The Windflower (60 page)

Touching his fingertips along the rise of her cheek, he felt her j flesh heat under his skin.

"If 1 could give you anything, what would it be, Merry?"

She sat curiously still, staring back at his reflection. Then a wry' little smile curved her lips. "A moment or two without having to think."

Softly he said, "Love, I can give you that."

His face had taken on an intent drowsy look she could feel in the lower part of her body. Her pulse skipped a pair of beats, and the tightness of her throat spread to her breasts. She swallowed uncomfortably as the experienced fingers slipped downward, stroking lightly the taut sinews of her throat. The heat of his body came to her from behind, his hips pressing into her back just beneath her shoulders. His knee slid up to the cushioned seat, bracing his leg, the motion cradling her against his thighs.

"Drink," he whispered, bringing the wineglass around her shoulder, touching the rim to her lower lip. His other hand, cupping her throat, felt the rippling convulsions as she drank. A delicate massage of-the soft underside of her chin tilted her head, and he bent, bringing his mouth down on hers. He drank the wine from her lips, tasting her flesh with his open mouth. Gently supporting her chin on his wrist, he slanted the wineglass to take some of the pale liquid on his finger and trailed it in a lazy path along the inner surface of her lips, following it with the tip of his tongue. The wine left a faint erotic glow where his light caresses applied it to the dove's-wing softness of her lower lip, the moisture aiding his mouth's exploration. Her eyelids fell shut, her lips swollen and slightly parted, her breath deliciously uneasy.

She abandoned herself to his touch, to the growing pressure within her body, losing herself in the melody of his murmured love words. His fingers were warm, slightly heating the sparkling wine before bringing it to the ripe nerves behind her ear, to her temples, to the thickly beating pulse in her throat. The heady fluid played beguiling tricks as the air cooled and dried it, leaving a hot, penetrating residue that saturated deeply into her fluttery senses. She turned her head weakly to the side, skimming her lips along his forearm, and then, as he offered it, his wrist, the rise of his palm, its warm hollow. And as his hands sank downward to lift and caress her breasts she heard a softly pleading sound escape her throat, and she said his name in anguished desire.

His quiet laughter flickered against her shoulder. "No, little flower. Softly, love. I need you too, but we have to give your body more time to be ready for love." His mouth, covering hers, caught her pleasure cry as his thumbs found her nipples, stroking them through fabric. Gliding over the moist surfaces of her lips, he whispered, "Tonight I want to pull the soul out of your body, Merry, and bring it together with my own."

She said something—a husky little utterance that sounded like "Yipes"—and he was laughing again as he slid his fingers under the narrow ribbons of her chemisette and drew it over her shoulders and down the smooth trembling flesh of her arms. Letting the fabric spill in a shimmer like new snow around her hips, he brought his hands back to stroke tenderly over the length of her hair, lifting it in a mass to his face, inhaling its hypnotic fragrance.

Peeking shakily upward, she watched the reflected image of her hair, a reddish tumbling cascade, as it mingled with his wild honey fairness. Her eyes had a liquid radiance, her mouth shone wetly, passion-flushes tinged her cheeks and neck. She stared at the puzzle of herself for a quick-breathing moment, until his hands found their way back to her breasts and she closed her eyes, gasping against the sweetness of his flesh pressing into hers. Her body pushed backward into the coaxing warmth of his thighs and bare stomach. Blindly searching, she brought an arm up to touch his face and to rub the back of his neck. And it was his turn to gasp as the motion arched her breasts into his fingers. Burying himself in the splendor of her curls, his palms pressed her overtender flesh, gently distorting the soft shape of her breast with their pressure. His thumbs, dewed in wine, slightly lifted her aching nipples. For a long time he held her thus against his body while his hands played luxuriantly over her bewildered flesh until she was hot and sweat-damped and shivering, and as he drew her to the bed she pulled at his clothing, undressing him with clumsy, shaking fingers as he laid her crosswise on the bed.

"Devon—1 love you . . . love you," she whispered thickly. "Love me ... love me ..."

