The Irish Duchess (28 page)

The fresh scents of heather and lilacs wafted from her hair. Someone had pinned all those gorgeous thick curls into an improbable creation at the crown of her head, but their handiwork had come partially undone with the heat of exertion. Dazedly, Neville dug his fingers into the heavy mass and sought the remaining pins. Fiona offered no objection as her hair tumbled free and loose about her shoulders.

Satisfied now that he could wrap his hands in her hair, Neville contented himself with gliding to the music while soaking up the pleasure of finally holding this will o’wisp in his arms.

The beat of the music increased, reminding Neville of his jealousy at the flash of slender ankles beneath heavy velvet as his wife danced in arms other than his. He swung her harder, watching with delight as Fiona grabbed at her skirt and lifted it out of her way.

Neville skipped her across the floor to the wild music of the fiddle, danced her over heaps of clothes and fallen candlesticks, swung her in a breathless reel, then danced her back again. Fiona rewarded him with a flash of ruby lips and white teeth. Fiery hair swung down her back as he spun her again.

It was a heady magic he couldn’t resist. While the music played on below, Neville halted their wild cavorting to seek the promise of her laughing lips.

Her arms slid over his shoulders, and Fiona breasts pressed into his chest so tightly he could feel the hectic beat of her heart pounding with his. Breathing unevenly, Neville demanded more. Without protest, she opened her mouth, and he captured that moist sweetness with his tongue.

His bride moaned against him and dug her fingers deeper into his hair. Realizing that finally and at last he had the right to touch this woman as he pleased, Neville sought the laces of her old-fashioned gown and pulled them loose.

Fiona’s cry of surprise scarcely matched his own groan of discovery that she wore nothing beneath the velvet. Cupping his hand over heated flesh, Neville smothered her in kisses of delight.

She grabbed his lapels to steady herself, nearly tumbling them into the bed before he caught his balance. Deliberately circling her swollen nipple with his thumb, Neville gazed down into Fiona’s flushed and dazed features. “I want you now, Fiona. I want your skirts off and your bare flesh beneath mine. Will you accept me as your husband?”

Fiona could scarcely think the words, much less say them. The eyes she’d once thought cold and hard as stone watched her with the heat of molten silver. The studious duke had transformed into a man flushed with triumph and arousal. His normally combed locks fell in golden-brown disarray. His cravat had come unfastened—she had a vague memory of pulling at it—and she caught a glimpse of hard male chest beneath the frill of his open shirt. She’d not had a chance to see him unclothed last time. The realization that she now had the opportunity—and the right—to see the duke fully nude brought a flush to her cheeks as she met his gaze. Without any further hesitation, she sought the buttons of his shirt.

Before she could unfasten more than one, Neville lifted her and pushed her heavy wedding gown over her hips and to the floor.

Fiona defensively covered her breasts as he stared hungrily at her nakedness. “None of my chemises fit under that bodice,” she muttered.

“I think I’ll order all your gowns that way.” He pushed aside her arms. “You are the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Since she felt certain he’d had his share of London’s beautiful courtesans, Fiona doubted that, but she liked the sound of it anyway. She had enough arrogance to enjoy the power of holding the attention of one of England’s most influential men.

“Your turn, my lord duke,” she whispered. “I would see you, too, this time.”

He seemed reluctant to let her go even long enough to unfasten his shirt, so she resumed the task on her own. As soon as her fingers touched his flesh, however, he jerked the linen over his head.

Fiona stared in stunned fascination at the broad chest revealed as Neville’s fingers nimbly worked the buttons of his trousers. She hadn’t expected muscles on a man confined to a desk, but his shoulders and upper arms bulged as strongly as any laborer’s. She daringly touched his flat male nipples.

“Fiona,” he growled as she tested the springy light hairs on his chest. “I’m a man on the brink of destruction. Be careful what you do.”

The urgency in his voice liquefied her insides. Curiosity forced her gaze upward. She just had time to note the way Neville’s jaw clenched and his eyes smoldered before he bodily lifted her and threw her among the rumpled sheets of her bed.

Fiona sprang to her knees before he divested himself of his trousers and shoes, not yet ready to lie flat and subservient beneath him. But her first sight of Neville’s full nudity robbed her of all defiance.

