dropped into a curtsy and held out her gloved hand, some bit of her brain remembering what she’d been taught a lifetime ago, as a young girl preparing for her Come Out. Gideon bowed over it, turning her hand at the last moment in order to press his kiss just below the pearl button fastening the soft kid against her wrist. The tip of his tongue touched her heated flesh and was gone, leaving her branded.
Richard melted away, physically removing himself. The rest of the world simply disappeared, as they, the room they gathered in, the entire city of London, were no longer important.
“Tonight?” she asked when she could finally locate her tongue.
“God, yes. Tonight,” he answered quietly, his tone all fierce seduction as he drew her arm through his and walked her back into the foyer, just out of sight of the others. “You flatter the gown just as I knew you would. I know what lies beneath it, and what lies beneath that. The silk of your stockings, the laces that lift and mold your breasts. The fiery center of you, the memories that have driven me mad these past endless days. I’ll be undressing you with my eyes for the eternity of time we have to yet get through until I can turn thought into deed. You must be gentle with me, Jessica, for I’m a man who has touched the silks that now touch you, imagining how I will rid you of them with reverent hands and delicate kisses, a man who is now rapidly approaching the end of his tether.”
She opened her mouth, and the silliest words in all the world popped out. Perhaps because she had wondered and then hated herself for wondering. Men had needs. She knew that, certainly. She hadn’t realized women could share those needs, but she did, now, thanks to him. That he would wait for her, however, astounded her. “You’ve been celibate these ten days?”
“Gives you pause, doesn’t it, knowing my reputation?” he asked, at last gifting her with a half smile, one that made him look younger, even vulnerable. “But I made myself a promise, and I keep my promises, although if I hadn’t been able to secure the Special License this afternoon, God only knows how I would have made it through another night without breaking down your door.”
“I’ve thought much the same,” she admitted, feeling heat flow into her cheeks…and other parts of her body. “I have this new…curiosity.”
“You’ll have to tell me about this curiosity. In some detail, please, and I will attempt to satisfy it all…also in some detail.”
The small bud of pleasure between her thighs, which he’d awakened from its lifetime of innocent slumber, contracted and released, sending a ripple of sensation throughout her body. Her skin tingled. Her nipples strained against the silk lining of her corset. Her knees could barely support her. If this was what his mere words could do to her…?
He touched the back of his hand to her cheek. “You’re thinking about it, aren’t you? I can see it in your eyes, your pupils gone all dark and wide. There’s heaven and there’s hell in what we humans desire, Jessica. But the past is the past, and now we start fresh. From now on, for us, and only between us, we reach for the stars.”
“You’re…you’re a remarkable man. Arrogant, always bound and determined to get your own way…but remarkable.” She watched his own eyes go dark and felt herself leaning toward him, angling up her chin for his kiss.
“Haven’t you finished yet, Gideon? Should I help? Jessica, please marry the man, which he’s assured me you want to do, although I can’t see the attraction, frankly, and let’s go in to dinner. I’ve been on horseback nearly all day, and I’m famished.”
Jessica lowered her head, the spell between Gideon and her broken.
He took her arm once more and turned Her about to see his sister standing a few feet away, one hand on her hip, her left boot tapping against the marble floor. Her grin was very nearly unholy. “Oops,” she said cheekily, clearly a young woman devoid of fear. “Are you going to growl now, Gideon?”
“Not tonight. Jessica, allow me, please, to introduce you to my sister, the incorrigible but kind Lady Katherine Redgrave. Kate, my bride, Jessica.”
Jessica dropped into a curtsy, realizing Gideon had not added Linden to that introduction. But as he’d said, the past was the past. “My lady.”
“Kate. My name is Kate, and since you’re about to become my sister, I think we can also dispense with curtsies, considering it would be I curtsying to you if Gideon ever gets this ceremony behind us. Gideon, the man is quoting sermons in there, and the fool is attempting to make limericks of them. Oh, that wasn’t nice of me, was it, Jessica? Your brother is a very…That is, he’s a well set-up young—” She hesitated, flashed a smile that could bring down kings, and ended, “He’s a bit of an adorable twit, isn’t he?”
“Of the first water, although only a woman would include adorable in that description,” Gideon agreed, laughing. “I could have had Brutus and Cleo fully trained by now, if I put my mind to it. But I’m enjoying Adam’s discomfort too much. Jessica, I asked Kate to come to town to bear witness at the ceremony, along with Richard. As I left the invitation rather late, Kate chose to travel the final leg via horseback, her groom in tow and her carriage containing her luggage lagging behind. But she is obedient,” he ended, grinning at his sister.
“Dying of curiosity, more like,” Lady Katherine admitted. “And, not that I don’t appreciate having you include me, brother mine, why didn’t you just have Trixie fly on over here on her gilded broom to bear witness? Oh, wait, I believe I’ve just answered my own question.”
“Not really. She has other plans this evening in any case.” He looked toward the doorway. “I suppose we should get this over with.”
“How could any woman refuse such a romantic proposal?” Jessica smiled at Kate, who winked at her yet again, and the three of them at last entered the drawing room, Gideon guiding them directly toward the fireplace and a clearly uncomfortable clergyman.
“Jessica, there you are! Quickly, what rhymes with leper? All I can come up with is pepper, and that won’t fadge.”
“Adorable,” Kate said again, in some amusement. “And much preferable to the way he’s been attempting to impress me with his clearly irresistible charms. Whoever let him off his leading strings this soon was overconfident in his hopes.”
“Yes, about that,” Jessica said to Gideon as the clergyman hastily arranged everyone in the proper order in front of him. “Adam told me a few things this afternoon. Shocking things. We should talk about them.”
“Tomorrow,” Gideon promised as the clergyman pointedly cleared his throat and opened his prayer book.
In the next few minutes, much more quickly and even prosaically than she could have imagined, Jessica became the Countess of Saltwood. She hadn’t really given much thought to that particular result of marrying Gideon, even after Lady Katherine had earlier joked about curtsying to her. Many people would now curtsy to her, address her as my lady, or your ladyship. Just the sort of thing she had once daydreamed about a lifetime ago, back in the days of her innocence.
Now Gideon, by wedding her, had given her back what he so clearly thought was the life she deserved. He’d married her because he felt the Redgraves owed her something, that was clear. But he also desired her. She hadn’t thought about desire as a young girl awaiting her first Season. She certainly hadn’t thought about it during her months with James, except to think men were no better than animals in the forest.
Yet when Gideon looked at her
