by Gaelen Foley
She reached for it when he carried her over to the console table, then held it up to light their way.
“Now, then, my love,” he murmured, “you shall have the tour. Mind you, if you see a place where you would like to be deflowered, do speak up.”
“I don’t want the tour,” she whispered, nibbling his cheek. “I want you.”
“My lady is impatient.”
“Yes.”
He quivered when she flicked the tip of her tongue against the corner of his mouth. At once, he turned his face and met her kiss with ardent hunger. His lips entranced her. Holding on tightly around his neck, Lizzie drank of his kiss ever more deeply. Their tongues danced, swirled, mated in delicious anticipation.
He was panting slightly when he tore his mouth away from hers. “To the bed, then.”
“Yes,” she breathed, thrilling to the words and the white-hot intensity in his eyes.
Her pulse pounded harder in her veins. Holding her stare, he carried her down the corridor, past an impressive staircase framed by towering Corinthian columns, then turned down another hallway while she lit the way with the candle.
He was very strong, she thought, scarcely noticing the rooms they passed and all the furniture shrouded in brown holland to keep off the dust. He carried her easily; she felt quite secure in his muscled arms, even when he stopped not far down the second hallway and braced her bottom on his knee, pausing to reach for a doorknob.
He gave the tall white door a shove. It swung open. As Lizzie held up the light, her eyes widened at the chamber’s opulence.
The flickering illumination of her single candle gave her barely a glimpse of the deftly wrought plaster grapevines and ivy that twined around the painted ceiling roundels. A gilded frieze several bands deep enwrapped the walls, which in turn were hung with tapestries on pale green silk. The tapestries depicted a few famed passions from Classical myth: it looked like Venus and Adonis, Psyche and Cupid, Persephone and Hades.
To the right sat an alabaster fireplace, all chiseled white perfection. The room had a private bathing alcove, as well, framed by a profusion of rose velvet curtains. Their rich folds and gathers were looped back with gold-tasseled ties. Four-branched girandoles dripping with teardrop crystals offered more light if they wanted it, but for the night’s events, she trusted the intimate glow of the simple taper would suffice.
“It’s the state bedchamber,” he remarked as he carried her into it, giving the door a thrust with his boot heel. It swung shut behind them. “Not all the rooms in the house are this rich. It’s supposed to be saved for the royals if they should happen to drop by. But tonight,” he purred with a roguish smile, “you are my queen. Candle on the table, please.”
She did as ordered.
“Now, kiss me,” he whispered.
She did.
He set her down gently on her feet and, never pausing in kissing her, began to strip away her clothing. Her hands shook as she helped him, her fingers fumbling with her bodice; his hands worked smoothly. She left the task to him and went to work on his waistcoat buttons. He lifted her gown away. He freed her hair, unlaced her stays, made her chemise disappear. Her pulse was wild. She stopped kissing him just long enough to assess the fastenings of his black trousers with a glance. He leaned his head back against the closed door behind him when she reached inside them and wrapped her hand around his steely silken shaft.
“Ahh, I’ve missed your touch,” he breathed, closing his eyes. His long black lashes fanned his high-boned cheeks.
Going up onto her tiptoes, she kissed his neck and nipped him with a sportive little pinch of her teeth. He let out a sensual purr of laughter in response. Then she pleasured him, breathing in his scent as she nestled her cheek against his chest. She stroked him until he groaned and stopped her.
“Enough,” he rasped.
“Take this off.” She clutched a handful of his fine linen shirt, tugging impatiently at it. He lifted it off over his head and dropped it. His dark jacket and waistcoat already pooled on the floor with her light dress.
She bit back a moan of climbing lust as she ran her hand up his smooth golden torso to his powerful chest, savoring every muscled plane and ridge. Then she pulled back slightly, just gazing at him in admiration. The man was seduction incarnate, naked from his lean waist up. His black trousers hung open a bit, inviting her further explorations.
Her heated stare traveled up his sculpted body to his face. His firm mouth, bee-stung with her kisses, seemed to pout; his sea-bright eyes glittered with desire.
