Anthony,” Charity gasped.
“This is torture.”
His laugh whisked over the quivering flesh of her belly, smoothly followed by a long, slow lap of his tongue, a circle of the very tip around the rim of her navel.
“Do you know, now that I have found myself on this end of it at last, I think it’s rather fun.”
He would. She yanked her arms, but the bonds he’d used to secure her hands to the bedposts held firm. Her silk stockings had proved themselves a good deal sturdier than she had expected, and Anthony knew how to tie a proper damned knot—unlike her flimsy attempt at it, which she suspected had only held for so long as he had allowed because he had wanted to know what her version of such torture entailed.
Negotiations, round…well, she wasn’t entirely certain how many rounds had come and gone since Mr. Fortescue had left. But they had both dedicated themselves to the task, and between the various concessions she had gained—and made—the tips of her fingers had quickly become ink-stained.
“Ah!” Her head fell back upon the pillow as he stroked his fingers between her legs, barely brushing her clitoris. A whisper of sensation, zipping through her already-shredded nerves.
“Please,” she whimpered.
“You know how to end it,” he said lightly, as he wedged his shoulders between her thighs. There was the scrape of his cheek against her sensitive skin, a kiss right there at the joint of her hip.
“Really, this ought to be embarrassing for you. I held out much longer.”
Yes, but that had been a minor battle at best. He had wanted to settle an outrageous sum upon her for pin money, and she had wanted to use her own funds rather than to simply allow everything she had worked for to sit in an annuity earning interest. They had settled upon her enjoying the fruits of her earnings provided he was allowed to shower her with jewels as he pleased. And really, she was quite fond of sapphires.
But this battle—long engagement or short—was ever so much more important.
A light stroke of his fingers, separating the delicate petals of her private flesh. His tongue touched her clitoris for no more than a moment.
“Anthony,” she hissed.
“It’s really not so much to ask of you,” he said, and two of his fingers found her, sliding inside her body.
“You only have to say yes.” And he set out with slow thrusts of his fingers, filling her in sleek plunges.
“God. You’re always so wet for me. You have no idea what it does to me to feel you like this.”
She had at least a bit of one. The weight of one of his arms stretched across her hips held her pinned to the bed when she would have lifted them into the thrusts of his fingers. A deliberate, maddening choice on his part—ugh.
“Why is it so important to you to be married here?” she gasped.
“Because it is what I want,” he said.
“Because your family is here. Because I have already secured a special license, and it would please me to use it. Because I do not intend to wait until I am officially out of mourning to wed you, and…because I believe there is a part of you, however small, that thinks I am going to change my mind.”
“Perhaps I wanted a big wedding,” she panted through the toe-curling—if ultimately unsatisfying—touch of his tongue. The utter bastard had absolutely no intention of letting her come.
“Perhaps I wanted to be married at St. James’s in the spring and have a dozen bridesmaids and an ocean of flowers.”
“Did you?” He lifted his head for just a moment, interested. As if, had she a particular inclination toward it, he might have sacrificed his own preference to give her the grand wedding she desired.
Charity breathed a temporary sigh of relief.
“No,” she admitted.
“Then it’s going to be here,” he said, and set back in again.
“I had thought Christmas Day,” he said idly.
“It seemed a memorable day to choose. But now I think”—he paused to enjoy the groan she gave as he widened the vee of her thighs and curled his fingers inside her—“now I think I will drop a day for every minute you resist.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, breathing heavily.
“That’s preposterous. You can’t do that.”
“I believe you’ll find I can. And I can see the clock from here. Fair warning.” Another thrust of his fingers, and he remarked, altogether too casually, “Did you know you clench around me when you’re about to come? So I’ll know precisely when to ease off to make certain you don’t.”
“That is cruel!”
“I learned from the best to be a ruthless negotiator. You’ve only yourself to blame.” With the pads of his fingers he rubbed that spot inside her, tearing a whimper from her lungs.
“Now it’s Christmas Eve.”
“Anthony!” Charity flexed her fingers over her head, squirming. A teasing nip. A suck. A devastating plunge of his fingers. She writhed, gasped, clenched—
“Mm. Not until you concede,” he said, and his fingers slid from her, leaving her empty, unsatisfied. Yearning.
