The meeting having been set for six o’clock tomorrow morning, Ripley had arranged for the post chaise to take him and Pershore to the dueling ground. He’d contacted his medical man, who’d meet them there. Everything was in order.
Nothing remained but to write what might or might not be the only letter he ever wrote to his . . .
Wife.
He shook his head, to shake off the feelings threatening to overpower him.
He dipped the pen in the inkwell.
My dearest girl, he began.
In great London houses, the rooms on the ground and first floors were magnificent, made for show. Those on the upper stories tended to be far less so, since few but the family and servants saw them.
This wasn’t the case at Ripley House. Occupying nearly a full wing overlooking the extensive garden, the duchess’s apartments were as spacious and sumptuously furnished as the public rooms. Though the furnishings weren’t modern—some were ancient and valuable—all were in perfect order, clean and lovingly cared for.
Olympia had bathed and changed in comfort. Her maid, Jenkins, who’d come with her from Gonerby House, was in such a state of ecstasy that she came dangerously close to smiling.
Naturally Jenkins had assumed, as anybody would, that Olympia’s running away from her wedding would turn her into a social outcast. This would have left the lady’s maid to choose between remaining loyal to her mistress or looking out for her own future and finding another employer. If the family was in a scandal, so were the staff. Even the most loyal servants might find such a situation intolerable.
And that was one more in the long list of consequences Olympia hadn’t considered when she fled her first wedding.
Yet if she hadn’t fled, she wouldn’t be here in Ripley House, sitting at her dressing table, wondering what her husband had in store for her this night, and Jenkins wouldn’t be so happily fussing about her mistress’s hair and the precise arrangement of her dressing gown’s falling collar.
A deep masculine voice dispersed all thoughts of hair and bedtime attire.
“That will do, Jenkins,” Ripley said.
Face red, Jenkins set down the hairbrush and hurried out of the room.
The reason for the red face became apparent as Olympia turned away from the dressing table toward the door. Ripley wore a dressing gown with, by the looks of it, nothing underneath. His strong neck was bare, and the narrow V of the robe’s opening revealed golden skin bearing a fine dusting of dark hair. Her gaze slid down over the dressing gown. Embroidered dark green satin with a purple lining, it was as opulent as the rest of the house.
Her husband, clearly, liked his creature comforts. He would have fit in nicely with the pashas of the Turkish Empire. As he’d said, self-denial was not his favorite thing.
This was a man who loved luxury and self-indulgence and not playing by the rules.
She wondered which rules he planned to break this night.
A tremor went through her, but whether it was nervousness or anticipation she couldn’t say.
“I came in the nick of time,” he said. “Jenkins had nearly tamed your hair, and I like it untidy. The way it was when I dismantled your wedding veil. The first one, I mean.”
“Oh, Ripley.” She started to get up. She wanted to throw herself in his arms. She didn’t know why she felt so desperate to do it, but she did.
“No, stay a moment,” he said. “I want to spoil your hair a little . . . and then despoil other parts.”
She sat again, and stared into the looking glass on the dressing table. She was still Olympia, the same unremarkable-looking lady she’d been a few days ago when she’d gazed into a mirror at her bridal splendor. But she wasn’t the same inside. She’d lived a lifetime in a few days. A lifetime with one man, she realized. Hours and hours, in the course of which she seemed to have fallen irretrievably in love.
He came to her, and untied the neat braid Jenkins had made. Then his long fingers went through her hair, loosening the plaits. She was aware of his hands in a way she hadn’t been aware of her maid’s. She was aware of his nearness and the warmth of his powerful body.
She wanted to turn away from the dressing table and make him pull her up into his arms.
She said, “It’s dawned on me that you and I have spent more time together than most couples do before they’re wed. And so we must know each other rather better than most.”
“I know you rather better than I ought to, on our wedding night,” he said. “But that’s my fault, for being so impatient. You ought to have had a proper introduction. I’ll give it to you belatedly.”
