Chapter 20

That night, while joining Lousia in her bedchamber, long after she had retired, Julius paused at the corner of the room where he would normally lay his makeshift bed.

She laid on her side, on the enormous confection of feather pillows and blush-colored silk— and he felt his heart twist. Her nightcap had come unpinned, and her sable tresses spilled across the pillow.

Unable to resist, he brushed his fingertips over her cheek and brushed her hair from her face. She wrinkled her nose and the sight drew a surge of tenderness in him.

Would it kill me to join her for once? Rose is safe, she is with us. I needn't worry about her tonight.

Shedding the robe, he tugged the sheet down, then slid in from the opposite side, tentatively reaching out to touch her again. This time, her eyes fluttered open, only a little, and saw him before the lashes swept down again.

Louisa shifted forward and gently, he reached for her, pulling her onto his shoulder and draped an arm around her back to press her closer. He cradled her closer, stroking her hair as she slept.

Her breathing had the deep, even quality of deep comforting sleep and his arm tightened protectively around her, chest aching with the knowledge that the woman dozing in his arms had suffered entirely too much.

"I'm sorry," he whispered against her skin.

As he felt sleep calling, he prayed for no nightmares and with her in his arms, his night was blissfully sweet.

Without full wakefulness, Louisa knew Julius was with her. Call it her intuition, her acute mindfulness of him or even preternatural happenstance, she could feel his presence in the bed.

They smelled of his cologne, the spicy, musky male fragrance that aroused her senses burrowed into the sheets, resisting the initial tugs of wakefulness. She felt him too, all solid and warm, his possessive arm wrapped around her middle.

Blinking awake, she took in the pale morning light seeping through the thin curtains, and a low fire burned in the grate. She did not want to move an inch but wanted to bask in the glory of waking in her husband's arms.

The feel of his pressed firm against her back, his manhood an iron bar pressing into her backside. She bit the inner of her cheek as proof of his arousal made her skin flush and her heart hammer against her breastbone.

He shifted a little and she tried to keep still and mimic sleep—except his hand slid over the swell of her hip and trailed over her waist. Julius voice was rough with sleep when he murmured, "I know you're awake, Louisa."

A gasp as curled his tongue around the sweet curve of her ear and suckled until she began to writhe against him. His cock strained, stiff and chafing at the barriers between them.

Groaning, he thrust into the cradle of her thighs, a hand sliding from her hip to cup her breast. His massaged the heft of her while his fingers found the hard peaks, rubbed them through the thin layer of silk. She was panting now, her eyes closed, her hands gripping his sleeves.

He drew his thumb across the puckered peak, and she jerked, her eyes flying open, foreign yet as potent lust beating in her veins. He strummed her nipple again, and grabbed for him as he slid her the arm of the silky bronze nightgown down and bared her breast to him.

Shifting her to her back, he cupped her breast and fixed his mouth over her. The hot, wet swipe of his tongue made her squirm against the sheets and her hand slid into his hair while the other grabbed at his shoulder.

His mouth was hot and wet against her skin as he mapped her body with kisses and hand savored the way her rounded mounds overflowed his palms, squeezing them.

"Julius, please," she said, her voice breathless and sweet.

He traced the rosy perimeter of her areola with the tip of his tongue, every sensation rife and titivating flying to her head and heating right through her veins.

Gripping at him, her breath popped free, turning into a moan as it left her lips. With growing embarrassment and desire, she felt how her woman's place was throbbing, aching, shockingly wet.

Restless with need, she rocked against him and felt his fingers trace up her inner thigh. "Please touch me."

His chuckle was dark and mischievous. "I am touching you."

"Devious man," she said breathily. "You know where I want you to touch me."

Rising, Julius shed the loose trousers he wore, and she watched him undress with glee. When he shed his trousers, a hot, viscous tremor passed through her core. His cock was huge, a thick and heavy truncheon between his thighs.

