“Your hair is not the only thing about to catch on fire,” he said.
He did not smile, but there was a smile in his voice. His voice was deep, heavy in her ears and along her skin, especially when he leaned close and ran his mouth over her collarbone. She shivered and he stepped away, taking the lamp with him.
Prudence almost gasped in protest, but as soon as the lamp was set down on the large desk nearby, Robbie was back, and she was sandwiched between his thighs again. He looked at her face, and then down at her nightdress, where it gaped a bit over her breasts. “I think you have the most beautiful breasts in Christendom.”
She smiled, though her heart beat faster. “You think?”
He smiled at her then, a wolfish gleam of white teeth. “I can’t be sure. For you’re wearing that damned old lady’s gown.”
“I am not an old lady,” she said.
“I thought you were five and twenty,” he answered.
She raised her hand and swatted him, not very hard, on his arm. He laughed a little then, but his eyes did not come up from the mounds of her breasts beneath her heavy cotton gown. “Let’s look beneath and see how young you are.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but he kissed her again, the taste of him dominating her whole body. Her protest died somewhere between her lips and her tongue, and she was lost in him altogether.
His hand pressed on her thigh, kneading the flesh as a cat might with its paw. His other hand was on her calf, pushing her gown up one slow inch at a time. She thought to protest again, but her tongue was too busy playing with his.
He tasted of whisky and of the meat they’d had at dinner. He smelled like heaven, the most delicious scent she had ever taken in. She knew that what they did was sin, but she could have no more told him to let her go than she could have stopped her heart from beating.
Her gown was up to her thighs then, and both of his hands were reaching under it. He pulled back to look at her, and she followed him, kissing him as soon as she caught him. He kissed her back, his fervor heightened as he lifted her up, just once, taking the hem of her gown with her.
Her nightgown was up and over her head in one quick motion when he stepped back again. He had some kind of skill or magic, for he did not catch her hair with it, nor did he get it caught on her chin. She wondered how many women he had touched before her, to have such practiced skill, but she let that thought go. For she was naked, and his eyes were on her, drinking her in.
The slick lacquer of the mahogany table felt cool beneath her thighs. She parted her legs a little as she looked at him, wishing he would stand between her thighs as he had held her between his. Robbie did not step toward her, but simply looked, taking in the swell of her breasts, the curve of her hips, and the smooth contours of her belly.
Prudence knew she should feel ashamed, that she should protest, and cover herself. But she had never felt more beautiful than she did in that moment, with his eyes on her. She did not move, but let him look his fill.
His hands were on her breasts then, weighing them in his palms, slowly, meditatively, as if they were fruit at market and he was a buyer. He leaned down and put his tongue to her nipple, and it pebbled beneath his mouth.
The pleasure shot through her in one heated bolt, making her groan. He met her eyes, his lips still on her breast, a look of triumph on his face. She almost told him not to be too sure of himself when he bit down very gently, and then a little harder, and she almost came up off the table altogether.
Such pleasure was beyond her ability to comprehend, so she did not even try. She let her inhibitions go—what few were left to her—and let herself simply feel.
His hand covered the breast his mouth had just been tending, his thumb rubbing her nipple, soothing and rough in turn. His mouth was on her other breast then, licking and biting and sucking as he wished. She writhed beneath him, trying to get closer to him. The soft linen of his shirt was hot beneath her hands. She scrabbled at it ineffectually, trying to get his shirt off him, and failing.
“Now, leannan, leave that be.” Both of his hands were on her breasts now, and his mouth came down on hers, as if to reward and chasten her all at once. “This night is for you. We’ll leave me and mine for another.”
She had no idea what he meant. She knew only that she had to touch him or die. Even with his mouth on hers and his hot hands on her breasts, she managed to get his shirt out from his breeches. She could touch his back, and felt the hot muscles flexing beneath her hand. He groaned at her touch, and kissed her harder, and the sound of his pleasure was a new kind of music, one she savored even as she sank deeper under his spell.
He pulled away and jerked her hips toward the edge of the tabletop. She wondered if he would take her then, and wondered what she should do, or should not do, to make the whole thing more pleasurable for both of them. She vaguely remembered hearing someone mention pain along with the loss of virginity, but she could not bring herself to care. She knew only that she wanted to be one with him. She ached so badly in her nether places that if he did not take her soon, she would surely die.
He pushed her down on the table until she felt her hair caught between the slick surface and her back. He freed her hair with one deft motion and moved it out of the way, running his tongue from the hollow of her throat, between her breasts, to the juncture of her thighs.
When his tongue touched her there, she shrieked and almost leaped off the table. He laughed a little, and the sound of it vibrated along her inner thigh. “Lie down now, leannan, and let me love you.”
It was the last thing he said for a long while. His mouth was over her then, kissing her as he had kissed her lips, but deeper, and stronger. The long, slow motions of his tongue turned to flickers, like a candle guttering out. Then, all at once, his tongue was in her and on her, and his fingers, too, so that the pleasure that had built so quickly inside her crested, like a great wave at Brighton, and crashed to shore, bringing her along with it.
