She tried to concentrate on his murmured endearments, his soft kisses. The odd full feeling, the steady pressure as her body opened to his, vied for her attention. Her eyes closed as she sought to remember every touch and kiss, every word and sensation.
Marcus paused and threw back his head. Adelaide’s eyes flew open and gazed in wonder. His face was strained with some unnamed agony, but there was also a joy there. She reached up to touch his face. He turned his lips into her palm and kissed it.
“You feel so good,” he whispered. “So good.”
She arched her hips and he gasped in response. “So do you, my love.”
At that, he gazed down into her face with an almost ferocious tenderness. Adelaide cried out helplessly as he plunged his hips into hers. The pain was sharp but brief. Almost instantly her arms and legs wrapped round him. She wanted to keep him there inside her. Her body knew long before any other part of her, this man was meant to be hers, to be locked with her forever.
Marcus gave her little time to think. He gave an agonized groan and withdrew in a slow glide. She tightened her legs and hissed at the war between pleasure and pain waged at the center of her. Adelaide wanted to protest until he pushed back into her. He moaned softly. She kissed his temple.
In moments, the rhythm set by his finger was between them once more. Oh, but the feel of it was far different. The pleasure built more quickly. The power was far more potent. She found she could join in the dance and as she did, the pace took them away. The light was made of bursts of color. Her ears made music of the meeting of their bodies. Gasps, moans and cries of joy were the song. Their lips sought to taste skin sleek with dew. Every breath drew in a scent of him and her, and a new scent of them joined, in what could only be passion. Nothing else could burn this hot, could consume this completely.
Adelaide reached for a place she never thought possible. What in her twenty years could have told her how exquisite this would be? She wanted to look at him. To see his face as the whirlwind of fire took her. When the crest of it hit, she could not. Her eyes closed and her back arched as she cried out his name. She did not need her eyes. The power of it all, the wonder of her love for this man, fell over her like an ocean storm.
She heard her name, a faraway roar, as Marcus shuddered and thrust into the very core of her passion. She felt flooded with heat and tightened her legs around him reflexively. He collapsed over her, his hands fisted in her hair, and murmured her name over and over. She swept her hands over his hot skin. Her lips wandered over the dampened silk of his black hair.
They lay there, the raven’s wing of his hair, against the flushed white of her breast. Adelaide knew now what all the fuss was about and she wanted to laugh. Or shout. Or sing. Lady Haverly had been right. Marcus definitely knew what he was about, although she doubted he would want to hear it from the old harridan. Adelaide was now a wife, Marcus Winfield’s wife. Her most secret wish come true.
Her thoughts were interrupted when Marcus stirred and raised his head.
“Are you…” He blushed and Adelaide forced herself not to smile. “Are you quite… Addy, please don’t make me ask.”
“Ask what, Marcus?”
He rolled off of her and she immediately moved to rest her head on his shoulder. He paused for a moment and then wrapped his arm around her to pull her close.
“I didn’t hurt you, did I, Addy?” How young he sounded when he was uncertain. Pity it did not happen more often.
“Of course not, Marcus,” she said. She snuggled into his side and threw her leg across his. He pulled the covers up over them and sighed. “It was wonderful,” she continued.
“Truly?“Truly. I liked it very much.” She suddenly remembered something Lady Haverly had said. “Shall we do it again?”
“Now?” he asked. His tone was incredulous.
“Can you?”
He gave a half-hearted laugh. “Could you give me a moment to catch my breath?”
She sat up a little and saw that he was grinning like a fool. “Of course, Your Grace. Do take your time. Ouch.”
Beneath the sheets, he had swatted her bottom. “What did I say about that?”
“Oooh,” she huffed as she settled back in beside him. “You sound like my father.”
“Hardly, duchess. The last thing I am feeling toward you is fatherly.”
“Oh,” she said. “Then, we can do it again?” He laughed this time.
“If you like.”
