How the Marquess Was Won

by Julie Anne Long

  She wanted to remember every detail about this day, for when she lay awake at night, telling herself stories in order to help her sleep in the wilds of Africa.

  “A bit like the Sword of Damocles hanging up there, isn’t it?”

  She didn’t jump, possibly because the ratafia had quite blunted the edges of her nerves, and partly because, given the events of the day, she’d half expected him to appear out of the shadows anyway. In fact, if she’d had a wish, in her heart of hearts, it was that he’d appear out of nowhere and they would be alone again . . . and here he was.

  But she was growing nervous of the cascade of wishes coming true today. In fairy tales, granted wishes generally resulted in grave consequences. A punishment for wanting too much, or wanting the wrong things.

  Still, it didn’t stop her heart from turning a cartwheel. And then thumping on much more quickly than before he’d spoken.

  He’d waited for her. Of that she was certain.

  “And here I was thinking it looked rather like the door to heaven just slightly ajar, Lord Dryden. But your observation does give one a bit of insight into you.”

  He laughed softly. “And yours gives one insight into yours, Miss Vale. It’s about escape, isn’t it?”

  “Mmm. Perhaps. And perhaps you fear the consequences of what you really want.”

  She heard his breath catch. She’d struck home.

  “I won’t deny it,” he said, finally.

  The admission was a gift. He wanted her.

  But she couldn’t so easily forgive the expression on his face this evening as she’d stepped toward him. Or forget hearing him request a waltz from Lisbeth as she stood there, pawned off upon Jonathan.

  Who’d turned out to be a delightful dance partner. But who now looked so like Lyon proximity to him was a little unnerving.

  “I wondered, Miss Vale . . . if you’d promised your fourth waltz to anyone.”

  “There were only three waltzes.”

  “I’m not certain parliament has yet ruled the number of waltzes allowed during a given evening. Or when they should take place. Doubtless we won’t be strung up if we add one more.”

  No “honor me with” or “if you would be so kind as to.” No pomp, no ceremony. She was tempted to decline on the basis of that alone.

  That, and she was fairly certain she shouldn’t touch him again. She could get to needing to touch him. She’d seen what needing things had done to people. And she, quite frankly, didn’t want to need anyone ever again.

  “No music is playing,” she pointed out.

  “I’ll hum, if you like.”

  This won him the smile he’d been aching to see.

  “You had an opportunity to dance the waltz with me earlier.”

  “I took pity upon Lisbeth. I felt certain all of yours would be taken eventually.”

  She snorted.

  “And they were taken, weren’t they?”

  She tipped her head, and he watched her reflect on the evening, and a dreamy smile spread over her face. As she spoke, she was almost breathless.

  “They were. It was the most . . . amazing thing.”

  He felt her awe as surely as it was his own, this girl from St. Giles. He reveled in her pleasure. “I’m glad,” he said softly.

  “Glad?” As usual, she was alert to hints of condescension.

  “That you got in some waltzing practice before I dance with you. I shouldn’t like to be tread upon.”

  “I see. It was all strategy, on your part, not dancing with me. A viscount asked for the honor of dancing with me.” She still sounded amazed. “That was the word he used. Honor.”

  “Did he, now?” he said softly. “And well he should have.”

  For a moment they regarded each other in silence. And when he spoke, his voice was soft.

  “I should be deeply, humbly grateful, Miss Vale, if you would be so unthinkably generous as to honor me with a waltz. Right now.”

  She mulled this offer, while the crickets played the opening bars of the waltz.

  “Well, before I raise or dash your hopes, Lord Dryden, I best take a look at my dance card . . .”

  With a flourish she held up her hand and examined an invisible card.

  He was ridiculously breathless with anticipation awaiting her verdict. She allowed a strategic moment to pass, to punish him, which perhaps he deserved.

  “You are in luck, Lord Dryden. My fourth waltz appears to be available,” she informed him loftily. “And you may have it.”

