“I’m not afraid,” Gina said flatly. She reached up and pulled down his head so that she could kiss him. “Would it make it easier if I told you some riddles? I cannot always remember the correct answer, more’s the pity.”
There was a moment of silence broken up by a drop or two of water falling from the pipe into the bath.
“Am I twittering?” he said, finally.
“You’re distressed. I myself am thrown into paroxysms by snakes. So be warned.”
A kiss landed on her nose. “I suspect if I were capable of paroxysms, this is the situation that would bring them on.”
“Shall we sleep with a lamp burning?”
“No. I am only disturbed by rooms with no light and no window.” He hesitated. “My father used to close me in closets and cupboards for punishment.”
“He tried that with me! That is, he did it once. He shut me in the wine cellar. But I described the punishment in a letter to my mother. The duke never recovered his hearing in his right ear after her visit. At least, that’s what he blamed his deafness on.”
Cam’s arms tightened around her. “I’m sorry he did that to you. It never crossed my mind he would do it to someone other than his own child. More and more, I think I should have taken you with me out that window.”
She laughed. “You couldn’t have! Imagine how annoying it would have been to be burdened with an eleven-year-old wife.”
“Well, if I had known he was going to lock you up in the cellar, I would have pulled you after me,” he said.
“To be honest, the cellar didn’t bother me very much. I am such a practical kind of person, and even at eleven, I wasn’t very imaginative. But if he did it when you were a child, it must have been dreadful.”
“The first time I remember it was the day of my mother’s funeral. He thought that I hadn’t shown proper respect because I fidgeted during morning prayers. So he closed the doors to the chapel and locked me in with her body.”
“That’s horrid!” she gasped. “Dreadful old man that he was. You were only seven or eight, weren’t you?”
“Five,” Cam said. “After that, he locked me up fairly frequently. I like to tell myself that I wouldn’t have become a coward except for the things he said.”
“You are not a coward!” They had ended up back on the chaise longue, and Gina had her arms slung around his neck. “What things did he say?” She thought that his body was slightly less rigid than it had been.
“That my mother was going to haunt me. I believed him of course. He could be quite graphic about decaying flesh and worms.”
“Cruel old man,” Gina snapped.
“Yes,” he agreed. “It took me some years to realize it. And coward or not, I am not comfortable in the dark, even now, years later.”
“That was a despicable thing to say about your mother,” Gina said. “She loved you so much.”
“How on earth do you know?” There was an amused note to his voice.
“Because I know,” she retorted.
He shrugged. “I have no memory of her at all. I expect she was a conventional woman of the ton who greeted her son and heir with a pat once or twice a week.”
“No,” Gina said. “She wasn’t that type of woman at all. I was given her bedchamber after our wedding, you know.”
“Her room? It was locked up during my entire childhood.”
“When he discovered that you had fled, your father locked your room instead and pushed me inside your mother’s.”
Cam’s lips were warm on her ear. “Tried to terrorize us both, didn’t he? It’s lucky that you have such a strong backbone.”
“It was odd at first,” Gina admitted. “All her clothes were in the wardrobe, and her hairbrushes were on the table, just as they were when she died. But my governess didn’t make anything of the fact that your mother’s things hadn’t been touched in over a decade. Instead, we started folding all the gowns and putting them away. And in the pocket of one of them was a little book. Your mother’s diary.”
He had started caressing her neck in an idly interested sort of way, but his hands stilled when she said that.
Gina leaned back into his arm in case he wanted to lower his hand just a trifle. “She writes about you as a baby,” she said. “I gather you were the sweetest baby ever born in England, Scotland or Wales. She used to sing you to sleep every night. Even when they had guests, she would slip away to the nursery so she could sing you to sleep.”
His hand had started its caress again, but she could tell he was listening.
“You had huge black eyes, and a plump lower lip. You had a special smile just for her, and your first tooth was just here.” She put her finger on his lips. He licked her finger, and she put it in her mouth. “Mmm,” she said dreamily. “You taste very sweet, even grown up.”
