To Pleasure a Prince (22 page)

“What?” She struggled to pay attention, but his driving thrusts were doing amazing things to her insides. Her belly felt all trembly and hot, and every time he came deeply into her, a new thrill shot through her.

“You really
are
…La Belle Dame…Sans Merci.” His labored breath warmed her cheek. “A born temptress.”

“Yes,” she retorted, delighted by the thought. She might not be able to read or give him perfect children, but perhaps in this one respect she could keep him happy. “Yes, my darling.”

His thrusting grew to a fierce pounding that drove the sweet tension to build in her like before. With a glad cry, she clasped him tight and arched up against him, seeking more of that magnificent feeling…

A hoarse groan sounded low in his throat. “Seductress,” he accused. “Siren.”

She turned her gaze to the painting where the sirens were cheering her on. “Yes,” she said, digging her fingers into his massive arms. “Yes.”

“My
siren,” he growled.

“Yes…oh yes…”

He thundered into her, around her, consuming her. He lifted his head to pierce her with a glance. “There will be no other dragons.”

“No…” she whispered, writhing beneath him.

He slid his hand down between them, unerringly finding that tender little spot that seemed to respond so well to his fondling. “None but me.”

“None.” When he fingered it, she gasped. “No…never.”

After that promise, there were no more words, just his body devouring hers, his finger building her own hunger to equal his until she was writhing against him, as eager to consume him as he was to consume her.

“Oh…my darling…oh…yes…yes…
yes!”
she cried out as the world exploded around her. “Marcus!”

Groaning her name, he gave one great final thrust. And as he spilled himself inside her, joining in her grand release, she clung tightly to his strong shoulders, a surge of relief mingling with her pleasure.

He was her husband now. There was no going back.

Thank heaven.

Teach your charge well, or when she is grown, she will abandon your teachings.

—Miss Cicely Tremaine,
The Ideal Chaperone

L
ong after Regina had drifted off to sleep, Marcus lay awake. At last he possessed the woman he’d craved for weeks. He’d assumed that taking her to bed would dull the keen edge of his desire for her, but it hadn’t. Even now, he wanted to bury himself inside her again, to wake her with kisses so he could taste her and fondle her and—

No, she needed rest and a few hours to recuperate from his frenzied lovemaking. He could only hope that the force of his need hadn’t alarmed her. What if it sent her running back to London to more urbane companions?

As that dour thought threatened to poison his contentment, he deliberately buried his nose in her tousled hair to breathe her heady scent.

Somehow it soothed him. He believed that she had enjoyed their lovemaking, frenzied or no. Once they’d made it past the difficult part, she’d thrown herself into it with all the enthusiasm a man could hope for.

She burrowed closer to him, and he wrapped her in his embrace. Only then was he able to sleep.

Dawn was streaking the sky when the sound of music woke him. Harp music.

Great God, he’d died and gone to heaven. And after only one rapturous night with Regina, too.

Cracking an eye open, he saw he was still at Illyria. Yet he heard harp music. Until a distinctly feminine curse sounded, and the music broke off.

That brought him fully awake. He sat up and spotted his wife not far from the bed. Seated on a stool, she was adjusting something on the harp while she mumbled to herself.

And she was completely naked. Exactly as she’d been in his dream.

His cock came fully awake, too. “I hope you plan to wake me like this every day.” He tossed the covers aside and left the bed, delighted and relieved to discover that his nighttime fears had been for naught.

She glanced up, startled, then frowned at him. “I regret to inform you that your dream about my playing the harp naked shall have to stay a dream. Playing a harp naked is decidedly too impractical.”

She looked so put out by that discovery that he smothered his laugh. “Oh?” he said as he stalked toward her.

“I’ve scraped my knees twice on the dratted thing,” she complained. “And this carved wood is rubbing my shoulder raw—”

“We wouldn’t want that.” As he passed it, he pulled the harp forward to rest upright instead of in the usual playing position. Then he came up behind her. “Though I must admit, it makes for a fetching picture.” He bent to kiss her neck.

“So did my gown. And you saw how well
that
worked.”

Chuckling, he dropped his hand to caress her breast. She sucked in a sharp breath, then leaned into his hand.

That was all the encouragement he needed. Scooping her off the stool, he carried her back to the bed. “Then we’ll have to manage without the harp and the gown. All right?”

Her answer was to lift her mouth for his kiss.

Sometime later, after they were sated and lying in naked contentment, he drew her into his embrace. She went willingly, resting her head upon his chest.

“I hope I didn’t hurt you, dearling,” he murmured. “I should have given you more time to recover from last night.”