"I will, little flower." But instead he brought his mouth down to rock gently over her panting lips. His hand began a light kneading motion on the skin below her navel that traveled slowly to her lean thigh muscle and then, more slowly yet, to her inner thigh. She was in a restless delirium of pleasure and need before he dipped his fingertips in the wine and slipped them into her. The fluid lubricated her to the love-nuzzle of his fingers, and his gently careful touch had brought her almost to rapture when he withdrew them.

Her bliss-numbed eyes flew open, and he kissed away the gathering tears of confusion. His own eyes were warm and blurred as he murmured, "It can be even stronger . . . higher, Merry. Trust me ..." And this time when he brought his mouth to hers, she met him with an open burning passion that exploded through his blood.

Holding her face in wet, unsteady fingers, he whispered, "Shall 1— Yes, sweet flower, touch me ... yes, again. Love, shall I make you fly? I'll show you."

He kissed every part of her. The lingering wine smears, heated and incensed by her flesh, were severely intoxicating. He could taste her from his throat to his loins. Her supple moist skin was like an expensive and subtle spirit: the fermented sepals of orchids, powdered silk, flecked gold and myrrh. He picked up the soft weight of her hair and rubbed it over her and himself, over her cheeks, her breasts, her mouth, his mouth. And his clever tongue, more articulate than it was even in speech, dragged her spirit to some high drifting heaven where her body shimmered like mist, in separate shining cells. She knew nothing beyond wet hot ecstasy, could not divide sensation into its parts; she could hardly follow the path of his hair brushing a rhythm on her skin or recognize that the shoulders and heels pressing so urgently into the bedclothes were her own. And then she saw him smiling lovingly, dreamily down at her as he entered her, spreading a smooth, exquisite voluptuousness through her, catching her writhing hips in a gentle grip and saying, "Slowly, love . . . slowly."

She had an unearthly beauty to her, her eyes with a ravished angel luster, her body answering his motions, quivering with exalted anticipation and then releasing a deep-rooted shudder each time he thrust himself slowly into her. As from a distance, he heard himself repeating her name, asking her in a shivering whisper to hold him, helping her to wrap her beautiful legs in their ankle bracelets around his body; and taking her face in his palms, he gazed into her feverish eyes and murmured, "I love you, I love you, I love you" until at last, under the worship of his body, she touched the heights he had brought her toward, in love, and his adoring hands caressed the tremors of her surrender.

Her fluctuating senses, battered by the potency of her release, led her to weep afterward, and he held and cherished her, curving her body to his in the way two bodies will curve together after love. When he could, which was not soon, he rose and brought another glass of wine, and sitting up, he pulled her body, limp as a heavy sheepskin, onto his lap and into his arms. He fed her a little wine, and when he saw she could hardly swallow, he kissed the excess from her lips. To his delight she said in a cross little voice, "If
that
was the glass you've been sticking your fingers into ..."

"Oh, no," he said, stretching an arm back to the bedstand to lift the other glass. "This is." With a wickedly teasing glint in his eyes he put the glass to his lips, and she watched with fascination and a little awe as he swallowed the remaining wine, savoring it. He gave her a smile of breathtaking charm, laid his fingers, barely touching, on her lips, and said, "Nectar of Merry."

CHAPTER THIRTY

However well placed Michael Granville's faith in her ingenuity may have been, it took none at all for Merry to escape Teasel Hill well before the hour she had appointed to meet Raven. Devon had been closeted since midmorning with his long-suffering man of business, who had been waiting with breathless impatience since Devon's homecoming to pounce on his elusive master and begin the formidable task of bringing the young duke up-to-date on the many details of his vast estates that required his attention. Aunt April and Devon's mother had remained late in their beds, recruiting their energies after the late hours of last night's ball. With some inner trepidation Merry asked Mr. Stanmore, Devon's steward, if he might order the carriage prepared for her, because she had some business to attend to in London. Without even waiting to hear her carefully rehearsed amplification he had excused himself with a smile and a promise that it would be done directly. Heady stuff that, for a girl whose servants in Virginia had known her from the cradle and were more likely to kindly direct
her
activities than the opposite. Merry's success with Mr. Stanmore almost emboldened her to ask for the key to the gun room because, though the weapons there were mostly of the sporting variety, Aline had mentioned once that it held also a small collection of pistols that Devon's father had acquired on his travels. But though there was nothing pleasant about the possibility of going unarmed to a confrontation with Granville, she was afraid that a sudden desire to examine the guns must occasion some notice. Someone might even mention it to Devon as soon as he emerged from his meeting, which under the circumstances would be disastrous. So, a little feebly, and not without a blush, she slid a knife from her breakfast tray into her garter, mindful of how Morgan's men often produced weapons from unlikely parts of their raiment.

