But then Lela’s eyes lit and she threw herself straight at him. Will held out his arms, caught her, and held her tight against his chest lest they both topple into the garden below.
“Will! I knew you were here. I’ve been doing so well, but the instant you entered, I knew it. So it isn’t just because I’m focused on you, although I am. But you’re special.” She flung her arms around his neck.
He had no idea what she meant but he nearly died and went to heaven having her heart beating against his. This moment made every minute of the last grueling week worth the exhaustion. Closing his eyes, Will clung to her, drinking in her scent, enjoying the softness against his hardness, letting her pleasure heal all the tiny wounds in his heart.
It didn’t matter if she was a duke’s daughter. This was Lela, his heart and soul.
A well-dressed gentleman stalked by, muttering. Another waltz struck up inside.
“I’ve come to do this properly,” Will warned, half-carrying her through the open doorway and back into the ballroom. “If you mean to tell me you wish to ask Cassie about her modiste, do so now.”
She laughed and let him take her hand and waist in a proper dance hold. “Oh, I heard him this time. I am very focused. I’ve been listening for you all evening. But I saw no reason to change what worked so well before. Being an addle-pate is convenient.”
“You are a malicious woman.” Will did his best to hold her correctly and not bury his nose in her hair and hug her so she pressed against his cock, where he wanted her. But his blood raced and he completely forgot his fatigue now that he had her in his arms again, swirling her about the floor. “Shall I tell you about Bess and Rose until I can dance you through this mob to an exit?”
“Yes, please, servants door to the right. Oh, this is sheer bliss! I was terrified you would stay away because you couldn’t dance or some such flummery. I’m so glad you’re here.”
He glanced down to see why she was tall enough for him to think improper thoughts about covering her in kisses and admired her heeled shoes. “How do you dance backward in those things?”
“You carry me,” she said with a laugh. “Is Bess well?”
Trying not to step on her feet or those of any around him, Will circled with the crowd. They passed the duke and the marquess, who looked startled as Lela laughed out loud over one of his stories. She wasn’t theirs anymore. She was his. Holding his not-so-icy princess, Will told her tales of Bess and Rose. His blood heated with every brush of her glove, trill of her laughter, and hint of her perfume. She swayed like a dandelion wisp in his arms, until he located the nearly hidden exit by the punch table.
With relief, he slipped her from the crowd of dancers into the silk hangings disguising the servants dark hall. Lela found the latch to the door leading to the third-floor private rooms. After the duke’s injunction, Will had explored this unused upper story thoroughly, searching for just the right spot. He led the way down the shadowed corridor now. If he was to do this, he would do it his way—with her full attention.
Lela gasped in amazement when he flung open a door to a small bedchamber lit by oil lamps. A fire crackled in the grate, and a bouquet of blue and white flowers waited on the dressing table.
“Is this your room?” she asked in amazement. “Is this where you’ve been these last hours while I was terrified you would not appear?”
“I will always be there when you want me to be,” he asserted, rummaging in his pockets for the little notebook, nearly panicking when he couldn’t find it. “I paid one of your footmen a great deal of blunt to prepare this room.” He found the book in a different pocket and exhaled in relief. “I’ve spent these last hours riding hell-bent for London through a rainstorm and then at Ashford’s being buffed and basted and shoved into these clothes like so much sausage.”
She laughed, and he could swear her eyes sparkled as she watched him with eagerness. Her happiness was in his hands now. The responsibility no longer overwhelmed him. He knew Lela in ways he didn’t even know himself. He had much to learn about being a gentleman and not a dog, but her acceptance gave him confidence that she would teach him, because that was who she was.
He handed her the notebook. “You need not look at this right now. You already know I cannot give you pretty phrases and poetry, but I give you my thoughts so you might read them when you are not too distracted. They tend to be all about you these days.”
She emitted a cry of delight that was even better than the music carrying perfectly through the walls.
