Stroke of Genius (14 page)

The marquess didn’t know it yet, but the games were about to begin.

And Crispin wasn’t about to play fair.

It was beyond folly for Pygmalion to conceive feelings for his creation, the work of his own hammer and chisel. Unfortunately, he had much less control over himself than his work and no amount of tinkering would alter matters.

Crispin and his servant crept from the alleyway through the tiny courtyard garden behind the Makepeaces’ town house. The hinges in the iron gate squeaked as Wyckham latched it behind them. They both froze, listening for sounds of alarm.

Crispin heard only the slow clomp of hooves on the next street over and the lazy song of crickets in the rose beds.

“It’s the far left window,” Wyckham said under his breath.

“You’re certain? More than one seems to be open.”

“Claudette told me herself, didn’t she?”

“Does the maid know our plans?”

“Not unless her mistress told her. She suspects something’s afoot, I’m sure. There’s no way to be cagey about that sort of thing,” Wyckham whispered. “I mean, there’s no reason for me to need to know which room belongs to Miss Makepeace. No respectable reason, in any case. But with Claudette, everything’s a wink and a nod. She knows how to keep her own counsel.”

“Which is what I suggest you do right now,” Crispin whispered back. “If we’re discovered, it’s ruin for us all.”

But most especially for Grace.

Where had that come from? Crispin prided himself on possessing no conscience at all. A man made his choices and paid for them…if he were caught. This was a deucedly inconvenient time to develop a moral compass.

Still the tiny accusing voice almost convinced him to turn back till he saw a shadow pass by Grace’s window. She was waiting for him.

He quickened his pace.

“At least, they don’t seem to have a dog,” Wyckham said as they neared the corner of the courtyard where the stone enclosure abutted the town house itself.

“Thank God for small favors,” Crispin said devoutly. He signaled for Wyckham to give him a leg up and he hoisted himself up to the top of the stone hedge. Along the upper story, there was a ledge about two feet wide outside the row of windows. Someone had placed a grouping of geraniums at the center of the ledge, but nothing adorned it otherwise. And since Grace’s chamber was on one end of the house, he wouldn’t have to work his way around a bunch of flowerpots to gain entrance through her window.

The ledge was edged with an iron railing designed to discourage precisely what he was attempting. But it also provided good purchase for his grip. He grasped a couple rails and used his upper-body strength to pull himself up, then threw his good leg up over the ledge. Soon he was standing upright with his feet between the rails on the outside of the railing.

The waist-high railing topped with spikes.

“Faint heart ne’er won fair lady,” he muttered.

What idiot first came up with that?
Crispin bet whoever the nameless bard was, he wasn’t facing a way to emasculate himself.

He peeled off his jacket. A little padding should help. But only a little.

He laid his jacket over the sharp points, knowing he’d never be able to think of a story to explain the holes that would satisfy his tailor. Then he grasped the top of the rail and lifted his body up, stiff-armed. He pointed his toes and swung his legs back and forth, trying to gain some momentum. If he could swing his legs high enough to clear the rail, he might vault over it.

He was almost there when Grace stuck her head out the window.

“What on earth are you doing?” she whispered frantically.

He lowered himself back down on the outside of the railing, upset that he’d have to start all over. “What does it look like?”

“Like you’re about to damage yourself permanently,” she hissed and pointed to the far end of the ledge. “Use the little gate.”

When he looked down the row of town houses, he saw that they all had little spiral staircases leading to their gardens from the right end of their narrow walkways. The Makepeace staircase had been removed, probably to make room for the thick stone enclosure below, but the gate was still there.

Frustrated and more than a little humbled, he moved along the outside of the rail to the gate, which opened easily and—
thanks be to God
—silently.

Then he tiptoed along the narrow ledge, past the other open window. Stentorian snores rumbled within. Mr. Makepeace’s room, no doubt. Crispin squeezed past the congregation of geraniums in the center. He retrieved his impaled jacket from the points of the railing.
Finally, he signaled to Wyckham that all was well and ducked into Grace’s open window.

“What’s so important that you take such a risk?” she demanded in a furious whisper.

She was wearing a perfectly virginal wrapper with a nightshift that tied under her chin, but she was bathed in moonlight. And that made her a creature of night and desire.

