Juliana was still silent. He flung open a pair of double doors.
"Your bedchamber. The boudoir is through the door on the left." He gestured for her to precede him into a large, light chamber furnished in white and gold. The enormous tester bed was hung with gold damask, the coverlet of white embroidered cambric. The furniture was delicate, carved spindle legs and graceful curving arms and backs, the chaise longue and chairs upholstered in gold-and-white brocade. Bowls of yellow and white roses perfumed the air. Juliana's feet sank into the deep pile of the cream carpet patterned with gold flowers as she stepped into the room.
"Oh, what an elegant room!" Her bitter anger faded as she gazed around in delight. The involuntary comparison of this epitome of wealth and good taste with the ugly, heavy, scratched, dented, and faded furnishings in Sir John Ridge's house would not be quashed.
Tarquin smiled with pleasure, then wondered faintly why this chit of a girl's approval meant so much to him. Juliana had bounced over to the door of the boudoir, and he could hear her delighted exclamations as she explored the small, intimate room. "How pretty it is." She came back to the bedchamber, her eyes shining. "I never expected to find myself inhabiting such elegant surroundings," she confided.
"You will grace them, my dear," Tarquin said, an involuntary smile still on his lips at the sight of her ingenuous pleasure.
"Oh, I dareswear within ten minutes the entire chamber will look as if a typhoon hit it," she retorted.
Tarquin held out his hands to her. "Come, cry peace. I meant no offense. Actually, I find your . . . your haphazard locomotion very appealing."
Juliana regarded him incredulously. "I fail to see how anyone could find clumsiness appealing."
"There's something utterly alluring about you, Juliana. Whether you're on your head or your heels." His voice was suddenly a caress, his smile now richly sensual, issuing an irresistible invitation.
Juliana stepped toward him as the clear gray eyes drew her forward like the pull of gravity. He held her by the shoulders and looked down into her upturned face. "There are so many more enjoyable things for us to do, my sweet, than quarrel."
She wanted to tell him that he was a deceitful whoreson. She wanted to curse him, to bring down a plague on his house. But she simply stood, gazing up at him, losing herself in his eyes while she waited for his beautiful mouth to take hers. And when it did, she yielded with a tiny moan of sweet satisfaction, opening her lips for him, greedily pushing her own tongue deep into his mouth, inhaling the scent of his skin, running her hands through his hair, urgently pulling his face to hers as if she couldn't get enough of him.
He bore her backward to the bed, and she fell in a tumble of virginal white. His face hovered over hers, no longer smiling, expressive now of a deep, primitive hunger that set answering pangs deep in her belly. He was pushing up her skirts and petticoats, ignoring the awkward impediment of the hoop. His free hand loosened his britches, then slid beneath her bottom, lifting her on the shelf of his palm as he drove within her.
Juliana gasped at the suddenness of his penetration, but her body welcomed him with joy, her hips moving of their own accord, her buttock muscles tight against the warmth of his flat palm. He supported himself on one hand as he moved within her in short, hard thrusts. And her belly contracted with each thrust, the spiral tightening until a cry burst from her lips and waves of pleasure broke over her. His head was thrown back, his neck corded with effort, his eyes closed. Then he spoke her name in a curious wonder, and his seed gushed into her with each pulsing throb of his flesh, and when she thought she could bear no more, a surge of the most exquisite joy flooded every cell and pore of her body.
"Such enchantment," Tarquin murmured as he bent and kissed the damp swell of her breast rising above her decolletage.
Juliana lay sprawled beneath him, unable to move or speak until her racing heart slowed a little. With an effort she raised a hand and touched his face, then let it flop back again onto the coverlet. "I got lost somewhere," she murmured.
Tarquin slipped gently from her body. "It's a wonderful landscape to roam."
"Oh, yes," Juliana agreed, pushing feebly at her disordered skirts. "And one doesn't even need to get undressed for the journey," she added with an impish chuckle, suddenly invigorated. She sat up. "Where are my husband's apartments?"
"On the other side of the house, at the back." The duke stood up, refastening his britches, regarding her with a quizzical frown.
She slid off the bed, shaking down her skirts. "And where are your apartments, sir?"
"Next door to yours."
"How convenient," Juliana observed, beginning to unpin her loosening hair.
"Let me show you just how convenient." He turned to the armoire on the far side of the room. "Come, see."
Juliana, still pulling pins from her hair, followed curiously. He opened the door, and she gasped at the rich mass of silk, satin, and taffeta hanging there. "What's that?"
"I told you I've been busy with your wardrobe," he said. "But that's not what I wish to show you right now." He pushed the garments aside and stepped back so Juliana could see into the interior.
She saw a door at the back of the armoire.
"Open it," he said, enjoying her puzzlement.
Juliana did so. The narrow door swung open onto another bedchamber quite unlike her own. No dainty, feminine chamber, this one was all dark wood and tapestries, with solid oak furniture and highly polished floors.
"Oh," she said.
"Convenient, wouldn't you agree?" His eyes were alight with amusement.
"Very." Juliana stepped back, shaking her hair free of its plaited coronet. "Did you install it specially?"
He shook his head. "No, it was put in by the third duke, who, it was said, like to play little tricks on his duchess. He was not a pleasant man, by all accounts. But I imagine we can put it to better use."
"Yes." Juliana was beginning to feel dazed again. "Does everyone know of its existence . . . the viscount, for instance?"
"No. It's known to very few people. And I'll vouch for it that Lucien is not one of them. He doesn't know this house well."
"Lord Quentin?"
"Yes, he knows, of course."
"Just as he knows everything about this scheme?" She ran her fingers through her hair, tugging at the tangles.
"Yes."
"And what does he think of it?"
"He completely disapproves," Tarquin stated flatly. "But he'll come round. He always does." He turned back to the armoire. "Shall we choose a gown suitable for Lady Edgecombe to wear to the play and a visit to Ranelagh?"
IVliy not? The man was an avalanche, rolling over all obstacles, unstoppable. And, although it confused her to realize it, for the moment she did not want him to stop.
Chapter 11
George Ridge emerged from the Cross Keys Bagnio in midafternoon feeling very much the man-about-town. He turned on his heel, enjoying the swish of his new full-skirted coat of puce brocade. His hand rested importantly on his sword hilt as he looked along Little Russell Street, debating whether to go into the Black Lion Chop-House for his dinner or return to the Gardeners' Arms to see if his posters bad born fruit.
The ordinary table at the Gardener's Arms offered a reasonable meal, and the fellow diners tended to be hard drinkers with a taste for crude conversation and lewd jests. In general it suited George very well, but last night, when the ordinary table had been cleared of dinner and set up for gambling, he'd discovered that his fellow diners were deep gamesters. As the bottles of port circulated and the room grew hotter, George had grown louder and merrier and very incautious, peering with bleary bonhomie at the dice and throwing guineas across the table with an insouciance that later shocked him. He hadn't had the courage as yet to calculate his losses.