  “This is very good news, indeed. Shall I hum, or shall the crickets be music enough for us?”

  She was silent, mulling. “Crickets.” She sounded shy again.

  “Excellent. For I should feel a fool humming. I cannot carry a tune.”

  He bowed low as any courtier before any queen.

  She curtsied as deeply as she could, grateful her knees didn’t crack, aware that she could feel the chill of cobblestone now against the bottom of her slipper. The soles were wearing a bit thin.

  And she took his hand. He folded his reverently over it. He settled the other at her waist.

  “Shall we?” he said softly.

  And he set the two of them in motion. One, two, three . . . One, two three . . . One, two three.

  Odd how this didn’t seem at all absurd, the two of them sailing in stately, broad circles in a deserted courtyard. Their heartbeats, the crickets, the rhythm of their breathing, their feet landing on the cobblestones comprised their orchestra. Keeping time was somehow effortless.

  “You’ve some experience, now, Miss Vale, and some comparison. Come now, tell me the truth. How is my dancing? Keeping in mind that the debacle you witnessed tonight was entirely an anomaly and entirely your fault. And you laughed! I was wounded. Sorely wounded.”

  “It wasn’t entirely my fault. How did you know I was laughing?”

  “Because I could hear it.”

  Oh, dear. “Tell me it wasn’t funny and I shall apologize. Tell me you are injured and I shall feel terrible remorse. It’s just . . . if you were me, and watching it all . . . and Lisbeth’s eyes were so very round . . .”

  “Shhh. Don’t laugh again. Very well. It was funny. The only thing injured was my pride. So how do you find my dancing now?”

  “Mmm . . . Well, while you dance very well . . .”

  He smiled. A glittering flash in the shadowy dark, an echo of the moon. “I sense a qualification pending.”

  “. . . I fear it’s not so well as Trou—as Sir d’Andre.”

  “Impossible,” he said firmly.

  “I feel I must be truthful above all things, Lord Dryden, and Sir d’Andre has a certain indescribable flair. Perhaps it is in the way he turns in the dance . . .” she mused, as they swept in a circle. “. . . or the way he glides . . . perhaps it’s the fit of his trousers . . .”

  “You noticed them, too?”

  “. . . or perhaps it is related to velocity . . .”

  “Ah, but what I lack in velocity I can make up for in . . . elevation.” He lifted her off her feet entirely, and she stifled a little burst of laughter.

  She weighed very little; he felt effortlessly strong.

  The realizations settled in for the two of them a moment later, and they were both moved in ways they couldn’t explain. Resulting in a silence.

  Dryden didn’t think he’d ever done anything quite so whimsical before in his life. He’d never wanted to.

  They were moving in sedate pattern now. Slowing, somehow, like a watch winding down. He looked down into her eyes. Clear as pools. Which he knew was certainly a cliché, but it fit, and he liked it. She was watching him with an expression he could not decipher, but the intensity of it gave him the sense she was memorizing him.

  One, two, three. One, two, three.

  Somewhere a nightingale, unable to contain itself any further, burst into song.

  “Tell me, Miss Vale. How often do you do exactly what you want to do just because you want to do it?”

&n
bsp; One, two, three. One, two, three.

  It was twice around the courtyard before she responded. “I can think of one time in particular.” She sounded just a bit breathless.

  He’d hoped she’d say something just like it. Because he knew his next line. “Did it happen this afternoon?” Conversational, his voice. And silky.

  The tempo continued to slow and slow. Twice more around the courtyard before she answered.

  “It might have done,” she allowed. Whispering now.

  One, two, three. One, two, three.

  Closer and closer they drew to each other. Slower and slower. As though some invisible thread was inexorably spooling them together with every rotation of the dance.

  “What do you want to do now, Miss Vale?”

  The question was both a caress and a demand.

  He could feel tension humming in her body where his hand rested against her waist. He breathed in, because he was greedy to discover things about her. Anything. This time he discovered she smelled of soap and sweetness, of the lavender no doubt her dress lived in, packed in trunk in tissue, when she wasn’t waltzing in the moonlight.

