It’s like I’ve been gift-wrapped.
He reached the bottom buttons, slipping his fingers underneath the cloth at her shoulders, pushing it off so that her wedding dress fell to the ground. He began to unlace her corset. Her heart was pounding. She was wrapped in desire, which built as her corset was loosened. She wondered what he would think of her.
I wonder what he’s thinking, right now.
He finished, his fingers drawing the sleeves of her corset downward. His fingers brushed against her skin, his touch like fire. It fell to the ground, baring her skin. She felt a slight chill, and the thrill of revealing all. His lips pressed to the nape of her neck.
She bit her lip as she turned toward her husband, letting him look at her. His mouth was open, his lips parted. His eyes seemed to drink her in. She stared back at him boldly. She stepped closer to him. He reached out, running a finger along her collarbone.
“What happened here?” he asked as he touched her scar.
She smiled—her mother had always seen to it that her dresses covered it. When it had occurred, her mother had been beside herself with the thought that she would be considered marked.
“There was a time when I was a girl that my father wouldn’t allow me to fence. I made one of the stable boys fence me. I didn’t have any protective gear on, and I was stabbed in the shoulder with a fire iron.”
He leaned in, kissing it. Arabella felt adored, letting her head fall back as he trailed kisses along the line of the scar. Once he was done, she opened her eyes, lowering her chin.
He’s as much mine, as I am his.
She reached up, undoing his jacket buttons. He helped her, taking off his jacket, then he untucked his shirt, pulling off over his head. She looked at his chest—the tight, flat muscles—the candlelight flickered on his skin.
She reached for the buttons. He let her undo them, then he pulled them down. He placed a hand on her cheek, pulling her toward him. They kissed, their shared desire causing them to hunger for each other. When he pulled away, he lifted her up. She let him carrying her over to the bed, where he set her down on top of the soft coverlet.
“Touch me, Charles,” she said. She wanted him to know how she craved his touch. To finally be able to demand it, and have what she had long wanted from him was the most wonderful thing.
This is even better than when it was in my mind.
He put his hands on her, his palms running over her breasts, her curves, along the outsides of her thighs. He leaned over her, kissing her. She ran her fingers through his hair.
He trailed kisses down her throat, along the scar on her collarbone. She moaned as he took one of her nipples in between his teeth. Arabella experienced a riot of sensations—as he sucked, he parted her netherlips, his finger dipping inside of her.
He buried his face against her neck, his breath warm against her skin.
“What are you doing?” she purred.
“It won’t hurt as much if you’re ready for me, darling,” he replied, continuing, until she was panting. She had never known that there was so much pleasure to be had. Her mother had certainly never told her anything of the sort.
“Are you happy?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “Now come here.” She wanted him inside of her. He entered her, moving slowly, in and then out. She gritted her teeth as the small bit of skin tore. It was but a moment of pain, and then it was over, and she felt nothing but pleasure.
She arched her back as he placed a hand on the small of her back, lifting her a little. Arabella looked up at him. They fit together, as though they had been made for each other. She arched her back as she came. He moaned, a low masculine sound deep in his throat. It was a primal sound, one which her whole body reacted to.
She bucked against him, moving her hips to meet his. Her hands gripped his waist, pulling him closer to her. He came, expending inside of her. He slumped against her; his face buried in her hair.
“You’re very good at that,” she murmured, her eyes closed.
“Good to hear,” he replied, pulling the blankets up around them. “You’re the only person who will ever benefit from it.”
“I love you,” she whispered as she snuggled up against him.
“I love you,” he replied, wrapping his arms around her.
Arabella couldn’t have been happier. She had married the love of her life. There was so much that she had to learn about him. She was looking forward to falling in love with all of him.
The End?
Extended Epilogue
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Preview: Wild Passions of a Mischievous Duchess
Chapter One
“Ferme la fenêtre, s’il vous plait.” Elizabeth said calmly, reaching out to grasp the back of the young boy’s jacket as he leaned out the large upper floor window.
“I don’t want to,” the young Marquess replied.
“En Français, My Lord,” Elizabeth chided gently.
“Je…don’t want to.”
“And how will you learn French if you are too shy to practice it?” Elizabeth asked, getting up from her chair to hoist him physically away from the window. Before she closed it, she glanced out at the rolling green of the estate. The air was crisp that morning, summer was coming to an end, but the warming sun shone cheerily in ignorance of this.
“I am not too shy. I just don’t remember.” The yellow-haired boy slouched back into his chair.
Elizabeth smiled over her shoulder at him, knowing it wasn’t true. He could translate from French into English quite well, and he showed that he understood her when she herself spoke French. But when it came to actually speaking it himself, he pretended he didn’t know how.
“It’s all right if your pronunciation is not perfect at first. That’s why we practice. I won’t laugh at you.” She’d told him all this before, of course. The five-year-old was vivacious and bright, but just as bashful as he had been on Elizabeth’s first day here ten months ago.
