‘If I want a servant, Jane,’ he thundered, ‘then damnation, I’ll call for one.’
Indignantly she jerked her arm free of his grasp. He didn’t look pale now, and he certainly didn’t seem weak, not when he was overflowing with bluster and spark like this. ‘I can understand perfectly if you’re cross, Richard, but I—’
‘Can you understand?’ he asked. ‘Because if you can, than that’s one more way you’re better than I’ll ever be.’
She shook her head again. Perhaps he’d drunk more of the brandy than she’d realised, because no matter what he was saying, she didn’t understand any of it. ‘Richard, please, be calm. Don’t do yourself harm.’
‘Harm!’ he exclaimed. ‘Damnation, how can you speak of harm after the wreck this night has become? Do you believe this is what I planned, what I wanted, for us?’
Suddenly it all made sense to her. ‘Oh, I am so sorry,’ she said unhappily, bowing her head and clasping her hands in a tight knot. ‘I spoiled everything, didn’t I? You’d arranged such a lovely evening for us, and then I spoiled everything by asking to leave the Ridotto so early.’
‘You, Jane?’ he said, incredulous. ‘How could you spoil anything when you are as close to perfect as any woman I’ve ever known?’
Swiftly she looked up at him. She wasn’t the perfect one, not by half. But Richard was: her golden-haired duke with the broad shoulders and laughing eyes, kindness itself, a gentleman beyond measure, beyond gallantry. That was perfection, a perfection she couldn’t dream of matching.
‘I’m not perfect,’ she said with regret. ‘Not at all.’
‘Yes, you are,’ Richard said, and he’d never meant anything more in his life. ‘Perfect for me.’
‘But I’m not,’ she protested again, shaking her head, her voice breaking with a troubled little sob. ‘When I think of the terrible risk you put yourself through this night—’
‘For you,’ he said softly, reaching for her. He slipped his hands inside her dressing gown to find her waist and pull her close. He’d held her earlier when she’d been bound by silk and whalebone, and he much preferred her this way, with only the thinnest layer of well-worn linen over her soft, warm body. He’d wanted to do this ever since she’d come to his door in her nightgown on that first night, and despite all the times he’d imagined it, his imagination fell far short of this reality.
‘I’d do it again a hundred times over, too,’ he said, his voice suddenly hoarse. ‘I’d slay any dragons you wanted slaying.’
‘It’s not the dragons that frighten me.’ Her fingers splayed lightly across his chest where he was sure she must feel the racing of his heart. She looked up at him, her eyes enormous, and at last he kissed her.
He meant to kiss her only once, and lightly at that, as a kind of reassurance for her after she’d been so frightened. She was trembling still; he could feel it as he held her. He would keep it quick and chaste, and not let himself be lost in the heady, hot temptation he’d discovered when he’d kissed her before. A single kiss, that was all. She was too fragile tonight for anything more.
But while he’d planned to be so honourably restrained, he’d forgotten about Jane herself. As soon as his lips touched hers, her arms were around the back of his neck, drawing him down to her level. Her lips pressed and slipped over his, soft and eager, and then tipped to one side to part for him. There was nothing cool about her mouth, as warm and rich and sweet as he’d remembered, and he couldn’t quite help himself from kissing her in return. It was quickly begun, yes, but not chaste, and not finished in an instant, either, the way he’d planned.
The sash on her dressing gown came unknotted, and the gown fell backwards over her shoulders. Impatiently she lifted her hands from around his shoulders only long enough to shake the dressing gown away, letting it fall into a woollen puddle behind her. Now when she kissed him again, her breasts with their thin linen covering crushed gently against his chest. He forgot the pain from his wounded hand, forgot everything but her. Instinctively, and against his own wiser and infinitely better judgement, his hands slid from her waist and over her rounded hips. It was nothing at all to pull that linen nightgown higher, to bunch it upwards so he discovered skin, bare, velvety, lovely-to-touch flesh, all the while drinking in the heady intoxication of her kiss.
He would stop. She didn’t understand what they were doing, though God knows he did. Jane was clever in countless bookish ways, but not about this. He must stop, now, while he was still able to heed such cautionary warnings in his head.