“We aren’t proper people,” she said. “Why should our wedding night be like other couples’? And since when do you care about oughts?”
“Since you.” He moved to kneel beside her.
He took her left hand and looked at it for a moment, where her wedding ring seemed to glow on her finger. He kissed the back of her hand. “Your wedding night ought to be special. Perfect.”
“That is exceedingly kind and thoughtful of you,” she said. “But bear in mind, if it isn’t perfect, you can try again. And again. Practice, you know.”
He laughed, but she caught an odd note in his laughter that made her look up quickly, into his eyes. They were shuttered. All she saw was the sleepy wolf.
He bent his head over her hand again and kissed her knuckles and her fingertips. He turned her hand over and kissed the palm of her hand and her wrist. He took her other hand and did the same. This time, when he kissed the palm of her hand, she moved it to curl her knuckles under his chin. She lifted his chin and looked at him but all she saw was affection . . . and wicked promise, yes.
He smiled and took her hand away and kissed her chin, her cheek, and the top of her cheekbone. Then his mouth covered hers and the light caress went deep in an instant. It was gentle and it wasn’t. It was like the summer storm they’d shared, but this time it didn’t feel so much like a war. This time, it was a claiming of each other and a joining of two wild spirits.
She hadn’t realized how wild hers was until she ran away with him, and she’d felt herself come alive without realizing what the feeling was. She hadn’t realized how hemmed-in and pent-up she’d been until he told her she was a bad girl.
She hadn’t realized how much she’d stifled herself, though now she saw so clearly why. She couldn’t behave as her nature inclined her to do. Young ladies couldn’t misbehave as young gentlemen did. Young ladies couldn’t sow their wild oats. If they did, they’d be ruined, and bring shame on their families. Young ladies had to follow the rules.
With him, those rules no longer applied.
Free, finally, she came alive now, drinking in his kiss like a healing potion. Her body warmed, and the warmth entered and soothed her heart, too. Her too-busy mind quieted and softened.
It was like drinking too much brandy, but better, so much better.
Still kissing her, he lifted her up from the chair and carried her out of the dressing room and into the bedroom to the side of the bed, where he set her on her feet.
“I want to see you,” he said. “All of you. And worship you with my body, as I promised to do in church.”
“I want to see you, too,” she said. “Whenever you appeared at an event, I watched you. It was easy to do without attracting notice, because everybody watched the three of you, to see what outrage you’d commit next.” The words spilled out of her, indiscreet, but they needed to be let out. “The whole time, though, I was watching you—the way you moved, the way you danced. I wanted to be the dashing lady you danced with. I didn’t even realize I was watching in that way or thinking those things or why. Or, if I did know, I refused to admit it to myself.”
“I watched you, too,” he said. “And I thought it was a bloody shame you were respectable.”
“But I’m not,” she said.
“I know that now,” he said. “It only took—what was it—six, seven years since you made your debut? How thick can a fellow
be?”
“Fortunately, I still have some good years left,” she said.
“True.” He slid his fingers through her hair, so gently that she trembled.
He kissed her forehead and the tip of her nose. He unhooked her spectacles and set them on the bedside table.
“I won’t be able to see you properly,” she said.
“I’ll stay close,” he said.
Her robe de chambre had no buttons or hooks. A tasseled cord at the waist was all that closed it. He untied the cord and the robe fell open. Underneath she wore a white, embroidered muslin nightdress. He brought his hands to her face and caressed her cheeks and her neck. He slid his hands to her shoulders. He bent and kissed her neck, her shoulders, and the hollow of her throat. Her skin vibrated with pleasure but she ached, too, with the sweetness of it, of being touched by him, kissed by him.
He untied the ribbon at the neckline and slipped the nightdress down past her shoulders. She was acutely aware of the night air on her skin.
