Ravishing in Red

by Madeline Hunter

  Curved arbors of ivy-covered wood were spaced periodically down the wide central aisle. From where he stood, the perspective created the impression that the entire length had an arched ceiling of foliage.

  A cluster of pots that contained vivid tulips surrounded the entry. Another thick massing of spring flowers spilled over the altar. Nosegays of daffodils and hyacinth decorated the ends of each pew. The entire effect was an opulent, bright painting that emitted light from hundreds of blooms.

  “Impressive,” Hawkeswell said. “You may have a small, discreet wedding, Summerhays, but it will not be forgotten soon. Your mother will start a new fashion.”

  His mother had nothing to do with this. This exuberance was not her style and she probably did not approve of the theatrical notes, especially during Lent.

  Mrs. Joyes had decorated this church, and populated it with the children of her greenhouse. Society would be impressed, and bring her their trade, no doubt, but he did not think that was her goal. Audrianna could not identify most of the people at this wedding, but she would recognize each pot and flower.

  A little commotion behind them caused Hawkeswell to turn. “We should go down. Your bride’s carriage is here.”

  Sebastian turned to see the carriage door open. Mrs. Kelmsleigh and her younger daughter emerged. Sarah squealed as the wind tried to steal her hat. An elegant ankle and white hem poked toward the top step. Mrs. Kelmsleigh cried out and pointed at what appeared to be a grass stain on the snowy fabric.

  “That is an extremely fine carriage,” Hawkeswell mused. “It looks new. The ladies are in the very latest styles too. No expense has been spared.”

  “None at all, I am sorry to have cause to know.” The bills had just started to come in. Mrs. Kelmsleigh had shown no restraint in bleeding him.

  “I wish I had a sister, so I could have enjoyed your generosity. Hell, I am sorry there was no way for you to marry me.”

  They turned away before Audrianna was totally out of the carriage, and walked down the aisle. Sebastian’s grooms-man already waited there.

  “Chin up there, Summerhays,” Hawkeswell muttered. “This is not nearly as painful as we think it will be. More like the guillotine than a hanging, I would say.”

  Audrianna wept when she saw the flowers. They brightened the day and banished the chill. They nodded to her while all these strangers stared.

  The building nervousness of the last few days, the melancholy from visiting Papa’s grave, the irritation with Mama and Sarah—all of it disappeared as she stood at the church door and surveyed the garden that The Rarest Blooms had made for her.

  Her eyes sought out Daphne. She sat to the far side of the guests, wearing the palest lilac dress that enhanced her pale beauty beyond belief. She would have upstaged Sarah badly if Sarah were not in the primrose instead. Daphne was alone. A note had arrived yesterday saying Lizzie’s headaches had returned, and that Celia would be staying home too, to nurse her.

  Lizzie had braved an unexpected visit to Mama’s house two days ago, however. Audrianna suspected that, having been granted a day of freedom from the pain, Lizzie had really come to town to help Daphne plan this display.

  A portly, gray-haired man approached, to take her arm. Uncle Rupert. Mama had insisted he be allowed to do this, despite his cruelties in the past. Audrianna had acquiesced, but in her mind it was her father escorting her and accepting the well wishes, with his good name restored and his comforting presence by her side.

  Lord Sebastian waited for her. He looked splendid. No one could ever think him other than the best catch. His dark blue frockcoat made his cravat gleam in contrast, and his eyes fairly glowed in the light coming from the many candles.

  He smiled as she approached. A kind smile. Reassuring, but still a smile designed to make a woman’s head spin. Her own did, as it always had. The faces blurred and receded. Even the flowers turned into a watercolor wash of hues. She spoke the vows like a woman drugged.

  Audrianna entered her new bedchamber. The wedding was over. They had returned to visit the marquess before attending the breakfast that he could not join. Now the guests were gone and all the rituals had been completed. Except one.

