by Marlowe Mia
She was relieved, and only a little surprised, when Crispin arrived at the Makepeace townhouse behind Lord Dorset’s elegant, crested brougham, astride a deep-chested black Thoroughbred. He was even leading a bay mare for her father.
“Thought you might enjoy a riding at least part of the way, sir,” Crispin said, studiously not looking at her.
Her father had accepted with pleasure.
Grace and her mother climbed into the beautifully appointed carriage Lord Dorset had sent to collect them. The party set off over the cobbled streets that soon deteriorated to dirt tracks leading out of the sprawling city.
“Aren’t you excited, Grace?” her mother said as the world turned green and rolling around them. “Just think! By Christmas, you could be a marchioness.”
“Mother, Lord Dorset hasn’t even called me by my Christian name yet,” Grace said, her ears perked to Crispin’s conversation with her father. The pair of them loped along as outriders, sometimes trailing the carriage, sometimes flanking it. She only caught one or two words from time to time, but they laughed together, loudly and often. “I think you are overestimating his lordship’s regard for me.”
“Nonsense, dear.” Minerva removed her straw hat and fanned herself with the broad bill. “Everyone in London could see how he positively dotes on you.”
“I suppose that’s why he just sent his carriage instead of coming himself. Honestly, Mother, I feel like parcel being picked up for delivery. If Lord Dorset dotes on anything about me, it’s probably my dowry.” Grace leaned her cheek on her palm. “Did you know they’re betting on the size of it at White’s?”
The brougham slowed as they climbed a hill and Crispin and her father came even with her window for a moment. Then they both dug their heels into their horse’s flanks and raced ahead of the equipage to wait at the crest of the slope.
At least someone was having a good time of it.
“Money is not something a woman should concern herself with. Just because the gentlemen at White’s engage in such speculation, there’s no need for you to be vulgar, dear,” her mother said with a tightening of her lips. “Besides, even your father and I haven’t settled on a figure yet. It depends on a number of things.”
Grace could tick them off for her. What title the gentleman would bestow upon her or what his prospects were, how glittering his place in society compared to her father’s plump pockets, whether she was judged to be sound breeding stock—Grace felt like punching her fist through the isinglass.
“At any rate, now you’ll be able to see Lord Dorset’s home and what’s more, he’ll see you in his home.” Her mother beamed. “Oh, this is progressing far better than I ever dreamed.”
Make that three of us who are having a good time.
“How was it for you and Father?” Grace asked as the coach came even with the equestrians again. “When you were courting, I mean.”
“Oh, it wasn’t anything like this. Neither of us came from money, you see.”
Evidently, it was only vulgar when Grace mentioned financial considerations.
A smile played about Minerva’s lips. “Though I must say, my family enjoyed a certain status on account of the titles in our past, but things were much simpler for your father and me.”
Simpler. Like the bliss of Crispin’s hand on her. Like the elemental fire of his kiss.
She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and tried to blot out the image of his damnably handsome face. The way he’d watched her with such intensity while she lost control of her limbs and fought to keep from crying out at the moment of her release. He was like a hawk eyeing a titmouse. Crispin would gobble her up if she let him.
“I remember one time . . .”
Something in her mother’s voice made Grace drop her hands. Minerva was gazing out the window at her husband, oblivious to Grace’s distress.
“It was just before Christmas and your father arrived at my parent’s home in a sleigh pulled by a wicked-looking beast. That horse Mr. Hawke’s riding puts me in the mind of it. In any case, Homer wanted to take me for a drive.” Minerva’s voice drifted away.
Grace waited.
“Of course, my father wouldn’t allow me to go by myself with Homer.” Her glance darted to Grace. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but your father was quite the rapscallion in his day.”
That didn’t surprise Grace a bit. “So what happened then?”
“Oh, never mind.” Minerva shook her hands as if to wave away the half-finished story.
“Mother, you cannot tell me my father was quite the rapscallion and not finish the tale.”
“Very well, but you must bear in mind, it’s really a cautionary tale.” Minerva scooted forward on her seat till her knees were touching Grace’s. “I’m sorry to have to tell you that I sneaked out of the house and went sleighing with him all the same.”
“How desperately wicked of you,” Grace said wryly. Measured against allowing a man to creep into her bedchamber, her mother’s misdeed was slight.
“Oh, I know I shouldn’t have, but that Homer!” She sighed. “If you could have seen him then. He was such an exciting fellow. I simply had to do it.”
“What’s cautionary about this tale?”
“Oh, I’m getting to it, dear. Well, your father was quite an accomplished horseman, but a bit of a daredevil when he drove. He whipped the nag into a full gallop, never mind the icy lanes, and we went careening along, doing sharp turns and driving the runners up on the snow banks so the sleigh would tip.”
Her voice sank to a whisper. “He admitted later he was trying to get me to sit closer to him.”
“How desperately wicked of him, too,” Grace said with a grin.
“You know, I actually think he wanted to see if he could make me squeal,” Minerva confided, “but I kept my lips clamped tight.”
If Grace’s parents hadn’t been down the hall on that night, Grace would have squealed. And pleaded. And wept aloud for pure joy while Crispin played his sinful games with her flesh.
