“But you like words,” he said. “I’ll give you some. You’re wonderful.”
She felt tears prick her eyes.
“You were wonderful drunk and running away,” he said. “You were wonderful, issuing commands. Telling me to help you over the wall and ordering me about and giving me the devil’s own time trying to manage you. I wish I had starting chasing after you years ago. So much fun I missed.”
“We’ll make up for it,” she said shakily. With a knuckle she rubbed her eye.
“No crying,” he said.
“I’m not,” she said. “I’m only . . . It’s very emotional. Conjugal relations.”
“When it’s done right, yes.”
“When it’s with the right one.” She managed a smile. “Or when it’s with the right wrong one.” She put up her arms. “Kiss me,” she said.
“As my lady commands.” He bent and let her arms curl round his shoulders, and he kissed her. This time it wasn’t so gentle. The tenderness was there, but fiercer and darker. It was like passing through a spring mist into a summer storm.
This time she touched him, too, exploring and learning the shape and feel of him the way he’d learned her. She ranged kisses over his shoulders and his arms, and moved her hands over as much of him as she could reach. And when she felt his sex pressed against her, she grasped his buttocks, and she heard his choked laugh as he stroked her in the place between her legs where he’d kissed her and done the lewdest, most delicious things, and where she ached for him now. Then at last, he pushed into her, and made a sound like a groan and a laugh combined.
This time her body gave way to him so easily. Then feeling was everything: the sense of joining and completion and the happiness of it. She was aware of heat and the scent of his skin and the mingled scent of their bodies but, above all, of the extraordinary feel of him inside her. She lifted her legs and wrapped them about him and he plunged deeper and she cried out: no words, merely sounds, of surprise and pleasure.
This time it went on for so much longer than it had done in that feverish time in the fishing house. This time they made love, unhurried, because of course they had all the time in the world. Lovemaking was all the dances with him she’d missed, but a great deal more: deeply intimate, skin to skin, hot and so joyous. She moved with him, following the rhythm he set—slow at first, then building and building, like a mad waltz, until she was spun away up into the heavens. Then she was a star, alight, and exploding with happiness. Then smaller explosions, and finally, she was drifting in the night sky, drifting downward, until she fell safely into his waiting arms.
Chapter 17
It wasn’t enough.
It was all Ripley had.
He held her tightly, because this might be the last night he ever held her.
He said, “Now, that was more like it.”
“I see,” said his duchess. “These conjugal relations are not quite perfect unless the lady faints.”
“Or screams. Preferably both.”
She turned slightly in his arms to look up at him. “No wonder I could find nothing in the books at Newland House. No wonder Mama became unintelligible.”
“Oh, there are books,” he said. “I have an extensive collection of licentious works. Some are quite antique, though nothing to compare to the 1450 Mazarin Bible with movable types.”
“The first with movable types,” she corrected.
He laughed. “I am also the proud owner of a generous selection of naughty prints, including a fine set of obscene works by Thomas Rowlandson. Where would you file naughty books, by the way, in your system?”
“Natural philosophy,” she said. “Or in one of the categories of literature, depending.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “It seems you’re not entirely innocent in that regard. I should have realized.”
“Boccaccio,” she said. “Ovid. Chaucer. But when one knows nothing, these sorts of works don’t mean much. Now I shall study them with more knowledgeable eyes.”
“If you’d ever come upon The School of Venus, you would have understood better. From the time of King Charles II, I believe. It describes, in frank detail, the sorts of things couples get up to. With illustrations.”
Her eyes widened. He couldn’t be sure what color they were at present, in the flickering candlelight. “Does it, indeed? That sounds like what I was looking for, when I was searching for information in my uncle’s library. But I hardly knew where to look.”
“If he has such books, doubtless he keeps them hidden,” Ripley said. “As must your father.”
“I’m not sure Papa knows what’s in his library,” she said. “And since it’s coming to us, he’ll never find out. I hope you’ve thought of where to put them.”
In exchange for a generous financial arrangement, the collection of the Earl of Gonerby’s library was to be one of the items Olympia brought to the marriage. This was one of the conditions Ripley had added to the marriage settlements.
“You can put the books wherever you like,” Ripley said. “We can enlarge the library here or move them to the house in Lincolnshire. Or one of the other houses. You may choose to shift volumes wherever you like. There’s some worthless stuff, too, you’ll want to cull. Plenty for you to do, though I’m not sure I can offer as much in that way as Mends could.”
She pushed herself up onto one elbow. “I was not meaning to spend all of my time as your librarian, duke.”
“I’m relieved to hear it. Because I have fantasies.” He thought of all he’d missed in not having a wife. But no, it couldn’t have been the same with any wife. It had to be Olympia. And it had to be now. The wrong time, the wrong circumstances . . . Never mind. No mawkishness. He had now.
“Well, if I must spend most of my time in bed—”
“A bed is not strictly required,” he said.
“If I am to spend most of my time engaging in conjugal relations, it’s good to know you have a lively imagination. Fantasies.”
He grinned. “I do, my dear. Shocking ones. I imagine you as my hostess—”
“Your hostess?”
“I see you giving London’s grandest balls and its most tantalizing dinner parties,” he said. “I imagine driving you through the park and riding with you. I can picture the dashing ensembles you’ll wear as a leader of fashion.”
“I’m shocked, indeed.”
“A bachelor duke is one thing,” he said. “A married duke, however, has social obligations. And I do like to entertain, as you’re well aware. But henceforth, my soirees will be the talk of the town for entirely different reasons. Imagine the jaws dropping when the beau monde reads in Foxe’s Morning Spectacle of our entertaining the King and Queen.”
“I can see the gentlemen in the clubs, falling out of their chairs in shock,” she said. “Frankly, I should have fallen out of bed if you weren’t in the way.”
She leaned over and drew her fingers through his hair.
Her touch, her touch.
Her voice.