The Baron’s Betrothal: An On-Again, Off-Again, On-Again Regency Romance (The Horsemen of the Apocalypse Series) (39 page)

“Clun, put me down,” she squeezed out as he climbed the stairs to the second floor.

“Shhh, Bess, you’re squawking.”

“I can’t breathe this way, sir.” She struggled ineffectually.

“No kicking or poor, decrepit Lord Clun is liable to drop you. What with his chilblains and all.”
 

She hung limp for only a moment then swatted his rump. Hard.
 

“That’s only exciting me,” he sang.
 

She squawked some more, but he was laughing too hard to hear what she squawked.

Outside his bedchamber, he let her down gently and opened the door. She got no farther because he swept her up again. This time, he cradled her in his arms and bore her over the threshold. A crackling fire burned in the hearth and warmed the room.

“Oh, Clun, you do have potential.”

“I’m relieved to hear it,” he said gruffly.
 

She flung her arms about his neck and kissed him. Mid-kiss, she opened her eyes to peek at him. He’d closed his just in time. She landed soft pecks on his eyelids and longer, deeper kisses on his smiling mouth. Then she kissed him as he had kissed her at the opera. Thoroughly. She teased open his lips with her tongue. He sucked on its tip and let her explore. She slid from his arms and he undid her buttons, hooks, laces and ties so deftly she was divested of her garments in one, long, warm, intimate kiss.

In turn, she pushed off his waistcoat, unwound his stock, and started on the shirt buttons at his throat. His breath caught as she tugged the shirttail from his breeches.

He caught up her hands and pressed them against his arousal. “This is your doing, Bess. I can barely contain myself.”

“So I noticed. Frequently.”

“I am shocked and scandalized,” he quipped. Rather, he was thrilled, and relieved, and eager for her. He shucked off the rest of his clothes with all speed. At long last, they were naked, and he wasn’t dreaming.
 

Clun purred.

* * *

No classical statuary, friezes or kraters compared to her Hercules in the flesh. But Clun gave her no time to study him as she would have liked. He flung back the counterpane, laid her on the bed and eased himself beside her.
 

She looked into his fathomless eyes and asked, “May I watch this time, Clun?”

“By all means. I intend to,” he said with a throaty laugh. His hand, so big and warm, stroked languidly over her body in long, leisurely sweeps that left tiny hairs tingling from her shoulders to her thighs. He kissed her neck and slowly kissed his way to her breasts. And stopped.

“By God, Bess, what is this?”

“What?” She asked, aroused and impatient.

He tugged on her necklace until the ring swung into view.
 

“Washburn noticed it and I had long enough arms. It was meant to be found.”

“Just as you predicted.”

“I am optimistic.”

“And I’m most fortunate you are.”
 

He untangled the necklace from her hair, lifted it over her head and set it all on the bedside cabinet.
 

“I wonder what else I might find if I look hard enough,” he murmured. She giggled as he explored the crease beneath her breast, licking up to its tender peak and teasing it mercilessly before sucking it between his lips. The sensation rippled through her as if there were a strand of nerves connecting her nipple to her sex. His teasing above created an answering, aching pulse between her legs. When he kissed his way lower still, the ache grew. His fingers caressed and explored her. And with a happy sigh, he followed his hands between her legs and pressed his mouth there, intent on tasting her. She writhed and cried out with the pleasure he gave her. He settled in and held her open to his hungry tongue, lapping at her, till she dissolved into the sensation of it.

His eyes never left her and he seemed intent on pleasuring her all night to drive her mad with desire.
 

“I want you, Clun, I want you,” she gasped, “I need you.”
 

Only then did he relent. He lifted himself to settle hard and heavy between her legs. He pressed himself against her till she moaned and begged.
 

“Clun!” She cried in consternation and ecstasy.
 

“I’m here, love.”

“Please,” she exclaimed and clawed at his back to underscore her point. “Now.”

There was a pinch of pain when he entered her. She was too swept up in the onrush of sensations to notice.
 

“Oh, Bess,” he sighed, “Bess.”

