by Gabriel
And cloves, which would forevermore be an aphrodisiac to him.
Perceptive woman that she was, she let him gather his wits and his wind for long, quiet moments, and he had to hope she needed the time as well.
“You are dangerous.” He sat back and surveyed her, then climbed off the couch. “Don’t you do that.” He stilled her hands again, but gently. “I will put to rights what I disturbed.” Carefully, he eased her breasts back into her bodice, and to his relief, she let him.
“You needed to do that?”
“You’re full of questions. Come here.” He lay down beside her without righting his clothing and dragged her over him. “I don’t hold with the notion that every good swiving requires endless verbal recounting. You stole my wits, love. I haven’t spent like that since I was a mere boy, and you will leave me a little dignity by not gloating.”
She turned her face into his chest, and he felt her smiling at his expense. Her smile warmed his heart and made him want to start up again, which was a very bad idea indeed, and not simply because the door was yet unlocked.
“I’m not sorry.” He could hear the humor and pride in her tone.
“You are sorry indeed”—Gabriel tucked his chin against her temple—“to accost a man in his own library, leaving him no modesty and less control. For shame, Polonaise. Now go to sleep and dream of me.”
“You’ll sleep too?”
“With one eye open, lest you have your wicked way with me again.”
She cuddled up, while he wrestled with consternation. What was wrong with those imbeciles on the Continent, that they’d failed to see to Polly’s pleasure? She was a Congreve rocket, as volatile in her passions as she was about her cooking or her art.
Jesus, to have her in his bed would be—
He yanked hard on the reins of his unruly desire, and nuzzled her hair as it occurred to him that in some ways, he was her first. The notion pleased him profoundly, and he was still savoring it when he fell asleep and dreamed of clove-scented sheets and huge mugs of chocolate topped with whipped cream and cinnamon.
Voices in the corridor awakened him. Gabriel put a finger to Polly’s lips, and as the voices passed, she went limp against him.
“Time to make our escape,” Gabriel whispered, shoving to a sitting position. When Polly would have climbed off the couch, he caught her with a hand behind the head and kissed her again, a right smacker, a kiss of dominion and gratitude. Polly smiled at him, a soft, radiant, devastatingly lovely smile, and he had to look away.
Only to notice his breeches were still undone. “Lock the goddamned door, Polonaise, or you’ll see the banns being cried.”
She smiled more broadly and rose to do his bidding—for once. He ran a hand through his hair and knew he should be buttoning his falls as fast as human hands could manage. He let his hands fall to his side and left his clothing in disarray as Polly advanced on him.
“I’ll tend to that.”
“Woman, you are unnatural, and I am perfectly capable—”
She knelt right between his legs. “And you are shy.” She gently extricated his softening length from his clothes and surveyed him. “Shy,” she murmured, “and… well proportioned.”
He watched as the artist in her measured, assessed, and turned him this way and that.
“Love, you keep that up, and I won’t be the only one set upon in this library. Best put away your toy.”
“Toys,” she corrected him, lifting his cock to run her fingers over his balls. “You got to see my bubbies, so hush. With models, one isn’t allowed to touch, and this is frustrating, because seeing the poor thing just hang there…”
“Polonaise.” His voice was hoarse to his own ears. “Might we have the anatomy lesson some other time?” Many other times?
She gave him a look from between his thighs, a look conveying hunger, artistic and erotic hunger, and he had to gaze past her head at the portrait of the third earl over the fireplace. The blighter seemed to be silently laughing.
“Right.” She tucked him away. “Your dignity won’t stand for it, and in your own library and all.”
“Just so.” She finished buttoning his falls, then ruined her display of sense by stroking him through his breeches a few times before she rested her cheek squarely on his genitals. “Gabriel, what have we done?”
“I don’t know.” Though he knew damned good and well what they had not—quite—done. He trailed his hand over the softness of her hair, the weight of her head an odd comfort. “I should be sending you away, Polonaise, not trifling with you.”
“And I should have enough pride to flounce off and not stay where I’m not wanted.”
“You’re wanted.” She was far more than wanted, which announcement would only make it that much harder to send her safely on her way. “You can’t doubt that now. You’re wanted until I’m coming like a hopeless stripling at the simple sight of you, wench.”
“You did, didn’t you?”
And he’d pleased her all over again, which hadn’t strictly been his intent.
“I said you could stay until the portrait is done,” Gabriel reminded her. “You haven’t even put paint to canvas yet.”
“The next sunny day, I will, and I can be very fast, Gabriel. Marjorie is a wonderful subject.”
Polonaise had accepted that she must leave, which should have been a relief. The notion was, in fact, intolerable, as intolerable as the idea that Gabriel’s situation might put her welfare at risk.
Which meant his best hope was to make her time at Hesketh memorable, and perhaps someday…
“Marjorie will be wonderful to work with,” he said. “I am a wonderful lover, however, and you must allow me to prove that. It’s only fair.” He was just another horny sod, soon to be reduced to a begging horny sod.
“So romantic.” She sighed against his thigh. “You could be a terrible lover, and I wouldn’t know the difference.”
