“You trust George?”
“He’s one of the footmen you set to guarding me, so yes. Moreover, he’s a young man who hopes you’ll look on him favorably when your house steward retires this fall. I doubt George is trying to do you in.”
Across from her, the duke stared at the half-made-up bed as if it were a chessboard and the game well advanced. “Not me. They were trying to do you in.”
“Not this again. I’m in fine fettle.” And too tired to humor His Grace’s queer starts.
“Did we trade oranges today?” He sat and patted the mattress, but a cozy chat was not in the offing.
“I haven’t eaten any oranges today.” She settled beside him, trying to recall everything she’d eaten or drunk, everything he’d eaten or drunk.
“The tea.” They said it at the same time.
“That tea was intended for you,” he said. “I chased off the footmen at the last minute on impulse, because I was sick to death of ledgers and I’d missed you.”
She looked away, not sure that was a helpful admission under the circumstances.
Under any circumstances…
“I guzzled down most of your cold tea. Do you usually consume the whole of it during an afternoon’s gardening?”
“Yes, if it’s a hot day, like today,” Gilly said, feeling abruptly chilled as the plausibility of Christian’s conclusion sank in. “You didn’t drink it all.”
“But you had none, and I had half the jug. I’m nigh twice your weight, Gilly. Someone means for you to die.”
He put his arms around her, and she scooted as close to him as she could get.
***
Having an enemy under Christian’s own roof galvanized the military officer in him, and Christian rejoiced to have that part of himself back. For too long, he’d been nothing but a captive, and by God, by God, he was ready to fight again.
Revenge was a fine notion to sustain a man while he regained his strength, but engaged battle was the surest sign of a full recovery.
“Whoever means you harm, Gilly, they’ll have to go through me to get to you, and I’m more trouble than they can possibly imagine.”
“But who would want me dead? I’m nobody. I’m nothing, a plain little impoverished widow whose best years are behind her.” She sounded so bewildered, as if she honestly believed that assessment.
“You are a titled lady, a member of this household, and the woman who wouldn’t let me die only hours ago. You also have to be exhausted.”
“How can I sleep when you tell me somebody wants me dead?” She rested her forehead against his shoulder, and his rage spiked. She was small, a quiet, diminutive woman who’d known enough grief and misery in her life. Only a fiend would prey on her.
And while Girard was a fiend, he’d had a Gallic gallantry where women were concerned, and no tolerance for soldiers who abused the whores and laundresses.
“You’re staying here with me, madam. We both need rest, and I won’t be able to close my eyes if you’re intent on sleeping elsewhere.”
She was apparently so rattled she didn’t protest, didn’t come at him with eleven reasons why he was wrong, misguided, and a fool. He hurt for her, that she should be so daunted.
“You were right,” she said miserably. “You were right about the coach wheel and Damsel’s girth. You’re right about the tea.”
He wished to God he’d been wrong. “There’s nothing to be done about it until morning.”
“And then?”
“We’ll make plans when I’m not recovering from poison, and you’re not exhausted from combating its effects on me.” And he’d find out where the hell Girard had gone to ground, for despite a backhanded chivalry toward the women at the garrison, who else would have the wits to cause Christian such diabolical mischief?
Gilly sat beside him, staring at her hands folded in her lap, and he wanted to howl. His countess at a loss was a daunting sight. Old Greendale hadn’t been able to blight her spirit, but someone else was certainly trying to.
They’d fail spectacularly. He’d make sure of it. “Come to bed.”
“I can’t.” She sat up straighter, a ghost of her spirit manifesting. “The staff will never stop gossiping.”
“They never do stop gossiping, but you’re a widow. If you want consolation from me in your grief, it’s your business, as you yourself reminded me.”
“Your tune has changed, Your Grace.”
“So has yours. If we’re to share a bed, you will please use my name.”
She squared her shoulders, a gesture that boded ill for a man who wanted a few hours sleep before joining battle in the morning.
Drastic measures were called for, or one of them would soon be in strong hysterics.
“Oh, fine, then,” he groused. “Get yourself killed and leave a man to grieve all over again when he’s hardly getting his bearings.” He sat back against the headboard and folded his arms behind his head. “Leave his only surviving child utterly bereft, cast adrift by a cousin too cavalier to accept the protection lying immediately to hand.”
He raised his gaze toward the shadows flickering on the ceiling. “Go ahead and thwart my authority as head of the family, head of the household, and the local magistrate.”
Gilly crawled across the mattress, which was roughly the dimensions of a foaling stall.
“Leave me to drown in guilt and helpless rage,” he went on. “To waste my remaining years in fervent prayer for your immortal and entirely too stubborn and misguided soul. Strong drink will be necessary in quantity, I’m sure, and given the bodily ordeals I’ve been subjected—”
“Hush.” She looped his arm across her shoulders and curled down against him. “I’ll stay here for now, but you must hush.”
He rolled up on his side, pulled the sheet up over them, kissed her shoulder, anchored his arm around her middle, and hauled her against his body.
And then did as she’d commanded.