He slid his fingers down from her neck to her breasts, pushing the neckline lower as he went, until her breasts were fully exposed to him. But she was a bad girl, and didn’t feel shy or modest at all. Besides, he’d seen her already, in the fishing house. She wanted him to look at her the way he’d done then, as though she were the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen.
His face changed and she saw the look she remembered. She caught a glimpse of something else as well, something unexpected. Pain?
But he bent his head, then his mouth was on her, his lips trailing over her breast, the lightest of caresses. Light as it was, she felt it deep within her, tugging at her heart and lower down, yes, and now she recognized the feeling, the wanting.
She wanted him, and she understood she’d waited years for him, without hope because she hadn’t dared to understand herself. She’d made herself what she ought to be, and it was like a dress that didn’t fit. No wonder her tiresome cousin mocked her.
Then he took the bud of her breast into his mouth and suckled and she forgot the past, her cousin, relatives, everything. She grasped his arms and held on, letting the sensations wash over her and through her, and she felt drunk, so beautifully drunk.
She’d learned to believe that no man would want her, truly want her, as she was.
He wanted her.
He teased and suckled the other breast, and worked his way down, drawing her nightdress down as he went and teasing her skin with his mouth and his too-adept hands. He licked her navel, making swirls with his tongue, and she let out a wild little cry.
He went lower still, and the nightdress slid down over her hips to the rug.
Then he put his mouth there, between her legs, and her body tightened. Spasms went through her, of heat and delight and a growing need.
“Oh,” she gasped. “Oh, my goodness. Oh, Ripley.”
He didn’t stop, and the feelings built to an intensity all but unbearable. She dragged her hands through his hair and her body pulsed and pulsed, out of her control, until a fierce sensation racked her, and she let go of him, and slumped.
He grasped her waist and lifted her up and onto the bed.
While she caught her breath and tried to find her mind, he threw off his dressing gown.
Then she was short of breath again. For a moment she simply lay there, gazing at him while her heart thumped and her breath came in gulps.
Then she slid up onto the pillows and drank in her fill. He was her husband. She could look. And the front view was as beautiful as the back view had been, that day he’d stood naked in the basin.
She hadn’t seen much of him in the fishing house. They’d kept most of their clothes on. Now . . .
His skin was bronze in the candlelight and perhaps from the sun of Italy, where he’d been so recently. The light glinting over the fine dusting of hair seemed to feather it with gold. Powerful shoulders and muscled arms and chest and belly—he was as beautiful and hard and solid as a Greek or Roman statue. With a difference. She’d seen classical statues, not all with fig leaves. She’d seen pictures in books. He was . . .
“Good heavens,” she said in a stricken voice she barely recognized as hers.
He looked down to where his manly organ swelled . . . rather dauntingly.
“This is what happens,” he said, “when a man is mad for his wife. But don’t worry. Hardly ever fatal, as I might have mentioned some days ago.”
She laughed. “Oh, Ripley, you say the most romantic things.”
“Wish I could,” he said. “In my case, best to let actions speak louder.”
He climbed onto the bed and knelt over her.
“But you like words,” he said. “I’ll give you some. You’re wonderful.”
She felt tears prick her eyes.
“You were wonderful drunk and running away,” he said. “You were wonderful, issuing commands. Telling me to help you over the wall and ordering me about and giving me the devil’s own time trying to manage you. I wish I had starting chasing after you years ago. So much fun I missed.”
“We’ll make up for it,” she said shakily. With a knuckle she rubbed her eye.
“No crying,” he said.
“I’m not,” she said. “I’m only . . . It’s very emotional. Conjugal relations.”
“When it’s done right, yes.”
“When it’s with the right one.” She managed a smile. “Or when it’s with the right wrong one.” She put up her arms. “Kiss me,” she said.
“As my lady commands.” He bent and let her arms curl round his shoulders, and he kissed her. This time it wasn’t so gentle. The tenderness was there, but fiercer and darker. It was like passing through a spring mist into a summer storm.
