Regency Pleasures and Sins Part 1

Alone with Roderick Graham, and emboldened by the two glasses of wine, Katherine said, ‘Mr Graham, if you were to flirt with me, how would you go about it?’

He almost choked on a lobster patty and took several moments before he could reply. ‘You would like me to flirt with you, Miss Cunningham?’

‘Oh, no, I am sorry. No, it is just that I am very inexperienced with things like that, and I am sure I would not notice if a gentleman were to flirt, and, naturally, one should be awake to that sort of thing.’ Now she had embarked upon this, Katherine was not at all sure how she was going to extricate herself. ‘And, naturally, one cannot ask a man who one would not trust,’ she finished in a rush. Possibly respectable Scottish lawyers, however youthful and good looking, were not the right type of man to ask. She misjudged Mr Graham.

‘Well.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Firstly I think I would fill up your wine glass and hand it to you, like this—and let my fingertips touch yours, like that.’

‘Oh.’

‘And then I would raise my glass in a toast to you, like this, and hold your eyes while I did so.’

‘Oh.’ Katherine swallowed. ‘And then?’

‘I would tell you what very beautiful eyes you have. And what very long eyelashes you have.’ He paused. ‘Would you like me to continue? I have to say, it is a pleasurable employment, but Lord Seaton appears to be becoming enraged, and whilst I—’

‘No! No, thank you very much, Mr Graham; that was most instructive.’ Well, if that was flirting, then Nick was certainly not indulging in it. On the other hand, if he was annoyed by Mr Graham—and she was most certainly not going to give him the satisfaction of looking in his direction—then that was interesting in itself.

She refused offers of another ice and left the supper room with her escort. There seemed to be only one explanation for her husband’s behaviour: possessiveness and a strong protective instinct. Which was depressing, for she did not want to be regarded as a possession to be guarded or a feeble woman to be protected.

But such melancholy thoughts were banished by a gratifying stream of requests for dances, to the point where she had to refuse the two before her waltz with Nick in order to escape and see Jenny.

Her maid clucked over a torn hem and made Katherine stand stock-still while she knelt and whipped the seam hastily. ‘And just look at your back hair.’ She relieved her feelings by jabbing in pins enthusiastically. ‘When do you dance with the master?’

‘The next dance. Jenny, am I flushed?’

‘Just nicely,’ Jenny pronounced, head on one side. ‘Bite your lips a little. There, now off you go.’

A quadrille was in progress and Katherine stayed where she was rather than make her way round to where Lady Fanny was deep in gossip with a bosom friend.

‘Another glass of champagne?’ It was Nick, standing right beside her, a glass in each hand.

‘I have had two,’ she said realising how gauche it sounded.

‘Another will not hurt.’

‘Very well.’ Katherine took the glass, startled to find that Nick’s fingertips touched hers. She looked up and found herself gazing deep into black eyes that seemed to burn hot.

The quadrille came to a close, the dancers clapping and walking off the floor. Nick retrieved her half-empty glass and set it down. ‘Now, Kat.’ And took her in his arms.

She was reminded of how he had held her the morning she had left him in Newgate; that fierce intensity. She looked up, but only his eyes betrayed any emotion beyond a pleasant social smile.

The music started and she was swept into the dance. This was nothing like Mr Graham’s carefully executed steps or the cautious and proper approach of the other gentleman she had waltzed with that evening. This was a very different experience indeed.

Her head whirling, she was conscious that she was improperly close to Nick’s body. When he whirled her round their thighs brushed, his hand tightened on her waist. She was so close that when she tried to look up she had to tip her head. It would be much more comfortable just to move closer and rest it against his waistcoat.

It was very strange, the music seemed to be getting softer, the floor harder, the air cooler. Hazily Katherine realised her eyes were closed and her head was, after all, resting on Nick’s chest as he swept her round and round and round. And there was no more music, only Nick humming softly in her ear.

‘Nick?’ It was far too difficult to open her eyes.

‘Mmm?’

‘Where are we?’

‘On the terrace. Look.’

