by Gaelen Foley
Accepting her answer with a bow worthy of a courtier, Tooke whisked her ragged cloak away with Ian’s fine one, then sped out of the entrance hall to leave the two of them alone, too discreet a captain of this sophisticated household to raise an eyebrow at the impropriety of their unchaperoned, late-night visit. He knew his master to be a man of the world.
Tooke did not fail, however, to send Ian a discreet nod of lavish approval on his choice of brides.
Ian, in turn, cleared his throat, picked up the candelabra that Tooke had left for them, and escorted Georgiana up to the main floor.
Though a bit more restrained in its ostentation than Knight House, Ian’s home reflected his lofty rank as well as his worldly tastes. The staterooms throughout the first two floors had been carefully laid out to accommodate his function as a diplomat, and the size and scope of the home were easily up to the task of entertaining foreign dignitaries in style.
In everyday life, though, he had to admit, its grandeur somehow emphasized its hollowness. It was equipped for large receptions, but hardly anyone besides the staff was ever here.
As a child, when it had been his father who was the marquess, he had innocently assumed that everyone lived the way he and his best friend Robert did, in eight-story mansions with walled sculpted gardens, gilded ceilings thirty feet tall, and marble busts unearthed from the Hellenistic age on display.
By now he knew better than that, thank God. He had long since learned how blessed he was in life, and he took seriously all the responsibility that came with so much privilege.
After he’d led Georgiana past all the pomp of the public regions, they ascended to the third floor and walked through the intimate private gallery. The long, narrow room ran along the back wall of the house, overlooking the garden.
The front portion of the floor had been divided in half, creating two large and sumptuous private apartments, one for himself, the other designed for the lady of the house. The latter had long stood empty.
Each suite contained a spacious bedchamber, a sitting room, an enormous closet and dressing room, as well as a bathing alcove and water closet with all the most modern accoutrements.
The two apartments adjoined, of course, for the usual marital visits, while the common sitting room along the back of the house had always been intended as a private family space.
As he escorted Georgiana across the long, narrow, family parlor, he could remember his mother sitting in here with his sister Maura, teaching her fancy sewing. He remembered himself as a boy, lying on his stomach on the blue carpet, playing with his pet cat’s whiskers and trying to memorize his Latin passages from the Stoic philosophers that his father had raised him on, half-listening all the while to his mother’s gossip disparaging the latest escapades of “that woman,” their neighbor, the scandalous Duchess of Hawkscliffe.
The first Georgiana.
Mother would not have approved of this match, he mused sardonically. Mother had believed in cold and dignified marriages, preferably unhappy.
No wonder it was Mother who had campaigned so hard with him for Catherine.
Taking both of Georgiana’s hands, he backed into his bedchamber, drawing her slowly into the room with a reassuring smile. Then he closed the door on all those old memories, and locked it.
Georgie was beginning to wonder if the blush that had invaded her cheeks half an hour ago was becoming a permanent feature, for it showed no signs of going away. If anything, her face glowed even more hotly as she dwelled upon the knowledge of what Ian and she had come here to do.
It seemed strange to her that she had zero misgivings about letting him seduce her. Then again, she had total trust in the man. He had always made her feel safe—not surprising, since he had saved her life in the very first moments of their acquaintance. To that lovely safety she now added a truly warm affection and a comforting sense of belonging. She knew that she belonged with him, and it made what they were doing feel very natural.
Still, though, that didn’t mean she wasn’t nervous. Her heart was racing with anticipation, and she slipped him a self-conscious little smile as he locked the bedroom door.
“Come in,” he murmured with a suave gesture toward the room. “Make yourself at home.” Then he turned away, crossing the cavernous space to set the candelabra on the distant lowboy.
Georgie scanned her surroundings by the low lights burning in the vast room. The space was conceived on a grand scale with gravity and dignity, pomp and splendor, as if deliberately to remind her that she was about to be bedded by A Lord. The colors were soothing dark blue and reserved brown, a bit of sophisticated black, with touches of gilding and splashes of red. Creamy walls stretched between oak floors cushioned by dark Persian rugs and a coved ceiling with painted medallions.
