St. Raven (45 page)

Should she be offended that he couldn’t tell the difference? Carried on a wave of mischief and relief, Cressida stepped forward and walked her fingers up his jacket.

He caught her hand. “You disappoint me.”

He really was disappointed, angry even. Because he thought his cousin’s love was unfaithful.

Cressida looked into his masked eyes. “It’s not Miranda.”

He froze. “I’m brandy-mad.”

She realized then that he’d been drinking. He wasn’t staggering drunk, but there was a slight slur in his voice and a slackness in his features.

What to say? The Swinamers could be close behind. What had she imagined would happen now? Him asking her again, giving her another chance?

“St. Raven!”

Lady Swinamer’s piercing voice. They were coming.

She raised her other hand, so she held his with both. “You’re not mad. My name is Cressida Mandeville, and you asked me to marry you.” Desperately she added, “You asked me first!”

He frowned, and for a dreadful moment she was sure he had changed his mind. It had been a whim, now passed.

“St. Raven!” Lady Swinamer again, nearer, almost here.

He changed their grip and turning, pulled her away, away from that demanding voice, out of the ballroom, through an arch, along a corridor, and down a curving stairwell. He stopped suddenly, on the curve with no sight of top above or bottom below.

“Cressida?”

They’d passed a flickering lamp, and it provided some light, but chancy here, around the bend. She couldn’t see him clearly, but his voice told her what she needed to know.

By planning or accident, he’d stopped with her one step higher so she could easily cradle his face. “I want to change my answer, if you’ll let me. But I have a boon to request.”

His hands covered hers. His eyes seemed entirely black. “What?”

“I don’t have the right to ask. I’ve been a fool. I heard you were at Violet Vane’s and assumed the worst. I heard you’d come to my ball from an orgy, on a wager, and I believed it.”

“Cressida—”

She sealed his lips with her thumbs. “But for both our sakes I ask you now. Please, Tris, can you swear to be faithful to me, all the days that we live? If you swear that, I’ll never doubt you again.”

He held her thumbs against his lips, and she felt his words as well as heard them. “I do so swear. I can’t imagine wanting anyone but you.”

An explosion of happiness struck her dumb, and then she said, “I ate a cake with pink icing.”

Why that? At a moment like this? He’d think her an idiot.

But he smiled. “Why not? If we eat oysters, eating insects is not so strange. And honey, after all, is insect food… I’m somewhat drunk, my love. Forgive me.”

“Only if you kiss me.” She leaned to him, but one of her horns collided with the wall, knocking the wimple all over her face, and the other pushed off his hat.

Laughing, they freed her, sliding down to sit on the stairs. He tossed his hat and her headdress to roll down the stairs. She pushed his mask up and off his beloved face. He untied hers, cleverly loosening her hair so she felt it tumble down her back as he kissed her as she’d hungered to be kissed over long weeks of separation.

It wasn’t enough. Desire built in her—physical desire, but more than that. A burning need to be his, and to claim him as hers. Even as they kissed, she climbed onto him, slid her hands beneath his jacket. She needed more. Skin. She began to tug his shirt loose—

He moved back, captured her hands. “Cressida, love…”

But then his eyes met hers and she saw practicalities explode into dust. He rose with her still latched around him with arms and legs and climbed the stairs up to the light. In the corridor, he put her down, but her protest was brief. He swept her into his arms and carried her away—away from the music and chatter of the ballroom, up stairs, along a corridor…

Cressida wasn’t paying attention to anything but him.

She’d undone his cravat and was stroking his neck, his jaw, tangling her fingers in his hair. Drawing his head down.

He stopped. They kissed again, passion building so fiercely that Cressida could imagine she’d drunk Crofton’s brew, could imagine surrendering to Tris, here, in a corridor.

She heard something and opened her eyes, then pulled back from the kiss. A maidservant was passing, carrying a pile of cloths, watching them with high eyebrows and a crooked-tooth grin. Once Cressida would have been appalled, but now she grinned back.

Tris looked at the maid, not quite grinning, but not straight-faced either. “My duchess,” he said. “You’ll be seeing a lot of this.”

The woman chuckled as she bobbed a curtsy. “Many blessings on you, zur,” she said in a heavy Cornish burr, and hurried away.

