Daphne felt the cave wall at her back as he worshiped her mouth, every touch more devastating than the last.
She’d missed him while he was gone. Far more than she could ever have imagined.
It wasn’t just that she enjoyed his company, but she admitted to herself, as she reveled in the feel of his hard body beneath her hands, that she craved him physically. Like the perfect equation, there was something about his particular combination of body and soul that, when combined with hers, rendered the most elegant solution.
“I missed you,” he said against her throat as she slid her hands beneath his coats, to feel the warmth of his skin through the fine lawn of his shirt. “Missed this.”
She replied with a sigh as he tugged down the top of her gown and put his mouth where she most needed it, on her exposed breast. Bold in the circle of his arms, she grasped his buttocks and pulled him closer, the jut of his erection pressing into her belly, reminding her of how much he wanted her.
As if he could sense her need for contact there, Maitland shifted, lifting her skirts with one arm as he kept suckling her peak. When she felt his fingers at her aching center, she gave a whimper of relief. Desperate now, she moved restlessly against his hand and almost cried out her disappointment when he drew away. She bit her lip as she followed him with her hand, stroking where he pressed against the falls of his breeches.
“I’m coming back,” he said in a strained voice, making quick work of the buttons there, before raising her gown to her waist. “Hold on,” he said, lifting her in his arms.
Instinctively, she wrapped her legs around his waist, fitting him against the aching heart of her. With one thrust he plunged into her, and Daphne cried out with the rightness of it.
They clung together for what felt like hours like that, Maitland’s breath warm against her neck as she felt a tremble run through him, like a racehorse eager to sprint away. Then when the stillness was almost unbearable, he began to move. Slowly at first, so that she felt every inch of him as he withdrew from her clasping body. But soon they were both writhing together in an erotic dance, Daphne welcoming his every surge forward with a rising sense of urgency.
At last, before she even knew it was upon her, she felt herself hurtling over the edge as she seemed to splinter into a thousand pieces of profound joy. Aware only in some distant part of her consciousness of the pulsing waves of her body where he claimed her with his own. Still clinging to him, she felt his rush toward his own release, until with a strangled cry he thrust one last time before relaxing against her.
They clung there to one another for several minutes, both trying to catch their breaths. When she let her feet drop to the ground, she found that her knees were a bit wobbly and was grateful for his steadying arms around her.
“Easy,” he said with a smile in his voice. “I wouldn’t want to follow up the most incredible experience of my life with a visit from the doctor. It tends to reflect poorly on a man’s sense of his own lovemaking skills when his partner ends up with broken bones.”
He was absurd, she knew. But it was one of the things she most loved about …
She stiffened as she realized what she’d just thought.
Loved? Why had her mind gone to that word?
Which Maitland misinterpreted as offense at his joke. “Not that that’s ever happened before, of course. I wouldn’t wish you think that I…”
Shaking off her momentary lapse, Daphne forced herself to smile. “Of course I don’t think that.”
He seemed to be skeptical of her reassurance for a moment before he smiled back and stepped away. “Good.”
While they both began setting their clothing to rights, Daphne reflected on her lapse in thought.
Perhaps it was perfectly natural for a lady to fancy herself in love with the man who’d just brought her such carnal bliss. That was what it was, she decided. Gratitude. She’d mistaken her natural response to his very considerable skills at bringing her pleasure for love.
Relief at having found a likely explanation for her momentary slip, she pulled up the sleeve of her gown and straightened her bodice.
Just because she was going to marry Maitland, she reasoned as she watched him turn his back so that he could discreetly refasten his breeches, did not mean that she had to give him her heart. Before this week, she’d been content to think of spending her life as a spinster bluestocking. While other women were toiling as wives and mothers, she would use her superior intelligence to blaze trails where no lady had gone before.
Circumstance and necessity had changed those plans, and she had agreed that marriage to the duke was now necessary both to protect their reputations and that of their as-yet hypothetical child. But that didn’t mean she had to give all of herself to him. Surely it was allowed for her to hold some part of herself back from him. No matter how much she trusted and admired him, there was some resistant corner of her mind that did not, might not, ever fully believe he could remain such a paragon as he seemed now.
