Page 42 of A Gentleman’s Offer

TEN WEEKS LATER

Dominic and his three companions crested the wooded ridge that overlooked his country house and looked down into the hidden valley below, catching their breath for a moment. It was late afternoon in a glorious September, and the old stone building was bathed in rich golden light, as if it had been dipped in honey. The central portion, which bore traces of the battlements and narrow arrow-slit windows that betrayed its ancient origin as a border castle, stood higher than the more modern, symmetrical wings on each side. On the central terrace, above the banks of white and purple flowers, he could see Meg, a tiny figure at this distance and yet one who held his heart entire and safe in her hands. She was tidying away her papers, he could see, weighting down the loose pages securely with a bright Venetian glass paperweight he’d given her and setting her writing table straight; she must have done working for the day. She was alone, but as he watched he saw Annie come out to join her for a rare moment of shared peace; he could hear his nephews scrambling about behind him, looking for the perfect tree to climb and pestering their father with endless questions that he answered with astonishing patience.

The Gilbert family had not been here before, and the boys seemed to be loving every moment of their stay, not least because De Lacy Court offered them opportunities for constant mischief, with its many panelled rooms, hidden staircases, extensive grounds, and the River Wye close by with its deep swimming pools. It was a wonderful place for children, Dominic thought, though he hadn’t spent much time here in his own boyhood, because his mother disliked the remoteness of the place. But there was plenty of time for such matters in his own future; in a fortnight or so, he and his bride would be taking ship for France and all the adventures that the Continent had to offer them. Paris first, and then wherever their fancies took them.

His brother-in-law Tom came to stand by his side, a solid figure with a ready smile and an air of calm competence. ‘The boys were wondering if we could go fishing tomorrow morning, Dom, though myself, I’d think that every fish with any sense for ten miles in either direction has been scared away and won’t come back till these two monsters leave.’

‘Do fish have sense?’ Toby asked. ‘They don’t look as if they do. They look calm, mostly, but quite stupid.’

‘Fishy sense enough to avoid you,’ his father told him. ‘Your mother would tell me it is wrong to bet, but I would wager a chocolate cake against either of you catching anything – or any of the rest of us, for that matter, with you splashing about and causing a great commotion. And I expect at least one of you will make sure to fall in.’

‘It’s not falling in if you mean to do it, Papa,’ Nick told him seriously.

‘Well, I don’t mean to do it. Not with my favourite boots on. When you do fall in, your uncle can pull you out.’

‘I may, or I may not,’ Dominic said. ‘It depends on how irritating you are being. Shall we head back now, urchins? It’ll be time for you two to eat your supper soon. I expect you’re hungry.’

‘We’re always hungry!’ they chorused, and Nick added, ‘We will ruin you utterly with… with our ’normous appetites, Mama says!’

‘Let’s go, then, while your legs are still strong enough to support you,’ Tom Gilbert agreed. ‘I’m sure your mother and Aunt Meg must have had more than enough peace and quiet by now. They’ll probably be bored with it, and missing us, and finding the house altogether too quiet.’

The boys ran yelling down the slope, dodging agilely between the trees until they reached an expanse of sheep-cropped grass, at which point they lay down and began to roll with increasing speed down the hill. Their father and uncle followed them more sedately. ‘I think I can see an episode of picking sheep shit out of two very dirty coats – which were no doubt clean this morning – in your immediate future, Tom,’ Dominic said with the breezy unconcern of the currently childless.

‘I don’t doubt it. If I’m really lucky, they’ll find where a fox has been, and roll in that, as dogs do.’ Dominic shuddered fastidiously and agreed that this horror seemed all too likely.

The boys had been packed off into Hannah’s care for a much-needed bath by the time the men reached the terrace, and indeed, two small, filthy jackets sat waiting, along with a stiff brush, for Tom’s fatherly attentions. ‘I refuse to allow those garments in the house in that condition,’ Annie told her husband with mock severity as he grimaced comically and agreed that he would of course deal with the revolting objects to the best of his ability before handing them over to the servants for proper cleaning.

The ladies had been drinking something cold and pink from frosted glasses, and Meg rose to fill two more from a crystal jug. ‘It will be nice to have a quiet evening, just the four of us, before the hordes descend tomorrow,’ she told them, smiling. Mrs Greystone, Lady Nightingale, Maria, Lady Primrose and her sister Lady Violet were all expected some time the next afternoon, with, naturally, the indispensable masculine escort of Mr Francis Nightingale to ensure their safety. Dominic knew that Meg looked forward eagerly to seeing how the matchmaking plans were proceeding, and confessed to a little curiosity on the matter himself. Francis deserved to be as gloriously happy as the rest of the family, he thought. The sale of Nightingale manuscripts had been arranged for later in the autumn and was already causing a great stir in antiquarian circles; Francis was managing everything magnificently, and Mr Clarke had proved to be so indispensable that Lady Primrose was seriously contemplating him as a match for another of her sisters.

