She’d never been so dictated to in her life!
Swinging around, muttering dire imprecations against males, all males, presumptuous or otherwise, she whipped off her apron, swung through the kitchens to check with Cook and Mrs. Judson, then hurried upstairs. Ten minutes later, after remembering and delivering the instructions she’d been on her way to give when the sight of Michael striding purposefully up to the house had distracted her, she hurried into the front hall.
Looking down, tugging on her riding gloves, she ran straight into a wall of solid male muscle her senses had no difficulty recognizing.
“I’m coming, I’m coming!” she protested, bouncing off.
He steadied her, then locked one hand about one of hers. “Just as well.”
His growl made her blink, but she couldn’t see his face—he’d already turned and was striding for the door, towing her behind him. She had to hurry to keep up, frantically grabbing up her habit’s skirt so she could clatter down the steps in his wake.
“This is ridiculous!” she grumbled as he towed her relentlessly to Calista’s side.
“I couldn’t agree more.”
He halted by the mare’s side, swung around to lift her up. He closed his hands about her waist, then paused.
She looked up, met his eyes. As always, she was screamingly aware of her giddy senses’ preoccupation with him and his nearness, but she seemed to be growing used to the effect.
“Have you had an affair before?”
The question had her blinking her eyes wide. “No! Of course not…” The words were out before she’d thought.
But he merely nodded, somewhat grimly. “I thought not.”
With that, he lifted her to her saddle, held her stirrup while she slid her boot in.
Settling her skirts, she frowned at him as he went to his horse and mounted. “What’s that got to say to anything?”
Picking up his reins, he met her gaze. “You’re not exactly making it easy.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I told you.” She brought Calista up beside him and they set out along the drive. “There’s the ball, the fete—I’m busy.”
“You’re not—you’re skittish, and looking for excuses to avoid taking the plunge.”
She looked ahead; she made no attempt to meet his eyes, yet she felt his gaze on her face.
“You’re the epitome of efficiency, Caro—you can’t expect me to believe you can’t take two hours out of the afternoon of the day before what for you is a relatively minor ball.”
He was right, at least about that last. She frowned, more inwardly than outwardly. Was he right about the rest, too? She knew what she feared; had it really cut so deep, did the fear hold her so securely that she would unthinkingly, instinctively as he was suggesting, avoid any situation that might challenge it?
She glanced at him. He was watching her but, as their eyes met, she realized he wasn’t seeking to pressure her. He was, most definitely, seeking to understand her; as yet, he couldn’t.
Her heart gave a little twist, a small leap; she looked ahead. Unsure how she felt about being understood, or his wish to do so. After a moment of steady cantering, she cleared her throat. Drew breath and lifted her chin. “I might, indeed, appear to erect hurdles, but I assure you I don’t mean to.” She glanced at him. “I’m every bit as determined on our present course as you are.”
His lips lifted; his smile was all male. “In that case, don’t worry.” He held her gaze. “I’ll ignore your hurdles.”
She humphed and looked ahead, not at all sure she approved of such a tack, yet…as they cantered through the golden afternoon, she drew a certain measure of comfort from it. Regardless of what silly vacillations her fears might drive her to, he wasn’t going to allow her to avoid or resist him—to draw back. In battling her fears, it seemed she’d found an ally.
It wasn’t until they were almost at the clearing that she realized they’d retraced their route to the Rufus Stone. When they cantered into the wide field carpeted in the green and gold of fresh grass and turning leaves, she wondered why he’d chosen this place, wondered what he was planning.
They halted; he dismounted, tethered the horses, then came to lift her down. He lowered her slowly; even when she was steady on her feet, he didn’t let her go.
She looked up; their gazes locked. She felt the fascination between them draw tight, as he drew her closer and bent his head felt their mutual hunger awake.
With his lips, Michael brushed her temple, then bent lower to trace the curve of her ear and nuzzle the sweet hollow beneath. He inhaled, let her scent sink slowly through him, felt himself react. “I should probably admit…”
He let the words trail away as he drew her fully against him.
