He said, “Olympia,” his voice hoarse against her neck.
And she said, “Yes.” And “Yes.” And always, “Yes.”
Yes, she said.
The yes thundered in Ripley’s mind, as loud as the storm outside. Or maybe the single word was the storm.
He had, more or less, decided what he’d say to her.
But this wasn’t what he’d meant to do.
Not yet, that is.
But the way she’d looked at him when she’d undone the buttons.
The way she’d looked—all luscious curves and white underthings and naughty pink ribbons.
He was a man, and not a virtuous one.
And so, when he should have said, No, wait, and then added something sensible and correct . . . he didn’t.
Instead, he walked straight into trouble, the way he always did. He walked the few steps to Doing the Wrong Thing. Then she was in his arms, soft and willing and learning far too quickly how to make him delirious.
And now.
Yes, she said.
Yes, of course. What other choice was there?
He looked at her, lying on the cot in all her creamy softness and out-of-focus gaze and white and pink, and the only real thought in his mind was more instinct than thought, the feeling of the wolf when he’s spotted his mate: mine.
And after all, he was a duke. Through his veins ran centuries of power and lordly compulsion to possess.
Yes, she said, and he moved his hand up over her leg, dragging her petticoat up as he went. He slid his hand over her knee and over her garter and up to the smooth skin of her thigh and up farther still, to the opening of her drawers and the silken place between her legs.
This was the time to call a halt. In a dark, distant part of his mind he knew this. But she only gave a small, surprised gasp, and then it was Yes, still, as she squirmed against his hand. And yes, she was wet and ready.
And no, he didn’t think. Thinking wasn’t a habit with him, and second thoughts were what other people had.
He stroked her, and felt her convulse around his fingers. That was what he wanted. This was as it should be. Yet it was more than he’d expected or ever experienced.
Her pleasure pulsed through him, like a summer storm, dark with flashes of light. She was the dark and the light, the danger and the excitement, and the sweetness, too. She was all he could see or feel or think: she, in his arms, under his hands, passionate and open and trusting and wild. She let out a little shriek, and a giggle.
He laughed, too, but mostly from shock.
Feelings. So strong.
He took his hand away and moved slightly away to get his bearings, and she said, “No, not yet!” She touched him, not meaning, he assumed, to touch where she did, where he was aching and rigid for her. But she did touch him there, and even in the dim light he saw her eyes widen. But instead of pulling her hand away, she left it there, and looked up at him, with the same little smile she’d offered before. A dare of a smile.
“Yes,” she said.
He was lost, or maybe he’d been lost from the start, from the moment he’d seen her in a cloud of white and clocked stockings in the Newlands’ library. Or long before that. Years ago. So much wasted time.
In a moment his trouser buttons were undone, and in another he was poised between her legs, and almost in the same instant he was pushing into her. She gave a choked cry at the intrusion, and he paused, though he thought he’d die. But it was only a heartbeat or two or a thousand furious ones before he felt her ease about him.
Then, “Oh!” she said. “Good heav—oh, my goodness, how—no, don’t stop. Oh, Ripley! Oh, my goodness! I’m going to faint.”
She didn’t faint, and neither did he. He went slowly at first. Though it promised to kill him, he gave her time to grow accustomed and learn, but she learned so quickly and gave so easily of herself that he grew dizzy with the joy of her openhearted ardor.
He seemed to plunge deep, deep underwater, into a hidden place of happiness. He was the knowing one, the experienced one, but in all her innocence and eagerness to learn, she took him where he’d never been before. He looked at her and marveled, even while he thrust deep inside her, and felt her close about him, holding him inside her. It was only a moment before he was in charge again, supposedly in charge, and leading the lovers’ dance he thought he knew so well.
But with her, this wasn’t the dance he knew. It was altogether different. He had no words, no coherent thoughts, but the feeling was there, filling him, fulfilling him.
The new feeling was there, as he felt the last pleasure shake her and as her body pulsed about him. It was there as he was swept upward, to his own peak of pleasure. And it was there as he drifted down again, to the world, as their bodies began to quiet, and as his mind came back and he knew, first, that she was his. Second, that there was no going back. And third, he was in the worst trouble of his life.
Ripley became aware again of the storm whirling and crashing around the old fishing lodge, though not so violently as before.
He squeezed in beside Olympia on the narrow cot and drew her into his arms. He rested his chin on her head. Mingled with the scent of the dying fire and their lovemaking was her own scent, as fresh as this patch of woodland where he’d played in his boyhood. He thought how little the present moment resembled that young boy’s notions of knights in shining armor and damsels in distress and the dragons a knight faced on a damsel’s account. What he couldn’t have foreseen was that the dragon, in his case, was a friendship he’d believed—and had good reason to believe—more precious to him than anything else.
Ashmont, his friend.
Ripley had betrayed him.
Ripley was a disgrace and had been for years, but this had to be the worst thing he’d done in his life.
Yet it seemed to him the best thing he’d ever done.
He said, “You’ve done it now. Have to marry me.”
“Yes.”
“No bolting.”
“No.”
