Bite Me, Your Grace (23 page)

The constable shook his head. With his preternatural gift, Ian could almost read the man's thoughts. He had no desire to arrest such a prominent peer of the realm, and to confirm his thinking, it was well known that the Duchess of Burnrath had donated a large sum to London's law keepers. How could he repay her generosity by arresting her husband when the man was only defending her virtue and had possibly even saved her life?

“I do not think a trial will be necessary, Your Grace.” The constable cleared his throat. “The assailant matches the description of a man who has committed several similar crimes,” he said, every nuance of his tone and gestures revealing the lie. “This is obviously a case of self-defense. I think it would be best to be discreet about this matter. I will take the body and file a report at my office. Due to the scandal your involvement would bring, I think we would be most prudent to keep your name out of it. Do you agree?”

Ian nodded solemnly. “Absolutely, sir. I bow to your wise recommendation.”

The constable stood and replaced his hat. “Very well, I shall be off. I trust Her Grace will benefit from the doctor's treatment, and with your care, God willing, she may recover from this terrible trauma.”

He sketched a hasty bow to each before taking his leave.

Doctor Sampson arrived soon after and dismissed the servants as he examined Angelica. He diagnosed her as being weak from shock. He dosed her with laudanum, despite her objections, and ordered her to have a week's bed rest.

“A week?” Angelica giggled in giddiness from the laudanum. “I hardly think I could stay cooped up for a whole day.”

Ian raised a brow. “Even if I am in bed with you?”

She grinned as her cheeks turned bright pink. “Oh. Well, that changes matters entirely!”

Angelica was able to stand five days of bed rest before she found herself on the brink of insanity. Ian noticed and announced that he would take her to the opera the next evening. That morning, a jewel case was left at her bedside. It contained a ruby the size of a pigeon's egg. She smiled, knowing just the ensemble that would go with the gorgeous pendant.

As the sun was plunging beneath the horizon, Angelica dressed in a scarlet taffeta gown beaded with jet. The low, square-cut bodice made a perfect setting to frame her new ruby necklace. Elbow-length gloves hid the worst of her fading bruises from her fight with the vampire hunter. Underneath she wore black silk stockings fastened with saucy red garters. Liza arranged her hair in elaborate curls, threaded through with scarlet ribbon. Ruby teardrop earrings completed the picture.

“How do I look?” she asked, twirling before the mirror and admiring the way a black-clad ankle occasionally peeked through.

“Um… er… very striking,” Liza said. “Wherever did you acquire that gown? It is almost too daring.”

Angelica laughed. “I had Madame Dupuis make it. I'd intended the dress to be a surprise for the duke before we had our… altercation.”

Liza raised a brow, eyeing the revealing bodice nervously. “Well, I do say he will certainly be surprised.”

Angelica applied a touch of lip rouge and a dusting of pink powder to her cheeks before dabbing her pulse points with perfume. The smell of wildflowers wafted through the room. “Fetch my black satin cape. What a shame I don't have a red one. And Liza? Has there been any mail today?”

Liza shook her head. “Not since the last time you asked, and the time before that. I wish I knew what news you are so anxious to hear.”

“I submitted a novel to a few prominent publishers,” Angelica lied, hiding her disappointment that the Elders' response had not arrived.

Really, she was being ridiculously impatient. It was doubtful they'd even received Ian's petition. If she kept jumping for news every hour, Liza was bound to grow suspicious. The sound of Burke greeting her husband in the parlor pulled her from her reverie.

Ian's appreciative smile as she sauntered down the stairs was well worth the effort.
Just wait until I remove the cape.
A secret smile played across her lips. She kept a modest distance between herself and the duke in the coach—despite his efforts to lessen it—and did not remove the cape until they were seated in their private opera box, just before the lights dimmed.

His harsh indrawn breath at the sight of her breasts curving up from the gown was a most worthy reward for her patience. When the lights dimmed, he reached for her and began to slowly trail his fingers up and down her gloved arm. The alternating sensations of his touch on her bare skin, then through the satin of her gloves, brought her to the brink of madness. She fought to keep her attention on the stage and lost the battle when his hand dropped to her thigh. The warmth of his palm through the thin fabric of her dress made her shudder with frustrated desire.

Boldly, she placed her hand on his leg, caressing the hard muscles of his thigh, reveling in the heat of him radiating through her gloves. She had to bite her lip harder to keep an excited gasp from escaping when her knuckles brushed his erection, straining through his black trousers.

Ian leaned over, his lips caressing her ear as he whispered, “Are you trying to seduce me, duchess?”

