The Naked Marquis. Sally MacKenzieЧитать онлайн книгу.
My hair is wretchedly curly—much like yours.” He let his eyes wander over her curls. She had tried to tame them, pulling them back off her face, but a number had escaped. Her blush deepened in a most attractive manner. “And I cannot object to having nice eyes—do you think them nice, Miss Peterson?”
“My lord!” Her face turned an even brighter red.
He smiled, offering her his arm. “Shall we repair to the study? I would appreciate your telling me about my nieces. As you may have guessed, I’ve not kept up with their lives.”
She hesitated, then laid her fingers on his sleeve. They trembled slightly, and he put his hand up to cover them. They were so small, so delicate. She had not struck him as delicate when she was a child—she’d been struggling so hard to keep up with him and his friends, he supposed. But she was not a child any longer. His eyes slid over to contemplate her bosom. No, not at all. And her lovely breasts certainly were not small, though he’d wager they were exquisite. A delectable handful, though covered by a very boring frock at the moment. His fingers itched to loosen her buttons and reveal the wonders she was hiding.
Sudden lust made a part of him, never small, grow significantly larger. He averted his eyes and repressed a smile.
His future suddenly looked much brighter.
Emma walked with Charles down the stairs to the study. Her emotions were disordered. She had been angry and frightened when he had burst upon them, but once she had comprehended who he was…well, she didn’t know what she felt.
She should still be angry. She had been angry these past four months when he had failed to make the short trip from London to visit his nieces. Not that the girls had missed him—they were used to neglect, more’s the pity. But Emma admitted to herself as she walked down the long staircase that she had been disappointed in him.
Oh, he had come briefly, for just a handful of hours, when the marquis and marchioness were laid in the family vault. But he had hurried back to London before the last prayer had faded, and he had not visited since. Why? What had happened to the man? Had the war changed him so drastically? Surely the boy she’d known would not have ignored his nieces in such a manner.
She remembered the day she’d met him. Remembered? Lud! She treasured the memory, recalling it whenever she felt lonely or sad or discouraged.
She had been six years old. Her father had just taken the Knightsdale living, and she missed her old house, her old playmates, everything familiar. Loneliness was a throbbing ache in her middle. She’d found a nice log by the stream that ran though the woods near the vicarage, and had settled down to cry until she had no tears left. But crying only made her stomachache worse.
And then Charles had come whistling into her world. She’d heard him before she saw him. She would have hidden away, but she was too exhausted from her tears. He’d stopped in front of her and put his hands on his hips.
He was only four years older than she, a skinny boy with curly brown hair, but he had seemed like a god in the wood’s still, leaf-sifted sunlight. He had made a noise of disgust and then had pulled a grubby handkerchief out of his pocket.
Buck up, he’d said as he’d scrubbed her face. Stop blubbering. You don’t want everyone to think you’re a baby, do you? Come on, you can help me look for salamanders.
She had fallen in love then, and she had never quite fallen out.
She looked down at his hand where it covered hers. He was not wearing gloves—nor was she. The warmth and weight of his palm and the touch of his strong, slightly callused fingers did odd things to her breathing. She had the shocking urge to turn her hand and weave her smaller fingers with his.
He was beyond her touch. She knew it. She had always known it, even when she had stared at him in the woods twenty years ago. He had been the son and brother of a marquis—now he was the marquis, and she was just the vicar’s daughter, as common as a buttercup in the Knightsdale fields. Still, she had tagged after him like a puppy, happy for some scrap of attention. When he’d left for school, she had cried again—and again the tears had not helped the empty ache in her middle.
And then her mother had died and she’d had her sister, Meg, and her father to care for. No time for silly romantic dreams.
She glanced at Charles’s profile as they reached the entrance hall. No time, perhaps, nor sense in it, but she had dreamed anyway.
She’d been sixteen when he’d last been home. Not yet out. Too young to be invited to his brother’s wedding ball, but not too young to desperately want to attend and perhaps dance with Charles.
She had done the most daring thing—the only daring thing—of her life. She had slipped out her window, through the woods, and up to the terrace. She’d hidden in the shadows, watching the men in their white linen and black eveningwear, the women in their jewels and colorful dresses.
She had seen Charles come out onto the terrace with a London lady. Emma had stared at the woman. Her dress had clung to every curve and dipped precariously low over her full breasts. She’d been amazingly, shockingly beautiful. And then Charles had taken the lady in his arms and kissed her, his hands roaming freely over her body.
It had made Emma feel very odd—breathless and uncomfortable. Embarrassed and wicked and…fluttery and hot. She had hurried back to the vicarage as if Satan himself were after her.
She’d seen that kiss in her dreams a thousand times, but in her dreams, she was the woman in Charles’s arms.
Well, she should be cured of that affliction now. She took her hand off his arm as they entered the study. The servants did their best, but the room still smelled of old fires and dust. It had been more than a year since the marquis—the former marquis—had visited the estate.
“Miss Peterson, I apologize if I startled you just now.” Charles gestured for her to take a seat by the fire. She preferred to remain standing, forcing him to stand as well. He threw her a puzzled glance. Emma gripped her hands before her.
“My lord, it has been four months since your brother and his wife died, leaving your nieces orphans. Why have you taken so long to come home?”
Charles shrugged one shoulder. “Home?” His mouth tensed and he looked down at the desk. When he looked back up, his face was emotionless. “The girls were in good hands. I spoke to your father at the funeral. Nanny was here and the governess as well. Why would they care to see an uncle who was a stranger to them? And I truly thought they were still infants.”
“How could you have thought that? Isabelle is nine years old and Claire is four.”
“I was only twenty-one, a young man on the Town, when Paul had his first child. Beyond the disappointment that he had not managed to get an heir, I didn’t think much of it. And then I went to war. The little one—Claire—wasn’t born when I left for the Peninsula.”
“And do you intend to leave them again, now that you’ve seen them?”
Emma could see from his expression that was exactly what he had intended.
“You can’t, my lord! The girls have lived long enough in the care of servants. They need a relative in the house. You heard how much Claire wants a papa! Isabelle, too, though she is too reserved to say so.”
“And what about a mama, Miss Peterson? Surely the girls need a mama as much, or more, than they need a papa?”
“Well, of course they need a mama, but there’s no one available at the moment to fill that position.”
“No?” Charles grinned suddenly. “How about you?”
Emma felt as if all the air had been sucked out of her lungs.
Charles bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. Miss Peterson’s jaw had dropped like a rock.
“It’s the perfect solution, when you think of it, Miss Peterson. The girls need a mother, as you yourself have pointed out. They know