Sophia sat up, her hand at her throat. “The baby…?”
Vanessa’s eyes grew brilliant. “Thanks to you, he has come to no harm.” She shook her head. “I am not even going to allow myself to consider the alternative, and neither should you. Having taken his fill of me, he is sound asleep while his father watches over him.”
Sophia began to push back the bedcovers. “I have taken over your bedchamber…”
Vanessa waved her hand dismissively. “You must stay exactly where you are.” She sent Sophia a glance brimming with complicity. “You need to rest.”
She then directed her gaze towards Bruno, seemingly oblivious to his robust good health and the potent masculinity he exuded. “You should also rest, Mr. Cavanaugh.”
“Not here, surely!” Sophia’s mother could not hide her indignation.
Sophia pressed her fingers to her lips to hide her smile at Mama’s scandalized expression.
Vanessa tilted her head minutely towards a door in the far wall and said to Bruno in a tone that brooked no argument. “You may use my husband’s bedchamber.”
The corner of Cavanaugh’s mouth quirked, and he swept Sophia with a look that made her knees quiver.
He bowed. “As always, your grace, I am your obedient servant.”
Lady Cranston’s skirts rustled. Sophia sat forward and held out her arms. “Mama. Do not look so stricken. We are all well and that is the most important thing.” She gave her mother a swift hug. “Will you be all right?”
“I…”
For the first time in Sophia’s memory, the power of speech seemed to have deserted her mother.
Vanessa hooked her arm through Lady Cranston’s elbow, turning her purposefully towards the door. “Of course she will be. I have already dispatched someone to Foxwood to collect all your Mama’s needs for the night and I am going to show her right now to the rooms in the north tower we have refurbished especially for the Regent, should he grace us with his presence before the year is out.
“Under the circumstances the dinner at Enderby has been cancelled but I will dine tête á tête with you, my dear.” She smiled kindly at Sophia’s mother. “I guarantee, your surroundings will be so luxurious, you will be loathe to leave them for a week!”
She ushered Mama out the door, at the same time commanding a footman; “Lord Enderby and Miss Cranston need to rest. See that they are not disturbed.” At the very last, when Sophia’s mother had been impelled along the corridor, she swung around and stabbed her finger at Cavanaugh. “You have one hour,” she hissed. “And you must marry her without delay or I shall have your head.”
“I doubt I can wait so long,” he drawled.
The door was no sooner latched than he came to her. He hauled her up from the pillows and into his arms, threaded his fingers through her hair, kissed her eyelids and her cheeks and her throat, pushed her nightgown aside and rubbed his face against her shoulders.
He took her face and held it away, pressing his thumbs into the corners of her mouth. “I don’t have the words to tell you how I love you,” he said, his breath hot against her lips.
“Show me,” she whispered.
A sound like a growl rumbled in his throat. “That is not love. What I feel for you in that way is pure lust.”
Sophia smiled. “Can it not be an expression of love?”
He stared at her. “Only if I am very tender.” He took her hand down to his groin. “But does this feel tender?”
Sophia pressed her hand against him. “It feels like an iron rod,” she said. “But I know you will use it tenderly.” She exerted a little more pressure, awestruck by the sensation of his erection expanding and hardening in her hand. An imp of mischief made her say, “Remember, we have only one hour at our disposal.”
He laughed softly. “You are a hussy.”
She knelt before him while he drew the loose garment over her head. He did not touch her but stepped away from the bed. He had already removed his wet boots while she was bathing and it took him only a moment to discard his buckskins.
She held her arms out, aware of his hot gaze on her breasts and the dark triangle at the fork of her thighs.
“Come,” she whispered. “There is nothing between us now.”
He did not pause. He was with her in a stride, pressing her back into the pillows with the flat of his hand against her collarbone. Her legs fell apart under him and she reveled in the heavy feel of his thighs against hers. The hair on his chest rasped against her nipples.
She had no fear, no uncertainty. She simply abandoned herself to him. The sound of her heartbeat drummed in her ears, her blood pounded through her body.
She arched her back, inviting him to kiss her breasts and take her nipples until they were tight in the heat of his mouth. She felt almost delirious with wanting, overwhelmed with a craving to draw him inside herself that annihilated all rational thought.
“Oh!” she cried when his mouth travelled downwards, mapping the flare of her waist and hips. He did not need to open her thighs for they fell apart of their own volition, her centre slick with desire.
He lowered his head and lapped at her and her breath came faster, each one riding on a whimper of want. In moments her body rippled and pulsed with pleasure so excruciatingly intense it was almost unbearable.
And when he’d risen on his knees and brought her up with him, she’d satisfied her yearning to weigh him in her hands, reveling in his rigid response, luxuriating in the power she held over him. Her breath came in quick, hard puffs. All her senses were on fire; all that existed in this moment, in this world, were he and she.
And then the intensity of her longing, her need to have him filling her overcame her and she sensed he was also at his limit. His member nudged against her like velvet over oak.
“Please…” she whimpered. “Show me….”
He hooked up her knees, lifted her hips and guided his thick shaft into the wet folds. There was a lick of pain that made her gasp, a murmur of reassurance from him, a moment of stillness while she adjusted to the sensation of him advancing into her, then he pressed forward and filled her to his root.
