One Night with a Rake (Regency Rakes) (20 page)

Nate released her mouth long enough to pull the chemise over her head. She stood naked before him, but seeing the slack-lidded passion on his face, she felt no need to cover herself. It didn’t occur to Georgette to be ashamed.

Instead she worked furiously at the buttons over his hips. She ran her hands down the loosened sides of his trousers, tugging them down his thighs along with his smallclothes. She reveled in his warm, hard flesh and the tiny hairs tickling her palms.

For a moment they stood breathless, drinking in the sight of each other. Nathaniel cupped her cheeks and searched her face for a moment. He didn’t need to say anything.

She could see the love in his eyes.

They came together in a flurry of kisses. The world slipped away and Georgette was aware of nothing but the glory of his skin, warm and vibrant, against hers. They fell as one back into the soft nest of the feather bed.

He stroked her everywhere—the crease of an elbow, the hollow behind her knee, the skin of her inner thigh. Every touch was potent with meaning, charged with longing. She ached to hold him inside her.

“Come to me, Nate.” She raked her nails up his ribs when he entered her slowly, moving with him, urging him in.

He finally filled her, plunging in with hard thrusts.

She looked up at him in the shadows and saw only the feral glare of a male animal in extremis. He was passion-blind as he moved within her, mindless, unable to stop. She welcomed him, raising her hips to meet each thrust.

Oh, the feel of him. Hard and strong and hot.

Blood pounded in her ears, in her womb, throbbing with life. A coil within her constricted, wound tight, stretched thin till it finally burst in bone-deep spasms. Her body shuddered its release.

Then Nate came, arching his back, and driving as deeply into her as he could. Georgette felt the warmth of his seed pulsing into her.

So
much
for
guarding
against
conceiving
a
child,
she thought absently.

It didn’t matter. Georgette gathered him close, accepting him with greediness. She wanted all of this man she could possibly hold.

He collapsed on her, nuzzling at her neck. He was still beyond speech, but she knew exactly what he meant by the low groan that escaped his lips.

Beyond the shuttered window of Nate’s Cheapside flat, the world spun on, ever faster. But there in that capacious feather bed, it had stopped its dizzying pace for a bit, spooling down to a slow, slightly wobbly roll.

Georgette decided if she never rose from that fluffy bower it would be quite all right.

Until Nathaniel uttered one word.

“Damnation.”

Mercy covered Reuben’s face with kisses. “Oh, ye’re all right. Tell me ye are.”

Blinking slowly, Reuben opened his eyes and smiled. He sat up, drawing Mercy into his arms. “I’m better than all right. I’m…I’m…”

The world began to spin a bit and his eyes threatened to roll back in their sockets, so he let himself sink back onto the fluffed up pillows. His head pounded like a pickaxe, but if that was what it took for Mercy Atwood to admit to loving him, he’d willingly accept the blows.

“I guess I am a little done in, at that,” he admitted.

“Just lie still for a bit,” she said as she extricated herself from his arms and scurried over to the dresser to fetch him a small goblet of wine. “The doctor says as ye can have a bit to drink once ye wake. First the man said water, but where in London would we find a glass of the stuff that’s fit to drink, I ask ye? So he finally allowed wine would do. The only bit of good judgment I got from the man, but ye’re sensible now, as much as ever ye were at any rate, so it seems he may have known more than I credited him.”

“And I know more than you credited me too,” Reuben said, still nearly giddy with the knowledge that she loved him. “It was your voice that woke me.”

Mercy cocked her head and slanted him a questioning gaze. “How much did you hear?”

Would she take it back now that he was fully awake and facing her?

“How should I know? A fellow can’t be expected to know what he hasn’t heard, can he?” He tipped up the goblet and drained every drop of the sweet red stuff. The vintage served at the House of Pleasures wasn’t the first-rate fare the marquis kept for his table, but Reuben figured it was just as potent. “You could have been talking for days for all I know. And changed the subject a dozen times with no help at all from me.”

“There was only one subject,” Mercy said, her expression softening. “You.”

His chest swelled and he felt as if he could run all the way to Snowdon and back with a full barrel of water balanced on his shoulders. If only his head didn’t feel as if it was about to detach itself. “You were talking about me? Well, some folk might say that’s a mighty thin topic.”

“And yet I plan to make a study of it, and I’ll apply myself a damn sight better than I do with milady’s reading lessons.” She leaned down and gave him a smacking exclamation point of a kiss. Then she straightened suddenly. “My lady. Oh! Reuben, she’s gone missing and we have to—”

He reached up and stopped her by pressing his fingertips to her lips.

“Don’t fret. I don’t know where she’s gone, but I think I know who she’s with,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut against the drumbeat in his head.

Mercy settled on the side of the bed again, put her hands on his shoulders, and gave him a little shake. “You can’t go back to sleep now. What do you know about Lady Georgette?”

“Just that she’s likely with Lord Nathaniel.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I came into the front parlor and found Mr. Duggins had been knocked silly and then…” His eyelids were filled with lead. He couldn’t keep them open.

