He was amazed at how easily he was able to slide into her slick sheath; and then, once inside, further amazed at how tightly she closed around him, like an eager, fevered hand. Keeping one arm around her hips, his hand pressed against the hard little knot of flesh just below her pubic bone, and the other to one of her full ripe breasts, he began to move slowly in and out of her, his chest pressed hotly to her back, his eyes, like hers, closed, as he relished the bounty in his arms.
So it hadn’t been a dream. It hadn’t been a dream at all. The two of them had made love long through the night, until, exhausted, they’d sunk into dreamless slumber. But Jeremy was full aware that often, that which was constructed by candlelight lost its luster when exposed to the harsh light of the day. He wasn’t about to let that happen with Maggie. He intended his mastery over her to be total. He would not let her plead that the moonlight had caused her to lose her head. He would not allow midnight to excuse what dawn brought with it.
It wasn’t until he heard her breathing quicken that he increased the pressure of his fingers between her legs. The movement of her own hips, as he entered and then retreated from behind, caused her to press against his callused fingers. His face buried in the fragrant curtain of her hair, he heard her moan softly in her sleep, felt her body opening, yielding to the demands of his. He plunged deeper and deeper into her, glorying in her eager acceptance of him, the dew that drenched his fingers, her ragged gasps for breath as he drove himself at her very core … .
And then he felt her stiffen all around him, her back arching while she thrust her pelvis greedily against his palm. The hot hand that had been clutching him so tightly, trying to hang on every time he pulled away, clenched convulsively, and then spasmed. And this time, Jeremy couldn’t pull away. He was caught in a trap of his own making, with no desire to escape. Instead, he gripped Maggie’s hips and erupted within her, filling her with liquid fire. She cried out hoarsely, her body shimmering with her own climax.
It wasn’t until he’d exhausted himself within her that Maggie’s eyelids began to flutter. Suddenly, he found himself gazing down into those dark brown depths that he knew so well.
“Good morning,” Jeremy said pleasantly, but because of the force of the orgasm he’d just experienced, his voice came out sounding raw and unsteady, not like his own voice at all.
Maggie blinked up at him. Her mouth, where he’d ravaged it with his own, was reddened from his whiskers, and her breasts were still rising and falling rapidly as she tried to catch her breath. “That,” she said huskily “was unfair.”
Jeremy lifted an eyebrow. Though he was still buried inside of her, he leaned up on one elbow, resting his head in his hand, and feigned innocence. “What was unfair?” he asked.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about.” But Maggie didn’t seem at all perturbed. She moved away from him, rolling over onto her back, before stretching languidly, like a cat. It was in doing so that she happened to brush her fingers against the bandage that was still tied around Jeremy’s shoulder. Suddenly, her eyes flared wide, and memory came flooding into them like tears. Jeremy, lying a foot away, watched in fascination as her irises went from brown to black.
“Jeremy,” she said, as she clutched at the sheets, dragging them up to her chin. Her expression was one of horror. “What have we done?”
Jeremy shrugged, though the movement caused a twinge in his wounded shoulder.
“I haven’t done a blessed thing,” he replied in mock indignation. “Here I was, sleeping peacefully, when I woke to find myself under lascivious attack. I defended myself as best I could, but you were simply too ardent, Mags. I’m afraid, in the end, I simply gave in to your lustful demands.”
“Oh, God, Jerry! How can you joke about it?” Maggie sat up, her long hair spilling about her. creamy shoulders. “Someone tried to murder you last night, and we … we …”
“We made wild, abandoned love?” He nodded. “Yes, I’d noticed that. I had no idea you were so bloodthirsty, my dear. If I’d known all I had to do to get you into my bed was bleed profusely, I’d have tried to get murdered more often.”
“Oh, Jerry!” Maggie covered her cheeks, which had been growing steadily more and more crimson, with her hands. The enormity of what had occurred was only just sinking in. She had made love with the Duke of Rawlings. Not just once, but several times. Her body was still tingling from his touch. As if that wasn’t proof enough, the sheets below her were stained with her blood. Good Lord, she’d lost her virginity last night, to a man who was not even her fiancé!
