Chapter Twenty-Three

There was a clatter that echoed off the slanted glass roof above the courtyard, drifting in through the open doors of Nate's chambers, followed by the sound of heavy booted footsteps.

Blanche gasped, twisting suddenly- "Nate!" she rasped, but a large hand spanned wide on her pelvis and pinned her firmly back down into the mattress.

"Ignore it," Nate growled, his voice muffled from where he was lavishly bestowing his attentions between her thighs. She moaned uncontrollably when his tongue danced intimately between her folds, parting her thighs wider where they sat over his broad shoulders. Her fingers twisted in the linen the bed.

"Southill!" Jason's voice shouted from below. "Are you about?"

Nate lifted his head an inch, an irate look on his heated face at the disruption. "I'm busy," he snapped loudly, dipping his mouth again, skewering her with a look of such molten gold it almost burst her into flame, especially when his tongue plunged deeply within the entrance of her throbbing body.

Over and over.

"Be that as it may," Jason drawled indolently, more footsteps echoing over the stones below, "Blanche has to ready for the dinner at our London residence with the family. As do you."

"Where is Blanche?" Nicola's voice now joined Jason's.

Blanche wanted to die, of pleasure or embarrassment- she wasn't sure. A decidedly wicked laugh came from the man between her thighs, making her realise that he held no intention stopping his sinful administrations, not in the slightest. "Nate," Blanche whimpered, her hips bucking against his tongue when his lips closed over her. The feel of his coarse beard against her highly sensitive, inflamed flesh made her groan again, a mutedly tortured sound.

"I have a fresh gown," Nicola called out. "We should really prepare to see the family. Jason implied that you may need something decent to wear." The last held an insinuation of slyness and seemed to throw the last bit of sense left inside Blanche to the forefront of her reeling mind.

With a trembling hand, she entwined her fingers in Nate's long hair, almost yanking him away from her. She stared at him sternly, a fair warning that they needed to behave and act with at least some modicum of propriety, though she feared that had largely been abandoned the moment she had stepped foot inside The Den. "I'm coming!" she hollered down to Nicola, noting that her voice held firm and not so much of the tremor that was currently wracking her body.

Nate glanced down between her legs, his lips curled up in a savage smile, before his eyes strayed up her body with leisurely possessiveness, pinning her with a look that was devastating once more to her wellbeing. "Well, you could be," he grumbled, nibbling her thigh, and then extracting himself from her limbs entirely.

Nathaniel Southill was the devil.

A breath she didn't know she had been holding whooshed from her shaking body explosively and then she shifted upright, propping herself into a cross-legged position in the middle of his bed while she tried to regain her balance. It was remarkably enviable how easily Nate could compose himself with little effort and Blanche watched him a bit dazedly as he shucked into a pair of trousers.

As he struggled with his prominently large arousal, she re-evaluated her previous assessment.

"As much as I enjoy the sight of you so beautifully naked in my bed," Nate mumbled as he bent over to collect another item of clothing, "do you intend to make yourself at least semi-presentable for our unwelcome guests?"

She blinked, realising she had been admiring the ridges of muscles on his back and the firmness of his backside. "Do I have a choice?"

"Unbeknownst to the two of you," Nicola called up, her voice laced with hard-pressed amusement, "sound does carry down here with remarkable clarity."

"Much to your brother's disgust," Jason added reproachfully.

Blanche pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle the laugh that flared up with her embarrassment. Nate's grin was roguish as he tossed her crumpled grown at her face, which she caught instinctively. After shrugging into a clean linen shirt, he padded over to the bed and practically yanked her from it. "I will have a bath prepared for you," he told her quietly, "so you can ready yourself."

"Do... do you have staff?" she asked curiously, wondering why it hadn't occurred to her before. There must be since he had not been in residence for some time while he stayed in Northwick. Surely there was a tier of management in place at his club that ensured things ran smoothly, and that would include a team of servants and staff to tend to matters.

"Of course," Nate said, chuckling. "Hours run a bit differently, you will find. Clientele only frequent us in the late hours of the evening, therefore our staff needn't tend to their duties until much later. And I do not have much of a need for them, but should you require anything it can be arranged with little to no effort."

"Oh." She blushed suddenly, wondering if anyone had encountered them in various stages of undress or embrace. "I had thought we were alone."

"We are," Nate explained. "We were. There are rooms semi-attached to the main building of the club where the staff quarters are. Should you need anything, you could summon someone by using the bell-pull." He gestured to the device near to the door of his chambers, which he tugged for emphasis right then. "I am not wholly uncivilised," he teased.

