Seduction - Guilty Pleasures Part 24

"I changed my mind. Corset hooks take too d.a.m.ned long to unfasten." He grasped the lacy edges of her princess petticoat and pulled the garment down her arms, revealing her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. So luscious, cream and pink in the candlelight. His throat went dry.

He cupped her b.r.e.a.s.t.s in his hands and heard her gasp. He lifted his gaze, watching a beautiful delight wash over her face as she closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall behind her, and he did not think he had ever seen anything lovelier in his life. He gently closed the thumb and forefinger of each hand over her hardened nipples, relishing the little whimpering sounds of pleasure she made even as he felt his self-control slipping.

Reluctantly, he slid his hands away from her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to grasp the folds of silk and cambric that were caught on the flare of her hips. He pulled the dress and petticoat down her legs as he knelt in front of her, keeping his gaze fixed firmly on the thick, willow-green rug and his l.u.s.t reined in.

His body was burning by the time the garments reached her ankles. She put a hand on his shoulder for balance and stepped out of them.

He pulled off her heeled silk slippers and tossed them aside, then his hands curved behind her ankles and moved slowly up her calves. He caressed the backs of her knees, and smiled when he felt shivers run through her. He untied her garters and pulled them down with her stockings.

Only when she was completely naked did Anthony dare to look up again. But he did it slowly, over long, straight shins and taut, tapering thighs, thighs that had a sleek, outside plane and an oval hint of muscle above each knee. Strong legs, lean and taut, more beautiful than all the plump, fleshy limbs of other women he had seen. A man's most insane dreams could not conjure up legs like these. "G.o.d, Daphne, I-"

He couldn't go on. Anthony ran his palms up the outside of each of her thighs, then grasped her bare hips in his hands. He pulled her toward him and pressed a kiss to the soft brown curls at the apex of her thighs, inhaling the scent of gardenias and feminine arousal.

That kiss was too much for her. She gave a strangled, startled cry, and her hands came down on his shoulders to keep herself from falling.

He stood up and lifted her in his arms. Turning around, he laid her on the bed, then sat on the edge beside her as he removed his boots. Standing up again, he looked at her as he began to unb.u.t.ton his trousers, and found that her gaze was fixed on his hands. He watched her face as she watched him slide his trousers off his hips, and when her lips parted with a soft, startled oh and a smile of pure approval, he wanted to laugh with exultation.

The mattress dipped with his weight as he moved to stretch out beside her on the bed. Leaning on one elbow, he gazed down at her for a moment, then he reached out to touch her. He flattened his palm across her stomach, then moved lower, and slid his hand between her thighs. He slipped the tip of his middle finger inside her.

She was wet, aroused, panting, as he encircled her c.l.i.toris gently with the tip of his finger. He barely moved, watching her face as her hips rocked frantically against his hand and she approached her climax. Nothing she felt was suppressed or hidden from him now; there was exquisite joy in every plane and curve of her face as she let out the soft, keening wail of feminine ecstasy. Anthony felt the tiny, convulsive shudders of her body as she wrung the last few pleasures of her o.r.g.a.s.m from him, and he was more pleased by what he had just witnessed than by any other s.e.xual experience of his life.

He withdrew his hand and moved on top of her, his weight pressing her deeper into the mattress. He entered her, and he wanted to move within her slowly, bring her to ecstasy one more time, but she was so tight, and the feel of her surrounding him was so exquisite that his good intentions went straight to h.e.l.l.

He heard his own visceral groans as he felt the tension within him rising, thickening until it was unbearable. No way to be gentle now, or hold back. He quickened the pace, thrusting into her with the rough, frantic motions of his own pa.s.sion finally unleashed. He came in a rush, the sensations exploding inside him with all the flash and heat of fireworks.

Afterward, he stilled on top of her, his hands sliding beneath her back as he watched her open her eyes.

"My goodness," she whispered, trying to catch her breath. "No wonder the Romans painted all those frescoes."

He laughed, the sound ringing through the room loud enough that it probably woke the dozing footmen out in the corridor. He rolled onto his back, taking her with him.

Her hair fell all around his face and he kissed her, not knowing if this woman made him feel more like a Roman G.o.d or the greatest lover in all of England. Either was more than he had ever dreamed of.

Chapter 26.

"And that is how we came to be in Morocco," she summed up. She had been lying here beside him, naked, with the sheets flung back, giving him a detailed account of her life as if she were a travelogue. It was not the most romantic aftermath to lovemaking, she supposed, but it was so nice to lie here beside him and watch his face watching hers with such avid interest.

"I envy you your travels, Daphne," he said after a moment, "but I do not understand your father. What was he thinking? Wandering around the deserts of Africa, with you working your fingers to the bone. That should not be a permanent life for anyone, especially for a woman. I cannot help but condemn your father's thoughtlessness."