“She’ll tell everyone,” Cressida said.

“We’ll tell everyone. Soon.”

They weren’t kissing. They were talking coherently, but that seemed close to a miracle. Cressida wanted only one thing.

Shyly, in a whisper, she said, “I want… I want to be closer to you, Tris, than I’ve been to anyone since I slid messily from my mother’s womb. Now.”

She saw her words hit him, and then he moved quickly, carrying her along the corridor, opening a door, then kicking it shut behind him.

She was in his bedroom.

He walked to the huge bed and slid her to her feet beside it. She immediately turned so he could untie her yoke. “Just one little knot this time,” she said, unable to manage more than a whisper.

His touch at her nape sent ripples of desire through her, and she could feel the unsteadiness of his hands.

“Which almost defeats me,” he said. His voice was hoarse. “But there.”

It came loose. She turned back, holding the yoke, then letting it fall. Eyes on his, she unknotted the rope belt as he tore off his jacket.

Cressida dragged the black gown over her head and flung it away, then she recognized the same old problem. “My corset.”

Gloriously naked down to his breeches, he laughed, but walked to his washstand and picked up his razor. For a second she thought of protesting, but urgency beat in her, too. She turned her back and felt the blade slice right down the laces.

She tossed the corset on the black gown and stripped the drawers and stockings off beneath her shift, back to him. An awkward shyness was creeping over her now.

“Miranda has scarlet ribbons on her corset and flowers on her stockings.”

Hands grasped her shift and pulled it up over her head. He turned her toward him. “And you’ll look splendid in such things, too. But now is a time for nakedness, my dearest love.”

He was naked. Magnificently naked, rampant with desire.

Cressida sucked in a huge breath of satisfaction.

“Tris, my love.” She placed her hands on his chest, and now everything seemed perfectly natural, perfectly… perfect. “Make me yours. Now.”

He went to the bed and dragged the rich covers back, exposing white linen, as he had once before, on that special night. All the feelings he’d summoned that night rushed back over her so she walked to join him on unsteady legs and leaned on him for support. He swung her up and laid her gently on the bed, then lay beside her, big, strong, hot…

Hers.

Cressida slid a hand from strong thigh to broad chest, trembling. “I keep thinking perhaps I’m dreaming.”

“I’ve dreamed of this,” he said, and kissed her again, his leg moving over hers, between hers as his knowing hand stroked. This time she opened her thighs eagerly, arching at his lightest touch, as if long into this game.

She heard him laugh softly, but it was almost a groan, then his clever mouth was on her breasts and she began to tumble off that cliff.

“Tris!” she cried, wrapping herself around him, afraid he’d let her fall alone again. But his hot weight came over her, stretching her wider, as wide as she longed to be. Hardness pressed.

“Yes, yes!” She could hear herself as if from a distance.

“Oh, yes…”

The pain was sharp and startling, but didn’t seem to matter because now, at last, they were joined fully, deeply, one, complete. She’d never felt anything so glorious in her life.

Until he started to move.

“Oh, my. Oh, my. Oh, yes!”

She thought she kept saying it, but she wasn’t sure for her mind seemed far from her seething body. This wasn’t like throwing herself off a cliff into mist. It was like spiraling in fire, like becoming one with his strength, his heat, his potency.

She arched, gripping him tight, feeling him arch against her as fierce, burning ecstasy consumed them both.

A thumb brushed her cheek. “I hope those tears aren’t regret, love.” He didn’t sound at all unsure of himself, and confirmed it by his next words. “Because you’re mine now.”

She knew she was smiling as she opened her eyes. “And you are mine,” she said, cradling his face. “I’m so sorry for almost plunging us into disaster with my doubts.”

He shook his head, brushed a kiss on her thumb. “I’m sorry my sad career was food for those doubts.”

“Without that sad career, would you be able to give me so much pleasure?”

He laughed, moving off her a little. “You are, as I once observed, a minx at heart, Cressida Mandeville.” One hand rested on her hip, sweet possession. “Cressida St. Raven, soon. How soon? I’m not sure I can bear one more night without you in my bed.”

She felt heat in her cheeks, but it was heat of pleasure at his frank desire. Tris Tregallows, the wonderful Duke of St. Raven, burned with desire for
her
.

