Epilogue
Beatrice swayed with the carriage as it rumbled along the road. Across from her, Graham was clearly less inclined to simply endure the journey in silence. He sighed, shifted in his seat and, in general, made his impatience known.
“We’ll reach Castle Black within the hour,” she said softly. They were returning from Gretna Green. A hasty ceremony in a small church was not what Lady Agatha had wanted them to have. She’d tried to dissuade them from getting married in what she referred to as a havey-cavey fashion but, instead, having a ceremony in the village church after the banns were read. Neither of them had been willing to wait so long.
“I’m well aware of where we are,” he said. “I am simply done with this carriage. And here I thought traveling by sea was bad!”
She laughed. “The roads are difficult at this time of year.”
He reached for her, grasping her hand and pulling her until she crossed the distance between them and sprawled across his lap. “There are things we could do to pass the time,” he said suggestively.
“In a carriage?” she asked, both scandalized and intrigued.
“It’s all about rhythm,” he offered with a teasing smile.
All thoughts of teasing fled as his lips moved along the column of her throat. He’d found her weakness. When he kissed her there, just below her ear, and followed that tender caress with the slight sting of his teeth, all of her good sense fled. It took so little to make her a slave to desire, she mused.
His hands moved to her hips, repositioning her so that she sat astride his lap. As his mouth descended on hers, he moved against her and she could feel the hardened ridge of his manhood pressed against her most intimate flesh. Experimenting, Beatrice shifted forward onto her knees and arched against him. The resulting contact elicited a soft groan from them both.
As the carriage rolled along, the sway of it did, in fact, create a rhythm that had them both breathless and gasping. The desire was so intense that any thought to propriety simply vanished.
Beatrice reached between them and began to unbutton the fall front of his breeches. “If we’re going to be scandalous, then let us be completely so.”
“Are you sure you don’t wish to wait until we are home in the sanctuary of our bed?” he teased.
“No. I want you now,” she said. “I need to feel you inside me.”
Her words were bold and impossibly brazen. But that had been the point. She’d discovered that her husband liked it very much when she behaved as a wanton. That moment was no exception. The simple statement had elevated the tension in him to new heights. Every muscle tensed beneath her and the hands gripping her hips tightened to the point that they would undoubtedly leave marks. But he was lifting her, positioning her above him, just so.
“If you want me inside you, Beatrice,” he whispered seductively, “then take me.”
It was a dare to see just how bold she would be and she was more than up to the challenge. Closing her hand around the thick shaft of his erection, she guided it to her entrance and with careful movements, began to sink down on him.
The pleasure as he filled her was impossibly intense. Beatrice swayed, but he steadied her by wrapping one arm around her waist. With that support, she began to move, rising up and down on him in rhythm with the movements of the carriage.
Again and again, she rocked down and he filled her, the heat of him scorching her skin as she strained toward release. When at last it came, her body shuddering and her cries lost in his kiss, she was weak with it. Limp and lax, she sank against him as he thrust into her once again, pressing deep as he spilled himself inside her.
Wrapped together on that seat, he whispered against her ear, “I may have to rethink my aversion to this mode of transportation.”
She smiled. “As our next journey is to London and your mother will be with us, I sincerely hope not.”
Graham shuddered at the thought. “If you had not already sated my ardor, that thought would have effectively withered me.”
Beatrice rose onto her knees and met his gaze. “Are you worried about London? About taking your place there?”
“I’m not worried about anything so long as I have you by my side… I will not be liked. I will be called a usurper, an outsider and, perhaps, even an imposter. There are those who will never accept that I am the Lost Lord of Castle Black.”
“It is their loss,” she said. “You are everything that a gentleman is supposed to be.”
“Hardly that!”
“But you are!” she protested. “You have been kind and generous with the staff, you have taken to the responsibilities and obligations of the estate, not as if born to it, but as if driven to do so! You were incredibly merciful toward Eloise when you did not have to be. Allowing her to return to her family rather than go to prison was a generosity that she did not deserve.”
“One could argue that it was a punishment her family did not deserve.”
Her lips quirked at that. “As you say… and what of Dr. Warner who struggled in York to build his practice? You’ve set him up in the village and now we have access to quality medical care instead of being dependent upon Dr. Shepherd’s quackery! Then there’s Sir Godfrey—even after the truth of his perfidy came about, you’ve still been gracious enough to let him live out his days in the townhome in Bath… albeit with a more stringent budget and supervision!”
“None of those decisions were made for altruistic reasons. Scandal, given all that we have already endured, should not be courted so openly.”
“Spoken like a true gentleman!” she proclaimed. “And while this trip to London is necessary to get Christopher enrolled in university again and to deal with the legal ramifications of your ‘resurrection’, it will be good for you to be reminded of what you come from, but it will also be good for Lady Agatha. She has been much too isolated at Castle Black.”
His hand made lazy circles over her back. Enough so that she wanted to purr and stretch like a cat. “And what of you, Beatrice? Will London and a jaunt into society be good for you?”
“You are good for me. Being where you are is good for me… beyond that, nothing else matters,” she admitted. The carriage turned off the main road and onto the more narrow lane that would lead to the castle. They were on Blakemore property. “Welcome home Lord Blakemore.”
“And to you, Lady Blakemore. Welcome home.”
The End