She found a small space in the small of his bare back to perch on the chaise and put a hand to his shoulder with the intention of giving him a little shake to wake him as gently as possible. But the surprising warmth of his skin under her hand made her pause. And in that small hesitation, as if in answer to her touch, he dropped his shoulder and turned slightly towards her so that she looked upon his face, and what surprised her, and was something she had not thought about or noticed until now, was that with his face in repose he was mesmerizingly handsome.
Ever truthful, she acknowledged she had noticed his virility but it was his ever-present, devil-may-care smile and the mischief, or was it defiance, that sparked his dark brown eyes, that had masked just how handsome he truly was and reminded her in no small way of her beloved friend and brother-in-law Vallentine; that he was supremely indifferent to what others thought of him and trod his own path, she did not have to stray to find to whom those qualities belonged.
That small movement, of dropping his shoulder and turning his head, had the power to draw her down, so close that she caught the essence of him: salty and spicy and thoroughly male. Thoughts of waking him with a shake vanished as she leaned in to lightly kiss his stubbled jaw, and to discover for herself if it was possible to arouse a living Greek statue.
“No. Not-not here. No.”
She ignored him.
His sluggish command was firm if muffled as he reluctantly removed his mouth from hers. He so wanted to go on kissing her, to enjoy the moist sweetness and aching arousal of the promises to be had in what her mouth could offer him, of what his tongue yearned to discover between her thighs. His mind raced on to thoughts of them engaging in auparishtaka and he moaned aloud the disappointment experienced by his throbbing vital organ when he removed her hand. But he was resolute. This was not the place. He had decided what he wanted, and how he was going to go about getting it; the short-term frustration of denial was a small price to pay if it meant she would share the future with him.
And so he scrambled up amongst the cushions on the chaise, now fully awake, dragged the coverlet up between his thighs to cover his arousal, and raked a splayed hand through tussled hair, gathering his thoughts and formulating an explanation she would understand. Antonia faced him on the chaise, achingly lovely in a nightshift outrageously askew and falling off one shoulder, honey blonde curls a messy tumble about her shoulders, looking thoroughly disconsolate and unsatisfied, to which she had every right.
“I do not understand at all why you say no and not here when he very much wants to make love. Do you not want to make love with me?” she asked wonderingly.
“More than I thought it humanly possible to want anything in this life.”
“Then please you will explain to me the difficulty,” she continued matter-of-factly, “because me I do not understand at all!”
Jonathon laughed at her petulance.
“I am very sure you don’t,” he agreed with a smile. “If there is a difficulty, it is making him behave. The mere thought of you and he thinks he is in control, and he is not. I am.”
Antonia frowned, unconsciously slipping her nightshift and dressing gown up onto her bare shoulder. “Behave? What is this behave and this control you speak about?” She had a sudden thought and her green eyes went very wide and she stared at him in disbelief. “Mon Dieu, please to tell me you are not one of these young men, like His Majesty and my son, who is a prude about all things of the bedchamber, that they cannot perform unless the door it is locked and the curtains they are drawn about the bed?” She threw up a hand. “And yet it is such men who breed like rabbits! It is unfathomable.”
He fell back amongst the cushions, laughing.
“It is not humorous in the least! It must be quite debilitating,” she replied indignantly but then she too saw the absurdity and tried hard to fight back a fit of the giggles. “What if the-the mood strikes and the-the bedchamber it is far away? To be so in control... It must affect the health, yes?”
“Yes, but not one’s ability to breed. Mieux baiser comme des lapins que se multiplier comme eux.” He sat forward and looked into her eyes, all humor extinguished, and put out a hand. “I will readily make love to you here, on this chaise, or out there, in the moonlight, for all the stars to see, and we will, but... Not the first time.”
Antonia moved up the chaise and slid under the coverlet, and took hold of the hand he held out, curious. “First time?”
He gently pulled her closer, to kiss her wrist and then the back of her hand, lips pressed to the red scar from the fiendish physician’s ligature that had held her fast to the icehouse chair. He looked up into her eyes.
“Do you remember the first time you made love?”
For some unknown reason, Antonia felt her face grow hot. How could she forget? She marveled at her naïve confidence in youth. It was she who had propositioned Monseigneur. She had trespassed into his bedchamber and discovered him naked, just out of his bath. It had been her eighteenth birthday the day before.
“Of course. Everyone remembers their first time,” she heard herself say blandly.
He smiled and said gently, pressing her fingers as he sat back against the cushions, “And so I want you to remember our first time.”
Antonia blinked and brought herself back to the present.
“But it is not our first time so—”
“With you; you with me. It will be our first time.”
She met his gaze. His sincerity made her uneasy. What had begun as an uncomplicated exercise in satisfying mutual lust was shaping itself into something else entirely and was so unexpected she was uncertain how to proceed or if she was capable of reciprocating. So she made less of it than it was, saying with a shrug,
“Why should that matter? Perhaps because it is the first time you have bedded a duchess? Antonia Roxton has never been with any other man but her husband and now you are to have that privilege.” She tugged her hand free and fussed unnecessarily with her hair, pulling the weight over one shoulder and plucking at the long curls. “To bed the Duchess of Roxton it is no small thing and quite a coup, so I am told. I have a page to myself in White’s betting book, much to my son’s disgust. He tried to have the page torn out. Me, I do not care. But he is very serious about such things, as is his nature. Tommy Cavendish says that not even Julian he could have the page removed. It is too titillating. Too many guineas have been wagered. Oh, on all sorts of ridiculous notions men get into their heads about me.”