Her face glowed luminously, her eyes enormous. Even her long plait was kissed by the shaft of liquid silver spilling into the room after him.

It left her looking almost exactly as she did when she visited his dreams. Barring the virginal wrapper and nightshift, of course.

“Well?” She fisted her hands at her waist and might have tapped her toe at him if she hadn’t been trying to keep quiet.

He swallowed hard. Why
had
he come? The moonlight made it hard to remember exactly.

Oh, yes. To see if she’d allow him to.

The game was always the same at its heart. He’d played a variation of it with her mother at their first meeting. Strip away a person’s wealth and power and what’s left? Only their principles.

Would Grace surrender her principles for him?

Evidently, she would. He was in her bedchamber, wasn’t he?

The muscle in his thigh began to cramp. “Climbing up here is not as easy as I made it look,” he whispered. “May I sit?”

She gave him a grudging nod and pulled out the chair from her dressing table. He plopped on the end of her bed instead and ground his knuckles into his thigh, hoping she wouldn’t notice his discomfort.

She began to pace the heart-of-pine floor. Her wrapper was less virginal than he’d initially thought when the moon diffused through it. The throb in his thigh was replaced by a throb elsewhere.

“This is highly inappropriate,” she fumed.

“And you didn’t realize that when you agreed to leave your window open?”

“Of course I did,” she hissed. “But—”

“But you did it anyway.” He caught her by the elbow on the next pass. “Careful, Grace. If you should take a tumble this time, I can’t promise there’ll be no swiving on the floor.”

Her mouth flew open and her eyes went wide. “You mean to say that’s why you’re here.”

He pulled her down onto his lap and pressed a finger to her lips.

“Shh. The trick to a successful assignation is stealth.”

“I am not having an assignation with you.”

“Let’s consider the evidence, shall we?” He whispered in her ear. “There’s a man in your bedchamber. He’s sitting on your bed and you’re on his lap. Unless your Boston is a much livelier place than I’ve been led to believe, that doesn’t seem like your average tea party, does it?”

“But I thought this was about something important. Something that couldn’t wait.”

“It is.”

“What is it, then?”

“This.” He cupped her cheek and lowered his mouth to hers.
If she’s going to bolt, she’ll do it now.

But she didn’t. She gave a small gasp in the heartbeat before their lips met, but she didn’t fight him. Her eyes closed. Her lips parted under his, and—wonder of wonders—her tongue darted in to explore his mouth.

He pulled her closer, taking more of her weight on his thigh. His cock rose to press against her hip.

Their kiss deepened and her hands were in his hair, untying the thong that bound it back and running her fingers through his unruly mane. Her hands blessed his scalp with their touch, cool and sure, smoothing his hair down.

There was something sweet, something indescribably comforting, in letting her touch his head. None of his other lovers had spent much time above his waist. It made him feel strangely naked even though he was still fully clothed. As if she could read his thoughts through her fingertips or swirl her thumbs over his soul.

When she palmed his cheeks, he slanted his mouth over hers and turned the kiss in a wicked direction. Sweetness fled and left something darker and more potent in its wake.

His hand found her breasts, hot and sure. Through the thin layers of her nightshift and wrapper, he felt her nipple harden beneath his palm. He kissed her jawline and down her neck.

He took one end of the knot that closed her nightshift between his teeth and tugged it free. She didn’t object when he slid her wrapper off her shoulders or when he parted her nightshift to bare her breasts to his gaze.

It wasn’t the first time he’d seen her breasts. That fiery time on the fainting couch in his studio was burned into his brain. But he feared, being an artist accustomed to idealizing the human form, that he’d embellished her charms a bit in his memory. That he’d improved upon nature.

There was no need. Her breasts were just as he’d remembered. Just as he’d dreamed, classically proportioned,
the perfect size to fit his hand and topped with tight little buds in the center of darker areolae. They rose and fell slightly with her shallow breaths.

She worried her lip for a moment. Then she took his hand and placed it on her breast.

She was surrendering her principles. If a person surrendered their principles, it meant he was important.

To her.

He realized with a jolt that he was dangerously close to surrendering his principles as well. Never in his wildly experimental and varied life of the flesh had he pursued a virgin. It was almost an article of faith.

That meant Grace was important.

To him.