Off to her left, a cheerful blaze crackled in the fireplace beneath a pristine mantel of snow-white limestone. Around it, elegantly strewn, sat a sleek grouping of gilded ebony furniture in the Roman style, as though this were the retiring room of Caesar himself.
To her right, however, Ian’s giant bed loomed in the shadows. Georgie gulped silently as her stare traveled over it.
Four towering Corinthian columns served as bedposts, holding up a crown of heavy velvet drapery. The coverlet was lustrous chocolate satin and the sheets, thoughtfully turned down by a servant, were of creamy cotton. A mound of tasseled pillows were piled against the ebony headboard. In all, they presented a prospect both intimidating and deliciously inviting.
Across the room, her darkly charming host slipped off his black evening coat and hung it on the doorknob to a closet.
As he headed back toward her, the firelight cast a ruddy halo over his dark hair and glimmered all along his powerful V-shaped silhouette. Her heart skipped a beat. A part of her wanted to lose her nerve and run, but she had waited and wanted and wondered about The Act for too long to back out now. Tonight her only desire was to let the man of her dreams satisfy all her sensual curiosity. Tonight she resolved to follow her heart, explore her instincts, find the secret to this mystery she had puzzled over for so long, and follow Ian’s lead.
After all, she thought as she slowly began peeling off her gloves, the man would soon be her husband. The thought of it brought a nervous, giddy, and yet joyful laugh bubbling up to her lips while Ian approached in his white shirt-sleeves and gray pin-striped waistcoat.
“What are you giggling at?” he demanded in a velvet murmur as he gently took hold of her elbows and stroked her arms in a soothing fashion.
“Sorry, I just can’t believe this is really happening!”
“Too sudden for you?” he murmured.
“No.” She moved closer to him, tilting her head back. “I’m happy.”
He slipped his arms around her waist and smiled at her. “Me, too.” Then he leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to her lips.
If she had any underlying doubts, they vanished when his lips brushed hers with silken care. Georgie couldn’t stop smiling as she returned the kiss, caressing his iron-hard arms through the crisp lawn of his shirt.
All of a sudden, he lifted her off her feet without warning; she laughed aloud as he carried her toward the fire.
“Um, Ian?”
“Yes, my darling?”
“You’re going the wrong way,” she pointed out, clasping her hands behind his neck in girlish delight.
“Mm?”
“The bed’s that way,” she whispered in his ear.
“So impatient,” he chided her with a smoldering glance of pure wickedness.
“Ah, you have a plan?”
“Always.” Arriving near the fireplace, he set her gently on her feet again. “Now you won’t get cold when I undress you.”
“Oh.” Her eyes widened, but she recovered her usual daring rather quickly. “Or—when I undress you,” she countered, reaching up to pluck at his impeccable cravat.
He bent to kiss her again, so smooth and sure of himself that she barely noticed that when his arms encircled her, he
was in fact unbuttoning the back of her gown. He distracted her from his true intent with a nuzzling kiss on her cheek. “You’re not scared, are you?”
“No.”
“Good. I’ll be gentle.”
When she realized what his clever fingers were doing behind her back, she decided that turnabout was fair play, and she reached for the buttons of his waistcoat. She was nowhere near as deft as he, fumbling her way through the job, but he completed his task and glanced down fondly, enjoying her eagerness if not her lack of expertise.
At last, she parted the silk halves of his waistcoat and pushed it down off his big, wide shoulders. He loosened her bodice with a casual air, sending wild thrills crashing through her body. How hard it had been to get him to kiss her back in the prayer cave! she mused. Now that he’d made up his mind about her, it seemed there was no stopping him.
