by Gaelen Foley
She reached a hand up to him; he linked his fingers through hers. Instead of helping her up, he joined her on the floor, lowering himself to his knees and smoothly straddling her. He lowered himself atop her and instantly claimed her mouth in a deep, unhesitating kiss, claiming her anew.
She moaned softly and wrapped her arms around him. Parting her lips, she returned his kisses with eager passion, her tongue swirled, mating with his. Her hands were warm and gentle as they cupped his face, stroked his hair. Ian slid his forearm under her, holding her in ardent hunger.
The nice part about fighting, he thought, was that then you got to make up. He splayed his palm beneath her long, luxurious tresses, cradling her head upon the floor. Georgiana kissed him again and again, intoxicating him with the warm, wet sweetness of her mouth and the sincerity of her welcome.
His heart was pounding, for her kisses told him more than any words could have expressed that he really had no reason to be jealous. Sending flowers was all very well, but those other chaps were wasting their time. Her every touch and kiss and sigh assured him she was his and his alone. He kissed her neck, then turned his head to kiss the lean, fine, womanly arms that held him.
All the while, she tormented him with her lithe body’s supple undulations. His need for her climbed and his kiss deepened as she wrapped her legs around him. Then he groaned against her mouth as she raked her nails down his back.
The woman needed bedding, and how he longed to give it to her! This was not what he had come here to accomplish, but every time he touched her, it was nearly impossible to stop.
He forced himself, reining in their passion and resting his forehead against hers. If Hawk walked in on this, he wouldn’t be pleased. Rolling around on the floor with his friend’s luscious young cousin would not be looked upon as suitable behavior, considering she was under the duke’s protection while she dwelled beneath his roof. Debauching her across the park at his own residence, well, that was easier to justify.
Georgiana kept kissing him, but Ian did his best to curb her exuberance. “You are,” he vowed, panting, “the most delicious angel.”
“More.” She grabbed the back of his head and pulled him down roughly again.
With a husky laugh at her fiery demand, he obliged, powerless to resist her. God, he must have died and gone to heaven. Nevertheless, he thought of one way to bring his passionate nymph back down to earth before their mischief was discovered by others in the household. “Don’t you want your present?” he whispered in her ear.
She paused, nibbling thoughtfully at his cheek. “You brought it?”
“It’s in my pocket.”
“What else is in your pocket, Ian?” She reached down with a wicked laugh and grasped his hard cock.
“Georgiana Louise!” he exclaimed with startled laughter. “I meant in my coat pocket, you incorrigible minx.”
“I’d rather have this instead.”
She squeezed him and he groaned.
“You are…so very bad.”
“Don’t you know it’s in my blood?” she whispered.
“So it would seem.” With a wince of delight, he let her hand wander, but only for a moment longer. Pulling himself away from her, he went up onto his knees and reached for his coat, thrusting a hand into the inside breast pocket.
She sat up, beaming at him.
“Close your eyes and put out your hand,” he ordered.
She obeyed, and he indulged in simply staring at her for a second, admiring those ridiculously long, coal-black lashes.
What a pretty thing she was, with such an innocent quality. It never failed to surprise him every time he noticed it.
“Are you still here?” she prompted impatiently.
“I’m here, princess.” He bent and pressed a kiss into her waiting palm, and then replaced his lips with his gift. The light silvery tinkling sound gave it away even before she opened her eyes. When he placed the silver anklet in her hand, her cobalt eyes flew open wide.
“Ian!” She looked at it joyously. “You got me new bells!” All of a sudden, she pushed up onto her knees and flung her arms around his neck.
He held her in return, encircling her slim waist. “I never thought you should change, Georgiana,” he told her in a husky whisper. “You’re perfect just the way you are.”
“Oh, Ian.” She clung to him, her arms twined around his neck in a long, heartfelt hug.
He did not think he had ever been hugged so thoroughly in his life. Her unbounded affection still abashed him sometimes, but he could get used to this, he thought as he smiled to himself. “Here,” he murmured to her at length. “Let me put them on you.”
