Chapter Six

      ‘What have you done to your hand, Marcus?’

      Exactly what Christian had asked him when the two men met at Jackson’s Boxing Salon yesterday afternoon, when Marcus had also refused any suggestion that the bandage upon his hand prevented him from participating in the sport. Indeed, his turmoil of emotions had still been such that he had felt no pain at all from his bruised hand as he’d bested Christian over the agreed three rounds.

      Marcus had removed the bandage earlier for his morning meeting with Julianna, but there was still a certain amount of obvious bruising to his knuckles from his dispute yesterday with the Japanese screen. ‘I assure you, my opponent looks much worse than I do,’ he dismissed unconcernedly, the broken screen having been removed from his study and replaced by a rich, red velvet chaise, which Marcus had yesterday instructed servants to bring in here from his own private parlour.

      ‘I dined with my brother yesterday evening,’ Julianna came back accusingly. ‘By which time his bruised eye had gone several shades of purple!’

      ‘Oh?’ Christian had not reacted yesterday to Marcus’s discreet questioning in regard to Julianna’s marriage, but could that only have been for Marcus’s benefit? Had Christian saved his own questions for his sister for later that evening?

      ‘We always dine together on Tuesday evenings,’ Julianna immediately answered the unspoken question dismissively as she moved farther into his study. Her gown was emerald green today, and perfectly complimented her ivory skin and red-gold curls.

      ‘Did you do as I instructed and leave off your drawers?’ he asked harshly.

      The aching hardness of his arousal, which seemed to have been with Marcus constantly for these past two days and nights, and which now surged up thick and heavy beneath his pantaloons without the benefit of his own restricting drawers, gave an increasingly familiar throb of appreciation for even the idea of Julianna being almost naked beneath her gown.

      ‘I did. And you?’

      ‘Yes.’

      Julianna felt that now-familiar heat course through her body just thinking of what lay beneath the fine material of his pantaloons. Marcus’s gaze was just as intent upon her, as if he might see through her gown to her nakedness beneath.

      A nakedness Julianna had been completely aware of since dressing earlier, her lack of drawers resulting in a sensitivity between her thighs, and a total awareness of the silky abrasion of her chemise against that bared flesh.

      A sensitivity that had deepened the moment she’d entered the study and looked at Marcus, and seen that today he had dispensed with his waistcoat as well as his jacket and cravat, enabling her to fully appreciate the muscled width of his shoulders in the loosely flowing white shirt. The fastening at his throat was once again laid bare, revealing even more of his olive-skinned chest than it had yesterday.

      Would he dispense with the shirt, too, by tomorrow, the day they were to explore taste and sound together? For surely they would not be able to do so if they both remained fully dressed.

      But she was moving ahead of herself again, had yet to get through the ordeal of today’s lesson. For an ordeal it must surely be, if Marcus intended to go through with his instruction of having her touch herself. As she had touched herself yesterday evening after bathing.

      Julianna had gazed at herself often in a mirror before her marriage to John Armitage, youthfully pleased with the image reflected back at her, and hoping that her husband would be pleased, too, once she was married. The years of being John’s wife, of his complete indifference to her body or physical pleasure, had resulted in Julianna slowly but surely avoiding looking at her nakedness in a mirror again.

      Until yesterday evening.

      Marcus’s arousal that morning had shown an appreciation for her body as well as her looks, and had caused Julianna to feel curious enough to see for herself what it was he had found to appreciate.

      The reflection in the mirror had shown she was far more slender than she had been at eighteen, but that slenderness only served to emphasize the fullness of sloping breasts tipped with rosy nipples, her waist dipping inwards, with red-gold curls nestled between curvaceous thighs.

      Julianna had skimmed her hands along those red-gold curls and up the slenderness of her waist before cupping beneath the fullness of her sensitive breasts. Her eyes had widened at the sensitivity of the rosy nipples at their tips, her knees almost buckling beneath her when she touched them out of curiosity and felt the pleasure of that caress course through the whole of her body before it settled intensely between her thighs. A pleasure Julianna had then touched wonderingly with her fingertips, trembling as she briefly felt the sensitive folds beneath and breathed in her own musky perfume.

      Just the thought of having to do that again today, in front of Marcus this time, was enough to weaken her knees all over again.

      ‘Shall we begin?’ she prompted. ‘I have an appointment with the dressmaker later this morning, the last fitting for the new gowns necessary for my return into society next month following my year of mourning.’

      Marcus scowled at thoughts of the man she had supposedly been in mourning for, and at the idea of other gentlemen very soon being able to fully appreciate Julianna’s alluring beauty in a no-doubt delicious array of coloured gowns. Men, he knew, would be intent upon winning Julianna for their own.

      He stood up abruptly. ‘Take down your hair and then we shall sit on the chaise together.’

      Julianna turned in surprise to look at the red velvet chaise in the window. ‘Was there not a beautiful Japanese screen here yesterday?’ she asked uncertainly as she removed the pins from her hair and allowed it to fall silkily about her shoulders.

      ‘It was damaged,’ Marcus dismissed.

      ‘That is a pity.’

      ‘Yes,’ he acknowledged as he took her hand in his uninjured one to accompany her over to the chaise, waiting until she was primly seated upon its edge, her back defensively straight, before lowering his long length to sit beside her, their thighs almost touching.

      Almost.

      Because, much as it physically pained him to be in this continuous state of arousal,