When You Wish Upon a Duke Read online

  “Hah,” Charlotte said with a magnanimous flourish. “Then look elsewhere about my person for inspiration.”

  He nearly choked, he laughed so hard, and again she laughed with him. If marriage to him was always to be so entertaining, then they were destined to be happy indeed.

  “I’ll look to your other qualities,” he said. “To my wife, a most excellent climber of trees.”

  She grinned. “To my husband,” she said. “A most excellent gentleman to land atop.”

  “I trust I’ll be the only one,” he said, laughing still, and they drank again. “Here now, sweet, it would be a good notion for you to eat something along with all this wine.”

  Charlotte hadn’t noticed when the footman had brought several dishes of food to the table. She leaned forward to consider them, and at once the footman behind her chair appeared to serve her, using a large silver spoon to ladle a grayish, creamy something onto her plate.

  She stared down at it, unconvinced. The footman had carefully added a bit of the garnish to her plate, a purple flower that matched the Marchbourne livery.

  “That’s a fricassee of goose livers and mushrooms, with a sauce of red currants to the side,” March explained proudly as he began to eat. “I’m certain you’ll enjoy it. I keep both a French cook and an English one. You met them earlier. This is most likely from Monsieur Brière’s kitchen, though they are both eager to please you.”

  She remained skeptical, both of the flowers and the livers. “Is he the one who has put the blossoms on the plate?”

  “I expect it is,” March said. “A pretty conceit, isn’t it?”

  But Charlotte’s thoughts had already left her untouched plate. “Answer me true, March, if you please. Are you hungry?”

  He set his fork back down on the plate with gratifying haste.

  “You see, I’m not, not really.” She plucked the purple flower from her plate and twirled it idly in her fingertips. “While you worry about your two cooks, I’m thinking of my poor lady’s maid, waiting in my bedchamber to undress me.”

  “Is she now?”

  Charlotte nodded, looking up at him through her lashes. That had gotten his attention earlier in the carriage, and clearly it had done the trick here again.

  “I’m thinking it’s barbarously ill-mannered of me to keep her waiting much longer,” she said. “And I’m thinking that my virile husband would not ever wish me to—”

  But before she could finish, March had pushed back his chair and dragged Charlotte into his arms. Her chair toppled backward with a crash, but neither noticed as it fell, or as a footman hesitantly replaced it. March kissed her furiously, his mouth slashing across hers with a dizzying urgency. Charlotte answered, as bold and eager now as he. Aunt Sophronia had been right. The wine had helped, and any last vestige of restraint or uncertainty had vanished—or had been vanquished—then and there. The heat that he’d stirred in her earlier in the carriage had returned as they’d made their way here, and now she felt it glowing again, a feverish fire low in her belly.

  Desire, she thought, the very word titillating and forbidden. That was what it was. She desired her husband.

  And March—March desired her, too. The way he was kissing her told her that.

  “Upstairs.” His voice was low and rumbling, the edge to it making her shiver with anticipation. “Now.”

  This was not how March had planned this evening.

  He’d envisioned his wedding night as a memorable occasion, one that he and his bride could reminisce fondly about for the rest of their lives. They’d begin with a quiet private supper in the dining room for the two of them, with wines and dishes that he’d chosen specially to please her. Afterward they’d shift to the drawing room for cordials and a special bride’s cake baked in her honor. They would sit by the windows and look out at the park by moonlight (he had checked to make sure there was a nearly full moon), a favorite view that he’d anticipated sharing with her. Then they would retire upstairs, where he’d give her a decent interval to undress before he’d join her in her bedchamber and finally, joyfully yet solemnly, consummate their marriage.

  That was what he had planned. But in all that careful planning, he had neglected a few important elements. He’d overlooked how lushly, lavishly beautiful Charlotte would be as a bride, and how, even in her innocence, she’d so tempted him that he’d practically tumbled her in the carriage coming home from St. Paul’s.

