The Inheritance (24 page)

“Yes, Your Grace,” the proprietor said, bowing obsequiously and racing to keep ahead of Nicholas, who was already headed for the stairs.

“Here’s your room, Your Grace. The best in the house.”

“Send up some water for my wife to wash. We’ll have our dinner in the private parlor later. Everything has been arranged?”

Nicholas raised a regal black brow that the proprietor acknowledged with another bow. “Yes, Your Grace. Everything will be ready at your convenience.”

“Close the door on your way out,” Nicholas said.

The proprietor bowed again and left them alone.

“You can put me down now,” Daisy said.

Nicholas eyed the bed. That was where he wanted to put her, but he knew there would be servants coming soon with water for Daisy to refresh herself. When he made love to her, he didn’t want to be interrupted. Slowly he eased her down the front of him, enjoying the trembling shiver that shimmered through her.

The eyes that met his weren’t the least bit droopy or sensuous. They were downright suspicious.

“All right,” she said. “What’s wrong with my appearance?”

Nicholas grinned. He couldn’t help it. He gestured toward an oval mirror standing in the corner. “Take a look for yourself.”

Daisy stalked over to the mirror. In the dusky light from the leaded window she didn’t see anything at
first. Then she spied it. She took a step closer and leaned in toward the mirror. Her fingertips examined the small bruise on her throat.

“Oh.” She turned to face him. At first her lips flattened. Then her eyes crinkled with humor.

Nicholas was surprised and confused by her response. “You aren’t angry?” he asked in a wary voice.

“Not if you aren’t.”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

She stood back and gestured toward the mirror.

Nicholas marched over and looked at himself. There, just beneath his right ear, was a small purple bruise. His cravat was askew, and his hair was standing on end.

“Oh.” His ears turned pink.

Daisy laughed. When Nicholas turned to her with a frown on his face, she covered her mouth to try to stop her giggles. But they kept coming. And got worse. “Oh, if you could only have seen yourself,” she said, hugging her ribs and bending over with laughter. “My wife isn’t feeling well,” she mimicked. “And all the time … all the time … he must have known what was wrong with both of us.”

Nicholas’s mouth twitched, then turned up in a smile. Finally he laughed, a deep guffaw that came up from his belly. “Good Lord! I wonder how many other dukes have arrived here looking like they’ve come from an orgy?”

“I’ll never be able to show my face in this place again,” Daisy said.

“Maybe we won’t sleep late tomorrow, after all,” Nicholas said. “Maybe it would be better if we sneak out at dawn.”

Daisy laughed until tears spilled from her eyes. “Oh, Nicholas, I don’t know when I’ve laughed so hard. It’s been so long. It feels so
good
.”

Nicholas could no more have stopped himself from taking Daisy in his arms than he could have stopped the rain from falling in England. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to seek her mouth with his. To feel the smile on her lips, to take the joy that bubbled out of her and merge it with his kiss. He reached over without looking and turned the key in the door.

“To hell with water for washing. To hell with dinner. To hell with everything. Except this.”

His mouth found hers again, and he took what he wanted, what he needed from her. “Daisy, Daisy,” he said in a raw voice. “I need you. Now.”

A knock on the door interrupted him.

He tore his mouth from hers, knowing they wouldn’t be left alone until he answered. “Go away,” he said in his best ducal voice.

“But, Your Grace—”

“Leave us alone!” Nicholas waited until the footsteps in the hall had receded before he returned his gaze to Daisy. Her hands were around his neck, and her body was pressed close to his. Even through the layers of cloth, he knew she must feel his arousal.

“Well, Daisy, we’re alone at last.”

The fear came and went so quickly in her eyes that he wondered again whether he had really seen it. But she did nothing to stop him as he lowered his mouth to hers and took the sustenance she offered him.

Daisy had already lived through one wedding night. But it had been nothing at all like this. She
had experienced more intimacy with Nicholas in the carriage than she had with Tony in all her years of marriage. And she was totally unprepared for the fever Nicholas kindled in her blood.

Tony had kissed her, but only as a perfunctory prelude to the main act. She wondered whether it would be the same with Nicholas, whether having kissed her with such abandon in the carriage he would behave the same way once they were in bed. Her anxiety made her nervous, and her nervousness made her stiffen.

