Addy’s heart contracted at the raw emotion in his voice. He found shame in something that was the least shameful thing she had ever heard.
“I would sit in the room and pretend to work on estate business or read the paper and she would prattle on about the lunch menu or the color of her new bonnet.” He smiled at Adelaide and she touched his hand, a brief touch to say she understood. “Who knew there was a difference between rosy pink and pink rose?”
Adelaide laughed softly.
“It didn’t matter. I simply needed to hear her talk. And then you came along, and prattled on about everything under the sun.”
She scowled at him and he grinned.
“But it was different with you. It wasn’t the sound of your voice. It was… the things you saw and the way you saw them. You made me see the wonder of this place again. It means a great deal to me, Addy. So, no matter how much I tease you, you keep telling me about the rocks and the trees and the birds.” He cupped her chin in his hand and pressed a light kiss to her lips. “Because I like it, Adelaide Winfield, Duchess of Selridge. I like to hear you talk.”
“You may regret those words one day, husband.” She winked and then knelt on the seat to get a better view out the window. “I shall remind you of this conversation the next time you tell me to be quiet.”
“Of that I have no doubt,” he said gravely. “Could you not…” He waved his hand in the direction of her upturned bottom.
“Marcus. For goodness sake.”
“Goodness has nothing to do with it,” he grumbled. “Had you not left me cooling my heels for two hours whilst you changed out of one perfectly fine dress into another perfectly find dress, we would be there by now, Your Grace.”
She turned from the window and gave him her most regal smile. “It is expected. I am a duchess now. Or so I have been told.” His put-upon scowl had her laughing as she turned to look for something notable to remark upon.
“You aren’t the one who was forced to stand there and listen to Sir Delbert Finch blather on about his missing, possibly murdered son. By the time he took his leave, I was ready to murder someone.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Passion’s a fire, dear girl. Nothing more, nothing less, Fire has the power to destroy and the power to make strong. It’s only when you see what remains at the ebb of the flames, that you will know if this passion between you and Selridge will sear you together or burn you to cinders.”
“How do I know if he feels passion for me, Lady Haverly? It may just be—”
“Oh, it’s passion, my dear. Passion and a great deal more, I think. Trust me on that.”
“But what kind? The good kind or…”
Lady Haverly gazed out the window and appeared to contemplate Adelaide’s question. When she turned to speak, her eyes were far away, but her wistful smile was very much present.
“A destructive fire is over all too quickly and leaves naught save ashes in its wake. A tempering one, if properly stoked, will burn slowly and surely through the fiercest storms.” The sharp-eyed matron touched her fingertips to the Ming vase exhibited on a marble pedestal by the window. “It leaves behind something strong and beautiful. Something those with the sense to know its value, will treasure forever.”
Lady Haverly’s words ran through Adelaide’s head like the strands of hair Bess brushed down her back. There were few servants at the hunting box. It was lived in year-round by the Quinces, husband and wife, and less than half a dozen others, whose duty it was to keep the ancient two-story stone mansion in readiness, should the duke or some relation wish to use it. For this week, at least, the staff was reduced to the Quinces, Adelaide’s personal maid, one kitchen maid and a young boy to do all around work and errands.
Mrs. Quince had gone to a great deal of trouble to prepare a late supper for the bride and groom. Adelaide refused to allow her first act as a duchess to be the snub of a loyal retainer. She’d insisted she was half-starved and the duke was as well. She was extremely grateful the poor woman failed to notice the sound of grinding teeth periodically interrupting the meal. Whatever Marcus was hungry for, it was definitely not turtle soup and roast beef.
Adelaide had been hard pressed to muster an appetite herself after hearing of Marcus’s conversation with Sir Delbert. In fact, she’d nearly fallen out of the carriage window. Marcus, however, had declared it all a tempest in a teapot. A blood-stained coat and cravat outside the dairy shed, three missing dogs, and a chewed up top boot in the apple orchard did not constitute a murder. The man had probably run off on some lark. Or so Marcus had told the magistrate.
