Authors: Jane Prescott
“That’s crazy,” she said weakly. “I can’t be an art teacher.”
“Is it crazier than me running a resort that fits the exact picture you had in your head?” Artie asked, his eyes burning into hers. “Is it crazier than us connecting so well on our first day with each other? Is it crazier than me falling in love with you in less than a month?”
Roz’s heart stopped. Artie flushed, apparently realizing what he’d just said. “I mean,” he said, panicked. “I don’t…want to get married right away or anything. And you don’t have to say anything. I just thought you should know.” Roz didn’t say anything, and this threw him deeper into a panic. The art studio’s silence seemed too much for him. “I just mean---“
“I love you too,” Roz said quietly. Her heartbeat was strong and sure, and as the smile on her face grew, she felt the truth of the words. “And I love this place. I would
love
to teach here.” She hesitated. “Does this mean you want to keep seeing me?”
Artie was shocked. His face was a mask of surprise, and then he burst into laughter. “Roz. I just told you I eventually want to marry you. You should listen a little closely.”
“Sorry,” she said hurriedly. “My head’s always in the clouds.”
Artie laughed, that rich, now familiar sound that rubbed along her skin like a velvet glove. “That’s what makes you so special. Your dreams are already sky high.” He kissed the top of her head as he pulled her closer, and she breathed in the scent of him. A month ago, she’d been spinning her wheels, and now she had reached two goals she never even knew she had. She wondered if her parents would be proud. She wondered if Sharon would be proud.
It doesn’t matter,
she reminded herself.
I’m proud of myself.
And she was; but as she stepped back from Artie’s embrace, she thought she saw a flash of movement outside the art studio door, followed by the low giggle and the
clack
of heels and Olivia and Ben hurried away. They were proud of her too, it seemed. It made it that much better.
THE END
“Oh Margaret, how can I marry him?” Ania asked. “I’d just die!”
The duchess-to-to be sat with her slender hands in her lap and wrung them together in worry. A fine crinkle of lines marred her otherwise porcelain forehead and her voice had raised several pitches. Her honey-haired sister sat beside her on the brocade loveseat in the sitting room, rubbing a hand along her back, an honest, if pitiful attempt at soothing.
“Maybe Nicholas is not as bad as you think he is,” Margaret said, concern creasing her voice.
Nicholas Connols was in fact, at that very moment, parting a delectable blonde’s nether regions expertly with his tongue. The girl squealed beneath his practiced ministrations and bucked her lovely young hips up to the sky, urging him to lap faster. As he felt her legs close around his head and the softness parting at the touch of his mouth, he made a mental note to leave the madam an extra-large tip for the girl; she truly was a find in this particular house, which had long been one of Nicholas’s favorites. Usually, he took two or three girls at once, since it had become a more frequent occurrence that he found himself a trifle bored with the ladies offered, but this particular little dish was promised to be particularly responsive, and she had lived up to the hype and had surpassed it. As he drank in the gasps from her mouth and she shuddered into his, he felt that unpleasant old restlessness creep deep into his bones. The girl sat up, a wave of golden hair curling down her back and wrapped herself in the bed sheet, looking over her shoulder in a practiced maneuver. He leaned over and kissed her bare shoulder, not because he was particularly enjoying the simpering little look she was giving him, but rather because he valued her time and her skills in the bedroom. Her eyes widened with surprise as she accepted the kiss, and for a moment, Nicholas thought he felt a moment of tenderness, which was quickly replaced as the girl’s skilled hands began to inch up his thigh, showing her to be every inch the professional she was. He sighed deeply in his throat and succumbed listlessly to her ministrations, diving under the cover with the blonde even as he dove headfirst into a familiar old boredom.
“They say that he visits the Gelded Pigeon at least three times a week and has several regulars there,” Ania grouched, biting her lip. “Oh, why couldn’t he have been the one who was denounced, rather than Brent?”
“Because Lady Connols’ dalliance happened before Brent’s birthday and not Nicholas’s,” answered Margaret, rather impishly, Ania thought. She was referring to Ania’s old betrothed, of course, Brent Connols, who had recently been denounced as Duke Connols, heir to the Connols fortune. It had turned out, rather sordidly, that Lord Connols’ wife had engaged in some rather indiscreet relations with a visiting member of the Foreign Service and that Brent Connols was not the legitimate heir of his supposed father’s estate. A fact that had only recently come out to his bride-to-be, Ania Cromwell.
