How ironic that she had never felt more beautiful than she did for the surprise marriage to Beau Courtland. She’d escaped the Ticking townhome with only the hideous gray half-mourning dress she’d worn that day and a bag or two of her accessories and jewelry from Liverpool. Later, she hoped to retrieve the lavish wardrobe she’d owned as duchess, but in the moment, she had been painfully aware of Beau and Teddy alone downstairs with the duke. She had grabbed a few personal items for herself and a few for Teddy, dashed off a note to Teddy’s valet, Mr. Broom, and fled.
Beau had taken her, along with Teddy and Miss Breedlowe, to Henrietta Place straightaway. Elisabeth and Lady Falcondale were pacing the front steps when she arrived. They had practically ripped her from the carriage door and spirited her up the stairs to a beautifully appointed room that Elisabeth explained would be her bedchamber as the new Viscountess of Rainsleigh.
Draped across the bed was the most beautiful gown Emmaline had perhaps ever seen. She reverently had touched the skirts, and layers and layers of diaphanous silk slipped through her fingers. It was a ruby color—not red, not quite pink, but the color of claret in a glass on a summer day. It was vivid and rich, with a smooth bodice trimmed in a corded piping of the same color.
“Lady Frinfrock insisted,” Piety Falcondale had told her excitedly. “God knows what she paid to have it made so quickly. She assumes that you’ve grown weary of the blacks and grays these many months.”
Elisabeth had added, “Or rather, she assumes her dear Beau may have grown weary. She dotes on him, which will be your cross to bear, I’m afraid. When she learned of the wedding, her chief concern was that Beau receive a bride who was properly turned out in a gown that he would, er, enjoy.”
Emmaline had looked up from the dress. “Do you think he will like it?”
Elisabeth had laughed again. “I think he will like removing it.”
And then everyone had laughed, everyone except Emmaline, who could not begin to fathom what she might or might not wear in the nighttime, as she had only just learned of what she would wear in the day.
She had dressed speedily, jumping every time someone came in or out of the room. She could not escape the niggling fear that the Duke of Ticking would storm into the room at any moment and drag her back to his brood. Under normal circumstances, she would have taken care with her appearance, especially her hair, finally unbound and with no hat, but she had been afraid to linger.
When she was dressed, feeling like herself for the first time in nearly two years, the women journeyed with her to Watford.
When they’d arrived at the snug, spare little church, Lady Frinfrock herself, along with her friend, Miss Baker, had met them in the vestibule. Miss Breedlowe had whispered an apology, saying that she’d implored the marchioness not to venture out in the cold for such a brief and informal ceremony, but her plea had fallen on deaf ears. Lady Frinfrock regarded the whole affair with almost proprietary regard, despite the rush. She had studied Emmaline’s dress with an eyebrow raised but said nothing. (Jocelyn had informed her that this was very high praise, indeed.) Next, she had produced a hothouse bouquet for her to hold before her like a proper bride.
“Thank you, my lady,” Emmaline had whispered reverently, truly humbled. “You’ve thought of everything. I shall never be able to thank you enough for the gown. It is beautiful.”
“You do look far less sallow when removed from the piteous gray,” the marchioness had said.
And then Mr. Courtland had appeared from somewhere inside the church and signaled the ladies to take seats. Teddy appeared next, and Mr. Courtland asked Emmaline if she would mind terribly if he walked her down the aisle on one arm while Teddy held her other arm. She nodded, too emotional to speak.
And so Teddy, looking handsome in a new suit, shuffled to her right side and Mr. Courtland offered an arm at her left. She marveled at the lengths to which her friends had gone to free her from the untenable situation in which they’d found themselves. If there had been time, she would have wept in gratitude. But there had not been time. Mr. Courtland suggested that the sooner they were properly married, the safer she and Teddy would be. She’d nodded, and he’d pulled her around the corner of the vestibule. Emmaline had dried her eyes and looked up, seeing first the short, narrow aisle and the small, tidy altar and then . . .
