She had liked calling him her champion, for the title had come swathed in her long-ago girlish innocence, a chaste and idealized champion. But Geoffrey wasn’t an ideal in a book: he was very real flesh and blood and bone, and what was even more surprising was that she was, too. She wasn’t granting him a kiss. She wanted him to kiss her, and as he bent over her, she eagerly turned her face up to his, her lips puckered into what she thought a kiss should be.
She wasn’t prepared for the reality of his mouth pressing boldly over hers, sliding skillfully over her lips until they parted with a startled little gasp that was lost between them. She’d no notion of how his tongue against hers could be so intimate, or so arousing. She hadn’t expected him to tangle his fingers in the back of her hair and hold her head captive as he kissed her, making it impossible for her to turn away even if she’d wished to, and she’d never thought that arm around her waist would pull her body close to his until her breasts were pressed to his chest and his thigh was hard against hers through the silk skirts of her petticoat.
Tentatively she began to answer his kiss, widening her lips to let him come deeper into her mouth and pressing back even as she prayed she was doing it right, and he rewarded her with a groan that told her she’d done it exactly right. She felt his kiss not just on her lips, but dancing through her entire body like the flames in the fire before them.
His hands slid along her sides, along the hard bones of her stays around her waist. One roamed higher still, tracing the low, curving neckline of her gown, and his fingers lightly grazed her breast, plumped high by her stays. She shivered, startled by how small a touch could have such an effect on her senses. In a single deft motion, his long fingers slipped inside her bodice to caress her breast.
She gasped in pleasurable confusion, and broke away from his kiss, though not from him. “Geoffrey, I—”
“Serena,” he coaxed, his voice rough with desire. “My sweet jēsamina.”
She smiled at how he’d turned the jasmine flower into a Hindi endearment, as he kissed her again, wooing her to relax. She felt her nipple tighten shamelessly against his palm, sensation and heat rippling through her body to gather low in her belly.
This was longing, this was desire and reckless passion. She’d known the words, of course, but only now did she understand their meaning. She remembered how the women had teased her when she’d been a girl, promising that a lover’s kiss should be masterful and full of glory; then she’d thought it was nonsense, but now she knew that glory was only the beginning.
“This is why I could not let you go,” he whispered hoarsely. “This, Serena.”
“It’s why I came to you,” she said breathlessly, rubbing her cheek against the slight bristle of his jaw. “I didn’t know, and yet I did.”
He turned her face up to kiss again, and as she parted her lips in welcome, the ormolu clock on the mantel chimed the hour. Distracted, she lost count of the chimes, and glanced over her shoulder to see the time: eleven o’clock.
“Eleven!” she cried with dismay, pulling away from him and tugging her neckline back over her breast. “Oh, Geoffrey, I’d no notion it was so late! I must go back directly, I must—”
He reached for her, drawing her to him once again. “Stay with me, Serena,” he said, his voice rough with urgency. “It’s where you belong.”
“I can’t,” she said, her palms spread against his chest. She was breathing hard, and so was he, and beneath her hand she could feel how swiftly his heart was beating. “I’ve been away far too long. If my aunt discovers I’m not at the rout with the others, she’ll become distraught, and everyone will know.”
His eyes were dark, full of desire. “When can I see you next?”
She bowed her head, unable to meet his gaze. “We should not do this, Geoffrey,” she said, unable to keep the longing from her voice. “We cannot. What future could there be for us? I’ve told you before that I have no intention of marrying.”
“Nor do I,” he said, lightly stroking her cheek with his thumb. “But there are other ways to share our future than marriage.”
Swiftly she raised her gaze. It was clear enough what he was proposing. Long ago she’d resigned herself to a life without the love that a husband would give. She’d never let herself consider this kind of illicit, ruinous love as an alternative, the kind that she’d been taught no respectable Englishwoman should ever accept. In India, such liaisons had been common enough—her own parents had not been married—but not here, and especially not for a lady.
She shook her head. “That’s madness. It is not possible, Geoffrey.”
