Fascination -and- Charmed (87 page)

Desperation drove Pippa to her feet. “May I tell you something, Fran—I mean Etienne?”

“Anything, my little bird.”

“You may not know this of me—in fact, of course you do not. But I am most interested in having as many of your children as possible. I intend to make myself a…a
vessel
for your seed. I shall be tireless in the receiving of that seed until I have born your fruit…” Her nerve failed and she ran her tongue over the dry roof of her mouth.

Franchot’s mouth hung open. “The devil you say,” he muttered. “Dashed good of you. That is, you take my breath away, dear gel. I’m of the same mind meself.”

He reached for her but Pippa evaded him.

“Oh, I’m certain you are,” she told him. “And because that is the case, it seems symbolic to me that our union be blessed before I avail myself of the pleasure of serving you.”

Franchot appeared, finally, to have lost the power of speech, but at least he’d ceased removing his shirt.

“Don’t you agree—Etienne—that there is something very beautiful about the thought of our dealing with the seed-and-fruit issue on the day of our marriage?”

“I…well, I…yes, of course. Very beautiful.”

“Oh, good.” She almost sank to the carpet with relief. “I’m extremely glad we’ve had this conversation. I feel I know you so much better and that you know me so much better.”

“Well…yes.”

She picked up his coat and handed it to him. “I’m hoping your grandmama may soon be well enough to continue my instruction in what will be required of me as your wife. And my papa must surely be on his way back from the Continent by now. Really, it is all
too
exciting.”

“Too exciting,” Franchot echoed. “I’d rather hoped you might consider putting aside all this waiting nonsense…as we discussed the other day?”

“The invitations have gone out.” Pippa contrived to appear sadly torn. “It would not be fair. Not to the dear dowager or to my father. And not to
you,
Etienne. This will mark a new triumph in your life, the time when you are about to ensure the continuation of your line. You will want the whole Polite World to mark that triumph with you.”

“S’pose you have a point.”

She shepherded him to the door, trotting beside him, peeping up into his face and smiling. “Why have we taken so long to arrive at this agreeable condition, Etienne?” Her face would split, and what little she’d eaten this day would part company with her stomach. The order of those events was in doubt.

For one dreadful moment, as he stood in the open doorway, she was afraid he would attempt to kiss her. Instead, he frowned as if trying to decide exactly what had just occurred and left, shaking his head.

Calum watched Franchot leave Pippa’s rooms. The man’s coat was over his arm and his shirt was disheveled. He appeared stunned.

Surely he hadn’t…

He wouldn’t force himself upon Pippa on the same floor where his sister slept and where any scream might be heard. Would he?

Franchot went slowly down the curving staircase and then his boots rang on the stone floors below as he headed toward his study.

Calum began to shift himself from his hiding place in the passageway leading to Lady Justine’s apartments, but the sight of Nelly Bumstead stopped him. Nelly Bumstead, all the while darting fearful looks in the direction Franchot had taken, scurried upstairs and into Pippa’s rooms.

More than an hour passed before Nelly, moving slowly and on tiptoe this time, left. Calum, his neck stiff from his repeated peering out of the passage, waited until silence drifted in, then made his own way to Pippa’s sitting room door.

He let himself into the dark room without knocking. In the wall facing the fireplace, what he knew must be the door to the bedchamber stood open a crack. Faint light showed there. Moonlight through windows where draperies had not been closed.

“Pippa?” he whispered. Frightening her was his last aim.

She did not answer.

Reaching behind, he turned the key in the lock and the action tightened every muscle in his body. There was no longer any doubt in his mind about what he would do this night.

Moving cautiously, silently, Calum crossed to open the bedchamber door a little wider. “Pippa?”

Moonlight shone through the casement to wash silver over the bed and the shape of the woman curled on her side there. Softly came the sound of her even breathing. She was asleep. Calum did not spare a glance for the rest of the room.

He approached, holding his own breath now, unwilling to startle her awake…and unwilling to deny himself the pleasure of looking at her while she slept.

