Secrets of a Perfect Night (17 page)

He suckled first one breast, then the other, and she existed only in the exquisite sensations coursing through her. His hands slid down her hips and he gathered up her skirts to skim his palms up the length of her bare legs. She ached with yearning and sank down, pulling him to her, and together they tumbled backward onto the hay.

She ran her hand over the front of his breeches, caressing the hard bulge that proclaimed his desire, and he groaned. His hand slipped between her legs and he touched her at that most sensitive point, already throbbing with urgency. Her legs opened and she whimpered and stifled the urge to beg for more. She caught at the waist of his breeches and pushed them down over his hips, his manhood springing free. She caressed the hard, hot length of him, and wondered anew at the odd merging of steel and velvet. He shuddered with her touch.

She knew his body now as well as she knew her own. Knew the power her touch had over him. And knew as well her own desires and the joy only he could bring.

She threw her leg over his, angling her heat toward his. He grasped her bottom and jerked her toward him, sliding into her with a quick motion and an ease that proclaimed this was where he belonged. A match as right, as perfect, as a key in a lock, a hand in a glove, a star in the heavens. She moaned and her hands twisted the fabric of his shirt and she pushed hard against him. And he filled her body and her soul.

He moved in rhythm with the pulse of her blood and she joined him without pause in an eager, desperate spiral of ecstasy. She met every thrust with her own, needing to feel him deep inside, to welcome and embrace the ever-increasing taut fire swelling within her. A flame burning hotter, climbing higher and higher, until all-consuming and all-powerful, explosive and shattering. Her body jerked beneath his, her back arched, and waves of delight surged through her. He thrust again and his body tensed against hers and he groaned with his own release.

They lay together for a long moment and she savored the feel of him still inside her. Slowly, the beat of her heart in her ears dimmed. His breathing slowed and gently he pulled away, but his arms remained wrapped around her and he held her close.

Briefly, she wondered at the circumstances that had brought them together. A scant month ago she was an innocent. Now she was brazen in her demands for the pleasure only he could provide.

“I have missed you,” she said lightly.

He laughed. “You’ve scarcely had the opportunity to miss me. We were together only last night. And the night before.”

“And the night before that as well.” She shifted, propped herself up on one elbow, and smiled. “Yet still it isn’t enough.”

“You are a demanding bit of baggage.” He reached out to run his hand along the length of her hip exposed by the skirts still bunched around her waist.

“If I am, it’s entirely your fault,” she said, trying to ignore his fingers trailing up and down flesh still sensitive from the passion of their coupling.

“I know.” A grin sounded in his voice. He slid his hand around to rest between her legs, his fingers idly toying with her.

She shivered with the pleasure of his touch and closed her eyes. “I’ve become quite wanton.”

“Yes, you have.”

She ignored the teasing note in his voice, her attention focused on nothing more than the touch of his hand, and sighed. He’d introduced her to this unimagined pleasure and now she was like a drunkard needing yet another tankard of ale. “I rather like being wanton.”

“You do seem to have taken to it.”

The stroking of his hand increased until once again glorious release flooded through her. She drew a long shuddering breath and collapsed back onto the hay. She certainly had experienced a great deal in a few brief weeks. Not the least of which was the excitement of loving Jason Norcross. And knowing as surely as she’d ever known anything in her seventeen years on this earth that being together was as necessary to his life as it was to hers. That he loved her with the same unbridled passion that she loved him.

He shifted in the dark beside her, and the straw rustled with the movement of him pulling on his breeches. She grinned. “Jason, when we are wed, will we disrobe entirely?”

“I hadn’t especially considered the idea, but it sounds intriguing,” he said thoughtfully. “Still, it wouldn’t be as much of a challenge. Next, I suppose you’ll be insisting on a bed as well.”

“You did say I was demanding.” She laughed and sat up, her gaze skimming over the deep shadows of the stables. “Although it will be difficult to give up all this.” In spite of her words, she would remember this old building with fondness.

