The Virgin Who Humbled Lord Haslemere by Anna Bradley

Chapter Twenty-two

It was strange how the night could drag on endlessly when one wished for it to be over, but pass in the blink of an eye when one wished it might linger forever.

Benedict was still asleep when Georgiana woke. His warm chest was pressed closely to her back and his arms were wrapped snugly around her. His soft exhalations tickled her skin and stirred the loose hairs at the back of her neck, and she squeezed her eyes closed to savor the sensation.

If she could have remained here like this with him forever, she would have everything she ever wanted. Something had woken her, though—a log falling to pieces in the fireplace. Despite the darkness, real life was already stirring, already prying into the private cocoon they’d woven around themselves.

London loomed large on the horizon, but she wouldn’t think of it now. Not yet. Not while she was still here with him. Their time together was nearly over, but right now this was her world, the only one that existed.

Everything else could wait.

Georgiana slid from his arms and raised herself onto an elbow, a delicious flutter in her chest as she gazed down at his sleeping face. His sensuous lips were parted, his hair tousled, and a faint flush stained his cheekbones. His cravat and shirt, his waistcoat and coat were on the floor beside the settee where he’d tossed them when he stripped them off last night, and her fond gaze lingered on his bare skin, the smattering of dark red hair on his chest.

He looked like a different man when he was asleep. More powerful somehow, without the layers of clothing covering his body and hiding the hard, tight muscles of his shoulders and arms. Those arms had been wrapped around her, and those long fingers had tangled in her hair, and her own hands had stroked the hard planes of his chest.

Georgiana gave into the urge to brush the wayward lock of dark red hair from his forehead. Benedict stirred at her touch and opened his eyes. His lips curled in a smile the moment he saw her face. “Good morning, Miss Harley.”

“Good morning, Lord Haslemere.” She returned his drowsy smile even as her heart gave a painful throb in her chest.

He pressed a sleepy kiss behind her ear before stretching with a contented groan. “Are you hungry, princess?” He rose from the bed, and Georgiana curled into the warm spot he left behind, pressing her face into the sheets to inhale his scent.

“I’m famished.”

Georgiana peeked over the edge of the coverlet to find Benedict standing by the table, peering into the hamper. His thick hair was mussed, his chest bare, and his breeches hanging low on his lean hips. Despite the heaviness of her heart, her breath caught in her chest. If this was how he looked freshly tumbled from the bed, it was no wonder every lady in London wanted him.

But he wasn’t with any of those ladies. He was with her, and she intended to take advantage of the little time they had left together. “Are there any quince preserves left?”

“We finished them yesterday.” He rummaged through the hamper. “Bread with butter, sliced ham, boiled eggs and…ah, here we are.” He held up a jar with a triumphant air. “Another jar of preserves. Strawberry, this time.”

“I suppose the strawberry will have to do.” Georgiana attempted a pout, but a grin rose to her lips instead. “May I have bread with some butter and preserves, please?”

Benedict’s gaze roved over her, lingering on her lower lip caught between her teeth, and an answering grin tugged at the corner of his lips. “You, Miss Harley, may have anything you wish for.”

Not anything. I can’t have you.

She pushed the thought away, unwilling to say it aloud and break the spell between them. Instead, she arched a coy eyebrow at him. “Anything?”

Benedict was arranging the rolls he’d found in the hamper on a cloth, but at her suggestive drawl, he raised half-lidded eyes to her face. “Anything, Georgiana. Everything.”

“There is one thing I’d like.” She beckoned to him with a quirk of her finger.

He took in the long waves of her hair tumbling over her bare shoulders, and the strong column of his throat moved in a swallow. “I’m at your command.” He paused at the fireplace, coaxing it back into a blaze before settling himself on the edge of the bed. He gazed at her for a moment, then held a piece of bread generously slathered with butter and preserves to her lips.

Georgiana opened, sighing with pleasure as he fed her.

“The strawberry preserves meet with your approval, then?” Benedict asked, his voice husky.

