Chapter 13
The sounds of the gambling rooms downstairs traveled up through the walls and drifted into Fennyman’s office as Rivers strode in.
Fennyman smiled at him, a rare thing, as he grabbed a bottle of champagne. “Shall we open it, Your Grace? You have triumphed again.”
“You can’t be serious,” Rivers blurted, feeling quite ill at ease.
Fennyman gave him an odd look, quickly uncorking the cold bottle of champagne and pouring out several glasses.
“Of course, I’m serious. They are married.
I was there in the bell tower. I watched the whole thing.
I would have started singing like the angels if I thought it would have improved the ceremony. ”
“That I would like to see,” drawled Lord Philip.
Rivers whipped around.
Lord Philip was sitting in a chair by the fire, boots extended.
“And what do you have to say, young man, about all this?” Rivers said. “What have you been doing these days?”
Lord Philip waggled his brows. “Oh, I have been doing very important things, Your Grace. Things you don’t need to know about.”
“Are you planning on marrying your actress?” asked Rivers kindly. He quite liked said actress in question. But it wouldn’t be easy.
Philip sat a little bit straighter. “Perhaps,” he ventured. “Perhaps, if she’ll have me, but I’m beginning to think that possibility has the same opportunity that ice has in Hades.”
Rivers could not stop himself. He smiled, despite his misgivings about Windbourne and Nancy. “Well, old boy, she’s much happier free, isn’t she? If she becomes your wife, she has to stop acting.”
Philip grumbled. “Why?” he demanded. “Why do we have to have all these rules?”
“Because the ton thrives on rules,” Rivers said.
Fennyman lifted his glass. “And we have pushed those rules to the limit, and now you have a duke and a duchess. Surely, you should be celebrating. You’re the one who’s always trying to celebrate.”
“Is this possible?” Rivers asked as he gaped at the two of them. He took several steps forward, his long coat flowing behind him. “Am I the only one who does not see cause for celebrating?”
“It seems so,” Fennyman said, taking a glass over to Lord Philip. Lord Philip clinked glasses with Fennyman, and they both drank.
Rivers let out an exasperated note.
“You two are always reining me in,” he said. “How is this possible that now I’m the one speaking caution and reason?”
“Why do we need caution or reason?” Lord Philip asked, twirling his champagne glass with ease.
Fennyman nodded. “Exactly. They’re man and wife. What’s the trouble?”
“The trouble is what she said to me right before the ceremony,” Rivers gritted.
That caused Lord Philip and Fennyman both to choke on their champagne at once. It was almost comical, the synchronized sputtering.
“And what was that?” Fennyman asked.
Harlowe stumbled in and exclaimed, “That she’s going to work herself to death being his wife.”
“Harlowe!” Rivers said. “That was supposed to be my line, and how the blazes do you know that?”
“Because I was lingering in the room adjacent to the entrance and I heard her say it.” Harlowe’s forehead furrowed into a considerable array of lines. “It was terrible.”
Rivers groaned and wiped a hand over his face. “It really was, wasn’t it? I was praying that maybe I imagined it. I was even hoping perhaps that Fennyman here and Lord Philip might convince me that I was an absolute fool for worrying about this.”
“You’re not a fool,” Harlowe said as he charged over to Fennyman and took up one of the glasses of champagne and downed it.
They all gaped at the butler, who seemed to have shed his subservience like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis.
“All that maneuvering,” Harlowe said, “and she’s learned nothing?”
“Harlowe, what are you on about?” Lord Philip asked, his eyes wide.
Harlowe looked from man to man to man. “I’ve spent a good deal of time behind the shadows trying to make things happen, talking to servants, working things out with seamstresses, doing things that none of you can do, except Fennyman. Fennyman can do it also,” he said.
Fennyman gave him an inclination of his head. “Thank you.” But Fennyman also acknowledged, “Actually, Harlowe. There’s a great deal that you can do that I can’t. If I try to do it, people are terrified. You try to do it, and people spill their guts out to you.”
“Thank you,” Harlowe said. “I’m glad you recognize my skills. Some people might do better if they did too.”
