A Reluctant Betrothal (The Grantham Girls)

by Amanda Weaver

  “What are you thinking of, Grace?” he murmured, smirking at her. He knew what she was thinking, beastly man, and meant to tease her about it.

  “I’m making a list for the market in my head.”

  “Hmm. Somehow I doubt that’s true.”

  “What are you thinking of?” she asked, to divert him.

  “I’m thinking about how much I like this room. This bed.”

  She gave a huff of disbelieving laughter. “Do be serious.”

  “I am being serious. In all my life I’ve never been happier than I am at this very moment, here with you.”

  Her emotions were too raw to allow a response. What could she have said anyway? Instead, she leaned over and touched his face, his cheek rough with a day’s growth of beard. It gave him a reckless, wild look completely at odds with the face he generally presented to the world. She rather liked it, as if this Julian was for her and her alone.

  Turning his head, he kissed her thumb where it rested at the corner of his lips, and then gently bit at it, drawing it into his mouth. In an instant, heat curled in her belly, sharpening into a spear of desire when his tongue caressed her thumb. How could he draw this out of her again when he’d done it so many times already? How could there be anything left after all they’d spent? It seemed to be a well which would never run dry.

  “Are you still hungry?” she murmured when he released her.

  “Yes, but not for the food.” He set the remnants of their midnight feast on the side table. “Come here, Grace.”

  Wrapping his hands around her upper arms, he pulled her forward into his lap. His mouth tasted summery and sweet from the plums, his tongue slick with their juice. Cool and sweet, a counterpoint to the dark spike of longing he kindled in her. His hand closed over her breast, gently squeezing, and her nipples hardened in an instant. With an arm around her waist to brace her, he bent her back and lowered his head until he could take one peak into his mouth. Grace moaned, a low, needy sound she’d never made in her life until Julian had laid his hands on her.

  “So pretty and perfect,” he murmured against her skin. “I’ve dreamed of having you like this so many times.”

  “Now you have me,” she whispered, eyes squeezed shut as he moved to her other breast and began to slowly take her apart. Pushing at the sheet doing its terrible job of covering him, she reached for him, trying to tug his body over hers. But he planted a hand by her hip and resisted.

  “Yes, I have you now. And I plan to take my time enjoying you. And I won’t ever let you go.”

  She pushed away the throb of bittersweet pleasure those words caused in her heart. The only way she could let go and enjoy him this way was if she refused to let any part of her weak, loving heart begin to wish for him. He would come to his senses one day and leave her, returning to the upstanding future he’d spent his whole life planning. He’d decided long ago what kind of partner suited him for that life, and it would never be her. But she had him now and she wouldn’t let thoughts of the future intrude to spoil it.

  Finding his hard length, she wrapped her fingers around him and squeezed. He’d shown her just how he liked it, and she’d discovered she liked it, too. She liked the way his fierce expression would momentarily clear, his eyes closing and his mouth going slack as she touched him. She loved that face, and loved being able to make it happen. “Your body is at odds with your words. It’s as desperate for me as I am for you.”

  He chuckled and pressed a brief, playful kiss to her lips. “Yes, but as you well know, I take pride in my control. In all things.”

  With another stroke, his eyelids fluttered slightly. “Oh? You can control yourself so well?”

  “Yes, I can control myself.” Then he wrapped his hand around her wrists and with one shift of his body, both her hands were above her head, pinned to the bed by one of his. “And you, as well.”

  Oh...A flush of hot desire raced up her body, as her thighs pressed together and her nipples grew harder. Why did that matter-of-fact declaration from him—this casual claiming of her body—make her feel so pleasantly...possessed?

  Julian’s eyes darkened as he gazed down at her. The moonlight picked out his features in cool blue light, as if he were carved from one flawless piece of marble. But he was not cool. Not marble hard. He was real and warm and commanding every one of her senses in a way no perfect sculpture ever could.

  An experimental twist of her wrists gained her not an inch of space. He was immovable over her.

  “Well?” she asked, her voice gone weak and breathy. “What do you plan to do with me now?”

  That carved marble face cracked as he grinned. When he smiled like that, a dimple appeared in his left cheek that she’d never seen before. She wanted to kiss that tiny crease in his face, and claim it as her own. “Anything I like,” he said. And then his free hand found her breast, kneading her nipple roughly, pleasure with just an edge of pain. She moaned. The sound must have appealed to him, because he didn’t relent, twisting her nipple until her head was thrashing helplessly on the pillow.

  The ache between her legs was becoming acute. She wanted to hook her heels behind his thighs and tug him into place between her legs. But his legs bracketed hers, pinning them together, holding her still underneath him. She could arch her back, but nothing more.

  “Please,” she panted, needing more, all of him.

  But he wasn’t ready to give her all of himself just yet. He wasn’t done taking from her. Releasing her breast, he slid the flat of his palm down over her breastbone and over her ribcage. When his hand swept over her belly, she spasmed, gasping.

