Much Ado About You Page 23

But it wasn’t as if he were touching her below the waist. And then without conscious volition, his fingers were stealing under her skirts, over the weave of her stockings, finding the lump of her garter and stroking on, on to the sweet skin of her thighs, the rounded curve, dancing on her skin, dancing closer, dancing closer…

  “Lucius Felton!” she said, and her eyes popped open now. “You mustn’t—what are you doing?”

  “Touching you,” he said simply. “Touching my wife.”

  No one could see what he was doing, had there been anyone to see. There was merely his arm under her skirt, and she in the crook of his arm, her head thrown back so that he could capture her mouth when he wished it, his strong fingers shifting closer and closer…her breast lying open to the sunshine, a wanton invitation to pleasure.

  She was quivering as his fingers slid closer, her eyes wide. “You mustn’t!” she gasped again. He was almost there now. He felt a soft curl of hair against his finger; it sent a lightning stroke of pure lust to his groin.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “It’s not—” But she couldn’t even bring into words all the things that this was not.

  Lucius grinned at her. Blood was pounding through his body and pooling in his loins, but his brain was still functioning. Barely. “If we were Romans,” he said to her, and only the lazy, husky tone of his voice betrayed that they weren’t having a simple conversation, “we would both be unclothed.”

  “And there would be a roof!” she said, going rigid as he cupped her. “Lucius, I really don’t think—”

  But he couldn’t let her finish that foolish protest. “Your body would be laid out before me like a feast,” he said to her, his voice deepening even more. “The steam would make your skin slippery. I would probably lay you back on this bench”—he stopped to kiss her, to kiss her into silence—“I would lay you back, Tess, and I would kiss my way down your neck, and down your breast, and the curve of your stomach…”

  Her eyes were dark as indigo ink. She didn’t seem to be breathing, just waiting.

  “I would kiss you here,” he whispered, bending his head to her breast at the very same time he breached her thighs in a slow, dizzying lunge—an exploration, a delight, a curvaceous dance…His lips played the same wet dance with her breast, a rough caress that made her body quiver and shake under his touch, under his tongue.

  All thought of footmen and picnics had fled Lucius’s head, leaving only the sleepy song of the grasshoppers, together with the warm, dappled light that spilled into the Roman bath and made Tess’s skin shimmer like diluted sunlight.

  A moment, an hour later, he found himself on his knees, unwrapping his bride as if she were the most important present he’d ever received in his life. Under his shaking fingers, strings sang their way apart. Buttons fell apart as if they were never meant to fasten. It was the point of no return.

  And at this crucial moment, Tess recovered her voice. It had deepened with desire to a huskier tone, a deeper hue, silken, wondering. “What are you doing now?” she wanted to know, when he pulled her gown over her head. “Are we playing Romans?”

  “Undressing you,” he said, with a hard kiss, pulling off her chemise as well. And then without waiting for her to catch breath, he scooped her onto his lap and let his hand drift where it longed to be, shaping her breast again and making her cry out in delicious surrender.

  Her eyes drifted shut and she leaned against him with utter trust. Blood pounded in his ears and he could hear nothing more than the gentle hum of bees working in the daisies in the banks above them, that and her little gasps of breath when his thumb rubbed in a lazy circle.

  But it seemed that he hadn’t married a lady. Because she let out a hum of pleasure, a purring noise in her throat that didn’t have a trace of self-conscious disapproval in it. Instead, her breast seemed to plump into his hand, a small nipple taut against his palm, a warm sound in her throat for every move of his hand…

  Of course, this could not go where it showed every sign of going. The weight of her bottom was delicious on his lap. He shifted her back on the bench as if she were that Roman matron he talked of, but she wouldn’t stay put. She sat up, all glowing skin, creamy pale curves that swelled to plump breasts, then the curve of her hips, a shy triangle of curls at her thighs.

  “There were two Romans,” she said. “And they were both unclothed.”

  His hands were wandering over her body with a harder stroke now, a possessive, take-no-prisoners kind of harshness that made her eyes lose their focus and her breath catch in her throat.