Pressing a kiss to his cheek, she released him from her embrace only with reluctance, but then sat obediently on the floor again. When Ian sat back on his haunches, Georgiana stretched one dainty bare foot across his lap in the most provocative fashion.
He sent her a satyric grin, enticed by the flirty love-liness of her feet. He took hold of her heel gently and deliberately tickled her foot with a slow, light stroke of his fingertip along the arch of her sole, but she bit her lip, refusing to let herself laugh. He pinched her toe and then abandoned their little game for some other time, resting her foot on his thigh.
Taking from her hand the intricately wrought chain of tiny bells, fresh from the silversmith’s shop, he draped the delicate chain around her extremely alluring ankle and fastened the clasp.
“Voilà,” he said, flicking it to make the bells jingle.
She swung her knee and gave her new bauble a try. “Ah! It sounds even prettier than the original!” Giving him a beaming smile, she removed her foot from his lap and leaned back, planting her hands behind her as she gazed at him. “What an utterly thoughtful gift, Ian. How kind you are to me.”
“You were being too hard on yourself.”
“I really can’t tell you how much it means to me that you feel that way. That you truly accept me as I am. Let’s face it, after all, I am a—bit odd; I’m perfectly well aware of it.”
He laughed.
“Maybe I am an acquired taste,” she said. “I try to get along with everyone, but still…I never quite felt like I fit in anywhere until I met you.”
He laid his hand on her knee in a soft caress. “Not everyone will understand you, but I do.”
Without warning, she leaned toward him, cupped his jaw, and pressed a firm but tender kiss to his lips.
His heart clenched, adoring her, but somehow he maintained his decorum. The way she left him dazzled, it took him a moment to recall the purpose of his visit.
She sat back slowly, stroking the side of his leg with her bare foot.
Pure temptress, even when she wasn’t trying.
He cleared his throat a little. “So, what did you, ah, want to talk to me about? I thought it was your asthma giving you trouble last night, but you said today that it was, er, something else that had been bothering you.”
“Right.” She lowered her gaze, nodding. “Oh, this is rather difficult.”
He frowned. “What is it?”
“Remember last night after we danced, when you went to get me some punch?”
He nodded.
“When you were gone, Lady Faulconer introduced herself to me.”
He froze. “What did she say?”
Georgiana hesitated, looking intensely uncomfortable. She took a deep breath, and then visibly forced herself to reveal what had been gnawing at her. “She claimed that even if we married, you would never love me because your heart died with Catherine.”
“I see.” Ian’s eyebrows arched high as he absorbed this. “How perfectly absurd. And you believed her?”
“I didn’t know what to believe! That’s why I went outside, to think. I was quite confounded by her revelations.”
“Not revelations, lies. What other lies did she tell you?”
“That’s all. That’s mainly it.” Her cheeks were a deep shade of rose, her blue eyes full of youthful vulnerability. “La
dy Faulconer said you never loved her, so that meant you would never love me, because of Catherine. But if you can’t love me, Ian, I’m not sure I even want to know it. Perhaps you should not tell me, because I’m so in love with you, I don’t think I could bear it—”
“Shh.” He stopped her lips with his fingertip and gazed at her in amazed, welling joy.
Her eyes were wide.
If he was not mistaken, she had just said she loved him.
He lowered his touch to her chin, capturing it gently between his finger and thumb. As he stared at her, a wave of awed splendor rose from the deepest core of his being. “My darling,” he said very softly, “I never loved either of them the way I love you.”
He heard her soft intake of breath and watched her blue eyes fill with agonized hope.
“You—love me?” she whispered.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her. The words flowed from his lips, straight from his heart. “Georgiana, I loved you from the first moment I saw you go tearing through the spice market on that white horse. I had no idea who you were, except that you were the boldest, maddest, most beautiful creature I had ever seen. And now that I do know you, you’re a thousand times more beautiful still.”