He made a low sound in his throat and his hand danced over her gown. “Why’d you put this rag back on?” he demanded.
She ignored him. “I daren’t tell you what she called you,” she said with exaggerated timidity. “I’m afraid you would be too humiliated.”
He was tracing a lazy path up her thigh. “Try me,” he said, kissing her eyelids.
“Buttercup,” she said, somewhere between a gasp and a cry. His thumb was doing…something. “She called you her little buttercup because you—oh, Cam, that feels so good.”
He pushed her back onto the chaise longue, and yanked up her gown. “You mother loved you more than anyone in the world,” she said, in the moment before she forgot what she was thinking. She reached out blindly and managed to catch his face in both hands and draw it to hers. Unfortunately, that brought his hard body down on hers, which destroyed the little thinking capacity she had left. So she spoke quickly. “Your mother was likely with you in those dark rooms, Cam. She was sitting next to you and crying because she wasn’t able to rescue her own little Buttercup.” Tears stung her eyes at the thought.
“I hope she’s given up her guardianship by now,” an amused voice said from the darkness above her. “I’d rather we were alone at this particular moment.”
“Oh you,” Gina said crossly. Without warning his head descended to her breast.
She melted, raising her body to his hand, writhing, crying out. He slipped in as if he was born to answer the throbbing sensation that had engulfed her thighs. She clutched him, hard, and tried to regain the sense of rhythm they had last time. It came quicker this time. She was learning, she thought. Then he did something different, lifted her legs, and half understanding, she wrapped them around his waist and—
This time he didn’t roll over and pull her on top of him. He was too tired. She took too much out of him, his delicious wife.
He slipped to the side, took his weight off her but stayed where he could keep his hand on the silken skin just under her breast. “So what color was my hair when I was born?” he said, when his heart had slowed to a reasonable rate.
“Huh?” She sounded dazed. Cam grinned to himself. He’d pleasured a few women in his day. But he had never seen a woman as passionate as his own prim and proper duchess.
He let his lips slide across her cheeks. She had beautiful high cheekbones. All this darkness was excellent for the sculptor in him. He was feeling her bones rather than seeing them; it made him itch to hold clay in his hands, to pick up a chisel. “Did my mother say whether I had hair as a baby?”
“Of course you did,” she said. “You had adorable little black ringlets.”
He smiled into her neck. “I hope you’re not one of those people who goes to sleep every time you have a little pleasure.”
“Mumph,” said his wife with a huge yawn. And she seemed to think that her response was sufficient.
But Cam felt as if his body was one huge grin. He scooped her up and strode toward the bath. Then he paused because he didn’t want to break a leg. He was pleased to find that he had walked unerringly to the top of the bath steps.
“Cam, what are you doing?” She nuzzled her face against h
is neck.
By now he was up to the knees in water. “Dropping you,” he said cheerfully.
She shrieked lustily when she hit the water. No reason for that, Cam thought. Lady Troubridge’s heating pipe was working just fine. Wait till he dropped her in the Mediterranean in December. Now that was chilly water!
She came up with a squeak and before he knew it she’d launched a counteroffensive that employed all kinds of body parts generally ignored in polite circles.
“I can’t believe you did that,” he said a few moments later, panting and laughing at the same time. He had the advantage because of his uncanny night vision, but she was so slender and slippery that she seemed to disappear from his hand. And she attacked without warning—
“No, you don’t!” he said with a shout of laughter, heading off an attack that might have had serious consequences. He caught her against his body and kissed her, a slow molasses kiss. “You wouldn’t want to jeopardize our future little buttercups, would you?”
It took her a moment to remember. To think about buttercups, and him and her, in the same breath. But he was crushing his mouth against hers, and if her foolish heart melted even more…well, what could she do about it?
