by Lauren Royal
Hugging herself, she watched him walk deeper into the house. Through an open window, more laughter floated from the river, faint and joyous. People celebrating on a barge, she imagined.
She didn’t have to wait long. A minute later Kit was back, a cloth sack in one hand and a cloak in the other. “Ellen’s,” he explained. “I thought you might be cold.”
He moved close and settled it over her shoulders, wrapping her in its warmth. Fine gray wool with black and silver braid, it was much heavier than her own velvet one and smelled faintly of Ellen, a light, carefree fragrance compared to her own heavier perfume. But Kit being so near, his own scent seemed stronger—woodsy, masculine, and heady enough to overwhelm her.
She was on the verge of asking for a kiss again when he stepped away.
“Thank you,” she said quietly as he guided her back outdoors. “It was very kind of you to take me for a walk. Away from…all that.”
“I needed a break from my work. And now that I’ve taken it, I’m realizing I’ll be needing sleep soon, too.”
Ellen was counting on that, Rose thought, wondering why she felt disloyal. Whose side was she on regarding this brother–sister tug of war? She wasn’t sure. She only knew that right here, right now, she was in the right place.
The streets were deserted this time of night, the river slow and dark, the moon illuminating its ripples. Kit guided her past the bridge that led to Eton, its shops dark and shuttered. They came to a wooden gate with white lettering that gleamed in the moonlight. “Romney Walk,” Rose read aloud.
The gate creaked when Kit opened it. “There’s a place near Trentingham named Romney as well, isn’t there?”
“There are many such places, I believe.” Beyond the gate, the path angled closer to the river. Although the moon provided enough light that she could trod the packed dirt without tripping, she allowed Kit to keep a steadying hand on her elbow. “The word derives from a Saxon word, rumnea, meaning water.”
He looked at her with admiration. “You know ancient languages, too?”
She smiled, liking that look. She couldn’t remember a man ever admiring her for more than her appearance.
It was the difference between a suitor and a friend.
“No, Rand told me about that. I’m not so much interested in old tongues—I’d rather learn languages I can use someday when I travel. What’s in the sack?”
“Bread. For the swans.” Several had been following them as they walked, gliding soundlessly on the water. One of them honked now, as though he’d heard Kit and knew food was in the offing. “I thought you might like to feed them.”
“It would never occur to me to bring bread. Lily would think like that.”
“She loves animals, doesn’t she?”
“Almost as much as she loves Rand.”
She wondered what her sister was doing this evening. In the middle of the night, so soon after her wedding…Rose was afraid she knew. She’d lay odds Lily was doing those things that were still a mystery to her, those things that she feared would be distasteful…except when she thought about doing them with the man here with her now.
She released a long sigh. “Lily is nice to everyone and everything, human and animal alike. I could never live up to her perfection.”
“No one’s perfect, Rose. Not Lily or anyone else.” He reached into the sack and handed her a few cubes of stale bread. “Shall we sit?”
The bank rose here, forming a little grassy hill that overlooked the river. Rose lowered herself to the springy ground, tucking Ellen’s cloak beneath her. She tossed a bread cube out on the water and watched the swans rush to gobble it. “I wonder what it is about you that makes me so glib,” she mused.
He sat beside her. “You don’t seem tongue-tied with anyone else.”
She blushed, thankful for the cover of darkness. “I don’t generally admit to people that I’m imperfect.”
“I hesitate to disillusion you,” he said wryly, “but I imagine they could figure that out without you informing them.”
Laughing, she shoved at his shoulder and tossed more bread. Swans honked, demanding still more. Across the river, a tiny bridge was barely visible over small rapids gleaming white in the moonlight. The sounds of running water were soothing.
After a moment of silence, Kit reached over and took her hand. When she didn’t pull away, he raised it to his mouth and pressed his warm lips to the back.
She knew she shouldn’t allow it. But his kiss on her hand felt different from Lord Hathersham’s, so different it made her shiver.