A careful perusal of the London map in the library had led Merry to pick out an address at random that seemed in convenient circumstances to her destination, since this was hardly the sort of adventure it would be possible to undertake under the patronage of Devon's solicitous if obedient servants. She was somewhat daunted when the carriage drew to a polite halt on the cobbles in front of the appointed address, which bore a wooden sign with painted letters that read Dealer in Foreign Spiritous Liquors. The groom in blue ducal livery who let down the steps for her was too well trained to look at her askance, but she could see he looked doubtful, and as she swept onto the pavement she could only be grateful that she hadn't chosen the building next door, whose brass sign read Drain Pipe Lay Down Undertaken Here.

She remained inside for a few minutes, pretending an interest in the port wines and unsuccessfully trying to fend off the attempts of the obsequious proprietor to make her sample his merchandise. She narrowly avoided inebriation by ordering a round dozen bottles of the port to be delivered to Teasel Hill and took her leave of the beaming proprietor. Standing a little dizzily on the flagged pavement outside, Merry told the coachman that she had chanced to meet one of her particular friends inside who would escort her on the remainder of her errands and see her home afterward. The one virtue (in Merry's mind at least) of the shop had been its very dirty front window, as a result of which Mr. Bibbins, the coachman, could not see within; he proved that British and American family retainers weren't so different by asking respectfully who he might tell His Grace was escorting her, should he happen to inquire. Pushed into a corner, Merry named Lord Cathcart and had the felicity of watching Mr. Bibbins's look of mild concern relax into approval. She could only hope Mr. Bibbins wouldn't by accident encounter that much respected peer on his way back out of the city.

Having rid herself of her kindly escort, Merry set off to meet Raven. Her spirits were low enough to give the bustling, impersonal cacophony of street noise a certain poignance. The high, white sun was dissolving at the edges into a gray-blue heaven flecked with huge clouds moving quickly in the wind. The air had more than a nip in it and was filled with city scents and the clatter of traffic. Shoppers jostled one another on the pavement of broad stones; apprentices with ink on their trousers wended through a maze of spruce clerks and assistants. The smoke-blackened dome of St. Paul's loomed like a mountain over the three- and four-story edifices'" below, and she gazed at it as she walked before dropping her eyes to, the scenes around her, capturing passing images in vignettes: bright-cheeked schoolboys with their satchels, gazing at pastry in a baker's window; a crossing sweep whistling a lively air as he took a broom to the street, where wheels had worn it down; and before a bookseller's, with windows displaying many volumes laid open for inspection, a small dog hooked by his lead to a hitching post was, worrying a black felt hat, blown, no doubt, from the head of some passerby.

The changing complexion of the surrounding facades told her that'; she had entered the city's high financial district, and by the time Merry reached St. Mary Abchurch, a pleasantly venerable red brick edifice in a yard of patterned cobbles, she began to understand why Raven had made this his choice. This was an area given over to commerce, the staunch bastion of the middle class, and none of the haughty nobility who had made her acquaintance at the dowager's ball was likely to meet her here. At the same time this was no slum, and though Merry had encountered her share of stares, it was an area where an unattended lady could walk without molestation.

The church interior was dim and intimate. Toneless light sprinkled from oval windows in the somberly frescoed domed ceiling, glooming on the dark wood surfaces, leaving the corners in shadow. Only two persons inhabited the room: a gray-haired lady in a black bonnet hesitantly trying to coax a hymn of the forty-seventh Psalm out of the organ; and a woman swaddled in shawls who was grimly applying beeswax to the Communion table.