by Lucy Langton
The rest of the day went as wonderfully as it possibly could have. The dowager duchess ended up getting along quite well with Martha and Archie, and the three of them had quite a good time together reminiscing about the old days.
Gregory and Sophie, on the other hand, had to be reminded quite a few times that they were in public, and that the dowager duchess was not yet aware of their desire for each other. They decided that they would eventually reveal to her their desire to become engaged, but it would be on an evening when she was a little more ... open to unusual developments in her eldest son’s life.
They knew that she may not take the news well, and neither would society. However, if Isaac had already married the daughter of a disgraced family, then certainly it wouldn’t be too much further a stretch for the Duke of Grenfell to marry a scullery maid, now would it?
Finally, the happily married couple retired to the Quince estate for their first night together. Louisa was finally able to see Isaac’s room and was overjoyed to see that she was given her own room as well. “But you’ll be sleeping in my room, of course,” Isaac commented as they admired Louisa’s room.
Louisa raised an eyebrow at her new husband. “Are ... are you trying to tell me what to do, dear husband?” she asked playfully. She walked over to him, pressed her body against his and rubbed his chest seductively.
Isaac’s eyes closed instinctively, and she heard his breath catch in his throat. “Certainly not,” he commented, “unless ... that is something you’d enjoy?”
Louisa’s eyes lit up, and she danced her fingers further down his chest. “Only in your bedroom.”
Isaac chuckled in a deep, sexy way, and then in one quick motion, swept Louisa off her feet and carried her into his room. Louisa giggled all the way there, and then when he lay her down upon the bed, he immediately crawled on top of her. “In that case,” he growled, “I’d very much like it if you were to undo your dress so that I might ... tease you with my tongue.”
Louisa felt her heart beating faster as Isaac talked to her. She wordlessly nodded, and then wiggled out from underneath him to come and stand by the side of the bed. She looked him in the eyes and then began undoing her wedding dress.
“Is this what you requested, husband?” Louisa asked, mockingly dutiful. Isaac nodded absent-mindedly, his eyes drifting down to her chest. She now had her dress undone and the top, and it tumbled down her chest to reveal her incredibly fine corset and delicate petticoat that she’d had picked out for her. When Isaac saw how see-through both garments were, he got up on his knees and came over to her side of the bed.
“Yes ...” Isaac said, kissing her neck ferociously and pulling her in tight to him. “But faster ... faster ...” he begged.
Louisa gently pushed him off her and said, “You’d like my clothes off faster? Then I suppose you’d better match my speed with your own attire ...”
By now, Louisa’s wedding dress was no longer on her, and she could feel Isaac’s throbbing member pressing up against her. Isaac quickly began taking off his suit from the day and was kneeling on the bed naked except for his pants in a matter of seconds. He smiled seductively at her, and she said, “Oh, but you’ve left the best part covered!”
Isaac reached up and began unlacing Louisa’s corset, maintaining eye contact with her the whole time. He shrugged and responded, “Yours is too ...”
He’d got her corset entirely undone by then, and as it fell to the floor, so did her attached petticoat. She was now standing in front of him entirely nude, and so she decided to make things equal.
When she pulled down his pants, his member was so hard that she immediately wanted it in between her legs. She made an audible sound when she saw it, and Isaac chuckled.
“That sounds like the sound you made when I stumbled upon you that day in the woods,” he whispered in her ear as he caressed her breasts and she began stroking him up and down.
Louisa couldn’t stop herself from giggling with embarrassment. “I ... I may have been thinking about ... something very much like this with you,” she reported.
Now it was Isaac’s turn to make the inhuman noise. He groaned in her ear, and Louisa could feel his tip glistening with wetness. She took one step closer to him and opened her legs ever-so-slightly, so that he became nestled in between her lips. And that, of course, was just irresistible to him. Isaac didn’t even try to control himself this time, he just gently turned Louisa around, spread her legs a little wider, guided his tip to her warm, wet entrance, and then slipped inside her.
When Louisa felt him, she automatically leaned forward just a bit, so that he was hitting that special spot within her. Isaac gently placed one hand upon Louisa’s throat and placed the other on her shoulder so that he could thrust deeper within her.
Both Isaac and Louisa were so aroused that it only took four thrusts for each of them to be on the verge of erupting. And then, when Isaac took the hand that he’d previously had on Louisa’s shoulder and began stroking her clitoris while he thrust deep inside her, that was all they could take. Isaac exploded within her, and Louisa braced herself against her husband as she finished with him within her.