What had she been thinking? What had she done?
Jeremy, completely oblivious to the private torture Maggie was putting herself through, folded his hands beneath his head—his shoulder protested, but now that his limbs had been loosened up from their lovemaking, the wound did not feel quite so bad—and happily studied the canopy over his bed. “So,” he said. “What shall we do today, eh, Mags? Hop a train and head on up to Yorkshire, pay a call on the family? Or would you rather stay here in London, maybe do some shopping, catch a show? I haven’t been to the theater in five years. I wouldn’t mind seeing something with some nice musical numbers … .” He happened to glance in Maggie’s direction in time to see her struggling into the nightdress he’d stripped off her the night before. “Say, Mags,” he said, with only a very little suspiciousness. “Where are you going?”
“Back to my room, of course,” was the pert response. “Have you seen my robe?”
Jeremy raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that it?” he asked, lifting the garment with his foot. “You know, Mags, I really think you ought to invest in something a little more daring than plaid. Maybe something diaphanous, with feathers … .”
Maggie snatched the dressing gown from him. “Oh, do shut up,” she said, through tightly gritted teeth. “You aren’t the one who has to go sneaking back down the hallway like a criminal—”
“What,” he asked, trying very hard not to laugh at her adorable indignation, “are you talking about?”
She shot him an irritated look. “Hill, of course!”
Jeremy raised an eyebrow. “Your maid?”
“Yes, of course. Oh!” Maggie hurried to thrust her arms through the plaid sleeves of her dressing gown. “I just hope she hasn’t noticed I’m missing yet.”
“What do you care what your maid thinks, Mags? Follow my example. If she gives you any guff, just dismiss her.”
“Dismiss her?” Maggie turned to glare at him, her normally gentle brown eyes crackling. “Jeremy, I’ll have you know that Hill is the only member of my family—well, of Herbert Park, anyway—who’s stuck by me these past few months. I can’t dismiss her.” She gave the sash to her robe a savage yank. “Though she’ll probably give her notice this morning, anyway … .”
“Why?” Jeremy asked curiously.
“Because no respectable lady’s maid would stay in the employ of someone like me,” Maggie replied, a bit exasperatedly. “It’s bad enough that I consort with artists and Bohemians, and that my own family has cut me off. Now I’ve completely ruined what little reputation I might have had left by spending the night alone in the Duke of Rawlings’s town house—”
“What do you mean, alone? We weren’t a bit alone. I had to go to a lot of trouble to get rid of all the people who were hanging about, as a matter of fact—”
“Oh, Jerry,” Maggie said. “Surely you can’t think servants count! We were unchaperoned. Your aunt and uncle were supposed to return from Yorkshire, but something must have delayed them—”
“Thank God,” Jeremy muttered.
“—and now if it gets out that you and I were in the house alone—”
A nasty thought struck Jeremy, one that caused him to actually sit up. “What if it does? What would it matter? You’re not worried about what that frog-eater will think, are you?”
“I’m worried about what everyone will think, particularly your aunt and uncle, who will probably be here at any minute.” Maggie primly tied
the sash to her robe. “And kindly refrain from referring to Augustin de Veygoux as a frog-eater. He does not, to my knowledge, eat frogs.”
Jeremy opened his lips to refute this, though based on what knowledge, he wasn’t sure, when a low tap sounded on the door. Maggie turned wide and startled eyes toward him, but he raised a finger to his lips. “Shh,” he said with a chuckle. “No need to panic. It’s only Peters. He’s the only member of this household who’d dare disturb a Rawlings while he slept.”
Maggie, far from heeding his advice not to panic, dove for the ladder that led down from Jeremy’s massive bed. Scrambling down it, she nearly tripped over the hem of her nightdress, but she recovered herself, and shot Jeremy an outraged look as he smirked at her near-hysteria.
“Oh, it’s all very well for you,” she hissed. “You have no reputation to worry about!”
