“All that eagerness? I wanted…I don’t know…the philharmonic in swelling crescendos, poetry beneath the full moon, something besides him pushing my skirts up to grunt and sneeze over me for a few moments in a haymow.”
Jonathan did not laugh, not at her pique, not at the sneezing. The man Robert was dead—the boy was dead—and even in her innocence, Amy hadn’t been the least bit impressed.
“My wife was not eager to fulfill her marital responsibilities, not at first.” Whatever the moment called for, Jonathan suspected it wasn’t that.
Amy drew back, her expression puzzled. “You loved her. I know you did.”
He gently maneuvered her head back to his shoulder. “I did—very much—but we married for the wrong reasons. Her family needed money, which I had; I wanted respectability for my children, which she could guarantee. A merciful God granted us friendship after a few years, but childbearing was dangerous for her, and her passions were not…they were not of the body.”
Not for his body, in any case. She’d been loving, affectionate, and dutiful, also anxious to have more children, but never eager.
“I’m sorry.”
Two ordinary words, but in them, Jonathan heard an understanding and consolation he’d never sought from another.
“It was difficult, when she died. One feels grief, but also guilt, and that anger you referred to. And then one feels simply sadness.”
Amy said nothing, but she did slip her arms around Jonathan’s waist. They were sitting on a bed by candlelight, and their embrace was no longer simply a matter of him holding her.
For she was holding him, too.
“Amy?”
Her hold on him became a trifle more…fierce. That fierceness told him she did not want to return to her room any more than he wanted her to go. But how, how on earth, did a gentleman make love to a lady?
“I should leave.” Still she did not pull away.
“I want…I want your eagerness. I want to give you my eagerness. I want you to hear poetry by moonlight and the philharmonic right here in this bed. With me. Now.”
Now and forever. He didn’t say that. Let her consider the moment, and as the moment went, so too, the forever could go.
She turned her face to his shoulder, and Jonathan tried not to breathe. His offer was precipitous, headlong even, but he felt compelled to establish his place in her affections, and this interlude under Deene’s roof was an ideal opportunity for advancing his suit.
Probably the only opportunity.
“Yes, Jonathan. Please.” The tremor in her voice mirrored the unsteady beat of his heart. “Yes” alone would have been enough to thrill him, but, “Yes, Jonathan, please…”
He wanted to recall each detail of this night for decades to come, so for a procession of instants, he did nothing but savor the embrace: rain pattering down on gusts and soft billows of summer air, lemon verbena teasing his nose, the perfect satisfaction of Amy in her nightclothes against his body while the candle shadows danced on the breeze.
And eagerness, a lovely passionate eagerness simmering through his veins.
“Jonathan? You’re not changing your mind, are you?”
“Never. I am trying to decide if you’d want the candle to remain lit.”
She lifted her cheek from his shoulder. “I want to see you.” Her smile was the hesitant, beautiful smile of a woman new to expressions of passion. Jonathan rose off the bed, brought the candle to the night table, and began to disrobe.
“See me, you shall.”
Her smile softened, and he had to focus instead on removing his clothing. His hands didn’t shake, exactly, but rather than fumble with his shirt buttons, he pulled the thing over his head and tossed it on a chair. His boots and stockings followed, and then he was down to breeches and underlinen.
Now, he hesitated.
“You are familiar with the evidence of a man’s desire?” Said evidence had been growing since the moment she’d sat on the bed. The etiquette books had provided exactly no guidance regarding how an aroused man dealt with the effects of base urges in the presence of an eager lady.
Amy stroked a hand over his bare belly. “I want to see you.” She slid her hand lower to cup him through his breeches. “Robert was always in a hurry. Always worried somebody would catch us…”
In which case, the sorry pup would have had to marry her and give up his silly notions of the glory of war. “Undo my falls, Amy. Please.” He added that last word because now his hands were unsteady.
