A Bride Unveiled (22 page)

He shook his head, his fingers deftly unfastening the buttons at her elbow. “I have to set an example these days. I could be a monk, for all the affairs I’ve had.”

She laughed again, not convinced, he thought. “But it’s true,” he insisted, drawing off her long white gloves. “I lost my attraction to illicit pleasures a long time ago. But . . . I never lost my attraction to you.”

“Why haven’t you ever married? You would make a devoted husband and father.”

“The truth?”

“You know that you can tell me anything.”

“Yes,” he said with a reflective smile. “That’s the problem. The women who are drawn to me tend to fall into two sets. The first type is giddy over having a protector and tries to provoke me into fighting all the men who have affronted her. The other is determined to make me give up the sword and settle down into domesticity.”

She looked into his eyes. For the life of her she couldn’t understand why any woman would want to change him. “There must be someone who loves you as you are.”

“Yes,” he said, shrugging. “But I would have to love her, too. And I’d have to feel that I could trust her. And in ten years I have found only one woman who fits this description, and she is engaged to someone else.”

“I don’t want to marry him,” she said suddenly, her eyes locking with his. “Is that a shocking thing to admit?”

He searched her face. “Nothing shocks a workhouse boy.”

“It would shock my aunt, Kit. She believes she has found the ideal protector in Godfrey, and I cannot tell her otherwise. She has been so good to me, and this is all she’s ever asked of me. But I don’t want to marry him. You gave me the terms of our association. Why don’t you give me your courage, too? I could use it.”

He glanced down at her gloves, symbolic of the challenge given. He had already accepted on her behalf. He simply wanted to hear her say as much to his face. “If there is any manner in which I can help, you have to ask me. I can’t overstep my bounds without your permission.”

“I should never have asked you to be proper. It doesn’t suit you. At least, not when we’re alone together. Be the conqueror you are at heart.” She pulled her gloves from his hands and threw them at his feet. “There. That is the gauntlet.”

He glanced down. Then he stepped over the gloves and pulled her into his arms. “As the one who has been challenged, it is my right to choose the weapons we shall use.”

“According to whom?”

He smiled slowly. “According to the dueling code.”

“Very well.” She laid her head against his shoulder, allowing herself to savor his protective strength. “You aren’t wearing your sword today, Master Fenton.”

“I didn’t think it would be appropriate for tea. I have other weapons, I assure you,” he said, and reached up his hand to unfasten the frog of her pelisse, catching it before it slid to the floor. “As you do,” he said, his eyes teasing. “But I noticed that you haven’t brought your fan. Does that mean you won’t discourage my advances?”

“Kit—”

He dropped the pelisse on a chair behind him. “It is also my privilege,” he continued, dipping his head to hers, “to name the time and place of the duel.”

She gave a breathless laugh. “You always did make up the rules as you went along. To your advantage, I remember.”

“Are you sure,” he asked, his lips hovering above hers, “that you’re willing to break the rules again to be with me?”

“Name the time,” she whispered.

“Now.”

“And the place.”

His lips touched hers. “In the bedroom, but not yet.”

She lowered her eyes. “When?”

“After I’ve undressed you and kissed you until you are too weak to put up any resistance.”

“But—”

He brushed against her. She swayed, and his left hand shot out to encircle her waist. “Wait,” he instructed her.

“When?” she whispered, her body molding to his.

“I can’t predict the exact time,” he murmured as his right hand unhooked the back of her dress. “This is a different kind of match than I usually fight. Moreover, a maestro knows how to prolong the moment.”

Her lips parted. Kit not only believed in prolonging a moment; he also knew when to seize it. He gripped her against him and kissed her until she was clinging to his neck by one hand and half sliding down the length of him. He could have fallen to his knees himself for want of her. Wordlessly he lifted her into his arms and carried her into the bedroom.

