He was glad she was telling him her story. It cleared up his lingering questions about Moreau, but he could not let it matter. He deliberately did not glance at the picture again. ‘Destroy it and forget it. It is over.’
She wandered to the window, opened the curtains a fraction and stared out into the night. ‘I think if two people really love each other there should be no secrets between them.’
His heart gave a lurch. Stuttered, then raced. He pulled her around to face him. ‘What are you saying?’
‘When you told me you loved me, you caught me by surprise. I was afraid. I’d said it once before to Pierre in a moment of passion, and realised I’d been mistaken in his feelings for me. I thought that by saying nothing I wouldn’t give you the power to break my heart.’ She huffed out a breath. ‘I am such a coward.’
He cupped her cheek with his hand. ‘You are the bravest person I know. How you managed to survive alone in France... How you faced Moreau and his damned gun. I was proud of you.’
She gave him a sad smile. ‘Not proud enough to go through with our wedding.’
His heart contracted painfully. ‘It wouldn’t be fair. I can’t give you want you want. What every woman wants. I can’t take the risk.’
‘Children.’
He nodded. ‘And I cannot control myself when you are near. I want you too much.’
Her expression lightened a fraction at his admission. ‘I can live with not having children as long as we can be together.’
‘You think that now, but what if you change your mind? What then?’
‘I would forgo them to be with you. But, Freddy, my dearest, not having children cannot bring your brother back. You are punishing yourself for no reason. His death was an accident. You know it was. You would never have cheated. You have far too much pride. Too much honour.’
She was right. In a way. ‘I made a vow. I can’t go back on my word.’
‘Your father was wrong to extract such a dreadful promise.’
‘He didn’t. He was horrified when I told him. But when I realised Reggie was dead I knew I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t be the heir. Not and bring another child into the world like me.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You saw my foot. It is a hereditary condition, passed down through my mother. My children are likely to be born with it, too.’ She didn’t react with revulsion, as he’d expected. Her face showed only puzzlement. ‘Do you think I’d let a child go through life with such an impediment?’ He gestured downwards.
‘You said it didn’t hurt.’
‘It hurts when your family hates the sight of you, can’t bear to watch you limp around so they hide you away in the nursery. Reggie wasn’t so bad, most of the time, but Mother couldn’t stand the sight of me. I swore to myself I would never put a child of mine through the misery of growing up a cripple.’
‘Oh, Freddy.’
There. There was the pity he’d fought to avoid. ‘If I don’t have children, it can’t happen.’
‘No child of ours would be treated so poorly.’
Red filmed his eyes, anger along with frustration. ‘You don’t know that. Can’t know.’
‘You wouldn’t hold a deformity against a child any more than I would. And we would defend them from anyone who tried. Look at you. It makes very little difference to your life. You walk, ride, play cricket occasionally.’ She smiled hesitantly. ‘You even danced.’
Something inside him cracked open. Warmth and light seemed to fill all the dark places inside him. A grin forced its way to his lip at the memory. ‘I did. Not all that well.’
‘You would get better if you practised.’
A laugh at her prosaic statement would not be stifled. He sobered. ‘Mother would never forgive me for going back on my word.’
She looked at him solemnly. ‘Your mother has much to account for, but this is your life, mon cher.’ She frowned. ‘You say this problem comes from your mother’s side of the family. Is it possible she blames herself? That she feels guilt?’
The truth hit him like a blow to the head, making his ears ring. Always he had hoped, even if he hadn’t fully admitted it, that by doing exactly what his mother wanted, trying to please her, she would find it in her heart to forgive him for not being perfect. For not being his brother. Perhaps even gain her love. But how could she, if she could not forgive herself?
He’d been so heartsick, thinking he might have harmed his brother on purpose, he’d let guilt rule his life. Yet he’d always known, deep inside, he would not have cheated, and had known Reggie would have. He hadn’t been the sort of fellow to accept coming in last. Only it wasn’t the sort of thing one said about a dead man.
