Enchanting Pleasures (29 page)

“Hello, wife,” he said.

Gabby blushed. She hadn’t seen him in private since the afternoon in Bath, after they were married. Does one curtsy to one’s husband even in the privacy of the bedchamber?

Quill’s eyes were shining with a wicked appreciation that made all of Gabby’s worries fly out of her head.

He walked toward her like a tiger stalking a goat. And Gabby danced backward, just as a goat might dance on its nimble hooves in the spray of the Indian Ocean.

“The bell will ring for dinner in a few minutes,” she said nervously.

Quill was grinning at her. “So it will,” he replied. His voice was deep and sent tendrils of heat down Gabby’s spine. “Perhaps we should have a small meal here, in your room,” then he corrected himself, with a glance at the adjoining door, “or perhaps in
our
bedchamber?”

Gabby’s mouth felt dry. “Quill,” she said, before she lost all capacity for speech, “we need to have a rational discussion.”

“Do you know, you request rational conversation quite regularly?” Quill was laughing at her.

“My father believes that women are unable to be rational,” Gabby explained. “I’m afraid that I adopted the phrase out of desperation.” And then she added, “My father’s conversation is often incoherent.”

Quill ambled toward her again. “You must tell me all about your father someday,” he said, his voice as smooth and liquid as silk. “He sounds like a fool.”

“He isn’t,” Gabby protested, nervously retreating a step. “Quill, I meant it when I said we need to speak!
Before
we…do anything further.”

A chill touched Quill’s spine, but he courteously stood still. “Have you decided that you would prefer to annul the marriage?” he asked, quite as he would ask for a cup of tea.

Gabby frowned. “Rational conversation, Quill,” she said pointedly. She turned her back and walked toward the fireplace, sitting down in an upholstered rocking chair.

Quill sat down opposite her and steepled his fingers. “All right, Gabby, what have we to discuss?” He was well-aware that he had limped throughout the funeral. His leg was dog-tired from days of walking the estate. During the reception, he’d heard more than one muttered speculation about the extent of his injuries. Likely Gabby hadn’t realized just what a useless cripple he was until today.

“I am worried about consummation,” she said, stumbling over pronunciation of the last word.

“Are you concerned about my fitness to do the task?”

“No! That is …”

Quill got up and walked to the window and stood with his back to Gabby. It was evening, and fingers of yellow light fell from the house windows. Quill noted without thinking that the rosebushes had not been properly pruned. “It would be understandable if you wished to annul the marriage, Gabby, now that you’ve had time to consider the consequences.”

To Gabby, his voice sounded indifferent.

“To be honest, I am not concerned about whether or not I produce an heir,” her husband continued. “No one will blink an eye if you annul the marriage. I could instruct Jennings to start the proceedings immediately.”

When there was no reply, he turned around, reluctantly.

Gabby was glowering at him.

“Well?” He kept his tone flat and polite. “This needn’t be an unpleasant conversation, Gabby. We are friends, as you have said in the past.”

“In that case, I would request that you return to your chair and do not stalk around the room in that melodramatic fashion.” Gabby stuck her chin in the air. “We are going to have a rational conversation, Erskine Matthew Claudius!”

Quill smiled without humor. “If you were listening to the will that closely, you must have noted that my father believed my injuries would prevent the conception of children.” But he walked over and sat down. His heart felt like a cold lump in his chest.

“When I said we needed a rational discussion, I simply meant that…before we …”

Quill waited politely. He wasn’t going to make it any easier for her, clearly.

“Oh, I can’t
say
these things aloud,” Gabby cried in frustration.

Before Quill could move, she jumped up and sat down on his lap, wrapping one of her arms around his neck.

She felt the surprise throughout his body, but then he relaxed against the back of the chair. Gabby leaned against his shoulder. From here she couldn’t see his face, and it was considerably easier to speak.

“First, I should like you to stop making corkbrained suggestions regarding annulment,” she said. “While I may well wish to murder you at some date in the future given your tendency to jump to absurd conclusions, I have been anticipating this—” She broke off and added, crossly, “You’re not stupid, Quill, so don’t talk drivel.

