His Secret Duchess

She hadn’t known that his mouth would feel like this, hot and moist and demanding, his teeth teasing the hardened bud his tongue created. Something was happening inside her body, moving, too, reaching toward him now, as her breast had sought out his caress. Unfamiliar and unknown, it responded to the incredible sensations of his mouth suckling the sensitive area no man’s eyes had ever seen before. No one but Nick. She was his, and it was right that he know before he left.

His tongue floated across the valley between her suddenly aching breasts, her heart fluttering underneath its heat and moisture, the trail it left branded on her skin by the very air. Her hands held his head, pulling it down against her chest, wanting his touch inside, where she ached. She made no protest when he turned her, laying her gently on his cloak, the coarseness of the wool against her bare back.

He leaned above her, propped on his elbow, the gray eyes studying the slender body before him. He touched the base of her throat, finding the small pulse. His long fingers were dark against her paleness, hard and callused against the soft translucence of her skin. They feathered lower, until, as hers had earlier, they stroked over the rose nipple that centered the milk-white globe.

Watching his eyes, she put her hands on his shoulders to urge him downward until the golden hair on his chest grazed over her too-sensitive flesh. Instinctively he moved above her, never allowing the hard muscles to contact her softness, choosing instead to torture them both, almost touching and then not, so close she could feel the heat of his skin beneath the softly tantalizing brush of hair.

It was not until her small hips arched upward into his, shockingly intimate, that he allowed his arms to close around her, locking her against the straining wall of his chest. She arched again, her body into his, demanding, this and more. Far more than she knew. Far more than he had ever intended. But not more than she wanted. And now, more than he could deny.

Her fingers, caught between their bodies, found, as he held her, the flap of his trousers, and frantic with need, she sought to free him from their restraint.

“Mary,” he said, his voice denying, but she didn’t listen.

He was leaving, and she, too, knew the dangers he’d face. Hers was a conscious decision, undeterred by all she had been taught, by all that she had truly believed until the reality of his danger intruded. Nick was hers, and her body demanded the fulfillment of that ownership, despite the denial of society’s mores, of her religion. This was hers and his. And might never be again.

She touched the unfamiliar contours of his body, desperate, urging him to finish what they had begun. What could no longer be denied.

“Mary,” he whispered again, his voice hoarse and agonized with need, with want, with pain.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.”

Again, her small hands entreated. Country-bred, she had no sophistication and no longer any hesitancy. She could taste the salt on his skin as the strong brown column of his neck rested over her lips. And finally, after she had touched him a long time, his hands joined hers to help with what she sought, to guide and to direct.

The air was shocking against her uncovered body, cold and invasive, but she wanted it, as she wanted the invasion that followed. Painful and tearing. She gasped her shock into the shoulder that strained against her mouth and heard his voice again whisper her name.

He turned his cheek against her face, the slight roughness of his beard burning her skin, his movements frenzied and uncontrolled. His hips drove above her a long time, and from within her pain, from its dark center, something began to form, to open like the tight-furled bud of a rose releasing into the afternoon’s sun.

She wasn’t sure of the feeling at first, at the edge of pain, and then beyond discomfort. Into something else. Pulsing and growing at the heart of his body’s driving caress. Expanding like the silk of the balloons she had watched them fill that summer in the London pleasure gardens. Filling with heat that couldn’t be denied, that couldn’t be contained by the pull of the earth’s gravity, until all at once, whatever had been there floated upward, soaring as the balloons had, out of her control.

She heard her own voice, crying out as the center released, and then Nick’s mouth was over hers, capturing the echo of the cry that had shattered the twilight stillness around them. His own release followed quickly, hot and powerful, roaring into the receptacle of her body like a torrent, shattering in its intensity. His body convulsed under her caressing hands. Once. Twice. And then was still. As still now as the clearing where they lay, still entwined. One.

Finally he moved, raising his chest away from hers on hard brown arms that trembled. He looked down into her face, which was touched with this great mystery», softened and exposed by what had happened.

“Mary,” he said again, the afternoon’s litany, and thinking that, she smiled at him. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

Her smile widened, blue eyes moving over the strong lines of his face. Beloved. This is my beloved. She watched her fingers touch his cheek, feeling, as she had felt before, the dear roughness. Too intimate and too private. Only hers.

“Oh, dear God, Mary, what have I done?” Nick said, his tone choked with despair.