  “Oh, darling Grace,” he said, bending his head so he could watch his hand descend down her. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”

  He’d said that to her once before, when he wanted to make her his countess, but his title played no part in what he was doing to her now. His hand slipped into the tight space between her thighs and twisted until he could touch her, until his fingers had found the hot, slick center of her.

  “Julian!”

  “Yes, Grace. What?”

  But she’d lost the ability to speak, or even think, as he drove her hard towards her release. Twisting under him, bucking, she was reduced to an incoherent stream of pants and moans. In the dark night, bathed in blue moonlight, he urged her higher and higher, until she felt she was at the high, airless peak of a mountain, suspended there. And then she was falling, descending down the slope at a breathless pace, blinding pleasure rushing up from below to engulf her completely.

  Still floating down that languorous descent, still awash in the bliss of the night wind around her, she lay as he’d left her, arms still flung over her head even when he released her. His hands came around her thighs, finally spreading them to let him in. When he entered her, a long, slow penetration, she rose under him, the pleasure spiking again.

  “So magnificent,” he murmured, settling in over her, each thrust of his body deliberate and deep. “My God, I love you, Grace.”

  The words were a different kind of pleasure, a far more dangerous kind. I love you, Grace. But love wasn’t enough. It never was. Life was too complicated.

  None of that existed tonight, however. There was only the moonlight, the man, and the magic he wrapped around them.

  Strength returned, enough to let her raise her arms, to touch his beloved face. Julian was unhurried as he took her, staring down into her eyes. She fell into the unbearable intimacy of the moment, lost to him completely. As weary and sated as he’d made her, he pushed her to yet another release, this one long and slow.

  “That’s it, darling,” he whispered as she shook in his arms, her eyes burning with tears she wouldn’t let him see. Only when she was through it did he look away, bowing his head as his pace increased and his own release built. Burying his face in her hair, he moaned as he shattered. O
nly then did Grace let herself cry for this man who she loved so much and who was never meant for her.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The morning breeze woke him first, cool and smelling of the sea. Before he opened his eyes, he became aware of the soft, worn sheets on his body, the slightly sagging but not uncomfortable mattress under him, the scent of lavender nearby, the quiet rustle of someone else moving about the room...

  His eyes snapped open. Grace was at the wooden dresser, looking into the speckled mirror over it and putting up her hair. A pang of pure, unalloyed happiness shot through him at the sight of her. Watching her in such an intimate way eased an ache in him he’d been unaware of until it was finally soothed.

  She was already dressed, another trim white blouse and a blue walking skirt. Remembering the long, sensual undressing from the day before, and imagining her naked body underneath all those prim buttons and pintucks, had him hardening for her again. It should have been impossible after the endless night they’d just shared, but apparently his desire for her could never be slaked.

  When she turned, she started to find him awake and propped on one elbow in bed. A delicious hint of pink stained her cheekbones. That she could be bashful after all they’d done the night before, all the ways he’d taken her body, delighted him.

  “Good morning,” he murmured.

  “Good morning.”

  “How are you?” Another flush of color, and this time her eyes dropped away from him, still lounging naked in her bed.

  She smiled, off-kilter, but still in control of herself, still his proud, self-possessed Grace. “A little tired, to be frank.”

  “So why on earth have you gotten out of bed and gotten dressed? Come back to bed and sleep with me.” Sleeping with Grace tucked up against him had been one of the more enjoyable experiences of his life and he was eager to get back to it. And after they’d slept some more, perhaps eaten something, then... His cock was already hard imagining it. Perhaps they’d do that first and then sleep.

  “I have to go to work.”

  He blinked. “Work?”

  “Yes, work. I have to open the gallery. I’m already late.”

  “You’re going to work? Now?”

  She chuckled and shook her head as she fixed a little silver pin to the collar of her blouse. “It’s what most people do, Julian. They go to work to earn wages to pay for flats and food and such.”

  Right. She was still stubbornly refusing to marry him. Very well. Stretching his arms over his head, he settled back on her pillows. “All right. Go to work and then hurry back. I’ll miss you the entire time you’re gone.”

  She came and perched on the edge of the bed. “What will you do with yourself all day?”

  Shrugging a shoulder, he reached for her hand, tracing each finger with his own. “Perhaps I’ll go by the Hôtel Victoire. There are always some Englishmen in residence. I’ll likely run into someone I know. Other than Musgrave, that is.”

  Grace’s expression froze. “People you know? What will you tell them?”

  “About what?”

  “About what’s brought you to Menton?”

  “I’ll tell them I’m here for you.”

  “Julian, you can’t! What will people say?”

  “I won’t mention your name, of course. I’ll just tell them I’m here visiting a lady friend.” He’d do nothing of the sort, of course. He might have taken Grace to bed, but no one would know what had occurred between the two of them until they were wed, and not even then. But he was enjoying the battle she was waging with herself, her headstrong insistence on taking a lover at odds with her bone-deep propriety. She was not a woman who could live easily with a lover. He knew it; he just had to wait for her to figure it out for herself.

