Nate’s pulsed thrummed in his veins like the rainwater rushing past in the ditch beside the road. He could glimpse the countess’s country home through the trees. He was almost there. Very soon he would see Cecile. The idea both thrilled and frightened him. Although he’d imagined dozens of different scenarios in his head over the past days, he still didn’t know exactly what he was going to say.
Would she be happy to see him? Embarrassed or upset? Would she even be there? What if she’d decided not to return to the countess’s employ for some reason? What if she’d disappeared altogether and he never found her again? Oh yes, his heart was galloping nearly as fast as Jackdaw’s hooves hitting the ground as these questions milled through his mind.
As he reined the horse to a sedate walk and stopped in front of the house, Nate considered that he probably should’ve freshened himself before coming here. His horse’s withers and his boots and trousers were spattered with mud. He hadn’t bothered to stop at an inn last night, but had wrapped himself in his cloak and slept in the shelter of a hedgerow for a few hours. He was dirty, unkempt and unshaven like a soldier straight from the battlefield. Once he’d finally come to a decision to go after Cecile, he’d been like a madman, determined to get to her as soon as possible. He’d simply saddled Jackdaw and flown across country.
Nate dismounted and tossed the horse’s reins to a boy who trotted toward him from the stable. “Please, rub him down, cover and feed him well. It’s been a long ride.”
“Yes, sir.” The boy led Jackdaw away, and Nate walked toward the house, stamping the worst of the mud off his boots on the walkway leading to the door. While he waited for someone to answer his knock, he removed his hat and pushed a hand through his hair.
The door opened to reveal a butler with a long, narrow face and an expression as blank as MacKenzie’s. Was that part of a butler’s training, to remove all human emotion from his face? “Good day, sir.”
“I’m Nathaniel Covington, come to call on Madame Cecile Lambeaux.”
There was a momentary flicker of something like surprise before the shutters closed over the butler’s eyes. “Come with me, sir. I’ll seat you in the parlor.”
Nate followed the man through the front hall, fragrant from some plants that bloomed profusely in urns along the walls, and into the formal receiving room, also a veritable jungle of potted ferns and flowers. It made for a tranquil, welcoming setting intended to put any guest at ease, but Nate was as twitchy as a racehorse waiting at the gate as he took a seat on a light green plush chair.
The moment the butler had left the room he rose and began roaming it, far too nervous to sit and wait. He was seconds away from seeing Cecile and he still didn’t know what he planned to say to her.
Although I don’t condone it, I understand the reasons for your ruse and forgive your action since you’re right in assuming there was no other way I would ever have made your acquaintance. It sounded correct…and cold. It wouldn’t do at all.
I’ve missed you, Cecile. More every day. I forgive everything and want you to come back to me. Much better, but not all of the truth. He still harbored some anger at her for her deception, and she should know that.
Hello, Cecile. I had to see you. Shall we make a fresh start at getting to know each other? My name is Nathaniel Covington, second son of the seventh Earl of Hillshire, and you are…?
As he gazed out the window at a rain-drenched garden in autumn shades of rust and brown, a voice from behind startled him from his reverie. “Hello.”
Nate turned to see Christopher Whitby in the doorway. He wore a tatty old sweater and dirt-stained breeches. He walked toward Nate with a tentative smile. “You’re here for Cecile?”
“Yes. The butler went to get her.”
“He got me, instead. I’ve never seen Hawkins so close to being flustered. He didn’t know what to do about you. Please sit down. You look like you could use a drink.”
Nate sank back down onto the green chair, his legs suddenly wobbly. A drink sounded damn good to take the chill from his bones. He gratefully accepted a glass of whiskey and sipped it.
Whitby sat down in the seat opposite Nate’s. “I take it you didn’t speak with Meredith.”
Nate almost asked “who” before he remembered that was the Comtesse de Chevalier’s first name. “No. I’ve been here only a few minutes.”