Nevertheless, he maintained a slow, leisurely air to avoid upsetting her with too much passion, kissing her shoulder as his efforts now bared it, kissing his way up one side of her neck. He threaded little tickling kisses across her hairline and then down the other side of her cheek, her earlobe, her neck, down low to the other shoulder, delighting and relaxing her with his lover’s play. Georgie was throbbing all over.
He captured her face between his warm, wondrously skilled hands, and as he kissed her slowly, deeply, he tugged the tortoiseshell combs out of her hair and brought her tresses tumbling down. This was a man who knew exactly what he was about.
When he ended the kiss, she wove a little on her feet in blissful unsteadiness. Ian, meanwhile, gathered her skirts in his knowing hands and slipped her dress off over her head with a practiced skill that would have impressed her lady’s maid.
Across the tall ceiling, the fire cast huge shadows of the two of them stealing more kisses and continuing to undress each other. Her senses were so sharply heightened she noticed the subtlest current of air moving against her bare arms as Ian gently unlaced her light stays. Discarding them behind him, his glazed stare fixed upon her now freed breasts.
He seemed to forget what he was doing as he stood there admiring the shameless jut of her swollen nipples against the paper-thin cotton of her chemise. He brought his hand up slowly from his side, ran one knuckle up her stomach through her chemise, and then diverted the center line of his caress, rubbing his knuckle across the hardened peak of her left breast.
Georgie sighed, but she wanted to see more of him, too. Reaching up to unfasten the single button that closed the front V of his shirt, she parted the smooth lawn fabric, revealing an expanse of his sculpted male chest so enticing that it made her moan a little. “Your turn,” she whispered, trailing her fingertips hungrily down the expanse of smooth skin that had been revealed.
Ian shook himself out of his daze and obeyed her, loosening his silver cuff links and then lifting his shirt off over his head. Tossing it aside at once, he moved toward her again to rid her of her petticoat, but Georgie stopped him in sheer awe, planting her hand on his splendid chest to keep him at arm’s length, just so she could admire.
“Oh, Ian,” she breathed in stunned awe. “You are magnificent.”
He smiled at her and dropped his gaze with almost boyish modesty, but it was true.
He was breathtaking, tall and powerful and beautifully proportioned from head to toe. His chest was at her eye level, so Georgie could not help but gape at the flowing swells of his pectoral muscles, the adorable flat circles of the masculine nipples, the slight dip in the center, running up to the beguiling notch at the base of his throat. His collarbones spanned outward like flying buttresses to reinforce the might of his wide, iron shoulders. Meanwhile, just below his lovely chest, all the compact rippling muscles of his abdomen and trim waist invited her exploration. She could see by the firelight that his skin there was velvety smooth, but she was almost too much in awe to dare touch him.
Looking lower, she admired his lean hips and strong, sweeping thighs. The size of the bulge between them, however, chased her frank scrutiny away in sudden recollection of what lay ahead.
How would it be possible for him to lie on her? she wondered. The man had to be more than two hundred pounds of pure muscle. Surely he would crush her.
She lifted her chin to ask him about it, but forgot the question as her stare traveled up over his wonderful torso. The beauty of his powerful arms lured her gaze now, and her touch.
Lifting her hands to his shoulders, she slowly traced her fingertips down his thick biceps, over his lightly furred forearms, to his warm, strong, gentlemanly hands. Her touch ended at the signet ring that he wore on his pinky finger, when Ian suddenly captured her venturesome hands. When she looked up in surprise, she found him watching her with rising fire in his eyes.
“Looked your fill?” he asked in a husky murmur, but Georgie couldn’t find her voice to answer, still caught up in staring.
She gazed at the strong, enticing column of his neck, the forthright angle of his Adam’s apple. She understood now why men kept their necks covered under restrictive cravats—to keep ladies from daydreaming all day about kissing those beguiling lines, tasting that sensitive skin. She admired his steely jaw, the narrow planes of his smoothly shaved cheeks, his generous, sensual mouth.
