The Society Catch (Harlequin Historical)

by Allen, Louise

  Giles lay there unselfconsciously while she swallowed hard and climbed back on to the bed. ‘It is all right, you know. Everything is designed to work together.’

  This insight into her thoughts made her blush more deeply. Giles caught her round the waist and pulled her down against him again and kissed her with such thoroughness that she stopped thinking again and simply clung to him, drinking in the scent of him, letting the heat of his mouth envelop her as his tongue teased hers and his teeth caught at the sensitive fullness of her underlip.

  Somehow he had managed to undo the tapes at the waist of her petticoat and Joanna found herself as naked as he was. Her immediate instinct was to curl against his flank, hiding herself against him, but he stopped her, easing her back against the pillows and raising himself on his elbow to look down at her.

  ‘You are so lovely.’ He reached out a hand and freed her hair from the pins that held it and it tumbled down, black against her white skin. Giles caught up one lock and used the ends to caress her breast, his eyes never leaving hers as he did so.

  She saw his pupils widen as he watched her, knew hers were dilating too, feeling that if the subtle caress did not stop soon she must seize his hand and press it to the flesh that seemed to be becoming heavier, tauter with every whispering stroke of the fine hair over it.

  He bent his head to recapture the nipple and with a gasp she closed her eyes, reaching blindly to caress his hair, hold him closer to her. His hand slid down her side, paused at the point where her hip curved, then ran over the gentle swell of her stomach. The warm palm spread and flattened over soft skin that seemed to quiver under the pressure.

  Joanna moaned softly, her head moving restlessly on the pillow, her hands tangled in Giles’s hair. His mouth on her breast was creating strange feelings deep inside her close to where his palm stroked across her stomach.

  ‘Giles, I don’t…I don’t know what…’

  ‘I know, sweetheart, I know. Just trust me.’ His fingers slid lower into the triangle of black curls and she stiffened, her thighs tight together in instant rejection. Giles’s mouth left her breast and she almost sobbed, convinced she had displeased him. Then his lips found hers again and he murmured, ‘Shh, my darling, just relax, let me love you.’

  His fingers moved down, parted her, slipped gently into secret, sensitive places that made her gasp against his mouth. Then the ball of his thumb found and caressed her in a way that stopped the breath in her throat. Without conscious thought her body arched to press against his hand. The amazing sensation went on, on, until she thought she could not bear it any longer, then his finger slipped into the moist centre of her and through her delirium she heard him whisper, ‘Open your eyes, Joanna, look at me.’

  Her lids fluttered open. Her eyes widened, found his tender, watchful gaze on her. ‘I love you,’ he said as everything gathered inside her into one imploding firework that burst through her veins and nerves, made her cry out with amazed joy, then fall trembling back against the pillows.

  Giles caught her against him and held her until the trembling stopped. Gradually some sort of coherent thought came back and she found herself resting against his chest, hearing the reassuring beat of his heart under her ear. ‘Giles?’

  ‘Yes, sweetheart?’

  ‘That was…that was wonderful.’

  ‘Good.’ He sounded gently amused.

  ‘But that wasn’t…I mean, you didn’t…’

  ‘No, you are still a virgin. I just wanted to give you pleasure, that is all.’

  ‘You succeeded,’ she said shakily, wondering if she had the courage to lie back and look at him. ‘But what about you? I mean, don’t you want to…?’

  ‘We do not have to take this to its conclusion Joanna, not unless you are sure. You can give me pleasure, just as I pleasured you. Look.’

  Shyly she lifted her head from his chest and watched as he guided her hand on to him. For a moment she kept it still, then the heat and hardness under her fingers, the sensation of soft skin, fascinated her and she closed her grasp. ‘Oh!’ To find that she could provoke a reaction just by a touch was a revelation. Biting her lip in concentration, she tentatively moved her hand and was rewarded by a soft groan from Giles. She glanced up at him, saw he had closed his eyes and let her hand move again.