He shook his head. “Can’t we do sums now instead?”
Elizabeth was about to begrudgingly relent when Brutus, one of the mistress’s beloved hounds, walked past the door to the library where she and the Marquess were having his lessons. The sight of the gentle giant of a dog gave her a flash of inspiration.
“My Lord, I have an idea,” she said, and whistled gently to the dog, who came at once into the room, bounding happily up to the young boy. Elizabeth handed the small book of French children’s verse to her pupil. “I will sit in the far end of the room and read. While I am not paying attention, I want you to read these poems aloud to Brutus. Surely you can trust him not to judge your beginner’s attempts.”
The boy laughed, his pearly baby teeth flashing as he rubbed the dog’s head. “Read to the dog! That’s silly.”
“Yes, it is, but you leave me no other choice. Can I trust you to really do it?” she asked as she got up, smoothing the front of her skirts with her hands.
“You won’t spy?” the boy asked.
“I solemnly promise that I will not spy on you if you promise to do your best for ten minutes. Brutus shall tell me if you do not.”
The Marquess laughed, flipping open the book of poems. “All right. I will do it. But not until you leave. What if I don’t understand the words?”
Elizabeth smiled. “That’s all right. Just sound the words out as well as you can. We can translate together later.”
She smoothed the child’s hair with her hand and winked at him before crossing to the opposite end of the room and opening a book across her lap. As she began to read, she heard him quietly begin to test the firs
t few French words to the patient hound.
The manor was still and quiet that morning, but it was early. The Duke and Duchess of Stonehill were a young couple yet, with their son Thomas and a new baby on the way, and their home was often bustling with company and activity.
Just as she was settling in to her reading, a gentle knock came to the doorframe and Elizabeth looked up to see the kindly face of Dorothy, the Duchess’ maid and Elizabeth’s only real friend. Noticing Elizabeth sitting alone, the woman approached her.
“Lord Limingrose giving you the run-around again this morning?” the woman asked quietly, grinning.
“He is too bashful to practice his French in front of me, so he’s reading to Brutus, instead.”
Dorothy laughed, wiping her hands on her apron. “Ah, you see? That’s why Her Grace loves you so much. You can think on your feet. May I come in?”
“Of course. Please.” Elizabeth said.
Dorothy had been the Duchess’ maid since the Duchess was a child. Dorothy had such a maternal spirit about her, such a friendly warmth and disarming humor that it seemed to make formality impossible. To know Dorothy was to befriend her.
“Can’t you just feel the excitement in the air? It’s as if the whole world is holding its breath for the new babe’s arrival.” Dorothy went on, settling herself comfortably on a chair.
“It’ll be soon now, won’t it?”
“Yes, it can be any time now. Though it may be another couple of weeks yet, too. She’s hoping for sooner rather than later, I think. The poor dear, always such a light and active thing. Confinement may as well be imprisonment in her eyes.”
“I was surprised she and the Duke had not taken to the country for these last few weeks, at least. I should think that plenty of rest and quiet would be welcome before the arrival of a new babe.”
“Oh no, she wouldn’t leave London for anything. She needs gossip and social calls like she needs air to breathe.”
“I suppose I must go back and check on him,” Elizabeth said, nodding in the direction of her pupil.
“Oh, right. Of course. Don’t let me hold you up,” Dorothy said, hopping up from the chair. “But I was sure that there was something I meant to tell you…” The woman put her hands on her generous hips and looked around the room as if a clue might be hidden among the decorations of the room.
Elizabeth smiled patiently.
“Oh, yes! You’ve heard, I imagine, that the Duke of Hadminster is coming to visit?”
“I…no. I hadn’t heard that.”
“Her Grace’s older brother. We haven’t seen him in ages, of course. He’s kept to himself ever since…well, that’s a story for another time. He’s coming to see his new niece or nephew and, as he will be the godfather, he seems to intend to stay for some weeks. Two months at least, is what I’ve heard.”
“Well, what is one more Duke in a manor this large?” Elizabeth said lightly, trying to ignore Dorothy’s not-so-subtle invitation to gossip about that ‘story for another time’.
Dorothy laughed. “Aye, you’re right there. Well, hurry along then. You aren’t paid to stand about talking to me!” she said with a wink.
Elizabeth watched her go, then closed her book and walked back towards the Marquess.
“Well?” she asked.
“I like this better. May I always practice with Brutus?” he asked, handing the book back to her.
“Hopefully, in time, you will feel just as comfortable practicing aloud with human beings,” she said with a slight chuckle. “But we can build confidence this way first. Now, shall we begin on your sums?”
