Page 52 of The Scandalous Love of a Duke (The Marlow Family Secrets #6)

Katherine seated herself in the far corner of the carriage and longed for darkness to hide in. John’s servants were too fastidious to leave the internal lanterns unlit. So, a low light illuminated John as he climbed the step behind her and slid into the corner diagonal to where she sat.

The carriage door shut.

He leaned back and looked out the window. Then his fingers lifted and brushed back his fringe.

A deep emotion of love and longing clasped in her stomach. She sensed vulnerability in him again. It only proved to her that the plans she made earlier had to be carried out. He needed saving from himself.

‘So will you explain to me now?’ she asked, her hands hanging on to the edge of the seat.

His head turned slowly, and his gaze struck hers, not with its ducal hardness but with intensity, expressing both his irritation and that he deemed the conversation unnecessary. ‘It was years ago, Katherine. I’m sure you do not wish to hear about it really. Besides I hardly remember.’

‘She said she was your first. I think you would remember that.’

His lips pursed.

John was her first. She would never forget that night.

‘She was my first woman, yes. It happened in Paris, the summer I left England. She chased me for a week. It is her thing – to break young men in. She broke me. Is that what you wish to know? Or do you want explicit details?’ She ignored his vindictive taunt.

‘She was the first, but she was not the only one,’ he continued.

‘There were many. I had a colourful reputation abroad. I can list names if you wish?’

He was deliberately provoking her, she knew, because he did not really wish to speak of this.

‘It is what young gentlemen of noble birth do. We are sent abroad on the tour explicitly to sow our wild oats and plough as many furrows as we wish out of the sight of our mothers and the judgement of society. There are whores on every corner at the tourist destinations, even in the arches of the Colosseum. I am mortal, and I was young.’ His piercing gaze bored into her, challenging her to comment or to judge.

When she did neither, a deep sigh left his throat.

‘I thought I was in love with her, with Elizabeth Ponsonby, if you must know. Now I know it was only ever a youth’s infatuation.

But when I found her with another man and realised I was nothing to her, I went on a rampage of carnal revenge, behaving just like her.

I felt better for it for a long while. It took me years to realise that I was only hurting myself.

And still more years to know I never loved her in the first place. ’

His shoulders shrugged. ‘She has been chasing me again for a few weeks. It appears I am to her taste once more since I acquired my title. I have already told her once, before tonight, I am not interested. Yet for the sake of her vanity she cannot accept my refusal.’

Katherine looked out the window, not really seeing.

‘I was one among many, Katherine. Everyone behaved like that abroad.’

Does he think that makes it better? ‘I learned that tonight,’ she answered, turning to face him.

His eyes flashed with anger. ‘Framlington. He is as bad as his sister. Keep away from him.’

‘The people you mix with are all false, John. I do not like them.’ Suddenly her courage of earlier ebbed. She realised she was crying.

John moved from the far seat of the carriage, sat beside her and his arm came about her. ‘Katherine, I cannot change my past.’

Her head fell against his shoulder and she nodded. She knew. But she could change his future.

His hand held hers in her lap. ‘I did not mean to upset you. I have not been with another woman for years, and I never felt for Elizabeth even a hundredth of what I feel for you. Knowing you has proven to me how shallow my feelings for her really were.’

A sob left her lips.

‘I was alone in Egypt, Katherine. I’m not that person any more. I will be faithful to you.’ His pitch urged her to believe him.

‘Katherine, I love you.’ She looked up into his pale eyes. They shone with sincerity. ‘Believe me…’ They were John’s eyes, and they bore the plea she had seen in the parlour at home when he had first asked her to marry him.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I am just tired. Everything has happened so fast…’

‘And you are reliant on a man who has let you down already. He did not come to your marriage bed and now he has introduced you to his former mistress. I am sorry, Katherine.’ He brushed a gentle kiss on her lips.

Her arms reached about his shoulders and she returned the kiss, cautious of his hurt lip. It was an intensely sweet kiss, because it was nothing like the lustful hungry kisses she had shared with him before.

When the carriage finally halted at the door of his, now their, town house, they were still kissing. He pulled away and smiled before a footman opened the door and another set down the step.

John climbed down and offered his hand to help her before his footman could, and when her foot touched the ground, he swept her off her feet. ‘Another thing I was remiss over yesterday, a bridegroom is supposed to carry his bride over the threshold, is he not?’

She smiled up at him, clinging to his shoulders as he carried her up the steps and into the grand hall. A clock struck twelve somewhere in the downstairs rooms and she looked over his shoulder just to check his coach had not turned into a pumpkin.

Mr Finch bowed deeply, but John did not set her down, and she was blushing intensely as he crossed the black-and-white chequered marble floor, saying over his shoulder, ‘Tell Smithson I will not need him, Finch.’

The heels of his dancing shoes rang on the marble as he walked, and then he was climbing the stairs with her still in his arms.

‘You may set me down,’ she whispered. ‘Your staff are watching.’

In point of fact, they were not; they were schooling their faces to a blank as they looked everywhere else but at the stairs.

‘They are paid well enough to see and hear nothing, Katherine, and if they dare to gossip they know they will be dismissed within hours.’