Prudence thought perhaps her heart had burst. But she lay there a long while, her legs dangling off the high table, until she realized that, indeed, she was not dead. A deep languor had begun to claim her, and though she felt the pleasure like currents in the wake of a storm, she still felt empty.
“I love you, Robbie,” was all she said.
He kissed her, his lips lingering over hers like a prayer. All his hunger seemed to be gone, sated on her body. Or perhaps he simply hid it from her, to protect her sensibilities. She wished she might see his passion again, but he had it locked away now, as behind a wall of stone.
“I love you, Prudence Whittaker. Lady Prudence Farthington. Daughter of earls, and sister of fools. I love you. God help me.”
He drew her up then and pulled her gown back down over her body, covering her once more. She was glad of it, for she had begun to feel cold since her pleasure passed. He picked her up and set her in his lap on the settee close by the empty fireplace. The lamplight still flickered, and she still felt his manhood hard against her thighs, but she was too tired to mention it. Perhaps he would take his pleasure from her another night. Her body tightened deliciously at the thought.
He did not keep her with him long, nor did he speak again. He simply dressed her in her wrapper, tying each brown ribbon as carefully as any lady’s maid. He led her to the door, picking up her lost hair ribbon along the way. Her hand was cradled in his, and she half expected him to hand her the bit of brown velvet, but he did not. Instead, he slipped it into his waistcoat pocket, and turned the key in the library door.
“Go straight to your room, turning neither right nor left. I’ve not yet seen the recluse duke, but he might be lurking somewhere. I would not like to have him find you, warm and ready for your bed.”
“He won’t find me,” she answered. “No one will.”
He kissed her deep then, and let her go. “I don’t trust myself to let you go to bed alone.
So I’ll leave you here.”
“You might come with me.”
She heard the plaintive note in her voice, and wished it away, but he did not throw it in her face. He simply smoothed her curls back from her face.
“I would, if I might, love. But my honor holds me here. I’ve trespassed enough for one night.”
Still she did not leave, so he drew her into his arms and kissed her once more, until she was breathless.
She smiled a little, and he swatted her behind as she turned and left him.
“I won’t always let you go so easily,” he said, standing in the doorway, leaning against the jamb, staring after her.
She felt his eyes on her all the way up the staircase. She could have sworn that she felt them still, even when she was alone in the upper corridor, even after she had closed her door behind her, and was alone in her room.
She realized only then that she had forgotten to look for a novel. Instead of reading someone else’s story, she lay back against her pillows and, with a dreamy smile, remembered her own.
Twenty-six
Robbie had the worst pain in his ballocks of his life, but seeing the pleasure and joy on Pru’s face had been worth it. He was a cad to take her as he had without the benefit of marriage, but he consoled himself that he had sacrificed his own pleasure for her honor, and had given her the first orgasm of her life. The first of many.
He did not sleep that night, because he knew that he could not. Instead, he rolled up the chart of the Orient and stowed it back in its pigeonhole in the duke’s great library. Then he settled down to watch the night fade, and the early dawn rise. That was where Alex found him, smoking a bit of the duke’s fine tobacco in one of the pipes from the duke’s vast collection.
“Since when do you smoke?” his brother asked, opening a window to chase away the worst of the fumes.
“Now and again, when I am feeling contemplative,” Robbie said. “I’m sure His Grace won’t begrudge me a few tobacco leaves.”
“Something’s different,” Alex said. “You aren’t brooding as you were this time yesterday.”
Robbie could not help but smile. He contemplated the table where he had driven a naked Prudence to lose her reason, and all her words save for his own name…which she had all but screamed more than once.
“You’ve got to change before you go in to breakfast,” Alex said.
“I’m not hungry.”
Alex laughed out loud at that. “Dear God, it is the end of the world.”
Robbie smiled at his brother’s good-natured ribbing. “Not just yet, I hope. I mean to marry before Armageddon comes.”
Alex sat beside him on the library settee, and stared with him into the cold hearth. “Soon, I imagine, from the look of bliss on your face.”
“I don’t look blissful. This is not bliss. It’s frustration.”
“With the right woman, it’s the same thing.”
Robbie could not completely disagree. In that moment, there was no other woman for him but Pru, and he knew that there never would be again.
“I would not be your brother if I did not ask you to wait until we know her better.”
“I know all I need to.”
“You think you do. But if the man we know of is her brother, he may be the very devil, a bounder and a cad instead of a fool. He may be a thief, and a liar.”
“We know he’s an Englishman,” Robbie said.
Alex did not speak again, but stared Robbie down. Robbie did his best to take his brother seriously, to consider the horror he might be bringing down on his family. Assuming Prudence’s brother could be saved, penniless and skulking at the docks as he was. The Dutch might have killed him already.
Robbie examined his own mind again, sitting there in the daylight. He knocked the ashes from his borrowed pipe, and laid it down. His mind had not changed, nor would it. He had just wanted to be sure.
“I need to send word to our uncle,” Robbie said at last.
“The Bishop of London?”
“The very one. I find I am in need of a special license, sooner than later.”
