Not far was good. She really needed to see Ross. To prove to herself that he was real.

"We've sent ahead to make the place perfect for you and Ross. Food and a fire and privacy. You won't be wanting for anything."

"But when did you arrange this? You couldn't have been planning beforehand. You found out less than two hours ago that we were married."

"True." Kate smiled at Caro. "But a princess works in mysterious ways."

Caro winked back at Kate. "So does a mother of twenty."

"Twenty children?" Not possible! The woman couldn't be more than twenty-five. "You and Jared have twenty children? How?"

"No, no, you first, Elizabeth," Kate said, pulling a wad of knitting out of her bag. "Tell us everything."

She told them nearly everything.

About the protest march and Scotland Yard.

The set-to in Parliament.

The arrest warrant and Ross's overwhelming gallantry.

The wedding and the nonexistent wedding night.

But she didn't have to tell them how much she had come to love him.

They seemed to have known that before she did.

Chapter 17.

For G.o.d's sake hold your tongue, and let me love.

John Donne, 1572-1631 The Canonization "d.a.m.n it all! First we made circles around London and now we're in Hampstead. On the way to G.o.d knows where." Ross glared at the two men sitting across from him in the carriage as it jounced and jolted along the rutted country road. "I'm going to kill you both."

"I'll risk it. What about you, Jared?" The blighter was doubtless grinning like a chimp. "I'm in with you for the whole pound, Drew. Besides, if I remember rightly, Ross was instrumental in tricking my Kate into stepping into my lair at the lodge." "At your own request, Jared." "Still, turnabout's fair play." Drew laughed. "Because we all knew it was for her own good." "Kate and I both benefited." Jared whistled. "d.a.m.n, if we didn't have the finest wedding night in the history of the world. No matter that it was two years late." "Pardon me if I'm a bit more driven, but I'd prefer that my wedding night occur sometime within a month of the wedding. Now let me out of this carriage at the nex 't -" "I agree with you, Ross." Drew sprawled back against the carriage seat. "Caro and I had our wedding night first and then got married the next morning." The carriage rounded a sharp curve to the right as the road left the village, then started down a hill. "Where the h.e.l.l are you taking me?" "Oooo, the boy is eager, isn't he, Drew?" "Can hardly blame him, though. We all did marry beauties." Ross ignored them and glared out the tiny window. A quarter mile outside the village the carriage slowed as it rolled through a hedge gate then came to rest. Without waiting for an invitation, let alone an explanation, Ross leaped out of the carriage, and stopped dead on the gravel walk.

"See, Ross," Jared said, following him down a step. " Grouse in eade Cottage."

"Good Lord." Ross laughed. Hard-won ages and ages ago by Jared. In a day-long dice game. With their pooled funds from the first of Craddock's gold b.u.t.tons. Their erstwhile home for nearly two years. He'd almost forgotten it.

"Your bride is inside."

Ah.

"The family moved out a month ago," Drew added from the coach. "It's yours for as long as you'd like it."

"There's a gig out in the carriage house and a horse in the paddock, should you ever wish to leave your paradise."

"Now, are we forgiven, old man?"

Ross laughed again and, without a backward glance, started toward the front door and the softly amber glow from the mullioned windows. "Good night, gentlemen."

The carriage sped out into the darkness, stirring the cool, rose-scented air into billowing clouds that drew him closer to the arbored entry.

With a quaking hand, Ross merely touched the door latch and the oak panel drifted open like an invitation.

The main room was just as he'd remembered it, though neater and more substantially furnished. The hearth blazed from the center of the room, flanked by wide, timbered arches on either side of the large-stoned structure. Its flames danced shadows across the carpet, up the walls, and into the parlor behind the chimney, where the hearth was open between the two rooms.

"Elizabeth? '' He stood in the entry, his nerves jangling as he scanned the room for his wife's lovely face in every curve and darkened corner, but without any luck.

Grousemeade Cottage wasn't large at all. Three rooms up, three down, and a snug kitchen attached in the rear. Difficult to get lost in.

Unless, of course, his pa l 's had dumped him here without a bride. For which they would pay the rest of their stinking live's. If they lived.

"Your friends are quite wonderful."

"Elizabeth?" His heart leapt toward the sound of her, somewhere in the weaving shadows of the candlelight beyond the arch to the right of the fireplace. A silky voice without substance.

