by Julia Quinn
“On the edge of the pond?”
“You had already taken off your pinafore and your dress, by the time I saw you. I was so caught by horror that I didn’t do a thing. You had your shoes and stockings off within a moment, and then you threw off your chemise and just pranced right into the water.”
“No!”
He was laughing. “Yes. You did. You, the entirely proper Lady Georgina. You took off all your clothes without the help of a maid, and you went into the water as if you were born to swim.”
“What did you do?”
“I couldn’t get out,” he explained. “Because I hadn’t learned much about propriety but I knew for sure that young ladies weren’t supposed to see a boy’s pump-handle. So I backed up, deeper in the water, and you followed me. And then, before I knew it, you were splashing me.”
“I can’t believe I don’t remember such a thing!”
“I’ve never forgotten. You were the most beautiful girl, Georgina. The most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Your skin was as white as the inside of a flower. Your hair was usually all pinned up and neat-looking, but when you threw away your bonnet, it fell down your back.”
“You didn’t—”
“Feel desire? I thought of you as if you were one of my sisters. But at the same time … it was confusing. You were so different from me, and so pretty, and so—so feminine. All that hair, and the way you shrieked when I splashed you.”
“You splashed me? That wasn’t very gentlemanly.”
“I didn’t know what else to do. Of course I splashed you, and you shrieked and splashed me back, so I got water in my mouth because I was laughing so hard, and that’s the way it was.”
“But how did you ever get out of the pond? And how did I?”
“My father’s stable master heard the rumpus and came out. He was no fool and knew he was looking at a disaster in the making. So he whisked you off somewhere, and ordered me out of the pool, and that was that.
“As far as I know, no one ever found out. I heard at supper that you had accidentally fallen into the horse trough, and after that your mother didn’t allow you around the stables, and anyway the summer was over, and we were all moving back to London.”
“I should never have said that you don’t understand death, should I?” she asked quietly.
There was a moment of silence, and then he dropped a kiss on her nose. “I wish you were right,” he offered. “I can’t remember not living with the knowledge. I loved my mother with all my heart, and she died.”
“Then why do you keep training these horses yourself?” she cried, frustrated. “Because you might well die too, you know.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, Georgie, but none of us are going to escape death.”
She snorted.
“I can’t live afraid.”
“You’re not thinking of the people who have to be afraid for you.”
Without warning, he rolled backward, taking her with him, so he was lying in the clover, and she was lying beside him. Right beside him. She froze instantly, every inch of her body suddenly aware of his. That big, muscled, gorgeous body. Her fingers trembled, wanting to touch him.
“Georgie,” he said. That was all. But she knew what he was saying. And she knew what her answer was, except that she was her mother’s daughter, and nothing like that could be put in words.
Chapter 23
Instead of answering him, she simply rose to her feet.
A shadow crossed Hugh’s eyes, and she knew that he was afraid that she was leaving. It felt good to tease him, so she turned with a little wiggle of her hips and walked a step to the edge of the stream. He couldn’t see, but she was undoing the pearl buttons at her wrists.
A moment later she felt him at her shoulder, but she didn’t turn to say anything.
“Georgie,” he said again. This time his voice had darkened to velvet, and it rushed over her senses and stung every nerve into life.
She didn’t turn around, just concentrated on slipping each little pearl button out of its buttonhole. Then she pulled off her linen shirt and laid it primly to the side. He still hadn’t said anything, or done anything, as far as she knew.
Her riding skirt took a moment or so. Her boots another moment. Her garters, stockings, corset … they all seemed to fly off her. Then she had on nothing but her chemise. She took a deep breath and pulled off her chemise.
Then she turned around to see what he was doing.
He was naked.
The rest of him was as beautiful as his chest. The muscles in his legs were huge, as befitted a man who could control a stallion with a nudge from his knees. They were shaded with dark hair.
“You didn’t have hair back then,” she said, managing to meet his eyes.
“You didn’t have breasts.” His voice was somewhere between sensual and downright dangerous. It made her feel as if she were looking at her body through his eyes—seeing herself as creamy, curved, and delicious.
Without a word, she raised her arms and started pulling pins out of her hair. There weren’t that many left after her mad cross-country race, but somehow her ringlets had stayed up. Now they tumbled down her back, the color of dark roses.
Richard approved of her body, and had told her so in his considerate way. But he always thought her hair verged on the vulgar.
The memory made her raise a hand and pull a thick lock of hair forward over her breast.
Hugh groaned, a hoarse puff of air that startled her. “Do you like the color of my hair?” she asked.
“I’ve never liked anything but red hair. Not since I was ten.”
She couldn’t stop smiling. “You did say that when Caro suggested Gwendolyn Passmore for your list.”
“Too pale,” he said. “Her hair is like an imitation of yours.”
If she stood here another moment, she would simply leap on him and start touching him in all the places and ways that a lady should never touch a man. Especially a man who wasn’t her husband.
So she turned on her heel and marched into the pond instead.
