The Duke's Disaster (R) (16 page)

“When we’re in bed, you must trust me,” he said.

“Trust you?” Thea tried to draw back, to meet his gaze—now, she tried to meet his gaze—but Noah held her gently in place.

“Trust
me
.” He stroked his hands down the waterfall of her hair, slowly, gathering his thoughts as he gathered her hair. “The men in my family are profligate rakes. I know this, but you are my wife.”

“I am.”

Thea was hinting at a question Noah wasn’t sure how to answer: How did being his wife make her different?

“I am a gentleman, Thea. I will not betray your bodily trust. In our bed, you are safe, from hurt, from humiliation, from violations of privacy even.”

Said the naked duke to his shy duchess? Lust had made Noah daft, but this much he grasped: a certain degree of trust was necessary if they were to go on with the next part of their marriage. Nothing profound, just the practical respect of two people responsible for a ducal succession.

“My privacy is safe in this bed?” Thea asked.

If she made Noah wait until that evening to conclude their business, when the candles could be blown out, he’d find a way to accommodate her.

“I have given my word, madam. Your privacy is utterly safe here.”

“Then may I keep my chemise on?”

* * *

James Heckendorn, Baron Deardorff, had lost his best friend when Noah Winters had assumed the title Duke of Anselm. At the age of seventeen, Noah had gone from being a serious-minded friend with a hidden hint of devilment, to obsessed with his responsibilities. Each of the Winters siblings had coped with the death of the former duke differently, while James had struggled for the rest of his university years to tempt Noah back to the land of the fun-loving and carefree.

Patience had been the one to point out to James what he was about, and to inform him that his objective was futile. Noah had become
the
duke
, and James’s best prayer of remaining his friend was to become
the
baron
.

He’d dismissed her insight, in his youthful arrogance, and yet she’d caught his attention in a way other young ladies had not. He got around to offering for her, thinking that fondness and familiarity were an adequate foundation for an aristocratic marriage.

Patience had sent him packing with a flea in his young, baronial ear.

Eventually, James had sorted himself out and made a better job of the wooing, but in hindsight, he could see that as a new husband, he’d had much to learn.

“You’re brooding,” Patience said, tugging his glasses from his nose. “Evening approaches, and Lady Antoinette cannot be subjected to your brown study at supper.”

James drew his wife down into his lap, for they were in the small sitting room adjoining their bedroom and James had taken the precaution of locking the door.

“You had a good nap?” Breeding women were given to napping, something else James had had to learn.

Patience tucked her feet up over the arm of James’s reading chair. He couldn’t feel the baby, but he could feel a
difference
. Patience had a secret, inward glow, a quiet good cheer that drew James like a candle in the window on a long chilly night. Heath had mentioned the same thing about Penelope.

“I have the oddest dreams these days,” Patience said. “I see Noah riding a pony, for example, or you in my best Sunday bonnet. The images are very vivid. This afternoon, I dreamed I saw Lady Antoinette jousting with a parasol.”

Patience was very fond of bonnets, also shoes, gloves, and parasols.

“A parasol is hardly an adequate weapon for a lady’s defense,” James observed. “What did Lady Nonie get up to today, anyway?”

Having a young lady underfoot was interesting. Patience had mustered maternal inclinations in the blink of an eye, while James had been daunted. Nonie was lovely, but she noticed everything, asked the damnedest questions, and was frightfully well read. On a whole new level, he realized he was about to become a father, possibly of a
daughter.

“Penny took Nonie off to Hatchard’s,” Patience said, “and I’m sure a stop at Gunter’s was planned as well. Nonie frets less if she gets out.”

James smoothed a hand over Patience’s hair, for it tickled his jaw when she moved about.

“What has Lady Nonie to fret over? You look after her every need, she loves to read, and she hasn’t yet made her come-out.”

Noah would see that all in the girl’s path was rose petals and doting swains, just as he had for his own sisters. How a taciturn and overworked duke arranged rose petals, James did not know, but if he and Patience had daughters, he’d acquire the knack himself.

And
the ability to summon nightingales.

“Nonie frets over her sister and brother,” Patience said. “Grantley’s predicament is obvious, but for Lady Thea, Nonie’s concerns are more subtle.”

James had no secrets from his wife, but where Noah was concerned, Patience often didn’t ask, and thus James wasn’t called upon to dance between competing loyalties.

“No marriage that starts with less than a week of courtship will have an easy time of it,” he said. “Perhaps we should hold a ball to welcome Thea to the family.”

Noah might thank him or kill him for that suggestion.

“I thought we should repair to Haverland for the rest of the summer,” Patience said, “and have a house party when Town empties out, but Nonie didn’t like that idea at all.”