  “It isn’t fair, you know, Lord Dryden, to ask such questions. I haven’t the words for it. You shouldn’t make me say it.”

  The space between them was now entirely gone as if it had never been. His cheek was against hers now. Nothing had ever felt so natural. His breath, even and warm, washed over her throat. She closed her eyes. Her senses were drunk on brandy and smoke and the crisp scent of linen, on the feel of a cool masculine cheek and the rasp of his whiskers over the vulnerable skin of her own.

  She was the one who stopped moving altogether first.

  He still gripped her hand. His hand still rested at her waist. The waltz could begin again at any time. They held each other, just like that. Only breathing now. In and out. In and out. They breathed in time with each other.

  “Aren’t you curious about what I would like to do?”

  “You told me earlier today that you always know what you’re going to do.”

  “I generally do,” he agreed on a whisper. “And this moment is no exception. For example, this . . .” and now his breath was in her ear “. . . is what I would like to do now.”

  The breathed words alone were enough to stand the short hairs on the back of her neck, send gooseflesh raining over her arms, and ruche her nipples. But then he turned the last word into a whisper before he dipped his tongue into her ear.

  And pressed a hot, open kiss in that hidden, silky place beneath it.

  Her breath snagged.

  And then it shuddered out on a single word: “Oh.”

  She ducked her head, tucking it into the crook of his neck. She could taste his throat. The salt and sweetness of it, if she opened her own lips.

  “. . . and this.” His tongue returned to trace, oh so delicately, the whorls of her ear.

  She’d closed her eyes against the shivers of pleasure, each a quicksilver rush through her entire body.

  “Good heavens, Miss Vale, but you’re squeezing my hand rather tightly.”

  “Devil.” It seemed odd to laugh when her body was a riot of new sensation.

  “Am I?” He sounded puzzled, but she could hear the laughter in his voice. “That seems all wrong. Given that this strikes me as heavenly.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.” His voice was husky. “Was that too predictable? How does my hyperbole compare to Sir d’Andre’s? Did he make you laugh, Miss Vale?”

  “No. His tongue was never close enough to my ear.”

  “It’s my tongue that made you laugh?” He sounded affronted. “And not my wit? And here I was setting out to arouse you. Though I suppose it’s a good thing his tongue was never close to your ear. I might have been tempted to shoot him.”

  “It would hardly be a fair fight,” she murmured. “I doubt he can move very quickly in those trousers.”

  Her voice was a distracted murmur against his chest. In large part because somehow, at some point, he’d wrapped his arms around her, and his hands were traveling in long, feathery strokes over her shoulder blades, above where her dress laced, where her skin was bare and chilled by the night air.

  She could feel him smile against the top of her head. “He’s handsome.” It sounded like a question to her.

  “He is.” There was no point in disagreeing.

  She’d looped her hands around his neck. And his hands, over the fine fabric of her gown, left little comet trails of sensation over her skin. Sighing, she surrendered to the pleasure.

  So different from the collision of bodies this afternoon. She didn’t think his caution had anything to do with a concern for her virtue. Given the events of the afternoon, he could be forgiven for thinking she might hand her virtue to him on a platter with just a little urging.

  If she didn’t know better she would have guessed he was uncertain. Perhaps for the first time in his life. The man who always knew what he was going to do.

  “Do you know . . .” He gave a soft laugh. “All I could think about tonight was what it might be like to touch your hair?”

  It was yet another extraordinary thing to say.

  It was overwhelming. She closed her eyes and shook her head slowly, in wonderment. As he dragged his fingers softly, softly along the outline of her, the swell of her hips, the nip of waist, then traveling up to skim her breasts, deliberately dragging over the hard beads of her nipples pressed against the silk of her bodice. And when they did, her body arched into his touch as if shocked; her breath snagged in her throat. He didn’t linger; instead his hands continued their journey, glided over her collarbone, then came to rest at the nape of her neck.