“Are you cold?” he asked.
“No. Will you kiss me?”
“Shy as usual,” Kit teased, sounding pleased as he reached for her.
Her heart began pounding. “I don’t mean…” Agitated, she scrambled to her feet. “Good God, I just want to see how you do it.”
He rose and moved close. “Like any other man, as I told you.” With a hand beneath her chin, he tilted her face up and leaned near. His warm breath brushed her lips. “A kiss is a kiss.”
“Oh, no,” she breathed. “It isn’t.”
Then she couldn’t say more, because his mouth had met hers.
She tried to concentrate on his technique. But as his work-roughened hands cupped her face, as his gentle pressure turned into more, as the kiss deepened and his tongue tangled with hers, she couldn’t seem to think straight.
Was he more tender? Not really—and not at all when the caress turned more demanding. Was he more skilled? She had to think so, but she couldn’t discern how. Did he taste different? Well, certainly. He tasted like Kit, only Kit…the most divine flavor ever to grace her lips.
She heard a moan and realized it was hers, and then she couldn’t think at all. She could only feel. A wonderful heat began spreading through her. She wound her arms around Kit’s neck and threaded her fingers into his hair, pressing her body against his. It seemed she could feel his pulse, his lifeblood, beating in tandem with hers. A perfect moment.
A thing of beauty.
When he broke the kiss, she tugged him back for another. He obliged her for a moment before drawing away with a low laugh. “So I’m different, am I?”
“Oh, yes,” she sighed. “But I cannot figure out how. I…I don’t like deep kisses.”
“Oh,” he said, “I think you do.”
“Only yours.” He was kissing her neck now, little wet kisses that should disgust her, but they didn’t. Instead, they made her shiver again. “How do you do that to me?”
“Maybe,” he murmured, his lips teasingly warm on her earlobe, “I do that to you because we belong together.”
“No.” That couldn’t be it. She couldn’t belong with a commoner. Kit was her friend, and she liked kissing him, and that was all. “No.”
“No?” He nibbled lightly along her jaw. She should hate this, but she didn’t. His lips inched toward her mouth, making her own lips tingle with anticipation. “Shall I kiss you again to prove it?” he asked, his mouth moving closer, but not quite there.
Frustrated, she took his head in both hands and crushed her lips to his. And with another low laugh, he set to proving his words right.
It was a kiss to sink into. This time his arms went around her. His hands spread on her back, pressing her close. She molded her curves to his body as the fluttery bubbles in her stomach became a hot, insistent ache.
Then his hands moved lower and cupped her bottom. She would swear she felt their warmth through her gown and Ellen’s cloak, along with an odd, exciting tingling. The viscount had touched her there, and she’d hated it. But when Kit’s hands pulled her closer, she melted against him. She felt a hardness where their bodies met, a hardness that made her think of the engravings in I Sonetti.
“Rose.” Her name was a husky entreaty. He tore his mouth from hers to open the cloak and press kisses to her throat, her chest, the tops of her breasts displayed in her low décolletage. Lord Cravenhurst had touched her there, and she’d felt nothing but revuls
ion. But now her skin prickled, and beneath her chemise and the long, triangular stomacher that covered her laces, her nipples tightened.
It was all she could do to keep from tearing her own clothes off.
This would never, ever do.
“Kit,” she breathed on a sigh.
He lifted his head and kissed her mouth, a warm clinging of lips. “Hmm?”
“I think we should go back.” She didn’t want to go back, but she had to. This wasn’t where she belonged. “Please, take me back. I…I’m afraid this isn’t right. I mean…we aren’t right.”
He paused a long, heart-stopping moment before stepping away. Then he took her hand and started down the path. She didn’t pull her hand from his. She knew she should—but she just couldn’t.
“I think, dear Rose, we are very right,” he said after a while. “And I believe that in time you’ll agree.”
It was a good thing he was just a friend, because she feared she might agree already.
