When the Marquess Met His Match (23 page)

The teal blue coat and skirt she wore made her eyes seem the brilliant blue of aquamarines. She’d removed her hat, and her hair gleamed like a blackbird’s wing in the sunlight pouring through the window.

She smiled, gesturing to the mantelpiece and the crude statuettes of carved alabaster that stood there, tucked between an ormolu clock and a small copper coffeepot. “Baroque and bazaar, indeed. I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe you.”

“Yes, well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.” He turned to the footman. “That will be all for the moment, Noah.”

The footman went out, closing the door behind him. The latch had barely clicked into place before Belinda was across the room and in his arms. She kissed him, her mouth warm and lush and tasting like heaven.

He savored it for a moment, then his hands came up to cup her cheeks, and he pulled back so that he could look at her. “Belinda, what are you doing here? And why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” He pressed a quick kiss to her lips, another to her forehead and another to the impudent tip of her nose. “And why in blazes did you take such a long time getting here?”

She laughed, twining her arms around his neck. “I know, I know. But I’m here now.”

“And I’m going back to London tomorrow.”

“Then let’s not waste a moment.” She took a deep breath. “Where is your room?”

Chapter 19

N
icholas caught his breath at the question, hardly able to believe this was happening. He’d joked about it several times, about how one day, she’d fling herself into his arms and demand he make love to her. He’d never thought it would actually happen.

He’d figured if he ever were lucky enough to get her into his bed, it would be because he’d somehow managed to seduce his way past her previous experience with men, her morals, and her good sense. But this was something he’d never expected in a thousand years.

“I’m dreaming,” he murmured. “I have to be.” But even as he said it, he was grabbing her hand and turning to open the door. He led her out of the drawing room, up another flight of stairs, down a long corridor, and into his private suite.

“This is quite different from the rest of the house,” she said. “A bit spartan,” she added, glancing at the plain white walls, brass bed, and cherrywood furnishings as he closed the door behind them.

“I simply had everything awful removed, and this was what was left,” he explained as he began drawing the moss green curtains, not all the way. Enough to cut off the bright sunlight outside, but leaving just enough space between the curtains for there to be light in the room. He didn’t want to make love to her in the dark. “Except the bed,” he went on as he started toward her. “That’s from one of the guest bedrooms. The one in here was this hideous thing of purple mahogany—” He halted in front of her and hauled her into his arms. “I don’t want to talk about the damn furniture.”

“I don’t want to talk at all,” she answered, and kissed him, wrapping her arms around his neck. He was already fully aroused, and she must have felt it, even through the many layers of clothing that separated them, for she pressed her body closer, groaning into his mouth, tasting him with her tongue. He felt the desire he’d been banking for weeks flare up as if no time had passed since those moments in the brewery, and he worked to keep it at bay.

He’d wanted her to come here, so that they would have the leisure of low, slow, luscious lovemaking, but for that plan to work, he knew he had to slow things down. He’d waited for this moment, dreamed of it, imagined it over and over, and he intended both of them to savor it. He gentled the kiss, nipping her lower lip, pulling it between both of his, tasting her.

“You go too fast,” he told her, and reached up to pull out her hatpin. “It won’t do, Belinda.”

He plucked off her hat, wove the pin through the crown, and tossed the confection of yellow straw and stuffed bluebirds into a corner. “You see,” he said as he reached for her hand and began pulling off her buff-colored kid gloves, “I’ve imagined undressing you dozens of times by now, and I’ll not be deprived of my fun just because you decided to take weeks to come down here and drove both of us to the brink of insanity.”

“Dozens?” she murmured, as he pulled off her second glove. “I doubt that.”

He let her gloves drop to the floor before he paused to consider. “You’re right,” he said, and reached for the first button of her teal blue polonaise. “It was probably hundreds.”

He untied bows, shoved buttons out of their holes, and slid the jacket of cotton sateen off her shoulders. One toss, and it joined the hat in the far corner of his room. He then lifted his hands to the base of her throat, his fingers searching beneath tiny, pleated layers of pale blue silk for a button or a hook, but her voice made him pause. “Nicholas?”

When he looked up, he found her smiling at him. “The buttons are in the back,” she said.