Pippa lay with one arm stretched up beneath her head, the other flung behind her. Black hair flowed over the white pillows and over one white-clad shoulder. The room was warm and she’d thrown back the covers. Her full lawn shift draped her body, the thin stuff clinging, somehow revealing more than if she had been naked.

Calum stood looking down at this woman he had not chosen yet would have chosen had the choice been his.

What had passed between her and Franchot earlier in the evening?

He thinned his lips. If she’d been ravished, she’d hardly be sleeping peacefully now.

If he did not touch her, he would die—or, at the very least, explode from needing her.

He turned his head to see her face—all shadows painted with light over fine bones and closed lids and the sweet bow of her lips. Her lashes were dark upon her cheeks. Her vulnerability made him long to gather her into his arms and bear her away where she would be safe forever.

The satin tapes that closed the front of the shift had been carelessly tied. A slight move, this way or that, and they would part. Calum rubbed a hand over his eyes. Looking at her was not enough. He must
touch
her.

He gained the other side of the bed and very carefully lowered himself to lie behind her. Propping his head, he studied the roundness of her cheek, the slender line of her neck and shoulder, the curve of her small, pointed breast. The nipple pressed against cobweb cotton.

He could take that nipple into his mouth through that cotton and hear her cry out with the pleasure he brought her.

Pippa sighed and wriggled, turning half onto her back.

And the tapes parted at her neck.

When she settled again, it was with one perfect breast exposed.

Calum tightened his thighs. His shaft sprang hard and urgent against his breeches. This was what he’d been made for, for this woman’s body. And she had been made for his.

With the backs of his fingers he stroked her cheek and whispered, “Pippa, do not be afraid.”

“Mmm.” She smiled a little in her sleep and turned her face up to his.

The tapes were open to her waist.

Mesmerized, he settled his hand on her throat. She was cool. Gently, he fondled her breast, then simply savored its soft, satiny weight.

Pippa arched her back.

Riding and tension had exhausted her. But her sleeping smile made him smile. She was ready to come to him. In her quiet, secret moments she had dreamed of being with him, and now she was in another such dream.

Carefully, Calum slipped his hand over her ribs, over her flat stomach, and felt the dips in front of her delicate hipbones. She was small. He frowned. She would need great care in the matter of childbirth.

His rod reminded him of what must come before any thought of a child, and he stroked on to find the soft hair between her thighs.

Curling his fingers over her mound, he sought the warm folds of her womanhood and found them already moist. Ah, yes, she was so ready for him.

Bending over her, he took the nipple that was still covered by her shift into his mouth and flipped his tongue over the instantly hardened bud.

“What?” She writhed and he knew she had awakened.

The instant her scream began, Calum covered her mouth firmly and brought his lips close to her ear. “It is I, sweetest. Calum.”

She struggled.

“I know, I know.” He grimaced. “I have shocked you, but I am only a man. I came to find you and you were…You did not awaken when I called you.”

She grew still and he took his hand from her mouth.

“Do you have any idea how you looked to me? Lying here in the moonlight. So lovely, Pippa.”

“What are you doing?”

He almost grinned. “I wanted to hold you and to bring you pleasure.”

“You frightened me.”

“I’m sorry. But before you awakened, you were happy.”

“How do you know?” She sounded suspicious.

“Your body told me,” he explained simply.

This time he pulled her into the crook of his shoulder and smoothed the shift upward to bare her legs.

“I just know you should not,” she said in a panicky little voice. “No. You absolutely should not do this.”

“Why?”

“Because…because…”

“There, you see? You have no reason, do you?” And while he spoke, he found that warm, wet hiding place of soft dark hair and parted folds grown plump with desire. “You are ready to become fully a woman, Pippa. I want you to become a woman with me tonight.”

“I…Oh!” Her back arched off the bed and he fastened his lips over hers in a demanding, driving kiss. She plucked ineffectually at his shirt, but he could not make himself release her long enough to remove it.

