She rang for Martine, and her maid came in, a cloak over her arm and the gun Fenris had sent to her in the other. The maid handed her the pistol. “Thank you.”
Once she’d determined the weapon was loaded, they left and were outside in the cold night air of Mayfair by half past one. While they walked, Eugenia told herself they weren’t deliberately walking in the direction of Bouverie, and that even if they happened to pass near the house, she wouldn’t stop. She couldn’t possibly call at this time of night, and besides, Fenris wasn’t likely to be there. He’d be at Upper Brook Street, wouldn’t he? More to the point, whether he was at Bouverie or Upper Brook Street, he was unlikely to be outside on a path that could possibly intersect with hers.
Ten minutes later, she and Martine crossed to the street that paralleled the west side of Bouverie. Fog swirled around the building’s upper stories and in the street, too. The damp air carried the scent and sting of smoke from all the chimneys. Only a few lights were on upstairs; the servants’ quarters. Fewer lights burned in the windows of the middle floors. Camber, she wondered? Or was Fenris home?
Was the marquess pacing his room somewhere inside there, fretting over the events to come in just a few short hours? Was he lounging in his club or reveling in the arms of a mistress? She ignored the sound of someone walking on the close that ran between this street and the one parallel. A single person, walking quickly. She remembered her gun almost too late. She slipped her hand into her pocket and wondered if she’d be able to shoot a living person.
Martine faced away, umbrella at the ready. The back of Eugenia’s neck prickled, and she waited to see who was heading toward the street where she and Martine stood. A shape emerged from the fog, a man in a greatcoat and a hat. A gentleman, she thought. Too slender to be Dinwitty Lane, whom she would be only too happy to wound just now.
He slowed when he saw them, then walked slower still. Martine slid her other hand into the pocket of her cloak and moved so that she continued to face the man as he approached. The turned-up collar of his greatcoat made him hardly more than shadow. Then he took off his hat and bowed. “Another night unable to sleep, Mrs. Bryant?”
Her heart jolted.
Fenris. Of course it was Fenris, for she was cursed. Blessed, said a voice in her head. Lucky beyond belief. She must be, for she never met anyone but Fenris out here. “How could I sleep tonight, of all nights?”
“I know your maid is aiming a gun at my heart. You, madam, had damn well better be armed.”
She showed him her pistol and, at his satisfied nod, dropped it into her pocket.
He went to her, and Martine simply faded from Eugenia’s notice. He stood too close to her, gazing into her face, and it was as if there were an invisible connection between them, drawing them together. This was inevitable, their meeting. Destined, and she wasn’t going to resist. He tipped his head in the direction of Bouverie. “Come with me?”
She moved with the pressure of his hand on the back of her elbow. They crossed the street to Bouverie where he opened a side gate that admitted them to the grounds. To their left was the mews, a stretch of buildings that ran the length of the street that backed Bouverie. Not a single light in the windows that she could see. He put a key to the lock of a door toward the rear portion of the house. He held the door for her and Martine.
Inside the small foyer, Fenris stripped off his gloves and stuffed them in the pockets of his greatcoat. With a quirk of a smile in her direction, he blew on his fingers a few times, then turned up the lantern that had been left on a table near the door. There was a candle there as well. He lit it.
The foyer was plain, with a plank floor, a table, and plaster walls painted white. Directly across from the door by which they’d entered, a staircase led upward into dark. To the left, more stairs led down. Fenris put a coin in Martine’s hand before he handed her the candle. “You’ll find your way below?”
Martine curtseyed. “My lord.”
“Tell Mrs. Harrison she’s to look after you. Ring for her if you need anything.”
She glanced at Eugenia, questioning with a look. Silence settled between the three of them, and in the quiet, Eugenia considered the fact that Fenris ought to have taken them to the front door so that he could be said to be officially at home and entertaining a caller. But he hadn’t. He’d brought them in clandestinely, through this private entrance that was not the servants’ entry. Martine waited for Eugenia to agree with this dismissal of her or else signal that she ought to stay. All three of them waited.