“Second, I should like to point out that if we consummate our marriage tonight, there is a good possibility that you will not be able to accompany your mother to Southampton. Third—” She couldn’t remember exactly what her third point had been. He smelled wonderful, her husband. He had an indefinable masculine scent overlaid by soap and clean-pressed linen. “Third,” she said hastily, “I think that if our marriage is to be a success, we need to come to an understanding.”

“An understanding,” Quill echoed. He felt as if she had dealt him three or four sharp blows to the stomach. “Gabby, do you
always
say precisely what you are thinking?”

“No,” Gabby replied meditatively. “In fact, although I admit this only because you are my husband, I have quite a reputation for telling fibs back home.”

“You can lie to whomever you want as long as you don’t lie to me,” Quill said, tightening his arms around her rather fiercely. “And this
is
home.”

“Mmmm,” his wife replied, rubbing her head against his shoulder like a lazy cat. “Not yet, it isn’t.”

“What would make it home?”

She lifted her head and looked up at him.

A delirious shot of heat went down his backbone at the look in her eyes. Quill sighed. “All right,” he said, shifting her weight slightly to avoid a potential injury. “What sort of an understanding do we need? I warn you, Gabby. If you make me wait even one more day, there’s no telling what the consequences might be.”

“All I am suggesting is that we proceed with caution,” Gabby said. She started ticking off her fingers. “We know that kissing doesn’t give you a headache.”

“True,” Quill muttered, suiting action to word by kissing the top of her head.

“And we know that caressing my chest doesn’t give you a headache. Well, what does?” She looked at him expectantly. “Because if we knew precisely what the action was, we could simply avoid it.”

Quill was nonplussed. “Gabby,” he said slowly, “how much do you understand about conjugal intercourse?”

“Almost nothing,” Gabby said promptly. Then she blushed. “I know that you are going to look at me. Will that give you a headache?”

“Never.” Quill had been seized by an odd trembling sensation, almost as if a joyous laugh was trapped in his bones and couldn’t get out.

Gabby was looking at him with narrowed eyes. “What did you expect? As I’ve already explained, my mother died when I was born. And the servants in my father’s house were most punctilious in their conversation. My father is particularly fierce about female concupiscence.”

“Female concupiscence. Why not the male version, or plain old English lust?”

“Women are the devil’s handiwork,” Gabby remarked. “They exist primarily to drive men into sin.”

Quill looked at her sharply and was relieved to see a slight smile on her face. “You’re a good exemplar,” he said, his hands irresistibly slipping under her arms to the front of her gown. “You can drive me into sin any day, Gabby.”

“I thought so,” she said happily. “My father always said that I had my mother’s sinful body and, although I never told him, naturally I thought it might be a useful inheritance.”

Quill broke into laughter as he began nimbly undoing the small pearl buttons at the back of her gown. Gabby tried to pull away. She clearly wasn’t done with rational conversation.

“Gabby,” Quill said, appalled to hear how hoarse his voice had become. “There are certain times when conversation, rational or incoherent, is not helpful.” He picked her up and carried her over to a bed hung in watered silk.

“This is one of those times.”

E
MILY
E
WING WAS DISMAYED
to discover just how much she missed Lucien Boch’s conversation. It had been over three weeks since Lady Fester’s ball, during which time Mr. Boch had called four times. She had refused to see him each time, steeling her heart with the thought that she could not raise Phoebe in a house of shame. And she had completed her account of the Fester ball with no mention of an amber-colored gown fashioned of Italian gauze, or of a former marquis, for that matter.

Unfortunately, Bartholomew Hislop had taken the news that she had accompanied Mr. Boch to a ball as a sign that he should be graced with the same attention. It was hard to contemplate, she thought numbly. This morning Hislop was tricked out in primrose trousers that were so tight as to cause him obvious discomfort. Even if she hadn’t ever met Lucien, even if she had no one with whom to compare Hislop, she wouldn’t have wished to be seen in public with him. At any rate, it was too late, too late, too late. The words rang dully in her head. She
had
met the elegant Mr. Boch, she had met him and she had—almost—succumbed to his practiced seductions. Yet virtue was a cold comfort, faced as she was with the bumptious and lusty Mr. Hislop.

“I wish you to accompany me to the balloon ascension tomorrow afternoon,” Mr. Hislop was saying, with more than a hint of petulance leaking into his tone.

