“Right,” he said, smiling down at his wife. “We will spare my hip.” He stroked her stomach as if he were caressing a cat. Shivers followed in the wake of his fingers. Suddenly he rubbed his thumb across silky damp curls, pulling her trembling thighs apart with his other hand.
Gabby gave a funny, half-strangled gulp. Quill withdrew his hand and moved backward, swinging his legs off the bed. He left her shaking, with a fluid burning heat between her legs. “Quill?” She reached her arms out to him. Her eyes were a dusky golden color and hazy with desire.
Obviously his wife had abruptly found herself in the throes of the same lamentable lust that had plagued him for the last fortnight. Suddenly Quill started thoroughly enjoying himself. “You know,” he said lazily, “I think we should outline our plan. So that we’re both clear about our duties.”
Gabby read the challenge in his voice and responded instinctively. “That sounds like a good idea,” she said airily.
“Well?” He stood in front of her, large and imposing, his legs spread, an amused smirk in his eyes that told her of secret laughter. “Why don’t you detail the first step?”
“Oh.” She cleared her throat. “Will you remove your clothing, please? I would prefer not to be in this state alone.” She registered the even tone of her own voice with a sense of gratitude.
At that, Quill smiled a crooked, sensual smile that didn’t reveal his surprise, if he felt any. “I think not, Gabby. What if I strain my hip? You had better do it for me.”
She sat up and came to her feet. Her heart was pounding unevenly. “Of course,” she responded, quite as if he’d asked for a second cup of tea.
She began to untie his neckcloth.
“If we are to spare my hip,” Quill remarked, “you shall have to do most of the work.”
“Of course,” she murmured.
He grinned. “Gabby, how much do you remember of our wedding night?”
Gabby pulled his neckcloth from around his neck and dropped it neatly over a chair. “I remember everything, of course.” She avoided his eyes as she began unbuttoning his shirt.
“If I am to put no weight on my hip,” Quill said, tone soft as a devil’s, “you will have to be more…forthright than you were that night, my dear.”
Gabby swallowed. “Naturally,” she replied without expression. She reached the last button and eased the shirt off his shoulders. His chest was a smooth sun-brown, without a single hair. Bewitched, she drew her fingers uncertainly over his taut muscles.
“Do you understand what I just told you?” Now it was Quill who was having trouble keeping his voice even.
“Mmmm,” she replied. True, Gabby didn’t have the faintest idea what it meant to be forthright in the bed, but she didn’t feel like fussing about it. She brought her hands up to his neck and let them slide down his chest again. Little shudders followed in her wake. Daringly, she leaned forward and kissed the heated skin her hands had just caressed.
Quill cleared his throat. He didn’t know how much longer he could keep up this civil air. He was throbbing so hard that his trousers might not even be able to slide down his hips. “The rest of my clothes, Gabby?”
In fact, he’d lost his urbane tone and his voice burst with hungry violence.
But she fumbled with his trouser buttons, and in the end he shucked the remainder of his clothing himself.
In a lightning-quick lunge, he grabbed her and fell backward onto the bed, pulling Gabby on top of him. Her eyes were dreamy, cheeks flushed as she straddled him. Then her eyes widened with shock and a glimmer of understanding came into them.
“Do you think?”
Quill didn’t, couldn’t, answer. In reply he clasped her hips and lifted her into position.
Gabby choked and instinctively pressed forward.
“Yes!” Quill whispered fiercely. “Come to me.”
Gabby trembled, caught on a wave of embarrassment so acute she couldn’t move. She was poised above him unclothed. She quivered with mortification. Naked in the open. It was depraved! At least before she had been hidden underneath him.
But then she looked down and there was Quill—his beautiful gray-green eyes asking desperately for something only she could give. She forgot her exposed flesh and leaned forward, kissing him gently as she nudged downward against his heat and demand.
He groaned against her lips and forced them open, possessing her sigh with his mouth, taking her breath into his lungs.
