In their bed, she never held back, never kept apart, and there were no unspoken secrets, doubts, or questions between them. It was the only time she freely gave her entire self, her soul and her heart, to him.
Exactly as she was doing now. How in blazes could he keep away from her? What more could he want?
“You do this to me, Serena,” he said roughly, pressing his lips to the side of her throat. “I can’t be apart from you. You’re a fever in my blood that will never break, nor do I wish it to.”
“Then take me, Geoffrey,” she whispered, pressing against him. “Here, now. Make me yours, and love me.”
He needed no more invitation than that. He swept aside her skirts, bunching them over her hips. He’d a quick glimpse of her legs in scarlet stockings with jeweled garters and her pale skin above—God, he loved the plumpness of her thighs!—and the triangle of dark curls at the top. Shamelessly she parted her legs for him, and when his fingers found her, she let out a long, shuddering sigh of pleasure.
“You’re wet already,” he said, stroking her swollen flesh with the ridge of his finger and watching how her eyes widened as sensation rippled through her.
“You do that to me, Geoffrey,” she said, gasping at his touch, nearly beyond words as her fingers flexed into his shoulders.
Her arousal inflamed him, and he tore at the buttons on his fall, and his cock sprang free, heavy and rampant. There was a small ledge at the base of the pilaster, and he grasped her by the waist and lifted her so her bottom perched upon it.
With her hands on his shoulders for support, she parted her legs farther for him, her breath quickening in anticipation. He opened her with his fingers and lodged the head of his cock within her flushed, blossoming lips. He always marveled at how small and tight her passage was, and yet she was able to accept him, especially when he was as hard and thick as he was now. He bent his knees and thrust, once, twice, until he was buried deep within the lush, wet heaven of her body. Her mouth fell open and her eyes grew heavy as she writhed against him.
“That’s it,” he said hoarsely, basking in her heat. “That’s it.”
She made a purring sound that turned into a moan, lifting her leg higher to draw him in more deeply. He hooked his arms beneath her knees and she gasped, curling her ankles around his back as her silk skirts rustled around them. He’d found his pace now, his thrusts steady and strong and relentless, his entire body driving the force of his possession.
He stopped thinking about whether she trusted him or not; he’d stopped thinking of anything that didn’t involve his cock. She made him lose all sense of time, and he’d no notion of whether they’d been there in that corner of the parlor for minutes or hours. All that mattered was that he was with her, and together they were glorious.
She rolled her hips to meet him in a sinuous dance of her own, and her breath was now coming in little gulps and pants that matched his thrusts. Her bare breasts shimmied, her nipples red and tight, and her forehead glistened with tiny beads of sweat that made unruly wisps of hair spring out around her face. Her golden eyes were heavy-lidded and wanton, and her lips were parted as she gasped for breath.
He could tell she was riding just on the edge of her release, poised there with her entire body exquisitely taut. She was whimpering as she clung to him, ready for it, and so was he.
He deepened his thrusts, angling so that he stroked her how she liked best, and she shuddered and cried out, arching and coming so convulsively around him that he did as well. His hips bucked as he emptied himself into her sweetness, overwhelmed by how she melted around him in a most intimate embrace.
“Oh, Geoffrey, how I love you!” she whispered raggedly, kissing him as she curled against his chest. “You—you are everything to me.”
Everything. He held her tightly, his heart pounding. She’d said it first, but he’d already believed it in his heart, and likely had since the moment he’d met her.
This was why he’d come back. This was why he’d never leave. This was why he loved her more than he’d ever thought possible, and why he’d risk everything to defend her.
She was, quite simply, everything to him. He loved her that much, and he could no longer imagine his life without her in it.
CHAPTER
15
“There’s something I wish to show you,” Geoffrey said with a great air of mystery as they walked arm in arm through Hyde Park. “Something rare and wondrous, that you will likely appreciate more than most any other lady in London.”
