Noble Satyr: A Georgian Historical Romance (27 page)

Not enjoyed it? Having her watch him while
he dried himself was the most arousing episode he had ever
experienced without actually touching female flesh. To be admired
and desired so openly and honestly was such a new and powerful
aphrodisiac that he had wanted the experience to continue for as
long as it was humanly possible for him to remain in control of
himself. It had taken all his will power to stand before her and
not get a full blown erection. He kept telling himself that here
was a girl with no sexual experience, that if he allowed himself
free reign she might well have run off in the shock of discovery.
The angry embarrassment of Ellicott’s untimely intrusion had poured
cold water on that imminent occurrence in the nick of time.

“Perhaps it is I who do not please you?” she
asked anxiously with a frown of embarrassment to be standing before
him in a thin cotton chemise that was shapeless and thus completely
obliterated her female curves. “I am sorry, Monseigneur… I-I will
go—”

“Antonia, you little wretch!”

Capitulation.

In two strides he closed the space between
them and gathered her to him, hands bunching up her chemise as he
bent swiftly to kiss her full on the mouth. It was a gentle kiss to
which she eagerly yielded, hands up around his neck and breasts
pressed against his hard torso. It was her first real kiss and
gentleness soon gave way to passion. He had a wonderful way of
bruising her lips she thought wickedly as her mouth hungrily clung
to his.

Before she knew what was happening she was
in the air and he had carried her to the bed where he lay with her
amongst the mountain of down pillows. But no sooner had he done so
than he broke away. She did not want him to stop kissing and
touching her. Confused, she watched him shrug off his banyan but he
kept his back to her. So she sat up and pulled the chemise over her
head and cast it aside, reasoning that if he was going to be naked
before her she should not be embarrassed to show herself to
him.

“I am not afraid,” she murmured near his
ear, arms about his neck. Her hands tentatively worked themselves
across his shoulders and down his back, but when she slid them
around his torso, he stayed her fingers before they could stray
further. Surprise sounded in her voice. “You do not want me to
touch you?”

He brought her hand up to his lips and
kissed her wrist. “
Mignonne
, I want you to touch me more
than anything, it’s just… I don’t want to
hurt
you. I want
very much for you to
enjoy
making love… Do you
understand?”

“But… I will enjoy making love…with
you.”

“It’s just that this is your first time and
I want it to be pleasurable and I have never… I have never bedded a
virgin…”

God, why was he suddenly the gauche one?

Antonia smiled and scampered to sit beside
him, her mane of waist-length honey curls her only covering. “Then
it will be a first time for both of us,” she assured him with a
smile and leaned forward to kiss his stubbled jaw.

Startled by such naïve confidence he was
slow to respond. He who had always been totally self-possessed with
a female in a bedchamber was being reassured by an ignorant girl
that everything would be all right on the night! She had unsettled
him and held him spellbound at one and the same time and for the
briefest of moments he wondered if he would be able to perform at
all.

And as he turned and kissed her, drinking in
the scent of her skin, fingers tangled in her hair, his paramount
concern was to make this night of all nights as pleasurable for her
as possible. To do so he must be ever so gentle and tender and take
matters slow and—The breath caught in the back of his throat.

“I have wanted to touch you here since you
stepped out of your bath,” she confessed guiltily, hand between his
thighs.

“You are shameless...” he muttered, the rush
of blood and heat between his legs at her caress causing him to
stiffen to an excruciating hardness. He watched her eyes go very
wide before looking at him from under her lashes with a wicked
little smile. “
Utterly
shameless.”

“Yes, I must be,” she confessed. “Though
yesterday I would not have thought so.” She fell back amongst the
feather pillows with a giggle. “Now you will please show me what it
is you do with him when he grows to the size of a beast.”

They slept. Antonia cradled in the Duke’s
arms, both snugly tucked up between the mountains of pillows, under
the heavy coverlet in his massive four poster bed. Before the sun
was up they made love twice more. Not as emotionally fraught as the
first time but just as intense, perhaps more so now that the Duke
had initiated Antonia into lovemaking. He was more wantonly
reverential of her wants and she, now knowing what it was to make
love and enjoying it, was eagerly amenable to his tutelage.
Finally, the deep sleep of satiated lust overcame them both and
they slept past noon.

It was early afternoon when the Duke
awoke.

He was alone.

For one moment he thought Antonia had
returned to her own rooms. He frowned, not liking the idea at all.
But then he heard the unfamiliar, something so totally foreign to
his apartment that he wondered if the pleasant sound was coming
from somewhere outside in the courtyard, that is until he heard
splashing. Singing and splashing and a very pleasing female singing
voice; contralto and melodic.

It was Antonia and she was singing in
Italian.

He threw off the covers, retrieved his
banyan from amongst the assortment of pillows and discarded
coverings, and strolled into his closet to find Antonia in his
tiled plunge bath up to her shoulders in perfumed bubbles. She had
piled her lovely long hair atop her head, but not very successfully
as the whole was rather lopsided and a long curl had escaped down
her bare back to dangle in the water. He leaned a shoulder against
a Mahogany Tallboy and watched her with an indulgent smile.

