The Valentine Legacy (Legacy 3)

“James, I won’t allow you to make sport of me again. You know very well what I’m talking about. I have no memory of having been mounted. When I woke up this morning, I wasn’t at all sore. I didn’t teeter on my legs the way I’ve seen some mares do who have been mounted. I didn’t look at all different when I stared into the mirror.”

“Oh, that.” He studied his thumbnail. He had a thick callus on the pad. Finally he looked over at her. At the moment she looked very much like the new Jessie, and he felt a surge of nice heavy lust. However, when she’d returned from her ride this morning, she’d looked just like the old Jessie, her hair in wild tangles around her face, her riding hat tied to the saddle by its ribbons, sitting astride Esmerelda, not in a decorous sidesaddle, laughing and talking all at once, telling him everything she’d seen, telling him every clever thing Esmerelda had done, and he’d thought blankly as he’d tried to listen to that mishmash of sounds coming from her mouth that it would be impossible to make love to the girl he’d considered a little sister for more years than he cared to count. But now she was as silent as the Duchess. She looked elegant. She’d never in his memory looked elegant until she’d come to England. He wanted to take that gown off her.

“It’s all right, James,” she said very quietly. “I understand, truly I do. You’re too kind to tell me that you would just as soon I kept away from you.” She very carefully folded her napkin and pressed it into the tablecloth beside her plate. She rose. “I am going over the household and the accounts with Mrs. Catsdoor. Please tell Sigmund that I will come and help with the horses later.”

She was nearly to the door when he said from right behind her, “Don’t leave, Jessie.”

She felt his hands on her shoulders, the warmth of him, the strength of him. She opened her mouth only to close it again when she realized that something had changed. He was no longer simply resting his hands on her shoulders. His fingers were lightly digging into her flesh, kneading her, making her feel very nice indeed.

“Turn around.”

She did, wondering what he would do now.

“Look at me.”

She looked at him, all the curiosity she felt written plainly on her face. Her lips parted a bit. He leaned down and kissed her—a full, deep kiss since this was the new Jessie standing in front of him and he had no memories of her at all as a sister or a brat or an irritating constant in his life. Actually, he thought as he licked her bottom lip, she was his wife. And that had to be the strangest thing of all. And she believed he’d already consummated their marriage. While she’d been in a drunken stupor. He nearly laughed aloud, but he didn’t.

She raised her hands to flatten them on his chest. She felt his heart pounding deep and fast beneath her palms. She felt the pressure of his lips, fascinating, that mouth of his, and she tasted the gooseberry compote they’d shared. She’d never imagined anything like this. She’d dreamed about it, wondered what it would be like if James pressed his mouth against hers, but to feel his tongue, to feel all of him pressing against her, it undid her completely.

She stood on her tiptoes, grabbed him, and pulled him hard against her. He laughed in her mouth. “Easy, easy, we’ve all the time in the world.”

“No, we don’t.”

“Perhaps you’re right.” He stuck out his hand and pulled the breakfast-room door shut behind her. He managed to turn the key in the lock. He wrapped his arms around her back and pivoted until he could see the table.

A lovely white linen cloth. All the dishes he could shove aside. He lifted her, never releasing her, never stopping his kissing, and carried her to the table. He eased her up onto her back, her legs hanging over the side, her feet to rest on the seat of her chair. He gently pushed her back, quickly shoving a plate of red mullet out of the way.

She was staring up at him, looking bemused and interested, that curiosity still lively in her eyes. “James, what are we going to do?”

“We’re going to be people, not horses.”

Now she looked a bit alarmed. “I’m lying on the table, James. There’s a bowl of Julienne soup beside my right elbow.”

He moved the soup bowl and the too-close plate of rolls. “That’s better. Now let me move this chair. Just let your legs hang down for the moment. Yes, that’s it.”

He moved between her legs, bent down, and kissed her some more. Immediately she brought her arms around his neck to pull him closer. “Let’s bring you down just a bit,” he said between wet, sharp kisses, grasped her hips in his hands, and brought her halfway off the table.

“Goodness, this is passing strange, James. I feel like—”

She didn’t finish. He pressed himself against her, and she flopped her hands to the table beside her as if he’d just shot and killed her.

“It’s just me, Jessie. No, don’t try to wriggle away from me. Just get used to the feel of me. Stay still.” He pressed in more closely. He closed his eyes, his fingers digging into her hips, raising her slightly. He could feel the heat of her. His fingers trembled and twitched. He wanted to touch her, to stroke her.

“Did you do that yesterday?”

“No, I didn’t do this yesterday. We were lunching on a rock, not a table. I don’t even remember yesterday.” He moaned when she arched a bit. “Wrap your legs around my waist, Jessie. No, don’t look at me as if I’ve lost my wits. Just trust me. That’s right, lock your ankles behind my back. Ah, that’s good.” Now he leaned over her and began kissing her again. Her wonderful gown buttoned up the front, the heavens be praised. He kept kissing her as he pulled each of those rotten little buttons out of its loop. Damnation, there had to be two hundred of them. He ran out of patience and ripped the last few free. He came up a bit over her and opened her gown. Maggie had struck again, he thought, both shocked and inordinately aroused by the sight of a peach satin chemise bordered with the most wicked little snippets of lace imaginable, none of the lace covering much of anything, just framing those breasts of hers that were the new Jessie’s breasts, not the old Jessie’s.

His hand hovered. Her breasts were rising and falling, looking as delicious and white as the frosting of the wedding cake Badger had baked and decorated until the wee hours of the morning the night before their wedding. Lightly he touched his fingers to her left breast. He closed his eyes and let his fingers trace over her flesh, warm flesh, warm Jessie flesh. Surely she hadn’t always looked like this, all white and full and round, arching up, staring at him as if he were a god from some ancient and exciting myth come to earth to claim her. Suddenly, with no invitation at all, he saw her as she’d been on a long-ago night when he’d come over with a bottle of port to her father’s tack room to toast his racing victory of that day. She’d been sitting cross-legged in a rickety chair next to her father’s de

sk, dressed in the most disreputable old shirt and breeches he’d ever seen, wearing no shoes, just thick black socks that he was certain had holes. Her hair was plastered down to her head and yanked back in a severe braid. Then she’d said in that snide, bratty voice, “Papa said I could stay a moment to greet the loser. I beat you but good today, James. You lost all your concentration in that second race, nearly fell off your poor horse’s back when that jockey tried to kick you. I laughed and laughed and won, naturally.” Then she’d stood, still grinning at him. “I’ll keep beating you, James. It’s your fate.”

And she’d sauntered out of the tack room like an arrogant boy, her father laughing his damned head off at what she’d said, and James just standing there wanting to tie her up in strong rope and throw her into the Patapsco River.

His fingers stopped caressing that white flesh.

20

“JAMES? WHAT’S WRONG? Are my legs squeezing you too tightly? Am I hurting you?”