I crossed seas, and it was like crossing years. To everyone it must seem as though I have come back from the dead.
That’s what they’d seen, those royals who’d seen and borne shame and disappointment and madness and the early deaths of loved ones: They’d seen life and courage and hope.
Zoe had glowed like the summer sun, and it was impossible to look at her and not feel the warmth and the optimism of her spirit.
That’s what the Regent had seen. That, combined with youth and good nature and beauty, had touched his sentimental heart.
Marchmont realized he’d been woolgathering and staring at her for rather a long time. He discovered that she hadn’t turned back to the window and the fascinating greenery outside. She was watching him.
“Are we done being proper?” she said.
“Oh, no,” he said. “That part’s only begun.”
“But isn’t this improper?” One gloved, braceleted hand took in the vehicle’s interior with a little sweep. “To be alone in a closed carriage? I wondered whether the court presentation changed the rules.”
“It doesn’t,” he said. “But others’ rules don’t apply to Aunt Sophronia. She makes her own.” He forced his mind away from the dangerous fact of being alone with Zoe in a closed carriage. He wrenched his attention from the warm bosom so generously displayed an arm’s length away, and changed the subject. “You swept all before you, too. That curtsey my aunt remarked upon was the most spectacular I’ve ever seen.”
Also the most arousing, but he wouldn’t let his mind dwell on that, either.
“Once I learned the way of it, I had no trouble,” she said. “I’ve prostrated myself wearing very complicated clothing. Everyone imagines we were always naked in the harem—or wearing a few veils—but that was not the case.”
He’d seen her naked a thousand and one nights, in his dreams.
“We were naked in our thoughts and feelings, though,” she went on. “That has been one of the hardest things about coming home: not saying what’s in my heart.”
What was in her heart was not his concern. What was in his was not her concern. “You don’t need to say anything,” he said. “You show it.”
“That, too, is a difficulty here.”
“You’re happy,” he said. “That shows. This was what you wanted—the life you would have had if those swine hadn’t torn you from it. Today that life begins, with royal blessing.”
She folded her gloved hands in her lap and looked down at them. “My heart is too full for words. You think I’m ungrateful and capricious, but that isn’t so.”
“I never thought you ungrateful,” he said. He remembered the light kiss on the top of his head and the whispered thank you and the sweetness of that moment.
“But capricious?” she said. “Because I flirt with your friends?”
“Oh, that.” He waved his hand. “Perhaps I was overprotective.”
“Oh, Marchmont, is that what you call it?”
Jealous and possessive and selfish was what he’d called it the day after.
Then he’d told himself, Out of sight, out of mind.
“What do you want me to call it?” he said lightly.
“What it is,” she said. “Not what’s convenient or witty or agreeable to your pride. But you’ll never do that, will you?”
To his consternation, she began to cry.
Zoe never cried.
She brushed away the tears. “Never mind. I’m too excited. I need some air. I’ll walk.”
“You can’t walk. No one walks in court dress, from court.”
She flashed her Is that a dare? look and reached for the carriage handle.
The carriage, which had stopped for the hundredth time, lurched into motion as she was leaving her seat and leaning toward the door. She lost her balance and fell on the floor in a heap of hoops and waves of satin and lace and net, her plumes tumbling forward.
She reached up for the door handle. He grabbed her hand.
“Let go of me!” she said. “Let me go.”
“Don’t be an idiot.”
She tried to pull free.
“Stop it,” he said. “If you open the door you’ll fall out onto your head.”
“I don’t care!”
“Zoe.”
She was trying to pull away, still.
He kept his grip on her hand and got his other arm under her shoulder and hauled her up.
She struggled all the way, squirming, feathers flying and diamonds flashing.
“Stop it, drat you!”
“No, no, no.”
He pulled her up and onto his lap, and held her there, his arms wrapped about her. Her tiara had slipped forward. The plumes tickled his cheek, and she wouldn’t stop squirming.
His manly parts couldn’t distinguish between a struggling sort of squirm and an invitational sort of squirm. They came to attention and his brain thickened.
He was lost in the cloud of satin and lace and net and the scent of Zoe and the warmth of her.
“If you don’t stop,” he said, “I’ll drop you on the floor and hold you down with my feet.”
She reached up and grasped a fistful of his hair. She brought her face close to his. “Possessive,” she said. “The word you want is possessive.”
He didn’t know what she was saying. Her mouth was a breath away from his and her scent was everywhere, in the cloud of satin and lace and net and femininity. The cloud billowed about him.
His hand slid up to the back of her neck, to cup the back of her head, and he kissed her.
Eleven
Zoe knew what he wanted. She’d known from the moment she’d stood on the landing and caught Marchmont’s first, startled expression before he hid it.
Liar, liar, liar, she thought.
He lied with words and he hid his eyes, but his kiss didn’t lie. It was hot and fierce.