In the low light she greedily took in his flexing shoulders and the delineated blocks of his chest. Dark hair was sprinkled over his taut skin, a trail bisecting the stacked muscles of his torso.

Her attention was drawn to the path of hair on his sectioned abdomen, down to his narrow hips. He was taut and sinewy everywhere, with no excess bulk…except between his thighs. His manhood was a thick and heavy truncheon between his thighs.

"Like what you see?"

"Very much."

Her breath puffed through her lips. Sweet heavens, his member was larger than she remembered. She had felt is arousal, touched him, even had her lips wrapped around him but to see him plainly like this was a different sort of arousal. Her center felt warm and liquid as he wrapped his fingers around his rampant member, the slow stroke up and down inviting her to watch.

"Should I disrobe?" the words caught in her throat.

"No," he said. "Stay just as you are."

He rejoined her on the bed and brushed his lips against hers, Louisa let out a shuddering sigh, her head tilting back for his kiss. He obliged her, a heated swirl of tongues, then shifted her on her side.

"Trust me," he brushed his lips on her cheek. He fixed his body behind her and she moaned when he cupped the her breasts, teasing the budded tips before sliding down over her belly and slitted his hand between her soft thighs, a growl of approval rising in his throat.

She was drenched. Pushing aside the heavy curtain of her hair, he kissed her nape and fondled her his thumb finding her slicked knot and circled the slick bud— once, twice, until she was trembling in his arms.

Pulling away, he lifted her thigh, and she felt the steel of his manhood slide between her soft inner thighs. "Clamp your thighs tight for me," he murmured.

The feel of him so close to her sex made her quiver and a needy moan escaped her. She could feel him, sliding against her nether lips, hard and hot, steel encased in velvet. He held her hip, gripping her while delivering a series of short, shallow thrusts.

Pleasure snaked up her spine at the feel of him, the rough scrape os chest hair on her back, the firm press of the square of his loins against the soft curves of her ass.

"Ah!" She gasped as he rubbed her wetness, alternating feather-light caresses with sinuous circles upon her sensitive nub. She was so close he knew she wouldn't last long. Sure enough, her thighs began to quiver.

He kept the pressure on, sparking a fire inside her and when he set his teeth on the tender juncture of her neck and shoulder, delivering soft nips her climax inched closer.

She was so lost in the sensations, writhing against him, that it took her a moment to realize he was leaking against her skin.

"More," she begged, wantonly fingering her own nipples as his restraint vanished and he began to pound into her. Her breathy cries urged him on.

Flutters started on her core as he rubbed her bud mercilessly—the orgasm blasted through her like a sudden tempest and she was coming around him, the pleasure almost too much to resist.

With the tight vice of her thighs clamed around him and that sudden bath of honey from her core, his climax hit him with the force of an oncoming carriage. Biting back a shout, he shot his seed in luxurious bursts, marking inner thighs with his pleasure.

With his arms around her, his damp breath skittered over her nape while her body gently came down from the ecstatic high. When her eyes opened again, she saw an emotion in his eyes that closely resembled the feeling bubbling under her breastbone. A universe of emotion that no words could convey.

He was still between her thighs, his arousal now quiescent but she still cradled him and the intimacy of it had heat flushing through her entire body. Surely, he could feel the heat of it too.

They hugged for several minutes with his face buried in the crook of her neck, and her cheek resting against the side of his jaw. He pressed a soft kiss to the exposed arch of her throat. Her pulse tripped, a million butterflies took flight in her belly, and her heart raced.

They stayed like that for a breathless moment. "I now know the taste of your skin," he murmured roughly, inhaling deeply as if wanting to trap her scent into his lungs.

"I know the feel of you now too," she whispered achingly. Reaching up, she swept his hair from his damp brow. "That was lovely…can we do it again?"

A laugh punched itself form his lungs. "Insatiable minx. I'll see what I can do for tonight."

