“A scheme?” Eve repeated blankly.
Drucilla cut off her sister’s answer. “Fortunately we will be spared the indignity of resorting to underhanded means.”
“What means?” Eve asked, highly curious now.
“It was only to be a last resort,” Beatrice said. “We planned to discover you with Sir Alex in a compromising position so that you would be compelled to marry him.”
Her eyes widening, Eve remained speechless, torn between astonishment and laughter.
“A compromising position wouldn’t be difficult to arrange,” Ryder said, his eyes glinting. “I’m certain we could find a way to oblige you.”
“That will not be necessary now,” Drucilla retorted. She turned her attention to her coffee cup. “But I admit, I was wrong to think Lord Gyllford would make a better match for you, Eve. I’ve come to believe Sir Alex will be an adequate husband for you.”
“I’ve always thought so,” Ryder murmured dryly.
“So have I,” Cecil declared, polishing off the last bite of his breakfast.
Seeing his empty plate, Beatrice rose to fetch the platter of kippered herring and offered it to him. “Have another kipper, young man.”
Cecil flashed her a broad grin. “I say, Aunt Beatrice, I think I could grow accustomed to being treated as a hero.”
“You are a hero for the moment,” Drucilla stated magnanimously. “Not that I expect it to last.”
“Oh, it will last,” Cecil promised. “I am turning over a new leaf, Aunt Dru. Sir Alex said I might be able to join the Foreign Office if I apply myself to my studies when I return to Oxford in the fall and prove myself worthy.”
Drucilla’s hand went to her heart. “Pray, don’t even mention such dubious ambitions, you rascal. We have had more than enough shocks for one morning, with not one but two betrothals.” Turning, she looked intently at Eve. “I do hope you won’t regret your decision to marry Sir Alex, my dear.”
Meeting Ryder’s gaze, Eve saw the blaze of tender affection in his eyes. Knowing the same fierce emotion was mirrored in her own eyes, she slipped her hand in his. “Never,” she said ardently, entwining their fingers. “My only regret is that it took me so long to accept his proposal.”
“It’s my regret as well, love,” Ryder agreed, raising her hand and pressing a tender kiss on her palm. “We have a great deal of lost time to make up for.”
“But just think what a pleasure it will be,” Eve said, her lips curving with the joy she couldn’t hide.
“Eve!” Drucilla exclaimed, her tone reproachful. “Pray mind your tongue at the breakfast table. Honestly, this is exactly what I feared—that Sir Alex’s mercenary manners would rub off on you.”
The glimmer of love and laughter in Ryder’s eyes deepened when Eve started to leap to his defense. When he gave a slight shake of his head, however, Eve held her tongue and summoned an appropriately chastened expression to mollify Drucilla.
Nothing could spoil her happiness just now, not even the dowager’s long-held disdain for Ryder’s common origins and questionable past.
After all, the waiting was nearly over, Eve reminded herself. She and Ryder had an entire lifetime ahead of them. A glorious future as husband and wife.
And judging from the loving way his hand tightened around hers as she met his dark gaze, Ryder shared her joyous anticipation.
Epilogue
The Isle of Cyrene,
September 1816
As he reached up to help Eve dismount from her horse, Ryder’s breath lodged in his throat. Golden sunlight poured down over her, setting her bright, unbound hair ablaze.
The waiting was over. She was his bride at last.
She belonged to him.
Possessively, he slid Eve down his body and stood holding her. He’d brought her here for a purpose, to the meadow where he’d first kissed her all those years ago. The afternoon was warm—September was still considered late summer on Cyrene—but the warmth was tempered by fresh ocean breezes coming off the Mediterranean.
To Ryder’s mind, the island was a sensual paradise, yet just now it was made even more enchanting by the special occasion.
Eve was truly here with him, just as in his dreams. Smiling up at him, that sweet, aching smile of hers, filled with love and tenderness.
“You don’t know how long I have waited for this,” he murmured, his voice husky with desire as he brushed her mouth with his thumb.
