Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 86167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Felicity was to arrive with her family in three weeks’ time. He only knew this because Townsend had told him tonight at the ball. A year ago, two years especially, he would have known to the minute when she’d arrive at London’s port, and been unsettled, anxious, needful, even depressed to see her disembark with her royal husband and plentiful children.
Now he understood that Felicity had always been meant for Prince Carlo and a royal life, and he had somehow, through fate and circumstance, been meant for the maddening, mysterious faerie-woman in his arms.
“August,” she whispered, running her fingers down his face.
“Yes?”
“I’m just saying your name. August.” She looked up at him. “But it’s Julian. That’s your given name. Why’ve we never called you Julian?”
He laughed at her drowsy question. “I suppose because I acquired my title before I was born. But you may call me Julian if you wish.”
“I probably won’t, because you’ve always been August to me.” She sighed in post-coital contentment. “My season of love. August.”
“It’s spring right now, darling.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead. “And August is not a season.”
“Oh, that’s right. Autumn is the season. Your talents have got my brain so muddled, I got it confused.”
“Doesn’t autumn begin in September? You know, officially?”
She placed a finger upon his lips. “Shh. Be nice.”
“I’m always nice to you.”
She managed a tired snort. “Always nice? You spanked me in the carriage on the way home from the ball for, what was it? My trumped-up offense?”
“Being too beautiful before the other men of the ton?” He countered her sleepy outrage with a stern frown. “It was not trumped up. You are excessively beautiful. How dare you?”
She dissolved into laughter. He loved that she still blushed, despite the daily perversities he subjected her to.
“And it was not a very hard spanking,” he added. “That was nice of me.”
“I’m not sure that’s the proper definition—”
She resisted his kisses a moment, then gave herself up to them, letting him pillage her sweet mouth before she finally pushed him away, coming up for air.
“While you are being nice,” she said, breathless, “I have something to ask you.”
“Certainly. What is it?”
“May we throw a garden party soon? Your garden in town is a wondrous size, with such lovely flowers. Now that we’re married, we ought to have people to the house.”
She was his own flower, soft petals glowing in the candlelight. “If you wish for a garden party, Lisbet, you shall have one. When?”
“Perhaps the weekend after Felicity and Carlo arrive, to welcome them.”
She studied him with a glimmer of anxiety, gauging his reaction to the “F word.” He’d forbidden her to speak of Felicity in the early days of their marriage, but things had progressed quite a bit since then.
“That sounds like a fine idea,” he said, putting her at ease. “We can invite all the families, as well as our neighbors and friends.”
“Yes, and have tents and tables full of refreshments. I hope Felicity and her husband agree to attend as our guests of honor.”
“I’m sure they will.”
Was this a gesture of truce, this garden party? A way for Elizabeth to prove she was done worrying about his past infatuation with Felicity?
“The servants will help with anything you need to plan it. I’ll help, too.” He stroked her hair, kissed her again. “The weather is perfect this time of year for garden parties. The children will be thrilled to roam about outdoors. We used to love these sorts of parties growing up.”
“I remember. Now our friends have their own children. Perhaps we will too, soon.” She laughed softly. “After our close and constant efforts.”
“Do I badger you too much?” He could not stop embracing her. “You must tell me if I ask too much.”
“You ask the perfect amount.” She snuggled closer beside him, letting out a contented sound that resonated in his cock and balls. No. Not again, not tonight.
“I think you’re tired, dearest. You should sleep.”
He had made her tired, subjecting her to his unending hungers. He spanked her for any and all reasons, which, at least, seemed to titillate her as much as him. He teased her, manhandled her, fucked her relentlessly, and she liked that too. The more she gave him, the more he wanted. He wondered where it would end. In autumn, perhaps. She’d be with his child by then, a little boy to be the next Lord Augustine, or a little girl to grow into a faerie like her mother.
But he must not call Elizabeth that. He might think of her as a magical creature—and fear her powers at times—but he knew she didn’t like to be considered strange or different. At the ball, she’d been approached by some former contemporaries of the Lady Caroline Lamb. In her day, Lady Caroline had held wild salons and supposedly communed with spirits, egged on by her lover Lord Byron. If her adherents wished a new “medium” to follow, it would not be his wife.