  But: “You should have no clothing as well.” And: “Lucius!”

  So he stood up and pulled off his boots, and, his eyes never leaving her, wrenched off his breeches and his smalls.

  Tess could feel cool moss under her bare bottom and cool moss at her back. She could hardly believe that her body wasn’t burning an imprint. Lucius was all muscle:all smooth, hard lines, beautiful in the sunlight. He turned, and the long line of his flank looked like carved marble, and there in front—

  She pressed back against the wall and a thrum of cowardice quivered in her heart. But there was something in his face she’d never seen there before. Was it joy? Desire. He looked free.

  Perhaps all men had that wildness when they were—the very thought reminded her that she couldn’t imagine a single gentleman of her acquaintance allowing himself to be unclothed in Mr. Jessop’s field.

  And yet, here was her husband. He was—magnificent. She reached out for him.

  Throughout her entire life, Tess never forgot what it felt like when Lucius first snatched her off the bench and held her against his body, skin to skin, softness to muscle, man to woman.

  There wasn’t room on the bench for the two of them, so they lay on a little nest of clothing, and she explored him. He was rigid—all over.

  “I just want you to know,” he said, “that I won’t actually take you here, Tess. I would never do that.”

  Her fingers stilled on the muscles of his flank. She had been thinking foggily that she would be more brave in touching him: after all, his fingers were everywhere.

  So she slid her fingers there: over the clean smooth length of him, enjoying the hiss of breath from behind his clenched teeth, the involuntary jerk of his body.

  But her skin longed for that feeling of him, so she came closer, until her breasts were against his chest, and he jerked again. She nuzzled his neck, and he made a rough sound in his throat; she ran her fingers over the muscles of his back, and her breasts rubbed against his chest again. He was shaking; she could feel his body shaking against hers.

  Tess was the one grinning now. There is a great deal of pleasure in power, after all.

  A second later she was flat on her back, and—the grin fled, like a dream in the night. One touch of his fingers, his lips at her breast, and she was crying out, twisting up toward him, lost in a fog of intoxicated sensation.

  But Lucius was having a moment of clarity. “I can’t do it, Tess,” he gasped, stilling his fingers.

  But she whimpered and bucked against him, so he answered her silent demand even though the slick welcome to his fingers turned his mind black, but still one thought caught. Her mother died years ago. She had no mother.

  “It’s not a question of breeding, Tess,” he told her, trying to control his voice. “The first time for women is painful. There’s—there’s blood. You wouldn’t be comfortable here.”

  She blinked, and he saw she did know that. But the knowledge slid away instantly, replaced by a haze of desire, and she arched against him again, the softness of her inflaming him, the wantonness of her snapping his control.

  He didn’t seem to be able to stop touching her, his fingers taking a rhythm that they couldn’t stop. Her full breasts rubbed against his chest and left streaks of fire, and she was twisting under him, moaning and crying, and suddenly she grabbed his shoulders. Her eyes flew open. “This hurts, Lucius,” she said. “This hurts.”

  He let hi
s fingers sink into her warmth.

  “That doesn’t hurt,” she gasped, and then pulled his head down and kissed him—a kiss that was a moan, a touch and sound at once.

  He let his hand fall away. It took nothing more than a delicious thought to poise himself against her. He was hungry for her, desperate for her.

  A cry came from her throat—but it didn’t speak of pain. Still…the blood. Every instinct told him that a gently raised female should experience something so distressing in her own bed, on clean sheets, in the dark preferably.

  But Tess showed not the slightest wish to retreat into the shade.

  She opened her eyes with a gasp and found her husband’s dark eyes looking down at her. She couldn’t help it, she laughed: a laugh and a gasp at once. “Don’t be so serious, Lucius!”

  “I feel you might regret—”

  “Never,” she interrupted. “You mustn’t think we’re the first to make love in Farmer Jessop’s field.”

  “The Romans were long ago and as you say, they had a roof.”

  “Emily,” she said, panting a little. “Emily and William. She was only sixteen—and why do you think he buried her under the sycamore tree?”

