He unpeeled her from her shift and stockings, unveiling at last the long and lithe and winsome whole of her. A slip of a girl, pale skin made paler by her long black hair. And then a womanly thatch of dark curls at her entrance, such a shockingly erotic counterpoint to the girlish slopes of her hips that for a moment desire nearly choked him. Oh, he could do this. My God, could he. His body wanted this. Was starved for it.
Too aroused for delicacy, he leaned her back against a marble column and knelt before her, dragging his lips along her hip bone and down between her thighs, teasing her with nothing more than breath until she parted wider and began to move for him, searching for the relief of friction. Precious, precious girl. He let his fingers fall gently on her hip bones and parted her with his mouth, letting his tongue at last find purchase against her hot, slippery skin.
She was so soft and wet and salty sweet. He lost all track of time, feeling a pang of pure possession every time she writhed or shuddered or dragged her fingers through his hair or whispered his name. Archer. Archer. Christ. He had never had such profound affection for the sound of his Christian name.
He swirled and suckled her until he could feel the tension rising in her body, on the verge of crisis. He invaded her passage experimentally with his tongue.
“Yes,” she said, all breath.
He had meant to make her come with his mouth, but now he wanted to feel it with his cock. He dragged his lips away and rose back up, edging his body so his erection pressed at the entrance of her quim. Her eyes flew open. Her lips pulled up in a grin.
“My bride, I did mean to undertake this in a bed.”
She snuggled closer, so that his cock was nestled just between her thighs. She closed her eyes at the sensation and pressed her face into the hollow of his neck. “Never mind beds.”
He took her hand and pulled her down atop the discarded pile of her skirts. He owed her dressmaker a debt of gratitude that there were so very many of them.
She landed beside him, laughing as their mouths met and stroking his foot with hers as they fell back into the tangle. What she wanted with his instep he could not say except that it delighted him and she could have it, though his hips were moving of their own volition to reunite his cock with the blessed sultry heat between her legs.
She wrapped herself around him. He could feel that she was yielding, eager.
“May I?”
“Yes. Please,” she breathed.
He edged inside with a slow, shallow thrust and waited for her to adjust.
“All right?”
She sighed and put her forehead against his shoulder. “Yes.”
He placed his fingers against the bud above her quim, stroking her, hardly moving inside, though the effort nearly killed him. She moved, urging him closer still. He gently withdrew and thrust back in. She gasped. He looked to her eyes for clues as to her pain, or pleasure, but they were closed.
“I’m not hurting you?”
“No,” she whispered. He let his hand work lazily in tandem with his thrusts until she began to quake beneath him, uttering a helpless little sound that made him smile. She cried out in earnest and contracted around his cock with such surprising force that she brought him with her.
And as he spilled his seed inside of her, he had a shockingly mutinous thought: I hope it doesn’t take.
Because now that he had had her once, how was he ever going to stop?
Chapter 19
A light supper had been laid out in Poppy’s bedchamber, but she ignored it, wanting only to soak off the remnants of the mud and rain in her—her—copper bathing tub. By the time Archer rejoined her, she was still immersed in the warm water, enjoying how her hair floated up around her like a mermaid’s. No. Like a proper duchess.
“Well look at you, Cavendish,” he said.
Cavendish, he called her still. As though she existed exactly as she always had. It made her inordinately fond of him.
She flashed him a saucy smile and rose up so that the tops of her breasts poked above the froth of fragrant water. She wanted him to see her. She wanted to make him hard and shaky again. She wanted to make him drunk on her.
He looked rather taken aback.
And then very, very pleased.
She liked that.
She liked that simply by existing, she could wrest a response from him. One even he seemed surprised by.
She was glad, she decided, that she had stolen his book. She was glad she knew what was in it and that he did not know that she knew. She liked that subtle imbalance in the knowledge between them. It gave her the advantage of surprise.
And now that they had covered most of the acts in plates I though VI this afternoon, there were a number of others she wished to try.
A cordial business arrangement, he had called this.
Given what she had planned, they might need to revisit that classification.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said, beckoning him nearer. “A hundred servants in this castle of yours and not a one to wash my back.”
“I should dare my servants to try it.”
He let his eyes linger on the stretches of her body that were bared. She stretched out, so that her ankle rose above the water, and smiled to herself at the way his lips curled up in appreciation for her provocation. He wanted her. She could see it in his face.
“Join me?”
He undressed and climbed into the bath behind her, arranging his knees around her thighs. He found a flannel and ran it down her neck and shoulders, around to her clavicle and breasts. She sighed with pleasure innocently, and then less innocently, leaning back to let him hold her. She pressed her slippery back and buttocks against his solid heat and amused her fingers by tracing them over the tops of his thighs. He placed a shuddering kiss behind her ear and she wriggled back, teasing his erection with the cleft of her buttocks until she could feel that his arousal was urgent and her only goal was to make him mindless with it.
“Are you sore?” he asked, tracing her from nipple to belly to the wet, soapy curls between her legs.
She was perhaps slightly sore, but the more pressing sensation was that she wanted to mount him, claim him.
