She narrowed her eyes. “I was talking about what you did at the tournament.”
“You mean when I walloped Chinny?” he asked with a grin.
“I don’t mean that I enjoyed seeing him beaten, but I was grateful that you stood up for me.”
“I could stand up for you now if you’ll let me.”
“Devon.”
“How grateful are you?”
“Grateful enough that I disregarded convention and came to your room.”
“And you wish to reward my valor?”
She hesitated. “I’m not going to ask what you mean.”
“I’d have flattened him if I’d known it would please you.”
“That isn’t exactly what pleased me.”
“Why don’t we find out what does please you?”
She swallowed at the dark seduction in his eyes. “I don’t think I should answer that question, either.”
“I don’t think you need to,” he said softly, showing her why with another deep, greedy kiss that left her head reeling and her body wanting more.
He ground his hips against her belly so that his rock-hard arousal rubbed the tender mound above her clenched thighs. Shocked, she twisted to dislodge his weight; he merely flexed his back and oh-so-slowly rotated his hips, his muscular body holding her immobile.
She moistened her lips, struggled for breath. “This is—”
“What a man and a wife do,” he whispered thickly.
“Except that we have not exchanged vows yet.”
“What do a few days matter?” he asked quietly.
She couldn’t help laughing. “This from a man who swore he would never make the walk to the altar?”
“If I’m making the walk, I’ll damn well enjoy what comes after.”
She was losing the battle, not to control him as much as herself. How could she have known a man’s body could evoke in her such unadulterated enjoyment? And need. Heaven help her, the friction of his overlarge organ had her woman’s place weeping with need. She felt her nether folds near flooded with warm fluid at his rhythmic stimulation.
She clutched at his shoulders in a desperate bid to distract him. “Aren’t you expected to be recognized at the feast in a short while?” she asked, her back arching involuntarily, her breasts feeling ripe and tender.
He laughed low. “I’ve a mind to feast on something else tonight. Something succulent and sweet.”
She had little time to ponder that shameful if surprisingly arousing statement, for suddenly he had untied her bodice and exposed her breasts to his hungry scrutiny.
His eyes danced wickedly while his fingers pinched one tender nipple into a hard peak. “It did please you to watch me fight for you,” he said amusedly, lowering his mouth to her aching breast.
“I thought you behaved bravely and, yes, it pleased me to watch you,” she whispered. “I realize you practiced great restraint in what you did, or rather did not do, to Adam at the tournament.”
“I’m practicing more restraint now, believe me.”
“Devon, for heaven’s sake,” she said in an unsteady voice. “How would we explain this if we were caught again? You’re lying naked atop me.”
“At least you can’t say I’ve deceived you with a disguise this time,” he said wryly.
“Don’t you think you should get dressed for the banquet?”
“I’d rather undress you.”
“It would appear you almost have.”
“Then I might as well finish.”
Convinced he meant what he said, she turned onto her side to slide off the bed, but somehow the movement placed her in an unexpectantly stimulating position of sexual vulnerability with his knee thrust between her thighs. His strong arm shot out to encircle her ribs; his hand cupped the breasts he had unbound from her bodice.
“To hell with the banquet.” He exhaled against her neck. “What is this annoying contraption that binds your waist?”
“It’s called a girdle,” she heard herself reply. “And it wouldn’t have been a bad idea if I’d asked for the ancient chastity belt that accompanies the costume.”
His free hand stroked down her side and slipped between her legs to casually part her plump nether folds. As she caught her breath, he whispered, “I daresay if I can get in and out of mail armor, I can unfasten whatever garment you wear.”
And as proof of this dubious skill, he unfastened the gold-linked girdle and drew the thin skirt of her bliaud up around her hips, leaving her throbbing sex open to his pleasure.
She made one final attempt to rise only to find herself flush against his body.
“That’s better,” he said quietly, playing with the damp curls above her cleft.
“Devon…”
His warm breath teased her ear. The dominant warmth of his hard-muscled body stole over her senses. She felt herself soften, ache, her sex pulsing unbearably. She bit her lip to stifle a groan.
He whispered, “That’s even better. Spread your legs for me a little more.”
“What…what for?”
“This.”
She gasped as he gently pressed one long finger between her dewy pink lips. Her muscles gripped him, her belly tightened, and if she had not been lying on the bed, she would have folded bonelessly to the floor.
“You’re so very wet,” he said, his mouth still pressed to her ear. “And tight as a bud.” He slipped another finger into her aching passage and groaned his approval.
She opened her mouth and cried softly as he thrust his fingers even deeper, probing until he reached a part of her body that resisted the invasion.
“Sweet Jocelyn,” he murmured. “I’ll try to be gentle when the time comes.”
When the time comes. And what was this? she wondered in bewilderment.
Her muscles tightened around his fingers, and she might have sobbed aloud had he not turned her swiftly and his mouth captured hers in another lustful kiss. He pulled her tighter to his body. His fingers quickened between the drenched folds of her woman’s place, bringing her to a climax so intense that it seemed her heart would cease to beat.
