A Trace of Roses

by Connolly, Lynne

  “Which you did,” she repeated, smiling.

  Yes, she saw the difference. “So you don’t think she came here for you?”

  He shook his head. “No. For you.”

  The pause lengthened between them. For her. Yes, of course. Dorcas was the first to say it. “If she did not know you were here, then yes, for me. If she is behind the attacks on me. She might have wished to assure herself that we weren’t together.”

  “Then she is doomed to disappointment,” he murmured, his lips against her hair. “She’ll have wanted to gloat, to make you call her ‘your grace’. Show your brother that she did not need his paltry earldom.”

  “We suspect her, don’t we?”

  He didn’t pretend to misunderstand her. “Yes, we do. Although she’s married, she has still vowed revenge on the Dersinghams. Seeing me with you could turn her nasty.” He continued after a moment. “Although she could choose to be gracious. Would you like me to try to get her to leave?”

  She shook her head. “Then she’d have even more to complain about. I would rather she saw us, and reconciled herself. Annie won’t allow her to be too impertinent.” Annie might be still finding her way socially, but she was a force to be reckoned with, if anyone got her dander up.

  Making the most of their time here, she snuggled in, relishing the wall of warmth that was her husband.

  “You are what I want,” he murmured. “Now, let me prove it.”

  He kissed her. With that one embrace, he melted away her fears, made her forget everything. She wasn’t sure she could recall her own name. For the first time, he shared a deeply passionate kiss with her. Even his caresses in the tent at the camp were restrained compared to this.

  Dorcas flung her arm around his neck, his muscles flexing under her. He increased the depth of the kiss, pressing his lips against hers, licking into her mouth. A flash of memory reassured her, of the way he took care of her in the tent, his concern overriding his passion. He would take care of her.

  Sensations rioted through her. Every part of her tingled, and her breasts tightened. She’d never felt anything like it before. She liked it.

  He cupped the side of her face, his hand gentle as his mouth ravaged hers. His fingers tunneled into her hair, pushing through it, dislodging pins as he went. Her senses loosened along with her hairpins. Sliding her hands around his waist, Dorcas flattened her hands on his back, in the sure knowledge that tonight nothing would stop her touching his bare skin, exploring him. He was hers.

  Although it was just as well one of them knew what they were doing.

  She tugged his shirt, trying to pull it free. Chuckling against her mouth, he finished the kiss. “I think we’d be more comfortable in bed.”

  “Yes, yes, we will.”

  Half-lifting her, he set them both on their feet, but he didn’t leave her. His breath, his heat, were hers, and she wanted to take the most of him. He glanced down at her, smiled, and put his capable fingers on the top of her bodice. Her fichu went with a couple of sharp tugs, then he undid the first hook.

  This meant so much more than the swift coupling they very nearly had in the field. As she watched, Grant banked down his passion so it was still there, but ruthlessly controlled.

  “This is your first time, but it won’t be the last.”

  His words sent chills coursing up her spine. Of the good variety, the waiting-for-a-treat kind. With that restraint, whether he knew it or not, Grant had issued a challenge. She wanted to see him lose control. She wanted to know what was beyond that powerful exterior, reaching back to his mind and heart.

  She wanted everything. In return, she was prepared to give him all herself.

  His eyes warmed as he undid her coat, hook by hook, revealing the fact that she wore only stays and shift beneath. “This is July,” she reminded him. “It’s hot.”

  “It’s going to get hotter.” Bending, he pressed a kiss to the upper slope of her breasts.

  He was right about the heat. Lifting her hands, she held his head, but he lifted it, grinning wickedly. “Let’s get you into bed.”

  She was only too glad to comply. She didn’t allow him to remain dressed, either. While he worked on her petticoat, she helped him out of his shirt. His wig went with it, landing with a thump on the carpet.

  That was better. He had a well-shaped, strong head that his close-cropped dark hair did nothing to disguise.