He came to a halt and reluctantly Katherine opened her eyes and gasped. They were standing on the edge of the terrace, looking out towards the lake. Instead of it being merely a darker smudge in the dark parkland, it was illuminated with lanterns all around the edge and on what she realised must be boats on the surface.

‘Nick, it is magical.’ It came out as a whisper. Had anyone seen them come out here? It was a very fast thing to be doing, yet here, now, in his arms, prudence fled.

‘Look at the house.’ He turned her within the shelter of his arm to look at the fairytale palace the Duke had conjured up with light. Flambeaux blazed along the frontage, lanterns flicked and danced on every balcony and, amidst the urns and containers of white flowers that seemed to be everywhere, more lights glowed silver.

‘Come this way, let me show you a secret.’ She was almost unaware of his arm around her waist, drawing her to him. All she was conscious of was enchantment, a feeling of safety and warmth, and a stirring deep in her veins as though her blood was turning to liquid silver, flashing and running through her.

In a dream she let Nick guide her slowly along the broad terrace and round the corner of the great house. On this façade too the flambeaux blazed and the lanterns glowed. Nick stopped at the foot of one of the turrets. One flaming torch was thrust in a holder by a small door. In the breeze the flame snapped and flared, colouring Nick’s face with red light. He looked unfamiliar, but not frightening.

‘Kat, look at me.’

‘I am.’

‘Kat …’ His mouth took hers in a hot, fierce claiming that swept her away instantly. There was nothing to do but yield to it, arch her body into his, open her lips to the pressure of his, ignore the voice of common sense that was battering away at her mind like a moth at a lighted window. Stop this now, before it is too late … It’s a kiss, only a kiss, her yearning, loving, heart argued back. I can stop any time I want to … I love him, he will never hold me like this again … It is only for a moment, then we can go back and no one will know.

His mouth was kissing, nibbling a hot path down her throat, up again to the lobe of her ear. One hand held her hard against him, the other strayed down caressingly to circle her breast.

Katherine gasped, stunned that the touch could send fire deep into her belly, set up an ache that could find no relief in either his touch or his mouth returning to hers. The earth moved, the stars and the looming bulk of the tower above her shifted. At first she thought dazedly that she was fainting, then she found she was in Nick’s arms and he was shouldering open the tower door.

No. Her voice was not working; she mustered all her strength of will now, while his caressing hands were stilled and his mouth had left hers, and tried again. ‘No. Nick, stop, this is madness. What are you doing?’

‘Carrying you upstairs to my bed where I intend making love to you.’ His voice was calm, not even breathless with the climb; if she had not been pressed against his chest, able to feel the thud of his heart, she would have thought him unmoved.

‘No!’ she said again. ‘You promised me that I could have the marriage annulled. How can I if we make love?’

‘I would never break a promise to you, Kat.’ He had reached a landing on the spiral stairs and shifted her in his arms so he could open the door. ‘I did not say we were going to make love. I said I am going to make love to you. There is a difference.’

‘I … I do not understand.’

‘I know.’ They were at his bedchamber door. Katherine knew she should struggle, but the same trust that had filled her when she had looked across that prison room into the eyes of a filthy, unshaven felon possessed her now.

They were inside the room. Candles burned steadily, there was a fire in the grate and on the washstand steam rose lazily from the jug. Someone had only just left. Nick set her gently on her feet and reached behind him to turn the key in the lock. ‘The key is in the door, Kat—you can walk away if you want to.’

Chapter Twenty-Four

‘I do not think I do want to leave,’ she said with difficulty, searching his face. ‘I should, I know. Nick, why?’

‘I asked you to wait a month before you made your decision. I have shown you my family, my home, the house you can make our own. I just wanted to give you a glimpse of one of the other benefits of married life.’ He was smiling at her reassuringly, but the dark fires were in his eyes and she knew that, whatever he was feeling at this moment, it was not calm, not restrained. And yet he was holding all that back for her.

She knew she was blushing and suddenly did not care. ‘Yes, Nick.’

‘You trust me?’

‘I have always trusted you,’ she said simply and was rewarded by the flare of emotion in his eyes.