“I take exception to that,” Jeremy said with mock gravity. “I am extremely conscious of your reputation. So conscious, in fact, that I shall ask Peters to act as lookout for Hill while you make your way back to your room—”
“No,” Maggie gasped. “Don’t—”
But it was too late. Jeremy was already calling for his valet to enter. The one-legged man did so, casting only a single, entirely incurious glance at Maggie. “Good morning, sir,” he said politely. “Miss ‘Erbert. ’Ow’s your shoulder this morning, sir? Is it still troubling you?”
“Not a twinge,” Jeremy replied calmly. “Peters, have you seen Miss Herbert’s maid up and about this morning?”
“Yes, sir,” Peters said. He had gone to the windows, and was throwing open the long velvet curtains. “I took the liberty of creating a diversion belowstairs that Mrs. ‘Ill is busy trying to clean up. If Miss ’Erbert wishes to retire to her own room, now would be an ideal time.”
Maggie hesitated not a moment. Her feet padding noiselessly on the parquet floor, she hurried to the door. She did turn, however, with her hand on the latch, to look back at Jeremy. He was sitting up in the middle of the great canopied bed, his skin very dark against the whiteness of the sheets. His eyes, however, shone bright as coins.
“Um,” Maggie said. Good Lord. This was extremely awkward. She had been sure—quite sure—that he would have mentioned something, anything about marriage, or at the very least, about love. She had given herself to him, after all. She was quite aware that most girls tended to wait to do that until after they were married. He had suggested going to the theater. But he hadn’t said a word about taking any trips toward the altar.
Oh, dear. How very presumptuous on her part to have even thought …
“Yes, yes,” Jeremy said, his lips twisted upward. “Go on and run, then, little mouse, before the cat gets wind of it.”
Maggie, ducking her head so that her long hair hid her blushing cheeks, slipped from the room without another word. As soon as the door clicked shut behind her, Peters turned from the windows and said mildly, “Congratulations, sir. I see you finally managed to—”
“Careful, Peters,” Jeremy said, without the slightest rancor. “That’s my future wife you’re talking about.”
“Meanin’ no disrespect, sir.”
“None taken.” Perfectly content, Jeremy sank back against the pillows. Though it was February, he couldn’t help thinking that the sun had never shone quite so brightly, nor the birds outside his windows sung quite so well. “Peters, let this be a lesson to you. Man can achieve anything, with a little charm, ingenuity, and patience.”
“You are a model for us all, sir,” was Peters’s dry reply, as he headed straight for the whisky decanter on the sideboard. “The maid, though. That Mrs. ‘Ill. She’s goin’ to be a problem, sir.”
“Easily rectified, my good man. Easily rectified. In about an hour, you and I will head downtown and secure a special license. By this afternoon, Miss Herbert will become the seventeenth Duchess of Rawlings, and our good Mrs. Hill won’t be able to say a word about it.”
Peters shrugged, and splashed a generous slug of whisky into a glass. “Beggin’ your pardon, Colonel, but we might ’ave a slight difficulty securin’ that special license today.” He lifted the glass and headed toward the bed. Jeremy eyed him with a single raised brow.
“Whisky for breakfast, Peters?” he asked curiously. “Surely it’s not as bad as all that.”
“Yes, sir,” Peters said. “I think you’ll agree wi’ me that it is.” Shoving the glass into his employer’s hand, Peters unfolded the crisp pages of the newspaper he had held tucked under his arm—The Times, Jeremy noted—and presented him with the society page, across which blared the headline, Military Hero Returns to London to Marry Indian Royal.
Jeremy brought the whisky glass swiftly to his lips.
Chapter 24
“I just don’t know,” declared the Baroness of Lancaster. “The blue is nice, but I think white is more appropriate.”
“Oh, Mamma!” sixteen-year-old Fanny Lancaster wailed. “Only babies wear white, and I’m not a baby. I’m wearing the blue.”
“I just don’t know,” fretted Lady Lancaster. “It doesn’t seem right. Miss Herbert, what do you recommend?” Glancing over at the portrait painter, Lady Lancaster smiled tolerantly. Daydreaming, of course. Well, what else could you expect from a lady artist? Lavinia Michaels had said the girl had a tendency to drift off. Probably up all night at some Bohemian party or another. But that portrait she’d done of Lavinia’s niece! Perfection! One hardly noticed the girl’s double chin at all. “Miss Herbert?”