“But I’m not,” he said, feeling both sad for her and pleased for himself that Polonaise Hunt did not have the sophistication to know good lovemaking from the common variety. “You’ll indulge my need to establish this beyond doubt?”
“You know I will.” She sounded bleak, and that had his good humor fading. “But it can’t come to anything, Gabriel. Promise me right now, you won’t start getting notions.”
“I already have,” he countered, meaning it. “I’ll promise you nothing but pleasure, Polonaise.”
“And the loan of a coach at the end of my stay here.”
He stroked his thumb over the sweet, stubborn curve of her jaw. “So mean,” he chided. “But hear me: I know I was dishonest with you at Three Springs, Polonaise. I had my reasons, though they seem less worthy now. I understand you want to decamp to higher ground when your work here is done—”
“You’ve ordered me to.”
He gently put a palm over her mouth, only to feel her tongue tasting his skin.
“I’m sending you away for your safety, not because I want to. If I had my way—”
She covered his mouth with her hand in a reciprocal gesture.
“No, Gabriel.” She peered up at him solemnly. “You need heirs and I am not the stuff a marchioness is made of and we won’t discuss this again. I’ll paint, and then I’ll leave, and if we dally a little betimes, that is simply for our own fleeting, private pleasure.”
“Those are your terms?”
“And discretion,” she added. “No one can know. Not Aaron or Marjorie or even the staff.”
“I accept your terms.” For now. He also silently assured her they wouldn’t be dallying a little. They’d be dallying one goddamn hell of a lot, and her pleasure would be far from fleeting.
***
“Mr. Erskine, you will devote your utmost efforts to this case.”
Erskine kept his expression deferentially bland. “My lady, I do so with all of my clients’ concerns.”
“You mistake me.” Lady Hartle drew herself up. She was a tallish woman and wearing
boots, which put her a tad below eye level with her solicitor. “You will devote all of your efforts to this case, until Gabriel Wendover and his younger brother see reason.”
Erskine wished, not for the first time, that he’d followed his mother’s advice and gone for the church instead of the law, though rising early on Sundays would be a pain. “Reason and the law are only nodding acquaintances. I am powerless to change the one, regardless of how compelling the other.”
“My daughter is the Marchioness of Hesketh.” She rapped the point of her parasol on the floor, like a judge might strike his gavel to demand order of an unruly courtroom. “I’m not asking you to change anything, but rather, to inspire the Wendover menfolk to abide by contracts that have stood for almost fifteen years.”
Erskine knew better than to back down. “As you’ve explained it, the only possible argument for invalidating the marriage is fraud in the inducement, but because the older brother was declared legally dead, it’s hard to know who was responsible for the fraud.”
“The bridegroom, of course.” Lady Hartle nearly shook with her determination. “Aaron had his brother declared dead. Gabriel didn’t rise up from the grave and see it done himself.”
Gabriel Wendover, who was never in the grave.
“So your theory is Aaron deceived his way into your daughter’s hand in marriage. A novel outlook, I’m sure, and the judges are not particularly fond of novelty. I don’t suppose there’s any chance of nonconsummation?” Not that this made the legal turf much easier to spade.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lady Hartle snapped. “My daughter is a beautiful young woman who knows her duty, and Aaron Wendover is a former cavalry officer in fine health with no younger cousins or sons to inherit.”
“So you’ve said.” Erskine’s tone begged leave to doubt Lady Hartle’s assessment. “Who are their solicitors?”
“The old marquess used Hamish and Hamish. You will contact them immediately and threaten suit.”
Which was absolutely the least prudent course. “Of course, my lady.”
“Be delicate about it.” She put her gloves on, which to Erskine bore a bit of symbolism. “Be firm, though. If I have to threaten scandal, I will. This is Marjorie’s birthright, and I will see it protected.”
“I understand.” Erskine bowed formally and hoped that would be sufficient cue for his client to make her farewells. She swept out, leaving the door open behind her, and Erskine’s partner, a dapper young blond chap by the name of Hay, came sauntering in.
“Hell hath no fury?” Hay asked.
“Hell hath all kinds of furies, but a mama-in-law scorned has to top the list.” Erskine kicked the door shut, lest all the heat leave along with her ladyship. “Join me for a pint?”
“That bad?”
“She schemed and maneuvered and threatened to get the younger brother’s foot in parson’s mousetrap, now the older brother has reappeared, and we must jettison brother-the-younger and get our marital hooks into brother-the-elder.”
“This is Hesketh, right?”
“How could you possibly know?”
Hay shrugged. Though young, he had an impressive network of informants and was smart enough not to brag about it. “Word travels. So can you do it?”
Erskine sighed mightily and thought of his daughter’s millinery bills. “Possibly.”
Hay slapped him on the back. “Or possibly not, but you can definitely spend a great deal of coin in the trying?”
Erskine grabbed his coat and hat, for it had become a suitably miserable, wet day. “Sometimes, my lad, even the coin doesn’t make the aggravation worth the effort.”
***
“It’s time we went up to Town.” Gabriel made that decision after dinner, when he wasn’t watching the candlelight bring out red highlights in Polonaise’s hair, or contemplating the late evening he intended to spend lying in wait for her in the library.