His body didn’t lie. She felt his heat and his arousal against her thigh, even while she struggled in his lap. She still struggled, though she knew she’d never be free of him. She squirmed under the big, gloved hands clasping her waist because she needed to. She did it for the pleasure of it, for the heat and the wild sensations racing through her blood. The thrill of it. The excitement.
She’d been trained to yield, but she wouldn’t yield to him. He would have to admit what he wanted and fight for it.
She turned her head away, breaking the kiss, and his hands tightened on her waist. She twisted this way and that, but he wouldn’t let go.
He kissed her neck and her shoulder and pushed aside the top of the sleeve with his mouth and kissed the place he’d bared. He lifted his head, and she thought he’d give up then, that his conscience or honor or some other horrible thing would get the better of him, but he breathed in deeply and she knew he was drinking her in, the way she did him.
The more she struggled, the warmer it became, there in the closed coach. From the corner of her eye, while she refused to give way and tried to turn away, she saw his golden head sink down, and then she sucked in her breath as his mouth touched the top of her breast. The hoops had folded up, crushed between them, and one big, gloved hand slid down to her knee.
His mouth was on her breast, his tongue dipping under the lace edging the bodice’s neckline. His hair brushed her chin, and the smell of him was all around her, inescapable: the clean, starched scent of his neckcloth and the fragrance of his shaving soap and above all the scent of his skin, and the combination of all these things, a scent like no one else’s in all the world.
The combination was fatal to her, as inevitable as kismet.
She turned a little toward him and beat on his shoulders, and then his hand came up and closed over her breast, and she gasped. The shock and pleasure of it raced through her and vibrated in the place between her legs.
He pulled her round to face him, and she couldn’t make her hands beat on his shoulders anymore. Her arms went round his neck, and when his mouth found hers, she gave up the kiss she’d he
ld back.
This was the kiss she’d longed for. This was the caress she’d longed for. This was the heat and excitement only he could make inside her.
He’d stolen away with her for a moment, and lifted her up and spun her in the air, and all of her being had soared with happiness and triumph.
Oh, and love.
He’d set her on her feet again, slowly, reluctantly, and she’d acquiesced, because what choice had she?
She hadn’t wanted him to set her on her feet.
She’d wanted him to push her against a wall and have her then and there.
Now, behind his back, she was pushing down her gloves and pulling them off, heedless of the bracelets. One fell off and another remained on her wrist, bare now. She slid her naked hands into his hair and held him so while the kiss deepened from longing to passion and while thinking dissolved into feeling.
She felt him move then, too, tearing off his gloves without breaking the kiss, and this time when she squirmed, it was toward him. But the hoops were in the way. She pulled up one side of the gown, but he pushed her hand away, and then his naked hand was on her knee, and moving up under the petticoat, sliding over her stocking and over the garter and up, onto her skin, and it was beautiful, a rush of pleasure so deep that she seemed to fall to the bottom of the world.
His hand slid higher.
“No drawers,” he said, and it wasn’t words but a groan. “Oh, Zoe.”
“To be proper above and wicked below,” she murmured.
“Oh, Zoe.”
The carriage lurched again and she nearly fell off his lap, but his arm braced her. But the other hand was still under her skirts, still on her skin, sliding upward with a slowness that was torture. She buried her face in his neckcloth.
He cupped her Palace of Delight, and she let out a cry and then another as he stroked her.
Now, now, she wanted to scream.
She was ready as she’d never imagined she could be ready. She reached down and laid her hand over his breeches front, where his membrum virile pushed against the cloth. She found the buttons and undid them, quickly, impatiently. Then she found his manly place, and she closed her hand over his instrument of delight. It was nothing like Karim’s.
“Zoe.”
She stroked up and down its length.
It was very large and hot and hard.
It couldn’t possibly fit inside her.
She didn’t care. They’d make it fit somehow.
She’d learned a hundred positions, and she simply turned a little and bent her knee and got her bent leg up against his hip, her foot on the carriage seat.
His hand came away from her pleasuring place and slid over her hand and pushed it away from his rod of joy. She rocked against him, as close as she could get, skin to skin.
There were a thousand roads to pleasure. This was only one.
“You,” he said thickly.
She lifted heavy-lidded eyes to meet the smoldering green of his gaze.
She leaned toward him and ran her tongue over his lips.
She licked his chin.
He made a sound, a laugh and a groan combined.
“We have to stop,” he said.
She kept on rocking, pressing her soft treasure against his hard one. She was lost in pleasure, in the dark world of the passions. She was lost in the scent of him and the low sound of his voice, so rough. The carriage rocked under them and the satin gown rustled against his breeches.
It was wicked and beautiful, and she hung in the hot darkness of desire, rocking against him, skin to skin, pleasuring herself.
“Zoe.”
She brought her hands up and pushed down the top of her dress and grasped her breasts. Eyes closed, she rocked.
He made sounds. Words, growls—she didn’t know. She was deranged with passion and pleasure and heat, beautiful animal love.
He grasped her waist. “You have to—”
And then he growled deep in his throat. His hand came between them, to her pleasure place, hot and damp. And then she felt it, the great hot thing that couldn’t fit and she didn’t care.