  He hadn’t counted on drinking so much while he’d dressed for dinner, foolishly hoping to settle himself after the near debacle in the carriage. Nor that he’d drink even more when his genteel toast to their future had somehow lapsed into a riotous low drinking game that would rob them both of all their aristocratic decorum, nor that his bride would end up drinking to his virility in such an enchanting, enticing way that he’d wanted to demonstrate it right there. He certainly hadn’t dreamed that the perfect supper would go untasted and the bride’s cake in the drawing room forgotten, or that he and his duchess would act with such shameless abandon in the dining room.

  And their half-drunken progress up the staircase—how could he have dreamed of that? Past more of his curtseying and bowing servants, and down the long hall to her rooms, holding so tightly to each other that they stumbled, so clumsy with desire that they laughed, then kissed, then laughed again. They reeled deliriously against walls and knocked into unnoticed chairs, and nearly tumbled back down the stairs. He had not been able to keep his hands from her, nor she hers from him, and it seemed that every dozen feet or so they’d had to stop to kiss again.

  He had, in short, in all his careful planning, completely overlooked the fact that he hadn’t married an icy, idealized duchess. Instead he had wed Charlotte, his Charlotte, the one lady in the world who had the charming power to both beguile and befuddle him to an astonishing degree.

  And now it had come to this, with him pressing her flat against her bedchamber door while she laughed and kissed him and tried vainly to open the latch without looking. His cock was as hard as stone in his breeches, and every delicious chuckle and wriggle that she made only aroused him more. He had never wanted a woman more, and he couldn’t believe that the woman was actually his wife.

  Could she have any notion of how perilously close to his limit he was?

  He reached around her to unfasten the latch, and when the door swung open, they stumbled forward together into her bedchamber. Charlotte’s startled maid was sitting near the fire, and jumped to her feet to curtsey, some scrap of needlework in her hand. There were going to be plenty of tales told in the servants’ hall tonight, and now she’d have one to contribute, too.

  “Leave us,” he ordered brusquely. “The duchess will call when she requires you.”

  The woman scuttled away into the next room, closing the door behind her. March glanced swiftly around the room. At least here everything was as he’d ordered, with flowers in the vases, the fire high, and the coverlets on the bed turned back. Unbidden, he thought of how this room had once belonged to his mother, then shoved the thought away. It wasn’t his mother’s bedchamber; it was the duchess’s, and since Charlotte was the duchess, it belonged only to her.

  With her maid gone, Charlotte looped her arms around his shoulders and smiled up at him.

  “You’ll have to undress me now, you know,” she said, her voice a husky, confidential whisper. “I don’t think I can do it myself without Polly.”

  “If that’s a dare, Charlotte,” he said, “then you are bound to lose.”

  He’d already made a fair start on removing her clothes somewhere on the stairs, and he’d magically shed his own coat and neck cloth as well. Her gown was pushed down over her bare shoulders, nearly uncovering her breasts, and her thick, dark hair was mussed and tumbled in charming disarray. He frowned down at her gown, trying not to be distracted by her breasts. For all the frippery, a lady’s dress was not that difficult to remove. Quickly he began pulling the straight pins that held the front of her gown together over her s
tomacher, letting them scatter wherever they fell.

  “It’s not a dare,” she said, and with a little harrumph she slipped her hands from his shoulders and began to unfasten the long row of buttons on his waistcoat. “Nor is it a race. Faith, why are there so many buttons to a gentleman?”

  “To torment you,” he said, but the sad truth was that he was the one who was being tormented. To feel her fingers moving down his chest, lower with every button, was torture indeed.

  He yanked the last pin from her gown, slipped his hands inside the open bodice and pushed it back from her shoulders and down her arms, letting it fall to the floor in a soft rush of silk. She grinned and blushed, making him wonder how much of that grin came from the wine and how much simply from Charlotte herself.

  “You’re not afraid, are you?” he asked, wrestling the last buttons free on his waistcoat and tossing it aside.

  She shook her head, heartbreakingly vulnerable for all her bravado. “Should I be?”

  “I pray not,” he said, more truthfully than perhaps she realized.

