Kasey Michaels (2 page)

Reese moved to assist his master in removing his jacket. “Muggy night, Your Grace,” he said. “I should imagine you’ll want the doors opened, as is your custom? I can return later and take care of all the particulars. You have the headache, Your Grace? Is that why you’re retiring so early? I can mix you up some laudanum, Your Grace, if that’s—”

The duke turned and heavily laid his hands on the conscientious valet’s shoulders. “Reese,” he intoned solemnly, “you’re a good man. You’re even a fine man. A veritable treasure. I’m blessed to have you, truly I am. But if you don’t go away right now, and much as it would pain me, I’m going to have to strangle you where you stand.”

His eyes wide in his head, Reese backed halfway out of the room, turned, and ran like a rabbit.

His Grace checked the time on the mantel clock against that of his pocket watch, then stripped out of his shirt and slipped his arms into a maroon silk banyan, tying the robe tightly at his still trim waist. He paused in front of a cheval glass to inspect his appearance, satisfied to see that he still looked quite dashing, even as he yearly nudged closer to sixty than he cared to remember.

And then he smiled, and smartly saluted his reflection. It was time.

Going to the burled cabinet in the corner, he withdrew a most fantastic invention he’d paid a stable hand handsomely to fashion for him—a compilation of two tremendous lengths of stout rope with a wide, leather strip tied midway between the two ends. When these rope ends were secured to the stone balcony and the contraption lowered over the balcony railing, it hung nearly down to the ground, greatly resembling a country swing.

Which was exactly Constance’s observation when she came creeping out of the bushes. Sitting her diminutive, perfect, pocket-Venus body on the wide leather strap, she declared, “Oh, Cesse, a swing! How very clever of you! How very much I adore you!”

“Yes, it is clever, my little dove, and I adore you as well,” he responded, groaning a bit as Constance’s slight weight tugged at his arms. “But softly, my dove, softly. It wouldn’t do to have the whole household down on us.”

She peered up at him from a distance of thirty or more feet. At the moment, it looked to be closer to sixty feet to His Grace, who had once thought this such a jolly, smashing idea but who was now having second thoughts. Her smiling face was caught by moonlight, and he watched in dismay as she gave her legs a small kick, setting the rope to swinging. “Lift me up, my sweet knight, and I will whisper most discreetly in your ear. Amongst other pleasantries I’ve been contemplating whilst cowering in yon bushes. None of them at all discreet, may I add.”

“For the love of Heaven, Connie,” he warned in a whispered shout—not an easy accomplishment, especially when one was doing one’s best to conserve one’s breath. “This ain’t a country fair and I ain’t a twenty-year-old buck. Have a care with that swinging or we’ll both be in the basket.”

“La, Sir Knight, do not say you are not up to the adventure,” Constance chided. Smiling at him, she lay back until she was nearly horizontal, her hands tight on the rope as he slowly, jerkily, began reeling her in like a prize fish. “You who are always
up
to any adventure.”

If Constance insisted upon acting the silly miss on a swing hanging from a mighty oak branch, she was bound to be in for a major disappointment. Although he had securely tied both ends of the rope to the balcony, it was now left to His Grace to do the actual
tugging
on the rope so that his lady love could be hoisted to the balcony. His plan was to grab on to each rope a foot or two below the knots, and yank on them as he walked backward, sliding his sweet Connie closer to the balcony with each step he took away from it—that’s what he would do.

Which was a fine idea. In theory. In practice, the maneuver was bringing a sheen of perspiration to the duke’s brow and a burning pain in his shoulders and arms.

“I’m warning you, Connie—” he said as her musical giggles reached him. Finally, she seemed to understand the seriousness of the affair and sat up, sat very still, awaiting his next move. The duke breathed a silent sigh of relief, then took another deep breath and began walking backward, the ropes wrapped twice around his forearms and held tight in his fists. He staggered across the balcony and into the bedchamber. He backed, slower and slower, across the Aubusson carpet, twice nearly losing his footing.

He pulled and he cursed, and he cursed and he pulled until, at last, just as the back of his knees made contact with the edge of the bed, the dragging weight on the other end of the rope vanished and he went flying backward onto the mattress.

“We did it, we did it, we
did
it!” Constance trilled a moment later, landing on top of him on the bed. “Oh, Cesse! I love you so much! And I’m so proud of you! Of course, I was also quite wonderful—climbing over the balcony rail all by myself, to become Lady Buxley’s most unexpected guest.”

She pushed at the lapels of his banyan, raining down kisses on his bare, and still wildly heaving chest. “How long may I stay? Will you keep me in a cupboard, dear Cesse? Will you feed me scraps you’ve pilfered from the dinner table? I’ve brought no clothing, thinking it difficult enough for my dear knight to heft this shameless baggage to the balcony without bringing a stuffed hatbox along on the trip. But it is of no concern to me. I shall wear your banyan over my nakedness, rolling up the sleeves a thousand times, and look most adorable as I sit in my corner, nibbling stale crusts. Oh, Cesse!” she exclaimed, rubbing herself against him. “Let’s make love on that adorable balcony!
Our
balcony. We haven’t done anything silly in far too long. The stars are bright, and the moon is full—shining down on the wet flagstones after this horrible day of rain.”

“Make—make love on the balcony?” His Grace gasped out, for what air that had remained in his lungs after his exertions had been crushed from his body by Constance’s enthusiastic greeting. His ears were ringing, a few stars were circling just above his head, and he had the nagging suspicion he was no longer quite as young and hearty as he believed himself to be. “But, Connie—sweet love, little princess—just think about it a moment. We’re already in bed. So much more convenient this way, don’t you agree?”