Amy’s were not. She dispatched the buttons on his breeches, then sat back. “You’ll have to do the rest.”
“My heartfelt pleasure.” He shoved the rest of his clothing to the floor and stood, hands at his sides. The look on Amy’s face was precious—stern, curious, and not a little nonplussed.
“Robert wasn’t built on quite the same scale you are.”
Which might account in part for the boy’s inability to inspire bodily poetry or soaring music. “Touch me, if it pleases you to do so.”
He could see the longing in her gaze at war with trepidation, so he decided the matter for her by taking her hand and curling her fingers around his shaft.
“You’re warm.”
While her hand was cool, wonderfully cool.
“Robert wanted me to kiss him.” She sounded dubious. “Here.”
“We can save that for another day if you’d rather.” Many other days, days when Jonathan had developed a great deal more restraint than was available to him at that moment. “Amy, I want to see you too.”
She left off fondling him, which was a mercy and a grief, then rose to stand beside the bed. “I’m old, you know.”
“Ancient, I’m sure, and yet I am older than you by several years.” He kept his hands at his sides lest he tear her clothing from her body and reveal her in all her glorious maturity. In his imagination, the sound of ripping fabric was drowning out the violins, and yet, Amy did not hurry.
She held his gaze while she unbuttoned her dressing gown—the thing had fourteen buttons. When he married her, he’d make sure all her nightclothes had only three buttons. Or two.
Or a simple sash around her middle on those few occasions when he permitted her to don a dressing gown.
She passed him the dressing gown, and he brought it to his nose to inhale the flowers-and-lemon aroma of her. “Do you need my assistance with that nightgown, Amy?”
She nodded, which he interpreted as an admission that her courage had deserted her. He took pity on them both and drew the nightgown over her head, his ability to count beyond three in any language having abandoned him.
“I wish you would not stare at me, sir.”
“Jonathan. The bed is behind you. The covers are available to soothe your modesty, but, Amy?” The impulse to lash his arms around her was a palpable, writhing thing.
She stopped peering around the room to cast him a glance.
“My dear, you are gorgeous. You are beautiful, and if you do not get into that bed this instant, I will fall on my knees to worship what I see of you by the light of this candle.”
Not poetry, but it put a hesitant smile back on her face. She scooted under the covers, and he followed her into the bed, crawling across the mattress to poise over her on all fours.
“Dear heart, how eager are you?”
She regarded him earnestly. “Quite.”
“Spread your legs a little.”
She might have recalled a similar importuning from the departed Robert, because she frowned when she complied. “Now what?”
Now nothing came between them but his self-restraint. “You might kiss me.”
By dint of iron self-discipline, he remained crouched above her under the covers, close but not touching, while she considered his suggestion. A gentleman would know flowery speeches and pretty words; Jonathan knew only lust and an abiding regard for his lady.
No—not regard. In those moments while Amy’s gaze traveled from his eyes to his forehead to his lips and
back to his eyes, Jonathan faced a truth: he had loved his wife. He described the feeling to himself as part duty, part deep fondness, part fast friendship.
He loved this woman too, but the mix was different—it included eagerness and panting lust, and while a gentleman wouldn’t likely be pleased to admit it, this was in Jonathan’s estimation an improvement over the marital relationship.
A brush of soft lips obliterated his ability to ruminate. “Do that again, Amy. Please, do that again.”
She smiled this time, smiled right against his mouth. He wanted to growl—would she consider that grunting? Her hand sank into his hair and without thinking, Jonathan allowed his arousal to brush against her sex.
He did growl—and she moaned, and the kiss turned into an oral wrestling match involving their entire bodies—tongues, hands, torsos, legs, and lips. In the melee, he came perilously close to penetration, and they both went still.
“Jonathan, you must…” She swallowed and found his free hand with her own, then laced their fingers. “Please. I can’t bear to wait any longer.”