Serena smiled from beneath the slanting brim of her hat, intrigued. “Rare and wondrous sounds very fine.”
“Oh, it is, it is,” he assured her. “I can virtually guarantee that you will not be disappointed.”
She laughed, happy to be in his company out-of-doors in the warm sunshine. They had spent this morning much as they had nearly every other morning for the last fortnight, making wedding calls and presenting themselves as a newly married couple to the older, titled ladies of Society: the “lady-grandees,” as Geoffrey called them good-naturedly. He’d teased her about all the invitations to tedious teas and good-works now sure to come her way, but Serena had understood the real reason behind the visits.
He had wanted her to be accepted both as his wife and as a member of his family, and by accompanying her in a manner that few other new husbands would, he’d reinforced her new status to an almost unimpeachable degree. Although she had been presented to most of these ladies before, marriage had transformed her so thoroughly that it was as if she were being introduced into Society all over again, with the welcome to Lady Geoffrey Fitzroy considerably warmer than the one that had been accorded to Miss Serena Carew.
Seeing Geoffrey endure so much weak tea and inquisitive conversation for her sake only made Serena love him more. He might have preferred to defend her with his fists, as he had done during that dreadful afternoon with her uncle, but to her these wedding calls were every bit as important, and much less violent.
She tucked her fingers fondly into the crook of his arm. They had left their carriage at the gates so they could walk the paths, but she hadn’t dreamed he’d planned a surprise for her.
“Is it something to eat or drink, Geoffrey?” she guessed, trying to coax the answer from him. “Some special sweet?”
He laughed. “Not exactly. But you needn’t wait any longer. Here we are.”
He grandly ushered her from the path to a clearing beneath a spreading oak. Near the trunk stood a puppet-booth, a wooden box tall enough to hide the puppeteers working inside, with a striped curtain of faded silk across the front like every other raree-show. But what set this one apart was the gaudy Indian scene painted within an oval frame on the front of the box—or rather, thought Serena wryly, an English interpretation of an Indian scene—complete with temples, palaces, monkeys, and exotically dressed men and women.
“You can already see why I brought you here,” Geoffrey said solemnly. “The show itself will be even more enlightening.”
Serena grinned, knowing he was taking absolutely none of this seriously. She hadn’t seen a puppet-play in years, not since she’d been a girl. “A Punch and Judy show?”
“Yes,” he said with relish. “But Mr. Punch improved, with an Eastern flair.”
“Will there by elephants?” she asked. “And tigers?”
He let his mouth drop open, pretending to be aghast. “However did you guess, madam?”
She laughed, welcoming such foolishness after the stiff-backed formal calls earlier in the day. There was a ring of benches before the box, filled mostly with excited children and a few older apprentices and idlers. The children were not the perfectly dressed little lords and ladies that she usually saw now, but scamps of a sturdier, scruffier variety that reminded her of the servants’ children from Sundara Manōra who had been her playmates.
The footman who had accompanied them stepped forward to clear a bench in the front row for Geoffrey and Serena, but Serena stopped him.
“W
e’ll stand, Henry,” she said. “These children were already waiting in their places when we arrived. I’ve no intention of spoiling their fun.”
“You are certain?” Geoffrey asked, surprised. “By rights you should have the best place.”
“But they came first, and that makes them deserve the front seats,” she said, smiling. “I’ve been sitting all morning, and it will not hurt me to stand now. Besides, we’ll see better this way.”
This endeared her to the rest of the audience, who offered up a brief round of applause and cheers that made Serena blush self-consciously. She and Geoffrey already stood out because of their dress and the liveried footman, and too late she realized she shouldn’t have drawn more attention to herself by such a gesture.
“Well done, love,” Geoffrey murmured, smiling fondly at her. “Not one of the lady-grandees could have managed a fraction of your kindness.”
Her blush deepened, and she squeezed his hand. But before she could reply, an out-of-tune horn sounded, followed by a crashing gong, and everyone’s attention—including hers—turned expectantly forward.
