She was going to scream. And then her throat was hoarse as Hart laughed and called her his sweet, sweet lass.
“Eleanor, you unmake me.” Hart’s words were lost in his groan as he pushed up into her, holding her, and let go of his seed.
The feeling didn’t end. It went on, Eleanor squeezing him, Hart rocking into her, his arms around her to keep her from falling. They were locked together, one.
Hart stayed inside her as he quieted little by little, his face at last relaxed, the tension released from his body. Eleanor knew she was one of the few able to see this, the Scottish duke letting himself be at ease.
Hart kissed her, with the warm kiss of lovers who had found their all in each other. He held her in his strong arms, licking the trail of freckles that led down her neck, and she felt the scrape of his teeth.
When he at last lowered her to the pillows, Eleanor was half asleep. He withdrew, the friction of him going out almost as heady as it had been going in.
He eased Eleanor onto her side and pulled the covers gently around her, Hart warm at her back. His thigh moved between her legs, solid strength, which both excited and comforted her. Surrounded by that comfort, Eleanor dove into a profound sleep.
Hart jumped awake to a clatter, a crash, a sigh of exasperation, and a mutter of, “Oh, blast.”
He forced his eyes open. Sunlight streamed through the windows, landing on the warm indentation in the mattress where Eleanor had lain. The pillows bore her lavender scent, but Eleanor had gone.
Hart lifted his head, stifling a groan as his muscles protested. He found Eleanor at the foot of the bed in her dressing gown, trying, one-handed, to unfold something that looked like a cooking crane.
Hart rubbed his face, his hand finding deep stubble on his chin. “What the devil are you doing?”
Eleanor had mischief in her eyes. “Setting up the photographing apparatus. It’s a bit difficult one-handed. Perhaps you could help?”
Hart sat up. Eleanor beamed and went back to her task, as though it was perfectly reasonable for her to be wrestling with a camera the morning after making love with her husband.
“You want to take photographs now?” he asked.
“In truth, I wanted to take one of you lying uncovered in the bed, with you half on your side as you were. You looked beautiful with the sunlight on you. But I had to drop the tripod and wake you.”
“You were going to take photographs of me while I slept?”
She blinked, as though to say Why not? “Do not worry. I will show them to no one. They are for me to look at while you’re away in London winning your election or stuck in Parliament all day. I know you won’t be staying here much longer, so I must take opportunities as I can.”
Hart came out of the bed. Eleanor, unworried, kept rattling the tripod until Hart grabbed it out of her hands. “I’d thought you’d forgotten about this.”
“No, indeed. I am afraid I am going to be the sort of wife who refuses to let her husband run off to a mistress. If you see that I am adventurous enough to take nude photographs of you, perhaps you won’t need to turn to a courtesan like your Mrs. Whitaker.”
Hart opened the tripod with one yank and set it on the floor. “I told you, I have no interest in Mrs. Whitaker.”
“You will be away in London quite often, and you are a very passionate man.”
“Passions I control very well.” Except when I am with you. “Whatever you think of me, I am not a youth led by his desires. And I don’t intend to plant you here while I am in London. You’ll travel with me wherever I go.”
“Oh.” She looked surprised. “Will I?”
“Yes. It’s why I married you.” To keep you by my side, no matter what.
“I can see your point. I suppose you’ll look like a steady, married man if your wife is always at your elbow.”
“That is not the reason I had in mind, but believe what you wish. You can put away the camera.”
Eleanor unlocked and opened the camera in its mahogany frame. “I find the handheld cameras quite nice to use when my father and I are out in the woods, but I prefer the tripod when I take a portrait, so I don’t accidentally jiggle the image. Don’t you agree?”
“El.” Hart’s hand came down on her good wrist. “I told you my terms. Only if I get photographs of you.”
“You cannot possibly take photographs of me while my arm is in a sling. I would look ridiculous. Now, the light is very good, and we must take advantage of it.”
“Eleanor.”
