Candice Hern (30 page)

"I'm glad you enjoyed it. But we still have the night. There is yet more to be enjoyed."

And so there was. After a brief supper, they fell into bed together again, neither of them willing to waste a single moment.

Rochdale knew exactly how to give a woman pleasure while taking his own. He moved her expertly into positions she'd never imagined. The fact of all that knowledge and how he'd achieved it ought to have been off-putting. But she found she was glad for his vast experience, for she was certainly benefiting from it. She laughed aloud as she suddenly realized why rakes were so popular with women. Of course they were! And hadn't Marianne told her of the benefits of having a rake for a lover? Grace also found that his history with women in some odd way allowed her to trust him. It was purely a physical trust and not emotional — she was not ready to tread those dangerous waters yet — and it allowed her to open herself completely to him. There was no part of her, inside or out, that she did not want him to touch. She wanted him everywhere on her and in her. If he could have crawled inside her skin, she would have allowed it.

Tonight, he rolled beneath her and had her straddle him. He lifted her hips and eased her down onto his erection. "Your turn, Grace. Ride me."

She had never imagined a woman could have control like this, but he encouraged it, and so she took charge. Placing her hands on his shoulders, she pulled up and then slid down his erection, repeating the movement again and again in a slow gliding motion. She looked down at him as she moved, a man in the throes of agony or ecstasy or both. His head was thrown back, his neck arched, but his heavy-lidded eyes remained open, barely, as he watched her.

"Yes, yes, that's it," he said, his hips moving up to meet hers. "Ride me, Grace. Ride me hard."

And she did. Finding just the right angle to produce just the right friction, she rode him with increasing dominance, taking all she wanted and more.

Finally, her release was so explosive, so thoroughly shattering, that she could do nothing but collapse upon his chest, breathless.

He pushed up hard into her once, twice, then quickly rolled her under him and pulled out, releasing onto the sheet.

They lay side by side for several minutes, neither of them willing or able to stir. She had watched him in passion. Now it was pure pleasure to study him in repose, to take in every detail of his body. It was an extravagance that she indulged with wonder, like a child who had been presented with a grand new toy, or a new pony.

Finally, he rose, as he always did, and saw to cleaning them both. After the first time, when he'd given her privacy to clean herself, she had ever since allowed him to minister to her. She enjoyed his gentleness and his care.

When he came back to bed and gathered her into his arms, neither of them seemed ready to sleep. She lay on her side and watched him, studying his face, admiring every beautiful part of it. "Some say you have bedroom eyes, but I never knew what it meant. Now I do."

"Bedroom eyes?"

"Yes. They have a look about them — smug, self-satisfied, lethargic – as if you had just risen from a woman's bed."

"Do they look that way now?"

She smiled. "Yes, they do."

"Good. Because that is exactly how I feel. Smug, for being the only man to have discovered the secret passions of Grace Marlowe. Self-satisfied for having enjoyed an extraordinary bout of lovemaking with her. And lethargic because she has taken from me all I can give and I am spent."

"Your eyes suggest that you carry that feeling with you all the time. Or have you simply learned to mimic it?"

"All I need do is think of a moment like this, and my eyes grow heavy with desire. But what about you? I may have bedroom eyes, but you have a bedroom laugh."

"A what?"

"When you laugh, it is husky and intimate, as if you've just had a good loving."

She laughed.

"You see? That's exactly the sound. Every man who hears that laugh imagines hearing it in bed. I certainly did the first time I heard it."

"What a pair we are, then, to always be making people think of beds."

They continued in lazy conversation while his hands gently stroked her hip, and hers traveled over his chest. They talked of Serenity and wagers and why he liked to gamble. And of the Fletcher family, who would be relocating to Bettisfont next week.

All at once, triggered by thoughts of his generosity, a wayward thought entered Grace's mind. "You never made Serena Underwood pregnant, did you?"

He raised his eyebrows. "What makes you think that? We were lovers."

"But you are more careful than that. Look how much effort you made to insure no one recognized me today. And ... and how you take care not to ... to finish inside me. I think you are far too protective of women to have made her pregnant and abandoned her."