She gasped, too, as he bore down, deeper and deeper, till his pelvis ground against her. Once inside her, he stilled. She felt him throb as if his heart now beat within her. He took her in a rhythm that accelerated something carnal and voluptuous in her. In response, she lifted her hips to meet his thrusts. Still, it was not close enough. She wrapped her long legs around him and held on for dear life and for the sheer, inexpressible ecstasy of their joining. He kissed her neck and throat as he thrust slow and deep. She gripped his buttocks and he growled as she urged him deeper, faster still.
 

Mrs. Abeel had explained the act so Elizabeth wasn’t tense her first time, despite her innocence. But the profound connection she felt in Clun’s embrace was overwhelming, its power frightening. He surged into her and receded again and again. And she let him sweep her up and away. Off she floated, clinging to him, holding him deep within her. Sweaty and panting, both cried out with relief when her tension finally exploded and ebbed away in lingering pulses. Not long after he, too, found his release.

After the maelstrom, he lay next to her, holding her close. She nestled into his warmth, tired yet more alive than ever before.

“Are you exhausted, poor old Lord Clun?” She stroked his heaving chest as he lay on his back, an arm flung overhead.

“Dare I admit it?” He replied. “And you?”

“No, I am over stimulated.” She toyed with his closest nipple. It was the tiniest button on a broad, sweaty slab of muscle. Just below his ribs she found a silvery puckered scar the diameter of a shilling.

“What’s this?” She touched the scar.

“I was shot once and twice blessed.”

“Blessed to be shot?”

“No. Blessed that it missed my lung, and that I don’t remember a thing. Seelye brought me back behind our lines somehow.”

“You’re much larger than he, how’d he manage it?”

“Won’t say. Told me I’d disapprove his methods.”

“How could you disapprove?”
 

“If he says I would, I know not to ask.”

She hummed and caressed him until another thought occurred to her, “Why is adultery called ‘criminal conversation’?”

“It’s a euphemism, Bess.”

“Well, obviously,” she snorted. “But talking would only distract from the experience, which is—”
 

“Hmm?” He smiled.

“Unforgettable,” she sighed. “But there should be a better term.”

He fell silent for a time. “Ill joy,” he suggested at last. “Illicit joinery.”

“That’s carpentry, Clun, I think not.”

“Then I leave it to you,” he whispered sleepily.
 

“But I welcome your opinion.”

“In which case, it’s my opinion we marry with all speed. In London,” he whispered into her ear. “Everyone here, except Roddy and Cook, thinks we’re married. I’d rather not upset the staff. As for a better term for adultery, it’ll never apply unless you plan to cuckold me.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said, soothed by the rumbling good humor of the big, warm, whimsical man beside her. She slung her arm across his broad chest. “I’ve grown rather fond of dear, old, decrepit Lord Clun.”

“You have my sympathy,” he whispered and kissed her forehead. “I am a trial.”

* * *

Waking first the next morning, Clun leaned over Elizabeth as she lay gloriously naked in his bed. Her hair tumbled over the pillows and she still glowed from their lovemaking. He could happily hover like a moth and watch her for hours. It was a trite simile to be sure but no less true. He couldn’t resist her.

Clun finally pulled himself from their bed, dressed and hurried to the kitchen to have bath water heated. He, Roddy and the handful of servants in residence soon hauled up enough hot water to the baron’s suite to fill a large tub for her.
 

Elizabeth burrowed shyly under the eiderdown to hide among the rumpled sheets smelling of lavender and their lovemaking.
 

“Your bath awaits, my lady,” Clun whispered to her when they were alone.

Chapter 36

In which the cats play while the mice are away.

A
s tired and sore as she was, Elizabeth never felt more cherished than when Clun emptied the last copper of steaming water into the tub and came for her. He rolled up his sleeves, threw back the covers and lifted her from the rumpled bed as if she were a wisp (which she wasn’t). After he settled her into the hot, scented water, he lathered a bar of soap in his hands. She sighed for as long as she had breath when he began to bathe her.
 

Had she not known it to be a physical impossibility, she’d have sworn his ministrations reduced her bones to aspic.