She saw him almost at once and with a bright
smile waded towards him, the bubbles breaking up in her wake,
exposing her glistening breasts for his admiration. She leaned her
folded arms over the tiled edge of the bath’s top step and looked
up at him. “I hope you do not mind that I have a bath,
Monseigneur,” she said with a shy smile. “I felt it most necessary
after…after what we… because—” She immediately corrected her slip,
taking the sentence in another direction, “—because it is a very
interesting bath this one. Almost a small pond. It took Ellicott
and the footmen an age to refill it. I am surprised their comings
and goings did not wake you. But perhaps you always sleep as one
dead after a night of—I was most interested to learn about the
mechanism by which it drains,” she stumbled on to mask her
awkwardness, which only broadened his smile. “Ellicott tells me
there is a series of pipes that flushes the soapy water down to the
drains below the kitchen. I was thinking it a great pity a similar
mechanism could not be worked for drawing clean water up.”

“Your thirst for learning is unquenchable,
mignonne
,” he quipped, ignoring her two embarrassing slips
and retrieving his quizzing glass from the clutter on his dressing
table. He sat down on the dressing stool and faced her, long bare
legs crossed at the ankles with his heels resting on the tiled
bottom step of the plunge bath. “No doubt my valet was only too
happy to talk mechanics with you while I was sleeping as one
dead?”

“I have always found Ellicott to be most
solicitous. And not once did he ask me why I was in your rooms or
make me feel at all awkward.”

“Not if he wishes to keep his position,”
murmured the Duke, quizzing glass let to dangle on its silk riband
between two long fingers. He looked at her keenly. “You are—well,
mignonne
? You are not in any—er—discomfort?”

Antonia frowned and shook her head. Another
curl unraveled and bounced to her soapy shoulder. “No, Monseigneur.
Should I be? Why?”

He did not know how to respond to her
straight-forward question other than in kind, and he had confessed
that to her the night before. “I have heard that sometimes after
making love, a female who has never been with a man before may
suffer some discomfort,” he said slowly, a heightened color in his
cheeks. “But not having any—er—previous experience of such a
situation, I cannot answer you with any authority.” He smiled
kindly. “My only concern is for your welfare and happiness,
mignonne
.”

This pleased her very much and to hide her
blush she stood up and, taking the small pail of fresh water set
aside for this express purpose, she rinsed herself free of soapy
bubbles before stepping down out of the bath via the three tiled
steps. Covering herself with the bath sheet Ellicott had discreetly
provided on the closest upholstered chair, she turned to the Duke,
who had not taken his gaze off her for a moment, and said
chattily,

“I hope you do not mind, but I sent Ellicott
to fetch a few petticoats and necessaries.”

“I am relieved to hear my erstwhile valet
has had—er—occupation while I slept,” he replied, admiring her bare
shapely legs through his quizzing glass.

“Yes. I told Ellicott, to Gabrielle he must
not say a word about my whereabouts, although I think perhaps she
knows.”

“You astound me.”

“But she must, Monseigneur, because—”

“I believe you,
mignonne
,” he said
and gave her bath sheet a tug so that it fell away and left her
standing naked before him.

Despite her diminutive stature, her womanly
curves were perfection itself and had the power to stop the breath
in his throat. For the first time in his life he questioned what he
could possibly have done right in the world to deserve bedding such
a beautiful woman; this delightful elfin-like creature who
possessed a pure heart and untainted soul. He felt curiously
blessed and uplifted.

He did not want this day to end.

He pulled her into his arms and cradled her
on his lap. “Must you dress?”

Antonia put her arms about his neck but
could not meet his gaze, suddenly shy. “If we are to have the
nuncheon Ellicott has prepared for us, then, yes, I think we
must.”

He fondled her breast, thumb gently rubbing
across her nipple. “But you are even more beautiful than I imagined
possible without your clothes,
mignonne
,” he murmured,
nuzzling her bare neck. “Indeed, this connoisseur of fine female
flesh deems you the most beautiful of all...”

Yet, as soon as he had uttered his
compliment, he regretted it. It did not need her head turned into
his shoulder to realize she had not taken his open admission with
the sincerity in which it was intended, but as a lover’s throw away
line to a beautiful woman. And thus for the second time in less
than a day he, the consummate lover, felt incredibly gauche in this
girl’s company.

He removed his hand from her breast and
pinched her chin.

“You are quite right,
mignonne
,” he
apologized, brushing a soft honey tendril from her flushed cheek.
“Ellicott would be most offended if we did not accord his cuisine
the respect it deserves. And he would be unable to serve up his
quail in a red wine sauce without dropping the lot if we were to
sit at table as we are now. And so I shall bathe, shave and wear a
frockcoat befitting my august rank. My very correct valet will
approve, don’t you think?”

She smiled and felt comfortable again. “He
will be very pleased with you, Monseigneur. And when we’ve had
nuncheon I wish you to take me exploring!”

He grinned, a particularly lewd response
popping into his head. But he restrained himself. “Exploring? And
what does mademoiselle have in mind to explore?”

“Last night coming through your rooms, I
noticed a bookcase filled with interesting volumes in all shapes
and sizes.”

“As only you would.”

“Will you show me some of these volumes,
Monseigneur?”

A simple request and one he would honor,
though he would be discerning in his selection. After all, for all
her worldly façade, Antonia remained quintessentially naïve, and he
would not change that about her for the world. The bookcase she
described housed his most prized collection of priceless erotic
writings, and artists’ folios of pen and ink sketches, charcoal
renderings and watercolours, gathered from all over the known
world. There was a particular folio that instantly sprang to mind,
from Asia Minor. From India, if memory served him correctly.
Beautiful illustrations. Very enlightening. The exploration might
be very interesting indeed…

And so settling into a makeshift pattern of
domesticity within the confines of the Duke’s apartment, Antonia
and the Duke spent several daylight hours in the sitting room and
study, and the rest of their time in the big four poster bed.