Then she raised her arms and pulled the last pins from her hair. It fell below her shoulders, ringlets and curls, thick and silky. She ran her fingers through it, shaking her locks free, enjoying the way her breasts rose in the air.
“You are so beautiful,” Gabriel growled, his voice little more than a thread of sound.
“I believe it’s time for a bath,” she said, turning her back on him. Then she paused and looked over her shoulder. “You
did
say that there was a bath prepared for me?”
He didn’t seem to be able to speak, but he leaped ahead of her and pulled away the velvet curtain that concealed his bathing area.
“How lovely!” Kate cried, seeing the huge iron tub full of gently steaming water, candles throwing golden specks of light over the velvet of the curtains, over the water, over her body.
She stepped forward and put in a toe, then, with a sigh of pure pleasure, relaxed into the curve of the tub, sweeping her hair behind her so that it hung over the edge.
The only sound in the room was the gentle plash of water and the harsh sound of Gabriel’s breathing. She couldn’t stop smiling. If she, Katherine Daltry, decided to be a wanton, she would be the best wanton this castle had ever seen.
“Soap,” she said, holding out her hand.
Gabriel put the ball in her hand without a word.
“Mmmm,” she said, sniffing it. “Apple blossom?”
“Orange blossom,” he said. His voice was dark and sinful.
She sat up just enough so that she could soap her left arm. “Shouldn’t you be getting dressed so that you can go back downstairs?” she asked. “I’m afraid everyone will be wondering where you are.”
His eyes were fixed on her hands as she soaped her right arm.
“Gabriel?” she inquired innocently, her hands straying to her breasts. “I’m sure you said that you would come and go. That was your plan, wasn’t it?”
His gaze was so hungry, so hot, that she was surprised the water didn’t evaporate. He cleared his throat. “Why don’t you finish washing, and then I’ll go. Unless you would like some assistance?”
She raised a leg from the bath and slowly, slowly washed her toes, letting her fingers stray up her leg.
“I suppose,” she said, stealing a glance at him under her lashes, “someone might help me with this other leg.”
Somehow it felt entirely different when strong male hands stroked soap over her leg.
And Gabriel’s interpretation of
leg
was not exactly in line with her own. Kate was no sooner lying back in the bath, enjoying the tingling sensation of his strong fingers stroking her thigh, than they crept higher . . . and then higher still.
She sat up. “Gabriel!”
“Hush, darling,” he said. And with that, his fingers slipped into a caress. This was no kiss . . . She should stop him.
Instead her legs fell farther apart in a silent plea that he continue. Whatever he was doing was fatal to her self-control. Kate’s common sense, her willpower, all the parts that made her fierce and strong, deserted her. All that was left was a body that rejoiced in his touch, arched toward him.
His other hand wandered to her breast and she actually threw her head back and cried aloud. His hands were like fire, teasing, tormenting, stroking her . . .
“I—” she gasped.
A finger dipped into her most private place for one throbbing instant and she shattered, crying out, her arms flying around his neck, her body shaking as stroke after stoke of fire shot through her body.
Kate came to herself slowly, finding that her wet arms were locked around Gabriel’s neck, that her eyes were squeezed shut. His fingers eased from her plump folds, giving them a little farewell pat that sent a final shudder through her body.
“God almighty, Kate,” he said in a kind of groan.
She didn’t move. She felt sweaty—and she was in a bath. Noises had come from her mouth that she hadn’t imagined any lady could ever make. Pleasure was replaced by a wave of embarrassment so violent that she would have preferred to die rather than open her eyes.
Plus—though it was a minor consideration—her legs were still throbbing.
“Kate?” he asked, his voice just as sinful as before. “Are you ever going to open your eyes?”
She shook her head, keeping her face tight to his skin. It smelled warm and male and indescribably enticing.
A hand slid down her back, following the curve of her spine under water, slid around the curve of her hip. “I want to kiss you there,” he said, conversationally.
Her body jerked in shock. “No,” she said, the word muffled by his skin.
“I must go downstairs and begin the dancing, but Kate . . .”
He gently pulled her arms from around his neck and stood up. Perforce, she opened her eyes. He was all taut muscle, even the part that stood fiercely above the band of his smalls.
“Won’t that be uncomfortable?” she asked, realizing instantly that her effort to make casual conversation was a failure. There was something aching in her voice, something that begged him to stay.
He couldn’t stay.
He was rubbing toweling over his chest and staring at her as if he couldn’t look away. “Yes,” he said flatly. “I’m going to have to wait on those stairs for a good ten minutes.”
