When the Duke Returns (22 page)

The Dower House
March 3, 1784

T
onight? What did he mean by that? Isidore wasn't at all sure that she wanted to repeat bedding so soon. She felt slightly tender. And she felt odd. Disappointed, which was stupid. Besides, Godfrey was returning from his stay at the vicar's, which meant that there couldn't be any marital intimacy. Godfrey would be sleeping in the sitting room of Dower House. She didn't want anyone in Revels House until the Dead Watch were safely back in London.

She wandered out for a walk. It was the kind of day that pretends spring has come, even though it hasn't. The air smelled sweet, and the sun was shining. A blackthorn tree in the garden had already bloomed and was
scattering seeds everywhere, like a child feeding birds in a dizzying circle.

Simeon would be a quite good husband. He was thoughtful and caring. His rueful little smile made her feel meltingly affectionate. He was so lovable when he wasn't in control, when he admitted that he wasn't sure what to do next. This afternoon was a perfect example. And he had admitted himself that the whole matrimonial experience wasn't quite all it could be. In fact, he was devastatingly attractive when he—

She stopped. It would be easy to love a man who admitted his faults, who threw off his clothes when he realized that he'd embarrassed her. When Simeon was spontaneous, he was irresistible.

Yet when she was spontaneous, it drove him to distraction. He shouted—and then he kissed. In short, he lost control.

“Godfrey will be staying in the Dower House, of course,” she told Honeydew on her return. “I am convinced the air is unclean in the main house and he is a growing boy. Besides, we emptied his room of furniture,” she added. “He can sleep in the sitting room.”

Honeydew didn't react by so much as a twitch to the news that, apparently, the duke would be sleeping with his wife. Likely Simeon's eyes would narrow a bit when he heard how she was rearranging his life, but the Middle Way would stop him from making too much of an outcry.

Pah! That's what her father would have said. Take the left way, or the right way. The upper way, the lower way…

She couldn't help grinning, thinking of his body. The lower way was likely something that no proper English gentleman would take. Yet even thinking about his body made her legs prickle and her breath feel short.

When he arched over her, his eyes grew smoky and dark. They looked almost anguished.

She started wondering again what he meant by showing her how his body worked. Worked? She knew how it worked. That part grew stiff.

His body was long and lean, like a man who could run twenty miles to save his beloved. Like a man who fought off ruffians without even dirtying his hands.

Yes, she would quite like to know how his body worked. The thought made her smile.

 

It was precisely the smile that irritated Simeon during supper. Isidore kept looking at him in a certain way, and before he could stop it, his blood would flare through his body and he would start shaking. Just a little, but still—shaking.

Shaking!

The thought of the Middle Way came into his head and he actually pushed it away. It seemed irrelevant when he was with Isidore, with that bubbling joy in her eyes and the way her hair curled so sweetly, and the impudent little way she would glance at him…

He liked to think that every time she smiled
that
way, she was thinking about him. Intimately.

It wasn't right to contemplate control. Not when Isidore was thinking about something else.

Besides, it was taking all his control to keep a calm conversation going through dinner. Isidore wasn't wearing anything like the provocative gown that she wore the last time the three of them dined together. And he himself had put on breeches rather than his inappropriate trousers. The stockings didn't seem to bother him so much this time, probably a sign that he was turning into a proper Englishman. But no proper Englishman would be ravished by lust, the way he was.
The only thing he wanted was Isidore, warm and sweet under him.

Honeydew poured lemonade for Godfrey. No wine, even though he threw Simeon an imploring glance.

Simeon found himself grinding his teeth.

Couldn't Godfrey have been housed in the barn? Did Isidore have to be so kind to his little brother? He had—

He had plans for this evening.

He shifted in his seat. Surely this was just what Valamksepa talked about. Lust as a poison in the blood, a wild, insurgent storm carrying reason before it. He had no reason. He just wanted her.

