She pressed her hand over his heart, loving the slow tattoo beneath her palm. “Do you promise?”
Ah, that smile. The Viking smile that assured her, yes, he promised. He promised to love her thoroughly and often, to make all the waiting worth the wonder to follow.
“I have married a goddess,” he said, scooping her into his arms and striding into the bedroom. “May I be worthy of that honor.”
Oh, to be plundered by a god who knew how to wield his hammer. Tyne gently set Lucy on the bed, stepped out of his breeches, and settled over her without once taking his gaze from her.
She wiggled beneath him, wrapping her legs around him. “My shift?”
“Is the only thing holding my dignity together,” Tyne replied, kissing down the side of Lucy’s face, from her temple, to her cheek, to her neck. “Though that won’t last long. I’ll make it up to you, Lucy. For the next three decades, I’ll make it up to you if you’ll excuse my haste on our wedding day.”
She did not excuse his haste. She abetted it, with slow caresses and long kisses, with wandering hands and well-aimed shifts of her hips. When Tyne had eased inside of her, and Lucy was nearly weeping with frustrated desire, he stilled.
“I have dreamed…” he whispered. “I have longed for this moment with you.”
“For all the moments,” Lucy replied. “To hold you as physically close as I hold your love in my heart.” He’d been right to have the banns cried, right to give her weeks to anticipate this joy, but she’d have to tell him that later, for he’d begun to move.
His loving was relentlessly controlled, his tempo escalating by maddeningly deliberate degrees, no matter how Lucy urged him on. She surrendered to his superior command of strategy—for now—and nigh unbearable pleasure was her reward. When she was drifting down from torrents of marital bliss, Tyne let go of his ferocious self-restraint, and the pleasure cascaded through her again.
They were both panting when he eventually stilled over her. The covers had been kicked halfway off the bed, and Lucy’s shift was hanging from one corner of the cheval mirror.
Ye gods, ye Norse, Greek, and Roman gods and goddesses.
“I like that,” Tyne said as Lucy’s hand smoothed over his backside. “I think you left claw marks there.”
How smug he sounded. “Don’t gloat.” Lucy pinched him in the same location, and he laughed. “What a wonderful sound,” she said. “My lover’s laughter.”
He eased from her and crouched on all fours, passing her a handkerchief from the night table. When had he thought to put that there?
“You’ll need sustenance now,” he said, climbing from the bed and strutting into the sitting room. “I’ll need sustenance. I am her ladyship’s devoted lover.”
He was also—yet another surprise—unselfconscious about his nakedness. What a delightful quality in a husband and lover.
The smile he wore as he brought Lucy the tray from the other room was frequently in evidence in the ensuing weeks, months, and years, the smile of a happy, much-loved Viking. He wore an even more tender smile when—forty weeks to the day after the wedding—she presented him with little Thor.
And little Freya.
And all the rest of the Tyne pantheon who came after the twins. The first time Sylvie was permitted to hold her baby siblings, she declared them even better than a blue unicorn, in which opinion, even her sister (who had begun to put up her hair) concurred.
Greetings, Dear Reader!
I hope you enjoyed Tyne and Lucy’s tale of moonlit kisses and plans gone awry. There’s just something about a guy with a sledgehammer, isn’t there? In my next novella collection, No Dukes Allowed (May 2018), our hero isn’t packing big tools, and neither does he have a title. How architect Alexander Morecambe thinks he’s going to win the hand of Eugenia, Dowager Duchess of Tinsdale, I do not know. (Excerpt below—might contain a few hints.)
If you’re in the mood for a full length romance, my fourth Windham Bride, A Rogue of Her Own, just came out in March. Charlotte Windham has met her match in Lucas Sherbourne—but has she met the love of her life? If you haven’t read this one, the ordering links are here.
I’m also working on another True Gentlemen, My Own True Duchess, which will come out in June. This is the story of Jonathan Tresham, a charm-deficient ducal heir, who gets tangled up with Theodosia Haviland, a widow with little tolerance for self-important aristocrats. She needs a goodly sum of money, though, and Jonathan needs to outwit the matchmakers, before they choose the wrong duchess for him. Necessity is the mother of happily ever afters? Excerpt below.
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Happy reading!
Grace Burrowes
From Architect of My Dreams by Grace Burrowes in
No Dukes Allowed
* * *
Adam Morecambe has good reasons for keeping his distance for titled society, and yet, when it comes to Eugenia, Dowager Duchess of Tindale, distance is the last thing on Adam’s mind. He’s an architect, and even though he knows better, when it comes to Genie, he’s building a castle in the air…. So why is she lowering the drawbridge, just for him…?
A sharp rap on the parlor door startled Adam from dreams of carved wooden flowers and freckled geese. His boots dropped to the floor, nearly clobbering an indignant marmalade cat.