“They do, indeed.” She licked her lips. “They’re lovely and sweet.”

He watched her with hot, dark eyes as the tip of her tongue darted out to lick daintily at the corner of her mouth. “Are they? May I have a taste?”

“Of course.” She held the piece of bread out to him.

He took it, but instead of biting it he leaned forward and ran his tongue over her lower lip. “Mmm. That is sweet. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted any sweeter, but just to be sure…”

He held the bread to her lips. Georgiana took an obedient nibble, the sweet flavor rolling over her tongue before the bread was gone again, abandoned on the table, and his mouth was there, hot and tart with strawberries, nibbling on her parted lips before he teased his tongue between them and plunged inside. He devoured her with a seemingly endless hunger until she was moaning, her lips swollen from his kisses and her fingers clutching desperately at his hair. “Benedict—”

“Lie down, back against the pillows.” His voice was strained, his touch urgent as he eased her onto her back with a gentle tug on her hips. “Yes, like that.” He lay on top of her, settling his hips between her legs and pressing his open lips to her throat.

Georgiana arched her neck, offering it to him. “I thought you were hungry.”

“Oh, I am.” He buried his face in the crook of her neck and inhaled deeply before dropping a chain of wet, open-mouthed kisses down her throat to the tops of her breasts. “Starving.”

She sank her fingers into his hair, tugging hard to urge him lower.

“Beautiful.” He slid his hand down her throat and over the center of her chest before cupping a breast in his palm. Georgiana let out a helpless groan when he dragged his thumb over her nipple.

That soft, breathless groan seemed to madden him. He became merciless, wringing helpless moans and gasps from her as he toyed with the reddened peaks, circling and teasing until Georgiana was writhing beneath him, and she pressed the back of her hand over her mouth to smother her incoherent whimpers.

But Benedict wouldn’t allow that. “Don’t. I want to hear how much you want me.” He took her wrists in a firm grip, dragged them over her head, and held them there with one hand as his mouth hovered over her breasts, his hot breath caressing the enflamed peaks. He pinched one lightly between his fingertips, making Georgiana quiver in his arms. “God, you’re so beautiful like this, so responsive. Would you beg me, Georgiana?” he crooned wickedly in her ear. “Beg me to suckle you?”

Georgiana arched up into the warm weight of his body over hers, ready to do whatever he demanded, but despite his roguish teasing, Benedict didn’t make her beg. He settled his hot mouth over one nipple and sucked gently on the tender bud. “Let go, princess. Let me hear you cry out for me.”

There was nothing Georgiana could do but succumb to his sensuous demands and give voice to the sighs and moans building in her throat as he slowly—so slowly—took her closer and closer to the edge of the precipice she’d tumbled over the night before with his sinful, beautiful mouth.

And all the while he was murmuring to her, whispered words of praise and passion, tenderness, and arousal, and…love? Georgiana didn’t know, she couldn’t think, couldn’t hear his breathy words above the thunderous pounding of her own heart, but as his lips slid over her skin, his whispered words like a prayer, she told herself she could feel his love in every breath, every touch.

Was this what it felt like to let go, to let her emotions flow through her like cool water between her fingers? This was the thing she’d spent all those years fighting against, running from? So many years of fear, and in the end, it had been the easiest thing in the world to simply let go.

To let herself fall in love…

Or was it only easy because it was him? Benedict Harcourt, London’s most desirable rogue—a man she’d thought of as having no principles, no true feeling—had been the one who taught her how to love.

A quiet sob left her throat at what she’d almost lost, and what she still had to lose.

Benedict had reduced her to a quivering, sobbing mass of aching flesh by the time he ceased his sensual assault and finally lifted his mouth from her breasts. His dark, glittering eyes met hers. “Do you trust me, Georgiana?”

How could he even ask? Didn’t he know, didn’t he see she’d given him everything? She cupped his face in her hands, smiling at the tickle of his bristles against her palm. “I do.”

