Page 37

“Seri would be most proud to hear what?” Serendipity asked from where she and Blessing were fishing a wildflower out of little Rorie’s mouth and prying another one out of her fist.

“There is a wedding breakfast to plan for this Saturday,” Grace said with a pointed nod at Felicity, who immediately jumped up and clapped with joy.

“ This Saturday?” Serendipity repeated, looking aghast. “Oh dear heavens, this is Wednesday. There is your dress to be sorted. Our dresses to be sorted. The food.” She came up short and looked at Wolfe. “I assume you have a special license and the ceremony will be here?”

He almost retreated a step but caught himself in time. “Yes to the special license, and I have no preference as to where we have the ceremony, as long as we have it.”

“Well done, you,” Fortuity said from the blanket spread across the ground where she sat beside her sleeping son.

Chance strode forward and clapped him on the back. “Welcome to the family, Wolfebourne, and may God have mercy on your soul.”

“Don’t worry, Gracie,” Merry said with a narrow-eyed glare at her brother. “Joy and I can manage the frogs and eels for Chance’s bed.”

“Are we not all getting a little too old for that prank?” Chance asked.

“We will stop that prank when you cease behaving like a horse’s arse,” Blessing said.

“Exactly,” Joy agreed.

Blessing’s husband, Thorne, and Fortuity’s husband, Matthew, stepped forward with wide grins.

“Congratulations, Wolfebourne,” Thorne said, “Trust me, you will never regret it.”

Wolfe smiled at Grace. “I know I won’t.”

“And if you ever need reinforcements,” Matthew said with a wicked wink, “do not send for us. Neither of us are foolhardy enough to test the sisters’ alliance.”

“It sounds as though there will be a need for a great many frogs and eels for the men,” Grace said as she started toward the house. “And now, if you will excuse me, I feel the need for an outing with Pegasus before Seri confines me to my room with innumerable preparations.”

“Gracie!” Serendipity stared at her walking away, huffing when she didn’t slow. She looked back at Wolfe as if he would be silly enough to try to stop Grace. “Today is Wednesday. She needs to start preparing now. Speak with her.”

“I shall,” he said, seizing on the opportunity and starting toward the stable. “Tenebrae and I will ride with her and do our very best to convince her she should be doing other things.”

“Your Grace!” Serendipity fisted her hands on her hips while the other sisters giggled.

“Leave off, Seri,” Chance said. “They are marrying on Saturday.”

“It is most inappropriate,” Serendipity said with a tight-jawed look at her brother.

“When has Gracie ever been appropriate?” Joy asked, then went uncharacteristically serious. “She is not a lightskirt, Seri, and you know it. Leave her be.”

Wolfe smiled to himself and kept walking, the sisters’ lively conversation and the men’s chuckling fading away as he neared the stable. A private ride with Grace was a treasure he was not about to miss.

By the time he and Jasper had his lively black stallion and Grace’s equally exuberant Pegasus ready for the ride, she joined them wearing her adventuring clothes—as he had known she would.

She halted and looked all around. “Well?”

“Well, what?” Wolfe launched himself up into the saddle, knowing it would be unwise to offer Grace any help with mounting her horse. In her mind, that would be akin to his saying she possessed the poorest imaginable skills of horsemanship.

“Where is everyone else?” She settled into the saddle and patted her steed as he pranced back and forth, excited to start the outing.

“I believe Lady Joy and your brother convinced the others that since we are marrying this Saturday, our enjoying a ride without benefit of a chaperone was irrelevant.”

Grace feigned a shocked demeanor. “How scandalous,” she said with a laugh, then took the lead, her lovely behind bouncing up and down in a most suggestive way as she became one with her horse’s gait.

“Indeed.” Wolfe would be more than happy to make the outing as scandalous as she wished. The lady had but to give him the command. He adjusted his seating, attempting to lessen the discomfort of the hardened ridge she had awakened.

They galloped across the meadows and cleared several fences, giving their horses their heads. They didn’t slow until they reached the fateful ravine that had caused them to meet after Grace rescued poor Hector from the deadly grip of the woodbine.

