His lips left her mouth and caressed her cheek before skimming over her jaw. When they found the sensitive skin of her throat, she pressed her back more fully against the wall, willingly offering him her body.

He tugged at the neckline of her dress, and her breasts sprang free. Every nerve in her body cried for more when his fingers stroked a hard nipple and then tested the heavy fullness of her breast in his hand.

The pressure in her belly continued to build. She couldn’t think or focus. She was robbed of breath, but still she wanted more.

Bringing his mouth back to her lips, he whispered, “To hold us over, until the wedding night.”

His voice was ragged, his breath as short as hers. She didn’t know what he meant, and then he lifted the front of her skirts and pressed his leg against her. Taylor’s thighs clenched around his muscles, and she felt wet. Giving in to some primal instinct, she began to rock against him as his mouth closed around a nipple.

Bamberg’s hand found its way through her skirts until he reached the folds of her sex. His palm pressed on her mound, his fingers retreating and entering again and again. Her body arched against him, one knee rising against his side as he steadily stoked the fires raging within her.

She cried out softly. Her fingers delved into his hair and caressed his cheek. She wanted him never to stop. Stormy pressures were building within her. Seeing the dark planes of his face against her pale skin was intensely erotic.

She was barely aware that she was standing at the moment when her world shifted. Wrapped around him, she came apart, burying her cries of release against his chest.

MILLIE CONTINUED to refuse the midwife’s suggestion of lying in the bed.

Too many people were coming and going. Apparently, childbirth allowed for no privacy whatsoever. Her sister Jo wouldn’t take no for an answer and settled in as a permanent fixture beside Dermot. Her parents had arrived at the Abbey just in time, and Millie was happy they were safely here. But her mother’s tears were no help to her, and Lady Millicent was banished from the room until her grandchild was born.

Sometime in the midst of it all, Millie thought of Taylor and the duke and wondered if anyone had gone after them. Before she could say a word to Dermot, however, another fierce contraction gripped her, and the thought fled into the oblivion of pain.

HAPPILY, no one had come after them. During the night, the rain and the wind stopped, and the sound of thunder faded off to the east. Inside the cottage, the fire’s embers only flickered, and the air had grown cool.

The single blanket was not nearly long enough to cover Bamberg, and his feet extended a good few inches beyond the bottom. The two of them were squeezed into a narrow bed not even wide enough to support the width of his shoulders. Her elbow poked into his side, and her naked back was pressed against his bare chest. She was deliciously warm in his arms. He’d spent the night in his breeches, his good intentions intact.

Last night had been a first for her…and a first for him.

For her, it had offered the first experience of her birthright as a woman. For him, it was the wonderful realization that the angelic woman lying in his arms was going to be his partner in life, forever.

Bamberg knew when she awoke by the change in her soft breathing. He smiled and ran his fingers through the silky golden tresses draped over his arm.

It was nearly dawn. Grey light filtered in from around the door and the shuttered windows. He knew they should be up and dressed, for Dermot and Millie would certainly send a boat after them now that the storm had passed. He owed so much to his friends. He’d expected a few hours. They’d given him the chance for a lifetime of happiness.

Taylor placed a kiss on the arm she’d been using as a pillow before turning in the small space and facing him. “When are we to wed?”

He ran his thumb over her swollen lips and kissed her forehead. “We’re in Scotland, so today, if that suits you. Unless you’d like to have your family present.”

“I don’t.” Her answer was quick and definite. “You’re my only family from now on. You are my today, my tomorrow, and my future. You’re the only one I need.”

Bamberg pulled her tightly against him. Her words warmed his heart. He thought of their future and all the years they would have together, enjoying each other and all the places they’d go.

“And wherever you wish to go, I want to be there with you.”

She’d read his mind. “Someday soon, whether or not we are blessed with a child, I’d like us to live in Bavaria, if that is acceptable to you.”

“I’d like that,” she whispered. “But right now, I don’t think your mind is on travel or your estates in Bavaria.”

Some things could not be hidden when two bodies lay pressed together in a narrow bed.

Her fingers trailed downward over the hard muscles of his stomach until she reached the front of his breeches. The hardness and size of him must have startled her, for she immediately withdrew her hand. But an instant later, she sought him out again—timidly, slowly, feeling him, exploring him. A low groan of pleasure emitted from deep within him, and this appeared to give her the courage that she needed.