"I protect myself, Grace, make no mistake. I want no accidental babe trapping me into marriage."

"And yet, Serena had a child."

"So I have been told."

"It was not your child, was it?"

He allowed a long silence to fall between them, and she wondered if she had been wrong.

"No," he said at last. "It was not my child. I doubt she knew whose it was. But do not absolve me of all blame. I did seduce her. And had I been a gentleman, I would have married her, regardless of the child's paternity. Instead, I walked away, leaving her alone and helpless."

"But it's not the entirely hateful tale that you allow to be spread. You could have let it be known that it was not your child. Instead, you allow people to think the worst of you."

"Better the worst of me than the worst of her. I had no desire to reveal her true nature to all and sundry. So I allowed her to use me as an excuse for her predicament. It did her some good and me no harm. I was already labeled a scoundrel by then."

"But it is only a label, as you have said so often to me. A label just like mine as the Bishop's Widow. They don't define us. You aren't entirely bad and I'm not entirely good."

His hand moved up to cup her breast. "Oh, but you are, Grace. You are very, very good."

He kissed her, and within a moment passion flared to life again. They made love slowly and easily at first, then more frantically, finally collapsing into an exhausted, tangled, satisfied heap. Rochdale fell asleep at once. Grace lay awake a bit longer, thinking of the return to London tomorrow and what would happen.

Here at Newmarket, with Rochdale, she had become a new woman. No, she had become herself. Completely without inhibition, she did and said what she pleased. She opened herself to him as she had with no other person, not even her friends, certainly not her husband. She would have to don her cloak of respectability when she returned to London. She could not completely abandon her old life and all the work she did. But inside she now knew who Grace Marlowe really was. And maybe now and then, perhaps with Rochdale, she would allow the real Grace to be revealed again.

"At Newmarket, I became a new kind of fool, Cazenove. I went soft. I lost my head." And something else besides. In fact, Rochdale figured he'd lost a great deal, when it came right down to it, and wondered if what he had gained in return was worth it. But then he'd think of Grace in his arms and nothing else seemed to matter much.

"It serves you right." Adam Cazenove scowled at him from across the thick plank table blackened with age. "It was a despicable wager, even for you."

Rochdale had returned from Newmarket with his head full of Grace Marlowe. At times he would simply sink into vivid recollections of each sexual encounter — a rather significant number of them, considering they had spent only two nights together. He became aroused just thinking of her dropping that nightgown and daring him to make love to her. He'd just as often recall her radiant face, glowing with sexual fulfillment or the thrill of her first horse race, and his heart would melt a little.

At other times, little panicky moments came over him, when he felt trapped. It made no sense, but he could hardly breathe from the sensation that he was pinned like a dead butterfly on a specimen board. Pinned down. Tied up. Trapped. But no one constrained him and nothing held him back. Except Grace. She held him with her beauty, her passion, her new and radiant happiness, her strength, her courage.

She confounded him. He had felt so off balance since returning to London yesterday that he'd sought out Cazenove, hoping for some masculine commiseration and good sense. Sitting in their favorite old-fashioned coffeehouse, The Raven on Fetter Lane, away from the prying eyes and ears of Mayfair or St. James's Street, Rochdale had confessed all to his friend. And had been roundly rebuked.

"If you have fallen in love with the woman," Cazenove said, "then I say it is what you deserve for allowing Sheane to drag you into such a damned fool wager. You deserve the pain and heartache and general feeling of having entered Bedlam that comes when a woman takes possession of your heart. It's an unsettling business, but you will survive. I did, and have never been more content in my life."

A roar of laughter from a group of men seated near the huge open fireplace rose above the general din. The squealing giggle of a serving girl followed, and Rochdale looked over just in time to see a bewigged old fellow pinching her bottom. The pink-cheeked girl in a huge mob cap wagged her finger at him and appeared to scold him, though her face was wreathed in a broad grin. The old man and his companions, all dressed in the style of twenty or more years ago, could be found in that same spot by the fire almost every day. Sometimes they drank the splendid coffee served there, and other times partook of a bowl of rum punch. A large blue-and-white bowl on their table, plus the bawdy behavior, indicated that this was one of their punch days.

