“I’ll never tell.”
“Well then.” A teasing glint lit his eyes. “I’ll just have to find out for myself.”
Before she realized what he was doing, he knelt in front of her.
She gasped as he reached for her hem and smacked him lightly on the shoulder. “Stop that!”
“I spent good money on those stockings.” His large hands slipped beneath her hem and reached for her shoes. “A sizeable part of the dukedom, in fact.”
“You did not!”
“Two estates and a farm, I assure you.” Clucking his tongue, he shook his head. “Might have to forget plans to send Pippa away for schooling now.”
She couldn’t stop the giggle that rose to her lips at the ludicrousness of that.
“A man needs to keep a close eye on his investments.” Then he lowered his voice and murmured huskily, “A very close eye.”
“Stop that,” she repeated as he lifted her foot and removed her satin shoe, but this time, the order was forced out between lighthearted laughs. Then between squeals when he tickled her toes. “Stop that, too!”
“Just checking the quality of the knitting.” His hand went to her other foot and did the same, this time tickling much longer until she was practically jumping on one foot to end the sweet torture.
“They’re of exquisite quality, thank you very much.” She slapped her hand against his shoulder. “They do not need to be inspected. And certainly not while I’m in them!”
“No?”
“No.”
“Pity.” He forlornly heaved out a sigh, then paused for a contemplative beat. “I’m also good at inspecting corsets.”
That unexpected comment brought a new bubble of laughter to her lips, and then he joined in, once more tickling her feet and making her dance a small jig. Oh, after removing her shoes, those beautiful stockings would be ruined! But she couldn’t make herself be angry at him, not when she hadn’t laughed like this in so very long.
Neither had he, she was certain, based on the rusty sound of his laughter. For a little while tonight, at least, they could forget their shared grief over Elise, let go of the pain, and enjoy each other’s company. A warm happiness blossomed inside her.
Still kneeling in front of her, Marcus tilted his head back to stare up the length of her.
Her heart stuttered at the astonishing sight of him, of this indomitable man kneeling at her feet. Never had she felt more feminine, more powerful in her entire life…never. And all because of him.
An inexplicable mix of excitement and comfort twirled through her as she reached down to cup his face between her hands, then bent over to kiss him.
Fifteen
Marcus tilted his face up to hers and welcomed her kiss, reveling in the spicy-sweet taste of her lips and the feathery warmth of her breath as it fanned across his cheeks. Her delicate fingers gently caressed his cheeks as she held his head still between her hands.
“Marcus,” she whispered, an aching plea.
“Whatever you wish.” With that murmur, he gave her permission to take all that she wanted from the kiss. And from him.
She smiled against his mouth, and that silken movement twined a low heat through him, only for it to turn to liquid flames when she took his bottom lip between hers and sucked. Each pull of her lips tugged in a straight line down to his cock, which began to ache, then flexed when she gingerly slipped the tip of her tongue between his lips.
He stayed perfectly still as he continued to kneel in front of her, to let her explore his mouth with little licks across his inner lip and teasing slides across his tongue, but the effort for restraint made him shake. Letting her kiss him like this without pulling her into his arms and returning the kiss as ravenously as he wanted to do was sweet torture, one that had his pulse spiking and his lungs squeezing in ragged fits. When her hands moved to rest on his shoulders, she could surely feel the tension beneath her fingertips, just as he could feel the yearning desire growing inside her.
Then, the kiss changed. Not the way her lips teased at his, not the way the tip of her tongue continued to make small forays into his mouth—no, he tasted hesitation and sadness.
When he reached a hand up to her face in silent concern, she lifted her head just far enough to slip from his fingertips.
Her gaze fixed on his mouth. “We might learn all our answers tonight,” she whispered, brushing her fingertips over his bottom lip. “What happens when we do?”
“We won’t,” he assured her glumly. It wasn’t the answer she was looking for, but it was the truth. “Not tonight.”
“Then soon. But we will.” She hesitated. “And then?”
His heartbeat skipped as he realized that she wasn’t asking about matters of justice or how they would turn their information over to the authorities. She was asking about the two of them.
He simply had no idea what the future held, except that he couldn’t bear the thought of no longer seeing her. She’d come to mean a great deal to him, and more than as a friend of his late sister, more than as a source for discovering the truth behind Elise’s death. More than as a beautiful woman whose kisses and caresses affected him more deeply than any other woman’s ever had.
During the past few weeks since they’d been working together to find answers, she’d given his life purpose.
“Then we worry about it later. For now, we should only worry about this evening.” He slipped his hands beneath her skirt to encircle her legs and bring her against him as he looked up at her. “And this evening, there is nowhere else I would rather be than right here, with you.”
He meant every word. Since he’d returned to England, he’d longed to be back in the field with his men, where he knew exactly who the enemy was and how to fight against him, where outcomes were certain and decisive.
Except when he was with Danielle.
She ran her fingers tenderly through the hair at his temple. That simple touch confirmed silently that she felt the same.