“Anything is possible,” he said. “Anything can be arranged for those who dare.”
The intensity in his expression reminded her of his father, a determination that would not be denied. Yet while she’d found it intimidating in the duke, with Geoffrey it was wildly exciting.
She saw it in his eyes. He would do whatever was necessary to be with her. Nothing would keep him away. Anything, truly, was possible.
She took a deep breath, her heart pounding in her chest. “I’ve no wish to wound those who care most for me.”
“Yet you would leave me.” He tipped his head to one side, watching her closely. “I cannot put you from my thoughts, Serena. Awake or asleep, you’re there.”
“You are mad,” she whispered. “Geoffrey, we scarcely know each other. Why should I believe you? Why should I believe anything you say?”
“Because if it is meant to happen, it will,” he said, his expression surprisingly vulnerable. “Kismet.”
Kismet.
She gasped. “You shouldn’t say that.”
“Why not, when you said it to me first,” he countered. “In the moonlight you told me you believed it. Do you still?”
She felt like a fledgling seabird, poised on the edge of a nest built into the wall of a yawning precipice. Far below her were sharp rocks and crashing waves. If she let uncertainty claim her, then surely she would plummet downward to her own destruction. But if she raised her face upward toward the sun and the stars and dared spread her wings to fly, then she would find soaring freedom, joy, elation beyond her imagination.
The rocks, and ruin. The stars, and Geoffrey.
Did she dare? Would she?
“I am always watched,” she said in a breathless rush. “My aunt, my grandfather, the servants. I’m never alone.”
He smiled, sensing her indecision. “You’re not alone now, either, are you?”
“My days are too full. I have no freedom. No English lady does. What you want is not possible,” she protested again, even as she realized the obstacles she was naming were more to convince herself than him. “Not at all.”
“Then what will your day be tomorrow, Miss Carew?” he asked, feathering teasing little kisses along her jaw. “Surely you do more than sit by the fire reading sermons.”
“I-I do,” she said, struggling to concentrate. “I have a dancing lesson, and will dine with Grandpapa, and make calls with Aunt Morley, after which we shall return her week’s books to Widdicomb’s. And in the evening, there’s a musicale at Lady Ralston’s house, and—”
He stopped her words by kissing her again, his mouth warm and purposeful and enough to make her melt against him.
The ormolu clock chimed again, this time the quarter hour: eleven-fifteen.
She tore herself away, her lace scarf catching on his sleeve. “I must go.”
“Go,” he said. “Fate will bring us back together.”
Finally she fled, and did not look back.
CHAPTER
6
“So where exactly did you vanish to last night?” Harry asked as he plunged his fork into the shirred eggs and bacon on his plate. He was only half-dressed for the day, with a bright red silk banyan over his breeches and shirt, and slippers still on his stockinged feet. “Don’t tell me you were in the drawing rooms all that time, either, because you weren’t. The elders might accept such a protestation from you, but I
won’t. I’m assuming it was some delightful lady that kept you away from the guests.”
“It was,” Geoffrey admitted, sipping at his coffee. He, of course, was properly dressed, having ridden from his own house. “Though that is all I’m admitting.”
Ever since his brother had married, it had become their custom when both were in town to take breakfast together at Hargreave House, here in this sunny back parlor overlooking the walled garden. This was the only hour of the day when Geoffrey knew he’d have Harry to himself, before Harry’s wife, Lady Augusta, finished addressing the servants for the morning and came to join the two brothers. It wasn’t that Geoffrey disliked Gus (as she was called within the family); far from it, for Gus was so cheerful and agreeable that it would be impossible not to love her as a true sister, which Geoffrey did. But the mornings without her wifely presence were the one time when he could regale his very-married older brother with tales of his bachelor exploits, of what he’d done the night before, with relish and unexpurgated detail.
At least that was how matters usually proceeded. This breakfast, however, felt different. The longer Harry poked and prodded at him for more information about his activities during their stepmother’s rout last night, the less inclined Geoffrey was to reveal them.