Devil take it, he’d been such a fool.
And he didn’t have to be alone—if what Minette was hinting at was true. If.
‘I love you,’ she said softly, as if sensing his doubt.
A storm raged inside him, hope at war with the dread of being wrong, of once more being rejected by one he held most dear.
‘I love you, Freddy.’ She opened her arms.
He walked into her embrace. ‘I love you,’ he said hoarsely, his heart feeling too large in his chest. ‘I need you.’
‘Yes.’ She twined her arms around his neck went up on her toes and kissed his mouth. ‘I need you, too.’
For the first time in his life he felt as if he had come home. He had a place where he belonged.
He carried her to the nearest flat surface. His desk. He set her on it. Standing between her thighs, kissing her until he thought he would go mad for wanting to be inside her.
He stroked the silken skin of her calves. The lovely, lovely turn of her ankle.
Chapter Twenty
He wanted her so badly. Not the joys of her body, though, God help him, he wanted that, too, but the radiance of her spirit that had brought light into his increasingly dark world.
If he gave in to this, let himself hope and then lost her, it would finish him.
She cradled his cheek with her fingers. Cool skin. A searing touch. ‘Freddy, darling, you don’t deserve to be shut out in the cold.’
She understood. What barriers he had left were sundered by the realisation that she really did understand. He caught her wrist before she could draw back, pressed his lips to the centre of her cool little palm. ‘I love you. I will always love you.’
‘I love you, too.’ A small laugh stirred the air across his cheek. He shivered with pleasure. She pulled back to look at him, her eyes full of mischief. ‘I thought you were so annoying the first time we met. On that ship. You were so handsome. I wanted you to see me yet you treated me like a child. I wanted to shake you and make you look at me.’
‘I saw you,’ he croaked, his throat so dry it hurt to speak. ‘I was terrified by how much I saw you. I thought the best thing was to keep far away.’
‘I missed you.’
The words soothed him like balm on a raw wound. ‘You are sure? You really do want to marry me?’
‘With all my heart.’
‘I will get a special licence.’ Urgency filled him. ‘Tomorrow. I won’t wait any longer to make you mine.’
‘I am yours. You don’t have to wait.’ She twined her arms around his neck and kissed him with all the heat of a passionate woman.
He pulled her tight against his body, feeling her curves and hollows against him, cupping her lush bottom in one hand, a high plump breast with its hard little peak in the other, and tangled his tongue with hers.
It felt right. As if she was the part of him he’d been missing all his life. He’d been broken but hadn’t known it. With her he was whole. A new man. A better man.
Her breathing became urgent, ragged, her fingers digging into his back, her hips arching against his now painful arousal.
He broke their kiss on a groan. ‘I want you so badly.’
A small smile of satisfaction lit her face. ‘Good.’
His body jerked at the erotic note in her voice. He shrug
ged out of his robe. While she nimbly attacked the buttons of his shirt, he toed off his slippers and shucked off his pantaloons. It was a mess of hard breathing and groping hands and so sexy he couldn’t stop his smile. Free of all but his shirt, he gripped her shoulders and kissed her again. Her hands slipped under his shirttails and, no longer cool, stroked his back and his buttocks. He glanced around desperately for a place they could lie down in comfort. She gazed at the jutting evidence of his arousal beneath his shirt. She slid off the desk and lowered herself to her knees, grasping his buttocks in her hands.
‘Minette,’ he gasped. ‘Oh, devil take it...’
She cast him a saucy glance from under her lashes. ‘You don’t like this?’
The proximity of her mouth so close to his aching flesh, the heat of her breath, left him blind with lust. ‘You honour me. You make me so damned happy.’ Being this vulnerable with a woman had never been an option.
‘It is all I want. You happy.’
Unable to think of a reason to protest, he pulled his shirt up over his head. She leaned back on her heels to look at him. Her gaze travelled from his face and down to his ugly foot, before returning to his face. With any other woman he would have plunged the room in darkness. He stood silent, waiting for her judgement. If she turned away now...