Resting his back.
Aaron glanced around at the footmen tidying up after dinner. “How about a game of billiards?”
Privacy was always the better alternative, so they were soon behind a closed door, with another fire roaring, the balls racked on the green felt.
“You want to meet with the solicitors?” Aaron broke and stepped back for his brother to take his shot.
“It seems the next thing to do.” Gabriel bent over the table—carefully, always carefully when the weather was turning—and sank a ball, but missed his next shot. “There’s the matter of my being declared dead, of course, and your having been invested, but also the looming threat to your marriage.”
“Marjorie’s happiness isn’t a threat.”
“You try my sanity, little brother.”
Aaron sank two balls quickly—easy shots—then blew the third easy shot.
“If you think I’m going to take her to wife, you’re mistaken. The notion is barbaric.”
“You wouldn’t abuse her.”
“I would swive her, were we married,” Gabriel said patiently, “and she is my brother’s wife, not some broodmare coming into season as she approaches the breeding shed.”
“I know that.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“Beat you at billiards,” Aaron ground out.
“I have no legitimate children, Aaron.” Gabriel studied the cherubs frolicking on the ceiling among oaken strawberry leaves.
“One comprehends this.”
Gabriel finished the oldest syllogism in aristocratic memory for him. “Ergo, one’s duty is to produce my heirs. Why the hell else would you take the title if not out of a profound appreciation for your role in securing the succession?”
“Leave it, Gabriel.” Aaron’s tone was relaxed, though he gripped his cue stick so tightly his knuckles gleamed white.
Gabriel bent low over the table and sank three balls in rapid succession. “We go up to Town and meet with Kettering, but we discuss only my death and the title. Your marriage can wait until Lady Hartle actually rattles her sword.”
“Is your back bothering you?”
“My brother is bothering me, but yes, stretching out like this is something I attempt cautiously.”
Aaron twirled his cue stick, a cavalier, graceful show of disrespect. “One might think you’d attempt it regularly, so as to accustom the body to it again. You were abed for how many months?”
“Too many. I used to spend a great deal of time soaking in hot springs, and that helped significantly.” As had Polly’s padded chairs, and her cooking.
“Why not have a bathing chamber put in here? We can afford it, and there aren’t any hot springs to be had.”
“That is a capital idea.” And offered with studied casualness.
“My quota for the year.”
Gabriel put aside his cue stick. “In truth, you have them fairly often. Whose idea was it to set up a schedule for swapping around the various rams on the tenant farms?”
“Mine.” Aaron appeared to study the balls arrayed on the table. “A young fellow likes variety.”
“And inbreeding is never a good idea,” Gabriel responded primly, though the British monarchy was comfortable enough with the notion. “I understand you favor bullocks over horses for the smallholders, too.”
Aaron sent the cue ball careening off various bumpers. “The heavy horses take more fodder and bedding, and aren’t as palatably put into the stew pot when their days are over; nor are they as strong for their size as the bullocks.”
“So now you’re getting rid of our draft teams?”
“Not ours.” Aaron lowered himself into a chair before the fire—the very chair Gabriel had been considering. “I’m former cavalry, recall, and George would call me out did I advocate getting rid of all the farm horses, but for the yeoman, the bullocks are the better bargain. Where are you off to?”
“The library,” Gabriel said. “There to consult further with your Domesday Book. Design us a bathing chamber, why don’t you? You were always good at such things.�
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Aaron waved a hand. “Your wish, et cetera. When are we going up to Town?”
“Tuesday suits, and our week will be up then too.”
“Famous.”
“Aaron?”
“That would be me.”
“I want to help, you know.” Gabriel’s hand was on the door, but his back was to his brother. “Whatever is turning you so damned grouchy, I want to help.”
“You can’t. I’m just growing into the Wendover legacy, you know. Bad dispositions, the lot of us.”
Seeing his brother wasn’t in the mood for confidences, Gabriel went prowling in the direction of the library, there to… rest his back.
Six
“Aaron?” Marjorie’s voice floated forth from the doorway to the game room. She was in shadow, because Aaron had blown out all the candles, leaving only the hearth light to think by.
“Here.” He held up a hand so she could see where he was over the back of his chair.
“I thought Gabriel was with you.”
“Sorry.” Aaron knew he should get to his feet, but instead he held out a hand to her. “Just me. Was there something on your mind?”
She advanced into the room, peering around as if to make sure Gabriel wasn’t lurking, though mentally, Aaron considered his brother nigh haunted him, and had for two years. His musings were cut short when he saw his wife was in her nightgown and wrapper. He’d seen her thus only for a very few moments on their wedding night, two years ago, and the image had haunted him right beside that of his brother’s pain-wracked face.
“You don’t normally seek me out at such an hour, Margie. Did you need me for something?” Did she need him for anything?
“I needed to talk to you,” she said, still darting nervous glances into the shadows.
“Come then.” He patted his knee, and when she approached, tugged her onto his lap. He settled his arms around her. “It grows chilly. We can talk like this.”
She nearly levitated at first, like a broody hen whose dignity had been slighted, so badly had he startled her. Then she settled, her arm tentatively sliding around his neck.