And with that, she kissed him on his cheek. “I will see you at the wedding.”
CHAPTER 8
The wedding was a tremendous success, not that it was ever intended to be anything else. The bride’s gown, the wedding breakfast, and the greenery that filled the interior of the cathedral—each aspect of the occasion was praised as sumptuous yet tasteful. Everything The Ideal Gentleman’s wedding ought to be.
“I am pleased to have been accessory to one of the most perfectly orchestrated ceremonies of our time,” said Felix’s new wife, when they were at last alone in his private rail coach, speeding north toward Huntington.
It was her way of telling him that this entire ceremony had been all about him—his good name, his stature, his importance.
He smiled. “And thus concludes my reign as the most eligible young man of the realm. It is the end of an era.”
She rolled her eyes.
He smiled more broadly. “The same could be said of you. When did you start preparing for your London Season?”
“Eight years ago.”
“And now that, too, is behind you. What plans do you have for yourself?”
She straightened the sleeve of her new traveling dress, a stylish, yet understated piece in charcoal grey—a garment that did not draw attention to itself, yet upon close examination, proved to be of flawless construction and exemplary fit. He did not believe that it had come by this state of inconspicuous perfection by accident: She would have given quite a bit of thought to how she wished to appear as Lady Wrenworth and must have decided that she preferred to let him have the limelight, but also to present herself in such a way that no one should be able to find fault in his choice of wife.
“Between fittings for my gown and trousseau, shopping with my family, and answering all the questions from Lady Balfour and your secretary concerning the wedding,” she said, straightening her other sleeve, “I haven’t had a minute to think about the future.”
“Liar. You’d stop breathing before you stop preparing for what’s coming next. What is it you are scheming about now?”
Her eyes were wide and limpid as she answered, “I have a thirty-room house, five thousand pounds a year, and a good telescope, not to mention Messier’s Catalogue. There is nothing left worthy of maneuvers.”
He rested his head on his palm. “But you are ambitious. I’ll bet you have tried to read astronomical journals, when you could get your hands on them. And I’ll bet you found it difficult, because you have had a woeful education, particularly in the area of mathematics.”
“I am not innumerate.”
“Oh, I’m sure you can calculate a household budget and a man’s wealth very well. But can you solve an equation?”
She looked as if he’d accused her of rampant honesty. “Of course I can solve an equation. I can solve paired equations.”
“What about quadratic equations?”
She flattened her lips. “No.”
“Do you know anything about trigonometry?”
“No.”
“Non-Euclidean geometry?”
“No.”
He set one hand beneath his chin and considered her.
“You make me nervous,” she said quietly.
“Because now I know you would like to be fluent in calculus?”
She sighed. “Because you read me like an open book, when I know I am not. I am no more transparent than a slab of slate—or at least I shouldn’t be.”
With anyone else, he would simply smile and let that be the end of it. But it was his wedding day, he had vowed to cherish her, and he was feeling very charitable.
“Then let me tell you this. Everything I need to know about you, I already learned the first night we met. And yet after I’ve read you like an open book all this while, you still remain something of a conundrum.”
This mollified her enough for the set of her shoulders to relax. “So . . . I don’t trust you and you don’t understand me.”
He laughed despite himself. “No wonder we get along so well.”
A beat of silence passed. She turned her face slightly to the side and glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes. “So what should we do now that we’ve established that our marriage is based on ignorance and general misgiving?”
He leaned forward. “Do you play cards, my dear Lady Wrenworth?”
• • •
She not only played cards, but proved to be one of the best Felix had ever played against.
“Where did you learn to play like this?” he exclaimed after she had taken yet another round from him.
“At home. We’ve no books and no instruments—guess what we did to pass time.”
“Do you count cards?”
“Of course,” she answered, as if there were no other possible choice.
“And you are the best player at home, no doubt?”
“No. I can hold my own with Cecilia and Julia, but Matilda is a terror at the table.”
That surprised him. “Really?”
“Had she been a man, we’d have sent her to Monte Carlo to win a fortune.”
“So what did you use as stake when you played at home?”
“Stake? What sort of question is that?” She shot him a look full of scorn. “We played to win. Now will you please let me concentrate?”
He wished it had been possible to capture her expression of contempt. For a poor fortune hunter’s daughter, she could rival a dowager duchess in haughtiness, when she was in the mood. “Certainly, Lady Wrenworth.”
She had already lowered her gaze to her cards, but now she slowly looked up. “You won’t stop calling me Louisa, will you?”
Little things like this made her the conundrum she was: that she would tell him openly that she did not trust him, and then in the next breath demand this intimacy from him.
“There is a time and a place for it,” he told her.
She gestured at the private rail coach, empty except for the two of them. “We are already in private.”
He only repeated, “There is a time and a place for it.”
Her cheeks colored—neither the time nor the place was too far away now.
“Right.” She cleared her throat. “Your turn, sir.”