"I rather liked it if we were," Blanche mumbled testily, mostly in the realisation that the afternoon she had spent blissfully alone with him in his arms had now suddenly come to an end. The reality of their situation became stark against the backdrop of their poignant engagement. What would transpire over the next week would no doubt be one of the busiest times of Blanche's frequents in London, beginning with the family dinner this evening where they would no doubt have to announce their engagement. On top of that, the niggling worry of exiting and entering Rothford House every evening unnoticed still had to be addressed and figured out, and the ever-lingering possibility of happening upon Edwin Rawdon... how he would take the news of Blanche's engagement to Nathaniel Southill made her uneasy.

Sensing her tension, he drew her in for a brief embrace. "We will be uncivilised as you like soon enough," Nate told her, then coaxed her to slip her gown over her shoulders. He turned her in his arms, assisting her with the buttons that ran down the back. "For now, however, we need to play nice with our best friends."

"If we must," she grouched and he led her from the chamber by the hand. Barefoot, dishevelled beyond repair, they joined Jason and Nicola in the courtyard downstairs, three flights of stairs down.

"Is this how you are receiving guests at the club now, Southill?" Jason intoned caustically, eyeing their state of dishabille with a haughtily raised brow as Nate and Blanche ambled towards them. Pale light from the slanted glass of the ceiling filtered through above them. "If I had known, I wouldn't have rushed my wife to conform to such appropriate attire."

Nicola blushed furiously at that. "You needn't be so crass, Jason."

"Me?" he sputtered, gesturing to his best friend and sister. "It is blatantly obvious what we have interrupted. They couldn't even be arsed to put on their shoes."

"If you prefer," Nate told him with deceptive sweetness as he snaked an arm around Blanche's waist and pulled her into his body, "you could always return in, say, an hour and we could arrange to have better coordinated our wardrobe."

It was Blanche's turn to blush now.

"Oh, gross. That is my sister, Southill."

"And that is my best friend, Jason," Blanche retorted, gesturing to a bright red Nicola.

"And that is mine," Jason returned, pointing at Nate.

"Enough," Nicola said, her voice trembling with laughter. "We are behaving like recalcitrant children."

"Believe me," Jason muttered, tugging his wife protectively close to his body, "the last thing we all have been doing this afternoon is behaving like children."

Nicola rolled her eyes at that before pinning a smile on her face and looking at Blanche with a degree of affection only best friends could truly portray. "I believe congratulations are in order," she said warmly. "Jason told me that Mr Southill intended to offer for your hand today."

"If we are to be part of the same family, Lady Blackwood, then perhaps it is only expected that you address me less formally," Nate said, then directed their attention to the state of Blanche and his attire once more, "besides, we are hardly following the protocols of decorum at present."

"Your club has always been a place of liberties, Southill," Jason said drolly.

"Perhaps then it should stay that way, Blackwood," Nate returned coolly.

"We shall leave you two to throw your weight around," Nicola said pointedly as she extracted herself from her husband's side and came over to Blanche's. "I trust Blanche has been given a sufficient enough tour of the place to allow me to assist her in her attire."

Nate gave them both a leer. "She saw enough to know where the important places are," he insinuated. "Then we became rather preoccupied."

"You are both as bad as each other," Nicola told them and linked her arm through Blanche's, beginning to drag her away from the two men. "Jason, I trust you will send Beth up with the valise I brought for Bee. Come, Blanche. We have much to discuss."

Jason shoved his hands deep into his pockets, suddenly looking very uncomfortable. "What? What could you possibly have to discuss?" he demanded. "All you two ever do is talk."

Nicola gave them a sly look over her shoulder. "Don't you worry."

"Wife, I am beleaguered beyond your knowledge. I demand it."

She waved her hand flippantly as they disappeared into the shadows of the staircase. "You know, dear," she called back. "Technique. Size. That sort of stuff."

"What?"

Nate's dark rumble of laughter drifted up towards the ceiling.

"You are terrible sometimes when you want to be," Blanche murmured, holding back her own humour at the situation and her brother's evident discomfort.

"Oh, rubbish. It's good to keep them on their toes from time to time."

***

Dinner at the Blackwood residence in Mayfair was an intimate family affair in the lavishly designed dining room. It was an extensive chamber, more opulently embellished with grandeur than their country seat of Northwick in order to impress guests and visitors of the London ton. The vast chamber was highlighted in tones of royal blue and gilded with gold, crystal chandeliers lit with a plethora of candles hung from the ceiling and cast the room in lambent hues that caught and glinted off the gilded frames of the windows and the wooden panelling of the walls.

Having been divested of Blanche's engagement to Nathaniel Southill earlier that afternoon, courtesy of the Marquis of Northwick himself, Kathleen Blackwood had been more welcoming of the news rather than surprised. Jason had deemed it best that at least their austere mother had been made privy to the news prior rather than shock her system entirely in front of the whole family.

