by Lara Temple
‘You said you aren’t interested in a marriage of convenience, Vivi. Well, I am not interested in an affair.’
Her eyes widened, shot through with pain and dismay. ‘I didn’t mean to imply that you wished to do this again...’
He caught her, pinning her down with his arms and his body. He was done with having her slip away the moment she felt the ground pulled from under her.
‘I wish to do this many, many times, in many, many places—but not like this. Not an affair. Not with you. Did you honestly believe I could contemplate that? Or a cold-blooded marriage of convenience?’
‘But...’
‘You are happy at the Hall, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, but...’
‘And you enjoy...this...?’
His hand trailed up from her thigh, over the dip by her hipbone and across the warm softness of her abdomen to her beautiful, luscious breasts, lingering there. His erection hardened against her thigh. He couldn’t resist leaning down and pressing a light kiss just above the dark areola. It gathered to a hard peak, and goosebumps rose along the arm that was trying to stop him.
He loved how responsive her body was, shifting towards him almost against her will as she tried to remain impassive. He wanted to reach the point with her where she would finally trust him enough to let slip that control. It would take work, and trust, and many, many days and nights, but it would be well worth it. If it took a lifetime it would be well worth it.
‘You enjoy this,’ he repeated with emphasis, holding her gaze. Her eyes were misty now, the hurt ceding to desire.
‘Yes, you know I do,’ she murmured, her leg rising against his. ‘But you cannot...’
He trailed his hand down again, resting it on her hip, his thumb brushing the soft valley between her hip and navel,
‘What can I not?’
‘Marry me.’
‘Not good enough for you?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You ought to marry someone like...like Lady Sarah. She wants to marry you, you know.’
‘Huh... She told you, I suppose?’
‘She did, actually.’
He pushed away a little, a slight smile on his mouth. ‘People tell you everything, don’t they? Why would she do that?’
‘She wanted advice. And to determine if I was your mistress.’
The smile faded. ‘Those two subjects strike me as contradictory. And why would she think you were my mistress?’
‘She saw you take a basket of roses from me in the garden.’
‘In the...?’ He frowned, his eyes narrowing. ‘I would have done the same for anyone.’
‘She said you have a different smile for me. She learned to look for it from her mother. The woman apparently had an eye for philanderers.’
He shifted over her, nudging aside her legs to slide one of his much larger legs between them.
‘Is that what I’m doing? Philandering? You do know the word means being fond of men?’
‘I don’t require a lesson in Greek right now. Lady Sarah—’
‘Devil take Lady Sarah! Do you really believe I would be happy with someone like her?’
‘I... You might. She’s beautiful, and intelligent, and not unkind—and she would be the right kind of Lady Westford.’
‘I don’t like her. I like you. I don’t stay awake at night hoping she will be on the shore when I come in from my swim. I don’t wake up as hard as a damn mainmast and realise I have to make do with my own company because of her. I don’t go searching that monstrosity of a house when I’m in a foul mood, hoping to run her to earth so I can be dragged out of whatever pit I’ve cornered myself in. I’ve never felt anything even close to this.’
He watched the expressions chase themselves across her expressive face—worry, want, and that awkward helplessness that was still little Genny Maitland.
He stroked her cheek gently. ‘She doesn’t truly wish to marry me. And I certainly don’t wish to marry her. I have other plans. And if you don’t wish to study Greek right now, we could try Italian. Do you speak Italian?’
‘No, but...’
‘Pity... But your Spanish is a good base. It won’t take you long to learn if you set your agile mind to it.’
‘Why...why would I learn Italian?’
‘So you will know how to order everyone about when we sail there for our honeymoon. And quite a few of my men are Venetians. A good general knows how to communicate with his...sorry, her troops.’
‘They aren’t—’
‘Yes, yes,’ he interrupted. ‘Say after me: Mi chiamo Genny. My name is Genny. Go ahead, say it.’
She sighed. ‘Mi chiamo Genny.’
‘Beautiful. Your accent is a little on the Iberian side, but we’ll soon change that. Now say, Mi chiamo Genny e ti amo.’
‘Mi chiamo Genny e ti...’
* * *
Her breath left her, falling as dead as the wind on a hot day.
Genny fixed her eyes on his, sinking into that deep dark blue.
‘It’s j-just like Sp-Spanish,’ she stuttered.
He nodded. ‘Say it.’
His voice was a purr, almost menacing, but she heard something else in it and it made the world shrink to the space of their two bodies.
She swallowed and wet her lips. ‘Mi chiamo Genny and I love you.’
His lashes fluttered down to cover his eyes, his head lowered, and his forehead came to rest on hers very lightly. But there was tension in every inch of his body. It was endless, the wait—either for the trap to close or the world to open.
‘Genny... God, Genny. You had better mean it.’ He turned his head, his lips just touching her temple, his words low and raw. ‘I need you to mean it.’
‘I couldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it,’ she whispered, laying her palms against his cheeks. She slid one hand down to press against the beat of his heart and touched her lips to his, felt them shiver. ‘Kit. I love you.’