  “You’ve not given me reason to be otherwise,” she said, and laughed softly, a throaty little chuckle that almost undid him.

  As if to prove it she untied the tapes at the waist of her petticoat and let it, too, drop to the floor. She stepped free of the pile of crumpled yellow silk, a step closer to him, and wriggled her stockinged feet from her slippers. Now she wore only her shift to her knees, and over that her stays—the same scarlet stays that he’d glimpsed in the tree, and which had haunted him for days.

  Except now it wasn’t a tiny triangle of imagining, but the entire tight-laced reality of Charlotte wearing them, her waist small and her breasts scarcely contained and offered upward, rising and falling with her quick breath. Her shift was such fine linen that it only seemed to accentuate what it pretended to hide. Her skin glowed through the sheer white, and through it, too, he could make out the shadowy dark mystery at the juncture of her thighs.

  “I don’t want you to be afraid of me,” he said, reluctantly dragging his gaze back to her face. “Ever.”

  “I am glad of that, March.” She smiled again, temptation incarnate. “But I’ll have you know, too, that I am monstrously brave for a lady. Even for a duchess.”

  “Especially for a duchess,” he said, his voice rough with the desire for possession. “My duchess.”

  He jerked his shirt free from his breeches and pulled it over his head, tossing it aside. Her eyes widened at the sight of so much uncovered male, but instead of shrinking away as he’d feared she might, she came closer, resting her palms on his chest. Slowly she spread her hands, exploring and tangling her fingers through the dark curls on his chest.

  “Oh, my,” she whispered with a certain pleased awe.

  “You are brave,” he growled, his hands settling on the narrowest part of her waist.

  She smiled, lowering her gaze. Lower still, and her eyes widened abruptly as she saw the sizable proof of his interest in her, pushing forward through his breeches.

  That was enough for him. He slid his hands down from her waist to cup her bottom, pulling her hard against his arousal. She gasped, and he kissed her hungrily, taking that little gasp into his own mouth. She slid her arms around his back, holding tightly, and slanted her mouth to let him kiss her more deeply.

  Even as they kissed, it was easy enough for him to free her breasts from the rigid top of her stays, easier still to shove aside the thin linen shift to bare her nipples. He rubbed his hand across them, making them stand hard, then with his fingertips tugged and squeezed until they were even harder.

  She broke away from the kiss, pressing her cheek against his with a startled little moan and arching her back to press her breast more fully into his hand. He kissed the side of her throat, where he could feel the pulse of her desire, and she shivered.

  “Oh, March, what you do,” she whispered. “What you do!”

  But what he did next was bend down and slip his arms beneath her knees to scoop her into his arms. She gasped with surprise, a gasp that changed at once to another sweet small chuckle as he carried her the short distance to the bed. She sank into the featherbed, her dark hair fanning around her face. Her eyes were heavy-lidded with longing, and her lips were full and red from his kisses.

  “What of my stays?” she asked breathlessly. “Shouldn’t we try to—”

  “Later,” he said, climbing onto the bed beside her. He hadn’t the patience for unknotting the clever lacing of a lady’s maid now. Neither of them did. “I want you too much.”

  “I’ll trust you,” she said, and smiled.

  Trust. She was trusting him not to hurt her and trusting him to lead the way in their lovemaking, as a husband should. He wished to be kind and patient. Respect, he knew, was key, and gentleness as well. Breathing hard, he struggled to recall the wise advice that Brecon had given him about pleasing a wife and the helpful suggestions about taking her maidenhead.

  But as soon as she held her arms open to welcome him, he forgot it all.

  He kissed her, and moved to lie over her, stroking her breasts and relishing the warmth of her skin. He shoved aside the skirt of her shift to discover more heated skin, and the long sweep of her thigh above her garters. She moved restlessly beneath him as she kissed him. Her hands roamed across his back, learning him, too, which only inflamed him more. His hand moved higher, unable to resist any longer.