  She had been given a lovely suite of rooms. The marchioness had redecorated them herself. Crisp toile fabric hung on the bed and windows. Deep blue covered the cushions of two chairs. A fine chinoiserie writing desk angled near a window. She opened it to find all the necessities for letters.

  A door on one wall gave access to her dressing room. Her personal belongings had been moved yesterday. A little army of servants and maids had descended on Mama’s house, to pack all those dresses into trunks. Now they inhabited the wardrobes that lined the walls of this chamber that exceeded her old bedroom in size.

  A lady’s maid named Nellie inhabited it too. She had been the field marshal of yesterday’s army, and the new bride was her duty. Red-haired and stocky, with a dusting of freckles on her face, she bobbed out from where she ironed in a corner when Audrianna entered.

  “Lady Wittonbury told me to serve you today, Madam. I was warned that you may want to choose your own woman, of course, but until then I hope that I can please you. I was told that the marchioness chose me because she believed that you would be more comfortable with me than with a French maid, and I swear I haven’t one drop of French blood in my veins.”

  Nellie seemed to think the requirement was political. More likely Lady Wittonbury had concluded that Nellie’s simplicity suited Audrianna’s background. Audrianna could only imagine the other requirements that Lady Wittonbury had itemized to the hiring service. She had to admit that the marchioness was correct in one thing, however. She would be more comfortable with a maid who did not have a lot of airs.

  Nellie moved to a wardrobe and removed an undressing gown. “I was in service to a lady up north, Madam. I am new to London’s ways, but I can dress hair with the best of them, and I ply a fine needle. Will you be wanting to remove those wedding garments now?”

  “Yes, that will probably be best. And brush out my hair as well.”

  Nellie went to work unfastening the dress. “Should I prepare you for bed, Madam?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  Summerhays had not said a word about that as he walked up to these chambers with her. Yet she was very sure that the last ritual would not wait for the night. His intention had been in the air and his presence, and it made her heart beat harder with each step beside him. The light stirring in her body was partly fear, and also something else.

  “Would you like to wear this nightdress that came?” Nellie went to a table and lifted one of several boxes perched on it. She brought it over.

  A beautiful nightdress lay within. A card said it was from The Rarest Blooms. Audrianna lifted the filmy, lightweight fabric. It was far more elegant than the nightdresses Mama had made her order. More mature too.

  “I think that I will use this. Bring me the other boxes too.”

  Sebastian’s valet poked his head into the dressing room. Nothing was said, but it was the sign that the lady’s maid had left Audrianna’s chambers.

  He could wait, of course. For the night, or even several nights. He did not want to. Nor did she expect it. She had known, when he kissed her at her chamber door, that he would be coming to her.

  Dressed in a robe of dark blue silk, he opened the door that led to her bedchamber. This entry had been cut once it was determined that Audrianna would use this chamber to the north of his apartment.

  Her chamber’s window drapes had been pulled, casting the room into modest shadows. One, however, was not closed completely. A beam of dusty light sliced through the dark, ending on the bed. He saw what it illuminated, and a hard arousal hit him immediately.

  The light bathed a beautiful woman in a diaphanous, transparent gown, reclining on a flower-strewn bed.

  Tiny blooms peeked out of her hair and dotted her body. Some discreetly placed lace almost made the transparent bodice modest. But not quite.

>   He had anticipated nervousness and awkwardness from her. He had even debated what to do if she cried. He had not expected this.

  He went to the drapes and parted them a little more, so he could see this Flora more clearly. Her legs, hips, even her mound, became discernible as filmy forms within the flowing gauze. He suppressed the urge to stride over there, strip off that provocative dress, and take her at once.

  “You look very beautiful, Audrianna.”

  “I was afraid you might think it was silly. It appeared that way when you first came in.”

  “Not at all silly. I was surprised, but in the best way.”

  “The dress was a gift. And the flowers. My friends sent them, to be waiting for me when I came up here.”

  “You look like a spring nymph. I would like to leave this light upon you, but I will close the drapes if you prefer.”