“Then what happened?” Grace asked because her mother’s attention had drifted back to the window where her father and Crispin were riding at a leisurely pace beside the carriage now. Grace tried to imagine her father as a madman behind the reins.
“Well, his driving got so wild, Homer upset the sleigh. Over we went!”
“Oh, no. Were either of you hurt?”
“No, we were thrown clear and landed in a fresh snow bank, so it was soft as a feather tick.” An expression Grace had never seen on her mother’s face before flitted over her features and was gone, to be replaced by a grimace. “But somehow the gelding’s traces broke and he was off to his stable before Homer could catch him.”
“You were stranded in a snowy wood in the middle of the night. That doesn’t sound like much fun.” Grace leaned back in her seat. “Or terribly proper either.”
“It wasn’t and we had to walk all the way back to my house. By the time we got there, my parents had missed me and the whole house was in a tizzy. Fortunately, they hadn’t yet alerted the authorities and started an organized search.” Minerva shuddered. “Imagine the scandal.”
“Quite.” Still falling short of letting a man creep into one’s bedchamber.
“But the good thing, the wonderful thing actually, was that was the night your father asked my father for my hand. So it all turned out well in the end.” Minerva smiled at her husband through the isinglass. “And now that time is nearly here for you, Grace.”
“We don’t know that, Mother. The marquess hasn’t asked me to anything but a house party.”
“Still, I have a feeling you’ll leave Clairmont betrothed, my dear.”
“I don’t know, Mother. I hardly know the marquess.” She looked out at Crispin. When he leaned over his horse’s neck and stroking its mane, she had to shut her eyes against his masculine beauty. When she opened them again, the horses had fallen behind the carriage, but the afterimage of Crispin’s hair falling forward,
of his big hand running over the gelding’s neck was burned on the backs of her eyes.
“Mother, if a title is so important to you, why didn’t you seek a titled husband when you visited England all those years ago?”
“Well, I’d already met your father before that visit and I was ever so much younger then. I didn’t realize how important one’s social position in the world can be. I was distracted by . . . other things.”
“But you weren’t engaged. And I’ve heard you complain so many times about how badly Papa used to swear and how he didn’t follow society’s rules.” Grace frowned in puzzlement. “You really weren’t well suited at all. Why did you want to marry him?”
Her mother templed her fingers and was quiet for a bit. “This is going to sound strange, Grace, but there is something wildly exciting about a man who doesn’t follow the rules.” Her mother’s lips curved into a smile. “It makes it that much more of a challenge when a woman tries to help him learn to follow them.”
“There may be something to that.” Grace sighed. “The marquess seems like a perfectly nice gentleman, who follows the rules to every crossed ‘t’ and dotted ‘i’. And he’s about as exciting as burnt toast.”
“Don’t say that, dear,” her mother said with concern. “It’s not the same thing at all. You’ll be a marchioness once you wed remember. And English peers have a very gay time of things. Your life will be filled with excitement.” She shook her head. “I shouldn’t have told you that story. I don’t know what got into me. I suppose it was seeing your father on a horse again.”
They fell into silence and Grace wondered if the marquess would want to do the things Crispin had done to her. Would Lord Dorset touch her till she unraveled? Or kiss her till her insides turned to pudding?
The greater question, she realized, was whether she could ever allow the marquess to do those things.
Chapter 26
Galatea was set on venturing to the countryside. So Pygmalion would sally forth as well. Anything to be near her.
After they stopped for a picnic lunch alongside the road, Mr. Makepeace decided to ride in the carriage with Grace and her mother. Crispin declined to join them at first, but her father insisted.
“I enjoyed the ride, but my backside is sore already,” Homer admitted as he tied the mare to the rear of the brougham. “Which reminds me, Hawke, do you know why marriage portraits always show the man seated and his bride standing?”
“No, can’t say that I do,” Crispin said. Now that he thought about it, that was the preferred arrangement for such a portrait.
“It’s because the paintings are done after the honeymoon. The man’s too tired to stand and the woman’s too sore to sit!”
Homer laughed loudly at his own wit and Crispin joined him. If Mr. Makepeace launched into that story some night at the marquess’s dinner table it might make his lordship think twice about forming an alliance with an American bride and her earthy father.
“Come, lad,” Homer said. “Your leg and my backside could both use the rest.”
Ordinarily any reference to his impediment would grate Crispin’s soul, but Homer meant well. As Crispin climbed into the carriage after Mr. Makepeace, he felt mildly guilty. He had considered turning the dinner conversation in such a way that would lend itself to one of Grace’s father’s slightly racy jokes some night.
Now he decided against that course. He liked Homer Makepeace. He’d rather laugh with him than invite Polite Society to laugh at him.
Which would Grace rather do to me?
Her face was a closed book, unreadable as he took the seat opposite her. She hadn’t spoken directly to him during lunch. Hardly looked his way, in fact. Now she shouldn’t be able to help it since he was seated right in front of her. But she turned her head and looked studiously out over the knolls and gullies they plodded past.
Did she ever think of that night when she left her window open for him?