Here was where they had discovered love and planned their future. This was the one place they could be together without the prying eyes of servants, all, no doubt, eager to report back to Lord Gresham that his only child had defied his wishes and continued to see the penniless cousin of his neighbor, George Norcross, the Earl of Lyndhurst.

It was a dangerous game they played. She pushed aside a shiver of fear at what her father would do if he ever discovered their deception. But if all went well, he would learn nothing until they were long out of his reach.

“Rachael? There is much we need to discuss.” His voice was abruptly serious. “I have booked passage on a ship bound for America.”

“When?” she said quietly, the realization of their impending plans sobering her mood.

“It sails early on the first of January.”

“The morning after Lady Bradbourne’s ball.” She
blew out a long breath. “Then our plan will work, won’t it?”

“With any luck.”

“We have love, Jason, we don’t need luck.” She forced a light note to her voice, but she knew as well as he the possibility of success hinged as much on chance as anything else.

He got to his feet and paced before her, his face falling in and out of the shafts of pale moonlight with his steps. “It is a relatively simple plan. You will slip away during the ball—”

“And meet you in the garden.”

“I shall have a carriage waiting to take us to the docks.”

“A hired carriage?” She scrambled to her feet and quickly adjusted her clothing.

He nodded. “I dare not use one of George’s. It is a slim possibility, but it could be recognized.”

“And we would be found out. I would be dragged back home and more than likely be the center of scandal. And my father…” She blew a long breath. “But even to save my reputation, he would never allow us to marry.”

“Why?” Jason stopped and frustration rang in his voice. “Why does he dislike me so?”

“Because I have never defied him in any matter other than you. I have been a good, biddable daughter in every other way.”

He snorted. “I can scarcely believe that.”

“It’s true.” How could she explain? Even when they were children she had always been free to speak her mind with Jason, to follow what impulses seized her.
But she could not remember a time when the presence of her father hadn’t filled her with fear. “He has always terrified me.”

“I know,” Jason said softly.

She jerked her gaze to his. “I’ve never told you that.”

“You never had to. I’ve always been able to see it in your eyes. But I’ve never understood why.”

“To my father”—she chose her words carefully—” I am nothing more than a commodity. Property as valuable as his prized cattle or the manor. He has always planned to arrange an advantageous marriage for me.”

“But I am George’s heir. I could well be the next Earl of Lyndhurst.”

“Unless he marries again and fathers a son. He is not yet forty, and older men than he have sired heirs.”

“Still, George would never leave me penniless. And I do not lack for ambition.”

“Nonetheless, even if you inherit his title, it’s not what my father wants.” She wrapped her arms around herself to ward off a chill far greater than the night air. A note of bitterness crept into her voice. “He wants my marriage to advance his position in Parliament. He means to use me as a pawn to further his political ambitions.

“You are a threat to those ambitions because he knows I love you. I have no idea how he knows, but he does.” She grimaced. “He knows I have loved from the time you came to live with Lord Lyndhurst after your parents died. You were rather wild and reckless then, as I recall.”

“I was a mere child,” he said indignantly.

She resisted the urge to point out that, at the moment, he sounded much more like a boy than a man. “And when we met again, during the season last spring, I loved you in spite of the reputation you’d acquired during your years at school and in London.”

“A reputation little worse than any others,” he said quickly. “Scarcely earned with anything of true significance.”

“And I loved you still when you, and that scarcely earned reputation, finally returned home.”

“A bit of youth misspent perhaps.” She heard the shrug in his voice. “Now, however, that is at an end. I am, after all, nearly one and twenty.”

“As old as that?”

“Do not tease me, Rachael.” He pulled her into his arms. “I am old enough to know my own heart.”

“And old enough to know mine.” She reached up and brushed her lips across his.

“When do you leave for London?”

She hesitated. She couldn’t avoid telling him a moment longer, but until she said the words aloud, she could believe nothing could separate them. Believe they could continue to meet night after night. “In the morning.”

“Tomorrow?” His arms tensed around her. “You’re not going to be at the manor for Christmas?”

“Father wants the house in order before Parliament reconvenes. And apparently, aside from the New Year’s Ball, there are a number of other events he wishes to attend. Political, of course.” Without warning, a strange, desolate feeling washed through her. “I
cannot abide the thought of not seeing you for nearly a fortnight.”