“Well, I don’t see how I was supposed to know. You’ve more layers to you than a French pastry.” That fact was confirmed when he turned her around and saw the long row of cloth-covered buttons down her back. “As many times as I imagined this moment, your clothing never had this many fastenings. Why you women wear such intricate garments is beyond my understanding. Makes things deuced difficult for a chap.”

“Well, that is rather the point,” she said, as he began undoing buttons. “Still, had I thought far enough ahead to realize we would be engaging in a
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the moment I arrived, I’d have worn something less complicated.”

“This is not a
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,” he told her, taking issue with her choice of words. “Making love to you shall take me much longer than two hours.”

She shifted her weight impatiently. “It will if you don’t go any faster.”

“Speed, my darling, is not the point.” He pulled her dress apart and pressed his lips to the bare skin at the nape of her neck, relishing the way she shivered in response. “Why are you in such a hurry?”

“After the shameless way I kissed you when I arrived, how can you ask?”

Those words and the catch in her voice as she said them tempted him to accommodate her wishes and speed things up, but he resisted temptation valiantly. He’d vowed that pleasuring her this time wasn’t going to be like the last time, and he intended to keep that vow.

Finished unbuttoning her bodice, he pushed it off her shoulders and down her arms. It caught at her waist, held there by the many hooks that attached it to her skirt. He left it there for now and turned his attention to her hair. One by one, hairpins hit the floor, and a few moments later, locks of raven black silk tumbled down almost to her waist, and he caught the fragrance of her perfume—light, sweet lemon verbena and deep, erotic musk, a combination that never failed to arouse him.

Not that he needed any encouragement there. He was fully, flagrantly aroused, but despite that, he seemed bent on torturing himself. He grasped a handful of blue-black strands in his fist and lifted them, savoring the scent of her and the deepening of his own desire that came with it. He tangled the strands in his fingers, played with them, kissed them, and, finally, pushed them aside. He pressed slow, tender kisses along the side of her neck up to her ear as he glided his fingertips down her bare arms, and he relished how her breath quickened in response.

He turned her around, and the moment he did, she lifted her face in anticipation of a kiss, but he didn’t kiss her. Instead, he continued undressing her. He wanted to heighten her anticipation, bring her all the way to the edge before he gave her what she was in such a hurry for. Slowly, he unfastened hooks, undid buttons, and untied ribbons, removing layers of silk, satin, and muslin from her body. One by one, bodice, corset cover, underskirt, corset, three petticoats, and a pair of shoes joined the pile of garments in the corner. By the time he had her down to her chemise and drawers, he was sure he was never going to be able to hold out long enough to make love to her properly.

His body ached for her, but he strove to contain it as he reached for the hem of her chemise. He pulled it up, and when she stretched her hands toward the ceiling, he removed it altogether. But he left her drawers on for now. He needed some sort of barrier, however flimsy, to remind him to keep his desire leashed as long as possible.

To that end, he spread his arms wide. “Your turn.”

“You want me to undress you?”

“I told you, I’m not making love to you with my trousers around my knees, remember? Not the first time, anyway.”

She reached out, hesitated a few seconds, then unbuttoned his waistcoat and slid it from his shoulders. It fell behind him to the floor, and she set to work on his studs, fumbling a bit with them. She laughed, sounding nervous. “I’m not very good at this. I’ve never done it.”

He frowned, puzzled. “You never undressed your husband?”

“No.” She fell silent, and he grasped her wrists, stopping her.

“Are you certain you want to do this? You don’t have to.”

“I want to.” She paused and looked up at him. “I want you, Nicholas.”

Those words, stated so simply, did queer things to him, they made him feel dizzy—with relief, and pleasure, and something else he couldn’t quite define.

“Thank God,” he muttered, taking refuge in teasing as she turned to drop his shirt studs into a crystal dish on the dressing table. “Because if you’d have refused me now, I think I would have had to throw myself off a cliff.”

She laughed at that as she pulled his braces off his shoulders and unfastened his cuff links. “Isn’t that a bit extreme?”

“That’s right, laugh,” he said, nodding as she turned away with his cuff links. “Laugh at the fact that I’ve been mad with lust for you almost from the first moment I walked through your front door, while you haven’t cared two straws. It’s driven me to the brink.”