The only Blackwood who was not present was Wilhelmina, who held little fondness of the city in general and had completed her weekly stipend out of each month to reside with the Blackwood's- an agreement Nicola had concocted in order to allow the haughty old baggage to condone her and Jason's nuptials.

The news of Blanche's engagement had been received with a level of shock from both Diana and Grace, but once the news had settled, excitement at the prospect of another (and final) Blackwood wedding ebbed over the table.

"The Northwick parish should announce the reading of the banns at the next service, I imagine," Kathleen was saying to Blanche and her son, "in which case we can arrange for the wedding to occur within the next month. Two Blackwood weddings in one London season, although yours will effectively close this year's, Blanche. The society papers will be rife with the gossip over it."

"I believe we shouldn't like a very big ordeal, mother," Blanche told her, noting how utterly uncomfortable Nate was beside her. Oh, he was portraying himself the utter gentleman in his black evening attire refinery, his profile the embodiment of polite courtesy, but she could sense how ill at ease he was at the prospect of coming under the watchful eye of London's ton. Perhaps she had simply become so in tune with his needs she could merely sense the shift in him even if it wasn't entirely evident in his outward portrayals. "A small gathering, as Nicola and Jason had, would be acceptable."

Kathleen sighed softly at that, but smiled fondly at her youngest daughter. "Of course, dear. As long as you are happy, then that is all that matters. Besides, Grace and Diana bestowed their poor mother with the fan fair of a large wedding."

"I am very happy," Blanche murmured, reaching under the table beside her to take her betrothed's hand in her own. Nate turned to bestow on her a warm, intimate smile. She loved that look. She loved that his beard was slightly unkempt whereas the other gentlemen present had all neatly shaven for the dinner tonight. She loved that his hair was long and thick and entirely unfashionable. His eyes darkened imperceptibly as if sensing the improperness of her musings and his fingers squeezed around hers.

"As am I," he said, mostly to her but the table were privy to that sweetly ardent declaration.

"Will any of your family be in attendance, Mr Southill?" Kathleen asked with innocent curiosity.

Nate stiffened slightly but pinned a bland, polite smile to his face as he regarded his future mother-in-law. "Unfortunately, Lady Blackwood, I do not have any family that reside in England, and I am afraid I have lost contact with any other members residing in America."

"You're a yank?" Rawdon asked from the other end of the table with some degree of distaste.

"My mother was, yes," Nate informed him coolly.

If Rawdon wanted to comment further on what he considered to be the irreputable nature of Nate's lineage, he wisely held his tongue at the family's dinner table. It was common knowledge that the Blackwood family tolerated and garnered friendships and marriages that may seem commonly inappropriate but as long as the recipients were happy, they managed well enough. Nicola Eversley marrying Jason Blackwood after harbouring a lifelong crush on the man was testament to just that, despite initial protestations from Wilhelmina in the beginning.

"Never mind that," Kathleen said, her entire motherly gaze now rapt on her newest son-in-law who more closely resembled a hulking Viking from long ago and should be wrapped in furs and leathers rather than the finery of a London gentleman's evening attire. "Your family is right here in this room."

Blanche could have launched across the table and hugged her mother right then.

"I suppose," Jason drawled from the head of the table, raising his wine glass in a small toast to Nate, "it makes it harder to call out my brother now, rather than simply my best friend."

"The only reason why I would be worried if you were to call me out, Blackwood," Nate told him with a level of drollness only a gentleman could inflect into his voice, "was if my fiancée was your second."

It was the best compliment he could have indirectly bestowed her and Blanche found herself beaming up at him.

"We really do need to work on your aim, dear," Nicola was telling her husband gently.

Jason only laughed. "I am quite content not being able to adequately shoot a pistol," he said. "Better that I simply never have a need to use them than inadvertently harm another. Intentionally or not."

"Though I am not sure I am pleased that my youngest daughter has been using pistols," Kathleen muttered with a sigh, "am I to assume that she is rather good at it?"

"A natural," Nate affirmed, smiling down at her with pride.

Oh, she thought, there were a few very wicked things she would do to him later just for how lovely he was being this evening.

"I should be surprised," Kathleen said reflectively, "but I am not. Thomas used to be an amazing shot. It is only natural that Blanche has followed so astutely in his footsteps."

"Truly, mother? I had no idea," Blanche said.

"I think if he had lived longer he may have very well enjoyed watching you develop the same interests as him, dear." She smiled sadly at that before ducking her head to consider the plate of food in front of her. "Enough of that, let us consider the wedding further. Perhaps you should like theme for the luncheon, Blanche."