Looking at his face, Kate suddenly realized that there was no reason for her shock of embarrassment. What happened between them, no matter how intimate, was not shameful.
So she pointedly let her legs fall apart, just as they wished to, and ran her hand down the inside of her thigh.
“What if I want that kiss . . .
now
?” she whispered.
Her flesh throbbed under her light touch, at the very idea of it.
“You’re killing me,” he said hoarsely. “I have to go, Kate. You know that.”
She gave him a devilish smile. “It’s all right. As long as you remember that I’m here, waiting.” She let her head fall backward, and her breasts rose above the water.
He made a choked noise and disappeared through the velvet drapes. Kate heard the door close behind him.
A small smile curled her lips. She had learned something rather wonderful, it seemed to her.
Gabriel would go downstairs and do whatever it was he had to do . . . and then he would return.
Y
ou almost missed the first dance,” Wick hissed at him. “I’ve delayed the musicians as long as I was able, telling everyone that Sophonisba was taken ill.”
Gabriel felt as if he were in a dream. His mind, his heart, were locked upstairs, with Kate, with the silky, honey woman waiting for him.
The only thing that got him to the threshold of the ballroom was the iron sense of duty in which he had been drilled since birth.
“I’m here,” he said tightly.
“Not a good night,” Wick said, looking at him. “She’s over there.” He nodded toward Tatiana and her uncle, in the middle of a small circle of gentlemen.
Gabriel walked across the room like a sleepwalker and apologized to Tatiana for missing most of the evening meal. “My aunt is elderly, as you could see,” he said. “When we reached her chambers she wasn’t feeling well, and I’m afraid she is rather imperious in demanding attendance during those moments.”
“I admire a man who has a sense of his responsibilities,” Dimitri said, rocking back on his heels and smiling approvingly at Gabriel. “Family always comes first in Russia. I don’t care for the kind of fathering that you see in England, with a child scarcely recognizing his own blood relation.”
A little girl with Merry’s name and Kate’s face danced across Gabriel’s mind as he turned to Tatiana and requested her hand for the dance.
Tatiana danced like a feather, her curtsies graceful, her sense of timing impeccable. And Gabriel, trained to dance from the age of three, was as good as she was.
Dimly, from behind a haze of sensual frustration, he was aware of the pleasure of having a partner with whom he was truly in harmony.
“Perhaps we might dance again?” he asked, as the music drew to a close.
She bestowed a little smile on him. “Indeed, Your Highness, it would be a pleasure.”
“A waltz, perhaps,” he said, knowing that he was putting the seal on his coffin. The moment a waltz began and he stepped onto that floor with Tatiana held in his arms, it would be a matter of days until he was signing a marriage contract. The dance was considered too sensual and disreputable by many sticklers in the
ton
; stepping onto the floor with an unmarried woman was tantamount to an announcement of their impending marriage. Not that anyone had any question about that.
She looked a little puzzled, as if a shadow of the bleakness that stabbed through his body had become visible in his eyes.
“I would be honored,” he said, getting a grip on himself.
Tatiana turned from him to take Toloose’s hand, giving him the confident smile of a girl who is discovering her power over men. “I should have to ask my uncle,” she told him, secret laughter in her eye showing that she understood the implication of a waltz as well as he did.
Gabriel took a breath. If he danced two or three more sets, and then told the orchestra to play the shortest waltz they had in their repertoire, then he could pretend to fall, or pretend to get drunk. Anything to get himself out of the room and back up to his tower.
A sharp rap on his arm brought him back to himself.
Lady Wrothe was standing at his side. “The music’s starting again,” Henry stated. The expression on her face was not entirely charming.
“Lady Wrothe,” he said, bowing. “Would you be so kind as to—”
“Yes, I would sit out this measure with you,” she said, interrupting. “Very kind of you, as I turned an ankle with these dratted heels of mine.” She headed directly for a secluded little alcove, just large enough for its padded settee.
“Now where’s my goddaughter?” she asked, without preamble. “I’ve been to her room, so I know that’s a taradiddle about her stomach. Kate’s not the sort to suffer any ailments; I’d be surprised if the girl spent a day in bed in her life.”
Gabriel’s jaw clenched as images of just how he and Kate could spend a day in bed together crashed into his mind. “I’m afraid that I can’t assist you,” he said, through the roaring in his ears.