Immediately she realized why ladies don’t swim. Because it wasn’t pleasant to feel muck under one’s toes. And water was rather cold. And though it looked perfectly clear on the bank, now that she was in it, she couldn’t see the bottom, which made her feel queasy. And …
There was a tidal wave of a splash, and a powerful body cut through the water. He stood up opposite her. “Bloody hell, but this is cold,” Hugh said, shaking wet hair out of his eyes.
Georgina didn’t need to be told. Her nipples had turned from raspberries to rocks. Her belly was protesting the little wavelets of cold water that welled out from the splash he made. She had absolutely no impulse to go any deeper.
“If you splash me,” she said, “I’ll have to kill you. Just so you know.”
“We all have to die sometime.” He grinned mockingly.
He deserved to be splashed, and the only thing that stopped her was the conviction that he would return the favor.
“Was the pool warmer when we were children?” she inquired. She couldn’t stop looking at his shoulders. And his waist. And below. The water was just clear enough that she could see … him.
She hadn’t looked earlier, of course. What she could see suggested that he and Richard were not alike. That was a polite way of putting it. She felt a pang of alarm, given the fact that she hadn’t enjoyed Richard’s invasions very much, although her husband had been considerably smaller.
Then she raised her eyes to find that Hugh was grinning broadly and watching her. “So how do I measure up?” he asked, laughter in his voice.
She turned up her nose. Far be it from her to criticize her dead husband. “You’re a bit smaller,” she said briskly, “but—”
The smile fell from his face, and he was beside her in one stride. “Georgina.” He said it low and threatening, but she was too busy getting used to the cold water that he had sent lapping over her stomach.
“Do yo
u want to rephrase that?”
“What?” she demanded, shivering.
He nipped her lower lip and nudged his hips forward.
She couldn’t help looking down, and now they were close enough that the water was translucent. She could see everything. Her heart thumped, and when she looked up she was quite sure that her dismay was in her eyes. “This won’t work,” she said quietly.
Hugh looked stunned. “It won’t?”
She bit her lip, feeling tears threaten. She shook her head.
“You’re telling me that Richard Sorrell had such a big pump-handle that you can’t even contemplate mine?” He took a step back and raked a hand through his hair. “Bloody hell!”
She couldn’t even smile. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” His voice was steaming with frustration and anger, though who he was angry at she didn’t know.
“You’re too—”
“Don’t even go there,” he said tightly. “This has damn well never happened in my life, and I can’t believe it’s happening now.”
“You’re too large,” she said desperately, to his back, since he was leaving the pool. “I’m sorry, Hugh, but it will never work. Never.”
He froze. “What did you say?”
“If all you care about is some sort of contest over the size of your thistle,” she said crossly, turning to splash out the other direction, “you can rest easy.”
He was next to her in a moment and picked her straight out of the water into his arms. “Look at me, damn it.”
“You needn’t swear,” she said tartly. But she met his eyes.
“Are you telling me that Richard wasn’t some sort of giant amongst men?”
“I think you are,” she said honestly. “And it’s not going to work. It—” She gulped and decided that she might as well be honest. “It hardly worked for Richard and myself. He was very considerate about it, and even so, he could hardly fit.”
The look in his eyes sent a dark thrill down her legs. “We can work on that, Georgie.”
“Don’t call me Georgie!” she snapped.
“I thought you liked it.” He was walking steadily out of the water, and since only her toes were still trailing through cold water, she was happy.
“Not when …”
“When it’s so necessary that you be a Georgina rather than a Georgie?” He put her on her feet, and she instantly missed the heat of his body. Then he started walking away, toward Richelieu, who had wandered a good distance away.
Was he leaving? She stared at his back, dumbstruck. True, she had said that it wouldn’t work. But she hoped … well, she hoped he could work some miracle. Because somewhere along the way she had decided to do an utterly scandalous thing, something that could ruin her reputation forever.
Hugh pulled at a bundle rolled behind Richelieu’s saddle, and then strode back toward her.
There was another difference with Richard. Hugh’s thistle stood upright. All the time. Whereas her husband …
“What did you fetch?” she asked.
His smile had the smugness of a cat in the cream jug. “Blanket roll. I always have an extra.” He threw it onto a bed of buttercups and plucked her off her feet, with the same lack of éclat that he always displayed. A moment later, she was lying on her back, stark naked, staring up at Hugh.
“Is that itchy?” he asked her, as casual as if they were on a picnic.
“Yes,” she said, too dumbfounded to do more than answer.
He snatched her petticoats, tucked them under her, and threw himself down next to her. He didn’t touch her. He didn’t roll over on top of her. He just leaned in, delicately, and kissed her.
They didn’t say anything for a while. Georgina tried to formulate words when Hugh pulled away from her mouth and started doing something so delicious to her throat … kissing her, and nipping her so that she found herself whimpering and clutching his shoulders, hoping that he would keep going.
Lower.
To her breast.
That very thought was enough to break the haze in her mind a little, and she murmured, “Hugh, perhaps …”
He responded by taking her mouth again. It was a primal kiss, one that told her without words that he was in charge, and she should just stop thinking.