Dazed, she buried her face in his shoulder and listened to the rapid pounding of his heart. Whatever wondrous devastation he had inflicted on her had not left him wholly unaffected. His breathing was uneven. His large hand stroked her in idle pleasure. She quivered again in his arms. And smiled inwardly at the thought of moments like this to come. She’d never guessed, but now that she’d been introduced to Devon’s world, she had to experience more.
“Perhaps I should fight more battles as your champion,” he mused, his voice drowsy with desire. “I—”
An abrupt knock on the door interrupted him. “May I come in, Devon?” a loud male voice asked. “It’s me, Adam. I should very much like a man-to-man.”
“As in combat?” Devon murmured, a scowl settling on his brow. “Jesus, I should have killed him when I had the chance.”
Jocelyn raised her head in horror. Her body felt heavy and weighed down with…Devon. “He can’t find us like this. Make him go away,” she whispered, springing up at the waist.
Devon swore under his breath and threw his arms across her midriff to arrest her flight. His blue eyes burned with frustration. “Go away,” he ground out. “You’ve caught me bare-arsed in the bath.”
“Are you in any pain?” Adam asked in concern.
Devon sighed and looked down in unabashed lust at the woman lying beside him. “Bloody agony. You aren’t helping, by the way.”
“I didn’t mean to lose my temper today,” Adam explained awkwardly. “I didn’t even mean to challenge you if the truth be told.”
Jocelyn reached covertly to pull down her tunic, but Devon caught her hand and laced his fingers in hers. “Don’t move,” he ordered her in a low voice. “No one is coming into this room.”
“You can’t even move?” Adam asked in alarm. “I must not know my own strength. Is it your back that pains you?”
“Somewhere in the vicini
ty,” Devon answered wryly. “More a little muscle stiffness than anything else.”
“Should I try to stretch it out?” Adam asked in hesitation.
Devon sat up, his face dark with irritation. “Is that what you came to ask?”
“Er, no,” Adam replied. “As a matter of fact, I was possessed of the idea that it would be a good show of chivalry if all three of us appeared at the feast as friends. Having fought each other earlier in the day, that is.”
Devon leaned down to kiss Jocelyn while drawing her dress back around those parts of her body he had stimulated and satisfied with such consummate skill. “All three of us?” he inquired absently, motioning her to sit forward so he could relace her bodice. “I assume that the third-party you refer to is Jocelyn?”
Poor unsuspecting Adam. He sounded completely disconcerted as he replied, “No. I meant that you, me, and Gabriel should muster a show of unity much like the Three Musketeers, if you will.”
“I won’t,” Devon muttered darkly, then raised his voice. “Hell’s bloody bells—did you say Gabriel?”
“He’s standing right here beside me, if you can believe it.”
Devon grunted. “What a coincidence. Don’t tell me he just so happened to be strolling by my room the same time as you?”
“How did you guess?” Adam said in surprise, then hesitated. “I don’t suppose you know where Jocelyn might have gone?”
Gabriel cleared his throat. “Adam is afraid that our fighting today might have frightened her off. She’s gone missing again.”
Devon leaned back on his elbows and smiled.
“Do you think we should seek her out?” Adam asked in an anxious tone.
“Would you be so kind?” Devon replied, placing his hand upon Jocelyn’s knee. “I am quite worn out from the thrashing you gave me.”
“I understand,” Adam said with such gravity that Devon could only shake his head in amused chagrin. “You must be incapacitated. I put up quite a fight, didn’t I?”
“I can only hope to recover,” Devon replied quietly. “I have rarely fought such a challenging battle before.”
“If I do find Jocelyn before you, shall I give her a message?” Adam asked after an awkward pause.
Devon hesitated, his expression so perplexed that Jocelyn feared he was about to give her away. Instead, he leaned forward and brushed her lips with a kiss that hinted of banked sensuality.
“I think I should best deliver my message in person, Adam,” he murmured.
“But you harbor no hard feelings?” Adam inquired again in a feverish voice.
To which Devon wickedly answered in an undertone that only Jocelyn could hear, “What say you to that question? Are my feelings hard or not?”
Twenty minutes later he had dressed in formal evening attire and stood guard in the hallway so that Jocelyn could sneak back up the stairs to her own room. She escaped just in time.
The castle was beginning to fill again as guests returned to their chambers to change out of their medieval attire for the sumptuous banquet in the great hall. Servants hastened to deliver clean water for washing, freshly pressed clothes, and scented billets-doux.
Lord Fernshaw’s feast marked the final event of the house party. Guests were known to stay up until the small hours and doze fitfully on the journey back to London. It was a night to flirt, to dine, to dance, to say farewell to a lover, to arrange future assignations.
And to contemplate the future.
Devon sat at the massive banquet table and sipped his wine, laughing at the jibes and ribald toasts that his presence had inspired. None of the taunts, however, touched upon his betrothal. No one at the party would openly offend Jocelyn after today. He had not only made his loyalty clear, he had proven that he would fight to defend her.
But if anyone had told him a week ago that he would leave this party engaged to be married, he would have denounced that person as a liar and trounced him on the spot.
Married.
To Jocelyn Lydbury.