Mr. Punch was the first to appear, as he always was, but in this show he sported a garish turban with a large glass jewel with his jester’s motley and arrived sitting in the howdah on the back of a pasteboard elephant. The children oohed and ahhed with appreciation, but it wasn’t until Judy arrived to quarrel with Mr. Punch that they began to laugh. When she was carried away in the jaws of a giant roaring tiger, they roared along with the tiger, and when Punch had no choice but to rescue his nagging spouse by beating the tiger, the audience cheered as well.
“More amusing than last night’s opera, isn’t it?” Geoffrey said as they applauded with the others.
“Oh, yes, much more so,” Serena agreed as she clapped and cheered. He’d been right to bring her here; as silly as it was, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d enjoyed herself more at an entertainment.
As Mr. Punch continued to battle with the tiger (which had roared back to life at the audience’s urging), a one-legged man in a worn red coat came from behind the box, leaning heavily on a crude wooden crutch. Clearly he’d been providing the sound effects, for he had a large cow-horn on a cord slung around one shoulder and a tin plate—the makeshift gong—thrust into his pocket. Now his role was to pass benches with a wide-mouthed bottle and collect coins from the audience, bantering with the puppets as he encouraged the audience to be generous.
“Poor beggar,” Geoffrey said, reaching into his own pocket. “This is what becomes of our soldiers when they return home from service as broken men. The country should do more for them.”
As the man drew closer, Serena now saw that his red coat was all that remained of a uniform. The brass buttons had been cut off and likely sold, as had the regimental insignia. His single boot must have also at one time been military issue, though now it, too, was so patched and worn that his bare shin showed through the holes in the leather. He was younger than she’d first thought, and as he came closer she saw that his face was lined with suffering and poverty, not age.
Pulling off his hat from respect to their obvious rank, he held the bottle out to Geoffrey, who dropped a handful of coins into it.
“Where did you serve, corporal?” Geoffrey asked, reading the faded markings of the rank on the sleeve of his coat.
“Seventy-second of Foot, m’lord,” he said. “We was sent to Calcutta to fight alongside the Company men. Queer place for a Lancastershireman, but that’s the way of it for the King’s men, isn’t it?”
Geoffrey nodded. “So that’s why Master Punch has a Hindi look to him.”
The soldier smiled. “Aye, it’s a wee wry joke of mine, tricking him out like that,” he said. “Sets us apart from the other boxes in the Park.”
“It was most handsomely done,” Serena said. Impulsively she reached into her purse and dropped a guinea into the man’s bottle.
The soldier smiled again as he recognized the heavier fall of the large coin, and for the first time he looked directly into Serena’s face. He caught his breath, then quickly recovered.
“Thank’ee, m’lady,” he said, bowing as far as his crutch would permit. “Your servant, memsahib.”
Serena nodded, suddenly uneasy. She was accustomed to having men be startled, even intimidated, by her unusual beauty; it had been happening to her for years. But she thought she’d glimpsed something more in the corporal’s face, a recognition that he’d instantly shuttered. Yet he couldn’t have known her from India; she’d been a child when she’d left, and had changed much since then.
He bowed again, and wished them good day, and shuffled back into the crowd. Punch had vanquished the tiger, which now seemed thoroughly dead and finished, and the performance with it.
“Are you unwell, Serena?” Geoffrey asked with concern. “You’re pale. I should have insisted you sit, instead of standing for so long.”
“I’m fine, Geoffrey,” she said, forcing herself to smile as she took his arm. “A bit tired, that is all. It has been a long day.”
But Geoffrey didn’t accept that. “We’ll return to the carriage at once, and home. We needn’t go out tonight, either. You can have your supper in bed, and I shall keep you company.”
“I’m fine,” she said, patting his arm. “I suppose it startled me to hear that man call me memsahib. I know it’s only the Hindi version of madam, but it’s not entirely a compliment. Most Indians only used it for more haughty European ladies.”
