Chapter 7
Undoing
Waking from his stupor, Ren growled and kicked his unlit cigar into the shrubs. He’d not been planning to smoke it. He only kept one in his waistcoat pocket for stressful situations.
Like falling in love with a woman he couldn’t have.
“I—” He gestured to the narrow space between them, frustration and need twisting inside him. If Georgiana wasn’t bathed in moonlight, her expression a teasing mix of innocence and resolve, he might be able to deny her. But the love matter made it very tricky. “You—”
Halting at the sound of clapping from inside the music room, recognizing they were soon to be interrupted, Ren grabbed her hand and pulled her down the marble stairs, onto the lawn.
The grass was slick with dew, the pebbled path he led her to hidden from view, unknown to anyone unfamiliar with the estate.
He wasn’t going to argue with this hellion if she wanted to throw herself at him—or himself if he seized the opportunity.
Still, he had a stake in this game. A swiftly-gathering plan.
Conditions he’d lay out in the privacy of the cottage, where a scandalous conversation overheard by one of the vultures in attendance wouldn’t ruin her. Conditions he presumed she’d refuse. He could see that Gia Harrington liked things done her way.
When he liked things done his way.
So that would be that, but at least it would be out in the open. What he felt. What she felt. No more fucking games.
He was tired of games.
“Slow down,” she whispered, tugging on his arm, stumbling to catch up.
He turned, his hands going to her shoulders in a firm hold. “Do you want me to take you back? Tell me right now if you do. I’ll comply without another word.”
She shook her head, hazel eyes glittering in the moonlight. Her mouth shaped the soundless reply: no.
“Then this is me, Gia, the man you asked for,” he murmured, leaning in to capture her lips beneath his.
The kiss was bruising, a rush of heat and pressure, need breaking through control, two souls searching for an anchor in the lonely twilight.
Her fingers caught at his lapels, held fast as if she’d claim him there.
If his world tilted, he wasn’t the only one to feel it.
Despite their difference in age and experience, his fascination wasn’t one-sided.
Unlike what he was used to, Georgiana wasn’t holding anything back.
She might not understand the particulars, but she wasn’t afraid to let him see her desire.
See her.
He’d not known he could be so captivated, or be given such an opportunity this late in life. He had a chance, he believed, to right his course.
“Not here,” he said, lifting her into his arms and kissing her with reckless urgency before she changed his mind or hers. By God, she was a dream, and he was done pretending otherwise.
There would be no machinations; he’d be alone forever before he set foot on that path again.
Vale’s cottage materialized out of the mist, the yellow door a beacon in the darkness. Ren took the portico steps two at a time, shouldering through the entrance and carrying her inside without pause. When he slid her from his arms and onto the settee, she made a faint murmur of protest.
There she goes, he thought.
She frowned, studying him as he crossed to the hearth and stirred the banked coals with the poker. “What’s wrong?”
Ren glanced over his shoulder to find Georgiana on her knees, her bodice askew, her hair a ruin he could not wait to make worse. The vision stole his breath. “You think you’re going to lead me about by the snout like those two buffoons at dinner, that’s what.”
With a gust of laughter that struck too near his heart, she collapsed back on the settee, bringing her knees up to wrap her arms around them. “You were jealous. I knew it!”
Ren started to dispute the claim, then remembered his promise to himself minutes ago. He shrugged, slipping the poker back into the iron holder, his jealousy undeclared, but better than a lie.
Georgiana plucked at the seam of a decorative pillow embroidered with a sickly bird of some type, her smile a thousand shades of coy. “Would it make you feel any better to know I now hold strong feelings of dislike for Miss Lavinia Pritchard?”
Hmm…
Slightly appeased, Ren dragged his sleeves down his arms, then turned to drop his coat on the wobbly escritoire that had seen better days the previous century.
Georgiana stopped laughing when he started undressing, a rosy blush stealing across her cheeks.
He’d only meant to get more comfortable for the discussion, but a winning strategy was a winning strategy, was it not?
Untying his cravat, he slid the silken length loose from his collar, then looped it around his hand. “Is anyone anticipating your return?”
Her lips parted, her chest lifting with a hushed inhalation. “My maid is hard of hearing. She wouldn’t know if the house was falling down around her, much less heed my return.”
