As he came closer, she looked up, and when she saw him, she nearly dropped her garden shears. “Wi-ill!”
He stopped on the path, as surprised as she sounded, for he’d just heard that wobbly little hiccup in her voice, and hope rose within him in a powerful wave. He had a chance. He knew he had a chance.
She didn’t smile at him as he came to stand beside her. When he reached her side, she tugged nervously at the wisp of hair at her neck with one garden-gloved hand and returned her attention to the rosebush.
“So, you’re back,” she said the obvious in an offhand sort of way, as if trying to show him she didn’t care tuppence about the fact, but it was too late. He’d heard that little hiccup in her voice, and she couldn’t take it back. Trix still loved him in spite of everything. He began to laugh. Damned if that wasn’t some kind of miracle.
She looked at him, a puzzled little frown etching between her brows. “Why are you laughing?”
He smiled. “I’m just . . . glad to see you. Aren’t you glad to see me?”
“Of course,” she said primly, snipping roses.
“I missed you.” He leaned closer to her. “I think you missed me, too.”
“If I missed you every time you went away, I’d spend my whole life miserable. I’ve learned my lesson about that.”
He knew he had to tell her of his imminent departure and his intentions before he attempted to put his plans for tonight into action, but as excited as he was to relay the news that was sending him back to Egypt, the words seemed to choke him as he tried to force them out. “I have something to show you,” he said, and pulled the telegram out of his pocket.
She pulled off her garden gloves and set them on the grass with her shears and her basket before she took the sheet of paper from him and unfolded it.
“You found Tut?” she cried excitedly, her gaze scanning the lines of the telegram.
“Possibly. We don’t know yet if it’s Tutankhamen.”
“Still, there’s something there, isn’t there? Something big, something important. Right?” She looked up, and when he nodded, she began to laugh. “Heavens, you were right after all. You were right. This means—” She stopped, suddenly appreciating what it did mean. Lowering her gaze, she read the telegram again, and he watched her face as her excitement for him faded away. She swallowed hard. “You’re leaving, of course,” she said without looking at him.
“Yes, Trix,” he said gently. “Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? So soon?”
He heard her surprise and pain. His hopes rose another notch, even as her pain hurt him, too. “I have to, if I’m to arrive in Thebes by the first of October. My train from Stafford St. Mary departs at noon, and if I don’t make that train, I miss the connecting train from Exeter to Dover. If that happens, I miss the day’s ship to Calais, which delays my arrival in Paris, and I miss the Orient Express to Constantinople—”
“The Orient Express?” she cried, her face twisting at the mention of the train they were supposed to take together for their honeymoon six years ago. “You’re taking the Orient Express?”
“It’s the fastest way to Constantinople.” He paused, leaning closer to her. “Want to come?”
Her face froze. Her pleasure at his triumph was gone, her pain at his impending departure was gone. Her face was a mask. “No,” she answered, and thrust the telegram at him.
He shrugged, pretending a nonchalance he didn’t feel in the least. “It’s just as well. Since we’re not married, it would make quite a scandal if we ran off together. Unless you’ve changed your mind about marrying me?”
“If I did, would you stay?”
He took a deep breath. “No.”
She bent down to pick up her shears. “Then I haven’t changed my mind.” She resumed snipping roses, but it seemed haphazard, with no regard for the quality of the blossoms.
“If you keep that up,” he said, watching her, “that bush will be naked.”
She stopped. “Since you’re leaving tomorrow, I assume you came here to say good-bye?”
“Actually, no. I was hoping to do that later. I came to see if you might be willing to go on one more midnight adventure with me.”
“Indeed?” She didn’t ask what he had in mind. Instead, she knelt on the grass, dropped her shears into her basket, and began gathering the roses she’d cut.
“This adventure is a little bit different from the ones we’ve had in the past,” he explained. “For this one, you have to come to my house.”
“Your house?” She paused and looked up at him. He waited, watching as the implications sank in and a pink flush came into her cheeks. “I see,” she said, and resumed her task. “A repeat of the other night?”
“A bit like that, with one exception.” He knelt on the grass and grasped her hands in his, and when she looked into his face, he said, “This time I want to finish what we started.”
“Do you?” Her voice was cool, but that was a pose. He knew it when her tongue darted out to nervously lick her lips and she turned her face away.
“I think you know what I mean.” He wanted to take her in his arms right here and now, pull her down into the grass with him and persuade her with kisses, but he couldn’t. He darted a look over his shoulder, but he couldn’t tell if Eugenia was still sitting by the window because of the glare off the glass. Still, it didn’t matter whether he could actually see her. He and Trix had years of experience with this sort of thing, and he’d rather developed a sixth sense about it. He could feel Eugenia’s watchful gaze boring into his back even from here.
“Beatrix.” When he said her name, she tried to pull her hands away, but he held them fast, drew a deep breath, and rolled the dice. “I love you. I’ve always loved you, and I think you know that. I want you, and after that night at Angel Cove, I think it’s safe to say you want me just as much.”
