“What things were those?”
She kissed him again. “I want to say that I am in love with my earl, that he gives me much more than care and pleasure. That he moves my soul and awakens my heart and makes me smile. Won’t our friends find that amusing, Hawkeswell? I ran away from a marriage and fought to be free, and now I am grateful that you are stuck with me.”
He did not laugh. He did not even smile. He turned his body so he could look at her directly. She could see his surprise then.
“I am not good with these kinds of words, Verity. Not when it matters.”
“I expect not. However, you are eloquent with your actions, Hawkeswell. Offering Verity Thompson her life back was the most loving act that I can imagine. I want you to know that you are not a damned fool. You are all that I want, and I am proud to be your countess.”
He lifted her hand and held it to a long kiss, then moved the kiss to her mouth.
“I had accepted that I would love you in vain, Verity. That although you reconciled to the marriage, your heart would always be rebellious, and you would always regret your life not being the way you thought it was supposed to be. So you have made me the happiest of men with your words.”
He embraced her closely and they shared a special kiss, one poignant and heartfelt. She savored it, and felt a breeze of freedom blowing away the remnants of old hurts and resentments and questions in her heart.
She nestled in his arms, her head on his chest, in a sweet silence. It was, she decided, a timeless moment that she would make sure she remembered forever.
They may have stayed like that an hour or only a few minutes. She did not know. The intensity of the emotion did not lessen, but she accommodated it so she did not fear it disappearing if she moved.
“I suppose we will have to find someone to replace Bertram,” she said.
“I expect so.”
“Mr. Travis could do most of it, I am sure. Contract the work and such.”
“He would not have time to work the lathes, then. He could not machine the bits.”
The topic drifted away into the night. She let it go. Another day it could be found again.
“I’m told that a young man named Michael Bowman has the skill for replacing Travis in machining those bits, if we decide we trust him with that secret,” he said. “Perhaps he could take over some of Travis’s duties, and Travis could do most of Bertram’s. If there are major decisions, he can leave them to us.”
“It is one solution.”
“A solution that you favor, I think.”
“It would mean visiting Oldbury at least several times a year, to see how things are going there.”
“I do not think that would be too inconvenient.”
She tightened her embrace. Love flowed until her heart ached. He was giving her back her home yet again. She would be a steward of her father’s legacy, the way it had been intended.
She had not realized that once it took root, love could grow and propagate, even after you thought it already filled you. But it did now, as they sat in front of the fire. She felt her love deepening and branching then and there, and it moved her profoundly.
“Hawkeswell, do you think the servants are well gone, above and below?”
“I expect so. Why do you ask?”
“I thought it would be better if they are, if I have wicked things in mind.”
He laughed. “Please tell me that you do.”
“Oh, yes, my love. I have spent hours in dreams about all the wicked things we do. Things I could never imagine wanting with any other man.” She knelt on the sofa and kissed him aggressively, and let her fantasies have their way.
He lifted her skirt high and she climbed on his lap, facing him. “This is perfect,” she said. “It is just as I pictured in one dream. Only I woke up before—well, before I wanted to.” She parted her shawl and worked the buttons of her pelisse dress. “Isn’t it convenient that this dress opens in the front?”
“Even more convenient that you have nothing on beneath it. It is no wonder that I love you. You were plotting this from when you woke.”
“I was hopeful.” She parted the dress as much as she could, so her breasts were exposed to his gaze. “Touch me. Touch me the way I dreamed. Touch me and tell me that you love me, and I will tell you too. We will say it again and again today and forever, because love makes the pleasure so joyful and perfect.”
“I love you, Verity. You make me joyful because you are perfect.”
He told her he loved her again while his palms caressed her breasts and thighs. He told her again between deep kisses full of need and barely restrained fury. He told her right after he entered her, while relief and contentment drenched her and desire began its wonderful climb to freedom and madness.
She wrapped her arms around his neck. He grasped her hips and moved in her. Sensations intensified, and within them tiny shivers foreshadowed the ecstasy to come.
“This is so exquisite,” she muttered into the crook of his neck between muffled cries. “You fill all of me, in every possible way. My senses and my heart and my body. You fill me completely, Hawkeswell.”
She knew, as their fevered pleasure swept them away and their joy merged and the knowing deepened, she knew that this was how it was supposed to be.
Coming soon from New York Times bestselling author
MADELINE HUNTER
Celia comes into her own and discovers what it is like to be . . .
Sinful in Satin
Look for it in Fall 2010
Dangerous in Diamonds
There is only one man who could shake Daphne’s composure.
Look for it in Spring 2011
The final two books in her ravishing quartet.
And don’t miss the first novel in
Madeline Hunter’s stunning quartet.
Read on for an excerpt from Audrianna’s story . . .
Ravishing in Red
Now available from Jove Books
Chapter One
An independent woman is a woman unprotected. AudriAnna had never understood her cousin Daphne’s first lesson to her as well as she did today.
An independent woman was also a woman of dubious respectability.