“You’re making me forget,” Gabby whispered when his lips moved from her mouth to her neck, leaving a scorching trail behind. Hands tightened on her hips as if he was about to pull her down.
“Gabby …” His voice was a plea.
Despite herself, a little squeak broke from her lips as she pushed down again. And pulled back. And fell downward again—deeper and sweeter. The breath was burning in her chest. She tried again, and again. Deeper each time. Quill’s face was agonized.
“Gabby!” he said roughly, and she knew that in a moment his self-control would break and he would pull her hard onto his body.
“Yes?” she whispered sweetly, and sank down until they were joined together like puzzle pieces made by a master.
A harsh cry broke from Quill’s lips and he arched his hips off the bed, holding her hips tightly against him.
Now it was her turn to cry out. But then: “Stop that,” she gasped. “You are not allowed to move your hip!”
For a moment a ravishing smile lit Quill’s eyes. “You drive a hard bargain, love.” His voice was husky, taut with control. A hand found its way to the front of her thighs and tried to distract her.
Gabby fell silent, intent on learning the rhythm of the rise and fall. She rocked awkwardly. She rose quickly and sank too slowly. She drove him half to distraction…. Quill ground his teeth and stroked his wife’s back. He rediscovered the delights of having a breast temptingly near his mouth. He counseled himself in patience and tried to keep in mind the fact that awkward lovemaking with Gabby was ecstasy compared to lying in a bed without Gabby.
He learned patience and then abruptly lost that hard-won virtue. His muscular body arched roughly upward, a thumping rise that sent a bolt of lightning through his body.
Reprimanded, he regained patience and whispered loving words he never meant to speak again.
Finally…finally, by the grace of God, his wife found a rhythm in her beautiful hips. Began to rise and fall in a dance that made the blood pound through his body in a delicious cadence. His heartbeat meshed with hers.
And then, as Gabby’s neck arched back and she cried aloud, Quill gripped her hips and thrust upward. Drove into her with every inch of strength he had and heard only dimly the wild cry that burst from Gabby’s throat as her body convulsed and she fell forward onto his chest.
It was enough. It was more than enough. He clutched her against him, all of her beautiful soft curves, his own jasmine-scented wife, and gave her everything he had.
And it was enough.
In fact, Quill was glad that her face was in his shoulder so she couldn’t see his own face. He felt as if his soul had jumped out of his own body, it was so…enough.
Instead, he said hoarsely, “That was very good for a first try, Gabby.” And then, ashamed of himself, he was glad to find that she had fallen asleep, right there on top of him, without hearing his foolish comment. He kissed her ear and her hair over and over, in an excess of tenderness that was profoundly embarrassing. It’s gratitude, he told himself. Gratitude for being saved from a fast.
It wasn’t until six in the morning that Quill understood that intuitive medical diagnoses should be seen as one of Gabby’s virtues, not the least of which was a masterful sense of rhythm. Rosy light crept into the corners of the room, but no ominous purple shadows flashed at the corners of his vision. His stomach didn’t lurch when he carefully eased Gabby’s sleeping body off his shoulder and stood up. He was stiff. His hip was sore, as if he’d worked too hard in the orchard. It protested when he stretched.
But his head was miraculously clear. A grin of pure, unadulterated joy broke over Quill’s face.
He leaned over and ran a hand up Gabby’s satiny thighs. In her sleep, she sighed and her legs fell slightly open. Shuddering, Quill forced himself to back away. He had a shrewd notion that his hip had taken all the motion it could handle at the moment. But tonight…ah, tonight.
It was enough to make a devil holler hymns.
EMILY SLOWLY ROSE from her desk and cast a regretful look at her stained fingers. Somehow she had to learn to use a quill without endless splatters.
Lucien Boch bowed before her. Emily curtsied. When she looked up, she found that he had moved to stand just before her.
“Emily,” he said huskily.
She opened her mouth to say something polite, but the words died in her throat.
“I came to make certain that your dragon did not reappear,” Lucien said. “But he isn’t here.”
“No,” Emily managed. “Mr. Hislop did not visit this morning.”