“Henry is with his nurse until breakfast.” Ren unfastened the top buttons of his shirt, the ends of his cravat dangling from his fingers. Her gaze was hot, tracking his movement and nearly scalding him. “If you stay here tonight, you’re mine, sprite.”
Georgiana gave a little wiggle, her flush rolling down her neck and past the scalloped neckline of her gown. All evening, Ren had tried to ignore how the ivory silk hugged her curves, the swell of her breasts, but now he didn’t have to. He didn’t have to hide a damned thing.
“Yours?” she whispered, her gaze lowering to his trouser front, his cock straining behind it.
“Mine,” he said, giving the cravat a hard tug that nearly cut off his breath.
“It’s a wholly unromantic way to do this.
I realize I could do better, men for ages have.
But I’ve only just come to see there’s a chance for us.
A startling, incredibly welcome surprise.
A wonder, actually. The first time I proposed, eleven years ago, or maybe it was twelve, was no proposal at all.
It was orchestrated by my father and Jane’s mother, a business arrangement without a care for the lack of affection between us.
” He unwrapped the length of silk and wound it back again.
“Until I met you, I hadn’t thought to marry again. I hadn’t thought to want to.”
Georgiana blinked. “You want to marry me?”
He shoved off the resting perch he’d taken against the escritoire.
“I want everything, Gia. And I won’t accept half degrees again, not for Henry, not for me.
I have a family, and I want you in it. If this is only about sex, understandable, I make no judgments, but I can’t be your guide. No matter how badly I’d like to be.”
Not when his heart was involved.
He crossed to her, gazing down as she gazed up.
Her eyes were liquid gold, her beautiful face and generous spirit having come to mean the world to him.
It was the utmost struggle of his life not to touch her.
“To answer your question, I want you so desperately I’m stunned by it.
But the more—here”—he touched his chest, his cravat ends swinging—“is telling me not to settle so easily. When that’s all I do. Settle.”
In the most unexpected turn of an unexpected proposal, Georgiana dropped her head to her hands and laughed into them.
“Are you rejecting me?” he whispered, half disbelieving, the other half certain she was making the right choice. There were a thousand reasons she should say no, one of which was his age. And the duchess bit wasn’t a benefit, in his opinion. Neither was his dabbling as an artist.
Before he could make another plea on his behalf, she launched herself into his arms, where he had no option but to catch her.
“Renwick Bellamont, seventh Duke of Dunmere, I’m definitely not rejecting you.
” She pressed her mouth to the curve between his neck and shoulder, her whisper warming his skin, “I was planning to seduce you, then tell you I love you after you’d figured out you can’t live without me. ”
Stunned, Ren gripped her hips and lowered her to the floor. “Love.” His heartbeat tripped, ringing in his ears. Love. He’d been hoping for extreme affection. Friendship. Camaraderie. A steady partnership.
She hummed a reply, curled her hand around the nape of his neck, and brought his lips to hers. “Let me show you.”
He didn’t resist. For the moment, she knew what she was about.
Georgiana unfastened his shirt and gave the sleeves a tug, tossing it to the floor.
Smiling, she removed the wrinkled cravat from his clenched fist and looped it around her wrist, having no understanding of the images this conjured in his mind.
He even stood there while she unbuttoned his trousers, a somewhat difficult endeavor with his state of arousal.
He made a low sound when her knuckles brushed him (there was no way in hell he could suppress it), and he stepped from them, kicking them into a wad beneath the settee.
The moves were nothing new, but her enthusiasm was.
She’d not only begun to explore—lips, nails, teeth—the first masculine example she’d ever had to herself, she kept up a running commentary.
Breathtaking, visceral analysis of his body.
Handsome. Hard. Strong. Ren felt like a volcano seconds before eruption, tight with need.
Halfway through this delightful torment, he joined in, unable to let her control this any longer.
He followed her blueprint, talking more than he had in his life as he loosened the ties on her bodice, slipped silk, cotton, and lace free, exposing her beauty to the supple moonlight piercing the window.
Gorgeous. Soft. Munificent. He loved every inch of her: plump breasts, pert nipples, generous hips, lithesome calves, dainty ankles.
She was more than he’d dreamed of, more than he deserved.
But he meant to have her.