TWENTY-SEVEN
“LADY TRENTINGHAM?”
Chrystabel turned to the Duke of Bridgewater and took note of his troubled expression. “Yes, your grace?”
“I thought I should let you know your daughter is missing.”
“Oh?” Poor man, he really seemed to care. “Whatever makes you think that?”
“She went off more than an hour ago. I was hoping she’d return within a reasonable time, so I’d have no need to alarm you—”
“Did she go off with Kit Martyn?” Feeling sorry for him, she laid a hand on his arm. “Mr. Martyn is a friend of the family. I asked him to escort her.”
“Back to your apartments?” When she didn’t answer, he apparently took that for an affirmative. “She did say she felt peaked. Will she be returning later this evening?”
“I’m not certain,” Chrystabel said slowly, feeling a twinge of guilt for misleading him.
But she hadn’t really lied, had she? She’d merely allowed him to jump to a conclusion. He truly did seem concerned. A pity he was all wrong for Rose—too dull and unchallenging.
Although her daughter would make her own decision, Chrystabel had no doubt that, with her subtle help, in the end Rose would choose the right man.
Bridgewater suddenly frowned. “It seems that, besides Lady Rose, a number of other ladies have gone missing.”
Chrystabel looked around, surprised to find he was right. There were noticeably fewer women than earlier. The abandoned men shifted restlessly, standing in little groups and talking about heaven knew what.
“Do you expect they’re all feeling peaked?” Bridgewater asked. “Perhaps the prawns were bad.”
“You men ate prawns, too, did you not?” Dull, just as she’d thought. But his heart was in the right place. Looking over to her right, she brightened. “Oh, here comes Rose now.”
Her daughter’s step was lighter, her cheeks pinkened from the fresh night air—and perhaps an encounter with Kit.
Chrystabel could only hope.
Bridgewater swept Rose a bow. “We missed you, my lady.”
“Did you?” she murmured distractedly.
Chrystabel took that as a good sign. If Rose was failing to flirt with a duke, she must have another man on her mind.
“Are you feeling better?” he asked politely.
“I…um…not really, I’m afraid. I…I just returned for my cloak.”
“You’re wearing a cloak,” he pointed out.
“Oh.” She blinked. “I borrowed this one.” She unfastened the gray wool garment and shrugged it off, handing it to Chrystabel. “Will you both excuse me?”
TWENTY-EIGHT
THE ATTIRING room was so crowded, Rose had to edge her way inside.
“Marry come up!” a lady was saying. “Will you look at this? How do you expect it works?”
“Very well, I can assure you,” another courtier said smugly.
“But this”—there was a pause during which Rose heard pages flipping—“this looks bloody uncomfortable.”
As a mass, the women all leaned closer. “Uncomfortable for the man,” a high-pitched voice put in. “But I’d like to be that lady!”
Amid laughter, Rose worked herself toward the center. And then froze. Eleven—no, twelve—courtiers were huddled over Ellen’s book.
She was beginning to back away when one of them glanced up. “Lady Rose! Could this book be yours?”
“Mine?”
The pimply, black-haired Lady W held up Rose’s purple cloak. “We found it under this. It’s yours, isn’t it?”
“The cloak, yes. But the book…” Oh, dash it—she couldn’t leave it here, so there was no sense in lying. “It belongs to a friend,” she said, holding her head high. After all, given the behavior she’d witnessed here at court, these women had no call to think her a wanton—not for simply having a book.
“A friend? Wherever did he find it?”
“She,” Rose corrected. “And why? Have you heard of this book?”
“Heard of it?” a plump brunette said. “Why, I Sonetti Lussuriosi is known far and wide.” She pronounced the Italian words with a horrible English accent. “It was suppressed by the Vatican in the last century; didn’t you know? There are few copies surviving, and many men searching for them.”
“And women,” someone added, prompting giggles.
“Lord Chauncey has a set of the engravings on his bedchamber walls,” one lady slyly informed them. “I’ve seen them.”
