The Duke's Perfect Wife

He drew his tongue between her br**sts and caught one of her ni**les in his mouth. Fire blossomed from the point he suckled. Hart gave her other breast the same attention, then he kissed his way down her abdomen, licked her navel, and continued down to her thighs. He parted them, kissed the soft skin on the inside of either leg, then fastened his mouth over her tight little berry.

He’d never done that before. Eleanor gasped with the wild pleasure of it. The sight of Hart suckling her, his eyes closed, his hair mussed, made her crazy with passion. His tongue was hot, driving her wild. He had to stop, but Hart wouldn’t stop. He cradled her hips in his hands, opened her to him, and drank her in.

“Hart…”

More words left her lips, but they were incoherent. She rocked into the mattress, and his tongue went on torturing her. Eleanor tried to wriggle away, but he was too strong. She had to lie back and take him licking, suckling, making her insane with pleasure.

Just when Eleanor thought she’d die of joy, Hart lifted his beautiful mouth away, slid up her body, and entered her.

He was filling her now, her handsome, naked Highlander. He laughed at her at the same time he demonstrated how good pleasure could be.

His strokes were strong, his hand on her shoulder holding her down. But he was gentle, making sure he never hurt her, even as he neared his climax.

The combination of him being rough and careful at the same time sent Eleanor into another spiral of pleasure. Ecstasy ignited from where they joined and spread across her body. She shouted with it, and Hart’s shout joined hers.

“El, my El,” he crooned as they wound down. “Dear God, you make me wild.”

You make me understand love, Eleanor thought, then the world went away except for her husband lying on her in the sunlight.

Hart and Eleanor developed the photographs together, in a darkroom Mac had set up when he’d experimented with photograph art. Mac had decided that, while photography had its merits, he preferred to slap paint on canvas and had gone back to that.

Hart took Eleanor and her stack of plates to the darkroom, locked the door, and watched her competently print the images from the dry plates. One by one, the photographs of Hart emerged, his body in full sunlight, or he coyly hiding behind the kilt. He looked like a perfect fool, and it made him laugh. Eleanor ignored him and kept on developing. She finished the last plate, gazed at Hart holding his kilt over his front, and pronounced the proceedings satisfactory.

“Good,” Hart said. “Now that you have new photographs for your memory book, you’ll destroy the old ones.”

Eleanor wiped her hands. “Mmm, perhaps. I still have not found all of them. I will continue my quest.”

Hart stepped in front of her. “No.”

“Why not? It was Fenians who wanted you dead, nothing to do with the photographs. I imagine Mr. Fellows is already in London, mopping them up. The Fenians, I mean, not the photographs. The photographs weren’t the danger, and I am determined to find them.”

For answer, Hart closed his arms around her and showed her that darkroom tables could be put to more use than for developing apparatus.

The real world, unfortunately, intruded on Eleanor’s newfound marital bliss, and Hart went back to his study and his quest to win every politician in the land to his side.

Eleanor was busy herself. Now that she was the Duchess of Kilmorgan, her correspondence had multiplied into a mountain, piling up all the more while she’d lain ill.

She had Maigdlin and a footman cart all her letters to the little sitting room off her bedchamber, and she sat at the writing table, sorting through the pile and trying to ignore the continued soreness of her healing arm.

She received many letters of congratulations on her nuptials along with wishes for her to get well, and of course, a growing stack of invitations. In the middle of the pile, Eleanor came upon a rather thick envelope of now-familiar stationery.

Her heart beat faster as she tore open the envelope and unfolded the paper inside. Inside this was a small tissue-wrapped bundle, tied with white ribbon. Eleanor hastily undid the ribbon and folded back the paper, and five photographs of the naked Hart Mackenzie fell into her hand.

Chapter 18

Eleanor fanned out the photographs across her writing table. The letter that had been folded around them was short, to the point, and badly spelled.

Many fellations on your weding, from one as wishes you well.

The writer meant felicitations. Another indication that she was unpolished and only basically educated.

Eleanor now had all twenty photographs. Again, no threats, no demands for money, nothing.

She rewrapped the photographs in the letter, returned to her bedroom to shove the bundle inside her remembrance book, and went in search of Ian.

She found him on the grand terrace that spread across the back of the house. Ian sat cross-legged in the middle of its marble expanse, playing soldiers with his son. That is, Ian was setting up carved wooden soldiers, and Jamie was cheerfully knocking them down.

“I say, the Battle of Waterloo would have been over quickly had Jamie been there,” Eleanor said.

Jamie picked up a French general, stuffed half of him into his mouth, and waddled toward Eleanor. Ian very gently stopped him and plucked the wet soldier out of his son’s mouth.

Eleanor sat down on the nearest marble bench. “Ian, I need you to tell me the names of all the ladies who lived in Hart’s High Holborn house.”

Ian wiped the soldier dry on his kilt while Jamie climbed up to sit next to Eleanor. Ian put his big hand on the boy’s back so he wouldn’t fall.

“Sally Tate, Lily Martin, Joanna Brown, Cassie Bingham, Helena Ferguson, Marion Phillips…”

“Stop.” Eleanor raised the notebook she’d brought and started scribbling with a pencil. “Let me take it down.”

Jamie pulling on the pencil slowed things, but Eleanor managed to start the list of names. “Go on.”

Ian continued, naming every one. Further probing let Eleanor know that some were courtesans, some maids who worked in the house, one the cook. All had lived at Angelina Palmer’s at one time or another, some staying only days.

“You wouldn’t happen to know where they all are now, do you?” she asked, making notes.

Ian, being Ian, did. Jamie tired of tugging on Eleanor’s pencil and climbed down from the bench. Ian steadied him, then kept a sharp eye on him as Jamie toddled about the terrace, picking up fallen soldiers.

Several of the ladies had died, he said. Most still lived in London, though one had married and emigrated to America. Quite a number had married, it seemed. Of the lot, three lived in Edinburgh. One was still a courtesan living with her protector, one was a maid in a big house, and one had married a former protector.