But he wasn’t thinking, at least not with the brains that were in his head. He was tasting, and touching, and discovering, and savouring every marvellous bit of her, even as he cursed his bandaged hand for making him clumsy. It had been a long time since he’d been with a woman, and longer still since he’d been with one he’d cared for the way he cared for Jane Wood.
She was the one who finally drew back, her breathing ragged and shallow and her eyes heavy-lidded, her arms still curled about his shoulders as if she’d never wish to let go.
‘My darling, darling Richard,’ she whispered, her voice breaking. ‘What if I had lost you?’
‘You’ll never lose me, sweet,’ he said, his voice hoarse, his hands sliding low enough to grasp her bottom. She gasped and tensed with surprise, but she did not pull away as his fingers spread to caress her, his senses reeling.
‘That is—that is very nice,’ she stammered, her hands sliding to his waist for support. ‘That is…nice.’
It was considerably better than ‘nice,’ thought Richard with a desperation that was growing in direct proportion to his desire. His mouth was dry with longing, his blood hammering in his ears as if he’d just climbed to the top of that bell tower Jane loved so much. It didn’t help that she’d slipped her hands inside his dressing gown, too, and was now sliding her hands up his back, exploring him the same way as he did her.
‘Your hand,’ she murmured. ‘I don’t wish to hurt you further.’
‘You’re not,’ he said, and in that moment he’d quite forgotten all about it. ‘Especially not now.’
He’d bet his life she was a virgin, and that she’d no notion of what she was doing to him. If he’d any morsel of honour, that alone should have sobered him enough to stop. Instead it had the opposite effect: she could be truly his, and he’d become the only man in the world who could ever say that.
He kissed her again, featherweight kisses of genuine sweetness, while his hand eased gently beneath her gown to her belly, to the tangle of dark curls, and lower, to steal into the honey-sweet place between her thighs. She shuddered as he touched her, stroking with infinite, tantalising care, and then she gasped again, breaking away from his kiss to squeeze her eyes shut and press her cheek into his shoulder. Her fingers clutched convulsively at his nightshirt, the last barrier between them and open disaster.
‘Richard, Richard,’ she whispered hoarsely as she moved awkwardly against him, her rhythm, like her pleasure, too new and unpractised to have any grace. ‘I—oh! Oh, my, oh!’
She was so tight around his finger, small enough to make his guess about her inexperience a certainty. Small and tight and trusting and hot, all enough to make him want to howl with frustration. And there, too, in that sweet, narrow cleft, he found the proof that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
‘My God, Jane,’ he muttered, the beginning and likely the end of his vocabulary under the circumstances. ‘My God.’
‘I—I don’t know what to say,’ she whispered as she swayed into him. ‘I can’t seem to—I shouldn’t—oh, Richard, please, ohh!’
He was in perilous danger of losing more than merely his honour, and before the two of them toppled over on to the unforgiving floor, he guided Jane the last two steps to his bed. She gasped as she fell backwards on to the feather bed, and gasped again as she saw the mirror in the canopy overhead.
‘Oh, Richard, that is wicked,’ she said with wonder. ‘It’s so—so Venetian.’
; ‘Pay it no heed,’ he said, shrugging himself free of his dressing gown to join her. ‘I don’t.’
‘But I want to,’ she said. ‘Pay it heed, that is. I will be brave, and I will be bold. That’s what I’ve learned here from you, you see. I must seize what I want for myself, because I might not ever be granted another chance. Especially after tonight.’
Her face crumpled as she fought back tears.
‘Here now, Janie, don’t cry,’ he said gruffly, reaching for her. Damnation, the last thing either of them needed now was tears. ‘Don’t cry.’
To his surprise, she rolled away from him to the head of the bed, beneath the gilded cupids. Before he could join her, she grabbed the hem of her nightgown and yanked it over her head. She balled the gown in her hands and threw it to the floor, then sat back on her heels. She met his gaze evenly, almost challenging him to look at her, her now-bare breasts rising and falling rapidly with her breathing and her cheeks flushed as she tossed her hair back over her bare shoulders.