Whitby laughed. “I meant at your house. She left yesterday to go try to talk you into forgiving Cecile for a deception that was largely her idea, but I gather you must have been already on your way here.”
“No. I never saw her. I started yesterday myself and have been riding almost through the night.”
“I can see that. You look like a man who’s had an epiphany and rushed to his lady’s side.” Whitby’s tone was teasing in a friendly way.
Nate looked down at his boots, which he should have offered to take off in the foyer. Bits of mud still crumbled and fell from them to mar the dark green carpet. “I’m sorry. I should’ve cleaned up before coming here.”
“On the contrary. I think women love this kind of romantic gesture. You should go to Cecile just as you are, surprise her and sweep her off her feet.” His smiled diminished. “If that is what you intend to do. Is it? What are you going to offer her?”
Nate suddenly felt as if he were talking to Cecile’s father demanding to know his intentions. “I don’t know. Before the truth came out, I was ready to offer her marriage, but now…I don’t know if I really know her. Maybe we need to reintroduce ourselves and start over.”
“That sounds wise.” Whitby paused, turning his glass in his hand. Light caught on the crystal and danced around the room. “Would you ever marry her despite her station? Because I don’t believe Cecile could be happy as a mistress. I may not know her well, but my impression is that, in her soul, she seeks a family.”
Sipping another draught of liquid gold that burned his throat and warmed his stomach, Nate thought that this was hardly how he’d expected this afternoon to go. He hadn’t imagined being questioned by Chris Whitby about his future plans—although a similar grilling by the formidable countess wouldn’t have surprised him.
“I would like to say one thing on Cecile’s behalf,” Whitby continued. “Meredith has the capability of making the most outrageous idea seem feasible. She’s as forceful as a hurricane and adept at getting people to fall in line with her plans. Cecile is naturally an honest, trustworthy person who would make a loyal and loving companion.”
Nate was surprised at how much the man’s assessment of her character reassured him. He barely knew Whitby, but the fellow impressed him as level-headed and sincere.
“I appreciate your opinion,” he said honestly.
Christopher nodded. “It could be difficult for the two of you to be together. Living outside of society’s rules hasn’t been easy for Meredith and me at times. But you will find friends with similarly open beliefs or different lifestyles, and you’re always welcome to visit here.”
“Thank you.”
“I suppose you should get on with sweeping her off her feet. I’ll take you to her.”
Nate set his empty glass aside and rose to follow his host from the room. His nervousness was back in full force, making his skin twitch and his fingers tap against his sides. Why was he so pent up? Cecile was the one who’d done the lying and the running away, yet he felt as if it was he who’d come to beg her forgiveness for some transgression.
Christopher glanced at him as they walked side by side along the hallway on the second floor to the stairway leading up to the garret. “Women can tie one in knots, can’t they?”
“They certainly can,” Nate agreed.
“Worth the trouble, though, for the right one.”
Nate smiled. The right one. Had he found her in the most unlikely of ways? It seemed to be his lot in life to fall for the unorthodox choice.
At the top of the next flight of stairs, Whitby gestured toward a half open door from which light spilled into the corridor. “I’ll leave you to it, then.” After the briefest of pauses and with the slyest of smiles, he added, “Have no fear of being disturbed.”
Nate gathered himself, drawing a deep breath, while the other man started down the stairs, then he pushed open the door and looked into the room.
It was a wide open space filled with the accoutrements of a dressmaker’s shop. Bolts of fabric and dummies swathed in colorful material were illuminated by the beams of sunlight that shone through several large windows. An imposing wardrobe at one end of the room presumably held more gowns and there were shelves on which filmy white undergarments lay folded.
In a beam of light, Cecile sat with cloth of gold spilling over her lap and onto the floor. The sun shone on her brown hair, picking out glints of gold there as well. Her head was bent over her work and her hair drawn away from her face into a severe bun on the back of her head, revealing the supple curve of her pale neck and shoulders. She wore a plain dress of hazelnut brown that contrasted with the showier colors of the other gowns. It made her stand out, a soft mourning dove in the midst of peacock finery.