Nicholas immediately noticed the difference. The pliant woman, receptive to his kisses, had disappeared. In her place he held a rigid, unyielding board.

He let her go and stepped away from her. She immediately lowered her eyes to keep him from looking into them. But he wasn’t about to let Daisy hide from him. He took her chin in his hand and forced her head up.

“Look at me, Daisy.” His fingers tightened. “Look at me.”

She lifted her lids, and he saw the fear.

He should have known she would be afraid. She had called him all sorts of names, labeled him a beast. And a beast was certain to be a savage in bed. It made him furious to think she believed he would harm a hair on her head. “What are you afraid of?” he asked in a low, menacing voice.

Daisy swallowed hard. It was more in the nature of a gulp. “It’s been a long time.”

“Tony’s only been dead a year.”

“It’s been much longer since … since he came to my bed,” Daisy confessed.

“How long?” Nicholas demanded.

“Six years.”

Nicholas’s hand circled her throat, where he felt her pulse pounding crazily. “Are you telling me Tony didn’t touch you for six of the eight years you were married to him?”

Daisy chose to respond with anger rather than embarrassment. She grasped the wrist of the hand that held her. Her eyes flashed with annoyance that she was being forced to reveal things to her new husband that were not his business. “Once he knew I couldn’t give him an heir, he wanted nothing further to do with me.”

His thumb brushed her cheek. Gently. Very gently. “He was a fool.”

Daisy stared at Nicholas, her heart in her eyes. That wasn’t the response she had expected from him. Nor did she expect the bare brush of his finger to send a frisson of sensation streaking to her belly.

“I suppose he had a mistress or two,” Nicholas mused. “Although why he would want another woman, when he had you, I can’t imagine.” His hand smoothed down her throat and over a shoulder bared by her wedding gown.

Daisy flushed with pleasure at what she recognized as a compliment. But she also knew that Nicholas wasn’t in possession of all the facts. Now was the time to confess her lack of ability in bed, her undesirability as a bed partner. She might as well. He was going to find out for himself very shortly.

“I couldn’t please him,” she confessed in a rush. “Tony found me lacking in … lacking,” she said, unable to be more specific than that.

“Surely not lacking here,” Nicholas said as he
brushed a hand across her breast. The tip pebbled before his hand had left her. “Or here,” he said, briefly touching her lips with his. “Or here,” he said, sliding his hand down to her belly and below.

Daisy trembled. “I don’t know exactly …”

“He could have taught you what he wanted,” Nicholas said, his eyes holding hers, forcing her to meet his gaze and promising her that he would remedy the situation.

“Nicholas. I’m … scared.” The last word came out as a whisper.

“Of what?” he said. “I won’t bite. Too hard,” he corrected with a teasing smile.

“That I won’t please you.”

His hands found her waist and tightened there, his thumbs sliding low to caress her hipbones. “You already please me,” he said. “Everything about you pleases me.”

“But you can’t know—”

“Trust me.”

They were strange words for him to utter. Especially when he knew so much more about betrayal. But he gave her no chance to worry further about whether she would please him. He could tell she had worried long enough. He would prove to her that she was exactly what he wanted and needed in a woman.

He set out to seduce her, as she had unconsciously seduced him in the gallery of Severn Manor. He kissed and caressed, seeking the spots that would arouse her ardor, until he knew she was caught up in a sensual maelstrom. He felt too impatient to bother with the thousands of buttons on her dress,
but as his hands closed around the material to tear it away, he remembered his fantasy in the carriage.

His hands loosened, and he turned her around so her back was facing him. One at a time, he released the buttons, each time pressing a hot kiss to her flesh. Sometimes his tongue caressed her. Sometimes it was his teeth that grazed her satiny skin. His lips wandered, seeking pleasure and giving it. He had never become so aroused merely kissing a woman, but he forced himself to finish what he had started, down to the very last button, which revealed the two small dimples above her buttocks.

Daisy moaned. “What are you doing to me, Nicholas?”

“Loving you.” He slowly shoved the dress down her arms and brushed away her tangled copper curls to press one last kiss to her nape.