‘I think we had better dispense with this very beautiful gown extremely carefully,’ he said thoughtfully, letting his hands rest on her shoulders. ‘I look forward to seeing you wearing it again. Now, how does it fasten, I wonder?’ His hands drifted, explored while she held her breath. ‘Ah, I see, little buttons: one, two, three … four.’ The narrow shoulders of the gown slipped down under his palms. ‘If I hold it and you step out—or is the approved method over your head?’

‘Over.’ It was so hard to speak. She was suddenly blind in the rustling silken darkness, then blinking again in the candlelight.

Her petticoats were slipped off, then Nick was turning her in his arms, nuzzling softly at her nape while his fingers tangled with the laces of her stays. ‘These are tight. How do you breathe?’ Then the stays fell away and she took a deep breath, cut short as Nick’s hands came up to cup her breasts.

‘Nicholas.’

‘Mmm?’

‘You … oh!’ His thumbs were flicking lightly at her nipples through the thin fabric of her chemise. She wriggled against him and found herself turned again.

‘Do … not … wriggle like that.’ He seemed breathless and Katherine suddenly experienced a soaring, liberating sense of power. She had thought her body and will were reacting blindly to his knowing hands and mouth, but now she knew she could have as powerful an effect on him. And it was a power she would do well not to exercise, she realised. Which was easier thought than done, given her complete lack of experience with men. She slid her feet out of her kid slippers, then stood quite still, her heart hammering, wondering what he was going to do next.

With an expression of great concentration Nick was undoing the ribbons that secured the shoulders of her chemise, and with a little shiver she realised his fingers were shaking, just very, very slightly. And this was a man whose hands had been steady in the condemned cell, on the gallows, facing an armed highwayman.

She was so rapt in the thought that it was a second before she realised that she was naked except for her silk stockings and her long evening gloves. Instinctively her hands flew to cover herself. Nick was looking at her with an expression that took her breath away. There was desire there—however inexperienced she was, she could recognise that—but there was something else, something almost reverent.

‘Are you not going to take anything off?’ she ventured, anxious to break the silence that was racking her nerves.

Nick kicked off his shoes, tossed aside his jacket and waistcoat and tugged loose his neckcloth and the top three buttons of his shirt.

‘Is that all?’ Katherine was uncertain whether to be relieved or disappointed.

‘I told you I would never break a promise to you, Kat, but I have no intention of making it any harder than it need be.’ He took a step towards her, then another. With a squeak Katherine backed away until the edge of the bed caught the back of her knees and she sat down. ‘Am I frightening you?’ He stopped.

‘No. Yes. I do not know.’ She was wittering, she realised, and pulled herself together. How am I feeling? ‘Yes, I am scared,’ she admitted. He took a step back. ‘And I think I rather like it,’ she finished in a rush of honesty.

Before she knew quite what had happened she was flat on her back on the bed, her hands caught above her head in the grasp of one large, gentle fist, her legs, which she tried instinctively to curl up protectively, were trapped under the weight of his leg and Nick was looking down at her with a gleam in his eyes that made her swallow hard.

‘Brave, honest Kat. May I take off your stockings?’

He was asking permission to take off stockings when everything else had been so ruthlessly disposed of? She nodded. As soon as her hands were free, one arm flew to cover her breasts, the other hand spread palm open, protectively across the dark tangle of curls.

She had a lot to learn, she realised as his fingers began to play with her garters. Apparently it was possibly to make removing a pair of stockings last not seconds but long, long minutes, and to make the act one of exquisite, pleasurable torture.

Stunned, she wriggled up against the pillows so she could watch his dark head, bent attentively over the task of removing two ribbons and two scraps of knitted silk. How could the straying fingers following the slow descent of the stockings as he rolled them down create such shivers of sensitivity? Why, when he bent to kiss her knee, did she have to bite her lip to stop crying out? Why, when his long fingers reached her ankle and then her instep and stopped to trail slowly up and down, up and down, did she have not the slightest urge to giggle, to protest that she was ticklish? Why was she lying back against the pillows, her eyes closed, her breath short?

His mouth replaced his fingers; kissing, nibbling, licking its way up to her knees, which she instinctively drew together. His hands pressed them apart, open, and his mouth began to torment the soft flesh of the back of her right knee. She gasped, felt her body arch with some instinct she did not understand and he murmured, ‘Too soon.’