“I’ll send for you when you’re needed, Martine.” Eugenia nodded at the down staircase, and Martine lifted the candle and disappeared.
Still wearing his hat and coat, Fenris took the lantern in one hand and Eugenia’s hand in the other. She still wore her gloves, yet the contact felt intimate.
As she climbed the stairs, she told herself there needn’t be anything improper about this. He might be taking her to a parlor to lecture her on her habit of late-night walks. He might. And even if he were thinking of something else, she was not obliged to do anything she didn’t want to do.
They ascended two flights of stairs, past what would be the floor containing the public rooms of parlors, saloons, dining rooms, and the like. They exited to a back corridor with a plain rug and the same white plaster walls as in the little foyer. He stopped at a wooden door, also quite plain and unpainted, and lifted the latch. He went in only far enough to hold the door open for her.
She entered a withdrawing room that was clearly a part of the main house, designed as a place for the staff to stage service of meals. The walls were lilac, and there was a domed ceiling with white scalloped decorations. Behind her, the door they’d come through clicked shut.
“I did not intend to stay the night here.” Fenris crossed the withdrawing room and opened another door, which he held for her as well. She found herself in a bedchamber. Oh, Lord. She struggled to separate the implications of this from her sense that anything that happened, from the moment he’d emerged from the fog, was inevitable. She was swept up, carried along. She had known all along that they would meet and end up here.
With only the lantern, the room was quite dim. She could make out the shadows of furniture, bed, chairs, tables, and the glow of the fire. Fenris came in after her and put the lantern on a desk painted gold. Across the way, a door opened.
“Milord?”
“I won’t be going to Upper Brook Street after all.” Fenris walked in front of Eugenia. “You needn’t stay close. I’ll ring for you when I need you.”
“Milord.” The dark form that was Fenris’s servant bowed once and withdrew.
How quiet the house was. The usual creaks and pops one heard. The low hiss from the fireplace. She stared at her feet, but the urge to watch Fenris overwhelmed her. He slipped out of his coat. He draped that over a chair and put his hat on the seat. While he did this, Eugenia’s pulse raced. He went to her, that same unfathomable expression on his face, and, after unfastening the frog that closed her cloak, put the first two fingers of his hand to the side of her face. His skin lay cool against her heated cheek.
She licked her lips. “If you have another engage-ment…”
“Not until morning.” He put his hands on her shoulders, underneath her cloak, and slid them forward until her cloak slipped off. He caught the garment just in time and folded that over the chair, too.
“You can’t mean to go through with this.” She swallowed. With every sweep of his gaze over her, she lost another shred of hope that she would tell him no and save herself. He’d bespelled her somehow, and the thing of it was, she didn’t want to come out from under it. “Your appointment, I mean.”
His eyebrows lifted. “With Mr. Lane? I do.”
“This morning, you said he’d apologize.”
“I don’t believe I said precisely that, but nevertheless, he has refused to do so.” He shrugged one shoulder. “One finds it necessary to take a stand in such circumstances.”
&nbs
p; He couldn’t die. It would be her fault if he were killed, and Lily would never forgive her. “Don’t.” She clutched his arm. “Please don’t.”
“Don’t what?” He rested his hands on her shoulders, mostly on her gown, but his thumbs swept over the bare skin above her collar. Part of her wanted to believe he had no improper intentions, but in the end, she wasn’t a fool. There was nothing proper at all about her being here. In his room. She was alone with a man she wanted desperately to dislike. And didn’t. She was going to repeat every mistake she’d ever made that had given him power over her feelings.
“Don’t be a fool. Don’t get yourself killed on my account.”
He moved behind her, and when she would have faced him, he put his hands on her shoulders again. “No. Stay like that.”