She lifted her chin a notch, but she still didn’t quite look at him. “You’re the one who didn’t want it,” she said, a little quiver in her voice. “I practically threw myself at you the other night, and you . . . you stopped.”
“I told you, I was being responsible. But . . .” He paused, trying to find a delicate way to say this. Unfortunately there was none. He leaned closer, keeping his voice low, even though there was no one within earshot. “There are ways to prevent a baby. Ways better than the one I used the other night.”
“Oh.” The blush in her cheeks deepened to a rosy pink, and as she caught her lower lip between her teeth, he knew she was wavering. He waited, but when several moments went by and she didn’t speak, he began to feel hope giving way to desperation. The thought of going to Thebes without her, of the eight lonely months to come, seemed unbearable.
“I’ll be gone a long time,” he said. “And before I go, I want this adventure with you. I’ll be wholly honest here. I intend to ply you with champagne, take shameless advantage of you, and make mad, passionate love to you. I’m hoping to persuade you to marry me and come with me tomorrow.”
“You mean elope?”
“Yes. It’s only fair to tell you that although I applied for a special license while I was in London, we won’t able to pick it up. We have to take the train out of Exeter straight to Dover, which means we’ll either have to marry on the ship across the channel, or wait until we reach Egypt. Either way, it will still make a scandal.”
“And you think I would agree to disgrace my family by eloping with you?”
“I’m hoping you’ll decide it’s worth it.”
She looked at him, but he couldn’t read anything in her dark eyes. “And if I refuse?”
“I’ll come back next year and try again.”
She sniffed, not seeming particularly impressed by that. “If you come back next year.”
“It’s all right if you don’t come tonight,” he went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “Because I am not giving up. Not this time. Say no, and I’ll be right back here on your doorstep come June.” He paused, then added, “But June is an awful
ly long way off, and if you want to come on this adventure with me before I leave, I’ll meet you by the lodge gates at midnight. Will you come?”
She stared down at her lap for what seemed an eternity before she replied. “Yes, Will. I’ll come.”
“You will?”
“Yes.” She pulled her hands from his, picked up her basket of roses, and stood up. “I like champagne.”
Despite her promise to meet him, he wasn’t sure she would, and when he saw her crossing the stretch of lawn that separated the park of Sunderland from that of Danbury, he dared to let his hopes for a future with her rise higher. He straightened away from the gate, and went to meet her.
She was wearing riding boots and those Turkish trousers, along with a dark, hooded cloak, and the hood of the cloak shadowed her face, preventing him from seeing her expression. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked as he halted in front of her and bent down, trying to look her full in the face.
“Yes,” she answered, and pushed back the hood of her cloak. “I’m sure.”
“You don’t want to back out?”
She smiled a little. “Shy at the jump, you mean? Stop at the edge of the cliff?” She shook her head. “No.”
“All right, then. C’mon.” Needing no further persuasion, he grabbed her hand and led her across the park and through the grounds to the house. He’d left the south door unlatched, and he took her in through that entrance, across the south wing, and up to his bedroom. He’d already prepared everything, but after shutting the door behind them, he lowered the flame of the lamp a little bit, shifted the bottle of champagne to another angle in the ice bucket, and pushed the plate of fruit and cheese a bit farther back on his dressing table, feeling strangely nervous. Perhaps because on all their previous adventures, there had been certain rules, and tonight those rules were gone.
He spied the black velvet envelope he’d bought in London. Stupid, he thought, and picked it up. He should have put this by the bed.
“What is that?” she asked as he walked past her, and he stopped. One really didn’t discuss these things with anyone, particularly not women, but she had the right to know. “They are called condoms.” He opened the black velvet packet lined with red silk, and pulled out one of the flattened rubber disks inside. “They . . . ahem . . . prevent a woman from becoming pregnant,” he said. “I bought them in London.”
“Heavens.” She took it out of his hand to examine it more closely, understandably curious. “Where does one find these?”
“Brothels. Prostitutes.” He took it back from her. “Not that I went to a prostitute. I mean, I did, but not for . . . not for that.” He waved the condom. “I went for this. I mean . . . God,” he choked, shoving the condom back into its envelope and tossing the envelope onto the bed. “I feel like I’m seventeen again and I’ve just come home from Eton and made the amazing discovery that you developed breasts while I was away. I can’t seem to say a single intelligent word to you right now.”
That made her laugh, but he did not feel like laughing at all just now. Doubts assailed him. “No going back,” he felt impelled to point out. “Once it’s done, Trix, it can’t be undone.”
“I know.” She began unbuttoning her cloak, still smiling, and her composure made him even more ill at ease. He shifted his weight, suddenly at a loss for what to do next, and he realized he’d never actually seduced Trix before, not like this, not with such blatant, lascivious intent. She’d already refused to marry him, seemed not the least bit inclined to change her mind and elope with him tomorrow. And the stakes were so damned high. Maybe this was a mistake. Taking a woman’s virtue when you weren’t married to her and you were about to leave the country was a mighty irresponsible thing to do.
He closed his eyes for a second, drawing a profound, shaky breath.
“Nervous?”