  As he fastened his mouth to hers again, she fumbled at the fall of his breeches, her fingers skimming over his erection, too shy to explore it. But it excited her all the same.

  New didn’t mean afraid, didn’t mean she’d wondered. People muttering in corners of ballrooms, rooms that went quiet when she stepped in, as if the participants had sprung apart. Annie, her face red, smoothing her hair back. Annie, her neat-as-a-pin sister-in-law, and Gerald, his face turned away, studying the books on a shelf.

  Well, she was about to learn what all that meant, why people lost their minds over this kind of intimacy. She had an idea, but with his fevered, almost frenzied attempts to get her naked, Grant was throwing all her preconceptions away.

  Starting fresh. Creating her own reality. She liked that. As he closed his hand over her breast, Dorcas gasped, and tipped her head back, meeting his determined, deep gaze frankly. “I want you,” she said.

  “Not as much as I want you.”

  His voice low, throbbing with desire, matched his heated body. He curved his hands under her breasts, pushed them up and bent his head to kiss and taste. Reaching out, she cupped his powerful shoulders, afraid she would lose her balance. The power of his lovemaking made her breath unsteady as she drew it in, felt the groan he emitted as he sucked her nipple.

  “Oh!” Although the sound was small, he’d heard it and lifted his head. His lips were full and red and wet. They tasted of him, she knew that now, what he tasted like, how his tongue felt alongside hers.

  After glancing over her shoulder, he bent and swung her up, so easily she wondered if she’d suddenly lost weight. Tenderly, he laid her on the sheets, then stepped back, hastily finishing undressing himself. Then he came forward again, and worked on her only remaining garments, her stockings.

  Dorcas had eyes only for Grant. His nakedness awed her, all of it, from the wide, smooth shoulders down his chest, sprinkled with dark hair, to the relatively narrow hips, designed to fit inside hers, like two pieces of a puzzle, and then lower.

  She let her gaze slide past his erection, now lying—standing—away from his stomach, and down the powerful thighs, rippling with muscle every time he moved, to the light skimming of hair just below his big toes. One nail was twisted, misshapen. But if he’d been utterly perfect she’d have felt intimidated. Her body was far from perfect.

  Grant was sampling it with unalloyed delight now that he’d rid her of her stockings. They joined everything else on the floor. He climbed over her, his legs inside her wide-spread ones, and urged her to lift her knees so she could accommodate him more easily. His hips weren’t that narrow, after all.

  Then he stopped. Intent on studying him, she took a moment before she realized he was doing the same to her. Her gaze lifted to his. “Oh.”

  He smiled, intimate and warm. “Yes, ‘oh’. Here we are, Dorcas, Wife. We have many nights like this to look forward to. If you want it, because I’ll take nobody who is unwilling.”

  She swallowed. “I told you I want you. I meant it.” Forced to be honest she asked, “Will it hurt?”

  His erection seemed abnormally large to her, but for all she knew, they were all like that. She’d heard that the pain was like ripping in two. And yet, she still wanted him.

  “It might,” he admitted. “It’s likely it will. Have you ever done this before?”

  “No!” she protested. “What do you take me for?”

  “A lovely woman, a woman who didn’t expect to marry, or so you told me when we first met. You might have tried this, and decided against it.”

  Dorcas shook her head, her hair
catching on the clean linen pillowcases. It was loose, completely devoid of hairpins now. She had no idea what had happened to them. Probably on the floor with the rest of her things.

  “I won’t condemn you for it,” he continued, “but I need to know.”

  “Then no.” She could say no more.

  What kind of man was he, that he could consider taking a woman who’d been with somebody else? But she had no more time to speculate as her husband took her in another ravishing kiss.

  His body covered hers, but he didn’t press. He must be supporting his weight, otherwise he’d crush her. He was a big man in every way possible. The hair on his chest grazed her nipples, which he’d already made sensitive with his kisses and caresses. Now he slid one hand to the most intimate part of her.

