“I’ll be careful,” she said. She’d been lolling over his right arm. Now she raised her hand to cup the side of his face. She loved to touch him, loved the feel of him, the myriad rich textures of him, the sheer differentness of him. He smiled at her. “I’ve got your left stocking off. I suppose it’s time for me to pull down the right one. Then, I suppose, I should continue upward and finish the job, but slowly this time, very, very slowly.”
She grabbed his face between her two hands and jerked him down to her, kissing him and not letting him up. When finally she did release him, he wasn’t in any hurry to raise his head. “North,” she said against his mouth. “Can you stop just a moment? I’ve an awful cramp in my leg. Perhaps you could rub it?”
He looked at how he’d twisted her about in his lap so he could get a better hold on her. “Sorry,” he said, and began to massage her leg.
“The other one, but that feels good too. Up higher, North.”
“Higher? You are a damned tease, Caroline Nightingale. Hmm, that doesn’t sound bad, does it? Perhaps a wife isn’t such a bad thing, particularly if her name fits so very nicely with her husband’s.”
“Higher, North.”
His breathing hitched. “Is the cramp gone?”
“No, it’s worse. It’s even higher now, North. Oh dear, the dreadful pain of it.”
He gave it up, slipped his hand beneath her skirt, and took the more direct route straight up to her bare thigh. “Ah,” he said, kissing her nose. “There, Caroline? That nasty cramp that’s nearly doubling you over in agony?”
She was staring up at him, her expression delightfully befuddled. She swallowed. “That’s fine for a while.”
“Let’s just see.” In the next moment, he was touching her woman’s flesh, and she jumped. “North, perhaps that is too high, perhaps that isn’t proper in the middle of the day, perhaps I was feeling too adventuresome and perhaps a bit too wicked, and now I’m admitting to cowardice—”
“It’s two hours after breakfast, Caroline, and I’m in a bad way. If you were sensible, you would be in a bad way too. However, according to my book, after such a strenuous wedding night that wasn’t really all that strenuous at all, I have quite a bit of catching up to do with you. I’m to be exquisitely attentive, not let you out of my sight for an instant, praise your eyebrows, and kiss you behind your knees and follow the trail of my fingers.”
He cupped his hand over her and she just stared at him, unable to think of a thing to say, just staring at his mouth, wanting him to kiss her, and he finally gave her a crooked grin, leaned his head down, and—
“Yoo-hoo? My lord? Are you in the library, my lord? Perhaps you are beneath the desk over there in the corner searching for a bit of something? My lord?”
“Don’t move even a toe, don’t make a sound,” North said into her mouth.
“My lord? Perhaps you are over there standing behind the curtains, but I don’t see your boots. Ah, perhaps just here, right in front of me, seated in that very big wing chair that was surely too large for your great-grandfather who was, it is said, a man who did not extend himself very well vertically.”
North eased his hand from beneath her skirt, smoothed down her clothes, gave her one last kiss, and said loudly, “Tregeagle, I am going to stand up now and set my bride beside me. Then I’m going to walk right up to you and smack you in your damned presumptuous mouth.”
North was only three feet from Tregeagle, his arm already up, when his housekeeper said in the reproachful voice of a mother whose child has misbehaved, “My lord, I do not bother you apurpose.”
“Ha!”
“My lord, please don’t strike me just yet. Please lower your arm for just a moment. I am an old man, barely able to stand upright without assistance. Surely you are too much the gentleman to strike me, an ancient being who’s also
your housekeeper since well before you were born?”
“What the hell do you want, Tregeagle? Make it fast, my fist is fairly twitching to stroke your jaw.”
“My lord, Mr. Bennett Penrose is here to see you.”
“I see. Why don’t you go tell him to wait. Say, for a good two hours?”
“He, er, is very offensive, my lord. He yelled at me. Actually yelled, demanded that I should bring down the little sluts. I told him the females were upstairs and that he could fetch them if he wished to—”
“That isn’t at all amusing, Tregeagle,” Caroline said, coming up to stand by North.
“Very well, miss, er, madam, I did not tell him where they were nor did I tell him he could fetch them himself. I am here to fetch you, my lord, so that you may deal with the young man. He isn’t a very proper young man.”
“No, he’s a bloody sod,” North said. “It would make more sense if he were Ffalkes’s son and not poor Owen. Very well, I’ll see him now. I’ll come out. You stay here, Caroline. No need to put your stockings back on… . Oh, you’re still here, Tregeagle? Listening at full ear, are you? No, don’t bother to answer.”
Caroline planted her bare feet right in front of him. She wagged her finger in front of his nose. “Oh no you won’t, North Nightingale. I am part of this and you won’t lock me out by calling it some sort of man thing.”
“Very well, Tregeagle. Show him in here.”