***
Gilly woke to two sensations, the first easy to identify: warmth. She was half on her side, half prone, and Christian lay along her back, a ducal blanket, his leg snugged up to her bottom and insinuated between her calves. His naked, muscular, hairy male leg.
The second impression was harder to classify, and not strictly of the body: she was safe. He held her securely with an arm about her waist, and he’d put himself between her and the door. She faced the windows, faced the pure blackness of that hour between moonset and sunrise, and knew a sense of peace that surpassed anything she’d experienced since her wedding.
And then his hand, his damaged left hand, moved. He shaped her breast gently, and Gilly both felt and heard him sigh. His breath whispered over her nape, and she hoped he’d merely been moving in his sleep, reliving a minor marital pleasure.
Except to her, it wasn’t minor.
And they weren’t married.
His hand moved again, with more purpose, and more heat spread through Gilly, from low in her belly and between her thighs. She put her hand over his to stop him from further caresses.
“I thought you were awake.” His voice was a rumble in the darkness, right behind her ear. “I’ll stop if you wish it, Gilly, but only if you wish it. This is where fancying a fellow can lead, for a widow with the courage to indulge her pleasures, and I’m almost sure you do fancy me.”
He opened his mouth over that place where her shoulder and neck joined, while Gilly tried to think.
And failed. She wanted him; he desired her as well. They were of age, neither one was married, and he was no longer nattering on about his honor, or hers, or—
He set his teeth on her and scraped a slow slide out to her shoulder. She closed her eyes and savored the feel of Christian holding her close, savored his heat and the strange sensations—part need, part desolation—that must be inchoate desire.
The d
esire she would examine soon, but first, Gilly gave herself a moment to enjoy the pleasure of revenge.
Greendale might have been a decent husband. Gilly hadn’t been his first wife, he’d been experienced, and he might have relied on that experience to show her consideration.
He’d shown her shame, misery, and mishandling, and now—now—Gilly was in bed with a man who knew how to cherish, how to go slowly, how to pleasure. She hoped the knowledge had Greendale spinning in his grave and trying to claw his way out of hell.
Christian shifted, and the loss of him along her back and side was physical and emotional both, and then he was back, nudging her flat onto her back and shifting his weight over hers.
“Spread your legs, love. Make a place for me, or tell me to sleep on the balcony.”
“Don’t go.” She was sure of that much, sure she didn’t want to be alone in this big bed, but as for the rest… She was wicked to want it, to want him, but also…right. Right that they join, though he wasn’t speaking of marriage.
Nor was she ready to raise the topic with him.
“Stop thinking, my lady.” He hitched up on his forearms, so his body caged hers, and evidence of his arousal, hard and warm, lay against her belly.
“I can’t…” She couldn’t see him, couldn’t read his features in the darkness. “Don’t rush me.”
He might have laughed silently. His belly bounced against hers, they were so very, very close.
“Haste is the last thing on my mind.” His lips brushed against her temple, then her eyes, her brows, her chin, and occasionally, as if it were just another feature, her mouth.
“You like this darkness. You like learning me by feel.” He would also like having his scars invisible to her, which Gilly understood better than he knew. Feeling very bold indeed, she nuzzled at him until she found his mouth with her own. “I like it too.”
She sensed endless patience in him, and so she learned at the age of almost twenty-six how to kiss a lover. Such kisses involved tongues, lips, taste, feel, and soft, needy noises that had her pressing up into his body, into his arousal, and wanting to consume him with her hands and her mouth.
“Now who rushes whom?” he asked.
Was he laughing at her? “If you can manage ducal grammar, I’m doing it wrong, aren’t I? I thought so. Tell me then what I must do. I’ll do as you ask, as you say.”
Please don’t leave me.
She hadn’t been able to get free of her husband’s attentions fast enough, had dreaded the man’s every touch, his every visit to her bed. With Christian, she wanted to surrender herself to an eternal night.
“A biddable countess is an alarming prospect,” he said, closing his teeth over her earlobe. “Though I’m entirely your slave as well, as it should be in a shared bed. You, for example, might ask me to attend your very sensitive breasts.”
He dipped his head and ran his nose over her nipple. Her fingers sank into his hair—she’d long since destroyed his queue.
“You want to take off your nightgown, don’t you, Gilly?”
Oh, she did. She wanted to badly, entirely, immediately. He shifted up to straddle her, and between them, the garment was gone, tossed off into the darkness.
“Better, hmm?” He settled down, but lower, resting his cheek against the slope of her naked breast. “Better for me, but for you too, I think.” And then he turned his face and nuzzled her again, but this time without the interference of fabric.
“Mercia…Christian.” She arched up, wanting his mouth. Needing it more than she needed her very dignity. “Please.”
“I live to bring you pleasure.”
Such a declaration ought to have sounded mocking or at least ironic, the sophisticated aside of a man happily at ease with bedsport, but to Gilly, his words rang like a vow. He closed his mouth over her nipple and drew on her with a slow, wet heat, making her back arch and her breath hitch.
“You like that, or am I mistaken?” He rested against her again, his tone pleased.
“It’s…almost too much.”
“Too pleasurable, or too intimate?”