  And then his fingers stroked the silky hair there. Again, and again, his fingers like feathers.

  “And?” she whispered.

  He hesitated. “It’s soft.”

  His voice was gruff.

  It’s yours, is what he meant. And she knew it. She could have been sporting pig bristles on her head or some such. He’d wanted to touch her hair because it was hers.

  He cradled the back of her head in his hand and tipped it back and brought his mouth down to hers.

  The kiss was hot, languid, thorough. He kissed her the way he might kiss a longtime lover, with no preamble. It invaded her. And within seconds she was trembling, and all but aflame.

  He sensed the need in her and took swift clever advantage. His fingers played over the laces of her dress; and then expertly, as if he’d done that very thing a thousand times before—there was a thought she didn’t wish to entertain in the moment—he loosened them. And such was the madness of the moment it seemed right, logical, even necessary.

  His mouth played over her ear, traveled the length of her throat, quite distracting her from the fact that his hands were gliding over her shoulders and easing the bodice of her dress away from them. Down, down, down. Only distantly was she aware she was increasingly bare, because his warm hands never left her skin and the kiss . . . the kiss never ended.

  Her blood was fiery liqueur.

  He slipped his hands into her dress along her back, and when he touched her skin he half groaned, half sighed her name, and her breath caught. His trembling fingers slid along either side of her spine, fanned open over her waist, sliding beneath the silk of her loosened bodice until his knuckles brushed beneath the velvety undersides of her breasts. And there he lingered, teasing, teasing, allowing her to guess just how much pleasure could be had from her own body. Quicksilver shivers of pleasure fanned everywhere through her. Until she was writhing, arching into his touch, and when she’d had enough teasing she arched up against his hands.

  He swore softly, closed his hands over her breasts. He cupped the weight of them in his hands, lifted them, dragged his thumbs hard over her nipples.

  “My God . . .”

  She’d had no idea. Lightning strikes of pleasure coursed through her again and again.

  He nipped at the ba
se of her throat, while he clung to her.

  “I want you,” he whispered, sounding astonished, almost angry. “So. Much.”

  With frantic, shaking hands she drew his shirt from his trousers and slid her palms beneath it. Slipped her hands over his hot skin, dragged them down over where his cock strained against his trousers, found his buttons. Hungry for the feel of his skin against hers. Caught up in a maelstrom of her own making.

  He could take her here, and they both knew it.

  He covered her hand with his, stopped her, gently but firmly.

  “Phoebe,” he murmured. He rested his forehead against hers. Their breath gusted audibly, mingled.

  He slipped his hands from her dress and tucked a hair behind her ear.

  “Phoebe . . .” he began. And then he spoke quickly, his voice low, taut, urgent. “I can give you everything you could ever desire. Gowns and pelisses and boots and bonnets. A beautiful, elegant home, a featherbed, a carriage. The finest food. Servants to do your bidding. Opera singers to sing just for you. I can make you safe and warm. And I can give you untold pleasure. Imagine the untold pleasure. Night after night of it. This is . . . scarcely a hint. I know so much. So much.”

  What was he saying?

  Her heart leaped in hosanna.

  His mouth moved to her throat, and he whispered there. “So much. Can you imagine how it will be for us? Imagine it,” he murmured into her ear. “Our bodies, bare entirely, my body moving inside you. The things I can show you, Phoebe. Do you want me?”

  She couldn’t speak. She was weak from the pictures he’d painted, from hope and astonishment.

  “Do you want me?” he demanded on a hoarse whisper.

  “I want you.” She choked.

  “I promise. You will see me often—whenever you please.”

  Wait.

  She went rigid.

  He went on. “Where do you want to live? Tell me, and I’ll buy a house for you in London and see you whenever I can . . . a house wherever you want. And it will be yours, always, no matter what happens . . .”

  She felt the plummet and the landing so physically the breath left her body. She nearly put her hand up to ward off the blow, as if the ground was rushing up to meet her.