nay,” he rasped, “I shall do my best to warm you.”
He slid beneath the covers and drew his delightfully difficult wife against him. She squirmed at first, but then settled down and sighed.
“You are quite warm, Husband,” she confessed.
“You have no idea,” he told her, shifting so that he tucked her beneath him and was staring into her startled gaze. “I intend to make love with you, Persephone…to make you mine.”
She closed her eyes. “If you must.”
He chuckled. “It would help if you were cooperating.”
She opened one eye, glaring at him out of it, quite a feat, he thought but dared not voice that particular on dit.
“I haven’t screamed yet, have I?”
“Do you intend to?” he demanded, gruffly.
She opened her other eye and sighed. “I hadn’t thought to, but you are making me quite nervous.”
“I would that you were relaxed,” he confessed, staring into
her warm brown eyes.
“Me, too,” she whispered sadly.
“What can I do to help you relax?” he asked.
She was silent for so long, he thought she’d decided not to respond until he heard her barely audible reply. “Leave?”
He rolled again until she lay on top of him and could no doubt feel how she affected him. “I think not, duchess mine.”
“I don’t really have a say in all of this, do I?” she asked.
“We will not be married in the eyes of the church or the law if we do not consummate our union.”
“I rather thought as much,” Persephone confided. “All right then,” she grumbled. “Do your worst.”
“Ah, darling,” he rumbled, pressing a line of kisses along the underside of her jaw. “You have just dared me to do my best to convince you that you’ve made the right decision,” he teased.
*
He kissed her with a swiftness and passion that stole her breath. She could not hold on to a thought, much less form a word to answer him. The kisses he’d trailed along the column of her throat to the hollow between her collarbones had her trembling.
The way he stroked his hands from her shoulders to her wrists and back had her skin tingling from the contact. His hands moved to her back, sliding up and down the length of her spine, neck to waist and just beyond.
She could not control the shivers wracking her frame, nor did she attempt to. Persephone did not know when she’d lost her chemise but knew the exact moment in time when she’d felt the utterly divine sensation of his warm skin brushing against hers. Her powers of speech left her entirely.
Her husband knew what he was about. She would have told him so, had she been able to form a thought…a word. The last thought she had before he shifted until she was once more beneath him was that he was the handsomest of men…and hers.
“From this moment on,” he ground out, “you belong to me.”
She could not explain how it felt at first to be joined thusly with her husband. But she knew the moment the pain subsided and a curious glowy feeling rushed up from her toes that she would do naught to distract him.
Her skin felt positively charged with energy wherever he touched, and her heart pounded in her breast as his head dipped to sup from her. He drew more from her than she thought possible as he kept up the steady rhythm, all the while kissing her face, her neck, her collarbone, driving her positively mad with a need she did not yet understand.
She was mindless, swept up into a vortex she could not name. With his name on her lips, she followed him over the brink into madness.
Later, when she stirred, it was to hear this man, her duke and husband, softly snoring as he held her tight against him. When she shifted to move slightly, he tightened his hold, rasping, “You cannot escape me now, my duchess. I will never let you go.”
Not quite the words she’d hoped for, but they would certainly do for the moment, she thought as she drifted off to sleep.
The Sixth Duke of Wyndmere smiled as he feigned sleep. He hadn’t wanted to startle her, drawing his duchess close. He relaxed fully when her breathing slowed and she fell asleep. He watched her sleeping in his arms…in his bed while a feeling of elation filled him to bursting.
Lady Persephone was truly his wife. He would protect her with his body, his title, and his name. He slid a hand to her belly, holding it there, wondering if a child had been conceived this night. Would that it would be a girl with midnight hair and laughing brown eyes.
At last, the duke drifted toward sleep with his lady wife wrapped in his arms. His last thought surprised him.
It wasn’t all that tedious being a duke…now that Persephone was his duchess.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Persephone woke slowly, feeling a bit less euphoric than she had the night before when she’d positively come apart in her husband’s arms. Had she dreamed it all? Surely two married persons did not spend an inordinate amount of time…er…doing what they’d done. Did they?
Would he remember what they’d done…on the off chance it hadn’t been a dream? Would he chastise her for being overbold? She shifted, feeling a soreness in a place she would simply not discuss and tried to swallow to relieve the tightness in her throat. Botheration, she had no idea what was expected this morning…she’d forgotten to ask her mother.
Persephone sighed deeply. She had no words for what had passed between them. He called it making love. Her mother had told her it would be doing her duty, holding up her end of the marriage bargain, fulfilling her promise to the duke.
