For Love of the Duke (The Heart of a Duke Book 2) (31 page)

“I sang that bloody ditty,” he spat.

A gentle understanding lit her eye. He did not deserve her pardon. “It is f…”

He glared her into silence. “Do not say it is fine,” he bit out. “It is not fine. Your father gambled your family’s wealth and security away and I sang a bloody ditty about it.”

Katherine held a palm up in attempt to stay his movements.

He ignored her.

“Jasper, it was merely a song.” The corners of Katherine’s lips tugged ever so faintly; he suspected she might smile. “A rather poor choice of song for a child, perhaps.”

Any other woman would be spitting fury with their vitriolic words and burning eyes. She should be livid, and she would be deserving of any indignation.

Except Katherine’s lips at last gave in to a full smile, revealing a faint dimple in her right cheek. Jasper jerked to a sudden stop.  And that was another blasted thing. He’d not even noted the dimple before this moment. How could he have failed to note the precious little indentation in her right cheek?

Jasper resumed pacing. “I didn’t even consider the child,” he groused under his breath.

Katherine blinked. “I beg your pardon.”

His hand slashed the air. “The child. Lizzie. I didn’t know another blasted thing to sing to the child. It hadn’t even occurred to me, until just this moment, the absolute unsuitability of such a piece.”

If his son hadn’t died, Jasper would be well-versed in the care of young children. He would certainly know the interests of a child two or three years of age, and which songs to soothe their troubled thoughts, and coax a smile. “I sang a bloody tavern ditty to a child,” he repeated with a shake of his head.

Katherine stepped in front of his path, so that Jasper was forced to either bowl her down, walk around her, or stop.

He stopped.

Katherine placed her palms upon his chest. His heart stirred. “She loved your song.”

“It was inappropriate.”

She nodded, and touched the tip of a well-manicured nail to his lips, silencing him. “She enjoyed it, Jasper. You made her smile. Does it matter how or why? It just matters that you did.” She opened her palm and cupped his cheek. He caught her wrist and dragged it to his mouth, placing his lips where her pulse fluttered wildly.

“Jasper?”

“Yes, Katherine?” he whispered against her wrist.

She giggled. “That tickles.”

He responded with another kiss to the sensitive intersecting of her palm. She swatted at him. “S-stop,” she commanded. “Jasper?”

He sighed, and pulled away. “Yes, Katherine.”

“Can we go abovestairs?”

Jasper narrowed his eyes. “Abovestairs?”

Katherine wet her lips. “Er, yes.” She scuffed the tip of her ivory slipper along the floor. Did his wife have slippers of any other color? He imagined her in a scandalous red slipper. Imagined himself tugging it loose, tossing it aside, and then lowering her stockings inch by agonizing… “I was hoping, that is to say, imagining,” She furrowed her brow. “Well, imagining might not be the right word.”

“Katherine?”

“Yes?”

“Out with it.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh, er, yes, of course. I want to spend the night with you.” Her cheeks flamed a red to match the carpet, only heightened by the pale white of her satin evening gown with those ridiculous lace ruffles along her décolletage.

Did she just say…?

“I know it is not at all the thing. Wives and husbands sharing the same chambers. Mother and Father never shared a chamber.” She grimaced. “Not that I care to think of Mother and Father sharing a chamber. It is just…” Her words ended on a high-pitched squeak as he swept her into his arms.

“What are you…?”

“Katherine?”

“Yes?”

Jasper shifted her in his arms, angling her in a way that her breasts were crushed against his chest. “Will you cease talking?”

“Er, right, yes, of course.” She peeked around his shoulder. “Jasper?”

He sighed. In addition to spirited, he would add loquacious to his wife’s sometimes endearing, in this instance, exasperating, attributes. “Yes, Katherine?” He pressed his lips to the place where her neck met her ear.

She giggled and swatted at his chest. “That t-tickles,” she managed to pant out between gasping laughs.