It was the second time that Phineas Finkbottle had observed the duke and duchess crushed in a passionate embrace. In the moment before he turned away he saw the duchess’s slender, milky back and the duke’s hand on the curve of her bottom. Phineas put down his lantern and turned to go without a sound. He couldn’t let his witnesses see the duchess unclothed. But his heart was filled with glee. He, Phineas Finkbottle, had stopped that annulment in its tracks.
“I’m sorry,” he said, pulling the door shut behind him and looking at the little circle of dowagers whom he had promised to escort into the plunge-bath. “I’m afraid that this is not a suitable time to visit the facilities.”
“Why on earth not?” screeched Mrs. Flockhart. “What on earth is stopping us?”
He almost quailed but then he straightened his shoulders. He was a man of resource, a man who got things done. “I saw a rat,” he said crisply. “Not an appropriate place for delicate ladies such as yourself.”
Mrs. Flockhart voiced what several were thinking. “Well! I do expect that Lady Troubridge, poor dear, will be rather horrified to know that she has been sharing her bath with rats! She is so insistent on the health benefits of a plunge-bath!” she tittered.
28
Mr. Rounton Defends His Heritage
“Do you know what I love about your eyes?” Gina said dreamily. “The way your lashes are so black. And they’re all spiky from being wet. I would love to have black lashes, truly that color, I mean.”
“I like yours as they are. They’re—” Cam broke off. “I can see your eyelashes.”
She turned her head and stared at the stairs up to the house.
“Look at that,” Cam said. “Someone’s come in and left us a lantern. Thoughtful of them. Nice not to interrupt us.”
Gina looked down and felt as if her blush must cover her entire body. “I must dress,” she said.
“Yes. I suppose the door is no longer locked.”
He picked her up and strode back through the water and splashed his way up the stairs. Then he let her slide down his body, onto her own feet.
She looked at him, and smiled, a cat-in-the-cream smile. “You didn’t seem to mind the dark very much.”
“Think you’ve cured me, have you?”
“You didn’t need curing,” Gina said, standing on her tiptoes so she could look straight into his eyes. “All those kisses your mother gave you were in your memory. You just needed reminding that she loved you—Buttercup.”
His smile was reluctant, but none the less sweet for that. “Perhaps you’re right,” he drawled. She turned away to pick her gown off the floor. He pulled her back against him, holding her naked bottom against him.
Feeling rushed through her legs and her knees almost buckled.
“I’ll be joining my lady in her bed tonight,” he said.
She couldn’t even answer. The blood was pounding so hard in her ears that she wasn’t even certain that she heard him correctly.
He let her go and strode over to his trousers. She stood for a moment, letting the fact that she was utterly, absolutely, in love with her fool of a husband sink into her head.
“And I’ll be sculpting you with that piece of marble,” he tossed over his shoulder. “I’ve been working on the sketches for the last two days.”
Wonderful. Now she was to become the naked resident of cloakrooms. She didn’t even care. She put a foot on the chaise longue and slowly pulled on a stocking. Her body twinged and protested. She was going to live among naked sculptures, become one herself. Her heart sang.
He was already dressed and had turned off the warming switch. “Cam,” she said, “do you see a garter anywhere?”
He plucked it from the floor and walked over to her. She took it and tied it just over her knee, shaking her gown down to the ground.
“I’m going to do your head and shoulders,” he said, tracing a line that ended just above her collarbone. “I’m not certain that I can do your eyes justice, especially the way they tilt at the corners. But this beauty here”—his thumb rubbed the back of her neck—“this is lovely and I know I can do it.”
Her relief must have showed.
“Thought I’d turn you into a naked Diana, did you?”
She nodded.
“I’ll be damned if I ever let another man see your body,” he said. “In stone or in the flesh. You’re my wife, Gina. Really my wife now. Not that I won’t sculpt other naked bodies,” he added.
Her eyes narrowed. “Marissa?”