“Oh,
pooh
on this silly bed!” she exclaimed, pushing the banyan off his shoulders and then swiftly going to work on the buttons of his breeches. “I want to make love in the moonlight, Cesse. Do you remember the night we frolicked outside that lovely inn near Epson? We rolled over and over in the grass like children—”

“We damn near rolled into a curst cesspit, the pair of us, mad fools that we are,” His Grace put in, wincing at the memory. Then he brightened, smiling up at the canopy over the bed. “Although I will admit I enjoyed sneaking about in the Tower last spring while m’wife wandered off to admire some stupid statuary. I backed you up against the cold stone walls almost under one of the Guard’s noses and hoisted up your skirts, remember? And you wrapped your legs around me, and then I...” He gave a small shiver as the last button of his breeches released and Constance freed him. “What was that you were saying about the balcony?”

She slipped from the bed and untied the strings at the throat of her black silk evening cloak. “Look, my darling!” she commanded, throwing open the cloak to reveal her perfectly nude, perfectly perfect body. Those more than perfect breasts. The woman hadn’t an ounce of shame in her, Lord love her, and no reason for any, now that Cecil considered the thing.

He lifted his head a little higher off the mattress and looked down the length of his body at her, even as his traitorous body remained prone, his legs draped over the edge of the bed, feeling numb from their exertion. But, saints be praised, one part of his anatomy had not been rendered exhausted by his small adventure, and immediately sprang to attention. He wasn’t sixty
yet
, by God!

“Oh, Cesse, how I do love you!” Constance giggled. “I knew you were
up
for anything!” She bent and gave his lower belly a quick, nipping kiss, then bounded for the narrow balcony, her bare buttocks catching the glow from the moon as she turned to drape her cloak over the wide stone railing.

“I’m going to Hell for what I’m thinking, what I’m doing, what I’ve done,” His Grace muttered under his breath as he pushed himself up onto his elbows. “But I don’t regret a moment of it either, by damn!”

“Come, come, my darling,” Constance called to him as she daringly seated herself on the cloak and opened her legs to him, twining her lower legs behind two of the fat stone balustrades. She braced her palms against the railing on each side of her as she sat, looking as if suspended in air above the black as night cloak.

Her head was thrown back in an expression of freedom, her perfect breasts glowing alabaster white in the moonlight, like twin beacons guiding him into harbor. “Let us be free and wild, Cesse, like mad creatures of the night!” She lifted her arms for a moment, daring the laws of balance, of gravity.
Sir Isaac Newton,
the duke thought randomly,
would have been amazed, dumbfounded.
Why, the learned fellow would have taken a single look at Constance and promptly forgotten to write down his stupid theories (and been a happier man for it).

“Connie! Be careful!”

“Careful? Oh,
that’s
no fun, darling! Look! Look at me, Cesse—I’m all but flying!”

Now, Cecil might have been tired. He might have thought a small nap in order, or at least a few minutes spent chatting over glasses of wine before they moved on to more carnal pursuits. But Cecil was also a man. A man with wants, a man with needs. A man very seriously in love for the first time in his life. A man who had been without his woman for five long and lonely nights.

His Grace’s evening slippers went flying—one hither, one yon. His feet hit the floor. The banyan followed. He let out a long, low growl. With his breeches dragging at his ankles until he could kick free of them, Cecil Seaton, Eighth Duke of Selbourne, went to his woman. Tall. Strong. Proud.

And randy as hell.

He slammed the balcony doors behind him as he stepped out onto the narrow span, sealing the pair of them off from the world, and, as an old army man, spared himself a moment to consider the logistics of the thing. The cold stone against his stockinged feet had brought him back to sanity—or as close as he could come to that state with Constance perched straight in front of him, naked as a jaybird. “God’s teeth, Connie. It’s too narrow out here for any real sport. If I take more than two steps backward, I’ll be hitting my rump against those damn doors. Can’t we go inside?”

“What? My knight stumbles just as he brings himself to the
sticking
point?” Constance pouted prettily. “It was such fun being hoisted up here in my swing, Cesse,” she said. “Just like those acrobats I’ve seen flying through the air. Why, I feel quite young again. You will, too, darling, I’m sure of it. Please don’t make us go inside to anything so mundane as a
bed
.”

“You render a man insane, Connie,” he said, sighing as she slowly rolled her head from side to side, the tip of her small pink tongue drawing a moist circle along her lips.

She laughed low in her throat as she reached out her arms to him, balancing precariously above the ground. “Come and get me, darling. Let us fly free as the birds.”

He came and got her.

Five minutes later Reese—the Compleat Valet, who knew his master preferred to sleep with the night air blowing across his body, no matter what the man might say to the contrary—tippy-toed into the duke’s darkened bedchamber. Still moving quietly, so as not to wake His Grace, he crossed the floor and pushed open the doors to the balcony, giving them an extra shove when his action unexpectedly met with resistance.

Lady Buxley had never given such a famous, talked-about house party. Her sister-in-law, Isobel, was later rumored to have been quite crushed by the woman’s coup.

In fact, in the end, Lady Buxley’s house party was acknowledged by one and all as the most exciting of the season.

Oh, no!

Never say twice!

I am past thirty,

and three parts iced over.

– Matthew Arnold

Oh! no! we never mention her,

Her name is never heard;

My lips are now forbid to speak

That once familiar word.

– Thomas Haynes Bayly

Chapter One