Maggie had been up all night, but not at any party. She still could not quite fathom what had occurred only a few hours before. She had made love with the Duke of Rawlings. Not once. Not twice. But three, possibly four times … she’d lost count after a while. It had been the most thrilling, the most exhilarating, night in her life.
Of course, when she’d sat down to her breakfast tray that morning, and opened the paper to the society page, which she habitually perused for potential clients, she found that it had been the most humiliating night in her life, as well.
Well, at least now she knew why he hadn’t proposed.
“Miss Herbert?” Lady Lancaster peered through her lorgnettes at the young woman perched on the end of her chaise longue. The girl looked all right—slightly peaked, maybe, from keeping such odd hours—but otherwise quite presentable in a dark wool visiting dress. Her hat was jauntily pinned to a saucy little confection of curls on top of her head—not at all the look for someone of Lady Lancaster’s class, but quite appropriate for a pretty Miss Herbert. Still, what ailed the girl? She’d been staring fixedly at the same rose in the carpet for nearly five minutes.
“Miss Herbert,” Fanny said, with another petulant stamp of her foot. That got Maggie’s attention, especially since Fanny had managed to rattle the Dresden shepherdess on the mantel.
“Yes?” Maggie asked brightly.
Ah, there, Lady Lancaster said to herself. She’s back.
It took only a few minutes of effort on Maggie’s part to convince Fanny that white was really the only appropriate color for a young girl having her first portrait painted. That done, the women decided on a mutually agreeable time for the sitting—Tuesday next at one o’clock—and then Maggie gathered up her sketchbooks and crayons and bade the baroness and her daughter adieu.
Out on Grosvenor Square, the crisp winter wind brought some color to Maggie’s otherwise pallid cheeks. She took in a few deep gulps of the icy air, hoping to clear her head before catching the omnibus and returning to her studio. She felt as if she’d had too much to drink the night before. Granted, she’d only had a few hours of sleep, but she’d gotten by on less in the past and not felt so gloomy. Well, she supposed that finding out that the man to whom one had lost one’s virginity was actually engaged to marry someone else had a way of dampening one’s spirits. If only, she said to herself, for the thirtieth time at least that day alone, her mother were still alive. Lady Herbert would know exactly what Maggie ought to do.
T
he truth was, Maggie had no one to whom she could turn for advice. None of her sisters were speaking to her, but even if any of them were, she couldn’t possibly have shared her problems with them—they would have been horrified beyond all belief. She knew good and well what Hill, who adored Augustin for all the good deeds he’d done her mistress, would have to say on the matter. Conversely, she knew that if she turned to Jeremy’s aunt Pegeen, who had remained Maggie’s staunch supporter throughout all of her family trials, she’d find herself being urged not to give up on Jeremy. There wasn’t a single impartial person to whom Maggie could turn.
Late that afternoon, back in her studio, Maggie gazed moodily at a portrait she was finishing up for the show on Saturday, a painting of a pair of towheaded toddlers, sweetly smiling while clinging to the neck of a long-suffering greyhound, and didn’t notice the door behind her swing open. She jumped when she heard a throaty voice behind her purr, “What is this? The ever-cheerful Mademoiselle Marguerethe, looking triste? C’est impossible!”
Maggie glanced over her shoulder, and managed a small smile when she saw Berangère Jacquard leaning in the doorway, her arms folded across her chest. Dressed as usual in the height of Parisian chic, though she was going nowhere more stylish than her own studio across the hall from Maggie’s, Berangère made a tsk-tsking noise with her tongue.
“What is this?” she demanded, slinking into the light-filled studio. “I thought you Englishwomen did not allow yourselves the luxury of sulking.”
“I’m not sulking,” Maggie said with a sigh. “Well … not really.”
“Aren’t you? Then you are doing a very good imitation of it, princesse.” Berangère curled her lip at the painting Maggie was sitting in front of. “Ugh! Quelle horreur! I suppose they are little earls, non?”
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