by Emily Larkin
To touch you, she almost said.
But that wasn’t why she’d come here. She was in Vickery’s room because he was unhappy and confused. “I want to talk.”
“We can talk tomorrow,” Vickery said, in a quelling tone. His gaze wasn’t quite on her; he was staring determinedly past her shoulder, as if trying to pretend that she wasn’t sitting on the end of his bed wearing only a nightgown.
“Would you rather be Charley Prowse?” Georgie asked quietly.
There was a long moment of silence, then Vickery’s gaze came back to her. Those striking eyes, one blue, one green.
“Talk to me, Vic.”
He exhaled, and the sound was a sigh. “I don’t know what I want, Georgie. I just don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.” He sounded tired and defeated.
“I don’t think you legally can become Charley Prowse,” Georgie said. “You could tell everyone in England that you think you’re Charley Prowse, and there’d be a great uproar, but you’d still be the Duke of Vickery at the end of it because you can’t prove it.”
His gaze was on her face.
“You’re always going to have to be a duke, Vic, but you could retire from public life if you want to. Only . . . is that what you really want? If you’re active in the House of Lords, you can push your cause. But if you’re not then you can’t.”
Vickery stared at her silently.
“So I think that’s what you need to decide first. Whether you want to keep campaigning or not. And if you don’t, then you can hand the running of your estates over to your men of business and deputize someone to cast your votes in Parliament and just . . . step back.”
Still Vickery said nothing. His gaze was on her, unwavering.
“But I can’t see you being happy doing that, Vic. Can you?”
He looked away from her. After a moment he shook his head.
“I think you’d be happier as the Duke of Vickery.” Georgie hesitated and bit her lip, and then said, “Don’t you?”
He shook his head again. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it would be a lie. Because I’m not the duke and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life pretending to be someone I’m not.”
He sounded so trapped and unhappy that Georgie scrambled up from the foot of the bed to sit beside him. “Vic . . .”
Vickery stiffened and tried to draw away.
“Stop it,” she said. “I’m not going to ravish you. I just want to hold your hand.”
He stopped trying to pull away, and when she took his hand, he didn’t jerk it free.
His hand was large and warm and tense. Georgie held it in both of hers and rested her head against his shoulder. “I hadn’t thought about it like that.” But it shouldn’t surprise her that Vickery had, because his integrity was one of the reasons she loved him so much.
After a moment, Vickery sighed. “I have,” he said. “Over and over.”
They sat silently together. Georgie heard Vickery’s soft breathing, heard his words echo in her head. Living a lie.
There was a way through this. She knew there was. She just had to find it.
She thought about the old duke, Leonard St. Clare. And she thought about the Joe Prowse that Bill Kernow had described. Vickery was the son of two very different men, but even if he couldn’t remember Joe Prowse, he’d been shaped by him, just as surely as he’d been shaped by the old duke. He had Joe Prowse’s good heart and Leonard St. Clare’s strong sense of honor.
Georgie thought about this for several minutes, and she thought about what Vickery had said. Living a lie. Pretending to be someone he knew he wasn’t. Then she drew a breath and said, “Do you remember how Bill Kernow described your father? Born sweet. Never out of sorts. That’s you, Vic. You’re his son. But you’re the duke’s son just as much. He taught you about honor and he taught you how to manage the estates and how to give speeches in the House of Lords. He raised you to be the Duke of Vickery.”
She paused, but Vickery said nothing.
“He thought the world of you, Vic, and I think that if he’d been allowed to choose anyone in England to succeed him, anyone at all, he would have chosen you.” She bit her lip for a moment, and then said quietly, “Do you not think so?”
Vickery sighed. He disengaged his hand and reached for the book he’d been reading. He opened it, found a page, and handed it to her.
January 25, 1806, Georgie read. Alexander is twenty-one today. Perhaps it’s a father’s partiality, but I truly believe there’s no finer man in England. It’s a comfort to know I can pass the dukedom to him. He’ll bear that burden far better than I have.
