Perhaps his friends were right and he had more in common with Georgiana than he’d first thought. He had not felt so alive in years.
But pleasant though it might be, he could not devote the whole of his waking life to her. He had promised his friends he would not walk away from his role at the club. If the masquerade planned for the following evening was to run smoothly, it would be necessary for him to attend. And though he had no intention of allowing his wife to set his comings and goings, he could not just disappear without notice.
Since she made a habit of long walks, he had to search half the property to find her. Eventually he was drawn to the lower meadow by the sound of another of her one-sided conversations with Sargent.
‘We could have more fun together if you had a ball, or a rag to pull on, or any other plaything. You poor dog.’
Of course, the dog had no idea what she was saying. But he was wagging his tail as if he had never met a more wonderful person in his life and would gladly learn English if it would make her happy.
‘How about a stick?’ she suggested. She searched around for a possibility. But as usual, the gardeners had done such a good job of clearing the brush and there was none to be had.
Then, as he watched, she spied a nearby apple tree. Despite her skirts, she managed to clamber high enough up the trunk to grab a fruit off one of the lower branches. She held it out to show him. ‘You mustn’t eat this, for it is far too green. It will give you a bellyache. But you are trained as a hunter, are you not? I am sure your mouth is so gentle that you will not even leave a mark.’
The dog sat at her feet, staring at her face intently as if trying to comprehend this torrent of unfamiliar words.
She tossed the apple to him. ‘Catch.’
It bounced off his nose, earning her an indignant look that asked why, if she claimed to love him, she had suddenly taken to throwing fruit.
‘You are supposed to catch it,’ she said patiently. ‘Then give it to me and I will toss it again.’
‘You need to give him a better reason than that.’ Fred could not help interrupting, if only to save the dignity of his dog.
‘He needs a reason to play?’ she said, shaking her head in amazement. Perhaps it was amazing to her. It sometimes seemed that his new wife was not so much an ordinary woman, but an elemental spirit of joy. Now, she was staring not at the dog, but at him. ‘What a sad life he must have led, before I arrived.’
‘He did well enough,’ Fred replied, suddenly unsure.
‘Did he really?’ That steady gaze was like the touch of a surgeon, probing gently at an old wound.
‘He was satisfied with order, and quiet, and following the commands that were given to him,’ Fred said, wondering why that sounded like such cold comfort.
‘But was he happy?’ she insisted.
He had been as happy as a dog could expect to be. They had both been. Comfort came with predictability and reliability. The distance between unfettered joy and profound regret was too close to risk.
But Georgiana had been the very opposite of such staid emotions. She was like a Russian doll, a nested series of surprises, each more pleasant than the last. A month ago, he’d had no reason to be dissatisfied with his life. But it paled in comparison to what he felt today, when he looked at the woman beside him. ‘He was content,’ he admitted at last, looking away from her to the dog at their feet. ‘But he was not happy. He did not know that there could be another way.’
‘Then it is good that I came here,’ she said. ‘For I would wish him to be as happy as I am, now that I am with you.’
For some reason, her happiness seemed to increase his own. His heart ached in his chest like an unused muscle forced to stretch after years without use. To hide his confusion, he scooped the apple from the ground and sent it bouncing into the field. Then he looked at the dog and said, ‘Fetch.’
Just as he had been trained to do, the dog gave one quick wag of his tail and was off into the grass, searching for his prize. In only a few moments, he was back, the apple held carefully in his mouth. He dropped it at the feet of his master and sat, patiently, waiting for a response.
‘Good boy.’ Georgiana smiled at the dog, patting him. Then she cast a sidelong look up at Fred that hinted there might be rewards for him as well.
He looked back to Sargent, blushing. ‘Again?’
There was another wag of the tail.
He handed the apple to Georgiana, prepared to teach her how to throw.
She wound up and let loose with a pitch worthy of a world-class bowler. ‘Fetch, Sargent.’
He laughed, amazed by her once more. ‘You have played cricket.’
‘I suppose it is too late to deny it,’ she said, straightening her skirts.
‘I don’t know why I am surprised,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Who taught you?’
‘The stable boys on my father’s land,’ she said, as unrepentant as ever.
‘And I suppose they also taught you to climb trees,’ he said.
‘And play drumhead,’ she agreed. ‘My father was the one that taught me to handle a carriage. Because it was more ladylike than riding astride.’
‘There were no little girls in the household?’ he asked.
‘Not a one. Until Marietta arrived, I was free of feminine influence and happy to be so.’
‘And after?’ he asked.
‘Not content,’ she said simply. ‘I do not do as well with order as you and Sargent.’
‘I noticed,’ he said, smiling.
Sargent returned with the apple, looking from one to the other of them before dropping it at Georgiana’s feet. She picked it up and prepared to throw again. Then she paused. ‘Are you about to tell me that it is improper for a lady to play games meant for boys?’
‘I suppose I might, if you mean to hoist up your skirts and play a game by the Serpentine,’ he said. ‘But I see no reason you cannot throw a ball for the dog.’