And then, there he was, tall and handsome in a formal wedding suit, with Joseph and Stoker standing behind him. She hovered in the archway of the door for half a beat, pulling back on Mr. Courtland’s arm, just to stare at Beau. Almost as if he felt her gaze, Beau looked up and saw her.
She smiled, their gazes held, and he slowly perused her appearance—ruby dress, hair pulled away from her face but long down her back, flowers, tears she could not blink away. He looked nothing short of dazzled. But his eyes also held impatience and need. Emmaline’s breath caught. She too was impatient, and she wondered if the same need was answered in her own eyes.
But then Mr. Courtland was tugging her along, and Beau smiled and cocked that one perfect eyebrow. A quarter hour later, the vicar pronounced them man and wife.
Emmaline was handed up into the Rainsleigh carriage by her husband while her friends and Teddy smiled and waved from the front gate of the church. She settled quickly and turned to wave back, but Beau slammed the carriage door with a click. He rapped twice on the ceiling, and the vehicle lurched forward.
“I’ve had just about all of that I can bear,” he said.
She frowned at the closed door. “I thought the ceremony was lovely, in fact.” Her frown failed because a pervasive smile had lurked beneath every nonsmile she had endeavored all day. She had even grinned through communion.
“I was thinking that we might suggest a meal together in honor of the . . . occasion,” Emmaline tried, pushing the curtain aside to look out the window. “It’s too late in the day for a wedding breakfast, obviously, but it was such a collective effort, wasn’t it? It feels almost rude to remove ourselves now.”
“No meal,” he said, sitting back on the opposite seat. “It’s not the slightest bit rude. Come here.”
Emmaline dropped the curtain and looked up. “You’re not hungry?”
“Yes, I am, in fact. Quite hungry. I said, come here.”
He was sprawled on the opposite seat, his arms propped slackly right and left, the picture of nonchalant repose. As if he hadn’t just been married. As if he wasn’t about to make her his wife in earnest. He was so relaxed, in fact, she would doubt his enthusiasm altogether if not for the look of impatient demand in his eyes. He extended his legs as far as the roomy seats would allow, bumping her ankles with his boot.
She wondered about the coachmen and the groom. She wondered about the length of their journey. “But where are we going?” she asked.
He took off his hat and tossed it beside him on the seat. He pulled off his gloves, one finger at a time. Emmaline stared at his hands.
“To bed,” he said plainly, casually.
“Now? In the light of day?” Her heartbeat was faster now, racing, despite their relaxed exchange. “Do they know?” She gestured to the window where she’d watched Elisabeth and Miss Breedlowe and both of their brothers wave good-bye.
“Of course they know,” he said. “Everyone knows, Duchess, and everyone is thrilled. Me most of all.” He patted the seat beside him. “Emma, come here.”
“Why?” she asked, looking up at him through half-lowered lashes.
He paused a beat, registering that look, and then he said, “Because I wish to tell you what I think of your dress.”
She looked down at the ruby dress.
“In the carriage?” Another lowered-lash look.
“Right here. Right now.” He reached out and plucked her hand from her lap and yanked.
She allowed it, falling against him. The wall of his chest was rock hard, and his left hand snaked around her waist, locking her to him. She sat on his lap. His muscled thighs were hard through her skirt.
“That’s
better,” he said. Idly, he fingered her hair. She shook her head, and the full weight of it fell around her shoulders. He made a slow hissing sound. He lifted a handful of it, and she felt the cool, weightlessness on her neck.
Suddenly, she wanted all of her hair loose and long and free. Lady Falcondale had plaited two sections away from her face and secured them at her crown with a ruby ribbon. It looked pretty for the wedding, but her hair had always been her secret vanity, and the hats and buns had been a particular punishment these last two years.
While he watched her, she bit off her gloves and reached to untie the ribbon. It skidded down the front of his shirt and the braids dropped to her shoulders.