She let out a wonder-struck laugh, brilliant tears suddenly shining in her eyes like diamonds. Without warning, she launched herself into his arms, hugging him hard, while her frantic whispers spilled joyously into his ear. “Marry me. Yes. I want to marry you, Ian. I want us to be together always.”
He grasped her shoulders and pushed her back to arm’s length. “You’re saying yes? You’ll be my wife, truly? You’ve come to your senses at last?”
“Yes!” She nodded zealously. “Yes, I do want to marry you! I love you, Ian. I love you, and if you still want me, then nothing can keep us apart.”
He stared at her, imprinting on his memory exactly the way she looked right now, in this moment, so that he would never forget the love on her face, his future in her eyes.
“If?” he whispered. Then he drew her slim body into his arms and held her hard.
He could feel her trembling, and he kissed her cheek in choked silence. “You are so dear to me,” he said brusquely, closing his eyes.
A long time ago, he had given up hope that real love could ever come into his life.
Now he had this beautiful, magical woman in his arms. Somehow she had become as precious to him as his own flesh and blood.
He kissed her head, trying to becalm the towering seas of emotion in his breast. The pitch and swell of it was still so unfamiliar. So much happiness made him feel odd.
She pulled back a small space and smiled at him, caressing his cheek.
She started to speak, but then a distracted look flicked over her face.
She furrowed her brow and turned toward the window. “Do you hear that, Ian? That dog?”
As soon as she said it, he registered in vague annoyance the sound of a dog’s vicious barking. It sounded as though it was coming from just outside Knight House.
He glanced toward the window, then looked at her again. “Ah, never mind that,” he began with a smile, but then he stopped, listening more intently. He went very still. “That sounds like Hyperion.”
God knew, Hawk had had that dog forever. It had been a pup with them when they were boys.
He suddenly frowned. “That dog hasn’t barked since King George was last in possession of his wits,” he murmured.
Something’s wrong.
“Let me check on that.”
She released him without argument as he rose and crossed to the bank of windows. He scanned the courtyard below.
Sure enough, the big old dog, normally so placid, was racing back and forth along the tall, black wrought-iron fence that girded the grounds of Knight House. Good Lord, the Newfoundland was barking through the bars and snarling like a rabid wolf, trying to get at something.
Or someone.
Ian’s eyes narrowed. Intruder?
At once, his stare swung to the leafy park, trying to spot the object of the dog’s frenzy.
His gaze homed in on a dark-clad man, and then he froze.
Horror spiked through him.
Disbelief.
Matthew.
“Ian, what’s wrong?” Georgie cried as he whirled away from the window, ashen-faced, rushing for the door with his heart in his throat. He barely heard the question.
“Ian!”
“He’s got my son.”
“What? Who?”
He was already out the door, not wasting one second to explain.
Barreling into the hallway, he flew down the curving stairs and through the marble entrance hall, bursting out the front door.
“My lord?” Mr. Walsh exclaimed, running out after him in alarm. “What is amiss?”
“Send for the constable!” he shouted as he pounded toward the wrought-iron gate, Armageddon in his eyes.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
W hat in the world—? Someone had Matthew?
Throwing her Indian tunic on over her yoga clothes, Georgie stole the briefest of glances out the window bay but saw nothing strange except the frenzied dog. She was not sure what was going on, but she had never seen Ian react like that before.
Still barefoot, she rushed out of the music room mere seconds after him. When she arrived outside, she found the normally placid courtyard of Knight House in a state of frantic commotion. The servants had left their posts, Hyperion was still barking loud enough to wake the dead, and from inside the house she could hear Bel screaming for Robert to help them.
“It were a Gypsy, ma’am!” one of the maids nearby was shrieking. “A Gypsy’s tried to steal the little master! Sally and Scott were playin’ hide-and-seek with him in the park and now they’ve vanished!”
