Page 32 of A Lady of Means (Roses and Rakes #1)

Chapter Twenty-Five

When the sun rose on an early autumn day, Moria was already awake.

She sat on a window seat and watched every single color painted across the sky, crying when shades of orange turned to pink and then purple and then blue.

Pink was always Rose’s color. It was a color Moria clung to, even if sometimes in secret, for a girl she never got to know, never got to love.

It was fitting that she greeted the rising of the sun alone. She could almost feel the familiar, soothing presence of her mother watching the sunrise with her like they had in the past, the phantom touch of a hand on her shoulder. But she didn’t have to be alone.

Moria rose from her seat at the window, replacing her wrap about her shoulders.

She slipped her feet into a pair of misshapen slippers that Olivia had made for her, smiling to herself.

Of all the finer things Moria owned, she loved those slippers and the care that had gone into them.

Not that she’d ever said as much, for if she did, Olivia and her skill-less needle would make her ten more pairs.

Moria padded down the hall to the room she’d shown Devyn to last night.

They’d arrived together, explaining that Captain Winter was here on business, to see one of the Earl’s horses put up for sale. No one had the cheek to question why Lady Moria, of all people, was acting as broker.

She’d shown him to a room, then she’d gone for a walk. Something about carriage rides always made her limbs feel restless. She’d picked flowers for a posy for her daughter’s grave on her walk: wildflowers from the edge of the fields and forest, roses, jasmine, and peonies from the hothouse.

He’d found her there, tears in her eyes and blooms in her hands, and said, “There’s the flower I was looking for.”

It felt so domestic and real and uninterrupted to have him all to herself in her family home, in the place where she’d spent countless hours imagining her bridal bouquet, growing flowers for her family’s table and for the arrangements at the village church altar.

He’d stood behind her, draping those powerful arms about her middle.

The way he craned his neck to lean down to traipse the sweetest kisses from her cheek down her neck and shoulder had her knees turning to marmalade.

She could smell the hint of mint and parchment and sweat as her body pressed against his.

She’d closed her eyes at the exquisite contact, bringing up a hand to touch his jaw.

They stayed there like that inside a protective bubble, like time and all the things racing toward them couldn’t find them there.

His stubble against her exposed skin, her mouth against his, hands touching and bracing, his male heat radiating through the linen of her day dress.

They spoke few words, there was a whole language translated between them.

And then the dinner gong. She’d gone to change for dinner, he having brought no other clothes, forced to make do with something that belonged to one of her brothers. He’d showed up at her door, holding his dinner jacket split down the seams at the back.

“I told you it wouldn’t work.”

She’d been unable to hold in her laughter. “The shape of a man like you wasn’t made for dinner jackets, my darling,” she said, placing a hand on the fine linen of his shirt. The heat of his skin beneath warmed her hand.

He looked down at the ring on her finger. “What was I made for then?”

Moria looked around the hall to make certain there weren’t any servants watching.

Slipping a hand inside his shirt, she stood on her tiptoes.

She poured all the fierce, bubbling emotions into a kiss.

His teeth gathered her bottom lip into his mouth, one hand squeezing her waist. That tender pressure concentrating so close to her core, her veins throbbed with the need for him to take those large, beautiful hands and move them lower.

“You were made for me,” she spoke the words against his lips.

A servant rounded the corner then.

“Greta?” the maid turned to her with a curtsy at the sound of her name from her mistress, Devyn pulled apart from her. “Could you tell Brierley that Captain Winter and I will take our dinner on trays in the library?” Moria gave her a saucy wink.

The maids' cheeks reddened. “Yes, my lady,” she muttered and tore off down the hallway toward the servants' stairs.

* * *

Devyn sat across from her at a large table in the library in only his shirt sleeves and waistcoat. The outline of his muscular thighs in breeches and bespoke boots kept snagging her attention as the footman laid a tray before them.

Without proper warning, they’d had to settle for a dinner of cold meats, sandwiches, cheeses, and fruits. Moria had chosen to supplement her dinner with a liquid one.

He took the bottle from her hands. “I’ll have one, just the one.”

“So very disciplined, Captain.” The way his throat bobbed as he swallowed, keeping his eyes trained on her, made her feel feverish.

“Have to keep my head around you.”