“Who else? I’m not putting you out in the marketplace. You’ll be naked in my bedroom, and no other place.”
There was something about his eyes that made her trust him. Fool that she was, she couldn’t even bring herself to question what he meant. Did he mean to take her to Greece? Or leave her home at Girton? She pushed the thought away.
“Oh dear,” she said with mock sadness. “That is a pity.”
“What?”
“If I’m naked only in your bedchamber”—she paused, her face alight with wicked mischief—“I gather we won’t make use of the bluebell wood at Girton.” She smiled at him, a smile that licked his bones and made him stand harder than a piece of oak. “I know you’re cured of your reluctance to be in the dark, but I thought perhaps we would need to refresh your lessons. At night.”
He concentrated on taking a deep breath. “May I escort you to your chamber, Your Grace?”
She dropped a perfect curtsy. “I would be honored.”
Gina tried to make her husband let go of her arm on the way up the stairs from the plunge-bath, but he ignored her.
“Stubble it, Gina,” he said, amiably enough.
“We should be restrained,” she said halfheartedly, as Cam pushed open the door at the top of the stairs. “I haven’t informed my fiancé that I won’t marry him.”
“Bonnington is not an idiot. Or perhaps he is. Either way, it doesn’t matter.” He held open the door, and Gina walked into the corridor.
“Cam,” she said, in a stiff, warning voice.
He looked over her head. “Well, if it isn’t the ubiquitous Phineas Finkbottle.” He pulled Gina back so she was behind his body. Then he walked slowly toward the solicitor, watching the man’s hands.
Faced with a livid nobleman, Phineas began to babble. “I hope I have not misstepped—I most regretted—but Mr. Rounton’s instructions—truly, Your Grace, they were quite straightforward—I couldn’t think of another—the earth closet—”
Cam stopped short and tried to make sense of Finkbottle’s tangled speech. The man blundered on, but nothing he said made much sense. “What the devil are you talking about? What is this talk of earth closets? And what did Rounton tell you to do?”
A nervous giggle escaped Gina. “If I understood him correctly, Mr.
Finkbottle almost locked us in an earth closet instead of the plunge-bath.”
Cam put an arm around his wife and pulled her tightly against his shoulder.
Finkbottle started to reply, something about keys and a gardener, but Cam brusquely interrupted. “Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? Where the devil have you put the Aphrodite?”
Finkbottle visibly trembled. “The what?”
“The Aphrodite, you blithering idiot!”
“I merely followed Mr. Rounton’s orders. He said nothing of an Aphrodite.”
“Don’t blame this on Rounton. He would never instruct you to steal a precious statue. The man is loyal to our family.”
“I don’t believe that Mr. Finkbottle has any idea what the Aphrodite is,” Gina pointed out. “In fact, I would guess that the Aphrodite is safely in Esme’s possession.”
Finkbottle stood there, looking as buffleheaded as it was possible for a young man to look. His face was as flaming as his hair.
“Are you the duchess’s illegitimate brother, then?”
Finkbottle’s eyes grew large. “What?”
“The duchess’s illegitimate brother,” Cam repeated. “Are you he?”
“No!”
“I can’t think how you saw any resemblance between us,” Gina interjected.
“He has red hair.”
“I’m not illegitimate,” Phineas stammered. “I’m poor but that’s not the same as being illegitimate. My father is a younger son of an earl. And my mother was a perfectly respectable woman, the daughter of a squire. And they were married!”
Indignation seemed to give him something of a backbone. “You have accused me of theft and of being ill-born, my lord, but all I did was lock you in the plunge-bath for a few hours.”
Cam stiffened again. “Well, why the devil did you do that?” he said softly. Phineas instinctively fell back a step. “Mr. Rounton,” he faltered.
“Mr. Rounton told him to do it,” Gina said. “Rounton sent poor Mr. Finkbottle to the house party and told him to compromise us. I believe Rounton might have thought he was protecting the ducal line.”