Ania shook her head wonderingly. “Who would have though Lady Connols to be the type to be carried away by passion? I rather thought that was the stuff of serials and books!” she cried. She had thought, at first, when her aunt came to visit and delivered the news, that it was just idle gossip and did not want to hear about it. Brent Connols, after all, had been so kind to her during her coming-out-ball that she had thought a union of at least friendship would have been possible between them. But as her aunt had salaciously implied, the legal proceedings had, indeed, proved that Brent Connols was not the legitimate son and inheritor of the Connols dukedom and fortune and with that piece of news, Ania’s parents had called off the engagement.
The worst bit of news, perhaps, had come earlier that morning, when Lord and Lady Cromwell had marched themselves into the very sitting room where Ania and Margaret sat now, interrupted the embroidery that was keeping Ania’s hands—and temporarily, her mind—busy, and delivered the latest news. Everyone knew, of course, of Lord Connol’s elder son, Nicholas, borne of his union with his wife before the scandal had rocked the ton, and who had, in light of the recent revelations, been named the new inheritor of the dukedom and estate.
“But what does all this mean?” Ania had asked, needle poised above her ring, temples beginning to throb. She had had a bad feeling about the upcoming news, and as it turned out, her premonitions were more than correct. Lord and Lady Cromwell had exchanged an uncomfortable look and turned to their daughter unwillingly.
“What it means, Ania,” Lady Cromwell intoned without quite meeting Ania’s green gaze, “Is that Duke Nicholas Connols is your new betrothed.”
Ania swallowed a scream at the news and found that she had somehow managed to prick herself with the needle at the most opportune moment, allowing her a small, audible gasp at the blood she drew to mask the outrage she felt at the news. The possibility of a certain kind of freedom that she had been expecting to have with Duke Brent Connols had, in just a moment’s time, slipped away, and Ania’s head swam with the news. She knew the truth, of course, and that her parents wanted to avoid any scandal associated with their name, which is why she was no longer being allowed to marry Brent, but something was still bothering her. Why Nicholas, why someone who was so closely associated with the whole sordid mess?
Never one to hide her opinions, Ania had decided to probe further. “Why have any association with the Connols’s at all?”
Lord Cromwell looked decidedly uncomfortable at that, and a bit as if he wished his daughter would sew her own lip shut with the needle she was still holding. “It seems that our estate holdings are not as up to par as we might have hoped,” he grouched, looking over at his wife, a nervous, birdlike creature from who Ania had inherited her hand-wringing.
Ania was shocked. She knew that her family had not exactly been swimming in wealth, but that everything was quite as bad as they could not even take a step away from a family whose reputation would surely sully theirs? She felt as if someone had given her a sharp blow to the stomach, even as an image of Brent Connols’s face popped up in her head. She would not admit it to anyone, not even Margaret, but she had been using his blue eyes and close-cropped blond hair as the foundation for her latest dashing male character. It was undoubtedly inappropriate to do such a thing, but then, few things about Ania’s life were appropriate, if ever they were discovered. Besides, she was engaged to the man—would it have been too much to hope that with marriage might come a certain knowledge of bedroom sports that she thought might be more enjoyable with an attractive man rather than an ugly one?
Well, that life was no more. Ania had had to bid Brent Connols a bitter goodbye. As Margaret attempted to calm her feelings of impending doom, Ania recalled the first time she had ever seen the young duke to be. It was not that she was a wallflower by any mean; she supposed the incessant people-watching was a product of her creativity, and so she found herself on the balcony of the drawing room alone during her coming-out ball. It had proved to be a most advantageous spot, given that it overlooked the terrace below, where a particularly noisy tryst had been arranged between Cornelia Vanderwilt and Bryce Amderwood; their meeting had begun with the lady’s helpless giggles and ended behind the rosemary bush that alternatively shook and resounded with the lanky gentleman’s groans. They were so loud Ania thought it was a wonder nobody else had caught on to what was going on, but then supposed that the water burbling in the nearby fountain provided an effective noise mask. She was leaning out over the balcony railing to gain a better peek at the lady’s bare leg that was beginning to inch out from behind the bush when a rather large male hand clasped itself around her waist.
