Duchess in Love (36 page)

T
wilight on the isle of Nissos has a strangely blue quality, a crystalline pearly glow that dances along the skin and shakes pure gold from hair like that of Gina Serrard, Duchess of Girton. She and her husband were leading the harvest dance. She laughed, holding her white frock up to her ankles as she skipped around the fire. And he danced after her, faster and faster, satyrlike, dark to her white.

When he caught her up in his arms, nodded to the assembled villagers, and began climbing the stone steps to the great house on the hill, there were many who wondered what he whispered so tenderly in her ear. Love poetry, perhaps. The Englishman was a fool in love. Anyone could see that.

Gina blinked. “What?”

“Rounton should arrive sometime this week or next,” her husband repeated.

“The solicitor?” Her voice ended in a little squeak.

“He will arrange to sell the house and ship my statues to England.”

“Why?”

“We are returning,” he said calmly. “We'll take
The
Starlight
back to London next month.” He looked down at her with an expression of extreme innocence. “Thought I couldn't arrange an ocean voyage, did you?”

“But why…what…”

“What do you think I was doing in the quarries every day?”

Gina smiled up at her husband. “Lifting stone? You're hoisting me as if I were a featherweight.”

“You are a featherweight,” he said. They reached the top of the steps and he put her deftly on her feet. “Rounton will ship tons of marble home to Girton. Enough to keep me in naked Dianas for the rest of my natural life, should I so choose.”

“Oh,” Gina breathed.

He tipped up her chin and brushed a kiss on her lips. “First thing, I'm placing marble Marissas all over the formal gardens, just to keep my hand in.”

Gina grinned. She'd come to like his indolent, sweethearted former mistress. “But Sebastian thought it best if we stayed out of England for a while, given the scandal.”

“The scandal is Bonnington's, not ours,” Cam said firmly. “
He
chose to play the gallant idiot, sacrificing his reputation to save Esme's. That was his choice. The story he wove about using a false special license to fool his way into your bed—well, it boggles the mind that anyone could believe it. But believe it they did. Bonnington, poor sod, is exiled to the continent and reviled as a disgusting reprobate who tried to bed a duchess without the benefit of marriage. His unhappy fate shouldn't affect our decisions, however.”

“Well, Sebastian said that if we stayed away, it would—”

“His ploy worked, Gina. He's an exile; you're considered lucky to have escaped his evil scheme; Esme's reputation is saved. And you belong in England, duchess that you are. Bicksfiddle is probably buried in a stack of inquiries. Cer
tainly he has chopped our hedges down to their bare stubs. Your brother is languishing in Oxford for lack of a family.” She made a face. “It's been months,” he pointed out. “Bessie Mittins is likely in the family way again, and in need of hardship funds. Who knows if Bicksfiddle will be as understanding of her fondness for the men of Lower Girton as you are.”

“But I like it in Greece, Cam.”

He stopped just inside the door and cupped her face to his. “I don't need to live on an island anymore, love. I can walk in the dark now.” He gave her a swift, hard kiss.

Gina caught her breath. Surely he was saying that he loved her?

“You are my light,” he said, towing her toward their bedchamber.

T
hey had quarreled, as they did occasionally. Cam said she should have asked his advice before she told Bicksfiddle to regrade the sewers in Lower Girton. He would have allocated some of the money to building stone banisters in the arboretum. Gina said he never thought about the future. Cam retorted that sewers were tedious, but that if she had asked, he had an idea about stone sewers, like those built by the Romans.

Gina walked away, up the stairs. She knew what he really meant. She made a tedious duchess. She looked down at her gloved hand as it lightly rested on the stair rail. Of course she always held onto the railing as she walked up the stairs. What if she fell? What if she teetered and fell? What then?

Nothing. She had spent entirely too much time in her life avoiding risks.

A small sound caught her attention and she paused and turned around.

He was still there, staring up at her.

“What are you doing?” she asked, taking her hand off the railing.

“Waiting,” he replied, his voice gentle.

Still looking at him, she started unbuttoning her left glove. “Waiting for what?”

“You might change your mind.”

She pulled off the glove and tossed it down the stairs. It missed three or four stairs and flapped down. Together they stared at the small pile of crumpled cloth. She looked up to find her husband's eyes dancing with laughter.

She pulled at the buttons on her right hand.

A large male hand came over hers. “You once told me that gloves are difficult to remove. I could help. Would you like me to help you?”

“Help?”

He nodded. “The thing you never ask for. So well trained you were by my dear papa. Have you ever asked for help, Gina?”

“Of course I have!”

“With something that mattered? Why didn't you write me when I lived in Greece, and tell me how much work the estate was? Why didn't you ask me to return? Why don't you ever ask me for help?”