She tucked her head into the hollow of his shoulder. He could feel her breath on his skin. He didn’t want to move. He didn’t want this moment to end. He needed time for it to sink in and make sense.
They didn’t have time.
“We have to do it at once,” he said. “Not a minute to lose. We have to leave here and be on our way to London before Uncle Fred knows we’re gone. Matters are complicated enough without our having to deal with him.”
She drew away from him and sat up. Her hair, dark honey with golden glints where the firelight caught it, was falling down, into her eyes and over her shoulders. Her breasts spilled out of the top of her chemise. The corset sagged at her waist. He reached up and clasped one perfect breast.
“Well, maybe not this very minute,” he said gruffly.
He drew her down and kissed her breast and the hollow of her throat. He kissed her on the mouth, and she parted her lips to him instantly. The kiss deepened, the hot inner storm rolled through him, and he lost the will to fight it. In an instant his heart was racing again, and he was coiled about her, moving his hands over the smooth curves of her body.
A moment ago he’d been cooling. He’d started to become capable of thought. Now all he wanted was more of her. He kissed her throat and her neck and made trails of kisses over her breasts. He grasped her bottom and pulled her against him.
She giggled and said, thickly, “Maybe not this very minute.”
They hadn’t time for languid lovemaking, and this time he used no finesse. He cupped her most womanly part and stroked her. He did little more before she was moving against his hand, wet and willing. In another moment he was inside her again and her legs were wrapped around his hips and there was nothing in his mind but her and the way it felt to be joined with her and the shock of it: to feel so deeply, to feel so much happiness.
A soft pressure enclosed him, and he felt her muscles contract, drawing him in, holding him. The wonderful madness returned. The world went away an
d nothing remained but the way she felt and the way they felt together. It was new, still new, and a wonder to him.
He was inside her, trying to make it last, not wanting it to end.
Not yet. Not yet.
But it was like the maddest of races, fast, fast, too fast. The peak came too soon and there was no resisting or slowing it. It came to him in a burst of joy. And then he was tumbling, tumbling down into a quiet place.
This time it took longer for Ripley’s breathing to slow and his mind to uncloud.
He didn’t want it to uncloud. He didn’t want to think. He wanted to wallow in the thousand and one delights of Olympia.
He couldn’t wallow.
He needed to be calm, to think. To plan.
Ashmont. What to do about him. If anything could be done.
If not, it was going to be very bad.
“It’s a good thing I knew nothing about what this was like,” she said shakily. “I’d have been ruined in my first Season.”
And if Ripley had had any idea, all those years ago when he’d first met her, he would have ruined her in short order. So much wasted time. But no. If he’d ruined her years ago, he wouldn’t have realized what he’d found.
Two days ago he hadn’t realized. All while he’d pursued her and tried to get her back to the wedding, Ripley had told himself that she was perfect for Ashmont.
Blind, blind, blind.
“It’s only this way with me,” he said.
Just as it’s only this way with you.
The realization was simply there, where it hadn’t been moments ago. He’d thought at first that what he’d felt for her was simple, if powerful, lust, the result of too long a time of celibacy. He’d realized, but not until yesterday, that it wasn’t simple at all. Now there wasn’t the smallest question in his mind. It had to be her. Nobody else, ever.
“I promise to make up for those lost years,” he went on. “Would much rather start now, making up for lost opportunities. The trouble is, I’ve already started when it’s not a good time.”
Could there be a worse time? Not much more than forty-eight hours after she was supposed to marry his best friend—to whom she was still, technically, engaged. Who was going to hate him. And try his best to kill him. And whom nobody would blame for doing so.
No time to fret about that now. One thing at a time.
Look after Olympia first. “I’m going to get up,” he said. “Some things to attend to. But you stay.”
She murmured an answer he took to be affirmative.
Gently he released her and sat up. He felt shaky. Had he eaten anything this morning? He couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter.
He stood, and was surprised at the twinge, until he remembered the bad ankle. Still, it was only a twinge. He found a handkerchief and quickly cleaned himself. He saw no blood. Nothing obvious, at any rate, in the firelight on a gloomy day. He’d been too impatient—really, a schoolboy would have shown more consideration. Still, he hadn’t hurt her as much as he’d feared. She hadn’t screamed or wept. That was good. Mindlessly he pulled up his trousers and tucked in his shirt. He buttoned the trousers.
“Stay here for a minute,” he said. “I’ll be back straightaway.”
He grabbed a small pitcher from the collection of utensils on the mantel and went out.
It was still raining, though less fiercely than before. Not that it mattered. As it was, he had to cover only a short distance to the river, and trees sheltered most of the way. He filled the pitcher and limped back to the fishing house.
When he opened the door, she still lay where he’d left her. She was staring at the ceiling, but her gaze quickly shifted to him.
“No time to clean up properly,” he said. “But there are some linens—it looks as though Alice camped here recently—and the water’s clean.” While he talked, he set the pitcher down within easy reach. He collected a few cloths from the basket of linens and lay them over the top of the pitcher.
She sat up, blushing, and the blush spread all over her neck and down, over her breasts. Swallowing a groan, he reached over her to retrieve the spectacles from the window ledge. He gave them to her, then busied himself with putting out the fire while his mind reviewed the perfection of her skin and the way she was round in all the right places.