  Dorcas flinched. Immediately he pulled away. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nobody has ever…” She didn’t know the words. “Touched me there.”

  “It pleases me that I’m the first to give you this. To bring this to you. Let me. Let go, Dorcas, my…sweet.”

  She could have sworn he was about to say something other than “sweet”, but she liked the endearment. It suited her fine. He watched her as he caressed, touched and invaded, but gently, carefully, exploring her.

  Why should she not do the same? Finally, she found the part of him that fascinated her the most tonight. That smooth head, slick and silky, the soft skin around the muscle that would soon introduce her to the pleasures of the bedroom. Someone had used that phrase in her presence, delicately indicating the most intimate of connections, but then kept quiet.

  Like a club she hadn’t yet joined. But she was about to. “Don’t be nervous,” he murmured against her lips.

  “I’m not. Not exactly.” She considered the words, apprehensive, tense, but none fitted, because excitement was woven in with everything else. “Grant, show me.”

  So he did. Taking his erection in one hand he guided it to her and, watching her, finally, and infinitely slowly, made them one.

  It didn’t hurt much. Not nearly as much as some people had told her it would. With her thighs hugging his hips, he could control what he was doing, stop if her breath shortened, continue when she had relaxed.

  When he was finally fully inside her, he stopped. “That feels better than anything I can ever remember.”

  Was that it, then? Would he take it out now?

  She wanted more. More what, she didn’t know. But she was nowhere near ready to have him stop. “Grant?”

  “Hold on to me,” he said, and he began to move. Gently at first, barely anything at all, but as she grew easier, better able to accept him, with more purpose, his drives increasing as her slickness gave him easy entry.

  And still, he watched her. “What are you looking for?” she asked him.

  “Any twinge of pain. Any sign that you’ve had enough.”

  “Have you?”

  “God, no!” His laugh shivered over her bare skin, and he moved harder, sharper, driving deeper and deeper with each stroke. Each time he did it, he touched some part of her that raised her arousal. She hadn’t thought that possible at the beginning, but it was. Their bodies connected in a series of sharp slaps, and Dorcas closed her eyes, tilting her head back on the pillow to suck in cool air and moan his name.

  “Oh, yes, Dorcas, you are so lovely,” he said, breathless himself.

  She forgot time and place, concentrating on the seed of warmth inside that grew to encompass her whole body. When she opened her mouth to scream, he covered it with his own, and she screamed into him as her body convulsed in waves of ecstasy.

  She was still quivering when he pulled his lips away from hers and that part of him most intimately connected with her pulsed and throbbed. His body went taut, every muscle and sinew, and he shuddered out her name.

  Dorcas had never seen anything so wondrous in her life as this big man, totally engrossed in her.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Dorcas woke up in a man’s arms. Never before, but it felt so natural that she could have been doing it all her life. The heat of his body warmed her so well she couldn’t remember a time when she was so thoroughly warm.

  Light was spreading gray fingers over the room. As she blinked, assessing the time, the clock tinkled the hour. Five o’clock. Closing her eyes, she tried to settle back into sleep, but her movements must have woken him.

  “Dorcas?” His voice was rusty, sleepy. Intimate.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you need anything?”

  She suppressed the urge to say “Only you” but considered, and that was the only answer. So she snuggled in more and let out a contented sigh.

  “Hmm.” He rubbed his eyes. “It’s early.”

  “Too early.”

  “Even for you? I thought gardeners were up with the sun.”

  “Sometimes. Not after their wedding night.” After last night, who would be fool enough to hurry to rise? Certainly not Dorcas.

  He groaned, a sound of deep contentment. “I meant to make you comfortable before we slept.”

  Guiltily, she recalled the injury that nearly killed him. “You’ve been hurt. You came here to recover. I hardly helped with that.”