“I am used to being independent,” she said mulishly.

He was drawing off her glove, finger by finger. He put a finger on the base of her hand, just over her pulse. “Ask me, Gina.”

She saw the crinkles at the corners of his eyes as he smiled…uncertainty behind his rakish smile. She knew him now, knew that his smiles hid—hid what? Need? Need for her? Her blood was racing from the simple touch of his finger on her wrist.

“I…I would like—” but she broke off. It was too hard, after years of silent wishes and the letters she didn't write.

After the unspoken fears that she would never have a family of her own. Asking for help meant discarding the idea that if she were a perfect duchess, she would be re
warded with a perfect duke. Because he was a perfect duke—for her.

He helped her then. “They tell me I have a wife,” he whispered. “Do you know where I might find her?” Gina saw the hint of something behind his laughter. Something less certain than joy.

“Would you like some help locating her?” she replied.

“The woman I love is here.” He tipped up her chin. “Will you marry me, Ambrogina? Will you be mine, for better and for worse, in good times and in bad?”

She swallowed, hard. “I will.” Her voice cracked. “Will you marry me, Camden William Serrard, and live with me, forsaking all others, till death do us part?”

He cleared his throat and said, “I will,” rather huskily. Then he bent his head and gently, so gently, brushed her lips.

“I need help,” she said, looking straight into his eyes.

“Anything.”

She turned around, not bothering to hold the railing, teetering on the little heels of her dress slippers. “I would like to undress.”

“Undress!” He looked around. Girton's vast arched stairway stretched above them, the newel posts wrenched from their places, to be replaced by statues. No one stirred; it was late at night. But there was nothing to stop Rundles from entering the hallway on a late night errand. True, the butler was more likely to use the servants' stair.

He laughed and protested: “Gina!”

She said nothing, just stood with her back to him, neck curved gently so that the long line of elegant buttons that ran down her gown were in evidence. He kissed her neck…it smelled like apple blossoms. Then despite himself, his fingers started undoing the buttons, one by one, right there on the palatial stairs of his home.

A memory leaped into his mind: his father poised on the
stairs like a feudal lord, shouting furiously at the servants in mid-step because he couldn't wait until he reached the bottom of the stairs. Cam's fingers faltered.

Gina began pulling pins from her hair and tossing them heedlessly to the side. They pinged lightly against polished walnut railings, fell to the marble, fell in all directions. His fingers were covered with a rush of sunlit-rosy hair, sleek and smooth and smelling of apples. His hands steadied and he began unbuttoning in a frenzy.

When he reached the last button, he pulled the dress forward. She helped, wriggling out of the arms. The cloth pooled and fell. Gina stepped away and kicked the garment to the side. Then she turned, dressed only in a frail chemise laced with blue ribbon. Eyes on his, she untied the little bow and the chemise fell open.

“I still need help,” his wife said, throatily. “I need—”

“I'm here, Gina.” Something ripped as he pulled the chemise down, down over creamy shoulders and beautiful breasts, half hidden by a sweep of red hair.

There she was, naked but for delicate silk stockings, her garters and slippers. He knelt down in front of her because worship seemed to be called for, but more because he couldn't stop himself. The skin just under the rise of her breasts was as sleek as the side of a peach. She giggled as his tongue wandered around her belly, and he said, “Quiet, wench,” and let his hands settle down on the luscious curve of her bottom.

Then he discovered that if he shifted down one stair…well, that put his mouth just at the juncture of her legs. He ignored her protests and after a while she stopped wiggling. She forgot to be a duchess and leaned back against the banister like someone accustomed to nudity in public places. He kissed her until little puffing moaning shrieks escaped into the dim twilight that surrounded the stairs. And then, just
when he could feel her trembling all down her legs, he stopped. Pulled away and gave her a little bite in the thigh. Explored that interesting hollow in her hip. Listened to her coming back to herself, regaining a sense of propriety—“No, you can't! Cam, we're on the
stairs
!”—and then settled back into an exhibition of mastery. Settled back in the juncture of those lovely thighs and drove her into a shivering, shrieking wife.
His
wife.

When she finally melted into his arms, gasping for air, crying for mercy, he just grinned.

Until she gave him a sultry smile that promised retribution, and wiggled against his groin. He sucked in his breath.

“Hmm,” Gina purred. Her tone reeked with revenge. “My chair is most uncomfortable. There's something
protruding
from it.”

He was too late. She slipped from his hands and hopped up two stairs, with a grin that was half lustful and half a giggle. Looking at his wife, Cam felt a burn in his chest that would never go away, no matter how many times he held her in his arms, no matter how many nights she slept beside him, no matter how many times she asked him for help.

He wrenched his shirt off as she watched with that frank and hungry gaze that never suited the prim Duchess of Girton. “You would have made a terrible marchioness,” he said. “Terrible!”

