“Dear, sweet things.” Emmeline had been apprehensive about meeting Johnathan’s younger sisters, but she needn’t have been.
All three of them had been crowded onto a window seat the day Johnathan brought her home to his country estate, their noses pressed to the glass. Her foot had hardly had a chance to touch the gravel drive before they burst through the front doors and gathered around her, chattering excitedly, each of them asking a dozen questions at once.
They were so like her own sisters Emmeline had felt instantly at home with them. Since then, what had begun as an eagerness on both sides to think the very best of each other had blossomed into a deep, genuine affection.
“Harriet and Sarah have declared they intend to become botanists themselves. As for Margaret, she’s bursting with excitement over Tilly’s visit next week, and has talked of nothing else.”
“I wish we could have persuaded Phee to come,” Emmeline said with a sigh.
Phee had been astonished to find the Earl of Melrose in the cramped entryway of Hambleden Manor the day he’d arrived to claim Emmeline. Her shock had quickly turned to quiet joy, but for all Phee’s happiness for Emmeline, she’d so far resisted a visit to Kent.
“Give her time, love. She’ll come, when she’s ready.”
In her worst moments, Emmeline worried that Phee would never be ready, that she’d spent too much time hiding at Hambleden Manor to ever willingly leave its secure embrace. She understood the urge to hide, the need to feel safe, but there was a great deal more to life than safety. Love, laughter, passion, hope—she wanted all of those things for all of her sisters—but sometimes she worried Phee would never give herself a chance to have them.
Johnathan, who could always tell when Emmeline was fretting over her sisters, shifted closer to her side, sliding one long, bare, hair-roughened leg between hers.
Ah, now that was Johnathan’s mouth. There could be no mistaking those full, soft lips, open and demanding, the warm tip of his tongue tracing the line of her neck for any species of rose, no matter how divine.
“Turn over, my lady,” he whispered in her ear.
Another delicious shiver skittered down Emmeline’s spine as she wriggled onto her back, her cheeks heating just a little as Johnathan’s gaze roved over her, the desire in his eyes warming every inch of bare skin it touched.
“Dear God, that blush drives me mad.” He followed the rose as he teased it down her throat, his eyes darkening as he let it rest between her breasts. “The creamy white petals with the hint of pale pink are just the same color as your skin when you blush.”
He traced the rose down her abdomen, pausing to tease her belly button with the impossibly soft petals before he drifted lower still, his blue eyes glittering as he dragged it over the slight curve of her lower belly.
Emmeline’s blush deepened, and Johnathan’s mouth curved in a slow, lazy smile. “Still so shy, after all these weeks as my countess?”
“It’s not shyness, my lord.” That wasn’t entirely true, as there was a part of her that would always find her handsome husband’s desire astonishing, but that rush of color to the surface of her skin had more to do with her consuming desire for Johnathan than it did with maidenly bashfulness.
“No?” Johnathan moved the rose back up her body to circle one taut nipple, his hot gaze darting to her face when a soft, breathless cry left her lips.
She swallowed at the breathtaking sight of him hovering over her, with his tousled golden hair and sensuous lips, his powerful chest and hard, flat stomach.
How amazing, that any man could be so handsome, and that that man could be hers…
But he was hers, body, heart, and soul. Since that fateful night in Lady Fosberry’s library, Johnathan had shown her in a thousand different ways that his love belonged to her, and her alone.
“Tell me what it is, then, sweetheart,” he crooned as he drew the rose across her chest to torment her other nipple, stroking and teasing until she was squirming against the bed, soft whimpers falling from her lips.
“Shall I show you, instead?” Emmeline closed her fingers around his wrist and pressed his hand against her body.
Johnathan’s eyes burned, his lips parting further as she guided his hand to the warm, wet place between her thighs. He let out a low, tortured groan at the evidence of her desire, then tossed the rose aside, his game forgotten as passion overwhelmed them both.
There were no more words after that—just his hot, demanding mouth on hers, his tongue sliding between her lips to take her, stealing every thought from her head but the delirious pleasure of his touch, his quickened breath, his hungry mouth devouring hers, and his hoarse groans as his powerful body moved inside her, hard and hot, stroking so deeply Emmeline was lost to him, gasps tearing from her throat until with one deep thrust, he sent breathtaking waves of pleasure shuddering through her.
He held her close afterwards, murmuring drowsily, words of love and passion as he pressed tender kisses to her temple, her lips, the slowing pulse at the base of her throat. She stroked her fingertips over his back, through his damp hair, a smile that belonged to him alone on her lips.
They dozed in each other’s arms for a while, Emmeline sure she’d never before been as warm as when she was in his embrace, until at last he stirred, and dropped a playful kiss on the tip of her nose. “I have something for you, my lady.”
Emmeline shook her head, but her smile was dreamy. “Not another gift?”
Johnathan knew she didn’t care much about silks or jewels or other extravagant trinkets, but he insisted it gave him pleasure to surprise her, so she’d ceased protesting, though occasionally she teased him about his countess being the most elegantly-dressed botanist in England.
“A gift for you to wear the next time we’re in London.” Johnathan fetched a square box of lovely, heather-colored velvet from the table beside the bed. “The ton must have something to gossip about.”
There was still a great deal of talk in London over the Lady in Lavender. There were those who steadfastly maintained it was Juliet, while others claimed it had been Emmeline all along. Still others insisted that Lord Cudworth and Lady Christine—now Lady Cudworth—had fabricated the entire story, and there was a small but shrill contingent who would tell anyone who listened that Emmeline had bewitched poor Lord Melrose with a mysterious perfume, an elixir of roses that made him fall madly in love with her.