  Turning his head, he kissed the top of her head, and when she lifted her chin, her mouth. Sweet and long. She sighed into the kiss, smiled when their lips separated. “Are we doing it again?” she asked, not without a little anticipation.

  “No,” he said. “Although it nearly kills me to say so. You’re new to this. You need to let your body get accustomed to it. Order a bath in the morning.”

  “It is morning,” she pointed out.

  He lifted up on to one elbow. “So it is.” Pushing the covers back, he examined her; the pink marks around her breasts where his nightly stubble had abraded her. “I should have shaved. God, I should have behaved altogether more civilized.”

  “I liked it as it was,” she said. The feeling of strangeness had entirely left her. “Will we always share a bed?”

  “I can see certain advantages in doing so.” He cupped her breast and touched his lips to the nipple. “But we’ll have separate rooms. After all, you’re a duchess.”

  She grinned. “So I am.”

  So she was, like her sister, like Matilda. Society would lose its mind when it heard. But he was Grant to her, not the Duke of Blackridge, not the wealthy owner of numerous concerns. She would have to learn to cope with it all, but she was looking forward to it. Life was full of challenges, and this was one of the more exciting ones.

  He met her eyes, his own glittering in the soft dimness. “You should know that I’m attaching a footman specifically for your service. He will be with you at all times, when I am not.”

  Apprehension made the hair on the back of her neck prickle. She barely stopped herself rubbing the spot. “Why?”

  “For your protection. We can’t forget that you are in danger.”

  Indignantly, she said, “But you? You’re in danger, too.”

  “I’m prepared. I’ll be ready,” he said grimly, and she was concerned immediately that he would be armed.

  “You won’t do anything rash?” Like shoot someone who appeared even a little suspicious.

  The light wasn’t too dim for her to see his lips twitch, but she heard it in his voice. “I promise I will not. And I have my men at the camp. I’ll walk down in the morning and ensure Armstrong knows the state of affairs. And no, I won’t go alone.”

  But she was still worried. For him, not for herself. And for her plants.

  “You think one of the other horticulturalists want to destroy my work, don’t you?” she asked.

  When he nodded, she went on, “I already made arrangements with the Crombies. One of them will stay in the orangery at night, until I come. I’ve ordered them not to interfere with anyone trying to destroy the seedlings and plants, only to take note and call the alarm.”

  He frowned. “Do either of them have experience with these people? If they’re
willing to have me attacked on my own ship, then they won’t hesitate to kill someone getting in their way. They did not care if I lived or died, don’t forget.”

  With a sound of distress, Dorcas curved her hand around his head, careful to avoid the spot that was probably still causing him discomfort. “You must take care, now.”

  “I promise,” he said with a smile. “Irksome though it might be, I won’t go alone to the mine, nor will I give anyone an opportunity to hurt me. But I don’t think they will, not now. Not if we let them think their efforts were successful.”

  “But they weren’t. I still want to cultivate what I have.”

  “No, they weren’t were they? But we’ll tell everyone that it was. Except, perhaps, for your brother.”

  Dorcas was glad Grant trusted Gerald. She would entrust him with her life. Annie, too.

  He lay down again, drew her close and snuggled in. She lifted her leg and tucked it between his as if she’d been doing that all her life. And then went back to sleep.

  Grant left Dorcas’ bed at six. He’d lain awake, holding his slumbering wife, thinking. He was more overwhelmed than he had cared to admit at first. She meant everything to him, but he had not wanted to admit it. Making love to her, holding her, completed something inside him. He would give up his own life to save hers.

  But for now, he’d let her grow used to her new state. Let her wake in her bed as she always did, and go through her morning routine. In the future, his bed was hers, and hers was his.

  Naturally his valet was in charge again. The man had arrived from London the day before. Grant was so relieved, that he found ignoring the man’s superior air easier than ever before. He had brought Grant’s entire wardrobe, and arranged it the way Grant understood, so if he wanted he could dress in the dark. Not that he did want to.