She tipped her drink back. “Thought you’d already lost it.”

“My head, my heart, my family jewels, my sanity,” he laughed, pulling her against his side. She rested her head on his shoulder.

“Do you have to smell so good?” she asked, nuzzling the side of his neck with her nose.

He pulled her tighter to his side. The feel of his arm draped around her, here, alone in her family’s house without any regard for what her family would say if they knew, took her back to another life.

To a different man she’d never gotten to love in the light of day.

Devyn wasn’t that man, and she wasn’t that girl, but her mind was playing tricks on her.

“Hey,” he tipped her chin up with a finger, a very large finger, to meet his eyes. “Where did you go? Come back to me.”

The concern in his voice, the smell of him, the sheer size of him, the dark tempest of his eyes. He was so much. There was so much to this man. And she wanted everything with him.

Her hand fisted around the strands of hair at the nape of his neck and brought him to her mouth, hitching up her skirts to straddle him.

His lips opened, letting her drag her tongue along the inside, scouring the roof of his mouth.

She took in the rumble that emanated from deep in his chest and swallowed it greedily.

Her hands were hungry marauders, roaming the wide expanse of his shoulders, down the slopes of his honed pectorals to his abdomen, and inside his shirt looking for purchase.

He pulled back and swore. “Moria,” he breathed her name against her hair.

“Mmm,” she whispered, teasing her lips across the exposed skin of his neck.

“What is it you want?”

“There’s a ring on my finger now…”

He swore, low and guttural and heating her to her core. “You’ve been drinking though.”

“I am in full use of my faculties,” Moria covered her eyes. “Ask me about the paintings in this room.”

“The one right behind me?”

“A glowering old miser named Frederick. He was married to the once ravishing redhead in the green dress, in the painting over by the decanters.”

She could feel Devyn turning to look. “And how about between the two windows along the far wall?”

“That’s a picture of my grandfather’s eleven most favorite hunting dogs, and his sons.”

Devyn let out a singular ha. “This family of yours. And the one hanging beside the dart board?”

“It isn’t a dart board, it’s for throwing knives.

Lawrence got it for Noelle after our parents died, she needed something to do other than write letters.

And that would be the seventh Earl’s fourth wife.

Isn’t she a beauty? No relation though, but I always loved that purple necklace and was quite sad it got willed to Kathleen. ”

Devyn peeled her hands from her eyes. “That’s a lot of eyes watching us.”

“There are no eyes in my bedchamber.”

Devyn looked down pointedly at the barely touched plate on the table in front of them. “You also drank, rather than ate your dinner.”

“I was hungry for something else,” she said, devouring him with her eyes. “Why are you blushing? I’m the debutante, aren’t I supposed to blush?”

“Come here, you viper,” he said, reaching for her.

There was a note of laughter in his voice that wrapped around her, comforting and warm. God above, she could wear his laugh as her favorite frock and never get tired of it.

He was kissing her, one massive hand pulling at her hair pins.

She opened her mouth for him. He rewarded this small act with a swipe of his tongue that possessed her own.

Her hand snaked into the collar of his shirt and down his back, aiming to pull it over his head.

He nipped her bottom lip into his mouth, sucking on it until it released with a pop.

“Oh my god,” she breathed. “You are a fantasy.”

He laughed again, wicked and sinful and boyish. “What fantasies am I conjuring…” his devious mouth traveled to her collarbone. He licked up her neck, bit her earlobe. “Right now?”

“The naked kind, definitely,” she said, reaching for his trousers.

They’d started this before, in a rowboat, in his club, at a party, but now they were alone. How many more moments would they get like this before he had to answer the call of duty and leave her behind?

“Are you sure?” He stilled her hands.

“These clothes? I need them off you or…” she shook her head, still looking at his perfect form. “I swear I’m going to go mad.”

She pulled at his shirt as he lifted his arms for her to haul it off and throw it over the back of the settee. His broad bared chest heaving made her impatient.

“Are you sure you aren’t outrunning your feelings?”

“I’m running toward a different feeling,” she answered, gripping his erection through his breeches, when he let out a groan. “A very hard one.”

He let out a curse, nipping her shoulder.

“You are not the only one with a wicked mouth.” She kissed his neck, licking her way down his bared chest, stopping to nip at one of his perfect light brown nipples.