“Hush.” She comforted him, her voice that of a mother whispering from the darkness of the storm’s rage to her frightened child. “It’s all right,” she promised. Her thumb moved against his lashes, which were gold tipped and darker at the root. Beautiful eyes. She had never really seen them before. Their color now was the same slate as the afternoon’s sky in winter. “I love you,” she said, and watched his face change again. Realigning. Finding the direction he had lost, the sure course of honor she had stolen from him.

“Where is your father?” he asked, and for a moment she couldn’t remember. Or think why he would want to know.

“With the dean. On visitation.”

“Will he be home tonight?”

“Not until Tuesday,” she said, thinking suddenly about her dear, frail papa. Of his unfailing gentleness with those who fell short of the grace so generously given. And thinking, finally, of the reality of what they had done.

“Come on,” Nick said, rising in one smoothly athletic movement and then reaching down to pull her to her feet.

Standing, she was embarrassed for the first time by their undress. She watched, unmoving, as he rearranged his garments, the action a matter of seconds. When he turned to her, the long fingers dealing competently with the last button on his shirt, his hands stilled at what was in her face.

“I have to go,” he said, trying to imagine what she must be feeling. “If I don’t, then I’ll be a deserter. It won’t matter that I’m Vail’s son. My regiment is going into combat, Mary. I have to go. I’ve been recommissioned.”

“I know,” she whispered, wondering why he was explaining. She had always understood he had to leave. That was why…

“Mary?” he said.

She would never see him like this again, she knew suddenly, the surety of her premonition so strong it took her breath. And so she let her eyes glory in him as he stood before her, young and strong and so beautiful. So alive. His hair disordered by their lovemaking, by her fingers. His tanned skin clean, its taste sweet and warm, salt-kissed under her tongue.

She closed her eyes, imprinting his image on her brain. To last forever. Nick. For one instant of time, he had belonged only to her, and she would cherish that in the dark future that lay ahead.

“Mary?” he said again, his tone questioning.

Her eyes opened, and she forced herself to smile at him. He crossed the small distance that separated them. He gently guided her hands through the openings in her chemise and then through the sleeves of the bodice of her gown, his fingers dealing with the intricacies of feminine dress with an ease that argued long familiarity. She wondered how many other women…and knew that it didn’t matter. Whatever they had been before, they were no longer. There was only now.

She stood and let him dress her as if she were a porcelain fashion doll. Or a child. It was not until his thumb had lifted to wipe away the tears that she even realized she was crying. She caught his hand, to lay the dampness of her cheek against its warmth.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said, feeling her smile begin against his palm in response to that apology.

“I know,” she whispered.

“Is it very bad, my heart?”

“No,” she answered, looking up to comfort his concern. His eyes were too serious, worried, a crease forming between the golden brows. “It doesn’t hurt.” A lie, but there was no need to add to the burden she’d already given him to bear, a guilt he would carry with him onto some battlefield in a place whose name she wouldn’t even know.

“We have to go,” he urged again.

“I know.”

But when he led her from the clearing, the gelding following as placid as a shepherd’s dog, and lifted her onto the animal, careful of her discomfort, it was to take her to a destination she did not expect.

The stones of the ancient monastic chapel blended into the fall of night’s shadows, almost hidden from the road. This was the oldest part of the benefice, seldom used since the newer church, much closer to the village, had been commissioned by the old duke, Nick’s grandfather. Built as a penance for his many sins, some had said. This small chapel was peopled now only by the ghosts of those who had prayed beneath its roof through so many centuries.

She didn’t question when Nick lifted her off Comet’s back and, taking her hand, pulled her toward the wooden doors. They creaked protestingly when he pushed them open. The interior was darker than the outside twilight, and they were forced to wait for their eyes to adjust to its gloom.

There was a tall stained-glass window behind the chancel, and in the light filtering through its gemlike panes they were finally able to see the simple stone altar in the shadowed darkness. The faint scent of incense seemed to permeate the silence. Nick again took her hand, leading her across the nave toward the altar. It was only at the realization of his intent that she shrank back, struggling to free her hand from his determined hold.

“No,” she said, her recoil from the sanctity of this place instinctive. “Not here.” She could not come here, could not stand in this place with him, her body wet with their lovemaking.

“Yes, Mary. Here.”

Wondering, she shook her head. Nick held her eyes a moment, and then turned to face the figure depicted in the central light, below the flowing tracery of the window.

“Here,” he said again. His eyes still raised to the image in the window, he began to intone the familiar words, “I, Nicholas William Richard, take thee, Mary…”

His voice faltered, and his gaze came back to the tearstreaked beauty of her face, lifted almost reverently, not to the window, but to his.