He had made love to her outside. Now she wanted to make love to him.
She lifted her hips back until she felt the blunt, slippery pressure of his cock against her tender, swollen flesh. She rubbed herself against it for a moment, enjoying the simple tactile pleasure that shot through her. She was rewarded by a ragged sigh from her husband. She wanted more of that. She reached down, adjusted her hips, and put the head of him inside her.
For a moment they were still, a bolt of heat between them. She shifted her hips to draw him in, and he let out a gasp. He reached around and placed his hand on her most sensitive part. She momentarily lost her concentration. The man had a way with his fingers. Such a way that if she let herself, she could shatter right down to her bones this instant. But she wanted to take him with her. She shifted her hips again, guiding him inside.
“Christ,” he whispered in her ear.
She moaned and gripped the sides of the copper tub, slowly taking more of him, using her body to control the angle of his entry, teasing them both with the unbearable slowness of it. She could feel his breath catch. Feel him losing his control. Oh, she wanted that. To make the strong duke shudder. She was pleased with her unladylike body, so strong and sinewy from her exertions out of doors, which could be used in the service of assuming this exquisite little sovereignty. She bore down on him—then up, and down again, not a bit of her withheld.
He put his forehead to her nape and ran his thumb against her lips, and she bit it, hard. He hissed. “Fuck, Poppy.”
The hoarse, unmediated crudeness of his cry took her over the edge.
A pang of white heat unfurled through her body, and she sank down until she fell entirely apart, her body a fugue, insensible to words.
Later, after she had regained her powers of speech and he’d admired the sight of her in her
new lace dressing gown and they’d picked at the food and she’d grown sleepy, she had a private thought.
She was not, in fact, a proper duchess.
And that was fine.
Her husband clearly didn’t want one.
“I must sleep, Archer,” his new wife said, rising from the spot before the fire where she’d been lying with her head on his lap after he’d once again made love to her.
He took her hand and kissed it. “Dream sweetly, Cavendish.”
She squinted at him. “You’re not leaving?”
He had not intended to share her bed. It was too intimate a habit to establish.
Consummation of their marriage—the act required to beget the child they’d agreed to conceive—was unavoidable. Doing it in a way pleasurable to them both was only sensible. But he owed it to his wife and to himself to establish the proper boundaries, lest there be confusion on the nature of their purpose here.
But the look of Poppy, sleepy and sated, made him waver. Surely a single night would make no difference. He rose and carried her to bed.
With her in his arms, he slept easily and dreamlessly for the first time he could remember.
He woke up to the sound of his wife laughing.
She was standing in her shift at the door to her dressing room, hip cocked, having a quiet chuckle to herself as she examined the contents of her wardrobe. His mouth quirked at the sight of her. How bloody adorable.
He climbed out of bed and padded across the rug to stand behind her, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and resting his head on top of hers. She fit him nicely.
“What could possibly be so amusing about your gowns?” he asked, breathing her in.
She leaned back against him and gestured at the shelves and hooks, overflowing with pretty, costly new items. “Have you ever seen anything like it? You’d think your sister expects me to open a shop in Mayfair.”
“Just her way of welcoming you to the family.” He stroked her hair, which ran gloriously free all the way to the small of her back. “What are you doing out of bed so early? It’s practically dawn. Couldn’t you sleep?”
“Practically dawn is when we decent working people rise for the day, Your Grace.”
“Then I shall have to make you indecent,” he said, dropping his lips to her earlobe.
Archer gripped her hand and led her to the bed, as light and free as she’d ever seen him, and she could not help but be startled by the sight of his back and thighs, which she had yet to see in daylight. His body was so visibly strong that the angry lines on his skin were like a sharp rebuke to his vitality.
He turned back with a smile in his eyes and caught her staring. She tried to correct her expression, but it was too late.
His face went blank.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Pardon?” He kept his voice carefully neutral, as if he had not understood her.
Oh, God. She had embarrassed him. How excruciating.
“I didn’t mean to stare,” she said softly. “I don’t mind. It’s only that it looks painful.”
“It isn’t,” he said dismissively.
She moved closer and put her hand to his arm, expecting to be drawn into his embrace, but the ease with which he’d touched her moments before was gone. She could feel the tension in his muscles, the way his pulse beat faster. It was costing him, to show himself to her.
“Poor man. What happened?”
He sighed and removed his arm from the vicinity of her hands.
“It doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago.”
It didn’t look so very long ago. A few of the scars had not yet silvered.
She could not resist giving him a skeptical expression.
“I assure you, it’s not painful,” he said stiffly. “I’ll cover up.”
She grabbed his hands as they went rummaging about on the floor for his discarded shirt, stopping him. She would dig them out of the discomfort of this moment if it took her six more tries. He was her husband, after all.
She gave him her largest, most earnest smile. One that lived mostly in her eyes, and which she usually reserved for babies and especially delightful dogs. “You don’t have to. Truly. I only want to understand.”
He closed his eyes and tilted his head back. Several seconds passed, during which she could see him gathering his thoughts. Engineering just the right response.