The mattress shifted and Katherine blinked and found he was lying beside her again, propped on one elbow. Everything inside her ached, yearned, needed … what? She had no idea. Nick had promised she would remain a virgin, so what could her untutored body be expecting?

He took her hand in his and bent over the tiny pearl buttons that fastened her glove from wrist almost to shoulder.

Removing her evening gloves with a button hook and great care took Jenny five minutes. Hazily trying to keep track of the passing of time Katherine thought it had taken Nick that long to undo five buttons, exposing enough of her wrist for him to kiss it with soft, nipping kisses. Slowly he worked his way up one arm, then the other, then peeled off the soft kid and threw the gloves aside.

Silence. Her eyes closed, arms thrown back on the pillow, Katherine waited, all thoughts of modesty utterly vanquished. Her body felt heavy, languid, yet her heart was beating like a mill wheel in the race and her breathing was short.

‘Look at me, Kat.’ She dragged her eyes open and found Nick was looking down into her face while the palm of his hand moved slowly down the swell of her breast until it was over the nipple. Her eyes fluttered closed.

‘Look at me, Kat.’ With an effort she opened her eyes again and his hand skimmed lower until it caressed the soft swell of her stomach, then down again until his fingers tangled with the curls beneath.

‘Shh,’ he whispered even as her lips parted in protest, then stayed parted in a gasp of shocked pleasure as one finger slipped through the curls into the secrets they hid.

It slipped, moved, teased until her body was tossing restlessly, her eyes wide and unseeing and her breath coming in short desperate gasps as she struggled to find whatever this aching frenzy was promising her. Then he closed her desperate mouth with his just as the tormenting pleasure burst in a shower of lights and spiralled her into darkness.

‘Kat.’

‘Mmm?’ It seemed that she was not drifting through space, but was being held, very gently, against a long hard body that smelt familiarly of limes and sandalwood.

Her cheek was resting on warm linen, her legs curled up against satin. ‘Come back, Kat.’ Nick was gently kissing his way along the sensitive line where hair met forehead.

Seized with shyness, she buried her face against his chest, curling her naked body against his clothed one. ‘I had no idea,’ she said shakily when she thought she could command her voice.

‘I am glad to hear it,’ Nick said so drily that she laughed and looked up at him.

‘You told Robert to give me champagne,’ she accused, suddenly seeing his tactics clearly. ‘You did not …’

‘Tell him why? Of course not.’

‘Then why should he do as you ask?’

‘Because I am his elder brother,’ Nick said with unconscious arrogance. ‘Forget Robert,’ he added callously. ‘Are you cold? Sleepy?’

‘No.’ Katherine shook her head. Did he want to send her back to bed? Her entire body was soft, glowing, alive with a new vibrant awareness. She wanted to touch him, explore his body as he had explored hers, and she knew that was impossible, forbidden.

‘Good.’ He bent over her, his lips and then his tongue fretting at her nipple.

‘Nick!’ The sensations her body had only just learned surged back, differently nuanced now with her newfound knowledge, every bit as overwhelming. He moved down her body, slowly tasting and savouring while Katherine, shocked, shy and in thrall all over again, surrendered to him.

His tongue flicked teasingly at her navel, making her laugh, then trailed down with an intent that turned the laughter into a gasp of protest, then a low moan of pleasure as Nick kissed her intimately, his hands caressing her flanks, his breath heating her already hot flesh into shuddering arousal. She knew now what that aching, building tension was leading to, but when it broke she broke with it into a thousand sparkling shards of pleasure, falling, drifting down into velvet blackness.

Nick lay watching the morning light build outside his windows, the discomfort of his unsatisfied body at odds with the deep contentment of his mind.

Kat was curled up against him, her head on his chest, one hand tucked confidingly in his, deeply asleep. He smiled, his mouth buried in the soft tangle of her hair. The most difficult thing had been not to tell her he loved her. Every instinct had urged him to do so; his mind had urged caution. Caught up in the emotional tumult of her first sexual experience, could she trust her own responses in the cold light of day? Could he?

