When You Wish Upon a Duke (27 page)

“Oh, March.” She let her cloak slip from her shoulders to the settee and quickly came to stand close before him. Now she could see his face clearly, and his emotions as well, writ achingly plain across his handsome face.

He loved her
.

She could see it in his eyes even more clearly than she’d heard the words, and for the first time since they’d been wed, he’d lowered his guard of ducal propriety and let her peek inside. It hadn’t been easy for him, but that made it all the more special. Bravely he loved her; he cherished her, he wanted her above all other women. In that single, heart-stopping moment, it was all there for her to see and relish.

But there was more to see, too, in the tension in his mouth and the tightness of his jaw. To her shock, she realized from the sadness and resignation in his face that as glorious as his declaration was to her, he also feared, even expected, that she wouldn’t return it.

She wasted no time in correcting him.

“I love you, too, March,” she whispered, her voice breaking with the perfection of saying it aloud. She reached up and held his face in her hands, making sure he’d never doubt her again. His stubbled jaw was rough against her palms, and she could feel the beating of his heart beneath her fingers. “I love you, and I do believe I was always meant to love you.”

He smiled, and she felt that, too, with her fingers, his mouth curling up at the corners against her thumbs.

“I believe it so for me as well,” he said softly. “I love you, Charlotte. Do you know I’ve never said that to any other?”

She smiled, too, the joy so tight in her breast that she feared she’d weep from it.

“Nor I,” she said. “Nor should you, ever, ever, except to me.”

As if to prove it, he took one of her hands in his own and turned his face toward her palm, kissing her there on the softest part. She shivered with delight, and with remembering.

“You kissed my hand like that the first time we were alone together,” she said. “In the back room at the mantua-maker’s. I didn’t want you to stop.”

“I wouldn’t have,” he said, kissing the inside of her wrist. “Except that your Aunt Dragon was thumping on the door outside, determined to protect your virtue.”

She chuckled. “I vow she would have broken it down if we hadn’t opened it.”

“She’s not here now, is she?” Using her hand to reel her in closer, he kissed her mouth. From the way he kissed her, Charlotte knew that even if Aunt Sophronia had somehow appeared at that very moment in her dragon guise, he would have ignored her, even if she had broken down the door. But what was a mere dragon before her duke? If only he would always be like this!

No, there was more than that. They both must change. If only they could forget the others crowding round their marriage, offering advice and suggestions and criticisms. If only they could simply be March and Charlotte as lovers, and not the imposing duke and duchess.

“Oh, March,” she pleaded softly. “Why can we not always be like this, without a thought for what others
think or say? What does our rank or station matter if we love each other?”

He was listening closely, watching her with such intensity that it gave her courage to continue.

“My own husband,” she said, reaching up to run her fingertips over his lips. “I only wish to please you, you know. I don’t give a tinker’s dam for what anyone else might think or say. You’re all that matters to me, March. All.”

“All?” he repeated, the single word full of wonder.

“All,” she said. “And I—”

But what she said was lost between them as he swept her back into his arms to kiss her with astonishing purpose, deepening the kiss until she melted against him. What choice did she have, truly? She loved being kissed like this, until her head grew dizzy and her bones dissolved inside her, and she was happy to yield to him in any way that she could. He tasted of the wine he’d just drunk, but it was his own masculine taste that made her giddy and robbed her of her sense. Really, it was just as well he kept his arm around her waist. If he let go now, she’d likely sink to the floor at his feet.

He must have sensed how weak she’d become, because his hand slid lower, his fingers spreading to fondle and squeeze her bottom even as he pushed her belly more tightly against him. Countless layers of clothing separated them, but she could still feel how hard and hot his cock had become as it pressed against her. She sighed raggedly into his mouth as they kissed. Excitement was gathering within her, too, that irresistible, unladylike heat that she’d felt only on their wedding night, when they’d both had too much to drink.

Aunt Sophronia had told her it was unseemly to feel so, unseemly and slatternly and unbefitting a lady of her rank and station. But where was the sin in it if she and
March loved each other? How could any pleasure that felt as fine and right as this be wrong?