“If I’d wanted that,” she replied, pulling the counter-pane up to cover them both, “I would not have awakened you by playing the harp naked. Besides, you did not hurt me. In fact…” A giggle escaped her.

“What are you laughing at?”

“My friends. They’re such ninnies. You should have heard what they told me about their wedding nights. They had me half-convinced mine would be awful.”

He arched an eyebrow. “I hope that means it wasn’t.”

A distinctly sirenish smile touched her lips. “You know very well that it was amazing, you self-satisfied oaf.”

“You were rather amazing yourself.”

She eyed him askance. “You mean I’m a shameless wanton.”

“Thoroughly shameless, thank God.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Having a wife who takes pleasure in sharing my bed? Great God, no. Why would I mind?”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not just saying that to save yourself a fortune in jewels, are you?”

He blinked. “Pardon?”

“My friends said the only advantage to marital relations is that their husbands buy them jewels afterward.”

“Did you want jewels?”

“Not if it means giving up what we just did.”

A smile tugged at his lips. “It doesn’t. But I’m afraid it didn’t occur to me to buy you any.”

She laughed. “I knew you wouldn’t. You’re not the jewel-buying sort.”

“I bought you a harp,” he pointed out.

“Yes, and it’s lovely.”

“Even if you can’t read the inscription.”

She went still, all her exuberance fading, and he cursed himself for mentioning it. But now that their second lovemaking had finally taken the edge off his lust, he wanted to know how she’d come to such a pass. “You really can’t read at all?”

With a shake of her head, she turned away from him onto her side.

He shifted to lie at her back, draping his arm over her waist. “It doesn’t matter to me, dearling. But I do want to know how a duke’s daughter could be—”

“Stupid?” she said bitterly. “An idiot?”

“Illiterate,” he corrected her. Drawing her back against his chest, he nuzzled her neck. “You’re not stupid at all. That’s my point. How have you managed not to learn to read?”

She turned her head to stare up at him. “You don’t think I tried? Hundreds of times, thousands of times? I did. I tried hard. But it never worked.” Her lower lip trembled. “I told you, my brain doesn’t function as it should.”

“How do you know?”

She sighed. “When Cicely began my lessons—”

“Cicely? I thought she was your lady’s companion.”

“She is. But she’s more than that. She was my governess from early on.”

He arched an eyebrow. “The duke couldn’t afford a governess for you?”

“Of course he could. Thankfully, Cicely talked him out of hiring one.” She shifted to face him. “You see, Cicely, my father’s first cousin, came to live with us shortly after I was born. Her father had just died. She was a plain woman with a poor family, so she was rapidly on her way to becoming a spinster even then. That’s probably why she was so fond of me. She was the one who first noticed my problems with reading. Knowing my mother’s stringent expectations for her children, she maneuvered it so that she became my governess before anyone could find out about my problems.”

“Your parents didn’t know?”

She shook her head. “Mother would have died of mortification. And Father rarely dealt with any of us. He spent most of his time in the usual gentlemanly pursuits and very little around his children. Even Simon doesn’t know.”

He frowned. “So Cicely was the only one to claim that you couldn’t read—”

“I know what you’re thinking. But Cicely did not ‘claim’ anything. She tried honestly to teach me. She would show me one letter, and I would see another. And yes, when I got older, I tested it on others. I would ask Simon to read a simple word for me, one of the few I’d managed to learn by sight. I remember distinctly asking him to read ‘was,’ and he told me it was ‘saw.’ ” Tears brimmed in her eyes. “I couldn’t even learn one word correctly.”

“So you gave up?” he said.

She glared at him. “Of course not, but it did discourage me. Still, I might have persisted if not for the headaches.”

“Yes, you mentioned headaches.”

“I get them whenever I attempt to read. Cicely consulted a doctor secretly, and he said that I should not try. That my brain was clearly damaged, possibly from a fever I’d had as a child, and that continuing to tax it might further damage it. So we…stopped the lessons.”

“And you’ve never tried again.”

“I try from time to time, but then the headaches come—”

“Yes, I understand.”

He understood, all right. Miss Tremaine had consulted some quack—or had pretended to consult some quack—and Regina, being a trusting child, had taken the damned idiot’s word for it that her brain was “damaged.”

He probed further. “So you don’t read at all? How do you manage? It’s not an easy thing to hide in society.”

“Oh, I have my methods.” Her smile looked forced. “If someone asks me to read, I just say my eyes are tired or I didn’t bring my spectacles or I’d rather read it later in private.”

As she’d done yesterday with Louisa’s letter.