"No, no, you do not understand. He was not so thoughtless as you think, Anthony. It was my insistence to remain." She turned her head on the pillow to look at him. "Papa wanted me to have a better life. He wanted me to go to England, he wanted to reunite me with my mother's family, but his letters, like mine, were rebuffed. The baron had disowned my mother, even going so far as to pretend she was dead, and he would not be moved to relent. Papa suggested sending me here for school, but I refused to leave him, and I could not allow him to give up his work and come here with me. He was so lost when my mother died, he needed me so desperately. I would not leave him, I could not. So we stayed together, and I a.s.sisted him. I loved him, and I helped him. His work and I were his purpose in life, and both of us were happy."

"Your father was stronger than mine," he said, turning his head to stare at the ceiling. "Perhaps because he had you."

She rose up on her arm. Resting her weight on her elbow and her cheek in her hand, she looked at him. "Your father had you, Anthony, and your sister."

"I sent Viola to relations in Cornwall." He turned his head to look at her. "I was not enough to ease his pain."

"I doubt that." Daphne reached out to touch his cheek, wishing he would open up to her about himself. "What happened to your father?"

He sat up, rolled his legs over the side of the bed, and stood up. "Dawn will be here soon. I should take you back."

Daphne watched him, her heart aching. "Why will you not tell me about this? I should not care if he had gone mad, if that is the reason you keep silent-"

"You should get dressed," he interrupted, bending down to retrieve his linen. "If the servants at Russell Square wake up and find you have gone missing, everyone will know where you are. Or they will think we have eloped."

Daphne did not move. "Why won't you tell me about him?"

"Because I do not want to discuss it, Daphne," he said as he dressed. "Ever."

She got out of bed and went to him, wrapping her arms around his waist. He felt as rigid as a statue. "Anthony," she whispered, staring at his back. "You press me at every turn to be more forthcoming about myself, to share what I feel and think and believe, yet you refuse to do so with me. I find it as hard as you to talk about my deepest feelings, but I have done so with you. Somehow, you have become my dearest friend. Despite all my efforts to keep you from seeing my many insecurities, you pull them out of me. I think that is because deep down, under all my fears, I want you to know who I am. I have come to trust you more than I have ever trusted anyone."

He did not move. He did not reply.

She pressed her lips to his back, feeling the fine weave of his linen shirt against her mouth and the hard muscles of his body beneath. She let her arms fall away, and she took a step back. "Anthony," she said to his back, "I know you are a very private person, but you want me to be your wife. I have opened my heart to you more than once, told you things I would die before revealing to anyone else. If you cannot open up to me and do the same, even if it is only a little bit at a time, we have no chance of happiness. I love you, but until you can begin to share yourself with me, I will not marry you."

He did not reply, but she knew that was not out of coldness. It was out of fear, fear just like hers. She got dressed without another word, and the carriage ride back to Russell Square was silent. It seemed there was nothing more to say.

Daphne did not go to the museum opening on the following day. Instead, she went out with Elizabeth and Anne to make calls, and their talk and laughter was a welcome distraction.

When they returned to the house just before six o'clock, Mary had barely opened the door for them before Lady Fitzhugh came out of the drawing room above with a cry of delight.

"My dears, I am so glad you are back." She came rushing down the stairs, a happy smile on her face. Her daughters and Daphne paused in the vestibule, stunned that the normally sedate Lady Fitzhugh was actually running down the stairs.

"Mama!" cried Elizabeth. "What has happened?"

"Something good," Anne put in. "How you are smiling, Mama!"

Lady Fitzhugh pointed to the calling-card table behind them, and all three of the younger women turned around.

On the silver tray atop the table was a single, thornless red rose. Beside it was Anthony's card.

"Another flower for Daphne," Anne said, laughing. "This is the reason you have a smile on your face as wide as the Thames, Mama? Because of a rose?"

"It's a thornless rose," Elizabeth said ecstatically. "And it's red. Oh, Daphne, at last!"

"What does it mean?" asked Anne.

"Love at first sight," Lady Fitzhugh told her, and turned to Daphne, putting a hand on her arm. "I am so ashamed of myself, my dear, but I had to look it up in your little book, for I could not wait. He left the museum-and it is the opening day, you know-to bring this to you himself. He was devastated, my dear, simply devastated that you were not here when he called."

"Daphne?" Elizabeth stared at her. "You are so quiet. Surely you do not doubt his feelings now?"

She did not answer. With a trembling hand, she picked up the rose, staring at it in bewilderment. She had been waiting for him to make the next move, but what did this mean? She vividly remembered her painful confession to him in the antika of how she had fallen in love with him the first moment she met him. Was he trying to tell her he remembered that, too? Or was he making a genuine confession of love? But that did not make sense, for he had certainly not loved her at first sight. She was not even really sure he loved her now.

