Chapter 1
No. 25 Upper Brook Street, London, October 1817
Grenville Foxman Talbot, Marquess of Fenris and eldest, and only son of the duke of Camber, always slept the sleep of the innocent.
As a child, he’d never had nightmares because even then he’d possessed the power to stop any terrifying developments that appeared in his dreams. He slew dragons about to roast him in flames. He vanquished monsters, sprouted wings and flew away from danger, or conjured a sword or other weapon when he had none. He transformed enemies into slugs or simply stopped an unpleasant dream entirely.
He was dreaming now and it was one of those dreams in which he was both participant and observer. As was so often the nature of dreams, the subject was both fantastical and sexual. He was naked and in front of him, her back to him, was Robert Bryant’s widow. The part of him that was observing his depravity commented that this was absurd. Eugenia Hampton Bryant would never consent to be alone with him. In his private quarters. This observation was followed by the suggestion that it would be a thunderingly good thing to discover where this dream would take him.
On no account would he wake up until he knew. He fell into his dream in a way that he had not before. Not in any dream. He was immersed. Submerged. Colors were more intense, his senses exquisitely acute. In the context of a dream that involved his most frequent sexual fantasies, this was an excellent development.
She wore blue and grey silk, sumptuous and cut like something from the previous century. The gown or robe or whatever it might be called was open at the back, all the way to the top of her derriere, and sliding off her shoulders. Because she wore no undergarments, not at all ludicrous to him, he feasted on the sight of her bare skin, the curve of her shoulders, back and hips. Her hair was unpinned but swept over her right shoulder. Her head was turned to the left, as if she were about to look at him.
He walked to her, stopped behind her and trailed a finger along the top of her shoulder and then the length of her spine. A sigh escaped from her lips. He slid his palm to her low back, then underneath her gown and over the swell of her bottom. In his other hand, he gathered a handful of her bodice and watched while he pulled the fabric down to expose her breasts.
Beautiful. Luscious. Delectable. His body, already tense with desire, went taut. He released her gown so that it fell, with a rustle of lace and silk, to the floor. She leaned back, and he cupped one of her breasts in his hand. She sighed again and whispered something too low for him to hear.
What did it matter whose name she whispered so long as she was soft and willing in his arms? But it did matter. He wanted Eugenia to moan his name when he slid into her. He needed her to long for him, to cry out his name when he brought her to her crisis, which his irritating, observing self pointed out, she never would except in this dream.
With her back pressed against his front, he caressed her, drew a fingertip along her hip to her rib cage, along the top of her shoulder, down her upper arm, and then slowly from the top of her thigh across her stomach. Such smooth, soft skin. He kissed the side of her throat, and she melted against him.
In his dream, she did not hate him.
“So beautiful,” he whispered. “My beautiful Ginny.”
She turned in his arms and clasped her hands behind his neck. Her eyes caressed him, and when he cupped her bottom and drew her closer, she let out a trembling sigh pure desire.
He carried her to his bed, pushing aside the heavy red curtains around it and placed her on the mattress. Eugenia wore nothing but a gold medallion on a blue ribbon the same azure as her eyes. He joined her on the bed, touching, his fingers gliding over her, his mouth and lips tasting. Beneath his hands and fingers, her skin was soft, so soft. She lifted one knee, and his pelvis settled between her legs. He took her nipple in his mouth, swept his tongue over the peak and she arched toward him on the end of a soft moan. He did the same to her other breast with a similar, satisfying result.
By the time he pulled himself over her, he was halfway to climax. She parted her thighs, and he slid inside her. Her body accepted him, soft and slick around him. Ready for him. Eager for him as she would never be in reality.
She wore a wedding band but it was one he’d put on her finger himself. They were married, he realized. She was his wife now. Not Robert’s.
Eugenia, God, so willing and passionate, put her arms around his shoulders, holding him close, moving with him. Her breath came in short bursts, and he was both masterfully making love to her and aroused almost beyond his endurance.
“I love you.” She gazed into his face, besotted, trusting, while he thrust into her. Her fingertips slid over his skin. “Fox. Oh, Fox, I love you more than life.”
“I love you, too,” he said, and his heart dissolved into her. “Forever.”
His observing self remarked, “You are deluding yourself.” To which his dreaming self replied, “Sod off.”
Eugenia wrapped her legs around him, and his body wound up tighter than ever. His climax shattered him to pieces.
She was asleep beside him when he realized Robert was standing at the foot of the bed. His best friend stood unevenly, as he always did, one hand on one of the posts so he would not lose his balance. His hair was shorn close to his head. He’d never been a handsome man, but no one who met him cared. Intellect, that beady-eyed genius, burned in him fever bright.
“Robert?” He wanted to apologize, to confess what a damned fool he’d been to allow their friendship to founder, but the words jammed up in his throat, and any way, Robert lifted a hand to stop him from saying something else he could never take back. Eugenia’s medallion, or one very much like it, dangled from his fingers.
“You’re to take care of her, Fox.”
He sat up, naked, one arm wrapped around his upraised knee. “You know I will.”
Robert leaned forward with that crooked grin of his. “I miss you, you old fool.”
“I, too.”
“There’s nothing you could have said that would have stopped me from marrying her. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
From the moment Eugenia met Robert, she’d not cared about anyone else. Robert, whom Fox had always assumed would never marry, had fallen just as fast and just as hard. It had all happened so quickly, and there hadn’t been anything he could do.
“Good.” The medallion slowly turned in Robert’s upraised hand.
“That’s no excuse for the things I said to you.”
Robert glanced at Eugenia. “She is the love of my life, Fox.”
“I know.”
“Keep her safe.” Robert let go of the bed post and took an uneven step back. The shape of his body wavered. “Make her happy. If it takes your last breath, see that she’s safe and happy. Swear it.”
He swallowed hard before he could manage words. “I swear it, Robert.”
Robert’s body wavered, thinned and then&hellpi;vanished as if he’d never been there. Which, seeing as this was a dream, he had surely never been.
Fox came awake, momentarily unsure of where he was. A chill permeated the air. A damn arctic wind.
He was at home. Not at Bouverie, but his private residence. The one his father had never been in. He pulled the linens and covers over his chest. London in October could be bitterly cold. His bedroom was silent, but his heart raced, and Robert’s voice echoed in his head as if he’d really been here, speaking to him.
Make her happy.
He’d made Robert a promise.
Oddly enough, even though he had sworn to do so in a dream, he intended to keep that promise.