He’d wanted to make her come at least once before suffering the pleasure of joining their bodies. The plan was selfish, intended to hedge a bet against his flagging self-control and their mutual eagerness. The plan was also insupportable, given the feel of her naked body beneath his and the way she said his name.
“Listen for the violins, my love.” He laid his cheek against hers, and in silence, found the opening to her body. She drew in a quick breath at the first nudge of his cock, so he waited until she’d relaxed again to push against her heat.
From somewhere, he found the resolve to move slowly. To listen to her—violins, be damned—to her breathing, to the way her body lifted into his deliberate thrusts then subsided, to the feel of her fingers closing more tightly around his.
He brushed his thumb across her palm. “Relax, my lady. I’m not going to sneeze, and this will take us more than a few moments.”
As he set up a voluptuous rhythm in the sweet heat of her body, he prayed joining this way would in a figurative sense take them the rest of their lives.
Four
At her first sight of Jonathan Dolan, Amy had liked that he was a brute of a man. Not only tall, but broad shouldered and braced with an ungenteel complement of muscle. He had calluses and scars, he raised his voice on occasion with his business connections, and did not suffer fools. Such a man would take up his responsibilities with competence and determination.
He would dower his poor relations, and from the portraits and sketches on the walls of his office, he had a number of those. As her interview with her prospective employer had progressed, Amy had found him keenly intelligent, a conscientious parent, and unflinching when it came to discussion of difficult subjects—his daughter’s safety, money, Amy’s character. He’d even made her sign a dauntingly lengthy contract.
In a manner many women would not have comprehended, Jonathan Dolan was a brave man.
In the ensuing months, Amy’s estimation of him had risen further. He was not merely conscientious where Georgina was concerned, he was devoted to the child. He could not only discuss money, he could quietly share it with any numbers of charities, and was gruffly generous with Amy herself.
Now she found he was also, beneath his finely tailored attire, gorgeous, a breathtaking specimen who made poor Robert, with his skinny chest and soft hands, look like the mere boy he’d been.
And Jonathan Dolan knew things about generosity that had nothing to do with coin, and everything to do with patience. He brushed his thumb across her palm again.
“I like when you do that.”
“This?” He repeated the gesture, a slow, sweet slide of flesh on flesh.
She turned her head and kissed his forearm. “When you do that with your thumb, you say you want to touch me every way you can.”
He spoke very near her ear, so close she could feel the shape of his breath against her neck. “I want to touch you in ways that haven’t been dreamed of yet—not by you, not by the naughty angels themselves. I want to put my mouth and hands to places on your body that will shock and delight you equally. I want to embolden you with my passion such that you shock and delight me with your own.”
A hint of a brogue had slipped into his voice, giving it a musical quality that counterpointed the undulations of his hips.
“Jonathan, I want to cry.”
He rested his forehead on hers and slowed his thrusts even more. “Hold on to me.”
She wanted to tell him the tears would have been for that girl in the haymow, the one whose back was itchy, who’d watched the wooden pulley hanging from the roof beam creak in the breeze while a selfish boy had fumbled and sneezed over her.
“Hold onto me, Amy.” Jonathan’s voice had taken on a rasp as he repeated the words. She locked her ankles at the small of his back, clutched his hand in hers, and focused her awareness on the slow thrust and retreat of their joined bodies.
A sense of vertigo stole over her, of gravity slipping its moorings. She closed her eyes and clung to him, begging with her hips for less deliberation and more passion.
He hitched up, shifted the angle, and abruptly, passion was too much.
Amy’s body went into a frenzy of pleasure, a rejoicing in itself that transcended her skin and dissolved the boundaries between her and her lover. She could feel his body as if it were her own, could feel pleasure ricocheting between them and expanding until she was weeping against his throat and bucking madly beneath him.
And then…a resonant stillness, broken only by the feel of Jonathan’s hand smoothing over her hair and their breathing finding a complementary rhythm.