‘You are such a beautiful man,’ she said softly.
‘Hardly that.’
She caressed the backs of his thighs. ‘Pure muscle. Like a racehorse.’ She licked her lips.
‘Please,’ he said. Never in his life had he begged for something he wanted. Never had he shown such weakness. But he didn’t feel weak. He felt stronger than he’d ever felt before. Because of her he was free to be himself. ‘Minette, please.’
She smiled and leaned forward, taking him in her mouth. Heat. Wetness. Suction. Her tongue teasing.
He widened his stance, keeping his balance. She reached up to stroke his belly, and he tunnelled his fingers into her lustrous hair. The sight of her moving rhythmically, the sensation of that movement, sent heat ripping along his veins. She brought him to the brink far too quickly. Blackness and bliss beckoned.
He eased her mouth from his body with a careful hand and brought her to her feet. She smiled knowingly, her mouth rosy and moist. So luscious.
‘I need to be inside you.’ His voice was barely more than a hoarse whisper. ‘Now.’ He swallowed. ‘I would please you as you have pleasured me.’
She gave him a tender smile. ‘Always so generous.’ She touched a finger to his lips. ‘I am not sure I deserve you.’
Too full of emotion for words, he swung her up into his arms and carried her to his bedroom. He stumbled a little but he didn’t care. He set her down on his bed and kissed her smiling mouth while his hand found her breast, the peak beading beneath his touch. She moaned into his mouth, arching up into his hand. So responsive. He climbed onto the bed and stretched out beside her, admiring the swells and hollows revealed through the sheer fabric of her nightgown, skimming his hand over them, learning her contours with his hands and his gaze. Never would he forget this moment. ‘You are so beautiful. And mine.’
‘As you are mine.’
Hers. They belonged together. And if they had children she would love them, no matter their faults. He drew her nightgown upwards, above her hips, and slid it off over her head. She didn’t hide from him or blush. She lay before him like a banquet prepared only for him, her gaze taking in his state of rigid arousal in a pass down his body. He delicately parted the sweet hot folds of her cleft. So wet. So ready.
‘Please, Freddy. I want you. Now.’
A demand he could not resist. He nudged into position and eased himself into her, inch by amazing inch, feeling her delicious heat draw him into her depths. For a moment he couldn’t move for the extraordinary gift of the pleasure she gave him. She lifted her legs around his waist, pulling him deep, arching up to meet his thrusts, urging him on with little cries and moans that drove him far too close to the brink when she was nearly there. He must not let her down, not in this.
He nuzzled her throat, curled down to take first one nipple then the other in his mouth, suckling and teasing with his tongue. She cried out her pleasure at his touch. And then she was coming apart around him, so beautifully, so intensely. He followed her into bliss.
The lay in each other’s arms, a sated, trusting tangle of limbs. The beauty of it gave him a lump in his throat and a prickling behind his eyes. She sighed and shifted. ‘That was...’ He waited, breath held. ‘Amazing.’
Yes. It was. Truly amazing. Unlike anything he’d ever experienced. Carefully he withdrew from her and held her within the circle of his arms, knowing she was his to protect and he was hers to command. For all time.
He bent and kissed her cheek then her lips.
‘No going back after that, my darling,’ he said, hearing the sound of his smile in his voice and liking it.
‘Oh, indeed not,’ she said, smiling up at him. ‘From here we go only forward.’
Forward to a future he had never dared imagine.
He kissed her long and lingeringly, wrapped her in his robe and carried her back to her bed.
Epilogue
As Freddy had promised, he obtained a special licence the very next day. Their wedding was held in the drawing room of Falconwood Hall the following morning, with the vicar from the village officiating. The only witnesses were Gabe and Nicky and Barker, who had returned from town to report on the disposition of Moreau earlier that morning, along with the Falconwood servants, who seemed touched at the invitation, if a little intimidated.
