“Thank you, Your Highness,” the duke replied, bowing, and feeling just the faintest prick of irritation over the prince’s remarks. I am so damned proud of Allegra, he thought. What instincts she had! She had greeted their unexpected royal guest, fed him, and turned his disappointment into pleasure. And he had not a doubt that this hunting party was going to come off without a hitch.
Crofts was awaiting his mistress outside of the dining room doors. “I have had the Lake Suite prepared for His Highness and the Blue Bedroom for Mr. Brummell, your ladyship.”
“Excellent,” Allegra replied. “In one hour, Crofts, I shall want a footman to take my letters to the stables. Send one groom, mounted, for each letter, and they are to await the reply. We are having a hunting party in two days. As far as the prince and his companion are concerned, this event has been planned for some time.”
“Very good, your ladyship,” Crofts said, hiding a smile. He had served two previous Duchesses of Sedgwick, and this third was more than their equal.
“I will be in my drawing room. Send Honor to me with my writing case,” she further instructed him.
“At once, your ladyship,” he replied, bowing, and hurried away.
As soon as she had her lap desk, Allegra hastily penned notes to Sirena, Eunice, and Caroline explaining that the prince had arrived without warning, and she had invited him to remain for a hunting party. They must come in two days’ time. She then wrote a note to Lady Perry apologizing for her last minute invitation, and requesting that the lovely widow and her sister join them. Sealing her missives with red wax and impressing her seal ring in the wax, she rang for the footman.
“Has Crofts given you your instructions?” she asked the footman.
“One groom for each letter, and await the reply,” Perkins said. “Is that correct, your ladyship?”
“Go along then,” Allegra said nodding.
The next two days were spent in preparations, but those arrangements were made with the utmost discretion so as not to arouse the suspicions of their guests. The prince and the duke spent the day out-of-doors riding and hunting waterfowl. Mr. Brummell, however, begged off. They ate great breakfasts and suppers. The evenings were spent playing Whist for no stakes as Prinny well understood the duke’s aversion to gambling, although he was unable to refrain from one small complaint.
“Seems to me a man so plump in the pockets shouldn’t be so stingy, Sedgwick,” he grumbled. “Especially when he’s winning.”
“But if we were playing for real stakes, Your Highness,” Allegra remarked, “you should owe my husband both Devon and Cornwall by now. Quinton is but saving your kingdom for you.”
Brummell burst out laughing. “A clever sally, your ladyship,” he said. “I hope you will come to London this winter.”
“It is unlikely, Mr. Brummell. We are country folk, and happy to be so,” Allegra said to him.
“Nonsense!” Prinny answered her. “I command you to come, Duchess. Can’t ever have enough beautiful young women about me, I fear. You will be a triumph, I vow.”
“How flattering you are, Your Highness, but remember I have a duty to fill my husband’s nursery even as your wife is now doing. I must attend to that before I come back to London,” Allegra told him.
“Prettily put, Duchess, but unless you are breeding, I will expect to see you dancing at Almack’s,” Prinny replied. “God bless me! I believe I have won this hand, gentlemen.”
Quinton had not come to Allegra’s bed the second night of their marriage, but she had been far too busy with all her preparations to notice his absence. Now on the third night she lay quietly, unable to sleep, and wondering why he was not by her side, when the door to their rooms opened and the duke entered the bedchamber, climbing into the bed next to her.
“My lord, I had begun to believe you had forgotten you had a wife,” Allegra said frostily. But secretly she was delighted to see him. “Our guests will be arriving tomorrow. We will have no time for each other, I fear.”
He pulled her into his arms, giving her a long, slow kiss that set her pulses racing and her toes tingling.
“I could hardly forget you, Allegra,” he told her when he had thoroughly kissed her, leaving her breathless and slightly dizzy. “And this is not my idea of a perfect first week of marriage. Damn me, my dear, if we shouldn’t have taken a wedding trip after all.”