Lucien took her hands in his and turned them over, looking at her beautiful, dirty fingers. “Perhaps you should wear gloves.”
“They cost too much to ruin with ink,” Emily said, pride in her voice. She tried to tug her hands away.
He kept her right hand and raised it to his lips, pressing her palm against his mouth.
“I would like to buy you gloves,” he said suddenly.
Emily tugged harder at her hand. “So would the dragon,” she pointed out. “I buy my own gloves, monsieur.”
“Do you speak French, Emily?”
“I prefer Mrs. Ewing. And yes, I speak some French. I had a tutor as a child.”
“Forgive me the impertinence. I have thought about you as Emily, and it slipped out. I should like to know more about your childhood.”
It was a very odd conversation, to Emily’s mind. What they were saying seemed to have little to do with the way he was looking at her. Or, she very much feared, the way she was looking back at him.
He was beautiful, this Frenchman. He was just a half head taller than she was, which meant that she could see long eyelashes curving against his cheek as he looked down at her hands. Her heart was pounding in her throat now.
“Mr. Boch,” she said. She felt like an idiot child, unable to form words.
“I would like to invite you—” Lucien began. But he stopped. Her eyes were the blue-gray of a sea mist, and they looked at him so innocently. He forgot that he was old, and widowed, and no good for her. He forgot that Emily had her whole life before her and deserved a man who was not wounded by life. He forgot it all in the blue-gray depths of her eyes.
He kissed her without touching her. He even dropped the hand he held, moved forward one step and bent his head. They were much of the same height, after all.
And she—the lovely, untouched Emily who deserved a better man than he—Emily kissed him back. He knew in an instant she had never been married. Her mouth trembled against his and then slipped open with a sigh.
Lucien kissed her, and stopped. He drew back and looked down at her and somehow managed a sensible tone of voice. “I prefer Emily because Mr. Ewing never existed.”
“Mr. Ewing died in a carriage accident,” she said. Her knees were weak and she knew perfectly well that she ought, as a gentlewoman, to order the man from the room. He was trying to seduce her. He was undoubtedly planning to turn her into his paramour, given that he wanted to buy her gloves. And yet she couldn’t work up any indignation. Her heart was pounding too hard.
Lucien bent forward again. Emily swayed, slightly, as he took her mouth and his arms pulled her hard against him. She gasped as he tasted her sweetness, tasted something that was not innocence but desire.
When he raised his head again, she didn’t try to escape. She simply looked back at him. He blurted out, “I should like you to marry me.”
She said nothing.
“Forgive me,” Lucien said awkwardly. “I should have phrased that more…Mrs. Ewing, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
Emily swallowed. She had thought about Lucien Boch endlessly in the last months. She had thought she knew why he called, morning after morning, why he invited himself to lunch. Either he owned a rival magazine or he was a rake planning to make her into a fallen woman. On the whole, she had preferred the second explanation. But marriage had never occurred to her.
“I do not have a dowry,” she said. “My father threw me out of the house years ago. He gave us a small sum of money, and said there would be no more. And he has not wavered in his opinion.”
“Your father is a blockhead.”
He had taken hold of her hands again and was pressing her palms to his lips. Emily felt a treacherous wash of heat. “I can’t marry you,” she said rather desperately. “I’m a social outcast. I have no family. I have responsibilities—Phoebe, and Louise …”
Lucien leaned forward again because he couldn’t stop himself. He pressed a kiss on her mouth. “You are my Emily,” he said. “I want you. I want you in my home, and in my bed. I don’t need a dowry, and I don’t have a family either.” He stopped, remembering all the reasons he had not to get married.
When he didn’t continue, Emily tremblingly raised one hand to his shoulder. “Did you have a family once?” Her soft whisper fell into the silence.
The agony in Lucien’s eyes blinded her, and she almost looked away, but didn’t.