She kissed him again, and this time without any uncertainty. He seized her mouth with his in an eager, openmouthed kiss that left both of them shaking.
“Danielle,” he murmured hotly against her mouth, longing to touch her intimately as his hands slid up the backs of her legs.
She answered with a sighing whimper and closed her eyes.
He caressed her calves, running his fingertips over the silky smoothness of the stockings. He smiled—the same stockings he’d given her. The masculine rush of pride and possession that she’d worn them tonight was impossible to tamp down, or the desire that rose inside him.
As she continued to bend over him, eagerly kissing him from above, his fingers teased at the lace hem of the stocking, tied to her thigh by a ribbon. He wiggled his fingers down inside her stocking and drew a surprised gasp from her lips, only for the sound to turn into a full-throated moan when he pulled loose the ribbon and pushed down the stocking, baring her entire leg to his hands.
“That’s…very nice,” she murmured as his hand traced invisible patterns up her leg, from ankle to thigh.
“No, it’s heavenly.” He punctuated that correction by doing the same to the other stocking. But this time, instead of touching her leg with his hand, he pushed her skirt up out of the way and dipped his head to repeat the caresses with his mouth, placing featherlight kisses against her bare skin.
By the time his lips reached her thigh, her breath came in quick little pants, and her fingertips dug into his shoulders. “So…is that.”
He chuckled. She was a delicious mix of confidence and innocence.
“And this?” He nudged her gown and chemise higher, exposing the juncture of her thighs to his gaze. He sifted his fingers slowly through her feminine curls, then bit back a groan when she seductively mimicked that gesture by combing her fingers through the hair at his nape.
“Yes,” she whisper
ed and leaned against the stone wall behind her for support.
The musky scent of her sex filled his senses, and he knew before he slowly slid his hands up her inner thighs to caress his thumbs between her legs—
Sweet Lucifer, she was already wet.
“And this?” As he teased his thumbs over her folds, he leaned back to watch the expressions flitting over her face. He would stop with a single word if she bade him. But he prayed to every saint and angel in heaven that she wouldn’t. He wanted this moment with her too much to deny either of them the satisfaction it would bring.
“Yes.” She shifted her legs farther apart to open herself to him. “Yes, Marcus.”
Not an agreement this time but permission. He dipped his head between her legs. Her gasp of surprise melted into a whimper of desire, and her hands tightened on his head as he explored her with his mouth.
At first, he worshipped her with light and delicate kisses, but as the taste and scent of her engulfed his senses, his restraint dissolved. The worshipping changed into plundering, the light kisses into hard licks, pulling sucks, and deep plunges of his tongue as he attempted to discover every secret part of her.
“Marcus!” Her body shook so fiercely with desire that her hands grabbed at his shoulders to keep her balance.
He shoved her gown out of the way and hooked her left leg over his shoulder. As he teased her folds with his fingers, he stared up at her, thankful as hell for the mask he still wore. God help him if she ever saw his need for her on his face.
“Hang on tight, love,” he whispered, flicking his thumb across the sensitive little nub buried at the top of her folds and eliciting a wiggle of her hips against his hand in response. “And don’t let go.”
This time when his mouth captured her, he slipped a finger inside her tight warmth. She cried out in surprise, but her arms tightened around his neck and her leg clenched tightly across his back as she arched against him.
He sucked gently at the little point at the center of her femininity as his finger continued to tease inside her. Evidence of her need for release slicked his hand, the taste and feel of her exquisite. She was so close that he could feel her quivering against his lips, could feel all those little muscles inside her tightening around his finger as he continued to stroke inside her. One more pulling suck of his lips—
She broke with a cry. His hands clamped around her waist to keep her on her feet as release shuddered through her and left her sagging bonelessly against the wall. When her leg slipped to the ground, he rose up to catch her in his arms.
She stared at him in wonder, her lips slightly parted and a visible heat in her cheeks even in the shadows.
The sight of her, flushed and satisfied, made him long to make her come again, this time while he was buried inside her. He couldn’t have that, not tonight. But he would never regret bringing her this pleasure. “Danielle, are you all right?”
“I’m wonderful.” Her trembling fingers lightly caressed his cheek.
Yes, she certainly was.
“But you didn’t…”
There was no use in pretending that he didn’t know what she meant. Danielle might still be innocent, but she wasn’t ignorant. There was also no denying the stone-hard bulge in his trousers.
“No,” he rasped, “I didn’t.”
“You don’t…want to?”
Sweet Lucifer. He bit back a groan of longing so fierce that it shook him to his core. He captured her face in his hands and kissed her heatedly enough to chase any doubt from her mind about exactly how much he wanted her.
“When you give your innocence,” he rakishly drawled into her ear when he could finally bring himself to tear his mouth away from hers, “it won’t be on some cold piece of ground tucked away shamefully in the bushes. And it sure as hell won’t be behind masks.”
He felt her swallow. Hard. “Where will we be, then?”
His heart stuttered at the promise implicit in her words that he would be the man she would share that moment with, at the realization that she wanted that, too.
