In My Wildest Dreams (23 page)

“I would think you'd want to be there to handle the situation.”

“Mother can handle it. If Lord Longshaw takes a swing, let Ellery take the blow. It's time.”

“More than time.”

She startled him with her cool verdict. So the bloom was truly off Ellery's rose. Throckmorton straightened, and with military resolution, said, “You failed to comply with my orders this afternoon.”

“What orders were those?”

“You were not supposed to follow me when I went after Penelope.”

“I thought you might need help.”

“As you saw, I had the situation well in hand.”

She smiled and folded a tuck into her skirt. “I thought you were very glad to see me.”

He hated to admit it, but it was true. Out there in the rain and the mud, he'd felt inadequate to handle Penelope's distress. His pragmatic daughter had sobbed and sobbed. He had petted her hair, but she'd clung to Celeste. He'd suffered a mixture of hurt because she'd turned to another in her misery, and relief that he didn't have to handle it alone. A man who took care always to maintain control scarcely knew how to handle an outpouring of emotion. “She had never seen a man shot before,” he said.

“I would hope not.”

“Did you tuck her . . . the children into bed?”

Now her lovely smile failed, and she glanced down at her lap. “I did, and I wanted to talk to you about them.”

Dear God. He straightened, the coffee sloshing in his mug. “They are here? They are well?”

“Very well.” She placed her gloved hand on his sleeve. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to frighten you. After this day's harrowing ordeal, you must be all in a twitter.”

Irritated beyond all belief, he said, “My dear Miss Milford, I am never all in a twitter.”

“Of course not.” She lowered her gaze, her long lashes sweeping downward. “I forgot that you are always unaffected.”

He felt it only fair to warn her. “I am one of the most unfeeling men in all of England.”

Her lashes rose. Her gaze peeked forth. Her dimples quivered. “I understand.”

He put ice into his tone. “I don't think you do.”

“In truth, I feel responsible about what happened to the children today.”

Astonished, he looked directly at her. “You do?”

“I'm their governess. If I'd taken care of them as I should, Kiki wouldn't have run away, and Penelope would have come to me instead of going after her.”

He flattered himself he understood human nature. Everyone,
everyone,
ducked when blame was apportioned. But once again Celeste had amazed him. She not only accepted responsibility, she
took
responsibility. A man scarcely knew what to do with a woman like her—or rather he did, but such madness was not acceptable.

“You were commanded by me to attend this week of festivities celebrating Ellery's betrothal,” he said. “There can be no dispute.”

“I know what's right.” Her chin jutted out. “I know what's best. In the future, I'll spend less time on frivolity and more time in the performance of my duty.”

“Everything that happens on my estate is
my
responsibility.”

She slid toward him. Her fingers trailed along his cheek. The silk of her gloves caught on the burr of his whiskers. “You have too much responsibility.” Her voice sounded husky and far, far too warm. “You should let me ease your . . . disquiet.”

Her big eyes spoke just as eloquently as her voice. For some reason which he could not discern, she wanted him.

But he was who he was, and so he bluntly declared, “I'm not the man for a girl like you.”

Her finger wandered over his lips, and lingered. “Really? Yet a girl like me recognizes a master of seduction.”

“Oh, that.” He tried to look bored, a difficult matter when the tent peg in his trousers was strong enough to support a royal pavilion. “Think nothing of it. I seduce so many woman that I—”

She laughed, a ripple of allure. “You seduce no one, Garrick. Except me. I well remember your habits, and if I did not, I have friends among the servants. They gossip, you know.”

He glared at her.

Her white lace gloves reached above her elbow, giving the illusion of modesty, but only the illusion; and when she unbuttoned her gloves, he found the presentation of the pale, delicate flesh of her inner elbow to be insupportably erotic.

She dropped one glove over the back of the sofa, the
other over the front. Her arms were bare, her fingers slender and capable.

“Only this morning you took my hand and pressed it here.” Sliding her palm down his chest, she brought it to rest over his cock. “You promised me enchantment. I've come to collect.”

Somehow, he retained the sense to say, “You don't know what you're doing.”

For a long moment, she stared at him in silence. “Do you mean I was wrong when I told Lady Hyacinth about the act being similar to horses mating?”

He couldn't help it. He sputtered with laughter even as his groin ached with need. “No, you have that . . . that is correct. But you don't realize the ramifications of relations between us.”

“It's very simple, really.” She was smiling again, relaxed. “You're Garrick Throckmorton. I'm the gardener's daughter. I'm not expecting marriage, and I don't plan to be your mistress. But I know that you know how to pleasure a woman, and I want my first time to be with you.”

