Midnight Pleasures (20 page)

Patrick’s deep voice intervened. “Uncle Richard, I fancy you will have to excuse my bride and myself. It is time for us to board.”

“Board? Board
ship
?” Richard looked nauseated. “Don’t tell me that you are taking that poor child onto the high seas?”

“We’re taking a short trip down the coast, Uncle Richard.”

“Close to land, I trust. Very nice. Still, any lady at sea must feel like a duck out of water. I expect you will be as sick as a horse the whole way there. Try the apple, m’dear,” he said comfortingly to Sophie. “Send out for some golden runnets, tonight, before you leave. Patrick! You must obtain some golden runnets first thing in the morning. Don’t forget to send someone out.”

Patrick met his brother’s laughing eyes over the head of his portly uncle.

“I will, Uncle Richard,” he replied gravely. “I am sure that Sophie’s stomach will be much soothed by a roasted apple.”

The bishop was still thinking. “And there may not be an appropriate brick onboard, Patrick. You’ll have to send someone out to get a brick tonight. Yes indeed. You’d better be on your way, since you need to make all these arrangements before daybreak tomorrow.”

Despite her nervousness, Sophie almost found herself smiling. Uncle Richard was as preoccupied as she was, simply with a different appetite.

“My mother!” She looked about a little wildly.

Patrick drew her arm into his. “She’s standing by the door, Sophie. Waiting to say good-bye.”

Sophie took a deep breath and met Charlotte’s merry eyes. Charlotte drew her into a warm hug, then whispered something in her ear.

Sophie pulled back. “I couldn’t hear what you said, Charlotte.”

Charlotte bent closer and whispered again. Sophie turned a fiery red but managed to nod.

“What on earth did you tell Sophie?” Alex asked Charlotte as they watched the newly wedded pair walk toward the door.

Charlotte turned and looked up at her husband, a flare of desire in her eyes.

“Oh,” Alex said, his voice deepening. “Perhaps you should whisper it in my ear as well?”

Charlotte nodded, her eyes dancing.

There was a minuet beginning, so Alex drew his wife to him and they melted into the slow, graceful swing of the dance. After a second Charlotte put her lips next to her husband’s ear and whispered.

“What!” His voice came out louder than he had intended.

“Do you think I was too indiscreet?”

Alex bit back a laugh. “Of course not, darling. I’m sure that’s advice that every new bride should receive.” Then he paused. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to make a frenzy among the gossips by kissing my wife on the dance floor.” Charlotte said nothing; only the slight uptilt of her chin and her sparkling eyes answered him.

When Sophie and Patrick reached the ballroom door, her mother and father were waiting for them.

Sophie curtsied gravely before her parents. Eloise looked at the golden head bowed before her, and her eyes swam with tears.

“Ma fille,”
she said, pulling Sophie into her arms and lapsing into French. “
Sois heureuse, ma chère! Je te souhaite tout le mieux pour ta vie mariée….”

“I will be happy,
Maman
,” Sophie promised.

Her father gave her a warm hug and then shook hands briskly with Patrick. “Take care of our little Sophie,” he said. George looked a little strained about the eyes, but otherwise he was as jovial as if Sophie were setting off for a picnic in Hyde Park.

Sophie kissed him on the forehead. “Don’t worry, Papa. I will be fine.”

As she and Patrick walked out the door, Eloise caught her breath in a sob. Startled, George reflexively put an arm around his weeping wife.

“She’ll be just fine, Eloise,” he said uncomfortably. “No need to worry. Foakes is a solid man, a good man.”

Eloise pushed him away, blindly heading to the anteroom outside the ballroom. George followed her as she walked into a salon off the hallway. Tears were streaming down her face. George’s heart twisted; he’d never seen his wife cry like this.

He took her hands. “What is it, dear heart?”

Eloise sobbed again. “You don’t understand…. She’s all I’ve got!”

George stilled, and for a heartbeat there was no sound in the room but that of his wife’s weeping. Then he pulled her slim body into his arms, tucking her head against his chest.

“You’ve got me, Eloise.”

When his wife, still weeping, simply shook her head, he said it again. “You have me, Eloise. You always had me.”

But it wasn’t until Eloise raised her head and looked at him, eyes drenched with tears, that she understood what he was saying.

When she opened her mouth to reply, George’s mouth closed on hers, stopping any protest. He kissed her into silence, and then said, his voice husky with passionate longing, “Take me back, Eloise. Please, take me back.”

Chapter 14

S
ophie awoke in a daze. She had been sleeping, deep in bottomless exhaustion, when something gently threw her against—against what? Her bed was rocking slightly, accompanied by the roll and slap of waves. Her nose was buried in fine sheets that smelled of lemon, but the perfume was overlaid with the keen scent of salt-laden air.

She turned over and opened her eyes. High above her were the arched carvings of Patrick’s bed. The bed was set into one end of the most luxurious sea cabin she had ever seen, or rather ever imagined, given that she’d never been inside a boat before the preceding evening. Patrick had bought the bed in India. From the outside, it looked like a box, with a curved top and one open side marked by pillars ringed with carved flowers. The innumerable small carved flowers had been painted crimson; they spiraled up the pillars and rioted exuberantly on the curved roof of the bed. For a moment or two Sophie traced their intricate byways. A marriage bed, she remembered drowsily.