“I can’t believe I get to marry you.” The words slipped from her in a soft tone of amazement.
He reached out and cradled her cheek in his palm. “I was just thinking the exact same thing.”
“I love you,” she said.
Dev stared at her, mesmerized. The only reason he did not say it back was because the love in her gentle gray eyes took his breath away, robbed his voice. He couldn’t even speak in the face of such beauty. Nude and white-skinned, she was a pagan goddess, her long brown hair flowing over her shoulders and down her back.
His worshipful gaze trailed down to the twin swells of her breasts, half-cloaked by her hair. Her slender waist was inviting, but the luscious curves of her hips made him blind with want. With his hand still cupping her face, he ran his thumb slowly along her mouth and shivered when she parted her lips to lave it with an erotic kiss.
Who could have known it? His prim bluestocking had the soul of a courtesan.
Removing the pad of his thumb from her kiss, he grazed his hand down her chest to trail the moistness from her mouth to her nipple. She licked her lips and watched him. He brought his hand to her mouth again for another kiss. This time, she moistened his middle finger with her tongue; he then inserted it between her legs, giving pleasure as he probed into the demure mass of tiny curls. She drew in her breath sharply when he found her wetness. He stroked her for a moment as she stood naked before him, arching with pleasure. Then he brought the same middle finger up and tasted it with a wanton gleam in his eyes.
She took a forward step even as he reached for her, lifting her up in his arms. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, her legs around his waist. With her sweet rump so soft and round in his hands, he carried her over to the elaborately canopied state bed and laid her across it.
Three times with hands and mouth he brought her to the edge of climax until she was frantic, wild with need. Then, when he entered her gently, there was no pain for her. Dev was in heaven, inching deeper into her body by degrees. His heart thundered, his chest heaving. His body trembled with the effort to hold himself in check when he had dreamed of nothing and no one but this night, this woman, for so long.
She cradled his head against her neck as he arched over her, braced on his hands. Every touch, every breath wound a spell of love about their bed. When her long, lovely legs hugged his hips and her body took up a sinuous motion beneath him, Dev glanced down at her rapt face. Delighted by the feathery sweetness of her lashes, he bent his head and kissed the delicate blue-veined skin of her eyelids as she lay with closed eyes, savoring his lovemaking.
“Never leave me,” he whispered as he stroked her hair. “I feel so close to you now. I never want this to end.”
“It won’t. I won’t.”
“I love you.”
“Oh, Devlin.” She whispered the sweet words back to him.
Then her breathing quickened, her rising hips drawing him deeper into the rhythm of her need. Her hands crept over his shoulders, traveled slowly down his sides. She stroked his back, then groaned and gripped his derriere, holding him motionless between her thighs. “Ah, it’s too much!”
A seductive smile shadowed his face as he realized she hovered on the very knife edge of release. Hot and quivering beneath him, she was panting for fulfillment, and he intended to give it to her. “Are you mine?” he whispered.
“Totally.” She fairly sobbed with want when he caught her nipple in his burning palm an
d teased it with a satyric squeeze. “Oh, Devlin. You’re driving me mad. I can’t take anymore.”
“Very well, then,” he said in a husky whisper, clinging hard to the fast-fraying edges of sanity himself.
A few more thrusts and she surrendered, straining and sweating beneath him; at the peak, a shrill little scream of sheer passion tore from her lips. She had been clinging onto his neck for dear life, but her hold already began going weak as the orgasm dazed her. Dev caught her lingering blissful moans on his tongue, clutching her hard in his arms. Driven to the brink by her steamy body’s luxurious convulsions, his control broke free. He let go with a wild cry, giving himself to her in a deep, final thrust that sent his hot release flooding into her fertile womb.
For a long moment, they could do nothing but lie there, a panting mass of sated youth, all tangled limbs, rosy skin, and tousled hair.
She lifted her head and kissed him weakly, then dropped her head back onto the state bed once more. “I love you, Devlin.”