“What are you afraid of, Hart? You’re a beautiful man with a beautiful body, and I wish to photograph it. It is the same as when my father finds a perfect specimen of a mushroom. Nothing for it but he must record it for posterity. Or at least for his own enjoyment. Besides, he often eats the mushroom. Please, return to the bed. I have loaded the first plate, and I am ready.”
How on earth Hart let her talk him into it, he never knew. He found himself lying back on the bed, his hands behind his head, while Eleanor tested light, peered through the camera, and tested the light again. She studied him a moment, lips pursed, then she picked up his kilt from the floor and draped it across his hips.
She went back to the camera and peered through. “Excellent. Please, do not move.”
Hart held his breath, knowing that one motion would cause a blur as the shutter opened to let in light. The shutter closed again. Eleanor pulled out the plate, set it aside, and put in another one.
“Some out of the bed now, I think.”
Hart smiled. “My wife, in dishabille, taking photographs of me in her bedroom. Decadent.”
“I think I’d like a view of your back,” she said, ignoring him.
Hart threw off the kilt and walked over to the window. This one was not as wide as the windows in his bedroom, but he preferred to be here, in Eleanor’s chamber. So much cozier than the grand salon that he slept in. Maybe he’d move in here instead of having her come to him.
He put his hands on either side of the window frame, presenting his back to her. Please God, don’t let anyone be taking an early-morning stroll.
“Delightful,” Eleanor said. “Stay there.”
He heard the click of the shutter, and Eleanor’s sigh of delight. “Another, I think.” More rattling as she changed the plate.
Eleanor looked through the camera’s lens and nearly swallowed her tongue. Hart stood in a beam of sunshine, light almost glowing on his bare body. He was all that was strength. The well-defined muscles on his shoulders smoothed down his back to form a pleasing triangle to his hips. His buttocks were tight and slim, a prefect complement to his thighs and taut calves. Even his heels pleased her.
Hart looked over his shoulder, arms bunching with the movement, his eyes golden in the sunshine. “Hurry, blast you. I think the ghillie is coming down the walk.”
“Perfect. Do not move, I beg you.”
Eleanor held her breath as she clicked the shutter. Hart was a burnished god, a Highlander of old come to sweep her away. Old Malcolm Mackenzie must have looked much the same, a hard, handsome fighting man, who’d been twenty-five at Culloden field. He’d eloped before the battle with Lady Mary Lennox, stealing her out from under her English family’s nose. Just like a Mackenzie—deciding what he wanted and taking it, even in the middle of war. From the stories Eleanor had heard, theirs had been a wild and passionate marriage.
Eleanor pulled the exposed plate out of the camera and picked up the next. Hart left the window in a hurry.
“That is the ghillie. We’ll do these away from the windows, if you please.”
Eleanor wanted to laugh. He sounded nervous, and she remembered how he’d voiced worry that his body would no longer please her. Poor Hart.
“Very well, then. You decide where to be.”
Hart stood uncertainly, his brow drawn, his head bent a little in thought, his delectable body glistening with perspiration. Eleanor clicked the shutter.
Hart looked up swiftly. “I was not ready.”
/> “No matter. It will make a lovely picture.”
Hart started to laugh. Ah, there he was, the smiling, sinful man from the earlier photographs, the man who’d laid her down in the summerhouse and taught her not to fear passion.
“All right, minx. How about this?” Hart seated himself on the bench at the foot of her bed, folded his arms, and spread his legs.
“Oh, my.”
The first photos she’d taken would have an artistic touch, a nude man in the sunshine. This one would be blatantly erotic.
Hart Mackenzie was unashamedly naked, his arousal obvious, his smile challenging. He was daring her to have a maidenly fit of the vapors, to look away, to not snap the picture. Eleanor studied the full length of his phallus and clicked the shutter.
“Another like that,” she said, her body heating. “Perhaps with you leaning against the wall.”
Hart rose and sauntered across the room. He leaned on a blank space of wall near the door, folding his arms again. His cock stood out, ramrod straight.