  She gazed down her body, and at his robe. He saw the moment when she calculated that he would not be the only one seeing in the light, and that he would see more than flowers and gauze, perhaps.

  He turned to close the drapes.

  “It would be childish of me to make this bold display, then hide in the dark where it can’t even be seen.”

  “I would understand, but I am glad you will be a little more bold.” He walked to the bed and unbuttoned his robe. Her eyes shut firmly. She turned her face away.

  Not so bold after all. He cast the robe aside and slid under the sheet.

  The gown proved more revealing up close. Elegantly erotic. Her dark nipples pressed against the fabric, already tight and hard. Not an innocent girl’s wedding garment, but then she was not a girl.

  He kissed where the gown met her shoulder. “Mrs. Joyes has excellent taste.”

  “I think that perhaps Celia chose the dress. The card did not say, but . . . I think so. Not Lizzie, that is certain.”

  The small talk seemed to calm her. For all her inviting, theatrical welcome, she was palpably nervous. “Why not Lizzie?” He used kisses and words to soothe and lure her. And to control himself. “Because she has been ill?”

  Her breath caught when he kissed her breast. But she also shifted a little, toward him. It was not clear that she even realized she did that. A bloom resting on her breast fell onto the sheet. “No, although her illness means she would have no time to order such a garment. I am certain it was not Lizzie because she has memorized the kinds of books your mother sent to me, and this dress is a little scandalous.”

  “So you knew it was, and you still donned it.”

  She looked up at him. “Is that shocking?”

  “Yes, but it bodes well for us.” He claimed her mouth in a kiss and released some of the desire burning through him. She responded tentatively at first, but the sounds and breaths and moves of her excitement soon swept her along. He unfastened the tiny buttons conveniently placed on the front of her bodice.

  Barely breathing, she looked down at his hand. Little flexes tightened her body, giving subtle evidence that this excited her more.

  “No?” he asked when his fingers reached the last button. He wanted to hear her acknowledge her anticipation.

  She did not answer at once. She just looked at where his hand rested. “Yes,” she finally said.

  He parted the dress to reveal her breasts. They were lovely, high and firm, with erotic tips. He flicked his tongue on one of them and her gasp of pleasure almost undid him.

  He teased her breasts with his mouth and hands until she slid into abandon. Lost in her own sensuality, she did not react badly when he peeled the dress off so she was naked. He eased on top of her and tensed against the way her softness and warmth sharpened his hunger to the point of pain.

  He tempered his hardest urges and blunted the sharpest edges of his need. Resisting the darkest depths of the sea of pleasure, he set about making her more crazed yet, so she would find the rest tolerable enough too.

  Skin on skin. Shocks of vulnerability and intimacy, one after another. Knowing hands and confident guidance and masterful power. Perfume everywhere, of bodies and crushed flowers.

  The astonishment never ceased but her body’s resistance eased. Pleasure spoke louder than any caution. Pleasure so sweet and torturous that she found it unbearable, but also never wanted it to end.

  He awed her more than he ever had, in ways she could not fight. She wondered at the sensation of his taut shoulders and back under her palms as she instinctively embraced him. He was both new and strange and old and familiar to her, in body and spirit and everything else.

  He shifted and rose on an extended arm and her embrace fell away. He lifted her right leg and bent it at the knee. He looked down her body, his hair falling over his brow and his eyes hard in their intensity. She did too, and wondered if he could see what she thought he could see.

  The touch from the garden, so welcome and necessary. She had been waiting for it, wanting it. Still it stole her breath. She closed her eyes so she would not see him watch her madness. He did wicked things. So wicked that she cried out, and bit her lip so she would not again. Except she did. He kept making it worse and soon cries filled her head so all thought was gone. Then nothing existed except that pleasure making her desperate for something she could not name.

  He moved again, up her body until his chest hovered above her and his hips spread her thighs. He pressed into her and awareness sliced through her daze.

  She looked up at his face, serious and hard. The dark of his eyes went on forever in his passion, and his tight jaw showed how he fought for restraint.

