both went still, looking deep into each other’s eyes, holding their breath, holding the moment until, unable to bear it any longer, Sara sank down, taking him, enveloping him, hard and almost, perfectly, too much.
‘Ahh.’
Almost too much, almost too big, too male, too... Lucian. And perfectly so. She held still, letting her body adjust, soften around him, embrace him, while she leaned forward and lay against his chest and let him hold her safely on the perilous brink of bliss.
Then she began to move, slowly upwards, rapidly down, making him gasp and throw back his head, his face a mask of intensely controlled pleasure on the brink of pain. Riding astride had given her thigh muscles that let her rise and fall to pleasure them both, forcing the urgent rhythm. Lucian let her lead until suddenly he caught her around the waist with both hands and held her still as he surged up, taking control, wringing gasping cries from between her lips as her vison began to blur.
‘We don’t have to be careful now,’ Lucian ground out.
‘No.’ She clung on as the pleasure mounted, twisted and broke over her like a breaker on the rocks below as he pulled her to him and shouted his release against her lips.
* * *
Lucian came to himself to find Sara limp on his chest, her head nestled against his shoulder, her lips tracing teasing patterns on his neck. Faintly the sound of voices and laughter drifted down to them.
‘Lucian, it is people on the library balcony we can hear—do you think they could have heard us?’ She sounded almost too sleepy to care.
‘Seagulls,’ he murmured, kissing her ear, which was all he could reach. ‘They will think it was seagulls.’
‘I’m glad the gulls are having such a nice time,’ she said, making him laugh. ‘Oh, listen, Dot is back and banging around, rather. We had better unlock the door.’
Sara simply had to shake out her skirts, Lucian had to wrestle with shirt tails and breeches and Sara’s attack of the giggles. ‘You look as disarrayed as Gregory did when I found them in the library.’
‘Your Mrs Farwell is about as terrifying as an enraged brother on the warpath,’ he grumbled, giving up on his neckcloth. He tied a rapid, plain knot and jammed the loose ends into his waistcoat.
‘Nonsense. She approves of you, she did right from the beginning. Mind you, it is probably the perfection of your profile and the width of your shoulders that she admires rather than your moral character.’ Lucian pretended to preen and they were both laughing when they opened the door and found Dot clearing the table.
‘You let your tea get cold,’ she said, fixing Lucian with a severe stare. He returned it with his best Marquess-on-his-dignity look and was rewarded with a twitch of the woman’s lips. Dot Farwell would have done well as the retainer who rode behind Caesar in his triumphal chariot, whispering, ‘Remember you are mortal...’ in his ear.
‘The word is spreading already,’ she reported. ‘It was all over the receiving office by the time I left. Hope you don’t mind, but that silly noggin Makepeace overheard me dictating the message and I put him in his place by telling him about his lordship here. And Lady Wharton is having vapours because her daughter danced with you, my lord, all unknowing that you were a marquess and if only she had worn her primrose silk you would have been so smitten you would have fallen for her and not Mrs Harcourt.’
‘Am I in everyone’s black books for not announcing who I really was?’ Lucian enquired. For himself he couldn’t care less, but he did not want to make Sara the target for jealousy on top of the gossip.
‘Only with Lady Wharton and no one takes any notice of her, what with all her airs and graces despite her husband being knighted for all the money he made in boot blacking,’ Dot announced with snobbery equal to any dowager duchess. ‘And that Mr Winstanley at the hotel is wringing his hands because he put you in the second-best suite and now he doesn’t know whether to move all your things before you get back or wait and grovel all over you and see what you think of the best rooms.’
‘It is a perfectly adequate suite that I am in. I suppose I had better go down and reassure him before he is too distracted to pay any attention to all his other guests.’ This was the last time he went anywhere incognito. Marguerite was always reading romances with dukes in masks and princelings of improbable European principalities roaming around in disguise and winning the hearts of poor but virtuous maidens before revealing their true selves. He had tried it and Sara had him spotted as a marquess within hours and everyone else was in far more of a taking about it than if they had known from the start.
He looked at her and saw to his relief that the colour was back in her cheeks and her eyes were bright. His conscience was troubling him over dragging her about the country on one long journey after another, but that glorious bout of lovemaking had restored her. As for him, he was fully prepared to do it all over again now. Perhaps the hire of one of the hotel’s bathing machines and a chilly swim was in order.
The door opened and three ladies came in, all hardly able to disguise their excitement.
‘Mrs Harcourt, I will leave you now, I am sure you must have much to do. Perhaps you would give me the pleasure of dining with me tonight at the hotel?’ He kept his tone formal.
‘Certainly, thank you.’ She was just as proper as he in her response. ‘It is ball night at the Rooms and I would appreciate your escort, Lord Cannock.’
‘Delighted.’ He bowed, the ladies sighed gustily and Lucian took himself off down the hill, amused despite himself. At least this was likely to do wonders for the profits at Aphrodite’s Seashell because all of the curious ladies would have to buy something to justify their snooping.
Conscious of Sara’s reputation, Lucian ordered dinner to be served in the hotel’s dining room, not in his suite. Mr Winstanley assured him that the chef was giving it his most personal attention, sent up four different menus for approval and a request to decide between the best table in the room in the bay window or the discretion of the screened corner. As Lucian had no intention of appearing to have anything to hide, that was an easy choice, but he nearly lost all patience when offered the choice between roses and a mixed floral arrangement for the table. Could his lordship tell him the colour of Lady Sara’s evening gown so they could co-ordinate the flowers, perhaps? No, his lordship had no idea.
His lordship, if truth be known, would rather like to dine with Lady Sara wearing no clothes at all and with a menu consisting of oysters and strawberries and cream. An afternoon swim, which apparently was quite outside the normal hours for such activity, although he was assured that the tide was perfect, had done little to cool his physical need for her. In fact, he suspected that the exercise had merely sharpened it.
Sara arrived, was ushered into the dining room with huge ceremony, which from the unusually serious expression on her face was making her want to laugh. She did chuckle quietly when they were finally left alone at their window table to drink their soup.
‘Was it very bad?’ she asked sympathetically.
‘I was about to ask you the same thing. Remind me, when I am complaining about the work involved when we hold our first ball, that it cannot be as bad as this. I escaped eventually and went for a swim.’
‘This
