The Duke's Daring Debutante (Regency Historical Romance)

by Ann Lethbridge

  He stroked the silken skin of her calves. The lovely, lovely turn of her ankle.

  Chapter Twenty

  He wanted her so badly. Not the joys of her body, though, God help him, he wanted that, too, but the radiance of her spirit that had brought light into his increasingly dark world.

  If he gave in to this, let himself hope and then lost her, it would finish him.

  She cradled his cheek with her fingers. Cool skin. A searing touch. ‘Freddy, darling, you don’t deserve to be shut out in the cold.’

  She understood. What barriers he had left were sundered by the realisation that she really did understand. He caught her wrist before she could draw back, pressed his lips to the centre of her cool little palm. ‘I love you. I will always love you.’

  ‘I love you, too.’ A small laugh stirred the air across his cheek. He shivered with pleasure. She pulled back to look at him, her eyes full of mischief. ‘I thought you were so annoying the first time we met. On that ship. You were so handsome. I wanted you to see me yet you treated me like a child. I wanted to shake you and make you look at me.’

  ‘I saw you,’ he croaked, his throat so dry it hurt to speak. ‘I was terrified by how much I saw you. I thought the best thing was to keep far away.’

  ‘I missed you.’

  The words soothed him like balm on a raw wound. ‘You are sure? You really do want to marry me?’

  ‘With all my heart.’

  ‘I will get a special licence.’ Urgency filled him. ‘Tomorrow. I won’t wait any longer to make you mine.’

  ‘I am yours. You don’t have to wait.’ She twined her arms around his neck and kissed him with all the heat of a passionate woman.

  He pulled her tight against his body, feeling her curves and hollows against him, cupping her lush bottom in one hand, a high plump breast with its hard little peak in the other, and tangled his tongue with hers.

  It felt right. As if she was the part of him he’d been missing all his life. He’d been broken but hadn’t known it. With her he was whole. A new man. A better man.

  Her breathing became urgent, ragged, her fingers digging into his back, her hips arching against his now painful arousal.

  He broke their kiss on a groan. ‘I want you so badly.’

  A small smile of satisfaction lit her face. ‘Good.’

  His body jerked at the erotic note in her voice. He shrugged out of his robe. While she nimbly attacked the buttons of his shirt, he toed off his slippers and shucked off his pantaloons. It was a mess of hard breathing and groping hands and so sexy he couldn’t stop his smile. Free of all but his shirt, he gripped her shoulders and kissed her again. Her hands slipped under his shirttails and, no longer cool, stroked his back and his buttocks. He glanced around desperately for a place they could lie down in comfort. She gazed at the jutting evidence of his arousal beneath his shirt. She slid off the desk and lowered herself to her knees, grasping his buttocks in her hands.

  ‘Minette,’ he gasped. ‘Oh, devil take it...’

  She cast him a saucy glance from under her lashes. ‘You don’t like this?’

  The proximity of her mouth so close to his aching flesh, the heat of her breath, left him blind with lust. ‘You honour me. You make me so damned happy.’ Being this vulnerable with a woman had never been an option.

  ‘It is all I want. You happy.’

  Unable to think of a reason to protest, he pulled his shirt up over his head. She leaned back on her heels to look at him. Her gaze travelled from his face and down to his ugly foot, before returning to his face. With any other woman he would have plunged the room in darkness. He stood silent, waiting for her judgement. If she turned away now...

  ‘You are such a beautiful man,’ she said softly.

  ‘Hardly that.’

  She caressed the backs of his thighs. ‘Pure muscle. Like a racehorse.’ She licked her lips.

  ‘Please,’ he said. Never in his life had he begged for something he wanted. Never had he shown such weakness. But he didn’t feel weak. He felt stronger than he’d ever felt before. Because of her he was free to be himself. ‘Minette, please.’

  She smiled and leaned forward, taking him in her mouth. Heat. Wetness. Suction. Her tongue teasing.

  He widened his stance, keeping his balance. She reached up to stroke his belly, and he tunnelled his fingers into her lustrous hair. The sight of her moving rhythmically, the sensation of that movement, sent heat ripping along his veins. She brought him to the brink far too quickly. Blackness and bliss beckoned.

  He eased her mouth from his body with a careful hand and brought her to her feet. She smiled knowingly, her mouth rosy and moist. So luscious.

  ‘I need to be inside you.’ His voice was barely more than a hoarse whisper. ‘Now.’ He swallowed. ‘I would please you as you have pleasured me.’

  She gave him a tender smile. ‘Always so generous.’ She touched a finger to his lips. ‘I am not sure I deserve you.’

  Too full of emotion for words, he swung her up into his arms and carried her to his bedroom. He stumbled a little but he didn’t care. He set her down on his bed and kissed her smiling mouth while his hand found her breast, the peak beading beneath his touch. She moaned into his mouth, arching up into his hand. So responsive. He climbed onto the bed and stretched out beside her, admiring the swells and hollows revealed through the sheer fabric of her nightgown, skimming his hand over them, learning her contours with his hands and his gaze. Never would he forget this moment. ‘You are so beautiful. And mine.’