“Where did you come from?”
The cat squinted, and the knock sounded again, more firmly.
“Come in.”
The Duchess of Tindale presented herself, looking as feminine and pleasing as she had in Adam’s dreams, but wearing a good deal more clothing. He rose from behind the desk, holding his unfinished sketch in a manner that hid the evidence of his wayward imagination.
“Mr. Morecambe.” She popped a brisk curtsey. “I’m looking in on you, as a hostess ought to. Do you have all you need to make your sketches?”
“I apparently needed a nap,” he said. “That is a diabolically comfortable chair.” He shrugged into his coat as casually as he could, though Her Grace had been married. A man in dishabille would hardly shock her.
“I have remarked the same on the occasion of tending to my ledgers,” she said. “The combination of accounting and that chair induces sleep even first thing in the morning. I’ve sent off a note to Petworth House.”
Petworth was the finest collection of interior woodcarving in all of England, possibly in all the world.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I hope Friday suits your schedule. Godmama’s gardener vows the weather will hold fair for the rest of the week. We can make a picnic of the outing.”
She was inviting him on a tour of Petworth. Also a picnic.
With her.
On the occasion of Adam’s first encounter with the duchess, he’d swept her into his arms to spare her a soaking. The contact had startled him. He’d not held a woman closely for ages, hadn’t wanted to. His every spare moment and thought went to building his business, and he liked it that way. Her Grace had tolerated the embrace for exactly two instants before she’d righted herself and shaken her skirts, but they had been lovely instants.
She was sturdy, lively, and friendly. None of which explained why Adam wanted to kiss her.
“I trust Lord and Lady Egremont will not be in residence?” he asked.
“Off to Paris. We’ll have the place to ourselves.”
To themselves and an army of servants. “Friday, you say?” Adam mentally rearranged lunch with friends as well as four other appointments to see properties for sale.
“Have you a conveyance? We can take my traveling carriage or the landau if the weather’s fine.”
“I’ll drive,” Adam said, lest he find himself plodding through the countryside, when the t
ime could be better spent marveling at the wonders of Petworth. “Shall we leave around eight in the morning?”
“Earlier,” she replied, tidying his sketches and handing them to him. “We have the long hours of daylight, we might as well use them. Leave the picnic basket to me, and plan on a lovely day.”
“The crack of dawn then,” he said, bowing over her hand as best he could with his sketches tucked under his arm. “I’ll look forward to it.”
The prospect of a day bouncing along the lanes of Sussex had her beaming at him, and her pleasure turned an unremarkable countenance luminous. Her eyes lit with such benevolence, that Adam held onto her hand longer than was strictly proper. She had a subtle beauty, not the boring, cameo-perfect appearance of her friend, but a personal loveliness that would make the hours until Friday morning long.
And busy. She saw Adam to the front door, where no servant sat in attendance collecting gossip and spying on the walkway.
“Do you know,” Adam said, “I do believe you are my favorite duchess in the entire world.”
“How many duchesses do you know, Mr. Morecambe?”
“Two.” Not strictly true. As a youth, he’d once been introduced to the Duchess of Seymouth, who’d regarded him as so much dung clinging to her slipper.
“You are my favorite architect.”
“How many do you know?”
She went up on her toes and brushed a kiss to his cheek. “One, and I am looking forward to getting to know him better.”
Adam tapped his hat onto his head, accepted his walking stick from her, and left the house without even taking the time to examine the fine Palladian window above the lintel.
* * *
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Read on for an excerpt from
My Own True Duchess
* * *
Mr. Jonathan Tresham, heir to a dukedom, has sought the privacy of an unused parlor to negotiate with Mrs. Theodosia Haviland for certain personal services. The negotiations are off to a bumpy start…
“I don’t want a perishing duchess!”
Mr. Tresham had raised his voice, though he was insisting rather than shouting. Theodosia was pleased with his reaction nonetheless. He’d managed the situation with Bea, managed Diana’s obstinance in the park, and managed any number of presuming debutantes. Theo was cheered to think Mr. Tresham had found a situation he could not confidently handle on his own.
“What do you want? You are to become a duke, God willing. Dukes are married to duchesses.”
“Might we sit? I’ll spend the rest of the evening enduring bosoms pressed to my person while I prance around the ballroom with a simpering, sighing, young woman in my arms. My feet ache at the very prospect.”
Theo began to enjoy herself. “Poor dear. You must have nightmares about all those bosoms.”
He smiled, a rueful quirk of the lips that transformed his features from severe to… charming? Surely not.
Theo took a seat and patted the cushion beside her. “Speak plainly, Mr. Tresham. The bosoms await.”