As the morning faded into afternoon, the child was released from his lessons. He wanted to try his luck at fishing the pond at the back of the estate, so Elizabeth packed up her drawing pencils and put on a bonnet. It was an odd thing, she thought, to be essentially beholden to so small a master. Governess was a title that carried some weight with the child, yes, but as long as he applied himself well during his lessons, his afternoons were more or less free, and she was there only to follow him and keep him from harm.
The breeze that blew across the estate carried with it the faint sweetness of late summer roses. Elizabeth held her hand to her bonnet as she and Lord Limingrose crossed the garden to reach the pond. Elizabeth had been working for the Duke and Duchess of Stonehill for almost a year, and yet she felt that she would never get used to the grandness of the place. Walking across the garden felt like walking through a painting. It was somehow blasphemous to smudge that beautiful landscape with her own presence. She, who had been raised within the dingy walls of a city orphanage, with no name, no history, no future.
She had been lucky to scrape together a respectable education, thanks to the patronage of an old clergyman who had recognized her intelligence in her orphanage days. But even though she was grateful every day for the opportunities that she had been given, she had not yet fully resigned herself to a life of being an eternal outsider in the world she now found herself in.
She made a place for herself on the grass and watched the boy cast a line into the little fishing pond that the Duke had built and stocked especially for his son. As she watched him, Elizabeth found herself yearning once more for the company of her own people. At the orphanage, and then at school, she had always been surrounded by many people her own age and class. The spacious, empty rooms of the manor and the vast estate still bewildered her, these ten months later.
In Dorothy she had been glad to find a friend, but at the same time, Dorothy was old enough to be Elizabeth’s mother. The house maids were always too busy to give a governess any mind. So, even though she lived in the manor of one of the most popular couples of London society, with people always coming and going, Elizabeth found herself wilting under the strain of a terrible loneliness.
She sighed, casting off her bonnet and putting those dreary thoughts aside. It was a beautiful day, and she had so very much to be thankful for. Determined to have a pleasant afternoon, she picked up her sketchbook and drawing pencils and began to attempt, for the thousandth time, to capture the graceful lines of the garden.
“Miss Peaton! Look!” the boy cried. Elizabeth looked up to see the scales of a quite large fish flashing in the sunlight at the end of the small boy’s line.
“Well done, My Lord!” she cheered, clapping her hands.
“May we eat him?” he called back.
Elizabeth laughed. “I’m sure Cook has already got dinner half-ready by now. How about you let this one go?”
“Father would let me.” The child sulked.
“And do I look like your father?” she teased.
This made him laugh and he released the fish back into the pond with a splash. The glittering water dazzled Elizabeth’s eyes for a moment before she looked down at the sketchbook in her lap. She flipped through the pages absently. Page after page was filled with carefully outlined garden paths and quiet interiors. There were no sketches of people among those still lifes and botanicals. Her sketchbook was as silent and lonely as she was.
Chapter Two
In the evenings, Elizabeth wished she had more to do. The daylight hours were always full of work, but as the sun set, the shadowy corners of the vast manor seemed to creep under her very skin and there was little she could do to keep her mind off it.
She sat at her writing desk, a candle illuminating the little space, and wrote and re-wrote lesson plans for the Marquess, but the truth was that having only one pupil was quite simple, and she could have done just as well with him without all this meticulous planning.
She reached for a fresh sheet of paper automatically, thinking idly to herself that she would write a letter. To someone. Anyone.
“Dear Mother,” she began, in her most careful script. Elizabeth had never been the type to keep a diary, but she catalogued her days in her own way, by writing letters she would never send, to a mother she had never known.
The faint scratch of her quill as it methodically moved across the paper broke
up the silence of the room enough that she felt her shoulders relaxing as she continued to write. She had filled two pages when a familiar one-two knock came to her door. Relieved by the intrusion, Elizabeth got up to greet Dorothy.
“Still up?” Dorothy asked.
“It’s early yet.” Elizabeth grinned, remembering Dorothy’s hinted promise of gossip earlier.
“I was about to have some tea in my room. If you wouldn’t rather keep your own company this evening, you’re more than welcome to join me.” The older woman seemed to understand her loneliness, and Elizabeth was reminded once again to be grateful for her many blessings. She nodded and followed Dorothy to her slightly larger quarters.
Dorothy’s room had a larger window and faintly yellowing wallpaper on the walls. Crocheted lace hung over the arms of her two chairs and a jar of violets sat in the middle of her nightstand. It was still a simple room befitting a servant, but it carried with it the air of a woman who was proud of her life’s work.
Everything was neat as a pin, and small decorative flourishes here and there made it one of the most comfortable rooms in the house. A pot of tea steamed welcomingly on the small table between the chairs.
“I really must sit down.” Dorothy began. “My feet are aching like anything today. I must be getting too old for running all over the house all day.”
Forbidden Desires of a Seductive Duchess: A Steamy Historical Regency Romance Novel Page 29