Actually, Harry’s questions had little to do with his reticence. Geoffrey had arrived at the table determined to say nothing about his rendezvous with Serena Carew, and he’d kept his resolution. He was generally very open with his older brother where women were concerned, but Serena was different. She was an unmarried noble lady, not an actress or a milliner’s apprentice, and she didn’t deserve to be discussed like one of his more usual conquests.
He also didn’t want to talk about her because he wasn’t sure what he’d say. He’d told himself that he’d gone through the trouble of meeting her alone last night because he’d missed her, and wanted to see her again, and kiss her, too, if she was agreeable. In his experience, absence did make the heart grow fonder, and the surest cure for an infatuation with a lady was to see more of her. To a lesser and perverse degree, he’d also done it because he’d been ordered not to by Lord Allwyn, and he’d been too stubborn to resist the challenge. All that was obvious enough, and perfectly suitable to share with Harry.
But as soon as Serena had walked into the library, things had stopped being obvious. She bewitched him. There was no other way he could think of it. Every graceful twist of her body, every turn of her head or glance from her golden eyes enchanted him further.
Yet it wasn’t just her beauty that fascinated him. There was an air of mystery to her that he found irresistible, something that he’d never encountered in any other English lady. Once she’d put aside the mask of aloofness that kept the rest of the world at bay, she had shared with him a rare, unexpected vulnerability. He could listen by the hour to her speak of her childhood in India, and after last night, he’d always associate jasmine flowers with her. He’d often told women that he thought of them constantly when he was apart from them, but with Serena Carew, he’d meant it.
When she’d first whispered “kismet” to him, he’d been ready to dismiss it as meaningless mumbo jumbo. Yet the longer he was with her, the more he’d come to believe that fate truly was bringing them together. Holding her and kissing her had only confirmed it. He could not forget the intoxicating taste of her mouth or the lush way she’d filled his arms, or, perhaps best of all, the starry-eyed way she’d looked at him after they’d kissed.
Kismet, indeed.
That was what he couldn’t explain to his brother, or to himself, either. He wasn’t even going to try.
Instead he reached for another piece of toast from the silver rack, and dropped a large dollop of marmalade in the center of it.
“Discretion, Harry, discretion,” he said as he spread the marmalade neatly to the very edges of the toast. “The lady feared that her honor would be damaged, and I shall respect that.”
“Of course her honor was in peril,” Harry said. “She was with you.”
“Exactly,” Geoffrey said. “All the more reason for me not to tell more.”
Harry sighed with frustration. “Just her name, then.”
“Just her name?” Geoffrey repeated, incredulous. “Really, Harry. If you have her name, you can guess the rest.”
“Then let me guess her name as well,” Harry said, trying another course. “Was it the luscious Lady Pencroft? I saw her wafting about you earlier, displaying a prodigious amount of her justly famous breasts for your admiration.”
“Who possesses famous breasts?” asked Gus cheerfully as she joined them in the little back parlor. “I should like very much to know who she is, in the event she is among my acquaintances.”
At once Geoffrey rose along with his brother, who hurried forward to greet his wife. Gus had not been born a great beauty, but love and happiness had turned her into one, and her round, freckled face always made Geoffrey smile nearly as broadly as her husband did. She and Harry had been married for almost three years and still behaved like the freshest of sweethearts, billing and cooing and kissing with such unabashed affection that Geoffrey was forced to stare down at his coffee to hide his embarrassment. They really were shameless for a wedded couple, especially since Gus was eight months pregnant with their second child.
Cautiously he waited until he heard Gus settle into her chair with a sigh before he once again glanced up. She was looking directly at him, sitting a bit away from the table on account of the large swell of her belly beneath a spotless linen apron. She took considerable pride in the management of her servants, and in the mornings she often dressed in linen and wool, more like a housekeeper than a countess.
“I know you’ll tell me the truth, Geoffrey, even if Harry won’t,” she said, her eyes bright with mischief. “Who is this lady with the prodigious breasts?”