  ‘As you are mine.’

  Hers. They belonged together. And if they had children she would love them, no matter their faults. He drew her nightgown upwards, above her hips, and slid it off over her head. She didn’t hide from him or blush. She lay before him like a banquet prepared only for him, her gaze taking in his state of rigid arousal in a pass down his body. He delicately parted the sweet hot folds of her cleft. So wet. So ready.

  ‘Please, Freddy. I want you. Now.’

  A demand he could not resist. He nudged into position and eased himself into her, inch by amazing inch, feeling her delicious heat draw him into her depths. For a moment he couldn’t move for the extraordinary gift of the pleasure she gave him. She lifted her legs around his waist, pulling him deep, arching up to meet his thrusts, urging him on with little cries and moans that drove him far too close to the brink when she was nearly there. He must not let her down, not in this.

  He nuzzled her throat, curled down to take first one nipple then the other in his mouth, suckling and teasing with his tongue. She cried out her pleasure at his touch. And then she was coming apart around him, so beautifully, so intensely. He followed her into bliss.

  The lay in each other’s arms, a sated, trusting tangle of limbs. The beauty of it gave him a lump in his throat and a prickling behind his eyes. She sighed and shifted. ‘That was...’ He waited, breath held. ‘Amazing.’

  Yes. It was. Truly amazing. Unlike anything he’d ever experienced. Carefully he withdrew from her and held her within the circle of his arms, knowing she was his to protect and he was hers to command. For all time.

  He bent and kissed her cheek then her lips.

  ‘No going back after that, my darling,’ he said, hearing the sound of his smile in his voice and liking it.

  ‘Oh, indeed not,’ she said, smiling up at him. ‘From here we go only forward.’

  Forward to a future he had never dared imagine.

  He kissed her long and lingeringly, wrapped her in his robe and carried her back to her bed.

  Epilogue

  As Freddy had promised, he obtained a special licence the very next day. Their wedding was held in the drawing room of Falconwood Hall the following morning, with the vicar from the village officiating. The only witnesses were Gabe and Nicky and Barker, who had re
turned from town to report on the disposition of Moreau earlier that morning, along with the Falconwood servants, who seemed touched at the invitation, if a little intimidated.

  Now Minette and Freddy stood on the steps, waving farewell to Nicky and Gabe, who had kindly decided to leave the newlyweds to their own devices. Barker had gone off to the inn in the village.

  ‘Would you care to walk in the grounds with me, Your Grace, since the weather is fair?’ Freddy asked.

  Suspicious at the note of anticipation she heard in his voice, Minette raised an eyebrow.

  He grinned.

  The man clearly had something in mind. ‘Certainly, Your Grace.’ She frowned. ‘Is it required that we are so formal in private?’

  He gave a shout of laughter. ‘Not at all, beloved. I couldn’t help it, I feel like I am living in a dream and keep having to remind myself we truly are married.’

  ‘Not a nightmare?’

  ‘Not at all.’ He grinned at her, making her toes curl. She had never seen him so carefree, and there was an air of mischief about him. ‘A dream come true.’

  She pulled him down so she could kiss his cheek. ‘You make me so happy, mon coeur.’ He did. Her heart felt so large it barely fitted behind her ribs, and a feeling of total well-being permeated her.

  ‘I’m sorry Mother refused to attend the ceremony,’ he said, his face turning grave. ‘But you were right. It is her loss. I assume she is settling into the dower house.’

  ‘I understand so. She has already received calls from some of her cronies.’

  ‘Perhaps she will come round.’ In truth, Minette doubted it. The woman had held on to her grief too long to let it go now. Indeed, it seemed to her that Freddy had barely avoided the same fate. Much longer and his heart too would have shrivelled to nothing beneath the weight of guilt and regret.

  They walked arm in arm through the formal gardens at the side of the house and onto the lawn at the back. Snatches of music wafted on the breeze. It seemed to be coming through the open French doors leading onto the terrace from the ballroom.

  ‘What is going on up there?’ Freddy asked, far too nonchalantly to be innocent.

  A wife ought to humour her husband. ‘How strange. It sounds like an orchestra.’

  ‘I think we should go and see.’

  They crossed the lawn and mounted the steps to the veranda. The music was indeed coming from within. An orchestra had set up in the same place they had been on the night of the betrothal ball, but this time she and Freddy were alone in the vast room. All the decorations had been taken down. Gilt chairs were placed at intervals around the walls, but oddly all the chandeliers were alight. The room glittered.

  She frowned. ‘Is this your doing, mon cher mari?’

  ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘Well, if it was anyone else, I believe it would go hard with them. Such extravagance to light all these candles when there are only a few occupants in the room.’

  ‘I can see you are going to be a fearsome Duchess.’

  ‘I do not like unnecessary waste.’

  He was laughing.

  She looked around her, and then she realised. ‘Your promise. You are keeping your promise.’

  ‘I am.’

  He made a gesture to the orchestra, and the music changed. It was the tune they had danced to in the garden. He held out his arms. ‘I promised I would dance with you on our wedding day.’