She prayed he was right. He had to be. Dylan had checked on the man. He was alive and well when they… ran off with his dogs, leaving him bleeding in the dirt. Adelaide groaned and covered her face with her hands.
“There now, Your Grace. You’re not nervous, are you?”
“What?” Adelaide blinked up at her maid. “No absolutely not.” She wasn’t. And she had no intention of allowing Dickie Finch, missing or not, to interrupt her honeymoon for another moment. Especially as she sat at the dressing table and listened to the subtle rhythm of Marcus’s wounded gait in the adjoining chamber. He paced, halted at the door to her side of the suite, and paced some more. She had taken a bit longer than usual with her evening toilette.
It must have been some sort of perverse knowledge that led Adelaide to indulge in a long bath with her favorite lavender bath oils and then allow Bess to brush out her hip-length hair. The earthy middle-aged maid, however, gave her no choice as to which nightrail to don for her wedding night.
“You just let Bess take care of that, Your Grace. Herself picked out just the right thing for tonight and we’ll not be nay saying her now, will we?”
Adelaide stared skeptically at the filmy concoction draped over the maid’s arm. She’d seen spider webs with sturdier construction. She’d found it hard to believe her mother-in-law had picked out something as scandalous as this. It was nothing but silky film and bits of strategically placed lace. At least she hoped they were strategically placed. Then again, Adelaide’s strategy was to get through her wedding night without humiliating herself with the man she loved. The duchess’s strategy was to get a grandchild on the way, the sooner the better.
So, here she sat in a diaphanous nightrail and remembered Lady Haverly’s last words to her.
“I’ll tell you, gel, if that kiss is any example, you’re in for a lovely night,” she’d said, after she dispatched one of the upstairs maids in search of the mothers. “You are a virgin, aren’t you?”
“Of course, I am,” was Adelaide’s indignant reply.
“Thought so. You don’t strike me as the type to give it up to a man who don’t post the coal.” The lady’s frankness was made worse by Bess’s snort of laughter. Adelaide’s confusion must have shown on her face. Lady Haverly tapped the wedding band Marcus had placed on her finger that morning.
“It’ll be a bit painful at first, but I daresay the man knows what he is about, more than knows.” She’d laughed wickedly. “No sense in going in ignorant though. God knows what Emily and Henrietta will tell you.”
Adelaide thought she had a notion of what would happen. Twenty minutes with Lady Haverly quickly disabused her of that notion. Bess offered up her thoughts on the subject as well. It all sounded a little made up, almost fantastical. Especially the bits about how to bring a man to his knees. However, the things the two women, one a high-born lady and the other a third-generation ladies’ maid, said, made much more sense than the jumbled up mess her mother and mother-in-law stammered through before they sent her off to face her wedding night.
A none-to-soft knock on the door between the suites interrupted her contemplation. With efficient deliberation Bess placed the silver-plated hairbrush on the dressing table. She arranged a long lock of Adelaide’s honey colored hair so it draped over her mistress’s shoulder and fell to her hip. With a last squeeze of her shoulder and a brief curtsy, she gathered up the discarded tr
aveling clothes and slipped out of the room.
Adelaide stood up and glanced around her chamber. Bess had draped the robe to match her nightrail across the foot of the large tester bed. She could put it on, but it would do little to make her feel less naked. It was made of the same gossamer fabric as the nightrail and did not even have the benefit of the added lace. The knock came again, a bit more persistent this time.
She took a deep breath. “Come in, Marcus.” A shiver of expectation raced down her spine. The door opened soundlessly. Adelaide looked at her clasped hands and then up at the doorway. His broad shoulders were draped in the forest green silk of an elegant dressing gown that hung to his ankles. The color made his eyes look dark and velvety. Gold threads shot through its intricate design and picked up the golden flecks in his eyes.