Someone shook him till he roused again and he looked up into Mercy’s little heart-shaped face. He smiled at her. She loved him.

“Then what, you big lummock?”

“You don’t mean that like it sounds, I know.” His own voice seemed as if it was coming from a long way away. “When you call me ‘lummock,’ it really sort of means the same as ‘dearest,’ or ‘dumpling,’ or ‘my sugary bugary bear.’”

“I’ll sugary bugary you if you don’t hurry up and get to the point,” she said, her tone sharp-edged. “Now tell me, Reuben. What happened to my lady?”

“Oh.” Her command drew him back from the soft swirl of colors behind his eyelids. “I saw Lord Nathaniel.”

“When?”

“Before he hit me. I meant to follow him up the stairs, but he must not have wanted me to.” Reuben fingered the swollen spot on the back of his head. “I don’t think he hit me here.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because I caught up to him at that little alcove on the first landing and that’s where he gave me a wallop to the jaw.” His tongue found a loose tooth. He smiled broadly at Mercy. “Didn’t knock a tooth out, did he?”

“No. You’re as pretty as you ever were. We found you at the foot of the stairs.”

“Well, then, milord didn’t do me that much damage, then. Likely it was the tumble down the stairs. Good. That makes me glad. He might not even have known it was me before he took that swing. Mighta thought I was some blackguard up to no good. Best I give him the benefit of the doubt.” He sighed deeply. “I always liked Lord Nathaniel.”

“Reuben, stick to the main point—Lady Georgette. If milady is gone, it does stand to reason that she’s with him. Though why did he have to steal her away like that?”

“Maybe he thought she wouldn’t go willingly.” Reuben tried to focus on Mercy’s face, but the pull of the dark kept edging his vision with shadows. “But why wouldn’t she? Anyone can see she fancies him.”

“Probably because some people don’t know what they’ve got unless they almost lose it.” She leaned down and kissed his temple. “Well, lucky for you when you fell down the stairs, you landed on your head. No harm done.”

That sounded a bit meaner than she meant it to be too, he figured, but he wasn’t disposed to argue with her. Especially since she stayed close and kept pressing her lips to his forehead, his mouth, his closed eyes every other word or so. She was saying something about wondering how they were to proceed, since if they went back to Yorkingham House without Lady Georgette, there’d likely be trouble.

Reuben let her rattle on.

So long as he feigned sleep he didn’t have to stir from this delightful spot. If he never opened his eyes again, he’d die a happy man.

***

“Language, Nathaniel.” Georgette made tsking sounds over his unexpected profanity. Then she ran her fingertips down the indentation of his spine and stayed to dally at the small of his back. “After that perfectly lovely interlude, I can’t imagine why you feel the need to swear. What’s troubling you?”

Nathaniel’s lips pressed together in a tight line. “I lost control.”

“That seems to be going around. I wonder if passion is catching, like the measles,” she said with a chuckle.

“It’s no laughing matter. I should have withdrawn.” He did so now. “I promised not to cause you shame.”

“And you haven’t.” At least, Georgette hoped one slip wasn’t enough to result in an unexpected child. She knew it was possible, but she shoved the thought aside. Her insides were still sufficiently fizzy for her not to care about the consequences of their actions, especially not the sort that might take months to arrive. “I’m not a bit ashamed of what we have between us, Nate.”

“You would be if it became public knowledge.”

“I don’t expect to tell anyone.” She looked up at him sharply. “Do you?”

He hesitated for a couple heartbeats. “No.” Nathaniel rose and began tugging on his smallclothes and trousers. “What is it you think we have?”

“Love,” she said simply. “That is what you professed to me in your awkward yet charming way a while ago, isn’t it?”

“Love. Is that all?”

“Isn’t that everything there is?” Feeling unaccountably shy since he’d moved away from her, she sat up, tucking the sheets under her armpits. “There’s no need for us to complicate matters.”

“As in do anything that might upset your match with the royal duke?”

More specifically, do anything that might upset her parents. “The match with the Duke of Cambridge is not set in stone.”

He eyed her with the watchfulness of a lion near a watering hole. “Do you want it to be?”

She dropped her gaze to her lap. “No.”

“Then why don’t you simply refuse him?”

“And send my father into apoplexy and turn my mother into a social pariah?”

“I don’t believe that’s it for a moment,” he said testily. “You’re the most stubborn woman I know. You have no trouble risking your parents’ ire when it means you’re traipsing about the armpit of London doing your good works. Why do you hesitate when your own happiness is involved?”

It seemed to have escaped his notice that he hadn’t offered her a viable alternative. While Georgette wasn’t sanguine about life married to a royal, she was even more certain she wasn’t made for spinsterhood. The way her sensual nature had bloomed under Nate’s attentions proved that. The fact that he hadn’t offered her marriage stung, but perhaps he was working up to it, as clumsily as he’d finally managed his mangled declaration of love.

The real reason she wouldn’t refuse the royal duke was a darker one, however. She swallowed hard.

