Chapter 24 #2
“You’ll survive it,” he chuckled, and a thread of the old dryness came back into his voice as the rain lashed harder at the glass. “Shall I distract you?”
“How?”
“I can recite Byron, Shakespeare, I can even tell you tales of my childhood….” His hand found the curve of her waist and drew her nearer, “…or I could kiss you?”
“I’d wager you already wanted to kiss me,” Emma whispered.
“I am caught,” he smiled, and leaned in to touch his lips to hers. He could tell the gentleness of it surprised her.
He meant to be gentle. After that room, after the ugly truth sitting open between them, after the way she had put herself between him and the chair as though her slight body could stand against ten years of ghosts, he could only ever thank her with his mouth.
“Another lesson?” she mumbled against him there.
At first, he was confused by her words. Then their meaning settled in.
He had told himself it was generosity at first. A husband preparing a wife for the life that came after him—there was something almost noble in it, if one squinted.
The squinting was getting harder. Each lesson he gave her with the careful, clinical promise that it was for some other man left a residue he couldn’t quite scrub off, like soot under a fingernail.
He kept teaching her how to be wanted by someone else and resenting, more each day, the someone else who did not yet exist and whom he had already decided to despise.
“No,” he decided, shaking his head. “This one’s for me.”
He traced the line of her lips, and a desire rose in her so intense that she gasped against his mouth.
Vincent slipped his tongue past her lips, teasing, hot, suggestive.
The kiss deepened, but the languid pace kept; she wrapped an arm around his shoulders, pulling him closer, and he slid a hand under her knee to draw her thigh over his, bringing them closer still.
His arms wound around her, holding her as if afraid she might slip away.
Emma held onto his shoulder before her fingers slid into his thick dark hair, and he savored the feel of her silken skin under his rough palms. She matched him breath for breath, touch for touch, kiss for kiss, and exhaled a soft moan against his mouth as he tilted her head back and took her deeper.
As much as he wanted her, he didn’t want more than this tonight, only her nearness, only the comfort of it.
Emma pulled away at last, her lips softly swollen, her eyes drowsy. “You’re wickedly good at that,” she whispered.
“Good,” he chuckled with his chest. “You’re always like a handful of thistledown in my hands, pet.”
Stifling a yawn, Emma murmured, “I suspect I’m going to fall asleep in the next breath.”
He reached over and covered them with the warm eiderdown, tucking its weight around her slight body to ward off the cold. “Pleasant dreams, Emma.”
As she drifted off, Vincent stayed awake and listened to the storm wear itself out against the windows.
What did it matter if he liked the warm, open way she gazed at him, or how passionately she came apart beneath him?
This wasn’t a love match—it was a marriage of convenience, and he needed to remember that.
That profound realization meant nothing when he found he could not pry his hand away from her body, not even when she turned in her sleep with her back to him.
The time will come when you must part. Enjoy this while it lasts.
A firm knock by morning roused Vincent, his head twisting on the pillow. Sometime in the night, he and Emma had broken away from one another, and he now found himself laid on his stomach, one arm shoved under the pillow, the sheets rucked low over his hips.
The knock came again.
Weston, of course.
Groaning, Vincent pushed out of bed and, after a brief, half-blind search for his robe, dragged it on and crossed the room. He opened the door only wide enough to glare through it. “Is someone dead?”
“No, Your Grace?”
“Is someone ill?”
This time, Weston’ lips twitched. “No, Your Grace.”
“And lastly, is something on fire?”
“Actually, yes.” Weston lifted a silver salver, where a folded letter sat looking far too pleased with itself. “Well, in a sense. A messenger came from Westminster. There is an urgent meeting of the lords today, and you are needed.”
Sagging against the doorjamb, Vincent rubbed his face before taking the note, “Ready the carriage in an hour.”
“It will be done, Your Grace,” Weston bowed.
Closing the door behind him, Vincent tore the note open to read a very curt note from the Lord Chancellor demanding the Duke of Highminster’s attendance at another meeting. As if England would topple into the Channel if he did not appear before breakfast.
Dropping the summons on the table, Vincent turned back just as Emma stirred beneath the counterpane. With her lashes fluttering and voice soft with sleep, she asked, “Is something the matter?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary, only that the powers that be are summoning me to Parliament.” He braced against the edge of the bed and leaned in to kiss her. “Good morning, sweetheart. How are you feeling?”
“Better,” she mumbled tiredly. Her hair lay mussed on the pillow, and with one bare shoulder peeking out from the sheets, her eyes cast over him. “I suppose the summons is urgent.”
“Yes,” he said, straightening with a reluctant sigh and moving to the wardrobe to pick out his pressed shirts.
Emma blinked after him. “Do you often dress yourself?”
“Also, yes,” he looked over his shoulder briefly. “It was born of necessity. When I was in the trenches of rebuilding, most of the staff had to be let go. Aside from Weston, Mrs. Roan, and Cook, the house was more mausoleum than ducal seat.”
He drew out a white shirt, then an icy blue waistcoat, and set both over a chair as he made to get dressed.
“Of course, no gentleman of sense would choose to become his own valet. But necessity is the mother of invention, and I learned to tie my cravat, polish my boots, and trim my facial hair without taking off an ear,” he went on, finding his usual pairing of sapphire cufflinks.
“Now, I do have a valet, though he’s more of an ornament these days. ”
At that, Emma slipped from the bed, dragging the sheet up with belated modesty. “Being self-sufficient is nothing shameful,” she said, heading for the bathing room. “Frankly, if more of the Upper Ten Thousand had to button their own waistcoats now and again, society might be less insufferable.”
“And pigs will sprout wings and fly over Bond Street,” he snorted to himself as she closed herself off in the bathing-room.
He called for his bathwater, and when she exited the room, he swept in immediately, kissing her cheek on the way in. “Don’t let me disturb your morning. Rest as long as you please.”
“I’ve rested enough,” she sighed while making for her rooms to collect her robe.
She returned just as Vincent was shucking his shirt, and the sight of his rippling muscles made her heart take an odd leap. Twisting his head to her as he worked on his trousers, Vincent gave her a knowing smirk—and red as a bonfire, she smiled back.
“Safe journey,” Emma murmured.
“Thank you,” he replied. “Hopefully, I’ll make it home before tomorrow.”
An hour after Vincent left, Emma reentered the house from the gardens, leaving Titan outside with the same stable boy currently minding the kitten. She had taken the hound out in Vincent’s stead and, seeing him charge across the lawn with wild delight, decided to let him run a while longer.
Calling for breakfast, she was gently advised by Mrs. Roan to take the blue drawing room as her own for the mornings.
A few minutes later, Lilian entered with a breakfast tray and a neat stack of letters.
“Is there anything else you would like, Your Grace?” Lilian asked cheerfully.
“Not at this time, thank you.”
Dismissing the maid, Emma ate first, then turned her attention to the letters.
Most were congratulatory cards from lords and ladies, along with invitations to balls, routs, and soirees, now apparently eager to receive her.
There was also a letter from Grandmama, two from Charlotte and Harriet, but the last had her dropping it as if it were a hot coal.
“Lord Ashton…” she breathed, staring at the thick, premium paper.
Swallowing, Emma reached for the letter again and debated whether to open it or not.