Pegasus and Tenebrae seemed contented enough to meander side by side for a while, so they encouraged their horses to amble alongside the tangled overgrowth bordering the deep gully.

“This is nice.” Grace closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sun, as Pegasus required no guidance. “You do not mind a wife with freckles, do you?”

“Not so long as you allow me to kiss them.”

She smiled before opening her eyes and nodding at a point up ahead. “Just beyond that gentle rise is the main road to the village. We daren’t ride past it or someone might see my attire.”

“What say you to dismounting and walking for a while?” Yes, he had an ulterior motive. Nothing so unchivalrous as making her his wife ahead of their wedding on Saturday, but a heated embrace would not be amiss. At least, he hoped she felt that way. The choice was entirely hers.

Rather than answer, she alighted with the grace of a butterfly flitting down to perch on a blade of grass. “Will Tenebrae stay with Pegasus? They seem friendly enough now that they have been around each other for a while, and there are no mares here to stir their competitiveness.”

Wolfe dismounted and patted his horse. “Yes, Tenebrae has always been an even-tempered old man, and I feel certain they can sense our relationship.”

“I think so too.” The smile she gave him made him ache to pull her into his arms. “You are the first person I’ve ever known—other than Mr. Carson—who believes animals take as much notice of human behavior as we do of theirs.”

“When I think of all the people I have met in this world, I do not necessarily agree with the assessment that we humans are the more brilliant of the species the Almighty ever created.”

“You are most definitely the right man for me.” She went to him, slid her hands up his chest, and tiptoed for a kiss.

He gathered her close, crushing into the warmth of her soft curves.

She molded against him, making him groan and toy with the idea of stripping them both naked and consummating Saturday’s vows here and now in the grassy field.

Cupping her face between his hands, he kissed her deep and with every ounce of urgency pounding through him.

She tasted of the berries they’d eaten earlier, but even more importantly, she tasted of need.

He worked his way lower, nibbling along the satin of her throat and the ticklish ridge of her collarbone.

Cupping the perfect fullness of her breasts nearly undid him.

With his face buried in the sweetness of the valley between them, he slowly lowered himself to his knees.

She knotted her fingers in his hair, then tugged and pulled in time with her groans as he worked his mouth down her torso, forcing himself not to lift her shirt but nibbling her through it.

As he nuzzled more and breathed her in, he ran his hand lower and rubbed her most intimately through her buckskins.

The warmth between her legs pulled a yearning growl free of him.

“Oh my.” Once again, she filled her hands with his hair, yanking and groaning as she stumbled and almost lost her balance.

Another growl escaped him as he caught her and lowered her to the ground.

His senses raged into a blinding haze of need.

But he would not take her. Not today. He was determined to reserve that ultimate pleasure for after they said I do.

“When we join, it will be the perfect sealing of our vows,” he rasped as he nuzzled her breasts through her clothing.

Hovering over her, he opened her legs with his knee and jutted his hips forward, nudging and rubbing his hard length against her warmth that would soon be his.

Both of them remained infuriatingly clothed.

Keeping their garments in place was the only way he knew of to set himself a boundary that would make him stop and think rather than reel out of control and bury himself in her, as he so badly needed to do.

“I swear I will not take you until Saturday.” He rhythmically ground himself against her. “I will not take you until you are my wife.”

“I will surely die by then.” She groaned, arching to meet his rubbing thrusts, clutching at him and wrapping her legs around his waist. “This aching…this wonderful aching will kill me.”

He understood completely. The feel of her, the smell of her need, was driving him past the point of reason.

He plundered her mouth with his tongue as he slid his hand down between them and massaged her between her legs harder and faster, tickling her sex through her clothing with an insistent steadiness he knew would soon send her into oblivion.

Oh, what he wouldn’t give to rip off every thread she wore and join with her. But not yet—not today.

She shrieked and shuddered beneath him, moaning and thrusting hard against the pressure of his fingers.