Now Minette and Freddy stood on the steps, waving farewell to Nicky and Gabe, who had kindly decided to leave the newlyweds to their own devices. Barker had gone off to the inn in the village.
‘Would you care to walk in the grounds with me, Your Grace, since the weather is fair?’ Freddy asked.
Suspicious at the note of anticipation she heard in his voice, Minette raised an eyebrow.
He grinned.
The man clearly had something in mind. ‘Certainly, Your Grace.’ She frowned. ‘Is it required that we are so formal in private?’
He gave a shout of laughter. ‘Not at all, beloved. I couldn’t help it, I feel like I am living in a dream and keep having to remind myself we truly are married.’
‘Not a nightmare?’
‘Not at all.’ He grinned at her, making her toes curl. She had never seen him so carefree, and there was an air of mischief about him. ‘A dream come true.’
She pulled him down so she could kiss his cheek. ‘You make me so happy, mon coeur.’ He did. Her heart felt so large it barely fitted behind her ribs, and a feeling of total well-being permeated her.
‘I’m sorry Mother refused to attend the ceremony,’ he said, his face turning grave. ‘But you were right. It is her loss. I assume she is settling into the dower house.’
‘I understand so. She has already received calls from some of her cronies.’
‘Perhaps she will come round.’ In truth, Minette doubted it. The woman had held on to her grief too long to let it go now. Indeed, it seemed to her that Freddy had barely avoided the same fate. Much longer and his heart too would have shrivelled to nothing beneath the weight of guilt and regret.
They walked arm in arm through the formal gardens at the side of the house and onto the lawn at the back. Snatches of music wafted on the breeze. It seemed to be coming through the open French doors leading onto the terrace from the ballroom.
‘What is going on up there?’ Freddy asked, far too nonchalantly to be innocent.
A wife ought to humour her husband. ‘How strange. It sounds like an orchestra.’
‘I think we should go and see.’
They crossed the lawn and mounted the steps to the veranda. The music was indeed coming from within. An orchestra had set up in the same place they had been on the night of the betrothal ball, but this time she and Freddy were alone in the vast room. All the decorations had bee
n taken down. Gilt chairs were placed at intervals around the walls, but oddly all the chandeliers were alight. The room glittered.
She frowned. ‘Is this your doing, mon cher mari?’
‘How did you guess?’
‘Well, if it was anyone else, I believe it would go hard with them. Such extravagance to light all these candles when there are only a few occupants in the room.’
‘I can see you are going to be a fearsome Duchess.’
‘I do not like unnecessary waste.’
He was laughing.
She looked around her, and then she realised. ‘Your promise. You are keeping your promise.’
‘I am.’
He made a gesture to the orchestra, and the music changed. It was the tune they had danced to in the garden. He held out his arms. ‘I promised I would dance with you on our wedding day.’
She managed a mock frown. ‘Rather clever of you to make sure there was no one here to see us.’
‘You are not accusing me of cheating, I hope.’ He put a hand on his heart. ‘You will give me time to become accustomed to displaying my clumsiness for all to see. And I will, I promise you. I will never let it stand in my way again.’
She couldn’t speak for the lump in her throat. The man had so much courage.
He opened his arms, and she stepped into them.
He began to move, gliding her around in circles down the length of the ballroom, a good bit steadier than he had been on the grass in the dark.
‘This, mon cher,’ she said reprovingly, ‘is not a dance we can do in public. We would be banished from the ton.’
‘I have to say, that is quite a relief,’ he said, and twirled her under his arm. ‘I don’t see me mastering the Roger de Coverly in the near future.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure of that.’
‘I love you, Your Grace,’ he said in a low, dark murmur in her ear.
‘I love you, dearest Freddy,’ she said, smiling up at him and adjusting her step just a tiny bit to accommodate a slight list to the left.
And then he stopped and pulled her into his arms and kissed her.
The orchestra kept on playing.
The Regency Season Page 24