He’d dragged Wyckeham out a couple times in the dead of night on the off chance she’d left the sash up again, but it remained steadfastly closed.
He supposed he should have seen her when she called at his studio, but he was still smarting from her dismissal. Usually, his lovers begged him to stay longer. At his first mention of the marquess, she’d been quick to don her wrapper.
He’d meant it in jest. She took it in earnest. She was still set to wed a title.
A cynical man wouldn’t worry about it. He’d look on that night as a carnal adventure with a virgin from which they’d both emerged happily unscathed.
Except Crispin hadn’t.
In the heat of passion, when her fingers clutched at him and she moaned his name, something inside him was indelibly marked. She’d etched herself on his soul like a foundry brand on an iron bell.
How was it possible she felt no such reciprocal mark?
After a few minutes conversation, the elder Makepeaces were lulled by the rocking of the carriage into a light sleep.
Grace was looking down at her gloved hands, neatly folded on her lap now. Her dark lashes were curled on cheeks that were soft and smooth and made his mouth water to press a kiss on them.
A filmy fichu covered her bosom, not quite obscuring the swell of her breasts beneath it. They bounced a bit with the motion of the carriage.
With very little effort, he could see her in his mind’s eye, sitting there without a stitch.
Her tight-nippled breasts jiggle with the rhythm of the coach.
And her gloved hands—he decided he’d leave the gloves on her—would not quite hide the triangle of curling hair just a hand’s span south of her belly button.
She looks up, a sly gleam in her amber eyes, and holds a finger to her lips to signal they must be quiet so as not to wake her parents. Then she parts her knees and spreads herself with both hands. I kneel before her glistening folds.
Crispin shifted in his seat and stretched out his right leg to accommodate the tightening of his trousers. His ankle brushed past hers.
Her eyes flared open and shot to his face.
“Don’t stare,” she whispered. “It’s rude.”
“I crave your pardon. I’ve always been a little uncertain about what constitutes rudeness,” he whispered back.
At least she was talking to him. Not pleasantly, but he’d take it.
“You’ve never craved anyone’s pardon,” she hissed. “And don’t try to tell me you don’t know what’s rude. You know exactly what you’re doing.”
“Ah, but do you know what I’m doing?”
“Probably.” She glanced pointedly at the bulge at his groin. “One commendable thing about current male fashion is that a woman rarely has to wonder what a man is thinking.”
“Commendable, hmm. Glad you approve. Care to join me in my thoughts.”
“I fear I already have.” She flushed scarlet and clapped a hand to her mouth. “That didn’t come out right. I didn’t mean that I was thinking about . . . I meant that you’ve already been thinking about me joining you—I mean, well, . . . not joining precisely, but—”
He leaned forward and put a finger to her lips. “Is there any way you can see yourself climbing out of this conversational abyss with your dignity intact?”
She shook her head.
“Then let’s agree to change the subject.”
She nodded, but didn’t say anything.
He leaned back, satisfied just to look at her. The slight indentation of her temples, the long column of her neck, the stray wisps of hair curling around the dear little shells of her ears—
“You’re still staring,” she whispered after several minutes.
“Yes, but now I’m not . . . thinking.”
She covered her eyes with one hand for a moment and turned her lips inward, obviously biting back a retort. Then she sighed deeply and dropped her hand back to her lap.
“Very well, a new subject,” she said in a normal tone, signaling that whatever he had to reply had better be something her parents could
overhear. “Have you ever worked someplace other than in your studio?”
“Not since I finished my studies, no. But we’ll muddle through. I sent Wyckeham and Nate ahead of us yesterday with the necessary material and equipment.”
“I see. Mother and I did the same thing with Claudette and our baggage. She wanted all our things aired and ready to wear once we arrive.”
Claudette in the countryside. That’ll please Wyckeham.
Wyckeham had regaled Crispin with tales of the delicious Claudette as often as he’d allow.
Crispin glanced at Mrs. Makepeace, who was puffing softly in her sleep and listing badly toward the brougham’s padded armrest. “A sensible woman, your mother.”
“Unless she’s in an upset sleigh,” Grace whispered.
“What?”
She shook her head. “It’s nothing. Nevermind.”
“At any rate, we’ll have to start from scratch with your casting.”
“Why? You’d made such good progress.”
“What I’d done previously with the clay model wouldn’t have made the trip,” he explained. “But one or two solid days and we should have it, I think.”
Her lips curved in a quick smile. “Careful. Thinking can be dangerous.”
“Anything worthwhile usually is.”
She gave a slight nod and he thought he detected a glint of promise in her eyes.
What did it mean? Was she agreeing to continue their dalliance? What did that signal for her courtship with Lord Dorset?
Was a dalliance all Crispin wanted from her?
A frank talk should settle matters. If he only knew for certain what it was he wanted settled.
Mr. Makepeace snorted himself awake and nudged his wife with his toe. “I think we’re almost there, Minerva.”
The brougham stopped and their driver descended to open an iron gate built into a rock wall that stretched as far as Crispin could see in either direction. Then the driver remounted the equipage and they passed under an arch from which hung the Dorset crest. Their driver chirruped the team into a brisk trot down a tree-lined lane.