“Soon,” she said, unable to stop looking down as if bashful. It was simply too much, too overwhelming at this moment. “My parents are due to sail shortly.”

“Blessed parents.”

“And they’re on their way here. They might be here…”

“Excellent.” He tilted her chin up so she had to look at him. “My dear Miss Mandeville, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife and my duchess? Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? Can it be done so fast?”

“Your parents will be here, and if a duke cannot obtain a license in short order, what use is he? You haven’t said yes, yet, you know.”

She relaxed into a laugh. “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! Oh, Tris, I’ve been so miserable without you. I’ve felt half alive.”

He cinched her into a tight hug. “And I feel like a man sentenced to hang who is suddenly reprieved. Not just reprieved, but given a glorious reward.”

He swept her long hair forward, then kissed her breasts through it with a hum of pleasure that made her feel faint.

“I never thought to ask,” he mumbled. “How did you get here? On angel’s wings?”

She gathered enough of her wits to pull his head up so she could form sentences, then told the story.

He worried about his horses, but seemed more interested in her navel.

She admitted that his cousin did not drive as well as he, trying to wriggle out of reach. She knew they both wanted to stay here, to make love again, to twine together and talk all night, but…

“You have an entertainment going on, Tris! You must return.”

“Nag.” He was too strong for her. “The Swinamers are there. Let’s hide.”

“You can’t.”

“I’m a duke. I can do what I damn well please.”

At the word, their eyes met and they laughed together.

She put her hand over his lips. “Seriously, Tris. You must return to your guests. And what of Phoebe Swinamer? I feel a little sorry for her.”

He captured her hand and began to kiss the tip of each finger. “Don’t. She wouldn’t feel sorry for you if your positions were reversed.”

Since she lay nakedly half over him, this made her laugh. “Hard to imagine.”

“Quite. I must have been mad. You admitted it was all your fault. You tell her.”

“Oh, no!”

He left off his games and rubbed his knuckle down her cheek. “At this moment I want the whole world to be happy, but I fear the best we can do for poor Phoebe is make the announcement and let her preserve her dignity. Nothing has been said.”

“I know. And I’ve seen so many instances of her petty cruelties that my heart cannot ache.”

Still, he made no move. Perhaps this was one of those situations where the woman must be strong. Cressida pulled herself away from him and climbed out of the bed. “We need to get dressed.”

He sat up, watching her in a way she’d never dreamed of being watched by a man. “You’ve lost your horns. There should be a risque joke in that somewhere.”

“Not one suitable for a lady’s ear, I’m sure.”

“Oh, you never know.” But he rolled out of bed.

His beautiful naked body had Cressida leaning against a chair for support. Perhaps they could stay here…

She saw the same thought in him, but he put on a gold and scarlet banjan that weakened her even further. Perhaps it would be easier for Miss Swinamer if nothing happened tonight…

He smiled at her in a way not at all steadying. “Stay here. I’ll send someone for our headgear. As you say, all the servants will know by now.” Then he went into the adjoining room, closing the door.

Cressida simply stood, taking in the disordered bed with a smear of blood on the sheets. Inhaling the sweet musky smell of their lovemaking. A proper young lady of Matlock should surely be riven by shame—or at least doubts—at this moment. She would know she should have waited until her wedding night.

Cressida felt that her world was finally exactly as it should be.

Smiling—when would she stop smiling?—she washed herself, then dressed again. It was a good thing this costume did not need a corset. In a pointless attempt at discretion, she tucked the useless garment in one of his drawers.

Dressed as best she could be, she sat at his dressing table and tried to pin her hair up. Her hands would hardly work. Perhaps it was lovemaking. Perhaps it was the after effect of the mad dash here. Perhaps it was because she hadn’t known how deeply, how entirely, she’d needed Tris until now. She hadn’t been able to let herself know, or she couldn’t have gone on.

He came back, with his hat and her horns.

“What’s the matter?”

She heard the cold edge of fear and turned quickly. “Nothing! Only that I realized how close I had come to losing you forever.”

She held out her hands and he came to take them, to kiss them. “I wish you didn’t have to be a duchess for me, Cressida.”