Georgie glanced at Vickery. He was frowning down at his hands.
She looked back at the diary. Perhaps it’s a father’s partiality, but I truly believe there’s no finer man in England. The words made something squeeze painfully in her chest. How had Vickery felt when he’d read them? She exhaled a shallow breath, touched the sentence with a fingertip, then closed the diary and looked at Vickery. “I think there are two things that are true about you, Vic. One is that you’re Joe and Martha Prowse’s son, but the other is that you’re Leonard St. Clare’s son. I think you’re his son just as much as you’re the Prowses’, and I think that if you choose to be the Duke of Vickery it won’t be pretending or lying; it’ll just be you being who you are.” She handed the diary back to him. “But it’s your choice and you’re the one who has to live with it, so choose what will make you happiest.”
Vickery took the diary and looked down at it. She saw indecision on his brow and tension in the tightness of his lips.
“I’ll stand by you whatever you choose,” she told him.
He glanced at her, and his eyes were so troubled that it hurt—Georgie felt it in her chest, a physical pain—and in that moment she knew she couldn’t wait any longer. “Vic?” she said. “Will you please marry me?”
He stiffened, almost a flinch. Shock chased the indecision from his face. He looked away from her. “I can’t marry you,” he said, his voice low and rough. “Surely you must see that.”
“Marriage isn’t just about the good times, Vic; it’s about the tough times, too.” She stroked the back of his clenched hand. “I want to be your wife when you’re worried and unhappy and things are hard for you. I want to be your wife now. Unless . . . you don’t wish to marry me?”
Vickery squeezed his eyes shut. “You know I do,” he whispered.
Four little words. Four short, ordinary words that she wanted to catch in her hands and hold forever. You know I do. You know I do. Georgie couldn’t breathe for a moment. All she could do was listen to the echo of those words while joy expanded in her chest—and then the ability to breathe returned and she inhaled deeply and said, “Then will you please marry me, Vic?”
Chapter Eleven
For a long moment there was silence. Vickery squeezed his eyes even more tightly shut, and then opened them and turned his head and looked at her. Charley Prowse. Alexander Aubrey St. Clare. With his mismatched eyes and his tousled dark hair and the worry on his face.
Georgie held her tongue while he wrestled with his decision. Don’t push, she told herself. Let him make up his mind.
“Yes,” he said, and the word seemed to come from deep within him. He thrust the diary aside and pulled her into his arms and kissed her as passionately as he’d kissed her yesterday. “I love you,” he said against her mouth. “You have no idea how much I love you.”
Georgie tried to say the words back to him, but his kiss was too fierce, too urgent, stealing her breath, making her heart sing. It wasn’t until he abandoned her lips to trail light kisses across her face—jaw and cheek and brow—that she was able to tell him. “I love you, Vic.”
He stilled, his face pressed into her hair.
“I love you,” she said again. “And I don’t care whether you decide to be Charley Prowse or Alexander St. Clare. I just want to be with you.”
“I want to be wit
h you, too,” he whispered.
They sat silently for a moment, nestled against the pillows. Vickery’s arms were warm and strong around her. She listened to his breathing, his heartbeat, felt his breath stir her hair, and felt joyfully alive, overflowingly happy.
“The past eight months have been . . .” She couldn’t find the right word. Unexpected? Wonderful? The two of them riding together daily, talking and laughing and growing closer. “Perfect.”
“It’s been a lot longer than eight months for me, Georgie.”
“What?”
“It’s been years,” Vickery said, pressing soft kisses to her temple. “Years and years.”
Her throat tightened. All the time she’d been mourning Hubert, knowing he had to be dead, hoping he was still alive, Vickery had loved her? “I didn’t know,” she whispered. “You never said anything.”
“Of course I didn’t.” He pressed his face into her hair again and was silent for a moment, then said, very quietly, “I wanted Hubert to come back just as much as you did.”