‘Ah, sweetheart, don’t cry,’ he said, his voice hoarse and she realised she was. She brushed at her eyes but the tears kept slipping out, slow and inexorable.
‘I’m sorry. I’ve been trying not to for weeks. I’m so sorry.’
‘God, don’t be sorry, love. Come here.’
‘I’m already here. If I come any closer, I’ll be inside you.’
‘I’d rather be inside you. And now you have finally admitted you love me I will be inside you soon enough. You can come closer...here, like this.’
He sat, pulling her onto his lap and tucking her head under his chin. Then he tucked the silk blanket about them like a cocoon, one arm warm about her waist, one hand curling around her feet as he held her against him.
‘It’s very useful, you being this small.’ He brushed a kiss over her hair, rubbing his mouth against it.
‘I hate it. I always wanted to be tall and beautiful, like Serena.’
‘You are far more beautiful than Serena.’
She rubbed her wet cheek against his chest. ‘Your eyesight is fading; that cannot be good for the Captain of a ship.’
‘My eyesight is excellent. I’ve told you before: your sister is the very definition of pretty, and I wish her well with it, but she isn’t beautiful. Beauty is another thing entirely. Those paintings you like on the wall here—I bought them because I kept going back to look at them...they kept playing on my mind. I’ve never once looked at them and thought, How nice, or How pretty. Beautiful is what is vivid, alive, demanding. Everything you are, Genevieve Maitland—soon to be Genevieve Carrington and, God help you, Lady Westford.’
She shook her head. Her throat was too tight for her to answer and the tears kept leaking out of her.
‘I think, love,’ he continued, threading his fingers through hers, ‘you should just let go and wail. It’s long overdue. I’ll survive.’
&n
bsp; ‘I don’t know if I will,’ she croaked.
‘Oh, you will. Trust me.’ His arms tightened around her, his voice dropping. ‘You do trust me, don’t you?’
‘With my life.’
‘Good. Maybe one day you’ll trust me with your heart too.’
Sometimes things could break in the strangest way. You could drop a glass a dozen times and it would just roll across the floor. Then one day you’d set it down on the table, just as you had a hundred times before, and it would shatter.
And just like that she shattered into a thousand sobbing pieces.
He murmured all kinds of wondrous things at her, just as she did to Leo and Milly and all the other strays she’d gathered. But mostly he held her, rocking her like a boat on a gentle swell...
* * *
‘It is my birthday today,’ Genny said, much later.
She’d wept her heart out and he’d put it back together with slow, gentle lovemaking that had almost driven her to tears all over again.
She’d expected pain, but there had been none, just a strange stretching as he filled her, a sense of finally growing to encompass her own body. The pleasure had been different too. She’d been carried higher and higher on a rising swell that had refused to let her loose, and pleasure had flowed through her like a wave within a wave, depositing her like a shaking mass of jelly on the other side.
He raised himself now, leaning over her, with the smile she loved so much curving his lips. Then he stood, walking across to the table, his body caressed by lamplight.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘Mary told me. I have something for you. Here.’
He brought the wooden box from the table and set it on the bed, before slipping back under the cover with her.
‘It is beautiful,’ she whispered, caressing the box.
‘Open it.’
She opened the lid. On a bed of milky silk lay a delicate filigree gold ring with a deep, almost red amethyst surrounded by seed pearls.
‘I bought this long ago in Naples. They said it had belonged to a princess, but I don’t know if that’s true. I just saw it and had to buy it. I had no idea that I would keep it, let alone one day make use of it myself. I probably should have found you a great big Carrington heirloom, or something, but—’
‘No,’ she interrupted, touching the cool stone. ‘No...’
‘“No” as in no good? Or “no” as in you like it?’
‘No, as in I am about to cry again.’
He smiled and took the ring. ‘And you said you weren’t excitable, my love...’
‘I was wrong.’
He paused with the ring halfway on her finger, his eyes rising to hers, the deep dark sapphire sparking with heat. Then he slipped it on the rest of the way, his thumb brushing over it like a seal.
‘We were both wrong about quite a few things. But not about this.’ He kissed her finger just above the ring and then, very gently, her mouth. ‘Make a birthday wish, Genny mine.’
‘You have just fulfilled it, Kit.’
‘Make another, then.’
‘I wish to go swimming with you every day.’
‘In winter too?’
‘Don’t ruin my wish with practicalities!’
He laughed. ‘Every day. You can warm me afterwards. What else do you want?’
‘You.’
His chest rose and fell. ‘You ask for so little, Genny.’
‘You aren’t little at all, Lord Peacock.’
‘Ah. You remember...?’
‘Of course I remember. You thoroughly disliked me that first week, didn’t you?’
‘Dislike isn’t the right word. You...rubbed me the wrong way. It merely took me a while to find out why. And what to do about it.’
‘Seduce me?’
‘May I remind you that you seduced me? Several times. And, no, when a spitting kitten is rubbing you the wrong way, all you have to do is turn around and then you discover that the rubbing is just right...’
His hand brushed down the length of her spine and she couldn’t stop the reflexive arching of her back into the caress.
‘Yes, just like that,’ he murmured, pressing the words against the sensitive skin below her ear as his hand curved round her waist, turning her over. ‘Just. Like. That.’