Alex sighed as if the weight of the world had fallen upon him, as if he could not think of words of sense to make his brother see reason. Robbie was glad Alex did not speak, but simply drew a wax-sealed paper from the inner pocket of his superfine coat.
Robbie broke the seal, and saw that he held a marriage license in his hand, ready to be dealt with by the first Church of England pastor he found. His name had already been printed in the bishop’s fine hand, though the place for Pru’s name was still blank.
“He left your bride’s name off, since we don’t know what her real name is yet.”
“So we do. She told me. It is Prudence Farthington, of Lynwood Hall.”
“So her brother is indeed the ne’er-do-well who skulks about the East India docks, biding his time for God knows what new devilry?”
“The very same.”
“We’ll have to keep our eyes on her, then, to keep her from slipping away to him.”
“There’s little danger of that,” Robbie said. “She loves the cur, and she’s loyal, but she thinks he’s dead. I imagine even if she were certain he lived, she would not run off all the way from Northumberland to London on such a wild chase.”
Alex looked unconvinced.
“I tell you, I know the woman. She is foolhardy at times, but she is no Mary Elizabeth. She would never run off without telling me.”
“As you say. You know her best, after all. But, Brother, I know women. Watch her. Keep both eyes open.”
Robbie stood and stretched, tucking his license into his own pocket before he pulled on his coat and went to find a bath. “Indeed,” he said. “Keeping watch over her is no hardship. I would do it anyway, even if her bounder of a brother were still dead.”
“Now that you know her name, if you truly mean to have her, you need to get her before a priest, and get that paper signed, quick like,” Alex said.
Robbie smiled. “That shouldn’t be too hard. Women love to get married.”
Alex laughed out loud. “The good ones give chase, and you know it.”
“I’m fast enough, if it comes to that. No worries. And she loves me. I’ve heard it from her own lips.”
Alex raised his hands in surrender. “I’m glad she’s so honest with you all of a sudden. But in my experience, just when you think you understand a woman, that’s when you’re deceiving yourself.”
“Maybe some other man, but not me.”
Robbie strolled out of the library then, whistling, with another pat to his pocket to make sure the document was still there. As he left them room, he heard his brother say, “God help him.”
* * *
Pru spent the day with Mary Elizabeth and Catherine, walking along the cliff above the shore, throwing knives, and staying out of Robert Waters’s way. She had finally slept a little toward dawn, and when she woke, she remembered all she had done with Robbie in the ducal library as though it had been some fevered dream.
Of course, no dream in her life had ever been so vivid, and her body ached deliciously from where he had held her down in her passion. She even had a tiny bruise on her inner thigh from his mouth, which let her know that the dream was real.
She dreaded and anticipated seeing him with such nervous joy that she felt as if she might jump out of her skin. Dressed in her ugliest gray gown and spectacles as armor against her own lust, she found Robbie completely elusive. She did not see him at breakfast, and as she spent the rest of the day with the two girls, she did not see him all afternoon.
She half expected to find him lurking in the stables when they returned their mounts, or waiting for her at the bottom of the staircase as she went up to dress for the ball. But he was nowhere to be seen. And as the house had begun to fill with the duchess’s overnight guests, Pr
u did not want to be seen, either. She hid herself away in her opulent, borrowed room, and wondered how she was going to work up the courage to come out at all. Hiding was a habit, an easy one to slide into and to wallow in.
Mary Elizabeth cured her of that notion at eight o’clock when she knocked on her door.
“Mrs. Prudence, you need to come out now.”
Pru, still dressed in gray worsted, opened the door for her charge. “No, Mary, I’m staying here.”
“Bloody blazes you are,” Mary Elizabeth answered, pushing past her into the room. She made a beeline straight for the blue gown that Catherine’s maid had pressed that morning. It hung on the pier glass mirror in sapphire splendor. Prudence had been spending the better part of an hour torturing herself looking at it, wishing that she had the courage to put it on and go downstairs.
Catherine, Alex’s young wife, came into the room behind Mary Elizabeth and gently closed the door. She was a vision in moss-green silk, and the ribbons in her long, golden hair brought out the mossy green and gold of her eyes.
“You look beautiful, Catherine,” Pru said.
“Thank you, Pru. So will you when we’re done with you.”
“Oh, no, don’t trouble yourselves. I think I feel a headache coming on.”
“Bosh,” Mary Elizabeth said. Instead of the snow white dress they had agreed on, Mary Elizabeth was dressed from head to toe in scarlet silk, a bright-golden baldric cutting across the gown like a prize of war. Pru blinked to look at her, but her personality was certainly large enough to carry it off. The girl looked oddly splendid, if nothing like a demure debutante.
“We are what we are, Mrs. Prudence,” Mary Elizabeth said when she caught Pru staring at the golden fabric against the red. “No use in hiding it.” She drew out a wicked long dagger from behind the baldric. “However, fashion can sometimes work to our advantage.”
“Mary, please tell me you don’t plan to wear a weapon into the duchess’s ballroom, to the ball she is throwing in your honor!” Pru heard the pleading note in her own voice. It was sure to fall on deaf ears, as most of her advice did. It seemed she was truly a terrible companion.
How to Wed a Warrior Page 17