“Perhaps,” she whispered, her voice ragged with arousal.

They left before the second act. The moment the carriage door closed, Ian pulled Angelica onto his lap and claimed her lips in a devouring kiss. She moaned and ground her hips against his as she pulled his hair free from its tie. She reveled like a starving woman in the feel of his mouth on hers, and it was all she could do not to let him ravage her before they arrived home.

When the carriage stopped, he swung her into his arms and rushed her up the stairs before the servants could manage full bows or curtsies. Over his shoulder she could see Liza's knowing smile before the bedchamber door closed.

Angelica grasped the lapels of Ian's jacket, ready to tear it in her eagerness to feel his bare skin against hers. He grasped her arms and turned her around to unfasten her gown.

“You have not finished seducing me yet,” he whispered, his breath blowing on the back of her neck.

When she was clad in only her black silk stockings with their scarlet garters and her ruby necklace, he sat on the bed, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “Now, walk about for me.” He threw off his waistcoat and unfastened his cravat.

Angelica felt deliciously wicked as she strutted and posed for him until his restraint collapsed and he pulled her to the bed to straddle him. She reached forward and unbuttoned his shirt, licking her lips as his muscled chest was revealed. He lifted her one moment to unfasten his breeches, and in the next, his hard velvet heat was sliding deep inside her.

It had been so long and she was so starved for him that she nearly climaxed the second he entered her. She moaned her pleasure as his entire length seemed to swell inside her sheath. When he cupped her rear and moved her faster up and down his shaft, she lost control and screamed and bucked her hips as she rode wave after wave of the orgasm.

He then picked her up and turned her over so she was on her hands and knees on the bed. He grasped her hips and thrust inside her hard. One hand reached down to caress the bud at the apex of her cleft, while the other held her by the hip as he pounded inside her, as he took her like a ravening beast. The mating was primal, and her climax seemed to shake the world. Moments later, he growled his pleasure.

She couldn't believe it when, before she could catch her breath, he was pulling her into his arms once more. He held her as if he would never release her.

“I love you, Angel,” he whispered before kissing her. Moments later, his embrace grew more heated.

“Again?” she asked in awe.

“Yes,” he whispered, kissing her throat.

“But I have to rise early for the King's coronation tomorrow. If I do not—” She was silenced as his lips covered hers once more.

***

Angelica hid a yawn behind her fan as she followed the royal procession through the streets to Westminster Abbey. She and Ian had stayed up until dawn making love. Though attending a royal coronation was deemed a great honor for her as a duchess, part of her was longing for bed.

Still, she had to admit that the King was an arresting figure in his opulent robes of state and twenty-seven-foot train carried by pages. His face was florid from the July heat and thick robes, and he was sweating profusely. Angelica sympathized with him. She was garbed in dark blue with an ermine-trimmed cape, as befitting a duchess. Ermine, she decided, was not a good choice for summer.

To further compound matters, she was required to wear her coronet. Though the headpiece was an exquisite creation wrought of gold and adorned with strawberry leaves encrusted with rubies, the sun heated the metal so that it burned her scalp. When they arrived on the awning-covered pavilion, she sighed in relief to be in the meager shade.

Once the procession reached the Abbey, with the Archbishop droning on, Angelica took her seat in the gallery next to the Duchess of Wentworth, one of the few women who had maintained her friendship.

“What an exciting event!” Jane whispered, green eyes twinkling.

Angelica nodded and tried to fan the beads of sweat from her forehead. “Yes, it is very…” She waved a hand at the ostentatious display below, at a loss for words. If only Ian could see this!

Her Grace laughed. “I heard it cost 243,000 pounds.” At Angelica's stunned look, she added, “His father's only cost ten thousand, to put this scene into perspective.”

“How… obscene.” She thought of the half-starved children she saw when volunteering at the hospital and felt ill. The choking miasma of the unwashed bodies surrounding her did not help matters.

Just as the Archbishop of Canterbury anointed the monarch with holy oil, a commotion broke out by the doors. Whispers soon gave way to shouts and jeers before erupting into pandemonium as people jostled each other, trying to get a better look.

“What is going on, Jane?” Angelica cried, elbowing aside the bodies that threatened to suffocate her.

The duchess was silent a moment, assessing the spectacle. “Oh, my God! I think it's… it is! Look over there.” She pointed. “Queen Caroline is seeking entry to the ceremony and she is being barred by armed guards. I heard this might happen, but I did not believe the rumors!”

The king's face was twisted into a crimson mask of rage. Angelica smirked. It served him right to have his moment ruined.

