My Last Duchess, стр. 43
She added matter-of-factly that she’d accepted His Grace’s proposal of marriage, and Hugo found the words so moving that hewaited until her butler turned away and caught her in a sudden kiss. “I love you,” he said fiercely, in a low voice meantfor her ears only.
But when he followed the butler up the stairs, he thought that Fiddle’s smile indicated that he’d overheard.
Hugo didn’t mind.
“Ophelia will wish to bring her household with her,” he told the butler, on being shown into the same elegant bedchamber aslast time.
“I have no doubt,” Fiddle said, bowing.
“No servants will be dismissed,” Hugo said, holding out his hand.
The butler shook it. “Thank you, Your Grace. I appreciate that, and so will the household.”
“You’ve taken care of her at a time when others might have taken advantage. I can never thank any of you enough.”
“We are all very fond of Lady Astley.”
“As am I,” Hugo said frankly.
The butler smiled.
Chapter Seventeen
Hugo might have thought Ophelia was tipsy, but in fact she knew exactly what she was doing, and the rightness of it hummedthrough her veins as she bathed and allowed her maid to put her in a nightgown.
A chaste white nightgown, because that’s all she had, but the very next day she meant to sally forth and order something marvelousmade of silk and lace for her wedding night, whenever that occurred.
First things first.
The deep-down connection she shared with Hugo? The way she no sooner glanced at him than she felt a flutter of desire?
That trumped everything.
When she walked into his room, it was lit just enough to create a cozy nest. Perhaps an eagle’s nest, because propped on pilesof snowy white pillows was a man with piercing eyes and a powerful body who—
Wanted her.
Loved her, according to his sister.
Was in love with her.
Was Peter ever in love with her?
The answer was obvious. They had never walked toward each other, knowing that their hearts were beating as fast as physicallypossible. Knowing that desire was a thrum in the blood and the legs and the head.
Of course, Hugo had climbed from the bed to greet her, his manners bred in the bone from generations of noblemen and theirnannies. She paused and let him come to her. Ophelia had never felt more than pretty: Usually she thought of her face as comely,an old-fashioned word that seemed appropriate.
But under his gaze, she felt beautiful.
Hugo reached out and wound his arms around her, pulled her close, and put his cheek against the top of her head.
“I’m short,” she said, breathing the words into his chest. He smelled like the soap she bought for guests. It made her happy,as if she owned a small part of him. As if she had changed him.
“Just the right size,” he replied. She could tell by the roughness in his voice that he meant it.
She ended up smiling against his skin like an idiot, and then because there it was—smooth and warm, roughened with hair—shestarted to kiss his chest, brushing her lips across ridges of muscle, kissing his flat nipple and then kissing it again, harder,when she felt the effect ripple through his body.
Like the wind in a wheat field, she thought dimly, and lost track of the thought because he had scooped her up in his armsand was carrying her to the bed.
He put her down gently on her back and lowered himself on her tentatively, but Ophelia had always been the sort of personwho made up her mind and then threw herself into life with abandon. She wrapped her legs around his waist in an instinctivemovement that would have likely given Peter a heart attack. Hugo groaned aloud, and the sound went down her spine.
After that, she promised herself not to let Peter have even a corner of her mind, at least not when she was in bed with Hugo.
“Phee,” Hugo said, lowering his head to hers. He licked into her mouth with an impatient ownership that made her shiver evenmore. His kiss was possessive, as possessive as the gesture of winding her legs around his hips.
“You’re mine,” she told him later, when her lips were plump and tingling from an endless kiss that broke only for gasps ofair that sounded like groans.
“Always,” Hugo said. He moved to her side and cupped her face in his large hands. “I am always yours, Phee. To death and beyond.”
They had that together: that knowledge that life is meant to be savored, and that time is limited.
“We have a choice in every moment of life,” he said, his voice brushing her body. “I choose to spend every possible one ofthem with you, Phee.”
“Are we never leaving this bed, then?”
He kissed her again, so fiercely that her legs felt boneless. “No,” he said later, enough later that her nightgown had beentossed to the floor. He raised his head from her breast to say it.
“Please don’t stop,” she begged.
He glinted at her and then put his mouth over her nipple. “This?”
She arched toward him. “More.”
He pursed his lips. “More?”
Words were coming from Ophelia’s mouth, but they didn’t answer the question. It was as if her lips refused to be silent, buther brain couldn’t spare the time to shape an opinion. One of Hugo’s hands made its way down her belly and slipped betweenher legs.
“God, you’re so wet,” he whispered, his voice cracking.
She wound her hands into his hair and did the one thing that Ophelia Astley had never done in her life: She commanded.
“Now, Hugo,” she said. “Now, damn it.”
The duke who never took direction from anyone—and that had included his young wife Marie—cracked a smile and braced himselfover her. “Sure?”
“Yes.” Ophelia drew her knees up and made herself vulnerable in a way that she never could have imagined: body and soul. Hugo’skisses ravished a small, unnourished part of her soul that she had never suspected existed.
And yet there it