  ‘Giles, am I doing this right?’

  He caught her caressing hand in his and opened his eyes. ‘You are doing it so right that I think you had better stop.’ He hesitated, his eyes dark with passion. ‘Joanna, do you still want to do this? Do you still want me to make love to you?’

  ‘Please, Giles.’ She slid her hands up across his chest, pausing to savour the unfamiliar feeling of his nipples hardening against her palms, then cradling his face between her hands. ‘Please love me.’ This time it was she who bent to kiss him, discovering the intriguing difference of being the one on top, of being able to vary pressure and contact. Greatly daring, she let her tongue flicker out to trace the line of his upper lip then caught his lower lip in sharp teeth, teasingly threatening to bite.

  For a few seconds he let her lead, then with an easy strength rolled her over until his weight lay on her, his knee pushing hers gently but inexorably apart.

  Joanna struggled against the desire to surrender utterly to the sensations flooding through her and managed to gasp, ‘Your leg?’

  ‘Just give me a moment,’ Giles shifted his position, winced, then smiled down into her wide, anxious eyes. ‘Provided you don’t kick it we will be fine.’

  She fitted against him so well, Joanna realised hazily, burying her face against his neck, feeling the reassuring strength of his shoulders under her hands, which were trembling with nerves. Lower, where she still tingled from the pleasures his fingers had wrought, she was overwhelmingly conscious of his aroused body and tried desperately not to think, simply to trust Giles and endure the next few minutes.

  He nudged against her and she found with a shock that he had already entered her a little. It felt strange but good and she let herself relax. Then he stopped and she was aware of a tightness, a constriction, as though her own body was barring the way. Giles bent his head to whisper against her lips, ‘Trust me, sweetheart’, then he thrust into her. There was a fleeting sensation of pain, more of discomfort and tightness, then he was lodged deep within her and she realised that they were joined, that this was Giles whose body was cradled within hers and that her own body was opening around him, caressing him, holding him.

  Her eyes fluttered open and she found his, a mixture of awe and anxiety in them. ‘Giles.’ Her voice was an unsteady whisper.

  ‘Sweetheart, are you all right? Did I hurt you?’

  ‘No, yes—just a little. Oh, Giles, I do love you.’ Her body was telling her to move so she tried, tentatively. In answer Giles began to move too, the rhythm of his passion overtaking her caution, sweeping her along on a building crescendo of sensation that she recognised from his earlier lovemaking. But this was fuelled, driven, by his body, too. She was part of it, swept up in it, unaware that her head was moving restlessly on the pillows, her fists were clenched against Giles’s chest or that she was crying out with pleasure. It reached a point where she could not withstand the tension any longer, her body arched into his, driving him deeper, convulsing around him as he cried out and the two of them collapsed back on the bed in a tangle of entwined limbs, their mouths locked in a final, desperate kiss.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Joanna came to herself to find that Giles was still lying above her, his weight on his elbows, his forehead resting against hers. Her wide open eyes were so close to his that their eyelashes tangled and he smiled and raised his head to look at her better.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said simply.

  ‘It was all right? I…’

  ‘You were perfect. I could not have dreamed of anything more perfect. That you want me, that you trust me—I cannot imagine a more wonderful gift.’

  ‘I loved it, too,’ Joanna said, uncaring how br
azen that sounded. ‘Giles, I had no idea it would be like that. I thought perhaps you would find me clumsy: everything I did was just instinct.’

  ‘Mmm.’ He bent his head to kiss her slowly along the line of her collarbone. ‘Your skin is like silk. Instinct? You have the most wonderful, sensual, loving, natural instincts, Joanna. Just think how good we are going to be together the more we practise. I foresee the need for a lot of practice.’

  He rolled carefully over on to his back and stretched like a cat. ‘I feel so good.’

