He shook the thought away.
An appropriate third way was obvious, always had been. Prostitution. Marry for money, marry well, marry a dowry.
To kill, to bury, or to screw.
Really, there wasn’t any choice about it at all.
She was just late enough so that he thought she wasn’t coming, and that the suite was to be wasted. It was after eleven when he heard the discreet knock on his door. He was sprawled in a chair, but he leaped up as a footman ushered in a heavily veiled female form and then left.
His heart bounded, and he walked over to her, laughing. “Is there anyone under these veils?”
“Oh no,” came a demurely smiling voice. “There’s no one here but I.”
“And you are the Ghost of the Lady of Shallot, I suppose,” he said, lifting off one veil only to discover another.
“Was the Lady of Shallot the woman who dashed about on her horse wearing no clothing?” Griselda demanded when he had tossed aside her third veil.
“That’s Lady Godiva,” he said, grinning down at her. He was clutching her hands with all the enthusiasm of a vicar greeting a sinner come to mass. “If you’d like to put on a performance, I’ll be happy to be your steed.”
He saw the moment the jest made sense to her, because her eyes widened. Then a naughty chuckle erupted from her throat. “I’ll have you know that I am a very proper widow,” she said severely, “and no one speaks in such a manner to me.”
“You aren’t a widow tonight,” he said. She had turned and was wandering about the room, so he came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her.
“I’m not?” Her hair was the sulky yellow of a peach, and tied up in elegant ladylike ringlets that hadn’t even been disturbed by her veils.
He nipped her in the ear. “You’re not,” he breathed in her ear. “I think you’re actually Lady Godiva, and you wandered into my room by accident.”
Her body was still, and he couldn’t tell if she were the sort who would welcome imagination, or whether she was a woman of rigid common sense.
“And what am I doing, wandering into a gentleman’s bedchamber?” she asked. His heart began to pound in his ears, because her voice was inquiring.
He ran his hands from her shoulders down the front of her pelisse, and then quick as a wink undid the twists that held it together. As he drew it off her shoulders, he said, “Well, you lost your clothing, of course.”
She turned around and smiled at him, and it was as if a perfect Dresden shepherdess leapt into vivid life, wrinkling her nose at him. “How did that happen?” She sauntered over to the table where the champagne stood, wrapped in a cold wet towel. “I should tell you, Darlington, that I rarely lose my clothing.”
He was there, pouring champagne. “I somehow know that,” he said, handing her a glass.
“This will be my third such encounter,” she said, waiting until he had a glass as well. “And my last.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“I’ve made up my mind to marry.”
These weren’t flirtatious smiles, but the rueful sort shared by campaigners on the eve of leaving for a battle. “I as well.”
“You do need to marry,” Griselda said, sipping her champagne. She looked delightfully concerned for him.
He leaned over and dropped a kiss on her lips. “So do you.”
“I?” she asked, and one perfectly arched brow flew into the air.
“Surely Willoughby has been dead ten years,” he said. “And Lady Godiva has only found herself wandering three times?”
“For one night only in each case,” she told him. “An inflexible rule. I always think it is so helpful for everyone if we are quite clear from the beginning.”
“One night,” Darlington said, feeling a pang of regret that nearly felled him to his knees. He only had one night before he must begin his marriage campaign. But none of that mattered in the face of the ravenous desire he felt for Griselda.
She glanced around the room, and he decided to lay down a rule of his own. “I have never married, but I’ve heard that such encounters take place under the sheets.”
“Indisputably,” Griselda said, her face not revealing a thing about her marital relations.
“And I imagine that affairs among the nobility often have the same lack of vivaciousness.”
“If one considers setting vital to…vivaciousness.”
“One does,” he said simply. “Tonight Lady Godiva rides in the open.” And just to give her an idea of what he meant, he pulled off his jacket and threw it to the side, pulled off his shirt and sent it flying in the same direction.
He knew he was desirable to women. True, he’d made love to very few. He had no stomach to make love to a sour-smelling lass who’d give herself for free in a tavern, little money to pay one who might smell better, and no heart to flirt with a maiden to whom he couldn’t offer marriage. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t seen their eyes follow him, seen a certain interest in her face when a woman surveyed his chest or glimpsed his forearm.
Griselda’s eyes rested on his chest, but he couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
“If we only have one night,” he said softly, “then I think that Lady Godiva should begin her ride, don’t you?”
But she was not a woman to be hurried.
He took down her hair, pin by pin, and made a delicious discovery. Those ringlets, the lady’s claim to propriety and beauty, were only for show. Down tumbled her hair, and it was thick as silk and straight, until it reached the end where it formed perfect little ringlets.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said, pulling them and admiring how they curled back into a perfect spiral.
“My maid puts in the curl,” Griselda said.
“How does she do that?” He was entranced, wanting to know every detail. “Do you stand there, naked, flushed, warm from the bath?”
She laughed at him. “I sit, respectably clothed in my dressing gown, and she wields a hot iron behind my shoulders.”
“I’m your maid for the night.” He took his time removing her gown, unlacing her corset, finally pulling off her chemise.
Surely she would insist on the lamp being turned down?
But she didn’t. She didn’t even glance at the light. Under all that clothing, she was as ripe and delicious as a peach, her breasts falling into his hands with an abandon that made his laughter catch in his throat, laughter that couldn’t make its way to the open air because he was in the grip of a lust so fierce that he’d never felt the like.
He was intoxicated by her long sweep of corn silk hair, with its little jubilant twists at the ends. He brought it over her breasts, and then pulled her in front of the mirror. They stood there together, she a study in creamy skin and silky hair, and he a harder, golden version of the same. “We look—” he said, and cleared his throat.
Griselda tipped her head back against his shoulder and watched him.
“I thought ladies were terrified by nakedness.” He was kissing her neck and talking between kisses.
“I’ve always liked looking at myself,” she said, watching his hands on her body in the mirror. “I like looking at you as well.”