Georgina let him do it because, after all, she was the one benefiting from all that male enthusiasm. It was awkward, but something about the way Hugh held her, hard, and didn’t let her break away, drove her wild with desire.
In fact … “Hugh,” she said, hearing her own breathy voice with a shock of surprise. “We aren’t going to …” She broke off in a moan.
“You undo me,” he said. His voice was a dark growl. Then he put his mouth on her breast. Just like that. With no preparation, without asking permission.
And she yelled. That was the only word for it. No, she was wrong. That hot, wet mouth suckled her, and she didn’t yell: She screamed.
It didn’t make him stop, either. He just suckled harder, until she arched her back to make it very clear that he was welcome to keep going.
It wasn’t until a warm hand slid up her leg that Georgina regained even a modicum of conscious thought. She yelped and tried to sit up.
A big hand pushed her down again, but she couldn’t summon the protest that she meant to because he nipped her, and that drove her body into a sweet, dark place again. So she closed her eyes, closed out the big, empty blue sky and all that air around them and just dropped into the frantic, tight feeling in her body, the way heat was coiling in her legs and building in her stomach.
She kept trying to arch up, but that big hand held her down. Then she found herself trying to pull him on top of her, and that was scandalous enough that her eyes flew open, and she squeaked, “No!”
“Yes,” he said throatily, and there he was. Hugh. She was flat on her back like any hussy, and he was braced on his forearms, grinning down at her.
She was scandalized. Of course. But she was also so happy that she couldn’t breathe. He was looking at her … that way. His eyes were—
And his hands—
“We shouldn’t,” she said feebly. “Not outside.”
His eyes laughed down at her, and all that laughter was side by side with desire. For her.
That was what she never saw in all the days of her marriage. And what she saw in the eyes of other men, looking at the woman they desired.
“Why not?” he asked, and the husky sound of his voice thrummed down her legs like a musical note.
“Not proper,” she said, with a little gasp because he had his hand on her breast again.
“I’m not married,” Hugh said.
“I know that.” Her fingers were clenched around his neck. What she really wanted to do was touch him.
But she wasn’t sure that was allowed. Richard certainly would not have wanted to be touched. But then he hadn’t wanted to kiss her neck, or her arm, or the side of her breast either.
“If you make love to me, Georgie, you’re marrying me.” His thumb rubbed harder, and she heard a little pant come out of her mouth and shut it firmly. “I love that sound you make,” he said, conversationally.
“We can’t do this … outside,” she said, sidestepping the whole question of marriage.
“Why not?”
“Because—because we’re outside. And it’s not—”
He took the word proper from her lips and kissed her into that storm of heat and pleasure again, until she knew without words that propriety had nothing to do with this particular day. This particular moment.
With Hugh.
“Are you ever proper?” she murmured, when he was kissing his way across her throat again.
“Rarely.” He had been braced above her, his body not really touching hers, and he rose back up on his knees. “It doesn’t interest me.”
Georgina couldn’t help gurgling with laughter. “That doesn’t surprise me.”
“A proper young lady would never pant in the outdoors,” he infor
med her, making her do just that with one rough pass of his hand.
“I—” she gasped.
“A proper gentleman would likely never say this.”
“What?”
“For God’s sake, Georgie, will you touch me? Please?”
She swallowed. “Is it … is that allowed?” It sounded so stupid that she closed her eyes for a moment. “I mean, would you like me to do that?”
He had a curious look in his eyes, almost like sympathy and a lot like regret, but then he gave her a grin, flopped on his back, and spread his arms. “I’m yours.”
Georgina sat up so fast that her head swum. He was gorgeous. She carefully got on her knees next to him, and then paused. She didn’t want to just touch.
She cleared her throat. She thought she knew the answer, but …
“Can I do more than touch you?”
His lazy smile would be outlawed in a Puritan county. “Georgie, darling, if you want to put that gorgeous mouth of yours anywhere on my body, you will make me the happiest man in England.”
She took a deep breath and didn’t even try to stop the delighted smile on her face. She probably looked like an idiot. Who cared?
This was Hugh, apparently the first man in her life who had seen her body, even if he was only ten at the time. And Hugh was the first man whose body she had ever seen in good light. So it was worth making an event of it.
So she inspected him. Closely, slowly, starting with his neck and slowly, slowly making her way down his body. Not touching him.
The interesting thing was that she seemed to be affecting him even without a touch. By the time she reached his waistline, he was holding on to the blanket like a drowning man, and his breathing was ragged.
“Georgie,” he said, once.
“I’m thinking,” she said, not listening to him. Because she’d reached the most interesting part of his body. Her whole life she’d called a man’s instrument his thistle. But that word didn’t seem to have any relation to what Hugh had. A thistle was soft and squishy and round. And Hugh was hard and long.
The very thought of it made her feel … she had her legs curled underneath her, but they suddenly felt uncomfortable.
Hugh made a strangled noise in his throat. “Georgie, please …”