“Oh yes, Marcus.” She yawned. “Very much.” She could not draw close enough to the warmth of his body. “Marcus?”
“Yes?” came the sleepy reply.
“How many times can we do it tonight?”
“You intend to keep count?”
“Of course.”
“Good God.”
She laughed softly. The last of the candles guttered into nothing. The rise and fall of his chest beneath her cheek was better than any lullaby. She touched her fingers to his lips. They were curved into a smile. A log shifted in the fireplace and the fire bloomed in a shoosh of bright light. Adelaide leaned up to make certain it had not rolled out onto the carpets. Marcus’s discarded robe lay in the floor. It shone black in the fire’s light, save for a square of white sticking out of what must be a pocket. A letter? What sort of letter might a man carry in his pocket on his wedding night?
Marcus tightened his arm around her hips. “Addy?” he murmured.
She gave the letter a last glance and settled back into his arms. “Here, Marcus,” she sighed, languor settling over her like a blanket. “I’m here.”
Chapter Eighteen
The steady rocking of the carriage had lulled Marcus to sleep. Or at least it was what Adelaide intended to tell anyone who asked why the duke was sound asleep at ten o’ clock in the morning. Especially when such questions might be accompanied by utter disbelief the man slept like the dead in a comfortable, but still bouncing, moving carriage. She would keep to herself the real reason for his weariness. Difficult, to be sure. A satisfied smile tended to creep across her face at the actual cause of his fatigue.
Their wedding trip was over. One glorious week of relative solitude was all allotted them, before the duties of a duke called them back to the Abbey. A groom had been dispatched by the dowager with a note. Marcus read it, looked puzzled, and then smiled ruefully.
“Sorry, Addy. It appears we must return to the real world. Our duty demands it.”
“Our duty, Marcus?”
“Of course, my dear. You are the Duchess of Selridge now. You will be at the mercy of every tenant’s wife with a smoky chimney, every servant with a question, and every squire with a loose pig until the day they lay you in the family crypt alongside me. Perhaps even after that.”
“You neglected to tell me all of this when you proposed, sir.”
“Which time?”
So, after one last glorious night of abandon—well one night and well into the morning—they had bade the Quinces a fond farewell and climbed into the carriage for the ride home. Marcus fell asleep in moments. Adelaide’s mind was too full of the happiness of the last week to sleep.
Their honeymoon had been idyllic, or so it was to her. It was made so, not by her introduction to the wonders and delights of the marriage bed. Oh, very well. Part of it was due to that. What she treasured most, however, was the gradual change in her husband. How she loved the sound of that word.
The closer the day of the wedding had drawn the more distant and cold he had become. When she saw him at all, he was the quintessential duke—condescending, staid, and completely in control. The rest of the time he had so immersed himself in his duties to the estate, even his mother had commented on it.
Yet, over the past week, Marcus had emerged, the real Marcus, the man of her memories. They were passionate lovers at night, but during the day they became more like friends. Definitely accomplices. He dared her to swim in the lake behind the lodge wearing nothing at all. They rode horses and played like children, or as much li
ke children as two people unable to keep their hands off each other could. They read to each other in the evenings and talked of their childhoods.
Through it all, Marcus opened a bit more of himself to her each day. Every little thing she learned was stored away in her memory. The task she set for herself was not an easy one. She needed every advantage if she hoped to win his heart to the same degree she had won his body.
Even with her lack of experience, when they made love, she knew he held something back, something of himself. She knew, because she never did. Her love for him was so complete, to hold anything back from him seemed like a lie.
The carriage hit a deep rut and swayed briefly to one side. His head stirred for a moment and then he turned to settle his cheek against the squabs. His switch in position gave Adelaide a full view of his scar. It was not as red and angry as it had been when he first returned from Waterloo. The night Clementine jilted him it had been painful to see.
She studied it now and tried to imagine what it must have felt like, to see the saber raised, to feel it cut into one’s flesh. Her stomach tightened. The thought of anyone hurting Marcus was a physically painful thing to her. Like the time a branch had knocked her from her first pony, and all of the air had gone out of her body.
