Chapter 8
Bliss
They made it to the main room the next time, where she settled astride him on the dilapidated settee after Ren made the mistake of sketching his name on her thigh. He’d put the idea of this position in her head with his bathtub fantasy, and curiosity had overtaken her.
What would it be like to ride you?
Though he’d been as excited as a lad with his first opportunity, he’d worried about this being new for Georgiana, about pain he couldn’t truly imagine—but she’d kissed away his concern.
Or rather, taken him in her clever hand and eased it away.
Here he was, an hour later, the taste of her, a flavor like ripe summer citrus, still blooming on his tongue, her touch lingering on his fingertips.
He’d asked her after the second round if she really wanted to be a duchess.
Be mother to a rambunctious boy, wife to an aging duke.
Take them on. Love them. Become Town fodder with two whispered words: I do.
Or maybe he’d asked her twice.
Yes, yes, yes, she’d said, sounding entirely sure about it.
“You have that worried look on your face again, Your Grace.”
Ren glanced up to find the object of his fascination before the hearth, an apple Henry had left behind half-eaten in her hand, her lush form laid out over the crimson counterpane they’d dragged off the bed.
His sketch had gone in a dark direction, the counterpane now a ravenous sea pulling her away from him.
He frowned and added the fruit, placing it at Georgiana’s feet because fingers weren’t the easiest to capture.
Resting on the floor with his back against the settee, he looked to the window and the slight tinge of pink beginning to show around the tattered curtain edge. “I’ve got to escort you back. The kitchen staff will be up soon.”
“Ten minutes,” she whispered with a yawning stretch that had his body springing to inconspicuous but vibrant life. She made him feel young, like life was full of potential. He was lonely; Henry was lonely. They needed her.
If he could only stop—for one bloody moment—imagining the half-moon birthmark on her hip. That charming crook in her tooth. He sighed and added them to the drawing.
“I told you all my secrets,” she said, after letting the silence settle. She was an extremely skilled diplomat, knowing just when to hit him with the hard questions. “While you’ve left things unsaid with someone who will soon be your wife.”
She’d told him about her unease with her body, astonishing him.
How her generous curves had kept her from riding as she’d like.
(He guessed she was at one time a demon on horseback.) How she’d wanted to hide what she couldn’t hide.
He tried not to think about the men who’d begun to notice her at fourteen. She refused to name names.
Saddened by the unwanted attention she’d received at such a young age, by her vulnerability, he crossly wet his fingertip to smooth a too-bold stroke. Trying to capture feet, even beautiful ones like hers, wasn’t easy. Her lips were parted when he looked up, her cheeks flushed a deep raspberry.
She wanted him as much as he wanted her.
“Quit smiling,” she said, grinning herself. “A cat with a fresh bowl of cream.”
Placing his pad and pencil aside, he crawled on all fours to her, on the prowl.
Georgiana laughed and curled into herself, but he’d wrestled enough in his lifetime, with Henry, never with a lover, to best her easily.
“Cream, indeed,” he whispered, rolling her to her back and sliding between her legs.
They were a rare combination. A lock-and-key fit. He’d never had this, found someone he adored and desired in equal measure. Respect, love, and fascination tied up in the same package.
He dragged his thumb along her bottom lip. “I didn’t have a family like yours. No one there for me, actually. Seven sisters, I can’t grasp the unruliness or the joy.”
“Eight, including me,” she corrected, her smile growing. “Plus my brother, of course.”
“Nine,” he breathed, hardly able to imagine it
“And I’m a twin to my sister, Cece, though we don’t look that much alike.”
“I should love to meet her. There must be similarities in your beauty.”
She wiggled her hips, pleased, teasing him. He was hard against her, and she’d proven the least cautious of the two. It wouldn’t be long before they were tangled up again.
But this needed to come first.
“My first marriage wasn’t my choice, or hers, as I’ve told you.”
“Somewhat told me.” She nipped his jaw, her fingers tugging at his trouser buttons. He’d at least managed to drag them on earlier. As for Georgiana, she had an easy indifference to being nude around him.
He paused to kiss her, falling into it, like always.
How could he not? He loved her against reason.
“We were unsuited, differing temperaments and such. Too young. Selfish. Impulsive. Though I tried to give her what she needed, her freedom, thereby leaving what I needed shut away in a closet in my heart. I’ll tell you more, someday, when we have days upon days together, just the two of us.
Suffice it to say, I may move slower than you’d like me to, but I will share my life with you, my heart, every last piece.
Until you’re as sick of ducal matters as I am. Sick of me.”
“Impossible,” she whispered.
He took her face in his hands, making sure she understood. “I want you, Gia. A life-altering longing. I love you. But more than that, we need you, Henry and I. A family, an existence outside the solitary one we’ve built. I pray this isn’t more than I should ask or hope for.”
Tears glistened in her eyes for the first time in his presence. “You and Henry are my dream, Your Grace.”
Then she showed him without words.
Ren had gone to great lengths to warn her.
It won’t be easy. Duchess. Mother. Wife. I’m gossiped about, hearsay will follow.
He had a reputation. A recent mistress of sorts, a friend with “mutual incentives,” as he decorously put it.