Her entry into the Two Swords Coaching Inn outside Brighton garnered more attention than any proper young woman would like. Eyes examined her from head to toe. Several men watched her solitary path across the public room with bold interest, the likes of which she had never been subjected to before.
The assumptions implied by all those stares darkened her mood even more. She had embarked on this journey full of righteous determination. The shining sun and unseasonably mild temperature for late January seemed designed by Providence to favor her great mission.
Providence had proven fickle. An hour out of London the wind, rain, and increasing cold had begun, making her deeply regret taking a seat on the coach’s roof. Now she was drenched from hours of frigid rain, and more than a little vexed.
She gathered her poise and sought out the innkeeper. She asked for a chamber for the night. He eyed her long and hard, then looked around for the man who had lost her.
“Is your husband dealing with the stable?”
“No. I am alone.”
The white, crepe skin of his aging face creased into a scowl. His mouth pursed in five different ways while he examined her again.
“I’ve a small chamber that you can have, but it overlooks the stable yard.” His reluctant tone made it clear that he accommodated her against his better judgment.
An independent woman also gets the worst room at the inn, it seemed. “It will do, if it is dry and warm.”
“Come with me, then.”
He brought her to a room at the back of the second level. He built up the fire a little, but not much. She noted that there was not enough fuel to make it much warmer and also last through the night.
“I’ll be needing the first night’s fee in advance.”
Audrianna swallowed her sense
of insult. She dug into her reticule for three shillings. It would more than cover the chamber for one night, but she pressed it all into the man’s hand.
“If someone arrives asking questions about Mr. Kelmsley, send that person up here but say nothing of my presence or anything else about me.”
Her request made him frown more, but the coins in his hand kept him mute. He left with the shillings and she assumed she had struck a bargain. She only hoped that the fruits of this mission would be worth the cost to her reputation.
She noted the money left in her reticule. By morning she expected most of it to be spent. She would only be gone from London two days, but this journey would deplete the savings that she had accumulated from all those music lessons. She would endure months of clumsy scales and whining girls to replace it.
She plucked a scrap of paper from her reticule. She held the paper to the light of the fire even though she knew its words by heart. The domino requests that Mr. Kelmsley meet him at the two swords in Brighton two nights hence, to discuss a matter of mutual benefit.
It had been sheer luck that she even knew this advertisement had been placed in The Times. If her friend Lizzie did not comb through all such notices, in every paper and scandal sheet available, it might have escaped Audrianna’s attention.
The surname was not spelled correctly, but she was sure the Mr. Kelmsley mentioned here was her father, Horatio Kelmsleigh. Clearly, whoever wanted to meet him did not know he was dead.
Images of her father invaded her mind. Her heart thickened and her eyes burned the way they always did whenever the memories overwhelmed her.
She saw him playing with her in the garden, and taking the blame when Mama scolded about her dirty shoes. She called up a distant, hazy memory of him, probably her oldest one. He was in his army uniform, so it was from before he sold his commission when Sarah was born, and took a position in the office of the Board of Ordnance, which oversaw the production of munitions during the war.
Mostly, however, she kept seeing his sad, troubled face during those last months, when he became the object of so much scorn.
She tucked the notice away. It had reminded her why she was here. Nothing else, not the rain or the stares or the rudeness, really mattered. Hopefully she was right in thinking this Domino possessed information that would have helped Papa clear his name.
She removed her blue mantle and the gray pelisse underneath and hung them on wall pegs to dry. She took off her bonnet and shook off the rain. Then she moved the chamber’s one lamp to a table beside the door, and the one wooden chair to the shadows in the facing corner, beyond the hearth. If she sat there, she would immediately be able to see whoever entered, but that person would not see her very well at all at first.
She set her valise on the chair and opened it. The rest of Daphne’s first lesson recited in her mind. An independent woman is a woman unprotected, so she must learn to protect herself.
Reaching in, she removed the pistol that she had buried beneath her spare garments.
Lord Sebastian Summerhays handed his mount to a drenched stable boy. The lad got in the long line waiting attendance by the grooms of the Two Swords.
Sebastian entered the inn’s public room. A cross section of humanity huddled there beneath its open-beamed ceiling. The rain had forced riders to take refuge, and coaches had been delayed. Women and children filled most of the chairs and benches, and men arrayed themselves around the perimeter, taking turns near the fire to dry off.
That was where Sebastian stationed himself while the worst of the weather dripped off his riding coat. The odor of damp wool and unwashed bodies filled the air. A few servants did their best to salvage some silk hats and crepe bonnets, while others served expensive, unappetizing food. Sebastian cast a practiced eye on the sea of faces, looking for one that appeared suspicious, foreign, or at least as curious as himself.
The advertisement’s use of a code name both annoyed and intrigued him. It would make this mission more difficult, but it also implied that secrets were involved. The notice itself, addressed to Kelmsley, indicated the writer did not know the man had been dead almost a year now.
