Helen Dickson

by When Marrying a Duke. . .

  Lady Wingrove’s eyebrows crept steadily up her forehead, clearly scandalised by this revelation. ‘Really? Gracious me! Then since you don’t need any advice from me, we will leave directly.’

  Marietta smiled when she had gone. Advice was a strange word to ascribe to the consummation of love between a man and a woman on their wedding night.

  * * *

  The open carriage that was to take her and Lord Russell to Arden Hall was festooned with flowers and ribbons and drawn by a pair of greys, which were considered indispensable, for it was usual to have grey horses. The fact was that because of the importance of the occasion—since it wasn’t every day a duke married a commoner, despite the bride being an heiress and Lady Wingrove on intimate terms with certain members of the royal family—a smart pair of greys attracted a desirable crowd along the way. As if to prove the point, the road was well lined with crowds of people waiting for a glimpse of the bride.

  When they arrived at the chapel, which was a part of the great house, servants from Grafton and Arden Hall, farm labourers, the tenant farmers and so many people from the surrounding villages were milling about outside, wide-eyed at the bridal vision about to become the Duchess of Arden. Everyone agreed she was the most beautiful bride any of them had ever seen. Her eyes shone and her cheeks were flushed with rose.

  The inside of the chapel was reserved for the gentry. It was small and perfectly proportioned. A gallery ran around the top and the ceiling was domed and beautifully painted with saints, angels and cherubs.

  Yang Ling fussed around her, arranging her train and adjusting the tiara on her head before drawing the translucent veil over her face and handing her a bouquet of gardenias. Lady Wingrove awaited her arrival inside the chapel misty eyed. Marietta knew beyond any doubt that the emotion she saw in her grandmother’s eyes was love—love and a profound and terrible regret that she had missed out on her own daughter’s wedding.

  Marietta took Lord Russell’s arm with her free hand and, to the sound of music from the small choir, she entered through the carved doors flanked by two pillars and climbed the four steps into the sanctified building, the pool of cream satin drawn behind her. Slowly she walked down the short aisle to where Max was waiting at the altar. Dressed in an immaculate dark-grey frockcoat and a light-grey waistcoat, he made the most handsome groom. As she reached his side, he looked through her veil deep into her eyes and smiled. His hand closed over hers and he leaned towards her.

  ‘You look absolutely lovely, my darling,’ he murmured. Sensing her nervousness, he said, ‘It’s all right. From now on I am here to cherish you. Be assured that I will always take care of you, Marietta.’

  And love. The unbidden word came into Marietta’s head. What about love? Would he ever be able to love her as much as he had loved Nadine—and more?

  Then the minister began intoning the words that would bind her to Max for ever and she heard him repeat them in that rich, deep voice she loved. Then she felt the coldness of the gold ring on her finger as Max slid it gently over her knuckle. He held her hand tightly as she made her own low responses with great clarity. Finding the moment one of such emotion, that it was all a dream, she was unable to stop her voice from quavering. Max was watching her and suddenly she found it difficult to breathe. Even as she uttered the solemn words to love, honour and obey this man she was giving herself to, a small part of her remained detached, wondering which words she’d use if asked to describe the way she felt that was making her lungs constrict.

  And then the minister pronounced them man and wife in the eyes of God and the assembled company. Max lifted the veil from her face to kiss her lips as a seal of the marriage. His mouth was soft and gentle on hers as befitted the occasion. The time for passion would come later.

  At the back of the chapel, Yang Ling wept with happiness, for she was certain her young mistress could not be in better hands. The register was signed and, placing her hand on Max’s arm, Marietta and her husband left the chapel. She stole a glance at him and, immaculately attired in his wedding finery, Max Trevellyan was the stuff that dreams were made of. She marvelled at the strength and pride carved into every feature on that starkly handsome face. With that lazy, intimate smile of his and those silver-grey, penetrating eyes, she thought he must have been making female hearts flutter all over the world for years, and they must have found him as completely irresistible as she did.