“Stay there.” Eleanor moved the camera closer to him, settled it in, and took the picture. “I must have more.”
Hart laughed. Eleanor caught him like that in the next shot, laughing in true mirth, his body bared for her delight.
“Excellent. Now some with the kilt, I think.”
Hart let her take three more photographs. For two he stood bare-legged in his kilt; for the third, the kilt was off, Hart holding the folds to his abdomen while Eleanor photographed him in profile.
“Now another,” Eleanor began.
Hart snarled. He dropped the kilt, came to her, hooked his arm around her waist, and pulled her from the camera. “No more.”
“But I brought seven more plates.”
“Save them.”
Hart swept her from her feet, swiftly untying the tapes that held her dressing gown closed. He laid her on the bed and peeled the dressing gown from her, careful of her hurt arm. When he found her bare beneath, he smiled, and stole her breath.
Hart climbed over Eleanor, nuzzling the line of her hair, and then inhaling all the way down her body. Eleanor expected him to part her legs, to enter her, but instead, he tasted her.
He drew his tongue between her breasts and caught one of her nipples in his mouth. Fire blossomed from the point he suckled. Hart gave her other breast the same attention, then he kissed his way down her abdomen, licked her navel, and continued down to her thighs. He parted them, kissed the soft skin on the inside of either leg, then fastened his mouth over her tight little berry.
He’d never done that before. Eleanor gasped with the wild pleasure of it. The sight of Hart suckling her, his eyes closed, his hair mussed, made her crazy with passion. His tongue was hot, driving her wild. He had to stop, but Hart wouldn’t stop. He cradled her hips in his hands, opened her to him, and drank her in.
“Hart…”
More words left her lips, but they were incoherent. She rocked into the mattress, and his tongue went on torturing her. Eleanor tried to wriggle away, but he was too strong. She had to lie back and take him licking, suckling, making her insane with pleasure.
Just when Eleanor thought she’d die of joy, Hart lifted his beautiful mouth away, slid up her body, and entered her.
He was filling her now, her handsome, naked Highlander. He laughed at her at the same time he demonstrated how good pleasure could be.
His strokes were strong, his hand on her shoulder holding her down. But he was gentle, making sure he never hurt her, even as he neared his climax.
The combination of him being rough and careful at the same time sent Eleanor into another spiral of pleasure. Ecstasy ignited from where they joined and spread across her body. She shouted with it, and Hart’s shout joined hers.
“El, my El,” he crooned as they wound down. “Dear God, you make me wild.”
You make me understand love, Eleanor thought, then the world went away except for her husband lying on her in the sunlight.
Hart and Eleanor developed the photographs together, in a darkroom Mac had set up when he’d experimented with photograph art. Mac had decided that, while photography had its merits, he preferred to slap paint on canvas and had gone back to that.
Hart took Eleanor and her stack of plates to the darkroom, locked the door, and watched her competently print the images from the dry plates. One by one, the photographs of Hart emerged, his body in full sunlight, or he coyly hiding behind the kilt. He looked like a perfect fool, and it made him laugh. Eleanor ignored him and kept on developing. She finished the last plate, gazed at Hart holding his kilt over his front, and pronounced the proceedings satisfactory.
“Good,” Hart said. “Now that you have new photographs for your memory book, you’ll destroy the old ones.”
Eleanor wiped her hands. “Mmm, perhaps. I still have not found all of them. I will continue my quest.”
Hart stepped in front of her. “No.”
“Why not? It was Fenians who wanted you dead, nothing to do with the photographs. I imagine Mr. Fellows is already in London, mopping them up. The Fenians, I mean, not the photographs. The photographs weren’t the danger, and I am determined to find them.”
For answer, Hart closed his arms around her and showed her that darkroom tables could be put to more use than for developing apparatus.
The real world, unfortunately, intruded on Eleanor’s newfound marital bliss, and Hart went back to his study and his quest to win every politician in the land to his side.
Eleanor was busy herself. Now that she was the Duchess of Kilmorgan, her correspondence had multiplied into a mountain, piling up all the more while she’d lain ill.