Long, contented moments went by while Amy simply marveled at what her body was capable of in Jonathan Dolan’s arms.
“Do you cry for your soldier boy, Amy?”
His voice was as gentle as the touch of his hand on her hair. Amy turned her face into his throat. “I cry for the girl who yearned. She wasn’t wrong: there is astounding poetry, there are gorgeous symphonies.”
“Dear lady, that was merely the opening movement.”
***
Maybe he’d forgotten this soul-deep postcoital peace, or maybe it had never been like this before. As a younger man, Jonathan had been too restless and self-important to appreciate the pleasure of simply holding a woman in his arms. As a husband, he hadn’t wanted to presume or overstay his welcome. As a widower, his encounters had been about sexual relief, with neither party seeking any entanglement.
He was entangled now. He’d arranged Amy over him, so she straddled his hips and cuddled against his chest. She used the end of her braid to tickle his mouth in a distracted way, as if her body wanted to play, but her mind was intent on serious matters.
“You are thinking, Miss Ingraham.” He kissed her crown. “These are not moments one ought to waste on thinking.”
She raised a troubled expression to his gaze. “Do you hold me in less esteem now for knowing what you do about me?”
Ah, women. Certain women. “What do I know about you? I know passion makes you brave and generous. I know you move me to forget myself. I know I am happy at this moment.”
“Be serious.” A hint of the governess laced her inflection. He envied schoolboys as he traced the arch of her brow with his thumb.
“I will be what you call serious. Marry me, Amy Ingraham. Please marry me. I will procure a special license, Deene and his lady will stand up with us, Georgina will be ecstatic. We can be married by sunset tomorrow and spend all our nights composing symphonies to passion.”
She did not smile at him. If anything, her countenance became more solemn. Jonathan debated the wisdom of arousing her again as a distraction, ran an experimental hand down the elegant curve of her spine, and discarded the notion.
A single caress of her bare flesh, and he was the one distracted.
“You needn’t offer for me, sir. I am no more or less chaste than I was when I got into this bed.”
Her words held a chilling sense of purpose, and Jonathan divined that along with her blue blood, Amy Ingraham had inherited a dose of the martyr. She would preserve him—son of a stonemason, climbing cit, upstart social nothing—from what she perceived as marrying beneath himself.
“Amy, I did not withdraw.” He kept his voice even, when what he wanted was to roll her beneath him and prevent her bodily from leaving the bed. “Neither time did I take the simplest measure to reduce the likelihood of conception. I am one of twelve. I have nieces and nephews without limit. I would not have climbed into this bed without intending to marry you.”
She stroked her fingers over his mouth. “I am not sure I would have climbed into this bed if I’d known your intent.”
“Why the hell not?” He was about to remind her that he could provide for her handsomely, buy her all the pretty things and fine horses she wanted, but something stopped him. Poetry and symphonies, maybe.
She looked hesitant in the flickering candlelight. “It isn’t what you think—it isn’t that I don’t…that I would not care to be your wife.”
“Then what is it?”
“I had not thought to be anybody’s wife, not ever, not now… I must discuss this with my sisters, I think.”
“Amy, are you ashamed of me? Is that it? Because my first wife was ashamed of me, and I bore it for years. If that’s how—”
“Hush.” She kissed him on the mouth, a solid, you-listen-to-me kiss followed up with a stern glare. “I am not ashamed of you. I could never be ashamed of you. You are the most worthy, honorable man I know. I adore Georgina, and she adores you.” Amy’s brows drew down as if in puzzlement. “I adore you. I must think about this though.”
He wanted to make love with her all over again, simply for admitting she adored him—he would think about the rest of her words later—but he instead posed a question. “Do you want to consider terms?”
This, he could understand. She had bargaining power now that every woman thought she gave up at the altar—only to find she held even higher cards after the wedding.
“I want to consider everything. I really did not foresee forcing an offer from you.”
Jonathan and Amy Page 6