Chapter 13
“I knew it. You are going to be a duchess,” Cora gushed as she whipped out her fan and beat it rapidly, hiding the gossip behind the painted pink silk.
“Shush,” Agatha replied, rather embarrassed but also thrilled. “You know no such thing.”
“Oh, yes, I do,” Cora said brightly, as the sounds of the orchestra and the gossip of the guests surrounded them.
“I knew it yesterday, and I know it even more so now. You are going to live in a giant house with lots of servants and lots of money, and you’re going to parade around the country, going to all his houses.
You are going to be one of the most important women in London. ”
She wanted to stomp on her friend’s foot.
Playfully, of course, but clearly Cora had no idea how wild this all was.
Because Cora could be correct, and yet at the same time very wrong, because it seemed that all those splendid things could also become a curse!
“Really, you should be serious, my friend.”
“I can’t possibly be serious,” Cora protested. “This is the stuff of dreams. You are the subject of a penny novelette.”
“I am not,” she countered, tugging at her long white gloves. “I am the subject of a whole host of difficulties. His mother does not want me to marry him.”
“What mother really wants a girl to marry their son?” Cora pointed out.
Agatha rolled her eyes. “I’m sure that some must. Don’t you think?”
Cora pursed her lips. “I don’t know. But books seem to suggest that they don’t. Plays too. Even histories. They don’t want to let go, you see? They want to maintain control for as long as possible, since they have so little power of their own.”
“I don’t think that’s the case with the duchess.” She sighed. “I think the duchess genuinely wants her son to get married. Just not to me.”
“Why?” Cora asked, snapping her fan shut. “You’ll be marvelous.”
“I’m not important enough.”
“Ha!” Cora retorted. “You’re more of a lady than I am, yet here I stand.” Cora winked. “Of course, no one wants to make me a duchess.”
“Well, they should. You’d be a wonderful duchess,” replied Agatha.
“An American duchess?” Cora asked, wagging her brows as they watched the thick crowd of couples dance across the waxed ballroom floor of Viscount Skyburn’s sprawling London townhome.
Agatha had already danced several times.
Cora too. She’d even danced with the duke once.
They had to be careful. He couldn’t ask her to dance multiple times.
If he did, the scandal would be far too great.
Already, people were talking about her, tittering away behind their fans, pointing ever so slightly, and looking at her with interest that was so intense she could feel it all the way across the ballroom.
Lady Hortense kept grinning at her as she danced by in the arms of different gentleman after different gentleman.
“Lady Hortense doesn’t seem at all disappointed,” Cora mused.
“Lady Hortense seems quite relieved to escape the clutches of the duke,” she replied. “And she’s an excellent sort.”
Cora worried her lower lip. “Oh dear, that makes it sound like the duke’s a bit of a gargoyle. Is he?”
“I think he’s an Apollo.” She all but swooned. “Oh, how his kiss—”
“His what?” Cora asked, her mouth dropping into a perfect O of gleeful astonishment.
She beamed at her friend. “He kissed me.”
Cora nearly jumped up and down but just managed to maintain a semblance of dignity. “Tell me every single detail.”
“You know that I cannot.”
“I think you should.” Cora gasped. “I shall swoon, and I shall sleep tonight envisioning how happy my friend is going to be.”
“Promise me that you’re not going to go back to America anytime soon,” she said to Cora.
“Why would I go back to America anytime soon? And why do you fear it?”
“Because I need a friend like you.” Agatha frowned. “If I become a duchess, I don’t think I’ll know who actually likes me or who’s just fawning upon me.”
“You’re considering it then?” Cora asked.
She grinned. “I’m considering having him, and I might just have to be a duchess if I have him.”
“How terrible for you! Yes, it shall be such a difficulty. So much trouble.”
“I think his family will make it thus,” she said quite seriously now. “Can you feel it?”
Cora leaned slightly to the side. “Oh, you mean the way that his mother is looking at you as if she wishes to stab you with her hairpin? Yes, I do see it and feel it. She’s quite intense.”