And ticklish. He could add ticklish to the growing list of his understanding of Katherine Waincourt, the Duchess of Bainbridge.

“You were saying?” he whispered against her neck.

She erupted into another fit of laughter. “Someone w-will undoubtedly hear us or see us.”

“Undoubtedly,” he said with a sardonic smile.

Katherine slapped her hand to his chest again. He grunted. She was rather strong for one so diminutive. “It wouldn’t do to create a scandal here.”

Jasper shook his head, bemused. “Katherine, you are my wife. There will be no scandal.” And if a servant was unwise enough to step into their path, then he’d sack the demmed fool.

Katherine frowned. “I do not like that dark glower, Jasper.”

It appeared she’d also come to know him. Jasper ignored her and carried her up the long, sweeping staircase, down the hall.

He paused a moment outside his chambers. No one had entered these rooms in a very long time. Not even Lydia had frequented his rooms. Instead, Jasper would pay visits to her, and then she’d insist for propriety’s sake he return to sleep in his own chambers.

Jasper pressed the handle and carried Katherine inside.

~27~

Katherine imagined this is how mere mortals felt upon entering the dragon’s lair. She shoved aside such silly musings as Jasper carried her over to his wide, four-poster bed, and deposited her amidst the center of the soft, feather mattress.

A little grunt escaped her at the unexpectedness of the movement.

She shoved herself up on her elbows and eyed her husband.

Jasper shrugged free of his jacket and tossed it to the ground. His black waistcoat and shirt followed. Her mouth went dry as his hands went to the fastenings of his form-fitting breeches.

Then he turned his attention to her.

Oh, God, I will never have enough of him.

Then, with the infinite gentleness she’d come to expect from him, Jasper sat at the edge of the bed. He held his arms out and Katherine scrambled onto his lap.

She captured his face in her hands. “I love you, Jasper.” Katherine willed him to hear the strength of her profession. “I…”

He kissed her until all rational thought fled with the magic of his kiss. His hands worked her gown up over her ankles, calves, ever higher, and then around her waist. The cool night air slapped her skin belied by the warmth of his kiss. Then his expert hands moved to the back of her gown.

Jasper paused. “I. Thought. I said. No buttons.” He punctuated the hoarse command between deliberately placed kisses to her eyelids, earlobe, the corners of her mouth.

Katherine moaned, and arched her neck back. “I don’t have any other gowns,” she managed to rasp.

He helped turn her around and devoted his attention to sliding each one of her pearl buttons free of the tiny grommets along the back of her gown.

Oh God, she’d never before realized how very much she detested buttons.

“There,” he whispered, and slid the silly ivory ruffled satin gown down her frame. It fell past her hips, and Katherine kicked it off.

Next, Jasper moved to her chemise and stays, removing them in short order so he’d bared her body to his hot gaze.

Katherine expected she should feel some maidenly embarrassment for the heated manner in which he studied her. But all she felt was a hunger for more. For him.

“What have you done to me, Katherine?” he groaned.

Their bodies met; hers soft and curved, his hard, and muscle-hewn.

Jasper worked his hand down between their bodies and stroked her damp core. “You are beautiful, Katherine. You’ve made me forget all the vows, all the pledges I’ve taken. I’m powerless against you.”

His tantalizing words wrapped headily about her. She clamped her legs tight around his hand, a ragged moan slipped past her lips as Jasper’s thumb pressed into her nub. As if of their own volition, her thighs fell open. Her head fell back. “I love you,” she said again.

Her words seemed to drive him to a frenzy. His lips slanted over hers, his tongue forced its way inside and she met his in a bold, nearly violent parry, even as his hand continued to deliberately torment her womanhood.

Jasper’s fingers caressed her moist center and she arched her hips, struggling to open her eyes.

He broke their kiss, and she moaned in protest, mourning the loss of him.

“You are so beautiful,” Jasper rasped out. He inserted a finger in her center.

