Kirkland laughed. “I can endure that. Since you don’t have a carriage in town, shall I pick you up in the morning?”
Callie answered for them both. “Thank you, that would be very convenient. Ten in the morning?”
After Gordon and Kirkland agreed, the earl left and Callie moved so that she was pressed against Gordon’s side. “Have you figured out why the idea of inheriting the Audley wealth and honors is so upsetting?”
“I hated being part of that family,” Gordon said slowly as he sorted through the tumult of his emotions. His father’s voice echoed in his mind. “Feel free to kill him. I have better sons.”“I despised most of my relatives because they were so beastly, and I hate Kingston Court, which is surely the ugliest, most mildewed great house in Britain. Sitting on the lake makes it damp and musty and it’s downwind from a coal seam fire. The house made me ill whenever I stayed there very long.”
“All good reasons to loathe the idea of becoming lord and master at Kingston Court. It is a dismal place,” Callie observed. “But the worst of your relatives are dead, and you’ve moved far beyond your miserable childhood.”
He squeezed her hand, never wanting to let go. “You were the best part of my childhood, Callie. Because of you, I managed to grow up at least somewhat sane and happy. But I have no desire to return there.” He grimaced. “Among other things, this inheritance will make it impossible to return to America if you decide you don’t want to live in England permanently.”
“Where you go, I go,” she said calmly. “Your sense of responsibility is too great to walk away from the land and tenants and businesses that are part of the Kingston estate. Since that responsibility has fallen on you, I’ll be right there by your side.”
He studied her lovely, delicate features, complete with stubborn chin, and wondered how he had become so lucky. With Callie beside him, he could face anything. “I was better friends with the Kingston tenants than with my family,” he said, remembering. “I can’t let them down. My father was a competent lord, but not a likable one, and Welham would have been worse in all ways.”
“A selfish brute,” Callie agreed. “If he had proposed to a young woman, she might have decided that living at Kingston Court with him was too high a price to pay, even to be a marchioness.”
“No sane person would want to live at the Court,” he said dourly.
“Fortunately we don’t have to live there,” Callie pointed out. “Though you can’t walk away from your responsibilities, there’s no requirement that we live at the family seat. We can build a pleasant, modern house elsewhere on the property, far enough from the lake and the smoldering coal seam to be healthy. I assume the entail includes a London house, but there’s no need to live there, either. I like your house on Mount Row.Ourhouse on Mount Row. We can jolly well stay there.”
“Thank God for you, Catkin.” He released her hand and put an arm around her to draw her even closer. “I’m realizing that I took the news of my inheritance so badly because it brought up everything I hated about my childhood. I thought I’d recovered from it, but I haven’t. All the pain and anger were simmering deep inside, waiting to erupt like a volcano.”
Callie frowned. “One can move beyond a difficult childhood, but I don’t think it’s possible to really forget. The scars are always there and the pain will flare up again if struck unexpectedly, as you just were.”
“Exactly. And these scars have just been bludgeoned by English inheritance laws. If I could leave the whole mess to my next younger brother, I would.” His mouth tightened. “I’m happier now than I’ve ever been in my life. I don’t want to lose that.”
“You won’t.” She rested her cheek on his shoulder. “We’ll both have more responsibilities, especially you, but we’ll also have great power to shape our lives as we want. You can build a new house and hire good people to run the estates while you become the resident rebel in the House of Lords.”
He smiled a little. “That part I might like.”
“You will,” she predicted with an answering smile. “Are there any modest Kingston estates near London? If so, we can have our convenient country manor without having to look for one.”
“There is such a manor in Hertfordshire, if I recall correctly. I visited once and the place was quite pleasant. I’ll have to ask the lawyer about it when I see him tomorrow.” He kissed her with deep gratitude. “You’re a miracle, Callie.”
The kiss deepened and hands began to move. He was shocked when he realized she was unbuttoning the fall of his trousers. Almost paralyzed when her fingers touched bare, heated flesh, he gasped, “What the devil are you doing?”
She chuckled. “Isn’t it obvious? I just hope that everyone in the house is upstairs listening to the music.”
Then she bent and put her mouth on him and he lost whatever awareness he had left. The pleasure lasted and lasted, deliberately prolonged as the cascading brilliance of a Vivaldi piano concerto twined through the voluptuous sensations.
When he reached the point where he thought he would incinerate into ashes, she brought him to a swift, annihilating culmination. As the madness faded into peace, he held her close, her cheek resting on his chest as he stroked her head and neck.
When he was coherent again, he said in a rusty voice, “If your intent was to distract me, it certainly worked. But what about you?” He caressed the provocative curves of her waist and hip, thinking how wondrous a woman’s body was.
She tried to brush him away. “We can discuss that once we’re home and in our very fine bed.”
“No. Now.” Despite her willingness to wait, he sensed her arousal in her quickened breath and flushed cheeks. He needed to give her the intimate pleasure she’d given him. Doing that would bind them even closer, and he needed that closeness desperately if he was to survive having his world turned upside down again.
His hand slid under the hem of her gown, then glided up her stockinged calf. Silken seduction. She gasped and rolled back a little, her legs separating to his touch. His own breath quickened as he touched intimate heat and moisture. They knew each other’s bodies well by now, and it was so easy, so satisfying, to bring her to the kind of shattering completion she’d given him.
He caught her cry in his mouth as he kissed her, inhaling her passion and returning it to her with his own. If he was a marquess, she was his marchioness, his match, his mate.
Most of all, she was his savior.
As her silent convulsions ended, he drew her against him, her head on his shoulder again. Wise man, Kirkland, to have a sofa in his study. It made misbehaving so much easier.
As he brushed back her shining apricot hair, he said softly, “Were you ever told the whole story of my mother and father? It was a great scandal.”