He took the place beside her. “Plain speaking has ever been my preference. I left England after finishing at Cambridge, and went abroad to make my fortune. In that endeavor, I was successful, but the whole time I ought to have been taking a place among polite society, making the right associations, being a dutiful heir, I was instead making money on the Continent.”
Without any partners, he’d said. “Why Cambridge? You would have met more young men from the right families at Oxford.”
Theo really ought to scoot a good foot to the side. She’d taken a place in the middle of the sofa, and Mr. Tresham was thus wedged between her and the armrest. There was room, if they sat improperly close.
He was warm, however, and he wasn’t shy about discussing money. Theo stayed right where she was.
“Cambridge offers a better education in the practical sciences and mathematics. I am something of an amateur mathematician, which skill is helpful when managing a fortune.” He gazed at the fire, his expression once again the remote, handsome scion of a noble house.
Theo had the daft urge to tickle him, to make that charming smile reappear. He’d doubtless offer her a stiff bow and never acknowledge her again if she took liberties with his person.
“You offered me plain speaking, Mr. Tresham, yet you dissemble. No ducal heir needs more than a passing grasp of mathematics.”
He opened a snuff box on the low table before them. Taking snuff was a dirty habit, one Theo had forbid Archie to indulge in at home.
“Would you care for a mint?” Mr. Tresham held the snuff box out to her.
Theo took two. “Tell me about Cambridge.”
He popped a mint into his mouth and set down the snuffbox. “My father went to Oxford. He earned top marks in wenching, inebriation, stupid wagers, and scandal. I chose not to put myself in a situation where his reputation would precede me.”
Most young men viewed those pursuits as the primary reasons to go up to university. “I gather he was something of a prodigy in the subjects listed?”
“Top wrangler. So I became a top wrangler at Cambridge.”
Ah, well then. “And you’ve taken no partners in your business endeavors. Can’t your aunt assist you in this bride hunt, Mr. Tresham?”
“Quimbey’s wife doesn’t know me, and she’s too busy being a bride herself. She and Quimbey are…” He fiddled with the snuffbox again, opening and closing the lid. “Besotted, I suppose. At their ages.”
Mr. Tresham did not approve of besottedness at any age, and Theo had to agree with him. Nothing but trouble came from entrusting a heart into the keeping of another.
“They are off on a wedding journey of indefinite duration,” Mr. Tresham went on. “They are reminding me that soon, Quimbey will not be on hand in any sense. He’s an old man by any standards, and I have put off marriage long enough.”
Theo patted his arm. “They are also leaving you a clear field to make your own choices, which seems to be a priority with you.”
He crossed his legs, a posture far more common on the Continent. “Possibly. They also asked me to move into the ducal townhouse during their absence, supposedly to keep an eye on the staff and the damned dogs. Pardon my language.”
“And you capitulated because of the dogs.”
He crunched his mint into oblivion. “A pair of great, drooling, shedding, barking, pests. Caesar and Comus. You’ve met Comus, Caesar is larger and more dignified.”
“You want me to help you find a bride?”
“Precisely. I haven’t womenfolk I can turn to for first-hand information, haven’t friends from school who will warn me off the bad investments. In this search, I need a knowledgeable consultant, and I am willing to pay for the needed expertise.”
A consultant, but not a partner, of course. “Why should I do this? Why exert myself on behalf of a man I don’t know well. I could end up with another woman’s eternal misery on my conscience.”
Another smile, this one downright devilish. “Would you rather have my eternal misery on your conscience?”
Well, no. Mr. Tresham was little more than a stranger, but he’d been kind to Diana, he was dutiful toward his elderly relations, and he’d make a woman of delicate sensibilities wretched.
“How would my matchmaking to be compensated?”
“Your role has two aspects: Matchmaker and chaperone. I will accept only those invitations where I know you have also been invited. You will simply do as you did with Dora Louise’s ambush in the library—guard my back. You will also keep me informed regarding the army of aspiring duchesses unleashed on my person every time I enter a ballroom.”
Theo got up to pace rather than remain next to him. “And my compensation?” Five years ago, she would have aided Mr. Tresham out of simple decency. Archie’s death meant she instead had to ask about money—vulgar, necessary money—and pretend the question was casual.
“I could hire any number of men to serve as discreet
bodyguards,” Mr. Tresham said. “You will be more effective for being unexpected, and for knowing my pursuers. I’m not buying merely your eyes and ears, though, Mrs. Haviland. Please be very clear that I am also buying your loyalty.”
“My loyalty comes very dear.” In some ways, loyalty was a more intimate gift than the erotic privileges a courtesan granted to her customers.
Mr. Tresham rose. Manners required that of him, because Theo was on her feet, but must he be so tall and self-possessed standing in the shadows? Must he be so blasted, everlasting attractive?
“Name your price, Mrs. Haviland.”
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Marquesses at the Masquerade Page 37