He fondled her breast. He’d fondled many breasts. But this was different because it was
her
breast. And her soft sighs, her hitching breaths.

He lowered his head to take her nipple into his mouth. It was perfect. He flicked it with his tongue and she made a noise. An involuntary gasp of pleasure.

It sounded unnaturally loud in his ears. He sat up straight.

“Grace, we have to be quiet.”

She nodded.

She nodded,
he realized in wonderment. That meant she was going to let him…

That small, accusing voice rose up in him again. He was planning to take something precious from her. Something she would never have again. Something he had no right to.

But if she was willing…if she wanted him…

She doesn’t know the way of things and you do.
The small voice in his head sounded much sterner now.

Give a conscience a toehold and the bloody thing tries to take over.

“Do you remember asking me to teach you about flirting, the impolite variety?”

“Of course.”

“This is that lesson. There is a way,” he said softly, wondering at the words coming from his own mouth. “A way for me to give you pleasure that will leave your virtue intact.”

She blinked in surprise. “And what about you? Will that give you pleasure?”

He cupped her breast again. “Let me worry about that. Will you trust me, Grace?”

She pressed her palms to both his cheeks and kissed him again, long and deeply. “Yes, Crispin. I trust you.”

Pygmalion claimed he didn’t need people.

But he did need one.

Badly.

What am I thinking?
Grace wondered as Crispin kissed his way along her neck out to the point of her shoulder.

She’d allowed a man into her bedchamber. She let him unfasten her nightshift. She watched his dark head dip to do wicked things to her breast and did nothing to stop him. And now she’d told him she trusted him.

Grace wasn’t thinking at all.

She was feeling. The warmth of his breath on her skin. The joy of his mouth anywhere it touched her. The solid hardness of his chest. The strength of his arms around her.

And his hands! No wonder Crispin Hawke was proclaimed a genius. His hands made her whole body sing. They smoothed over her hills and valleys. Now he palmed both her breasts, strumming her taut nipples with his thumbs.

Grace bit the inside of her cheek to keep from crying out at the aching joy of it. She was awash in new sensations, drowning in bliss.

“Stand up,” he ordered in a stage whisper.

It didn’t occur to her not to obey.

Crispin was her guide in this sensual odyssey. She’d be lost without him.

He rose, too. The wrapper slipped off her arms and pooled around her feet. Crispin gathered her close to kiss her again and she melted against him. When he released her mouth, he drew her gown up and over her head. She lifted her arms in surrender.

Then he stepped back to look at her.

Suddenly shy, she covered herself fig leaf–style. He shook his head. She swallowed hard and let her hands fall to her sides. It felt suddenly like the most natural thing in the world, as if she were his life model and she were merely striking a pose for him.

No, not quite. Her jittering belly told her it was far more than that. She wanted him to see her. Wanted to know if he found her fair. Still burned desperately to know which part of her Crispin Hawke thought was her best feature.

His gaze traveled down her body, an assessing, leisurely stroll. Heat followed in its wake and when he reached the juncture of her thighs, she felt as if her heart had dropped to her pelvic floor. It pounded hard between her legs.

Then he looked back up at her face and smiled. She smiled back at him, giddy that he seemed pleased with what he saw. He signaled for her to turn slowly.

She obeyed, feeling her bottom pink as she turned it toward him. Her whole body was deliciously hot by the time she faced him once more.

“You’re exquisite, Grace. Lovelier than I imagined.”

Her heart fluttered under his approving gaze. Then a thought struck her.

“Oh, no!” A hand flew to her mouth. “I just remembered Claudette’s warning.”

“What was that?”

“That a woman must remain clothed from the waist
down to keep her virginity.” Her face crumpled. He’d tricked her.

She sank onto the bed and covered her face with her hands.

“No, Grace, it’s a bit more complicated than that.” He sat down beside her and hugged her to his chest. “So long as one of us remains clothed, you’re safe.”

“You’re sure.”

“I will never lie to you.” He played with her long plait, tickling the end around her aching nipple. “But you really should convince Claudette to give you more complete information.”

She’d been mortally embarrassed by the intelligence she’d already gleaned from her maid. To have demanded more would have been terribly uncomfortable.