  She managed a mock frown. ‘Rather clever of you to make sure there was no one here to see us.’

  ‘You are not accusing me of cheating, I hope.’ He put a hand on his heart. ‘You will give me time to become accustomed to displaying my clumsiness for all to see. And I will, I promise you. I will never let it stand in my way again.’

  She couldn’t speak for the lump in her throat. The man had so much courage.

  He opened his arms, and she stepped into them.

  He began to move, gliding her around in circles down the length of the ballroom, a good bit steadier than he had been on the grass in the dark.

  ‘This, mon cher,’ she said reprovingly, ‘is not a dance we can do in public. We would be banished from the ton.’

  ‘I have to say, that is quite a relief,’ he said, and twirled her under his arm. ‘I don’t see me mastering the Roger de Coverly in the near future.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure of that.’

  ‘I love you, Your Grace,’ he said in a low, dark murmur in her ear.

  ‘I love you, dearest Freddy,’ she said, smiling up at him and adjusting her step just a tiny bit to accommodate a slight list to the left.

  And then he stopped and pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

  The orchestra kept on playing.

  * * ***

  Keep reading for an excerpt from A ROSE FOR MAJOR FLINT by Louise Allen.

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  A Rose for Major Flint

  by Louise Allen

  Chapter One

  19th June 1815—the battlefield of Waterloo

  The briar rose caught at her with grasping, thorny tentacles as she backed away. The pain was real, so this must all be real. The screaming inside her head made it difficult to think, but it hadn’t stopped, not since she had found Gerald. What was left of Gerald. He had seemed untouched until she had grasped his shoulder and turned him over.

  The noise in her head hurt so much. She lifted her hands to try and clutch at it, squeeze it out, make it stop. Then she could think, then she would know what to do about...them. Her arms wouldn’t move. She looked down to the imprisoning briars, then up at what was coming towards her across the muddy, shell-ripped ruin of the spinney. This was real and this was hell and so those were demons. They laughed as they came, four of them, blood-soaked and mud-smeared, wild-eyed and ragged, baying like hounds on the hunt. She knew what they wanted, what they would do to her, even if she knew nothing else. Not her name, not how she had lived before this nightmare had begun, not how she had come to be here.

  She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing happened. Go away. Help me, someone. Help me! Nothing. Only the sound of her heartbeat racing. Only the sound of their laughter and the words that made no sense as they hit her like fistfuls of slime.

  And then he came. He pushed aside the shattered, wilting branches, strode through the mud and the nameless, stinking filth. The Devil himself. He was big and dirty, bare-headed, stubble-jawed, blood-soaked. He had a sword in one hand and a pistol in the other and a smile like death on his blackened face. He roared at the demons and they turned, snarling, towards him. He shot the first and came on, stepped over the body and waited, waited until they were on him and then...

  She closed her eyes, stayed in the darkness with the screaming in her head, the screaming from the demons, the Devil’s roars. She would be next. She had sinned and this was hell.

  * * *

  ‘Open your eyes. Look at me. You are safe, they have gone.’ Gone to a much worse place, the scum. Flint looked down at the pistol in his left hand and the blood-streaked sword in his right, thrust one into his belt and pushed the blade of the other into a tussock until most of the gore was gone. He sheathed the swo
rd and tried again. ‘Open your eyes.’

  The woman was tall and slim and her hair, where it was not wet and matted, was a dark brown. Rose petals had fallen from the briar that held her. They were fragile, pale pink, incongruously beautiful on the ripped, soaking fabric of her gown, the tangle of her hair. Long lashes fanned over white cheeks and her mouth was slightly open. He could hear her breath coming in short, desperate pants like a trapped animal in a snare. She had bitten her lips and the sight, amidst so much carnage, touched him despite his defences. Angered him.

  ‘Let’s get you untangled.’ Flint kept his voice calm, used the firm tone that would steady an injured man. The briars tore at his hands, added to the bruises and cuts, the little rips of pain reminding him he was alive. After three days of hell, who would have thought it?

  When he got her free she just stood there, swaying. Flint touched the back of his hand to her cheek, leaving a smear of blood on the cold skin. She flinched but her eyes opened, wide and dark, the pupils so distended he could not see the true colour.

  ‘What is your name?’ She stared blankly. Shock, certainly, and perhaps she did not speak English. He tried French, Dutch, German. No response, not a flicker. ‘My name is Flint. Major Adam Flint. Are you hurt?’

  They hadn’t raped her, he had been in time to stop that, at least. The sound of their laughter had brought him here at a run. He had heard that unmistakeable excitement too often when men had poured into a besieged, defeated city and found the women and the girls. Children. Sometimes you could be in time. Often, not. Badajoz...

  Still she stood there, a breathing statue. She must be a camp follower, but he couldn’t leave her, not here. Her man, if he was still alive, would never find her, but others would. Flint put his arm around her, ignored the way her body shuddered at the touch, bent and swept the other arm under her knees to lift her against his chest. Pain stabbed from the sabre cut in his right side. The blood must have dried into his shirt and lifting her had ripped the wound open. He ignored it.