She nodded. ‘Then I will show you what it looks like when I am not holding back to protect your delicate male sensibilities.’ She threw it again, even farther than before.
Fred whistled in amazement. ‘It is a shame we did not have you at Eton.’
‘You would not have known what to do with a girl there.’
He slipped a hand around her waist and dragged her to the ground. ‘But I know what to do with one now.’
‘We are in a field in broad daylight,’ she reminded him with a wicked grin. ‘Anyone might walk by.’
They were a half mile from the nearest path and lying in grass so deep the foxtails were waving over their heads. By the sound of his distant baying, even Sargent had found something more interesting to do than bother them. All the same, Fred returned her smile as he tossed up her skirts. ‘Then I’d best be quick about it.’
‘About what?’ she said, gasping as his lips touched the inside of her thigh.
‘Another lesson in your education,’ he said, continuing to kiss his way upward. ‘If you happened to look at the ceiling while you played cards, what I am about to do to you what was happening to the Roman girl painted directly over your head.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
‘Oh, dear.’
He was kissing his way up the inside of her leg until his mouth settled on the place that gave her the most pleasure. He grazed the little bud of sin with his teeth before swirling his tongue around it, then dipped inside of her, thrusting just as he did when he kissed her on the mouth.
The pleasure was sudden and intense, and she arched her hips up to press herself against his mouth. She clutched the grass in her fists to anchor herself to the earth as the climax took her. It was almost too much to stand. Her heart would burst if it continued. But when she tried to escape he held her hips in place and took her even higher before the last rel
ease which left her limp, wet and ready for his entry.
He pulled away and knelt to undo his breeches. She rose as well, lunging to tackle him to the ground, climbing on to his body and pushing her skirts out of the way to take him inside her. Then she locked her feet behind his thighs and thrust hard and fast against him, moving on him with the same frenzy he had driven her to.
When she knew he was nearing the peak, she reached beneath the collar of his coat and dug her fingers into his shoulders before sealing his mouth with a musky kiss. She felt his climax in the shocked breath he gave and the sudden tensing of every muscle before he relaxed with a sigh.
She broke the kiss and relaxed as well, resting an elbow on the ground and her head on her fist. ‘Does the club have a painting for that as well?’
He sighed, staring up at the sky with a beatific smile. ‘If we do not, I shall paint one myself and hang it at tomorrow night’s masquerade, in your honour.’
‘We are going to London,’ she said, smiling at the fun of fancy dress.
He gave her a surprised look. ‘I have given you my opinion of your attending events at Vitium et Virtus.’
‘But surely, now that we are intimate, it would be all right,’ she said, running a coaxing finger down the front of his vest.
‘I do not see how,’ he said. ‘The club is no place for a lady.’
‘Yet I saw many women there,’ she said. ‘If you go without me, how am I to trust that there is nothing unsavoury occurring?’
‘You should not even know of the place, much less wonder what I am doing there,’ he replied.
She had meant it in jest, but his reply was hardly reassuring. ‘But I will wonder,’ she said. ‘And others will wonder why you are alone, since we have been married less than a month.’
‘No one will talk,’ he said, as if this was the only thing that should concern her. ‘I am the one who sees that no scandal ever escapes the place. The members are sworn to secrecy.’
‘Not talking about a thing is not the same as not knowing it,’ she said. She could already imagine the sidelong glances she would get when ladies of her acquaintance realised he had returned to town without her. ‘I do not understand why you think my scandals shall be public and yours shall be private.’
‘It was a rule you agreed to, when we married,’ he said.
As she remembered it, she had agreed to nothing. She had told him specifically of her plan to break any and all rules when she chose. ‘But that one makes no sense,’ she said. ‘And it hurts me when you go to that place without taking me along.’ That was more truth than she’d planned to reveal.
Her honesty did not seem to affect him in the slightest. He rolled her off him and on to the soft grass that had been their bed. Then he gave her a quick peck upon the cheek before standing and doing up his breeches. ‘I will be back on Thursday morning. The time will pass so quickly you will hardly know I’m gone.’ Then he left her, walking in the direction of the stables, probably to prepare his horse for the ride to London. She could hear him whistling a few bars of the song she’d been trying unsuccessfully to teach the bird. It was some consolation to think that one of them had learned it. Would that Frederick was so easy to educate in the things that really mattered.
She rose and shook the grass from her skirts, calling for the dog before walking with him back to the house. By the time she arrived, she had a plan to teach her husband the benefits of shared entertainments.
He would not like it, of course. At least, not at first. If there was truly nothing to fear from Vitium et Virtus and her husband’s continued fascination with it, then there was no reason she could not go as well. He would see her there and scold her. Most likely, he would become so angry that he would kiss her. Then they would go to the places there that other couples went when they wished to be alone, and he would forgive her everything.
But he would not just leave her behind, as Father had when he’d married Marietta. They belonged to each other now, just as the Bishop said at the wedding. They belonged together.