He pushed, and her eyes flew open.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh.”
He pushed again, and her head sank onto his neck. She bit her lip. It hurt.
He pushed again, and she swallowed a cry of frustration. It was very uncomfortable.
Then she felt his hand again, so caressing, in her soft place, and inside her something gave way and she could feel him inside, filling her, and she whispered, wonderingly, “Oh, this is—oh, this is very good.”
He made the sound again, half laughter, half groan.
Then he moved, and she moved with him, rocking as she’d done before, but this time he was inside her. And this time the pleasure strengthened and seemed to rise inside her like a rocket. Higher and higher it went. And then it struck the top of the heavens and burst, and its remnants cascaded down, through her and around her, sparks of happiness trickling down in the darkness.
Mad, mad, mad.
He held her tightly while he came back to himself and she came back to herself.
He held her tightly while reason returned and said, Mad, mad, mad.
“Oh, Zoe,” he said, when he could find his voice.
“Oh,” she said softly. “That was splendid. Now I understand why the women carried on so. It’s most agreeable—except for the painful part in the middle. But that was because of my virgin barrier. Before that part and afterward, it was very good.”
He drew back a little to look at her.
She gazed at him dreamily and rocked a little, back and forth.
It was the shameless rocking. He might have come to his senses if not for that.
Or probably not.
There she was, smiling her wanton smile, her breasts hanging out of her dress.
“You have no inhibitions, have you?” he said.
“My English came back so quickly and easily,” she said. “Inhibitions seem to need a great deal more time than three weeks. I didn’t have much time for them—I was so busy practicing curtseying out of a room backward without tripping over my train or the hem of my gown or dropping my fan.” She stroked his cheek.
He turned his head and kissed her hand. The scent of their lovemaking was there, and his mind started to thicken again.
Think of her father, he told himself.
And that was like a pail of ice water dumped on his privates.
Lexham, the one man in the world for whom he’d lay down his life.
…whose youngest and dearest daughter Marchmont had just dishonored.
He took her hand and kissed the back of it. As he did so, his gaze strayed to the window. “Curse it,” he said.
“What?” she said. “What?”
“We’ll be there in a moment,” he said. “We need to put our clothes in order very quickly. We need to pray that the sun’s glare on the coach window prevented anyone’s seeing what we were doing.”
This was another coach meant for formal occasions. A heavy vehicle, older and larger than the one that had brought them here, it was built like a man-of-war, and richly fitted out. It would not jounce about a great deal when people were not sitting quietly in their respective seats. Onlookers wouldn’t be able to make out what transpired inside the carriage. The windows were small, the interior dark. Still, the two footmen standing on the footboard at the back might have heard the sounds and known what they signified.
Never mind.
It didn’t matter whether anyone had seen or heard or guessed what the Duke of Marchmont had done. He’d done it, and he knew what he had to do next.
He shifted her back onto her seat and helped her clean herself and put her clothes in order. Then he attended to himself. In the process, he found some spots of blood on the inside of his breeches’ flap and some on her petticoats.
It was only a very little, and that discovery eased one weight from his mind. He hadn’t hurt her so badly as he’d imagined.
/> He shouldn’t have hurt her at all.
He should have been content with keeping his cock out of a place where it didn’t belong.
But no. He couldn’t be content with touching her and pleasuring her with his hands and letting her pleasure him with her hand, her wicked, wicked hand.
Never mind. It was done, and at least there was no obvious evidence on the outside.
The matter could be dealt with quietly.
Quietly, that is, if she would cooperate.
He knew Zoe too well to count on that.
He had better be careful how he approached this. He took a moment to determine the best way to put it to her. Then, “Zoe,” he said.
She was giving a few final adjustments to the lace at her neckline. “You’d better fix my headdress,” she said. “I can’t see whether it’s straight or not.”
He adjusted her tiara. He brushed from her hair and his coat bits of feathers that had got loose during the orgy.
“Zoe,” he said.
She looked up at him and smiled the beatific smile.
“Zoe, would you mind very much becoming the Duchess of Marchmont?”
The smile faltered a little. She gazed at him for a long, long time.
He made himself wait.
“It’s because of this,” she said, her hand sliding to her belly. “Because I’m not a virgin anymore.”
“I know I should have controlled myself,” he said. “I know you wanted to meet other men—but even if we hadn’t done what we did…Zoe, I’m sure I wouldn’t like it at all if you did that with someone else.”
Those were not the smoothest remarks he’d ever uttered, but he felt anything but cool and composed at the moment. He was too painfully aware of having destroyed her chances of choosing a husband for herself. He was too painfully aware of having betrayed her father’s trust. At the same time, he didn’t regret what had happened, and it was quite true that he didn’t want her to choose another husband.
“Possessive,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
Her expression brightened again. “Only a crazy woman wouldn’t wish to be the Duchess of Marchmont,” she said.
It wasn’t quite the answer he’d expected—but what should he expect? “Does that mean yes?”