Rochdale wondered if he and Cazenove would still be holding down their regular table in another thirty years, reminiscing of the old days and flirting with the serving girls.

Alfred, the head waiter and another permanent fixture of the Raven, approached with a tray. He placed a pottery cup in front of each of them, then poured steaming dark coffee from a tall white pot. Leaving the pot on the table, along with a bowl of coarse sugar chunks, a creamer, and two spoons, he tucked the tray under his arm and disappeared without a word.

Rochdale took a sip of the rich brew, found it to be too hot, and set it down to cool. "This thing with Grace," he said, getting back to the business at hand, "it isn't like you and Marianne. You knew her for years."

"Yes, but falling in love with her took me completely by surprise." Cazenove dropped a lump of sugar into his coffee and stirred. "Just as it has with you."

"I don't know if it's love. It's definitely obsession. I can't get the blasted woman out of my mind. If you can believe it, I can't seem to work up interest in any other women. To be honest, I haven't been with another woman since I began my pursuit of Grace. She's had me entranced for weeks. And now ... now I fear she has spoiled me for anyone else."

Cazenove's eyebrows shot up and he flashed a wicked grin. "The devil you say! She was that good?"

"That's not what I meant, though she was ... well, that is none of your damned business. But, unlike most other women I've been involved with, she is not a conniving bitch. She's ... a good woman, a decent woman. Genuine, true-hearted, unjaded. Artless as a newborn colt. It's been a long time since I've known such a woman. If ever."

"Because you deliberately avoid decent woman. But they are out there, my friend. Marianne is such a woman."

"Don't point fingers, Cazenove. Up until a few months ago, you followed the same path as me. A parade of willing women in your bed. Demireps and doxies, titled women with loose morals, anyone available for a quick shag or two and nothing more. Neither of us sought out decent women."

In fact, Rochdale had convinced himself years ago that women like Grace, or Cazenove's Marianne, truly good and worthy women who were not scheming or manipulative or grasping, did not exist. Those who pretended to be good and decent were the worst, hiding their plots and machinations behind masks of propriety, and he did indeed avoid such women. Instead, he sought out willing widows and unscrupulous wives and the occasional highborn young slut, like Serena Underwood.

Cazenove took a long sip of coffee and said, "Yes, I would have to say that, over the years, we both have played the licentious rake to perfection. I am not sorry that my rakish days are over. I have no desire to be with any woman other than Marianne. Did you ever know old Lord Monksilver?"

"Can't say as I did."

"A jolly old sort who'd cut quite a dash in his youth. I met him when I was just out of university, a young pup ready to hump anything in skirts. I've never forgotten what he said to me. He told me I could have sex with a different woman every night for years on end, but then one day the right woman would come along, and I would never want another woman in my bed again." Cazenove chuckled. "The old fellow was right. Maybe Grace Marlowe is that woman for you."

"I honestly do not know if she is, but I will tell you something, Cazenove. I'm tired of being a so-called libertine. Do you know that most of the women I've been with felt anonymous to me? They meant nothing to me. They could have been nameless and faceless, as long as their bodies were desirable. In bed, one was much the same as the next. Between you and me, I find I am tired of that anonymity. The encounters gave me no more than a moment's physical release, and left me empty. I came home hating the smell of perfume and powder on my skin and in my hair."

"And this is only since Grace Marlowe has come into your life?"

"No, I have been getting tired of the game for a while now. Grace has just made me realize how tired." He took a drink of coffee as he pondered how much she had brought into focus for him. "I just don't relish any more of those anonymous encounters. Oh, I still feel the urge. Hell, even that buxom serving maid over there tents my breeches and makes me want to mount her. But it is almost like a reflex, animalistic and base. It's nothing like what I felt with Grace. Somehow she made sex into something new for me. Something ... important. Even reverent. Damn it all, I'm not making any sense."