Her question caused him to open his eyes. “Yes,” he admitted. “You?”
“No.” Her smile widened, and then for no accountable reason, she started to laugh. “I like that you’re nervous.”
“You do?”
“Yes.” She shrugged, letting the cloak fall away from her shoulders as she turned toward him. “Because I’m the one who’s usually in that position on these adventures of ours, and you’re the one who’s all breezy and confident.”
“Yes, well, that’s often just an act.” He raked a hand through his hair as she halted in front of him. “Pure bravado on my part.”
She slid her arms around his neck. “There’s nothing to be nervous about, you know,” she said, stood up on her toes, and kissed him. “I don’t bite.”
He cupped her face, and when his lips parted, hers did, too. He took her mouth in a long, slow kiss, then his hands slid between them. As he unbuttoned her jacket, his knuckles brushed her breasts, and arousal flared instantly, like lighting a match. But he knew he had to keep it in check, for he had a long way to go tonight if he was to win more than her body. Even as he reminded himself of that, he paused to cup her breasts in his hands, and as his palms embraced them, he realized she wasn’t wearing a corset.
He knew what her breasts looked like, for the image of her disrobing in front of him a week earlier was still vivid in his mind, and as he imagined it again, shaping her breasts in his palms, his arousal deepened and spread.
After a moment, he reluctantly slid his hands away from her breasts. He yanked the hem of her shirtwaist out of her Turkish trousers, and he broke their kiss so he could see what he was doing as he began unfastening the buttons down the front of her shirtwaist. It was an agonizingly slow process, for the buttons were tiny, and there were dozens of them. It didn’t help that his hands were shaking as he strove to keep his desire in check.
“Just so you know,” he said, trying to sound terribly man-of-the-world, “next time I tell you I’m going to seduce you, wear something easy to unfasten.”
She sniffed. “Well, next time,” she said, matching his blasé tone, “I might not let you seduce me at all.”
He stopped, chagrined that he already seemed to be taking her for granted again. “No?”
“No. I might seduce you first.”
He laughed at that, and the tension inside him suddenly broke apart. “You just might at that,” he said, desire replacing nervousness as he unfastened the buttons down the front of her shirtwaist. “It won’t take much,” he assured her. “Just smile and say hullo the minute you see me.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all. I’ll be putty in your hands after that. Trust me.”
“Trust you?” She tilted her head, as if considering it. “I’m not sure when you are unbuttoning my shirtwaist, you can be trusted.”
He laughed again, a low, throaty chuckle. “You have a point.” He slid her shirtwaist off her shoulders, and as it joined her jacket on the floor, he caught his breath, for he could see the faint circle of her nipples beneath the thin lawn fabric of her chemise, and his arousal ignited into full-blown lust. He had to see her breasts again. Right now. He couldn’t wait a moment longer.
“Lift your arms,” he ordered, and when she did, he grasped the hem of her chemise and tugged it up over her head, baring her body from the waist up.
His throat went dry at the sight, for she was even lovelier now than the image in his mind from their night at Angel’s Head. He cupped her breasts again, savoring the lush, full shape of them in his palms. He toyed with them, caressing the satiny white skin and velvety pink nipples, until he could hear her breath coming in little catching gasps.
“You love me,” he said, rolling her nipples in his fingers. “You do. Admit it. Say you’ll marry me and come to Egypt with me.”
She shook her head, and he knew she wasn’t ready to concede anything yet. Her hands came up, pushing his aside. For a moment he thought she was pushing him away, but instead, she began to unbutton his shirt, and it was her turn to start issuing orders. “Take it off.”
“I can’t.” He lifted his wrists. “You didn’t
undo my cuffs.”
“Oh.” She laughed and reached for one, fumbling with his silver cuff links, and as she turned to drop them onto his dressing table, he pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it aside.
She turned back around, and when she did, she immediately reached out to touch him. He inhaled sharply, tilting back his head at the feel of her hands on him, wondering how he was going to bear this long enough to get them both undressed.
But he endured it, for it was sweet, unbearably sweet, to feel her palms glide over his skin as she touched his arms, his shoulders, and his chest, but by the time she reached his abdomen, he couldn’t take any more.
Gently but firmly, he took control back from her. “If you keep torturing me this way,” he said, grasping her wrists to pull her hands down, “this is going to be a very short seduction.”
She slanted him a wicked look. “And that would be bad because . . . ?”
“Because you haven’t told me you love me yet.” Before she could reply, he captured her mouth with his, kissing her deep and slow as he unfastened the buttons of her trousers. “I’ve told you that I love you,” he went on as he shoved the trousers down her hips, “and I’m waiting for reciprocity.”
He didn’t get it. She leaned forward to press a kiss to his chest instead, and lifted her hands to the waistband of his trousers as if to unfasten them as he had unfastened hers. But he knew he couldn’t let her. He was rock hard, and if she started touching him there, he’d never be able to hold out long enough to do this properly. They had waited years and years for this, and he had no intention of spoiling their first time by going too fast. Besides, he had another objective in view, one that was just as important to him.
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