That in turn suggested the Domino was not from London, or perhaps not even from England. Since the name was not spelled correctly, Sebastian trusted that the Domino was not a good friend or close associate of Horatio Kelmsleigh. Hopefully, the Domino did not even know what Kelmsleigh looked like.
Kelmsleigh’s suicide had been unfortunate on many counts, one of which was the way it offered too easy an explanation for a mystery that Sebastian was sure had many more facets. Tonight he hoped to learn if he was correct.
“What ho, Summerhays. I did not expect to find you taking refuge along with me in this sorry way station.”
The greeting near Sebastian’s ear jerked him out of his search of the room. Grayson, Earl of Hawkeswell, beamed alongside him with a near empty tumbler of hot wine in hand. A smile of delight stretched beneath his blue eyes and artfully clipped black hair.
“A cloudburst caught me five miles back,” Sebastian said. Hawkeswell was an old friend, and had been a close companion in his wilder days. Sebastian would normally be delighted to have his company to pass what promised to be a miserable night, but the reason for being here made Hawkeswell an inconvenient discovery. “Are you on your way up to London, or coming down?”
“I am returning. I met with an estate agent in Brighton this morning.”
“You are selling the property, then?”
“I have no choice.”
Sebastian communicated his sympathy. Hawkeswell’s finances had been bad since he inherited the title, and most of the unentailed property was gone. An attempt to rectify the problem through marriage had gone sadly awry when his wealthy bride went missing on her wedding day.
Hawkeswell looked around their environs. “No baggage? I trust you did not leave it on your horse. Anything of value will be stolen by morning.”
Sebastian laughed lightly, and noncommittally. He had no baggage because he planned to be riding back to London tonight, and the weather and dark be damned.
“Do you have a chamber above? Is your baggage there? I asked for one, but the innkeeper has hired them all out, he says. Even my title did me no good. But if you have one, we can go smoke and drink and escape the stench down here.”
“I do not have a chamber, I am sorry.”
Hawkeswell’s eyebrows rose above knowing eyes. “Not taking shelter at all, are you? And not heading for Brighton either, I’ll wager. You are here to meet a woman. No, do not say a word. I understand the need for your elaborate dodges these days. All but the marquess now, aren’t you? Can’t be lifting skirts wherever and whenever anymore.” He put his finger to his lips, mocking the need for discretion.
It was as good an explanation as any, so Sebastian let it stand. He remained friendly and attentive while he completed his scrutiny of all those faces. None struck him as more apt to be the Domino than any other.
Hawkeswell appeared likely to hang on all night. Sebastian needed to shake him, and decided Hawkeswell’s own theory would have to do.
“You will have to excuse me. I need to speak to the innkeeper about the person I came here to meet.”
He made good his escape. He found the proprietor dispensing ale to a wiry fellow with a low-brimmed brown hat.
“Was there anyone here asking about Mr. Kelmsley, or inviting inquiries about that name?”
The innkeeper peered at him, then went back to taking his customer’s money. “Above, in the back, last door. The guest there would be the one you want, and I’ll not be wanting to know why.”
Sebastian aimed for the stairs. He wished Hawkeswell had been correct. Waiting out the weather on a feather bed, dry and cozy with some feminine warmth in his arms, would be a pleasant recompense for the miserable ride down here and the one waiting at mission’s end. Instead he was stuck with duty and obligation, and a long conversation with someone known as the Domino.
Audri
anna huddled beneath her shawl in the shadows. The low fire could not fight the damp chill in this chamber. That was not the only reason she shivered, however.
Her vigil was depleting the renewed resolve that she had summoned by reading that notice again. She had begun to see this plan from a different perspective, that of her entire life up until the last seven months.
From that viewpoint, her behavior today was utterly mad and inexcusably reckless.
Mama would certainly say so. Papa would have agreed. Roger would be appalled if he knew too. Proper young ladies did not ride alone on public coaches to public inns, and wait in dark chambers for unknown men to join them.
This expedition had begun to feel like a bizarre dream. She forced her nerves under control and demanded that her mind regain some of its determination.
She was here because no one else would be. The world had buried her father’s good name with his body. His death had been proof enough that he was guilty of the accusations against him. Everyone assumed that remorse, not deep melancholy, had caused him to kill himself.
The whole family still wore his shame. Mama mourned the loss of friends even while she valiantly defended his memory. Even Uncle Rupert had ceased to write when the scandal broke, in an attempt to wash himself of stain by association. And Roger—well, his undying love could not surmount the scandal either.
She tried to maintain a semblance of indifference about that, but deep sorrow squeezed her heart at the thought of Roger. Eventually that would no longer happen, she trusted. At least she could take some small comfort in the knowledge that she would never be so disillusioned again. With the bad turn life had taken, no other man would ever propose.
She had told her mother that she would live with her cousin Daphne in order to mitigate the financial burdens caused by Papa’s death, when the family was reduced to the income from Mama’s small trust. In truth she had wanted to escape an old life stuck in the doldrums, and build a new one where she would find contentment within her changed expectations.
Provocative in Pearls Page 28