Not Quite a Lady (The Dressmakers 4)

The thought warmed him.

It warmed him quite a bit.

“I’d better go back,” she said. “If they’re going to talk to Mrs. Endicott, Molly might decide she isn’t wanted and will come looking for me.”

She started to get up, then paused, a comically baffled look on her beautiful face. She twisted to one side, her hand searching among the linens. “I’ve lost my shoe,” she said.

She turned about onto all fours, and started crawling about over the sheets and pillowcases. “I can’t believe this,” she said. She turned her head to throw him an exasperated look. “Don’t just stand there. Help me. I can’t leave without my shoe.”

He knelt upon the tangle of laundry. He began looking for the shoe.

This would have been easier if she hadn’t been crawling over piles of bed things and bath things and kitchen things and stray underwear, her derrière swaying as she moved.

Don’t look, he told himself.

He tried not to look but he couldn’t shut out the teasing rustle of movement nearby.

“I cannot believe I lost my shoe,” she muttered. “The curst things tie!”

He tried not to look but he could see, out of the corner of his eye, the light muslin dress with its feminine froth of ruffles. He recalled then, vividly, her sitting upon the desk last Friday, in her too innocently feminine dress. He saw her hands pulling the skirts up to her knees and telling him to touch her.

“I thought you sent your laundry out,” she said. “I cannot believe your valet would let your drawers be jumbled among the bed linens.”

Darius could almost feel the slope of her insteps under his hands, the slender ankles, the elegant curve of her legs.

“Charlotte,” he said, “you have to get up. Now. And go to the other end of the laundry.”

She looked over her shoulder at him. “Why?”

“Because,” he said.

“Because…?” She waited for clarification.

“Because Mrs. Badgely is right. Laundries are dens of iniquity.”

She started to get up. Then she sank back onto her haunches. “Did she put indecent thoughts in your head?” she said.

“No,” he said. “You put indecent thoughts in my head. And it won’t do. I made up my mind to woo you properly. I made up my mind that the next time we made love it would not be furtive and hasty. The next time we made love, we would be wed, and have all the time in the world, and we would take all the time we needed. I would undress you, slowly, and learn every inch of you.”

He heard her breath coming faster, as his did.

She folded her hands against her stomach, as though she must hold herself back. “I love when you touch me,” she said. That was all.

He remembered how she had touched him. His body remembered, in a rush of heat that thickened his mind.

“We’d better find your shoe,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “You’re right.”

She never moved, though, only sat looking at him, her folded hands tight against her belly.

He crawled to her, over the discarded sheets and towels and aprons and underwear.

“I think about you all the time,” she said. “I can’t help it. Last night, I lay in bed—”

He put two fingers against her lips. “Don’t tell me.”

She took his fingers away. “Is it wrong?” she said. “Am I a hopeless wanton? Am I too bold?”

“No,” he said. “Oh, no. Not for me. With me you need never hold back.”

“Then I won’t,” she said. She put her hands up and cupped his face and kissed him, sweetly, lingeringly.

His arms went around her, helplessly.

He leaned in, and she fell back, and he with her, onto the heap of laundry.

He felt her laughter against his lips, and he was laughing inside, and laughter should have been enough to keep desire at bay.

But the laughter was pleasure, and from one pleasure to the next was all too easy.

Her hands moved over his coat, then under, and under again. Heat rippled wherever she touched him.

Your hands, your hands.

It was the same for him: At the touch of her hands, feeling stirred and built and roiled through him, wave after wave. He couldn’t name what it was she awoke in him. It didn’t need a name.

Call it hunger.

He kissed her throat and dragged his hands over her. She sighed and squirmed under his touch. He let his body sink onto hers, and their legs tangled. They kissed, rolling over mounds of bedclothes, until she was on top of him, straddling him, her core pressing against his arousal.

He dragged his hands up under her skirts and petticoats. She tugged at his trouser buttons, quickly, impatiently. Her hair was tumbling about her shoulders.

Wild and so beautiful.

“I want you,” she said. “I want you inside me.”

“I’m yours,” he said raggedly.

She pushed his clothes away, setting him free. Her gaze locked with his, she caressed him. “Like this?” she said. “Is this right?”

“Whatever you do is right,” he said. He brought his hand to her core, brushing over the downy curls. He was awash in pure hot pleasure, simply touching that warm cloud of femininity.

“Your hands,” she said. “Oh, your hands.”

“Come to me,” he said.

She understood, and rose a little. He guided himself into her, and she gasped. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, this is…good.”

“Yes,” he said. It was good, so good.

He reached up and cupped her face and brought her lips to his.

A long, aching kiss, while their bodies joined in simple, primitive rhythm. He felt her pleasure peak, her body vibrating. He rolled with her onto his side, and she pulsed with every movement, yielding utterly to him, to herself, to feeling, pure feeling.

Yes, this was right and good.

She was right and good.

He pressed his mouth against her neck to muffle his groans as his body pumped with hers, and fiery happiness coursed through him. He heard her muffled cries, too, as she went with him this time to the pinnacle of all the human body could give in pleasure.

Then, when at last they began to quiet, he wrapped his arms about her and kissed her neck, again and again.

He kissed her and laughed, for delight—of her, of the two of them, joined, the two of them as one.

It was so easy then, to understand what was in his heart, and easy, too, to say it. He murmured the words against her silky skin: “I do love you, I do.”

Chapter 13

Of course she couldn’t believe her ears.

A wise woman would not seek confirmation.

A wise woman would hold her tongue, and not risk spoiling the fantasy.

Charlotte wasn’t wise.

“Say that again,” she said.

He lifted his mouth from her neck. “Say what?”

“What you just said.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

She heard laughter in his voice. “Yes, you did,” she said.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

A long pause. “Must I say it again?” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

“I forget,” he said.

“Say it,” she said.

He chuckled softly.

“Say it,” she said.

He put his mouth close to her ear. “I love you,” he said. “Now are you happy?”

“Yes,” she said. “I am very happy.”