“I wasn’t being secretive, Gus,” Harry said, a little wounded. “That’s Geoffrey. He has made a great secret of the latest lady to capture his interest, and I am striving to guess her name. You overheard my suggestion of Lady Pencroft.”
“The one with the breasts.” Gus nodded, adding a dollop of cream to her tea. “That makes sense. She’s rather sweet, in addition to her other more notable attributes.”
“Was it Lady Pencroft, then, Geoff?” Harry asked eagerly. “Was she the one you swept away from the party for a bit of, ah, private conversation last night?”
“Oh, I can tell you that,” Gus said, clearly disappointed that there wasn’t a more elusive secret. “It wasn’t Lady Pencroft at all. It was Miss Carew.”
Surprised, Geoffrey’s toast hung in midair. “What makes you say that?”
“Because it’s the truth.” Gus shrugged, holding her cup cradled in her fingers as she raised it to her lips. “I’d heard so much about Miss Carew that I was curious, and asked Celia to point her out to me. I watched you talk with her, then separate with more fuss than was necessary. Soon after both of you vanished, and then later returned, also separately, but within five minutes of each other. When all I could do last night was sit with my feet up on a cushion, it wasn’t a difficult puzzle to solve.”
“That’s hardly proof of anything,” Geoffrey said. It was a weak rebuttal at best and he knew it, but he’d been so sure his ruse had worked that Gus had taken him by surprise. “Many people came and went from the parlors in the course of the evening.”
“That they did,” Gus agreed. “But they didn’t gaze at one another like a pair of billing turtledoves the way that you and Miss Carew did.”
Harry, however, saw it in a less romantic light.
“You’re an ass to involve yourself further with that particular lady, Geoffrey,” he said flatly. “I explained the peril to you on that first night, and God knows Father has had his say in the matter, too.”
“This is between the lady and me,” Geoffrey said, more curtly than he’d intended. “I don’t see that it’s anyone else’s affair than ours.”
Gus no
dded in sympathy. “He’s right, Harry,” she said. “I don’t see why everyone is in such a righteous fuss about this. If Geoffrey and the lady enjoy each other’s company, then where is the harm to it? She’s certainly beautiful, in an exotic sort of way. I can understand why Geoffrey is so beguiled by her.”
But Harry shook his head, looking stern and judgmental, and entirely too much like their father.
“You can say that because you haven’t conversed with her, Gus,” he said. “She’s undeniably beautiful, but there’s an unsettled air to her that’s … well, disconcerting. She’s distant. She keeps herself apart. I suspect it’s likely due to her curious upbringing, but you can’t begin to tell what she’s thinking.”
“Which is precisely why I find Miss Carew so intriguing,” Geoffrey said. “Most ladies her age have little of use to say, but Miss Carew’s conversation is quite fascinating.”
Harry grumbled, unconvinced. “I do not believe it is entirely her conversation that fascinates you. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve been led by your—not by your head. If you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself standing before the parson beside the lady, with old Allwyn’s blunderbuss at your back.”
This was enough to end any man’s appetite. Geoffrey shoved aside his plate with much of his breakfast remaining uneaten, and at once a footman removed it.
“The last thing Allwyn would wish is to see her wed into our family,” he said. “He thinks we Fitzroys are disreputable upstarts, and nothing but whores and bastards.”
Gus’s brows rose at the strong language. “That seems rather uncharitable of him.”
“That is the charitable version,” Geoffrey said, relieved to have shifted the conversation over to the old marquis. “What he spewed in the front room at White’s was much more, ah, colorful. He nearly made Father lose his temper.”
“Oh, my, he must have pushed wickedly hard for that to happen,” Gus said, her eyes wide. “All Celia told me was that Lord Allwyn was unhappy.”
“Allwyn will be a great deal more than unhappy if you debauch his granddaughter, Geoffrey,” Harry said sternly. “And the poor man’s right. You can’t keep toying with a lady like this. It’s not honorable, and it reflects badly on our entire family.”
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