“My dearest Lizzie,” he whispered softly, drawing her into the circle of his arms. “I love you, too.”
“Say it again,” she begged him, thrilling to the miraculous words.
He moved his lips close to her ear and breathed his declaration again, whisper-soft. With a small groan of intoxicating desire at the warm tickle of his breath at her ear, she wound her wrists behind his neck and lay atop him.
He pulled the coverlet up to keep her curvy body warm, and when his gaze snagged on the small smear of blood on the flat sheet, he was reminded anew of the lifelong bond they had promised to each other, if not yet before God. He was filled with the sobering knowledge that she was his now—his to love and cherish—his to protect.
With a wave of fierce male instinct in his veins, he pressed her head tenderly to his chest as he held her.
“Is it always that good?” she asked in a drowsy murmur.
He smiled in amusement and kissed her hair. “Ask me in the morning, and you’ll find out.”
When she woke up in the morning, Devlin wasn’t there.
Lifting her head from the pillow for a weary glance around, Lizzie started to frown upon finding herself alone, then ruefully decided it was just as well. It was beyond her power to resist that man, and merely sitting up in the great bed called her attention to her body’s soreness from last night’s exertions.
After a moment, she scratched her head with a drowsy sigh and slid down from the high state bed with the sheet loosely wrapped around her. She crossed the lavish chamber to the bathing alcove. Behind the rose velvet curtains, it was all tiled wall mosaics and gleaming marble, like a miniature Roman bath—quite an unusual luxury even for the grandest houses. She smiled to find that Devlin had filled the bath for her. She knew it had to have been he who had done it because the warrior in him was too protective to let the servants pass through and glimpse her sleeping in the nude. An exploratory splash of her fingertips informed her that the water was still warm. With a fond smile at his thoughtfulness, she let the sheet fall and stepped into the bath.
Refreshed and dressed half an hour later, she went looking for him—and for her breakfast. It was only then, venturing through the gleaming corridors of Oakley Park that the full impact of her decision hit her.
Last night, she had been too shocked by all that he had told her in the carriage and then by her feverish want of him to pay much attention to the house. But now she stared around her, slack-jawed, at the soaring ceilings, the exquisite salons, and the white marble stairs that seemed to float up to the next floor without any support from below, and she could not believe that this masterpiece of a house was to be her home.
No longer just a well-behaved hanger-on of the household, here she would be the wife and mother, the heart of the home. Overwhelmed by the fulfillment of her heart’s desire, she walked out slowly into the spacious main gallery and looked up at the inside of the fanciful dome.
How still the whole place was. She suddenly knew in her bones that this was what she had been born for. To love this man, to restore this shattered family to wholeness, and to use all she had learned from the Knight family so that with the elevated rank and wealth she would share with her husband, she could do greater good in the world. Her destiny was at hand.
“Coffee, ma’am?”
Lizzie whirled around to find Mr. Jeffries shuffling toward her with a silver tray on which the coffee service rocked precariously with his unsteady gait. Really, the dear old thing ought to be pensioned off, she thought, hurrying to help him, but he seemed so happy to have someone to wait on.
“Thank you, Mr. Jeffries. You’re very kind. I’m afraid I couldn’t find the breakfast room.”
He smiled. “This way, my lady. If you wish, I will show you every room in the house and gladly answer whatever questions you may have. I am sure you will want to see the conservatory, the long gallery, the ballroom, the library—”
She perked up anew. “Library?”
“Yes, ma’am. But first, no doubt, my lady shall need to be restored by a good breakfast.”
She smiled at him as he beckoned her into a bright, airy dining room where the two other members of the staff waited to meet their new mistress—the aged housekeeper and the cook. Mr. Jeffries introduced her to the old women; then all three gazed at her, marveling at her, as though she were the empress of the known world.
“You must eat, my dear!” the cook advised, and sensing at once that Lizzie was not one to stand on ceremony, they took her under their collective wing like three fairy godparents. They were as solicitous as if they half believed she were already in a “delicate condition.”