She had Maigdlin and a footman cart all her letters to the little sitting room off her bedchamber, and she sat at the writing table, sorting through the pile and trying to ignore the continued soreness of her healing arm.
She received many letters of congratulations on her nuptials along with wishes for her to get well, and of course, a growing stack of invitations. In the middle of the pile, Eleanor came upon a rather thick envelope of now-familiar stationery.
Her heart beat faster as she tore open the envelope and unfolded the paper inside. Inside this was a small tissue-wrapped bundle, tied with white ribbon. Eleanor hastily undid the ribbon and folded back the paper, and five photographs of the naked Hart Mackenzie fell into her hand.
Chapter 18
Eleanor fanned out the photographs across her writing table. The letter that had been folded around them was short, to the point, and badly spelled.
Many fellations on your weding, from one as wishes you well.
The writer meant felicitations. Another indication that she was unpolished and only basically educated.
Eleanor now had all twenty photographs. Again, no threats, no demands for money, nothing.
She rewrapped the photographs in the letter, returned to her bedroom to shove the bundle inside her remembrance book, and went in search of Ian.
She found him on the grand terrace that spread across the back of the house. Ian sat cross-legged in the middle of its marble expanse, playing soldiers with his son. That is, Ian was setting up carved wooden soldiers, and Jamie was cheerfully knocking them down.
“I say, the Battle of Waterloo would have been over quickly had Jamie been there,” Eleanor said.
Jamie picked up a French general, stuffed half of him into his mouth, and waddled toward Eleanor. Ian very gently stopped him and plucked the wet soldier out of his son’s mouth.
Eleanor sat down on the nearest marble bench. “Ian, I need you to tell me the names of all the ladies who lived in Hart’s High Holborn house.”
Ian wiped the soldier dry on his kilt while Jamie climbed up to sit next to Eleanor. Ian put his big hand on the boy’s back so he wouldn’t fall.
“Sally Tate, Lily Martin, Joanna Brown, Cassie Bingham, Helena Ferguson, Marion Phillips…”
“Stop.” Eleanor raised the notebook she’d brought and started scribbling with
a pencil. “Let me take it down.”
Jamie pulling on the pencil slowed things, but Eleanor managed to start the list of names. “Go on.”
Ian continued, naming every one. Further probing let Eleanor know that some were courtesans, some maids who worked in the house, one the cook. All had lived at Angelina Palmer’s at one time or another, some staying only days.
“You wouldn’t happen to know where they all are now, do you?” she asked, making notes.
Ian, being Ian, did. Jamie tired of tugging on Eleanor’s pencil and climbed down from the bench. Ian steadied him, then kept a sharp eye on him as Jamie toddled about the terrace, picking up fallen soldiers.
Several of the ladies had died, he said. Most still lived in London, though one had married and emigrated to America. Quite a number had married, it seemed. Of the lot, three lived in Edinburgh. One was still a courtesan living with her protector, one was a maid in a big house, and one had married a former protector.
Eleanor wrote everything down, not asking Ian how he knew all this. She had no doubt that what he told her was accurate. The letters had most likely originated in Edinburgh, and to Edinburgh Eleanor would go. “Thank you,” she said.
Ian, seeing that Eleanor had finished her questions, became fully absorbed in his son. Eleanor watched, content in the April sunshine, as Ian and Jamie set up the soldiers again, Ian lying on his stomach while Jamie worked his way around his large father.
When Jamie tired, Ian sat up and let Jamie climb onto his plaid-clad lap. Ian closed his arms around his son, and Jamie dozed, Ian gazing down at him with such intense love that Eleanor quietly rose and left them alone.
Eleanor found it easy to get herself and Hart to Edinburgh not a few days later, into the very house in which one of the maids from High Holborn now worked. A woman called Mrs. McGuire had hired the maid, and Eleanor found that she and Hart—now the most sought-after couple in Scotland—had already been invited to Mrs. McGuire’s next grand soiree.
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