Page 72 of Lord Carlisle's Enticing Lure
He lifted her chin and hugged her closer. “Continue, my darling. You should make a list. We’ll acquire what you need in Richmond, but if that does not suffice, we’ll take a short trip down to London so that you can go to Ackermann’s for all your supplies.”
She gave him a hearty kiss. “After we are wed.”
“Yes, afterward,” he said with a wicked gleam in his soft gray eyes.
“We do have so much to do…afterward!”
He grabbed her close and pulled her to his lap, where for the next hour or more, he drove his fiancée—and himself—wild with his affections.
“Doing that in a moving coach,” Giselle said as he tried to help herput pins back in her hair, “requires more practice. I do hope we travel often.”
He arched a brow. “Ah, but I have plans, and I doubt we shall go far for months and months.”
“Staying at home, are we?” she teased.
“Enjoying the serenity,” he declared with wicked eyes.
And she kissed him.
*
When they arrivedat his modest home along the Thames in Richmond, Giselle stood in the foyer imbibing the atmosphere. The foyer was ethereal. With celestial blue-veined marble on the floor, pink Corinthian columns in a semicircle, and ivory walls that rose to a rotunda of pink glass, she stood in the center of a heaven she had not imagined on Earth.
Clive’s butler, an older gentleman named Winston with iron-gray hair and a ready smile, had taken her coat and gloves, then left her and Clive in the hall. The man disappeared, she knew, because he perceived her enchantment with the house’s aura.
Clive, brimming with smiles and twinkling eyes, offered his arm. “I am eager to show you the house.”
She could not have been more in awe of any building. The foyer opened to a reception room done in shades of pink to fuchsia. To one side, double French doors opened to a grand salon, formal but comfortable in overstuffed Chippendales, handsome settees, and two chaises longue, all done in shades from blue to lavender.
“I am overwhelmed at the colors, the complements, and panache.”
Clive might have preened, he was so proud and pleased. “This is my mother’s work. She would love your appreciation of it all.”
“The rest,” she told him. “I must see it all.”
He showed her to a long hall, filled with portraits of those he saidhe would name later, as well as the treasures his family had collected over the centuries from China, India, and Africa.
“The next floor,” he said, as he led her up the enclosed marble stairs. “A private place.”
Here in a small salon, the palette changed to greens and fawn. Another dining room was small, cozy in yellows and gold.
Then he took her down the hall and stood before a door. “This is the entrance to the marchioness’s suite. I had all the previous furniture removed. The hangings taken down. This is yours, to do with as you wish.”
“It is empty?”
He was watchful, assessing her reaction. “It is.”
“I wish it to remain that way. I want to be with you, each night, each day.”
He swept her close and spoke on her lips. “I want you not farther from me than this, always.”
Then he kissed her.
She toyed with the end of his cravat. “We could make it our nursery.”
“We could.”
“Show me your rooms,” she urged him.