  He was braced on his elbows above her and he just nudged her. A silent acknowledgment, an acknowledgment of Emily and her William.

  “Do that again!”

  He did, and a pleading sound flew from her lips.

  “Again—”

  She was arched toward him, thrown in erotic abandonment, crying with every touch. So he fell free suddenly, shook off thoughts of civility and white sheets and darkened rooms. What had that to do with his own wanton, ecstatic wife, her fingers digging into his shoulders?

  He thrust.

  Her eyes flew open and fixed on his face. He waited for her cry, for pain, for—for a gush of blood? He hardly knew what he was waiting for. It was as if the whole spun-sunshine silent world hung for a second, the blue sky holding its breath.

  But her eyes were shining. “Go on,” she said in a husky whisper. “Or—or”—and now there was something like anguish in her eyes—“was that all?”

  There, in the Roman baths, with swallows circling overhead, Mr. Lucius Felton threw back his head and laughed. And since his new wife took exception to his humor, he must needs soothe her vexed feelings.

  So he thrust himself slowly into her again, and encountered nothing but joy. They experimented, until they found a rhythm that matched their passion.

  The only thing pounding through Tess’s mind was an urge to move. She understood, suddenly, with shocking clarity, crude stable jests about riding women. But was she being ridden? Or was she riding? Their bodies met each other with fierce strength. Lucius’s breath was making a harsh sound, and he was clenching his teeth, braced on his arms, eyes shut.

  Tess looked up at him and knew that she was losing control of the ride: her body was flying free on its own, riding him harder and higher. Suddenly she felt his hand rub across her nipple, a rough shaping of her breast with a hand that said, without words, this body is mine.

  And she flung free, the heat exploding to the very ends of her fingertips, free with a cry that disappeared into the blue sky.

  Chapter

  29

  Lucius’s house was a Tudor collection of herringbone brick and tiny mullioned windows patched in rather higgledy-piggledy, with roofs sloping down in all directions. It looked as if Elizabethan ancestors had added on various chambers when they felt like it, and the whole had settled into the ground until it had a slightly crazed but comfortable look about it.

  It wasn’t nearly as large as Holbrook Court. It certainly wasn’t a castle, as Annabel predicted, nor even a mansion. It was a large house, a large, charming, comfortable pile of a house.

  Tess didn’t realize just how much she was dreading becoming the Lady of the Castle until the carriage drew to a halt. “Is this it?” she breathed.

  Lucius waved off his footman and helped her from the carriage. “Yes, this is Bramble Hill. Do you like it?”

  She looked up at him, eyes glowing, and breathed, “Oh, Lucius, I adore it!” It wasn’t until a few minutes later that she realized there was profound relief in his eyes.

  “It’s not as grand as Holbrook Court,” he remarked.

  They were walking up a wide sweeping circle of stairs to the large door. “I would dislike that very much,” Tess said frankly. “I thought you would live in a castle.”

  “A castle?”

  She nodded.

  “I can buy you a castle if you’d wish.”

  “No, thank you.”

  Servants were spilling out of the entrance portico now, lining up on either side. Lucius might not live in a castle, but he certainly appeared to have enough staff for one.

  “This is Mr. Gabthorne,” Lucius said, introducing her to a round, cheerful-looking butler. “I am happy to say that Mrs. Gabthorne acts as a housekeeper for us, and does a wonderful job too. And this is…”

  Introducing the servants—each of whose names Lucius recalled without difficulty—took over forty minutes. Afterward Lucius led her into a lofty-ceilinged sitting room that opened with huge arched windows to the gardens.

  “Bramble Hill was redesigned two years ago by John Nash, working with a landscape gardener,” Lucius remarked. “All the main rooms have windows to the ground. From the drawing room, one can look west or south, either across the park, or past the conservatory and along the valley.”

  Tess turned around and around in the drawing room. The entrance to the garden was all entangled with ivy, honeysuckle, and jasmine. “It must be utterly beautiful in the summer.”

  “I’m fond of it,” Lucius agreed.

