Duchess in Love (29 page)

Gina had never been a coward. It was with dismay that the old duke, Cam's father, had discovered that his son's young wife had too much backbone for her age. He had succeeded in molding her into a proper duchess, but only at the expense of his nerves. Mr. Bicksfiddle, the estate manager, would have echoed the old duke's statements. Once the Duchess of Girton decided to do something, not hell nor high water could stop her.

She stepped back and pulled her sopping chemise over her head and tossed it to the side. It billowed when it hit the water, and sank.

The look on Cam's face was everything a woman could
hope to see, under the circumstances. She ignored the burning heat in her belly and the unsteadiness of her limbs and splashed a little water in his direction.

“You will love bathing in the Mediterranean,” he said hoarsely. He walked one step toward her. His large hands touched her as if she were marble sculpted by Michelangelo himself. “Ah, God, you're so beautiful,” he said. And in the wonder of his voice, she felt truly beautiful for the first time.

There were strands of wet hair caught on her cheeks; he carefully pushed them away. “There's paint on your cheeks,” he said, and rubbed with his thumb.

She looked puzzled and then laughed. “I darken my lashes.”

“I thought you did,” he said with satisfaction. Then he brought his great, wet hands to her face and rubbed. “They're beautiful without paint. Like strands of sunlight.” She caught his hands in hers, and he bent his head to her lips.

She came to him with a little sigh that set his pulse racing. He lingered on her body, molding its sweet curves to his fingers, memorizing the delectable curve at the inside of her hip. She turned out to be a laughing mermaid, his wife, liable to fall backward into the water. He had to punish her with kisses until she clung to him trembling, her breath caught in her throat. Begging…

He climbed from the bath, holding his wife in his arms. Carried her to Lady Troubridge's chaise longue and laid her down.

She was a wanton woman, his duchess. She didn't lie under his hand, as had most women of his experience. Let alone a woman with no experience. She twisted and turned, begged and cried. Turned to him. That was the truly unexpected thing, from his point of view. She not only took, but she gave. Where he kissed her, she kissed
him. Where he touched her, she touched him. She was a born coquette, a ravishing combination of innocence and innate knowledge.

And she laughed. She giggled when he kissed his way down the curve of her breasts, the delicate curve of her rib cage. Stopped giggling and they had a brief argument as he continued. He won when he distracted her by letting one hand stray to her breast. His Gina could no more contain herself when he touched her breast than a young boy can resist being tickled. There was no laughing then. He made his sweet way where he wished, and kissed as he wished, and she twisted and gasped and cried in his arms.

The shocking part—not to put it too bluntly—was that she pushed him away and demanded her own rights. “Ladies don't do this sort of thing,” he warned her. His body went rigid as a board as she kissed a little path, a winding, smiling path down his stomach. “Gina—” he said, but she paid him no mind. She probably never would, he thought dimly. They'd be—but he lost the thought. His fingers caught in her sleek, wet hair, and a low groan burst from his chest.

When he pulled her up, covered those red lips with his own, he closed his eyes in the face of her delight.

“He can't have you.” His voice was rough and his hands were shaking. He rolled her on her back and ran a hand down her sleek legs. They fell open and she arched against him. He was afraid to diminish her pleasure, afraid of the pain. “It won't hurt long,” he said into her ear.

“I know. Please, Cam. I want you…I want you!” Her hands clutched his shoulders.

He thrust. And waited to cause pain. Dimly, he was aware that his body was shot with ecstasy, demanding more, demanding—but he waited. She had her eyes closed. He kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her lips.

“Gina!” he whispered. “Are you all right?”

She opened those eyes, the exact color of the Mediterranean at sunset. “Do you think that you could do that again?” she said. He wasn't mistaken. She was going to laugh all the way through making love. There was laughter gleaming in her eyes and in the tremble of her mouth.

He withdrew, slowly, and plunged deep. The laughter disappeared and she gasped. It seemed to him not an unhappy gasp. So he did it again. And this time she met him halfway. He could feel his vision slipping.

“It doesn't hurt, does it?”

“A little bit,” she replied. “You're—you're—bigger than I am.”

He could feel that for himself. Every inch of his body was telling him the same thing.

