The real temptation wasn’t the dukedom. No, the real temptation was Beech himself. Even with only one arm, he was twice the man his brother had ever been, and three times the man of two-faced swells like Lord Maynard.
Lord, what must Beech have been like before he was injured? He had been sent away to sea before she had been grown-up enough to ever have the pleasure of so much as a country dance with him.
If only he had not been sent away.
If only she had not been lured in by the dark fascination of passion. If only.
Cold caution of the sort she had never felt that night she had closeted herself with his brother in the Warwick Court library gripped her in its icy fist now. That night, the flirtation with Caius had been a game—one that she was sure she could win. But she knew better now.
Knew that she did not want to play any sort of game with Marcus Beecham.
And, so, she asked, “Why, Beech? Tell me why.”
“Why we should marry?” He smiled at her as if he had ten reasons to hand. “Other than the obvious?”
Penelope felt heat blossom under her skin from the top of her forehead all the way down to the edge of her bodice. And lower. “Be serious, Beech.”
His eyes softened at the corners. “I know what is right and true and valuable in this world, my dear Pease Porridge,” he said in that low, sure, captainly way of his. “And I know my duty.”
Duty. It was as if the heel of his large leather sea boot had stepped directly upon her heart, so sharp and painful was her disappointment. It was as it had been before with Caius—Beech would marry her because he felt he ought to. Not because he wanted to.
“Beech.” Penelope could not entirely swallow down the bitter brew of her dismay. “I thank you for your candor, but I am quite firmly decided against being anyone’s duty.”
“Ah.” Her words seemed to strike him with force—his head tipped back—before he leaned closer. So close she could see the glint of his grey-green eyes, dark and piercing, regarding her with an intent that was as thrilling as it was mesmerizing. “Had you rather be my compulsion?”
Something darker and too needy for caution stirred within—a volatile mixture of pride and unadulterated want. “Lord, yes.”
Their lips seemed to meet with an elemental force, gravitating together as if both ends of the Earth had simultaneously tipped them into each other’s arms.
Yet once met, the second touch of his lips was less urgent, far more tentative. He slid his hand along the line of her jaw carefully, in the way a man raised a too-full glass to his lips—slowly so as not to spill. As if this were more than a mere tasting of flesh. As if he were offering his trust—his very self.
“Beech,” she said, because there was nothing else she could think to say, nothing that would communicate the riotous mixture of want and apology that made her feel hot and needy and unworthy all at the same time.
But his lips were smooth and taut above the soft brush of his beard, and he tasted of brandy—just wicked enough to entice. She wanted to drink him in, gulp him down, until she was intoxicated by the possibilities he promised.
She fisted her hands in his lapels, pulling him closer. Holding on to him the way a drowning woman clings to a lifeline.
He met her desperation with a merciful lack of reserve—slanting his mouth across hers and kissing her more deeply, searching with his lips and tongue, pushing his hand into the twisted arrangement of her hair, scattering the pins to the upholstery.
His thumb fanned along her cheek, and he kissed her with heat and abandon, drawing her out, thawing the chill of the winter night. Warming her in a way that nothing else ever had. Everything else faded, until there was nothing but the longing for the feel of his mouth on hers, and the pleasure so strong and sharp it nearly took her breath away.
Oh, Lord, how she loved kissing. Loved the give and take. Loved the sensual abandon. This was her true ruination—this hoydenish, hungry neediness. This unbecoming, unladylike affinity for passion.
Oh, how he kissed.
The rough texture of his whiskers rasped against her skin as he arched her head back to kiss down the curve of her throat. His teeth slid down her neck to worry and nip at the hollow at the base of her throat.
And all she wanted was for him to go lower. “Lord, Beech. Please.”
“Devil take me, Penelope,” he breathed against her skin.
The devil had clearly already taken them both. Because she did not care that they were in a freezing carriage, eloping to only Beech knew where. She did not care that she had abandoned everything she held dear—what was left of her good name and every last shred of her tattered reputation—to go away with him.
Because sometime in the past hour, she had fallen heart over head in love with Marcus Beecham, and she no longer cared anything for her name or reputation. She cared for him.
And so, she would give him the love and affection he so clearly needed, and so clearly deserved. She would give him her love until she had no more to give.
Or until he came to his senses.
Whichever came first.
Chapter 9
The carriage began to slow. “Warwick Court, Your Grace,” John Ramsey called from the box.
Marcus was obliged to stop kissing his duchess-to-be and attend to the practicalities of his elopement. “You’ll want to bring that fur, Pease Porridge—it’s snowing something fierce.”
“I am certainly Pease Porridge Cold and rather stupid to come away in nothing but my gown and evening slippers.”
He instinctively took her chilly hand to chafe warm and found himself at a disconcerting loss to do so—he could not do so with only one hand.
The realization shocked him anew, because for a moment there, he could swear he had felt it—pins and needles of feeling along the whole of his missing arm, from elbow to fingertips—alive and reaching for hers.
But the feeling faded into an empty ache. An empty, ravenous ache he needed to assuage. As soon as he got her safe and warm.