Breakfast was laid out on the sideboard, and though she wanted to find Devlin, she did not have the heart to leave it sitting there growing cold after the aged servants’ warm reception and all the trouble they had gone to, to fix it for her. With patient courtesy, she thanked them and helped herself.
They stood by, beaming as they watched her eat. She was tempted to invite them to join her, but they wanted a proper viscountess for their master, and by goodness, she vowed, it was a proper viscountess they would get. She resisted the habit.
As soon as she sat down at the large mahogany table, her gaze came to rest on the portrait of a proud, raven-haired beauty that hung in a gilded frame above the fireplace opposite. “Who is that?”
“Why, that is your predecessor. Katherine, the ninth Lady Strathmore.”
Katie Rose. She stared at the picture. “She really was quite beautiful, wasn’t she?”
The servants agreed in woeful murmurs, their gray heads bobbing.
Lizzie set her fork down with a sudden sense of uneasiness, but she forced a smile. “Has anyone seen Lord Strathmore this morning?”
They glanced worriedly at each other; then Mr. Jeffries nodded. “He has gone down to Mulberry Cottage, madam.”
“The guest house?” she asked, furrowing her brow.
“Oh, it’s not a guest house, my lady,” the housekeeper volunteered. “Mulberry Cottage was where His Lordship was raised.”
Lizzie’s eyebrows lifted; then she remembered that Devlin’s father, Stephen, had been the younger brother. Jacob had held the title, and this grand mansion was Jacob’s masterpiece. The younger brother, Stephen, and his wife must have only warranted Mulberry Cottage as their home. She nearly smacked herself on the forehead. How silly of me not to realize! Devlin had been all too easygoing in this grand house last night. No wonder, she thought. He no doubt thought of the grand Oakley Park as Uncle Jacob’s house.
Mulberry Cottage was his home.
“Even after his father came into the title, the family preferred the cottage,” the housekeeper volunteered, then nodded again at the portrait. “My lady Katherine used to say that it was cozier for the children. What a beautiful family they were. Such a loss.”
Lizzie stared at them. Now she understood why Devlin was so down-to-earth. His earliest years had been spent, like her own, not in the manor house
, but in a simple thatched cottage.
“Poor Lordship,” the cook sighed, shaking her head. “When they died, he ordered the cottage sealed up like a tomb. Aye, ma’am, nothing was to be touched. Those were his orders. It was all to be left exactly as it was on the day they died.”
She paled.
In the next instant, she was on her feet, rushing out of the room with barely a murmured, “Excuse me.” She knew he had gone down to Mulberry Cottage to confront the past.
She did not intend to let him face it alone.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
The path into the thicket where Mulberry Cottage stood was overgrown with wild daisies and Queen Anne’s lace, and brambles that caught at Lizzie’s skirts as she ran by. The entrance of the cottage came into view with its gingerbread trim and a tangle of climbing roses.
At once, she saw Ben, who came toward her with a desperate look. “Miss Carlisle, I was just coming to get you! He’s inside.”
“Is he all right?”
“I don’t know. He won’t let me in.”
Lizzie gave him a grim nod and moved past him to the wood-planked door, opening it cautiously. It squeaked, betraying their incursion.
“Leave me alone, Ben!” came her beloved’s wounded-lion roar from within.
Lizzie glanced at the valet in trepidation. Ben shrugged and shook his head.
Taking a deep breath to ward off her rising sense of dread, she opened the door wider and slowly poked her head inside. “It’s me, sweeting. Where are you?” She slipped inside and closed the door behind her. “Devlin?”
No answer.
Venturing deeper into the cottage, she had a vague impression of cheerfully painted walls and simple wooden furniture. Some bookshelves, a pianoforte, homey decorations. An empty birdcage. A table with some porcelain figurines. Pressed flowers hung in small oval frames. The place smelled musty, everything coated in a thick layer of gray dust.
When she stepped around the corner, she saw him in the parlor. He was kneeling on the carpet, immobile, staring down blindly at a child’s half-completed puzzle on the floor.