It wasn't the Middle Way. God knows what kind of way it was. A bad way. He drank his wine and brooded about her breasts. The whole Middle Way concept ignored the fact that a man's blood went on fire around his wife.

And Isidore was his wife.

Surely…

No.

At the end of supper he rose, ready to go somewhere. He seemed to have no bed, so he would presumably be housed in the barn with Honeydew.

But then it became clear that Isidore had different ideas. The meal was over, and before he knew exactly what was happening, she was in front of him, like a little whirlwind of silk and the sweet smell of her skin, saying this, saying that. She put everyone in their place, ordered Honeydew around in the sweetest of ways, directed Godfrey into his bed and he, it seemed, was to accompany her on a stroll through the gardens.

“It's a lovely night,” she said, smiling up at him. “The moon is out.”

She had long eyelashes that curled upward so deli
cately that they distracted him. “Hmmm,” he said, unable to formulate even a simple sentence.

A moment later they were strolling down a path. It was actually quite warm in an early spring sort of way.

“Where shall we go?” Isidore asked. Her voice was bubbling, like a child at a party.

“For a walk?” he suggested. His mind felt like marmalade. All he wanted to do was drag her behind a tree and cup his hands around her bottom. How could he have made love to her and not spent an hour on each breast? It felt as if those lost moments were mocking him now.

Something in her expression dimmed a little and he wrenched his mind away from her bodice. Cleared his throat. “Shall we visit the summer house?” he asked, desperately.

“A summer house! You have one?”

He would do anything for that smile. The certainty of his vulnerability was so dangerous that he just walked beside her, silent as the grave. They walked toward the bottom of the formal gardens. “It's more of a folly than a true summer house,” he said finally.

They rounded a last turn.

“As you see.”

Her mouth fell open.

“It wasn't meant to be a ruin,” he told her, deciding honesty was the best policy. “Although I understand that ruins are becoming quite fashionable.” He cocked his head and tried to see it through her eyes. A romantic heap of stone, supposedly a disintegrating medieval castle? Or what he saw: another of his father's imprudent failures, a building that was to be a proper summer house of stone, fallen to pieces after the builders were left unpaid?

Isidore walked ahead of him. She wasn't wearing
panniers tonight, and her gown followed the curves of her own delectable hips.

“Have you been inside?” she said, turning and looking at him. He could barely focus on what she was saying over the roaring in his blood. She was his, and he had to have her, to own her, to touch her, to kiss her, to…

She leaned back against the fragment of a stone wall and smiled at him. Was that an invitation? Who gave a damn?

With a muttered curse, he strode forward and picked her up, as smoothly as if he carried damsels on a regular basis. “The grass might be wet,” he said, hearing the roughness of his own voice.

She didn't say anything, but she wasn't struggling to get away. She just nestled there in his arms, a curvy perfumed bundle. He rounded the building and headed straight for the broken arch. Where the courtyard was supposed to be…

Yes. Tiles gleamed faintly in the moonlight. Fallen walls protected them from view…not that anyone was out wandering his gardens at this hour of night.

He put her down and stripped off his coat. He still couldn't meet her eyes. She would be horrified if she knew what he was like, how mad in lust he was, mad enough to howl at the moon, to pounce on her like an animal.

“Simeon?” she asked. Her voice didn't sound frightened. It was husky and caught a little on his name. There was something about it that made his groin clench. And then she combed her fingers through her hair, almost shyly, and he broke, lunged at her and yanked her against him. If he'd thought, he might have considered a gentleman's kiss, a sweet meeting of mouths that would tempt her into opening her lips…

He ravaged her, took what he wanted, took her sweetness and the taste of her, the smell of her, the way her body swayed under his fingers when he kissed her, the way she murmured something, or perhaps moaned.

But in the back of his mind a voice was shouting for attention. He couldn't just—he couldn't just do what—

She was moaning, she was, just a little sound in the back of her throat but it was enough to make him mad. Surely he could just put her down—

Gently, of course.

On the ground? Cold and damp?