“If someone is very persistent, like you were last night, I either lie about what I read or change the subject.” She shot him an arch glance. “Most people aren’t that persistent. And they’re not usually asking me to read anything scandalous, either.”

“How would you know since you can’t read?”

She shrugged. “Cicely is always close by to tell me what it really says when no one is paying attention. In fact, Cicely reads everything for me. She buys me the translations for the opera well in advance so she can read them to me. She writes and reads all my notes. She reads me the newspaper and my ladies’ magazines—”

“Which is how you’ve managed to hide it all these years,” he said dryly. “Otherwise, you might have been forced to learn, and then you wouldn’t have needed Miss Tremaine.”

She shot him a sharp glance. “Marcus, you must not blame Cicely for any of this. She has been very loyal to me. It cannot have been easy for her—never being able to leave my side, always having to read and write for me while hiding that fact from the world. The minute I need her to read something, she takes out her spectacles and does it without complaint.”

“Better that than to be cast into the street.”

Regina’s expression grew mutinous. “She knows I would never cast her in the street.”

“Does she? Your brother was more than ready to banish her to the country. If not for your need, she would have been forced to go, too. So of course she reads without complaint. For a poor relation, it’s better than the alternative.”

She sat up in bed to glare at him. “If you are trying to suggest that Cicely deliberately set out to deceive me about my defect—”

“No, not completely,” he murmured soothingly, though that was precisely what he thought. “But perhaps she has exaggerated the problem to make you dependent upon her.”

“The headaches are real! She did not invent them.
I
did not invent them!”

“Of course not.” He sat up, too, cupping her flushed cheek in his hand. “But, dearling, plenty of people get the headache from doing all sorts of things. Still, they go on doing them, and they survive headaches without wreaking permanent damage on their brains.”

Tears spilled down her cheeks as she glanced away. “You don’t understand.”

“I do.” He gathered her into his arms. “Truly, I do. Headaches are awful things. I don’t get them myself, but Louisa does, and I know she suffers greatly from them.” He tightened his hold on her stiff body, searching for a way to convince her. “Tell me this, Regina, do you ride?”

“Yes,” she bit out.

“And when you first learned, weren’t your muscles very sore for days afterward? Didn’t your ass…er…bottom hurt every time you sat down? Didn’t your legs feel like rubber for a while?”

She went still. “Yes,” she said in a more subdued voice.

“Did you then decide that there was something wrong with your legs and your bottom? That you should never ride again?”

“No.” She drew back from him. “But that happens to everyone—their legs hurt and their bottoms hurt and they all know to keep going until they learn. I’m the only one who has headaches when she reads.”

“How do you know? Have you asked every lady you’ve ever met? Every girl in a grammar school? For all you know, there could be twenty, fifty, a hundred of you ladies who get headaches when they read. There might even be men who do.”

Her breath was coming quickly now, and her eyes were riveted on his face.

“If you are so reluctant to talk about it,” he went on, “what makes you think
they
would? Why would they risk being called stupid or lazy? How do you know there aren’t hundreds of ‘brain-damaged’ people wandering London as we speak?”

“What are you saying?” she whispered.

“That I truly don’t believe you can hurt your brain by taxing it, dearling. But I’m certain that you’ll never know unless you try.”

The sudden yearning in her face tugged at his heart. Now he understood why she craved London society, why she feared being “trapped” in the country. For a lady like Regina, who couldn’t read but was too clever to be content with only needlepoint and wifely duties, being in the country would be a curse.

In London she could feed her mind at the opera, the theater, the salons. Her companions might be idiots, but they were probably entertaining idiots, and they distracted her from dwelling on her “damaged brain,” as she called it.

Out here at Castlemaine, she would be bored to tears. So if he wanted to keep her here with him…

“Later today,” he went on, “I’ll ride over to the house and fetch some of Louisa’s old primers. If we take it slow—”

Hope filled her face. “Do you really think I could learn?”

“I know you could.”

“Oh, Marcus, if you could teach me, you don’t know what it would mean!”

“I can guess. Without my books to keep me company these past nine years, I would have gone mad.”

A sudden cloud dimmed her face. “But what if the doctor was right? What if I turn myself into a blithering idiot—”

“You won’t.” He pressed a finger to her lips. “I won’t allow it. And you know us dragons—we always get our way.” When that didn’t seem to reassure her, he tried another tack. “Besides, surely if I could brave Almack’s for you, you can brave a few headaches for me.”

Perhaps if she wouldn’t do it for herself, she would do it for him, out of some sense of duty. Somehow, he was going to get her reading. He had to. It was the only way to keep her here with him.

“All right.” She settled against his chest with a sigh. “I promise to try.”