“But it doesn't hurt, it feels—ah—I don't know. It makes me feel
hungry
.”

A slow smile curled Cam's lips. “I can help you with that,” he said against her mouth. He plunged again, again, again.

She was a screamer, his duchess. He knew it, and he was right.

What he hadn't known was that she would make him into one.

 

C
am rolled onto his back, carrying his wife with him. He put her on top of him as if she were a blanket. She slumped boneless, her head tucked into the curve of his neck. He stroked the long line of her backbone and thought pleasurably about nothing. Thought about staying in the plunge-bath forever. She was sleeping, so he dragged Lady Troubridge's blanket over her sleek skin and kissed the top of her head.

Perhaps they should get dressed…rescue might come at
any moment. He wrapped his arms around his precious bundle of a wife. He'd made one decision: he wasn't going to let her go until they did that again, oh, perhaps a thousand times. Two thousand. His eyes drifted shut.

G
ina woke to darkness so profound, so thick and silent, that she literally couldn't see anything. For a moment she was mortally frightened.

But then she realized that while she couldn't see, she could feel. And hear. It wasn't utterly silent. She could hear Cam breathing. Moreover, when her heart stopped beating frantically in her ears, she could hear his steady heartbeat, not so far from her ear. And she could feel her own boneless, satisfied body. A grin curled her mouth.

There had been no excruciating pain, as she'd heard it described. She had heard all about the marital act. She knew it was pleasurable, in the right circumstances. And that some women didn't enjoy it, while men always did. She turned her lips against the warm skin beneath her. She had an idea that those women weren't as lucky as she.

He woke up like a cat, straight from sleep to awake. His body went rigid. “What the
devil
happened to the light?”

“I think the oil lamp burned out.” She kissed his throat, tasted salt.

He said nothing and his body didn't relax.

“Cam?” She found his lips. An involuntary shudder went through her body. Perhaps, she thought, her body would never be the same. Blood danced under her skin, speaking of the hair-roughed skin beneath hers, the hard angles and muscles she lay on, the luxurious weight of her own breasts against his hard chest.

He kissed her, but it was no more than a pucker of the lips.

“I'll have Finkbottle's skin for this,” he said, and he sounded a good deal more furious than he had when they were first shut in the bath.

“The lamp was bound to burn down,” she pointed out. “Do you have any idea how long we slept? Perhaps it's already near morning.”

“It's between ten and eleven o'clock in the evening. We've been here approximately three hours.”

“How on earth can you tell?” she asked, nuzzling his neck with her lips.

“Excuse me,” he said, lifting her off his body and putting her to the side. A moment later the blanket tucked around her shoulders.

“How can you see what you're doing?” she asked. “And how do you know what time it is?”

“I have had similar experiences,” he said. His voice didn't echo even a trace of the pleasure they had shared. Gina huddled in her blanket.

Cam had walked away. She strained her eyes but couldn't see anything at all. “Don't fall in the water!” she cried, suddenly afraid.

“I won't.” His voice came from the right. “Would you like to wear your gown?” His voice came back toward her and the gown fell into her lap. Gina clutched it gratefully. She dropped the blanket and pulled on her gown. It took a moment to make certain that she had it on correctly.

“I've found your stockings,” said the voice, dimly. “But I can't seem to locate one of your slippers.”

“You threw it to the right.”

A moment later she was drawing on her stockings—a far more difficult task in the dark than in the light. Then she was as dressed as possible. She shuddered to think what her hair looked like. All she could do was comb it with her fingers.

“Cam?” she asked.

“Yes?”

“Why am I bothering to get dressed? Aren't we likely to spend the night here? It seems to me that Finkbottle would have returned if he was likely to.”

“I doubt he ever meant to return,” he said in a brutally angry voice. “I plan to kick that damn door until someone hears me.”

Gina thought for a moment. “Cam,” she called. “Will you come here, please?”

She heard his footsteps, but it was still a shock when he touched her. “Will you sit with me?”

He hesitated. “Of course,” he said, sitting beside her.

“What is the matter?” she said, in a tone carefully empty of blame or reproach.