‘There,’ she said quickly, as if afraid of losing her nerve. ‘I’m done being shy, Richard. If it pleases you, that is.’
‘Jesus, Jane.’ She was already brave and bold, and had always been so, and he loved her for it. How could she not realise that about herself? He’d tried to imagine her so many times without her clothes, but the vivid reality before him made those dreams seem poor and faded. Her skin glowed ivory pale by the candlelight, her hair tangled chestnut around her face and a darker, burnished colour in the triangle of curls below her belly. Her breasts sat high and round on her chest, with dark crests that begged for his caress, and her lips, too, were dark and swollen from the kisses they’d already shared.
‘You don’t agree?’ she asked, her words rushed. She shook her hair again, her breasts bobbing like small ripe fruit. No wonder the cupids behind her grinned. ‘That—that I am being brave?’
‘Yes,’ he managed to croak. If she happened to glance downward to the front of his nightshirt, she’d know she might need every bit of that damned courage, and soon, too.
She smiled, her mouth ruddy and inviting, the way he’d made it. ‘Then let me see you, too. If you are brave enough, that is.’
Still he hesitated, even as his whole body throbbed with need. She was daring him, and this time it wasn’t merely another visit to another picture gallery that she was proposing. How much did she truly know of men, anyway? She hadn’t done particularly well guiding his daughters in that area. Did she know the consequences she risked of losing her maidenhead to him, of taking his seed into her body? What, for that matter, would he do if he got her with child? He wasn’t like a score of other carelessly single-minded gentlemen he could name who’d sired bastard after bastard on their female staff. He thought about these things, double damn him for a fool, especially with Jane, because Jane was—Jane was Jane.
His Jane.
But Jane herself knew none of this. Too late he realised that all she could see was the doubt that must be painted like a signboard across his face, and in those few moments he watched her brave invitation begin to falter and fade. She pulled one of the pillow-biers from the bed and clutched it in her arms over her breasts.
‘You’ve come to your senses, haven’t you?’ she said, her voice flat with a shame she’d no right to feel. ‘You’ve remembered that you’re the Duke of Aston and I’m a governess, and a powerfully foolish governess at that. You’re going to do what you meant to do long ago. You’re going to turn and leave, and that will be that.’
She gave her shoulders a sad little shrug for emphasis, as if to prove she didn’t care, even as she bowed her head and dug her fingers into the pillow to keep from crying. She was, after all, the bravest woman he’d ever known.
And it was that, then, that decided him. To leave her now would crush her, and he wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t. He knew he loved her, didn’t he? Wasn’t that enough?
And his conscience and propriety and whatever else was gnawing at him could just damned well go to blazes where it belonged, and where he could retrieve it later. If he chose to.
‘No, Jane, I’m not leaving,’ he said hoarsely as he began to pull his nightshirt over his head. ‘And I swear to you I’ll never leave you again.’
She didn’t answer, but looked and watched as he undressed, her violet-blue eyes intent on him as she hugged the pillow in her arms. He wasn’t ashamed of what she saw. He was a well-made man, especially for his age, and proud of it. Yet as he drew the shirt over his head, he didn’t miss her stifled gasp—of fear? surprise? approval?—and when he looked up, her cheeks were flaming.
‘I am not frightened,’ she said fiercely. ‘I am not, so do not even think that of me.’
‘Then you won’t need that to strike me,’ he said as he took the pillow from her hands and lay beside her on the bed. ‘Though I’ll grant you goose feathers are a good deal more agreeable than most weapons.’
‘You know I’d never wish to harm you, Richard.’ She laughed, a little trill of nervousness as he traced the long sweep of her hip and waist with his unbandaged hand. ‘But if you can kiss me again and—and touch me the way you did before, then I won’t even have to consider it.’
‘Striking me or more being afraid?’ He kissed her gently, wooing her to put to rest the fears she swore she didn’t have, and pulled her closer against him, letting her grow accustomed to the feel of his body beside hers. He didn’t want to hurt her, though he couldn’t forget how small and tight she was.