There was a moment just before she reacted to the sound of footsteps and looked up in which he was able to study her face in repose. In the golden glow of sunlight reflected off the shining fabric, she shone like a Renaissance painting and looked as haunted and mournful as a suffering saint.
So beautiful. So sad. His heart filled with emotion. The overwhelming desire to erase that expression from her face and replace it with joy filled him. Nate stepped forward, and Cecile looked up and saw him.
Her eyes widened and she froze with her needle digging into the material in her hands.
“Hello,” he said softly and took another step into the room. His body thrummed with the desire to cross the room and sweep her into his arms, but he held back, still uncertain what he had come to say to her.
Cecile’s mouth opened slightly, but she didn’t answer, as though his unexpected presence had shocked her into muteness.
Nate continued to approach her slowly. “What are you sewing?”
“Madame’s wedding gown.” Her voice was barely a whisper. Every trace of the well-spoken lady he’d met was gone. Was this mouse-quiet woman the real Cecile? But no, those other aspects of her personality were just as real; she was simply taken aback and embarrassed just now.
To put her more at ease, he knelt at the edge of the drop cloth pooled around her chair. Now he was on a level with her eyes so she couldn’t look away. “I’ve missed you.”
Her eyes glistened, and her lower lip trembled. She swallowed hard before she spoke. “I’m so sorry, sir, for my deception.”
“Don’t. Don’t call me, sir. We’re far beyond that and you know it.” He reached out to remove the shimmering golden fabric of the countess’s wedding gown and the needle from her hands. He set them carefully on the floor then grasped Cecile’s hands. They were cool and dry and slid neatly into his as if they were made to fit together.
“It was wrong and foolish, imagining I could be with you,” she continued.
“But your plan worked. And you were right in thinking we never would have met any other way. You created an opportunity where there was none.” His heart and mind were abruptly clear and open, for as he said the words he realized they were absolutely true.
Her gray-green eyes seemed to have flecks of gold in them today. They studied his, flicking restlessly back and forth as if reading him. “You…forgive me?”
“Yes.” He leaned forward, releasing her hand to slip one of his around her waist. Her ribs pressed into his palm as she breathed out. “I want you to come home with me.”
“As your mistress?”
“As my wife.” The words came easily from his mouth, and he knew that was what he’d meant to tell her all along even while he pondered and argued with himself all the way here. How much easier life was if one simply gave into what seemed natural and right.
“But you don’t even know me. You don’t know anything about me.”
“You can tell me the details of your life, but Cecile, I already know everything I need to about you, about who you are inside.”
He rose then and pulled her to her feet, kicking the wedding dress out of the way and drawing her into his arms. Her palms rested against his chest as he bent to kiss her, a light brush of the lips at first which quickly grew deeper. The desperate need that had swirled in him during the past week without her, unacknowledged and rejected but never gone, rose to the surface of his consciousness.
His tongue teased at the seam of her lips and they parted, welcoming him inside. He kissed her deeply then, passionately, leaning into her. Cecile’s hands curved over his shoulders and her body bowed into his, her curves pressed against his hard planes. The softness of her breasts mashed against his chest, his aching erection straining into her belly, sent waves of fire through him.
He’d taken Whitby’s comment that they wouldn’t be disturbed as a joke, not expecting to do more than talk to Cecile and maybe kiss her. But suddenly he wanted much more, right here, right now, in that block of sunshine falling across the floor. He wanted to take her, possess her, show her she belonged to him. The primitive urge rushed through him and he broke away before he could suit action to thought.
He gasped for breath and held her away from him. “You must feel it, too. We belong together.”
Her bosom, well covered by the sedate neckline of her dress, rose and fell rapidly. Her cheeks were pink and her lips wet from his kisses. She ran her tongue over them, and his cock throbbed. “Yes, I feel it. But, Nate, how can this ever be? I’ll admit I had hopes of becoming your mistress, but never expected an offer of marriage.”
