Pleasure For Pleasure Read Free Page B

gowned in cloth of gold; the groom committed the forgivable solecism of taking her hands during the ceremony, and smiling down at her in such a way that tears came to the eyes of many an unhappilymarried soul. And even some of the happily married ones.
    Garret Langham, the Earl of Mayne, watched his closest friend, Raphael Jourdain, Duke of Holbrook, stand at the altar with a sense of deep satisfaction. The day was when he might have scoffed at a man with Rafe’s look of abject adoration. Rafe resembled nothing so much as a lovesick cow, or rather bull. Which was just fine, because Mayne felt the same way. Before long, it would be he standing before the bishop, swearing to love and to cherish, as Rafe was doing.
    His heart quickened at the thought, and he could almost feel his own features taking on a look of imbecilic adoration. After all, Sylvie was his . He’d never understood that before; never guessed how powerful it was to know that the woman you most love in the world has agreed to be yours.
    He glanced at his left. She was standing beside him. Sylvie de la Broderie. Even her name sent a shiver of delight up his spine. She was dressed, as always, with exquisite correctness. Her gown was a rosy pale pink that somehow didn’t swear with her pale red-gold hair. He could just glimpse her elegant retroussé nose. Little curls fell down her neck from under her jaunty, unmistakably French bonnet, adorned with a flutter of tiny ribbons. Like her bonnet, Sylvie was unmistakably French.
    Mayne’s mother was French, and he loved nothing more than speaking the language. It all felt right: he had finally, at long last, found a woman whom he adored, and she was French.
    â€œIt’s providence,” Rafe had said lazily the night before. They were toasting his wedding with water, since Rafe didn’t drink.
    â€œAnd my sister adores her,” Mayne had said, unable to stop categorizing Sylvie’s perfections.
    â€œGood old Grissie. You must find your sister a husband now that you’re contemplating domestic bliss. You’re so unnaturally cheerful that I can hardly stand your presence.”
    â€œWell, you won’t have to bear me for long,” Mayne had retorted. “Wedding trip, eh? There’s a newfangled notion.”
    â€œAre you saying that you won’t wish to take your Sylvie to a remote location, preferably on the slowest boat available?”
    An image flashed into Mayne’s mind, of himself peeling back Sylvie’s long gloves, revealing a sweet delicate wrist and…
    Rafe had laughed at his silence.
    Mayne knew that he was dangerously smitten. All he had to do was glance down at his fiancée’s gloved fingers to feel a stirring in his groin. The very thought of peeling off those gloves made him more fraught with passion than he’d been in years. Likely, he thought with a flash of amused contempt for himself, since bedding his fifth or sixth matron.
    Yet Sylvie was different from all those women he had bedded, from the first to the thirtieth. She was even different from the only other woman he’d truly loved, the one matron who had not given in to his skilled seductions, Helene, the Countess Godwin. The countess was seated a few rows behind him. They rarely spoke to each other, and her happiness with her husband shone from her eyes. Mayne’s bitter disappointment (though he was ashamed to admit it) had hampered him from the kind of cheerful relationship he enjoyed with most of the society ladies whom he’d bedded.
    Of course, that life was over. Sylvie was a virgin, innocent in the ways of the body, even if she had a practical French approach to the bedroom. In fact, she’d told him in her enchanting French accent that she doubted she would make him happy in the bedroom. A little smile curled Mayne’s mouth. Those were naive words, though one would never think to use that term of his sophisticated, sleek fiancée.
    Now he glanced