Much Ado About You

Which he was.

“I found that bathing room extremely interesting,” he answered calmly. “If you would not object, I would be glad to take a second look at the pipe system leading to the bath. I’m thinking of putting in a plunge-bath myself.”

He carefully supported Tess down the fall of rocks in the corner. But the bathroom was manifestly uninteresting. After poking at the hole for a moment, he couldn’t think how to carry on a pretense of interest.

“This must have led to a cistern,” he said.

His wife was looking straight up into the sky, so he looked as well. A few drunken-looking birds were whirling and swooping after each other.

“From Latin, cisterna,” she said agreeably, not taking her eyes from the starlings.

“Exactly,” he said, rather taken aback. “You have some unusual bits of information, Tess.” He tipped his head back to watch the birds in flight, as she was doing.

“They’re mating,” Tess said, turning to look at him. She was feeling suddenly daring, and older, and married.

“I doubt that, at this time of year,” Lucius noted.

But Tess was having a rush of joy, and it was going to her head: a rush of joy that she’d married this big, dazzlingly elegant man who looked at her with such hunger. He didn’t flatter. And he had none of Mayne’s flummery.

The sky was high and blue, her husband was standing beside her looking confused and hungry, and she was married. Married! Married women could do anything! They could kiss under a sycamore and not lose their reputations. They could—

She turned slowly toward her husband.

They could do precisely as they wished. They didn’t just observe life. They—they reached out and grabbed it.

For the rest of his life, Lucius Felton never forgot the next moment. His blushing, virginal bride disappeared. He found himself facing a woman whose mouth suddenly took on a tilt that could only be described as lustful. That smile was not that of an innocent…

She reached out to him, and he blinked, holding back.

“Lucius,” she said. Her fingers curled into the hair at the nape of his neck, and she was on her tiptoes, must be on her tiptoes. “Lucius.” And since he couldn’t get his frozen body to move, she pulled his head toward hers and plastered her lips over his, and what she lacked in the way of experience, she made up for in raw, native talent.

He groaned, and the last threads of his control slipped away.

They were there, the two of them, in each other’s arms in a place that may well have seen many an embracing Roman.

But, as Tess had noted during her first visit, the Romans were interested in more than grapes and aqueducts.

Chapter 28

I n his adult life, Lucius had never given a second’s thought to the idea of deflowering a bride. For one thing, he hadn’t planned to have one. And for another, a cynical side of him had the idea that there weren’t so many virgins waiting about anyway. And the whole idea of virgins was tedious. What could be more uninteresting than a woman who not only didn’t know what she liked, and might well take a dislike to the whole business, but didn’t know how to please you either?

No, virgins held no appeal.Until now.

Because Tess was a virgin likely to win him to the sport in one fell swoop, except that he was quite aware that after making love to Tess, there was no second virgin possible.

She was cheerful, for one thing. Her voice was husky, desire-filled, joy-filled. She didn’t tremble from fear, but from excitement. And her eyes weren’t bright with terror, but with interest. Curiosity. And her curiosity! She had a wish to kiss the inside of his wrist, and then wondered what the inside of his elbow tasted like. He had to pull off his shirt to satisfy her curiosity, and then the feeling of her slender fingers running all up and down the furring on his chest was enough to undo him. There he was, an English gentleman, bare-chested in the outdoors. It was a curious feeling: rather liberating.

But he kept enough fragile control that he allowed her fingers to sing on his skin, but he didn’t touch his breeches. And she, for all her shining eyes and laughter, didn’t touch him below the waist.

They ended up, naturally enough, on the moss-covered bench that lined the room. At first they sat side by side. Then she found her way onto his lap.

He didn’t know how long she sat there, the curve of her bottom against his legs, his arms tight around her, lips roving over her cheeks, and then returning to her mouth for more aching kisses. They were the kind of kisses from which there is no return. The kind of kisses that drive the blood into a muffled thrum that beats through the body and clouds the mind and finally makes the very idea of gentlemanly behavior an aberration. For wouldn’t any man on God’s earth, looking at Tess’s eyes shining with sensual pleasure, understand that civility was rot? That the restrictions of genteel behavior were rot as well?

The only thing that mattered was making his new bride sigh as his hand shaped her breast. Sigh? Tess didn’t sigh: she squeaked his name and closed her eyes, as if what she couldn’t see wasn’t really happening. But it was. They were both there, outdoors; he needed her eyes open, her—without a second’s thought he wrenched her bodice down and curled his large hand around the soft weight of her breast.

Her eyes flew open, and she opened her mouth to protest. So he crushed his mouth against hers. It wasn’t a gentle kiss, or a kind kiss, or a sweet kiss. It was a demand. The moment he pulled away she opened her mouth again, but:

“Your breast is exquisite,” he told her, and whatever she meant to say was swallowed into a sharp cry as his thumb rubbed across her nipple, a cry that shuddered through her body and made her shift closer to him.

“Lucius,” she said, and her voice quavered. He rubbed her nipple again, and she collapsed against his chest, eyes closed again.

Lucius couldn’t look away from her, from the rosy cream of her lush breast in his hand and the way she arched into his touch, breathing so quickly that every breath was like a cry. He was on fire, every inch of him on fire, and yet some fugitive part of him kept noting that he hadn’t crossed all the bounds of propriety yet.

Not yet. Not when he could pull her bodice back up at a second’s notice, if he heard voices coming across the field. True, her hair tumbled like molten bronze down her back, and her lips were swollen from his kisses, and she was shuddering.

But it wasn’t as if he were touching her below the waist. And then without conscious volition, his fingers were stealing under her skirts, over the weave of her stockings, finding the lump of her garter and stroking on, on to the sweet skin of her thighs, the rounded curve, dancing on her skin, dancing closer, dancing closer…

“Lucius Felton!” she said, and her eyes popped open now. “You mustn’t—what are you doing?”

“Touching you,” he said simply. “Touching my wife.”

No one could see what he was doing, had there been anyone to see. There was merely his arm under her skirt, and she in the crook of his arm, her head thrown back so that he could capture her mouth when he wished it, his strong fingers shifting closer and closer…her breast lying open to the sunshine, a wanton invitation to pleasure.

She was quivering as his fingers slid closer, her eyes wide. “You mustn’t!” she gasped again. He was almost there now. He felt a soft curl of hair against his finger; it sent a lightning stroke of pure lust to his groin.