His answering smile was both tender and wicked at once. “Then you’ll let me kiss you?”

“I…of course, I will. You have been kissing me, haven’t you?”

Benedict slid his warm hand slowly down her side and settled it on the slight swell of her belly. “This is a different kind of kiss.”

A different kind of kiss? As far as Georgiana knew, there was only one kind. “How is it—”

“Do you remember the painting in Madame Célestine’s entryway? The one I caught you staring at, where the gentleman’s face was here?” He parted her thighs with his knee and cupped her between her legs, one long finger sinking inside to stroke her.

Georgiana fell back against the bed with a gasp. Oh, she remembered it. How could she forget it? The man on his knees beside the settee, the lady’s legs parted, and the rapturous expression on her face, her head thrown back in ecstasy—

“That’s how I’m going to kiss you, Georgiana,” Benedict crooned, opening her legs and moving down the bed. “This kiss will be unlike any you’ve felt before. I’m going to make you cry out for me.”

“I—” That was as far as Georgiana got before Benedict settled between her legs. She sucked in a breath as his soft lips delved into the nest of darker brown hair between her thighs. “Oh!”

For a moment, she was too shocked to move, and a moment was all it took for Benedict to render her utterly speechless with the sinful, delicious strokes of his tongue against her swollen, hungry core. He seemed to know just what to do, just how to kiss and lick and nibble on that tender flesh to make her gasp and squirm in his grasp.

Not because she wanted to get away from him, but because she wanted more. “Benedict, please…”

“Shhh. I’ve got you.” He did, and he was utterly ruthless when it came to giving her pleasure. He pinned her hips to the bed, nudged his broad shoulders between her legs to keep them open, and just…devoured her.

And she…she writhed and whimpered and cried out for him, just as he said she would.

One low, harsh moan after another tore from his chest with every drag of his tongue over her core, spurred on by her hoarse cries and her wild tugging on his hair. She couldn’t be still, couldn’t be silent as he edged her slowly, inexorably toward the edge she’d balanced on the night before, when he’d been inside her and every thrust of his hips had brought her closer, closer, warmth gathering in her belly and between her legs until it pulled so tight and hot there was nothing else for it to do but explode—

“Benedict!” Georgiana arched closer to his teasing lips as she unraveled. He stayed with her, his strokes gentling as he coaxed her down the other side.

He didn’t stop until he’d wrung the last shudder from her, and she was lying in a boneless heap in the middle of the bed. Then he pressed a sweet kiss to the inside of her thigh before crawling up the bed and dropping another kiss onto her forehead. “You look pleased,” he murmured, grinning down at her.

Georgiana gazed up at him. His cheeks were flushed, his lips glossy and his hair standing on end from her frantic fingers, and she thought she’d never seen a more beautiful sight in her life. “Nearly as pleased as you do,” she said, with a teasing tap on his chin.

Another one of the wicked grins Georgiana had come to love drifted over his lips. “If I could, I’d spend every morning with you in just this way, making you squirm and cry out for me.”

But he couldn’t spend every morning thus, and neither could she, no matter how much she might want to. The thought cast a dim cloud over her pleasure, but Georgiana pushed it aside before it obliterated all the beauty of their time together.

Instead, she let her teeth sink into her lower lip as she slid her hands down his muscular back toward the tempting curves of his arse. “I like making you cry out for me, too.”

“Oh?” A grin quirked his lips. “Is that so, Miss Harley?”

“It is.” Georgiana let her fingers wander under the waistband of his breeches and squeeze.

He gave her a scandalized look. “Did you just pinch my arse?”

A very uncharacteristic giggle slipped from her lips. “If I did, it’s your own fault.”

“I beg your pardon, madam. How it is my fault?”

“If you didn’t wear such tight breeches your, er…the back of you wouldn’t be as likely to catch a lady’s attention.”

He stared down at her for a moment, mouth hanging open, then threw his head back in a laugh. “Are you saying you’ve been sneaking peeks at my arse?”

