A low vibration rumbled in his throat as Blake bumped open the door to the master bedchamber with his shoulder. “‘I’ll say she looks as clear as morning roses newly washed with dew,’” he quoted, carrying her to a crocheted coverlet and laying her down, before sitting on the bed’s edge and pushing off his shoes. “‘In thy face I see honor, truth, and loyalty. My heart is ever at your service.’”
Even though she knew he didn’t mean a word, that he merely repeated Shakespeare as cynically as he had on the night of the duel, Jocelyn thrilled with the warmth of his deep baritone. Just his voice could excite her. When he leaned over to remove her unfastened gown, he quite possibly incited her to madness.
“It’s broad daylight,” she protested as he lifted her and tugged until her lovely gown pooled on the floor. She pushed at agile fingers stripping her down to her corset and the thin chemise over her breasts. “The servants will be scandalized.”
“And why should I care?” Triumphing over the corset hooks, Blake kissed the curve of her breast again.
Before she could think of a suitable reply, his mouth closed over her nipple, and Jocelyn gasped at the exciting new sensation. A strong tug of desire reawakened her lower parts, and she hastily gripped Blake’s biceps in hopes of deterring him. Or herself.
He suckled deeper and fondled her other breast. She squealed with delight. In that moment, if she’d had any hope of a marriage of convenience, she gave it up. She ought to be terrified, but she was thrilled that his kisses wouldn’t end now.
Her groom was more powerful and determined than a line of cavalry storming the bastions, whatever bastions were. And he did things to her that undermined her defenses. The moisture of his mouth on her breast was a seductive sin. Jocelyn tried to speak, but Blake stopped her with kisses. Just as she settled into the welcome familiarity of his mouth and tongue, he lifted her breast free of confinement, and caressed the aroused nub.
Her traitorous body arched into his hands. In return, he groaned against her mouth and hastily untied her chemise, until he could fully cradle and caress her breasts. Jocelyn nearly wept with the wonder of his touch. His hands weren’t smooth, but tough and hardened, yet still gentle as they explored what was his to take.
“I am no gentleman waiting politely for the night. I think I might explode if I wait,” he warned against her lips.
Just the depth of his hunger heated her insides like liquid fire. She could hardly believe a man of the finest quality like Blake could desire someone of her weak fiber in such a way. He made her giddy with hope and terrified her at the same time.
Sun streamed through the open drapery. She covered her bare bosom with her arm when he halted just to gaze upon her nakedness.
Blake’s big hand stayed her, and his heated gaze scorched through her middle to the place where she burned for him. “No, I want to see all of you, know all of you. You are the most beautiful prize I have ever won.”
The lure of his passionate declaration was strong. No one had ever thought of her as a prize, beautiful or not, but still, she registered a protest for decency. “The draperies are open.”
“Do you think someone hangs from the roof to look in?” he asked in amusement.
It was all happening too fast. She didn’t know what to think. She hardly even knew what he was doing. She wasn’t shy and missish. She’d undressed in front of dozens of maids and modistes and even Lady Belden. But never for a man who touched her flesh as boldly as he did.
“I thought . . . ,” she started to say, but he leaned over and swept his tongue over her nipple again, and moisture pooled between her thighs.
“Don’t think,” he suggested, lifting her and pulling the coverlet off to lay her against the sheets. “Lovemaking isn’t for thinking. It’s for doing.”
There was a philosophy after her own heart.
He stood and finished unwrapping his neckcloth, revealing the full brown column of his throat. Jocelyn scrambled to her knees, determined not to be a passive contender in this battle of wills. Painfully aware that her chemise gaped open, leaving her breasts bare like a wanton’s, she wrestled with the buttons of his waistcoat while he struggled from the tight fit of his cutaway.
“You are supposed to have a valet help you with that,” she scolded, hiding her shiver of excitement at the way he admired her breasts. “This is what comes of such havey-cavey haste.”
He heaved the coat over a chair and adeptly finished the waistcoat buttons. “I do not consider tupping my wife in broad daylight in the least questionable. And if I wished to be hasty, I’d have flipped up your skirts and ravished you in the carriage.”