What she liked best, though, was his concentration. He focused all his attention on her. He gazed in wonder everywhere his big hands touched her as he bent to his task. He soaped her shoulders and breasts, taking excessive care with her nipples till she giggled and swatted his hands away. He stroked lower to her belly and teased at her navel. Lower still, he stroked gently between her legs and sent renewed waves of desire pulsing through her. She moaned and held his hand still against her. He looked up at her, worried.

“Oh, Clun,” she sighed.

“What? Did I hurt you?”

“No.”

He bowed his head and murmured, “Perhaps I was over-enthusiastic last night.” He became engrossed with washing her arm, caressing it in a firm, soothing, soapy grip from shoulder to fingertips. “It was your first time, I should’ve been gentler.”

She shook her head ‘no’ and pulled his face to hers for a kiss.

Mistaking her denial for forbearance, he said, “I’ll do better next time, Bess.”
 

“Heaven help me if you do,” she moaned and sank nose deep in the bathwater. She blinked at him, the corners of her smile just above the water’s surface.

It was as if the heavens opened and lit his face. Clun smiled back at her in a way she’d never seen. Before her eyes, happiness settled over him. She saw it relax his features. It softened his lips into a teasing, boyish half-smile and deepened his solitary dimple. And it warmed his dark eyes as he held her gaze. She felt inordinately proud of herself for having inspired that grin.

* * *

With most of the staff in Wales packing up the baroness’ personal effects for removal to the Ludlow dower house, Clun and Elizabeth were left almost completely on their own at The Graces. They wore two of his shawl-collared dressing gowns all day — hers engulfed her but she loved the scent of him next to her skin. They played catch-me, catch-me and kiss-chase in the unpopulated rooms and echoing corridors. While at play, they thundered up and down stairs and through communicating rooms, laughing so hard the captured could not kiss properly when caught. They ran in bare feet chortling and roaring like manic children escaped from their dour nanny. They did, that is, when they managed to venture from the vast, rumpled baronial bedstead.

Before the New Year, Clun managed to take care of some estate business. He sent a formal letter to commission Sir Thomas Lawrence for a portrait and sent word to Fewings in London by express courier telling him to ‘warn’ the baroness something was afoot at the castle to bring her bustling back.
 

It was time he faced the Fury.

Venturing
 
into the study that afternoon, his lady proposed a game of hide-and-seek. The lord of the manor agreed, provided the seeker earned a boon upon finding the hider. To this, the lady agreed with some misgivings. The lord of the manor also graciously volunteered to seek first and began counting rapidly to 50 without further warning.
 

His lady squealed in outrage and scampered off while he continued to count at what she yelled was a “grossly unfair speed.”
 

Clun heard her patter up the stairs from the second floor and started following her by the time he was rattling off “35-36-37-38.”
 

“Cheater!” echoed down from the hallway above. “Of all the devious, dirty tricks. Wretched scoundrel!”

“All’s fair, love,” he called out as he stormed up the stairs finishing the count as he started his search.
 

He heard an answering squawk and indignant mutterings continue in the distance. Sound carried beautifully in the empty corridor. He sought her by taunting her and then listening for muffled grumbles of irritation coming from furniture in each room.
 

At the end of the hall, he detected barely audible grumblings as he listed possible boons.
 

“I have it,” he concluded. “I shall pour cream in your navel, love, and lap it up like a cat.”

On tiptoe, he crept up to an obstreperous wardrobe and threw open its doors. She squealed. He demanded his boon even before she could unfold herself from the armoire. She refused flatly to serve as his saucer of cream, pleading ticklishness. Naturally, his boon involved allowing him to find every hidden, ticklish place on her body. Not surprisingly, their game stalled when opponents made thorough, languid love on the unused bed.

* * *

After the exhausted pair revived themselves from Cook’s larder, Elizabeth became the seeker and Clun the sought.
 

Not being a “wretched cheat like a certain someone who shall remain nameless,” she gave Clun the full count to 50. She regretted it immediately. After searching fruitlessly for the baron through the saloons on the first floor, and the unoccupied second and third floor bedrooms, she headed back to the baronial bedchamber to await his triumphant reappearance. Instead, she discovered him sprawled atop his bearskin rug.