“Well, not just that.” Georgiana moved her hands to the front of his breeches and slipped loose one of the buttons of his falls. “Your legs, too.”

His eyes widened as she slid the other button free. “That’s not very…ladylike of you.”

“Is that a complaint, my lord?” Georgiana stroked her palm over the hard plane of his stomach, inching lower with every caress.

His breath caught, and he swallowed. “No.”

“No, I rather thought not.” She might not know much about a gentleman’s anatomy still, but she knew a great deal more than she had last night, and she knew he was aroused, both by the flush of color high on his cheekbones, and, more importantly, the hard length rising from the crumpled fabric of his falls.

Georgiana teased her fingertips around the waistband of his breeches. They slipped off easily when she gave them a little tug. “There. That’s better.”

“Better for what? Do you intend to ravish me, Miss Harley?”

“It crossed my mind, yes.” Georgiana let her fingers drift over the narrow trail of dark hair low on his belly.

“I was hoping you’d say that.” Without warning Benedict grabbed her around the waist, tumbled onto his back and dragged her on top of him. His fingers closed on the hem of her shift, and with a quick flick of his wrist he tugged it over her head. “Come here, love, your thighs on either side of my…yes,” he hissed, when he had her straddling his hips.

Georgiana squirmed on top of him, already breathless. He’d hardly touched her yet, but the delicious pressure was already building in her belly again. “Benedict, I—”

She broke off with a choked gasp as he reached between her thighs to stroke the eager bud hidden in her damp folds. His dark gaze never left her face as he circled and teased, harsh breaths tearing from his chest. “God, look at you. Your hair wild, lips swollen, that flush on your cheeks. I could watch you like this…”

Forever.

He didn’t say it, and Georgiana pretended the word didn’t echo in her heart, all the louder for remaining unspoken. Instead she ran her hands over his shoulders and chest, a small smile curling her lips when a stroke of her fingertip around his nipple made him suck in a breath. “Take my cock in your hand, Georgiana.”

Georgiana lifted his rigid length from his taut stomach and gave him a leisurely stroke, her fingers caressing his shaft and cupping the head.

“Ah.” He jerked beneath her and grasped her hips. “Put it inside you.”

She raised herself to her knees and pressed the dripping head to her core. “I don’t know what—”

“Sink down onto me, love. Slowly. Yes…God, yes.”

Benedict was panting as she lowered herself onto him, her eyes widening as his stiff length eased inside her. “Oh, I…Benedict, I want…”

“You want to come, princess?” Benedict was trying not to move, to let her take him in as slowly as she needed, but he was biting his lip, his hips twitching with the effort to remain still. “Just a little more. Slowly…you’re so wet, Georgiana. I can feel how much you want me.”

Oh, she did. She did want him, so much her knees were shaking as she took him in, her body softening around him as he filled the empty place inside her until at last, at last she’d taken all of him.

Benedict groaned, his neck arching as his head fell back against the pillow. “You’re so perfect, Georgiana.” His hips jerked helplessly against hers, nudging his cock deeper. “Ride me, sweetheart.”

Georgiana could deny him nothing. She did as he commanded, whimpering when he reached between her thighs to rub a tormenting finger against her aching nub as he thrust up into her. She let the pleasure seize her, suck her into the vortex until everything blurred around her, and she knew only Benedict, his big, warm hands clutching her hips, his hoarse cries as he nudged her closer, closer…

She cried out when the pleasure rolled over her. She braced her hands on his chest and threw her head back, her thighs trembling, tears she wouldn’t let fall swimming in her eyes. Her name was on Benedict’s lips and his hands tangled in her hair as he took her with him, over the edge and into bliss.

* * * *

The room was quiet, the only sound the faint hiss of the fire as it burned low in the grate.

They’d have to leave soon. London was waiting.

Georgiana was sprawled across Benedict’s chest, her hair wild and her skin damp. He’d gathered her against him as their breathing calmed, and she’d drifted into a doze.