He climbed on the bed, kneeling before her, pulling her hair until she leaned into him. “Red-headed heirs, Fiona,” he murmured. “Lots and lots of red-headed heirs.”

The words traveled straight to her womb and burned like a hot poker. She gasped as his hands possessively pushed up her breasts. His lips fastening on her nipple melted all her remaining defenses.

He had her flat upon her back within minutes, writhing and moaning as he worked his kisses down her throat. The sheets twisted beneath her as the music in the room below changed to a manic Irish jig. Her hips rose and fell to the rhythm, to Neville’s touch on magic places, to the music of her soul as he sipped at her lips and groaned with equal wildness.

“Now, Fiona,” he muttered against her ear. “Let me have you now. I’ve waited too damn long as it is.”

As the fiddle reached a frenetic crescendo, and the flute piped its wild melody, the music swept them away on a whirlwind. Fiona arched her hips upward in blatant invitation. She cried out in abandon as he accepted her invitation and surged into her.

They moved with the music, with the pounding of their hearts and blood, with the rhythm of their souls. Fiona’s fingernails bit into Neville’s back as he plunged so deep she thought herself mortally wounded. She spiraled upward so fast, she screamed as Neville finally pushed her over the whirlwind’s edge.

The scream fell into a dead silence from below, but neither of them noticed as their own melody continued to play in their heads. Fiona quaked and trembled again as Neville found new momentum, and fell with her into the dizzying aftermath of passion.

Fiona woke some minutes later to Neville warming her breast with his hand. A heavy, masculine leg held her trapped against the wrinkled sheets, and the musky scent of their love-making was nearly as erotic as the play of his fingers against her skin.

She supposed she should feel shame and wickedness at the lack of restraint she’d just displayed. Instead, she felt a strong stirring in her lower parts as Neville raised up on one elbow and studied her with a look of intent that she read well.

“I like making you scream with passion,” he said in a voice more harsh than gentle.

She drew her fingers down the line of his long jaw. “You will grow accustomed enough to my screaming, my lord husband, for I do it in anger as well as pleasure. Then how will you feel about your shrew of a wife?”

“I think I’ve found the key that turns your anger into pleasure, my lady wife,” Neville replied mockingly. “I’ll simply turn the key whenever the need be.”

He plundered her mouth, stifling her irate protest. Capturing her with his greater weight, he claimed her thoroughly as she parted her legs in surrender.

She should have known a man who could command governments could command her too-willing body with impunity. She would never be fully herself again.

Instead of frightening her as it ought, the prospect excited Fiona beyond imagining. She had never been a part of anyone or anything before. Catching the wide shoulders of the man above her, she arched hungrily into his embrace, and took him deep between her thighs. As he moaned and lost control, she knew she owned a piece of him as well.

Twenty-seven

Fiona ached in places she hadn’t known existed, yet at every twinge, she shivered in sensual anticipation. She moaned and curled into her pillow, hoping for sleep, except she had a man’s elbow up her nose and an insistent pounding at the door.

The elbow shifted and a strong arm drew her closer. Fiona savored the exotic male smell, then wiggled her hips against temptation. She moaned again, this time in delight, at the discovery he was again ready for a romp.

A firm hand gripped her curls and held her back as she tried to kiss him. Sleepily opening one eyelid, Fiona peered at her husband. His Grace looked the part of rogue or worse with his jaw bristled with stubble and his thick hair tumbled in all directions—until he smiled. Smiled. The mighty Duke of Anglesey actually smiled, and in the morning too.

Fiona offered, a slow, almost timid grin in return. He was, after all, a man of far greater experience than she, and he’d generously offered to teach her more.

“I don’t suppose the door is locked,” he asked as the pounding at the door was replaced with a maid’s voice calling for “Fiona,” followed by a hastily corrected, “Your Grace.”

Momentarily startled at the title applied to herself, Fiona sought the rebellion that should erupt at the appellation, but Neville’s gaze dropped to her breasts, and any thought at all evaporated.