Jocelyn gulped, suddenly aware that she wore nothing except garters and stockings beneath her chemise. She pounded her fist against his shirtfront, refusing to be intimidated by his greater experience. “That is crude, sir. Go back to quoting Shakespeare.”
She untied his shirt and tried to tug it from his tight breeches. She had no earthly idea what she was doing except it seemed unfair that she be the only one undressed.
Blake enveloped her hand in his fist and gently pushed her backward to the bed, so that her bottom met the mattress and she had to hastily unfold her legs, leaving them dangling over the edge—with his rather intimidating size looming over her.
“You’d rather have Shakespeare’s words than my own?” Stripped to his shirt and trousers, he studied her recumbent position with satisfaction. Or perhaps her breasts. He seemed to like her overly plump bosom. Jocelyn clapped her arms over her front, and his eyes lit from within at the challenge she presented. Her position was indecent, and she briefly considered pulling her legs to the mattress and rolling to the other side.
But like the idiot she was, she relished having his full attention. She pushed her breasts up with her arm, daring him to take what she offered. He moved closer, crushing the thin silk of her chemise while standing between her knees. He aroused her woman’s place to demand a satisfaction she could not envision. Yet. She eyed his button flap with interest. The fabric scarcely seemed sufficient to confine the bulge it concealed.
She forgot his question. So did he, apparently. Parting her knees farther, Blake leaned over to pin her arms to the mattress. Neutralizing her ability to provoke him more, he suckled hard on her breast until she stifled moans of pleasure and gave up any pretense of decency.
“You first,” he murmured, trailing kisses down her middle as he shoved the skirt of her chemise up to her waist.
Jocelyn had no idea of his intentions until he stroked her stockings with tantalizing caresses, untied her garters with agile fingers, and eased her thighs apart, then stroked her in a place she scarcely dared touch herself. He held her down when she almost came up off the bed.
Before she knew what he intended, he was kneeling between her thighs, kissing, nibbling, doing all those things that he had done to torment her lips. She bit back a shriek as his tongue swept her . . . there. She needed to sit up, stop him, not let him dangle her knees over his shoulders so he could . . .
Moisture spilled as he suckled at a delicate part. She wasn’t certain if her screams were in her head or if she uttered them. His depredations shocked her from her senses, shooting her high into the ether, where she learned true mindlessness and a raging need that must be satisfied. Now.
And her gallant husband obliged, returning to her side to push his fingers deep and caress until she burst apart into a million tiny pieces of Jocelyn and her screams echoed against the bare walls.
Before she could recover her senses and float back to the room, a frantic cry echoed from outside the bedroom. “Jooooossssie!” Heavy feet clumped down the uncarpeted hall, followed by another call. “Josie, where are you?”
Jocelyn turned her head and bit the pillow to hold back a sob.
20
Rolling over to trap Jocelyn between his arms, on the brink of finally having his way with his audacious, heaven-sent bride, Blake did his best to shut out the uproar rising from the rest of the house. He
r cries of ecstasy still rang satisfyingly in his ears. His cock strained eagerly at his buttons, but even though his mind had sunk to his lower parts, he couldn’t ignore Jocelyn’s inexplicable outburst of tears.
Why was she crying now that he’d given her pleasure? He’d planned this moment with as much care as was possible, given his state of mindless lust.
Uproar. In an empty house. Some of the blood returned to the thinking part of his brain. Uproar had yet to equate with danger, not in rural Chelsea. Befuddlement slowed his reactions.
Fists beat against the bedroom door. A parrot shrieked from a distance. A dog yipped in alarm. Glass broke and a maid screamed. A howl of fear accompanied the pounding. Blake wanted to beat something, too, but the only object within reach was his beautiful sobbing bride. Nearly nude and within a hand’s reach of being ravished . . .
Her tears finally unmanned him. Stunned, he didn’t know how to respond to this display of feminine weakness, except to murder whatever had caused her grief. Surely he hadn’t . . . ?
