“Oh,” she said. “Oh.”
He pushed again, and her head sank onto his neck. She bit her lip. It hurt.
He pushed again, and she swallowed a cry of frustration. It was very uncomfortable.
Then she felt his hand again, so caressing, in her soft place, and inside her something gave way and she could feel him inside, filling her, and she whispered, wonderingly, “Oh, this is—oh, this isvery good.”
He made the sound again, half laughter, half groan.
Then he moved, and she moved with him, rocking as she’d done before, but this time he was inside her. And this time the pleasure strengthened and seemed to rise inside her like a rocket. Higher and higher it went. And then it struck the top of the heavens and burst, and its remnants cascaded down, through her and around her, sparks of happiness trickling down in the darkness.
Mad, mad, mad.
He held her tightly while he came back to himself and she came back to herself.
He held her tightly while reason returned and said,Mad,mad,mad.
“Oh, Zoe,” he said, when he could find his voice.
“Oh,” she said softly. “That wassplendid.Now I understand why the women carried on so. It’s most agreeable—except for the painful part in the middle. But that was because of my virgin barrier. Before that part and afterward, it wasvery good.”
He drew back a little to look at her.
She gazed at him dreamily and rocked a little, back and forth.
It was the shameless rocking. He might have come to his senses if not for that.
Or probably not.
There she was, smiling her wanton smile, her breasts hanging out of her dress.
“You have no inhibitions, have you?” he said.
“My English came back so quickly and easily,” she said. “Inhibitions seem to need a great deal more time than three weeks. I didn’t have much time for them—I was so busy practicing curtseying out of a room backward without tripping over my train or the hem of my gown or dropping my fan.” She stroked his cheek.
He turned his head and kissed her hand. The scent of their lovemaking was there, and his mind started to thicken again.
Think of her father, he told himself.
And that was like a pail of ice water dumped on his privates.
Lexham, the one man in the world for whom he’d lay down his life.
…whose youngest and dearest daughter Marchmont had just dishonored.
He took her hand and kissed the back of it. As he did so, his gaze strayed to the window. “Curse it,” he said.
“What?” she said. “What?”
“We’ll be there in a moment,” he said. “We need to put our clothes in order very quickly. We need to pray that the sun’s glare on the coach window prevented anyone’s seeing what we were doing.”
This was another coach meant for formal occasions. A heavy vehicle, older and larger than the one that had brought them here, it was built like a man-of-war, and richly fitted out. It would not jounce about a great deal when people were not sitting quietly in their respective seats. Onlookers wouldn’t be able to make out what transpired inside the carriage. The windows were small, the interior dark. Still, the two footmen standing on the footboard at the back might have heard the sounds and known what they signified.
Never mind.
It didn’t matter whether anyone had seen or heard or guessed what the Duke of Marchmont had done. He’d done it, and he knew what he had to do next.
He shifted her back onto her seat and helped her clean herself and put her clothes in order. Then he attended to himself. In the process, he found some spots of blood on the inside of his breeches’ flap and some on her petticoats.