He laid Violet upon the sturdy iron bedstead. Then, layer by layer, he unfastened her sleeves and undergarments until at last all that was left was to pull out the comb that held back her hair. Her breasts, pale and heavy, rose as she drew a deep, nervous breath. He smiled to calm her. He felt anything but calm himself. Her nude body brought his blood to a boil.

She had undone his self-discipline without even trying. He wanted her for his own. He wanted her to himself, here, on the flocked mattress, before anyone could take her away from him again.

She was still the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. He would still crawl through black tunnels to be with her. He would fight for her. She had been his light once, and he would do anything to prove he was worthy of her. She was offering him the ultimate gift—herself.

He leaned over her, carefully unknotting his neck cloth. He let his eyes wander from her lush mouth to the delta of her thighs. Her soft vulnerability aroused his animal instincts—the need to mate, to make her his. He traced his fingers from her delectable mouth down the curve of her shoulder and stroked the underside of her breasts. His heartbeat escalated as her nipples darkened, responsive to his touch. He lowered his head to lick each engorged tip in turn.

She gave a moan and arched against his mouth. He placed one hand upon her belly, stilling her, and with the other unbuttoned his shirt. She closed her eyes, her breathing ragged. He allowed his hand to drop to the hollow between her legs. His fingers parted her wet folds, slipping inside to find pulsing heat. She swallowed a groan.

She shivered and opened her eyes. Awakened sensuality smoldered in their depths. As he pressed another finger inside her, his own sex thickened. He felt the ache of it all the way up through his teeth.

“Conquer me,” she said, lifting her hand to his face. “Be my champion.”

“A lady is not supposed to marry a boy who begins life as a pauper, no matter how high he rises in the world. I will never be respectable.”

“I will never belong to anybody else but you.”

For a moment he did not react. But then he broke. He drew back on the bed and swiftly tore off his neck cloth, waistcoat, and shirt. It would be bliss to get out of his breeches, but he resisted. The need to thrust inside her warm flesh was too strong. She gasped as he covered her with his body, her hands instinctively clasping his shoulders.

Instinct. He followed it as he gently forced her back against the bed. Her breasts lifted, and she smiled, raising one knee, a natural tease, a temptress. He was harder than he had ever been, desperate for her, afraid that he would explode the instant he put himself inside her.

Still he waited; still he understood that to master her was to prolong the moment. He stroked her nipples slowly. “Don’t move.”

“I’m not sure that I can,” she whispered.

He drew a breath, ignoring the unbearable tension that built in his body, and kissed her mouth, the creamy skin of her throat, the pointed tips of her breasts. He kissed her belly and below, his tongue parting the sweet lips and then sucking gently on the sensitive bud above.

Instinct.

Destiny.

They had not been merely a lonely girl and an ill-begotten boy once upon a time. They had been friends and enemies, champions and critics, drawn each to the other. Kit was a romantic. He did not believe in passion without love.

S
he felt immodest. She felt unfettered. She felt afraid until his deep voice soothed her. He was different from the Kit she had known, and yet still familiar. The wicked strength of those hands. His beguiling mouth. It became a duel between them, yes, and it was dangerous. But it was more—an intimate dance to heaven.

His tongue stabbed deep and dominant inside where she ached and had never been touched. The purity of the pleasure she felt forbade that she know shame. His hands forced her farther apart. She was unguarded, exposed, unable, unwilling to escape the happiness she found with him.

“Sweet,” she thought she heard him whisper, but his voice was muffled, his face buried between her thighs.

Her back arched. She begged silently for mercy. She pressed her wrist to her mouth to keep from crying out. The sensations he unleashed inside her became too intense to bear. She fought against them. For a terrifying moment she thought her heart had stopped, and a black mist swam in her mind. His tongue quickened, speared deeper. He sucked at her bud.

She flexed her body, a final objection or surrender, perhaps both at once. She splintered and gave herself to the sublime pleasure that shivered through her blood and into her belly.

Overcome, she opened her eyes as he slipped back to remove his trousers and then lowered himself over her, bracing his arms on either side of her shoulders.