When they had finished kissing passionately and laughing at their own ease of finishing, the couple lay down in bed together in each other’s arms. Louisa had her body pressed up against the side of Isaac, and Isaac was cradling Louisa in his arms. Louisa looked up at him and said, “Isaac Quince ... I do believe you’ve made me the happiest woman in the world.”
An easy, warm smile crept across Isaac’s face. “If that is even half as happy as you’ve made me, my darling, then that’s plenty.” Louisa tipped her head up towards Isaac, and they kissed once more, now forever connected as man and wife, but more importantly, as the loves of each other’s lives.
THE END
Can't get enough of Louisa and Isaac? Then make sure to check out the Extended Epilogue to find out…
How will Evelyn react when her father shares that he found a suitor for her?
At the ball, who will manage to steal Evelyn’s attention and what will he ask her?
What kind of incidents will bring Evelyn and Nathan back to Louise and how will she feel about it?
Click the link or enter it into your browser
http://lucylangton.com/louisa
(After reading the Extended Epilogue, turn the page to read the first chapters from “A Lady's Touch of Sin”, my Amazon Best-Selling novel!)
A Lady's Touch of Sin
Introduction
When her mother finds out that she was involved in a frantic love triangle, Marta Schnitzler is instantly being cast from her Austrian home. What awaits her is her Aunt Margaret, a tittering woman with an earnest responsibility to find Marta a match, against her wishes. While the blue-eyed beauty desperately tries to escape from her future misery, a very dashing man shows up in her life, but, to her misfortune, he is not the one her Aunt has chosen for her. But when her Aunt insists so much on a particular engagement with a Duke, should she just give up to the tantalizing stranger she just met or should she fight to satisfy the burning passion she holds for him?
Baldwin Terrence is a successful businessman and the future heir to his ducal estate. When his best friend’s cousin comes unexpectedly to visit, he finds himself surprisingly stricken by her stunning eyes, and the connection between them is electrifying. Her beauty is irresistible and tests his willpower at every turn. She's everything Baldwin is not: a spitfire, compassionate, apt to dream and gossip and live loudly and grandly. Of course, she catches the eye of nearly every important member of society, including the dastardly Duke, Lewis Remington. The only thing he knows is that he is determined to possess her, at any cost. Will he convince her that the haven she’s longed for all her life may be lying in his arms?
Thus begins a tale of lust and heartache, full of passionate moments. But soon their burning promises are all they have left. Caught between her past and her future, Marta must decide whether she’s willing to let go of
the life she knew for a love she never thought she would find. But in the end, is the choice actually hers to make? Torn between her Aunt’s will and what she desires, she has to choose between the man who sets her heart on fire and the one she despises. But can this undeniable desire between them really be buried? Will their love prove strong enough to shatter every obstacle in their way?
Chapter 1
Blonde-haired. Blue-eyed. A woman who'd grown up in the shadow of the gorgeous Alps, attuned to the layered and humble culture of the Austrians. She’d never been one to demand anything else. “In every way, you’re an Austrian girl, aren’t you?” was how her mother phrased it, with a twinge of doubt to her voice.
“You’ve raised me an Austrian girl,” Marta returned each time, genuinely fearful that her mother looked at her—her half-English, half-Austrian daughter, and considered her a mistake. Perhaps she longed for a full-fledged English daughter, a daughter with a better English accent, and a more proper approach to the concepts of courting and love.
Throughout the previous months, Marta had certainly proven herself to be much more like an Austrian girl than her mother wished for.
Marta Schnitzler was nearly 19 years old, which meant her mother, Evelyn Schnitzler, had journeyed to Austria to marry her father nearly 20 years before. Throughout those early years, Marta had lived a stunning, sun-speckled life. But there was always a strange shadow behind that life: the shadow of England, the country her mother had left behind and seemed to miss so desperately.
Throughout Marta’s childhood, she’d demanded of her mother only twice: why had she left her beloved home? Her mother spoke of England with such poetry and nostalgia that it made even Marta’s heart ache. Her mother had said something off-handed about her duty to Marta’s father and left it at that. “It was a different time,” she said eternally, as though that was some sort of bandage over everything else.
Marta had journeyed to England before age nineteen only a few times: at ages four, eight, and twelve. Now, as her mother verbalized to her that she would embark on a journey and remain in England throughout the next courting season, Marta was left only with the images of her twelve-year-old trip.
She felt sure it had rained the entire time; the grey clouds above had pressed onto their heads in a formidable fashion, and the accents had been difficult to decipher from county to county, as they’d visited her mother’s various friends and cousins. She glanced up at the gorgeous, white-capped Alps and felt a surging pain in her stomach.
