The Ugly Duchess

He braced himself a bit awkwardly on his left arm and slid his hand between their bodies, touching her in the place she liked.

“No!” she cried, sharp and fierce. “That hurts!” She grabbed his arm. “Do it like this. Push here. Oh, like that!”

Joy rushed over his body like some sort of windstorm, faster than lust, faster than desire. It gave him back a measure of control, and he thrust slowly, watching her face, her tightly shut eyes, pressed and rolled his thumb, just a little. She flinched, but then she moaned. She was shuddering all over; surely she was close.

“I’m going to kiss you there,” he said, the words coming with a gasp as he thrust into her again. “I’m going to lick all that peach juice. I want it, Daisy. And I’m going to . . .”

But at that moment her grip on his arms tightened even more and her cheeks turned a beautiful shade of pink. She threw back her head and cried aloud.

It was as astonishing as he could have imagined. She began to throb around him and he froze, astonished by the way her pleasure spread to him and then moved in waves of fire through his body, until his brain shut down completely and his craving body took over.

She began gasping again. He could feel her breath against his neck, but he couldn’t even pay attention, because all of a sudden she started tightening again, throbbing down there, and he was gone in a white blaze of fire.

He wasn’t James anymore, nor an earl, nor a future duke. And she wasn’t Daisy, nor Theo, nor a future duchess of any kind.

They were two bodies knit together as tightly as puzzle pieces.

Till death do us part, James thought gratefully. Till death do us part.

Eleven

Dawn came, and with it a conviction on Theo’s part: she would never walk again. In fact, a brief experiment convinced her it might be best not to move her legs at all.

After the second time they had made love, she had been so tender and swollen that James had poured cool water into the basin on her dressing table and gently sponged her, which felt so good that she started to giggle.

At some point they had supper, but then James made good on his promise to kiss her down there, and before she knew it, she was begging him and begging him, pulling at him with all her strength.

When he gave in, her whole body sang.

So the sun was up and still they were lying about, unable to get over the wonderful strangeness of having another body in the bed. A plaything. A playmate.

“I love your knees,” James said, planting a kiss on one round kneecap. “They’re so elegantly spare.”

“Don’t you dare touch me above the knee,” Theo ordered. “I’m crippled.”

“Surely not.”

“Yes, I am. You owe me something.”

“Anything.” He lay on his stomach, running his fingers delicately over her ankles. “These are the most exquisite ankles I’ve ever seen. Like those racehorses who look too delicate to jump a stile, let alone gallop.”

“I would like you to sing to me,” Theo said, watching as pink light came in the window and played on his skin. It was whisky colored to the waist, and then turned stark white where it curved into a muscular buttock.

James groaned and dropped his head into the covers. “You know I hate singing.”

His voice was muffled, but she made out his words. His mother had loved to listen to him sing, but after her death he stopped singing entirely, except while at church.

Theo felt like testing her power, stretching her wings. “Will you do it, for me?”

He rolled over. “Wouldn’t you like something else, something that only I can give you? Anyone can sing.” His blue eyes had a lustful gleam that she was learning to recognize.

“Absolutely not.”

“I hardly know anything but hymns anymore.”

She tugged at him. “Come, sit with me.” She was leaning against the bedstead. “Sing me that song your mother loved so much, the old one from Queen Elizabeth’s time.” She held her breath. Would he do it? It wasn’t a fair trial, not when they’d been married scarcely more than one day.

“ ‘Song to Celia,’ ” James said, his face expressionless. But then he looked at her and smiled, and came around to the head of the bed and crowded her in such a way that she found herself leaning against him instead of the bedstead.

And he wrapped his arms around her, took a deep breath, and sang, “Drink to me only with thine eyes, and I will pledge with mine.”

Theo’s heart almost stopped at the liquid beauty that filled the room. His voice was an extension of him, a perfect voice emanating from a perfect body.

He paused. “Sing with me.”

She was no great shakes at music, but, like any gentlewoman, she was trained. Their voices entwined and his made hers all the better: “Or leave a kiss but in the cup, and I’ll not look for wine.”

As they sang, the light strengthened, sunbeams gaining amber edges, creeping up the coverlet.

When the song ended, Theo was so happy that she couldn’t say a word. James dropped a kiss on her ear. “If you ever tell anyone that I sang to you, I’ll tell your mother you went to the Devonshire ball without your chemise.”

Not for the first time, Theo thought that his mother had done her son a disservice by ordering him into the drawing room to sing every night. After all those performances, he could not enjoy his own gift. “I promise,” she said, leaning her head back so that she could catch his kiss. “Will you sing to me every morning?”

His smile was in his eyes, not on his mouth. “Only after nights like this one,” he whispered.

He returned to his room then, leaving emptiness in her bed. Maybe, she thought fuzzily, I will be able to persuade him to sleep with me one night. Whatever they had done together—and she blushed just to recall some of it—there had been no sleeping. At least, not until now he’d gone to his own bed; euphoria notwithstanding, Theo wanted nothing more than to sleep for hours.

At some point Amélie peeped in the door. “Hot water, my lady?” she whispered.

Theo nodded. “What time is it?” she asked, coming up on one elbow. Even that made her wince.

“Eleven in the morning,” the lady’s maid said. “His lordship said not to wake you for breakfast.”

“Thank you,” Theo said, absently watching the sun on the pale carpet. That lovely variegated cloth being woven in India looked like that. Perhaps the Ryburn Weavers could make a silk that would shift from buttercup to cream. Though she thought dimly that silk was made from worms that lived on pods? Something like that. And she’d never heard of a silk pod tree in England.

A short time later Amélie announced that her bath was ready. If no one had been looking, Theo would have hobbled on her way to the bath, but she didn’t want Amélie to guess how she was feeling, so she straightened her back and pretended everything was normal.

But after a half hour soak in hot water, she felt considerably better, and she sat at the window to dry her hair, ignoring Amélie’s alarmed protestations regarding chills. She had always loved the gardens behind this house, but that emotion felt more profound now that she knew they belonged to James, rather than to his father.

To the two of them, James had said, over and over. The gardens were hers as well.