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She was looking up at him, into those dangerous green eyes, and all she saw there was love. His beautiful mouth curved into the smile that could so easily warm a woman’s heart, and lower down.
He truly did love her. After all she’d told him. He truly believed she could do anything.
“And if I don’t?” she said. “If this sticky little matter proves too much even for my guile and imagination—”
“We’ll live with it,” he said. “Life isn’t perfect. But I had much rather live it imperfectly with you.”
“Th-that is a very f-fine s-sentiment.” The sob was filling her chest.
“I didn’t practice it at all,” he said.
“Oh, Clevedon,” she said.
He opened his arms. She walked into them. There was no choice, no choice at all. His arms closed about her and she wept, stupidly, but it was days and nights’ worth of bottled-up fear and worry and sorrow and anger and hope.
Against all odds, hope. Because she was a dreamer and a schemer, and one didn’t dream and scheme without hope.
“Does this mean I’ve won?” he said. Tears were all very well, but he needed to be absolutely sure.
“Yes,” she said, her voice muffled against his waistcoat. “Although some might argue that you’ve lost.”
“Will you marry me?”
A long pause.
His grip of her tightened. “Marcelline.”
“Yes. I’m simply not noble enough to say no.”
“Don’t be noble, I beg you,” he said. “I think nobleness of spirit . . . and morals . . . and ethics . . . and scruples . . . those sorts of things are all very well in their place. To a point, you know. But beyond a certain point, I think they make me bilious.”
She looked up at him. Tears shimmered in her eyes but there was laughter as well, and it curved the corners of her beautiful mouth.
“It doesn’t agree with me,” he said. “I tried to be good. I tried not to be my father. I tried to live up to Lord Warford’s standards. Then one day I realized it was pointless, and I’d had enough. That’s when I set out with Longmore on a Grand Tour. But when he decided he’d had enough of the Continent, and wanted to come home, I didn’t think I could stand coming back. Then you came into my life and everything changed. Because you were right. For me. Are. Right. For me.” He slid his hand down her back. He heard her breath hitch.
That was all it wanted. That little sound. He had waited for so long. He’d suffered the tortures of the damned.
He tipped up her chin and untied her bonnet. He tossed it aside.
She winced. “That was my best bonnet. It took me forever to decide which one to wear.”
“You? But you always know what to wear.”
“I never had to confess to anybody before,” she said. “That’s my confession bonnet. I even trimmed it special—and you toss it aside like a soiled handkerchief.”
“You confessed,” he said. “It was beautifully done. Like everything you do.” He quickly untied the black lace thing around her neck.
She caught his hand before he could throw that down. “Clevedon, what do you think you’re doing?”
They’d waited long enough. They’d made each other miserable for long enough. It was time for happiness.
“You know very well what I’m doing,” he said.
“You didn’t even lock the door,” she said.
“Right.”
He let go of her hand, picked up the nearest chair, and pushed it under the doorknob.
Then he led her to the sofa. He draped the lace thing over the back, and brought his hands to the fastenings of the layered cape.
“You can’t undress me,” she said.
He looked down at the layered cape and the great puffed sleeves and the belt, and he remembered what was underneath, layer upon layer. He remembered watching her undress herself. He remembered the way she’d set her leg on the bed, against his hip, and rolled down her stocking.
For a moment he couldn’t breathe. His heart was pumping too fast and his breathing was too quick and that was nothing to the excitement stirring down low.
“Right,” he said. “Another time.” He drew her down onto the sofa and gathered her in his arms. He kissed her until her body went all soft and yielding and her arms wrapped about his neck, and she kissed him back in the same fierce way.
He lifted his mouth an inch from hers. “I’ve been wretched,” he said.
“I’ve been wretched, too,” she said. “I’m no good at being good.”
“I don’t want you to be good,” he said. “I want you to be you. Marcelline. The woman I love.”
She caught hold of his head and brought his mouth to hers.
It was a long, searching kiss, and a lifetime seemed to pass in that kiss, and a lifetime opened up before them. He’d very nearly ruined his life and hers, but they’d found their way at last.
He eased his mouth from hers and said against her cheek, “One of these days—soon—we’ll have time for leisurely lovemaking. I’ll spend a delicious forever taking off your beautiful clothes. “But for now . . .” He found the bodice fastening under the cape and he unhooked enough of the bodice to get to her corset and chemise, exposing a few inches of her velvety skin. He kissed the hollow of her throat, and the smooth curve of her neck, and she sighed, and arced back, like a cat stretching simply for the pleasure of it.
She still had one hand tangled in his hair while she moved the other over him, taking possession of him the way he took possession of her, so easily and naturally, with a touch. He heard the brush of her fingers over the wool of his coat sleeve and the rustle of his starched neckcloth as her hand moved downward. When she came to the waist of his trousers, he caught his breath.
She slid her hand down, and his cock swelled and rose at the touch, and “Mine,” she said softly. “All this manly beauty. All mine.”
He caught hold of her dress, the embroidered flowers feeling almost alive under his hand. He dragged it up by fistfuls, a great mass of dress and petticoats that billowed over his arm. He stroked over her drawers, upward over her thighs and between her legs to the opening of her drawers. He cupped her and she shivered. “Mine,” he said. “All this feminine perfection. Mine.”
His mouth found hers again and he kissed her and drank in the taste of her and the feel of her mouth and her tongue, and he took it all in like a man starved. And while he kissed her, he slid his fingers into the soft cleft between her legs. She was wet there, and her legs trembled as he stroked her, and then he was trembling, too. So much happiness.
“What a lucky man I am,” he said.
She let out a throaty laugh. “You’re about to get luckier.”
She unfastened his trousers fully and grasped him. “I want you,” she said softly. “I want you inside me. I want you to be mine and I’ll be yours.”
“Yes, yes, yes, whatever you say.” He pushed into her, and he seemed to fly up into the heavens. He saw stars, and “Oh,” she said. “Your grace.”
“Gervase,” he said.
“Gervase,” she said, and she made it a whisper, and the sound made him shiver. “Mon amour.”
Then in French: murmured words of nonsense and love and pleasure while they made slow love, then faster love, until there was nowhere farther to go, and they seemed to leap to a blinding happiness, like flying to the sun. Release came in a cascade of sweetness. Then he was sinking onto her, burying his face in her neck, and murmuring her name.
For a time they simply lay together.
Quietly. At peace.
So hard to believe, after so much turmoil. But here he was, in her arms, and there was her heart beating steadily in her chest and filled with happiness.
She held him, relishing his weight and the feel of his silky hair against her skin and the scent of him, while her breathing quieted, and th
e world came back.
“That was much more fun than self-sacrifice,” he muttered.
She laughed. “Yes, cheri, it was.”
He raised himself up to look at her. “Cheri,” he repeated. “Why does it sound so delicious when you say it?”
“Because I’m delicious,” she said.
“The delicious Duchess of Clevedon,” he said. “I like the sound of that. I like the feel of her better,” he said. “And the scent of her. And the sound of her voice. And the way she moves. I love her madly. I would like to stay here, and count all the ways I love her, and show her all the ways I love her. But the world calls. Life calls.” He kissed her, so tenderly, on her forehead. “We have to put our clothes on.”
It took only a minute or two, since they hadn’t taken very much off. For her, a slight rearrangement of her undergarments, a few hooks to fasten, a stocking to pull up, a garter to tie. For him, a quick business of pulling up his drawers and trousers, tucking his shirt in, and buttoning a handful of buttons.
He found her black lace fichu, and she tied it.