“Can’t or won’t?” Henry said, tapping him sharply again with her fan. “I’m not a jack-pudding, you know. That girl’s parents have both cocked up their toes, and so she’s mine now. And I”—she smiled with all the charm of a mother tiger—“will not be pleased if her heart is broken.”
“I would feel the same,” Gabriel said.
“Who would guess that, seeing you circle the floor with that over-nourished Russian girl on your arm?”
“Princess Tatiana is a very . . .” He paused. “She’s a lovely girl.”
“But would Kate enjoy seeing you make sheep’s eyes at a
lovely
girl?”
“Lady Wrothe,” Gabriel said. “This marriage was arranged on the basis of my bride’s substantial dowry and my title. It’s an old tale, and one we’ve all heard before.” His words came out like hard little acorns, one to each beat of his heart. His eyes flicked to her face. “I cannot marry Kate.”
“If you’re planning to weave me some sort of lament, don’t,” Henry snapped. “You don’t have to hide Kate away like some sort of doxy you hired for the night while you’re out there dancing with your bride-to-be.
She
can be here too, because there are plenty of men who would love to marry her, substantial dowry or no!”
Gabriel took a deep breath. “I cannot marry where I will.”
“I’m not saying you should,” Henry retorted. “There are men who throw the world at their lady’s feet, and then there are the rest of you, who see the world as a ledger in black and white. I encountered one of you early in life, so I know just what you’re like.”
He had never been so close to striking a woman before. “If you’ll forgive me—”
But her hand fell on his arm, and what he saw in her eyes stayed his tongue. “You’ve got a choice before you, prince,” she said. “You damned well better make the right one, or you’ll spend your life cursing yourself. That gentleman I mentioned just now . . . I don’t think the dowry he married made up for what he lost. And I believe he would agree with me.”
Gabriel turned, rather blindly, and walked toward the door. A gentleman lurched out of his way at the last moment.
Only Wick stepped in his way.
“I told Tatiana that I’d waltz with her,” Gabriel said in a low, harsh whisper. “Find her and tell her something.”
“A
waltz
? I’ll have to tell her that you’ve taken ill.”
“I have,” Gabriel said. “Sick unto death, I think they call it.”
U
pstairs, Kate dried herself off, examined her ruined chemise, retrieved her crumpled dress and put it over a chair, and finally pulled on a dressing gown that hung against the wall. It was silk, and felt like an exotic caress against her skin. She wound the cord twice around her waist to keep it closed.
Still Gabriel didn’t come.
She picked up the journal on Ionian treasures, leafed through it, and was amused to find a learned and aggressive letter from Gabriel featured in the notes. She picked up Aretino and put him down again immediately. Those engravings seemed to have nothing to do with the incandescent tenderness with which Gabriel had touched her.
And, like that, she realized that she’d made a decision.
She meant to sleep with Gabriel. She was greedy, mad with greed if the truth be told. She wanted this—him—for herself, to make up for the seven years in which not a soul touched her in a loving way.
She would give him her virginity, and then leave for London. Her legs trembled at the thought, and she felt her cheeks warming. It was the only thing she had wanted ferociously in years.
The door opened, and Gabriel walked through. There was something leaden in his face, in his eyes. “What happened?” she asked, from across the room. And then, walking to stand before him: “Gabriel, what happened? Are you all right?”
He looked down at her, eyes full of an emotion that she couldn’t read. “Do you know what I’ve been doing in the ballroom, Kate? Do you have any idea?”
She put a hand on his coat, wanting to feel the solid warmth of him in light of the chilly rage in his voice. “Dancing.”
“Not just dancing,” he said, precisely. “I’ve been dancing with my future wife, Tatiana.”
Kate never thought that pain could rip through one’s heart like a wound, but now she knew it could. She had managed to forget about Tatiana, to pretend that Gabriel was simply . . . elsewhere. Her whole body tensed and froze, just as it had when she had entered her mother’s room and seen a body with no spirit.
Luckily Gabriel kept talking. “I sat with her at dinner. She has dimples and speaks five languages. We danced the first dance. She is an exquisite dancer. I asked her to waltz.”
“I see,” Kate said unsteadily, reaching up to push her hair behind her shoulders.
“You don’t
see
,” he said in a savage tone. “You don’t know enough about bloody society to
see
. Waltzing with a woman means taking her in your arms and circling the floor, leg to leg.”
“It sounds very intimate,” Kate managed, proud of the control in her voice.