She knew he was afraid of hurting her, but pain was no match for the pleasure within her grasp and she met him thrust-for-thrust with a sensual power she would not have known herself capable of.
“Slow, my sweet,” he said, nipping her earlobe, but she was incapable of “slow”, gripping his shoulders, sliding the soles of her feet against his calves and moving against him, around him, with accelerating rhythm until his body tensed and his seed spilled into her.
Her dripping sheath clenched and released, the waves of pleasure radiating outwards, but she did not want him to withdraw and she took up the rhythm again, flushed with triumph when he stiffened inside her and renewed the thrust and withdrawal she hungered after.
He held her face with his hands, pushing her damp curls away from her forehead. His eyes glowed into hers. “My God,” he said, “if this is the way you make love, I’ll be an old man before my time.”
Sophia sank her fingernails into his buttocks and rolled her bottom into him. His hardness and urgency thrilled her.
“I’ll ration you,” she said, taking his lower lip between her teeth. “I do not want to wear you out.”
“Greedy minx,” he uttered with a low growl, meeting her beat-for-beat until she felt the beginnings of that exhilarating spasm. His warm fluid filled her again and the concentric circles of pleasure engulfed her once more.
She lay on her back, her hand clasped loosely in Bruno’s. She felt totally replete. She ached a little and stung a little but overarching all that, her whole being hummed with a languid torpor.
After a little while, he turned and propped himself up on one elbow, twirling strands of her hair between his fingers. “Are you all right?”
She smiled, stretching her body like a cat. “I am exceptionally all right. I do not believe I have ever been so all right in all my life.” She kissed his nipple then circled t
he dark disc with her forefinger. “…although I am rather disappointed—”
He reared back. “Disappointed?”
Sophia glanced at him through her lashes. “I thought it would be larger.”
“Larger?” He stared at her hotly.
She pressed her finger into the white crescent just beneath his nipple. “This scar,” she said, her mouth curving. “After your tale of derring-do about being skewered by a Toledo blade in a midnight alley, I expected it to be much larger.”
“Wench,” he growled, leaning down to kiss her on the mouth.
“Wait there,” he said after a moment, rising from the bed in one of those graceful movements she’d come to love.
“I would not go anywhere,” she whispered, watching him cross the room, his sculpted body all light and shadow as the day crept to the edge of darkness.
When he returned he held a bowl of water in one hand, with a cloth and towel draped over his arm. He set the cloth and bowl on a table beside the bed then raised her and slipped the towel underneath. Gently, he prised her legs apart and sponged her.
“You must be sore,” he said. “Is the water too cold?”
She shook her head, moved by his tenderness, certain that this consideration was not the way of all men. Even though her body ached, the residue of their lovemaking caused an expectant throb and she was sorry when he wrung out the cloth for the last time and put it aside.
A discreet knock at the door warned them their allocated hour had expired. Bruno held her face in his hands and touched her forehead with his.
“I love you more than life itself,” he said.
Sophia smiled against his mouth. “And I you,” she whispered. “I cannot bear to imagine a life without you in it.”
While he drew on his still-damp buckskins, Sophia slipped the discarded nightgown back over her shoulders. She watched his powerful form cross the floor, enthralled all over again by the grace of his movements, the wide shoulders tapering down to narrow waist and hips, the long shapely legs. She could scarcely believe the words she had whispered to him, the way her body had welcomed him. Before he opened the door he looked over his shoulder and smiled at her, and she knew one day she would paint him exactly like that.
She heard him give a low whistle and a murmur of thanks before he turned back into the room holding a tray laden with food. Ruby red wine glowed in a crystal decanter. “Hungry?”
Sophia laughed. “I am!”
With a murmur of dismissal to whoever had delivered the tray, Vanessa entered the room behind him holding a pile of clean garments in her arms. Encompassing them both with an affectionate smile, she dropped the clothing onto a divan. “Under the circumstances I could not allow anyone else to deliver these.”
Sophia bounded out of bed. “Vanessa! You are the dearest friend anyone could have.”
Still holding the tray, Bruno dipped his head to the duchess and then sent her one of the crooked grins Sophia so loved. “I’ll go along with that.”
“Pshaw!” The duchess waved their thanks away. “I’m afraid you shall have to dress yourselves.” Her eyes danced. “I’ll wager this juicy tidbit of gossip has already migrated beyond the borders of Herefordshire!”
Sophia laughed. “The young Lord Beaumont dallying with the mad spinster painter!”
Bruno scowled. “Not a spinster for much longer! Three weeks is it? For the licence?” He set the tray down on a nearby table. “And not a mad painter, but one of Europe’s most distinguished artists.”
“Indeed,” said Vanessa, blowing them a kiss before turning to leave the room, closing the door quietly behind her.
“Bruno?” said Sophia a short time later when they were both dressed and seated with their meal between them on the table.
He handed her a goblet of wine and poured one for himself. His eyes scanned the selection of cold meats on the tray. “Mmmm…”
“What became of Marie? After she left Northbridge?”