He wasn’t hiding anything. The tale about him having a vase tossed at his head by a widowed baroness was true; the story of his climbing from her window after being chased out by another lover was false.
Georgiana believed him.
But when the friend with mutual incentives showed up in Vale’s lavender parlor that afternoon, looking as fresh and beautiful as the wild rose Ren had drawn on her wrist, Georgiana recognized she was being presented with a choice.
A test for the soon-to-be-minted Duchess of Dunmere, with all Ren’s warnings attached.
She could act the cross heroine and storm off, make the duke in question beg for forgiveness to prove his devotion. Instead, Georgiana let her unease sit, her jealousy simmer, the widowed countess, Lady Julia Littlepage, sipping tea across the parlor with the grace of her station.
Then she let it fade, the image of Ren above her—his lashes sweeping low over his searing blue eyes as his release took him—drifting through her like rain. She touched her lips, the ghost of his kiss still lingering there.
He was hers. She’d promised to love him, love Henry.
Although he didn’t know it, she’d also promised to grow up. To become his Gia. It was time to leave behind selfishness, childishness, rebellion, and embrace life.
She loved Renwick Bellamont enough to do that and more.
Loved his soft smiles, his gifted hands, his vulnerability.
The lock of hair that stuck out slightly above his left ear.
How his boot tapped beneath the dining table when he’d run out of patience with the conversation.
His subdued honor. The way he adored Henry.
She loved that most of all.
Georgiana wasn’t going to let anyone ruin this, including herself.
So she left the parlor feeling only the faintest prick of irritation and made her way into the gardens.
She and Ren had plans to take a walk along the riverbank with Henry, maybe go into the village of Twickenham for ice cream.
They had decided to delay making an announcement until the winter, enough time for Georgiana to get to know Henry and for a duke to be seen properly courting his future duchess.
That she would be in his bed as often as possible, or he in hers, was left unsaid.
Smiling at the plan, she found a bench and settled upon it, the sunlight a brilliant splash across her.
Beyond the clipped hedges, the gravel path curved toward the lower gardens, where the faint murmur of the river carried on the breeze.
She heard them before she saw them—Henry’s breathless giggle, the quick patter of running feet, Ren’s deep voice behind him.
By the time they came through the garden gate, both of them were a little out of breath.
But only one wore the worried look of a man who knew trouble had just taken tea inside.
As Henry buzzed around her, gathering flowers, darting from bloom to bloom with restless purpose, Ren took the seat next to her, his hat in his hands.
He tapped it carefully against his knee—once, twice—until she reached out to still him.
That scoundrel Anthony Vale had alerted him. Men certainly stuck together.
“I need to tell you—”
“I already saw her. In that ghastly violet parlor.” Ren’s cheeks were chalky, his lips bloodless.
He looked about ready to come apart. Georgiana loved the daft man with all her heart, and it was clear he was trying.
She was just going to have to make peace with the occasional ghost of his past appearing if they were going to make this work.
“She’s lovely, everything one would hope for in a friend with incentives. ”
Ren dropped his head to his hand and massaged his temple, something he did when he was worried. “I knew that confession was going to haunt me. When you slipped my shirt on with nothing beneath and started posing inquiries, I quite lost my ability to govern myself.”
Georgiana held back a smile. She should be angry. But for some odd reason, she wasn’t.
“I won’t be handled by you or society,” she said, and after a quick glance to see that Henry was occupied digging a hole near a copse of azaleas, let her fingers drift over Ren’s knee through superfine wool, to mid-thigh before pulling her hand away.
His fingers flexed into a fist as he shivered at her touch.
She sighed softly, her body warming in response as well.
“Later,” Ren murmured. “I wish to have my cravat back.”
Georgiana had the treasured length of silk hidden in her portmanteau. Ren had promised to show her how to use it properly next time.
His sea-blue gaze cut her way. “No one would ever think to handle you, sprite, certainly not me. This wasn’t a planned assignation. Julia and I have never met outside London. You are my focus, for the rest of my days, you and Henry my only concern.”
Georgiana wasn’t sure about that. Women had shown her their artifice many times. But she would, to smooth out the strain at the corners of his eyes, go with his version of things.
“If I were vaguely vexed, Your Grace, I know a way you can soothe my agitation.”
Bracing his hands behind him on the bench, Ren groaned, stretching out his long legs. Her gaze traveled the lean line of him before meeting his dimpled smile. He knew what he did to her.
“Leave your terrace doors open tonight, Gia.”
Before she could respond, her cheeks hot, Henry ran up to her, a tangle of pink and white azaleas caught in his fist. “For the lady,” he said, thrusting them at her.
She laughed, taking the crushed blooms as if presented a bouquet from a prince. Something in her chest loosened—this small, earnest offering, this boy, already half hers. Her vision blurred for a fleeting second, and she turned her face just enough, but not before Ren saw.
“Darling Gia,” he whispered, then rose, offering her his arm. “Shall we? I’ve heard the ice cream in the village is divine.”
Henry whooped and tore off down the path, then spun back on his heel, making sure they followed, his grin wide and expectant.
Georgiana glanced up at Ren, a quiet, certain emotion passing between them, leaving words behind. Together, they set off down the path, Henry skipping before them, sunlight flickering through the trees beyond.
Before them lay a summer afternoon, and their future, at last.