How To Bed A Baron (7 page)

              Serena keened in pleasure, raising her knees to draw them up around his waist in a unconscious effort to draw him in deeper. He seemed to lose the first thread of his control then as her body surrounded his in a greedy grasp. She clenched her insides around him, and felt another thread of his control snap.

              “Serena,” he said, his voice breathless but filled with warning at the same time. She ignored him, and clenched her muscles again, feeling an exquisite pleasure as he drew out of her body, and rammed into her a second time.

              He seemed to lose all of his control at once, then, for her let her wrists go as he raised himself on his elbows to gain purchase, plunging into her again and again in a frenzy of desire that took control of them both. Serena felt her pleasure rise again, this time not in a slow spiral but in a burst like fireworks that made her scream his name, and left her shaking around him, tears on her cheeks.

              Arthur did not stop at her pleasure, but found his own, moaning her name once as he sank down on top of her, his face in the fall of her hair.

              “I love you, Serena,” he said, his voice muffled in the pillow. He lay on top of her still, and he turned his head, so that his lips were close beside her ear. Otherwise, she might never have heard him.

              The thunder of her own heartbeat started to slow, and she began to wake to the world again, one limb at a time. Her feet were chilled, because he did not cover them, but the rest of her body was warm, nestled safely beneath his large one. She had always know that she and Arthur were of a height, but it had never occurred to her how lovely that would be in bed. She had never thought to find herself beneath him, in this bed or anywhere. She thanked every god she could name in that long moment of silence, throwing in Isis for good measure, though she had never yet been to Egypt. She sighed deeply then, relaxing under him. She knew that the world must intrude between them, but for the moment, she wished herself no place but where she was.

              That was when she knew how deeply she loved him, in the moment her body lay sated beneath his, and his scent of sunlight all around her, with Arthur breathing gently into her hair.

***

“You will marry me.”

              Arthur heard his own voice in the silence, and cursed himself. He sounded imperious, like one of his old dons, or like one of the pompous bastards at the Royal Academy, who were so sure of that their opinions on art and literature were the only opinions that mattered. He breathed deeply, and tried again.

              “Serena, it would be my honor if you would consent to be my wife.”

              He waited a long, excruciating moment, knowing that she would refuse him this first time. He fully expected that she would refuse him the next fifty times he proposed as well, so he decided to go ahead and begin his campaign while she was still pleasured and quiet beneath him, before she had time to think.

              “Arthur, give me a drink.”

              He frowned, looking at last into her eyes. The beautiful green of them was as clear as grass, as clean as spring. He looked into her eyes, and waited, hoping she might say something else, but she did not. She merely wriggled beneath him, tempting him to take her again.

              “I’d like water, Arthur. Or wine, if you have it.”

              He did not keep wine in his rooms, but he did keep water. A tumbler of humble pottery kept his well water cool throughout the night. He had replaced the cut crystal tumbler with the pottery just the month before he had left for London to find his bride. The pottery was not good enough for Serena, but the water it held was good and cold. He rose from the bed, and poured it into a crystal goblet, handing it to her.

              She drank greedily, then offered him the empty glass. “I’m sorry, Arthur. I meant to leave you some. I’m thirstier than I thought.”

              He did not answer, but waited for her to refuse him then. Instead, she sighed and stretched, her beautiful, rounded breasts rising with the gesture. “Should we sleep here?” she asked. “Or should we go to my bed?”

              Arthur poured himself more water and drank it down, staring at her, still waiting. She did not speak again, but smiled at him, still sated from their lovemaking. Perhaps she had not heard him. He proposed a third time.

              “Serena Davenport, will you marry me?”

              She sighed then, and he realized that she had heard him before, each time, and had simply been ignoring him. “Come back to bed, Arthur,” she said. “It’s been a long day.”

              “Answer me first,” he said, sounding priggish.

              She did not take offense but looked at him with love in her eyes. “Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”

              “I want to talk about it now. Indeed, I don’t want to talk at all. I want a clear answer, and then I want to go to bed.”

              “Then the answer is no.”

              Arthur had known that would be her answer, but he was surprised by how much it hurt his heart to hear it. He breathed deep, until he was sure he was in control of himself. No one could hurt him the way this woman could. Only now, sitting naked in her presence, did he remember that.

              He stood and drew on his small clothes and his breeches, leaving his stockings where they lay.

              Serena raised herself on her knees so that they were eye to eye. Arthur was careful to stay well back from the bed so that he would not touch her again. His heart was bruised, but the rest of his body wanted her. He looked at the ring on her finger, and felt his heart clench.

              “Arthur, you don’t want to marry me. I’m twenty-eight years old. I’m ruined. I spent my youth in the wilds of Italy behind enemy lines digging in the dirt with my father. I have a decent jointure, enough to live on for the rest of my life, but nothing to tempt a man to marry me. Arthur, you can do so much better than me.”

              “I cannot,” he said, his voice feeling like broken glass in his throat. He tried to clear it, but found it still blocked by unexpected pain. He might have to ask her to marry him another fifty times, but he prayed to God that each time did not tear his heart out as this one was doing.