“I know.” Hubert and Vickery had been as close as brothers. She put her arms around him and held him tightly. A feeling grew in her chest, as if she was about to cry. Not because of Hubert, but because of Vickery’s constancy, his patience, his hope. “Thank you for waiting for me,” she whispered, lifting her face to him, kissing him.
It started slowly, a tender, gentle kiss, but as the seconds slid by it became something deeper and more urgent, a kiss that didn’t merely say I love you, but also I desire you, I hunger for you, a hot and breathless kiss, no longer sitting on the bed but lying on it, Vickery leaning over her, his mouth devouring hers.
He pulled back, panting. “We have to stop.” His eyes were dark. His pulse beat fast in the hollow of his throat. “Georgie, you need to go.”
She looked up at him. With his pupils dilated like that, both his eyes looked the same color. “You always do the right thing, Vic. The responsible thing.” She reached up and touched his cheek. His skin was hot, slightly bristly beneath her fingers. “I wish you’d do the wrong thing tonight.”
His breathing was ragged. He stared down at her. “That’s what you want, is it?”
“Yes.” She traced the shape of his mouth, running a fingertip over his lower lip, over his upper lip. “I’ve had a daydream these past few months.”
He was silent, watching her with those dark eyes, his breath warm on her hand.
“I used to imagine that we’d gallop along the clifftops until the horses were sweating, and then we’d stop, side by side, and look out at the sea, and after a moment you’d lean over and kiss me.”
“I would, would I?”
Georgie nodded.
“And then what?”
“And then whatever happens after kissing would happen. Except I don’t know what that is.” She traced his mouth again—lower lip, upper lip—then blurted, “I want to know, Vic.”
Vickery stared at her for a long moment. “I’ve had some daydreams, too, these past few months. Would you like to hear one of them?”
Georgie nodded.
“Do you remember the time that spring squall came up out of nowhere and drenched us?”
She nodded again. The burst of rain had been sudden and intense, soaking them both within seconds. They’d galloped home, sodden and laughing.
“Well, sometimes I imagine that we see it coming and we make for the summerhouse and tie up our horses and I run up the steps and open the door, but for some reason you’re a few seconds behind me—fussing with your horse or something—and it’s you who gets drenched. Not me, just you. There we are, in the summerhouse, and you’re cold and wet and . . .” He flushed. “And I have to warm you up before you catch a chill.”
“Warm me up how?”
“Well, first we need to get you out of your habit. The wool is soaked through and you’re shivering.” Vickery’s flush deepened. “You don’t mind this? It’s not . . . offensive?”
“No,” she assured him. “It’s a lot better than my daydream. Go on. You help me out of my habit . . .” She imagined him fumbling with the buttons.
“Everything you’re wearing is wet, your stockings, your chemise, everything, so, um.” He cleared his throat, his blush spreading. “So you take it all off and I dry you with my shirt and give you my coat to wear, but it doesn’t really cover you.”
Georgie could imagine it vividly: the coat would be enormous on her, the cuffs swallowing her hands, the tails dangling almost to the ground. It would cover her breasts, but from the waist down she would be naked, completely exposed. She felt her cheeks grow hot, until she was blushing as much as Vickery.
“And even though you’re dry, you’re still cold so I make you warm.”
Georgie stared up at him and listened to her heart thump in her chest and felt her blood rush in her veins. Her gaze was caught in his, she couldn’t look away. “How?” she whispered.
“Like this,” Vickery said, and he placed his hand on her bare ankle.
She shivered convulsively, and he froze, and said, “Is this all right, Georgie?”
Her throat was almost too tight for speech. “Yes.”
Vickery hesitated a moment longer, his gaze intent and searching. What he saw on her face must have reassured him; his hand slid up her ankle and under the hem of her nightgown.
Georgie couldn’t help shivering again. This time Vickery didn’t stop. His hand climbed her calf slowly, gliding over her skin. When he reached her knee he paused, his eyes intent on her face. “Still all right?”