Her hand was drawn to his face. She reached out and let her ungloved fingers hover just over his marred cheek. They traced the path of the Frenchman’s blade. She could not fathom why. Did she wish to heal it, to erase it? How could something so horrible be so precious to her? That much was simple to explain. It was part of him.
Another jerk of the carriage bounced Adelaide out of her seat and into the floor. Her hand collided with his face and slid down his body to rest in his lap. Marcus opened one eye and looked down.
“Was there something you wanted, my dear?”
She blew the drooping feather from her lovely lavender carriage cap out of her eyes and snatched her hand away. She batted at the hands that reached to help her up, for the most part because they were attached to a highly amused Marcus.
“You were snoring,” she said. “How on earth can you sleep in a moving carriage?”
His eyes narrowed for a moment. Whatever he thought of her explanation, he did not question her. “Cavalrymen don’t find themselves in the vicinity of a bed too often during a war. I learned to sleep just about anywhere.”
“I am glad I never had to learn. I prefer my nice soft bed, thank you very much. It doesn’t move.”
“I don’t know, Addy.” He paused. His face was impassive, but there was something distinctly wicked in his eyes. “You slept quite soundly in that field of flowers where we—”
“Marcus.” She clapped her hands to her cheeks just in time to feel the heat gather there. “You shouldn’t speak of it. Someone might hear.”
He chuckled. “Are you afraid the driver might tell the rest of the servants the new duchess likes to make love in the grass? In broad daylight?”
“Oooh!” She shook her finger at him. “You enticed me to do that, you wicked man. One kiss and the next thing I knew I was…” Adelaide could not bring herself to finish the sentence.
“Lying naked in a field of lavender after having made love to your husband, frightening several birds with your cries, and then snoring like an infantryman when it was all over?”
She snatched the carriage blanket from the seat and threw it over him. He laughed as he pulled it away and tucked it around her legs. His tender smile made her heart do a funny little flip.
“Marcus, what were you dreaming last night?” The question popped out before she even realized it. Unfortunately, it happened all too often where Adelaide was concerned. If something piqued her curiosity, she could not rest until she had picked it apart like a bad bit of embroidery.
His face shuttered immediately. Two things occurred to her. He knew exactly what she meant, and he did not want to talk about it. She read the signs easily and just as easily ignored them.
“What makes you think I was dreaming last night?” His tone was cool and as smooth as the lake right before they dove into it.
“You called out in your sleep.” Some unnamed compulsion had taken over her mouth, also a frequent occurrence. “You said—Julius, wait. I didn’t mean it. It woke me up.”
He propped one ankle onto his knee and folded his arms across his chest. “I really don’t remember, Addy. I’m sorry I woke you up. Perhaps, I should—”
His eyes were glassy and flat, his mouth a grim line. The duke was back, just like that. He might as well have waved a fox tail in front of a pack of hounds. Adelaide did not intend to let this go.
“Marcus, please. Everyone has nightmares. I daresay my mother’s voice features in half the bad dreams of the ton.”
Not even a hint of a smile from him.
“You called out to your brother and you sounded very distressed. What did you say to him that you did not mean?”
“It was a dream, Addy. Dreams don’t mean anything. I don’t remember.” His voice did not rise at all, but there was an edge to it. A reed of hesitance like a rusty hinge, opened after a long time closed, touched her ear.
She knew better, but Adelaide could not help herself.
“You are not the sort of man who says things he doesn’t mean, Marcus.”
His mouth twisted in a bitter smile.
“A wife but a week and already she knows my deepest secrets.” She saw his casual tone for what it was, an attempt to throw her off the scent. “I must be more guarded. They’ll drum me out of White’s if word of this reaches London.”
“You are guarded enough.” It hurt to say those words, because they were true. “And it is no secret you don’t say what you don’t mean.”