“A crude set,” a second lady put in. “Copies. Nothing like the fine artistry of these originals.”
“You’ve seen them, too?” a third lady asked.
“You haven’t?” a fourth replied with an arched brow.
From the laughter that ensued, Rose concluded that Lady Number Three—and she—were the only women at court who hadn’t found their way into Lord Chauncey’s bedchamber.
Odds were he might be a good kisser. Unfortunately, he also sounded like a terrible rake.
A wistful sigh came from one of the ladies. “I do so wish I could read Italian. These sonnets must be fascinating.”
“That they are,” Rose said.
As one, the assembled group stopped focusing on the book and swung to her instead. A few of them sidled closer.
“Can you read Italian?” one of them asked. Or rather, slurred. She was wearing the newly fashionable plumpers—cork balls inside her cheeks to round out her face.
Rose nodded. “Yes, I can read it.” Perhaps it wasn’t considered ladylike to study languages, but she was far past trying to impress these women.
And oddly enough, they didn’t seem disapproving. Quite the contrary. “Will you read this book to us?” one asked.
Rose’s face flamed at the thought. “I…I don’t read Italian that well,” she fibbed. “Not well enough to read aloud.”
They all sighed together rather theatrically.
“But I’m translating the sonnets for a friend,” she found herself telling them. “One at a time. I could bring the written translations to court, too, if you’d like.”
The brunette’s overly made-up eyes widened at this offer. “Would you?”
The pimply Lady W smiled. “We’d be most grateful.”
“Mosht grateful,” slurred the woman with the plumpers.
The blond Lady W stepped forward. “I must say, dear Lady Rose, that’s a very kind offer, indeed. I’m so pleased to have made your acquaintance here at court.”
TWENTY-NINE
IT WAS A GOOD ten more minutes before Rose managed to make her way out of the attiring room with I Sonetti hidden beneath her cloak. It was another hour before her mother had fallen asleep and she could sneak from their bedchamber into the tiny attached sitting room. She closed the door between the two rooms quietly, then lit a candle, fetched paper and ink, and set to work.
In the old days, she would have feasted her eyes on the engravings first thing, but she was determined to become a new, better Rose. She wouldn’t allow herself to look a
t the pictures until she’d translated the first sonnet for Ellen.
It proved an exercise in frustration. She worked until the candle guttered and she had to light another. But try as she might, she couldn’t seem to make the English sound like a sonnet.
Let us make love, my beloved,
quickly, for we were made to make love.
And if you adore my yard,
then I will love your seat of womanly pleasure.
The world would be worthless without this.
And if it were possible to make love after death,
let us make love until we die of it,
and then make love to Eve and Adam,
who found death so distasteful.
Truly and verily,
if the scoundrels had not eaten forbidden fruit,
I know not whether the lovers would have been contented.
But let us stop speculating, and drive your yard into my core,
until my spirit comes alive and then dies.
And if it be possible, push even more of you inside me,
So we should witness every pleasure of making love.
It would have to do, she finally decided—Ellen had said that Thomas didn’t care for sonnets, anyway. A clock on the mantel was striking three when at last she allowed her gaze to stray to the drawing.
It was nice, as she’d remembered. Bare skin notwithstanding, the couple looked relaxed, the pose romantic. Their arms were wrapped around each other, their lips meeting above while their bodies met below. As Rose studied the picture, that slow heat started building again inside her.
When she imagined herself with one special man, the heat built to an ache. This, she realized suddenly, could be beautiful.
Releasing a shuddering sigh, she turned to the second engraving, and then the third and the fourth—the one where the man and woman were reaching out to touch each other. Her cheeks burned, no matter that she was alone. Unable to resist, she flipped to Position Five, an engraving she had yet to see.
The man sat on the edge of a bed, and the woman sat on top of him, facing away. She was reaching between her own legs and back to grab his…yard…and guide it into herself. . .