“After what happened in here last time, why would you even want to come near me?”

She blessed him with her dimpled, full-of-joy smile. “Because I love you, Garrick Throckmorton.”

He jumped away from her, backing into the corner of the couch like some imperiled maiden. “I think not!” She couldn't mean that. She didn't know what she was saying.

“You can think as you like, but you don't know my mind.” She leaned toward him, presenting a cleavage that fixed his attention. “You see, I've been familiar with
you all my life, so you can't say I'm deluded as to your character.”

“You are.” Of its own accord, his hand lifted and smoothed the surface of her breasts right along the neckline.

“Why?”

Her flesh was softer than that velvet of her gown, and it glowed with the radiance of the sun. Yet he retained enough sense to reply, “I can't tell you.”

She took a breath that lifted her chest into his hand. “Then if I am, I have no one but myself to blame.”

Blast the woman.
Love.
How dare she announce her love for him? She had loved Ellery only a few days ago . . . but he believed that to be nothing more than infatuation. His belief had been how he had justified his decision to change her mind. Now it appeared he had succeeded only too well. She said she loved him. Such a statement from this woman at this time worked on him as a powerful seduction.

He had to make his current quandary more comprehensible. “If you don't leave now, I will have to take you.”

She stared back at him, her eyes wide and clear.

“Do you understand?” he asked. “Probably, after the way I've treated you I deserve to be teased to the point of agony. But the chaotic events of the day ruined whatever small modicum of discipline I have left.”

She kicked off her shoes.

Intent as a wolf scrutinizing a tasty dove, Garrick watched each of them fly across the conservatory. If she wished to undermine his discipline, she was doing an excellent job.

Love. Dear heavens. She was beautiful, innocent, and ten years younger. Just because they shared experiences such as foreign travel, not to mention the common background of Blythe Hall, and just because she seemed mature—except for loving Ellery, a matter of rampant immaturity—and just because she had observed him in the past and claimed to know what she was getting into . . . none of those were reasons to suppose she actually understood the ramifications of declaring love to a man such as he.

He had to make himself more clear. “In an effort to bolster my prudence, I've eaten fortifying foods. I've been drinking coffee rather than liquor. But the food and the drink isn't strengthening my resolution. So unless you want me to take your virginity, you should get up and walk to that door and leave me alone.”

She stood.

She comprehended. She took him at his word.

Disappointment ripped through him. Yet he had no right to feel regrets. He ought to be glad she had the good sense to run.

On bare feet, she padded to the door.

He ought to be glad she recognized him for what he was. Realized the irrevocability of a union with him. Saved him from the worse sin of all—the despoiling of an innocent, the daughter of his gardener, a woman of high morals and distant dreams.

The door clicked shut. The handle rattled.

Leaning his head against the back of the sofa, he closed his eyes and fought for mastery of himself. He'd always known he had a prodigious and passionate appetite. But he'd also assumed his will was greater than that appetite. Now he wanted nothing so much as to
follow Celeste. To pick her up and carry her back here. To make her his own in the most direct and primitive way he could devise.

And she didn't want that. She deserved better.

Silk rustled behind him. Every muscle in his body tensed. A scent tickled his nose. Citrus, cinnamon, and ylang-ylang. Vaguely he wondered if abstinence caused hallucinations or worse, madness.

Then Celeste's hands settled on his shoulders. “Lie down with me.”

22

C
eleste massaged the tense shoulders beneath her hands. She watched Garrick's reflection in the window as he opened his eyes. He looked right at her; his mouth was set in a straight line, his eyebrows dipped low. As he stared at her in the glass, his chest rose and fell in harsh breaths; she could almost see his struggle between the enlightened gentleman and the primal male.

But he'd admitted he was tired, and that his resistance was low. She could have him, and with the skillful application of feminine wiles, she would. Smiling, she said, “I admit, I have never done this before, but I suspect most men don't look so grim when presented with a chance to fornicate.”

A shudder ran through his frame, and he shut his eyes again.

But just for a moment. When he opened them, the severity had vanished. His hands covered hers. He lifted
first one, then the other, to his lips, and pressed a kiss on each palm. “I'm a grim man.”

But he smiled at her with such sensual intent she tried to take a startled step backward. She hadn't expected that, that he would transform from the weary, wary gentleman to the purposeful amorist in the blink of an eye.

“Did you lock the door?” he asked.

“I did.”