When he made no reply, she looked out the carriage window. The sound of the wheels and the smell of the dusty road crept into the silence between them. It startled her when he took her hand to hold lightly between his own.
“We all say things we don’t mean, Addy. We say them in anger… without thinking.” She looked at him then. Those green eyes drew her like the unexplored depths of a twilight forest. “Me most of all. I am no paragon, I assure you.”
A tingle of fear touched the back of her neck. There were times when being a pushy, curious person was not a good thing. She was no match for the truth lurking in those eyes. Not yet. “I never said you were. Although, I am shocked to hear you admit it.”
He kissed her hand before he released it and sat back. The tension in his shoulders was gone. His smile was a teasing torment once again. “So, you are cataloguing my faults already?”
Adelaide gave him her best cheeky grin. “Of course. I shall need to know every chink in your armor, should I hope to win your heart, husband.”
His look of astonishment made her laugh. “My heart? A hard, knotty old thing at this point. I have other parts far more worth having, my dear.” He wiggled his eyebrows in a poor imitation of a pantomime villain.
“Oh, I have those parts well in hand, sir.” She waved her hand at him. “Do shut up, you horrible debauched churl. You know perfectly well what I mean.”
“Of course, my dear.” Now he looked like a parson after a particularly good Sunday dinner. “I married you, Addy. Will that not suffice? I should think that alone shows—”
“That you are a poor driver, who got lost on his own estate, and had the abysmally bad luck to fall into a hole with an unmarried hoyden?” She smiled sweetly and blew him a kiss.
“I was not lost.” He turned to the window in what might have been construed as a huff had the sparkle of merriment not twitched at his lips. It only lasted a moment before he asked a question she did not expect.
“Why?”
“Why what, Marcus?”
“Why do you want to win my heart?” She watched his Adam’s apple bob once, then again. “I mean, it really isn’t necessary. It… We rub along fine, Addy. I am fond of you already. We can—”
She could not bear to watch him struggle with something
which, after all he had been through, instilled what could only be called irrational male fear in him.
“Please don’t trouble yourself, Marcus. I do understand. You are not required to respond in kind.” She patted his hand as it rested on his propped ankle. “At least not yet.”
He shifted in his seat as a wrinkle of worry, or perhaps confusion, moved onto his brow. “Why on earth would you want—”
“Clemmie had it, Marcus. She had it in an instant without an ounce of effort on her part.” Adelaide caught his gaze and held it. She prayed he did not hear the knocking of her heart against her ribs. The twenty-year-old girl she was but a fortnight ago screamed at her for the risk she took. The bride, the wife, and the lover didn’t care. “She didn’t appreciate it, perhaps because it came to her so easily.”
“Addy, I don’t love Clementine. It really doesn’t matter.” The proper words, the expected ones, were useless, when he hadn’t a clue what she meant.
“I am no beauty, Marcus, I understand that.”
“Stop saying that, Addy.” His anger sent an arrow of joy singing through her blood. It settled quite close to her heart. “You are a beautiful woman. Far too lovely for an ugly bastard like me.”
She stood shakily in the confines of the carriage and launched herself into his lap. He was so startled all he could do was laugh. His arms closed around her as she touched her fingers to his lips. “You suit me very well indeed, Your Grace. I would ask you not to cast such dispersions on my husband.”
“Certainly, Your Grace.” His lips hovered over hers.
“One more thing, Marcus.”
“Yes, Addy?”
“I am not my sister.”
“Thank God.” Marcus said and then covered her lips with his own. He bent her over his arm as he plundered her mouth with hot, wet kisses. Her feathered hat fell down between their faces. He paused long enough to bat it to the floor before he lowered her to the carriage seat and covered her body with his own.
Adelaide managed one brief thought before the fire in her blood made everything, save her husband’s passion, disappear. Whenever she spoke to him of love, he answered her with passion. Perhaps he thought it would distract her from her stated course. Poor man. Little did he know, it only served to strengthen her resolve.
Lost In Love (Road To Forever Series #1) Page 20