Royal Regard (25 page)

“We are agreed on that, if nothing else,”
Nick replied, his determination gritted between his teeth.
“Although I am still not certain why I am not at the top of your
list of dangerous men.”

Huntleigh chuckled, but was silent for many
long minutes. Eventually, he rested one hand on his walking stick
and used the other to pass Nick the unopened bottle of brandy.

“Because, my lord duke, you love her.”

Michelle tugged absently on the
sparse curls on Adolphe’s chest, her face on his shoulder, body
tucked under his arm, while he gently stroked her hair. Their limbs
were tangled, bodies and heat ensconced behind the forest-green
tapestry bed curtains in one of his manor house guest chambers: not
his room, nor hers. Both were nude, still sticky with sweat.

After hours of lovemaking, her hair was
rumpled and matted, the paint on her face disarrayed, cheeks
beard-burned, lips kiss-swollen. Adolphe could imagine no sight
more striking than Michelle after a long day of pleasing him.

For her part, she couldn’t help touching the
long scratches down her sides and the bruises on her wrists and
throat. His features were relaxed and body loose, hair tousled,
falling unevenly without pomade.

“Every time
, Monseigneur, vous êtes
extraordinaire
,” she said, as she kissed him lightly, just
above his nipple.

“You may call me by my name tonight, my
sweet.” She mouthed it silently, as though tasting a delicacy. “You
are most entertaining,” he chuckled. “I have hardly considered my
troubles at all this day.”

He opened the curtains on his side of the bed
to encourage a breeze, brass rings sliding loosely along the canopy
rail. “Light a candle and open the window, Michelle. It will rain
tonight, and I want the sea air to clear the stink of London from
my nose.”

She opened the bed curtains and sat up. She
used the tinder tube to light a rapeseed oil lamp, glowing red in
the darkened room. Stepping to the window, hips swaying in the way
she knew best enticed him, she said, “Why do you not come home to
stay, Dofi? You say you dislike London, but you are there but for a
few days each month. The air here is clean, and you can see France
from your bedchamber. I see you renewed when you visit the cliffs.
Your troubles fall away.”

She opened the shuttered casement window,
setting the latch to keep it open, then tied back the drapes.
Walking back, she bounced just enough on her toes to set her
breasts swinging, nipples hardening in the cool wind.

When she was almost to the bed, he said,
“Stop.” She pulled her foot back from the step she was about to
take. “You have the face of a crone,
ma petite
, but in this
low light, still the body of a girl. Turn for me,” he demanded,
twirling his finger to demonstrate. She turned her back to him,
looking over her shoulder playfully. “Bend over and spread your
legs. Show me your
derrière
.”

She bent at the hips, giving him the view he
craved: her striped, welted, and scarred flanks, bruised with
today’s handprints and fingertip bruises, scars years old, every
one with a salacious story he could tell. He leaned over the
mattress, ran his fingers up her leg, then sharp fingernails down
the back of her thigh across the rising welts, making her stumble.
She quickly regained her position and bent further with a sigh that
could have been frustrated or contented or both.

He growled, “Come back to bed, my lovely
little whore. It is a chilly night, and I would have you keep me
warm.”

He said nothing until she was once more in
his arms. As she tugged the blanket up, he stopped her, rubbing his
free hand along her arm, using his thumb and index finger to pinch
her nipples lightly, then harder, using his nails until she keened.
He fell back onto his pillow, pulling her closer, covering them
both with the blanket.

“I have reason to remain in London for the
moment.”

He could hear the sneer in her voice.
“
Madame la Comtesse
.”

He yanked her head back by the hair at the
nape of her neck, and listened to her gasp, his cock hardening
again, the third time since he had returned to Dover five hours
ago. “
Oui, Madame la Comtesse
. Soon
Madame la
Duchesse
. I grow tired of repeating myself,
ma chère
.
You will show respect for my wife, or I will have no need to keep
you once I have married.”

“I am sorry, Dofi. I mean no insult.”

The lines around his mouth deepened.
“Monseigneur
will do.” The tiniest of whimpers objected when
he took back the gift of the name she had given him in
childhood.

Satisfied with her fearful apology and his
continuing lesson in proper deference, he dropped her head and
caressed her hair again, and she snuggled closer to his side,
letting her hand drift down his stomach, falling gingerly on his
hip, close enough to stroke him if he commanded it, far enough away
she couldn’t be accused of taking liberties. She risked a sensual
kiss behind his ear, and he turned his head to allow it.

“She responds well to your suit,
Monseigneur
?”

His hand dropped heavily to her shoulder.
“She is charmed, but I must make her want to elope the moment her
meddling husband is gone. She would have fallen in love before now
if not for his interference,” he snarled. “The old fool is minutes
from death, and still he makes plans to thwart me.”

“Does he not see the honor of his wife
becoming
une Duchesse de France
?”

“He would prefer to consign her to a
convent.” His tone rasped as he explained, “Like the rest of
les
goddams
, he has no love for Frenchmen, and like every
bourgeois
tradesman, is envious of nobility.”

Fingertip twisting in the curly hairs on his
thigh, she tucked her head close, burrowing against his shoulder,
inhaling his scent. Shifting his hip under her fingertips signaled
a small reconciliation. For a lifetime, she had been allowed more
freedom with his person than other women, especially after she
pleased him so thoroughly, but the indulgence was never
guaranteed.

“And I am sure,” he spat, “he has no wish to
be cuckolded by a man who can screw her better than he, with his
limp, old man’s prick.”

She moaned her agreement in his ear and
gently nibbled the side of his neck until he tugged her mouth away
by her hair. She settled her cheek against his shoulder before
asking, “Does she not have other suitors? Is her fortune not
appealing?”