• • •
It was rather difficult to concentrate after that, but since Louisa wasn’t the only one distracted, she still defeated her husband soundly.
“Good thing you only play to win,” he teased her. “Remind me to never put any money on the table.”
“As long as you say nothing to your friends. I am not averse to taking their money.”
“I’d like to see you go up against Lady Tremaine. She is quite the player.”
She made a face. “Your former paramour Lady Tremaine?”
“My current good friend Lady Tremaine. I lost five hundred pounds to her once. You will be my vengeance and seize the sum from her—with high, compounding interest, of course.”
“Are you sure I am a better player than she?”
“Her advantage over most men is that she has a noteworthy chest, which she displays shamelessly when she sits down to a card table. You, however, will not be distracted by a pair of breasts.”
Louisa suddenly had the image of him with his hands on Lady Tremaine’s noteworthy chest—and it made her feel spectacularly underendowed. “Is she invited to your house party?”
“She is always invited to my house party. But she is out of the country this month, sampling the male species all over Scandinavia.”
“But if she comes, you will be distracted by her breasts?”
“It’s nothing to do with her. I sometimes find myself staring at sculptures of bare-breasted women around Huntington—speaking of which . . .”
They drove past the gate of the estate.
“Welcome to your new home
,” he said softly. “I hope you like it.”
She had, of course, thoroughly studied the passage concerning Huntington in Lady Balfour’s book on the great manors of the realm. But dry, matter-of-fact descriptions could not possibly capture the charm and tranquillity of the place, all rolling hills and green glens.
Then the land opened and there stood the manor, grandly and dramatically illuminated by the rich, golden light of sunset. It was a Tudor house that had, during the course of its long life, acquired a lavish, baroque flair. The once plain stone front now boasted an elaborate cupola and twelve pilasters that rose three stories high from a gorgeous terrace accessed by double-returned flights of steps. Twenty-seven windows, nine to each bay, shone down upon the circular reflection pool in the center of the formal French garden.
“It’s almost unfair,” she told him. “The master of this place should look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.”
“Sometimes he does,” said her husband, pulling on his gloves. “When you visit the family gallery, you will see that my ancestors are not the most prepossessing lot.”
There was no time for her to ponder his statement. The carriage had come to a stop before the manor, and it was time for her to meet the staff.
Afterward, she was led upstairs to her apartment, which had a private bath with walls and floor of blue and white marble, and a sunken bath with hot and cold running water.
She made sure to betray little of her marvel as her new maid ran her bath and showed her how to use the faucets. But when she was alone, she covered her mouth and screamed a little.
It was too much, her good fortune.
She stepped into this decadent bath, lowered herself into the perfumed water, tilted her head back, and felt . . . impatient. She smiled to herself. At least in this respect, there was nothing improper about her marriage. She would have married him as long as he had enough money to support Matilda. And if he hadn’t, they would have found a way somehow.
Schemers and schemers alike, the two of them.
And tonight they were headed to a place where she would have complete confidence in him: the marriage bed.
She finished her bath humming.
• • •
It was becoming more and more difficult for Felix to be objective about his new wife.
If his first impression was correct, then she was just a passably pretty woman who was very skillful at presenting herself to her best advantage. But as she entered the drawing room tonight, glowing, he could not remember a thing about her artifice.
She was stunning.
“You are a vision, Lady Wrenworth,” he whispered in her ear as they walked arm in arm toward the dining room.
“And you would have fortune-hunted most successfully if you’d had to do it, what with your charm, your wiles, and your sweet, Apollonian face.”
He felt an unfamiliar flutter in his stomach. “That’s the best compliment I’ve ever had before dinner.”
“I hope to also compliment you a great deal after dinner. Will dinner be long?”
He laughed softly. “No, dinner will not be long. The kitchen has been instructed to not overtire you with too many courses, as you’ve had a long day and would naturally prefer to retire early.”
“Naturally,” she answered as he pulled out her chair himself.
He would have never considered himself the sort of man who touched his wife while there were others present, but of their own volition, his fingers trailed across her nape, as if the softness of her skin had acted as a magnet.
She expelled a breath.
He walked to his seat with as much nonchalance as he could manage. “If you will look out of the windows, I believe you can see the Greek folly.”
Especially illuminated tonight, for her pleasure.
Her eyes widened. “Dear me, those are some very slender columns. They conceal nothing, do they?”
“They are not quite as slender as that,” he reassured her. “The folly appears closer at night than it actually is.”
“When will your friends be here?” she asked.
“Day after tomorrow.”
There had been no question that they would honeymoon at Huntington and that his summer house party would proceed as usual. How else was he to make her erotic dreams come true?
She sucked in a breath. “It is a fascinating pavilion.”
And she was a fascinating woman. He could not imagine now what he had been thinking when he’d believed he’d marry a girl twenty years his junior with a tremendous pair of breasts and nothing upstairs.