“Your Grace!” If his secretary was astonished to see his employer ushering a young woman with no cloak and no chaperone over the doorstep of Warwick Court, he hid it well. “You must be perishing from the cold.”
“We are indeed, Martins.” The snow had begun to fall in earnest, slanting down at such a rate that he and Penelope were covered from their dash from the carriage. “It’s a bitter night. My betrothed will require some warmed wine, if you would please alert the household. No—belay that.” Marcus had wanted to begin as he meant to go on—Penelope would be his wife as soon as he could find a clergyman to make an honest man out of him—but until he was sure of the special license, it were more prudent to keep the whole of the staff from gossip. “If you might do that yourself, to leave us privacy?”
“Of course, Your Grace.” Able Martins was all wary accommodation. “Let me wish you very happy.” He bowed to Penelope. “There is already wine, and a fire laid above stairs, in your chamber, Your Grace. If you pleased to take your ease there?”
“Thank you, Martins. We’ll go up directly.” Indeed, his Pease Porridge was shivering in her snow-dampened gown. “Damn my eyes, I seem to be conducting this elopement rather badly.”
Penelope’s small smile was teasing. “Have you conducted many others?”
Marcus could only bless his stars that she met difficulties with such good humor—it boded well for them. “Not a one. You are my first. And only.” He took her hand again and kissed it before he led her up the high, twisting staircase. “You?”
She shook her head. “No. Though I will admit I contemplated one, before I came to my senses.”
He did not need to ask with whom she might have contemplated eloping. He need to remember that she was eloping with him. They were together. And he meant for them to stay that way. Always.
He took up a fresh blanket from the carved chest at the bottom of the bed to replace the snow-wet fur but could do no more than offer it to her. “Wrap yourself up in this.�
� With only one arm, the ability to perform that service was beyond him.
What other services he was yet to be unable to perform, he would soon discover.
Penelope seemed to feel his unease—she rubbed her bare arms. “It’s very elegant,” she said of the tall room.
“It’s overlarge,” he answered, happy to talk of easy nothings. “After the comfortably close confines of shipboard life, I will confess I find Warwick Court so big it feels empty.” He poked up the fire to chase more of the chill to the corners. “But I hope you will like it.”
Penelope took a deep, steadying breath before she stood. “I like you.”
“Brave girl.” He handed her a glass of warm spiced claret. “Get that in you to chase out the chill.”
“Thank you.” She took a sip. “Gracious, that tastes divine. Almost as good as you.”
Everything within him eased and tensed all at the same time. “I am honored you should think so.” He kissed the soft lips she turned up to him.
She tasted of wine and winter warmth, of cinnamon and nutmeg-spiced happiness. A happiness he would drink in until he was no longer thirsty. He touched her face to draw her close, to feel her petal-soft skin pressed close to his.
She wrapped her hand around the back of his neck to run her fingers through his loose hair. “Your hair is wet,” she whispered against his lips. “And your coat is damp, too. Come under the blanket with me,” she coaxed as she began to push the coat from his shoulders.
“No.” The word came out no less harshly than he intended.
“Beech.” Her voice held no rebuke, but he felt her reproach all the same. “If you mean for us to be together,” she asked quietly, “do you mean to keep yourself from me? Am I to keep myself from touching you?”
“No.” He would overcome this hesitancy—this defect, this weakness. He would trust the impulse, the surety that told him she was the one—the one who would most let him be himself.
“Has no one else touched your arm?”
Marcus drew in a deep breath and let it out, and finally said what he had not. “It is not an arm any longer—it is a stump.” He could not look at her but turned his gaze into the dancing fire. “And yes, someone has. My steward, Sealy Best, has. He was the surgeon’s assistant on Victorious and nursed me back to health after—” Marcus had spent so much time trying to forget those searingly painful, angry early days that it was difficult to speak of them now. “He stuck with me, like a barnacle on my hull, becoming my steward when I was eventually posted to my own command.”
“I’m glad—glad you had such care. But I will care for you as well. I’ll learn,” she promised. “I’ll learn what you like. If you let me.”
This is what he admired about her—she did not retreat in the face of difficulties. No polite sidestepping of the problem. She would look him in the eye and hold him to account. Just as she ought—if he was prepared to trust her with his heart, why could he not trust her with his body?
Because he didn’t always trust his body himself.
Because despite the passage of nearly two years since he had lost his arm, sometimes he felt it burn and ache as if the whole of it were still there. Because he woke from sleep gripping the sheets with a hand that was gone. Because the nightmare of the surgery visited him each and every time he closed his eyes.
Because he was not entirely himself. And he feared he never would be.
“Give it time,” was all he could ask.
“Dear Beech,” she whispered. “My time is entirely yours.”
He could answer only with a kiss—across the line of her shoulder, pulling fabric away with his teeth, nosing into the soft perfume of her body until he found the shoulder laces of her stays. And then her hands were over his, guiding him, aiding him in untying the laces and tugging her bodice down just enough that the tips of her breasts were bared to his gaze. And his mouth and his tongue.