Then she forgot all about the flowers. There, next to her, was a muscled brown arm. Because in a marriage bed one consummates a marriage, and to consummate a marriage, one needs a husband, and … there he was. Sophie choked back a giggle. Patrick was lying on his stomach, his face turned away from her. All she could see of his head was a silky mop of silver-streaked black curls. He didn’t seem to be wearing any clothing. Sophie colored, suddenly finding that she wasn’t wearing a nightdress either.

Images of the night before poured from the recesses of her memory, bringing with them a strange glowing heat that settled in her stomach and the backs of her knees.

The sheet had slipped down to Patrick’s waist, leaving only the broad expanse of his shoulders visible. Sophie bit her lip. A fragmented memory of herself clutching those shoulders, arching up against Patrick’s chest, pleading, gasping, panting, flew into her mind.

Cautiously she sat up, tweaking the sheet a bit so that it reached above her waist. Patrick had beautiful shoulders. In the morning light his skin was a dusky golden color that stretched smoothly over bumps and curves of muscle.

Suddenly he gave a little grunt and rolled over, twisting so that the sheet rode even lower on his hips. Sophie gasped and reflexively grabbed at her part of sheet, managing to pull up enough material to cover her breasts. Patrick stayed asleep, his breath coming deep and even, and finally the hasty beating of her heart calmed.

Oh Lord, but her husband was beautiful. Sophie stared in fascination. Midnight-black eyelashes lay curled against his cheeks, echoing the high arches of his eyebrows. Boldly, she lowered her eyes to Patrick’s chest. After all, he
was
her husband, wasn’t he? She had pressed herself against that chest last night—intimately.

The flare of rosy color in her cheeks heightened as she thought of Patrick’s rough groans. He wouldn’t seek out another woman immediately. Something in her relaxed, a spring wound so tightly in the area of her heart that she hadn’t even noticed its presence.

Cautiously, cautiously, Sophie hooked one finger under the edge of the sheet where it lay low on the ridge of Patrick’s hips. She could see the rise in the sheet that marked the particular
thing
that she would like to see in the daylight, and when Patrick wasn’t watching. How odd it must be to have a part of oneself always bobbing straight out in front, Sophie thought.

She managed to ease the sheet up a few inches, and she was just leaning forward to peer under it when a choked laugh and a fluid motion erupted from the sleeping man. Before she had time to think, she was smoothly flipped onto her back—like a grounded turtle, Sophie thought indignantly. The very body part about which she had shown curiosity was even now, ah, nudging her. Color streamed up her cheeks as she met her husband’s dark, laughing eyes.

“How long were you awake?”

“Long enough,” Patrick answered with a hint of purely erotic elation in his voice. He bent down and brushed his lips against hers, making Sophie shiver with delight. “Long enough to know that my new wife was awake. Long enough to see you clutching that wretched sheet to your beautiful breasts. God, Sophie, do you know what glorious breasts you have?”

Sophie looked down at her breasts. There they lay, pinkish in the pearly light, heavy for her small body. “They look well in the French style of gown,” she said uncertainly. What was she supposed to say? She’d never really given her breasts a second thought.

But then Patrick’s mouth descended and closed on her nipple, and without willful volition her body arched against his. A tattered moan tore from her throat. He thrust a knee between her legs and murmured something against her breast without stopping what he was doing.

It was only much later, after the sheet had finally given up the fight and lay twisted on the floor and the bed had settled back to the gentle rock of the ocean water, that Sophie thought to ask what Patrick had said. She was lying on her side, idly tracing a sweaty line down her husband’s chest.

“What did you say about my breasts?” she asked.

Patrick’s eyes were heavy lidded. He was trying to figure out why having sex with his wife would make him feel almost as if he would cry. It must be something about the ritual of marriage, he finally decided. Knowing that you’re going to be with one woman the rest of your life, and never with another. There must be something about it that tipped sex from good to wonderful.

“Hmm?” he said lazily, pulling Sophie up against his side.

She repeated her question, rather shyly.

Patrick opened one eye. “Didn’t I say they were glorious?”

Sophie nodded. “After that.”

Patrick opened both eyes. “I can’t remember.” His voice was honey thick. “Perhaps I’d better take a look and see whether it comes to mind.” Nudging Sophie back, Patrick slid down in the bed until his eyes were parallel with that exquisite part of her anatomy.

Irresistibly he reached out to touch her breasts, shaping their heavy, creamy perfection in both his hands. A slight relaxing of Sophie’s spine was her only response.

“Did I say that they are larger than wild apples?”

“No,” Sophie whispered.

“They’re not the same color as apples, of course,” he said conversationally. “Apples are red, as everyone knows, and your breasts are white as milk, with just a hint of rosiness under the skin.” His thumbs were dancing over her nipples, making Sophie’s breath press hot against the inside of his chest.