James roused himself from increasing fascination with the curve of Patience’s shoulder, and the shadowy treasure half-hidden beneath the lacy décolletage of her chemise. Pregnancy had made her breasts intriguingly sensitive, or maybe James’s hands had become intriguingly skilled.

James kissed his wife’s ear. “Nonie was chattering nineteen to the dozen at breakfast about the invitations you received to Darnley’s gathering later this summer. Now you tell me she won’t enjoy a house party we host at our own very pretty country house. Women are fickle.”

Patience bit his earlobe, gently of course. He was the father of her child, after all.

“Nonie isn’t keen on house parties, but Thea apparently loathes them. There’s something there, James. We ought to ask Meech if he’s heard any gossip concerning Thea and unfortunate incidents at house parties.”

Meech would know, and what he didn’t know, he and Pemmie could casually unearth from their wide circle of acquaintances, former paramours, and servant-familiars.

“I’ll suggest Noah have a word with Meech,” James said, “because it’s none of our business, Patience. We should be focused on choosing names, decorating the nursery, and cosseting you.”

“I like the cosseting part,” she said, squirming around to straddle his lap. “I think the cosseting ought to go both ways. I should cosset you too.”

James should have argued. They had a houseguest, and they’d been late for breakfast that morning as a result of cosseting each other.

“Nonie’s with Penelope,” Patience whispered, “and I’ve moved dinner back an hour.”

James had been warned by other fellows. When the baby came, the cosseting bit was set aside for months, another daunting thought.

Patience worked the straps of her chemise down, and James’s hands ached.

“We have months to come up with names,” he whispered. “For now, let the cosseting begin.”

Sixteen

“Then may I keep my chemise on?”

Late-afternoon light slanted across Thea’s features, revealing doubt, wariness, and genuine bewilderment. She apparently didn’t know if a chemise was expected, permitted, tolerated, or bad form entirely.

Noah ran his finger along the lace of her collar.

“Of course you can keep your…” He stopped as inspiration struck. “I
want
you to keep your chemise on, if that’s how you’ll be more comfortable. What goes on here is not about appeasing my lust and shooing me out of your hair. Not only about that.”

“It isn’t?”

“For God’s sake…” He touched his lips to Thea’s again, whisper light, at variance with the exasperation that made him want to shout: “Kiss me.”

Amid the lavender-scented sheets, Noah waited, flat on his back, stark naked, his wife straddling him and his rampant arousal. Fortunately for his sanity, Thea deliberated for only a progression of heartbeats before she leaned forward—not far enough to give Noah the sensation of her breasts brushing his chest, but far enough—and touched her lips to his.

She withdrew after the merest pressure, then her lips returned, a shade less hesitant.

“Delicious,” Noah whispered. “More, please, or I will beg, and you don’t want a begging duke on your conscience, Thea.”

Neither did Noah. A begging duchess, however, became his sole objective.

Thea covered his mouth with hers, probably to shut him up.

Noah was happy with the result. Thea braced herself on her hands, and put herself at that height most conducive to his mouth plundering hers. By careful degrees, Noah transformed a kiss of the lips, mouths, and tongues, to a shared bodily caress.

The better to signal his intentions, he framed Thea’s face with his palms, her golden earrings dangling against his knuckles.

Noah traced her neck and shoulders, and on down her sides to her waist, then back up. By increments, he coaxed Thea closer, until she lay on him, the smooth expanse of her belly meeting his, her breasts pressed to his chest.

She must have realized Noah had become her ducal fainting couch, for she sat up. He let her, and the resulting view was lovely.

“You want me to take my chemise off.” Thea’s voice had gone smoky, her gaze unfocused.

Noah would have given his oldest horse—yes, his second mount, dear Regent, to a good home anyway—to get that damned chemise off of her.

“The fate of the chemise is entirely in your hands, Wife.” Noah leaned up and nuzzled her breast through the thin material. He contemplated chewing the thing off of her, but contented himself with getting his mouth over one of her nipples through the cloth. He dampened her flesh and suckled gently until Thea whimpered.

Noah desisted and lay back against the pillows. Thea looked so torn, so balanced between inchoate arousal and mortification, that Noah gathered her in his arms rather than continue to study her.

At least in terms of confidence, Thea was the very next thing to a virgin. The very, very next thing, and this inaugural marital romp abruptly became serious business. Noah rolled them so Thea was beneath him, and buried his face against her neck.

“This is better,” Thea said, stroking Noah’s hair.

“Because I can’t gawk, stupefied by your feminine bounty?”

She kissed his cheek, which gesture Noah felt in low and lovely places. “I like your weight, Noah.”