No, best to let her think, to ponder on what his own abstinence might mean, wonder about his motives a little. On the night of the dinner party he had planned, that was when he would tell her and hope that she had fallen just a little in love with him—enough to agree to give up her desperate independence and take on what he realised, if his father and Robert did not, must seem an even more daunting responsibility.

She liked him, trusted him, that he had always known. She seemed, by her innocent responses to him, to find him attractive, but none of that would be enough for Kat. She wanted love and he had to make sure she saw it as genuine, not a trap to hold her to this marriage that was not a marriage.

The sun was edging higher: time to move. He slid carefully out of bed, hardening his heart against the small grumble of protest she made. With the care of a ladies’ maid he picked up discarded petticoats, hunted for stockings and garters, found an errant glove and began to ferry all of Kat’s clothing back to her own dressing room.

Then he returned to the big bed, reached under the covers and picked Kat up. She turned in his arms, half-waking, and her mouth found his neck just below the fading marks of the noose. Her lips moved slightly as if tasting and the caress almost undid his will power. Nick stood with her in his arms, breathing deeply until the urge to lay her down and rip off his clothes ebbed a little, then strode into her bedchamber and tucked her into her own bed, pulled the covers up snugly around her, turned on his heel and walked away.

He went and looked out over the park, shining in the early morning light. The chilly waters of the lake beckoned as a cure for his aching loins and overheated imagination. His mouth curled at the thought of what any early-rising guest might think if they saw him striding across the dew-soaked grass in the full splendour of a Chinese silk dressing gown and diving into the lake. That would be taking eccentricity a little too far.

But there was Grandfather George’s plunge pool, which the previous Duke had had constructed in the aftermath of his Grand Tour in imitation of a Roman bath house. Nick pulled on the heavy dressing gown, snatched up a towel and padded off along the corridors in the direction of the Duke’s suite.

The pool was concealed with heavy drapes further down the corridor from his father’s bedchamber. Nick slipped in and saw that it was full of clear, doubtless cold, water with a stand of towels by the side. It was a rectangle with a curved end set within a small pillared room with some of the statues the Duke had brought back from Italy and marble inlays on the floor. He remembered it as being perhaps four foot deep and just long enough to take two strokes from end to end, with a submerged bench all around the edge.

Too shallow for the dive he was hoping for to shock his system into some semblance of calm, but he cast off his robe, stepped down into the pool and ducked under the water. It was as cold as he expected and wonderfully effective. With a sigh of relief Nick struck out and took two plunging strokes to the apse end, turned and dived under the surface to glide back again.

As he surfaced, tossing the wet hair back from his face, the curtain opened and his brother and Roderick Graham appeared. They were still in evening dress, more than a little owl-eyed and dishevelled, and Robert had a champagne bottle by the neck.

‘Hello, Nick,’ he said amiably. ‘Didn’t expect to see you here.’

‘You are drunk,’ Nick observed. ‘If you’re coming in, for heaven’s sake get undressed first.’

‘What? Oh, yes, good idea. We’re a bit tired, that’s all,’ Robert announced, shedding clothes on to the marble with a fine disregard. ‘Not drunk, just a bit on the go.’

‘Aye, that’s the way of it,’ Graham announced, suddenly sounding extremely Scottish. He tossed his waistcoat on to the pile of Robert’s clothes and peered hazily at Nick. ‘Hurt your neck?’

Nick slid further down on the submerged bench until the water reached his chin. ‘Leather military stock,’ he said lightly, ‘Damn things chafe like the devil at first, I’ve never lost the mark.’ He choked as a slapping wave of water hit him with Robert’s uncoordinated tumble into the pool, followed by the lawyer’s slightly more graceful descent. ‘Will you have a care, you clumsy oaf?’ He slapped his brother lightly over his soaked head and suddenly found himself seized in a wrestler’s hold. The two of them struggled, laughing and spluttering in the cold water, all at once boys again. Graham fended off one, then another, and finally managed to duck both of them, at which they turned on him and pushed him under.

Nick surfaced, almost weeping with laughter, to find himself regarding the toes of a pair of Morocco leather slippers and the hem of a sombre red silk robe. ‘Oh, God.’