Holy Scoundrel (16 page)

“Sleeping in our dress, are we?” he asked between kisses, his hands seeking buttons and closures, finding some, undoing as many as he could, and before he had a chance to wonder why she wasn’t trying to help remove her clothes, his nightshirt was being lifted over his head.

“Unfair,” he said. “I only have the one layer.”

“Lucky me,” she giggled. “I have a dozen.”

“Two dozen, at least,” he said as his hands crept beneath until he found her, the silk of her thigh, her sigh near his ear, warm and welcoming, just like her, her legs falling open to a stroke up the inside of that thigh, closer and closer to his goal and her plea. “This is not prudent,” he mumbled through his sexual trance.

“Nor wise,” said she on a shivery gasp.

“Nor patient,” he added as she rose to meet his seeking hand.

“It’s no virtue I can think of,” she gasped between those little satisfied mewling sounds she made. “It’s splendid.”

He smiled, his shaft dancing for her attention “Ordained,” he added.

She shuddered at the small and growing cataclysm within her. “You should know. “It’s hopeful,” she added.
“
Hop
e
is a virtue.”

“Mmm.
”
As i
s
love
.
But no more words were necessary as he made her rise toward climax, pulling pleasure from her deepest recesses, making her repeat his name in supplication and need—for him.

After making her shudder three more times, he let her rest, while he removed her dress as if from a limp doll. One layer gone.

And though he thought she might fall asleep, she awoke instead, rolled to her side to face him, found his needy self, and took him into her hand, moving her petticoats so his shaft rested at her entrance, at that sweet wet place where she pulsed to pull him in.

He tugged her petticoats over her head, and anything else that got in their way—as they lay face to face. And before he decided how serious to let this get, she screamed in frustration, stole his decision, arched her hips, and forced him to impale her.

He let her eager muscles take him deep.

Gabriel bucked, he shouted, his good sense lost in her intoxicating power, her hands in his hair one minute, cupping his bollocks the next, so that every sensation became new and blazing hot, till he caught fire and reveled in the burn. But she would not lead him to completion and cautioned him not to move too fast. “Slow. I want it slow.”

As if she worked a magic he had not quite realized she possessed, she concentrated her inner muscles and practically woman-handled him, squeezing his erection in small bursts while pulling him deep within her tight sheath. Gabe ground his teeth and tried to last as long as she wished while she floated him to heaven.

Her breathing became erratic, her thrusts harder, more fevered. He growled in thanksgiving and matched her for speed, exulting in their wild abandon, both of them headed for a sensual cataclysm, and together they shouted and flew off the edge of the world.

In the float to awareness, they held, clung, her tears blessing his neck, him trying so very hard not to let his emotions show.

She had come home. Lacey had come home to him.

They slept, woke, and made love again and again.

Toward dawn, they lay wakeful, holding tight, and he wondered if she feared, as much as he, what daylight would bring in the way of reality. “Your skills are new, more powerful. I hadn’t noticed in Ivy’s wagon. You never used them when we were young. Are there books to teach such things?”

She chuckled. “At Peacehaven, we were all women, most without their men, well, mos
t
afrai
d
of their men, but sometimes, when the children were asleep in the dead of night, we talked of forbidden things. Marcus had shown his gentle side, proved he had a heart by caring for Jade and little Emmy. Jade had announced that ‘not all men were created equal; that some of them are good.’ So we hoped, which inspired sensual memories that begged explaining, which bred dreams. They hoped for men worth pleasing, and in whispers, they shared secret bedroom skills a woman might employ for tha
t
on
e
good man, meant for each of them, who would remove them from a life of drunken beatings. I listened, Gabriel, and in my mind and body, I practiced the wiles I would work on you, if ever the opportunity arose.”

That humbled him no end. He leaned on an elbow. “Me
?
No
t
Nick?”

She gasped, planted him a facer, and left his bed so fast, the muzzy dizziness had not stopped circling before he knew she was gone.

Mac raised a brow when she saw his black eye in the morning, and while he drank his coffee, she slapped a steak on it none too gently.

Cricket laughed when she saw him and tilted her head. “PapaGabe, did you run into a doorknob?”

“The biggest one you can imagine.”

“Smart doorknob.” Mac chuckled.

He and Lacey did not converse until the day of their shopping expedition at the end of that week, and it seemed, by mutual consent, he believed, that they would leave his fall from grace—the mention of Nick, he supposed—to the annals of unspoken history.

Lacey believed that Gabriel was right about Cricket’s taste in dresses. He laughed aloud when she chose lime silk ruching for one of Lacey’s strawberry muslin morning gowns.

Despite the diplomacy required of the situation, Lacey left Watts and Acott, Drapers, on Tarrant Street, with six new dresses on order, and wearing an unclaimed treasure, a walking dress of rich jasper silk with agate buttons. Her mantilla and white chip bonnet, both specially trimmed with jasper ribbons, were everything she could want.

Bridget happily wore a pair of new lime-green silk ribbons in her hair, despite her lavender dress.

They stopped at the Swan, one of the oldest inns in Arundel, for a delicious tea to be packed as a picnic, and afterwards, though Tom Buller hired pleasure boats for the river, they chose a quiet safe spot beneath a tree to watch the activity on the water.

“With more than forty ships registered in Arundel, the River Arun is no peaceful port,” Gabriel said as he ruffled Cricket’s hair and bumped shoulders with Lace. “It connects to the sea by a directed canal.”

He bid them watch the tiny harbor tug, th
e
Jumn
a
, pull th
e
Ebeneze
r
, a one-hundred-and-fifty ton merchant ship toward the open sea. “A ship like that carries coal, lumber, and salt,” Gabriel said as he took Cricket on his lap. “Watch that bridge over there.” The railroad bridge rolled back to allow the
huge ship to pass.