“Mother. You can’t think that I’ll just leave my beautiful Austria all spring and summer long,” she whispered. “You cannot rip me from something I hold so dear. All my friends and my…”
“Yes, your lovers,” her mother said, a note of sarcasm in her voice. “Of course, I wish you to leave your lovers. You’ve created quite a mess of it all, darling Marta. I can see it on you. You’re a shadow of your former self. Moping about the house, your heart aching.” Her mother sniffed and lifted her chin, as though she sensed the power of her words and wanted to allow them to sting another moment more.
Tears collected in Marta’s eyes, but she refused to let them fall. She, too, lifted her chin toward her darker-haired mother, a mother who looked very little like her. When they’d walked down the street together years prior, people had stopped them and asked their relation, as they didn’t seem to be mother and daughter. This had cut Marta’s mother to the core. “She’s my daughter,” she’d insisted, in broken German. “Through and through.”
This was another factor that had altered their relationship over the previous few years. It seemed that Marta’s mother could never master the German language, no matter how often she studied. She’d grown increasingly disheartened about it. When they were in public, Marta ordinarily had to take over the conversation and speak for her mother, who grew aggressively red-faced and normally screeched at Marta afterwards. “I could have handled that myself.”
But Marta had grown up speaking both languages. She felt both sides of her personality as two separate countries. And her mother had pinpointed the Austrian side as the reason for her adventurous nature, the reason she’d fallen into such a strange and sinister love-triangle.
Indeed, her heart felt as though it had been dropped deep underwater. It beat slowly, strained, aching and heavy from all the madness she’d created. It was all her fault. She knew that.
“An entire season in England will be good for you,” her mother continued. They sat in the breakfast nook area with a full view of the mountains. She poured them both another spot of tea and rearranged the shortbread cookies atop the platter between them. The platter, to contrast the tea and English biscuits, had been painted in the Austrian fashion. Here it was, on full display: another contrast between England and Austria.
“Do you suppose?” Marta asked. She moved her biscuit across her plate, unsure if she’d ever be hungry again.
“I do. You remember my sister and her son, Ewan, don’t you?”
“Aunt Margaret. Of course,” Marta returned, remembering the finicky woman, approximately the same age as her mother, who’d insisted that she didn’t run too swiftly with the boys through the forest and moors, as it wasn’t “ladylike.” At this, her mother had told her sister that Marta ran around like a ruffian through Austrian hills. “It just chills me, wondering what sort of woman she’ll grow into,” she’d said.
These weren’t the sorts of things women like Marta could easily forget. She supposed that one never truly forgot the little, strange insults one’s mother cast toward them throughout their early youth. One’s mother was one’s very first audience—and if applause wasn’t heard, what sort of creature had one become?
“You’ve spoken with Aunt Margaret about this, then?” Marta asked. Her throat felt as though it might seal off, disallow her breath.
“Yes,” her mother returned. “She’s entirely thrilled with the idea. Already speaking about the sorts of matches she wishes to procure. She’s quite the meddling woman, of course—always has been. I remember when we were first courting, she had her finger in everyone’s business. If only I had listened to her when she’d told me who to link myself with, perhaps I wouldn’t…”
Here, she paused once more and drew her eyes again towards the biscuits. This seemed to be where the two of them chose to look throughout this strange and alienating conversation. Eye contact wasn't much of an option.
“Perhaps you wouldn’t have moved to Austria to be with Father? Perhaps you wouldn’t have had me?” Marta said, a hint of annoyance in her tone.
She’d felt the words flow from deep in the belly of her mother. She’d resisted them and now resisted asserting that those had been her thoughts. Her mother cleared her throat, shifted in her chair, and then blurted, “You’ll leave in three days’ time.”
This was far too sudden. Marta tore up from her chair and blinked at her mother, aghast. At nineteen years old, she could hardly envision travelling such a distance alone.
“You’ll take Laura with you,” her mother said then, as though this was enough of a gift.
“So, Laura must be forced to abandon her family and friends also?” Marta asked. She sizzled with volatility.
“You can tell her to remain here if you’d like to go on alone,” her mother said, sounding flippant, now. “It’s really up to you. I’ve informed her of the journey, and she seems rather pleased. Excited, even. The prospect of a new country, a new life… Why wouldn’t a young maid like that wish for adventure?”
Her mother placed a dry biscuit across her tongue and slowly chewed it, studying Marta’s face with beady eyes. Marta’s heart leapt into her throat and then floated back down again. She felt aching resentment for what her mother planned to do: rip her away from this wild situation she’d crafted.
But in truth, as minutes ticked on, she did recognise this as an opportunity to become something else, something better.
And, if nothing, talk of her departure would ripple through her Austrian t
own and make her sound even more exciting: certainly not the sort of woman you didn’t choose over another.