“I have a Roman folly, too, you know,” he informed her grandly.
And much to the befuddlement of his footmen, they both burst into laughter.
CHAPTER 9
They reached the end of dinner in forty minutes, a record at Huntington. She rose and withdrew with a significant look his way. Don’t make me wait.
But he did make her wait—she ought to know better than anyone else that he was that sort of bastard. He enjoyed his glass of Armagnac with a smile—and perhaps a leer—on his face, thinking of her willingly spread thighs. He walked up to his apartment imagining the moans of her helpless pleasure. And as he slowly prepared himself for bed, in his head he could already hear her pleading for more.
And more. And even more.
He barely managed to duck a flying hairbrush as he opened the connecting door.
She stood at her vanity table, still in her evening gown, her hair loose, her face screwed in displeasure. “I told you not to make me wait.”
“My goodness.” He laughed. “I didn’t marry just a liar, but also a virago.”
She turned her head away with great, hair-tossing drama. “I am not in an amorous mood anymore.”
“What a thing to tell a man who’s come to make love to you,” he said, stalking toward her. “And why, pray tell, if you were in such an amorous mood, did you keep on your dinner gown?”
“I dismissed my maid before I left for dinner. I was planning to use you for a variety of menial tasks tonight—including brushing my hair, by the way, which I had to do myself, because you were probably out in the gardens staring at big-busted statues.”
He pinned her between himself and the vanity table. “Quite wrong. I was picturing your bust and hoping it would be spectacularly diminutive.”
He gathered her hair to one side so he could press a kiss to her nape. She expelled a whimperlike breath. “Why would you want me to be that flat-chested?”
He kissed her earlobe, delighting in the tremor beneath her skin. “Because I like secrets, the bigger the better—and the size of this secret is inversely proportional to the size of your breasts, my dear, dear Louisa.”
The buttons on the back of her dinner gown presented very little challenge. She watched him in the mirror as he undid every last one of them, her lips parted, her gaze heavy lidded. He extricated her from the gown and started on her corset.
“Where is this mythical bust improver of yours? I’m most anxious to make its acquaintance.”
“This one is built into the corset.”
He had now loosened the corset enough to slip it over her head—and examine its amply augmented interior. “Well done.”
“Thank you—I suppose.”
“Now, if you will allow me to help you out of these petticoats, we will be able to tackle your combination and see just how much you’ve exaggerated.”
“Can’t you see that I am practically concave on top?”
The petticoats slid to the floor. He turned her around. “Promises, promises.”
She bit a corner of her lower lip. “I wish I could tell my mother your enthusiasm concerning my hollow chest. She was quite apprehensive during our ‘talk.’ I do believe she barely restrained herself from suggesting Frederica, who needs no help filling bodices, as a substitute bride.”
>
He rubbed a finger along the neckline of her combination. “Your mother is proving herself an exceptionally silly woman. Did she manage to tell you anything useful?”
“No. I believe you taught me more about the male anatomy with your walking stick.”
They tittered, she winking conspiratorially at him. He was still smiling when he began to toy with the topmost button on her combination. She was so very pretty with her hair tumbled all about her in fat, bouncy curls, her limpid eyes fixed on him, her gaze on his hand one moment, on his eyes the next.
He, on the other hand, watched only her face. The size of her breasts was quite irrelevant—what excited him was the transparency of her desire, the depth of her hunger, and the thoroughness of her infatuation.
Her skin, however, was rather exceptionally fine-grained and smooth beneath his fingers. And the expectancy in her eyes, that tinge of nervousness, was most gratifying—she wanted to please him with her body.
With almost a sense of noblesse oblige, he glanced down.
Somewhere in the back of his mind was an almost inaudible voice, reminding him that he had lost his objectivity where she was concerned, and therefore ought to temper his reaction with a healthy dose of skepticism.
But he wasn’t listening. All he heard was the sudden roar of blood in his veins. And all he saw was perfection, sheer, absolute perfection.
Small breasts, yes, but high, firm, and marvelously shaped, with the most beautiful nipples he had ever seen, rosy and most eagerly erect. His mouth went dry. His hand reached out and caught one nipple, so firm, yet so incredibly soft and satiny.
His heart pounded. His breaths turn ragged. And he became so hard, so fast, he was light-headed with this southward rush of blood.
He looked back at her face. Did he used to plan, step-by-step, a watertight seduction of this miraculous creature? He must have. He vaguely recalled things he meant to do to her, words he meant to whisper in her ears.
But the rawness that had overtaken him made him incapable of such finesse. His hand behind her nape, he yanked her to him and kissed her. Ravaged her. Somewhere inside he knew that such pure devouring was all wrong for a first kiss. But she didn’t seem to mind. Her hands dug into his scalp; her lips fastened upon his as if she were trapped underwater and he the reed that brought her precious air.
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