He pressed a tender kiss to her temple, twining one of her curls around his finger. He’d opened his mouth more than a dozen times to beg her to come to North America with him, but closed it a dozen more without uttering a single word.

She had a life here—a home, friends, and a purpose that gave meaning to that life. What did he have to offer her that could compete with that? A treacherous ocean journey, and an uncertain future. There wasn’t even time for him to marry her before he sailed for North America.

He’d be asking her to risk everything for him, and he couldn’t even promise he’d be able to make her happy. No. He might not be as selfless a man as he should be, but there was no way he’d ever ask her to give up everything for him.

But there was one thing he could give her, something that would make her happy. Once he was gone, thousands of miles away, if he could think of her as happy, he might be able to grab and hold onto just a tiny bit of happiness for himself without her.

“Tell me about your plans for the Mill Street building. What are your hopes for the next Clifford School?” She’d been dreaming of her school for years now, putting all of her energy into it, and he couldn’t imagine a better way to spend the little time they had left than to hear her talk about it.

She woke from her doze, and let her head roll against his chest with a sigh. “I didn’t find Clara Beauchamp, Benedict. I didn’t help Jane. I didn’t fulfill my promise, and I can’t accept the Mill Street—”

“Don’t, Georgiana.” Benedict’s arms tightened around her to hush her. “You can take it, and you will. If you don’t, it will sit there empty, of no use to anyone. I trust you to use it wisely. Don’t deprive me of the chance to do something worthwhile.”

She remained quiet for a time, drawing patterns over the backs of his hands with her fingertips. “If you truly wish for it, I’ll do as you ask.”

Benedict pressed a soft kiss to her temple. “I do wish it.”

Silence fell between them, but Georgiana broke it before it became too heavy by laying a tentative hand on his chest. “What of you, Benedict? Your home here, your servants, all your things. Will you just leave it all behind?”

“Yes. Darlington will look after my interests here, and I have trustworthy servants. They’ll take care of things until I…” He’d been about to say until I return, but he broke off without speaking the words. The truth was, he’d likely never return to England, and it was best if he didn’t hold out any hope this journey would be temporary. He and Jane and Freddy needed to build a new life, and there was no way he could do that if he was constantly longing to return home.

To return to Georgiana.

“I suppose they don’t matter, do they?” Georgiana’s voice wasn’t quite steady. “Clothing, carriages, horses—I used to think you cared about those things, but I was wrong.”

“Georgiana Harley, wrong?” Benedict attempted a teasing tone, but his throat was too tight for mirth, and it was a dismal failure. “What do I care about, then?”

“People.” Georgiana’s voice was quiet. “Your sister and nephew, your friends. They all mean more to you than anything else.”

You mean more to me, Georgiana. You mean everything.

He wanted to say the words aloud, to tell her it was killing him to leave her—tell her that he loved her. Holding it back was tearing his heart to shreds, but he couldn’t speak to her of love when he’d be gone by this time tomorrow.

So he said nothing, just lay quietly with her cradled in his arms, burying his face in her hair and breathing in her scent so he might recall it, and lose himself in the memory of her once he was gone.

Georgiana was quiet as well, but she stirred when he dropped a kiss on her forehead. “It won’t end here.”

Benedict couldn’t have said why, but her softly spoken words made him stiffen. “What do you mean? What won’t end here?”

“My pursuit of Kenilworth.” She looked up at him, surprise crossing her face at his expression. “Surely, you didn’t think Lady Clifford and I would just drop it, and let Kenilworth get away with what he’s done?”

That was precisely what Benedict had thought, fool that he was. He should have known better. “Georgiana—”

She struggled upright and pulled free of his arms. “He had Lord Draven attacked, Benedict. He hurt Clara Beauchamp, and Jane and Freddy—”

Benedict tugged her back into his arms and trapped her against his chest. “Do you think he won’t do the same to you? Kenilworth is a monster, Georgiana. He’ll hurt you if you keep up your pursuit!”

