He was almost at the door when she spoke again. “Gareth, do you think there is any chance that you may in fact someday get her with child? That I may someday have a grandchild?”
He smiled, and went out to the garden.
* * *
“I think we should get married, Eva.”
Eva blinked, and looked down her body to where Gareth’s dark head nestled between her thighs. He did something that made her groan fill her garden.
“I— This is most—” She tried to speak through her astonishment and madness.
He did it again. She almost fainted. When her head cleared, she was clutching at grass, gasping for breath. “Stop that! We need to talk.”
“One moment. It would be rude to leave you like this.”
He didn’t, of course. He never did. With alarming efficiency he sent her crashing into a climax, then moved up to lie with her.
She took several minutes to collect herself, then held his head and looked in his eyes. “That may be the most unusual proposal a woman has ever received.”
“Thank you. I thought it inventive.”
“It will be hard to describe when friends ask for the particulars, however. Did he kneel, Eva? Did he wait for a glorious sunset? Actually, no, Sarah. He proposed while his tongue was making shocking explorations of my private parts.”
He pecked a kiss on her cheek. “At least you will never forget it.”
No. Never.
“I thought you did not believe in marriage except in the most practical ways. There is nothing about marrying me that will enhance your fortune, so this makes no sense.”
He ran the side of his finger along her jaw. “I have discovered that my views on the matter were ill considered. About marriage, and about love.”
“They were? About love too?”
“Definitely about love. As you might imagine, I am astonished to learn how wrong I was.”
“Just how wrong were you?”
He laughed. “You are not going to make this easy, are you?”
“After all your fine talk about it in the past, I want to hear a full recanting.”
“Not a recanting. A codicil. An addition.”
She waited.
“All that I said that day still is true, usually. However, if a person is very lucky, it is possible for him to feel a very special love for a woman. One that affects the pleasure in the best ways, and is bigger than it, or anything else centered on himself.”
Her throat burned. She pressed a kiss to his lips.
“And if that man is truly lucky,” he said. “That woman has the same love for him. Do you, Eva?”
She nodded. “Oh, yes. Yes, I do.”
“Then I want to know that you will be mine forever. I want us to marry.”
She did not know what to say. She had prepared no answer, since she had never expected to hear the question. “Were this only about love, I would agree with all my heart, Gareth. I have fallen desperately in love with you, despite my better judgment and even expecting it to cause me heartache.”
“There will be no heartache. I promise you that. I cannot blame you if you do not believe me, but I will never hurt you in any way.”
“After being bad for so long, do you really think you can stop?”
“I swear I will. I’ll still get to be bad with you, of course. You would not want me if I were too good.”
“If we are married, what we do would not be truly wicked anymore.”
He laughed, and tapped her nose with his fingertip. “You are adorable, and still at least half-ignorant. There is much we will do that you will still find very wicked, even if we are married.”
“There is?”
“We have barely begun to tap the variety of the pleasures you will know.”
She laughed, and kissed him. “I think you are trying to bribe me.”
“Think of it as negotiating the settlement.”
She climbed on top of him so she could embrace him closely, with her ear to his chest and her body molded to his.
“We are agreed then?” He held her closely. “I want you to know that I have found a way to allow you to still see your own plans through.”
She had been too happy to think about her plans and how marriage did not fit them. “I expect I will have to alter them a bit.”
“Not much. Rockport proposed I broker sales for him on the Continent, much as I have at times brokered art collections. If even half of what he said comes to pass, we will have all the servants you need. We can spend some time in London each year, so you can study your art too. Or you can have a house in Birmingham, and study with a master there.”
She rose up so she looked down on him. “You are going to take employment with Wesley?”
“Not really. I will be doing what I have always done for years now, however.”
“You do know that you do not have to marry me to have me, don’t you?”
He reached up and cupped her face with his hands. “Have you already forgotten the most important part? I love you, Eva. I do not want you as a mistress. I want us to live together so I can have you whenever I like, and so we both have a place in the world and it is together.” He pressed her head down and kissed her. “Say you will marry me, Eva. You have not yet. Not properly.”
She wiped the brimming tears from her eyes. “Yes, I will. Yes.”
He worked the buttons of his trousers. “Then open to me now, before I die from wanting you.”
She helped to free him from his garments, then rose up and lowered herself, taking him inside her. They neither moved for a while, but remained still in this first union of their life together. She savored each instant, so she would remember forever how she felt.
Then Gareth caressed down her back, and lower still until his fingers explored in a most shocking way. His eyes flashed naughty lights at her reaction.
She reached back and smacked his hand away, then rode him with joyful pleasure.
Read on for a special preview of the next historical romance from Madeline Hunter
TALL, DARK, AND WICKED
Coming soon from Jove Books
Loyal.
Good-humored.
Clean.
Intelligent.
Uninhibited.
Passionate.
Accommodating.