She sighed again and shifted to her side, bumping into a warm, very solid male form, and murmured, “Not a dream.”
He drew her back against him. “And thank God for that.”
She stiffened in his arms hearing his stifled laughter. “You find this amusing, Husband?”
He kissed the top of her head and shifted her beneath him until he was gazing into her eyes. “One must make one’s own amusement wherever and whenever possible.”
“I did not think you found aught to amuse you in life. You seem so aloof, so proud.”
He kissed the tip of her nose before nipping her right earlobe. She shivered and he smiled. “Heretofore, you’ve only met the duke who has to be quite correct at all times whenever going about in society. Last night you met the man.”
She sighed realizing she quite well liked the man…as much as the duke. He pressed a line of feather-soft kisses along the length of her jaw before dipping down to place a kiss below her ear. She moaned, unable to contain the feelings beginning to stir anew. Shifting to give him better access to her neck had her tingling from head to toe. She groaned and stiffened.
“Persephone?”
She tried to settle her breathing but felt the twinges of discomfort again.
“I am the worst of bounders,” he said, shifting so he was once more cradling her back against him. Wrapping his arms around her, he confessed, “I lost my head last night and am still reeling from what transpired when we made love.”
She grumbled, “I am quite sure I lost a bit more than you.”
He laughed.
“Well?” she demanded, “what have you to say, Husband?”
“Jared,” he whispered, kissing that spot…just below her ear.
She relaxed against him. “Mmmm…Jared.”
“It was your duty to grant to me what you will give but once. I am humbled by the gift of your virtue and shall treasure the giving of it until I breathe my last.”
Tears filled her eyes, and though she tried to blink them away, she could not. His words filled her heart to bursting. “I confess I had not thought to enjoy the…er…giving of myself quite as much as I apparently did.”
He brushed her tears away with one hand, all the while holding her close against him. “Nor did I,” he told her.
“You’re not serious,” she asked, “are you?”
“Quite. I’ve never been with…” his voice trailed off.
She finished his sentence for him, “A woman whose virtue was still intact.”
“Indeed.”
“I don’t have to see your face to know you’ve raised one blasted eyebrow again.”
He stiffened and she coaxed, “Please do not be vexed with me, Husband. I have no notion of what is proper in this instance. None of my mother’s teaching dealt with lying in bed with one’s husband…”
“Devoid of clothing?” he supplied.
“Yes,” she said, “precisely.”
“Instead of delighting in the nearness of your satin-soft skin and gentle curves, I should be attending to my job.”
“Which job would that be? The ducal one?”
“Nay,” he said, pressing one last kiss to her forehead, setting her away from him and slipping out of bed. “You should be quite sore this morning and it is my job as your husband to ease your pain.”
She pulled the covers up to her chin and frowned at him. “I think not.”
He chuckled again as if he
could not help himself. “I see my lack of clothing does not affect you adversely this morning.”
She felt her face flame. “If we are to do this again,” she paused to gather what was left of her composure. She dug deep for the courage to ask, “Must we do this again to ensure I produce your heir?”
His dimples winked at her. His sapphire gaze was positively brilliant with what she now recognized as desire…for her. “Most definitely, duchess mine.”
“Then I should not cower before your unclothed person.”
His laughter bounced off the walls of his bedchamber, filling her heart with a lightness heretofore nonexistent. “You please me, Persephone.”
“I am so glad,” she grumbled before adding, “please do cover yourself. I can only bear to look upon your…” What would be the correct term for his gloriously sculpted muscles, from his neck to his…unmentionables…and back again?
“Manly physique?” he suggested, reaching for his dressing gown.
She nodded and shifted again, not quite able to find a comfortable spot in the bed that had grown cold without him beside her, holding her close.
Covered from neck to ankles, he reached for the bell pull. “Mrs. Wigglesworth will no doubt anticipate my request for hot water and have it ready to fill the tub in my dressing room.”
The very thought of slipping into a tub filled with hot fragrant water had her sighing in anticipation.
“I shall take that as your agreement,” he said. “I left orders to have a full breakfast brought up after we’ve both had a chance to bathe.”
“Both?”
His smile was a bit on the devilish side. “How else would I be able to soothe what I no doubt abused last night?”
“Did you have to be so vigilant in your quest to seal our union?” A quick glance at the unabashed shock she saw there had her pulling the covers over her face and demanding he go away.
She felt the bed shift as he’d obviously sat on it.
“Persephone.”
She wished she’d had that first bracing cup of tea. Her mornings never went quite as she’d hoped without it.
Mending the Duke’s Pride Page 27