“I do so know,” Eve replied with a ripple of laughter. “You have told me often enough that I can picture it in my own mind.”
Ryder’s eyes gleamed. “Then you know what happens next.”
“Yes. This is the part where you make passionate love to me.”
“Exactly. So why are we tarrying?”
Grasping the quilt from his saddlebag, Ryder left their horses grazing and took Eve’s hand to lead her through a glade of willows to the banks of a lazy, rippling stream. While she watched, he spread the quilt on a carpet of grass and late summer wildflowers.
A short while ago, they had slipped away from the lavish wedding breakfast hosted by Sir Gawain Olwen at Olwen Castle. Today’s event was actually the second such celebration held in honor of their marriage. The first one in London—a small wedding ceremony and breakfast in June—had been attended by Eve’s siblings and the aunts, as well as several of Ryder’s friends and fellow Guardians.
The festivities this afternoon had been much larger, resembling more of a feast. Along with many of the island’s inhabitants, Eve’s parents had attended. While they would never welcome Ryder with open arms, they were prepared to tolerate his marriage to their eldest daughter.
His friends, on the other hand, had welcomed Eve gladly into their ranks. She had fit with perfect ease into island society, while Ryder’s fellow Guardians and their mates had made her one of their own.
Eve was admittedly fascinated by the remarkable tale of how the exiled knights and followers of one of England’s most legendary kings had settled on Cyrene nearly a millennium ago and founded the secret order, the Guardians of the Sword, with the purpose of battling evil and tyranny and defending the weak. The league had nearly died out during that long dark interval of history, and only in the past century been revived to meet the grave challenges spawned by the bloody French Revolution and Napoléon’s subsequent attempt to conquer the civilized world.
The future of the Guardians was still in question, however. The current elderly leader, Sir Gawain, was growing weary of his enormous duties and hoped to retire soon. His intended successor, the Earl of Hawkhurst, who was one of Ryder’s closest friends, would have been named long before now, except for one significant problem: It seemed that Hawk first needed a bride. And not just any bride, but one who could carry on the legendary bloodlines of the original knights, as the order’s charter required.
But the Guardians’ business was not on Ryder’s mind at the moment. Instead, his every thought and feeling was focused on his beautiful wife. He and Eve had escaped from the festivities to hold their own private celebration here in the meadow.
They had officially been married for three months now. Three incredible months in which Ryder had experienced the sheer joy of waking up next to Eve each morning. Of holding her and laughing with her and challenging her. Of knowing she belonged to him, just as he belonged to her.
He went to her now and gazed down into her eyes without speaking, aware of how rare and precious it was for a man to be able to live out his most cherished desire. Loving Eve in this sunlit meadow was the fulfillment of all his dreams. She was his life, his future, his every wish come true.
“What are you thinking?” she asked when Ryder remained silent.
“How lucky I am to have you.”
Reverently, he placed a hand over her slightly rounded belly. They both considered it miraculous that she was to bear him a child next spring. It wasn’t until they’d reached the island that Eve had discovered that her morning nausea during the two-week voyage from E
ngland was not due to seasickness, but rather to her impending pregnancy.
“I still can scarcely believe our good fortune,” she said softly, marveling.
“It’s hard for me to comprehend as well.”
He had a family now—and the familial warmth he had yearned for for so long. Claire and Cecil, the aunts, and the prospect of children of their own. But best of all, he had Eve.
“Now for our vows,” Ryder prompted. She had indulged his whimsical desire to pledge their marriage vows over again in this special place.
Her smile as warm as the day, Eve allowed him to draw her down onto the quilt. They knelt facing each other, hands clasped. The moment was hushed and reverent as she spoke the simple promise:
“I, Eve, take thee Alex as my wedded husband, to love and honor and cherish forever.”
And Ryder responded with the same promise: “I, Alex, take thee Eve as my wedded wife, to love and honor and cherish forever. You’re mine to protect, to keep, to hold.”
“And you are mine.”
