When You Wish Upon a Duke Page 16

  “Thank you, madam,” he said solemnly. He shrugged the banyan from his shoulders and lifted the coverlet.

  She moved across, making room for him. She tried to recall her aunt’s directions about how she must leave everything to him and not be forward or slatternly. The advice about being a perfect duchess had made perfect sense in her aunt’s drawing room, but here, in bed with March, it would be much more difficult to follow. She was more anxious now than she’d been last night.

  He settled beside her on the bed and leaned forward to kiss her. His unbound hair slipped forward beside his face, and abruptly, horribly, she began to giggle.

  “What is it?” he said, drawing back with a frown. “What have I done?”

  “Nothing, March, nothing,” she said, mortified. “It’s only that I’ve never seen you before with your hair untied and not clubbed back in a queue, and—and I do not know why, but it made me laugh.”

  But to Charlotte’s dismay, he saw no humor in it. “If my hair disturbs you,” he said, “I can go have it tied back, and return.”

  “No, please don’t go,” she said, daring to touch the front of his nightshirt. The opening at the throat was unbuttoned and deep, and she’d a tantalizing glimpse of the dark hair that curled on his chest. She remembered how that hair had teased her nipples last night when he’d moved over her, how much she’d enjoyed it even though, in retrospect, it had been another of those slatternish things she’d done wrong. “Please stay. Please.”

  “You are certain?”

  “I am,” she said. To prove it, she reached up and ran her fingers through his hair. “I like your hair, anyway. It’s thick, like a lion’s mane.”

  At last he smiled. “I promise not to bite.”

  “How kind of you,” she said, reassured by that smile. “A lion, then. I like lions.”

  “I thought you liked dragons.”

  “I do,” she said. “I like lions and I like dragons. And you, Duke. I like you best of all.”

  He kissed her then, and she slipped her arms over his shoulders. Surely that wasn’t slatternly, but oh, how difficult this was going to be to remain a well-bred duchess!

  While his kiss began as gentle and reverent, exactly as he promised, the longer her kissed her, the more demanding it became. Without removing her nightshift, he began caressing her breast, and though his touch was as delicious as she remembered, it was muted by the linen between them. She longed to remove it, to shrug it over her head and toss it aside, but she didn’t dare. Aunt Sophronia had been most specific about the nightshift, and she didn’t want to disappoint March again.

  At least he didn’t seem to be disappointed so far. Breathing hard, he moved across her, pulling her nightshift to her hips and no farther. He eased her legs apart and settled between them. His cock was already hard, the way it had been last night, and she held her breath in expectation.

  Last night she’d been stunned by how easily her body had accommodated him and how rapidly her first discomfort had blossomed into such exquisite pleasure. She had shamelessly wrapped her legs about his waist to take him deeper, and she had writhed and rocked and cried out with him. Brothel tricks: that’s what Aunt Sophronia had called that, and if resisting them would make March love and respect her, then she would, no matter how pleasurable it had been.

  But when he entered her now, she couldn’t help but gasp, it felt so right. She hadn’t the words to explain it better than that. Could it mean that she truly was a low woman at heart? Was that why she was having such a difficult time not acting like a slattern? This time he had managed to be more respectful of her, and focusing all his attention on stroking her from within instead of fondling or caressing her in an inappropriate manner.

  For her part, she struggled to lie still as she’d been told, her eyes squeezed shut as she tried to keep back the cries that keep rising up in her throat. She made herself think sad, somber thoughts, the same way she did to keep from laughing at the wrong times. Yet still the heat built as her body coiled more and more tightly, and the more swiftly he plunged into her, the more she ached for the joy of release. She was almost there in spite of herself, almost there with her whole body reaching for it, when with a grunt he drove into her one final time and fell forward upon her, breathing as hard as if he’d run a race.

  “Charlotte, my own,” he said, kissing her again. “My own dear wife.”