“I haven’t forgotten all the times you said last night that we have to wait to make love until we’re married.” She rolled him back and climbed on top of him.

“Then what is it you have in mind right now?”

“Doing to you a little of what you’ve been doing to me.”

Bamberg pushed the blanket off her shoulder and lifted his head to her breasts, taking her sweet flesh into his mouth. But she was clearly determined not to allow him to lift her alone into a state of bliss. Not this time. Coaxing him back to her lips, she seduced his mouth with her lips and tongue and with soft murmured cries in her throat. Before he could recover from that, she was undoing the buttons of his breeches.

Bamberg was lost the moment she reached inside and wrapped her fingers around him. All the strength and self-control he’d employed last night was gone. He’d never be able to hold back now.

“Hullo?” a voice called from outside the cottage. “Is someone here?”




CHAPTER 6




How to Ditch A Duke

– Step 6 –

Pack for Foreign Climates


OLIVER PENNINGTON MCKENDRY came into the world in the wee hours of the morning with a healthy cry of protest after nearly twenty hours of labor. Immediately following the birth, Dermot and an exhausted Millie took a few moments alone, holding their infant son and admiring the perfection of the wrinkled face and hands and feet.

Soon after, the grandparents were allowed in. And shortly after that, the baby was taken briefly to the Great Hall to meet the other members of the Pennington family who were continuing to arrive. Aunts and uncles and cousins lined up to view the infant.

It was sometime in the middle of the day when Dermot and Millie looked at each other and remembered the friends they’d left out on the small island in the loch.

“After what I’ve done to her,” Millie said unhappily, “Taylor will surely never speak to me again.”

“No doubt,” Dermot agreed dolefully, before adding brightly. “But the silver lining in that cloud is that we’ll be drinking fine Bavarian wines until we’re old and grey. Bamberg will now be certain that I’m his best friend.”

Receiving a slap on the arm, he immediately went down to send a groom off after the duo. But he only got halfway to the stables when he espied his uncle, Blane McKendry. The minister was approaching from the direction of the loch. And he was walking with two people.

Lady Taylor Fleming and Franz Aurech, the Duke of Bamberg.

And they both appeared to be extremely jovial. In fact, Dermot noticed they were holding hands.

“Ah, nephew,” the cleric called out as they approached. “We have cause for celebration.”

“Indeed, we do,” Dermot replied, shading his eyes against the sun and trying to avoid looking at the two island castaways. “And it’s a fine day for a celebration.”

He wondered how his uncle heard about the baby. He hadn’t sent word to the village, but thankfully, someone had done it.

“After the storm last night,” Blane McKendry began, “I knew that old George Hanover, that monster of a pike the Squire and I have been angling for since you were a lad, would surely be rising for a fight. You remember last year the Squire nearly had the blackguard, but the beast tore the rod right out of his—”

“I recall, Uncle. It was an epic battle.” Fishing. Island. It now made sense how these three were together.

“Aye, so this morning I rowed out to the island. Thought the Squire would already be there, but I beat him to it.” The minister smiled with obvious satisfaction. “Then, just as I was going by the cottage, I saw a few wisps of smoke and realized someone was in there. And who should answer my call but these two fine people.”

Dermot hazarded a glance at them. Standing arm in arm, they appeared to be unperturbed by the story. Whatever response Millie feared from her friend, it didn’t show in Taylor’s shining face.

“And once we shook hands all around, what do you think they asked me?”

“For a fish to fry up for breakfast?”

“Nay, lad! A wedding!” The minister beamed at his companions.

“I asked your uncle to marry us today,” Bamberg announced, clapping his friend on the shoulder.

Taylor held onto the duke’s arm and smiled happily at the minister. “Your good uncle here has given up a day of angling in order to officiate at our wedding. And we’re hoping you and Millie will stand up for us as witnesses.”

Bamberg nodded. “We should like to be married at once. Do you mind, McKendry? Do you think Lady Millie would mind?”

Millie would be thrilled. And how appropriate that these two should want to be married now, without Taylor’s horrid father and brother present. Very satisfying, indeed.

“Not at all. I’m certain she’ll be delighted,” he replied. “Come inside. I have some news of my own to convey.”

They’d done it. Millie’s perception of her friend’s true feelings, added to his own cleverness in giving them time alone, had kept a duke from being ditched.