She tightened her arms around his broad back because she needed his support, but more because she wanted to. He was tugging at the back of her skirts, tangling in the cloth as he struggled to reach her within all that linen and silk and the cane of her hoops. Abruptly he stepped back, and she gasped in disappointment.

“Go to your maid, Charlotte,” he said, breathing hard. He clenched his hands tightly at his sides as he willed himself not to touch her further. “Have her undress you and prepare you for bed, and in a quarter hour’s time, I’ll come to you.”

On any other night she would have done as he’d asked, returning to Polly and her own bed to wait in misery for his bleak, empty visit. But tonight she knew he loved her, and that changed everything. She glanced up beyond March to the portrait of his great-grandmother behind him, and Charlotte could have sworn that Nan Lilly’s smile was for her.

No one should ever call the Duchess of Marchbourne a coward.

“I believe, March,” she said, her breathing rapid, “that I’d rather stay here with you.”

She retrieved her pearls from the table where she’d tossed them, and slowly hooked them back into her ears, the only things she intended to put back on. Slowly, too, she untied the lace kerchief from her shoulders and let it drift behind her. At once his gaze left her face to stare at her mostly bare breasts, raised and presented to him by her tight-laced stays. In the French fashion, of course.

He was either scowling or simply concentrating very hard on her breasts.

She sighed deeply, making sure that his concentration was well rewarded.

“Forgive me, March, but I no longer care what is appropriate
and what is not,” she said, lifting her arms to begin pulling the pins from her hair. “I told you that before.”

“You did,” March said, but with a decided lack of conviction—or rather, his conviction was more completely focused on her breasts. “That is, ah, true.”

“Of course it’s true,” she said. “You’re March and I am Charlotte, and I love you, and you love me.”

She drew the last pin from her hair and shook it free, combing her fingers through the heavy waves so that they rippled over her shoulders. March didn’t say anything, but she was quite sure she hadn’t lost his attention. This was an
interested
silence, nothing like the one he’d used before to keep her away. Lightly she rested her hands on his chest.

“I’ll act as your servant tonight,” she said, already unfastening the heart-shaped shirt buckle. The buckle pinned the opening of his shirt closed, and to free the prong she had to slip her fingers inside his shirt, brushing against his chest. “There will be no more need for you to summon Giroux than for me to call Polly. If you’ll let me, that is.”

“How could I stop you, Charlotte?” he asked, his voice strained.

Deliberately she tucked the little heart in the front of her stomacher, glittering between her breasts. “If you wished to, you could.”

“I could,” he agreed, leaving the rest unsaid. He could, but he wouldn’t. It was as if he’d given himself permission, and she fervently prayed he wouldn’t change his mind.

With a little smile she slipped her hands inside his jacket and eased it away from his shoulders and arms. She was surprised by how heavy it was: her clothes were as insubstantial and light as air, but his were weighed down with embroidery and buttons.

Buttons, and more buttons. While his coat had been open, his waistcoat wasn’t, and one by one by one she undid the long row of small cut-steel buttons, fifteen in all. She didn’t rush. She pushed each glittering button through its silk-stitched hole with care as her fingers made the slow progress down his chest and lower. She bent before him, and finally knelt before him, her skirts settling around her. From the way March tensed and shifted, struggling with his self-control, she suspected it all made for a teasing torment for him, which made her go more slowly still. She took extra time with the last buttons at the bottom of the waistcoat, and if her fingers brushed over his very evident cock inside his breeches, it was no more than artful accident.

Finally she reached the last button and swept the waistcoat from his shoulders. Her gaze met his for a moment, his dark eyes so full of smolder that she flushed and swiftly looked away. She was very much playing with fire. There was no other nor better way to describe it, and wondering how long he’d let her continue only made her game more exciting.