  She turned around and looked at him sharply. “I am surprised by all this—” She waved her hand at the graceful furniture and heavy silk rose fabric at the windows. The floor was strewn with rugs in faded jewel colors.

  “Why?”

  “I suppose because it’s so—so homey. And yet it’s not a family home, is it?”

  Lucius strolled over to the mantelpiece and seemed absorbed in gathering a few fragrant chrysanthemum petals that had fallen from a bowl. “If you mean by that, did I grow up here, or was this house in my family when I was a child, no.”

  “Of course that’s what I meant,” Tess said. “You found this house yourself.”

  He nodded.

  “And you furnished it so beautifully.”

  “I had help,” he said mildly. “I travel a great deal, so it was no hardship to find pieces that I like and have them shipped here. I’m afraid you’ll find, Tess, that I am rather set in my ways. All my houses look like this.”

  Her eyes widened. “Exactly like this?”

  He laughed. “Not exactly.”

  And then, “How many houses are we talking about?”

  He cocked his head, almost as if he were listening to the wind. “Four…five counting the hunting lodge.”

  Tess sat down suddenly. “And each is as beautifully appointed as Bramble Hill.”

  “I like to be surrounded by attractive things,” he said, sitting down opposite her.

  “Each has a full staff?”

  “Naturally.”

  “It might as well be a castle,” Tess said, blinking at him.

  “I trust not.”

  “It’s not the beauty of it that surprises me,” Tess said, looking around again. “It’s the way it looks, well, as if it had been here for a hundred years. As if you inherited it from a great-grandfather.” She walked over to the wall and stood before a grand lady in an extremely starched ruff. The lady was clutching a fan, and looking down her nose, and altogether had the look of a rather ferocious ancestor.

  “A portrait of an Elizabethan lady,” Lucius said, walking over to her. “I bought it when the Lindley estate was sold off. Presumably she is a Lindley, although the sellers were unable to tell me her name.”

  Tess looked up at the fierce lady, nameless now and yet clearly so proud of
her name. It seemed odd that Lucius had hung portraits that any reasonable person would assume to be his own ancestors, but she couldn’t quite put her feeling into words without seeming critical, so she kept her tongue.

  “I bought this painting at the same time,” Lucius said, leading her across the room.

  It was a girl, half-turned toward the room. For all its formality, her personality peeked through: she was wistful, yet there was a dimple in her cheek.

  “That’s lovely,” Tess said. “I don’t suppose you know who she is?”

  “No idea. The painting was sold to me as a Vandyke, but I believe it’s likely of the school, rather than the master himself.”

  Tess had no idea who Vandyke was, and she was conscious of a growing feeling of inadequacy. Lucius’s house was so—so perfect. Perfectly appointed, even to the extent of ready-made ancestors. Perhaps this was common in England; she had never heard of hanging a portrait of an utterly unknown person. “Do you not have any representations from your own family?” she asked, and then could have bitten her tongue. Of course his family would not have given him any such thing.

  But he answered easily enough. “None at all,” and took her by the arm and led her through the gardens.

  They were strolling through the rosebushes, all pollarded and stricken-looking, the poor things, when Tess asked: “And your house in London, is it as exquisite as this one?”

  “I think so,” Lucius said rather indifferently, poking a rock off the path with his cane.

  “With similar portraits on the walls?”

  He nodded. “I have a nice portrait of three children by William Dobson in the drawing room: I do know who those are. They were the children of a roundhead cavalier during the Civil Wars, whose name was Laslett.”

  “Are there still Lasletts in England?”

  “I would expect they are somewhere,” Lucius said. “I haven’t the faintest idea. I’ve never met one, at any rate.”

  They turned down a path that led to a charming pergola. Tess admired the structure and thought about her husband.

  It wouldn’t do, that’s all. It simply wouldn’t do. Somehow she had to mend the fences between her husband and his parents, and then the first thing she would do after that would be to remove all these—these spurious relatives from the walls and give them back to whomever they belonged to. It wasn’t right to have other people’s family on one’s walls. It was as if Lucius was trying to create a new family to replace the one that discarded him.