In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster (46 page)

Despite the passionate desire smoldering hot and urgent in his eyes — despite the telltale tension she now recognized, rejoiced in, that held him — despite the heated desperation in his grip, he captured her gaze, murmured, even as his gaze drifted to her lips, “We’ll need to talk about our betrothal, and our wedding.”

The words were rough, passion edged, only just decipherable.

It was a challenge to focus her mind enough to answer, but if he could find wit enough to ask, she would match him even in that. “I believe,” she breathed back, lids lowering, her senses reeling as his hands shifted, evocatively rising over the planes of her back, “that we’ve reached what the grandes dames would term an understanding. Given that we have”— his hands firmed possessively and he drew her nearer, her breasts pressing against the muscled planes of his chest, the crisp hairs abrading her sensitized skin; it took effort to find breath to conclude —“we can leave such details for tomorrow. For now —”

Reaching up, she drew his head down the last inch and pressed her lips to his. Kissed him with all the passion and desire that had been building, building, between them.

He kissed her back, took control, ravished her mouth, claiming with a blatantly ravenous passion, and the volcano of their need erupted.

Wants and hungers collided, geysered.

Their hands spread, clutched, raced and traced.

Their pulses thundered.

Then he lifted her, laid her on the bed, and followed her down.

Winced again.

“Your arm.” Despite the raging fever in her blood, she had no difficulty focusing on his hurt. Holding him back, she struggled up onto one arm. “We can’t do anything that might open the wound again.”

She’d forgotten; they hadn’t made love since he’d been shot.

He hesitated, flexing his left arm. He met her gaze, then his lips curved in a slow, distinctly wicked smile. “So we’ll dance in a different way — one that won’t put undue strain on my arm.”

“Oh?” She arched her brows. “How?” Both a blatant command and a haughty demand.

His smile widened in appreciation. Gripping her waist, he rolled onto his back, lifting her over him as he did. “Like this.” He settled her astride him, her knees to either side of his waist, then he eased her back.

She needed no further directions.

She laughed; placing her hands on his shoulders, she leaned forward and kissed him — made the wild, wanton caress into a promise.

One of his hands pressed between her shoulder blades, holding her to the kiss; his tongue dueled and tangled hotly with hers, while his other hand glided, reverently tracing her curves, before slipping between her thighs to cup her, then to stroke and caress her soft flesh until the folds were swollen and slick.

Then first one, then two, long fingers slid into her body; he worked them deep, then repetitively stroked, his thumb circling the tight nubbin of nerves just behind her curls.

Until she was gasping, panting, flooded with need and want, and an urgency too sharp and desperate to deny.

She broke from the kiss; too breathless for words, her senses aflame, her body aching for just one thing, she followed the guiding prompting of his hands until she felt the broad head of his erection nudge at her entrance, then eased back and took him in.

Eyes closing, nerves taut and quivering, she caught her breath at the feel of the heavy rod of his erection inch by inch impaling her. Filling her. Possessing her. The sensations, so different in this position, washed through her; they merged with her rising emotions, forming a sea of passion and desire, of surrender and love that flooded her and swept her on.

Slowly, achingly slowly, she sheathed him fully in her body. Enshrined him in her heart.

Reached for him with her soul.

Jeremy drank in the glory suffusing her face and decided this was heaven. His, at least — his heaven on earth. She moved upon him, instinctive and sure, increasingly confident in and abandoned to her pleasure. And his. He closed his eyes and let her loving roll over him. The sensations of her silken limbs shifting, sliding, smoothly over his, caressing, stroking, artfully inciting, the wonder of the heated clasp of her tight sheath, the joy of her breasts teasingly swaying over his chest, sometimes brushing as she shifted as she rode him, all contributed to a state bordering on ecstasy.

She adjusted, and took him deep, then deeper. Wrapped him in her bounty, then ripped his wits away. Razed them, wantonly cindering his control, then brazenly she set herself to stoke the conflagration that, as ever, already blazed between them.