He could feel her, could sense her heat, taste her savory fragrance on the air.

"They're devious too. Caro and Kate, especially." And then she appeared like a spirit just inside the arch. A shape, a shadow. His willful harem dancer.

She had been dazzling in the ballroom tonight; here in the cottage she was sumptuous, glittering. Her hair cascading freely across her shoulders, her cleavage deep and lush.

"You call them devious, wife? What of you and your trousers?" He shrugged out of his coat and dropped it across a chair back, savoring her smile, the glint of her eyes. "Shocking London to its marrow. Exposing your legs to the world, when I, your ravenous husband, haven't yet had the pleasure."

"All for a good cause."

"Ha! You'd wear those trousers every day for your own convenience if you could get away with it."

"I don't see why I shouldn't. Skirts can get in the way of doing all sorts of ch.o.r.es. What would you do without your trousers? Oh, I... ah-ha!" She paused in her realization, then sent him a teasing smile so beguiling that he would follow it to the ends of the earth.

"Are you threatening my trousers?"

"Come see for yourself." She c.o.c.ked an eyebrow, dipped her shoulder at him, then disappeared into the flickering shadows beneath the arch.

And he followed like a wake follows a ship. Fo l lowed her exotic scent of sandalwood, the soft shoosh of silk that stirred against her legs. Followed her through the arch and into the parlor.

But the back parlor had never looked quite like this when he'd lived here with Jared and Drew. Opulent drapes against the rear windows, a scattering of thick carpets littered with piles of huge satiny pillows. A steaming tub, a low table laden with cheese and bread and succulent fruits. The whole scene shimmering with a forest of candles.

And standing in the midst of this breathtaking landscape was his exotic wife, in her exotic trousers and... Lord help him, the only garment between him and her pouting, perfect b.r.e.a.s.t.s was that short vest, precariously fastened in the front.

Those tiny silken ta.s.sels dancing where his hands ought to be exploring.

The full-sleeved, blowsy shirtwaist she'd been wearing beneath the vest had disappeared somewhere along the way. And now all he could do was stammer and stand there aching for her.

"I understand your journey here has been long and difficult, sirrah." She came toward him with a delicious glint in her eye, her arm extended as she approached, her fingers beckoning.

"Grueling, madam. Across arid deserts and raging seas." Oh, yes, he could play her game, would play it gladly. He could stand here and watch the gentle, purposeful swing of her lithe hips, the shifting, clinging silk against her thighs.

And the hypnotic bobbing of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s beneath that singular vest with all its shadows and snickle-ways, waiting for one of them to show itself to him.

"Then settle your thoughts. I'm here to serve you." She stopped just shy of him to entwine her fingers in the front of his waistcoat. "After all, I'm told that you purchased a night full of scented delights with in e."

"Indeed. A bought-and-paid-for night in the seraglio, madam." A night he might never survive, though he would die the happiest man on earth.

"A night in my seraglio, sir. Designed with you in mind." She tugged down on his waistcoat, bending his mouth to hers like a willow in the wind. "Hungry?"

"Starving."

"Good." She produced a succulent blackberry between her fingers, then popped it into his mouth and kissed him lightly, slowly, on his mouth, nibbled along his jaw until she reached his ear, and whispered, "If you'll follow me, my lord."

"Anywhere, anytime." He was dazzled as she pulled on his cuff, dumbstruck by her scent as she led him toward the low table. "I have since the moment I saw you marching down Whitehall with your outrageous sign."

She turned back to him and smiled, quirking her head as though she thought he might be teasing. "You saw me in the street that day?"

"Watched you from the moment you left Trafalgar Square." He slipped his hands around her slender waist, finding warm, bare skin beneath his fingers, and suffering a jolt of l.u.s.t that pulled her forward against his erection and made her eyes flash.

"You said you hadn't."

"Every blessed step you took, my love."

"Why?"

"Hoping like a fool that you would glance up at me." He lifted her into his arms, holding her fast against him, length upon length, unable to get enough of her.

"Where were you, Ross?" She hugged her arms around his neck, clinging to him, scrubbing her fingers through the hair at his nape.

"In the Admiralty." He kissed her eyelids, the side of her nose. "At a meeting that held no importance after the moment I saw you."