Slowly, he took up one braid and began reverently unraveling the plait. “You know,” he said softly, “the hat you lost in the canal actually washed to shore downstream, and the boys, Ben and Jason, delivered it to me last week. Effective fishing trap, that hat.”
“What? No.” She laughed.
He nodded once. “They pulled it from the water with two bream skewered on the spines and the body of an eel trapped in the netting on the brim.
“Really?”
“No,” he said, “not really.”
She laughed, but the carriage hit a bump, and she jostled. His hands left her hair and caught her around the waist. He lowered his head, and she thought he would whisper something more about the hat. She closed her eyes and sank in, but he said nothing. He touched his lips to the area of skin just behind her ear. Emmaline sucked in a breath.
“You were so beautiful, Emma,” he murmured. “From the very beginning. Your eyes, so big and bright and earnest, haunted me. When you look at me, I feel as if you see nothing but me.”
I do, she thought.
He kissed his way from her neck to her jaw, dragging the roughness of his emerging beard against the soft skin.
“So beautiful,” he continued, “even in that hat. Even in the bloody widow’s weeds. Did you have any clue how beautiful I thought you were?”
Another nuzzle. He was nearly to her mouth now. She parted her lips, anticipating. Her breath was fast and shallow.
“But when I saw you in this dress,” he said, retreating to her ear again, “with color in your face, and light in your eyes, and your hair loose . . . ” He delved his hand into the long trail of her hair and lifted, fitting his fingers around the back of her head, tilting her face up to him. “I thought, never has there ever been a more beautiful woman.” His lips returned to the sensitive area behind her ear, and she whimpered.
So close. He’d been so close.
“Do you know what else I thought?” He nuzzled again, following the same path, nearly to her mouth and back. “Do you know?”
Her answer was a whimper.
“I thought, Please, God, let her never bind her hair again. It was a bloody crime, tying it back so tightly, and those hats . . . ”
She laughed, a breathy, distracted laugh, and he shifted so he could see her lips, almost as if he’d forgotten to kiss them. And then he dropped down, finally touching his mouth to hers, sealing them in a hard, slow, open kiss; kissing her as if he would not breathe if he did not.
It was Emmaline, in fact, who did not breathe. She squeezed her eyes shut and clung, sliding her hands up his arms to his massive shoulders. He turned his head, deepening the kiss, and she moaned softly, thrilled by each new closeness. But now she was not close enough, and she could only angle her neck so far.
Beau growled and shifted her, not breaking the kiss. He slid his palm beneath her bottom and scooped her high against him.
“Gather up your skirts,” he breathed, dropping his head back.
“Wha—”
“Your skirts,” he said to the ceiling of the carriage. “They’re in the way.” He swallowed. “Bunch them around your waist. Then you can straddle me.”
She blinked at him through a haze of desire. “Here?”
He turned his head to the side, sucking in breath. “Always.”
Shock and modesty were but faint glimmers as she dropped her hands from his shoulders and gathered up the swath of fabric, freeing her legs.
He nuzzled her throat, waiting as she piled handfuls of the ruby silk on the seat. When she was finally free, he lifted her higher, raking his face against the neckline of her gown, and she lifted one gold-slippered foot over his body. She put her hands on his shoulders, and he slid her down his chest, seating her heavily on his lap. Her body was jolted by the sweet sensation of very hard against very soft. She wiggled just a little, unable to not explore the new closeness, and he groaned.
“Hold still.” He ground out the words as he clamped his hands on her waist. “Or I will not last.”
She puzzled over this, her brain working only enough to understand the source of this new pleasure and repeat it. She wiggled again. He groaned again, louder this time, and closed his mouth over hers.
She was lost then, swept away in a torrent of sensation that erased thought and function. She pulled back only to breathe.
“Careful, Emma,” he said, sucking in his own breath. “I can usually be counted on for more control, but you”—He kissed her again, hard and fast—“are like nothing I’ve ever . . . ” Another kiss. “I’ve never had to ever . . . ”
But she didn’t want to hear about what he may have ever known, and she sank her fingers into his hair, and pulled his lips to hers, and repeated the long, air-robbing kiss.