  He tried not to hurt her, she was sure. He did anyway. She closed her eyes so he might not see how much. Then it was over and they were joined and the pain eased, but the reality of this, of him and her and what was happening, overwhelmed her.

  Remnants of the pleasure stirred while he moved in her. His physicality again impressed her palms and fingers. The moments turned long, and too real.

  His careful thrusts beckoned the pleasure forward again, so it was not horrible. No daze or distance developed again, however. Pleasure did not obscure the truth now. Instead an unbidden intimacy overwhelmed and awed her during her vulnerable submission.

  He did not leave once it was over. She thought he would, to spare them both the uncompromising reality that kept assaulting her in the aftermath.

  No anticipation now. No excitement obscuring how it was. She lay beside a naked man whom she barely knew.

  She was unable to set aside how defenseless he made her feel. Powerless really. His possession of her had disadvantaged her, and at the start of a long game that she had not fully realized that she had agreed to play.

  She closed her eyes so she might find some privacy. She had been stripped of it completely in this bed, as surely as he had removed that nightdress. That dismayed her more than anything else. Much more than any pain. Her separate-ness had been breached without her ever agreeing to it.

  “You appear very thoughtful.” His voice, so close, forced the intimacy to reassert itself.

  “I am doing some ciphers in my head. Addition. Subtraction.”

  She felt his low laugh on her cheek even though it made no sound. “What do you cipher?”

  She opened her eyes, to his naked shoulders and chest. That had not mattered while immersed in the pleasure, but it shocked her now. “I am calculating how often this can be done in ten hours, and whether you will want to do it again soon.”

  His eyes were kind, as if he knew how awkward she felt. How confused and exposed. “Not too soon. Not for a few days.”

  He sat up. She knew he would leave. He did not do so at once. He gave her time to close her eyes. Someday perhaps she would not.

  She heard him move in the chamber.

  “Call for your maid. She will prepare a bath for you. We will dine with my brother tonight in his chambers. I promised him we would, since he could not attend the wedding breakfast.”

  She felt him standing right beside her, then a light kiss on her cheek. “I am sorry t
hat I hurt you. I tried not to. I will not again.”

  It touched her that he had tried. She imagined this could have been hellish if he had not.

  She opened her eyes to see that dark robe near the door to his chambers. He needed no absolution from her. He had not asked for it, but only spoken to reassure her. Yet a new sense about him had entered her while she was stripped of all protection, and it whispered to her instincts now.

  “You did not hurt me very much.”

  He paused and looked at her through the shadows.

  “I am more shocked than hurt, and more confused than shocked. It was as you promised. More than tolerable enough.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  He did not come to her for two nights. Then he came every night. Audrianna calculated that those hours, in addition to the time spent in each other’s company but not in bed, indeed came to about ten hours the first week.

  By the end of that week she grew accustomed to having a naked man in her bed afterward. He did not linger long, but he did not leave immediately. She had assumed this was something done in the dark and in silence, a duty performed on the sly. Perhaps Lord Sebastian took a more liberal view because of all those experiences as a rake.

  Allusions to his past showed up at every social event she attended. No one actually spoke of it, but she perceived a merry astonishment that he had married at all, and only to make such a bad marriage at that. A few ladies’ clever barbs insinuated that she had all but trapped him. It became clear that Lady Wittonbury was of that view.

  She mostly managed to avoid Lady Wittonbury. As Sebastian had said, it was a very big house. The library and music room became her havens when she left her own chambers. And the garden, of course. It was so large that one could disappear in it, and if she felt the need for different environs, she took Nellie and walked in the park or down Oxford Street.

  She usually had to suffer Lady Wittonbury’s presence at breakfast, however. They would open their mail and Lady Wittonbury would advise which invitations to accept. Some of the events would not happen for weeks, even months, when the season was in full bloom. Lady Wittonbury explained several times that this season would be fairly quiet compared to others, owing to the court mourning of Princess Charlotte that still stretched in front of them.