“I am afraid that I must decline,” Emily replied. “I write in the afternoons, and I cannot take excursions of this sort.” Too late, she realized that she had played directly into his hand.

“Fine!” he chortled. “In that case, we shall spend the evening at the theater. An intimate evening will cheer you up.”

When she opened her mouth to refuse, Hislop’s flabby lower lip puffed out. “Or I won’t be helping you any further, Mrs. Ewing.” He placed one stubby finger on the stack of foolscap balanced on the table. “It took me time, it did, to gather all this information.
Quid pro quo
, as they say in the legal profession.”

Emily swallowed and opened her mouth to answer, but Hislop held up his hand. “I will give you time to consider,” and he leered at her again, eyes lingering on her chest. “I will leave you with this thought: You need me, Mrs. Ewing. For example, no one but the most fashionable will be invited to the Countess of Strathmore’s ball. You need me and”—he giggled naughtily—“I need you.”

Emily pressed her hand hard to her roiling stomach as the door closed behind Mr. Hislop. Finally she lowered herself into a chair and concentrated, hard, on not crying. She didn’t even jump when the door to her study burst open and Phoebe came running in.

“Mama, Mama! Sally and I went to visit Kasi Rao, and Mrs. Malabright was packing everything!”

“Packing?” Emily tried to shape her face into lines of sympathy.

“They are leaving. Mrs. Malabright said that you must tell Miss Gabby, because she doesn’t dare write a letter. She said that men want to take Kasi back to India.”

“What?”

Phoebe nodded, her blue eyes round with fear. “They would make him go out in public, Mama. Around
strangers
. Kasi cannot talk to strangers!”

Emily took a deep breath. “Goodness, how surprising. Where is Mrs. Malabright taking Kasi Rao?”

“To her brother’s wife, who lives in Devon,” Phoebe said. “She told only me, Mama, and you are to tell Miss Gabby just as soon as she returns to London.”

“Mrs. Malabright was right to put her trust in you, darling,” Emily said, closing her arms around Phoebe’s round little body.

She would do anything—
anything
—to save Phoebe from the scorn of polite society. And if that meant that she had to say farewell to the seductive Lucien, so be it. And good-bye to the informative Hislop as well.

Phoebe looked up at her anxiously. “No one could take me away from you, could they, Mama?”

“Never!” Emily said fiercely. “You are my very own little girl.” She swallowed more tears. “Time to wash before supper! Quick as a bunny, Phoebe.”

G
ABBY
’
S HEART WAS POUNDING
so hard that she could hear it in her ears. She wasn’t ready. It wasn’t nighttime. She didn’t wish to disrobe in an open room, with candles burning. But it was her duty, she told herself. Her father had made it quite clear that her husband’s wishes were to be her law.

“You said we would wait until we returned to London.”

“No,” Quill replied. “Can’t do it.”

There was a pause as he made his way down the long row of pearl buttons.

“The bell is going to ring for dinner. Your mother will think it quite odd if we don’t join her.”

“She’s eating in her room.”

“Well, then, Lady Sylvia will be affronted. You are her host.”

“Nonsense,” Quill said. “She’s more likely to applaud. She expects me to produce an heir, in case you didn’t notice this afternoon.”

Quill eased Gabby’s dress forward and stood her up. A pool of black fabric fell to the floor. He twirled her about and started unlacing her corset.

Gabby stared numbly at the embroidered coverlet. “I believe this is a mistake. How are you going to travel to Southampton?”

“Since Peter will be accompanying Mother and Lady Sylvia to the Continent, there is no particular need for me to travel with them.”

“What about your headache?”

There was no answer. Her corset fell forward and joined her gown on the floor. Under it Gabby wore only a light chemise.

Quill turned her around slowly. The chemise was laced to the waist and then fell in pleats to the floor. He let his hands glide from her shoulders, past her short sleeves, and down her bare arms.

His eyes were a decadent shade of green. Even with Gabby’s inexperience, she could read desire in them. “I wish you wouldn’t look at me like that,” she whispered.

“I can’t help it. You’re mine now, and you’re beautiful.” His hands moved to her waist.

“I would rather not do this at the moment,” Gabby said clearly. “I don’t feel it is a proper time or place.”

“Mmmm,” Quill replied. He was rubbing his thumbs over her nipples in a manner that made Gabby feel hot and terrified at once.