              “You are the woman of my heart,” he said. “You are my first and only choice. I want to marry you.”

              “Arthur, only this morning you were traveling to Gretna Green with some girl you had proposed to in London. Believe me when I tell you that, when you wake in the morning, you will be glad I refused you now.”

              He did not look at her, but drew his shirt on over his head. He did not bother to dress any further, but waited in silence, feeling her eyes on him.

              Serena sighed again, and rose from his bed. She did not bother to draw on her shift, but stood naked in front of him, her breasts brushing against his shirtfront, rising in peaks as if to taunt him with what he could not have.

              “I love you, too, Arthur. That is why I am not going to marry you. I am going to let you go.”

Chapter Ten

Serena had never felt so wretched in her life, not even when her father had died.

              She wanted nothing more than to say yes, to marry this man, to bear his children and live in his home, safe from the world for the rest of her life. Since he had made love to her, Arthur, Baron Farleigh felt obligated to wed her, as any gentleman worth the name might. He was a man who always kept his word, a man of honor in a world without. She had no honor left, but what little she had she would use to let him go.

              She thought of the parade of young, blonde, lovely girls that would bring him good dowries and clean pedigrees, along with nubile, virgin bodies. The thought made her slightly sick to her stomach, but she would not let nausea lead her to take advantage of this man who had never been anything but her friend.

              She stood naked except for his ring, and he would not meet her eyes. She took the ring off, and offered it to him. It was warm from her hand. She wanted to keep it, just as she wanted to keep him, but she knew very well that she could not.

              He still would not meet her eyes, but he looked down at the ring in her palm. The three pearls gleamed in the firelight. She thought he would take it from her then, but he did not.

              “That ring is yours,” he said. “No one else will wear it.”

              “It’s your mother’s,” she answered him.

              “Not anymore.”

              He looked at her then, and the pain in his face was enough to pierce her heart. She was not the only one wounded by all that had passed between them. She had been a damn fool to give into her lust, to express her love for him, and to think that she would be the only one touched by it. This was Arthur Farleigh, the man she had loved all her life. The man who deserved better than she.

              She put the ring back on, afraid that she would lose it. She would give it to his mother in the morning, and apologize to both of them again for the farce this night had become, before she left to see what ruins might remain of her long-neglected family home.

              After that, Serena had no idea what she would do. She had come all this way to save her father’s legacy. She had done that, and her long fight was over. Now she had to decide what she would do with the rest of her life.

              She drew on her shift and gown, and realized that she would have to make that decision now with a broken heart. She cursed herself for a fool, because she was the one who had broken it.

              She knew with all certainty that she was doing the right thing. She would not trap Arthur in a marriage that would bring him only embarrassment, and no wealth. He needed a decent match, and she had not been a decent woman since she left for the Continent with her father ten years before.

              She felt the temptation to berate herself for her own foolishness, for her unconscious cruelty, but she forced herself to stop. Abusing herself would not change the facts. She must act in Arthur’s best interests until he could do that for himself.

              He did not touch her again. He held the door for her and followed three steps behind as she made her way to the guest wing where her room was. She kept waiting for him to say something, even if it was to rail at her, but he did not. Somehow, the heaviness of his silence was far worse.

              Still, she would save him from his own misguided honor, even if it killed her.

              Serena was still thinking this as she opened the door to her bedroom and found M. Galliard waiting for her.

***             

Serena took a reflexive step back as soon as she saw Galliard standing over her neatly made bed, her leather satchel and all its contents scattered across the counterpane.

              “Where is it?” the man asked in French.

              Serena answered in English, as she never had any desire to speak a foreign language again, “Where is what, Monsieur?”

              “The statue! Do not play the fool with me, mademoiselle. I have tracked you here and I have discovered your room, though I see you have resumed your whorish ways and have not bothered to sleep in it.”

Serena felt Arthur stiffen behind her, and when she touched his hand, she could feel that the slow boil of his temper had begun to heat. Arthur said nothing, as was his habit when he was angriest, and the foolish Frenchman kept talking.

“I care nothing for your immorality or your choice of lovers. I care only for the statue. It belongs to me.”

“It belongs to the dead, monsieur. And they cannot claim it.”

“Do not mince words with me as your father might have done. The past is on sale to the highest bidder, and with the Emperor fallen from grace, a great many new men have risen to purchase in his stead. I have three buyers vying for the Etruscan piece, and there will be an auction as soon as I return with it to Paris.”

“
Bonne chance
to you, for I no longer have it.”

Galliard reached for her then, and quick as a snake, he took her by the throat. Arthur stepped forward to punch the man, but froze in mid-motion. She waited, wondering if she should strike the Frenchman down, or if she should concede to Arthur’s masculine pride and let him do it, when she felt the cool rim of a gun’s muzzle against her temple.

She swore under her breath in French and in Italian, and Galliard laughed.

“I see that you and your lover understand at last the gravity of the situation. I am in deadly earnest. If you do not reveal the location of the statue, I shall be forced to shoot you. And to date, I have never shot a lady. For I am a gentleman.”