Gina was not interested. She leaned back against the railing and enjoyed the way her husband's fingers fumbled with his boots when her breasts rose in the air. When she ran a lazy finger over her breast and down her tummy, he wrenched off a boot and accidentally dropped it right down the stairs.

“I feel a wave of embarrassment,” she drawled, lounging against the railing, as much the bold courtesan as she ever envisioned her French
maman
.

He raised an eyebrow. “Really?” He was almost ungarbed.

“Indeed. I should like you to put out the candles, Cam.”

He laughed. “My little duchess…you already cured me of my fear of the dark, don't you know that?” He moved to stand just before her. They were both naked now.

He kissed her, but without touching her body. She pulled back from the heat and desire and said, “Cam,” in a shaky little voice.

Naked, he had a beauty such as she could never have imagined. One never looked at his body when he was dressed. His personality was too vivid, too explosive, too engaging. But without clothes, one saw the long line of thigh, the taut beauty of his arse, the leashed strength in his arms as he cupped the candles leading up the stairs.

One by one the shadows grew, casting the stairs into darkness. He skipped the candle just before her and continued up the stairs. When he looked from the top of the stairs, there was a dim candle glow halfway up the stairs, and there, to the side of it, a beautiful creamy shape that he knew to be silky from top to bottom: a body that laughed with a breathless chuckle, kissed with a lustful glee,
loved
…Gina loved with a fierce strength.

He snuffed the last candle with no more ado than one steps on an ant.

And then, finally, he did what he had wanted to do for the last hour. He sat down on a stair and held out his arms.

But she couldn't see him. The high mullioned windows let in little light when the moon was full, and tonight there was no moon at all.

“Gina,” he said, and his voice was full of husky promise. “Come here.”

She sounded uncertain. “Where are you?”

“Across from you. Don't worry; I won't let you fall.” And
he reached out and found a slender ankle. Walked his fingers up that ankle, pulled gently on her leg. And then he had her sitting on his lap, those gorgeous long legs slung around his hips. He leaned back against cool marble and ran a deliberate thumb over one nipple.

The tiny strangled noise in the back of her throat was everything he wanted in life.

She traced her fingers down his cheekbones. “No jokes?” she whispered. His fingers moved and she cried against his mouth.

“My pulse is steady,” he said.

She put her lips to his neck and pressed forward into his hands. She could feel him stir under her. His pulse thundered under her lips. “No, it isn't,” she said.

“It's not the dark, it's you,” he said. His voice was as quiet as velvet and not at all joke-filled. “You are my wife, my prim duchess, my naked love.” His hands molded her body to his. “I don't need to tell jokes…holding you is joy enough.”

“Oh, Cam—” Her voice broke on a sob that turned to a gasp, and then to a moan.

He forgot it was dark. All that mattered was the silky touch and rounded curves, the fiery heat and gasps of his own, his very own duchess.

And Gina forgot that
Duchess is as Duchess does.
Her husband lifted her, held her poised over him, let her fall; delicious weight. She cried out. There was nothing poised about her now, nothing neat, nothing proper. She rode him with a clear fierce joy and an exuberant pleasure that disregarded convention. She laughed, rubbing her breasts against his chest, glorying in the sensation. He laughed when she tickled him, until her fingers trailed lower.

At some point Gina reached over and snatched her gown so that Cam could stuff it behind his back, since he swore
the marble was crippling him for life. But she refused to leave the stairs, and he couldn't even think of standing without her. She needed him to anchor her to the ground, just as he needed her to light the darkness.

Finally they stopped laughing, and her breath grew shorter, came only in gasps. He could feel every inch of her silky skin, her softness, her forgiveness. He held her tight, thrust up hard, harder. She cried out with every thrust, kissed him again and again, kisses and cries melting against his face.

He thrust harder, just to hear her shuddering cry. “I love you,” he said fiercely. “I think I've always loved you.”

He wasn't certain that she heard him. She was trying to go somewhere that only he could take her. So he gripped her hips and pumped into her so hard that he actually rose off the steps. She screamed and clutched his shoulders and screamed again…

They were together, in a tempest in the darkness, in the heat.

And in the shuddering darkness that wasn't lonely, Cam picked up his wife and without sparing a thought for the clothing strewn over the stairs, walked to their room. Her head lay on his shoulder, as peaceful as a babe's.

He put her on the ancestral bed. On his father's bed, his grandfather's bed. On the bed where his own child would be born. Many of them, if he had his way. He lit candles, only so he could watch her.

She opened her eyes, a lazy smile and the hint of shyness that was his duchess. “Come here, Your Grace,” she said sleepily.

“Thank you,” he said. “I believe I shall.”

And he did.