Lord Ywain Hemingford—Ives to his family and closest friends—read the list of the qualities he required in a mistress. He had jotted them down, in no particular order, during an idle moment the day before. Only the first one deserved its ranking without question. In fact, it should be underlined. There were other qualities that attracted him, too, but these seven, he had learned through experience, were paramount.
He tucked the paper behind some pages, to be later returned to its current duty as a marker in his book. He settled into his favorite chair, propped his legs on a footstool with his feet aimed toward the low fire, and again turned his attention to a novel he had been meaning to read for four months now.
Vickers, his manservant, set a glass and two decanters—one of port and the other of water—on a table next to the chair, then stepped back out of view.
“If your brother the duke should come by this evening, sir, should—”
“Deny him entrance. Bar the door. I am not home to him. If God had any mercy he would have inspired Lance to remain at Merrywood, not allowed him to venture back up to town where he will be a nuisance to all whom he encounters. I am done with being his playmate, or his nursemaid.” At least for a while, he added to himself. After a recent, renewed week of barking, the hounds had again retreated, but they had not given up the hunt.
Ives did not mind being his brother’s keeper. He resented very much playing the role for a brother who treated his advice like it came from an old aunt. One would think that a man under suspicion of murder would be more circumspect in his speech and actions, and want to create favorable impressions, not stick out his tongue at society whenever he could.
“Very good, sir.
”
Padding steps. A door closing. Peace. Ives closed his eyes and savored for a moment that rarity in his life—freedom to do whatever he damned well pleased, whenever he chose, with nary a claim on his time or attention.
Several developments allowed this respite besides the dwindling interest in Lance by magistrates out for blood. No cases awaited his eloquence in court for at least a fortnight. By coincidence, his mistress had a week ago been most disloyal, giving him the excuse he had sought for some time to part with her.
That left him free of her too. Of attending on her. Of purchasing gifts. Of feeding her vanity. Of joining in little parties that she liked to hold that bored him more than he ever let her know.
It did, of course, also leave him free of a sexual companion. That was not a situation that he by nature welcomed, but he did not mind too much. Contemplating with whom to end his abstinence would give his forays out on the town an enlivening distraction.
He anticipated a glorious stretch of pointless activity. Several long rides in the country beckoned, following whim more than roads or maps. A stack of books like this one waited, too long unread. He could indulge in regular practice with sword and fists, to improve his prowess at fighting with both. And he looked forward to at least one good long debauch of drunkenness with old friends too long neglected.
“Sir.”
Vickers’s voice, right at his shoulder, surprised him. He had not heard Vickers return.
“Sir, there is a visitor.”
“Throw him out, I told you.”
“It is not your brother. It is a woman. She says she has come on business. She says you were recommended to her.”
Exhaling a sigh, Ives held out his palm.
“She gave me no card, sir. I would have sent her on her way, but she would not indicate just who had recommended you, and the last time such an unnamed recommendation came your way it was from—”
“Yes, quite right.” Damnation. If someone, or even Someone, thought to interfere with the next fortnight by having him running around England on some mission or investigation, Someone was very much mistaken. Still, he should at least meet this woman and hear her out, so he could construct a good reason why he could not help her.
He stood, and looked down at himself. He wore a long banyan over his shirt and trousers. The notion of dressing again raised the devil in him. Hell, it was long past time to call at a lawyer’s office, even if Someone recommended him. He would be too informal for a stranger, or for business, but he was hardly in a nightshirt. This woman would just have to forgive him his dishabille. With luck she would realize she had interfered with his evening, which she rudely had, and make quick work of whatever she wanted.
He walked to the office. She was probably a petitioner for some reform cause, or the relative of a friend looking for his advice on which solicitor to hire. Her mission this evening no doubt could have been completed more humanely by writing a letter.
He opened the door to his office, and immediately knew that his visitor had not been recommended by anyone significant, let alone Someone really important. Her plain gray dress marked her as a servant. He could not see one bit of adornment on either it or the dull green spencer buttoned high on her chest. The simplest bonnet he had seen in months covered her black hair and framed her face.
Eyes lowered, lost in her thoughts, she had not heard him. He considered stepping out just as silently, and telling Vickers to send her away. He placed one foot back to do so.
Just then she lifted a handkerchief to her eyes—nice eyes, he could not help but notice, with thick, black lashes that contrasted starkly with her pale skin. Radiant skin, as it happened, giving her face a notable presence, if he did say so, even if she was not a beautiful woman. Handsome, however, even if somewhat sharp featured.
She dabbed at tears. Her reserved expression crumbled under emotion.
He hated seeing women cry. Hated it. His easy sympathy had caused him nothing but trouble in the past too. Still—
Hell.
He waited until she composed herself, then walked forward.
* * *
Padua sniffed, and not only to hold back the tears that the day tried to force on her. She also checked for the tenth time to discover if her garments still smelled.
They did. In fact, they stunk.