It took Georgie a moment to find her voice. “Yes,” she whispered.
Vickery gently nudged her knee.
Georgie surrendered to that nudge, parting her legs, inviting him to do whatever he wanted, anything, everything.
Vickery’s hand slid higher beneath her nightgown, creeping up her inner thigh, inch by slow inch, his fingers moving over her skin, tickling, making her shiver and gasp.
“Getting warm?” Vickery asked.
“You know I am,” she managed to say, breathlessly.
He laughed softly, and transferred his attention to her other thigh, his fingers light and caressing, teasing. Georgie bit back a groan. She dragged air into her lungs, unable to believe that this was happening, that she lay on Vickery’s bed with her legs spread for him, the nightgown barely concealing her private parts—and then she remembered that in his daydream she was wearing his tailcoat, and if she lay like this, splayed, she would be utterly bared to him.
It should have mortified her; instead, a pulse of pure pleasure coursed through her veins.
Vickery’s hand drifted higher. “Want to be even warmer?” he whispered.
“Yes.”
Vickery pushed her nightgown up to her waist and she was bared to him.
Every muscle in her body tensed. Georgie was caught between embarrassment and need—and then she saw the expression on Vickery’s face and the embarrassment snuffed out. He was looking at her as if she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. She saw his wonder, saw his desire.
Vickery reached out and traced a gentle path through the curls at the junction of her thighs, and then—oh, God—he was stroking her again, his fingers sliding across exquisitely sensitive skin—sliding, sliding—and then his fingers dipped inside her.
Georgie’s back arched slightly off the bed. She clutched the counterpane.
Vickery grinned at her, his face hot, his eyes dark, and dipped his fingers inside her again. “Like that?”
She could only groan.
His grin broadened. He shifted, lowered his head, and then his mouth was where his fingers had been.
Georgie opened her own mouth—but no sound came out. She had no breath to give voice to her shock, or to the quite extraordinary pleasure he was evoking. She could do nothing but grip the counterpane and shift helplessly while he teased her with his fingers, with his tongue, with his teeth. Her pulse thundered in her ears and she was hot enough to burst into
flames—and then she did burst into flames. She heard herself cry out breathlessly.
Vickery drew her nightgown down, covering her, smoothing the fabric gently over her legs, and then stretched out alongside her.
“Do you think that would warm you up enough?” he asked.
Georgie pressed her hands to her face for a moment, catching her breath, catching her sense of self, then she lowered her hands and looked at him. “You know it would.”
He laughed softly and gathered her in his arms, kissing her brow, her cheek, her lips.
Georgie kissed him back, tasting herself in his mouth. “What happens after that? In your daydream.”
“It depends,” Vickery said. “Sometimes it stops raining and you get dressed and we ride home, and sometimes . . . sometimes it rains all afternoon and we stay in the summerhouse for hours.”
“Hours?”
“Hours and hours.”
She ran her fingers through his dark, disheveled hair. “What do we do?”
“Lots of things,” Vickery said. “Would you like me to show you my favorite one?”
“Yes.”
Vickery climbed off the bed and removed his nightshirt in one movement, dropping it to the floor.
He was stunning in the candlelight. The broad shoulders, the muscular arms, the powerful thighs. A trail of dark hair arrowed down his abdomen.
Georgie’s gaze followed that trail and fastened at his groin. She had grown up in the countryside. She knew that males of a species possessed an appendage that females didn’t. What she hadn’t known was what the appendage looked like on a man.
Vickery’s appendage was rather larger than she’d thought it would be, jutting stiffly from his body. Its color was a rosy red.
Georgie stared at it, consumed by curiosity and an intense longing to touch it, and then looked at his face.
Vickery was watching her, waiting, his eyes dark and intent, his chest rising and falling with each breath.
Georgie moistened her lips, found her voice. “You’re magnificent.”
Vickery blushed, until his face was as rosy as his appendage. “Do you still want to continue with this daydream?”