She didn't care. She loved him, and he was taking another step toward her. Odd how one simple thing could put everything else into place. This time, she was going to take a leap of faith all the way to him. This time, she wasn't going to be afraid of getting her heart broken. This time, she wasn't going to worry about making a mistake. She s.n.a.t.c.hed the flower off the tray and ran for the front door, flinging it open to leave the house once again.

"My dear, where are you going?" Lady Fitzhugh called after her.

"The museum," Daphne called back over her shoulder. She grabbed up her skirts with one hand, held her rose with the other, and raced toward the entrance to the square, oblivious to the incredulous stares of those strolling in the park. She ran through the gates and up the street, scanning the carriages for an available hansom as she went. It took seven blocks before she finally hailed one. The church clock was striking seven o'clock as she gave the driver the address of Anthony's museum and climbed into the carriage. Once inside, she fell back against the seat, breathing hard, holding the rose to her cheek, and hoping with all her heart that the position of d.u.c.h.ess was still open.

She did not come. Though surrounded by people every hour, Anthony watched for her, glancing at the doorway of his collection room every few seconds, scanning the faces in the crowd constantly as the hours of the afternoon dragged by, but she did not come.

The opening of his museum would be hailed as a triumph. Twenty-seven collections of Romano-British art and architecture, including his own, were on display, and those who waited until the opening day to purchase tickets found that none were available for any viewing at any hour until mid-July. But Daphne, so much a part of this project, did not come.

His extraordinary and controversial decision to have the museum open to all who wished to view the antiquities would continue to be debated for decades, and the ha'penny tickets for morning views had been among the first to disappear, but he could not share that gratifying news with Daphne, for she did not come.

He ordered the doors kept open an additional hour, but when everyone had left and he was alone, she still had not arrived. Yet he walked around his museum, his footsteps echoing on the stone floors. And he waited.

Anthony knew he had been a fool not to tell her last night what she wanted to know, but G.o.d, he had never told anyone about his father. He never discussed it, not even with Viola. People gossiped about it, and servants whispered about it, but no one really knew what it had been like.

There was so much he would say if she came. He would tell her every secret he had, shout them from the Whispering Gallery at Saint Paul's, if only she would come.

So hard to reveal himself, but Daphne understood. Like no one else, she understood.

Anthony heard the front door open, heard it thrown back with a bang. Then footsteps crossing the stone floors through the main gallery. And there she was, breathing hard, with the rose in her hand and her bonnet askew, looking disheveled, windblown, and utterly lovely.

"What does this mean?" she asked him as she walked toward him, twirling the flower in her fingers. "What are you telling me?"

"My father killed himself."

She stopped. The rose stopped twirling in her hand. She stared, her beautiful eyes wide with shock at the abruptness of his statement.

"One night, three years after my mother died, he drank four bottles of laudanum. He missed her so much, you see. She was everything to him, and he loved her down to the depths of his soul, and she died. He did not want to live without her, and he killed himself. I found him."

So hard to say these things, even harder than he had thought they would be, each word a world of pain, and he felt as if he were twelve years old all over again. "I thought it was a blessing. G.o.d help me, I did. I was glad."

She did not say anything, but simply stood there, listening as the words began pouring out of him. "Can you imagine what it is like to see your father sob for hours at a time? He talked about her with me, and with Viola. I had to send her away, for she was only six years old, and she did not understand. Daphne, he talked to the servants as if she were still alive, giving orders to them about how she wanted a cup of tea sent up to her room, or sending them on some other such errand for her. He would wander the halls at night, calling her name. He sat at the dining table and talked to her. Entire conversations every night with an empty chair."

Oh, G.o.d. Daphne put her hand over her mouth. The words were pouring out of him so rapidly, she could hardly understand what he said. She knew some of it already, but it was harder to hear him speak it. He had been a boy then, only a boy. Once she had foolishly thought she knew what a broken heart was like. So wrong, for it was only now that it was breaking, breaking for the man she loved, who had been a boy watching his father go mad.

"I was twelve when he died, but I really became the duke when I was nine," Anthony went on. "I had to. He could not make a decision for the life of him. He would stare at doc.u.ments for hours, but never sign them. The land steward started coming to me. All the duties began to pile up, and by the time my uncle came to be my father's regent, I had already been running things for several months. With my uncle's a.s.sistance and advice, I did everything. I had to a.s.sume the power at once. I knew that."

"I remember you told me," Daphne murmured. "That day of our picnic."

"My poor father could not manage to add two numbers together. He was incoherent. He could not converse on any subject but my mother. He refused to allow his valet to shave his face, because he was waiting for Rosalind to do it. She had always done it-it was a sort of intimacy between them."