This time she touched him, too, exploring and learning the shape and feel of him the way he’d learned her. She ranged kisses over his shoulders and his arms, and moved her hands over as much of him as she could reach. And when she felt his sex pressed against her, she grasped his buttocks, and she heard his choked laugh as he stroked her in the place between her legs where he’d kissed her and done the lewdest, most delicious things, and where she ached for him now. Then at last, he pushed into her, and made a sound like a groan and a laugh combined.
This time her body gave way to him so easily. Then feeling was everything: the sense of joining and completion and the happiness of it. She was aware of heat and the scent of his skin and the mingled scent of their bodies but, above all, of the extraordinary feel of him inside her. She lifted her legs and wrapped them about him and he plunged deeper and she cried out: no words, merely sounds, of surprise and pleasure.
This time it went on for so much longer than it had done in that feverish time in the fishing house. This time they made love, unhurried, because of course they had all the time in the world. Lovemaking was all the dances with him she’d missed, but a great deal more: deeply intimate, skin to skin, hot and so joyous. She moved with him, following the rhythm he set—slow at first, then building and building, like a mad waltz, until she was spun away up into the heavens. Then she was a star, alight, and exploding with happiness. Then smaller explosions, and finally, she was drifting in the night sky, drifting downward, until she fell safely into his waiting arms.
Chapter 17
It wasn’t enough.
It was all Ripley had.
He held her tightly, because this might be the last night he ever held her.
He said, “Now, that was more like it.”
“I see,” said his duchess. “These conjugal relations are not quite perfect unless the lady faints.”
“Or screams. Preferably both.”
She turned slightly in his arms to look up at him. “No wonder I could find nothing in the books at Newland House. No wonder Mama became unintelligible.”
“Oh, there are books,” he said. “I have an extensive collection of licentious works. Some are quite antique, though nothing to compare to the 1450 Mazarin Bible with movable types.”
“The f
irst with movable types,” she corrected.
He laughed. “I am also the proud owner of a generous selection of naughty prints, including a fine set of obscene works by Thomas Rowlandson. Where would you file naughty books, by the way, in your system?”
“Natural philosophy,” she said. “Or in one of the categories of literature, depending.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “It seems you’re not entirely innocent in that regard. I should have realized.”
“Boccaccio,” she said. “Ovid. Chaucer. But when one knows nothing, these sorts of works don’t mean much. Now I shall study them with more knowledgeable eyes.”
“If you’d ever come upon The School of Venus, you would have understood better. From the time of King Charles II, I believe. It describes, in frank detail, the sorts of things couples get up to. With illustrations.”
Her eyes widened. He couldn’t be sure what color they were at present, in the flickering candlelight. “Does it, indeed? That sounds like what I was looking for, when I was searching for information in my uncle’s library. But I hardly knew where to look.”
“If he has such books, doubtless he keeps them hidden,” Ripley said. “As must your father.”
“I’m not sure Papa knows what’s in his library,” she said. “And since it’s coming to us, he’ll never find out. I hope you’ve thought of where to put them.”
In exchange for a generous financial arrangement, the collection of the Earl of Gonerby’s library was to be one of the items Olympia brought to the marriage. This was one of the conditions Ripley had added to the marriage settlements.
“You can put the books wherever you like,” Ripley said. “We can enlarge the library here or move them to the house in Lincolnshire. Or one of the other houses. You may choose to shift volumes wherever you like. There’s some worthless stuff, too, you’ll want to cull. Plenty for you to do, though I’m not sure I can offer as much in that way as Mends could.”
She pushed herself up onto one elbow. “I was not meaning to spend all of my time as your librarian, duke.”
“I’m relieved to hear it. Because I have fantasies.” He thought of all he’d missed in not having a wife. But no, it couldn’t have been the same with any wife. It had to be Olympia. And it had to be now. The wrong time, the wrong circumstances . . . Never mind. No mawkishness. He had now.