And, she couldn’t help reminding herself, he had kept his aunt’s letter to him from her. As betrayals went, it was small, but it could be the first in a series. Or worse, might lead to larger and larger ones.
“You’re quiet,” Maitland said as they walked in single file through the hidden passageway leading from the cave up into the kitchens of the main house. “I wasn’t too rough, was I?”
She heard the concern in his voice and felt a pang of affection—that’s what she’d call it—for this man who seemed so careful not to do her harm.
“Not at all,” she said, glancing back to give him a reassuring smile. She’d never been overly concerned about the feelings of others—mostly because she managed to hurt them without meaning to again and again. If she allowed herself to care too much, she’d be always in tears—but perhaps because of his gentleness with her, she wanted desperately not to hurt him. Hopefully, there would be no reason to do so.
She couldn’t help but recall his words to her earlier about letting people down being part of the human condition.
* * *
Not really giving a damn if the whole household guessed what they’d got up to in the cave, Maitland left Daphne at her bedchamber door with a kiss before going in search of Kerr.
Unfortunately, he was forestalled by the appearance of his sister, Lady Serena, bearing down upon him in the hallway leading to the study.
“I’d like a word please, Maitland,” she said with a speaking look that reminded him of their mother in one of her moods.
Without waiting for him to agree or disagree, she stalked down the hall past the study, where he’d hoped to find Kerr, and toward her own little parlor.
By the time he stepped into his sister’s demesne, she had already taken up a position behind her writing desk, reminding him of a father about to reprimand his heir. Their father had been particularly fond of the pose, though he’d often employed a birch as well. Fortunately, he needn’t worry about any sort of corporal punishment from Serena.
Closing the door behind him, he couldn’t help straightening his coats before he perched on one of the painfully small chairs before her desk. Really, had it been too much to ask that his aunt, who had furnished the entire house, would ensure at least one man-sized chair per room?
“I trust your trip to London was a success?” Serena asked. “I know you at least were able to speak to Mama, because she sent a letter informing me of her intention to come down for the wedding. Which, by the by, she has instructed me to tell you, should really be at St. George’s Hanover Square.”
Maitland gaped. “How the devil did she get a letter here so quickly? I only made it there and back in such haste because I rode as if the hounds of hell were on my heels.”
“I daresay she told her messenger to do the same,” Serena said with a shake of her head. “You know when Mama is determined, she can make whatever she wants happen.”
“She told me she would not attend the wedding,” he continued, wanting to tug his hair from its roots. “That she was far too busy. I should have known it was a feint. Just once I’d like her to do what she says she’ll do.”
“You had just as well wish for the moon to fall to the earth to be bowled like a ball,” his sister said. “She will always do as she pleases, as you well know.”
“Then so shall I,” he said with a scowl. “Daphne and I have arranged to be married in the village church in three days’ time. If Mama is not here by then, she’ll simply have to settle for meeting my duchess after the fact.”
Serena, who had come to respect their mother’s whims like the unpredictable imps they were, made a tsking noise. “Are you sure you want to do that? She can be most disagreeable when she’s been thwarted.”
“So can I,” he said simply. “And I am more concerned with disappointing Daphne, who must be my main concern now. Mama will just have to adjust.”
“Speaking of Daphne,” Serena said with a chiding tone, “I would prefer it if you could manage to behave yourself until you are wed. It’s bad enough that Ivy and Quill compromised themselves into marriage on my watch, but now my own brother has got himself a bride in the same way. Beauchamp House is beginning to get a reputation in the neighborhood for mayhem.”
He felt his ears turning red. He had thought Kerr might tease him about the extra time they’d taken on the return from the vicarage, but not Serena.
Still, he felt a need to defend himself, if only to preserve the upper hand as a sibling. “I would think that finding a dead man’s body in the library would do more damage to Beauchamp House’s reputation than the hasty marriages of two of Aunt Celeste’s protégés.”
His sister scoffed. “You know full well that sex is far more scandalous than murder, Dalton.” She only used his Christian name when she was truly annoyed. “And if you had the decency to keep your … um … escapades confined to other places besides the house, I would perhaps be less incensed.”
“But we did,” he protested, because technically the cave was not inside the house. At least not the part of it where he and Daphne had … escapaded.
