Emily joined them by the window. “Do you realize that less than a year ago we were all gathered up north in Cumbria to celebrate Christmas, three ‘single’ women?”
“You were still married, aunt, just separated,” Celestine protested.
“But I felt single. Baxter and I had not been together as man and wife for seven years! And separated for five; I felt very single, let me assure you. And now I have two babies, Celestine has one, and who knows . . . by next year at this time?” She eyed May with complacency.
“Am I doing the right thing?” May said in a burst of fear. “I always said I would stay single, I always said I was not meant for marriage.”
“Do you love Etienne?” Emily said gently.
“I do. I love him wholly and completely, but is love enough?” She turned her gaze to Celestine. “Is it enough?”
Her friend’s calm gray eyes held a thoughtful gleam. She glanced at her aunt. “I will not say that love alone will get you through every trial. Men are incomprehensible sometimes . . . the things they think are important, their fragile sense of self-worth! Exasperating at times.”
May giggled, her nerves bursting to the surface. “Do not tell me that Justin St. Claire is, after all, not perfect?”
“He is perfect in his fallibility,” Celestine said, her expression softening. “And he loves me completely. Everything else is just details. If you know Etienne’s heart, then you know everything.”
Emily nodded. “Listen to us old married ladies, my dear. No matter what arguments and tiffs you two get into—and there will be arguments, my dear, never doubt that—always remember what is in his heart, and appeal to that. He will not fail you.”
“But am I doing the right thing?” May clutched at her two friends’ arms as a drowning woman going under reaches for a lifeline.
“Trust us,” Emily said, glancing over at her niece and then back into May’s wide, frightened eyes. “Every bride goes through what you are feeling. Listen to your heart, not your head, right now. If I had listened to my heart, I would have disregarded my hurt feelings when Baxter and I parted, and we could have avoided a long and horrible separation.”
May took a deep breath, and the two other women came together with her in a three-way embrace. Listen to her heart, she told herself. Listen to her heart. A calmness descended over her like a benediction from above. She loved Etienne, and he was good for her. She felt like she was really living when she was with him. And she was good for him. In the past month they had made such plans for the future! Starting with a honeymoon to France to visit his sisters, and offer them a home in England if they ever needed one.
“I’m ready,” she said, pulling out of the warm embrace. “I am ready to get married.”
The chapel on the grounds of Brockwith Manor was a tiny gray stone building covered in leafless ivy. Inside, in front of an assembly of friends and relatives, Etienne and May pledged to love each other always as a rare beam of November sun broke through a cloud and lit up the stained glass window behind the altar, sending shards of brilliant color over the congregation. May’s mother noisily wept, clinging to the arm of her new husband, a tall, handsome older man who May had liked immediately when they met at her mother’s wedding, and respected, too, when he rejected the money she would have given him as her mother’s dowry. He had insisted that she put the money in trust for Maisie.
May’s nerves had not completely disappeared. She glanced around at her mother for reassurance, but Maisie’s face was buried in Mr. Banks’s chest. And then May caught Emily Delafont’s eye. The older woman smiled reassuringly and glanced up at her tall, saturnine husband. She squeezed his arm and his expression softened as he gazed down at his plump, pretty wife. Emily caught May’s eyes again and nodded.
May understood. She knew Etienne’s heart, and it was good and true. Together they could weather any storm.
• • •
Night closed in early so late in November. When May and Etienne’s carriage pulled up to an inn halfway between Surrey and Dover, the inn in which they would spend their first night as man and wife, it had already been dark for hours. Only the coach’s lamps and dim moonlight that peeked out from behind clouds had lit their way.
The wedding breakfast had been hilarious, with laughter from one end of the long table to the other. There had been speeches and toasts, anecdotes and a little ribald kidding, interrupted by the various needs of the babies—Celestine and Justin’s son, and Emily and Baxter’s son and daughter. Etienne and Justin had become fast friends, after a wary few minutes when they first met. Both men were possessed of a devastating charm with the ladies, but were quite happy with their fates as married men. And each was convinced that his horse was the fastest, bravest beast in England. It was agreed that the next summer there would be a definitive race between Etienne on Théron and Justin on Alphonse to settle the matter.
May’s faith in Baxter Delafont and his rigid code of honor turned out to be justified. He had investigated Etienne’s branch of the Delafont family in the month before May’s wedding and had found that Etienne’s great-grandfather had left England and never claimed an inheritance that was owed him. It had been accumulating interest ever since and was now a considerable sum. Etienne was rich. Perhaps even richer than May, but no one was counting. Ironically, he could have had it just for the asking, any time, if he had just declared himself to Baxter years before.
Also in the month between proposal and wedding they had found out that Cassie was “with foal,” as May laughingly called it, with Théron the proud father. It was the very beginning of magnificent plans May and her new husband had for a stud farm. Though their plans would have to wait just a while longer, as they had other plans to bring to fruition, among them, the honeymoon.