She did. Lord help her, she did. Because surely Fenris, of all men, could not hurt her any worse than what Robert’s death had done. Could not. Her stomach dropped, then soared and dropped again when he unhooked the first fastening of her gown. Then the second, and she really couldn’t believe how badly she wanted this to happen.
“Have I told you I’m glad you’re wearing colors again?” His voice came soft and low in her ear. Once, just once while he found and unfastened all the ties and hooks and ribbons of her clothes, he pressed his mouth to her shoulder, and the shock of that warm and intimate contact weakened her knees.
When the time came, he draped her gown over the chair, and then her stays and petticoat. She’d already stepped out of the sensible half boots she’d worn. Had she really done that on her own? She anticipated his hands on her, touching those places that made her melt. Once again she was wracked with desire.
He stood behind her and gathered two handfuls of her chemise, and she drew in a breath as the fabric slid up her body, over her head, and then, simply, off. He rested his palms on her shoulder, then smoothed a hand along her arm while he breathed the words, “Such beauty. You humble me, Ginny.”
That moving arm circled her waist, forearm resting on her bare skin, drawing her back against his front. His other arm he wrapped loosely around her very upper chest. He angled his lower hand to her hip while he drew the other downward and around the outside of her breast.
How long had she felt herself separate from people? As if there were a barrier between her and anyone else, that everyone was real and vital except her. Fenris had come inside that barrier once already, and he would do so again tonight. His hands on her, those whispered words brought him into a world she had, for too long, inhabited alone. Tonight, here, with him, she would once again feel, really, truly feel like a living, breathing animal.
He kissed the side of her neck. His fingers moved again, cupping her breast now, plucking, a caress that drew longing from her. He dropped to his knees and his hands glided around her, downward. So tender, so unerringly finding places where the lightest touch of his fingertips made her shiver with longing.
He removed her garters and stockings, and when she was absolutely bare, he turned her around. Still on his knees he kissed the top of each of her thighs, hands cupping her bottom, then moving around her hips and down. His fingers slid lightly, so lightly between her thighs. “Lovely Ginny.”
Butterflies took flight in her belly, and she looked down, her hands resting lightly on his head. Fenris. A man she had hated for years. His hair was silk against her fingers, thick locks of dark, dark brown settling around her hand and fingers. She was hardly able to believe she felt like this, when for such a long time after Robert’s death she’d thought those feelings had died with him.
This was Fenris, the Marquess of Fenris, on his knees before her, worshipping her with his hands, his mouth, his eyes and breath. He ran his palms from her legs to her hips and up her back as far as he could reach, and desire snaked through her, twisting her emotions and then pushing out everything but him and what he made her feel.
At last, though, he rose and took her face between his hands and kissed her, openmouthed from the start, savagely even, a deliberate taking of her, a prelude to what would come. Tongues touched, entwined, their breath mingled, and his hands cupped her face. He was breathing faster when, at last, he pulled away from her. He took her hand and guided her to his bed, a monstrous canopied four-poster.
He said, “Lie down. I want to look at you.”
He undressed while she did that. Boots, stockings, his coat and waistcoat. He let them drop where he stood. She caught a flash of the medallion when he put his watch on the chair. Very quickly he stripped himself of everything, and Eugenia’s breath caught, because physically he was shockingly perfect. Sleekly muscled, just as she remembered, and, yes, absolutely as large everywhere. Lord. His cock was erect, and she had an intense longing to touch him, all the girth and inches of him.
From the bed, she held out a hand. “Come here.”
“Ginny,” he whispered as he joined her.
He came over her with no preamble. He nudged a thigh between her legs, and she adjusted. From the very first push of him inside her, she groaned. Her passage was wet for him, ready for his entry, aching for him, and this was a thousand times more intense than before. Pure joy flashed through her. Perfect. So simple, to feel this way, to accept a man inside her.
