The Cinderella Countess

by Sophia James

  Aurelian had been his best man and Shay had been the groomsman. Annabelle had asked Lucy to attend her and Mrs Rosemary Greene had journeyed especially from Whitechapel to be her other bridesmaid. Lytton’s brother David had come up from the school he’d recently returned to and had enjoyed the celebration, but Prudence his sister had not been able to make the trip from Italy under such short notice.

  Belle held her marriage ring up to her new husband now, one finger turning the gold and sapphires so that they glinted in the light.

  ‘I don’t think that I could possibly be any happier.’ Her voice was quiet and filled with a shyness that was new. ‘But I need to tell you something before...’ She stopped and blushed, an action so unlike her that he frowned.

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘I know I am ancient, but the thing is that I am still a virgin. I don’t comprehend quite what you might want me to do though, as I’ve told you, I have read books and so I am not entirely unsullied...’

  He brought his hand forward and ran a finger across her lower lip to stop the unending torrent of apprehension. She was nervous, for the skin on her arm had raised in to goosebumps.

  ‘There is no right or wrong in making love, Annabelle. There is only truth.’

  The air had changed around them now, from delight and joy to desire and need. Lytton could feel the blood thrum through his veins as he ran his finger down further across her chin and the long lines of her throat to rest on the rise of one breast covered in white silk.

  The round firmness of it filled his palm and he flicked at her nipple, her head tilting back so that she closed her eyes, breathing with surprise and shock.

  ‘It feels...hot.’

  ‘And this?’

  His hand pulled back the flimsy fabric and came in to the nakedness beneath. The hard bud of her grazed his skin and he took the firmness between one finger. ‘Do you feel this?’

  She only groaned in response.

  ‘Or this?’

  He had slipped the strap of her gown across her shoulders so that her breast was now visible and his mouth came around her, sucking gently.

  Bright blue eyes flew open and her fingers came to rest upon his head.

  ‘This is allowed?’

  He laughed. ‘This and so much more, my darling. Trust me.’

  ‘I do.’

  The sweetness of her answer tugged at him, her innocence and her purity. He had never once before made love to a virgin, for every woman he had bedded was well attuned in the ways of the joining of flesh.

  This was different. Annabelle drove him wild even while he harnessed such a desperate need. She was soft and pliant and open and real. When his mouth fastened back on her lips he revelled in her.

  His. The one word had his member standing firm against his thighs. He ached with the desire to possess her and he trembled with the necessity to take it slowly.

  Drawing in breath, he pushed down the other strap so that the silken sheath fell in a pool to the ground. On her feet were silken slippers and in her hair were white gardenia buds, their scent beguiling and fragrant.

  Fragrant like Annabelle with her dimples and her long dark hair, her swollen lips and the ivory of her skin whorled into redness by his mouth.

  ‘Hell.’ He couldn’t keep his emotion in, the word surprising her.

  * * *

  Thorn was swearing again. Was there something wrong? Was there a flaw that she had never considered in her body, a defect that she had not understood before?

  He looked heated and he was breathing quickly, his eyes darkened to a bruised brown and standing there before him, virtually unclothed while he was fully dressed, she suddenly felt...wicked.

  Not wrong, no, not that, but revealing in a way that let him see right into her. Opening her legs, she tipped back her head, liking the feel of her hair heavy against the round of her bottom. A temptress. A siren. As far away from the careful and sensible Miss Annabelle Smith as she could have possibly come.

  The sensuality of what was happening kept her still, her breath shallow even as all the parts inside her melted into feeling, sharp in one way and muted in another.

  Take me, she wanted to say. Take me to the places I have only read about and let me know the magic between a man and a woman, between a husband and a wife.

  The candles on the sideboard flickered, the scent of them heady. The grandfather clock in the corner struck the hour of six and a curtain billowed against the incoming breeze from an opened window letting in a slight but welcome breeze.

  It slid across her body and Thorn laughed, his head coming down as he licked a trail where the zephyr had lingered, from navel to breast. The coldness left was almost painful and her breath banked. He would hurt her soon because all the books spoke of that. Ripped asunder and plundered. It was the way of men when they took. Her teeth began to chatter.

  ‘Don’t hurt me too much. Please.’

  ‘Ah, sweetheart,’ he replied and stood, unbuttoning the small garment that was left on her and peeling it away so that only nakedness remained, a single lacy garter at her thigh and a gold bracelet from her grandmother at her wrist.

  With a soft, reassuring movement he opened her legs, her thighs spread against his hands, his fingers coming into the centre of her, a quiet intrusion, a small but determined assault. Then one was in her, up inside and joined with another. She felt the thickness of them and the stretching as they arched up deeper, his own body beginning to move against hers with the rhythm of his hand.