But his words fell on deaf ears. “I don’t wish to hear it. I know what I heard when I was in the wine cellar looking for something for dinner tonight, and it was not the soothing sound of the sea, let me tell you.” She gave him a pointed look.
If possible, his ears got redder. He had never enjoyed the sort of relationship with his sister—or any family member aside from Quill—where he felt comfortable discussing his sexual exploits. And certainly he didn’t relish the thought of his sister overhearing him with Daphne.
He shuddered. He couldn’t help it.
“Oh, I heartily agree,” Serena said with a pained expression. “So, perhaps now you’ll agree with me that at the very least you should confine your amours to the bedchamber?”
“But you just said you didn’t want us doing it in the house!” He couldn’t help pointing out her inconsistency.
“I don’t want to know about ‘it’ at all,” she said, her voice rising with exasperation. “But at least in either of your bedchambers, I won’t be in danger of overhearing you.”
She had a point there. Being overheard by his sister was about as strong a cockstand killer as he could imagine. In fact, some of the afterglow from the cave had been destroyed knowing she’d heard them.
“Very well,” he said with some remorse. “You’ve made your point. I apologize for scandalizing you. It’s just that Daphne and I are…”
There was no way he could describe just how impossible it was to keep his hands off his betrothed without embarrassing them both. So he settled for saying, “very compatible.”
Serena smirked at the euphemism. “I could have told you that from the first day you met,” she said with a shake of her head. “I am happy for you, Dalton. More than I can say.”
Her smile was genuine, and he felt the warmth of her affection in a way that had been missing from his interview with their mother. It was Serena whose support he wanted most.
“I will admit,” she went on, “that at first I was not overly fond of Daphne. She can be quite abrasive at times. And her insistence upon her own intelligence was grating before I realized that it is her insecurity about all her other abilities that makes her flout it so.”
“And she is correct that she knows more about maths than the rest of us will ever forget,” he said wryly. It should perhaps be a bit intimidating for him to contemplate marrying a woman who could think circles around him, but he sensed that there was something about him that she was drawn to. Something only he could give her. Something she needed—and not just carnally, though that was one connection between them certainly.
“But I think she’s beginning to realize there is more to life than just intellectual pursuits,” Serena said. “And you are not a simpleton, brother. Just because you haven’t devoted your life to scholarship doesn’t mean you know nothing.”
It was true he’d been rather good at school, but Dalton knew that his true skill lay in his ability to read people. And to navigate the sometimes troubled waters of personal relationships, be they business or social. He was good at people.
He said as much to Serena.
“I think that’s why you complement one another,” his sister said with a smile. “Though I do worry about how she’ll manage the political intricacies of being a duchess.”
At that, he laughed. “Are you mad? She already behaves like a duchess. All she lacks is the title and power to follow it through. She’ll be far more successful than Mama has ever been. With the difference being that she won’t be manipulating people for the sake of her own ends. And if she offends anyone it will be accidental rather than purposely.”
“You truly are in love,” his sister said with a laugh.
At the mention of love, he shook his head. What he and Daphne had together was powerful, and he felt great affection for her, but he wasn’t ready to call it love. Not yet when they’d only given in to their desires three days ago. “I wouldn’t go that far,” he said, “but perhaps it will grow into love. At least that is my hope. At the very least I want our marriage to be more affectionate than that of our parents.”
“Or mine,” Serena said with a sad smile. “Do not apologize for thinking it. I was, too. In fact, I sometimes look at Ivy and Quill, and you and Daphne and wonder if I will ever find that sort of happiness for myself.”
Dalton’s chest hurt for his sister. Her marriage had been, with the exception of Jeremy, a nightmare. But the very fact that she was even considering the possibility of finding love meant that she’d healed in some way. And he counted that as a blessing.
“I know you will, my dear,” he said, grasping her hand where it lay on the desk. “I have every faith that there is some man out there who will appreciate and love you as much as Jeremy and I do. Indeed, as the whole of Beauchamp House does.”
“Even Daphne?” Serena asked skeptically.
“Especially Daphne,” he replied with a grin. “How can she not love the lax chaperone who allowed her to go cross-country with me?”
Her shout of offended laughter rang in his ears for a long time afterward.