Newgate Prison reeked. The stench that London gave off seemed to concentrate in the Old City, but Newgate smelled like the source of it all. She had never experienced anything like it. It remained in her nose, and apparently it had permeated her clothing.
She sat rigidly on the chair the servant had pointed out, and debated whether to open one of the windows to the autumn breeze. Her surroundings caused a good deal of worry to spike. She had perhaps been rash in following the advice to seek out this lawyer. Probably so, considering the person who had given the advice had been a bawd incarcerated in the prison.
Normally, she would not take advice from a prostitute or a criminal. Yet when that woman called her over as she found her way out of the prison, and showed sympathy, she had not been herself. Just talking to someone eased her distress. After hearing her tale of woe, that woman advised she get a lawyer, and even provided the name of one who had aided a relative who was wrongly accused. Suddenly the prostitute appeared as an angel sent by Providence to offer guidance out of the Valley of Despair.
Now she awaited that lawyer’s attendance. Not only a lawyer, but also a lord. She thought it odd that a lord was a lawyer. She would assume the bawd erred on that, except the servant here did not blink when she used the title in requesting an audience.
Now that she was here, she could believe the lord part. Although she sat in his chambers, this was no apartment, nor merely a set of offices. Rather, she sat on the entry level of what appeared to be a new house facing Lincoln’s Inn Fields. There had been nothing to indicate that others lived or worked above. This lawyer had a good deal of money if this whole building was his home.
The mahogany furniture and expensive bookbindings said as much. Her feet rested half submerged in the dense pile of the carpet on the floor. Her rump perched on a chair that must have cost many pounds. Real paintings decorated the walls, not engravings done after famous works of art.
His fees were probably very high. She doubted she could afford them. The bawd had guessed as much. If you’ve not the coin to pay him, he’ll probably take other payment, dear. Them that works our side of the Old Bailey almost all do.
Could she agree to that? It would disgust her. She recoiled from the idea. Only in the most desperate of circumstances would she stoop so low.
She closed her eyes, and immediately was back in the prison, peering into a cell full of men. The stench, the dirt, the ugly sounds all assaulted her senses again. Hopelessness and death reigned in Newgate Prison. No one would leave a loved one inside it if she had the means to get him out.
These were indeed desperate circumstances.
Tears pooled in her eyes. She dabbed them away with her handkerchief and fought for composure. She never cried, but this was not a normal day in so many ways.
“You asked to see me.”
The voice jolted her out of her reverie and drew her attention to the man suddenly standing ten feet in front of her.
His appearance startled her in other ways too. He was not what she expected. Not at all.
She had pictured a man of middle years with gray hair and spectacles and a face wizened with experience. He would wear dark coats and a crisp cravat and be accompanied by a clerk or two.
Instead the man assessing her—there was no other word for the way his gaze took her in—could be no older than thirty or so. He possessed classically handsome features and a fashionable mane of dark brown hair of an enviable hue. He wore a long banyan that could pass for a greatcoat if not made of midnight brocade instead of wool.
An impressive man. His green eyes captivated one’s attention. Right now they reflected aloof displeasure. Very attractive eyes, however. Intel
ligent. Expressive.
She found her wits. “Are you Lord Ywain Hemingford?” She had no idea how to pronounce Ywain. Surely not Ya-wane, as the bawd had. She tried EE-wane instead. His subtle wince said she got it wrong.
“I am. You have me at a disadvantage, however.” Those eyes flashed a spark of impatience.
“My apologies. My name is Padua Belvoir.” She took in his informal dress. “I have intruded at the wrong time. I am sorry about that too. I have been so distraught I have not paid proper mind to the hour, and I could not rest until I sought the help I need anyway.”
“You told my man you were recommended to find me. May I ask by whom?”
By a prostitute in Newgate Prison. “I do not think she wants me to tell you her name.”
He strolled across the chamber. “I assume you are here regarding a criminal matter.”
“How did you know?”
“Because that is the only reason she would not want her name used, and because from the smell of you, you have recently been in Newgate.” Ever so calmly, he opened one of the windows. A crisp breeze poured in.
She felt her face burning.
“Please, do not be embarrassed. The prison is a fetid place,” he said. “I had a coat that had to be burned after I wore it there one summer day.”
“It is not only fetid, but horrible in every way. The conditions are disgraceful. The inmates are wretched.”
He settled his tall body into a chair near hers. He sat in it like a king might sit on a throne. His arms rested along the tops of its sides and his hands hung in front of its carving. “I thought you had come to request a donation, perhaps in order to attempt to improve those conditions. Just as well you did not. It would be a noble but futile quest. People tend not to worry overmuch if criminals are not comfortable.”
“I am not here to ask for a charitable donation, although someday I hope to have the time to devote to such good causes. And not everyone in that prison is a criminal.”
“I assure you that most are.” He offered a half smile, no more. “Since you do not want money, perhaps you will explain what you do want.”
His Wicked Reputation Page 30