The young lady whose dinner invitation he’d ignored four years ago, and look at him now. That neglected offer had come back manifold in the form of a whirlwind marriage. Lord help him. It would have been easier all the way around if he’d attended the original meal.
As it turned out, he’d be eating dinner with her for the rest of his life.
He watched her with unwilling interest, reminding himself that his country wallflower’s composed demeanor concealed quite a passionate nature. Her soft, willowy body heated his blood; the warmth and subtle charm she revealed each time they met proved perhaps even more attractive. He wondered how he was supposed to sleep beside her every night and pretend indifference to his needs.
It wasn’t possible. Nor did he intend to deny himself the pleasure of their wedding bed. But as for what else either of them could expect after they exchanged vows, he could not predict.
Their eyes met. He raised his goblet to her and drank deeply, swallowing a laugh at her faintly reproachful frown.
Yet when another toast was made in his honor, hers was the first goblet lifted in the air.
It was as if the sheer meanness of social criticism had forced them into an alliance. Complain of their plight as they may to each other, they seemed to have made an unspoken pact to put on a good show in front of their peers.
The cruel-minded or merely curious who waited to see a crack in the veneer of the scandalous couple quit the table that night disappointed. For all his appearance of negligent noblesse, Devon’s backbone had been forged of Boscastle steel—and strengthened by his father’s cane. The cavalry had made a man of him. His sisters had made sure he knew how to treat a lady in public.
Let him and Jocelyn battle out their arrangement in the privacy of their bedchamber when the time came. There was no reason for anyone to know by his behavior his true feelings.
Nor did he have full knowledge of them himself, to be quite honest.
As for Jocelyn, well, her quiet, English country charm stood her in good stead. She smiled, said little, and gave second thought to those who wondered how long it would be before her Boscastle strayed.
All in all, the majority of guests agreed that Devon and Jocelyn not only made a handsome couple, but that the unfoldment of their secret romance had elevated Alton’s annual house party to the status of the best affair they had ever attended.
Chapter Eleven
They were to be married in the private chapel of Grayson Boscastle’s Park Lane residence the morning following their return to London. Emma Boscastle had promised to handle all the arrangements. Even so, Jocelyn had been on pins and needles from the moment the viscountess’s carriage set upon the Epping Road, Devon riding behind with Gabriel and Grayson.
The ladies arrived in London twenty minutes before their gentleman guardians, and from that moment on there wasn’t time to worry about much of anything. Jocelyn was absorbed into the passionate heart of the Boscastle family.
In fact, she and Devon spent only a few minutes alone on the stairs of Grayson’s mansion the night of their arrival, and even then they were headed in opposite directions.
He was running upstairs to look for one of his unruly cousins who’d been firing spitballs at the servants. She was coming down from a hurried fitting with Lady Jane’s seamstress to alter the wedding gown she was to wear the next day.
The house was full of Boscastles who’d rushed to London for the surprise wedding and the night-before supper to celebrate the event. With so many relatives reunited, it was practically impossible to carry on any sort of conversation without being interrupted in a heartwarming if exhausting way.
“Well, this is a surprise,” Jocelyn said, her heart giving that pleasant but painful leap it did whenever she saw him. Handsome, seductive Devon Boscastle. How was it possible he would be hers? “I thought you might have run away on the way here.”
“Sorry to let you down,” he teased, grinning at her. “It’s a hellish thing to discover that one has honor at a
time like this. I thought you might have run away, too,” he added ruefully.
“I’ve never run away from anything in my life,” she said steadily.
“Neither have I.” His blue eyes twinkled with mischief.
She nodded, suddenly not knowing what to say. He was marrying her, and he didn’t want to. “Well, then, here we are, although one of us could still run away before morning.”
But neither of them had.
When she’d awakened the next day, the very first thing she heard was his deep voice from the floor below. He and his brothers were laughing loudly. They were, she was discovering, a family quite unrestrained and prone to frequent laughter. She could only hope that his good spirits would continue and that they would have cause to laugh together often in the future. She’d never had much reason to laugh in her own home. It had been agony to watch her mother caught in such an unhappy marriage.
And now…She bit her lip. She didn’t want to be caught in an unhappy marriage, and she didn’t want Devon to feel caught, either.
It was a day a woman was supposed to enjoy. A bride was meant to be the center of attention, to feel beautiful, and cherished. She dressed with Grayson’s wife assisting her, and then Grayson walked her down the aisle to give her away because at the last moment her father and brother had decided not to come.
She wasn’t as nervous as she thought she’d be. She drifted through the ceremony with a curious feeling of detachment, as if she were in a theater box watching two actors pretending to take their vows.
Who was that raven-haired stranger who towered over his unassuming bride? It was all overwhelming. The dark beauty of the Boscastle family—all of them brimming with some vital essence that stirred her very soul—made her feel as if she’d been asleep until this very moment.
“Well,” Devon murmured, coughing into his gloved fist, “we both appear to be here.”
“Yes.” She hid an unwilling grin.
“Your father and brother…?”
She shook her head, forbidding herself to show she cared. It was a relief, if the truth be told, that her father had refused to appear. There would be no whisper of unpleasantness to mar her wedding day. “Not coming.”
The Sinful Nights of a Nobleman Page 12