“Well, you’re getting one. I couldn’t be content to only have you halfway in my life.” He added another lure to the line. “Besides, Peter is living with me now. What kind of example would it set for me to have a mistress in the house? And I won’t set you up in some cottage. I want you with me always, every day and every night.”
She raised her hands to cover her cheeks in a delightfully girlish gesture. “This is too much. I can’t…”
“Yes, you can. Just say you will.”
Cecile couldn’t believe this was happening. It was too similar to fantasies she’d spun in her mind to be real. She would’ve imagined she’d fallen asleep in her chair in the warm shaft of sunlight, except her mouth tingled from Nate’s kisses and she felt his hard hands gripping her waist. Surely a dream couldn’t awaken details down to the very smell of a man, sweaty, muddy, horse-scented. And a dream couldn’t be vivid enough to encompass the timbre of his voice and the look in his eyes when he regarded her.
Sir Nathaniel Covington was here in her sewing room, looking as if he’d devour her like a seven course meal if she only gave the word. There was, of course, only one possible response to his request.
“Yes. I will marry you.”
And then she was back in his arms, her feet swept off the floor and her ribs crushed. She dangled in his embrace like a child’s doll, well-loved and hard-used. Mon Dieu, she wanted to be used hard, filled and pounded with his cock as if it was a battering ram breaching a fortress.
She grasped the back of his head, threading her fingers through the thick strands of his dark hair and twisting while she kissed him as deeply as he was kissing her. Their tongues lashed around each other like a pair of ropes seeking to knot themselves together. Then she sucked on his lower lip, tasting whiskey, feeling the meaty thickness of it. She wanted to bite into it, but let it go after a moment.
Nate set her down and turned her around. She heard a click as he shut the door then his hands moved down her back, unhooking her bodice and letting her dress drop to the floor. With effortless ease like the most experienced lady’s maid he removed her corset, chemise, petticoat and drawers. He unfastened her stockings from her garters and rolled them down her legs.
“Sit,” he ordered, and she sat on her sewing seat while he knelt to remove her shoes and stockings. The gruff command in his voice sent a thrill through her that made her nipples peak. How astounding to hear the husky timbre of his voice here in her solitary sanctuary. He was like a fantasy come to life.
Nate sat back on his heels for a moment, gazing at her sitting nude before him. He grasped her knees and spread her legs farther to stare at her pussy.
Cecile was embarrassed and aroused at his lustful appraisal of the pink folds and dark slit. He rested his thumbs on her labia and pulled them apart. His face lowered and she anticipated his tongue on her, but he continued to examine every nuance of her sex until she was soaking wet and nearly squirming with the need for more.
Glancing down, she realized her left foot was planted right on top of Madame’s wedding gown. Lifting her foot, she kicked at the material to get it out of the way. She should make him stop, gather up the dress and hang it, but somehow the discarded garment was her last concern right now as Nate leaned in between her legs and pressed a kiss to her sex.
She sucked in a soft breath through her teeth and her eyes nearly closed. The pulses throbbing through her down there grew at the touch of his lips. He licked lightly along her seam and twirled his tongue around the bud at the apex of her entrance. His fingers caressed her plump labia then slipped in between, sliding inside her on slick juices. His touch was heavenly, not just because it stimulated her sex but because it was him here at last, making love to her.
The decadence of it—sitting on the chair where she’d spent so many hours at her work, now being pleasured by her lover—was thrilling. She gripped the seat of the chair on either side, as she lifted her hips toward his torturous tongue and clever fingers, thrusting deep and finding a spot that made her whine. Days without Nate, certain that she’d never know his touch again, had primed her for such a moment. Her body and soul yearned for him and it only took a little stimulation before she gasped and cried out softly. Her pussy clenched around his fingers, and she released like a bird flying free of its cage to vanish into the sky.
Cecile panted for air in the still, close warmth of the room, while sparkles of delight continued to tingle through her. And when they’d finished, she opened her eyes and looked down at Nathaniel Covington, kneeling at her feet like a knight errant. His lips were moist with her body fluids and his eyes sparkled with lust.