Hours later, Lousia tried to fight of the many fantasies that kept bombarding her mind about what had happened in the bedroom earlier—and what could have happened— she forced herself to focus on the piles of correspondence high on her table.

With a cup of tea to her side, she shifted through invitations cars, calling cards and complimentary vouchers to Almacks of the Opera House, and dropped a letter from Lord Holbrook to the side, the continued to sort.

Another letter from Holbrook went into the pile, then another and a fourth. By the time she got to a sixth, concern began to dawn on her heart. What was so important that it would take—she looked down— seven letters from the man?

What is wrong here?

The letters were Julius private correspondence but a he was off again, to London, she heeded to temptation, or possibly intuition, and opened the last one.

Your Grace,

I do know you are a busy man and various concerns are pulling our attention left and right, but I feel it incumbent to draw your attention to the most pressing issue of all; the investment in the steam engine.

As I write to you, the stock of Sherborne's stock is soaring. Everyone from aristocrats to mudrakers are investing in the venture and if we fail to get on the boat, it will sail without us.

The slashing cursive began to lose it smooth cadence as the man wrote on, possible in haste or in worry.

I fear if we lose this chance, it will be gone for good. I sense catastrophe and cloying regret would be at our doorstep if our investment is not made in a timely hour. The turnover will be a wave surging past us in alacrity.

Please visit Mister Sherborne as soon as possible and pledge the hundred thousand pounds or the return of millions will pass us by.

Yours in sincerity and trust,

Adam.

Thick confusion blanketed her mind. A hundred thousand pounds? Dear god. It was probably a fraction of the wealthy Julius held but—she cast back into her memory of the day the earl had come to visit with his son.

Had not the asking price been twenty-five to fifty thousand pounds? How had it jumped to a hundred now? She looked back over the letter and read, "…the stock of Sherborne's stock is soaring."

Did that mean the entrance price was increasing? Is that why it as a hundred now? She did not know head or tails about commercial business…but something did not right here.

She felt a strange buzzing in her head, like a fly circling her ear. The buzzing got louder and louder.

Knowing it was wrong, she opened all the letters and found they were all in the same strain— Holbrook pushing and prodding Julius into this arrangement. Surely, this was an urgency with investment, yes, but this felt excessive.

Gathering the letter, she placed them in a drawer, knowing she had to talk to Julius about it when he returned. But—Julius. The poor man had so much on his plate already, most of all, what they had just discovered yesterday, that the men who had tried to abduct Rose were still watching her,

"Not to mention this nonsense with this meddlesome man at the War office," she noted.

Would it be a kindness to take one burden of his wide shoulders? If she could get to the bottom of this—her intuition was still ringing like church bells—then this would be one less thing to perturb him.

"I think…" her mind flew to an older man, in a wide study, poring over book, "…father should be able to help me with this."

Decided, she fetched her coat and sent for her carriage. It was only when the vehicle came around, she remembered Rose.

"Mr. Sawyer, please look in for Rose and when she wakes, tell her I wont be long," she said while tugging a glove on. "Hopefully, I will not make a liar out of myself."

The Claimond House was a no small affair but rather a sprawling red brick great house that dated back to Henry VIII. While it was an older creation, her father had made sure it held all the modern conveniences a man of his wealth could buy.

As soon as the carriage came to the gate, a livered footman came to the door and helped her out. "Good morning, Your Grace," he bowed. "Welcome home."

"Thank you, Mulford," Louisa addressed one of her father's most faithful footmen. "Is father home?"

"He is, yes, but I am afraid he is in the middle of business negotiations with three other lords," Mulford bowed. "Should I tell him you are here and tell you his answer?"

While she heard his words, the one word that stood out was business. Could it be so coincidental and auspicious that she had arrived on a day when this was happening?

"Actually," she removed her coat. "I think I will go with you. I know it's a faux pas to interrupt such things, but this time, I hope father will make an exception."