“Stop it.”
“Who will Antonia Roxton bed now she is a widow? When will this grand événement occur? Has the Duke my son forbidden me from taking a lover?”
“Stop.”
“Did you know he has every right to do that? Imagine! At my age being dictated to by my son.”
“Stop.”
“But perhaps it is me who is to have the last laugh? After all, no one, most definitely not Julian, in their wildest imaginings will guess that Antonia Roxton lusts after a man not many years older than her son—”
“That’s enough!” Jonathon growled and so viciously that Antonia was instantly contrite. “You’re being self-destructive for its own sake and I won’t allow you to ground my honorable intentions to dust under your heel!”
“Will you not, M’sieur?”
“Never again will we speak of age because it is irrelevant. It was irrelevant when you fell in love with Monseigneur, so it is irrelevant now. You don’t need me to satisfy your vanity. You and I and the entire fraternity of White’s know you are more ravishingly beautiful than most of the women half your age. That is your son’s dilemma, and who can blame him for his apprehension? The instant his father breathed his last your virtue became fair game for every man with a pulse! But I am not like them and I won’t be seen to be like them.” He looked away, out through the columns to the moonlight shimmering across the still lake, and swallowed hard, and she knew her flippancy had hurt him. “As for me and Roxton,” he added quietly, turning back to look a
t her, “there may only be half a dozen years separating us, but in our experiences of life and women, a great yawning ocean divides us, which puts me more on par with his father than it ever will with your son. So when I tell you I want us to remember our first time together it is my sincerest heartfelt wish: Our first time. Two people: Antonia and Jonathon, no one else. Understand?”
There was a tight silence between them. Neither looked away from the other. If ever there was a moment for her to retreat from a possible future with him, this was it, Jonathon thought as he awaited her decision, face and body impassive but with the blood pounding in his ears. Finally she spoke, and so softly that through the drumming he had to strain to hear every word.
“It seems you have given this first time of ours a great deal of thought.”
“I have.”
She held his gaze yet it was impossible not to notice the tightness in his jaw and neck. Finally, her green eyes sparked and she dimpled with a roguish smile.
“So tell me about this first time,” she teased, touching his arm that lay across the top of the gilt wooden frame of the chaise. “Or is it to be a surprise?”
He breathed easy, grinned and pulled her into his embrace and they settled on the chaise, the coverlet over them both, she with her head against his chest.
“A surprise.”
She snuggled in.
“Bon. I like surprises.”
He thought she had fallen asleep, she was quiet so long, and he was content to stare out between two columns at the full moon, fingers absently playing with a long lock of her hair, satisfied one hurdle had been leapt but ruminating on how many more remained before he could be certain that his future with her was secure, not least was the hurdle of how to tell her who he truly was, or more correctly, who he was to become on the imminent death of his ancient distant relative, and how that would signal the first day of the rest of his life by a lake, not unlike this one, but on the far side of Hadrian’s wall in remote Scotland; he might as well tell her he was returning to the subcontinent!
“Where is your valet?” she asked drowsily.
“I left him in India. He had a wife and children and could not leave them.”
“So who looks after you?”
“I look after myself.”
“A gentleman does not look after himself... He must have a valet.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. I will find you one tomorrow.”
“Will you indeed? Do I appear that unkempt?”
“Yes. I like it. But you have suffered long enough. You must have a valet.”
He chuckled and hugged her.
She let her hand wander lightly over his chest, across the muscles of his firm stomach and then down to his groin. He caught her wrist before her exploration went further and brought her hand back up to his chest and held it there in his large warm hand.
“Behave yourself.”
She giggled into his side.
“But with you, I don’t think I can. You are too tempting.”
“There is that proverb about all good things coming to those who wait.”
“That is a great piece of nonsense! Good things come to those who seize the opportunity.”
He gave a bark of laughter and swiftly kissed her hand.
“Now you are thinking like a merchant.”
“And you are the one being stubbornly noble!”
He closed his eyes, smiling.
“Sleep, wicked woman.”
There was another long silence between them.
“Is he the reason you were teased at school?”
“Yes.”
“Because he is circumcised. Why?”
“Why was I teased about it or why is he circumcised?”
“Silly. It stands to reason you would be teased because only Jews are circumcised and they cannot attend Harrow.”
“Jews and Muslims.”
“But you are neither.”
“I am neither but I had no say in the matter. My father converted to the faith of Islam and that requires male children to be circumcised. And so in his wisdom he had my elder brother James and I circumcised, as there was little likelihood of us returning to England. He intended for us to live, marry women on the subcontinent, have families and die in India.”
“What happened to change that?”