“Did I tell you that they taste sweeter than wine?” Patrick’s tongue was tracing an errant path around the circumference of one breast.

“No.”

“They taste of honey, as if I were eating peonies or poppies.” He was tracing small circles now, coming closer and closer to her nipple.

“I don’t think you said that,” said Sophie, her voice an aching wisp of sound.

“Did I say that your skin is softer than …” Patrick couldn’t think what he was going to say. He’d reached a nipple of the palest, sweetest pink. With a silent groan he bent over and pulled it into his mouth.

When he raised his head, his wife was looking at him, her eyes slightly wild, small pants coming from her lips.

“Now,” Patrick said, his voice deep with desire. “Now we have to anatomize the other breast, don’t you think?”

Sophie’s response was fierce and immediate. She reached out and dragged his shoulders up until he was kneeling on the bed, ignoring his laughing protests.

“Wait, wait, O impetuous wife! I just remembered precisely what I said.” His eyes had a wicked twinkle as he pushed her back down on the bed. “You seemed to be curious about
my
anatomy when I woke up this morning. I simply offered you the chance to satisfy your quest for knowledge.”

Sophie blushed—but she obediently lowered her eyes, looking down her husband’s chest to the planed lines of his stomach and even farther. A mischievous gleam lit her eyes. She trailed a finger over Patrick’s muscled skin, tracing the path her eyes had taken.

“Hmm,” she said, her voice husky.

Patrick’s eyes narrowed. His voice emerged half strangled. “What does that mean? Hmm?” His skin was marked with fire where her finger had lingered, let alone what she was doing now with that innocent expression on her face.

Sophie found that her breath was coming quickly and she’d lost the thread of the discussion.

“In order for me to finish my investigation,” she whispered, “I need to do some research.” A trail of kisses retraced the path of her finger.

Patrick gasped and then groaned. His heart raced to a brutal drumming in his chest.

“No research.” Patrick didn’t sound like himself. His muscled arms braced as he provocatively drove Sophie toward the same flaming passion that had conquered him.

“We’ll discuss it later,” she managed, and then the time for talking was over.

When Patrick and Sophie Foakes finally emerged onto the deck of the
Lark
, the sun was high in the sky.

Sophie blinked at the chilly, bright quality of the air. As far as she could see there was nothing but foam-tossed waves and swooping gulls.

“How far are we out to sea?”

“Not far,” Patrick replied. “As long as these seagulls stay with us, we haven’t gone far out. And we won’t ever leave the shore far behind on this trip. We’ll round the tip of Cornwall and then pull into the coast of Wales whenever we please.”

Patrick thought of telling Sophie about the fortifications he was to inspect, and then dismissed it. He could tell her about it later. It wasn’t exactly romantic talk.

“It’s a shame we can’t go to Italy, as my parents did for their wedding trip,” he said idly. Then his eyes lit up. “If you weren’t aboard, I might give it a try. Shoot across the channel, tiptoe around France, and dock at Leghorn.”

“Leghorn,” Sophie said with fascination. “Do you mean
Livorno
?”

“Exactly.” Patrick leaned back against the rail, grinning at her as he tossed orange peels over his shoulder to the screaming gulls. “Did you study geography in school, then?”

“Oh no,” Sophie said. “I was sent to Cheltham Ladies’ School, and the best young ladies have no need for geography, since they never travel outside the boundaries of England.”

“Why do you know the Italian name for Leghorn, then?” Patrick’s eyes were automatically ranging over his vessel, checking the gaff rigging, the square sail on the foremost mast, the easy, orderly movements of his crew.

Sophie looked at him and said, “Oh, just a bit of knowledge one acquires.”

But Patrick merely appeared to be distracted. “Do you speak Italian?”

Sophie froze inside. “No,” she blurted. “I don’t know very much …” What an idiot she was! Had she just said that she didn’t know very much about languages? Or that she didn’t speak very much Italian? And, oh dear, what about the book on Turkish grammar currently residing amidst her undergarments? Perhaps she could throw it overboard when Patrick wasn’t looking.

“No one expects young ladies to actually speak foreign languages,” Patrick said comfortingly. “I swear that most of the ladies I’ve met in Almack’s barely know their native tongue. You must be fluent in French, given your mother’s nationality.”

Sophie nodded, afraid to open her mouth.

“I’m a dunce when it comes to languages.” Patrick popped a sweet section of orange into her mouth. “I speak French poorly, and after that I know only odd phrases in other languages. Do you know what the most important sentence in any language is?”

Sophie shook her head, fascinated despite herself.

“Hazard a guess.”

She thought for a moment. Her knowledge of languages was so academic that it was difficult to visualize herself in a different country. “ ‘Where can I find a constable?’ “

Patrick rolled his eyes. “Believe me, constables are more trouble than they’re worth.”

“ ‘Will you direct me to an inn?’ “

“No.” Patrick moved closer to her and tipped up the rim of her bonnet. Then he tore off a section of orange and held it before her face. “ ‘Please, will you accept this unworthy gift, an offering from me and my country, O honored lady?’ “