  He withdrew and sprawled beside her, his head on the pillow next to hers. His eyes were closed and his smile content.

  But Charlotte’s eyes were wide open, and as she stared up at the pleated canopy overhead, she was anything but content. She had done what she’d been told to do and she knew she’d pleased him, yet her own body remained unfulfilled, as if she were dangling from a cliff with no hope of rescue. Slowly she felt the tension ebb away from her limbs, but it wasn’t the staggering burst of joy she’d discovered last night. All she was left with now was his seed, wet between her thighs, and the hope that perhaps they’d made a child, a son, between them.

  That was what she was here to do, and the reason he’d married her. So what right did she have to feel so ridiculously disappointed? She shoved her nightshift down over her legs, and moved away from the damp place on the sheet. A single tear slid down her cheek and onto the pillow, and with a muffled sob she dashed it away with the heel of her hand.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked with concern, turning to face her. “If I have hurt you—”

  “You didn’t,” she said quickly. “Not at all. But you are pleased?”

  “I am,” he said, and smiled. “How could I not be with you?”

  “I’m glad,” she said, and tried to smile back. He was happy with her, the way Aunt Sophronia had predicted he’d be, and his happiness would lead to love, and love was what she wanted.

  He wiped his thumb along the curve of her cheek, following the path of the single tear. If he wished her not to cry, then he shouldn’t be looking at her like this with such kindness.

  “You must be tired,” he said. “I’ve made you traipse all over London with me today. I should let you sleep now.”

  He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed to leave, and she caught his arm to stop him.

  “Please don’t go, March,” she said. “Please.”

  He looked surprised. “Don’t you wish to sleep?”

  “Not alone,” she confessed wistfully. “Please don’t leave. I know that we’ve our own bedchambers and that’s where we’re supposed to sleep, but I’d much rather you stayed with me here.”

  “To sleep?” he asked, as if this were some unfathomable mystery. Perhaps to him it was.

  “Yes, to sleep,” she said. Though her parents had kept separate bedchambers and dressing rooms, too, she’d always remembered them sleeping together, or at least she remembered going to them early in the morning and finding them in the same bed. “Neither of us slept well last night, so perhaps we will do better this way. As man and wife, rather than duke and duchess.”

  He smiled. “I suppose we are both.”

  “Yes,” she said softly. “We are. Will you stay?”

  By way of an answer, he slipped back under the covers. He put his arm around her waist and drew her closer. At once she snuggled into him.

  He made a low grunt of contentment and shifted closer still. He swept her hair to one side and kissed the back of her neck, and she smiled to herself. Her body fit so neatly against his, as if it were always intended to be there, and his arm around her waist made her feel safe and protected.

  No, better than that. He made her feel wanted, and surely being wanted was one step away from being loved.

  “Happy now?” he whispered, his voice already drowsy and thick.

  “I am,” she said, drifting to sleep herself. “I … am … happy.”

  March climbed down from his horse and tossed the reins to the waiting groom. He’d spent the last hour riding in the park, riding hard, too, through the mists and trees of early dawn. He’d thought
the exercise would bring him some peace. To his grumbling discontent, it had not, and as he climbed the steps to the house, his grumbling continued at a furious pace.

  Charlotte’s request had seemed innocent enough. The majority of English husbands and wives shared the same bed every night. Although he himself had never slept in another’s bed, he’d been willing to try it, for her sake. Her bed was nearly as large and comfortable as his own, and besides, at the time, the long walk back to his own bedchamber hadn’t seemed nearly as charming as remaining where he was.

  And charming it had remained. Too charming. Though he’d fallen asleep quite agreeably with his lovely wife in his arms, he’d awakened this morning with a demandingly hard cock.

  But worse still was finding Charlotte blissfully asleep beside him. During the night she’d managed to kick off the sheets and let her nightshift twist up around her waist. She was lying on her side with one knee curled up, displaying not only that splendid leg and wonderfully rounded bottom, but a good deal more besides, rosy and ready and enough to rouse a dead saint. If he hadn’t been hard already, that luscious sight would have done it in an instant.