The new Lady De Lacy handed her husband his glass, and he pulled her down to sit on his lap for a moment, putting his free arm about her and inhaling the intoxicating scent of her hair as she rested contentedly against him. Lieutenant and Mrs Gilbert, some eight years married, smiled tolerantly at the lovers and strolled away arm in arm, making a tactful pretence of admiring the glories of the late summer garden, and the rich colours in the sky that presaged another spectacular sunset over the Welsh hills.

‘How is your Melusina doing?’ he murmured, brushing her bright curls with a kiss as she settled more comfortably into his embrace.

‘Oh, terribly, poor thing,’ she told him, blue eyes sparkling with laughter. ‘It’s a curious circumstance, but she can barely go a day without falling into some dreadful danger through the machinations of the evil Count Malabarba and his henchmen.’

‘I particularly enjoyed it when she was tied to the bed in the lonely turret, her clothes in utter rags,’ he said, tightening his arm about her and setting down his glass the better to hold her as she wriggled deliciously against him in full awareness of what she was doing to his self-control. Dinner might well be a little late tonight, he thought. ‘You know I’m always happy to help with research. It’s my husbandly duty, in fact, and as such I take it very seriously. What do you have in mind for her this time, poor suffering creature?’

Lady Nightingale’s publisher had offered Meg a contract, on reasonable terms, if she could have her manuscript finished before she left for France. He planned to publish The Italian Twins’ Tribulations, or Melusina and Marianna , anonymously, with its author described tantalisingly on an elaborate title page as A Noble Young Lady, Lately Married to a Gentleman of Fashion. It should do rather well, he had assured her.

‘I’m almost finished,’ she told him with a quick smile. ‘This last scene of deadly peril is to be the final one, the climax of the whole story, you might say, and so must be something special.’

‘Do you have any ideas for this, er, climax?’ She almost always had ideas, he’d found. And he too was not uninventive. In that respect, as in so many others, they found themselves well matched.

‘One or two…’ she said, and leaned forward to whisper in his ear. There was not the least need – there was no one nearby to overhear, however shocking and unladylike her words might be – but as her sweet breath tickled his skin and her fingers slipped inside his jacket to toy purposefully with the fastening of his shirt, Dominic had no objection.

‘Time to change for dinner,’ he told her, standing easily with her in his arms and carrying her inside, through the quiet old hall and up the elaborately carved wooden staircase towards the large four-poster bed that awaited them in their chamber.

‘It’s hours till dinner, sir,’ she teased. ‘Am I to be ravished repeatedly, like poor Melusina?’

‘I like the sound of “repeatedly”,’ he said as he carried her. Her arms were about his neck and his hand caressed the swell of her thigh just where it met her bottom. There were fabrics between them currently – muslin and lawn and cotton, buckskin leather and wool and linen, but soon they would be naked, or naked enough, and able to give and receive pleasure, and learn each time a little more about each other, in a joyful journey of discovery that they had barely begun.

‘Though Melusina is never completely ravished, as I understand it, but is always rescued at the last possible moment,’ he told her as they reached the top of the stair and set out along the minstrels’ gallery. ‘It must be exceedingly tiresome for the poor girl, I should think. But I swear that you shall not escape my wicked plans, my lady!’ He achieved an evil laugh, echoing around the great hall very much in the style of one of her villains, that made her giggle as she clung to him.

‘Good!’ she said. ‘I don’t in the least want to escape you. And I have wicked plans of my own! You must not take off your boots, Dominic!’

‘I’ve begun to worry that you only really want me for my boots,’ he murmured, manoeuvring her expertly through her bedchamber door and pushing it decisively shut behind him. He laid his precious cargo on the bed and stood looking down at her in what he hoped was a suitably dashing and villainous manner. Judging from her expression, and the way she licked her lips, it was.

‘I think I’ve proved that you are much more to me than boots,’ she said, settling comfortably back against the pillows. She’d lost her satin slippers, unregarded, somewhere in their journey up the stairs, and she reached out one stockinged foot and ran it tantalisingly up the inside of his leather-clad thigh until it reached the fall of his breeches, where it stopped, as well it might. He took it in his hand and pressed it against him; she wriggled her toes, and he groaned pleasurably. ‘So much more,’ she said. ‘And now, since I feel that you are more than ready to do it, I want you to make me a duchess.’ Slowly, slowly she pulled her foot from his grasp.