“You like fifteen stone of husband mashing you into the bedclothes?” Noah lifted his head to regard her, and damned if Thea wasn’t blushing again. He could feel the heat rising from her chest, past her neck, and flushing her cheeks. The sensation was lovely, as if her sentiments bloomed right next to his skin.

“I like fifteen stone of husband keeping me safe and warm.” She raised her knees, the movement emphasizing how her body cradled his.

“Kiss me, Araminthea.”

“We did that already, Husband. Are you stalling?”

Noah was savoring, not the same thing at all. “I’m having an intense and highly philosophical internal debate,” he said, using a golden earring and his teeth to tug delicately at Thea’s earlobe. Maybe he
would
gobble her whole, because she tasted like sunshine, flowers, and goodness.

“A debate about?” she asked.

“My wife’s well-being,” he replied, switching ears. “In a moment, lest I part with my few remaining wits, we will join our bodies.”

“One suspected you were depleted in the wits department.” Thea’s breathing had grown a tad pantish.

“This part of me”—Noah flexed his hips so a certain aspect of his anatomy slid slowly over Thea’s sex—“wants to remain more or less where we are, with a few significant adjustments.” He repeated the caress of his sex over hers, and God bless her, she shifted her hips, as if trying to follow his movements.

“If we resume our prior position, though”—he kept at her with his hips, for his sanity would mutiny did he stop—“you would have more control over what followed.”

More control over him.

Thea’s thumb brushed across Noah’s nipple as she trailed her hand from his chest to his throat. Noah mentally seized on Caesar’s letters from Gaul.

Gallia
est
omnis
divisa
in
partes
tres…
Noah’s wits were dividing into parts innumerable.

“I wouldn’t know how to go on,” Thea murmured. Her thumb was back, and then two thumbs were parting Noah’s reason from further scholarly maunderings about the dratted French.

“Thea, I can’t…that is to say…” Noah fell silent while she levered up and kissed his jaw. “Jesus save me.”

She found his mouth next, and twined her tongue with his, in the rhythm he’d set up between their bodies.

“Please, Wife…” he managed, “you have to tell me.”

Two more languorous, torturous, slick slides past heaven.

“Yes, Noah. Now.”

Thea’s hips stilled, and Noah mentally promoted himself to prospective sainthood by going immobile as well.

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure, Noah. With you, I’m very sure.”

He closed his eyes in thanksgiving, and probed at her gently, until he’d threaded shallowly into her heat.

“You’re all right?”

Thea nodded, her earring tickling Noah’s jaw.

Noah cradled the back of her head in one hand, and tucked her face against his shoulder. “You say, if you’re not, and I’ll…sweet heavenly choruses.”

Thea had moved her hips, taking another inch of him for herself, and Noah let her, then he took over the business, because that was the point of their position, for him to control this part, this delicate, fraught,
holy
moment.

“Noah, please…”

He stopped, and Thea moved restlessly beneath him.

“You can’t stop, Husband.
Please.
” Begging, and not a moment too soon.

“Hush,” Noah ordered. “I won’t stop, just hush.” Inch by slow, careful inch, he joined their bodies, with Thea matching his rhythm awkwardly at first, then more smoothly, then with a wondrously instinctive ease. Noah’s arousal ratcheted up, and he hauled it under control by listening to his wife’s breathing.

He paused when he was hilted in her wet heat.

“Are we finished?” Thea asked.

“Holy, ever-loving, benighted…we are not finished.” Noah brushed Thea’s hair off her forehead, then kissed her nose. “You are comfortable?”

“Not particularly.”

“I’m too heavy.” He made to shift away, but Thea locked her ankles at the base of his spine and prevented him from unjoining them.

“I don’t mean that kind of not particularly,” Thea said, sifting a hand through his hair. “Move some more.”

“Your wish, and so forth.” Noah moved carefully, savoringly, then levered up on his arms to see Thea’s face. Her expression was distracted, as if she were listening to their bodies, trying to place a distant melody.

“I like it better when you move,” she said, “but it’s still…incomplete.”

Incomplete. Noah was balls deep in his wife, and it was incomplete.

Well, hell, of course it was.

“I can complete it for you, Thea. I will complete it for you.”

Noah moved with more purpose but kept his tempo slow until Thea met him thrust for thrust, bowing up tightly against him.

“Better?” he rasped.

“Yes, and worse.” Thea was panting, her legs scissored tightly around him, her body reaching for what it instinctively knew lay ahead.

“I want to touch your breasts, Thea.”

“Uhn.”

By no means was that a refusal of Noah’s request—for he’d been
asking
.

She arched her back when his fingers closed over her nipple, and Noah felt the first flutters of her release stir. He stroked into her hard, drew on her tongue, and gently rolled her nipple in a concerted choreography of arousal.