Her eyes slid closed at his words, and he continued to caress her. Those words, when uttered as they were, hoarse with passion, Katherine found she believed him.

“Do you like that, Katherine? If you tell me you do, I shall give you more than you’d ever imagined.”

More than this volatile storm raging through her?

“I do,” she cried. “That is, I do,” he teased her nub, and she caught her lower lip between her teeth. “Oh, goodness. I do, like it, Jasper. Please,” she implored. She could not survive this passionate torture, no matter how much she reveled in his ministrations.

Jasper lowered her to the mattress and followed her with his body.

He inserted his shaft inch by agonizing inch. Beads of sweat dripped from his brow.

Heat filled her at the hungry desire reflected in the near black of his emerald stare.

Jasper’s breath grew labored, and then he plunged deep inside her.

Katherine cried out, and then he began to move. Her hips rose and fell to match his steady, rhythmic thrusts.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

Katherine didn’t know if the litany filled the air around them or merely rang inside her head.

But she loved him.

He thrust again.

With a savage intensity that terrified her.

He withdrew.

And her heart would belong to him.

He plunged deep.

Forever.

Katherine’s body stiffened, and then she exploded in a burst of flashing colors of the Vauxhall Gardens fireworks she’d once viewed.

Jasper’s muscles went taut beneath her fingers. His face contorted in a paroxysm of rhapsody and agony, and then he spilled his seed inside her body as she convulsed around him. He collapsed, and braced himself above her until he could once again breath, and then rolled away from her.

A sated smile tugged at her lips and she curled against her husband’s side.

Jasper’s arm hovered a moment about her, and then he pulled her close.

With the fire’s embers popping in the hearth, and the cool winter air howling against the windowpane, Katherine drifted off to sleep

A deep rumble pierced the edge of Katherine’s consciousness. Her lashes fluttered open. She yawned and blinked back the thick fog of sleep.

She struggled to adjust to the dimly lit room as she tried to sort out her whereabouts.

Another bear-like rumble caught her notice, and she looked around.

Her gaze alighted upon her husband sprawled on his back, a broad arm draped over his brow, his lips slightly slack in his slumber.

She flipped onto her side and studied him. How very unguarded, how very uncomplicated he appeared with the hard, edge of wakefulness stripped free.

He shifted, drawing her attention to his broad, muscular chest covered in a spriggy mat of dark curls. She hesitated, and then caressed the delicate wisps of hair. She jumped as he broke into a sputtering snore.

Katherine lay back down, knowing she must have the world’s silliest smile upon her lips, but she’d not been able to stop grinning since that morning, when Jasper made her his wife in every sense of the word.

And he’d made love to her, again.

In all her nineteen years, she’d not known joy such as this.

I love him.

Her smile fell. Jasper hadn’t returned those very important words. There would always be Lydia. His heart would forever belong to his first, beautiful, paragon of a wife who’d masterfully completed tapestries that still adorned the walls of the castle.

But perhaps…she rolled back to her side, and examined him—perhaps just a small sliver of his heart remained alive, and that tiny sliver could one day belong to her.

Jasper shifted on the pillow. His smooth, even breaths indicated he still slept.

Her gaze snagged upon the faintest scrap of fabric concealed beneath his pillow. Pale green like mint leaves, the cloth had a familiar look to it. Katherine hesitated. Her gaze moved between Jasper’s closed lids and the hint of green.

Mother had despaired of Katherine’s unrelenting inquisitiveness. The whole ‘curiosity killed a cat, thou hast mettle enough to kill curiosity’, business.

Katherine inched closer to the head of Jasper’s enormous four-poster bed. Breath held to make sure he still slept, she lifted the edge of his pillow.

And froze.

Her heart pounded loud in her own ears. She shoved the corner of the pillow up and reached for the familiar, long-forgotten reticule she’d thought to never again see. Katherine held it in tremulous fingers, as her heart beat with a greater sense of urgency within her breast, the steady thumpthumpthumpthump filled her ears, confused her thoughts.