  * * *

  The wedding breakfast was held at Grafton le Willows, an extravagant and splendid affair presided over by Lady Wingrove and crowded with friends and acquaintances, all of them telling one another as they drank champagne that Max was a lucky man in his choice of wife. Max kept Marietta close by his side, and Marietta was so very aware of him, watching her, admiring her, even if he didn’t yet truly love her.

  Congratulations were offered and glasses raised to toast the happy couple and soon they were leaving to return to Arden to begin married life and shortly to leave for their honeymoon in Paris.

  * * *

  The bedroom, she had been told considerately and diplomatically by Max, had been his mother’s room and had not been slept in since her death and therefore had not been shared by himself and Nadine. It was a beautiful room, light and airy and tastefully furnished with glowing satinwood and velvet chairs and a sofa drawn up to the fireplace, the overall colours pastel shades of green and soft beige. The bed was an enormous tester draped in green damask.

  But it was not the elegance of the room that Marietta—Lady Trevellyan, the Duchess of Arden now—was concerned with as her new husband emerged from the dressing room and crossed to stand beside the bed they were to share—the bridal bed. He wore a long, rich, brocade robe tied about his lean hips with a loosely knotted sash. His hair was neatly brushed and his eyes were as dark a grey as the evening sky just before night falls.

  Marietta was sitting up in bed in a modest nightgown. It was plain and sensible and covered her beneath the bedclothes from her neck to her toes, but there the severity ended. Yang Ling had removed the pins from her hair and brushed it until it snapped and the red-brown tresses curled about the bristles. Now it lay like a lion’s mane about her shoulders, a living, shining brilliance, transforming her into a breathtaking picture Max could not quite believe.

  She was watching him warily, her eyes deep, apprehensive pools of dark green. She was pale, her hands folded tightly on the top of the covers, her lips clamped together to stop them from trembling.

  ‘You look like the girl I met in Hong Kong in that nightgown.’ Max smiled, his eyes shadowed with some emotion. ‘And your hair is magnificent.’ Moving closer to the bed, he saw the fear and confusion in her eyes when she gazed at him. Sitting on the bed beside her, he gently enfolded her in his arms, trying to ignore the incredible feel of her soft body crushed against his robe. He wanted to kiss her, but, sensing her tension, he just held her and stroked her lustrous hair. Eventually her tension eased and she kept very still, her breathing light and rapid.

  ‘As we are now man and wife, Marietta, would you object if I kissed you?’ he ventured softly, aware of her innocent sensibilities and knowing that if he charged ahead and started to make love to her he would never have her confidence and trust again.

  She leaned back a little and looked up at him, her face so lovely and vulnerable that Max’s heart wrenched at the thought of hurting her—for there would be a moment when he would, but he hoped it would be fleeting and forgotten in the aftermath of the lovemaking.

  ‘I have no objections,’ she said.

  ‘And you would have no objections if I get into bed beside you?’

  ‘No, in fact I would be terribly upset if you didn’t. I don’t want to spend our wedding night lying all alone in this great bed.’

  Turning to face her, Max brushed her hair back and placed his hands on her shoulders. He laid his lips on the pulse which beat frantically beneath the curve of her jaw, then let his mouth drift to her cheek. He could feel her tension, but something told him
it was not the strain of rejection but a wondering, a curiosity, a wanting to move on and make some sense of what she was feeling.

  He kissed her neck, then with unhurried fingers untied the ribbons at her throat and breast and tenderly eased the gown aside, relieved that she didn’t try to stop him. Her ivory shoulders and full, rosy-topped breasts gleamed in the light from the lamps.

  ‘My God, you are so beautiful,’ he breathed, and felt her body quiver when his hands slid down her arms.

  He took her soft lips in a long, sweet kiss, then, releasing her, he divested himself of his robe and swept the satin coverlet back and slipped his naked body into the bed beside her. Relieving her of her nightgown, so that she wouldn’t be overly conscious of their nakedness and the jaunty size of his erection, he drew the sheet over them and gathered her close. When their bodies came into contact a small gasp escaped her lips and he felt her hesitate.