Epilogue
‘Well, this is a sad disappointment,’ Genny said.
Kit took off his other boot and watched as his wife stepped further into Julius Caesar’s fabled Rubicon River. She stood, hands on hips, frowning at the grassy incline and the woods beyond.
‘Not what you expected, love?’
‘Not at all. I had this image of a great river, like the Thames or the Tiber, and Caesar glaring across it at the wealth and power of Rome that were denied him. I knew it could not be anywhere near Rome itself, yet somehow... Fantasy can be so much more satisfying than reality.’
Kit stepped into the stream, sighing with pleasure as the cool water engulfed his feet.
‘I beg to differ. I far prefer reality to the fantasies I had to indulge in until I came to my senses and kidnapped you.’
‘Is it kidnapping if I came willingly?’
‘Kidnapping or not, I’ve not regretted a moment since,’ he said, planting his feet and sweeping her into his arms. She gave a yelp of surprise. ‘Alea jacta est, Genevieve Maitland. The die is truly cast, and this is the fate you’ve drawn—two perfect children and one imperfect husband. Resign yourself to it.’
She laughed. ‘Kit! We’ll fall in.’
‘If Caesar had had so little faith in the Thirteenth Legion as you have in me, my little field marshal, history would have played out quite differently.’
She wrapped her arms around his nape and settled more securely against him, her lips brushing against his neck, just where she knew how to do the most damage. ‘That’s not true, Kit. I trust you wholly, without boundaries, with my life and my heart and our two horrid children.’
‘I happen to be quite fond of the little devils—especially when they are far away in Venice with their aunts. Your daughter, Genevieve Maitland, looks likely to rival you in tyranny.’
‘Why is it that when she is being brilliantly managing she becomes my daughter, yet when everyone says how sweet and beautiful she is, she is your daughter?’
‘It is one of life’s mysteries. Stop that, or we shall both end up in the water.’
She gave his ear a playful nip and blew gently on it. He groaned and let her slip down his body, holding her tight against him before leading her to the other bank.
‘I told you my skirts would get wet.’
He eased her back onto the grassy incline and stretched out beside her, running his hand down her thigh and then slowly gathering the damp fabric so that it slid up to reveal her legs.
‘You should have tied them up as you did that day in the bay. Then I could have the same pleasure untying them...smoothing them down...or up...definitely up.’
She sighed and stretched happily as his hand followed word with deed.
‘I’m so glad we decided it was better that I accompany you on your voyages again now that Tom is old enough.’
‘It wasn’t a decision; it was a necessity, Vivi. You have no idea how much I missed you on my last voyage.’
‘I beg your pardon; I have a very good idea. You had your voyage to distract you. I had to spend every night in our bed alone.’
‘I should hope so. And I had to spend every night in our other bed, alone, freezing my backside off in the Baltic Sea, with a ship full of snoring and shivering men. After a week I was ready to turn back. After a month I promised myself that next time you were coming with me—even if we had to let the children fend for themselves. After two months I was convinced you were quite happy not to be constantly disturbed by my carnal lust. After four months I was crying into my wine...a
pitiable sight.’
She smiled, her fingers trailing patterns on his back and sending shivers of anticipatory pleasure to all the right places.
‘That is very poetic—though a trifle dramatic and not quite accurate. After three months you were safely back in your bed with me, being mightily disturbed by a three-month accumulation of my carnal lust. In fact, I am feeling mightily disturbed right now.’
‘You don’t mind the ghost of Caesar watching on, then?’ he asked.
‘Not in the least. He might learn something from the best lover on earth, ever...’
He laughed and slipped his hand higher up her thigh, curving it over her warmth. Somehow her skin felt different from anyone else’s. It made no sense, but there it was.
‘Perhaps this was why he crossed the Rubicon—the poor fellow was looking for this.’
‘This?’ she sighed, her eyes closing again as he trailed kisses down her throat.
‘This...’ He eased her bodice down, punctuating each word with a kiss as he revealed inch after inch of warm skin. ‘Happiness. Contentment. Challenge. Joy. Pain. Pleasure...’
He slipped the last inch from her tightly beaded nipple and bent to lavish a slow kiss over the sensitive peak that made her twist towards him with a moan, her fingers threading through his hair. But then he drew back, blowing a gentle soothing breath against the damp skin and looking up at her, holding her gaze as he spoke.
‘...and love.’
She rested her palms against his cheeks. Her grey eyes were magnified by the welling of tears and her voice was hoarse when she finally spoke.
‘I would cross any Rubicon for this, Kit. Fight any battle for you. You know that, don’t you?’
Kit waited out the tightening of his throat. He hadn’t completely lied. Perhaps he hadn’t quite cried into his wine, but the depth of pain and fear that had caught at him all those miles from her had been as much a shock as falling so desperately in love in the first place. He had needed to return.
‘I know that, Vivi. That is why I need you with me. I need you to remind me that you care for me almost as much as I care for you.’
She smiled his favourite smile—full of joy and promise and trust. ‘Dear me, Kit. Are we competing again? I’ll win, you know.’