An animalistic, guttural sound forced its way out of Daisy’s throat.

She wondered how two men could be so very different. Tony had never cherished her as Nicholas just had. He had never kissed her flesh as though it had the taste of ripe strawberries. He had never wanted her so badly he was trembling, as Nicholas was now.

Daisy no longer doubted her ability to please Nicholas. Nor did she doubt her own ability to respond to him. She was willing to bear all the pain she knew would come when he left her in exchange for the passion he offered to share with her. It wasn’t love. But it was something equally intimate—the joining of two people in the most primal manner possible.

Nicholas was less patient with Daisy’s corset. He
hated the thing, and it bothered him not at all when the ties snapped in surrender to his strength.

Nicholas was unprepared when Daisy stayed his hands on her clothing while she began to undress him. He was staggered when she performed the same ritual on his shirt that he had performed with her dress. His body was quivering by the time she reached his navel.

Daisy relished the chance to taste Nicholas, to feel the crisp hair on his chest. To watch his flat nipples peak as her tongue rasped over them. To watch his belly contract as her teeth slid over his skin. She reveled in the smell of him, the texture and taste of him.

His cousin was a fool, Nicholas thought. He had known from the first moment he saw Daisy that she was a sensual creature. He had wanted her fire, wanted to sink himself into her and be burned up in the conflagration. Her skin was smooth, her hair silky. He couldn’t touch enough, couldn’t get his fill. He curled his fingers in her hair and pulled her close for a searing kiss.

Then she was touching him, pressing against him. And he burned.

Daisy had never known what it was to want a man this way. Had never known she could be so demanding as a lover. But when she laid both her hands on Nicholas’s bare chest she felt a shudder go through him, and she experienced a sense of feminine power such as she had never imagined. She wanted to touch him, to taste him. Her hand slid down, oh, so slowly, to cover the bulge in his trousers.

Nicholas groaned. “What are you doing to me, Daisy?”

She froze. “You don’t like it?”

She started to remove her hand, but he caught it and held it against him. His lazy-lidded eyes sought hers. “It feels good. Damn good. Don’t stop, Daisy.”

She was more hesitant as she continued her exploration across his flanks to his hard buttocks. She soon forgot to be careful. It was fascinating to watch muscle and sinew tense beneath her touch. The rough sounds Nicholas made in his throat caused a corresponding excitement deep within her.

His hands weren’t still, either. Daisy felt herself undulate beneath his caresses. It wasn’t until she felt his hand on her belly that she realized she was naked.

So was he.

Astonished, she glanced up into his eyes, down at his evident arousal, then back up into his eyes, which by then were alive with laughter.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t seen anything like it before, because I won’t believe you.”

“But I haven’t!” Daisy blurted. “I mean, it was always dark, and we were under the covers and—” Daisy hid her face against Nicholas’s chest to keep from blurting anything more.

“A fool and an idiot,” Nicholas muttered.

His arms closed around Daisy, and he held her close. He could feel her nipples harden against his chest. The copper curls between her legs teased his shaft, causing it to throb. He clenched his jaws and forced himself to patience. If he did what he wanted he would terrify her. He had asked for her trust, and he intended to earn it.

His hands roamed her back from her shoulders all the way to the dimples above her buttocks. He
wanted to grasp her and pull her close, but he resisted the urge. Barely.

The room filled with shadows as the sun began to set.

“Daisy,” he murmured against her ear.

“What, Nicholas?”

“I think it’s time to go to bed.”

Her fingernails cut into his shoulders. The fear—more of inadequacy now than of him—was back. Kissing was all well and good, but she had been dry when Tony thrust into her body, and it had hurt terribly. She couldn’t be sure the same thing wouldn’t happen with Nicholas. “I’m afraid,” she whispered.

“I know. I’ll take care of you,” he said. “I promise.”

To his surprise, the tension slipped away, and she became pliant in his arms. Her body melted against his, and he felt his pulse begin to race.

He kissed her eyes closed, then kissed each cheek and finally found her mouth with his. It was a questing kiss, seeking permission to enter. She parted her lips and sighed a welcome. His tongue probed, then stroked her mouth, blatantly mimicking the sexual act.