“What a thing to ask me.” She tried to sort the answer out in her mind, except he’d switched breasts, and Gilly felt as if he were drawing the tide of desire up through her body with his mouth. Too pleasurable and too intimate, both. Intimate because he knew the havoc he created inside her.
“If you were bored, or perhaps looking for diversion,” he said, “you might use your hands on me.”
Her hands? Where were…? They rested on his shoulders. She winnowed them back from his temples, indulging a long-suppressed desire to tangle her fingers in the abundance of his hair, not simply brush a hand over it. She caught a rosy scent, but not quite the soap she preferred herself.
“You smell of roses.” She brought a silky lock to her nose and caressed his cheek with it.
“To remind me of you.” He left off using his tongue on her nipple, and shifted as if he’d similarly torment her belly.
Her belly?
“Where are you going?” She held him motionless by a fistful of hair. “I can’t kiss you if you disappear under the sheets.”
He stopped, and a considering silence ensued before he shifted again, back up over her. “Your wish is my most sincere desire.”
Holy, everlasting feathers, the man must be unloosing on her a year’s worth of very skilled kisses. His tongue flirted, teased, appeased, and flirted again. He tasted her, he coaxed her into exploring his mouth, he offered her his tongue and she took it, and all the while, Gilly grew more and more tense, more needy.
“Your…Christian…” She wrapped her legs around his flanks. He let out a groan, mostly humor and something else that suggested his patience was at least tried, though by no means exhausted.
He braced an arm under Gilly’s neck, which left him a hand free to torment her breasts. If his mouth was skilled, his fingers ought to be declared illegal by act of Parliament.
“You have to tell me if you want more,” he said, his mouth near her ear. “Tell me, Gilly.”
She nodded against the pillow, arched her back to thrust her breast into his hand, and realized the wretch wanted to hear her speak the words, too. “I want…”
“You want me? You want what all this entails?”
He flexed his spine, and the rigid length of his cock slid over the top of her sex, and up her belly, then subsided.
“I want you,” she said, trying to turn his head with her hands so she could get her mouth back on his.
“You shall have me then.”
He was a cavalry officer, Gilly reminded herself. He understood strategy, and he was applying it. His hand shaped her breast, not quite as gently, and his touch made her desire leap. His fingers knew how much more was perfect, his kisses grew hotter, wetter, and even Gilly’s sense of balance threatened to abandon her.
“Christian…Christian…please. I don’t know how…”
“I know,” he said. “Trust me, Gilly. Do you trust me?” He moved again, his cock sliding over her sex, gliding wetly up, then down. She strained against him, frustrated and gratified and more frustrated still.
“You have to tell me, Gilly. Say yes.”
“Y-yes…”
Above her, he slowed, his thrusts became languid, and Gilly wanted to scream and pound on his back with her fists.
“You’re saying yes,” he whispered. “Yes, Christian.”
“Yes, Christian, but please God, now.”
She tried to flex her hips when he retreated, to change the angle so he’d cease this maddening rubbing and join their bodies. That had to be what she sought, though there was no way to know anything for certain, not when she was so befuddled and overwrought.
“Oh, sweet, merciful feathers…Christian.”
He came into her body slowly, and she was glad now for the d
ampness easing his way, because his proportions challenged her to the point of near-pain.
“Relax, love. Take a breath, let it out. I won’t move until I feel you relax.”
But she wanted him to move, needed him to. She did as he bid, breathing in, then slowly easing the breath from her body.
“Again.”
He remained exactly as he was, poised above her, but his hand brushed a caress over her brow, then came to rest around the back of her head so her face was cradled against his shoulder. He did it again, more slowly, and the sheer tenderness of his touch had Gilly sighing.
He pushed in deeper, and she sighed again until he set up a shallow rhythm.
“You can move with me, or not. I’ll last longer if you don’t, but not much.”
She wanted to ask what he meant, but he’d settled his mouth over hers, his kisses again lazy, and then…not so lazy.
Something in Gilly’s vitals began to hum, to heat up and spread out and take over her limbs and her mind. She lifted up to meet his thrusts, and tried to grip him when he’d recede from her.
“Ye gods…” he whispered against her neck. “Just holy… Ah, Gilly.”
His tempo picked up, but more than that, he stopped being so delicate with her, and Gilly’s body began to sing.
“More.” She meant to whisper in his ear, but the single word must have conveyed desperation, because Christian cast off any semblance of politesse and possessed her in fierce, carnal abandon.
She came undone, utterly, completely, unexpectedly. Somewhere between what on earth and oh, God, Christian Gilly’s body became a ravening, mindless creature of pleasure, surprise, and more and more pleasure. She keened into his neck, clung, shook, clawed at him, and started all over again when she felt the damp heat of his seed deep inside her body.
When the storm passed, he went back to petting her hair, and she experienced for the first time the post- coital intimacy of breathing in counterpoint to a lover.
“I had no idea,” she said, smoothing his hair back. “No earthly clue…”
“Ah, Gilly. You unman me all over again.”
He shifted to his side and pulled her into his arms, which caused his cock to slip from her body, and the sensation brought her pleasure, even as Gilly endured a sense of loss at Christian’s absence.
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