Chapter 41
Chapter
Forty-One
With My Body I Thee Worship
Rosalynd had eaten almost nothing at our wedding breakfast. A hundred people had claimed a hundred small pieces of us. Every time a plate came near Rosalynd, someone’s aunt arrived to weep on her.
After the last carriage rolled out of Grosvenor Square at half past four, I had taken her upstairs and told her to rest, because it had been a long day and she had been standing in silk since nine o’clock in the morning.
And now at eight o’clock I stood at the window of my private sitting room waiting not so patiently for her.
Behind me, Milford supervised the laying of a table with the gravity he brought to his most solemn tasks.
“Ham, Your Grace. Bread and butter. Champagne. And Cook has sent chocolate-dipped strawberries with her compliments.”
He set the last dish down, cast an eye over the whole, and moved a fork one-quarter of an inch to the left. “The household is dismissed for the night. There is no one on the upper floors.”
“Milford.” I turned toward him. “I noticed you speaking with Honeycutt this afternoon.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“May I ask what he said?”
Milford hesitated. “He asked me to look after Her Grace.”
Something tightened in my chest.
I had seen the two men together earlier, standing somewhat apart from the wedding party. I had thought nothing of it at the time. Now I understood.
Honeycutt had served the Rosehavens for decades. He had watched Rosalynd grow up. Watched her shoulder responsibilities that should never have been hers, and carry them so capably that everyone around her had eventually forgotten their weight. But he hadn’t. He had watched over her.
And today, without ceremony or sentiment, he had given the care of her to Milford.
“What did you tell him?”
Milford met my gaze. “That Her Grace would be well looked after.”
I swallowed against the sudden thickness in my throat.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “She will be.”
“Good night, Your Grace.”
“Thank you, Milford, for everything.”
He paused at the door. “It has been my very great pleasure, Your Grace.” The door closed behind him, and the house lay quiet just as he said.
A soft knock came on the connecting door. I opened it to find Rosalynd on the other side, in a peignoir the color of cream, her copper hair streaming down her back in a riot of curls.
“Warwick.”
“Rosalynd.”
“I hope food is on offer because I’m famished.”
I bit back a smile. Trust her to bring food up first. “Ham, bread, chocolate-dipped strawberries. And champagne to wash it all down.”
“Excellent.”
We ate on the rug in front of an unlit fireplace, because she declared the table too formal for the occasion.
As she bit into a strawberry, she said, “By the way. Laurel and Chrissie will be joining us at Thornburn Abbey.”
I stopped with the champagne halfway to my lips. “And you waited until now to tell me.”
“Several members of my family assured me you would agree to anything I proposed.”
“So you thought to wait until our wedding night.”
“Too late to cry off. We are well and truly married.” She licked chocolate from her thumb without the smallest appearance of shame. “A masterful stroke, if I say so myself.”
I took the glass out of her hand and set it aside. “Oh, you will be stroked, my dear. Deeply.”
“Vigorously as well, I hope.” She batted her lashes at me. “Claire was very instructive.”
“Deeply. Vigorously. Masterfully.”
“I believe we are overdressed for the occasion.”
“Well, that can be easily remedied.” Taking her by the hand, I led her to our bedchamber and our bed.
“I can snuff out some of the candles if you wish.” Alice had requested we make love in the dark, every time, without exception, in the short time we’d had.
She’d been too shy to allow me the full view of her body.
Rosalynd’s outraged gaze found me. “And miss seeing you in the buff? Not likely.”
“Very well.” The difference could not be more clear. Rosalynd did not have a shy bone in her body.
She shrugged off her peignoir. Her nightgown, seemingly made of gossamer butterfly wings, revealed every inch of her glorious figure.
The high, proud breasts, the slender waist, the thatch between her legs with its hint of copper, the same shade as her hair.
When she shrugged her shoulders to slip out of it, I stopped her.
“That, my darling,” I said, “will be my privilege.”
“Whatever you say, my lord and master.” Her lips quirked at the end.
I would never master this woman however long I lived.
She turned to the bed and stopped. A difficulty had presented itself. The mattress stood level with her hip. “Should I take a running start?”
It cost me not to laugh, but somehow I managed it. “That will not be necessary.” I put one arm around her back and the other beneath her, lifted her, and set her down on the counterpane.
She propped her head on one hand and gazed at me with enormous expectation. “Your turn.”
I pulled my shirt over my head in one motion.
“Very nice. But nothing I have not seen before.” She gestured at my trousers with the air of a woman at a private viewing. “Proceed.”
I moved to obey.
“Slowly.”
Holding her gaze, I unfastened the buttons one at a time. With each one she made some small sound—a sigh, a hum in the back of her throat, once something close to a purr. By the fourth I was close to losing control. By the sixth, I was barely hanging on.
“Splendid, Your Grace,” she said, when only my drawers remained.
I kicked the trousers across the room with more haste than dignity, put one knee on the bed, and took her into my arms.
I kissed her lush mouth. The soft skin under her jaw. The line of her throat, and the freckles scattered across the tops of her breasts. Something I had been contemplating in ballrooms for months while standing with my hands behind my back like a monk.
The witch then slipped both hands inside my drawers and squeezed my buttocks. Predictably, matters below stairs took a decidedly enthusiastic turn. I’d intended to move slowly, but there wasn’t a chance in hell that was going to happen now.
I stripped the gossamer thing from her body and tossed it over the bed. Then I slowly—very slowly—kissed my way up her legs until—
“Warwick.” Barely a whisper. “What are you doing?”
“Worshiping you.”
She gasped. “You are a wicked, wicked man.”
I raised my head. “Shall I stop?”
“Not if you value your life.”
I took that as a no.