Before his wits could completely relocate from lower parts to his head, Jocelyn brushed at her eyes and recovered her aplomb with remarkable rapidity, as if she had practice in controlling bouts of weeping. “I believe you will have to get up now, sir.”
“Can’t,” he muttered, inches from the swirling champagne tresses he’d loosed and had meant to have brushing his skin in another moment or two. Leaning over her, with both hands trapping her on the bed, he listened to judge whether the knocking indicated reason for alarm, but in his bones, he knew who it was. The rest of the cacophony raised his hackles, though. “Give me a few minutes. What’s that racket?”
“Percy?” she asked hesitantly.
Blake frowned. Percy did seem to be squawking more than usual. The door began to rattle in the frame. Damned good thing he’d locked it.
“That’s not Percy at the door,” he argued.
“Ummm, that might be Percy’s keeper. If you would move just slightly to your left . . .” She wiggled under him, trying to escape.
She was nearly naked. He wasn’t close enough for skin contact. He wanted to keep stripping.
The chaos below did not diminish. In fact, the dog howled as if it were being beaten.
“Close your ears. I’m about to swear.” Cursing under his breath while Jocelyn stuck her fingers in her ears, Blake shoved up from the bed.
As soon as he started dragging on his waistcoat, Jocelyn sat up and began fastening her fallen chemise with shaking fingers.
Another crash of breaking glass cut off any protest he might make. With shirt gaping, Blake opened the door and caught sight of a skinny back and mop of hair racing down the service stairs, toward the back of the house.
After years as a bachelor, he was not prepared for married life resembling the chaos of war. Perhaps he should acquire a cannon.
Below, Percy broke into a rapid spate of French about wheels of fortune and rogering rakes. Cries and shouts and the decided thud of a blow followed. This time, the warning of peril smothered Blake’s lust, and his instincts leaped to the fore. Waistcoat unbuttoned and flapping, still in his stockinged feet, he ran toward the commotion, wishing he had weapons close at hand.
Jocelyn clamped down her fears as her trembling fingers refused to fasten the ties of her chemise. Fearing Blake would keep on running and never return while she wasted time dressing, she hunted for a robe.
He’d turned her world upside down, and she was too shaken to think. What had he done to her? Was that what lovemaking was about? It had been wonderful, beautiful, but . . . not quite complete somehow. She didn’t have time to ponder like a lovesick fool.
Finding her robe, she gathered it around her and left the room where she’d learned the sweetness of marriage and felt so briefly loved and wanted.
She longed for more of that sweetness with all her heart. But Blake’s admiration would not last. She knew the panic-stricken voice at the door had been Richard’s. Once Blake realized the turmoil in which she lived, her experience with Harold and her brothers-in-law told her that he would be furious. His resentment would mount and before long, arguing, screaming, and flung objects would ensue.
But this time, they could not be tossed from their home. She repeated that reassuring refrain as she hurried down the back stairs.
She arrived in the conservatory to discover Bitty cowering under the bench and Richard racing wildly in circles, clutching Percy’s cage while the bird screamed in several languages.
Richard must have spent these last few days repairing the big cage. The last she’d seen of it, it had been left in a crumpled heap on one of the plant tables after a cleaning crew had swept out the debris.
The cause of her brother’s panic lay sprawled across the mostly empty stone floor, shaking his head as if to regain his wits. Judging by his clothes, the intruder was a ruffian. A stout stick that Richard may have been carving for perches lay on the floor beside the prone man. That her harmless young brother might have struck a thief shocked her into silence while she tried to reorient herself.
“Mine!” Richard cried frantically at Jocelyn’s arrival. “Mine!” Clutching Percy’s cage, he whirled in a frenzy, as if searching for hidden enemies.
Looking puzzled, her new husband collared the intruder and jerked him to his feet. He raised his eyebrows in question. Or in expectation of answers. Either way, Blake was not smiling.
He wasn’t shouting or pounding Richard into the ground as Harold might have, either. Jocelyn took a deep breath to calm her rattled nerves.