‘What do you know of such shockingly unladylike cant terms, madam?’ he asked her teasingly, even as he stripped off his coat and waistcoat, and pulled his shirt hastily over his head.

‘I couldn’t even tell you where I heard it,’ she said, biting her lip as she looked at him, bare chest and boots, and cockstand straining against his tight breeches, the open desire in her eyes inflaming him even further. She saw that too – they were so closely attuned to each other – and she very deliberately pulled up her skirt and petticoats so that her long, beautifully rounded legs were exposed up to her bright blue garters and beyond. ‘But I remember hearing it and thinking, Mmm…’

‘You imagined, wanton creature, that one day a man would carry you upstairs and throw you on a bed, pull up your skirts, just like the Duke of Marlborough supposedly did to his duchess when he returned home from the wars, and take you without even stopping to pull off his boots?’ He was unbuttoning his breeches as he spoke and springing free.

‘I don’t think the stairs were a feature,’ she said seriously, never taking her eyes off him, her hand creeping up her thigh to toy with the dark blonde curls that covered her seat of Venus. He stood, erect, and watched her hungrily. ‘Nor the bed. I would have been perfectly satisfied to be ravished on a sofa. Or a sofa table, come to that. But we have guests, of course. Probably the Duke of Marlborough was too grand to worry about such matters. Or the house was bigger.’

She was an endless delight to him. ‘Blenheim Palace is undeniably a trifle bigger than this house – that’s probably why they made it so very large, don’t you think? But despite all that, I’m going to make you a duchess,’ he told her. ‘I’m going to put your legs about my ears and plunge right into your glorious wetness, and I am confident that soon you will be… perfectly satisfied. But let me watch you a moment first. I love you always, but most of all when you are wicked and shameless and surprising.’

‘Like this?’ She slipped her fingers deeper into her curls, between her lips, and stroked herself and stretched out languorously on the big bed, as he watched and jolted at the wonderful sight. ‘Like this?’ she said again, unbuttoning her bodice with her left hand and pulling down her chemise so that she could cup one magnificent breast and begin playing with the taut nipple.

‘Just like that,’ he said, and then he could wait no longer and pulled her close with ruthless intent. She left off touching herself and reached eagerly for him, and he slipped into her in a glorious rush of heady sensation that set them both gasping.

‘Oh God,’ she moaned against his neck, moving with him, digging her fingers into his buttocks, wrapping her legs around him, ‘sometimes slow and tender is good, my love, but sometimes fast and hard is better!’

‘I’m sure the Duchess would have agreed!’ And then both of them moved far beyond the power of speech, though they cried out as they came together in a great outpouring of ecstasy.

‘Dominic, do you think,’ she said much later, cradling his head between her breasts and smoothing back his disordered honey-brown locks with a loving hand, ‘that people will truly discredit the evidence of their own senses and actually believe that you had always intended to marry Miss Margaret Nightingale, rather than Miss Maria Nightingale, all along? Even though the engagement was announced in the newspapers in black and white, and we held that dreadful party to celebrate, and everyone congratulated me thinking I was my sister?’

He was drugged with pleasure, and said lazily, ‘I don’t see why not. My mother tells me that nobody has questioned the matter in her hearing, or even looked at her oddly. She is in Brighton, you know, and must have heard if rumours were circulating. People don’t give a damn, my love, if one behaves with enough style and conviction. Has Francis not said that it shall be so? And is Francis not a phenomenon, now that he has been unleashed upon the world, and likely to be Prime Minister one day, or something equally startling?’

‘Admiral of the Fleet. Or Archbishop of Canterbury, perhaps.’ He kissed one perfect breast in appreciation of the idea, and then again, in appreciation of the breast. ‘I dare you,’ she said, almost purring, ‘to mention the idea to my mother, and to Maria. You might say it in jest, but they will take it entirely seriously. They both disapprove of the established Church, for excellent reasons, but that would not by any means stop them from…’

‘Arranging his ordination by the end of the month,’ he finished for her. ‘He would be a bishop, I imagine, in a sennight or two, with them at his back. Canterbury could only be a step or two away. Do you mean to be as terrifying and unstoppable as your mother, when you are older, my darling? And never to take no for an answer?’

‘More so!’ she said. ‘And in that vein, I believe you promised to ravish me repeatedly, did you not?’ Sir Dominic admitted readily that he had, and furthermore that he was a man who always kept his promises.

Dinner was very late that evening.

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