“I recognize your skills,” Rivers said indignantly, feeling the comment was likely for him. “I want to make you a duke.”
“No, you don’t,” Harlowe, said. “And if you do, I know where you sleep.”
Rivers laughed. “My, my, Harlowe,” he said. “I knew you were my dearest friend. Your honesty and frank banter tells me such.”
Harlowe rolled his eyes. “Right, dear friend. You’re not wrong. We are in dire straits.”
Fennyman swung his gaze from Rivers to Harlowe. “You mean it, don’t you? She really said something to that effect about her working?”
Harlowe scowled. “Yes. She was born a lady, but apparently now that she’s got a taste for work, she doesn’t know how to let it go. And, of course, there’s the self-worth issue.”
Lord Philip closed his eyes and let out a peep of horror. “Her father.”
“What?” Rivers asked, swinging his gaze about, trying to understand this deduction. “What about her father? What does he have to do with any of this? He’s dead. We’ve gotten around that. We found her a good match.”
“Yes,” Lord Philip explained, “but we’ve been worried about Pierce and his father problems all this time, and we never stopped to think about hers.”
Fennyman set his glass down. “Well, this is absolute balderdash,” he said, and he folded his arms across his chest. “I’m not going to be able to sleep now. Bloody hell, I do like my sleep. She seemed above such things.”
“What?” Rivers asked. “Tell me?”
Harlowe gave him a sympathetic glance. “I know that you have never questioned your own self-worth, Your Grace.”
“Why would I?” Rivers asked. “I’m a duke.”
“Exactly,” Harlowe said. “But most of us don’t have that sort of luxury, even some of the other dukes we know.”
“Yes,” Rivers said. “It’s a problem. I know. Carry on.”
Lord Philip let out a sigh. “How does he not understand this?”
Rivers arched a brow. “Because my father was a perfectly wonderful person. He had some difficulties, of course.”
Harlowe snorted. “Look, Your Grace. She doesn’t think she’s worthy of love.”
“Ridiculous,” Rivers said. “They both declared their love for each other. We know it. The servants have confirmed this.”
“Yes,” Harlowe agreed carefully, “but that doesn’t mean she thinks that she’s worthy of it.”
Rivers stopped, a muscle tightened in his jaw. “Damnation,” he said. “I really thought we just had to get them married and everything would be fine.”
“I’ve told you before,” Fennyman said, “marriage is not necessarily the answer. It’s why I’ve prevented you from catching people in the act and forcing a wedding.”
“Now what?” Rivers said, feeling quite unanchored.
Lord Philip, Harlowe, and Fennyman all exchanged glances.
“I don’t like this silence,” Rivers declared. “This silence is terrible.”
“Yes,” Fennyman said. “It is.”
And Rivers realized that the silence was because none of them knew what to do next.
Married! It had been a small, perfect wedding in a church designed by Christopher Wren. Pierce’s friends, Eileen, Victoria, Pansy, and Nancy’s mother had been in attendance for the swift but intimate ceremony. It was more than she could have ever hoped for.
Now, she was in Pierce’s London townhome, as his duchess. A very different thing from how she had entered it.
Nancy had wanted to give herself to Pierce since that moment in the room with the Aphrodite painting, but she hadn’t been able to.
Suddenly, she was quite glad for that. Though she’d known how much she wanted him, and he wanted her, there had been too many rules to break, too many chances, and he, despite his sinful nature, had been too much of a gentleman to put her in such a position in his house.
Now, she was his duchess, and nothing was stopping them from having each other.
There in the bedchamber that had been prepared for them with beautiful flowers and silks, Nancy boldly took his hands in hers.
“No more waiting required,” she whispered. “No more propriety to keep us apart.”
“Never again,” he growled, and he pulled her to him gently. “I want to take you here on the floor,” he said. “I want to take you over and over again all night long until all you can think of is me and I of you.”
The words did something to her, something passionate, something elemental.
“Then do it,” she purred.