Daphne saw his face twist with pain, and it was almost unbearable. She took a step forward. She wanted to tell him to stop, that he did not have to explain any more. But she steeled herself to wait and let him finish.

"I had to lock him up, Daphne. He started to do things, like load his guns and fire them into the walls. He could have killed someone. He could have killed himself, so I had him locked in a room upstairs." His voice broke. "I do not know how he got the laudanum. The doctor, I suppose, though he denied it."

Anthony straightened and looked at her as if remembering she was there. He must have seen something of her horror in her eyes, for he said, "Now you know my deepest fear. I never want to be my father."

He turned away. His back to her, he said, "His madness might not have been caused by his grief, only brought out by it. I cannot say it is not hereditary. I knew you were ent.i.tled to know all this when I proposed, but G.o.d help me, Daphne, I could not tell you."

She did not know what to say. How could any words suffice? She started to walk toward him, but even as she did, he was walking away from her.

"I will not pursue you any longer," he told her over his shoulder. "All I ask is that if ... if there is a child after last night, you let me do my duty in that, at least."

Daphne halted a few feet away from him. She gave a little cough. "Thank you for telling me, for sharing that with me. But I really came because I heard you were looking to fill a position on your estate. What are the qualifications of being a d.u.c.h.ess?"

He stiffened, and did not speak for a long moment. Then he drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. He turned around. "Are you applying for the post, Miss Wade?"

"I thought I might, but I have concerns about the position, for I know it is an arduous one. What does a d.u.c.h.ess do, exactly?"

He took a step toward her. "Love the duke. Love him with all the pa.s.sion she hides within her, love him each and every day of her life."

Daphne nodded with no change in her expression. "I already do that. What else?"

"She would need to rid herself of any fashionable notion of ever sleeping in her own rooms, unless of course he takes to snoring."

Daphne tilted her head to one side, her heart pounding so hard she believed she could hear it echo off the dome overhead. "I believe I could manage that, even the snoring, for if one can sleep through a sandstorm, one can sleep through anything. What else?"

"She must run his household, at whichever estate they are in residence. She must be discreet, for the duke is a private man, and she would need to always behave with restraint no matter what her inner feelings, for she will be constantly observed by others and gossiped about."

Daphne tapped her fingertip to her lip several times, then nodded. "I believe I am rather good at that part."

"However, she must learn not to conceal her true feelings from the duke himself, who only wants to make her happy. She must give many fetes and country house parties, run a vast number of charities, be able to entertain dignitaries-kings and such-and try to look down her nose at everyone else and convince them she is far better than they are. She might have difficulty with that part."

"I can learn."

"She would need to treat servants with all her diplomatic kindness, smoothing over any feathers ruffled by the duke, who is known to be an impatient man, difficult to satisfy, and not always thoughtful of the feelings of those who work for him. Pleases and thank yous and things such as that are difficult for dukes to manage, you know."

He smiled, and her heart began to soar. He took another step toward her. "She has to learn how to spend the duke's money with absurd extravagance, especially on follies for herself, such as beautiful clothes, jewels, and presents for her friends. She must never, ever, allow herself to run out of gardenia-scented soap, for dukes are known to be quite partial to gardenias. And should she and the duke have children, she has to love them. She has to lavish upon those children all the attention and care that the duke and d.u.c.h.ess's own sets of parents were never able to lavish on them."

"I could do that," she whispered.

He took another step, and halted a foot in front of her. He reached out and wiped her tear away with the tip of his finger. Only then did she realize she was crying. "She has to stop being afraid of getting hurt, for the duke will surely hurt her again on many occasions during their long marriage, but he will never do so with deliberate intent, for he loves her more than anything on earth."

She caught back a sob and started to speak, but he gestured to the flower in her hand, stopping her. "I sent you this because it is the truest expression of my feelings that I am able to give you." He took a deep breath. "I fell in love with you that day in my gardens, when I saw you standing in the rain. I have loved you since first sight, Daphne, for that moment when I saw you standing in the rain was the first time I ever truly saw you."

"Oh, Anthony!" She threw her arms around his neck. "I was afraid," she cried, her voice m.u.f.fled by his shirtfront. "I could not believe that you were sincere. I kept telling myself I did not love you anymore, but I knew I was deceiving myself and had been for such a long time. I love you. I do not know when I fell in love with you-the real emotion, I mean, and so much stronger and deeper than what I felt before-but I did fall in love with you."

She sniffed and took his offered handkerchief. "Now, what were those twenty questions you wanted to ask me?"

"Only one." He cupped her cheeks in his hands, loving her face and all the subtle nuances of feeling conveyed in her expression. "How much time do I get in exchange for that rose?"

"For the rose, a short engagement. For the speech, you get a lifetime."

"I can live with that," he said, and kissed her.

end.