“What?” Looking past the chaos to scan the park, Georgie suddenly spotted a wiry, dark-clad man in a low-brimmed hat as he came tearing out from behind a stand of trees that had obscured their view. Horror seized her as she saw that he had lifted Matthew off his feet and with one arm hooked roughly around the boy’s waist, the other clamped over his mouth, the man was running with him, full speed, toward a waiting horse.
Matthew struggled, trying to kick his way free as his feet dangled well above the ground. Then Ian burst into view only a few steps behind them, and gaining. She was sure her heart had stopped as she watched him sprinting across the green in an explosive burst of speed.
He dove at them just a few yards away from the horse, tackling the man with the brute force of a runaway stagecoach. Marquess, boy, and would-be kidnapper all went crashing down to the soft green turf.
Ian grabbed Matthew, picked him up bodily by the back of his short coat, and tossed him out of the heap, shoving him toward Knight House. “Run!”
The boy went flying clear of the fight and sprawled on all fours in the grass, but bravely stumbled to his feet and obeyed his father’s order. Sheer panic stamped across his face, Matthew went racing toward safety as fast as his little legs could carry him, but then he halted in childish uncertainty, turning back to look for his father.
Seeing his sire engaged in a brutal fight, the five-year-old began crying as he stood alone in the park.
Georgie was already on her way. Jagged pebbles under her bare feet turned to soft grass as she raced toward him, her sights fixed on nothing else.
She didn’t even hear the shouts, or look for Ian, or notice her cousin Robert tearing past her with a rifle, let alone his order to her to get back inside. Her instincts heeded nothing but the crying child, and nothing deterred her until she reached his side and had the small boy in her arms. Not even stopping to ask him if he was all right, she picked him up and ran back to Knight House with a strength she did not know she possessed.
Ignoring her straining lungs, Georgie did not stop until they were inside the gates again. Mr. Walsh and the children’s head nurse crowded around at once, the heavy-set woman taking the boy from her. Georgie’s knees were w
obbly, but when Mr. Walsh urged her to come back into the house, she refused.
Gripping the fence, she stared through the wrought-iron bars at Ian in savage pursuit of the would-be kidnapper once again. The man had gotten to his feet and was trying to reach his horse, but Ian clearly had no intention of letting the blackguard get away. He was taller, with longer strides, and more than that, he was enraged.
As she watched their renewed chase, riveted, something deep inside Georgie suddenly prayed he would not catch the man. Ian had rushed out with no weapon, and what if that low criminal had a gun?
Robert, fortunately, had managed to grab a weapon before leaving the house and now rushed to Ian’s aid. With an innate anticipation of each other’s movements ingrained in them from the rugby fields of their boyhood, Robert took up a position to head the man off. Bringing the rifle up smoothly to his shoulder, the duke took aim at the criminal’s chest, but with Ian hot on the man’s heels, just a few steps behind, he held his fire.
Caught between the two, the criminal veered to the left trying to escape the pincers they had created for him, but this shift gave Ian the two-second gain he needed.
Once more, his relentless pursuit ended with them both slamming down onto the earth. But when the assailant whipped out a knife and slashed at Ian with it, Georgie’s mind was taken right back to the horrific battles she had gone through with her brothers in fleeing Janpur.
The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. Dear God, Ian was a diplomat. A peacemaker. Unlike Derek and Gabriel, he had not spent the past few years in constant combat. Sheer dread paralyzed her. Oh, please, don’t take him away from me. Dizzy with horror, she clutched the bars of the fence harder, neither able to watch nor to turn away.
Robert ran over and planted himself nearby as Ian arced his body clear of another wild swing of the villain’s dagger.
“Drop the knife, you bastard, or I’ll shoot you where you stand!” the duke roared, taking aim again.
But Ian grabbed the man’s wrist on his next swift lunge and pivoted smoothly, jerking him off balance. He banged the man’s forearm over his knee with a shattering blow that made him release the dagger with a bellow of pain. He elbowed the man in the face, and a closer struggle ensued.