His eyes. They wandered over her body in a slow, heated gaze. She felt them like fingers on her skin—a touch here, a caress there. Everywhere they paused her body tingled and then burned. Adelaide never dreamed her skin could be brought to life by a mere look. Then again, there was nothing mere about Marcus.
He stood there so long she wondered if he had second thoughts about this marriage, this night. His eyes finished their appraisal and now had a glassy, almost mesmerized appearance. If he kept it up, she would be a melted puddle in the floor.
“Will you come in, Your—” He cleared his throat, a warning. “Will you come in, Marcus?” she asked. Good heavens. The wedding night had only started and she already sounded like a naïve, tangle-tongued ninny. Adelaide ran her now sweaty palms down the sides of her nightrail. Her hands bunched the material. Mistake. Marcus’s eyes fix on the tight points which now tented the sheer lace over her bosom.
“Addy, I—”
“Marcus, I—”
They laughed and shook their heads. She’d held her breath from the moment he started toward her, until it blew out in her laughter. He moved slowly to stand before her and rest his hands on her shoulders.
“You go first,” he said. “Your Grace.”
She scowled up at him and then curved her lips into a tiny smile.
“I’m sorry, Marcus. This is just so…” The word refused to find her tongue.
“New?” he offered. “Strange? Confusing? Awful?”
“Not awful.” She allowed her eyes to wander over his face. This face had invaded her dreams and become more precious than any other over the last year. It was never more so than tonight. “Nothing with you could be awful, Marcus. You must know that. It’s just…”
How could she explain it and not look like the silly young girl he had pronounced her the night they were rescued? She was certain he thought her too young and naïve to be his duchess. Would he also think her too ignorant and inept to be his wife?
His fingers feathered across her cheek, before he touched them to her chin. She tilted her head up in response and found herself caught in the forest of those green eyes.
“I feel so awkward and stupid. I’ve never done this before and—”
“I cannot tell you how happy I am to hear it, sweetheart.” His face was solemn, in spite of the laughter that lurked in his voice.
“Of course, you are. Men seem to place a great deal of store in a woman’s innocence. Have you ever stopped to think how we feel, when we know you’ve been with hundreds of women?”
Marcus looked a bit taken aback. “I don’t think it’s been… I mean…” For once he had the wisdom not to continue.
Adelaide slipped from beneath his hands and walked to the hearth where the fire burned warm and bright. “I haven’t the first idea what to do, Marcus. I’ve had instructions from four different women today and frankly none of what they said made much sense. I did not even pick this thing I am wearing. Your mother did. I feel naked and I look ridiculous.”
The way Marcus stared at her made her think of a horse looking at water after a long hard run. He appeared incapable of taking his eyes off of her.
“Do I?”
“What?” To her surprise, his voice cracked.
“Do I look ridiculous?”
She looked down and realized her pose in front of the fire illuminated every inch of her practically naked body. With a sharp squeak, she tried valiantly to cover herself with her hands. In two halted steps, Marcus was in front of her and drew her hands away.
“You look anything but ridiculous, Addy,” he said roughly. He held her hands in his and bent to brush a kiss across her forehead. “You look beautiful.”
Her hands trembled until his thumbs brushed her palms in a tender caress. She smiled. A strange prickling teased the back of her eyes.
“You don’t have to say that, you know. I have already married you.”
Marcus laughed and pulled her into his arms. “So you did. I forgot. I need no longer court you. I have captured you and Great Aunt Adelaide’s fortune, so I can go back to playing the rogue.”
“A rogue in a lovely dressing gown,” Addy said. She ran her hands over the soft silk and rested her cheek on his chest. “Why is it women are only alluring when barely covered, and men are alluring even when covered from neck to foot?”
“You find me alluring?” He grinned down at her as she raised her head to answer.
“Very.”
“I find you incredibly beautiful. Especially when you are barely covered.”
“I don’t believe you. Although I do appreciate that you said so whilst looking at my face.”
“Where else would I look?”