But now May was alone with Etienne in their room at the inn, a comfortable, warm, lovely room. May sat on the edge of the high bed waiting as Etienne changed out of his clothes in the adjoined dressing room. Finally he entered, wearing a dressing gown given to him, with much laughter, by his cousin the marquess. Baxter had said, with quirked eyebrows, that it was one piece of clothing that would likely stay good for years, for it never would stay on for more than a few minutes at a time. Dodo, present when her nephew said such a scandalous thing, had swatted him much as she might have when he was a little boy, but had laughed nonetheless, as had everyone else.
May swallowed hard, but gazed steadily at her handsome husband. Husband! How strange to even think the word, when she had sworn never to marry. And yet every morning since her proposal to Etienne she had awoken with the knowledge that she was the luckiest woman alive. The firelight flickered over the rich burgundy of the dressing gown and over his bare legs. Eyes wide, she gazed down at his naked limbs as she slipped off the bed and stood, uncertain what she should do.
“Are you frightened, little one?” he asked, the firelight glinting on the mahogany flecks in his tawny eyes.
“A little,” she whispered. She felt such a welter of emotions—fear, desire, nervousness, love, anticipation—that she hardly knew which was strongest.
He moved toward her but stood still several feet away. Tenderness shone from his eyes. “I will wait, if you are too frightened. Always, mon ange, you must tell me what you want and what you need from me, and I will do my best to fulfill your desires. I will go as slowly as you need me to.”
“No!” she blurted, and then felt the blush rise through her body at her eagerness. “No, I want . . . I want . . .” She could not say what she wanted, but she had dreamt of it many times. She would not put off this night for anything, for the moment was coming when they would be truly wedded, finally as one.
He smiled, a secret smile of satisfaction. “Then come to me, my love,” he whispered.
As if in a dream, she floated across the few feet that separated them and stood before him, looking up into his eyes with trust and adoration. He was hers for all time! How was this possible? she wondered. After they found that he was rich, her
deepest fear was that he would cry off, that he was marrying her as the only alternative to penury. Her expression of that fear had resulted in their only fight so far, and she knew that he had been hurt by her worry.
She had spent days in an agony of fear that she had hurt him so deeply that his love would turn cold, but after a while she realized that he had forgiven her, and he never said another word about it. He loved her. That was the only reason a man like him would ever marry, and she must know that, he said finally, when she brought it up once again. He forgave her for her doubt because he knew in his heart his own motives for marrying her, and knew that in time she would understand how much he loved her.
And now she did. How it had happened she had no idea, but she knew in that instant that he really loved her. What he never said, but what she felt he understood, was that her fear of him leaving her had more to do with her own self-doubt, and that his love would gradually heal that part of her. Already the healing had begun.
She now stood before him as his wife, until death parted them. He kissed her ear, whispering naughty things to her in French to make her blush, and then his trembling fingers untied the front of her nightrail as he trailed kisses down her neck. He pushed her gown over her shoulders and it fell in a puddle of sheer fabric at her feet.
He took one step back and she shivered in the coolness of the room, afraid of what she would see in his eyes, any hint of disappointment, but as he gazed over her body his eyes lit with an inner glow. “You are perfect!” he whispered, taking a deep, shuddering breath. He reached out one hand and touched the birthmark on her breast, and then cupped it with a gentle hand. “Absolument parfait. Ravissant!”
Her whole body convulsed at this first touch on her naked skin by her husband. He had told her so much, taught her so much, that she knew her body was ready that very moment to receive him, but she also knew that he would take his time in his oh, so skillful way. It would be exquisite torture. For him too, she hoped.
But there was still one nagging doubt in her mind. Should she say it? Would she ruin this perfect moment with her doubts and fear? But in the end she could not restrain herself. “Etienne, I know your taste. I know you appreciate more ample women, like Emily.”
“Do I? Did I ever?” He smiled at her, shaking back the dark curls that framed his face. “I don’t recall that now, you know. I find myself entranced by a lithe, slim, perfect little one. A wood nymph with auburn hair that glows like fire and with eyes the color of the sky over the channel. A woman who is . . . how do you English say this? Ah, ‘pluck to the backbone’ is my little one. Brave enough, even, to propose to and wed a naughty Frenchman without a sou to his name.”
He swung her up in his arms and carried her to the bed, setting her gently down on the covers and laying one warm kiss on her flat stomach before straightening.
“Will you change your mind back?” May asked.
Eyes wide, she watched him shrug out of the dressing gown, not so much as a nightshirt underneath. The firelight danced over his naked skin and she licked her suddenly dry lips as she let her gaze wander over his body until it was riveted on the evidence that he wanted her very much.
He lay down on the bed beside her and caressed her, letting his hands wander her slim curves until she felt her body ignite, and she was no longer cold, but fevered with desire. He pulled her close and she felt the hard contours of his body mold her to his will. Soon she would be possessed by this glorious man, she thought, as she let her own hands wander, and heard him gasp as she dared so much more than she would have believed she ever could. Her fingers traced the scar on his hip, so close to his groin, now a healed memory of their time together in her folly.
“I will never change my mind about you, little one,” he said, his words muttered hoarsely. “From now until the end of time you will be my measure of perfection in all things, including the sweetness of your body, which now, if you do not mind, I will sample.”