She held the book to her breasts—which weren’t covered by the usual flimsy bits of lace and muslin but exposed to his lascivious stare in all their pearlescent glory. Will could almost imagine the pink tips budding beneath the silk. He dutifully kept his gaze on the smile flickering about her lips, and had to pinch himself to prevent bending over and stealing a kiss. He was the one too distracted to speak.
“Pretty words don’t always come from the heart,” she murmured, easing closer, so his head spun from her scent. Rose tonight, not vanilla. “Will, if you don’t say it, I will, but I am terrified I’ll send you fleeing into the night.”
“Does this look as if I’m going anywhere?” he asked gruffly. “How can I go anywhere when my heart is here? If it takes magpie clothes and city houses to woo you, I’ll comply, because I cannot go on living without you. And I know I’m a presumptuous fool to even think a woman like you could be happy with a man like me, but I have to ask. Lady Aurelia, would you consider marrying me?”
Her smile lit the room better than a thousand lanterns. Still holding the foolish notebook, she circled his neck with her slender arms and stood on her toes to kiss his newly-shaved jaw. “I love you, Mr. Ives-Madden. I think I have loved you ever since you carried a weeping little girl and her filthy puppy out of a ravine for me. I have loved you more for every minute I’ve been in your company. I would be proud and delighted to be your wife, without magpie clothes. . . magpie? Honestly, Will, where did that come from?”
He laughed. He roared with laughter and joy, lifted her from the floor, and spun her around in time to the bouncy tune coming through the wall. “I love that I don’t have to explain myself to you and love when you demand explanations,” he said senselessly. He was too giddy with disbelief to do otherwise. “I love that you look like an ice princess but hide a heart so fiery with love and compassion that you hear what others do not. And I want to make love to you here, right now, before you can change your mind. Or maybe so you can change your mind. I’m terrified I’ll terrify you.”
“I thought you’d never ask,” she said demurely, tugging at his starched neckcloth. “You look very uncomfortable in this. Shouldn’t it come off?”
Will gulped and stayed her hands by pressing them against his linen. “Is that a yes?” He studied Lela’s beloved face, the expressive eyes and laughing lips.
“That is an unqualified yes, sir,” she said, covering his cheek with kisses.
Wanting to say what he didn’t have the words to say, Will pressed his mouth to hers.
She responded gratifyingly, sinking into the kiss with all the desire and need he felt. He still couldn’t believe it. He’d dreamed of this for nights on end, telling himself he was a fool, but here she was, returning his fervor with a passion all her own.
He moved his kisses to her throat, and she moaned in a manner that hit a visceral chord and had him instantly hard. He heard the notebook hit the floor. He kissed the sweet flesh of the round orbs rising above her bodice. She nibbled his ear.
“Tell me to stop now,” he said, hiding his anguish that she might do so. “I will wait for the vows to be said if I must, but right now, I am the animal I’m trying very hard not to be.”
“You are no animal! No more than I am an addle-pate.” She yanked off his neckcloth and ran her fingers from his throat down to the bare chest she’d revealed. “I have wanted to do this since the beginnings of time. The sausage suit has to go.”
Will unfastened his coat butto
ns and eagerly wriggled out of the confinement. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he remonstrated, because she was innocent and didn’t know.
“I am a Malcolm. I know exactly what I’m doing,” she reminded him, helping him tug the coat sleeve off. “We don’t keep all those journals for naught.” She stopped a moment to gaze up at him with delight. “Your notebook is like a journal! You may be the first Ives male to actually write down his thoughts.”
“They are very badly written thoughts.” But Will’s mind wasn’t on the damned notebook. It was on the rise of her breasts above that shimmering ball gown. He flung his coat at a chair and reached around her, hunting for the hidden fastenings of her bodice. He fumbled, nearly ripping the gossamer gown from her back.
“But you wrote them for me,” she murmured, turning to work at his waistcoat buttons. “That means more than all the poetry in the world.”