His bad angel spoke up again, telling him that his coat was as good as a blanket. For a moment he managed to look down at Isidore with a modicum of logic.

Her eyes were dazed and she had her hand wrapped in his hair. She looked like a woman in the grip of desire. She would…

No.

His good angel screamed so loud that even his most diabolic self shuddered. “I promised,” he said, and had to stop for a moment. She licked his lip, and it sent a stab of desire to his loins that could only be responded to in like manner. He had his hands around her again, lifting her slightly so that she fit snugly against him.

No.

“I'm going to show you how my body works,” he said, pushing her away.

Isidore's mouth was slightly puffy, bruised. Her eyes were like shadowed wells. “Tomorrow,” she said, drifting toward him. “For now, let's just kiss.”

He had to take charge. He had to be in control. He stepped back and ripped his shirt over his head.

There was an audible gasp and then a giggle. He risked looking at her.

“Simeon! You're taking your clothing off—”

He leaned over and pulled off a boot, and the other boot. The stones felt cold under his stocking feet.

“I can hardly see you!” she protested. “The moon isn't that bright and—” Her eyes were large and shining. She could see him well enough. He could see every shadow and curve on her, every inch of skin he wanted to kiss and lick…

He pulled down his breeches, paused for a moment and pulled off his stockings as well. If you're going to be naked in the garden, you might as well
be
naked.

Then, finally, he met her eyes.

Her hair was tumbling around her shoulders, falling around her face in a way that made her look shy and retiring, like the girl he thought he wanted. Back when he didn't know anything. Isidore might look shy, but it was a trick of the moonlight; her eyes were ranging all over his body, pausing here and there, sticking at his midsection until he almost started to grin, but he stopped. Waited.

She needed to
know
him in order to want him, he had decided.

“You have so many muscles,” she said finally. “Why?”

“Because I run.”

She came closer until she was a fraction of an inch from his skin. It was incredibly erotic, standing there naked before her in the moonlight. She reached out a finger and touched his chest. Her touch burned and he had to clench his fists to stop himself from reaching out to her. She rocked back on her heels and he felt her touch leave him.

“So how
does
your body work?” she whispered. But she wasn't looking in the right place any longer.

His erection was standing out from his body, straining in her direction. He wrapped his fingers around
himself. Her eyes flickered, darkened he thought, though it was hard to tell in the moonlight. “This is designed for your body,” he said. “Man and woman are designed to fit together.” He let his hand fall away.

Of course she was no timid miss. She wrapped her fingers around him and his head fell back. He caught a groan back at the last moment. “I'm glad it's not hairy,” she said thoughtfully. “You don't have very much chest hair, do you, Simeon?”

She loosed her grip and then just as he was about to answer, swept her fingers down the length of him. The words died and he couldn't stop the muffled sound in his throat. She liked that; he saw a gleam in her eyes.

And that was what he wanted, wasn't it? Wasn't it? Because she was experimenting now, holding him close, sliding—

“No,” he managed.

“Yes,” she said, tightening her hand, sliding…And her other hand, it was—

Fire raced up his thighs. He put his hands on her wrists and pulled them from his body, holding them for a moment before he let them drop.

“No.”

She pouted and her lips were so plumply alluring that he forgot his plan and pulled her into his arms. She gasped and then fit herself to him perfectly, like parts of a piano coming together to make music. Like a violin reunited with its bow.

“You're mine,” he said. His voice was guttural and not calm. Not soothing. Not in control. He didn't even care. She put her lips against his chest and gave him a little kiss, and another. The touch of her lips burned. He couldn't remember what the next phase of the plan was. But that part of his brain was still beating out the same
reproach: gentlemen don't make love to their ladies out-of-doors. It's not proper. It's not
right.
It's not calm and collected.

It's—

“I'll show you,” he said, his voice catching because her hair against his cheek was as soft as spun silk and he just wanted to eat her. To lick her. It could rain on them and he would lick every drop from her body and keep her warm.