She began giggling, a sound like pure joy turned to song. “We can’t do that here.”
“Ah, but we can.” He picked her up with a kiss, and put her down on the fur, shifting his hands just in time to trap her panniers before they flipped into the air.
“Most men can’t manage that,” she said, grinning at him.
“I’ve been watching you maneuver into chairs for months now,” he admitted. He pulled up her skirts, but found another under it, and another under that. “How many layers are you wearing?”
Her eyes had darkened from sky blue to something more tempestuous. “At least bar the door,” she said.
He pulled up the last layer, a thin chemise, and then turned to cross the room and slam the bar in place. He returned to find her propped on her elbows, her legs dangling over the side of the table, emerging from a froth of pale blue and snowy white petticoats. She wore pale blue stockings, and above the ribbons that held them up, her thighs were plump and creamy.
“Come,” she said, holding out a hand.
He was there in a rush, crouching and pushing her legs apart.
She gave a little scream and tried to sit up. “Angelic behavior,” he reminded her. Simple hunger roughened his voice. “You taste wonderful.”
“You’re looking at me in the daylight,” Betsy exclaimed, “and we aren’t even in a bed.”
“You are exquisite.” He leaned forward to lick the delicate, fluted petals between her legs. His hands were clasped on her knees so he knew when she began trembling, with small, surprised cries.
He licked with patient intensity, building her pleasure until she was begging. Each word soaked into his soul. He was learning his lady’s ways, what made her cry out, writhe, draw up one knee in ecstasy. He knew it to be one of the most important lessons of his lifetime.
All the time, desire mounted ferocious demands in his own body, until he was shaking as much as she was. When he finally let go of one of her knees and pushed two thick fingers inside, she exploded with a scream.
He stayed with her through it, lapping her gently, turning his head to kiss the inside of her knee and, when she quieted but for small gasps, her upper thigh. Then he straightened and drew her forward, just enough to meet his cock.
He paused long enough to catch a smile from languorous eyes before he leaned over to kiss her, taking her mouth at the moment he took her body. Her arms wound around him, clinging to him, holding him to this world. Their hearts beat the same frantic rhythm as he sank into her.
“Does it hurt?” he whispered into her mouth, ready to withdraw.
Her eyes opened and he saw sharp joy there along with hunger. “No,” she whispered back. She wriggled and he bit out a groan at the sensation. “It feels uncomfortable but at the same time . . . won’t you please move, Jeremy? The way you did last night?”
His mind went blank and he couldn’t think of the proper response: “My pleasure” would be absurd.
But it was his pleasure: not just the act of it, but the way her soft mouth clung to his, and the way her hands wandered, bolder than they had been the night before. She managed to free his shirt and ran her hands over his nipples, jolting his senses.
He loved every joyful syllable of her laughter, and he loved it when she fell silent but for small sounds that transformed to aching moans.
A fierce male satisfaction grew inside him when she wound her legs around his hips, sobbing out demands with raw erotic fever. His cock deep inside her, he cupped her face in his hands and said, “I love you, and you’re mine.”
His heart squeezed, meeting her shining eyes.
“I love you too,” she whispered.
Afterward, he carried her home, wrapped in her white cloak. “She fell,” he told Prism, who looked mildly alarmed.
“I’m fine,” Betsy said, raising her head from his chest.
“I’ll take her upstairs,” Jeremy told the butler. “She may have twisted her ankle. She may have to rest in bed for the day.”
She managed to muffle her giggle against his coat.
Chapter Twenty-four
When Betsy called Winnie and asked for supper in her room hours later, Jeremy didn’t bother to hide behind the curtains or whatever it was that gentlemen did in melodramas.
She was his, and that was the end of it.
She had fallen asleep, her hair a midnight cloud tangled around her shoulders—he’d washed out the powder, but they made love rather than comb out her curls—when a gentle knock on the door brought a note.
It was from Grégoire: I am in the library. I wish to say goodbye, as I shall return to London early in the morning.
Jeremy frowned at the note. He hadn’t liked the look on Grégoire’s face when he talked of Bedlam. Nor that his cousin detailed the print that depicted Jeremy hiding behind a tree with a familiarity that suggested he sketched it. Grégoire’s anger seemed to hide a different emotion, a suggestive and disturbing thought.
He pulled the covers up to Betsy’s chin and dropped a kiss on her hair.
When he reached the library, Grégoire was seated, reading a book. Jeremy frowned. The scene was staged: but to what end? His cousin had always been a pain in the arse, but Grégoire’s instinct for drama was moving past annoying to something else.
“Cousin,” Grégoire said, rising, putting his book to the side, and sweeping into a bow. “I have a grave matter that I wish to raise with you before I leave for London.”
Jeremy dropped into the chair opposite him without returning his bow. “What is it?”
“I accept that you have formed an understanding with Lady Boadicea.”
“You could call it that.”
Grégoire’s eyes darkened.
“Since you sent that note to her bedchamber, you know that it is far more than an ‘understanding,’” Jeremy supplied.
“It would be morally wrong to marry her.”
Jeremy didn’t roll his eyes, but only because he had decided to limit insults to words. “Your reasoning?”
“You were damaged in the war,” Grégoire said, leaning forward. His eyes were so earnest that Jeremy almost missed the calculation in their depths. “You are not the man you used to be.”
He paused, presumably to allow Jeremy to absorb this terrible news.
“True,” Jeremy said. He leaned back in his chair, examining Grégoire as carefully as he might a colonial soldier. He’d always known that his cousin wanted to inherit the title, but now ambition seemed to have gone further than wistfulness.
It was remarkably annoying. Betsy lay in a bed upstairs, and he could be there, running a hand around her breasts, tasting her again, making her ache until her eyes softened and she began to beg him.
“Go on,” he ordered, irritation lacing his voice.
Grégoire arranged his features into an expression of deep concern, but something about his eyes looked feral. Jeremy didn’t move a muscle, but he abruptly realized that the room was a battlefield, albeit without cannon fire.
“You were in Bedlam for over a week,” Grégoire said, putting his cards on the table. “While there, you were violent and had to be restrained. I spoke to the attendants myself. They brought in three men to subdue you.”