He frowned. “I ordered her return to France.”
“Why did she come here?”
“She had been in touch with William and Alice Cavanaugh. As Garrett’s widow, she probably thought she could extract funds from them. When that proved unsuccessful she came here, hoping to capitalise on my remorse over what happened to Garrett.”
“And she was unsuccessful in that mission as well?”
He nodded grimly.
“The Cavanaugh’s must have been devastated to learn of Garrett’s death,” said Sophia, knowing as she said it that she was picking at the scab of Bruno’s grief, but wanting him to know she was strong enough for him to confide in; staunch enough to share his heartache.
He tilted the goblet to his lips and swallowed hard. “It was an awful thing to have to tell them.” He stared down into the wine with his blurred reflection rippling on its surface. “I was very angry and not as gentle as I could have been.”
Sophia picked up his free hand and kissed his taut knuckles. “One day perhaps you will be able to make your peace with them.” At his doubtful stare she said, “It will help heal your heart.”
“Perhaps.” He smiled, rubbing the back of her hand against his cheek. “For an eccentric artist, you are a very wise woman.”
Sophia sipped her wine. “Will your mother return to England?”
He shook his head. “I had hopes she might, but she is very fragile. I received a letter from her this week. It’s not only her health that holds her back. She has lived such a secluded life she does not think she could manage the voyage or the attention she would probably receive in England. Sister Julia and others at the mission have become like family to her.” He raised his eyes to Sophia’s. “Sister Julia told her that the people who left her at the mission were indeed Spaniards, but the captain had drowned some years before and his wife had taken a vow of silence and retired to a secluded convent in Spain.
“Sister Julia had had little contact with them over the years and had simply obeyed their instructions to send me to a respectable, well-educated family. At interludes she received funds which she dispatched to the Cavanaugh’s but these had dried up around the time I left Philadelphia. Sister Julia simply told my mother that the privateer’s wife was a compassionate human being who had lost several children herself, and who would not see us abandoned.” After a moment he said, “I must be satisfied with that.”
Sophia leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth. “And I must be thankful; to your mother for surviving a monstrous ordeal, to the people who rescued her, to Sister Julia for taking care of her all these years, and to the Cavanaugh’s for allowing you to grow into a beautiful adult man.”
His eyes glistened. “Sophia.”
Not too far away, Sophia heard the sound of a baby cry, the soft rumble of the duke’s voice and Vanessa’s quiet tones shushing the fretful infant. Her love for Bruno filled her to overflowing. She knew she would risk all to have his child, to help him plant roots in the place he belonged, to grow old by his side.
Only a few scraps of their impromptu meal remained on the tray when, after a brisk knock, Vanessa entered again.
“Are you ready?”
Bruno reached for Sophia and she rose with him, slipping her hand into his.
“We are ready,” she said.
~~~
Thank you so much for purchasing THE BEAUMONT BETROTHAL. I do hope you enjoyed reading Sophia and Bruno’s story as much as I enjoyed writing it!
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Excerpt from The Duke’s Blackmailed Bride
“Ours is a small world, Miss Fitzwilliam, and you have not moved through it without notice.”
Vanessa’s cup halted halfway to her lips. Over its rim she sent him a cool stare.
“Those cat’s eyes of yours could never
look the innocent, so do not play the ingénue with me, Miss Fitzwilliam.”
Her name on his tongue sounded strangely exciting.
He leaned forward, elbows on knees, his glass cupped loosely in both hands. Not a gentleman’s hands, noted Vanessa. Northbridge’s hands were scarred and calloused, she supposed from hard riding and the perils of warfare.
“There was the incident of the high perch phaeton driven at speed through Hyde Park.” His measured voice brought her attention back to his account of her misdemeanors. “Two wheels off the ground at one point, so I have been told. Dowagers having to adjust their hat pins as you flew by.”
Vanessa sipped her tea.
“The night you played understudy to one of Prinny’s coterie in Drury Lane,” Northbridge continued, “wearing trousers. The footlights showed your legs to advantage, I believe.” His gaze moved downward.
Even though they were well concealed, Vanessa found herself pressing her limbs together. “I was obliged to play the part of a young man. What was I supposed to wear? Petticoats and hoops?”
“Your appearance on stage was shocking enough,” Northbridge said, leaning toward her and pinning her with his gaze, “but surely even you must have been aware that staying overnight at Crockford House, without even a maid in attendance, scandalized all society and put you quite beyond the pale.”
Also by Leigh D’Ansey
Kincaid’s Call - a Contemporary Romance
The Duke’s Blackmailed Bride - a Regency novella.
About the Author
Leigh D’Ansey writes sexy Regency and Contemporary Romance from her home in New Zealand, way down in the South Pacific. With her life partner, also a writer, she lives in a uniquely beautiful landscape of thermal activity, lakes, farms and forestry. Reading and writing have been central to Leigh’s life for as long as she can remember. Some of her work has been recognized at a national level and her Regency novella ‘The Duke’s Blackmailed Bride’ climbed the ranks to reach #1 on Kindle’s paid Regency list.
The Beaumont Betrothal: Northbridge Bride Series Book 2 Page 23