And if she should find that he only went to the club to escape her and to sample pleasures in private and fulfil desires that he did not wish to admit he had?
She did not want to think about it. She had seen him there twice. He had not been behaving any more improperly than he had when people could see him.
It was a shame, really. If one could not let down one’s guard when all around them were doing so, what was the point of going to such a place? To cause him to make even a small misstep would be a service. If it was possible to commit a sin when one was with one’s own wife. She was not sure.
She went into the house and up the stairs, with Sargent loping at her side, until she arrived at her bedroom where her maid was waiting. ‘There is to be a ball at Vitium et Virtus and I need a costume.’
‘Oh, no, ma’am.’ Polly was still smarting from their last adventure and the risks she had taken.
George gave her a frustrated frown. ‘Do not be so silly. I am going with my husband. If he owns the club, I will be perfectly safe there.’
‘I suppose,’ Polly said. ‘But you do not mean to look like a fallen woman again, I hope.’
‘I am not fallen,’ George said with a proud smile. ‘At least not in a way that society frowns upon. I am married now. And thus, I am allowed some latitude in my dress, am I not?’
Her maid had no argument against something that was so perfectly true.
George threw the doors of the wardrobe open wide. ‘It should not be necessary to buy a costume, I think. Perhaps something old can be re-trimmed.’ She pulled out a blue-green gown, the colour of the sea on a summer day. ‘This one. Pull off the sleeves, cut the hem until it looks like seaweed. Take the pearls from another gown and scatter them across the bodice. And make me a mask as well.’ She held it up against herself, swaying to admire the movement of the skirt. ‘I shall let down my hair and be a mermaid.’
And she would not bother with the nonsense of attracting other men to dally with. In no time at all, she would catch the only man she cared for, lure him to the rooms upstairs she had heard about, and bind him so tightly to her that he would never leave her again.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
His wife was a bad influence on him.
Fred smiled. Not a terrible influence, perhaps. But he was definitely different from the way he had been the last time he’d been to Vitium et Virtus. Tonight, he was enjoying himself.
The dance floor was packed with devils, angels, sheiks and harem girls, and any number of mythological figures in costumes chosen for their ease of removal. By midnight, there would be couples kissing in dark corners, embracing in alcoves, and leading each other up the stairs to the bedrooms. While it would be a lie to pretend that the whole world was in love, it most certainly seemed to be in lust.
For a change, he knew how it felt. He was simultaneously satisfied and wanting, content and restless. Once the music had slowed and the chatter of the crowd faded to intimate whispers, it would be safe to slip away, reclaim his horse, and ride home.
He grinned. His friends had been right. Georgiana Knight was the most amazing thing that had ever happened to him. He had not noticed how cold and unhappy he had become until she had come along to change him. Her scattershot manners were infuriating, of course. But try as he might, he could not stay angry with her for long.
He would be arriving close to dawn, when the first rays of sun shone through his lover’s bed curtains, and he would waken her with a kiss. Her blue eyes would open wide with surprise, before putting her arms around his neck and dragging him back down into the pillows with her.
She had been angry at him today as well. But when he’d gone to say goodbye she had given him the sweetest of kisses and wished him a safe journey, their argument of the afternoon totally forgotten. She had not announced that she love
d him as yet, but her actions spoke louder than words.
For his part, momentous declaration should probably be spoken with some ceremony and not tossed over his shoulder on his way out the door. He doubted he was capable of poetry. He had given her jewellery. And he had not just given her flowers, today he’d made love with her in them. When he closed his eyes, he could still smell crushed grass and buttercups.
There ought to be something more than just words to convey the depth of his feelings. As he crossed towards the office, he glanced around him at the swirling dancers and swayed along with them to the beat of the music. Perhaps that was what he needed. She liked to dance. He would hire musicians and they would spend the evening waltzing in each other’s arms.
As they had in the past, masked women reached out their arms to him. And as he had done before, he disengaged himself and moved on. But tonight, he laughed along with them as he did so. While he was not precisely aroused by their advances, they did not leave him unmoved. Watching the abandon of the dancers made him even more eager for the night to be over, so that he might go home and work off the excess energy coursing through him.
Instead of simply walking away, he turned back to watch, just for a moment. And, as was true for everyone else in the room, his eyes were drawn to a woman in the centre of the crowd, dancing alone. Her gown was the green of a swell in the Mediterranean, the skirt tight through the hips and flaring out in a wave of ruffles and shredded ends, except in the places it was slit to reveal a bit of bare leg. Her bodice was a mass of pearls and spangles, giving the illusion that her breasts were bare under a spray of sea foam. It was accentuated by her long blonde hair, down except for a few small braids that held bits of coral and shell. Her face was hidden by a mask, covered with even more spangles, as smooth and bright as the scales on a fish.
Convenient Bride for the Soldier & the Major Meets His Match & Secret Lessons With the Rake (9781488021718) Page 19