For a moment, he was silent, listening to the
wind whip around the corners of the house, considering the question
he had been asking himself: whether any of the sycophantic fortune
hunters sniffing at Lady Huntleigh’s assets posed a real threat.
“Only Wellbridge might seduce her readily, but once she has no
husband and is draped in black, he will abandon the field. He has
no need for money and will soon tire of
la comtesse
begging
his attentions.”

Her head came right off his shoulder. “You
cannot want a woman who soils herself with an Englishman.”

He laughed with a deep rasp, tweaking her
nose. “I still want you,
mon chaton
, and you have soiled
yourself with Frenchmen, Prussians, Turks, Venetians, probably even
Gypsies.” Her body tensed, so he allowed his fingertips to drift
down her neck, across her shoulder. “Let him tumble her.”

Michelle twisted her leg around his, chilly
toes toying with his ankle.

“He can be her atonement for compelling me to
dance attendance, as though she is worthy of my notice. I am sure
Wellbridge is no dunce in the bedchamber. Let her know ecstasy once
and she will feel the lack for a lifetime.” Adolphe relished
Michelle’s quiet whining at the unwelcome thought of feeling his
lack. “He will drop her in the gutter when he is sated; she is too
whey-faced to keep as a mistress.
La comtesse
could not make
me hard with both hands and a rope.”

Michelle’s hand clutched at his hip, waiting
for any indication he might allow her a more intimate touch. The
reflexive curling of her fingers, tightening of her leg, the faint
rocking of her sex against his thigh, were both noticed and
unrewarded.

“Will she not fall in love with him?”

“Pity for
Madame
and her lover,
Michelle?” He yanked her hair, dislodging her wet heat from the
possibility of fulfillment. “Events will proceed more easily if she
falls in love with me first.”

“Of course you can make her love you.” She
snapped her fingers. “Like that! Who could be more deserving?”

The pride Michelle took from being chosen as
lover to
le duc
shone in her eyes, ready to defend against
anyone who might devalue his name. The confidence in his powers of
seduction caused his sex to rise again. With a firm tug of her ear,
he reminded Michelle she needed nothing but her presence to render
him stiff as a poleax, several times a day.

“By the Heavens, I hope I need not bed her
before we are wed. That I will do naught but once.”

Her voice grew very small and she scooted
closer once more, braving his chastisement. “You do not plan to get
her with child,
Monseigneur
?”

“Why would I fuck an ugly old woman,
ma
petite
, when I have a pretty one?” He leaned down and kissed
the top of her head, smoothing the wrinkles under her eye with his
fingertip. “No, Michelle, I have no need for her once the money is
mine, and I want no half-English child. It is a pity you are too
old to bear. In France, your bastards might inherit.”

The silence fell heavy and dark, and he held
her closer, kissing her forehead, her face in his palm like
cradling a kitten. His hand down her shoulder and arm gentled as
for a frightened animal. Michelle curled her leg around his under
the blanket, her toenail scratching his heel. A tear fell on his
collarbone, but he wiped the next from her cheek with his thumb,
distracting her with a sweet, soft kiss.

“
Mon chaton
, you must not cry. It has
been so many years, and we have been given this great gift from
God, my dear, the chance to be in each other’s arms again.” He
cuddled her closer. “Does that not dry your tears?”

Before he could whisper the same words of
comfort as so many times before, she shuddered and shook off her
excess emotion, careful not to dislodge his hands, and nodded very
slightly, offering the tiniest of kisses on his shoulder.

The reticence in her voice dared not
verbalize the larger question hanging in the air. “What will you do
with her?”

Pleased he had held her grief at bay, he
absently toyed with her riotous red curls and answered, “She will
be kept in the country until she can act like a
duchesse
,
not a sailor’s whore. If she can be made presentable, perhaps she
will have value at Court, since she is known there. But first, I
must marry her, which is proving more complicated than I had
thought.”

He shifted his hipbone slightly, and
Michelle’s hand very slowly slid toward his cock, a quarter-inch at
a time. He watched, waiting, letting her risk his anger. Although
he was responding, he stayed her hand an inch away.

His voice hard and low, he ordered, “Stop,
you greedy slut.”

Asserting his control would be more comfort
to Michelle than any tenderness he might show. Tenderness only
confused her.

She pulled her hand away without delay,
draping it across her leg. Indrawn breath and instinctively pulling
herself closer, signaled she was safe again under his dominion.
Firmly grasping the hair at the nape of her neck, he let the
fingers of his other hand drift down her thigh, tugging her legs
very slightly apart. “I will fill your hungry cunt soon,
ma
douce pute
, but I have an idea I need to consider.”

As the cool wind blew across them, now
half-uncovered by the bedclothes, her shoulders tightened, so he
pushed her back down to the mattress, holding her there with his
free hand. When she relaxed into his touch, he ran his fingertips
along the seam of her lips, opening her clenched jaw to allow her
to suck on two of his fingers, almost daring her to bite him. His
smile grew wider and colder as she pulled him inside, sucking and
licking his hand as though he offered food to ease starvation.

The bed curtains rattled as he pulled them
shut against the breeze, now infused with the scent of incipient
rain, filling the enclosed space with the combined perfume of ocean
wind and their long day of arousal and satisfaction. Sitting up to
straddle one of her legs, keeping her exposed and available, his
other hand reached her center, and he began stroking very lightly,
teasing until she groaned. He bent down to suckle her nipple,
biting, scraping his teeth against the swollen flesh, then kissed
the bruises on her throat, drifting toward her ear, all the while
letting her prove the willingness of her lips and tongue.