  Burying his fingers in her hair, he stared for a long, long moment into her eyes. ‘What is about to happen between us is nothing to be afraid of, Marietta. It will be an act of giving and taking for us both. Initially you will feel pain, but it will be brief. I will be as gentle as I can be. Do you understand what is to happen?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, and I do not fear it, Max.’

  Tilting her face up to his, she offered him her lips. Very slowly he began to kiss her, long and lingeringly, with all the aching tenderness in his heart and she, after a few moments of tense passivity, began to kiss him back. Her soft lips parted with only the slightest urging from his probing tongue. Her slender arms went around his neck and she pressed herself to the full length of his hard, unyielding contours. Max groaned, his mouth opening passionately over hers, and when he shifted her on to her back and leaned over her, what Marietta was feeling was drugging, delirious and quite wonderful.

  She looked up at him, her eyes enormous and unblinking in her small flushed face, and her mouth was rosy, as though waiting for further instructions on how to proceed, as if she wanted to take a more active part in this pleasant pastime, but was not sure how to go about it. Tentatively she moved her fingers over the furring of dark hair on his chest and felt the slight increase in the steady thudding of his heart, the rippling of his powerful chest muscles when she slid her hand a little lower.

  Max felt it as a flame racing uncontrollably through his veins. Careful not to unnerve her, with gentle, skilful hands he slowly caressed her slender form, her waist and belly, and he could feel her flesh ripple in the aftermath of his warm, strong hand. Her back arched like that of a cat in a shaft of bright sunshine, lifting itself to meet his touch, and when his hand very gently cupped her breast she gasped and her nipple hardened against his palm. He lifted his head and she looked up at him with drowning, feverishly bright eyes.

  ‘What is it?’ he murmured. ‘Would you like me to stop?’

  ‘Oh, no... Please don’t stop...’

  And he didn’t—in fact, he doubted very much that he would be able to if he tried, for her arms had crept around his neck once more and she was pulling him down on to her.

  ‘Tell me what you feel, Marietta,’ he murmured, since he believed that humans should give and take love with words as well as actions. ‘Does what I am doing please you?’

  ‘Yes—yes, it does, Max. I really had no idea I could feel like this.’

  ‘I’m glad, but there is more, much more, my love.’

  It was as though these two words unlocked Marietta’s heart and all the love she was capable of feeling for this man came pouring out of her. My love, he had called her and she wanted to be nothing else. She could sense the need in him, the need he had of her and her body, and she gloried in it, and when his fingers reached that part of her that was totally private she could hear herself begin to moan in the back of her throat. The sensations were utterly exquisite, burning her flesh to a compelling, melting, quivering need, to go on until the very core of her ignited and inflamed every part of her body.

  Leaning on his forearms, Max gazed down at her lovely face. ‘I want you,’ he whispered against her parted lips, his voice hoarse with tenderness. ‘I want you so very badly, Marietta. I ache for you.’

  Suddenly there was pain as his hard shaft pushed its way quickly inside her, breaking through her barrier, and she gasped and bit her lip, then the pain was gone, leaving only pleasure. A fierce exhilaration swept through her, filling every vein with liquid fire. She wrapped her arms around him, lost in incoherent yearnings. With his lips devouring hers, more eloquent, more demanding than before, he moved inside her. Some essential part of her Marietta had not been aware of until now awoke and she ceased to think at all. She felt something unfold inside her, spreading and filling her with warmth, with colour and light and reaching every nerve in her body. The volcano that had been threatening to erupt suddenly exploded with a force that shocked her, tearing a low moan from her throat. Max stifled it with his mouth and with one deep thrust, he poured his shuddering warmth into her.