“I doubt he understood that.” Geoffrey sighed, now contrite. “I thought you’d be amused by the puppets. Pray forgive me if they brought up old memories.”
“They didn’t,” she said, reassuring him as best she could. “They were wonderfully foolish, and they made me laugh. What harm could come from that?”
But Geoffrey’s misgivings were more well founded than Serena herself realized. For the first time since their wedding night, the old nightmare returned to torment her. No matter how she fought it, the dream held her in its grasp. Relentlessly it forced her to remember and relive again every detail of that last day and night at Sundara Manōra, of being left alone with the dead and sure to perish herself.
Yet when she reached the last part, when she lay beside Asha and burned with the fever, and when her sister’s fingers were already still and cold in her own, something changed.
The black-clad doctor bent over her, chafing her hands and forcing her eyelid upward to peer at her eye.
“We must do our best to save her for poor Carew’s sake,” he said. “She’s his daughter, of course. He always boasted of her beauty.”
“Brave little lady,” one of the soldiers beside the bed said. “She can’t stay here, that’s for certain. Here, miss, we’ll be as gentle as we can.”
Strong arms gathered her up, lifting her from the bed and her sister. The necklace with her mother’s picture slipped from her fingers and dropped into the tangled sheets. She struggled weakly, wanting to tell them to bring Asha as well, but her mouth was too dry and the words too far away.
“Take her to the wagon, Abbot,” said the man in black. “I’ll do what I can for her, but it will be a miracle if she survives to see Calcutta.”
Her strength spent, she lay limp in the soldier’s arms as he carried her from the room. Her eyes stung with the acrid smoke of the burning house, and she whimpered helplessly.
“Be easy, miss, be easy,” the soldier said. “You’re safe among Christians now.”
She dragged her eyes open, struggling to comprehend, and the soldier named Abbot smiled down at her.
“Serena, it’s only a dream,” Geoffrey was saying. “Please, love, wake, and leave it behind.”
She gasped for breath like a swimmer rising from deep water, fighting to orient herself with the waking present.
“You’re here, love, you’re awake,” Geoffrey said softly as he smoothed her tangled hair back from her forehead. “You’re awake, and I’m here with you.”
She’d f
rightened him: she saw it in the tension of his face as he leaned over her. Yet how could she put his fears to rest when she was still terrified herself?
“Hold me,” she whispered hoarsely. “Please. Just—just hold me.”
He swept her into his arms, holding her tightly against his chest, as if he feared she’d fade away.
“You’re safe, Jēsamina,” he said fiercely. “You’re in London, not India. You’re safe here, and I’ll never let any harm come to you.”
But she wasn’t safe, not even here with him.
Because the soldier who’d carried her as a child from her burning home was the same man who had recognized her today in the park.
“Where is Serena?” Harry asked with surprise, glancing past Geoffrey as he entered the back parlor. “Didn’t you bring her with you?”
“I’m afraid not,” Geoffrey said, dropping into the chair opposite his brother’s at the table. Since his marriage to Serena, his routine of taking breakfast several mornings a week with his brother had expanded to include both of their wives and often Harry’s older daughter, Lady Emily, as well. “She had a difficult night, and I left her to sleep.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Harry said, motioning for a footman to fill Geoffrey’s cup with coffee and refresh his own. “Gus will be disappointed, as will Em. I trust Serena is not seriously unwell? Or perhaps she’s in a more interesting condition?”
“No,” Geoffrey said quickly. Although Serena had yet to keep away from his bed in the five weeks they’d been married, he knew that women’s courses were unpredictable things, and he hadn’t let himself read anything further into it. “No. It is more complicated than that.”
Harry frowned in sympathy. “Has she been seen by a physician?”
Geoffrey shook his head. He had not shared Serena’s nightmares with anyone else, both from respect for her privacy and because he’d no idea himself what to make of them. Perhaps confiding in his brother might help.
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