His arms wrapped around her fiercely then, and he kissed her with all the pent-up ardor he’d been denying the entire day.
“And now to consummate our new vows,” Ryder finally breathed against her lips as he bore her down onto the quilt and rolled over with her again and again until she was laughing in protest.
“You do realize this is wicked, making love out-of-doors,” Eve remarked as he began to divest her of her ivory silk gown.
“No one can see us.” They were sheltered by the copse of willows and would have ample warning if anyone happened upon the meadow. “But if you want me to stop…”
“Don’t you dare stop!” she exclaimed, beginning to help him. “Not after arousing me this far.”
Drawing down her bodice to bare her luscious breasts, Ryder nuzzled the swelling slopes as his thumbs began to draw slow circles on her nipples. “Have I aroused you, love?”
“You know you have.”
“You aren’t nearly as aroused as I would like. I want you panting and writhing and whimpering for me.”
“That will come soon enough,” Eve assured unevenly as he cupped her breasts. “I have no doubt.”
He bent to take a peaked nipple in his mouth, kneading gently while he suckled her, and he heard her breathing sharpen.
A moment later, however, Eve pressed her splayed fingers against his chest. “No, my darling, this way isn’t your dream. I want to enact it just as you described it to me. I am supposed to be making love to you. Now, lie back and allow me to.”
“Very well,” Ryder agreed without much resistance. “I’m entirely at your command, sweetheart.”
She undressed him first completely until he lay nude, the warm sun beating down upon his bare body. Then Eve rose to her feet to remove her gown and underclothing.
Braced on his elbows, Ryder watched her with heavy, half-closed lids. She moved with a grace that left him aching, all elegance and lush warmth. Sunlight played on her pale skin, on her hair, coloring the rich gold with tints of flame. The bright tendrils wound around the silken globes of her breasts, teasing the peaked buds of her nipples.
Ryder’s eyes glistened as he followed her progress, his gaze touching every part of Eve, drinking her in. The sight ravished his senses. Her bare, dusky-tipped breasts. Her slender waist and curving hips. The dark gold curls at the apex of her thighs. The long, lovely legs that would soon wrap around him.
Feeling a sheen of perspiration break over him, he clenched his fists, knowing it would take all his willpower to let Eve maintain control as she did in his fantasy.
“You are incredibly alluring, you know,” he muttered as she knelt beside him. “Utterly irresistible.”
“So are you.”
She reached down to caress his throbbing arousal with a fingertip. The smile that curved her lips was one he relished, playful and innocent, seductive and sinful. Then she curled her fingers around his manhood, making him inhale sharply. When she laughed, delight surged through him, while desire exploded in him with blazing heat.
“Eve.” His voice came out as a hoarse rasp. “I don’t know how much of this I can bear.”
“You must,” she asserted with that beguiling siren’s smile.
Rebelliously he rose up to kiss her. Before his lips could touch hers, however, she pushed at his chest with both hands, making him lie fully on his back.
“I told you, I want this to be exactly as in your dream. I want to make love to you, Ryder…to show you how very much I love you.” Her voice was husky, rough silk, stroking his nerve endings, and Ryder let Eve have her way.
She kissed his entire body, beginning with his face and sweeping slowly downward. Her lips teased the line of his jaw, the vulnerable hollow of his throat, his breastbone, searing the part of his rib cage that concealed his hammering heart. She was profoundly sensual, her warm breath pooling on his skin, the cool silk of her hair caressing his fevered flesh.
Finally, however, she eased over him and lowered herself to straddle his thighs. When she leaned forward, pressing her body flush against his, all Ryder’s muscles clenched in anticipation of their joining. Her naked skin burned his, while her hair spilled down in a gold curtain around them.
As their gazes locked, the air shimmered with raw passion. When she bent to press another ardent kiss on his bare chest, Ryder gave a harsh, shuddering groan. In response, Eve smiled her soft, beguiling smile.
