“What is he like? The Pickens boy?”
Mrs. Bleufleur snorted. “He’s like all nineteen-year-old boys, m’lady. More interested in farts and pigs and the barmaid’s bosoms than anything else. But what he’s like isn’t as important as what he can offer. A home here, close to her family.”
Not a scant month ago, Amelia would have agreed with every syllable of that sentiment, but she looked over at her husband. What a man was like was more important in a marriage than she had ever previously credited.
“Does she have much talent as a seamstress, do you think?”
“Blimey if I know. She can mend a tear in five seconds, and you’d never know it was there, but the clothes she makes don’t have any real place around here in Abingdale. Too fancy. They’re good for a wedding dress but that’s about it.”
Benedict had had a solution for every problem presented to him today, and the people here admired him for it. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps she could build that same level of esteem if she put the effort into getting to know these people.
“You’re right, Mrs. Bleufleur. London is no place for a girl on her own. But if the Pickens boy is only nineteen, he needs a few years to ripen before he’ll make any woman a decent husband. Bessie could go to London and see what she can make of herself in a year or two.”
The woman’s frown deepened, and she crushed her reticule in her hand. “But isn’t it awfully dangerous, m’lady? She’s my little girl.”
Amelia put a reassuring hand on Mrs. Bleufleur’s shoulder. “Send her to me, with her best creations and her sketchbook. If she’s any good, I’ll give her the reference she needs to join a respectable household or an established business. She’ll be safe and somewhere we can keep an eye on her. We may just give her dreams wings yet.”
“She looks happy,” Benedict said when Amelia returned.
“I think I actually managed to help.” She couldn’t hide her smile.
He brushed a strand of hair away from her eyes. The feeling of his thumb on her skin made her shiver, but the look he gave her was so full of heat she thought she’d melt from it.
“And are you happy? Here? Helping?”
She wrapped a hand into the lapels of his coat, edging closer to him. His nearness made her dizzy, giddy. Her cheeks flushed hot, and as she looked up at him, her gaze could go no farther than his lips.
“I am,” she whispered.
Chapter 16
I feel so ill.” Cassandra collapsed on the chaise in a dramatic manner.
“You shouldn’t have eaten so many sweets.” It was the proper thing for Amelia to say but hypocritical in the extreme given she had also overindulged in wrapped peppermints.
“It might be best for you to sleep it off, little sister,” Benedict said. “It’s well past your bedtime.” He leaned in close to Amelia. “Yours too.”
She yawned. “I think you might be right.” In London, she could dance until dawn, but after just a few weeks of country hours, she simply wasn’t up to it. She held her hand out to Cassandra. “Let’s go to bed, little one.”
The house was empty. All the servants had been given the day off to enjoy the fair, and although it was nearing midnight, none had yet returned. Only the pad of their feet on the carpet broke the silence.
“Good night, poppet. Sleep tight.” Amelia kissed Cassandra on the forehead and walked down the hall to her room, leaning on Benedict all the way.
Inside, the fire had gone out.
Drat.
In her first week—back before they’d hired help—Amelia had learned the art of making a fire. But it was difficult, and it was too late for her to be bothered tonight. It was also too cold for her not to bother.
“Dash it.”
“I’ll get it.” Benedict crossed to the fireplace and began to empty the ash into a bucket.
Exhausted, Amelia sat on the edge of the bed and unlaced her boots, tugging them off and arranging them at the end of the mattress.
Her husband was a very useful man. She couldn’t imagine any of her London beaus knowing how to light a fire.
He was a very nice man too. And handsome. With broad shoulders and muscular arms that felt lovely to hold.
“Pardon?” he asked. Still kneeling before the fireplace, he twisted to face her.
“Excuse me?”
“You said something.”
She shook her head. “No, not at all. I wasn’t thinking—saying—anything.” Heat crept up her neck. The late hour and her woolgathering were going to get her into trouble.
The flames held, and he stood, rubbing the back of his neck. “Well, I guess that’s good night then.” He made no move to leave though. And she didn’t want him to. They’d been dancing around it for days, this attraction.
But he was her husband.
There was no one around.
And really, there was no reason not to kiss him again. And whatever came next.
“I can’t get out of my dress.” She stood and took two steps toward him, her pulse thrumming through her veins.
“You can’t get out of your dress?” She couldn’t tell if the flames from the fireplace were dancing in his eyes or if he was as scorching as she was.
“My lady’s maid is out.”
He crossed the space between them in three quick strides, coming to stop just inches from her. Close enough that she could feel the warmth of his breath. He rested a hand on her waist. His fingers flexed and pressed into her, but he left those few darned inches between them.
“Then can I be of assistance?” he asked.
She inhaled. This was her chance to change her mind. But that breath was potent. The smell of him made the room tilt. It swirled through her, turning her blood hot.
She leaned forward, turning those few inches into just a finger-width.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Thank God.” He pulled her tight against his body, the long hard breadth of him setting fire to the deepest parts of her.