She puffed a stray lock of hair away from her face, her chest heaving. That tight coil of encroaching bliss began, gradually, to unwind itself. Her pulse slowed from its frenzied pace.
A minute passed, perhaps as many as two. And then he touched her again, caressing slick, oversensitive flesh, arousing her all over again.
“You’re an arse,” she muttered.
“But you love me. And you are going to marry me. Perhaps on the twentieth of December?” A swirl of his tongue that nearly dragged a shriek from her lungs.
“No? Ah, well. The sooner the better, I suppose.”
Another ruinous thrust of his fingers, and her whole body shuddered.
“I concede!” she gasped.
“I concede. For God’s sake, Anthony, let me come.”
“And you will wed me?” he asked.
“On the nineteenth?”
“Yes!” Her hips arched into his fingers the moment he lifted the weight of his arm from them, striving to take the satisfaction he had denied her. Only to be deprived of it once more as his fingers slipped away from her entirely.
“Oh, you wretched—at least untie me!”
“Soon. I like you like this.” He came up to his knees, sliding one hand beneath her thigh to pull her leg about his waist.
“Maybe a little too much. I’m seriously considering finding new things for us to quibble over only to extract concessions from you in exactly this manner.” He groaned as he sank into her—a groan of patent relief, as if he had come home at last. A long, slow glide, stretching swollen inner tissues.
“Ah, there,” he said, and she knew he had felt the helpless clench of her inner muscles around his cock. He watched himself take her one inch at a time. Watched the fingers of his free hand find the bead of her clitoris, and stroke her.
Charity’s head fell back, eyes closed, and she came with a screech, so hard and so quickly that stars danced behind her lids. Toes curled, every muscle locked in aching, scorching bliss. That too-long-denied climax crashed over her, and for a few moments she thought she might’ve lost consciousness.
And she was still tingling with the last lush pulses of it when he gave his first thrust.
“Again,” he said, his voice thick, commanding.
“I want to feel you come again.”
Her back arched on the next thrust, and the threat of another climax, which she would have said was impossible so soon, was now an unavoidable certainty. Already her nerves sparked with the beginning of it. There were, she supposed, with the last flutters of conscious thought before raw sensation dragged her under once more, worse problems for a woman to have.
It was a long time later, when he had at last picked free the knots he’d tied in her stockings and settled her once more in the crook of his arm that he murmured in her ear, “The nineteenth? You’re certain?”
And she knew, as she snuggled against his chest, that if she asked, he would let her free of the promise he had extracted from her. But if she had not been certain when she had made it—well, now she was.
“Yes,” she said.
“The nineteenth.”
***
Eight days until she would marry, and Charity hadn’t a suitable gown in her trunk. And while Mercy might have access to a wide range of precious gowns and fine fabrics, they were not of a size similar enough to merit the borrowing of a gown, and Charity doubted that a proper new gown could be fashioned in the time left.
So an unsuitable gown it would have to be, which seemed fitting, since she was soon to become an unsuitable duchess. Again.
Anthony, meanwhile, had a perfectly adequate selection of garments, because he had hoped for—and planned for—exactly this. He and Thomas had gone tromping through the snowy landscape down to the village just a half an hour or so ago, so that Thomas might introduce him to the local clergyman and beg him to perform a simple ceremony here at the Armitage estate the following week.
Charity had remained behind, for she had thought it best not to appear before a man of God in a vibrant red gown. Which was all she had thought to bring. But come their marriage, she would not have a choice, and red it would be unless she cared to go to her wedding naked. Which would be appropriately scandalous, but something less than savory with so many of her relations present.
And perhaps a few more of her soon-to-be relations, she thought, as she watched a carriage—Anthony’s carriage, unless she missed her guess—turn off the main road and onto the drive.
Uncertain even now whether she had hoped Anthony’s family would choose to remain in London or whether she had hoped they would accept the offer to come down to the countryside for Christmas, she climbed out of her seat near the drawing room window and headed for the foyer to retrieve her pelisse from the butler in deference to the snowy weather without the house.