“Yes, she is, and clever,” Agatha allowed. “I think she thought that she was going to get rid of me this afternoon, and it didn’t work.”
Lady Hortense rushed up to them, her skirts swishing about her legs. “Do say that I can stand with the two of you?”
“Of course you can,” said Agatha. “This is my friend, Miss Cora Foster. She’s American. Lady Hortense, you have been on full display this night.”
Lady Hortense’s nose wrinkled. “I know. Poor Mama is so horrified by this afternoon’s events. She keeps making me dance with lord after lord, hoping that one of them will catch. And what she really doesn’t understand is I don’t want a single one of them.”
“What do you want?” Agatha asked.
Lady Hortense pursed her lips. “You know, I don’t really know.
I just know that I don’t want this. I’ve had this for so long, and I’ve realized it makes me seem quite precious, but it’s so shallow and so cold.
Nobody in this room is happy except for maybe you two, which is why I want to stand with you. I think it could be catching.”
“Happiness?” Agatha clarified.
“Why not?” Hortense replied, grinning, the jewels in her hair gleaming the same way as the silver and gold embroidery in her elegant ivory silk gown.
Cora laughed. “I like your idea. I think we should try to infect as many people with happiness as possible.”
Hortense nodded. “Let’s do that and walk about the room and cause quite a stir. Everyone will think it’s shocking that you and I are to become friends,” she said to Agatha.
And the three of them did indeed link arms, walking about the crowd, gossiping about the costumes that everyone wore, talking about who was dancing with whom, and just having a merry old time.
Agatha’s mother was standing in a corner drinking punch, talking to many of the other ladies who were quite eager to make her acquaintance now that they understood Agatha was being pursued by a duke.
At last, Agatha realized she needed a breath of fresh air. So much attention upon her was surprisingly wearing.
She slipped off from her two friends, leaving them to grow better acquainted, quite glad that Hortense was going to find another person who might understand her better than most ladies of the ton.
Most ladies of the ton were determined to marry and marry well, but it seemed that Hortense had other ideas.
She was a black swan, an odd duck, someone who did not want to fit in, and Agatha liked her well for it.
She headed down the hall quickly, slipping past a series of rooms until she at last found herself exactly where someone of her nature needed to be.
Out of doors, on a balustrade in the dark night, tilting her head up towards the moon. She knew she really shouldn’t be out there alone, but it was all so much.
“It’s so easy to find you,” a voice said from the shadows.
She whipped about, her heart slamming into her throat.
“Whatever are you talking about?” she yelped, but then she realized she knew the rumbling voice. Westfort.
“You always head outside,” he pointed out.
“You didn’t follow me, did you?”
“I didn’t need to,” he said, stepping out of the shadows. “I just sat out here on the balustrade and waited for you to come.”
“Are you serious?” she said.
He nodded. “You’re drawn to it, aren’t you?”
“What?” she asked.
“Nature, music, things that are pure.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call this garden pure,” she pointed out. “It’s quite manufactured by man’s hand, but then again, so is music.” She contemplated the elegant topiaries and hedges. “It is beautiful and the scent? Couldn’t you just drink it in?”
She tilted her head back, letting the breeze bathe her face. There was the scent of roses and hyacinth floating through the air.
“Yes,” he murmured. “But it’s not as delicious as yours.”
She snapped her eyes open and gazed at him. “That is a terribly shocking thing to say.”
“Only if you are a young debutante who I shouldn’t be talking to, but I am determined to convince you to be my wife, so I think it’s a very good idea that I say things like that.
Now, I know I should say you are the most intelligent woman of my acquaintance.
You are the most interesting woman that I have ever met.
You’re the most daring lady that I know. ”
“That’s not true,” she said tartly. “I’ve read the newssheets and the gossip. There are many more daring ladies in the ton.”
He hesitated. “Yes, but they’re daring for a different reason,” he said. “You’re bold about life and they, well, they’re unhappy and so they act out.”
“And you?” she queried. “Are you unhappy and acting out?”
He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
She gestured between them, her gloved hand glowing snowy white in the moonlight. “Isn’t this possibly all just some great protest on your part before you surrender and marry the proper girl that you’re supposed to?”