Cannon fire boomed across the gardens, signaling the start of the fireworks before the evening’s end. In unison, all the bands sent up a fanfare that sparked excitement through the park.
“We have to return to the box,” he told her, thanking fate for this small reprieve from having to answer her question, because he had absolutely no idea what to say. “The fireworks will be starting soon, and we’ll be missed.”
She nodded. But neither of them could bring themselves to loosen their hold on the other.
“When this evening is over and we have whatever answers we’re going to find from Lady Hartsham about Elise,” he murmured, “the two of us are going to have a long talk.”
Another nod against his shoulder, but this time, she slipped away from his embrace. She retied her stockings, slipped on her shoes, and backed slowly toward the path. Then she was gone, dissolving into the darkness.
Sixteen
Dani hurried through the dark stretch of gardens as quickly as she could without stumbling on the uneven path. She wound her way back toward the lanterns and buildings of the main section of the park more relieved to be out of the wilderness with every step she took.
Her heart pounded brutally hard, and she gulped in great lungfuls of air. But she didn’t dare stop. She also didn’t bother to glance behind her, because she knew Marcus wasn’t following.
As a gentleman, he would wait before he returned to the box, to give several minutes’ space between their two arrivals to cover up any whispers of impropriety that they’d returned at the same time. And to give him an opportunity to collect himself, so there was no evidence of what they’d been doing in the darkness.
Oh, heavens, what they’d done! She pressed her fist against her chest to keep down the rising flush—not of regret or humiliation. Never that, never with Marcus. How could she ever regret something so wonderful with a man so special?
No, she fought down her emotions because she wanted nothing more than to turn around, run straight back into his arms, and beg him to do that again. To give him the same exquisite bliss that he brought to her. And with that, possibly lose both Nightingale and herself.
A long talk, indeed.
She slowed her pace as the path spilled out into the area surrounding the Chinese pavilion. Her fingers grabbed at her mask and she tore it off, her hand falling to her side and the long ties dangling against her skirt. She dragged in several deep lungfuls of the cool night air until it tingled her chest from the inside. But there wasn’t enough air in England to fight down the flaming heat lingering inside her that Marcus had ignited. A heat she knew only he could extinguish.
As she approached the rear of the gallery, a figure moved out of the darkness. Dani halted with a surprised gasp.
“There you are.” Mrs. Slater stepped into the lamplight from the shadows where she’d been waiting. “And gone dangerously longer than twenty minutes, I daresay.”
Thankful to hide her lack of breath under the pretense of being startled, Dani half panted out, “The line for the ices was exceedingly long.” But her voice held no inflection to support that lie. She added dryly, “Pity that we were separated in the crowd.”
“Indeed.” Mrs. Slater looked past her toward the avenue and lowered her voice, “And His Grace?”
Playing along with their very thin charade, Dani drawled, “I have no idea what you mean.”
Mrs. Slater’s face tensed as she continued to hunt for Marcus. “I was certain you’d have come back together,” she murmured. “This isn’t at all…” Then, in a beat, she cut off her musing, and her distraction was gone, a smile in its place. She took Dani’s hands and held her arms open wide, then raked an assessing gaze over her from head to toe and back again, looking for any sign in appearance that she’d engaged in anything less than proper. “Well, I hope you found Vauxhall
amusing.”
Amusing. Not at all a word she’d associate with Marcus. Intense, overwhelming, dedicated…
He needed her help to put his sister’s ghost behind him, and in that, she’d not let him down. She linked her arm with Mrs. Slater’s and led the woman toward the box door. She had answers yet to uncover this evening, and a niggling suspicion tingling at the backs of her knees told her that not all of them would come from Lady Hartsham.
“The gardens were quite diverting.”
That was the understatement of the decade, yet Mrs. Slater’s only reply was to slide her a look that Dani couldn’t quite decipher.
The two women slipped inside the box, arm in arm, exactly as they had left it, with seemingly not a care in the world except to drink one last glass of punch before the night ended.
Inside the box, no one had seemed to notice—or care—that they had been gone, although the gentlemen craned their necks each time the door opened, most likely in hopes that Marcus had returned. They all wanted one last chance to worm their way into his good graces.
But among the women, excitement rose over the impending fireworks. They were all in heated discussions about the best viewing spots and whether they would have a better view from the railing just outside the box or out among the crowd gathering in the alley, whether they should wear masks, and would the attendants know to bring them more punch if they left the box?
Dani couldn’t stand the prattling lot of them. Too much had changed tonight for her to have patience for such trivial matters. So she slipped away from Mrs. Slater and made a beeline directly for Lady Hartsham near the railing.
“May I have a word?” She attempted to snare Beatrice’s attention away from solving the problem of the band playing too loudly from the box next to theirs.
But the countess waved a hand to indicate that she needed a moment to resolve the problem and gestured for the uniformed attendant who had been serving them all evening. “If you would please go across the way, to that box right there and—”
An Inconvenient Duke Page 15