“There’s not much point,” Fiona croaked as she realized she was shamelessly uncovered. Striving for insouciance, she continued, “Few of the rooms have keys and Michael’s made copies of them all. He’s trying to find some way of cutting them so they fit the locks missing their keys.”

“I could lock it against the maid,” he suggested, raising a leering eyebrow.

Remembering the destruction they’d wreaked last night, she propped up on one elbow and peered over his shoulder. “The tapestries will hold the maids out a while longer.”

“It’s time and past to be up, your holy worships,” Michael called from the far side of the door. “The looms and orphans cannot wait. You can honeymoon later.”

“But they will not stop the bloody earl. Couldn’t you throw another temper tantrum and tell him to go away?” Fiona inquired hopefully.

“You liked that, did you, brat?” Neville shifted to nuzzle his bristly jaw along her ear. “But you’re the one who wishes to spend her dowry on McGonigle and the orphans, remember?”

Fiona pressed her fist against his muscled chest and tried to wriggle from his grip. “And Michael holds the purse strings, as usual,” she said dryly, squealing only a little when he nipped at her nape.

“He owns us,” Neville agreed. “Or rather, Blanche does. She just lets Michael have his way—unless I raise serious objection, of course.”

“The unholy triumvirate,” Fiona muttered.

“We’ve got McGonigle and his Whiteboys agreeing to leave Aberdare alone and to turn their energies to helping with the looms. I apologize if I did not have time to dance with you,” he said, holding her close to nibble her neck.

“If you’re not out of there within the half hour, I’ll tell Cook to put breakfast away and you can go without until dinner,” the earl shouted through the panel.

Neville grimaced, turned over, and flung his pillow at the door. Apparently satisfied with his response, the intruders departed.

“Apology accepted,” she agreed, knowing Aberdare was more important than a dance. Although she admired the view of her husband’s smooth, broad back, Fiona sighed and pulled the sheet up to her neck. “I’m starving.”

“Why can’t someone bring breakfast on a tray?” Neville grumbled as he turned back to find her covered.

“No one is trained for the job.” Fiona shrugged. “Besides, then we wouldn’t get up, so Michael wouldn’t let them.” She noted the gleam of lust in his eye and warned, “I don’t know about you, but I scarcely had a bite of our wedding breakfast, and if you will remember, we had no dinner at all.”

Neville swallowed that reminder with obvious regret. “If we were at Anglesey, we could have trays delivered to our door and not leave bed for a week.”

Fiona grinned at his frustration. “Not if Michael wanted you in London. He would blow open the door or come through the window and hold us at gunpoint or some such. I’m sorry, but you’ve married into the wrong family, if it’s rationality you want.”

Neville frowned, appearing to contemplate that problem for a minute. Before Fiona could strike him for his insulting thoughts, he straddled her and buried his bristly lips against her throat. She squealed and shoved at his wide chest.

“Cry ‘enough,’ my shrew,” he murmured, running kisses up and down her easily-bruised skin.

“Never!”

And rather than obediently climb from the bed, they tumbled out in an avalanche of sheets and blankets.

***

January, 1823

“I cannot believe Michael’s done this to me,” Fiona muttered as the wind whipped the sails and the yacht set sail from Dublin some weeks after it first arrived. “Whatever did I do to deserve the witch?”

Watching to be certain no one overheard, Neville leaned back against the rail and pulled his sulking wife into his arms. “Michael only wanted you to have someone from home with you. He means well. I couldn’t tell him I prefer your curls all tumbled about your face rather than pinned and proper. The widow was trained as a lady’s maid, and she was the only one willing to make the journey.”

“But she’ll fuss and mother me and write everyone back home of everything we do.” Fiona snuggled against his chest, though her temper was still evident.

“Another reason Michael chose her,” Neville replied dryly. “Should I neglect you in any way, our black widow will notify him immediately, and probably with great satisfaction.”

“What if she’s the murderer?” His coat muffled her words.

Neville wrapped her in the lengths of his greatcoat and steered her toward their berth. “If she had the money, she would have run far away by now.”

“And Colin? What is his excuse for sending Colin to train your yearlings?” Fiona popped her head from the folds of his coat to glare at him.

“To keep you from doing it?” he suggested wryly. “Because, if he were the murderer, he would be on his way to America now?”