That smile was his undoing. Needing to satisfy his fierce hunger, he grasped her hips to lift her up, then coaxed her willing body down to receive his hard shaft until she was impaled fully on his rigid flesh. His heart pounded as Eve sheathed him in wet, silken heat.
“At last I am yours,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
She was bound to him now in the most primal way possible.
Her eyes shone brighter than the sun-rippled sea as she began to move against him, setting an urgent rhythm. Ryder held her waist, urging her on, intensifying his own pleasure as well as hers, feeling her flushed skin burning under his desperately roving hands.
The surge of her hips matched the thundering of his blood; her keening whimpers echoed his harsh groans as she clutched fiercely at his shoulders, throwing her head back in wild abandon. She was all wild, unleashed passion. The passion he had taught her.
“God, Eve,” he grated in a ragged, breaking whisper.
As they climaxed in unity, love and wanting came together inside Ryder, pouring through him like honey and sunlight until their whole world dissolved into hot, pulsing brightness.
Afterward, Eve collapsed upon him and lay there unmoving, her face buried in his damp shoulder.
Ryder couldn’t move a single muscle, either. He couldn’t speak. His throat was too thick, his heart too full. He felt a love for her so strong, it burned with every breath. A happiness so intense it was almost painful.
Somehow, by some miracle, Eve was his bride and she loved him.
“Was that like your dream?” she finally murmured against his skin.
Sated and boneless, Ryder nodded. “It was infinitely better.”
“Good.”
After a long while, he summoned the energy to roll over her so he could gaze down at her beautiful face.
Her eyes were closed, her expression one of utter contentment. He knew without her telling him so that she felt loved, felt treasured and cherished, just as he meant to keep her for always.
Then as he watched, a slow, sensual smile curled her lips.
“Now what are you thinking?” Ryder demanded, his voice still rough with passion.
Eve opened her eyes to fix a slumberous gaze on him. “I was remembering the letter we had from Cecil yesterday. His complaint that Claire and Macky were disgustingly happy.”
“Which is just what you wanted for her.”
“Yes, but obviously Cecil is feeling left out.” She gave a fond laugh. “Or perhaps he is only trying to soften our sympathies by playing the martyr. Can you
believe his request that our first child be named after him?”
Ryder grinned. “I could possibly consider Cecil for my son’s name.”
“But what if our child is a daughter?”
“I suppose we could always name her Cecily or Cecilia.”
“I suppose so,” Eve said dubiously. “Although I had hoped we might name our first daughter after your mother.”
“Truthfully, I like that better.” Bending, Ryder pressed his smiling lips against her forehead. “Fortunately we have ample time to decide.”
“All the time in the world,” Eve agreed, wrapping her arms around his neck and drawing him down for another beguiling kiss.
Read on for an exciting chapter from Nicole Jordan’s
Touch Me with Fire
coming in December 2006
Vitoria, Spain
July 1813
Through hooded eyes he watched the woman undress in the moonlight, his carnal hunger tempered by pain. His right thigh, mauled by a volley of cannonshot six weeks before, ached dully, although not enough to make him refuse his hostess’s late-night visit to his bedside. He would not ask her to leave. It would be rude and pointlessly cruel to reject her after all she had done for him these past weeks.
Naked except for the heavy bandage on his thigh and the cool sheet drawn up to his waist, Julian, Lord Lynden, reclined against the pillows. Waiting.
With a whisper of black silk, she let the dressing gown fall to the floor, revealing lush, full breasts, with nipples peaked in anticipation. “Do I please you, señor?” Pilar asked in soft, throaty Spanish. She moved toward him slowly, her dark eyes shimmering with sexual awareness.
Although not fluent in her language, he comprehended her meaning and replied politely, “Very much so, querida. You are exquisite.”
He did not greatly exaggerate. The silver light flooding through the open patio doors spilled over her nude body, turning it mysterious and pale. He knew that voluptuous body with a fair measure of intimacy now. This was not the first time Pilar had played the ministering angel, slipping secretly into his bedchamber at night to comfort and soothe him—and to indulge in a few stolen hours of forbidden passion.
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