All the to-do of greetings would fall upon her shoulders at present, since Mercy was taking a well-earned nap after putting Flora down for hers, and the dowager baroness, Juliet, and Mercy’s father had all gone for a ride. There was no one left to do it, and someone would have to greet them. Helen would be reasonably polite, she thought, and so too were her children likely to be. Esther was an unknown quantity. But the duchess—
They had not, exactly, parted on the best of terms at their last meeting.
Still, Charity braved the frigid breeze, and perhaps an even chillier reception, to walk through the door and down the steps onto the drive. Hattie and a child who she supposed must be Evelyn tumbled out of the carriage first, and Charity found herself relieved that they had been permitted, for this trip to the country, to shed their mourning black for dresses in a lovely shade of lavender. Still half-mourning, but…softer, she thought. Something less stark and grim than the unrelieved black in which she had first seen Hattie.
Then Helen emerged, followed by another lovely, elegant woman that Charity assumed must be Esther. And at last, the duchess. She stepped down from the carriage swathed in the voluminous folds of a neat black traveling cloak, looking frostier than the winter snow that had settled upon the ground. A snow queen in her natural habitat.
Charity opened her mouth to force out some sort of greeting—
The duchess said, “How is it exactly, Miss Nightingale, that you are acquainted with the Armitages?”
Well, then. Straight into it.
“My half-sister is married to the baron.”
“Your half-sister?”
“Yes, Your Grace. Through our mother,” Charity said, with a sharp slice of a smile.
“I believe I might have mentioned her to you before. My mother, I mean to say. I don’t tend to spread gossip about the worthier members of my family.”
“Your half-sister is a baroness.” This, with a measure of disbelief.
“There are occasionally, Your Grace, aristocratic men who manage to find something worth loving even within women whom Ton society would consider beneath them.” She gave a gesture to the house behind her.
“Would you care to come in out of the cold? I’m afraid we weren’t certain when—or indeed if—you would arrive, so it may be some time before rooms can be made up for you.”
“Yes, naturally,” the duchess said, brushing at the wrinkled folds of her cloak.
“And some tea would not go amiss. Where is my son?”
“Out.” Charity had considered leaving it at that. But better, she thought, to manage expectations from the outset. Now, while the carriage was still in the drive. Now, while she was the only one present to witness whatever sort of tantrum to which the duchess might find herself disposed.
“He is in the village with my brother-in-law,” she said.
“To speak with the local reverend. We are to going to be married.”
The duchess hardly blinked.
“Yes, I know,” she said breezily.
“What day?”
Dumbstruck, Charity could only respond, “The nineteenth.”
“Pity. Christmas would be better.”
“A few days will not make a difference. We have already decided. Our minds”—hearts—“will not be swayed.”
With a delicate nudge upon Hattie’s shoulder, the duchess sent her granddaughters scurrying toward the house, and Helen and Esther hurried after them, no doubt to keep them from coming to mischief if left unsupervised.
“It is a pity,” the duchess said, “because men so seldom recall little things like anniversaries. Best to have it on a memorable day.”
Oh. Well, then. While she would not have called the duchess amiable, precisely, still the woman had been somewhat less hostile than Charity had expected.
“Is my son expected back soon?” the duchess inquired.
“Not within the hour, I shouldn’t think.” And she couldn’t possibly hazard a guess as to how long such a meeting might take, whether Anthony and Thomas might find some amusement in the village afterward, or how long their walk back might require with the falling snow growing deeper by the moment.
“Good,” the duchess said.
“Then you and I shall take tea. In private.”
Somehow, through sheer dint of will, Charity found the restraint to wait until the duchess had swept past her to roll her eyes to the heavens and sigh.
***
“My son has informed me that I owe you an apology,” the duchess said as she selected a tiny square teacake from a plate.
“It couldn’t hurt,” Charity said.
“Perhaps it is petty of me—”
“It is.”
“—But then I learned early on that turning the other cheek often yields only another slap.” Charity bared her teeth in a feral smile.
“I haven’t got the least meekness within me, Your Grace, and I would not show it to you even if I did.”