“Good.” Retaining her hands, he stood and crossed her arms as he faced her. “You are my opposite. Darkness and light. Harshness and joy.” Crossing around the sofa, he stood so his gaze could sweep her from toe to crown. “Have you come to save me, Celeste? Will you drag and coerce me out of this sterility and forward into bliss?”

When he was at his severest, he exuded a dark sensuality. When he was inviting, his allure colored the light, scented the air, flavored her passions, and wrapped her in the earthy joy of being in his company. And when he was touching her . . . lifting their entwined hands . . . she curled their fingers together, taking pleasure in each sensuous stroke of fingertip and pad. “Is that what you feel when you look on me?” She placed his hands on her shoulders, then boldly walked her fingers up his chest and down his waistcoat. As each button slipped through its buttonhole, she smiled with the voluptuousness of the task. “Bliss, Garrick? Do you feel bliss?”

He looked down at his own white shirt, now visible after her ministrations, and when he spoke, she surmised his teeth were firmly clenched together. “Before you take such liberties, please remember who you are.”

Her fingers halted on the button of his trousers. “The gardener's daughter?”

He caught her chin between his fingers and held it so firmly she couldn't look away. “Don't ever suggest I am such a snob again. To me you're not the gardener's daughter or the governess. There isn't a label or a title large enough to embody your being.” Angry, stern, he spoke in his Mr. Throckmorton voice that demanded she listen and understand. “To me, you are Celeste. You are joy personified.”

“Oh.” She clenched the waistband of his trousers, warmed by the heat he radiated, warmed by his words.

“And I was warning you to be careful with your liberties, for while you are all those things, you are also the virgin who I want to gently initiate into the mysteries of physical love.”

“Ohh.”

His chest rose and fell like stiff bellows that worked with great difficulty. One hand clenched her shoulder, the other her chin, and both trembled with strain. And his trousers . . . with a lightning-quick touch, she slid her hand down over the front.

His member was there again, just as it had been earlier in the stairwell, and she couldn't repress a smile—and a tremor. “That is so flattering,” she said, “and so fearsome.”

“I'm going to pull the curtains now.” He wheeled away.

She smiled at his retreating figure. Her quivering awareness battled with her fear of intimacy, of nudity, of unknown moves and painful invasion. But on the balance, it was good to know that, in his turn, Garrick struggled to contain his desire. That desperation made him more human; more like her.

He pulled the long, heavy, indigo drapes, shutting
them into a den bound by velvet and scented with flowers. Going to the sofas, he pulled the cushions off and onto the carpet between the two orange trees. He tossed pillows about with abandon, draped the whole area with wraps and blankets from the trunk, pulled one sofa close. With a grand gesture, he indicated their nest.

Filled with the courage of recklessness, she stalked toward him. He drew her into his arms. He was so much taller than she was; the top of her head came to his chin, and she could rest her cheek on his chest—and did. For a long moment, he held her cradled against him. Her hand stroked his collarbone. His fingers threaded into her hair, and his breath whispered against her forehead. They were two people, brought together by long acquaintance, by unexpected circumstance, by love, and before they took the final, irrevocable, ardent step, they shared the warmth of belonging.

Unhurriedly, she straightened. “I didn't get to finish undressing you.”

“But I want to undress you.”

She shook her head. “This time, it's my turn.”

He cupped her cheeks in his hands and looked into her eyes. “You are going to make me pay for what I did here yesterday, aren't you?”

“Oh, yes. I want my revenge.”

Stroking her cheeks with his thumbs, he stared into her face as if absorbing the sight. “Very well.” Stepping back, he flung his arms wide. “Do your worst.”

Exultation and fright fought for supremacy within her; how could she feel like this and not burst from the joy, or make a fool of herself? But better a fool who embraced one perfect moment than one who longed eternally and never dared take what she wanted.

Sliding her hands beneath his jacket, she slipped it off his shoulders and allowed it to drop onto the marble floor. His shirt was easy; she tugged it loose from his trousers and pulled it over his head.

His bare chest startled in its perfection. Clothed, Garrick gave the appearance of bulk and strength, but exposed to the light, he proved to be a mass of large, smooth muscles beneath olive skin, and dark, curling hair that stretched from shoulder to shoulder and down his flat stomach. She'd never seen anything so alive, and she touched him in curious amazement, stroking her hands first down his arms, then down his sides. “You're beautiful,” she whispered.

“Men aren't beautiful.”

“You are.” She circled him, dragging a finger around his abdomen and around to his back.

His back showed the same sturdy build. “You're not constructed like an aristocrat,” she said. “More like a farmer or a laborer.”