“That would make me quite the scoundrel,” he said. “Dragging your name through the public like this.”
“You haven’t asked me to marry you. You haven’t asked me to dance too many times. I’m sure I could weather the storm of it if you suddenly abandoned me.”
“I could never abandon you,” he declared as he slipped his hand around hers and pulled her along the dark shadows until they met a set of stone stairs.
She knew she should go back. But she didn’t wish to. She wished to go forward and discover whatever mysteries he had to show her.
Quietly, he guided her past a small pool with a fountain, spraying water into the air from the mouth of a mermaid.
The air chilled as mist filled it, but then he slipped them into a nook that she never would have spotted, hidden away from the world, surrounded with high shrubs and the scent of flowering trees.
“Was this what you were waiting for me for?” she asked, even as her heart began to beat ever faster and a strange ache began to torture her. An ache she felt certain only he could fill. “To get me alone like this?”
He lowered his head towards hers, his dark hair teasing his strong face. “I have been waiting to get you alone like this since…”
“Yesterday?” She laughed.
He frowned, then laughed softly. “Yes, I realize it’s all happening terribly fast. I know it was just yesterday, but it feels like forever too. I don’t think this needs to happen slowly,” he said. “I think that when you really know that you want something or someone, you shouldn’t hesitate.”
“Why not?” she breathed, longing to lean into him. Longing to be as bold as he seemed to think she was.
“Because if you hesitate, you could lose the thing you wish for,” he said. “And I don’t want to risk losing this, losing you. I think that I should take you now and show the world that you’re meant to be mine.”
She studied him. He was quite serious. There was something deep inside him driving all this, like a relentless fear she didn’t understand.
That actually made her more hesitant, because she didn’t want him out of fear.
She wanted him out of pure confidence, arrogance even, but he was quite serious.
And as he pulled her into his arms, she knew one thing.
She wanted this too, and she wasn’t about to deny that.
Adam’s mouth stole over hers, tempting her, teasing her. Each touch of their lips was a step closer to heaven, there in the secret nook of the garden. Her hands roved over his muscled shoulders, and she adored the way it felt when she feathered her fingers through his thick, dark hair.
Their bodies moved together, hers arching into his as she felt herself pitching towards passion. And when his tongue teased her lips, she did not resist.
As his tongue delved into her mouth, his hands cupped her hips, then moved to her buttocks.
She gasped against his mouth as he rocked her into the hard length of his sex, pressing her against the placard of his breeches.
That was for her.
Slowly, he inched her gown up her legs in fistfuls until he could slip his fingers to the vee of her thighs.
She knew she should stop him, but she did not wish to. This was perfection. When his fingers slid into her slick petals, she let out a cry of delicious shock, which he swallowed with his kiss.
Then, slowly, achingly, he stroked those petals until he found her most sensitive spot. Once he found that spot, he did not relent, circling and stroking and teasing until she clung to him, certain that she was about to break apart. But she wasn’t afraid of that feeling. Oh no, she was drawn to it.
His kiss only deepened, his mouth moving over hers in a primal rhythm, and as she clung to him, he teased her opening with his finger as he circled her. Then there was no going back. Just as she’d wished.
There was only forward, into starlight and unimaginable ripples of pleasure.
Adam’s chest pumped as he drew in ragged breaths before he rested his forehead to hers. “I want you more than I’ve wanted anything in the world.”
She parted her lips, eager to offer herself.
But then he shook his head. “I want to learn you slowly. In degrees. Savoring every bit of you.”
“How shall we manage that?” she whispered.
“Do you wish it?” he asked, holding her close.
Her legs were still shaking with the pleasure he had given her. She bit her lips, trying to think properly. More of this? Of course. “Yes,” she murmured. “Oh yes.”
“Then we shall learn each other in nooks like this all over London,” he whispered.
“And if we are caught?” she challenged.
“All the better, for then you must be mine.”
She laughed softly. “That desperate, are you?”
“Yes,” he growled before he pressed a kiss to the curve of her neck. “For you? Always.”