To her surprise, the duchess answered, “Good. You will need that.” She took a sip of her tea. Frowned as if the quality had failed to meet her high expectations, and plunked in an additional lump of sugar.
“A duchess has need of a sturdy backbone, especially one of your present social standing. People will say foul things of you. No doubt many of them will be true.”
“If you are expecting an apology of me for my past, then you are to be disappointed. I am neither sorry nor ashamed.”
“I hadn’t thought you would be. You don’t seem the sort. Nevertheless, people will try to make you ashamed—”
“As you did?”
The duchess slammed down her napkin with a ferocity that shook the table.
“You called me a sad old woman!”
“You are a sad old woman,” Charity said.
“Blast you, I am attempting to apologize!”
“Are you? You’re doing a piss poor job of it,” Charity remarked idly as she took a teacake for herself.
“When you attain the age that I have done,” the duchess said, “and have lost the things I have lost, perhaps you, too, will be a sad old woman.”
A fair point, one well-made. The duchess had been narrow-minded and unkind, but Charity had been petty and insolent in return. She wondered if, in some small way, the duchess hadn’t been trying to pay her a sort of compliment. If she had not attempted to find a tiny something within her—for instance, her rigid, unbending spine—to admire.
“You’re right,” Charity said.
“That was unfair of me, and cruel besides.”
“But not,” the duchess allowed, stiffly, “strictly undeserved.” She drew a breath, lifted her tea cup to her lips, and took a fortifying sip.
“It has occurred to me that you will soon be my son’s wife, and the management of his household will fall to you.”
“I’ll admit to some pettiness,” Charity said.
“But I am not petty enough to eject you from your home, if that is what you mean to imply.”
The duchess’ shoulders sank in relief.
“Thank you for that,” she said.
“I had wondered.”
“That is not to say,” Charity added, “that I do not intend to run my house precisely as I see fit.” But she did not need to remove Anthony’s family to do so.
“Or that I will timidly accept aspersions cast upon my character—or Anthony’s—from those within it.”
“I expect you do not do much timidly,” the duchess said. She drew in a great breath, held it in her lungs, let it out in a trembling sigh.
“You are not the duchess I would have chosen for my son,” she said.
“I don’t expect you have the slightest sense of how to be a good one.”
And that—that was true enough, Charity supposed. She really did not.
“But despite that, I do believe that you will make my son a good wife. As a duchess, I must despair of his choice. But as a mother—as a mother, what matters most to me is my son’s happiness.”
Charity blinked in surprise, finding herself strangely touched.
“So I shall simply have to teach you how to be a duchess,” the duchess said, with a beleaguered sigh.
“Even if it should take me the remainder of my life.”
Charity choked on a little laugh.
“Careful,” she warned.
“For just a moment there, you were doing quite well.”
“Yes, well, I’m afraid I am rather set in my ways. But I do love my son, Miss Nightingale, and I would prefer that we not be at odds, as it will make sharing the same household a less miserable experience. To that end,” she said, and set her reticule atop the table to pry open the little drawstring bag. From it she withdrew a small object, held in her closed fist.
“I am certain Anthony has selected a ring of his own choosing, but I thought a family heirloom would be appropriate. You must be seen to have the support of the family, after all.” And she opened her palm to reveal a small gold ring set with an absolutely massive ruby.
Charity’s brows lifted.
“You are giving me a family heirloom?”
“To welcome you to the family,” the duchess said.
“Probably Anthony has chosen something less gaudy and ostentatious for you, something which will not weigh the hand down quite so heavily. While this may not be suitable to wear every day, there will be occasions upon which it will be necessary to remind the public of your status, and this, I think, will do the job nicely. It is a perfectly suitable ring for a duchess.”
It was a perfectly suitable ring for a princess. A queen, even. But that the duchess had unbent enough to offer up a family heirloom, unprompted by her son—that meant something. A peace offering, Charity thought.
“Thank you,” she said, sincerely, as she accepted it.
“I will wear it.”
The duchess gave a tiny nod, her hands curling once more around her tea cup as if to warm them.
“Your first lesson,” she said, “is that a duchess does not say piss.”
Charity tipped back her head and laughed—and to her surprise, the duchess chuckled with her.