She was at the brink of her release. Abandoning her lips, Calum drew a circle around her revealed nipple, moving close, but not taking that crown she rolled to try to press into his mouth.

This was an innocent, he reminded himself. He must not allow his own drive to obliterate her need for his restraint. Again he circled her nipple.

“Calum!” His name was high and thin on her lips. “Please.”

He made yet another circle, growing closer, and her body bathed his fingers with her woman’s hot, slick essence.

Writhing afresh, she found his rod and tested its steely length and weight. Reaching, she supported all of his manhood and kneaded desperately. She did not know what she did and he was glad. He would not want her to be afraid now.

Almost beyond control himself, he gave her relief and drew the center of her breast deep into his mouth. The sound of his own suckling drove him to near insanity. Her hips came off the bed and soft sounds escaped her throat.

Summoning all restraint, Calum withdrew his hand and listened to their panting in the darkness.

She was waiting, yet he knew she was not sure what it was she waited for.

He could take her now, and so simply. But he found he wanted to wait and breach her on their wedding night. Tonight he would do what he must to find peace—after he’d taken her to a place she would never forget.

Rapidly, he pulled enough away to flip her onto her back entirely. Pushing up her knees, he knelt between them and buried his face in her sweetness.

He made love to her with his darting tongue and felt himself pulled into the dark, boiling space where she hung. His manhood pulsed and he held back only with a force of will he would not have dared hope he possessed.

“Calum,” she moaned. “No. Oh,
Calum.
”

His tongue darted again and he took the small, thrusting nub at her center between his teeth.

And he felt her fly into pieces.

Her release was long and shuddering and impossibly joyful to Calum. When at last he drew her damp body into his embrace, he felt as he had never felt before with a woman. Her pleasure made him more of a man than had he lain sated himself.

Minutes slipped by, many minutes, before she raised her face to seek his. “You came for this?”

She knew so little for one who undoubtedly thought she knew so much. “I came because it is time,” he told her.

“Time?”

“I am going to take you away. Now. Before morning.”

With a forearm, she pushed the riotous mass of her hair. “Away? We cannot. Where would we go?”

“To get married.”

He felt her grow still. “Then that is why you came. To urge me to go with you.”

“Is that so bad? It is as it should be.”

“As it should be. That I should marry you, you mean?”

He frowned. “Of course.” This was not the reaction he expected. “Franchot was here earlier. He didn’t try to touch you, did he?”

She was silent a moment before saying, “He did not touch me, no.”

Her honesty was something he accepted without question. “My darling, let me help you gather a few things. Then we must make our escape carefully.”

“Why now?”

“Because it has to be. You are meant to be with me and there must be no more delay.”

“Because you believe you are the Duke of Franchot?”

He did not think he had heard her correctly. “You said—” But he had heard correctly. “How do you know? It was not said at the fair.”

“You said it to Struan at the cabin. After you thought I had gone. I forgot to leave the food and returned.”

“Why did you not come in.”

“You would not have wanted it. You had no intention of telling me. Even now, when we have just been together like this, you would not have told me.”

He wetted his lips.

“Would you?”

“Not until the time was right. The less you know, the better.”

“Really? I should come blindly to you, believing you want me only because you have formed a
tendre
for me? When would you inform me that you sought me because you believe I already belong to you?”

He grew chilled. “You did not mind what just happened between us.”

“I…I loved what happened between us. Why couldn’t you have told me what you believe and why? And then asked me to come with you? Why didn’t you tell me the night of the fair?”

“Some knowledge is dangerous.”

“Dangerous because I might tell your rival, you mean? Dangerous because if I knew the real reason for your ardor, I would not be such a simpleton?”

Anger swelled within Calum. “I do not regard you as a simpleton.”

“Dangerous because I might become an impediment to your claim on the Franchot titles and lands, then? And to the alliance with the Chaunceys?”

“Damn you, woman. You time your protests to your own convenience.”

“You came to me whilst I slept. I did not ask you to come.”