She stepped around him, as much to escape his gaze as to continue undressing him. She reached up and brushed his queue over his shoulder, and was surprised to see that the square buckle on the back of his stock was covered with rubies, too. Such a pretty, costly trinket, to be hidden by his collar, his hair, and his coat, and yet as she unfastened it and slowly drew the neck cloth free, she marveled at how many other such things she did not yet know about her husband. Even now she took a long minute to study him greedily, smoothing the white linen of his shirt over his broad shoulders and admiring the elegant fit of his breeches. It was a shame that gentlemen’s long coats hid their backsides so completely, for at least her husband’s was a handsome sight indeed, rounded and muscular from riding.

Swiftly she returned to his shirt, unbuttoning the cuffs before she stepped back before him to undo the two last buttons at his neck. From habit he raised his throat to make it easier, and she couldn’t help but kiss him there, beneath his chin.

He started, then grinned. “Giroux never does that.”

“I should expect not,” she said, smiling at the notion of the staid valet ever taking such an outrageous liberty with his master. “But I could not resist, March. Indeed, I could not.”

As if to prove it, she again kissed his chin, and his jaw, and then, inevitably, his lips as well. Yet while they kissed, she continued undressing him, pulling his billowing shirt free of his breeches and sliding her hands along his torso beneath it. His skin was warm and sleek, the play of his muscles beneath her hands fascinating. After that first night, he’d always taken care to come to her with his nightshirt, and whether it was unladylike or not, she’d missed … 
this
.

But now as they kissed, he was beginning to undress her, too, though with more urgency than finesse. Before long he’d managed to remove her gown, petticoat, and hoops, and he’d even unpinned her stomacher from her stays, only once stabbing himself on a pin.

“Ouch,” he said, breaking away from kissing her to stick his finger in his mouth. “Damnation, but there’s a lot of sharp points to you.”

She chuckled again. “Even roses have thorns.”

“I’d rather think of a bramble bush,” he said, turning her around. “At least once you pass the thorns, there’s a sweet berry inside. What kind of devil’s knot does your maid tie in your stays?”

“I don’t know what Polly does, because I never see it.” She turned her head to look back at him over her shoulder. “So you would rather think of me as a berry than a rose?”

“Of course,” he said, fighting with the knotted lace. “A rose is good for admiring and nothing more, but a berry is not only beautiful, but sweet and juicy.”

“ ‘Sweet and juicy’?” she repeated, for it seemed a nonsensical compliment. “How can I be as juicy as a berry?”

“You’ll see,” he said, his voice so low and full of dark promise that she shivered. “There goes the knot.”

There the knot went, and there went her stays, too, falling forward from her chest. She’d barely shrugged them free before he reached beneath her arms and into her shift to cup her breasts. She gasped with surprise and then with pleasure as he caressed her, tugging and teasing her nipples into stiff little peaks. Her breath quickened into little sighs of joy, and she closed her eyes and sagged back against him, covering his hands lightly with her own.

“You’re beautiful, Charlotte,” he murmured, kissing the side of her throat. “So beautiful.”

If all he did with her tonight was this, then she’d be happy, it felt that fine. But she was greedy and wanted more, and besides, she longed for their play to last the night. She slipped free of his embrace and darted out of his reach.

“You’ve far too many clothes compared to me,” she said breathlessly. He’d left her with only her shift, the fine Holland so sheer that she might as well be naked, and her shoes, stockings, and garters. She bent to pull his ruby-covered heart from her discarded stays, and tucked it instead in the neck of her shift. The weight pulled it down perilously low across her breasts, exactly as she’d hoped. “It’s your turn now.”

“Easily remedied,” he said, quickly pulling off his buckled shoes and reaching for the buttons on the fall of his breeches.

“Let me,” she said, stopping his hand. She knelt, but
instead of unbuttoning his fall, she began with the fastenings on the leg of his breeches, four small buttons and a buckle as well. When that was done, she untied his garter and pushed his stocking down along his well-muscled calf, then scurried over to the other leg to repeat the process.

“Charlotte,” he said, his voice faintly strangled. “This is torture.”

“I know,” she said, brushing her lips over the back of his now-bared knee. “But if I’m to be a proper valet—”

“A proper valet would have been sacked by now,” he said, and abruptly hauled her back to her feet.