He groaned when he was as far inside her as it seemed possible for him to be, stretching her, filling her, and this was what she’d wanted all those lonely years since Robert. She missed this, a man’s body, his sex inside her, pushing. Thrusting, then the delicious slide away. She missed knowing she was adored.
“God, Ginny, my God, you take my breath.” Eyes locked with hers, he withdrew all but the head of his cock, then pushed forward again, slowly this time, and he fit so perfectly. She tipped her hips toward him, and he put his hands on either side of her, lifting up enough to see her, and the rhythm began.
Every stroke delicious, the roughness of his thigh against hers, the slide of his belly against hers, skin to skin. The hitch in his breath and hers. His thrusts were harder now, as hard and as rough as before, and she found she did like that. She lost herself to the pitch of her body, the call of her climax, met that, her arms tight around him, palming his backside, feeling the flex and release of his muscles. He was good at this, she realized. Taking a woman. Practiced.
Well. Thank God, for that.
At one point, he paused and took a steadying breath. His eyes drooped half closed, and she had one leg drawn up, and she arched against him, pressing herself to him, and he stared into her face, shook his head once, and grabbed her wrists, pinning them to the mattress above her shoulders, and he pumped hard against her forward push. He put a hand on her breast and curled the other around her head, and he rolled his hips and hit a spot inside that shattered her.
“Yes,” she heard him say. “Yes.”
She was brought to a point where the pleasure reached such a peak she couldn’t move, could hardly breathe, and only moments after she had breath in her lungs, he hit that spot in her, no accident then, and she came apart all over again. He gave her the space of a breath or two to come down before he shifted his weight to one forearm, nearly on his side, and cupped her bottom, bringing her harder forward. The rhythm continued, faster now. Urgent.
They reached a point where she knew he was close, and so was she, again. His eyes, at this moment, were unfocused, lips parted, and then he whispered to himself, urgent and with shorter and shorter breaths. “Ginny, Jesus, oh, God.”
He threw back his head and let out a low moan as he pressed hard into her. His arms shook and he lowered himself onto her, hips still hard against her, still pushing forward, head to her shoulder, and she held him while he finished.
When, later, he withdrew from her, he breathed her name again, and for some reason she couldn’t speak for fear she’d cry.
They began again with him exploring her body, his cock soft, and she touched him, too. Eventually, he grinned at her and the light in his eyes was so very smug when he put her on her back and he entered her again. Differ
ent this time than before. More desperate now, so that neither of them had time to think. He was rougher than he had been, and that made her smile, because if he thought to master her like this, he was mistaken. She wanted this from him.
She turned her head and bit his upper arm, not hard, but enough that he felt it, and he shouted out. She wound her fingers into his hair until he forced her hands away and spread her arms wide and pinned her. Very different this time, his taking possession of her like this, with both of them aware that she’d both invited him and brought him with her.
“I don’t want to bruise you,” he said.
“I don’t care.”
He bent his head to her breast, his fingers tight around her arms, and closed his teeth on her nipple, enough that she sucked in a breath and then went over the edge without him. The finish this time was sweeter, but no less intense. They lay together for a time, limbs entangled.
“Ginny.” He drew a strand of her hair away from her face. “I have to send you home now.”
Chapter Twenty-five
EUGENIA AND HESTER WERE IMMEDIATELY SURROUNDED when they arrived at Hyde Park shortly before noon. It was their habit on days she and Hester were not at home to walk to the park before making calls. It had been her thought that getting out of the house would take her mind off the fact that she’d heard nothing from Fenris. Nothing but the most awful silence.
A friend of Hester’s, a Miss Lynd, drew them into the midst of a crowd that quickly grew larger and included both genders, though most everyone was Hester’s age or younger. Lieutenant Fraser was among the gentlemen, with his elder brother, too.
“Have you heard?” Miss Lynd put a hand on Hester’s arm.
Not Proper Enough (A Reforming the Scoundrels Romance) Page 22