  ‘Even your leg?’ Joanna sat up rather unsteadily and looked at the bandage that appeared, by some miracle, to still be in place.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to go on a route march,’ Giles admitted, cautiously flexing the foot and grimacing as the damaged tendons stretched. ‘I am going to have to make love to you at least three times a day simply to get enough exercise.’

  ‘Oh,’ Joanna feigned a pout. ‘Only three times?’

  ‘Minx,’ Giles said appreciatively. ‘If you carry on sitting there looking so utterly delectable I will just have to…’

  He broke off at the sound of the door handle being rattled. Then they heard Alex’s voice on the other side raised in what Hebe always referred to as his ‘parade-ground shout’. ‘Giles! This door is jammed.’

  Giles shouted back at the same volume. ‘It’s locked, you idiot.’

  ‘Then open it!’

  Joanna pressed her hands over her mouth to suppress the giggles.

  ‘How can I?’ Giles demanded. ‘I can’t walk.’

  Joanna hissed, ‘Ask him if everything is all right. He sounds drunk.’

  ‘Lord, Hebe! I had forgotten.’ Giles raised his voice again. ‘Is everything all right? How is Hebe?’

  ‘Couldn’t be better!’

  ‘He is drunk,’ Giles commented, grinning. ‘The baby has come?’ he shouted back. ‘Really,’ he added, dropping his voice again, ‘this is a ludicrous way to have a conversation.’

  ‘Then make him go away and I’ll open the door,’ Joanna said, hopping out of bed and searching frantically for her stockings. ‘I can hardly let him in now, can I? Look at this room.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Giles drawled, regarding the havoc from under sensual, hooded lids.

  ‘Of course the baby’s come! We want you to come and see. I’ll get Starling to fetch the spare key and a couple of footmen with a chair.’

  On this threat he appeared to leave. Joanna gave a muffled shriek, scrambled all her clothes together and bolted into the dressing room, only to be recalled by Giles.

  ‘Unlock the door, quickly, and throw that sheet back on the bed!’

  Joanna closed the door of the dressing room and pulled on her clothes with as much calm as she could manage given a mixture of giggles over their predicament, joy at hearing that Hebe and the baby were both well and a complete sensual daze engendered by Giles’s lovemaking.

  At the sound of Starling and what sounded like at least four footmen arriving in the bedroom, she sat down at the dressing table and regarded her image in the glass. Dragging Giles’s comb through her hair restored some order to her appearance but did little for the flush in her cheeks or the crimson swell of fiercely kissed lips.

  ‘He loves me,’ she whispered. ‘He loves me.’ It was a miracle, but it was no dream, not with her body throbbing with the knowledge of his, not with the proof of his love in every tender word, every skilful caress.

  When the room outside fell silent she risked a peep around the edge of the door to find Giles sitting in the chair clad in a gorgeous Oriental silk dressing gown, the walking cane she had fetched him by his side.

  Giles grinned. ‘Starling says that he trusts that his lordship’s natural joy at the “Happy Event” did not disturb my rest, but he fears that his lordship cannot have tried the door handle properly in his “understandable excitement”. He quite understands that I do not wish to be carried through the halls of Tasborough in the manner of a Roman emperor and will make my own way to her ladyship’s suite when Miss Fulgrave returns from her own room.’

  ‘Thank goodness. Giles, have you any idea where my hair pins ended up?’

  ‘All over the bed, I imagine. That will cause the chambermaid to speculate in the morning.’

  ‘No, it won’t,’ Joanna was determinedly shaking out pillows and smoothing the under sheet. ‘Six, seven…eight. That’s all of them. Now I’ll just put my hair up and we’ll go and see Hebe.’

  With the aid of her arm and the stick, Giles managed to get to his feet and hobble painfully along the corridor. ‘Can’t put any weight on it, otherwise it’s fine,’ he ground out in answer to Joanna’s attempt at a calm enquiry as to how his leg felt, but the beads of sweat on his forehead said rather more than he was willing to reveal and Joanna could only be thankful that there were no stairs to negotiate.