“You’ll do yourself a mischief, leaning out that far,” a friendly voice calmly said behind her, and Ania stifled the scream of surprise that had been threatening to escape her lips. She turned around and found herself looking into a pair of nice blue eyes that twinkled with laughter. Brent Connols’s ears were pricked by the noisy little rosemary bush, and he looked out beyond Ania’s head—he must have stood at least two heads taller than her—and hinged on the thumping piece of flora. A smile creased his face, and Ania felt herself sag in relief; Brent Connols was not going to chastise her for spying on the young couple’s tryst.
“I’ve always wondered,” he said, quite soberly, “how people avoid getting thorns stuck in their hair once they are finished with such clandestine meetings.”
Ania found herself chuckling aloud at the thought. “Perhaps they do as the primates do,” she found herself saying aloud. “You know, picking through each other’s hair before they rejoin more polite society.”
At Brent’s laugh, Ania found herself relaxing easily into his company. They stayed together for the rest of the evening, even though Ania knew that it was quite inappropriate. Still, there was something about their exchange that made her know almost immediately that they were going to get along splendidly. When he called on her and Margaret the next day for a carriage ride, she found herself thinking how lucky she was that she had found herself somebody with who she could be friends. It was the best marriage she could ever hope for, she often thought, since who but a friend—and her sister—could ever understand her extracurricular activities, ones that did not go a long way in ensuring that she was the perfect future duchess? Expertly trained and long since an expert in hiding her imperfections and sparks of imagination behind a smooth façade, Ania hoped that if Brent was the kind of man who could laugh with her at another couple’s foibles, perhaps he was the kind of duke who would allow her some small measure of freedom to carry on as she wished.
Alas, it seemed not to be. Ania was not pleased.
“Did you truly think you two had a connection during that time, Ania?” Margaret asked her, wondering at it all.
“Yes,” Ania answered, bending her head, the waves of her light brown hair falling about her face. Darn curls, never could stay up as they were ordered to. “And now, I have to marry his brother, that—that rake!”
Nicholas Connols listened to the purr of the girl’s voice in his ear as she expertly licked his ear and shifted the weight of her pert little bottom in his lap.
“What do you want me to do to you, darling?” she whispered, and he felt himself riding to the occasion.
“Keep your mouth busy,” he countered, and the girl scrambled to her knees in front of him, sliding a certain heavy part of his anatomy in between her lips. Her work down there was skilled, to be sure, but Nicholas found himself unable to lose himself in the moment completely. He was not sure what he was looking for, but he knew for certain he would not find it in this house of ill repute, despite the fact that the house was stocked with women to cater to every physical need. The problem was, thought Nicholas as he felt himself swell inside of the blonde’s mouth as she rubbed her tongue along the length of his shaft, was that it was all so casual. There was nobody except for Brent that he could share his thoughts with, and certainly not here. What he wanted, he was slowly realizing, was something more than the short-term payoff of the random tumblings inside of these houses. Certainly, the women were grateful, for he prided himself on being a tender lover; he loved women. Loved their curves, their softness, and their delighted squeals as he took them to newer and newer heights, but the fact of the matter was that he was finding the conversations outside of the bedroom quite tiresome. Perhaps it was time he searched for something more.
Just then, with a testament to this house’s superb timeliness, the door to the room slid open and another woman entered. She had skin like dark honey and bright blue eyes, and as was previously arranged, she came up to the blonde kneeling on the floor and began a slow, sensuous rub of her shoulders. The blonde stopped her tongue-stroking to tangle her fine limbs with the new woman, and for a while, Nicholas worked himself, watching the dance between the two females in front of him. They sank to the floor and giggled as they positioned themselves appropriately to take him into both of their mouths simultaneously.
Was he willing to give this up? Nicholas couldn’t help but wonder as he sank into the pleasure of the moment. Something was still nagging at him, and it was only as of late that it was coming into sharper focus for the young duke-to-be. As much as he was enjoying the little scenario he had orchestrated for himself, he knew that his favorite part of being with a woman came before all of this. It was the thrill not of the hunt, but of a built-up anticipation for them both; a laugh here, a soft chuckle and rapier wit elsewhere. He did not know if such a woman even existed, one who could contain both of these qualities within herself at the same time, but hope springs ever eternal. Even if such a woman existed, she would undoubtedly be a bluestocking of the highest order, and unlikely to be particularly suited to his, ah, more physical needs. Besides, nobody in his circle married for love, and he supposed that with the most recent developments in his life, he would have to take on a bride in a more timely manner, somebody who was perfect and knew how to run a household. That thought alone would have made him yawn aloud if he wasn’t being attended to quite so carefully.