Page 127

“Easy,” he said, holding her up. “I’ve got you, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”

“I—I thought—”

He gave her a hard, swift kiss. “I want you out of the river.” And without another word he began towing her through the water as if she were no heavier than a babe. Isidore had just enough time to be confusedly grateful for Simeon’s passion for running and the strength it gave him. (Turquoise Coat would have left her to sink or, rather, he would have plummeted down right next to her.)

Then they were at the shore, where a hundred helping hands reached out to them. Simeon was up in a flash, turning around to pull Isidore up the bank. Her skirts seemed ten times heavier than they had been, and the weight of water and jewels made the silk of her overskirts stretch past her feet, tripping her. Finally Simeon just bent down, picked her up in his arms and walked up the slope.

Everyone on the bank was screaming and howling “Hurrah!” The noise was deafening. Isidore felt a sudden breeze, took one appalled glance down, and realized that the diamond-encrusted cloth of her bodice had given up its battle with gravity and had fallen below her nipples. She looked up, horrified, and met Simeon’s eyes. He was laughing.

A second later they were on the bankside, and Simeon wrapped a coat tightly around her. “I can’t let all of London know what they’re missing,” he said into her ear.

“Oh, Simeon,” she said, hiccupping, half-crying. “He struck you, Simeon. He struck you and I couldn’t do anything to stop him.”

“You did stop him,” Simeon said. “I might have died, but for you.”

“And then we were in the water,” Isidore said with another hiccup, “and I was going down, and all I could think of was the Dead Watch and how they would gloat when they were sent to find my body.”

“Never,” he said, his arms tightening around her. “I would never allow that to happen.”

“Don’t ever let them be the ones to rescue my body, Simeon,” she said. “Promise me.”

“You’re not going to drown. Ever.”

She put her head against his chest and listened to the strong beat of his heart. They were safe. Tears slid slowly down her cheeks.

He said something she couldn’t hear.

“What?”

“Don’t you see how lucky we are, Isidore?”

“Yes,” she said, a little damply. Her heart was still pounding with fear, even now she was in the warm circle of his arms.

He pulled back and cupped her face in his hands. “We’re like your parents, sweetheart. If one of us is going to be lost, both of us will go. I would never, ever stop searching for you if our boat overturned.”

Then he was kissing her, the kind of possessive, loving kiss that she’d seen her father give her mother a hundred times. Tears welled out of her eyes, and Isidore wound her arms around Simeon’s neck and held on as tightly as she could, even as her tears made him a little wetter than he already was.

It sounded as if the cheers grew even louder when he lowered his head to hers again…but maybe that was just her imagination.

Two minutes later, Simeon picked her up again and carried her through the crowd, regardless of her wet, heavy dress trailing behind them. Isidore hadn’t paid much attention to what was happening around her, but when the groomsmen closed the carriage door behind them and Simeon deposited her on a seat, she looked about. She was placed in the most luxurious carriage she had ever ridden in, upholstered in red velvet with gold coronets sprinkled everywhere. The horses started and she could hardly feel the motion, so sweetly was the coach designed and calibrated.

“Where are we?” she asked, half laughing.

Simeon was wrestling off his wet shirt and didn’t look up. “The Duke of Buckingham’s carriage.”

“A royal carriage,” she said, watching him under her eyelashes. Her breath felt hot in her chest. Surely he couldn’t mean to…

He did mean precisely that.

Because a second later Simeon was tenderly peeling her drenched bodice down to her waist. There were red marks on her skin left by the diamonds as she struck the surface of the water. He kissed every little bruise, moving down her body like a man who knew exactly where those kisses were most needed.

And though Isidore had never imagined such a thing was possible—making love in a carriage, let alone a prince’s carriage!—she found herself laying back on red velvet upholstery as her husband deftly woke her body into the same trembling, vibrating state she had experienced on the yacht.

“We shouldn’t,” she whispered at some point, and lost her train of thought when a wave of pleasure swept her into a place where words were impossible.

And when he thrust into her, she plummeted into a state where she could do nothing but sob for the pure pleasure of it.

Simeon’s body begged him to follow her, but instead he chose to make love to Isidore slowly. It was only by kissing her, by stroking her, by stroking in her, that he could tell her in a way that scorched the truth into both their hearts.