“Everything was so easy for Anne. She was the golden one, the apple of my parents’ eyes. I was an awkward girl, and I don’t know that I’ve outgrown it as a woman.” The small keening hurt inside that was never quite stilled throbbed afresh. “When Anne died, I always had the suspicion that my parents wished it had been she who survived the fever instead of me.”

“Surely they—”

“Oh, nothing was ever said outright,” Georgette assured him, trying to keep her voice bright. “But there are some things one knows without knowing how.”

Nate didn’t say anything and she was grateful for his silence. She blessed him even more when he took her wordlessly into his arms and rocked her slowly. It gave her the courage to finish what she feared putting into words.

“People make all sorts of bargains with God when eternity yawns before them. I know. I went several rounds with the Almighty during the worst of the fever,” she said. “I promised then to try to be the daughter my parents wanted, to make them proud.”

Nathaniel tightened his embrace. Georgette leaned into him, wishing she could keep her head resting on his shoulder forever.

“When I came to the attention of the royal duke, it was as if I’d finally made good on that promise,” she said. “Suddenly they did love me. They did want the best for me.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And they didn’t wish I was Anne.”

He kissed her neck once, a sweet brush of his lips. “I don’t wish you were Anne. I wouldn’t change you a bit.”

Her heart ached sweetly at the completeness of his acceptance of her.

“Except maybe to make you more cautious for your own safety,” he added.

She smiled at him. “That’s why I have you.”

“But if you marry Cambridge, how can you have me?”

Her face crumpled. “I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it. Please, Nate. Let’s not spoil now.”

He pressed a kiss on the crown of her head. “If we don’t want to spoil now, we need to think about returning you to Yorkingham House with as little fuss and fanfare as possible. Come. I’ll be your lady’s maid.”

Nathaniel pulled back the sheet and helped her dress, pausing to caress her in small ways before he covered her decently. Once he fastened the last button, she was more of a mind to let him start undoing them again, but he was right. They couldn’t afford to dally in Cheapside any longer.

“You haven’t told me what you learned at White’s this morning,” she said as she retrieved her scattered pins and began to do up her hair. The small shaving mirror mounted over a washstand wasn’t as conducive to the task as her large vanity mirror at home, but it was all she had to work with. “What about your Lord Gobberd?”

“I’m satisfied he had nothing to do with the murder of either Vesta or Mr. Bagley.” Nathaniel shrugged on his shirt and went in search of the wrist studs. He bent to retrieve one near the foot of the bed. “He seemed genuinely relieved to have lost the House of Sirens to me.”

In the mirror, Georgette caught him watching her as she fiddled with her long locks but made no move to help her dress her hair. Evidently his skills as a lady’s maid were limited to robing and disrobing the female form.

“He did mention my former tenant as one who would be furious enough at the changes on Lackaday Lane to do something about it, though.” Nathaniel found the other stud and affixed it to his wrist. Then he pulled on his waistcoat.

“You mean Sadie O’Toole?”

“How do you know that name?”

“I wasn’t taking tea with the madam at the House of Pleasures for the sake of her crumpets, you know.” Georgette sighed at her reflection. Her coiffure was beyond help. She could only hope she didn’t encounter anyone she knew as they made their way back to St. James’s Park. “Madam Bouchard spoke of her. She wasn’t the type to suffer a slight, she said. Perhaps we should pay Mrs. O’Toole a visit.”

“I would if I knew where to find her.”

“I know,” Georgette said, delighted to bring some new bit of intelligence Nathaniel had not gleaned. “According to Madam Bouchard, she’s set up shop in Whitechapel.”

His brows shot up. “Very well. As soon as I take you home, I’ll—”

Georgette had studied her father’s maps of London often enough to know Whitechapel was in the East End of the city. “Wouldn’t it be more efficient if we simply went there from here? You’ll be backtracking quite a bit to take me to the West End and then—”

“Georgette, you must understand. You think you’ve seen the worst of London because you braved Lackaday Lane. Let me assure you, you haven’t. If Covent Garden is the armpit of London, then Whitechapel is its hairy unwiped backside.”

“That’s rather indelicate.”

“But it’s also rather accurate,” he said with a frown. “I would spare you.”

“You should know by now, Nate, I would not spare myself. Where has my bonnet got off to? Oh, there it is.” She picked up what had been a cunning little confection of lace and velvet. Now the brim was hopelessly bent. “Well, it’ll never be quite the same again, will it?”

“I’ve a feeling I never will either.” He came up behind her and put his arms around her waist. “What am I to do with you, woman?”

“Love me,” she suggested as she tied a jaunty bow beneath her chin. “You know I have to go with you. If there is a chance I can help someone, I do not fear to go where they are. Not as long as you are with me.”

He dropped a kiss on her neck, then crossed the room to the highboy. He opened a drawer and pulled out a pistol which he stashed in his jacket pocket.

“I’ll stay with you,” he promised as he came back to her side. “You’ll have to drive me away.”