He caressed her face with the tips of his fingers, stroking her cheeks with the back of his knuckles. “Oh my love,” he returned softly. “Not tonight. That sort of passion awaits us in the future. Tonight, I will be so gentle.”
“Not too gentle,” she dared to tease, even as her insides quaked. “I have been dreaming of this moment since I caught sight of you without your shirt.”
His eyes widened. “In truth?”
She nodded, her cheeks blooming with embarrassment. “I cannot believe I am confessing it, but from the moment I saw you in that room, shirt off, eyes bold, I wanted you. It was all I could do to behave as well as I did.”
He arched a brow. “I rather like the fact that you almost could not behave with me. I don’t want to have to behave with you anymore, but I shall take very good care of you indeed.”
Pierce’s hands went to the laces at her bodice. He worked with a fevered need. Quickly, he pulled her bodice loose and then, piece by piece, swept the fabric off her body, each movement a caress.
Deliberately, slowly, as if he realized how momentous this was now that she stood in a shift and stays and stockings, he removed each item of clothing as if each was a kiss upon her sensitive skin.
When the last item of clothing was gone, she waited to see if he would be as pleased with his bride as she hoped. She needed him to be pleased, to have no regrets. From the look in his eyes and the wildness there, she knew that he was pleased.
His sensual lips parted. “Come,” he whispered. “Come with me.” And then he led her to the big, four-poster bed. “This is your first time,” he said gently, “so we shall make this simple and easy. Gentle. There should be no surprises.”
“I don’t know,” she managed, even as her own anticipation began to build. “You already are a surprise. Everything about you is a surprise.”
He smiled at her, taking her hand in his. “You surprise me too. I never would’ve believed that I was going to meet the love of my life when you came to my home.”
“The love of your life?” she echoed, hardly daring to believe it.
Surely, she had not found herself so very lucky. Her life in recent years had been so unlucky, but then he pulled her into his embrace, sheltering her as if from a storm, and kissed her. He kissed her with the sort of tenderness and passion only a man who was deeply in love could.
Quietly, he picked her up in his arms and put her on the bed. His hands trembled as he removed his clothes without aid. Once he was naked, the light shining on his muscled form, he laid down beside her.
She ached for him, needing him, barely understanding what she truly did desire. She understood the very basics of what happened between a man and a woman, but no one had ever prepared her for these feelings.
The way her skin felt alive and tight. The way she felt as if she might come undone without him.
Pierce took his time as he kissed her and then paid attention to every little bit of her. Slowly, he kissed his way along every curve of her body. It was if he longed to touch every inch of her skin, to make every inch of her skin belong to him.
Gently, he turned her over and skimmed his fingers over her back, then her bottom, then the back of her thighs and knees.
He then paused at her thighs, and while she gripped the sheets, glancing back over her shoulder, waiting to see what would happen next, he stroked his fingers along her silken place.
He touched her opening, and with a few of his fingers, he caressed the soft petals.
With another he began to ease his way in, testing her.
“You’re so tight,” he whispered. “I don’t wish to hurt you.”
“You won’t,” she insisted. “Please, I need you.”
Gently, he turned her over onto her back. He braced himself on his forearms, gazed down into her eyes, and he made them one.
He thrust into her and for one very intense moment, her entire body was shot through with pain. She abruptly wanted him to stop. She needed to escape. It was too much. He was far, far too much.
He held himself still as his face strained. He tried to make it easy, but he was so large, and as he had said, she was so tight.
She panted against him. “Well, this is preposterous,” she declared.
And then he laughed. And she did too, and suddenly that changed everything. Laughing together, her body eased, he rocked forward, and the pain was gone.
Their gazes met. And in their laughter and shared desire, all the worries and hesitation drifted away.
She was meant for him, and she was never going to lose him. No matter what she had to do.
Pierce began to move inside her. Somehow, her untutored body began to match his movements, and soon, with that laughter and their understanding and ease, he rolled his hips over her body like a storm crashing upon the land, a wave upon the shore.
And then she was gone, completely tossed into the paradise that he had created between them.
And suddenly she knew that she had found the man of her dreams. And she was going to make sure that she was the woman of his.