  After a moment when their bodies ceased to tremble, Max rolled on to his side, taking her with him, cradling her in his arms. With her face resting in the curve beneath his jaw, Marietta experienced a joyous contentment, a languorous peace. It was unlike anything she had ever known. The room had become a magical place—their own private heaven. Sighing now, she settled against him, their naked bodies, despite the difference in their height, fitting together in sweet perfection. Marietta could smell him now she had her senses back, smell his skin, the scent of his cologne and a musky odour she could not identify, not an unpleasant odour—an odour of sensuality, one which she knew she would always associate with this moment.

  They lay for a while, not speaking, and then Max raised his head and gazed down at her, half-expecting her to have fallen to sleep. ‘What a truly amazing creature you are, Marietta. You were made for loving.’

  Tilting her head back, sated and happy, she smiled up at him, her heart almost bursting with love of him. ‘And you would know that.’

  ‘Naturally. You know very well there have been

  others—’

  She stopped his words with her lips when an image of Lady Murray sprang up unbidden into her mind. ‘Don’t,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t want to know about the others—not now. This is my time—our special time. Please don’t spoil it.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Marietta, that was insensitive of me.’ On a sigh he laid his head back on the pillows, holding her close. ‘However, I now realise my wife is no prim miss, but a lusty woman with an appetite to equal my own.’

  Rolling on to her belly, Marietta leaned on her elbows and began tracing a line of tantalising kisses over his chest. ‘I am a married woman now so I can be as lusty as I like.’ She grinned up at him puckishly. ‘Are you complaining by any chance, your Grace?’

  Taking her arms, he drew her up so she hovered over his face. ‘Not a bit of it, my lovely new duchess. I want you to be as lusty as I could wish for. You were a delight.’

  ‘And I’m delighted to hear it.’

  His eyes darkened as he looked at her. ‘Do you realise just how desirable you are?’

  ‘Am I?’ she said curiously. ‘I’m amazed you can say that, for I never thought you felt anything for me beyond irritation—at least that’s the impression you gave me in Hong Kong.’

  He laughed. ‘Was I that bad? I suppose you were irritating at times.’

  ‘There you are. You were positively dreadful to me—in Happy Valley—and then again when you found me in China Town.’

  ‘Call it self-defence,’ he chuckled softly.

  Laughing delightedly, she wriggled away from him and stretched her body for him to inspect. ‘I don’t think I care for that remark. I think I’m going to have to punish you.’

  ‘And how do you propose to do that?’ he asked, devouring her with his eyes, his fingers tweaking a lock of her hair.

  ‘By insisting that you make love to me again.’

  ‘You call that punishment? I call it pl
easure, my love.’

  And to prove his point, leaning over her he took her hands and held them above her while he carefully inspected her breasts, her waist, the curve of her hips. He knew her now, every part of her, knowing the true nature of her. The thrill reverberated throughout Marietta’s whole body with an intensity that would have told him everything he needed to know about her—if he had not already known it. His senses were alive to every inch of her form languorously stretched out before him and, desire pouring like boiling lava through his veins, he kissed and nuzzled and caressed her until she felt the heat return to the pit of her belly and she sighed with absolute delight as he took her again with a lovely languor consumed in a passion infinitely more powerful than before.

  It was in the early hours when Max finally unlocked their bodies with a slow, supple deliberation calculated to cause Marietta every last ounce of exquisite pleasure, torture and rapture. Lying exhausted in her husband’s arms, she fell into a deep slumber.

  * * *

  The morning was well on the way when Marietta opened her eyes to the knowledge of her husband’s lovemaking, and during the nights that followed the desire, the anticipation, the excitement drew them to their bedroom. It would begin in the lamplight, an incandescence which turned their bodies to a honeyed glow. Here they made love with increasing ardour and satisfaction. This was where Marietta was most truly happy. In their bed Max was hers, hers alone, his body—which was to Marietta a miracle of male beauty lovingly put together with long graceful bones and flat muscles—rousing hers with a male rapture and delight she found utterly satisfying.

  But although Max made love to her in the way she liked, the way she responded to, he didn’t succeed in soothing away her fears of pregnancy.