He pulled his shirt over his head, then his undershirt, but when he looked at her again, she still had her back to him. She was so rigid, so still, it worried him. “What’s wrong?”

His cuff links dropped from her hand into the dish, joining his studs with a clink. “Is that really true?” she asked without turning around, “or are you teasing me?”

“I’m not teasing. Well, I am, a little, because I’m nervous as hell, and I always tease you more when I’m nervous.” He put his hands on her bare shoulders and turned her around. “But it’s still the truth. I’ve wanted you from the first. It stuns me that you think otherwise.”

“Yes, well, there are things you don’t know about me.” She took a deep breath, then looked down at her fingers, which were twining and untwining nervously. “When I married my husband, I loved him too much, and he didn’t love me at all. As a result, he felt smothered, I felt undesirable, and our physical relations were . . . disappointing for both of us.”

“Undesirable? You? Stuff.” Nicholas made a sound of disbelief. “Was he impotent?”

“With me, yes. Sometimes. With his other women, I don’t know.”

Still holding her wrists, he leaned forward and kissed her. “I won’t be disappointed, Belinda.”

She smiled a little. “Don’t say that quite yet.”

She started to pull her hands away, but he didn’t let her. “There is no way on God’s earth you could disappoint me because you are lovelier than anything my imagination has ever conjured up, and believe me, I have a very good imagination.”

He released her wrists. “Everything about you is desirable to me. Your hair, for instance,” he said, smoothing the inky locks with his palm. “It’s so black it’s almost blue, and it feels like silk. Your eyes—all different shades of blue in the daylight, gray in twilight—stun me every time I look into them. Your skin, your scent intoxicate me. And your figure, well . . .” He paused and grasped her wrists again to spread her arms wide. His throat went dry at the sight of her pale, smooth skin, and her round, full breasts with their pink nipples and darker aureoles. He slid his gaze farther down to her perfectly proportioned hips, and he cursed himself for not taking off her drawers earlier. By the sunlight that peeked between the curtains, he thought he could see the dark triangle of hair at the apex of her thighs, and the desire he’d been holding in check for weeks threatened to flare up out of control. He forced his gaze back to her face, but it still took him a few seconds before he could speak again because her face was every bit as wrenchingly beautiful as her body.

He cleared his throat. “As for your figure,” he resumed, “I hope it’s all right if I reserve judgment on that for a bit.”

“Reserve judgment?” she echoed, and he didn’t know whether what he heard in her voice was disbelief or fear. Possibly, it was both.

“Yes,” he answered. “You see, I think I have to do quite a bit of research on this particular topic before I pronounce an opinion. I think I’ll begin here.”

Still holding her hands apart, he bent his head and kissed her breast. “Lovely,” he said, and grazed her nipple with his tongue, gratified to hear her sharp intake of breath. He let her hands go and cupped both breasts. “Pink and white, and such gorgeous nipples.”

He played with her breasts, shaping them. He toyed with her nipples, relishing how they hardened in response. He pulled one into his mouth and suckled her, softly at first, then harder, until she was moaning low in her throat and her hands were raking through his hair to pull him closer.

He could feel her arousal growing hotter. He wanted that. It was clear Featherstone had been a piss-poor lover, and though the other man had clearly had no idea just how much passion Belinda possessed, he knew, and he intended to stoke that fire as hot as it could go.

He gently scored her nipple with his teeth, and she cried out, her knees giving way beneath her. He wrapped an arm around her to hold her upright, his tongue still licking her nipple as he guided her body backward until she hit the brass footboard of the bed.

“Now, where was I?” he murmured, pretending to think about it. “That’s right. I was doing research.”

His hands slid to her waist. “Perfect,” he said. “I think you should leave off the corset from now on. You don’t need it at all, and if we do decide we want a
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, it will be far easier to manage it. Particularly if we’re in some farmer’s field somewhere tomorrow afternoon.”

“In a field? Lovemaking outside, in the open?” She was staring at him as if he’d gone mad.

“I suppose that sort of thing wasn’t to Featherstone’s taste either?”

She shook her head. Her tongue shot out to lick her lips. “Never. Not even at night.”