Page 57 of Ironvine

“How did it feel?”

“Awful. Exciting. Horrible.” Her glassy eyes met his. “Liberating.” She was emotional, yet not distraught. She stood on the edge of a cliff, breathing in the crisp fresh blustering air. “I am now utterly free.”

“Yes. Free.” His heated blood tore through his veins at the sight of her. He was right there on the cliff’s edge with her. “We need a drink.” They went into the drawing room, and he poured her a glass of brandy and handed it to her.

She swallowed greedily. “Tell me, am I being an insolent child?”

“You are brave. Holyfloke did not get his way and he is angry. That is all.” He took a swallow from the bottle. “You need rest, Georgina. Choose any bedchamber you like. There are many. We have a long journey ahead of us tomorrow.” He threw himself on an easy chair by his brother’s corpse.

A small weary smile flickered over her lips. “I shall finally see my beloved Gloucestershire again. Will we wear black to marry?”

He let out a sharp laugh. “I rather like the idea of that. Our wedding was founded on a death, after all.” He drained the bottle.

She took it from his hands and knelt before him. Blood rushed through his veins at the sight of her kneeling between his legs. “You must be exhausted,” she murmured, her hands on his boots, searing through the leather to his very flesh.

“What are you doing?” He licked at his lips, his pulse charging.

“Helping you.” She pulled on a boot, and he let her. He had no energy left. Only aches of all kinds. She helped him remove the other as his gaze landed on the curve of her bosom, the bosom he hadn’t had much of a chance to savour. “Will you not go to bed?” she asked him.

He averted his gaze from her ravishing body, those gleaming eyes of hers. He could drown in those eyes. “I have a responsibility, as is the custom, to stay up all night with my brother’s corpse to verify that he is well and truly dead.”

“What a good, responsible brother you are.”

He let out a weary scoff. “Oh, I always have been.”

Her hand stroked his thigh, and a molten heat surged over his flesh. “I imagine you’ve always been good and responsible, haven’t you?”

He took her hand in his and brushed it with his lips. “Go before I change my mind.”

“Good night then.” She left him and went upstairs.

His head fell back against the chair as he stared at his lifeless brother. Hugh dead. What a waste it was. Who had killed him in his own house? He scrubbed a hand down his face in an effort to scrub the images of his brother’s lifeless bloody corpse from his memory.

“I wonder,” he said aloud. “Are you with our father in hell or our mother in Providence? Perhaps you stalking the underworld trying to seduce Persephone herself?” He let out a dark laugh. “Idiot, idiot…” He closed his eyes, but images of Hugh did not dance before him.

No, it was Georgie.

Her body quivering all around him as he licked her. Her melted gaze as he filled her, her surprise as their bodies surged together. Oh, that surprise of hers, that was…priceless. Her cries of sensation and feeling, sensation and feeling she had never known before.

He indulged himself in those infinitely satisfying and fresh memories, and his muscles finally eased.

* * *

The pink lightof morning glowed through the windows, reflected on his brother’s waxy lifeless flesh. He stood over him, taking in his scent. “You are well and truly dead, brother.Adieu.”

Tracking up the staircase, he yanked off his chemise as he went. He wanted a bath, a good scrubbing. What he really wanted was to rub himself off. That taste of Georgina last night had set him off in a way he had never been set off before. Maybe it was the intense contrast of death and pleasure, the eruption of violence, and the spoiling of innocence.

Maybe it was simply Georgina.

Charles entered his chamber, and there, on his bed, lay Georgie. Her long, thick hair cascaded over his pillows. Her lips were parted, her breathing deep and soft.

His chest filled with heat, and his pulse quickened. “I promise you, I shall always keep you safe,” he whispered. “No matter what I have to do. I shall do it.”

He reached out and touched her cheek, traced a line down her neck, across her exposed clavicle. He was getting married. He would have to get used to living with a woman. In his house. In his bed. Sighing softly, Georgina turned over, a bare shoulder peeking out from the large chemise.

It might not be too difficult a task.

ChapterTwenty-Four

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