She had barely noticed the subtle gold streaks in his dark brown hair before, but now the gold in it sparkled in the firelight. His forelock had fallen forward over his brow, and beneath its tumbled shadow, his eyes smoldered with bright jade intensity. She reached up and tenderly brushed his hair out of his eyes, revealing the thick, feathery lines of his eyebrows once more.
Impossibly handsome, and there was an end to it.
Somehow finding her wits again, she wondered if she should apologize for staring, but then, all of a sudden, she noticed the cheval mirror in the corner and caught a glimpse of his broad, bare back in the reflection. God. She shuddered violently in a fresh wave of fiery yearning.
What struck her most about that strong, beautiful back, however, was his proud, erect carriage. Posture that fine couldn’t be taught. A man was either born to stand like a leader or simply couldn’t do it. In the solidity, the sheer predatory grace of his posture, she could see his Norman warlord ancestors in him. It made her smile. Oh, yes, every line of this princely man proclaimed his innate nobility.
She met his gaze again and couldn’t speak, a lump in her throat to think that he would truly be hers, always. She may have looked her fill, but if he was really hers and this wasn’t a dream, then she wanted to touch him.
She wanted to claim him for her own.
Every inch.
Georgiana reached out and touched his stomach; then she began caressing him, and Ian melted against her hands. He closed his eyes and dropped his head back slightly as an eager sigh escaped him.
The way she touched him made him tremble. She stroked him with reverent delight, like some fair archeological lady who had unearthed a precious find that she alone knew how to decipher, she alone could understand.
It didn’t matter at all in that moment that she was a member of the grand Knight clan. If she had been the lowliest dairymaid and yet touched him with so much love, he would have married the chit. The value to him of being touched like this was greater than she could ever understand. What he mostly remembered of marriage, after all, was being pushed away.
But Georgiana’s heartfelt caresses traveled up his chest and over his shoulders, making him feel almost as though it were the first time for him, too. Maybe in some strange way, it was. For behind all his practical reasons for marrying Georgiana, so logically thought out, and quite apart from their crazed physical desire for each other, an indescribable something else had sparked itself into existence between them, a promise and a possibility, like some magical seed that with proper tending might flower into something beautiful.
She gave him hope that a closeness he had long given up on might still be possible for him. That maybe he could be truly known by a woman, and maybe even…truly loved. Not unt
il finding her had he realized how much he needed this. She made him aware, too, of how much he had to give. Perhaps her native daring inspired him, for, at last, despite the nightmare of his first marriage, she made him willing to try again. To give again. To risk opening himself anew. Then her touch curled around his nape, pulling him down to kiss her.
He obliged, still frankly amazed at how easily she had agreed to the match after all her brave words at the maharajah’s feast, flaunting her independence. He hadn’t forgotten her silly quote from her aunt’s ridiculous book: “Wedlock is a padlock.”
Well, there was a time not very long ago that he would have agreed, but the events at Janpur and their brush with death had forced them both to consider life a bit more seriously. For his part, Ian had realized during all those long months at sea spent wrestling with Derek’s request that he didn’t really want to spend the rest of his life alone.
The truth was, it hurt every time he went to Knight House. All his friends were paired, and all his friends were happy. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t had plenty of chances to remarry. After the official year of mourning for Catherine had passed, his secretary had shown him a list of the ton’s top thirty debutantes whose parents had already begun making discreet inquiries about his future plans.
He had never had any illusions about their motives. It all boiled down to his title, his obscene fortune, and his worldly position. Having had his fill of being used, he had shied away from all their simpering daughters. But with Georgiana, everything was totally different. She had become his second chance at the one, secret thing he had always wanted most, the one thing that fate, despite all the gifts that it had showered on him, had not seen fit to give: a family.
A real family of his own, and a home filled with happiness and love.
He had expected to have it years ago, but the whole thing had turned into a cruel joke.
Fearless Georgiana made him brave enough to try again. If there was one thing he was sure of, it was that this passionate beauty would never betray him.