“My brother died; then a distant cousin here in England. I became my uncle’s heir and my father, my uncle’s younger brother, who had given up all rights to his inheritance upon his conversion to Islam, was persuaded to send me to England to be brought up a proper English gentleman as befitted my new circumstances. I was not much older than your Frederick when plucked from the warmth of the subcontinent and thrown into the depths of an English winter and the bleakness of Harrow.” He felt Antonia shudder and hugged her. “Your daughter-in-law is a wise woman to keep Frederick from Eton until he is old enough to deal with the brutalities of an English boarding school. Being heir to a dukedom is no protection while at school. It only exacerbates the cruelty by boys who will never have another opportunity to meet you on a level playing field.” He gave a huff of dismissive laughter. “The tattoo didn’t help.”
“You had this done as a boy?”
“Right before I boarded the ship for England. Eight years old and full of my own ideas even then. Three elephants in an eternal circle: James, my father and me. It hurt like bloody hell.”
There was a long silence between them, so long in fact that he thought she had fallen asleep in his arms, but then she spoke again, this time fighting off sleep yet succumbing to slumber with every sentence uttered.
“Why are you sleeping out here?” she asked drowsily.
“You haven’t invited me inside.”
“Not invited you inside?”
“A gentleman waits to be asked.”
She was incredulous, even as she slipped into slumber. “You... You are the most—the most frustratingly and possibly the most—the most romantically minded man it has been my misfortune to encounter...”
He grinned in the darkness and fell into blissful sleep.
Antonia woke to the sounds of hammering and sawing, and laughing children. If the annoying noise of industry made her wonder if she was suffering her first megrim, the sounds of children at play had her throwing back the coverlet and calling for Michelle. And then she remembered she was in the pavilion—or was she? Half the contents of her bedchamber had found their way to her pretty outdoor sitting room. A Chinoiserie dressing screen, walnut washstand, various articles of clothing and the combs, brushes and silver backed mirror from her dressing table were set out across chairs positioned behind the chaise longue where she had spent a contended night’s sleep in the arms of her merchant guest.
Guest? She frowned at the word as she quickly threw the silk dressing gown over her diaphanous nightdress and retied the ribbons. He was her guest, but he had become more than that, and yet they were not lovers, not in the strictest sense of the word; well, not yet. She found a pair of silk embroidered mules by the chaise, washed her face with the lavender-scented water, used the toothpowder and peppermint mouthwash then silently returned the towel to Michelle who stood as a statue by the Chinoiserie dressing screen, gaze riveted to the marble tiles.
Antonia wanted to blurt out that nothing had happened the night before so there was no need for Michelle to appear as if she had somehow strayed into a bordello. But as she was very sure something would happen in the near future what was the point of denying now what was surely inevitable? She smiled to herself as she threaded a pale pink ribbon through her messy abundance of curls and was about to ask why it was that for the past sennight she had woken to the discordant sounds of carpentry, when an object amongst the toiletries caught her eye.
She picked up the nondescript glass bottle with its glass ball stopper that had tied about its neck a velvet ribbon with small note attached. She knew what it was and where it had come from. The perfumier M’sieur Floris, or as she had pla
yfully dubbed him Le Grand Nez, blended his unique perfumes at his premises in Jermyn Street, and this particular scent he had named Antonia in her honor. She had not worn her scent since Monseigneur’s internment in the Family mausoleum. She did not need to guess who had left it there but the note intrigued her.
M’sieur Floris assures me the scent is delicate, joyful, unique & divine. In truth: a distillation of all that you are. Thus to wear it is surely superfluous?
“Do you wish for me to break the seal, Mme la duchesse?” Michelle asked, a close eye on her mistress who continued to stare at the note and knowing full well who had left the bottle of perfume.
Antonia shook her head and with a hard swallow thrust the bottle at her maid. “Was-was I dreaming or did I hear the children?”
“Not a dream, Mme la duchesse. They are down at the big oak with M’sieur Strang. They arrived an hour ago but I was told not to disturb you,” Michelle explained, scooping up a pair of billowy silk trousers, a long sleeved shift and a pair of jumps. She headed for the dressing screen, expecting her mistress to follow, but when Antonia did not move, she came back to stand before her and the Duchess lifted a leg of the Ottoman trousers with an enquiring scowl, which prompted Michelle to explain, “M’sieur Strang says it is most necessary for you to wear this fancy dress—”
“These are the clothes of a sultan’s wife and I have not worn them since the masquerade held to honor Frederick’s birth. I do not understand at all how he knew I had such clothes,” she muttered to herself, going behind the dressing screen, Michelle on her heels. “Or why he thinks jumps is part of the ensemble. Turkish women do not wear such things.”
“The jumps they were my idea!” Michelle announced and rushed on when the Duchess looked at her askance. “It is—it is scandalous he has you wear openly such coverings on your legs before children.” Adding with a curtsey, “I am sorry, Mme la duchesse, but is the truth.”
Antonia pressed her lips together on a retort then said very quietly, “The scandal it is still to come. Now we will not talk. I want very much to see the children.”
Autumn Duchess: A Georgian Historical Romance (Roxton Series) Page 31