“I’ve read all the right sorts of books, but they reach a certain point and then resort to euphemisms so obscure I’m left with my own speculations.” And some of those speculations seemed so ludicrous. Even if she were right, she couldn’t imagine the women she knew—her mother especially—engaging in anything so indelicate. So animalistic. “Why don’t
you
tell me the rest?”

“Because then I’d want to demonstrate. Believe me, Grace, this is going to be hard enough.”

“So if I put my nightshift back on, you could remove your clothing.” She reached down and scooped her shift off the floor. Seeing Crispin in the altogether would be a wonder indeed. “And I’d still be safe.”

“Only if the bottom of your nightshift was stitched closed,” he whispered. “Or if I were a much finer man than I am.”

She cocked her head at him. “A much finer man wouldn’t have crept into my bedchamber, would he?”

“Not unless he got the chance.”

“Oh, that’s right. You maintain there is very little difference between one man and another. But I think you’re wrong, Crispin.” She took his hand and pressed it to her cheek. “There’s no one like you.”

All the air whooshed out of Crispin’s lungs. This wasn’t some art critic waffling on about his latest creation. It wasn’t the words of the peerage, fearful over what he might do to them in marble if they disrespected him. It wasn’t the gushing of an unhappy wife of an inattentive husband enraptured over the delights he gave her body.

Grace said it simply, as if it were an indisputable fact.

There’s no one like you.

He mattered to her. Not his work. Not his success. Him. Just Crispin.

The thought terrified him. And thrilled him.

And to add the exclamation point to her declaration, she was sitting naked beside him on a bed when she said it.

He laid her down on her thick feather tick and began worshipping her body. He laid his hands on her, smoothing over her skin, alert to every sharp intake of breath or pleasured sigh. From head to toe, he explored her, every curve and crease.

He sneaked darting glances at her face while he touched her. Delight, confusion, revelation—one by one, they paraded across her features and glowed in her amber eyes. He mentally tallied his discoveries.

Grace is ticklish on her ribs on the right side.

The skin of her inner elbows is soft as a newborn’s.

Circling her navel makes gooseflesh ripple across her belly.

Her nipples draw tight when I simply look at her breasts.

When he passed his fingertips over her mound for the first time, she drew a shuddering breath, but she
didn’t look away from him. Her mouth parted when he came back to that delicious bit of her, and the trust he saw in her eyes made him weak and strong at once.

She was nothing like he’d dreamed her. When her doppelganger first started invading his dreams a month or so before he met her, she’d been a practiced succubus, as worldly as his most experienced lover. Wanton, erotic, demanding…

The real Grace shivered under his lightest touch. She responded with small gasps and sighs. She covered her mouth to keep from crying out.

She made him feel more a man than ever in his life.

“Raise your arms over your head,” he whispered.

She reached up and grasped the railed headboard, arching her back.

He claimed one of her upthrust breasts with his mouth and suckled her, while he teased her legs apart. She opened to him and he found her slick and warm. His cock ached to fill her. In another time, another world, another dream, he’d have taken her, virginity be damned, in the blind heat of rutting rage, but he controlled himself in this one.

This was about Grace. He wanted to prove she was right. There was no one like him.

He traced her parts, separating her intimate folds, luxuriating in her wetness, in her swollen sensitivity. Her point of pleasure had risen to be stroked. He toyed with it, circling it, feather touches that had her lifting herself into his hand.

When she finally growled with frustration, he covered her mouth with a kiss to swallow the sound. Then he relented. He touched her directly this time and she groaned into his mouth. He stroked her with two fingers, lightly at first and then with more pressure. Fresh moisture from her depths rewarded his efforts.

Crispin could have roared in triumph. She wanted him. Desperately, achingly, passionately.

He rocked his sheathed cock against her hip without realizing he did so. Her hand found him through the fabric of his trousers and stroked.

There was no artifice, no technique. She didn’t try to be anything other than herself. She wanted to touch him and so she did.

And tormented him beyond bearing in the process.

His fingers fell into a steady rhythm against her spot and he felt her body begin to tense. He deepened their kiss and she arched into his hand. When the first tremor in the soft lips of her sex started, he slipped the tip of his long middle finger into her virginal tightness. Her inner walls spasmed around his fingertip and his cock throbbed in time.

Her whole body shook and she tore her mouth from his with a gasp.