“Very,” Gabriel said. “If you and I—” He turned away and spoke to the black window. “If you and I ever waltzed, everyone in the room would know we were lovers. You can’t conceal anything, not with a woman in your arms and a waltz playing.”
Kate was confused and getting a little angry. It didn’t feel right that Gabriel was pushing his betrothal in her face. “It is likely not proper for me to offer congratulations.”
He swung around and stared at her, his eyes like black coals. “Do you
dare
to offer me congratulations?”
Kate smoothed the front of the silk dressing gown she wore. “I should . . . I should return to my chambers.”
He was on her like a predator. “You will not leave me!”
And then she knew what the emotion in his eyes was. It was despair, and rage—and love. Love. “Gabriel,” she said, with a little gasp.
“You dare—” he began again.
“Hush,” she said, putting a hand to his cheek. “Hush.”
He swallowed.
“I probably wouldn’t love you so much if you were not the man that you are.”
His throat worked furiously. “You—”
“Love you.” She nodded. “With all my heart.” She brought his face to hers, and gave him the sweetest kiss of her life. “You are mine,” she whispered. “In some way, in some part of my heart, you will always be with me.”
With a groan, he folded her into his arms. She wrapped hers around his waist, catching the faint odor of his orange blossom soap, together with a spicy wildness that was Gabriel’s alone.
After a while, he stirred. She put a hand over his mouth before he could speak. His arms slid from around her shoulders and she stepped back, tearless, head high.
“You cannot marry me. You will marry Tatiana because she is chosen for you, but more than that, Gabriel, because you
deserve
someone who speaks five languages, and who dances like an angel, and brings a king’s ransom with her.”
“If the world were different—” His voice broke.
“It isn’t,” she said steadily. “The world is what it is, and you have a whole castle to feed and clothe and look after. Not to mention a lion.”
He didn’t smile.
“You will never turn your back on your responsibilities,” she told him. “You are not your brother, Gabriel.”
“But for you,” he said achingly.
“I would rather love you now,” she said fiercely, “than take you as a man broken by turning your back on your family.”
“You are a rather frightening woman,” he said, a moment later. But his eyes had lost that wild despair.
She put her hands on the knot holding the dressing gown together. “What do you call this garment?” she inquired.
“A banyan.”
“It is rather hot.” She slowly untied the knot. “You see, Gabriel, while you were downstairs making a decision of one kind, I came to a decision of my own.”
He looked, rather unwillingly it seemed, from her hands to her face. “You did?”
“Whatever happens with Tatiana,” she said gently, “doesn’t matter here, not tonight. Tonight is for us. Tomorrow is for the world, for Tatiana, for dowries, and all the rest. I shall come to your ball with Algie, and then I shall travel to London with Henry. I believe that I shan’t go back to Mariana at all. There is nothing for me there, though it took me years to realize it.”
“Henry will take care of you.”
She smiled. “Yes, she will. She fell in love with my father, you know. Truly fell in love with him. But he married my mother instead. So she lived her life without him. And it was a happy life.”
Gabriel made a sudden violent movement. “I don’t want to even think about the prospect of you with someone else.”
That was just like a man, to Kate’s mind. He talked easily of Tatiana, but the parallel, her future spouse, was not such a straightforward subject. “Henry sees me as the daughter she never had,” she said. “You will be here, and I shall be in London. But tonight . . .” She untied the cord and let it slip through her fingers. It fell to the floor with a gentle slap.
“Tonight I want you, all of you.”
“What are you saying?” His face was dark with hunger.
She let the banyan ease apart, its silk falling to the side to reveal one breast.
“I’m giving you my virginity, such as it is,” she said simply. “It’s a gift, Gabriel, and one I have the right to bestow on whom I wish. It does not mean that I won’t climb in a coach after the ball and leave this castle, because I will.”
He was shaking his head, so she let the other side of the banyan slide open, freeing both of her breasts to his gaze.
“I, and I alone, can bestow this gift,” she told him, drawing a hand over the curve of her breast. “It will not change anything between us. I expect you to use a French letter.”
To her relief, the steel in his jaw eased a bit. “You sound like the abbess of a particularly strict brothel.”
“Not a very complimentary comparison,” she said, unable to stop her grin, “but I’ll forgive you.” The banyan fell down, to her elbows. “Do we have an agreement, Gabriel? Do we have tonight?”
“I shouldn’t,” he said raggedly. “As a gentleman—”
“You’re not a gentleman tonight,” she reminded him. “You’re a man, Gabriel. And I’m a woman. With no titles, or society, or nonsense between us.”