“Quill, are you listening to me?” Gabby tried to ignore the sensations in her body, especially those below her waist.

Without answering, Quill maneuvered her to the bed and pushed her backward. Then his knee nudged her legs open—and the knee touched her.

“Quill!”

“I’m listening,” he said lazily. He bent and licked her nipple just as he had before, in Bath, right through her chemise.

Gabby took a deep breath, trying to control a rising sense of panic. What was there to be so afraid of?
Pain
, for one thing. The thought gave her resolution and she pushed at his shoulders, trying to get him away from her breast. He had to stop doing that; he was making it hard to think rationally.

Then, without warning, Quill abandoned one breast and moved to the other, sucking it into his mouth. A large hand started roughly caressing the wet nipple. To Gabby’s shame, a guttural sound burst from her throat.

The shock gave her a burst of strength. “No!” She squirmed sideways so quickly that Quill let go of her in surprise, and she lurched forward off the bed.

“I do not approve of this,” Gabby said, trying hard to ignore the throbbing sense in her lower body. “We haven’t discussed it—”

“Rationally,” Quill chimed in. He was grinning like a devil, lying on the bed looking wicked, and delicious, and male…. Gabby almost sobbed with a combination of bewilderment and longing.

“It is illogical to continue. You won’t be able to travel for days. What about your work in London?”

Quill stood up and unbuttoned his waistcoat. He tossed it to the floor next to her gown.

“I don’t want to!” she said desperately, watching with fascination as Quill drew his linen shirt over his head. His body was lean and muscled, as different from her own as could be imagined. Heat pulsed in her veins.

He was still grinning, an audaciously wicked smirk.

“It’s not dark. We should be under the covers, in the dark. You shouldn’t bare yourself like this—where is your nightshirt?” Her voice rose. “And you’re looking at me again!”

“You’re looking at me too,” Quill said mildly. He was pulling off his boots now.

Gabby’s vision blurred with tears. She winked them away and crossed her arms rigidly over her breasts.

“Why so coy, love?”

A sob escaped from Gabby’s throat. “I don’t want—
this,”
she cried.

“Why not?” To her relief, the seductive tone was gone from Quill’s voice.

But how could she answer him? She stumbled into speech. “What we’re doing is shameful. It should be done in the dark, under the covers. You can touch me if you wish, because you are my husband and I can’t say nay, but you can’t look at me like that. You can’t make me do naked things—in the light!”

Quill sighed. Then he backed up and sat on the edge of the bed. “Come here, sweetheart.” He held out his arms.

Gabby took one look at his chest and shook her head. “I’m almost certain that your headaches are caused by misconduct. Your behavior is not Christian.” Her voice was strained and earnest.

“Christian?” He bent forward and grabbed one of Gabby’s wrists, pulling her slowly toward him. She perched reluctantly on his knees, back straight so that she didn’t touch his naked chest. It was mortifying, the way her fingers yearned to caress him.

“We’re behaving like heathens,” she whispered miserably, adding the “we” for his benefit. Frankly,
he
was the heathen. “Back home, in India…my father—” She stopped.

“What would he say?”

“A couple was seen making love by the river.” Gabby’s voice was quite sunk with mortification. “He pointed them out in church and made them stand up and said that God would strike them down.”

“And did God strike them down?” Even Gabby couldn’t miss the potent anger in Quill’s voice.

She shivered. “No. But they had to leave the village.”

“Your father is—” He broke off. He wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin on her soft hair. “Do you like your father, Gabby?”

“One doesn’t have to
like
a father. One only has to obey him.”

“And did you always obey him?” Quill asked, making an educated guess.

There was silence. “No,” Gabby admitted. “I was a thorn in his side.” She was clearly quoting.

“Why didn’t you obey?”

Gabby didn’t seem to notice that she had relaxed her spine and was leaning against Quill’s chest. Quill was aware of every soft breath she took. Carefully, he drew on self-control learned from years of pain. “Why not, Gabby?” he repeated.

“Father is sometimes too strict,” she said, so softly he could hardly hear her voice. “He can be cruel.”

Quill’s calm tone applauded. “It sounds that way to me. How is he cruel?”

“We live in a small village,” she explained. “Father arrived as a missionary. He built a house and a church.”