Oh, to be inside her when those concentric rings of bliss fanned out.

He held her till the storm subsided and her breathing returned slowly to normal. She turned to look at him then, her eyes wide.

“I never imagined,” she whispered.

“Neither did I.”

It was as though his previous trysts had been mere exercises in plumbing. Fitting this piece with that for such and such a duration until one or both of them reached a terminus of sorts. There’d been no trust. No one had ever so sweetly and utterly surrendered to him.

In Grace’s complete confidence in him, she’d opened a doorway to her heart. Crispin had glimpsed her soul. And a human soul is a terrifyingly beautiful thing to behold.

He’d offered her pleasure and she’d accepted it. He’d
never been so intent on giving. Though part of his anatomy was still very set on receiving, his soul was satisfied to have given.

He laid his head between Grace’s breasts and drew a deep breath, willing his body to settle.

Grace trusted him. There was no one like him. He wouldn’t betray her.

She’d been a virgin when he climbed in her window. She’d still be one when he climbed out.

Her fingers brushed over his head, smoothing his rumpled hair. Her chest rose and fell and her heartbeat slowed under his ear.

“I assume there’s more,” she finally said in hushed tones.

He raised his head and nipped her breast. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“No, Crispin. I didn’t mean…That was wonderful. Extraordinary.” She propped herself up on both elbows, artlessly unaware how fetching the pose rendered her, and looked pointedly at the bulge in his trousers. “I meant for you.”

He sat up, needing to put a little distance between them now. If he was going to keep her trust, he had to remove himself from temptation.

“Yes, Grace, there’s a good deal more. For both of us.” He rolled off the bed and found his discarded shoes.

“Really? Can you show me?”

She drew her knees under her and sat up on them. For a moment, Crispin imagined rubbing his cock between her breasts. An image of her head dipping down made his vision waver. She could take him in her mouth.

His balls tensed for release. He’d dreamed it so many times. But the Grace in his dreams had bloodred lips and a knowing glint in her eyes.

The Grace before him was still an innocent in so many ways. Besides, he’d never be able to keep from
growling his pleasure to the moon if she actually did it. And her parents were only a thin wall away.

Her brow furrowed. “Don’t you want to?”

More than he wanted to keep breathing. And it might come to that if he woke Mr. Makepeace.

He leaned down and kissed her forehead. He didn’t dare anything else.

“Yes, Grace. I want…” He wanted to spread her wide and bury himself in her sweet flesh. He wanted to flip her over and ride her till they were both spent. He wanted to tangle himself with her so thoroughly they’d never be able to separate. “But not here, not now.”

She nodded. She climbed out of bed and draped herself on him. He held her, running a hand down the smooth length of her spine and staying to dally with the indentations above her buttocks.

Dimples on both sets of cheeks.
Just as he’d hoped.

“Grace,” he murmured into her neck.

“Hmm?” she said as she pressed her soft body against his. They fit together with such rightness.

“You have to put your wrapper on or I’ll never be able to leave.” She smelled of scented soap and musk and satisfied warm woman. He wanted to capture her essence and carry it with him. To put her in his pocket and keep her next to his heart.

“Perhaps I want you to stay.”

“If you’re prepared not to marry a title, I just might.”

Where the hell had that come from? A woman might mistake that for a ham-handed proposal.

Instead, it seemed to remind Grace that she was a virgin who needed to remain one and galvanized her into action. She stooped to retrieve her wrapper and slipped it on.

“You’re right. Good night, Crispin.” She stood tiptoe and pecked his cheek.

He ought to feel relieved. He’d thought her such a sensible female that first day in his studio when she decided to ignore that initial ill-considered kiss.

Had she decided to ignore the pleasure she’d just experienced?

He frowned down at her. Did this night mean nothing to her?

“Crispin,” she whispered.

“What?” How long had he been staring at her?

“I’m wearing my wrapper and you’re not leaving.”

It was a dismissal.

His chest ached. The muscle in his thigh that hadn’t throbbed in the last hour sent an urgent message of pain to his brain. He hurried out the window and made his hitching way along the ledge without a mishap with the geraniums.

As he dropped from the ledge to the stone wall and then to the garden courtyard, he seemed to hear her voice in his head again.

There’s no one like you.

Apparently there was no one like the Marquess of Dorset either.