‘That will seem very rushed, tongues will wag.’
‘Not if you put it about that I asked for Cleo’s hand the day I brought her to you,’ Quin said. ‘You naturally wished her to acquire some town bronze before the engagement was announced. Just smile when you say it, Your Grace. Who would dare doubt you?’
‘No one, if they know what is good for them. Well, Cleo. Your room is as you left it. I want to speak to Deverall about settlements.’
‘I have to stay here?’
‘Of course you do, Cleo.’ Quin bent and kissed her. ‘Trust him, my darling,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘You learned to trust me, he’ll be easy in comparison.’
* * *
‘There, Lady Quintus Deverall, is your new home.’ Quin swung Cleo down from the chaise and pointed to a house nestling below the wooded shoulder of the hill. Golden stone glowed in the afternoon light and sweeping wings framed the central block.
‘It manages to be grand and homely at the same time. I love it.’ It was perfect. Home, with Quin.
‘I haven’t done much to it, I’ve been away too much, but you can do what you like to make it yours.’ Quin leaned on the wheel and put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.
‘Ours,’ Cleo said and rested her head against his shoulder. ‘Will I be here very much alone? May I not travel with you?’
‘Not when I am extracting beautiful women from foreign lands and kissing them senseless in the hope they’ll admit to being spies,’ Quin said. ‘Otherwise, yes, of course.’
‘You never kissed me senseless,’ Cleo complained.
‘Then I have not been trying hard enough.’ Quin held the door for her to climb back into the chaise and told the postilions to drive on. ‘Of course, we may decide to stay put when the children arrive.’
‘We’re back to the kissing then,’ Cleo said. She had a niggling suspicion that decorating the nursery might be a priority, but it was too soon to be certain and they had only made love once. But still, she had hopes.
‘I hope so,’ Quin said and took her in his arms and proceeded to kiss her until the world was spinning. When the carriage came to a halt in front of the house she could only blink at it.
‘I told the staff to make themselves scarce for two days,’ Quin said as they reached the foot of the steps up to the front door. ‘Food will appear, hot water will materialise, beds will be made, all apparently by ghosts.’ He swept her up into his arms and climbed the steps. ‘Even front doors will open by magic.’ As he spoke the heavy panels swung open with a loud creak. Cleo thought she heard the quick scuff of footsteps and a muffled laugh, but there was no one in sight as they entered a wide hall with a staircase winding upwards like the coils of a nautilus shell.
‘Are you hungry?’ Quin asked.
‘Only for you.’
‘In that case, as you have been disappointed in my kissing—’
‘I never said that!’
‘—I intend to render you senseless, as requested.’ Quin strode across the hall and up the stairs without, apparently, drawing breath. It was, Cleo decided, the most dashingly romantic sensation.
He shouldered open a door on the first landing. ‘Your bedchamber, my lady. And rather more to the point, your bed.’
How he managed to undress her while kissing her, Cleo could never afterwards recall. And his own clothes seemed to melt away, although afterwards she found his shirt was ripped from neck to hem.
Her brain was most satisfactorily addled by the time he released her lips, only to start on her neck, then her shoulder and then her breasts. That was bliss, better than bliss. Quin could just stay there, kissing and nibbling and licking and gently biting and she would spin into one climax after another, she was certain.
But he abandoned her breast just when she was clutching the sheets and arching up into his mouth. He trailed kisses down her ribs, swirled his tongue into her naval, found an exquisitely sensitive spot on her hip bone, then proceeded down her left leg.
‘What are you doing?’ She managed to lever herself up on her elbows as he sucked her toes into his mouth and started to do improbably wonderful things to them.
‘Kissing you,’ Quin said as he moved to her right foot. ‘It obviously needs more work as you aren’t senseless yet.’
The back of her right knee was just as ticklish as her left, her hipbone just as sensitive on that side. And then he slid between her thighs, gently pushed her legs apart and began to kiss her intimately.
Cleo writhed and sobbed and begged, but Quin was relentless. He seemed to know to within a fraction of a second when the swirl of his tongue was about to tip her over into oblivion, to a hairsbreadth where the nip of his teeth was pleasure and not pain. The universe spun down to the place where Quin’s mouth made love to her and then fractured into swirling stars and burning galaxies and he was in her arms again, and within her, and they were moving together in an aching harmony that ended, finally, blissfully, as they found a peak together and plunged off it, locked in love.