Adelaide glanced down at her breasts. They felt full and achy. The combination of the lace stretched over them and the silk of his dressing gown against which they were cushioned, sent catherine wheels of sensation all over her body. Worse, the low neckline of the nearly nonexistent nightrail threatened to spill their plump emphasized bounty all over his chest like melons from an overturned cart.
“Just because you have the loveliest breasts in all of England, does not mean they are your most noteworthy feature.” His statement would have been easier to countenance, had his voice not grown hoarse and quavered three times.
She stepped out of his arms and crossed hers over the offending appendages. “I take it you have seen all the breasts in England, sir?”
With a movement so quick she was taken completely by surprise, he unfolded her arms and tucked her into his body again. “Only a fool would answer a question like that, my dear. Shall I tell you what your best feature is?”
“If you hope to salvage this wedding night,” she said in a put-upon tone. “Perhaps you should.”
“Your face, Addy, when you smile.” The tenderness she craved to the point of pain, shone in his eyes and resonated in his words. “All is right in the world when you smile. You are so beautiful when you are happy, it makes my heart hurt.”
She could not think what to say. Whatever else happened tonight, she truly believed he meant those words. To her amazement, the radiant glow his words evoked in her spilled from her face to light a smile on his.
He bent to kiss her and as he did, clasped her so tightly as to lift her feet from the floor. He tasted faintly of brandy and something sweet and clean. His lips were gentle, but insistent. A warm caress flittered across the seam of her mouth. His tongue teased and pleaded and that tender flutter settled in her stomach before moving lower.
She opened her mouth just enough to tug at his lower lip. His chuckle rumbled against her breasts. Her nipples contracted almost painfully in response. Had her arms not tucked themselves around his neck, she was certain she would have crumbled to the floor.
His tongue stole over her teeth and danced across hers like a flame. She heard a helpless whimper and realized it was her own. The ebb and glide of his roughness over her timid silk pulled her into an inferno. Liquid pooled at the juncture of her thighs and did nothing to soothe the fire he stoked with his lips and tongue. There was no air. She would drown in him, but the need for him, for the heat of this kiss, shattered all reason.
Marcus’s inarticulat
e growl barely touched the euphoria created by his kiss. He dragged his mouth away only to rest it at her temple. His warm breath elicited tiny shivers as it brushed her ear. The catch of his breath in short gasps thrilled her. It matched her own.
“Dear God, Addy,” he said hoarsely. “I had decided to do the noble thing and tell you we did not have to do this tonight.” He seemed unable to help himself. His teeth skimmed the rim of her ear and took a gentle nip of the delicate lobe. A husky laugh, she barely recognized as hers, and a delicious shiver coursed through her.
The deep V of his dressing gown lay open and bared a tantalizing peek of smooth muscled skin. Addy could not resist. She pressed her lips to his flesh in hopes of sending some of the heat he had breathed into her back to its source. Her reward was a sharp hiss and a wicked moan. He lifted his head and stared into her eyes, his own ablaze with an almost primitive light.
“Have you changed your mind about that nobility, Marcus?”
“Yes.”
“What changed your mind?” Her voice flirted and teased and she knew it.
“You,” he said as he ran his hands from her shoulders to her hips and back again. “In this gown. With your hair…” He gathered its weight in his hands and drew it up to bury his face in it. “Your hair, Addy. I’m afraid my nobility has flown straight out the window.”
“I must confess.” She rolled her hips in a gentle brush against his. The harsh rasp of his breath and the prolonged shudder that instantly rocked his powerful frame gave her a taste of her own power. A power only beginning to emerge and one of which she knew little, save what her instincts told her. “It is not your nobility I am interested in, Marcus. Not tonight.”
He hesitated but a moment. “Thank God,” he murmured. He combed through the tangle of her hair to cup her nape and tilt her head for his kiss. She opened to him, eager to taste the heated silk of his mouth, a taste which intoxicated more than the most decadent syllabub, hungered even as it sated.
Lost In Love (Road To Forever Series #1) Page 18
