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“Your mother, your sister,” he said.
She nodded.
He closed the small distance between them.
“This will be our first memory in this room,” he said. “I want it to be perfect. It must set the tone for the rest of our life here together. Because this is home.”
She looked at the bed, then up at him. Her mouth turned up ever so slightly.
She understood.
His gaze drifted downward.
She wore one of her new frocks: a pale lavender pelisse-robe that buttoned all the way down to the hem. “So many buttons,” he murmured as he brought his hands to the topmost one. He brought his mouth to hers as well, and kissed her. It was long, slow, and deep, and all the while he was unbuttoning, slowly, to just beneath her waist.
Then he eased away from her mouth and sank down onto his knees, and continued his work, but more quickly.
When he was done, he looked up at her. She shrugged out of the garment, let it drop to the floor.
She moved toward the bed, darting one quick but devastating glance over her shoulder. She leaned against the bedpost for balance and reached up under her petticoats.
He watched, still on his knees, mesmerized, while her silken drawers slipped to the floor. She loosened the ribbons of the petticoat bodice, and the neckline drooped over her corset, baring her breasts to a tantalizing hairsbreadth of the nipples.
She turned, slowly, and clasped the bedpost with both hands.
He rose, not at all slowly, and stripped to the skin. Over her shoulder, she watched him, her ripe mouth still curled in the tiny devil’s smile.
He went to her. “Wanton, Your Grace. You’ve become wanton and depraved.”
“I’ve had an excellent teacher,” she said softly.
He cupped her breasts, trailed kisses over her shoulders and back. He felt her shiver with pleasure, and he shivered and burned inwardly with impatience.
“I love you,” she said. “Take me like this.”
She pressed her beautiful rump to his loins.
Muslin tickled his swollen rod, a maddening torment that made him laugh hoarsely. In public, she could freeze a man with one blast from those ice-blue eyes. In private, with him, she was all fire, the most wanton of harlots.
He dragged up her skirts. “Like this, Duchess? Is this how you want me?”
“Yes, like this. Now.”
He cupped her, tangled his fingers in the silken curls, and found liquid heat. Now, she’d said, no more patient than he was.
He entered her, and took her as she wanted, because it was what he wanted, too. She understood.
He’d wanted this room to echo with cries of passion, and laughter, and love words. They were not tame and decorous beings, either of them, by nature. They were defiant and fearless and hot-blooded. They were not quite civilized and never would be.
And so they made love like the passionate creatures they were, and when they tumbled onto the bed, they made love again. And again. Fiercely, joyously, noisily, shamelessly.
And when, finally, they lay limp with exhaustion, their damp, naked bodies twined together, the scent of their passion hung in the air, in the mixed gold and crimson light of the setting sun, and the sounds of their lovemaking seemed to echo in the room.
“Now, there’s a memory to warm an old man in his old age,” Vere said. “And to give a fellow reason to live to a very old age.”
“You’d better,” she said. “Otherwise, I shall find someone else.”
“If you try to find a replacement, you’ll be sadly disappointed,” he said. “I can’t be replaced. I’m the only man in all the world who possesses the right combination of qualities for you.” Lazily he stroked her breast. “You can turn your Ballister stare upon me all you like, but you can’t petrify me. You can knock me about to your heart’s content without worrying about doing any damage. You can perpetrate any sort of outrage your wicked mind conceives and be sure I’ll join in, with a will. You’re a troublemaker, Lydia. A Ballister devil. Nothing less than a Mallory hellion would ever suit you.”
“Then you’d better stick with me for a very long time,” she said. “Else I’ll follow you into the hereafter.”
“You would, too.” He laughed. “You wouldn’t quail, even at the mouth of hell, with flames spewing at you and demons howling. But I’ll do my best to put that off as long as possible.”
“I can ask no more,” she said, “than that you do your best.”
“You may be sure I’ll make a first-rate effort to be one of the long-lived Mallorys.” He trailed his hand down to her belly. “For one, I’m vastly curious to see what sort of monsters we’ll produce.”
She laid her hand over his. “I am, too. It would be a grand thing, wouldn’t it,” she added softly, “if we started a baby on this day, our first day together in this house, in this bed. A child conceived in love, in the light of the sun…” Her mouth quirked up. “And altogether uninhibitedly.”
“A child would make a fine keepsake of the occasion,” he said huskily.
“The finest.” She tangled her fingers in his hair and brought his face close to hers. In her cool blue eyes, twin devils danced, the ones only he could see. “Maybe,” she whispered, “just one more time. I know there’s no way to make sure—”
He kissed her. “You may be sure, madam, that I’ll do my damnedest.”
He did.
Epilogue
In the 1829 edition of the Annual Register, under “Births,
July,” the following notice appeared: 20. At Longlands, Northants, the duchess of Ainswood, a son and heir.
The future duke, christened Edward Robert, was the first of seven children, of assorted genders. Some were fair-haired and blue-eyed, some dark-haired and green-eyed.
But they were all hellions, each and every one.