She stood up and shouted. “Long live the Queen!” Her voice was lost amongst the clamor, but her friend clapped a hand over Angelica's mouth anyway.

“Hush!” Jane admonished, her stern warning quite ruined by intermittent giggles. “You would catch too much trouble if the wrong ears heard you. And you definitely do not want anyone to take notice that your husband is absent. After all, we are all required to be here by royal command, skin condition or no.”

Angelica sobered immediately. It would be just her luck that Ian would be thrown in the tower and burned to death by the sun before they could leave for Paris. “I still think the King is a cad for how he has treated her,” she grumbled. “I hope she did have at least one of the grand affairs she's been accused of. The poor woman deserves a bit of happiness.”

“I agree,” her companion said then leaned in to whisper, “I had heard that, when on trial, she said, ‘I have only committed adultery once, and that was with Maria Fitzherbert's husband, the King.'”

Angelica laughed. “One must admire her droll wit.”

The commotion eventually abated and the ceremony droned on. Angelica found herself quite vexed with the Elders. If they'd responded to Ian's petition with sufficient alacrity, she could be sleeping the day away at her husband's side. She breathed a deep sigh of relief when the ordeal was finally over and they were able to go back outside, though it was only so they could make the brief journey to Westminster Hall for the banquet.

The banquet would have been the disappointment of a lifetime, sheer torture, in fact, for the wives of the peers had to be seated in galleries above while the men enjoyed the vast array of food below, but the Duchess of Wentworth was prepared for the occasion. She pulled two carefully wrapped meat pasties and a flask of wine from her reticule, and the two women devoured the meal with relish. One lord below apparently had the same idea, for he wrapped a capon in his napkin and tossed the meager repast up to his grateful family.

Angelica had a moment of fear that the King would now notice her husband's absence, but she saw that he was distracted, nodding and winking at someone in the gallery to his left.

“Whoever is he trying to communicate with in this throng?” she whispered behind her fan.

Jane pointed her fan at a dark-haired, voluptuous woman seated across the vast chamber. “That is Lady Elizabeth Conyngham, his latest mistress. They have been barred from seeing each other throughout Queen Caroline's divorce trial. She is a vulgar woman, hence her appeal. It was her husband that the King promoted to marquess earlier. Were you not paying attention?”

Angelica shook her head. “No, I think I must have dozed off around then. So the King is done with Mrs. Fitzherbert then?”

Jane laughed. “Maria was old news far before Elizabeth. His last mistress was Lady Hertford, and before that, Lady Jersey.”

“Lady Jersey?” Angelica gasped, as she remembered the prim and proper patroness of Almack's throwing her out for her scandalous behavior with the duke.

The duchess shook her head. “Not Lady
Sarah.
It was Lady Frances, her mother-in-law, that I am speaking of. Though Lady Sarah has had plenty of affairs of her own.”

Angelica fought to muffle her laughter as Jane entertained her for hours with delicious gossip.

By seven-thirty in the evening, with the sun at the windows compounded by hours of three hundred bodies in closed quarters, the heat became too much for King George. He departed for Carlton House, no doubt with his mistress following close behind. Half the procession followed him; the other departed in the opposite direction.

“There is to be a party at Hyde Park with a fireworks display and hot air balloons. Would you care to join me?” Jane asked.

“If there will be food, I will gladly follow you anywhere.” Despite the afternoon respite, Angelica was ready to keel over from starvation. “Do you think I could summon a page to dispatch a note to my husband? I am certain he would love to join us when he is able.”

At Hyde Park, the champagne flowed and the tables groaned with food under covered pavilions. The hot air balloons were a sight to see, but as the sky darkened and the fireworks commenced, Angelica's attention wandered from the colorful illuminations as she scanned the park for the approach of the Duke of Burnrath.

“I understand you are to become one of us,” a deep, accented voice rumbled behind her.

Angelica turned to see Rafael Villar standing in the shadows of a copse of beech trees. Instead of flinching, she stepped closer, refusing to display her trepidation. “Yes, I am.”

The corner of his mouth lifted in a brief half smile as he nodded in approval of her courage. “I suppose I must welcome you, then.”

His reluctant tone made her laugh. “I appreciate your warm reception.”

Rafael's customary scowl returned. “This is no laughing matter. I must warn you that joining the ranks of the immortals means that you will have to separate yourself from all of this.” He waved his good hand at the merry celebration.

Angelica opened her mouth to retort, then closed it as the truth of his words struck her. Everyone she knew would age and die around her while she remained the same. Suddenly, the implication of hers and Ian's forthcoming fifty-year honeymoon became clear. They had to leave London before their secret became known.