When they reached the state chambers John kicked the door open and shut it with his heel. He let her feet slip to the floor and then braced her nape and kissed her once more. His other hand held her waist.

Breaking the kiss after a while, he said, ‘You are mine, Katherine, I will be loyal, and I will not be cuckolded.’ His pale eyes glowed with the intensity that was all John.

‘And you are mine, John Harding,’ she answered. ‘I will not be made a fool of.’

He smiled, his fingers tugging loose the ribbon which tied her cloak. The garment fell to the floor.

She felt breathless. It had been such a long time since the night at Pembroke Place and the hours they had spent in the tower.

‘I already know I am yours, Katherine. I have been since Grandfather’s funeral. You have been all I think of and all I have lived for since then. I am your slave, darling.’

His fingers slid her dress off her shoulders, leaving the short, puffed sleeves draped lower down her arms.

Her heart thundered with anticipation. All the feelings she had known in the bright tower room and in his shadowed bedchamber flooded back.

As his gaze held hers, his fingers trailed across the top curve of her breasts. ‘I have missed you,’ he stated as his hand slid into her bodice.

‘Missed my body,’ she answered in a husky voice.

‘Missed you…’ he repeated, as his fingers slipped free of her bodice. He reached about her and began releasing the buttons at her back.

She looked up at the ceiling and faced some Greek scene of women lying all about a chaise longue, dining on fruit.

His lips touched her neck as her dress fell slacker and her breasts seemed to press more firmly against her corset.

Her arms lifted and settled on his shoulders as he bit and nipped at her neck; he could make her feel such delicious things and now she was free to love him without guilt.

He was making no effort to rush, her dress hung open at the back but his hands merely embraced her waist, as he kissed her neck.

She kissed his earlobe and his temple, and stroked her hands across his back. A part of her could not believe she was his wife.

His hand kneaded her breast over the cloth of her gown as his lips came to hers.

When he broke the kiss she was breathless.

He held onto her gaze as he drew her dress down. Smiling, she pulled his evening coat from his shoulders.

Everything in his expression spoke of a devotion and desire which was beyond physical. He needed her. She knew he did. He was letting her in to view all his vulnerability and letting her know he loved her.

He leaned over her shoulder again and unthreaded her lacing.

She began unbuttoning his waistcoat. They then stripped each other systematically and slowly, peeling off the layers.

When it came to the last she watched his naked body, sitting on the edge of his bed as her foot rested on his muscular thigh and he rolled down her second stocking.

He kissed the sole of her foot once it was off. Then with one hand still gripping her foot, the other braced her neck and he kissed her lips once more. She melted inside. His gentleness was sublime. It had not been like this in the tower, nor in his bed at Pembroke Place.

‘Lie back,’ he whispered. She did, with her legs still dangling to the floor.

He knelt before her and she throbbed there, burning with need and damp heat as he paid homage with his mouth.

If she could simply forget the world beyond his bedchamber she would have the most wonderful marriage. She was in ecstasy. Her first flood drew close, the wave rising, about to break, but then he ceased and stood and half leaned over her and the wave washed away without a crest.

One hand parted her naked thighs wider, and his other hand pressed down on the mattress beside her, and then there was pressure between her thighs where she had only known it once before.

It was not painful. It felt right. Though the sensation of pressure also felt like stretching, it filled her and completed her, the other half of her whole. But it challenged her and overwhelmed her too, to have him there within her body, where his child already grew.

He was still standing on the floor, leaning over her and pressing into her, slowly, gently.

His movement expressed tenderness, and longing, and a need to relish, but with each movement he gained more depth, pressing a little deeper, urging her legs a little wider.

Her fingers lifted and touched the bruise on his cheek as he withdrew.

His thrusts developed a stronger but still slow rhythm. Her hands held his lower arms, while her legs wrapped about him and her calves gripped at his back.

She was panting in time with his rhythm and all she could focus on was John, on his face as he looked down at her. Her fingernails cut into his forearms and her head pressed back into the bed as she closed her eyes.

His movement quickened.

She broke all about him, tumbling over a cliff into the drifting clouds of heaven.

‘I love you,’ he whispered, increasing his tempo to allegro, moving more swiftly, but there was still a blissful planned determination about it as he delivered these swift, short, sharp strokes, making her pant for more and cling to his shoulders.

His breathing was heavy and rasping and she could feel and smell sweat on his skin. She liked his smell of him, and liked his body weight coming down more heavily on to her as he neared the end.

‘John!’ She broke again a moment after his weight fell fully on her and his body clenched in spasm.

His forehead rested on her shoulder.

Her fingers ran through his hair.

When he lifted off her and withdrew, she became cold, and shivered.

He walked about the bed and pulled the covers down. ‘Slide in.’

She did.

He climbed in beside her, leaving the candles burning, then set his arm about her shoulders and kissed her temple. ‘I love you, Katherine.’

‘I love you too,’ she said, pillowing her head on his shoulder.

‘Even after all I have done. I have treated you badly.’

‘Yes, but love cannot judge. It is why I turned Richard away after you left. I could not marry him when I still loved you.’

‘I will make you happy,’ he said.

‘I am going to make you happy too.’ Her fingers cupped his cheek. ‘Be yourself with me. I do not want you to be like the people I met tonight.’