  To his shock he discovered she was already swollen and wet with desire, as feverish as he was himself. He stroked her as gently as he could, trying not to think of how tight she was around his finger, and how much tighter still she’d be around his cock. She made small shuddering moans of pleasure as he did, the most delicious sounds he’d ever heard, and she rocked against his hand as if striving to draw him inward.

  He needed no more invitation. The last shreds of his self-control were gone. He tore open the buttons on the fall of his breeches to release his cock, and swiftly settled himself between her thighs. With only one thought in his mind, he plunged forward. She cried out with anxious surprise, trying to wriggle backward across the sheets and away from him, but he held her fast by the hips and pushed again. Once more, and he was buried deep.

  If it was possible to find earthly paradise in a woman, then he had in Charlotte. To his remorse, he couldn’t tell if Charlotte felt the same. She fluttered beneath him, with a small sound of unease that seemed infinitely worse after she’d proclaimed her bravery earlier. His conscience told him to say something, anything, to comfort and reassure her, but words of every kind seemed to have vanished from his grasp.

  Damnation, what was he supposed to say? Her eyes were squeezed shut, closing him out, and he couldn’t begin to tell what she felt. Finally he kissed her, the best he could offer in the circumstances. To his relief, she kissed him in return, her hands creeping back to clutch his shoulders, though her eyes stayed shut.

  Unable to help himself, he began to move again. It didn’t take long before he’d found his rhythm, his pleasure building at a thundering rate that matched his heartbeat.

  But what was even better was how she’d found it, too. At first she’d moved only tentatively, but as he moved faster, so did she, rocking to meet his thrusts. He slipped his arms beneath her knees and raised them to be able to enter her more deeply, and instinctively she curled her legs around his waist, holding him in another kind of embrace. With each thrust, she began making breathy little cries that spurred him onward. Her beautiful eyes were wide open now and filled with pleasurable bewilderment over what was happening to her.

  No, to them both. He’d never felt anything like this, not with any other woman. But as rare as it was, he knew he’d not last much longer. Suddenly she arched her back and stiffened, her release wresting a low, keening cry from her. He felt it, too, convulsing around him, drawing him deeper like a pond he couldn’t resist. Nor did he. At once he joined her, throwing back his head to roar as he plunged one final time into her.

  E
xhausted, he fell forward, half on her and half to the side, his eyes closed. He didn’t ever wish to move, not when he could hear her heart beneath his ear. He wasn’t sure he could, anyway.

  She sighed, and he felt that, too. “You told me to trust you, March,” she whispered. “I did, and I—I’m so glad.”

  Trust. That was a word he didn’t want to consider, not now, and it thumped like a thrown brick against his conscience. She had trusted him, and what had he done? Rolling away from her, he reached down to pull up his breeches and button them over his nakedness.

  He felt her hand on his back, lightly tracing his spine with the tips of her fingers. He didn’t deserve such gentleness from her, not after what he’d done.

  “I’d no notion it would be that glorious,” she said. “Rather, it’s you who are glorious. Ah, my own dear, dear husband!”

  He was her husband, and she was his wife. There wasn’t any denying it now. Reluctantly he turned and faced his new duchess.

  She was curled against the pillows, her eyes heavy-lidded and wanton. Her mouth was so red it almost looked bruised from his kisses. Her hair was a bedraggled tangle around her face, with long strands pasted to her sweaty shoulders. What was left of her clothing was in crumpled disarray. Her breasts were still shamelessly displayed above the red stays and her shift shoved high over her bare thighs and stained with his leavings.

  He had done this to her. She had given him her innocence, a gift a woman can offer only once, and he had ravaged it like a worthless mongrel. He had not been kind, nor had he been gentle. There had been no respect, no poetry, no wooing. He’d ignored every word of Breck’s advice. He had sworn before God to honor her and promised to himself that he would only treat her with the highest regard, as a gentleman should. She had trusted him, and how had he responded?

  He’d debased himself and dishonored her, and dragged her down to the gutter with him. He’d heeded only his lust, and forgotten everything else beyond satisfying himself. He’d torn away her clothes, thrown her to the bed, and used her like the lowest drunken sailor with a two-shilling whore.