‘If this is what happens when you fail, perhaps you should not try so very hard,’ she said.
He pulled out of her and she sighed at the loss. Then he rose and scooped her up, carrying her across the room.
‘What are you doing?’ she said, laughing.
‘What I should have done, before,’ he said, with a stern look. ‘I am taking you to my bed, where you belong.’ He tossed her on to the mattress, then stood over her, hands on hips like a sultan surveying his conquest.
She stared for a moment, admiring the body she had felt rather than seen. Then she shook her head, to remove the fantasies forming there, and sat up. ‘We cannot.’
‘No?’ He looked both surprised and disappointed. It was quite flattering.
She smiled. ‘You said there could be no more secrets between us. Before we go any further, I must tell you the whole of our troubles. Then we will see if you are truly as brilliant as you claim to be.’
Chapter Thirteen
As she led him down the hall towards the Countess’s suite, Gregory walked behind her, admiring the view. She was barefoot and naked, except for her rumpled nightgown, open at the throat so it hung low and bared her shoulders. Her hair was tousled and her skin was flushed. She looked well and thoroughly loved.
She looked back at him, smiled and held a finger to her lips, reminding him of the need for silence as they passed her sister’s room.
He did not want to be quiet. He wanted to shout for joy. And to call a ‘thank you’ to her sleeping sister. When Hope had left them alone to play chess he had wanted to retire as well. Considering how much trouble he had caused by being alone with one sister, he dared not risk the reputation of a second one, even if their interaction was completely innocent.
But the younger Strickland had detained him, demanding one more game. The moment her sister was out of earshot she pushed away from the board. ‘Now we will wait. Twenty minutes should be enough.’
‘For what?’ he had asked.
‘For my sister to become angry enough to do something rash,’ she said, with a smile.
He frowned at her. ‘I do not want your sister to do something rash. And I do not need your help in winning her, if that is what you think you are doing.’
She laughed. ‘Perhaps you need no assistance. But my sister needs twenty minutes.’
At last, he had relented. ‘Twenty minutes, or twenty days. It should not matter either way, because nothing is going to happen between us until I have spoken with your grandmother.’ It was pure luck that had made him saynothing,rather thannothing more. Even though she did not seem to try, Miss Charity was far too good at ferreting out secrets.
She was good at judging her sister’s character as well. Though Hope had always claimed to be the proper one, he’d seen no evidence of it tonight. But it was no longer as important to protect her innocence as it had been. Before they’d made love, he had got a promise of devotion from her. There would be no more talk of the Earl, because she had promised to love only him.
He was going to marry Hope Strickland. The acceptance of his official offer was a foregone conclusion. Even so, he would make one, on one knee with a ring worthy of a daughter of one of England’s noblest families. Tradition was important to her. It should be so to him as well. After all, he was starting a family line of his own. She would be the first Mrs Drake. There would be children. Offspring. Progeny. Descendants.
He thought he had been happy before. But now, his throat closed with emotion at the thought of the future. There had been an emptiness in him for as long as he could remember. And now Hope Strickland had filled it.
Ahead of him, she had stopped. She stood at the Countess’s open bedroom door, beckoning him to enter. When they were both inside, she shut it tightly and lit the candles on the bedside table from the one she’d carried. ‘What I am about to show you might be hard to see in candlelight. But I think that was rather the point all along. A dark room hides a multitude of sins.’
He felt a sudden chill of foreboding. Had that been a reference to what they had just done, or was she speaking of something else?
She continued speaking, unaware. ‘I removed these from the lock room this afternoon, while you were busy with Charity.’ She pulled a velvet box from the dresser and spilled the contents on to the bed.
‘The Comstock diamonds,’ he said, surprised.
Now she was poking through some of the most famous jewels outside the royal family as if they were nothing but jumble.
‘The full parure consists of a tiara, eardrops, two rings, a brooch. And, of course, the lavalier, which must be three carats at least. Grandmama rarely wears anything more than the smaller of the rings. She has complained for as long as I can remember that the rest are too heavy for any occasion less than a visit to court.’
As he stared at the jewels, the reason for her secrecy came clear. To verify what he already knew, he picked up the necklace, weighted it in his hand for a moment, then blew on it, holding it up in the candlelight to check the surface for fog.
Then he set it down with a sigh. ‘How long since the real stones were replaced with paste?’
‘I have no idea,’ she said, sitting on the edge of the bed and tucking her feet beneath her to keep them warm. ‘It was hard enough getting Grandmama to describe the rest of the items she took. But when she did not mention them, I became suspicious and examined them.’ She ran a fingernail along the surface of one of the larger stones. ‘They are scratched. No true diamond would have such damage.’
‘And you asked her what had become of them?’