Will had no reply to that. He’d wanted to give her a special gift, and he’d had naught else. He simply loved her a little more for understanding. “There was one morning when the sky was blue and gold and fair and I saw you in it, but I could not paint the words the way I saw it.”
She stood on her toes and scattered kisses over his jaw. “You make me see myself through your eyes. Blue and gold and dawn mean far more to me than poetry about pearls.”
Will sighed in relief as her bodice finally came off, giving him access to the corset. He wanted to take his knife to all the delicate strings, but she was a Christmas package wrapped up in silver ribbons, and he refused to be hasty. “I wish I could paint,” he murmured, untying and loosening the whalebone structure. “I want to immortalize this moment.”
Lela gasped as he finally pried her loose from her garments and lifted her breasts free.
She remembered this moment of freedom from the warehouse. Their mutual pleasure wasn’t half so clear then as it was now, with light to illuminate Will’s reverential expression, and his words of love to warm her heart.
She could see his delight as he worshipped her with his hands, and then, with his mouth. “This is what I listened for,” she murmured, sliding her hands over his hard, linen-covered chest while he kissed her breasts. “Not the words, but the need.”
Blessedly, Will didn’t argue with her irrationality. He merely raised his mouth to hers and kissed her deeper, entangling his tongue with hers and telling her of how their bodies were meant to blend. Her sensitized breasts ached brushing against his stiff linen.
“I vow to love, honor, and take thee in equality into eternity and beyond,” he murmured against her ear, before dropping her gown to the floor.
The words of the Malcolm marriage ceremony, Lela knew, although altered to promise her more. He offered her the heritage they shared, admitted that they were more than just a dog trainer and a duke’s daughter, but the future of their family. He understood. That he could so humble himself for a woman’s need for words solidified her love until her heart nearly burst with it.
“I do not need to wait for vows said before a priest,” she said, kissing his chest through the linen. “I take thee now, as husband, to love and honor into eternity and beyond.” Malcolm vows were more lasting than those said in a church. They sealed their fates.
The music in the ballroom rose in a crescendo. The fire bloomed higher. Light and laughter filled the air as Will carried her to the bed. They had so many thoughts and fears that hadn’t been said, but the spirits and their eternal vows spoke for them. Whatever the future held, this moment promised that they would share it together.
It wasn’t a grand bed. It barely fit Will’s large frame. But the linens were fresh and the mattress was soft, and Lela sank into it as he covered her with his heavy weight.
Will ran his strong workman’s hand from her garter, up her bare flesh, to her buttocks. Lela thought she might expire of desire. She parted her legs and rubbed herself against his straining trousers. She had yet to see his full masculinity. She was curious, but curiosity could wait. She needed his knowledge of how to release this spiraling need.
But instead of easing her tension, he increased it. His beautiful dark eyes studied her with intensity, watching her reaction with pleasure as he covered her face in kisses. He caressed her with excruciating gentleness, then breathed his hot desire over her breasts until she feared her blood would boil through her skin. He tore off her flimsy chemise, leaving her bare except for her stockings, and his expression of joy awoke her to a whole new pleasure. She shivered with it as he shoved her garters down, admiring what he uncovered. Flames danced everywhere he looked. She wanted to tug his hand down to touch her as he had before. She ached. She melted.
But she wanted to see him too, so she reluctantly waited.
Kneeling over her, he cast off his shirt, diverting her from her needs to admiring the raw masculine flesh and muscle revealed. She wanted to speak her appreciation but she was speechless. She caressed the light river of hair flowing between his taut male nipples, across the rippling muscle of his abdomen, and disappearing inside his trousers. She tried to sit and kiss him as he had her, but he straddled her, preventing her from rising.
“It will hurt,” he warned her. “I cannot promise otherwise this first time.”
“I hurt now,” she whispered. “Show me more.”