  “What will they think of you?”

  “No one will make note of what I do and with whom. And I wouldn’t care if they did. I’m telling you, Grace, I won’t live my life by those rules anymore, not if they’re going to cost me my happiness.”

  She sighed, looking slightly mollified. “I don’t live by those rules either, I suppose.”

  Raising her hand to his mouth, he pressed a kiss to her knuckles, shockingly innocent compared to all the ways he’d plundered her during the night before. It was a kiss not out of place in the most formal ballroom. But his lips knew her now, and one touch was enough to open the dam of his desire. Hers, too, judging from her parted lips, the soft, indrawn breath, the downward fluttering of her lashes.

  “Are you sure you need to go this moment?” he murmured against the inside of her wrist.

  Her head sagged on her shoulders and she moaned. “Yes, so you have to stop touching me, or I won’t.”

  “That’s not much incentive for me, since it would give me precisely what I want.”

  “Yes, but Madame Duvernay is counting on me to open the gallery.”

  “There’s no one desperately wanting to purchase a painting from you at this hour. I, however, am quite desperate for something from you, and it has nothing to do with art.”

  “Julian...” she sighed, but she made no effort to pull her hand free or rise from the bed. He grinned in triumph against her wrist.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be quick, and that can be its own kind of pleasure.” Reaching for the hem of her skirt, he began to drag it up her calves. Perhaps he’d leave her in her clothes. Just raise her skirts, bend her over something, take her hard and fast from behind. Yes, he’d send her out the door to work still perfectly groomed, and yet shaking for him beneath her tidy outfit...

  “Everything you do to me is a pleasure,” she said, eyes closing.

  “Then by all means, let me show you another way.”

  Grace was late to work.

  * * *

  He was a beast.

  Three hours had passed and her nipples were still hard and tender, chafing against her corset every time she drew breath. Under all her petticoats and skirts, her thighs were still trembling. Here she stood in the middle of the gallery, trying to discuss a canvas by Pissarro with a wealthy American widow and all she could think about was Julian, her body, Julian doing wonderful, unspeakable things to her body. Every inch of her ached for him.

  “It’s rather good, isn’t it?”

  It was magnificent.

  The widow’s eyes widened and she realized she’d said that out loud. Nearly moaned it, actually.

  Right. The Pissarro. Clearing her throat, she corrected her posture and banished thoughts of the night before from her mind. She was meant to be selling a painting to this nice American lady, who seemed eager to buy it. No sale could be easier to make, provided she could focus, and forget the way Julian had turned her towards the dresser, made her curl her hands around the edge for support, raised her skirts, and—

  “Pissarro is one of the most talented artists I know,” Madame Duvernay said, stepping between the American widow and Grace. “See the brushwork here? No one is doing quite what he does.”

  With a sigh, Grace removed herself, stepping behind the counter to organize receipts which were already perfectly organized. How did women do this—let a lover take so much from them—and still move forward every day like they hadn’t been shattered? Perhaps they didn’t love. It wasn’t the taking that shattered, it was the giving, the loving. That’s what broke you to pieces.

  “Your handsome duke must be quite the master in bed to put you in this state,” Madame Duvernay remarked when the American had departed with her Pissarro.

  “He’s not a duke, he’s an earl,” Grace replied absently, then realized which part of the sentence she’d failed to correct. “And I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Madame Duvernay let out a loud, throaty laugh, and Grace blushed. “Oh, ma chérie, you think I can’t tell when a woman’s been bien baisée? You
r duke must be quite good at it to put you in this state.”

  “I told you, he’s an earl. And he’s not mine.”

  “Non?” She arched an expressive eyebrow. “What did he come to the South of France for, then? Besides swivving you till you can barely think straight.”

  “He’s... we’re...”

  Madame Duvernay charged over her hapless flailing. “Because he is a man who looks like he wants something and has come to get it. He had that look in his eye, non? I think you are the something. And I think he is wanting more than to bed you. He can bed all the women he likes in London, if that’s all he wants.”

  What a horrible thought, Julian with another woman. She couldn’t breathe as she imagined it. But a lover had no hold on a man. He was free to go bed any woman he pleased when he left her.

  “He asked me to marry him,” she heard herself say. Oh, dear. The last thing Madame Duvernay needed was something like that to sink her teeth into. And predictably her eyes lit up with glee.

  “Ah! My little Grace will be a duchess!” Madame Duvernay remained stubbornly ignorant about anything to do with British aristocracy outside their willingness to spend their money in her gallery.

  “Not a duchess, a countess. And I won’t be that, either, because I said no.”

  Madame Duvernay shut up for all of thirty seconds as she stared at Grace. “Why do you say such a stupid thing?”

  “It’s too difficult to explain.”

  “Seems clear to me. You love him, it’s all over your face. That and the sex.”