“My father
was
a laborer.” Garrick paused while she ran her hands up the indent of his spine. “He thought a man should know how to lift and toil, and I spent some time working on the docks. And in India—” He froze when she pressed herself against his back and tried to span his neck with her fingers. When she stepped back, he said in a conversational tone, “Your breasts scorched my flesh where they touched.”

She chuckled and stroked the long muscles that extended from his shoulders to his spine. “I see no signs of burn.”

He turned on her and seized her wrists. “Celeste . . .”

Giving him her sauciest smile, she reminded him, “You were telling me about how you labored in India.”

For a moment, he looked bewildered as if he didn't know what she was talking about.

She freed her hands, then lightly slid them up his arms. Standing on tiptoe, she whispered in his ear, “You were telling me how you developed such a marvelous brawniness, and I really, really want to hear.”

In a gritty voice, he said, “I will make you pay for this.”

“I'm depending on it.” Her discovery of love for him hadn't blinded her to the advantages of being initiated by Garrick. He was a perfectionist, the exact man to instruct her. He would insist on nothing less than pleasure for them both. For her. It was that confidence that gave her the audacity to tease him when his hands bunched into fists and he lusted after her with his gaze.

“India,” she urged.

“I spent a few months in a nomad's camp, herding yaks.”

“What's a yak?”

“It's a furry beast of burden that gives milk.”

“Why would a businessman herd—”

“Because I was traveling with the nomads!” He sounded exasperated.

She leaned her head against his shoulder and hid a smile. “What else?”

“I spent more than a few months a captive in Kabul, sweating blood in the rajah's quarry.”

“You've had adventures.”

“At the time, they felt like punishments.”

“You'll tell me sometime?”

“Not now.”

“Not now,” she agreed. Searching through his chest hair, she found his male nipples and circled them with
her fingertips. “Different, yet the same. When I touch you, does it feel the same?”

“As when I touch you?” At her nod, he lifted one shoulder. “I can't say, but I like it. I like it very much.”

She pinched gently, as he had, and when he groaned she said, “Yes. I think it feels much the same for both of us.” Satisfied she had achieved a small measure of revenge—and knowledge—she once more slid her palm over the bulge in his trousers. It hadn't diminished; if anything, it had grown.

She swallowed and fumbled a little as she unbuttoned him.

He took her shoulders as she did, whether to support her or himself, she didn't know. “I promise you—” he began.

She interrupted. “I know.” Untying the string of his drawers, she slid her hands along the side of his hips and down his thighs, following his clothing toward the floor. Kneeling, she was saying, “We just need to get you out of these trousers . . .” when she noticed . . .

All right, she'd known his penis was there. Curiosity had suggested this method for a closer look. But it was so close and so . . . well . . . big. Gorgeous, but big. Especially at eye level. Especially . . . leaning back, she viewed his whole figure.

The hair on his chest extended over his furrowed abdomen to join the quantity of dark hair at the junction of his legs. His hips weren't slim, made for slipping between a woman's legs, but solid, heavy-boned, with a strength that would weight on a woman and imprint her with his claim. And likewise his member, a sweep of
smooth, olive skin, dark veins and subtle graduations, would dominate a woman. “Dear heavens.” In amazement, she glanced up at his face.

He stared down at her, his gray eyes intense, his lids heavy. “Well, Celeste? What do you think?”

“I think I want to touch you.”

His member twitched.

She scarcely heard him say, “You haven't asked permission before.”

Extending one finger, she touched him. Just the tip.

His breath hissed out.

Glancing up, she saw the way he watched her—as if she were the torturer stretching him on the rack. But she couldn't be hurting him, so this must be like what he'd done to her, a pleasure so great as to be pain.

Gently, she wrapped her hand around the shaft.

Odd, to think that pleasure could be almost unbearable. Odd, also, to find that arousing him could arouse her, but it did. As she held him cupped in her palm, as she rubbed her fingers over the cap, the ridges, as she found the strength of the base and heard the faint, deep groans her exploration invoked: she discovered her cheeks flushed, her breasts ached with need, and a damp warmth grew between her legs.

She wanted.

Grasping his thighs, she rubbed her cheek against the rough hair and marveled. Sturdy, solid, like every part of Garrick. Each large muscle delineated, masculine, evocative of the strength of the man.

His breath rasped above her. He touched her hair, a light caress.

Because it seemed right, because it seemed daring,
she leaned forward and kissed his member, and ran her tongue up its length.

Suddenly he waited no longer. Pulling her to her feet, he unbuttoned her in a fury of movement.