That licked over their skins with searing flame, that beat through their veins like elemental thunder.

His hands roamed her hips, the long lines of her flexing thighs, then swept up to capture her breasts and worship.

Rearing up, eyes closed, head high, she gasped and rode him ever harder; her hair dancing about her shoulders in golden disarray, she whipped the storm of their passions to new and dizzying heights.

Until need and want and passion coalesced into one driving desire.

One aching, ravenous hunger.

One powerful, overwhelming, impossible to deny urge.

On a growl, he came up on his good arm, propped on that elbow, and with his left hand captured one breast and brought the tightly furled nipple to his mouth. Licked, laved, then drew the tight bud into his mouth and suckled.

She uttered a smothered scream, found his head with her hands, locked her fingers in his hair and held him to her as she rose and fell and drove them both on.

Then she tightened about him.

Releasing her breast, he palmed her nape, braced his arm and rose higher to claim her mouth, deliberately shifting the angle of their joining.

Driving her inexorably to that indefinable edge.

And over it.

She went. On a scream he drank, she soared high, higher, then she broke, shattered, and fell.

And took him with her.

Unable to resist, on a grating groan he thrust hard, high, and felt the powerful contractions of her sheath clamp about him. Felt her body claim and receive him.

He shuddered as he sensed the reality of that other side of him so close to his surface, just beneath his skin, that other side of him that she and only she connected with, that she so effortlessly drew forth. A primal, primitive, wildly possessive side, it drove him to take her, to claim and chain her, his forever more.

With that other side in the ascendancy, he could accept nothing less.

But possession worked both ways.

Their bodies clinging, with him sunk deep within her and their hearts thundering to a single beat, he knew that to his soul, and accepted it as right. As inevitable. Unavoidable. Irretrievable and irrevocable.

As the way he and she would always be.

Each other’s.

Joined by that power the poets called love.

On the heels of that acceptance, simple and soul-deep, completion rolled over him, through him, not simply physical satiation but an elemental completeness in so many ways, on so many planes. She brought him the part of himself he’d been missing for so long, and made him whole.

Spent, exhausted, he slumped back to the pillows and she collapsed on top of him. He closed his arms around her. Felt her drag in a breath, then let it go. Her limbs sank against his in total surrender.

Not to him but to what had raged between them.

To what, acknowledged, now lived between them, their new reality built on their new, changed selves.

The harshness of their breathing eased; the night’s silence returned along with his hearing. Aware of the tug of the tide of ecstasy, the growing temptation to let go and let bliss carry him away on that golden sea, he lifted her from him, settled her, boneless, back in his arms, then he shifted his head and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “This is the truth of us — how we’re meant to be.”

She pillowed her head just beneath his shoulder, then dropped a warm kiss on his chest. “This is how we are, and how we will be.”

The words rang with her commitment, one to match his.

Eyes closing, he blindly groped, found the covers, flicked them over their cooling bodies, then he closed his arms about her, lay back, and surrendered to the bliss they’d wrought.

eremy departed from Eliza’s room only just in time to avoid the maids, leaving Eliza with strict instructions to get dressed and meet him as soon as possible.

Enthused and determined, she rushed through her ablutions, hurried into her clothes, and brushed and coiled her hair.

Finally presentable, she walked briskly from the room. She had no clear idea what Jeremy intended, but she recalled well enough that they had issues to discuss.

Not that she was all that bothered with the details, not after the night had clarified the one, truly important issue in such a definitive way.

Love. She was still trying to absorb it. Yes, she’d known she loved him, and yes, she’d hoped and suspected that he might love her in return.

But now she knew.

Not only knew but … somehow last night had been different, with every caress in some intangible way emphasizing their new truth. Crystallizing and anchoring their love.

Last night had been a demonstration of love, of love in the flesh.

Smiling, feeling as if her face might crack so great was her happiness, she reached the end of the corridor. Stepping into the gallery, she saw Jeremy loitering before one of the long windows, pretending to look out.

Seeing her, he turned and, long legs eating the distance, joined her.