How erotic it was to be nude and sexually sated while he was still clothed and hungry for her. But now that he’d taken care of her needs, Nate wasted no time in standing and tearing off his clothes. His eagerness was exciting, and her sex tightened in anticipation of being filled completely. Her body had quickly become accustomed to the feeling of his shaft inside her and now craved it desperately.
Naked now, he pulled her off the chair and into his arms. His mouth roved over her face, kissing forehead, eyelids, nose, cheeks and jaw at random. He kissed her neck, sucked on the pulse in her throat. His hands slicked down her back and grabbed her bottom, pulling her hard against his erection. The thick shaft slid over her sensitive clitoris, and she gasped at the piercing intensity of the pleasure.
Then he was lying her back, down onto the floor, onto the white drop cloth spread beneath her chair. Onto Madame’s wedding dress!
“Stop!” she gasped. “The dress will be crushed.”
With a growl of annoyance, Nate disengaged from her, releasing a nipple from his mouth and rising up on his knees. Cecile rolled to one side. He tugged on the shining silk and pulled it from beneath her.
“Not on the floor,” she said when it appeared he would throw the garment aside.
Giving another impatient grunt, he rose and draped the dress over the nearest dressmaker’s dummy, and then he was back, kneeling over her. His blue eyes caught the sunlight and shone so brightly they were like the iridescent breast of a peacock. He looked like he would devour her as he slowly lowered his body over hers.
She glanced down between them, seeing his magnificent cock angled straight for her sex. It bumped against her clit, sending another pang of bliss rocketing through her then Nate angled lower, nudging his cock between her legs. Without a guiding hand, the head sought her center and pushed inside. She stopped watching then, as her eyes closed and she immersed herself in the sensation of having him inside her.
Nate exhaled a sigh as he thrust deep. Her body enveloped him, her muscles drawing him in until they were joined, interlocked like individual pieces of a garment sewn together strong and firm. At last those irregular pattern pieces made sense when they became a finished gown. This was what she’d waited for her whole life. He was her missing half and for the first time Cecile felt right in being with him. There were no more lies. He knew who she was and wanted her without reservation, which was only right because they belonged together. She had no doubts about that now. Her body had known it all along. It had simply taken her mind longer to catch up.
The floorboards beneath her back were hard underneath the thin sheet. His body weight pressed her into the floor, but the slight discomfort only added to her pleasure in a perverse way. She wanted to be pinned beneath him, here on the floor of her mistress’s house in a shaft of sunlight. The sun was hot and Nate’s body was hotter, thick and heavy and real. She could smell him, taste the salt of his skin with her tongue, feel the sheen of sweat beneath her hands as they slid down his back to grip his ass. His muscles were taut and flexed beneath her palms as he pumped in and out of her body.
Cecile watched his face, the frown of concentration, the shadow from his eyelashes cast against his cheeks. She was entranced by the flare of his nostrils as he breathed, the moisture beading on his forehead and upper lip, the wetness of his parted lips. She lifted her head from the floor and kissed him, tasting her musky essence on his mouth.
He kissed her back, long and lingering, while he continued to rise and fall, filling her over and over. Cecile spread her legs wider then wrapped them around his lower back, locking her heels together. Her spine pressed harder into the floor, as her hips lifted off it, creating a new angle, a deeper penetration. And deep within her the lingering sparkles of her orgasm gathered like fireflies congregating.
“Cecile,” he breathed her name and joy swelled in her heart. He moved faster now, thrust harder, as his climax built.
She relaxed and rose along with him, higher and higher. She dug her fingers into his flesh, kneading him, feeling him, and her mouth opened wide against his chest as though in a silent scream. His sweat bathed her, and their slick bodies writhed together in the heat of the sun, slapping and sliding against one another.
“Now,” he groaned. “Oh God, now.”