He all but fell into the softness of her—he kissed each tight pink peak, delighting in the sweet scent of her skin and in the supple strength of her body as she arched her spine, her hands tangling in his hair as he sucked and tongued, moving from one tightly furled peak to the other.
“Oh Lord, Beech. I’m yours.”
He could only smile against her skin. “Not yet. Not until you marry me.”
She laughed. “And what, pray tell, will you do until then?”
“Oh, Pease Porridge, the night is young. And so are we.”
Chapter 10
Now that true ruination was at hand, Penelope had a moment of doubt—but only a moment. Loving Beech wasn’t ruination—it was fulfillment. The fulfillment of all her deepest, most secret desires. The fulfillment of every promise she had ever made to herself while relegated to sitting in ballroom chairs.
And Beech was kissing her with heat and a tenderness so kind and full of longing she had no defense against it, and she wanted none. She was empty of everything but a growing need that was fed by every taste of his smooth, clever lips.
He wrapped his arm around her waist and carried her to the bed, while he trailed hot kisses down the side of her neck, finding the secret place at the turn of her nape that made her shiver and sigh and angle her head away to give him greater access. Appeasing the low hum of want that built within, fanning the flames higher with every touch.
They sat on the bed with their legs enmeshed and their hearts entwined. His lips rounded to the hollow of her throat, and Penelope could feel her own heartbeat rise in response.
But it wasn’t enough just to be touched—she needed to touch him, too. Needed to taste the warm salt of his skin, needed to run her fingers through his long, snow-dampened hair, and tumble the unruly locks through her palms.
She kissed his dear, kind, achingly handsome face, letting her lips skate over that interesting little scar, across the high line of his cheekbones and down the strong line of his nose, taking little sips of him, as if he were hot spiced wine. As if too much at once might intoxicate her.
But she had already drunk too deep, because his clever fingers were at the four buttons at the back of her gown, and she was turning to make it easier.
Beneath the layers of chemise and stays and gown, her breasts grew full and tight with longing, and she closed her hands across the front of her bodice not just to hold her gown over her nearly-bared breasts, but to appease the needy sensation that swept under her skin.
And somehow, he understood—his hand came around to cover hers, answering her unspoken need by holding her tight. Filling her senses until every thought and feeling began and ended with his touch.
And she was falling again, or coming back. That was it. Coming back to him. To herself. To the rightness that had always been between them.
But she was falling as well, her head cradled safely against his shoulder, boneless under the press of his warmth and the safety of his embrace.
He began a slow but thorough exploration of the sensitive swath of skin below her collarbone, tracing the span and curve of her loosened neckline, and delineating the edge of her stays beneath. Back and forth, his clever fingers stroked the tips of her breasts, bringing a flood of sensation pooling beneath the heated surface of her skin. Winding her higher and higher, until she was straining toward his hand, silently urging her breast into his palm.
And then not so silently. “Beech. Please.”
He answered by delving his hand under her stays, firmly curling around her breast, until he could roll the nipple between his thumb and forefinger. The sensitive peak instantly contracted into a tight bud as need spiked through her, hot and nearly painful in its bliss.
She was as taut as a drawn bow, ready to fly loose at the slightest pressure. Need—want and lust and desire—grew until it was an insistent feeling of sharply pleasurable pain driving her on. Pushing her toward the irresistible lure of the passion he loosened within her. And she wanted more. “Beech, please.”
She showed him what she wanted by pulling her arms out of the velvet sleeves and p
ushing her gown down to pool at her waist, so she could undo her front-lacing stays.
He looked his fill, watching from over her shoulder as she unstrung the laces. And when there was nothing between them but the thin cotton of her shift, he slowly traced the outline of her nipples through the fine layer of fabric, sending streaks of sensation stretching deep into her belly.
“So beautiful,” he murmured against her neck. “You have no idea how often I have thought of you. Years of thinking and wishing.”
Penelope had to close her eyes against the rush of heat behind her eyes. She had spent years of hoping and wishing to be so wanted. “Beech.” She would repay his years of loneliness with love. She would give him everything she had left to give. “I am yours.”
His solemn vow rumbled through him. “As am I yours.”
His pledge held an earthy urgency that fed her restlessness, making her shift and surge beneath him until his fingers closed around her nipple, tweaking it possessively before he turned her in his arms and took the peak fully into his mouth.
There was nothing but his hands and his mouth and his possession of her body. But even as he laved and teased her with his lips and tongue, he closed the curtain of the bed around them, cocooning them in the dark, before he began to divest himself of his clothing, shrugging his way out of his coat, freeing the remaining buttons of his long waistcoat, and flinging away his cravat without ever taking his mouth from her.
When he was down to his shirtsleeves, he came back to her with a look of such heat and intent, it stole the breath from her lungs. With his hand at her shoulder, he urged her back upon the bed, but he did not come over her to kiss and caress.
Instead, he raised her legs to either side of him, and began to unlace the ribbons of her slippers.
Penelope instinctively squeezed her knees together. “Beech?”
“Yes, Penelope?” he answered as he flipped up her skirts and ran his hand up her legs, over her stockings to the edge of her garters.
Dukes by the Dozen Page 9