“Richard,” she said in the firm voice that sometimes penetrated her brother’s panic attacks. “Richard, it is all right. You are scaring Percy.”
She crossed the conservatory to break his pattern and force him to acknowledge her presence. “No one is taking Percy,” she reminded him soothingly. “Did you stop the ruffian?”
“Tony, bad,” Richard shouted, hugging the cage against his thin chest and retreating into simpleness, as he sometimes did when he was frightened.
Tony? Harold often called Antoinette Tony. And Richard used to argue with Antoinette whenever she came near the birdcages. There had been a dreadful drama right before Harold had thrown them out, after Richard had discovered Antoinette fiddling with the cages in the middle of the night. But that had been six years ago. Richard must have mixed up something in his head.
Jocelyn glanced nervously at the ruffian but she could not see the connection to their sister-in-law. Bitty had come out of hiding to growl now that Blake held the stranger.
Her little brother was no longer the cherubic toddler she’d cradled when he’d had nightmares. He stood taller and was probably stronger than she. But in his befuddled head, she was still the big sister he trusted. While Blake interrogated the thief—oddly enough, in French—Jocelyn pried the cage from her brother’s fingers. She set it on a worktable, then soothed Richard with words. Once he calmed down enough to realize no one would hurt his pet, he sank to a workbench and rocked a muttering Percy while crooning softly.
She was afraid to turn and see if Blake had walked off in disgust. For a few heavenly moments, she’d been an object of desire and had felt as if she might actually have a life with a good man in it.
Blake’s furious cry of pain caused her to swing about in alarm.
To her dismay, the thief had sufficiently recovered from his blow to attempt escape. He held a bloody knife in his hand while Blake clutched his wrist. She didn’t understand the words, but from Blake’s actions, she assumed the Frenchman was ordering him to stand back. Where were the damned servants when she needed them? Probably hiding in the cellar.
Blake’s shirtsleeve was soaked with blood. Before Jocelyn could think, or even panic, her ferocious husband kicked the knife from the man’s hands, and it skittered across the floor.
Shouting French curses, the ruffian fled the room, running toward the front of the house. Holding his wounded arm, Blake chased after him—in his stockinged feet!
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br /> Torn between the need to calm her little brother and assist Blake, Jocelyn could do neither. Aware that she was barefoot and walking on glass, she returned gingerly to the hall in hopes of dragging the maid and footman from their hiding places. The blood drops staining the newly waxed floors caused her heart to rise up in her throat and impede her breathing.
The sound of a horse galloping away warned her that the thief had escaped. Shaking, she stood at the top of the kitchen stairs and shouted at the useless servants to bring bandages and lend a hand. Finally, they came running.
She met Blake at the front door with a basket of medical supplies, hoping to offer some succor in return for his not yelling. She wanted to start off on the right foot.
He scowled, rejecting her offer of aid, and stalked past her toward the conservatory. Too shaken to argue, she followed, leaving the maid to wipe up the blood.
At discovering Richard senselessly rocking a now quiet parrot, Blake glowered at her, waiting for explanations. As if she had any.
“What happened?” he demanded of her incoherent brother.
Richard shook his head and hugged the parrot cage tighter.
“Did someone harm Percy?” Jocelyn asked, seeing nothing else in the room worth stealing.
Richard reluctantly nodded.
“The thief spoke only French. He refused to say who sent him. Why would he want a parrot?” Blake demanded.
Jocelyn had no answer. “Perhaps Ogilvie sent him to steal the bird back?” She set the basket of bandages down on a bench and waited for her husband to sit so she might dress his wound.
Blake grabbed a cloth and wrapped it around his arm.
Irritated by his rejection, shaken by the emotional and physical upheaval, she fell back on her usual habit of blithely ignoring all conflict. She sat beside Richard and rubbed his arm until he stopped rocking so hard. “Can you tell me what happened?” she asked as gently as she could.
“I hit him,” he attested. “I hit him so he could not steal Percy.”
The Devilish Montague Page 17