I could never rock and ride with you all the way to the heart of the sun,’ he gasped as he took up the race again, and now she had the measure of it she felt the drive into something wonderful as well, as he rode hard and high inside her, and she wrapped her long and slender legs about his neat buttocks and rode with him.
She felt hot and greedy for everything he had to give her and deep and generous with all she had to offer in return. She wound her ankles together over his striving thighs and felt his whole body gasp at the feel of her wholly with him, completely engaged in the lovely flight into somewhere nobody else could ever go but them, together. Now the race was frantic and even more intense than it had been last time. She felt almost as if the full force of Mother Nature herself flowed through her as she threw back her head and felt the life of it shoot through her until even her toes and fingertips seemed to glow with it. ‘Oh, my love,’ she gasped as she writhed against him, and his thrusts deepened and seemed to take her even further away from her day-to-day self. There was that forlorn moment of wondering if the journey was all there was and their destination just tantalisingly out of reach and then they were there and how could she have doubted they would be?
‘I love, love, love you,’ she murmured on a keening whisper that turned into a satiated sigh that deferred to the fact her brothers were asleep only a floor below with the windows open.
Still their bodies soared together and the climax of that frantic ride seemed to promise eternity as they lay locked and mindless and yet so deeply mindful of each other all at the same time. Polly felt quivers of ecstasy rock her all the way down to her toes and wondered how rapidly he’d made her proud of her lanky inches instead of always half-ashamed to be so tall and supposedly unfeminine.
‘Aren’t you glad you came?’ she asked innocently as the fire finally sank to a dearly remembered spark and the odd magical shiver of ecstasy still shook her.
To her surprise he seemed to find that comment irresistibly amusing and buried a bark of male laughter against her hair, where it spilled in a wild silky cloud against the down pillows of my lord’s makeshift bed.
‘What?’ she demanded, almost managing to feel cross with the great puzzle of a man as he groaned with suppressed laughter, then finally made himself disengage from her sated body as reluctantly as she made herself admit it was near dawn and about time she resorted to her own part of the castle.
‘I’m delighted I came back to my own and to you this spring, my love. Even more delighted that the next fool on my beloved godmother’s list can now take over his part in her Machiavellian schemes and deliriously happy that I’ll very shortly be marrying a marchioness after all my protests that I never would. Will that do?’
‘Possibly, but why were you laughing at me so hard you nearly gave us both away just now?’
‘I will tell you another time.’
‘Will you now?’ she asked as if she had the least intention of staying out of his bed anytime it could be avoided for the next forty or fifty years.
‘It will give you something to look forward to,’ he teased her with a wicked glint in his eyes and since she was beginning to be able to see the colour of them as the sun thought hard about rising on a fine June morning, she shot him a challenging look before she sprang out of bed and began to resume her scandalous breeches and best coat.
‘Maybe, but today I’m looking forward to the boys showing us this phantom treasure that sounds like the little details of your mother’s life nobody seemed to recall seeing for the past two decades. Then you should probably show me the lord and lady’s private quarters of your soon-to-be-refurbished mansion, my lord,’ she said with a jaunty smile and saw shadows steal into his gaze as he contemplated whether he could live with her in that part of the house after all.
She held her breath even as she pretended to be serenely convinced there was nothing out of the way in her plans for their morning and reached for my lord’s fine set of hair brushes to smooth the tumbling mass of her hair into her usual plait to at least start the day halfway to being tame. ‘My valet will be as shocked as a maiden lady if he comes in and catches you sitting on the end of my bed combing out your witchy hair for my very personal delight,’ he warned her lazily.
‘He’d better learn to live with me or find another job, because I’m not going to spend any more nights in my room across the courtyard to save his blushes or anyone else’s,’ she warned.
‘Ah, Farenze, can’t say I expected you to come since you’re supposed to be busy with that ramshackle old place you bought off your brother-in-law. Is this your viscountess? Good evening, my dear. Delighted you could join us after all the invitations your husband has refused on your behalf. I dare say he wanted to keep you to himself.’ The Earl of Trethayne bowed to the mystery lady the ton had been so eager to meet all Season and preened himself that they’d had to wait until his granddaughter’s ball to do it.
The latest Trethayne chit and this grand waste of money his daughter-in-law had forced on him would be the talk of the town after tonight and for once he didn’t begrudge the money all this show and frivolity was costing him. His gaze drifted onward to gauge what effect this social triumph was having on whoever was next in the receiving line, then sharpened abruptly, as if he’d been replaced by a statue of a grumpy old cheeseparing aristocrat instead of the real thing.
‘The chit must know she ain’t welcome here, I told her last time she was here never to bother me or mine again,’ he managed to stutter out between stiff lips as the statuesque lady dressed in the first stare of fashion reached him and looked as if she wasn’t quite sure why she had bothered.
‘I’m not a chit any longer, if I ever was, and I don’t know why you imagine I need your welcome now, sir—I found none when I came to you and begged for help when I was seventeen and alone in the world but for three little brothers.’
‘French whelps,’ he almost spat at her as if she had suggested he helped her to look after a litter of unwanted puppies rather than three then very small children.
‘Half-French,’ the stripling at her side informed him with nearly as much brass-faced impudence as his sister.
‘I can assure you the other half is pure Trethayne,’ the next gentleman in line said with his usual casual impudence and Earl of Trethayne frowned at the Marquis of Mantaigne and wondered why he’d never told the idle fool exactly what he thought of him before tonight.
‘What the devil do they have to do with you or the Farenze connection?’
‘Lord Farenze and I were brought up together, so we share a lot of family feeling, Trethayne. I’m sure you know the ones I mean—love, loyalty and caring for the welfare of others even when you don’t always want to? I hope you don’t expect Lord Farenze and I to ignore each other as our wives make their first forays into the ton tonight. That would be downright unnatural for such close connections, don’t you think?’ Tom asked silkily.
His host paled and flashed a glance from one to the other of the striking group taking up so much of his guests’ attention there was near silence in the overcrowded ballroom. For a moment he seemed about to admit that the unlikely group of people in front of him were indeed connected in some way he didn’t understand, then he gathered his senses and his long-standing conviction he was right and they were all wrong and fought back.
‘What’s that sentimental rigmarole got to do with them?’