“Oh, dear heaven!” Her fingers closed in my hair. I tasted her honey, and she gasped my name twice. And when I did more than taste, she screamed.
I could wait no longer, I came up over her. “This may hurt.”
“Then do it swiftly.”
“That is not how this works, darling.”
Going slowly, I held her while she learned the shape of me. An eternity later, when the the last resistance had yielded, I asked, “How do you feel?”
“Stuffed.”
I dropped my head to her shoulder and laughed until the bed shook.
“Warwick.”
“Yes, my darling.”
She smiled up at me, entirely pleased with herself. “May I have some more?”
Much, much later, there was more ham.
I had discovered several things about my husband in the course of a single night.
One of them was that he could be persuaded out of bed to fetch a tray if the request was put to him while he was still catching his breath.
He came back with it balanced on one hand and no clothing whatsoever.
I took my time about the view before I took any of the bread.
“You are staring, Duchess.”
“I am appraising. There is a difference.” I tore the bread in half and gave him the larger piece, because he had earned it. “Warwick,” I said while he settled himself on the bed.
“Mm.”
I laid my head on his chest. “I should like to return the favor.”
“What favor is that, my sweet?” He asked, before feeding me a strawberry and licking the juice from my lips.
“You pleasured me magnificently. Turn about is fair play. I want you to teach me how to please you.”
“You have pleased me more than I can express.”
My hand went wandering down the flat of his stomach. He caught it two inches short of its destination.
“Another night.”
I frowned at him. “Why not now?”
“Because I would as soon not die of pleasure on my wedding night.” He brought my hand to his mouth and kissed the knuckles. “I will teach you everything you wish to know. In time.”
“How to touch you?”
“Among other things.” Locking gazes with me, he licked and sucked one of my fingers, while I grew liquid inside.
He put away the ham and the bread and returned to the bed where he settled his head on my belly with a long breath. My hand went into his hair of its own accord, and we lay like that while the candles burned down.
His face, in the half dark, was not a face I had ever been shown before. Not in a drawing room, not across a study desk, not in a first-class railway compartment with everything ending between us. The lines at the corners of his mouth had gone.
“I have never seen you like this.”
He raised his head. “Like what?”
“As if a weight has come off you.” I traced the corner of his lips. “You look ten years younger.”
“For this one moment, perhaps I am. It will not always be so. The world will intrude soon enough.” He kissed the inside of my wrist where my pulse beat wildly beneath the skin for him. “But here, nothing can touch us. There is only you and me. The rest of the world can wait.”
“Us.”
“Us.” He sat up. “Which reminds me. I have a present for you.”
My heart pinched. “I have nothing for you.”
He caressed my cheek. “You have given yourself to me, Rosalynd. Nothing else you could offer would come close.”
While he crossed to the chest of drawers, I enjoyed the view, regretting nothing about how thoroughly I watched him go. He came back with a flat leather case and put it into my hands.
I opened it to find an entire array of sapphires. A necklace, earrings, a bracelet, and a brooch, laid on dark velvet, the stones a deep shifting blue and the settings so fine they seemed to hold the light inside.
My hand went still above them. “These are the ones from the auction house.”
“They are.” He lifted an earring and held it up beside my face. “The exact color of your eyes. I stood in that gallery and looked at you across the room asking Hargrove about commission structures. That’s when I understood that I was not going to be able to give you up.”
There was nothing I could say to that. So I said nothing while he took the necklace from its nest.
“Let me.” He fastened the clasp at the back of my neck and let the stones settle against my skin. He looked at me for a long moment with an expression that made my eyes sting.
I gave him one minute more. Then I reached back, undid the clasp myself, and laid the whole magnificent thing into its case and shut the lid.
“Put it away. I have a beautiful thing of my own I should like to enjoy.”
His brow furrowed.
“You, Warwick. You.”
Somewhere across the square, Rosehaven House would be dark, except for one window on the second floor where Laurel would be reading past any reasonable hour. Tomorrow there would be trunks, and Petunia’s opinions on the drapes, and two more sisters cheerfully installing themselves in my honeymoon.
But tonight there was a man coming back to our bed with the candle in his hand and that ten-years-younger look still on him.
So I curled my arms around him and set about discovering, in my own inexpert fashion, how to make my husband scream.
Rosalynd and the Duke of Steele may have found their happily-ever-after, but murder has an unfortunate habit of finding them.
A Murder at Thornburn Abbey
An ancient abbey. A house full of secrets. A murder decades in the making.
Eager to begin a new chapter in her life, Rosalynd arrives at Thornburn Abbey expecting quiet days in the Yorkshire countryside. Instead, she discovers the Duke of Steele is assembling a gathering of progressive peers to strategize sweeping reforms certain to upend the established order.
Among the guests is a powerful lord whose arrogance and sharp tongue have earned him no shortage of enemies.
When the man is murdered, suspicion immediately falls upon his political rivals.
But as Rosalynd and Steele are drawn into an increasingly tangled investigation, Rosalynd becomes less and less convinced that politics lies at the heart of the crime.
As if murder were not enough to contend with, tensions flare between Steele and his black sheep younger brother, a battle of wills erupts between Rosalynd’s sister and one of the assembled lords, and her youngest sibling insists she has seen a ghost wandering the ancient abbey.
But Thornburn has been keeping secrets far longer than any of them have been alive. And before Rosalynd and Steele can unmask a killer, they must discover which secrets are worth killing to keep.
A Murder at Thornburn Abbey, Book 6 in the Rosalynd & Steele Mysteries by USA Today bestselling author Magda Alexander, takes Rosalynd and Steele to a shadowed Yorkshire estate where political ambition, family loyalties, and long-buried secrets collide—with deadly consequences.