Page 23 of A Most Improper Duchess
‘You know, I’m not sure. I had completely forgotten him. You drove any other thought from my mind.’ He shook his paper out. ‘I’m sure he’ll find his way home. I haven’t known him long, but I fear he’ll be like a bad penny. Always turning up.’
Vivianne hunched back against the chair. She could read, but not well, so had little to distract herself from the gnawing doubt at her impetuousness. For not the first time in her life, she had placed her future in the hands of a handsome man.
The countryside of her childhood ripped by, and even though she knew the railway line was kilometres from the little stone cottage and barn she had grown up in, she couldn’t stop herself from looking for it on the horizon.
‘Tell me again about our house.’ She didn’t want to sound scared, but the unsettled fear that bubbled wouldn’t calm.
Arley lowered his paper, then laid it aside. He placed his glasses beside it on the seat, then swung himself across the little cabin to sit beside her. He pulled her against his side and interleaved her fingers with his. ‘In our garden, there is a tree in the yard that is so old, my grandfather used to climb it. I used to sit in it some days and watch the happenings of the street. And maybe our children will climb it too.’
Vivianne stiffened, her chest tightening. ‘Children?’
Arley squeezed her hand. ‘I had always hoped. I barely knew my father. But my mother remarried when I was older, and even though we did not always get along, we were something of a family… their happiness made me crave it for myself. I never truly thought it possible until I met you.’ A little of the colour left his face, and his smile wavered. ‘Is that something you want for yourself? To be a mother?’
‘I have spent so much of my life trying not to be one.’ The warmth in his eyes didn’t fade, but it turned sad, and disappointed. ‘You want to make a family? With me?’
While she had heard his wordsmarry meclear enough, the exact window they would open for her hadn’t fully bloomed in her mind. But now, chugging through the countryside, Paris behind her back, the vision of a new life cleared in her mind. A little house, with a garden, and now, the picture he painted included small pieces of her heart, playing, calling her by a new name.Mother. No. They would not call her Mother. They would call herMaman, and she would teach them her tongue. Nerves, hope, fear, excitement, all of it rose and while she could have screamed, she instead let out a nervous giggle. ‘Oui,’ she whispered. ‘Yes, I do.’
Arley raised her hand to his lips and kissed her palm. ‘I knew. As soon as I saw you, I knew.’ He twisted his hold, then kissed her wrist. A flutter ran through her. ‘We could start trying now?’
He folded her collar back, revealing a little more skin, and teased his tongue over the exposure.
‘You want a bride with a swollen belly?’ Even as she spoke of reservation, her body keened.
‘I have already sent word ahead by telegram. The first reading of the banns will be this Sunday. We’ll be married in less than a month. No one would know.’ He scraped his teeth, then nipped her skin. ‘Do you know how hard it has been to sit here and read the paper and not throw your skirts over your head?’
He planted kisses behind her ear and nipped at her earlobe. It all felt too good, too perfect, and the pleasure he ignited clanged like warning bells.
‘This is rash. You are infatuated. It happens to the dancers all the time.’
Arley sat back and studied her face. ‘I am not infatuated. When we reach London, you will understand my haste, but trust me, I’ve never been more certain of anything. I know love from having lived so long with its absence. From watching, but never feeling. And I know it hasn’t been long, but there is a pull between us. A thread.’ He tucked a finger under her chin and drew her closer. ‘And if I marry you, I can kiss you all I want and not have to pay.’
She tried to resist, but it was incomprehensibly true. She did feel alive in his arms, she did feel a magic in his touch. He spoke of love so casually, and why not? Why not rush into its arms? Why not surrender?
Why not, indeed, fall?
Arley tugged down the blind and checked the brass bolt. He leaned back against the door and pressed his hands flat against the wood. ‘It scares me too. I came to Paris to write a list, and now I am bringing home a bride.’ He swallowed hard, and his bravado flickered, then faded. ‘The more I have you, the more I want you. You are a shining light. An extravagance. But will I be enough for you? Just as I am?’
Confidence and hesitation, bravado and uncertainty, his fingers trembled as he raised them to his throat and tugged at his collar. He fumbled with the first button and exposed a small triangle of chest.
In a mirror to his movement, Vivianne unfastened her own top button. Then the next. Eyes locked on hers, he continued to work at his shirt, tugged off his waistcoat, then stripped off his top layers in one movement. But with the sweep of his arm, he banged his knuckles against the roof of the carriage, and with a twist, and a squawk, he stood, half bent, with his undershirt tight caught at his chin.
‘Dash and sod it,’ he mumbled into the layers of clothing bunched around his ears, then twisted and knocked into the door. The blind rattled against the glass, and he gave a pitiful yelp.
Vivianne stifled her giggles as she jumped from the seat. When she found the tangle of caught clothing, she slipped it free. Still laughing, she kissed his neck, and cheek, and when she found it, his mouth, nose and eyelids.
Arley shook his clothes from his wrist. ‘I was trying to seduce you. I just look like a fool.’
‘I am not difficult to seduce,’ she said, still laughing, then caught herself. And she saw, reflected in his eyes that would not meet hers, his vulnerability.
She traced a line from the dip at the base of his neck, between the firmness of his chest, and over the tautness of his torso. ‘For a man who spends his days at a desk, you are very impressive.’
‘I row. On the Thames.’ He found the buttons of her bodice and slipped them free. The slow seduction altered its pace and shifted to fast and haphazard. Together they grappled, wrenched, fumbled and freed, kissed and gasped and drank each other. Bumped teeth and noses and laughed like youths fumbling behind a hay shed. There was nothing delicate about it, no seduction, no performance or pretence. Just raw and needy, and as Arley sank back against the seat and unbuttoned his trousers, and she dropped her skirts to straddle his thighs, her body thumped with that same yearning that had made her bend before him and demand he conquer her. He pushed the last layer of cotton from her body.
His expression took on that sweet awe, like in the wine bar when he had made his plea for a walk with his pin. ‘You are so delicate. I am worried I might break you.’ He ran his palms along the length of her torso, over her ribs, brushed her nipples and took one in his mouth. Vivianne arched into the attention, moaning with bliss. ‘And then you spin on your heel, or laugh, and catch me unawares, and all I see is strength. And I just hope you don’t break me.’
Suspended over his body, her sex pressed against the tip of his cock, Vivianne paused. A soft curl fell over his face, and she pushed it back, searched his eyes and kissed him, slow and deep. Her tongue searched his, teased at his tip, tasted his earnestness and breathed his love. She drew it into her body and let it wash through her, affection and desire meeting as strangers before melding into a shuddering embrace. When they separated, she had to blink fast to hide her tumult, but a tear spilled free and ran cool down her cheek.
‘Is something wrong?’ he asked as he wiped it away with his thumb. ‘Do you want to stop?’