  Not gentle now, but seeking. Her grasp came down to hold him there, her feelings growing wilder as he quickened. She could not breathe, could not move, could not escape from the plundering hardness, her heart thumping and the sweat building until there was nowhere left to go but up, up into trembling release, up into heaven and sweetness and relief. She could not stop her sounds, short guttural groans that made her breath swell and her stomach clench, hard inside, almost falling.

  He simply picked her up then and took her to the bed, laying her down unresisting, the wetness on his fingers staining her skin with the musky smell of passion. Her own hand came to the place his had just been and the surprising wet made her gasp.

  ‘It is your body welcoming mine, Annabelle. It is beautiful.’

  He had taken off his shirt and his trousers followed, the fall unbuttoned and then gone. She had never seen a man before unclothed save in books, and flesh and blood was a lot more immediate than the marbled statues of ancient gods.

  Scrambling up, she sat and he came in beside her, placing her hand upon him, so that she could feel the softness among the hard, familiarising her.

  ‘It is just me, my love, ready for you. It might hurt a little at first, but then...’ He stopped and she saw him swallow. ‘But then we will fit. I promise it.’

  Crossing his heart, he lifted her so that she sat astride him on his knee, a careful gentle lift. The tip of him rested in the place his fingers had been and then ventured deeper, stopping when the pain began.

  ‘I love you.’ His words were whispered against her cheek and he held her still, filling her, feeling her, helping her to understand the small and powerful questions of the flesh and waiting for a sign.

  The throb of blood, the quickening beat of their hearts and this time when she moved he moved with her, in and out, deep and then deeper, the rush of lust, the answer to fear, the understanding of a reciprocal pleasure that bloomed deep between them.

  Tipping her head, he looked straight into her eyes, their joining complete. ‘Come with me, sweetheart. Come now.’

  Another feeling rose. Not quiet. Not gentle. Not waiting. She rode him with her own need, pushing into fervour and intensity as waves of consummation crashed all around them, beaching on to the sands of love.

  Complete. She felt as if her life had just begun in this second and as if every other moment before
it had been leading to exactly this. She was spent and elated, she was exhausted and energised. She wanted to keep him inside her for all the hours of the night, beating in her, quenching the fire. There was no world around them save the one that was here and she never wanted to leave it.

  ‘You are everything to me, Thorn.’ The words were whispered as she kissed his neck. She wanted him again, violently. She wanted the feelings back, the power and the beauty.

  He seemed to understand what it was she asked of him because he laid her down and then his mouth was there, his tongue, his breath, the softness of flesh and the urgency. Filled up with him her hand threaded through his hair and she moved, no rhythm now, but broken strokes and uneven.

  When she climaxed this time she wondered if she might lose consciousness altogether as she stopped breathing and simply felt.

  He was a magician and she was his assistant, a lover of such prowess that she could not grasp the consequence. When he sat up he kissed her mouth and she could taste herself on him.

  ‘I feel like a king,’ he finally said. ‘The king of happiness.’

  She laughed and stretched. ‘The king of lovers, too.’

  ‘A king with a queen who takes my breath away. Thank you, Annabelle, for everything.’

  ‘Will it always be like this? Making love?’

  ‘I hope so. Perhaps it is particular just to us, this elation, because I have never felt it before.’

  ‘Then I am glad.’

  She felt the shake of his humour. Joy in the marriage bed, complete and perfect.

  ‘Others will know what is between us because it will be impossible to hide.’

  ‘And when they guess they will be happy for us. We have both been lonely for so long. Besides, Aurelian and Shay both have women who complete them and perhaps we might help Edward find the same when he returns to England next year.’

  ‘Your inventor friend?’

  ‘You will like him. He has the same sort of enquiring mind as you have.’

  ‘My aunt would say the same of you, Thorn.’

  ‘Alicia seems a lot happier now and healthier, too.’

  ‘She wants to run the clinic in Whitechapel. Rose is going to help her and Milly, our kitchen maid in White Street, will be a part of it, for she has not enjoyed her new job at the tannery. I also want to be involved as much as I can be.’

  ‘I never doubted it.’ His smile was kind.

  ‘That’s another reason why I married you. You believe in me and support me. I don’t know what might have happened if I had never met you. I might have been sad for ever.’

  ‘We would have met, Annabelle. I’d have made sure of it.’

  Epilogue

  One and a half years later

  They sat by the fire on a cold January evening, the snow thick outside and the sky stormy. Aurelian, Violet, Shay, Celeste and all their children had left that very afternoon, having spent the Christmas holidays up at Balmain. Edward Tully was still here, though he was often out in the evenings.