“It would have been fine,” Allegra replied, “if Prinny hadn’t got it into his head to come to Hunter’s Lair for our wedding, and then arrived after the fact. Why isn’t he at home with his wife? She is expecting a baby after all.”
“He despises Princess Caroline. If the truth be known the princess is gauche, rough-spoken, and not given to bathing as frequently as she might. You know how fastidious Prinny is, my dear. I went to the wedding in April. The prince was drunk to the point of collapse. The king had to run after him when he wandered away from the altar during the ceremony.”
“How sad for his wife,” Allegra said softly.
“Why sad?” the duke probed. “Their marriage, like ours, was a sensible and practical matter, Allegra.”
“They might not be in love, Quinton, even as we are not in love, but you are kind to me. I do not believe if I were carrying your child that you would leave me to wander about visiting your friends and acquaintances,” she responded. “You would not desert me.”
“No, my dear, I would not,” he agreed softly. He lay her back against her pillows, smiling. “Dare I hope that you missed me last night here in your bed? I know that I missed being with you.”
“Did you, sir? Then, pray, what kept you from me?” she demanded.
“Our guest and his passion for Whist, I fear,” was his answer. “It was quite late when Prinny decided he would go to bed. Mr. Brummell is far more sensitive to our newly married state despite his youth and bachelor status. He attempted several times to coax Prinny from the card table, but to no avail.”
“You are here now,” she said in a tone he would have sworn was seductive.
“Madame, are you flirting with me?” he teased, and chuckled when she blushed. There was still so much innocence about her. He reached out, and pulled the ribbons of her night garment open. A single finger flicked each side apart. “Are you suggesting, madame, that I make love to you?” He looked directly at her.
“Yes,” she replied eagerly, taking his breath away when she drew his head down, and brushed her lips across his mouth.
He needed no further encouragement. Burying his face between her two little breasts he began to kiss her most passionately. “You are delicious, Allegra! I want to devour you, my dear. I shall devour you.” His mouth fastened over a pert nipple, and he suckled upon her flesh. His head was spinning. His heart was hammering with his excitement. How could he have been so blind about love?
Allegra sighed happily as his mouth and his hands began to roam over her warm flesh. What was happening to her? You are falling in love, the little voice whispered in her head. “No!” she cried aloud.
“What is it, my darling?” the duke said, raising his head from her breasts. “Are you all right? Do you want me to cease?”
“No, no,” she said. “Don’t stop, Quinton.” Why had he called her darling? “Oh, yess!” she murmured as his lips moved down her shapely torso. “Ohh, that is nice, husband,” she told him as he licked at her belly. “Ohh, I want to do it!”
“Do what?” He had stopped in his worship of her body.
“I want to make love to you. Wives can do it, can’t they?” she asked. “I don’t want to be some passive lump of dough. I want to learn to make love, too, Quinton. Can I? Will you show me how?”
Sitting up, the duke yanked his nightshirt off and threw it by the bed. “You have but to do what I do to you. And yes, wives can make love to their husbands in return, Allegra. I am flattered that you want to make love to me.”
“You give me pleasure, my lord. We are friends now, and I would give you pleasure in return.”
He
lay back. “Then do so, madame,” he told her.
Matching him, Allegra pulled off her own nightgarb. Then she sat cross-legged at his side studying him for several long and silent moments. Finally she reached out with her hand and touched the hair upon his broad chest. “It’s soft,” she noted aloud, her fingers ruffling across it. Then she traced the narrow line down his flat belly curiously. She wanted a better view of him, and so to his surprise Allegra climbed atop him, plunking her bottom upon his thighs. Reaching out she ran the palms of her hands over his long hard torso. Her fingers teased at his male nipples. Leaning forward she brushed them with her own nipples.
He drew his breath in sharply, unable to help himself, amazed by her boldness.
“Did you like that?” she asked curiously.
“Your touch is arousing,” he admitted honestly.
“You have a beautiful body, Quinton,” she told him. “I saw pictures of ancient statues in books in Papa’s library. That is how I may make my comparison.”