“Beautiful,” he said, his voice wickedly deep. “I want to devour every inch of you.”

She stared at his bare form and felt defenseless against his masculinity. He was lean and lithe, with taut muscle defining his shoulders and torso.

He grinned. “Do you like looking at me in the raw?”

She blushed. “I wasn’t doing any such thing.”

“You were. It’s all right. I like looking at you, too.”

“You’ve a wicked tongue.”

“Did you like what I did to you?” he asked. “What are you ashamed of?”

“Do people talk about things like that?”

He kissed her softly on the mouth. “I’ve no idea what other people talk about in bed. I’m glad enough that I can be myself with you.”

Perhaps she was still in shock as he kissed her, the scent of her own desire on his mouth. But even the intimate act he had just performed did not prepare her for the raw desire that raked her as his shaft prodded her sensitive cleft.

“I could sink into you and never leave,” he said, his eyes holding her spellbound. “I could break this damned bed—” He broke off with a deep-throated growl. “But I’m going to do what is right even if it kills me.”

Kit wasn’t sure how he summoned the willpower to stop himself in time. Maybe it was the innocent trust in Violet’s eyes. Maybe it was the memory of carrying her home the day she’d taken ill, the horror on her uncle’s face when he realized that his niece had made friends with a workhouse boy. In his mind Kit could still hear her aunt’s hysterical shrieks from inside the house.

He would like to believe it was more than guilt that stopped him. He would prefer to think that his control had come from the code of honor that he had studied and taught.

Whatever the reason, he somehow found the strength to lift himself from her alluring warmth. His prick stood as stiff as a poker. He ached with primal impulses. Yet he knew what he had to do if she were to be his. Not his secret lover. But his for all time.

He stepped away from the bed and stood in silence until he was able to gather full control of himself. He wanted her for his wife. She wasn’t going to be disgraced. When he took her, it would be on their wedding night.

“I care too much about you to bear,” he said at last. He cast a longing glance at her tempting body where she lay on the bed before picking up their garments from the floor. “I want you to go home.”

“I wouldn’t have stopped you,” she whispered. “I love you, Kit. I wanted to show you what I felt.”

He closed his eyes, her confession eroding his resolve. “I’ll do the right thing by you. I promised myself in Monk’s Huntley that I wouldn’t drag you into the mire.”

“You’re not in the mire now.”

He opened his eyes, stealing another illicit look at her tousled beauty. Violet unveiled. “Please,” he said. “You tempt me more than I can take. Fencing has given me control of my body, but it has not made me able to resist you.”

“What are you going to do now?” she whispered, sitting up slowly.

He put on his shirt and helped her back into her clothes, aware of the clock ticking in the hall. When she had finished dressing and combed back her hair, he took her hand and led her to the door. She clung to him.

“Answer me, Kit. What are we going to do?”

“We have a term for it in sword fighting.” He stared down at her in possessive yearning. She had no idea what it cost him to let her go, but he swore that this would be the last time. “It is called a change of engagement.”

Her eyes widened. “You’re going to confront Godfrey?”

“One of us has to.”

“You are his hero, Kit.”

He frowned. “Not for long.”

“Godfrey is the least of our worries. My aunt cannot withstand another heartbreak. All she has ever wanted is my happiness.”

He took her face in his hands and kissed her lightly. “Then I’ll have to prove my worth to her. Would you be ashamed to be my wife?”

“I’ve never been ashamed of you. Nor can I live without you any longer. I’m going to tell her as soon as I get home. I know I can make her understand. She has softened since my uncle died.”

“Then I will manage all the rest.”

G
odfrey had taken a cab to the shop that morning, certain that there was rain in the air. He followed his usual ritual of sequestering himself in his countinghouse to check on his money box before he inspected the clerks for untidy attire. He spent another three hours reviewing his accounts. He found that he had been overcharged on his last shipment of silver lace. The sales of walking sticks, however, had exceeded his expectations. His association with the fencing academy was paying off in more ways than one.