He bent his head and kissed and nibbled his way over her skin, and soon they were lost to every thought but that they loved and wanted each other.
Much later, under the warm covers of their nuptial bed, Etienne slumbered and May drowsed near sleep, nestled in his arms. So that was what she had so feared, she thought, feeling the change in her body wrought by marriage. She felt very, very married now, and gloried in it. Miss Parsons was so very wrong about lovemaking. She moved luxuriously, sinuously, rubbing herself shamelessly against her lover’s hard body and knew the moment Etienne was awake again. She felt the pulse of desire shudder through him.
Without a word, he pulled her to him and kissed her softly on the lips, then disappeared under the covers. May giggled and then gasped as her husband did scandalous things to her body. Poor Miss Parsons, to have missed this wonder, this ecstasy . . .
And then any thought of anyone else in the world but her husband was lost.
“Oh, Etienne!” she gasped, lost in a delicious whirl of love. He pulled her under the covers and silenced her in the sweetest of ways.
Excerpt from Married to a Rogue
Keep reading for a sneak peek at
the story of Baxter, Lady Emily,
and Etienne in
Married to a Rogue!
Lady Emily Sedgely, separated from her husband and bored to distraction after years of solitude in the wilds of Yorkshire, is stirred by a sudden thirst for life and eagerly returns to London for the Season. Back in the swirl of society, she quickly warms to the attentions of an ardent young Frenchman—until a chance encounter with Baxter, her estranged husband, leaves her as confused as ever about her heart’s true longings.
Baxter, the Marquess of Sedgely, was given to dark moods and an uncertain temper that doomed his marriage. Finding relief in travel, he spent five years gallivanting the Continent and has now returned to London with a comely young mistress—and a dangerous secret. Cavalier about his safety, he discovers a far greater concern—for just one look at Emily stirs a realization that while his life may be in danger, it is his heart that faces a more immediate peril.
When Emily’s young French suitor arouses suspicions that he may not be all that he appears and a unknown assailant makes several attempts on Baxter’s life, the two are driven to protect each other and surrender to a passionate reawakening—and neither will rest until they are safely in the arms of the only person they’ve ever loved.
Chapter 1
“My lady has grown fat!” The words were spat from the lips of a long, lean man, a quizzing glass held to his eye.
“I suppose that explains Prinny’s newfound passion for her.” The tall man’s companion, a small, elegantly dressed gentleman, sat languidly tapping his fan against the edge of the opera box.
The first man whirled to gaze down at him, forgetting the supposed need for the eyeglass. “Lessington, do you mean to say my lady wife has captured Florrie’s wandering eye?” His dark eyebrows arched over equally dark eyes. He had been called saturnine, satanic, and even Luciferian in recent years owing to his dark complexion, black eyes and hair, and his penchant for all black clothing, but mostly for his uncertain temper.
All was not black on Baxter, Marquess of Sedgely, though. The dark wings of hair at his temples were streaked with silver, and his dour temperament was not always evident. He had been known to soften in the presence of his mistress, Annabelle Gudge, better known by her stage name of Belle Gallant. Intimate friends had noted that at times he treated the sylph-like beauty with an almost paternal affection. At that moment, though, his expression was one of disbelief as he stared at his friend, Sylvester Lessington.
That man, at least ten years Sedgely’s junior, fanned himself delicately with a chicken-skin fan and replied, “Oh, yes. Prinny is devoted to the marchioness and pays her the most extravagant compliments. It is whispered that he has even taken to writing verse—encomiums to her grace, beauty and charm.”
Sedgely raised his eyeglass again and gazed across the heated, noisy opera house at the box occupied
by his wife, Emily, his aunt—who was also his wife’s companion, he had heard—and their escorts. Good Lord, it was Fawley she was with! That windy sop!
As he watched his wife intently, her head turned and he could see her gaze off into the distance. He knew from experience that she was gone from the crowd, her mind elsewhere. She had always had the ability to leave a crowded place when the heat and noise became too much for her, and wander in spirit the lonely hills and moors of her native Yorkshire.
For an instant he, too, was transported back to a moment more than fifteen years ago when he had first seen her. He was on his way to visit distant relatives on a repairing lease. Riding along a country road on a lovely late-spring day in Yorkshire, he came to a spot where the bridge was washed out and stopped to watch in amusement as a girl he took for a village maiden led a broken-down hack through the stream. She was shoeless, hatless and had her old gown pulled up to reveal dainty ankles and a shapely calf; a dairymaid perhaps, or barmaid, he speculated.
He was not in such a hurry that he minded in the least stopping to flirt with a buxom, pretty maiden, and Emily was indeed pretty, with rosebud lips and big brown eyes. She had been shy but not timid, and the encounter had ended with a stolen kiss, the sweetness of which still lingered on his lips all these years later.
He could still remember the heavy fullness of her lovely breasts pressed against his waistcoat and the silky feel of her hair as his hand caressed it. His attentions had been teasing until that point, but he recognized in that moment the full urgency of his ardor. She had been naive and sweet, and her innocent passion had sent his pulse racing. He had left her after that blissful interlude determined to seek her out and press his suit once he was settled in his temporary home.
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