He sank his hand into the back of her chignon, sending pins flying. Tipping her face toward his, he touched his lips to hers.
This kiss. It was a new silk dress, a perfectly chalked ballroom, and meeting the queen all in one.
It was both familiar and an epiphany.
It was heaven.
“Amelia,” he murmured. “My God, Amelia.”
The strength of his sex pulsated against her, igniting the same primal throb in her.
His lips moved to her earlobe, the sound and heat of his breath making her shiver. He trailed a line of soft kisses to the edge of her dress.
“Oh.” Her knees buckled, and only his arm around her stopped her from falling to the ground.
“You’re perfect,” he whispered, the words brushing against her skin, causing goose bumps to form. He ran his hand down the small of her back and cupped her backside, squeezing it gently.
Her fingers gripped his shoulders. “I thought I was an idle, pompous aristocrat.”
“You’re strong.” Without raising his head from her chest, he started to free the buttons along the back of her dress.
“Are you sure you don’t mean stubborn?” she asked, flinching at the sudden exposure to the cool air as her dress pooled around her waist.
“You’re witty.” He pushed her dress over her hips, and suddenly she was standing in front of him in nothing but her underclothes. She was tempted to cover herself with her hands, but he shook his head.
His stare was thirsty, roving, yet full of wonder.
“You said I was sarcastic,” she whispered.
“You’re intelligent.” The words came out half-strangled—the effect she was having on him that pointed.
“Not calculating?” she asked.
He shook his head, untied the laces of her stays and removed them.
Tentatively, she took a step toward him and undid the knot at his throat.
“Amelia,” he groaned. He swept her into his arms and settled her on the bed. He shrugged off his jacket an
d waistcoat, tossing them in a heap, and pulled his shirt over his head.
The first time she’d seen him half naked, she’d been barely conscious.
The second time she’d been curious, her body alert and tingling.
This time, the sight of his tanned skin, the ropes of muscle, the smattering of dark blond hair across his chest whipped up a blazing heat inside that writhed across her body, settling between her legs. Her body arched toward him. She wanted him here. With her. Now.
“Easy, princess,” he said as her fingers brushed his thigh. He tugged off his boots and flung them across the room where they hit the door to his bedroom with a thud. He undid the laces at his waist and pushed down his breeches in one move.
“Heavens.”
She wasn’t a complete innocent. She had seen some Greek statues. But this? This was something else entirely.
She swallowed, unsure how it would work. “I…uh…”
Her uncertainty must have been plain across her face because his manner shifted. Gone was the intense urgency, the wild abandon. What was fierce became gentle.
He climbed into bed next to her, tipping her chin so she was forced to meet his gaze. “Trust me.”
He curled his fingers around the hem of her shift, drawing it up, gradually exposing her. He bit his lip as he lifted it past her breasts and over her head.
The heady thrill of his expression overwhelmed any sense of shyness she felt.
He grazed his palm across the side of her rib cage and up. Up until his hand cupped her breast and his thumb circled her nipple, drawing a sharp gasp from her. It was the lightest, softest of movements, yet it rocked through her.
He bent his head and wrapped his mouth around her nipple, sucking gently, causing her feet to stretch and flex and her whole body to go taut.
“You’re so beautiful.”
What did one say to a man who was trailing his tongue down one’s bare chest? Thank you?
That felt overly formal.
He slipped his hand to the curls between her legs, and all thought of responding vanished. A pleasure drove through her, and she gasped, pulling away.
With a satisfied chuckle, he stretched out beside her, propped up on one elbow, a maddening smile on his face. “Trust me.” His fingers returned to her curls and found the soft, sensitive core of her. He stroked it, over and over. Each time pushing her higher and higher, though where they were going, she didn’t know.
As the tension built, all reason and inhibitions fled. She grabbed his wrist, pressing his fingers harder against her as she thrust her hips forward.
A tiny corner of her was mortified. The rest was enraptured.
“Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.”
This. This. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t hear. Stars shone in her vision as the whole world dropped away.
This was why foolish girls risked their reputation, why married women sent satisfied, cryptic glances. Why Helen had left a king for a mere prince.
It built and built and built with each stroke.
And then she tipped over the edge of the precipice she hadn’t seen.
She bit the back of her hand to keep from crying out as her body took on a life of its own, straining and twisting in pleasure, lifting from the bed before collapsing in a sated, languid heap.
He cupped her face in his hands, coarse and rough with calluses. Hands that had never known softening crèmes but had built things, tamed things. Might be taming her.
“I…” There weren’t words to describe it.
No wonder this was kept from unmarried girls. Society would fall. There wouldn’t be enough dark corners or locked rooms at any gathering.
She looked at him. The heat in his eyes hadn’t banked. If anything, her—incident—had increased his desire. His cock was still hard against her thigh, and a muscle along his jaw ticced.
Where she was spent, he was coiled tight. She didn’t have to be a genius engineer to know there was still more to come.