“Good.” His gaze roved her face, the caress almost a kiss. Taking her hand, he raised it, briefly brushed her fingers with his lips, then said, “Come on. I know where we can talk without being interrupted.”

He led her downstairs, then down the long corridor to the library.

Ushering her inside, he closed the door and locked it.

She glanced around, then, eschewing the large desk, walked down the room to where a sofa sat facing the vista visible through a pair of long windows.

Jeremy followed. They rounded the sofa, but before she could sit, he caught her hand. Drawing her to face him, he trapped her other hand, too, held each in one of his.

He looked into her eyes and simply said, “Dearest Eliza …” He paused, then went on, “I hadn’t seriously looked about me for a wife, but if I had, I would never have imagined that my eye would settle on you, let alone that my heart would. That I might fall in love never truly crossed my mind, yet here I stand, irresistibly and irrevocably in love with you.” That was more than he’d intended to say. Drawing breath, he continued, “But as I am so deeply in love with you that I cannot imagine living without you, will you please do me the inestimable honor of consenting to be my wife?”

The slow smile that broke across her face dazzled him.

Eliza took a moment to assemble the right words. Searching his eyes, her heart in hers, she drew breath, and replied, “Dearest Jeremy, I’ve been looking, searching, everywhere for my hero, for the one man who could sweep me off my feet and into wedded bliss. Had we remained in London, I would never have found him, for I would never have realized”— raising one hand, she placed her palm to his chest —“that my hero’s heart beat beneath this particular chest. But the trials of the last weeks have shown me the truth — your truth, and our truth. So as I’m so much in love with you that I can’t imagine life other than by your side, yes, I will indeed marry you.”

The smile that filled his eyes warmed her, wrapped around her. He again kissed her fingers, first one hand, then the other. “Excellent.” His smile turned wryly teasing. “Now that we’ve got that detail dealt with, we need to make plans.”

She nodded and sat, drawing him down to sit beside her. “Are we going to make a stand?”

“Oh, I think so — don’t you?”

Chin firming, she nodded. “So — how are we going to open everyone’s eyes?”

There was, of course, only one way. A way most members of the haut ton would shudder to even contemplate.

They had no such qualms.

Breakfast was no use to them as Celia habitually did not join the company, preferring a tray in her room. Given they did not wish to encounter any of their supposed mentors, not until they could speak with them all at once, they slipped into the breakfast parlor and hurriedly broke their fast as the dishes were being set out, then escaped from the house before even Royce appeared.

They went out to the stable to check on Jasper. The young black was restive, pining for a run. With Jeremy unable to risk his wound reopening, Eliza suggested, and, somewhat warily, Jeremy agreed, that she should drive them in the gig, Jasper between the shafts, into Alwinton, the nearest village.

Despite a few minor scares, Eliza managed well enough. They tooled around the village and along several lanes, then returned to the castle just as the rest of the company were sitting down to luncheon.

“Our timing, thus far, is perfect.” Her arm through Jeremy’s, Eliza walked toward the family dining room.

Jeremy looked into her face, glowing, luminous, and not just from their drive, and smiled. “Remember what we planned. No second thoughts?”

She shook her head decisively. “None.”

They swept into the dining room, and the others all looked up.

Beaming, letting his happiness overflow for all to see, Jeremy halted Eliza at the side of the table on which the pair of them usually sat, let his gaze rest briefly on each of the six faces turned to them in surprise, then announced, “Eliza has done me the honor of agreeing to be my wife.
However
, we wish to make it clear to all, to you and subsequently to the rest of the world, that we are not marrying because we in any way feel we must, not because of any ton expectation or social dictate.”

He paused, once again letting his gaze circle the faces, now looking even more taken aback, then he looked at Eliza, saw the same truth he was projecting shining like a beacon in her eyes and joyously lighting her expression. Lifting her hand from his sleeve, his eyes on hers, he raised her fingers to his lips. Kissed. Then he turned to the others and declared, “We’re going to marry because we’re in love. Because we found love, or it found us, somewhere in Scotland. And we’re not going to pretend that it didn’t happen — we don’t want to take the coward’s way out and not acknowledge our truth, our reality.”