  As much as he despised himself for enjoying the sight of her like that, he hated himself infinitely more for actually considering waking her to make delightful use of what she was unconsciously offering. Most men he knew would not think twice of doing that, but he’d only to remember how she’d wept last night after he’d tried his very best to be considerate and respectful. How shocked would she be if she’d known he was ogling her? And how horrified would she have been if he’d actually acted on his raging impulses and claimed his rights as a husband only hours after he’d already exercised them?

  He wouldn’t do that to Charlotte. He couldn’t, not and live with himself, and once again the image of his profligate father, both with his mother and with the harlots he’d bought, rose unbidden like a fearsome, looming ghost. Over and over Charlotte spoke of how she trusted him, and to take advantage of her as she slept would have been the surest way to destroy that trust forever.

  But as far as he was concerned, that must be an end to sleeping with her. He had enjoyed it, enjoyed it immensely, because he also liked her immensely as well. After only a handful of days as her husband, he’d already become so fond of her that he could no longer imagine his life without her in it. He wouldn’t deny that. But while she might trust him, he didn’t trust himself.

  And he had to stop thinking about Charlotte asleep now, before they embarked together on another round of those infernal wedding calls. To sit across from her in the carriage and in drawing rooms and be able to think only of her with her nightshift rucked up and her bottom in the air …

  He took the last flight of stairs two at a time, determined to wear himself out. He’d request that Giroux bring only the coldest of water for washing, too. Muttering darkly at his own lack of restraint, he was already untying his neck cloth when he entered his rooms.

  “Good morning, March.” Charlotte was sitting at his table, reading his newspaper spread out before her, and very likely drinking his coffee, too, albeit with so much cream that it was nearly white. She was wearing that dark pink dressing gown again, the one that made her look like a blossoming rose, and she’d added the pearls once again to her ears. She hadn’t tied it as tightly today as she had before, and as she leaned over the open paper he’d a generous view of her pale breasts there by the window in the morning sun.

  Whatever good the ride might have done him went right out that same window, too.

  She stretched her arms out to her sides and yawned prettily. “I slept so well last night, March. I trust you did as well?”

  “Absolutely,” he lied. What else was he to say when she asked him like that? And he had slept well, up until the point when his cock had awakened him.

  “You look very handsome this morning,” she said, smiling warmly as she looked him up and down with open approval. “I like you dressed that way.”

  He wasn’t accustomed to having a woman study him so thoroughly, even if it was his wife. He wasn’t wearing anything extraordinary, just the usual white leather breeches, red waistcoat, and dark woolen coat that Giroux had chosen for him.

  “It’s what I wear to ride,” he said, and immediately felt like an idiot. What she could do to him simply by smiling! “I was riding in the park, you know.”

  “So Giroux has told me.” She plucked a piece of toast from her plate, spread strawberry jam to the crust, and began to tear off tiny pieces daintily to feed herself. “I like to ride, too.”

  “I didn’t know you rode.” Another stunningly stupid comment. Of course she must ride, since she’d grown up in the country. He tossed his hat on another chair and sat beside her, taking the cup of coffee that the footman offered. He told himself it was only to be hospitable, and had nothing to do with Charlotte’s dressing gown or her feet in those green mules with the high, curving heels. Though it was quite … engaging to watch how she crossed one pale, bare leg over another so the mule dangled from her toes and displayed the curve of her instep and ankle and calf and made him remember everything else above that. Quite engaging, and seductive as hell.

  What malicious devil inspired him to desire his own wife like this?

  “I do like to ride,” she continued blithely, no notion of how she was depriving him of his wits each time she jogged her toe to keep from dropping her mule. “I’m good at it, too. My sisters and I used to race one another on the beach. We didn’t ride on ladies’ saddles, either, so we could go every bit as fast as any of the men. Once I overheard an old man at church call us the Wylder she-devils for riding like that, which was terribly shocking and rude, but very funny, too.”