“I would not have thought otherwise, my dear,” he responded gallantly. His male member was absolutely throbbing, imprisoned between his thighs beneath her round buttocks. He wanted to roll her over and plunge himself into her sweetness.
“What is the matter?” she asked him, seeing the look in his silvery gray eyes that she didn’t understand.
“Climb off me, you little bluestocking, and I will show you,” he said, half laughing.
Allegra obeyed. Then she gasped at the sight of his risen manhood, which thrust from between his muscular thighs. It was the first really good look she had had of it, and Allegra could scarce take her eyes off of it. Tall, blue-veined, and hard, it bobbed before her eyes. She was mesmerized by the sight.
Quinton Hunter lay his bride back amid her pillows once again. Mounting her, he pushed gently into her love sheath with a single smooth motion. She was very wet and hot. “Do you understand the power you can exert over me, Allegra?” he asked her softly as he bent and kissed her lips lightly. Then he began to move upon her, slowly at first, and finally with quick, hard strokes of his lance that sent her senses reeling with mindless pleasure. Allegra cried out, unable to restrain herself.
“Ohhh, it is so wonderful! Do not stop, Quinton! Do not stop!” Then with some silent, ancient instinct guiding her she wrapped her legs about him allowing him even deeper passage within her eager body.
Her unexpected action rendered him hot with new lust, and he drove himself deeper and deeper into her until he could hear his heart thundering in his ears. Her body was shuddering with their fulfillment, which once again, as on that first night, they shared together.
“Ahh, Allegra, I cannot help myself, but I adore you!” he cried out. “Do not hate me for it, my darling! I want you to love me even as I love you.” He caught her face between his hands, and began to kiss her with a desperate passion.
She hadn’t heard him say he loved her. Had she? She was so fuzzy and replete with her satisfaction. “We don’t believe in love,” she murmured almost to herself. “Love hurts.”
“It doesn’t have to, my darling,” the duke said. “Ohh, Allegra, open your eyes and look at me.”
Slowly the heavy, thick, dark lashes lifted themselves from her pale cheeks. Her violet eyes stared directly into his.
“I love you,” he said quietly. “I know we meant this marriage to be a logical and judicious match without the encumbrance of foolish emotions, but I find I am, alas, like my romantic antecedents. I have fallen in love. Can you forgive me? Can I one day teach you to love me, my darling Allegra?”
“Oh, Quinton,” she said weakly. “I do not know what to say to you. If I am honest with you, and I must be, I have to admit to feeling some emotion I cannot comprehend with regard to you. But is it love? I do not know. I have never been in love, and the love I feel for Papa, Aunt Mama, and Sirena is, I know, an altogether different thing. You really love me? Why?”
Rolling onto his back the Duke of Sedgwick thought a moment. “I really don’t understand it myself, Allegra,” he admitted. “But I know that I love you. Those few weeks you were away from me I could not bear your absence. Ask Ocky. I was a perfect fool, waiting for and anticipating your return. At one point I convinced myself you might not rejoin me. It was agony.”
“Why on earth did you think I wouldn’t come back to marry you, Quinton?” she asked him. This was a proud man, and his sudden revelations were most startling to say the least.
“What have I to offer you but a title? Having come to know you this past summer, Allegra, I knew that my title wasn’t reason enough, for you are too honest to be awed by such things.”
“But I gave my word to the match,” she replied. “You surely didn’t think I would break my word?”
“Logic and reason, I have discovered, play no part in love,” he said quietly.
“I see,” she said. “But do you trust me?”
“With my life, my darling,” he swore.
Allegra laughed. She couldn’t help it. A starburst of happiness was beginning to fill her. “You love me? You really love me?”
“Yes!” He pulled her into his arms, and kissed her hungrily.
“Oh, my.” She laughed again. “Dearest Quinton, this is going to change everything,” she told him.
“I know,” he admitted, and kissed her again, his big hands beginning to wander over her body.