She caught him by the ears and peered into his eyes. "Is that what brought you into Scotland Yard that day? My protest sign?"

"You did, Elizabeth." He laughed, slowly lowered her to her feet in front of the table and lifted her hair back off her shoulders. "While you marched past me with such determined pride."

"I was terrified," she whispered, catching her lower lip with her teeth.

"And I was besotted with the beautiful woman scowling out at the world from the back of that paddy wagon."

"That's not like you, Ross." She offered another blackberry between her fingers, and he took it eagerly, her fingertips and all, nibbling and licking them until he was holding her hand, kissing her palm.

"It isn't at all." To think, he might have walked away, might never have met her. And he suddenly couldn't imagine the loss. "But believe me, my love, you're worth every penny of blackmail you wrung out of me tonight."

"So far." She was now tugging on his sleeve, lifting herself up onto her toes, the tips of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s a teasing, white-hot pressure seeping through his waistcoat, the linen of his shirt.

He steadied himself, restrained his urges and took hold of her elbows. But a shudder ripped suddenly through him, a lightning blue thirst for the woman he'd married but had hardly kissed.

He took her mouth with his, possessed her lips completely, tasting her and teasing. Sending him into an ecstasy when her tongue found his and played and flickered, until he was groaning like a bear and clutching her hips and lifting her into his arms again.

Mindlessly hungry for her, he carried her to the carpet, as he had imagined so many times, and drove her deeply into the mounds of pillows, deeper and deeper with his kiss against her hair and her eyes, then back to the lushness of her berry-flavored lips.

She sifted her fingers through his hair and looked up at him, her mouth rosy and moist. "My lord, I'm supposed to be pleasuring you."

"Believe me, love, you are."

But his little vixen gave a quick twist to her hips and he was suddenly, amazingly, trapped beneath her. Trapped by her devilish grin, by the simmering thrall of sandalwood caught up his nostrils.

"Now isn't that better?"

"G.o.d, yes!" She was straddling his hips with her knees, and his shoulders with her arms, settling another kiss on his lips, a long, leisurely kiss, a mad exploration of his mouth, a waltz with his tongue.

And then she was dangling a deep red cherry above his mouth, dragging it across his lips until he caught it and chewed.

She crossed her arms over his chest and rested her chin on the back of her hands. "According to Kate, the cherries are from a tree here at the cottage.''

"I remember." He sat up slightly and tossed the pit into the fire.

"So the three of you lived here in the cottage? '' She slowly poked a cherry into her own mouth, making him want to follow after it.

But he'd vowed to pace himself through the night, to restrain himself for the sake of his eager, unbridled wife.

"Our headquarters for nearly three years, until Jared was twenty and we all went off to sea."

"My amazing husband." She cut off his words with another juicy blackberry then another kiss nuzzled against his mouth, another endless, honey-warm kiss. "And then, Ross?"

"Canad a - " He was breathless for her. "- w here we foiled a royal embezzlement plot and gained the queen's everlasting grat.i.tude."

"The queen's champion, as well as my own." She was silk and sleekness from head to toe. He could barely think for the need to pull off her clothes, roll her onto her back and plunge inside of her. But that was for later, if he could last.

And still she nuzzled and squirmed against him until she finally stood up and over him. Her silk trousers shimmering like a warm river, the undersides of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s like shadowy crescents beneath her skimpy vest.

A sultry haven he intended to visit as soon as he could manage to regain his senses.

"I've more for you, my lord." She held out her hand to him.

Transfixed, not sure he could take much more, he gathered her soft hand into his and rose up onto one knee. She planted a kiss on his mouth and lifted him the rest of the way to his feet.

Then she stood back and raked him with her gaze while he waited as silently as he could, breathing like a bull.

"Your bath awaits, sir." When he reached for the b.u.t.tons of his waistcoat, her fingers followed, tangled with his. "Let me do that. You're to relax here in my harem."

He laughed and took her chin between his fingers. "If I let you undress me, I can guarantee I'll not be relaxed in any way."

"I can see that already. Felt you as well." She grinned up at him as she started up the front of his waistcoat, b.u.t.ton by b.u.t.ton. The backs of her warm fingers sifted heat through the linen of his shirt, taking his breath away.