“And he’ll hurt someone else if I don’t! I know he’s dangerous, Benedict, but I have Lady Clifford and Daniel to help—”

“No!” Benedict grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him. “I forbid it, Georgiana.”

She jerked her chin free. “I beg your pardon, Lord Haslemere, but you don’t have the right to forbid me anything. As long as there’s a chance Clara Beauchamp is still alive—”

“There isn’t a chance! Damn it, Georgiana, she vanished six years ago, and not a single person has seen her since.”

“That’s not true! Jane said—”

“Jane got a fleeting glimpse of a fair-haired lady in a darkened carriage, nothing more. Lady Tilbury said she hadn’t seen Clara since she disappeared.” Benedict clutched at his hair, torn between anger and panic. “Even you and Lady Clifford thought Jane made a mistake.”

“Lady Tilbury denied it, yes, and I believed her at first, but I’ve changed my mind. She lied to me about something else, so she wouldn’t hesitate to lie about this, as well.”

“What do you mean? What did she lie about?”

“She never said a word to me about a liaison between Clara and Kenilworth. Given she was a great intimate of Clara’s mother, I find it difficult to believe Lady Tilbury didn’t know about it. It puts her denial in doubt.”

Benedict’s head was spinning. Could Clara Beauchamp really still be alive, and hiding in London? “What else did Jane say about Lady Tilbury the night she came to the Clifford School?”

Georgiana’s brow furrowed. “Not much. Just that Lady Tilbury never leaves her country estate in Herefordshire, but that she’d come to London this spring with her grandson.”

Her grandson? This was the first Benedict had ever heard of Lady Tilbury having a grandson. Lord Tilbury, who’d been a friend of his father’s, had been killed in a hunting accident more than thirty years earlier, and Lady Tilbury had never remarried.

But perhaps Georgiana had it wrong, and the child Lady Tilbury had brought to London was her ward, or—

Benedict stilled, his eyes meeting Georgiana’s. “How old is the child?”

Georgiana frowned. “I don’t know. Jane didn’t say, but young, I think. Jane said the boy was sickly, and Lady Tilbury had come to London to consult with Doctor Cadogan.”

Benedict digested this, his heart racing. “Lady Tilbury’s country estate is in Herefordshire, you said? Didn’t Lord Draven’s new housemaid also say she’s from Herefordshire?”

“I think so, yes.”

It wasn’t that remarkable a coincidence, given how many people from Herefordshire came to London, but taken all together…

“Lady Tilbury never had any children, Georgiana. That boy isn’t her grandson. When Jane told me Freddy isn’t the duke’s heir, I assumed she meant Lord Draven was Freddy’s father, but—”

“But there was never anything between Jane and Lord Draven. She must have meant something else entirely.” Georgiana’s wide eyes met his. “Perhaps she meant—”

“That Freddy isn’t the duke’s firstborn son.” If Clara and Kenilworth truly had married, and Clara had given birth to a son, then that child, and not Freddy, was the heir to the Kenilworth dukedom.

Georgiana grabbed Benedict’s hand. “Lady Tilbury, who never leaves her estate in Herefordshire, suddenly appears in London with a boy who isn’t her grandson, then Clara Beauchamp, who hasn’t been seen in six years, is spotted in a carriage outside Lady Tilbury’s townhouse? If Clara is alive, concern for her sickly child might have lured her to London.”

“Lord Draven was attacked that same week, Georgiana. Mrs. Bury said she’d hired a housemaid from Herefordshire, and that she’d—”

“That she’d happened along at just the right time to accompany Lord Draven to Oxfordshire. If Clara really was in London, heard of Lord Draven’s attack, and feared for his life, she might have risked posing as a housemaid so she could come to High Wycombe to be with him. Jane said Clara had very fair hair—so fair it was almost white. Rachel has dark hair, but—”

“It might be a disguise.”

“My God, Benedict.” Georgiana covered her mouth with her hand. “I think…I think there’s a chance Lord Draven’s new housemaid might be Clara Beauchamp.”