  She paused long enough to lick a large drop of jam from her finger, running her tongue neatly along its length, then grinned at him.

  He watched her licking that jam and understood perfectly why that old man in Dorset had called her a she-devil. The Wylder she-devil. Most appropriate.

  “I should like to race you, too, March,” she said, her eyes widening with anticipation. “I promise I’ll ride properly, like a lady, so I’ll be slower, but I’ll wager I’ll still beat you, so long as I have a good, fast horse.”

  The idea horrified him. “Good horse or not, Charlotte, I won’t have you risk your neck racing through Green Park,” he said. “I’ll see that you’ve a proper horse and would be delighted to have you accompany me, but no racing.”

  “Very well, then, not in the park,” she said. “But the next time we visit Greenwood, where I won’t shock anyone, we’ll see which of us is the faster. I’d venture you’re a horseman, because it will be in your blood. I know next to nothing of your great-grandfather’s politics, but most every picture in this house shows him on a horse. I know he was a racing king, and rode the courses himself.”

  “He did,” March said, relieved to shift the subject to his royal ancestor on horseback. “He was faster and more daring than many of the hired jockeys.”

  “Well, yes, but who is going to dare to beat the king? A silver cup for your trouble, sirrah, and now off to the Tower you go.” She used the jam knife for a vivid representation of the executioner’s axe. “Besides, you have his royal thighs. I saw that from the pictures, too. A gentleman cannot be a good rider without possessing well-muscled thighs. Royal thighs.”

  That made him gulp his coffee and splutter it back into the saucer with some decidedly unroyal coughing. She jumped up with her napkin to blot his waistcoat, cooing and tut-tutting over the outrageous heat of the coffee, as if spilling it weren’t his own damned fault.

  And hers.

  Stepping back, she lowered her chin to look up at him from beneath her lashes. “Did you mean what you said before? You will let me ride with you?”

  “I will,” he said as evenly as he could, “so long as you vow not to ride like a she-devil.”

  She grinned and ducked her head, something he’d learned meant she was pleased, which in turn pleased him
. He did like the idea of riding with her. He’d have her company, but without any of the seductive hazards of a closed carriage.

  “I’ve one more question, March,” she began, and the way she was blushing before she’d even asked made him wary. “I know you wish me to be your proper wife and duchess and all, and I am trying to be so. But that picture behind you, March—I vow, that shepherdess is wearing my pearl earrings, and I do not think she looks entirely proper.”

  As if he, too, were seeing it for the first time, March turned in his seat to look at the painting in question. The shepherdess wasn’t proper, nor had the painter intended her to be, and the incongruous pearl earrings were the least of her impropriety. With eyes half closed and the most wanton of smiles, she lounged provocatively on a mossy stone, her gauzy chiton looped high over her bare legs and so low on top that one plump, round breast was completely uncovered. To make certain no one overlooked this bare breast, she cupped her fingers beneath it, as if offering it to the viewer—which March had always believed was the entire point of the picture.

  “That’s my great-grandmother, Nan Lilly,” he said. “She’s painted as a shepherdess, yes, but she was really an actress. And, of course, my great-grandfather’s mistress, and the first Duchess of Marchbourne. Because of all that, it’s quite a famous picture, but it’s also one of my favorites, which is why I have it hung here. That’s the king on the other wall.”

  With fresh interest, Charlotte turned to study the portrait of his great-grandfather, and March did as well. Being a royal portrait, it wasn’t nearly as informal or appealing as the shepherdess—how could it be, with a crown and all that ermine besides?—but March had always liked the sly, rakish twinkle to his dark eyes that the king hadn’t quite been able to suppress, even while wearing a crown. That was the reason he’d hung the two portraits across from each other, so the pair could remain together, and he gave a little bow of respect to the king, as he always did.