She broke the kiss. “Since no one is home at Lockwood House, I don’t suppose anyone left an open window or unlocked door?”
“As a matter of fact, I did.”
After stabling the horse, he led her into the house and lit a candle before guiding her upstairs to his bedchamber, even though he hadn’t slept there in years.
Felicity doffed her pelisse and reached up to take down her hair.
Jack set down the candle and doffed his cloak. “Let me,” he whispered, and he swiftly undressed her as her russet curls tumbled over her shoulders and down her back.
She lay back on the bed, lifting her arms over her head to spread her hair all over the pillow, offering him a clear view of her nude body as he thought he might burst out of his clothes before he could remove them.
“Do you need help?” she asked with a faint smile.
“No. Stay right where you are.” He couldn’t take his eyes away from her as he sat down to remove his boots. “Don’t even move. You are the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen.”
“You don’t want me to move at all?” Her voice was small and anxious. “Or make the slightest peep the whole time?”
Jack dropped a boot to the floor with a thump as he surveyed her. “Who’s been cutting a sham with you about the act of love since the last time we were together? Surely not Lady Tyndall, who to hear his mother tell it, seduced Howland because he was too feeble to ward off her advances? Then again, after what I’ve observed of him in the past few days, maybe he couldn’t at that.”
“No, the Duchess of Halstead, my straitlaced aunt from Boston. She spoke to me this morning about the wedding night—with Howland.” She shuddered, or maybe she only shivered because she was unclothed and the bedchamber was just a little chilly.
He stood up to unfasten his breeches. “Well, she’s wrong, sweetling. When I told you not to move just now, I meant that you shouldn’t leave me.” He gifted her with a tender smile as he lowered his voice to a hot whisper. “Otherwise, once you’re in my embrace, make all the moves and sounds you want.”
She smiled back, breathing out a little sigh of bliss. “I will never leave you. I will never go anywhere without—without you.”
Once he was as naked as she, he covered her body with his own and kissed her passionately, delving his tongue deep into her mouth as he tasted the sweetness that was Felicity. Her hands feathered lightly down his back and beneath his buttocks as she opened herself to him, apparently eager to have him inside of her. As he scattered kisses all over her face and neck, across her chest to her breasts, she reached down to cup him with one hand while stroking him with the other. Jack gasped, thinking he might explode on the spot, and began suckling the rosy peak of one of her breasts as if doing so would keep his climax at bay.
But he didn’t think he could hold back a moment longer, so he plunged swiftly into her tight passage that was already slick with desire for him. Felicity moaned and arched beneath him, weaving her fingers into his hair as he thrust in and out of her silken heat with an urgency that made the bed rock and creak. To his delight she cried out in abandon, for there was no one around to hear the rhythmic music of their love.
For it was love that he felt coursing through every part of his body, a sensation that barely trumped the throbbing pleasure in his loins as he continued driving into her, harder, faster, deeper, till everything dissolved in a flood of ecstasy that swirled around them, setting them adrift on a sea of passion that tossed them from one wave to the next till he collapsed beside her, panting raggedly and gazing into her shining eyes as he said, “I love you, Felicity.”
She smiled back, a tiny tear of joy glittering on her dark lashes before she kissed him and whispered, “I love you too, Jack.”
* * * *
At their wedding a fortnight later, Jack’s Uncle Crispin kissed the bride on the cheek before telling his nephew, “You were right all along, Jack. Perhaps if I hadn’t pressed you and Grace to marry, she might never have caused such a scandal that now no one will marry her. And I must say, I’ve never seen you as happy as you seem now.”
“I don’t seem happy. I am happy,” Jack asserted, as he held Felicity’s hand, now sporting his mother’s ring, in his own. “With Felicity by my side, I intend to spend the rest of my life being happy. And I have faith that in time, Grace will find happiness, too.”
Felicity’s latest—and final—betrothal ring was a diamond just like the one Howland thought to foist on first Lydia and then her, only it wasn’t quite as big. After all, Jack and Samantha’s father had been a soldier, the younger brother of a viscount who’d inherited his title from a distant cousin. The bigger ring from Howland had originally belonged to the bride of the younger son of a duke. The only thing that made Felicity almost as happy as being the bride of Captain Jack Jordan—for surely nothing could make her happier than that—was being able to surprise Lady Martha Griffin with the return of her ring at Jack and Felicity’s wedding reception.
“Oh, you dear girl!” Lady Martha exclaimed, tears of joy glittering in her eyes as she held her long lost betrothal ring between her thumb and forefinger. “I never thought I would see this ring again—certainly not on my own finger.”
Her son, the Duke of Ainsley, accompanied by his own bride of almost two months, the former Sophie Patton, carefully plucked the ring from his mother’s trembling fingers. “Allow me, Mother.” He slid the ring onto the third finger of Lady Martha’s left hand.
Sophie, for her part, reached for Felicity’s hand, favoring her with a warm smile. “I’m happy to have a new cousin, especially one who’s a bride like me and Samantha.”
“Don’t forget Emily,” Samantha reminded Sophie, as she stood on the other side of Jack. “She just married Gabriel’s cousin James.”
“Who also happens to be my cousin,” Sophie said, laughing. “Have we any other cousins in need of marrying?”
“There’s my cousin Grace, who my uncle always wanted me to marry,” said Jack.
“And my cousin Blake, but I don’t see the two of them marrying each other,” added Felicity, as she recalled the mysterious young woman who’d been in the book room with him that night. “Then again, I never thought I would marry a highwayman.”
“Only I wasn’t a real highwayman,” Jack insisted.
“Except for all those times you donned a mask and stole precious valuables.”
He lowered his voice. “Including the night I stole into Halstead House?”
“You stole an express from Aunt Cordelia,” Felicity said. “Even if it was the wrong one.”
Mischief gleamed in his aquamarine eyes. “Ah, but that was hardly a precious valuable. Yet I did steal the most priceless thing of all. The one thing I still have and always will.”
Felicity smiled. “My virtue?”
“Indeed, but did I not steal your heart as well?”
“What makes you think you didn’t steal it the night we met? And why is your mouth suddenly hanging open as if you’re hoping to catch…a kiss?”
“Because even though the night we met was the night you stole mine, I thought I was only stealing your garnet ring,” he said earnestly. “As for my open mouth, you’re absolutely right. I am hoping to catch a kiss.”
Jack and Felicity kissed in front of all their guests, to the shock of some and to the delight of others…but most importantly, to their own mutual joy at finding love forever after.
THE END
WWW.KARENLINGEFELT.COM
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Forks, Washington, Karen Lingefelt probably dreamed of being a writer while still in the womb. As a preschooler, she scribbled with crayons in picture books to put her own spin on the story. In school she sat at her desk defiantly writing stories when she should have been working on her remedial math assignments. Later she joined the Air Force, and when she wasn’t traveling overseas, she spent her off-duty hours banging out epic sagas on her portable typewriter. Even after leaving the service to become the sta
y-at-home mom of three special-needs children, she eked out a few minutes to continue pursuing her lifelong dream.
Now the author of lighthearted, romantic romps set in Regency England, she lives in Florida with her family.
For all titles by Karen Lingefelt, please visit
www.bookstrand.com/karen-lingefelt
www.BookStrand.com
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