She stroked the rough stubble on his cheek, and he leaned into her hand, placing a hot kiss on her palm.
“What next?” she whispered.
He growled, a guttural, animal sound that formed no words yet spoke reams, and pressed into her with a desperate kiss.
In that ephemeral state between asleep and awake, there was no sight, just the light of the dawn inside him, even though a corner of his rational brain knew it was still dark outside.
This was a different kind of dawn, beyond the breaking of a new day. The smooth, soft pink of Amelia’s skin, the slow rhythmic whoosh of her breath, and the enveloping smell of jasmine all heralded a different kind of beginning.
He curled his arm around her, pulling her close to him, content just to listen to her breathe. She shivered, goose bumps prickling across her arms—disappearing as he ran a hand over them in big, slow circles.
Why had luck favored him in this way? He had failed one woman so completely. How could the universe have sent another in his direction? Particularly one as perfect as her.
He nestled his cheek into her hair, his thumb drawing gentle patterns on her side.
Once the light flowed through the uncovered window, her sleep became lighter, more restless. She shifted, each move pressing her closer to him, brushing against his cock and flooding his mind with carnal thoughts.
She stiffened beneath his touch when she woke and then relaxed, sinking into his embrace. “Good morning,” she said as she rolled to face him. Her chest and neck had flushed a delightful, self-conscious shade of red.
He reached down and grabbed the bedsheet, pulling it over them. “Good morning.” He kissed her, soft, quick—like a habit they’d have for the rest of their lives. “Last night was—”
“Educational?” She didn’t meet his eyes, instead focused on the hair on his chest, running her fingers through it in small, whirling patterns.
“Perfect.”
She gave a satisfied little hmph. “So what next?”
Benedict stretched out, his feet hanging over the edge of the bed. “We ring for breakfast and spend the rest of the day in bed.”
Amelia propped herself up on her elbow. “Tell me about your mother.”
“You want to talk about my mother? Now?” When he imagined a perfect morning lying in bed with his perfect wife, his mother was decidedly not part of that picture.
“I feel like I know everything else about you now. I want to know this.”
He shifted to face her. Her brow was furrowed, and her kissable lips were stubbornly pursed. There was no escaping this conversation.
“She was beautiful. Almost as beautiful as you.”
Amelia colored, and the seriousness of her expression softened.
“She’d tell me stories of her life in London, of how she had dozens of different beaus and how even Prince Henry read her poetry. She promised we would travel there for the Season. One day. We would have an orangery and greenhouse and garden maze. One day. She would introduce us to the king. One day. There were a lot of ‘one days’ in my childhood.”
It had been almost thirteen years since his mother had died. Two decades since she’d left. The twisting in his gut never went away.
“She sounds—”
“Unhappy,” he interrupted. “You can’t be happy while you’re wishing you were somewhere else.”
“Why didn’t she move back to London?”
“My grandfather wouldn’t allow it.” Because the marquess was an unfeeling bastard.
“Short of hiring a thug to tie her to the furniture, I don’t see how he could have stopped it.”
“She went. For a few weeks. No one would see her—not her friends, not her mother. What little money she’d scraped together wasn’t accepted anywhere. She’d been blackballed. At his request, I’m sure of it.”
“And so she went to France.”
“No. She wasted away here until she was barely a shadow. Then she moved to France.”
A crease formed between her eyeb
rows. She tapped on his chest distractedly, her nail stabbing at his skin just a little.
He caught her hand with his and eased it away.
“I’m not the most sentimental person, but it does seem rather cold, even to me, to abandon your child.”
He released her hand, preferring the pain of her prodding to this. He turned his attention to a crack in the wall in the corner of the room.
“I was a disappointment. She wanted a son like her—fine, graceful, and well-spoken. I was big, gangly, could barely move without knocking something over. ‘My son, the gigantic clod,’ she said. I just…wasn’t what she wanted.”
Amelia cupped his cheek with her hand, gently turning him to face her. “That must have been very painful.”
“When I was younger, I thought that if I could just be less oafish then she’d get well. Once she left, I thought that if I could just make my fortune in time, she’d come home.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. They gave me my first patent a year after she died.”
She brushed a lock of hair from his eyes. “I’m not your mother. I like…this.” She ran her hand across his chest, her cheeks flushing as she did. “And I’m not wasting away.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?” she whispered. “Because I promise you, I’m not going anywhere.”
Chapter 17
As far as Amelia was concerned, the firm was running with authoritarian precision—the kind usually achieved only by His Majesty’s army, navy, and any household she ran. Benedict had given her free rein to contribute to his business however she saw fit, and in the space of two weeks, she’d used a lifetime’s experience managing a large household to increase efficiencies in the firm’s operations—from adjusting the workers’ timetables, to overhauling their inventory processes, to implementing a filing system so he could actually find his test results.
Now she leaned against the mezzanine railing and watched the workers do their jobs.
“You haven’t moved for an hour,” Benedict said, coming up behind her. He encircled her within his arms, nuzzling into her neck.
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