“Nothing,” he replied, just as calmly. “Other than the fact that I dislike being imprisoned in a dungeon by a solicitor who has likely stolen a priceless artwork.”

She held on to his arm so he couldn't slip away. Perhaps men grew irritated after—a more dreadful thought struck her. Perhaps he was in a rage because, having taken her virginity, they would no longer able to procure an annulment. A pang of distress sounded all the way from her heart to her stomach.

“Are you angry because the annulment won't go through?” she asked, before she could rethink the question.

“No,” Cam said shortly, sounding uninterested. “You're
mine now.” Gina felt a thrilling dip in her stomach. She'd never been anyone's before. Even her mother had not really been her mother, and her husband had not really been her husband. There was something oddly reassuring about the briskness with which he announced it.

“Then what is the matter?” she repeated.

“For God's sake, I just said that nothing was the matter,” Cam roared, starting to his feet. Gina came with him. She loathed the idea of stumbling after him in the dark.

But he tore away her hand and walked off. “It's only dark, Gina,” he said roughly. “There's no reason to go into a tizzy.”

“But I'm not—” Gina said, and stopped. It was he who was scared—how odd that she hadn't seen it immediately.

He hadn't gone far, so she simply walked in the direction of his voice until she bumped into a warm body. He was leaning against the wall. His body was rigid. She cupped his face in her hands and kissed him. At first he didn't respond at all, and then his lips softened.

She almost thought she had done it, when he pushed her away and said, in a strained sort of way, “Lord save me from an insatiable woman.”

Gina bit her lip and counted to ten.

“It was supposed to be a joke,” said a voice just in front of her.

She counted to ten again. As she had told Carola, silence was sometimes extremely useful.

Sure enough, his arms reached out. He put his lips in her hair, and at first she couldn't understand what he was saying. So he repeated himself.

“Did you hear the jest about the preacher, the Puritan and the vintner's daughter?”

“No,” Gina said.

“I can tell you a riddle, if you like,” he offered.

“I would prefer not. I've never been any good at riddles.”

“I would not wish you to be afraid of the dark.” There was a driven rage to his voice. “I shall have Finkbottle's head for putting you in this intolerable situation.”

“I'm not afraid,” Gina said flatly. She reached up and pulled down his head so that she could kiss him. “Would it make it easier if I told
you
some riddles? I cannot always remember the correct answer, more's the pity.”

There was a moment of silence broken up by a drop or two of water falling from the pipe into the bath.

“Am I twittering?” he said, finally.

“You're distressed. I myself am thrown into paroxysms by snakes. So be warned.”

A kiss landed on her nose. “I suspect if I were capable of paroxysms, this is the situation that would bring them on.”

“Shall we sleep with a lamp burning?”

“No. I am only disturbed by rooms with no light and no window.” He hesitated. “My father used to close me in closets and cupboards for punishment.”

“He tried that with me! That is, he did it once. He shut me in the wine cellar. But I described the punishment in a letter to my mother. The duke never recovered his hearing in his right ear after her visit. At least, that's what he blamed his deafness on.”

Cam's arms tightened around her. “I'm sorry he did that to you. It never crossed my mind he would do it to someone other than his own child. More and more, I think I should have taken you with me out that window.”

She laughed. “You couldn't have! Imagine how annoying it would have been to be burdened with an eleven-year-old wife.”

“Well, if I had known he was going to lock you up in the cellar, I would have pulled you after me,” he said.

“To be honest, the cellar didn't bother me very much. I am
such a practical kind of person, and even at eleven, I wasn't very imaginative. But if he did it when you were a child, it must have been dreadful.”

“The first time I remember it was the day of my mother's funeral. He thought that I hadn't shown proper respect because I fidgeted during morning prayers. So he closed the doors to the chapel and locked me in with her body.”

“That's horrid!” she gasped. “Dreadful old man that he was. You were only seven or eight, weren't you?”

“Five,” Cam said. “After that, he locked me up fairly frequently. I like to tell myself that I wouldn't have become a coward except for the things he said.”

“You are not a coward!” They had ended up back on the chaise longue, and Gina had her arms slung around his neck. “What things did he say?” She thought that his body was slightly less rigid than it had been.