Inside, she felt the swell move through him and she clamped her muscles hard around him, drawing his essence from him and into herself. One more thrust and he struck that particular spot inside her like a mallet hitting a gong. The reverberations of another orgasm, subtler than the last, vibrated through her. Her body arched up and her mind flew away again.
They remained locked together, fused by sweat and lust and gasping for breath for several minutes, and then the one became two again. Nate peeled away from her and rolled to his back, flinging an arm above his head and blowing out a long breath. Cecile rested a hand on her chest, feeling her heart pounding.
After a bit, Nate reached over and took her hand, clasping it lightly. “Cecile Lambeaux, now that you’re going to be my wife, tell me about your life.”
She shrugged. “There’s not much to tell. It’s very short. My life didn’t really begin until I met you.”
Cecile squatted on her haunches to read the faded lettering on the flat gray stone near the edge of a sprawling city cemetery in Paris. A damp wind whipped across the slope, lifting her hat from her head and sending it flying between the rows of similar markers.
“I’ll get it.” Peter ran after the beribboned straw bonnet as it tumbled over the brown grass, and snatched it up as it caught against another stone.
“Are you all right?” Nate crouched beside her and opened his cape to wrap half of it around her. Instantly the heavy wool garment cut the chill wind. The warmth of his body and his heavy arm draped around her shoulders helped, too. “You need a heavier coat.”
“I don’t know what I thought I’d feel when I finally found them.” Cecile reached out and traced the letters of her mother’s name with one finger, as if that would make some connection, but she still felt nothing. “They’re just stones. I was so young when they were taken from me I really have very little memory of either of them.”
Nate clasped her arm, squeezing her shoulders lightly.
“Except…I think I remember my Papa sailing me through the air like a bird. And I remember Mama’s voice singing a song.”
“Think of those things, then. Remember them that way,” Nate advised.
The sound of Peter’s racing feet on the ground stopped right behind them as he returned with Cecile’s hat. “Here, Madame.”
“Thank you, Peter.” She took it from him and put it back on, tying the pink ribbons tight beneath her chin and running the hat pin through the straw more firmly.
“I used to visit my mother’s grave when I was younger, but it never helped so I stopped going,” Peter said. “I had Granny, after all, and my friends and pets. I wasn’t alone.”
Cecile tilted her face to look up at him and reached out her hand. “And now you have us.” His ungloved hand was cold as she clasped it in hers. She could feel the cold even through her glove. “Mon Dieu! You’re cold. It is time we returned to the hotel and had some chocolate, non?”
“Only if you’re ready to go. We came here for this.” Nate rose, taking her arm and drawing her up with him. “If there’s any place you want to visit we’ll go there. Peter can take the cold. He’s a strong young man.”
The boy’s head bobbed in agreement. But his cheeks and nose were bright red and Cecile had had enough of shivering on the hillside herself. As Peter had said, she wouldn’t find her family in a graveyard. Her living family flanked her on either side; the tall brown-haired man and coltish brown-haired boy. And she had more family back in England: Meredith, who was like a sister to her.
Soon their pilgrimage to France to find Cecile’s family would be over and they would return home in time for Meredith’s wedding. After that… A thrill of excitement at the unknown future shivered through Cecile, or maybe it was just the chill breeze sneaking underneath his cloak. She clasped Nate’s hand and squeezed it. His warmth enveloped her.
Cecile reached down to take Peter’s icy hand, too. He looked up at her and a small smile flashed across his lips. He seemed embarrassed yet pleased by her holding his hand. The boy was hers now, too. Peter would have to leave them to return to school, but he would be home on every break and they would live as a family in Nate’s moldy old manor, working to make the estate as it once was. There would be setbacks such as dealing with Ronald when his debts mounted or satisfying disgruntled tenants, but they would face these problems together.
And who knew, maybe there would be a child of their own one day. The idea of it put a smile on her face.
Nate bent his head toward her. “What are you thinking?”
“That I have a family at last.” She looked up at him and her smile grew wider.
He nodded and leaned to kiss her. “We have a family.”