He opened his eyes and met hers, his expression gentle. Very, very nicely he said, “Poppy, if I wanted to talk about this, I would have sought a different kind of marriage. I’d like to keep this private. Please don’t ask me again.”
Oh.
She rose from the bed, about as leveled as she could recall ever having been. To be put in one’s place with such kindness. How singular.
“Cavendish,” he said, so very, very gently. “Come back?”
Such delicacy, he had, with her feelings.
She despised it.
It meant that he could see how much he’d hurt her.
She granted herself a moment to gather her frayed dignity into some semblance of order before ironing her face into a smile and turning back to him.
“I must finish packing. The carriages are to leave for London at noon.”
He stared at her, clearly struggling to read her tone. “Very well.”
He rose, collected his discarded clothing, dressed, and left the room.
As soon as he was gone, she closed the door of her dressing room and sat on the floor and did what she’d wanted to do for the last ten minutes: wept.
She cried for the plants and soil she would leave behind today. She cried for the loss of her parents, so many years before, and the loss of her uncle, not yet fully mourned in the chaos that his death had triggered. She cried for the loss of her girlhood, which was well and truly over now, if she’d ever really had one. She cried for the dull ache between her legs and in her heart, and for her stupidity, for taking risks she’d always flattered herself she was too smart and too clearheaded to venture, risks as old as womanhood itself.
She was not so misty-eyed she had deluded herself into thinking this was courtship. She knew he didn’t love her and didn’t plan to start. But she’d been vain, thinking she possessed some kind of sultry female potency strong enough to melt away his scruples.
Yesterday, with all his nerves and affection and tenderness, it had been possible to imagine it was working. That the connection she felt to him was returned, in some small way.
And today he had been so polite and bloody sweet in letting her down gently that her foolishness was compounded, because he must have seen how she had hoped.
It was mortifying, the amount of care he took. She would rather he had simply said That’s not what I bought you for, Cavendish, and slapped her.
Well, she had learned her lesson just the same.
She had entered this marriage to protect her ambition. She must not risk herself in the process of saving it.
She slumped against a rack of shoes. How could she protect herself when he held all the power? He had secrets; she did not know what he might be hiding. He had wealth; she had only what he gave her. The imbalance was striking, and dangerous, and it galled at her. Until her nursery was built, the only asset she possessed in their arrangement was her womb.
The door cracked open, revealing the kindly face of Mrs. Todd, whose eyes widened at the sight of her. She must look every bit the sloppy, tear-soaked mess she felt.
“Oh, Your Grace, my poor dear. Whatever is the matter?”
At the woman’s sympathetic, motherly tones, Poppy cried harder.
“Shall I summon His Grace?”
“No!” she cried.
“Ah, I see. Not the wedding night you’d imagined? Few of them are, lass. Well, worry not. The act is painful at the start for some, but a body adjusts. Some even come to enjoy it. Shall I make you a simple, for the pain?”
Poppy was not sure whether to laugh or cry harder.
“Oh, Mrs. Todd. I have n
o need for a simple. But I wonder, have you any pennyroyal?”
The housekeeper’s face went flat with surprise. A countrywoman, she would know well what the plant was used for.
“Your Grace,” she said gently, “such remedies are not typically prescribed after a wedding.”
Particularly, she did not add, a wedding to a duke. What more were duchesses, after all, than vehicles for the begetting of heirs? Was that not what Poppy was? What she had explicitly agreed to become?
“I grow a bit in the walled garden,” Mrs. Todd admitted, glancing about as though she might be caught in the act of domestic treason. “I make a tea. For the maids.”
“Would you please have several doses packed in my trunk?”
The woman stared at her like she had lost her mind. Pennyroyal brought on the monthly courses. High doses could trigger a miscarriage—or worse—but a smaller one was thought to prevent conception. It was used by anxious maidens who’d allowed a gentleman too much liberty, or women with a house of children who could not afford another one.
Some said it didn’t work. But Poppy believed in the mysteries of botany. They’d always served her better than prayer alone.
Mrs. Todd relented. “Aye. But if His Grace were to find out …”
“He won’t.”
Her husband was not the only one who could keep a secret.
Chapter 20
Oh God, his heart.
He had known he would hurt her feelings by declining to discuss his scars, but that didn’t make it any easier to watch. Archer stood outside her door and listened to the muffled sound of his wife crying. It took every drop of self-control to stop himself from returning to her room and taking her in his arms and answering her questions—and the inevitable, excruciating corollaries—one by one.
He was not ashamed of his private lusts. Their awakening had saved him, returned him to himself, and that discovery was precious. But the truth of his desire was between himself, God, and Elena. Explaining the painful, freeing acts that kept him sane and strong to Poppy would be like handing her his soul and asking her to treat it tenderly. He did not want Poppy’s tenderness. Tenderness made one vulnerable, and evading that was the point of this arrangement. They had an agreement, after all, and his end of it had not come cheaply. He had done nothing he had not warned her he would do when he’d offered her his hand. He had done, in fact, the very least of it.
The Duke I Tempted Page 16