Allegra purred with open contentment. He loved her. She had never before believed in love, but suddenly his devotion was very important to her. “It is most unfashionable for a husband and his wife to be in love,” she said, then murmured happily as his kisses covered her torso, to be followed by his warm bathing tongue. “Ohh, Quinton, that is nice,” Allegra said softly. “Ahhh, yes,” she agreed as he suckled upon her breasts until she thought they would burst from the sheer pleasure. When he began to lick her ear she imitated his action, whispering to him, “Do you want to fuck me again, Quinton?”
“I am going to fuck you again, Allegra,” he replied as he pushed slowly into her, teasing her by withdrawing and entering again several times until she began to protest.
She wrapped herself about him, silently demanding his full attention and homage. “I want to feel the soaring again!” she finally told him. “Don’t stop! Don’t stop!” Her nails dug into his shoulders, and then raked down his back sharply.
The light pain honed his appetite for her. He drove deeply into the hot marsh of her sex making her whimper. The body beneath his strained and writhed as he forced her fiercely to passion’s peak. His own desire for her was enormous. “You are mine, Allegra. You are mine!” he groaned, unable to withhold his own passions any longer.
“Oh! Oh! Ohhhh!” she cried in return. What was happening to her? It had been wonderful before, but this time she didn’t think she was going to survive their shared lust. She was dying. Ohh, God, she was dying! And it was incredible!
When Allegra came to herself again it was within her husband’s arms. Her cheek was pressed against his chest, and she could hear his heart thumping beneath her ear. His hand was gently stroking her dark hair which had come undone from its proper nighttime plait.
“You are revived,” he said softly.
“Am I still alive?” she wondered aloud.
He laughed. “You have an incredible capacity for passion, my darling young wife,” he told her, and she felt him kiss the top of her head. “You leave me breathless, Allegra.”
She was silent for several minutes, and then she said, “Will you leave me tonight, Quinton?”
“No, my dear,” he answered her. “It is unlikely I shall ever leave your bed again, no matter the gossip involved.”
She smiled then closed her eyes, feeling more at peace with herself and with her life than she had ever felt before.
Quinton Hunter sensed his wife relax, but he was not yet ready to sleep. He had no idea what had made him admit his love for Allegra, but at least she hadn’t been repulsed by her new knowledge. She had even sai
d she harbored some sort of feeling for him, but she had not said she loved him. That would surely come in time, he decided. For the first time in his life he understood his father’s drinking himself to death after his mother’s death. To be without the one you love was surely a hell on earth.
Allegra awoke early. Quinton still lay by her side, curled onto his side, sleeping peacefully. She studied him closely for the first time. He was handsome, but it was not his beauty of either face or form that attracted her. Looking into his face she saw something else. She saw strength and honesty. But I don’t believe in love, she thought once more. You don’t? the little voice in her head mocked. Then why do you care that his demeanor is one of strength and honesty?
Quinton Hunter opened his eyes, and looked into Allegra’s beautiful face. Her gaze was suddenly startled by what she saw.
“You do love me,” she said wonderingly. “I can tell. It is the look in your eyes, Quinton. Oh dear! Oh dear!” God almighty! She sounded like a perfect ninny, but his words last night while surprising were nothing compared to the emotion she saw now in those silvery depths.
“You think too much, my darling,” he told her. “Get up, madame. We have a houseful of guests arriving today, and a future King of England in the Lake bedchamber even as we speak.”
Allegra couldn’t help it. She giggled. “I never expected to be so rudely tossed into my duchessdom this quickly, my lord,” she told him. “We should have been gone when Prinny and young Mister Brummell arrived. They say we will not go to Italy next spring as some French general is harrying the Venetians.”
“I will make it up to you when the French stop harrying the Venetians,” he promised her. “Besides, I am longing to make love to you in a gondola, my darling Allegra. Mad, passionate love beneath the moon as we glide by the Piazza San Marco on a warm summer’s night.”
“Sir, I think you quite mad,” Allegra told him, arising. “Ohh!” She whirled about, rubbing her bottom which he had just lovingly smacked.
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