Concern crossed his broad face, but he opened his placket with practiced skill. Instead of removing the tight trousers, however, he caressed her between her thighs, distracting her from what he hid. Lela cried out, needing to open for him but confined by his weight.
He rubbed and caressed as he had that other night, bringing her to the brink of enlightenment, pushing her that one last step until she flew apart, heaving and crying like a mare in heat while the musicians played a jaunty folk tune on the other side of the wall.
And then he was shoving inside her, bracing her thighs apart with his big hands, piercing her with a stallion’s pizzle until she bit her lip to prevent screaming from shock.
He stopped and began kissing her again. In relief, she complied eagerly, holding his square jaw and covering him with licks and bites and joy. He caressed her breasts until a river of desire flowed from his touch to the place they joined.
“I love you,” he murmured. “I love and worship you and I would be proud if you were to bear my child. And as much as I would like to say that I will not share your bed if you ask it of me, I cannot. I want you far too much. So tell me to stop and send me away now, or bear with me until I can show you the pleasure of a marriage bed.”
“Don’t stop,” she whispered, drunk on kisses and the need to feel that thickness all the way inside her. “Please don’t stop. I will die if you stop.”
“To hell with consequences, your father, and all the whispering maggots back there,” he murmured.
“My family will merely tell them I was overcome as usual,” she whispered back. “They will not miss us.”
With that last obstacle removed, he touched her between her legs again. His caress made her rear off the mattress—and impale herself on his maleness. The shock of tearing tissue tore a sob from her throat, but then he was inside, filling her, teaching her the power of joining.
And it was pain and bliss and struggling to find one without the other until he cupped her buttocks, lifted them, and drove deep.
She cried out as he shuddered and spilled within her. Then the passion he’d taught her exploded deeper and more satisfying than before, leaving her limp and weeping with the immensity of what they had done.
“Mine,” he whispered, caressing the tangles of hair that had fallen from her pins.
“Mine,” she whispered back, sliding her hands over his muscled derriere and squeezing until he buried a roar in the pillow.
Chapter 25
Lela watched anxiously as Will walked around the sturdy three-story stone cottage. The grounds were extensive and neatly tended. She could hear the gentle lapping of the river not too far away. Richmond was close, but not nearly as loud as the ci
ty. Now that she’d learned to focus, it was easier for her to visit London, but she relaxed more in the country.
She held her breath as her new husband examined the stable, kennel, and dovecote hidden behind the trees and hedges. “It is not the Cotswolds, I know,” she said nervously. “But Father’s steward said this was the best of his unattached properties. I can ask for another, I suppose.”
“But they would not be near London,” he said, understanding. “I chose the Cotswolds not just because they were more central, but because I could afford no better. I do not need to be central so much if I’m not traveling. And if your dower brings this property, I will have all my funds to spend on us.”
She thought he said that with satisfaction, and she thrilled that she could tell so much of what he felt from his voice. With Will, that was a valuable gift. “Copying and distributing the hand sign book won’t cost too much, will it? I have too much to learn to start a school like Bridey, but if I can help others. . .”
“A school may happen in time, but the book is a good start,” he agreed, taking her in his arms and holding her, just as she needed. She was still far too uncertain of her place in the wider world he had made his own, but he never let her fret. He encouraged her tentative steps toward a freedom she’d never hoped to attain.
“I would love to think I can help children like Rose to communicate,” she said with a sigh of contentment as his hands rode up and down her spine. “I don’t like being a useless ornament.”
He laughed, that deep bass laugh that shivered her bones in delight. Will laughed and smiled more now, she’d noted. She thought she might be partly responsible for his new outlook.
“You are as ornamental as those trees lining the yard. They make a pretty picture, yes, but they also provide shade and a windbreak. Some of them flower and provide nectar for honey. In the fall, the fruit-bearing ones feed us.” He bent his head to study her up-turned one. “You are more beautiful than any tree or flower, and far more useful.” He grinned. “Especially in bed.”
No Perfect Magic Page 26