What a miracle it was that nobody had caught her ages ago.
I’m boring and pedantic, she’d told him.
That was completely wrong, but he was glad that everybody had believed it. And he supposed he was glad it had taken him so long to discover she wasn’t like the other respectable girls. Now at least he was old enough to appreciate how special she was.
But it would have helped if it hadn’t taken him quite so long.
He turned back to her. She was pulling the tapes of her chemise closed. She tied them and started to reassemble her corset.
“I’d better help,” he said.
She slid off the cot and stood. “It’s easier standing up,” she said. “Although I doubt it makes any difference to you. Even my maid can’t get my corset undone as quickly as you did.”
“Practice,” he said. “Though I’m better at getting them off than on.” Not that one needed to get corsets off so very often. Furtive couplings rarely involved much undressing, and he’d always rather liked furtive couplings. For the danger. “At any rate, I can do it more easily than you can.”
He had only loosened the corset string enough to get at her breasts, and so it was mainly a matter of tightening it again and tying it. He picked up her dress and helped her into it.
He looked at the long parade of buttons and remembered her unbuttoning them, and the look she’d given him when she’d finished, and he wanted to pull the dress off again and throw it down and toss her back onto the cot.
But no.
Death awaited.
Not certain death, but it was a definite and well-earned possibility.
“You do the top,” he said. “I’ll do the bottom.”
He knelt and started buttoning.
Her knees, very much to Olympia’s surprise, managed to hold her upright.
Her breathing had returned to something like normal.
As to the rest of her, she’d never be the same.
No wonder Mama had been so inarticulate.
She looked down at his dark head. She wanted to drag her fingers through his hair and kneel on the floor with him and kiss him and . . .
. . . make him do it again. And again.
You have to marry me now, he’d said.
Well, of course. She could hardly go back to . . .
“Ashmont,” she said.
“Wrong name,” Ripley said, looking up. “It’s the shock. Got you confused. I’m Ripley. The other Dis-Grace. The one you’re going to marry. And no bolting this time.”
“No, I mean that Ashmont—”
“He’s not going to be pleased about this development, no.”
She hadn’t thought this through properly. She hadn’t thought at all. Now she remembered. All the fights. The duels. One in which, apparently, Ashmont had nearly had his ear blown off. It might have been his head. But now . . . What had Ripley said, the other day, in the garden? Something about a lovers’ romp, and since I’m the only one in your vicinity, I’m the one he’ll call out.
She was still engaged to Ashmont. Thanks to cowardice, she hadn’t broken it off. A short time ago she’d lost her virginity to his best friend. She wanted to dash her head against the wall. So stupid. So reckless. She wasn’t even drunk! What was wrong with her?
She said calmly, “You’re his friend. Ashmont won’t call you out. He can’t.”
“Right. Nothing to worry about. I’ll punch him in the face and he’ll punch back and then he can’t be the injured party. I’m not sure that plan will work now.”
“In that case, I’d better be the one to tell him,” she said. “He can’t call me out.”
Ripley returned to buttoning. “You can tell him whatever you like.
It won’t make any difference. He’s my friend and I’ve betrayed his trust. Oh, and there’s the humiliation, too.”
“I betrayed him,” she said. “I didn’t break off with him as I ought to have done. I hedged my bets.”
“You did nothing of the kind.”
“I did. I left it to him, knowing he’s too stubborn to let me go.”
He was halfway up the skirt. “You’re a woman,” he said. “You don’t have the luxury of doing the decent thing or the honorable thing. As you pointed out a little while ago in the library, marriage is different for women than for men. You did the intelligent thing.”
“The practical and sensible thing,” she said.
“That, too. Since you couldn’t be sure you’d get through my thick skull, you very wisely decided not to burn your bridges. Also, I’ll wager anything you were too subtle and tactful in that letter. You didn’t want to hurt his feelings. I don’t understand why people are so shy about hurting his feelings. Must have something to do with the lost puppy look he gets. I can’t manage it. Tried. Look like a gargoyle.” He’d reached the waist of her dress.
“I wanted to be kind,” she said. “It wasn’t his fault.”
“Kind.” Ripley stood. “He isn’t that fragile, and yes, it was.” He found the belt and gave it to her.
She quickly wrapped it about her waist and closed it. “It’s very good of you to defend me. That bodes well for a marriage. Still, it doesn’t matter if he is or isn’t fragile or whose fault it was. You don’t know how hard I’ve tried. To do what was right. To be a good girl. To be pleasing.”
“Yes, well, you’re not a good girl,” he said.
She sucked in her breath.
“Good girls don’t get drunk and run away on their wedding day,” he went on. “Good girls don’t take off their clothes in front of wicked men. Good girls don’t taunt those men into tumbling them. Good girls don’t make the men wish they’d thought to do it years ago. Good girls are boring. You won the awards for boring because you were trying to be a good girl. You’re not. You’re a bad girl, and if you’d been a boy, you might have been one of my best friends. I’m glad you’re not a boy. Now, can we stop talking and thinking and get out of here? We haven’t a minute to lose.”