Page 125 of Lessons for Marquesses
She slid her fingers like butterflies down his chest to his thigh. He caught her hand, maybe too firmly.
“We should go back to bed,” she half-whispered, half-laughed. Her nose crinkled and it tore him to nothing.
She hurried on when he remained quiet. “Is it too much? Too soon?”
“Of course not. I would spend a year in bed with you. A lifetime, if allowed.”
“Do you think the vicar would marry us there?” she asked with a grin.
I am more afraid than when I faced the prospect of the gallows.
I am more afraid than I ever was at war.
He encircled her shoulders. “George, I am the Marquess of Eastwick.”
Georgiana was sensible. True, she had dreams like sails upon a ship, but when the wind ceased to fill them, reality was her rudder. And she had awakened this morning in Nicholas’s arms with the sweet ache between her thighs, his scent on the sheets and her skin, and her sails needed no filling. Reality was in his black lashes draped in sleep and in his breath blowing softly on her cheek.
Reality was three things: the luminous morning was specifically made for this new beginning of her life, Nicholas loved her, and he had a wicked sense of humor.
She poked at his navel. “Who are you?”
“I am the Marquess of Eastwick,” he said steadily.
“Ah, well, how do you do, m’lord?” His arm flexed, tightening about her shoulders. “Do you know,” she said with another poke, this time at his heart. “I had a special dinner planned just for you. With a purgative pudding for dessert.”
His eyes darkened.
“That was a jest. But since you are here, shall we negotiate?” She kissed his cheek, licking down to his mouth and capturing it in a smoldering invitation. “What will you give me for that?”
His jaw was rigid, his passion gone.
“And lest you think that my only contribution to your proposed partnership, I do have this.” She drew a finger from her neck to the apex of her thighs. “If say, what? Perhaps, two years of this for half of Farendon? Or will your lordship allow me my home for as long as I share my favors?”
He held all the sadness in the world in the curve of his mouth. “I lied to you. Very few know me as Eastwick. When I was in the colonies, I was Mr. Wolf. I returned to England and continued the guise. My plan was always to have Farendon back, and when you would not sell it to me, I purchased all your debt, bent on destroying you.”
She laughed, but where was the jest?
“I didn’t care if you were a female. I wrote the Jockey Club to have you removed from the Fordyce Stakes because if Minion won you would have been four thousand richer for it.”
His words hung in the stillness. At the window, a magpie scraped at the remainder of the grain. Georgiana grazed his shoulder where the scar had changed him. She saw the man she loved in his gaze and the man he brooded over.
“You are helping me to win a match race,” she said.
“I offered because I needed to come to Farendon to stop you from selling it to the walls.”
“I never told you that. Now I really don’t believe you. Oliver would never betray me. And you saved me on the castle wall. If you had wanted Farendon enough to crush me, you would have let me go. You risked your life to save me.”
His hand slid to his neck. “I’m not a murderer.”
There was not a chance, outside of the cruelest, most malicious plot, that this man was the Marquess of Eastwick. Her Nicholas was gentle, heroic.
Georgiana held the ruby ring to his face. “You asked me to marry you.”
“I want to marry you. I love you. But I cannot change the fact that I inherited a marquessate.” He took her hands in his. “I am sorry. I will forever regret what I did.” He did well checking his emotions, but his eyes were pained and his mouth flat as if it had never known a smile. “Just as you are different inside than what others think of you. I am not Eastwick and never will be.”
“You would never be so cruel. Would you?”
Nicholas leaned down to his discarded coat and withdrew two letters. “Here are the letters you sent to me. The first a list of my faults and crimes against you that you sent with the others. The second, the letter you sent requesting to meet me here. I came to confess my crimes to you yesterday. I could not live with it any longer. I should never have been able to live with it at all.”
