Page 645 of From Rakes to Riches

Marcus had never thought of himself as an impulsive man—his youthful brashness had been thoroughly trained out of him by the Royal Navy. But the feel of her delicately boned fingers combing through his beard fired more than his imagination—he felt the heat and promise of her touch like a brand.

So, he angled her mouth for a deeper kiss.

She met him without hesitation. Her tongue stroked and licked at him, kindling the fire between them with each blissful touch. She folded herself into his embrace and everything within him, every nerve, every fiber of his being, was reaching out to her with heat and urgency.

He left her lips to kiss his way down her neck, to taste the sweet slide of her skin while she angled her head in response, granting him tacit access while her hands raked through his old-fashioned queue, pulling away the carefully wrapped ribbon.

“Lord, Beech. Even your hair smells divine.”

She smelled of velvet and winter irises, chilly and fresh, and he wanted to gather her in like a bouquet.

But it was she who gathered him, her hands at his coat, parting the buttons and pushing it wide across his chest. Her palm sliding through the narrow slit at the throat of his shirt beneath his stock to lie flat against his skin. Her mouth at his nape, putting her lips and teeth to the sensitive tendon at the side of his neck until he was bowing his head to let her have her way with him.

Until he felt her hand explore the line of his shoulder, and curve down around his shoulder to his upper arm.

Or rather what was left of it.

“No.” His voice was a fog of strangled desperation—and the relief when she ceased her exploration was so profound it nearly unmanned him. Nearly.

Because there was some noise above, at the top of the stair that started them into flight.

“Penelope?” her father’s voice called.

And the decision seems to be made for them.

“Let us go,” she said at the same time that he begged, “Come.”

Marcus took her hand, and they plummeted toward the bottom of the stair in a breathless race, like the children they once had been, their fingers tangled together in a desperate clutch.

“Left here,” she directed, navigating the narrow turnings. “And then left again for the door that leads to the stable path.”

In the darkness of the passage Marcus paused with his hand on the doorknob. If she went with him now, she would be doing more than crossing a threshold.

“You do understand, if you come with me now, you’re coming with me forever.”

She drew in a deep breath before she nodded. “Yes. Yes, I will.”

He shoved open the door to the cold night air and held fast to her hand as they flew across the bitterly cold, cobbled courtyard of the stable block.

The night wind lashed at them, sending her dark velvet skirts and plain petticoats whipping against her legs, making him regret he had not thought to retrieve his heavy sea cloak from the footmen—she was like to perish in so insubstantial a gown.

But there was his carriage and coachmen in the yard, mindful that he had instructed them that he would be no longer than an hour and a half at the ball, already putting the blanketed horses back into harness.

Yet what an astonishingly productive, life-changing hour and a half it had been—he had barricaded himself in a room, made a public spectacle of himself dancing a waltz, throttled and threatened a toad of a man, asked a lass to marry him, and was now attempting to carry off an elopement.

Devil take him, but if he wasn’t in love, he didn’t know what he was.

“There are fur rugs inside.” He held the coach door for his already shivering duchess-to-be. “Get yourself under the fur.”

She clambered in, but still he held her hand.

“Penelope.” Marcus said her name aloud for the first time because he wanted her to know he was serious, and because he had been wanting to say it, longing even, to taste her name like tart sloe wine upon his tongue. “You may trust that I will take care of you, and I will always do everything in my power to do what’s right.”

“Of course you will,” she answered. “Just as I will take care of you.”

Something within him tightened and eased all at the same time. “Is that a yes?”

“I suppose it must be.”

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