“That my mother was going to haunt me. I believed him of course. He could be quite graphic about decaying flesh and worms.”

“Cruel old man,” Gina snapped.

“Yes,” he agreed. “It took me some years to realize it. And coward or not, I am not comfortable in the dark, even now, years later.”

“That was a despicable thing to say about your mother,” Gina said. “She loved you so much.”

“How on earth do you know?” There was an amused note to his voice.

“Because I know,” she retorted.

He shrugged. “I have no memory of her at all. I expect she was a conventional woman of the
ton
who greeted her son and heir with a pat once or twice a week.”

“No,” Gina said. “She wasn't that type of woman at all. I was given her bedchamber after our wedding, you know.”

“Her room? It was locked up during my entire childhood.”

“When he discovered that you had fled, your father locked your room instead and pushed me inside your mother's.”

Cam's lips were warm on her ear. “Tried to terrorize us both, didn't he? It's lucky that you have such a strong backbone.”

“It was odd at first,” Gina admitted. “All her clothes were in the wardrobe, and her hairbrushes were on the table, just as they were when she died. But my governess didn't make anything of the fact that your mother's things hadn't been touched in over a decade. Instead, we started folding all the gowns and putting them away. And in the pocket of one of them was a little book. Your mother's diary.”

He had started caressing her neck in an idly interested sort of way, but his hands stilled when she said that.

Gina leaned back into his arm in case he wanted to lower his hand just a trifle. “She writes about you as a baby,” she said. “I gather you were the sweetest baby ever born in England, Scotland or Wales. She used to sing you to sleep every night. Even when they had guests, she would slip away to the nursery so she could sing you to sleep.”

His hand had started its caress again, but she could tell he was listening.

“You had huge black eyes, and a plump lower lip. You had a special smile just for her, and your first tooth was just
here
.” She put her finger on his lips. He licked her finger, and she put it in her mouth. “Mmm,” she said dreamily. “You taste very sweet, even grown up.”

He made a low sound in his throat and his hand danced over her gown. “Why'd you put this rag back on?” he demanded.

She ignored him. “I daren't tell you what she called you,” she said with exaggerated timidity. “I'm afraid you would be too humiliated.”

He was tracing a lazy path up her thigh. “Try me,” he said, kissing her eyelids.

“Buttercup,” she said, somewhere between a gasp and a cry. His thumb was doing…something. “She called you her little buttercup because you—oh, Cam, that feels
so
good.”

He pushed her back onto the chaise longue, and yanked up her gown. “You mother loved you more than anyone in the world,” she said, in the moment before she forgot what she was thinking. She reached out blindly and managed to catch his face in both hands and draw it to hers. Unfortunately, that brought his hard body down on hers, which destroyed the little thinking capacity she had left. So she spoke quickly. “Your mother was likely with you in those dark rooms, Cam. She was sitting next to you and crying because she wasn't able to rescue her own little Buttercup.” Tears stung her eyes at the thought.

“I hope she's given up her guardianship by now,” an amused voice said from the darkness above her. “I'd rather we were alone at this particular moment.”

“Oh
you,
” Gina said crossly. Without warning his head descended to her breast.

She melted, raising her body to his hand, writhing, crying out. He slipped in as if he was born to answer the throbbing sensation that had engulfed her thighs. She clutched him, hard, and tried to regain the sense of rhythm they had last time. It came quicker this time. She was learning, she thought. Then he did something different, lifted her legs, and half understanding, she wrapped them around his waist and—

 

T
his time he didn't roll over and pull her on top of him. He was too tired. She took too much out of him, his delicious wife.

He slipped to the side, took his weight off her but stayed where he could keep his hand on the silken skin just under her breast. “So what color was my hair when I was born?” he said, when his heart had slowed to a reasonable rate.

“Huh?” She sounded dazed. Cam grinned to himself. He'd pleasured a few women in his day. But he had never seen a woman as passionate as his own prim and proper duchess.

He let his lips slide across her cheeks. She had beautiful high cheekbones. All this darkness was excellent for the sculptor in him. He was feeling her bones rather than seeing them; it made him itch to hold clay in his hands, to pick up a chisel. “Did my mother say whether I had hair as a baby?”