“You might not want to marry me, Emily. My marquise’s name was Felice. My son was Michel. I didn’t…I couldn’t protect them. When I was away, trying to secure passage to England, they, they—”
She crossed the few inches that stood between them and brought her arms around his neck. She could see the shadowed darkness in his eyes. “They died,” she finished for him. “I’m so sorry, Lucien. Now they live here.” She pressed her hand to his heart.
Lucien cursed himself. He hadn’t cried in years—in years. He hadn’t cried when he ran desperately through the charred remains of the chateau, when a shout told him that the men had found the bodies of his wife and child, when he buried them in each other’s arms, as they were in death.
So Emily cried for him. Huge tears filled her beautiful eyes and ran down her cheeks. Her shoulders jerked and she pressed her face against his shoulder. His arms went around her reflexively.
“It was a long time ago,” he said.
“I suppose there is no time long enough, is there, Lucien?”
There was a heartbeat of silence.
“Probably not. I should not have asked you to marry me, mignonne. I am not good for it. Although, although you are the—” He stopped again.
Emily seemed to have stopped crying. All he could see was a smooth sweep of golden hair, but she wasn’t trembling anymore. Her arms were still hard around his neck.
“Hush” was all she said.
Lucien thought for a second and then brought his arms down from her back and picked her up. She weighed nothing, his Emily. He walked over to a comfortable settee and sat down, tucking her against his shoulder again. Then he started dropping kisses in her hair. Which wasn’t, he realized, the right thing for him to be doing, given that he had just withdrawn his marriage proposal.
“I will marry you.”
Lucien stopped kissing her hair. “I don’t want to be married for pity,” he said, his brusque tone at odds with his heart. His heart didn’t care why she married him, as long as she did.
“I think I shall marry you for the gloves you will buy me,” Emily said, raising her head and looking in his eyes. “Will you deny me gloves?” She took one ink-tipped finger and pressed it against his mouth. There were tears on her cheeks.
Lucien pulled out the two pins that held her cap. “Where is Mr. Ewing?” He tossed the scrap of lace onto the floor.
“There was no Mr. Ewing,” she admitted at last. “I was afraid when we came to London. I thought we would be safer if I appeared to be a widow. So. I am accepting your offer of marriage. Will you play
the reprobate and withdraw your offer?”
It seemed to be out of his hands. Lucien bent his head and Emily kissed him first.
She had made the most foolish, most irrational decision of her life, and happiness was singing in her heart. She had agreed to marry a man whom she had known a scant few months. She knew nothing about him—nothing.
Nothing and everything.
“Perhaps you are right,” she said teasingly. “Perhaps I should weigh your offer against Mr. Hislop’s. Of course, I am not entirely certain that his offer is for marriage, precisely.”
Lucien pulled her tightly against him.
“I’ll run him through if he touches you,” he said, surprising himself with his vehemence.
“Then I shall marry you to save Mr. Hislop.” Emily laughed. “And to support my favorite glover.”
“You will marry me because you love me,” Lucien said. There was only a tremor of a question in his voice.
Emily’s lips trembled under his. “Because I love you,” she whispered. “And…because you love me, Lucien.”
He held her so tightly that she could feel the imprint of his buttons through her gown and chemise. “I do,” he said finally. “God help me, Emily, but I do love you.”
THE RECEPTION FOR Kao Rasi Holkar, heir to the Holkar throne, was held at East India House in Leadenhall Street. Lord Breksby was at his most genial as his carriage turned into Leadenhall.
Gabby sat next to Quill in silence, wondering whether it would be horribly gauche to slip her hand into his. She was nervous about the evening ahead of them. Then, when they were almost there, his large hand enclosed hers, and a warm glow lit her heart.
The East India Company had spared no expense for the reception. The small stone courtyard was lined with riflemen wearing gaudy uniforms and strange flat caps. As the party entered, they all snapped to attention, holding their rifles very straight. Gabby shivered and hurried past.
The walls of the entrance hall were lined with glass cabinets. Gabby drifted over to one as a footman took her pelisse. Inside was a collection of jeweled birds, studded with rubies and garnets.