After that, a four-master slippe
d
int
o
the harbor, with th
e
Jumn
a
pulling it in. A ship called th
e
Knickerbocke
r
with a sailor atop a mast shouting, “Lacey. Lacey Ashton!”

“Nick!” Lacey stood, shouted his name again, and waved. “It’s Nick, come home, Gabriel,” she said, waving again toward the ship.

“Leave it to him to own the dratted ship!”

“It could be a coincidence that Ivy calls him Knickerbocker.”

“Nothing about Nick has ever been a coincidence, even the fact that he’s the only Norse god in his titled family. Blond, blue-eyed, with a smile to make women swoon.”

“Shush, Gabriel.”

“M
y
uncl
e
Nick?” Cricket asked.

“He
r
uncl
e
?” Gabe barked.

“He’s her mama’s cousin. We were raised together like brother and sisters, so yes, sh
e
woul
d
call him uncle, would she not, as a symbol of respect?”

“Respect, yes. Nicholas Daventr
y
mus
t
have respect,” Gabe mumbled.

“Gabriel Kendrick, if your thick head ever gets to becoming normal size, you are going to feel like the hind end of a stubborn . . . arse.”

Cricket slapped a hand to her mouth, but she couldn’t suppress a giggle. Lacey either, the two of them falling over each other, and when they came up for air, Cricket was twice as excited. “Let’s go meet my uncle.”

“It takes hours to get off a ship,” Gabriel said.

“Not if you own it,” Lacey replied.

Gabe sighed. “Which I’m sure he does.”

“
Pleas
e
PapaGabe?”

“Not today, Cricket. Let him get settled first,” Gabe said
.
Or maybe break his neck falling from that blasted mast first.

Before Bridget could work up a good pout, Gabe took her on his lap and showed her in the distance the windmill on Portreeve’s Acre.

“Let’s go to there,” Bridget said. “I want to see the windmill up close.”

The Acre was a vast expanse of grass as far as the eye could see with scattered trees and a windmill dead center, beside a narrow stretch of the river. “We’ll visit the windmill soon, Cricket, and have NannyMac make us a robust Scottish picnic that day.”

Watching father and daughter together, Lace knew she could never separate Gabe and Bridget. They loved each other. She’d have to find a way to make it work for the three of them. Never mind Prout’s ledger of threats. Never mind Gabe’s thick head. Never mind that Nick had come home.

“In the high distance, Cricket,” Gabe said, “are the peaks of Ashcroft Towers, Lacey’s old home, and Uncle Nick’s new one, since he’s Vincent’s heir. It was built to guard the valley and its access to the sea.”

Lacey cleared her throat. “Nearly every owner added a tower, including my father.”

“Did you know, Cricket,” Gabe took over, “that your great-grandfather raised large American owls as pets in Ashcroft Keep? He named them after some of the noted men of his time.”

Lacey chuckled. “One day his butler came to him in the breakfast parlor and said, “If it please your Grace, Lord Montgomery has laid an egg.”

“Like Lady Cowper, Papa?”

“Exactly like.” Gabe wanted to teach Cricket more of the castle’s history, her heritage through Clara, but she yawned, as did Lacey, so he urged them to rest and let them drift into sleep, closing his eyes as well, pleased to be their lumpy pillow.

Soon enough, Cricket woke crying for her mother.

Gabe turned to Lace. “She hasn’t done this in months.”

Lace tried uselessly to comfort her, but Cricket wouldn’t be calmed.

“Cricket,” Gabe said, remembering the early days right after Clara’s death. “Cricket, come to Papa,” he said. “And I’ll sing you happy.”

Lacey regarded him in surprise, but Bridget climbed into his lap as she must have done before she decided he’d let her mother go without a fight. He sang her favorite hymns in the same clear baritone he usually reserved for service.

When he finished singing, Cricket began to run her fingers back and forth along his beard stubble. “MyLacey, feel,” she said. “Ucky-scratchy, isn’t it?”

Lacey’s teasing smile hovered, telling Gabe he was in for a roasting. She stroked his cheeks, his chin, her eyes bright with memory. “Yes,” she said. “It’s definitely ucky-scratchy. Do you know how he gets it smooth again?”

Bridget shook her head, eyes wide. “No, how?”

“Tomorrow we’ll watch him shave.”

CHAPTER TEN

Next morning, Gabriel fetched Lace first at dawn, then they tickled Bridget awake, so they could drag her, yawning and moaning, each by a hand, where she and Cricket climbed into Gabe’s bed, sleepy-eyed and night-rail clad, to cuddle with Tweenie and watch him shave—Gabriel, not the dog.

Gabe stood before his dresser mirror wearing his black brocade dressing gown brushing lather on his face, which made Lacey wonder what he usually wore, or didn’t wear, to shave. She thought of him in the puppet wagon, buck-naked and soldier-ready, searching—not for something to wear, but for something to eat.

He turned at her chuckle and winked as if he read her. Yes, she liked him best in a bed, deliciously randy and ready, then gentle and loving, in turn. All hers, at least in her mind.

Truth was, he belonged too much to a set of false impressions where she was concerned, which made him entirely unsuitable. A man should trust his soulmate. No matter the evidence, he should have said no, and again, no. “Lace would not have betrayed me.” And until the day he could say as much, and believe it, there was no hope for them.

What was more, he belonged to the machinations of the woman who paid his wages and worked him like a puppet for as long as he failed to reach up and cut his strings. And he belonged to the sins of his fathers and the fear that kept him tethered to a livelihood that he had not chosen so much with his heart as with his pride.

He straightened for a moment to watch her, as if he coul
d
se
e
condemnation and hopelessness march across her features, and she saw him retreat inside himself, at which point, his expression dimmed, and he returned to shaving.