  To Joanna’s anxious gaze Hebe seemed very small and far away in the big bed, but although her voice was tired it sounded strong as she cried, ‘Joanna, Giles! Come in. Giles, sit down at once—Joanna, why did you let him walk?’

  Joanna pressed Giles firmly into the nearest chair and ran to Hebe’s bedside. ‘How on earth do you expect me to stop him? He is as stubborn as a mule. Oh, Hebe, how lovely! Is it another little boy?’

  ‘Meet young Giles,’ Hebe said with a smile which lit up her tired, pale face. ‘Here, take him.’

  ‘Oh, may I? He is so tiny! Giles, look…’

  She turned to find Giles still sitting in the chair, an identical shawl-wrapped bundle in his arms and Alex by his side looking not drunk, just utterly dazed and happy.

  ‘Twins! Giles, you were right!’

  ‘This one is little Joanna,’ Alex said, smiling as Joanna had never seen him smile. ‘We thought you both might be willing to be godparents.’

  Giles looked up at his friend. ‘Very happily, on one condition: you stand as my groomsman.’

  ‘Joanna!’ Hebe threw her arms wide and, handing little Giles to his father, Joanna went and cast herself into her cousin’s embrace. ‘Thank goodness, I was beginning to think the pair of you would never work it out.’ She looked closely at Joanna and said, low voiced, ‘If there is anything you want to talk to me about, you only have to say.’ Joanna blushed hotly and Hebe’s eyebrows rose. ‘I see, perhaps I am a little late. What a bad chaperon I am.’

  ‘Dreadful,’ Joanna agreed solemnly, ‘but a very good friend. Oh, Hebe,’ she whispered, ‘I love him so much it hurts.’

  ‘I know,’ Hebe agreed. ‘And it never gets any better, thank goodness.’

  They were interrupted by Nurse bringing Hugh down to meet his new brother and sister and Joanna helped Giles to his feet and out of the room.

  ‘This is a truly wonderful day,’ Giles said, gathering Joanna against his side and hugging her tight. ‘Shall we go back to my room and discuss exactly how many children we plan to have?’

  ‘It is very tempting,’ Joanna smiled up at him, ‘but first I must write to Mama and the Geddings and Georgy, and you must write to your father.’

  ‘No, that is the second thing,’ Giles said, seeing Starling advancing in a stately manner down the corridor. ‘Starling! Break out his lordship’s best champagne and find me those footmen and their chair. I intend to be carried in state to the dining room and there to consume lobster and champagne with my affianced bride.’

  Starling rose to the occasion. ‘Congratulations, Colonel. I will place the wine on ice at once and set out the very best crystal. As to the lobster, I will ascertain whether one is to be found upon the premises.’

  As the butler swept down the staircase, summoning minions to his side, Joanna rested her cheek against the heavy silk of Giles’s sleeve. ‘I do not think I would ever have had the courage to rebel as I did if it were not for that champagne you gave me at the Duchess’s ball. Do you remember? I had a dreadful hangover the next day and as far as Mama was concerned that started my disgrace.’

  Giles pulled her tight against him. ‘I just want
to see your eyes turn green and sparkle with that same fire I saw in them that night. I want to kiss your lips to taste the wine on them as I could not then. And I never, ever want to part from you again as long as I live.’

  ‘You want to hold me captive?’

  ‘Chained to my heart and my soul for ever.’

  At the head of the stairs Starling held up a restraining hand to four stalwart footmen who were carrying a chair between them. They obediently turned their backs and waited patiently while Colonel Gregory satisfied himself that his runaway love perfectly understood the terms of her surrender.

  ‘For ever,’ Joanna whispered against his lips. ‘For ever.’

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-2984-6

  THE SOCIETY CATCH

  Copyright © 2004 by Louise Allen

  First North American publication 2006

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