“You’re killing me,” he said, snatching her to him so suddenly that the breath left her lungs. “You unman me.”
From what she could feel, that was definitely not the case.
“Really?” she asked, her voice a provocative thread of sound. Then she deliberately rubbed against him. Her wrapper had given up the fight and fallen to the ground; there was something delicious about the contrast between her nakedness and his formal attire.
Not that she had long to enjoy it.
With a muffled groan, he fell back a step, his eyes eating her alive, and began wrenching off his clothes. Buttons flew; his cravat skidded across the desk and landed on the little pile of pottery fragments; his breeches disappeared while she was still absorbed with his chest.
“You’re very muscled,” she said, striving for a casual tone.
“Hunting,” he said.
“Don’t tell me you’ve been providing all the fowl that we eat at every meal.”
His mouth quirked. “Hardly. Witness the gift of my mother, who kindly left me a Star of India emerald whose price will keep the castle going for another six months, even given the extravagances of this weekend.”
She sobered, drew closer, and put a finger out to his shoulder. “Gabriel?” Her whisper had an aching hunger to it, and he responded immediately, scooping her up and striding over to the bed.
He put her down and then, without further ado, swung a leg over her and lowered himself, slowly, onto her body.
Kate let out an involuntary squeak at the weight of him, the heat, the curious feeling of a muscled body against hers. He didn’t move, just waited there, elbows braced on the side of her head.
She opened her eyes and met his. “Aren’t you going to . . .”
“What?” he asked, obviously trying to look innocent but failing.
Kate licked her lips. She didn’t expect to have to instruct
him
. “You know,” she insisted.
“No, you tell me,” he said silkily. “You had all the time to study Aretino while I was downstairs.”
“I didn’t look at that book,” she said, wiggling around to get herself more comfortable. He was no lightweight, after all. A strange look crossed his face. “What?”
“That—feels good,” he said, a hoarse little gasp escaping his lips.
“Ah,” she said, pleased. She wiggled again, testing how his hardness fit into the curve of her thighs. “Would you like to know what I did while you were downstairs?”
“What did you do?” He had lowered his head and was licking her collarbone. The rasp of his tongue sent a little frisson over her nerves.
“I didn’t look at the Aretino, but I read the journal about Ionian antiquities,” she said, running her fingers down his shoulder, slipping to his broad back, dancing down the line of muscle there. “I read your letter to the editor. It was very intelligent. Very argumentative too. I thought you needn’t have called the author a numbskull. Or said that he was writing nothing more than piffle.”
“Kate.”
“Yes?”
“Shut up.”
His head slipped lower and his mouth closed over her nipple.
She didn’t shut up. She couldn’t; when he took her nipple into his mouth, she gave out a startled cry. It felt as if a wire snapped inside; as if she were a puppet, her body arched toward his, feeling soft, warm, and desperate. Suddenly the erection pressing between her thighs felt . . . different. “Gabriel!”
He sucked harder, and she forgot the words that formed in her mind before they could reach her lips. She clutched his shoulders, but he pulled away from her. Before Kate could collect herself, he braced himself on one elbow, freeing his right hand, which slid down her leg to—
There.
“I don’t think that’s—” Kate managed.
But his fingers were dancing in her curls, and he lowered his head to her other breast, and she couldn’t answer, she couldn’t speak.
Sparks started racing up her legs, and she writhed, her hands clutching him, desperately running down his arms, over his chest. “I want,” she panted.
“What?”
He sounded entirely too lazy, too calm, and too in control. His voice penetrated her brain and she opened her eyes. She was just lying on her back like a ninny and letting him pleasure her.
Ignoring (with effort), what he was doing with his fingers, she started kissing his cheek. When he wouldn’t raise his head, she licked him like a cat, just the way he’d licked her, and purred when he shuddered at her caress.
Finally he raised his head, so she licked the edge of his lips, and then nibbled at them, because the idea occurred to her, and they looked delicious.
Gabriel put up no objection.
She let her hands run down his back and over the curve of his arse, discovering the muscles, exploring hills and valleys and the small dimples that marked his left and right side.
She could feel him stirring against her, and it seemed to her that it was likely a good sign.
“Kiss me,” she commanded, licking his lips again. “Please.”
He covered her mouth fiercely, and her arms flew back up to his neck, as if only holding him tightly would keep her steady in the firestorm of their kiss. Long drugging moments later, he broke off the kiss, only to say, “I want to make this last all night, but Kate . . .”