Thea keened softly in his ear as she found her pleasure.

“Let go,” he whispered. “Take all you need.”

He drove into her, until she was limp and quiet beneath him, then he eased his rhythm to slow, gentle movement.

“Complete now?”

“Gads, Noah.”

“I’ll take that as a yes, for the nonce.” He folded his arms under Thea’s neck, caging her with his body.

“Now are we finished?”

“What is this preoccupation you have with finishing, Duchess?”

Thea blew a stray lock of hair off her forehead. “This is all new to me, Husband. I feel…” She ducked her face against Noah’s throat.

“Pleasured?” He nuzzled her temple, kissed her cheek.

“Confused.”

That almost threw Noah off stride, but he was learning this husband business, and waiting was part of it.

“You seem to be completely composed,” Thea went on, “but I feel…”

“Yes?”

“I could cuddle up and drift off, but my mind is whirling, and my body is humming like a bowstring that’s been plucked
hard
, and the sensations are too much to contemplate experiencing again this century, but also so…”

“Pleasurable?”

“Overwhelming, though
you
don’t seem overwhelmed, Noah. You are
inside
me
, and still your savoir faire has not deserted you.”

Well, actually… “You can rob me of my savoir faire,” he said, and too late it occurred to him he was giving Thea weapons she might never have learned to use had he kept his mouth shut.

“I have no wish to rob you of anything,” she said, patting his backside. “Somebody in this bed had better know how to go on.”

“The sensations you refer to?” Noah kept his rhythm smooth but let himself penetrate more deeply. “A woman can enjoy those many times in succession, if her lover is considerate and has a bit of restraint.”

A universe of restraint.

“You have restraint,” Thea said, closing her eyes and hitching her ankles against his back. This had the effect of tightening her inner muscles.

“I am also considerate. Do that again.”

“Yawn?”

Ye whimsical gods. “Not yawn, Thea. Inside, try to stop me from withdrawing.”

She experimented, and Noah saw heaven from behind closed eyes.

“Like that?”

“Exactly, precisely like that, as hard as you like.”

Thea continued to test and refine until they were rocking steadily, and Noah’s control was turning to fairy dust.

“This time,” he whispered, “I’ll be overwhelmed too, just keep… Holy everlasting powers, just like…damn,
Araminthea
…”

When her pleasure hit, she sank the nails of one hand into Noah’s backside and bucked against him, until his own pleasure flooded out into every particle of his body, and even beyond that, as if his skin were dissolving, and his satisfaction and Thea’s were one unified experience of ecstasy.

And yet all the while, Noah had been aware of his wife, aware of her breathing, aware of the panting groans of pleasure escaping her natural reserve, aware of her breast pushed into his hand, aware of her supple length undulating in counterpoint to his greater strength. Then Noah felt the bodily peace radiating from Thea as pleasure ebbed, and her sighs fanned past his ear.

This joining had been
different
, and part of the difference lay in Noah’s attention to Thea, his unwillingness to lapse into even a moment of complete selfishness, complete oblivion to his partner and her pleasure. Thea was his wife, and relying on him to see to her satisfaction, and oddly, doing that had enhanced his pleasure as well.

“I’m squashing you.”

“Hush, Husband. Please.”

Thea’s hand closed again on his fundament, as if she could keep him where he was with that touch alone.

“Somebody ought to fetch us a wet flannel, Wife, and because you have a large, useless fellow draped over you, that leaves me to see to it.” A large, useless, husband. “Do not move, and I mean do not.”

Noah eased from Thea’s body, and she remained obediently still while he crossed the room and retrieved a cloth. He used it on himself, then dunked it in the tub and wrung it out before returning to the bed.

Thea was on her back, knees up, legs slightly spread, her gaze directed at the strawberry leaves and leaping stags cavorting about the molding.

“You said not to move.”

Noah sat at her hip and kissed her, so brave was she. Without breaking the kiss, he eased the cool, damp cloth over her sex, and held it there, until Thea started against his mouth.

“I can do that.” She tried to push his hand away, but Noah ignored her and rested his cheek on the slope of her breast.

“Your heart is nigh galloping, Wife.”

“You appropriate some very personal tasks to yourself, Husband.”

“This is personal.” Noah sat up, then lifted the cloth, refolded it cool sides out, and repositioned it. When Thea bore that, he swabbed gently at her sex. “With you, it is personal.” A few more dabs for form’s sake, because she was allowing it, and then Noah tossed the cloth onto the rim of the tub. “Now you must evaluate my maiden attempt at providing my duchess her marital pleasures.”

“One can’t evaluate something beyond words,” Thea said.

Noah climbed onto the bed. Thea neither squeaked nor squawked when he pulled her across his lap and wrapped his arms around her.