“Perhaps a gift will make it easier to bear.”

“A gift? For me?” She lifted her head and looked up at him. “What kind of gift? Is it wonderful?”

He laughed and released her. “No, simply a token.” He stepped into a beam of moonlight and held out his hand. Something twinkled on his palm.

She stepped closer. “What is it?”

“It’s a guinea. Actually,” he said wryly, “It’s two halves of a guinea. I split it with an axe.”

“Jason, you split a guinea? A gold coin?” She shook her head. “But why? You can ill afford to be—”

“I can afford this.” He shifted the pieces in his hand and they glittered in the moonlight. “This was given to me by my father on my last birthday before he and my mother were killed. I have always cherished it in the belief that it kept them close to me even in death.” He chuckled. “Foolish, I know.”

“Not at all,” she said, touched by his words.

“I knew we would be apart, at least for a short while, and I thought…that is, I hoped…”

“That if we each took half of the coin, it would keep us together, in spirit if not in body?”

“Something like that,” he said gruffly as if embarrassed by the sentimental gesture. “I love you, Rachael.”

“And I love you.” She took one of the halves, still warm from his hand, and closed her fingers around it. “And I shall keep this forever.”

“Forever,” he echoed, and drew her back into his
arms. Her lips met his once again. She lost herself in the joy of being in his arms and ignored a tiny feeling deep in the pit of her stomach that such sheer happiness was far too wonderful to believe.

Or to last.

Two

L
ADY
B
RADBOURNE’S BALL
was as exciting as Rachael had imagined, but she knew full well the magic in the air, the promise the night held, had little to do with welcoming the New Year.

“Lord Gresham, may I offer my compliments to your daughter.” The portly gentleman addressing her father cast her an appreciative, but not impertinent, glance. “She is looking exceptionally lovely this evening.”

“Thank you, Lord Caruthers.” Rachael offered him a genuine smile. She could well afford to be gracious tonight.

“Indeed she is.” Her father surveyed her carefully, his look cool and assessing. “She seems to be having an exceptionally good time as well.”

“It is the start of a new year, father,” she said lightly. “And what better way to welcome 1805 than by indulging in festivities such as these?”

“And enjoying them.” Lord Caruthers beamed and raised his glass.

“Of course.” Her father’s eyes narrowed as if he
could see inside her soul. As if he knew what she was thinking. As if he knew her plans. Unease shivered through her.

She ignored it and raised her chin, meeting her father’s gaze directly, her courage fueled by the knowledge that it would be a very long time before she saw him again. If she ever saw him again. “It’s a night to look forward to the future.”

“And is there anything in particular you are looking forward to in the coming year, Miss Gresham?” Lord Caruthers said.

A new life. Freedom. And love
. “Why, my lord, I suppose I wish for no more than anyone else. Peace, of course. Prosperity. Happiness. Health—”

“A suitable marriage,” her father said with a hard, firm tone.

“Indeed.” Lord Caruthers chuckled. “What else would one wish for a daughter than a match with a man of good fortune and respectable title? Although I daresay there should be no end of eager suitors for Miss Gresham’s hand.”

“Why, my lord, you will quite turn my head.” Rachael laughed, confident in the knowledge that she did indeed look her best this evening. Her dark hair was pinned on top of her head in a cascade of curls, and a glimpse in a mirror had showed her a complexion that glowed and eyes that sparkled. She alone knew the anticipation and excitement that put the blush on her cheek had nothing to do with the ball.

“Would you honor me with a dance, Miss Gresham?” Lord Caruthers offered his arm.

“I should be delighted.” And why not? This would be her last ball in London for a very long time.

She took Lord Caruthers’ arm and allowed him to lead her to the floor. She tossed her father a brilliant smile over her shoulder and was rewarded by the dark look on his face. Of course, he was not used to seeing her as animated as she was tonight. But she couldn’t seem to help herself. The simple knowledge that love and freedom waited for her at the end of the evening infused her with a recklessness that could not be denied.