Every last implement had been laid back on the table; a stunned but expectant silence prevailed.

Jeremy smiled. “So,” he concluded, “we wish to marry, and we wish the occasion to be puffed off to the very top of everyone’s bent. We intend to place a highly unconventional notice in the
Gazette,
and we wish that to be followed by a major engagement ball. As for our wedding, we want that to be a spectacular celebration. We want our love to be publicly acknowledged, to be known and understood by all — to, figuratively speaking, shout the fact from the rooftops.”

Glancing around the table again, he took in the dawning understanding breaking across all the faces and let his smile widen. “In short, we want everyone to know that we are”— he looked at Eliza, and, eyes misty but smiling beatifically, she responded, saying the words with him —“beyond lost in love.”

Silence reigned for half a second, then Eliza dragged her gaze from Jeremy’s eyes and looked at her mother.

Celia rose from the table; tears streaming down her cheeks, she held out her arms. “Oh, my darling children!”

Eliza went into her arms and held her mother as Celia dissolved into happy tears.

Then Minerva was there, laughing, smiling, hugging Eliza and Celia both, then passing them to Leonora so Minerva could envelop Jeremy in a scented embrace.

Moments later, Celia, openly laughing and crying at the same time, displaced her. “I am so thrilled!” She kissed Jeremy’s cheek, then drew back to beam up at him. “You did that just right.”

After bestowing another surprisingly strong hug, Celia passed him on to Martin.

Who was simply delighted and said so.

Among the men, backs were thumped and hands wrung. Exclamations abounded. Explanations were requested and made, as far as they could make them.

Royce shook his head. “I didn’t see that coming, but in retrospect I should have.” He met Jeremy’s eyes. “Fate has a way of catching up with one when one least expects it.”

Jeremy grinned. “I was and am happy to be caught.”

Royce’s lips quirked, his gaze going to his duchess. “In the end, aren’t we all?”

The meal for the moment forgotten, they stood and laughed and talked. Jeremy caught Eliza’s eye, and she smiled and nodded. The sincerity of the others’ pleasure and joy at their news, their unreserved acceptance of it, was transparent and could not be doubted.

They’d succeeded thus far. They’d shattered the perception of their union that had prevailed among this group.

“Next, we take on the ton,” Eliza murmured.

Jeremy smiled. “And we’ll triumph there, too.”

But it was Leonora who gave him most hope that convincing the ton wouldn’t be difficult. “We had wondered, of course, but neither of you are all that easy to read — you’re both quieter, more reserved — so until you said it, we couldn’t presume.” Her eyes on his, she smiled a touch mistily. “Love is not something you can impute to another, but, darling Jeremy, I am so very happy for you both — and Humphrey will be utterly delighted.” Glancing at Eliza, then looking at Tristan, Leonora went on, “Trust me — the words might be hard to say the first time, but they get easier with the years, and you’ll never regret saying them, now or in the future.”

Turning back to him, stretching up, Leonora kissed his cheek, then patted his arm and left him to move to Tristan’s side.

Jeremy watched his sister and brother-in-law, saw the affection that so effortlessly flowed between them. Knew he and Eliza would from now on share a similar unremarked yet remarkable connection.

To his left, Martin, beaming widely, pumped Royce’s hand, while Minerva stood alongside Royce, her arm in his, her lips curved and her eyes shining.

Their grand denouement had got them over the first and highest hurdle; the rest, as Leonora had said, would come more easily.

Jeremy glanced at Eliza, to his right.

She met his gaze, a fleeting moment laden with that recognition that only, he now realized, came with love, then she turned to Celia as her mother returned to wrap her once more in a warm embrace.

Eliza returned the hug, wondering.

Only to hear Celia whisper softly, “My darling girl — welcome to the club!”

Notice appearing in the
Gazette,
May 15th, 1829