Then it was as though she melted, relaxing and letting her legs slowly slide from around him and come to rest on the ground.

She barely shifted beneath him with slow, deep breaths, but her heart pounded against his chest.

“How in the world did you do that?” she asked in a lazy whisper without opening her eyes.

“I am a very gifted man.”

“You have no idea.”

“It will be even better after we are wed.” He rose and kissed the tip of her nose.

“I fail to see how that could be remotely possible,” she said, her eyes still closed.

“Trust me, my love. It is very possible.”

She barely cracked open an eye and smiled. “On this, I will always trust you, my very gifted man.”

“I rather like the sound of that.” He nibbled a slow, leisurely kiss along her jawline, noticing with some pride and a great deal of satisfaction that her lips had gone a delightful shade of cherry red with his attentions.

Even though he still painfully ached for relief, her nearly boneless state of relaxed bliss made his suffering well worth it. He could tend to himself later.

“I suppose we just proved we do, in fact, require a chaperone.” Her lighthearted tone revealed no remorse or regret whatsoever.

“I think we did quite well.” He locked eyes with her, losing himself in the twin pools of blue that had grown so much darker with her passion. “You remain a virgin, and we have yet to see each other unclothed.”

She didn’t respond, just held his gaze and caught her bottom lip between her teeth. The faintest puckering between her brows worried him.

“Grace?”

“What?”

“You look as though you dread what I am about to ask.”

“That is because I do.”

He remained on top of her, propping himself on his forearms to keep from crushing her. “I am not moving until you tell me what is wrong.”

She struggled to look anywhere but in his eyes. “You know I often ride astride? The only time I ever ride sidesaddle is in the park in London.”

“I fail to understand how that is a problem.” He twitched the slightest shrug, then pecked another kiss to the tip of her nose.

“You may still ride astride after we marry. Here in the country. On our land or the Broadmere estate. I feel you should still ride sidesaddle in front of others, of course, and absolutely no riding once you get with child.” He gave her a stern look that he prayed she took to heart.

“I will not have you or our children endangered in any way.”

“You obviously have no idea of what I am attempting to tell you in as delicate a way as possible.”

Her expression became so terse that he wondered what he had missed. He wasn’t normally thick when it came to understanding hints and innuendo. “Just tell me, Grace, since you are quite right. I have no idea what you are trying to tell me.”

She shifted beneath him with a deep breath then released it as a heavy sigh.

“Mama warned that if I insisted on riding astride that my husband might be taken aback on my wedding night if I did not inform him and make it quite clear that I had never lowered my guard and allowed a man any liberties.” Tears welled in her eyes.

“And yet here I am, unmarried and lying beneath you after allowing you a great many liberties. I’m afraid you won’t believe me when I tell you that no man has ever known me—as in the biblical sense of the word. ”

It finally dawned on him that in her roundabout way, Grace was attempting to tell him that her maidenhead might not be intact due to her habit of riding astride and usually at a hard gallop. He had heard of that happening. Never had he come across it, but he knew it to be a possibility.

He framed her face in his hands and forced her to look him in the eyes. “Stop looking for things that will make me stop loving you, because I swear upon my life that no such thing exists.”

Her bottom lip quivered in a most heart-wrenching way. “I merely thought you should know.”

“Thank you, my lady. I now know, and do not give a rat’s arse that your maidenhead may have given its life to your saddle rather than my cock.” He couldn’t resist a devilish grin. “The rest of you is mine, and I consider myself a truly blessed man in that regard.”

“Such language, Your Grace!” But the laughter in her eyes made the scolding fall short.

“You, my dear one, are my heart mate, the other half of my soul, and, very soon, my wife.” He nibbled a tender kiss across the sweetness of her lips before lifting his head and smiling down at her.

“Forgive me for the coarseness of my words, my love. I merely wished to impress upon you their sincerity.”

“Oh, I am quite impressed, Your Grace. Quite impressed, and I can hardly wait for whatever else you wish to impress upon me.”

“Saturday, my love. After we have said our vows—I swear to impress you to the very best of my abilities.”