But now the carriage was turning, rolling perhaps onto a smaller road paved with rounder, bumpier stones. The bounce of the road became a jostle, and Emmaline struggled to keep her balance. But soon she discovered how their bodies absorbed the shock, and she allowed the rhythm of the clipping vehicle to rock them together with its own intermittent bump-bump-bump. The sensation erased sight and sound. All she could do was feel.
Beau growled once, lifted her off his body, dropped her on her back on the carriage seat, and fell on top of her, barely breaking the kiss. One moment she was sitting astride his lap, and the next moment she was flat on her back, their legs a tangle against the door.
She tried to laugh, delighted by his strength and ferocity, but he pounced again on her mouth, and she sucked in breath before she was lost again.
He had just located the hem of her gown with his fingers when Emmaline realized the vehicle had lurched to a stop. Next, a rap sounded on the door, two swift knocks, and then retreating footsteps.
Emmaline froze.
“The footmen,” she rasped. “I’m . . . I’m . . . and you’re . . . ”
“Easy, Duchess,” he rumbled, allowing them both to catch their breath. He kissed her neck and shoulder. “They would not dare open the door.”
Emmaline considered this, wondering why they would not dare. Carefully, working hard to separate her brain from the delectable little bites he now nipped on her neck, she asked, “Because . . . you’ve asked them not to disturb us?”
“Well, yes,” he said, his voice muffled by her skin. “I did ask. But they would never open this carriage door, even if I had not. Not when we’ve just come from our wedding. En route to our house—well, en route to a house.” He propped up on his elbows and looked down at her. “You’ll be happy to know that I have elected not to bring you home to the boat on Paddington Lock. We’ve come to Henrietta Place.”
“Does this trouble you? I know you do not enjoy your brother’s house.”
“Ah, but apparently it is my house, and that is what bothers me. But he and Elisabeth have not moved away yet. And it is my understanding that you and I will away to New York very soon.”
“Yes, we will,” she answered, smiling. But her mind returned to the grooms and footmen who loitered outside the carriage but would not open the door. “Rainsleigh?”
“Beau,” he whispered, biting her earlobe.
“Beau, do you mean all the servants here also . . . know?”
“If you mean, is the staff aware that I’m halfway to bedding my wife in this closed carriage? Y
es, of course they know.”
She thought about this. She thought about Elisabeth and Bryson, who would apparently share this house with her, and Miss Breedlowe, who was looking after Teddy tonight. She thought about all the servants she might pass when they left this carriage and walked to . . . wherever they might go inside the house. Beau had already mentioned the bedchamber. But surely . . .
She looked at him. “But everyone will know that we are . . . being intimate?”
Beau chuckled and sat up, grabbing her wrists and yanking her up with him. “Yes,” he said, “everyone will know. And before you apply your duchess’s rule book to whether this may be appropriate or not, let me assure you that I don’t care. Although it does happen to be appropriate, considering I just bloody married you. What we’re doing and what we shall do, all night long, goes on between every married man and his wife, even these grooms, if they’re married, even Lady Frinfrock, when she was married.”
Emmaline thought of Lady Frinfrock laid out on the carriage seat and made a noise of distress.
Beau laughed. “The only person who did not carry on in this fashion was your late husband—bloody imbecile—but I thank God for that.”
“Why ‘thank God’?” she asked. It was a self-serving question, but she wanted to hear him say it. And how much better to enjoy the words now, when he was rumpled and breathless, his eyes the most vivid shade of passion-dipped blue?
“Because that means that you belong only to me, and I have the supreme privilege of introducing you to one of the very best things in life, and then keeping all of your pleasure entirely to myself. Forever. Whether you like it or not.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“At the risk of saying too much, Emma, I feel compelled to ask you: do you understand what will happen here, in this room, in that bed, in about five minutes’ time?”
One for the Rogue Page 22