  ‘Where does Ed go at night?’ she asked Thorn dreamily, sitting in his arms on the thick rug in their bedchamber and watching the flames.

  ‘To drown his sorrows, I think, down at the village tavern. He is lonely and lonelier still in the company of all of us. I remember feeling exactly the same before I met you and for some time after. Happiness seems so elusive when you do not have it.’

  A noise to one side of the room had her turning. ‘Sleep is elusive, too, my darling,’ she replied very softly so that Harry did not waken. At eight months their son was full of energy, but a very light sleeper. They had taken to having his cot in their room much against everyone’s wishes, but for them it felt right.

  Thorn’s hand cupped around her stomach, easily accessed under the nightdress she was wearing.

  ‘And this new little one? I wonder who this will be?’

  ‘Ours,’ she replied and leaned back to kiss him, surprised as always by the passion his small touches engendered. One and a half years together and the magic just kept on growing so that she felt the luckiest woman in all the world.

  His family had come to Balmain this year and though she had always been close to Lucy, his mother, too, was beginning to thaw. Alicia had had her part in that, too, and Annalena as well, for the three of them had formed a close friendship and were often seen together talking.

  A family.

  All the pieces of it disparate, but forming a whole that was comforting and strong.

  ‘Annalena had a letter from Huntington the other day.’

  She felt him tense.

  ‘He asks if perhaps he might visit us in the summer. He regrets all the things that he has done and wishes to make amends.’

  ‘Is your grandmother happy with him coming?’

  ‘She is. He has not been well and I think she worries for him.’

  ‘And how do you feel, Annabelle?’

  ‘He is my cousin. He should have a second chance.’

  His arms folded around her, bringing her in closer, and she smiled. This was how life was supposed to be lived, with joy, hope and forgiveness. Passion, too, was a part of it and, turning, she slipped the nightgown from her shoulders and watched his eyes as the fire played over her breasts.

  ‘My beautiful Countess,’ he said as his mouth came upon her.

  * * *

  If you enjoyed this story

  read the other books in

  the Gentlemen of Honor miniseries

  A Night of Secret Surrender

  A Proposition for the Comte

  And be sure to check out these other

  great reads by Sophia James

  Ruined by the Reckless Viscount

  A Secret Consequence for the Viscount

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Shipwrecked with the Captain by Diane Gaston.

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  Shipwrecked with the Captain

  by Diane Gaston

  Chapter One

  June 1816

  Lucien Roper stood at the rail of the packet ship, watching the Dublin harbour recede into the distance. He inhaled the salty breeze and felt the bracing wind on his face. Voices of the sailors tending to their tasks rang in his ears.

  Only a few more days, then, with luck, he’d be back on the deck of a ship of his own, with his old crew, and back to the life from which he’d received so much. A fortune in prize money. Recognition and respect. A place he bel
onged.

  A woman’s laugh sounded over his shoulder, its sound so joyous, so unlike his restless mood that he turned, startled. She wore a grey cloak, shrouding her face.

  What pleased her so? he wondered.

  This was the sacrifice the navy life demanded of him. He was not free to court a young woman with a joyous laugh. Not for him to marry a woman and leave her for his mistress, the sea. He’d seen what happened when a navy man married and he and his wife spent most of their days apart.

  As his own parents had done.

  It had been a long time since he’d suffered the effects of having an absent naval father. Lucien himself had been at sea for more than twenty years now, since the age of twelve. This was his life and before it, a mere memory.

  He was eager to get back to it. His beloved Foxfire had been sold for breaking up, no longer needed now the war was over, and the Admiralty had promised him a new ship. Of course, there were dozens of captains like him, clamouring for a ship, but he’d earned a spot near the top of the list. At least with the wind this brisk they could count on making it to Holyhead by the next afternoon and he’d be in London a few days later.

  He studied the sky and frowned. This crossing would be rough. Maybe too rough. Likely their departure should have been delayed a day, but the sooner he reached England, the better.

  Still...

  He sauntered over to where the packet captain stood.

  ‘We’re in for a patch of bad weather,’ Lucien remarked.

  The Captain knew who Lucien was—a decorated navy captain, a hero of the Adriatic Sea and Mediterranean.

  ‘What?’ The Captain looked surprised Lucien had spoken to him. ‘Oh. Bad weather. Yes. Must sail through it.’

  Lucien had made it through many a storm. He’d make it through this one. He’d prefer, though, that the Captain seem less preoccupied and better able to attend to the weather and what was happening on his deck.

  Like noticing the young grey-cloaked woman back away from sea spray and stumble a little.