‘Either one,’ she breathed, nearly forgetting to answer as he began to touch her again the way she wanted, and the way he wanted, too. ‘I told you I am determined to be very brave.’
‘I’ve never doubted it,’ he said. ‘My own dear, darling Jane.’
‘And you are mine, Richard,’ Jane whispered, overwhelmed by how impossibly sweet such simple words had become. ‘You’re mine.’
He smiled as he nudged her knees apart, and she could feel him, all of him, hard and insistent against the inside of her thigh. She knew what would happen next; she was innocent, not ignorant, though she wasn’t entirely sure how the act was accomplished. She would trust that to Richard, just as she’d come to trust him in so many other ways. With any other man, this would mean she’d be ruined, but not with Richard. He wasn’t claiming her maidenhead for boasting afterwards, or making a male trophy of her inexperience. She was giving it freely, a gift to him of the one single valuable thing she had to offer.
But as he touched her again, she forgot everything else but her desire for more, more of the strange, agonising, wonderful tension that he was building within her body. She ached for him in a way she’d never thought possible, and wouldn’t be, if she hadn’t loved him as much as she did. She pushed her hips forwards, seeking more, her breath coming in short gulps as she clung to his shoulders.
‘Be brave now,’ he said, his voice taut, and distantly she wondered why she needed to be brave at all.
Then he moved over her, and that part of him that had seemed so alarmingly large began probing where his fingers had teased her. Instinctively she fluttered against him, realising too late that this would hurt. Too late, and he was driving deep within her, forcing her open, and she couldn’t any more stifle her cry than she could get away.
‘There now, sweet, it’s done,’ he whispered, though from his grimace he didn’t seem to be enjoying this any more than she was. ‘It will be better now, I promise.’
She swallowed hard and nodded. She must trust Richard in this, too, as she had in so much else, for what other choice did she have?
But to her amazement, the searing pain she’d first felt began to fade as he moved within her, and in its place came the same sort of enjoyable tension she’d felt before, gathering and growing low in her belly. Tentatively she began to move with Richard, and he groaned in response, the kind of gruff animal sound he’d made when she’d hugged him close. She liked being able to do that to him, giving him the same sort of pleasure that he was giving
her. The strange part was that the more she tried to give to him, the more she, too, seemed to garner for herself.
She arched her back to meet his thrusts, bracing herself against his shoulders. This felt good, very good, and as she closed her eyes she realised the animal sounds were now of her own making. Yet still the pleasure built, rising higher and sweeping her with it like the wind would carry a ship, carrying her higher and further until she feared she couldn’t bear it any longer, and then, with wonderful, staggering abruptness, she was falling into the most beautifully blissful, calm sea, floating weightless in a safe harbour of purest joy.
She opened her eyes, and saw their reflection in the looking glass above them: his broad, muscled back, his tousled golden hair, her dark hair fanned around her face against the pale linen, her legs still wrapped wantonly around Richard’s waist and her arms around his shoulders, a sight enough to make her blush, not with shame, but love. Love had made her as one with Richard, the love they’d discovered when neither was searching for it. Or maybe, without realising it, they had, and her smile twisted with emotion that was far too much for her heart alone to contain.
‘I love you,’ she whispered, her lips close to his ear and her fingers tangling in his curling hair. ‘I love you, oh, so much!’
He sighed, a rumbling sigh of contentment that she felt as much as heard. ‘Then marry me.’
She froze, not believing what she’d heard.
He pushed himself up on his forearms to look at her. ‘Marry me, Jane,’ he said. ‘Please.’
‘Oh, Richard.’ Tears welled in her eyes. ‘Do not believe that because of—of this, that you must wed me.’
‘Why the devil not?’ he asked, mystified. ‘I love you, and you love me. Isn’t that reason enough for two grown folk such as us?’
She shook her head. ‘I cannot think that—’
‘Then for this once, let me think for both of us,’ he said. ‘I love you, and you love me. You suit me better than any woman I’ve ever known, Jane, suit me in ways that it outright bewilders me, they’re so perfect. I cannot imagine my life now without you in it.’
The Duke's Governess Bride Page 21