Surrender to the Marquess

‘I will admit to sentimental and romantic, Lady Cannock,’ Lucian murmured in return, making her shiver as his breath teased her ear. ‘But soft, no. Anything but. It makes me think of our wedding day and that makes me—’

‘Shh!’ She nudged him in the ribs with her elbow. ‘I am on my best behaviour as The Perfect Marchioness today.’

‘I have plans for that,’ her husband muttered as the happy couple turned and began to walk down the aisle.

‘Marguerite looks so poised and beautiful and Gregory looks so happy. It was good of you to find him that post at the Foreign Office, I think he will do very well there.’

‘I think so, too. And my little sister has grown up faster than I can imagine with the prospect of married life and his career to support.’

Sara looked up at her husband, loving the pride in his voice, on his face, as he looked at Marguerite and Gregory. She followed him out of the pew and took his arm as they led the guests out on to the steps of the church so that everyone could throw rose petals. Marguerite stood up in the open carriage and tossed her bouquet straight into the arms of her oldest bridesmaid and then sat down with a bump and fell laughing into Gregory’s arms as the carriage set off for the wedding breakfast at the family town house in Cavendish Square.

‘Oh, that makes me feel so middle aged and sensible,’ Sara said, clinging to Lucian’s arm as the jostling to find carriages began.

‘I have a cure for that.’ He guided her down the steps and round the corner. ‘Here is our carriage.’ He stopped and looked up to the driver. ‘Pearson, I want you to take us back to Cavendish Square the long way round, if you understand me. There’s no hurry,’ he said as he helped Sara into the carriage and reached to draw down the blinds. ‘It will be an age before everyone gets there.’

‘Lucian, what are you doing?’ The last word came out as a squeak as he tossed aside his hat and gloves and began to struggle out of his coat.

‘I never did get to make love to you in a closed carriage, if you recall. I had such a vivid image of it when we were in that confounded chaise and now…’

‘Now I am all dressed up and wearing the famous Cannock yellow diamonds and the world’s tightest corset and—ooh!’

Lucian vanished under the froth of her skirts. ‘And some very wicked garters, I am happy to discover.’ His long, clever fingers were already doing sinful things and his lips and tongue were not far behind. He knew her so well now, after only a month of marriage. He knew her body and her responses and he knew her emotions and feelings, too, and used them to keep her almost constantly either at a pitch of arousal or totally sated, it seemed to Sara as she locked her fingers into his beautifully barbered hair and wrecked a very fine Brutus.

Sara pulled off her new lemon-kid gloves and bit down on them so her cries of pleasure did not escape as Lucian sent her tumbling into bliss. When she recovered her senses he was kissing her lips, her bodice was around her waist and she could not, frustratingly get his shirt out of his trousers—at which point the carriage lurched against the kerb and they both fell off the seat and on to the floor with Sara underneath.

‘Are you all right?’ Lucian peered down at her, his neckcloth askew, his hair rumpled. He looked, to her, perfect, wild, sinful and on the edge of out of control.

‘Absolutely.’ And even more perfect when, with a wriggle of his hips and a tug at her skirts, he was inside her. ‘I am making a careful note of the date,’ she gasped against the damp heat of his mouth. ‘If our firstborn arrives as a result of this I shall call him Barouche.’

‘Better still, we could call him Hansom,’ Lucian said with a chuckle that became a gasp when Sara lifted her hips to meet him. ‘I never thought I could make love to a woman who fills me with such delight and can make me laugh at the same time. But then I never imagined falling in love and marrying a deliciously Imperfect Marchioness.’

They fell over the edge together, laughing and kissing and came to themselves to find the carriage at a standstill. Lucian struggled up on to the seat and pulled Sara up beside him.

‘Oh, my goodness, look at us!’ she gasped. ‘There are over a hundred people waiting for us to make an entrance in there.’

Lucian cracked open the window. ‘Once more round the square, Pearson. Slowly. Come on, my delightfully unconventional Marchioness, we have about five minutes to return ourselves to perfect order. Do you have a comb in the reticule I have just trodden on, my love?’

*

They descended the steps of the carriage in almost perfect order, although Sara found an earring dangling in the folds of Lucian’s neckcloth and tweaked it out just in time. He took it from her and fixed it in her earlobe with perfect solemnity in front of an intrigued audience. Then he caught her up in his arms, kissed her right on the lips and twirled her round before setting her on her feet again.

‘My apologies for keeping you waiting, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said with an elegant bow. ‘But when a man loves his wife as much as I love mine, occasionally he has to show it. And now, let us proceed to celebrate another happy marriage in the making.’

Amidst laughter, and some tears, they led the way into the great dining room. As Lucian pulled out a chair to seat her at Gregory’s side she turned and whispered, ‘Love me always?’

‘For always and a day,’ he whispered back. ‘Always, until the tides cease to flow. Always, until the moon no longer shines on the waves.’

‘You have become a romantic.’

‘You made me one, my love. Only you could.’

*

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