Her hands sliding up, over his shoulders, she blinked at him. “What?”
His lips curved. He lowered his head. “I would have ignored your hurdles anyway.”
He took her mouth, felt her give it, and herself—felt her sink against him. For long moments, he simply savored her, and her implicit surrender. Yet the isolation of the clearing was not why they were here. Nevertheless, capturing her senses, focusing them, and her, on all that would be between them, on the ultimate intimacy that would soon exist before he broached his immediate objective, wasn’t a bad idea.
Eventually, he drew back; when he lifted his head, she opened her eyes, searched his. “Why did you choose here?”
He might be able to addle her senses, but her wits were clearly more resilient. Releasing her, he took her hand, drew her to walk with him toward the stone. “When we came here last time…” He waited until she lifted her gaze to his, until he could capture her eyes. “As we rode into the clearing, I was baiting you.” He saw that she remembered, was remembering. “I wanted a reaction, but the reaction I got was not one I can interpret, even now.”
Looking ahead, she halted; he halted, too, but didn’t release her hand. He shifted to face her. “We were discussing the life of an ambassador’s wife, namely your own, and the duties you or any such lady had to perform.”
Her features set. Without looking at him, she tugged her hand; he tightened his grip. “You warned me of every ambassador’s need for a suitable helpmate—I mentioned that the same held true for government ministers.” Relentlessly he continued, “I then pointed out that Camden had been a master ambassador.”
Her fingers twitched in his, but she refused to look at him; her expression was stony, her chin ominously set. “I brought you here to ask you what about that upset you. And why.”
For a long moment, she remained utterly still, statuelike but for the pulse he could see thudding at the base of her throat. She was upset again, but in a different way…or the same way compounded by something more.
Finally, she drew in a deep breath, fleetingly glanced at him, but didn’t meet his eyes. “I…” Again she breathed deeply, lifted her head and fixed her gaze on the trees. “Camden married me because he saw in me the perfect hostess—the ultimate ambassadorial helpmate.”
Her voice was flat, without inflection; denied her eyes, any chance of reading her feelings, he was left guessing, trying to follow her direction. “Camden was a career diplomat, a very experienced and canny one by the time he married you.” He paused, then added, “He was right.”
“I know.”
The words were so tight with emotion they quavered. She wouldn’t look at him; he pressed her hand. “Caro…” When she didn’t respond, he quietly said, “I can’t see if you won’t show me.”
“I don’t want you to see!” She tried to fling her hands in the air—found her fingers locked in his and tugged. “Oh, for goodness sake! Let me go. I can hardly run away from you, can I?”
The fact she recognized that made him ease his grip. Wrapping her arms about her, she paced, looking down, circling the stone. Agitation shimmered about her, yet her steps were definite; her expression, what he glimpsed of it, suggested she was wrestling, but with what he was still at a loss to guess.
>
Eventually she spoke, but didn’t slow her pacing. “Why do you need to know?”
“Because I don’t want to hurt you again.” He hadn’t even needed to think to reply.
His words made her pause; she glanced fleetingly at him, then resumed her pacing—from one side of the stone to the other, leaving the chest-high monument between them.
After another fraught pause, she spoke, her words low but clear, “I was young—very young. Only seventeen. Camden was fifty-eight. Think about that.” She paced on. “Think about how a fifty-eight-year-old man, a very worldly, experienced, still handsome and devastatingly charming but ruthless fifty-eight-year-old man convinces a seventeen-year-old girl, one who hadn’t even had a Season, to marry him. It was so easy for him to make me believe in something that simply wasn’t there.”
It hit him. Not like a blow but with the keen edge of a knife. He suddenly found himself bleeding from a place he hadn’t even known could be cut. “Oh, Caro.”
“No!” She rounded on him, silver eyes ablaze. “Don’t you dare feel sorry for me! I just didn’t know—” Abruptly, she waved her hands and turned away. Dragged in a huge breath and straightened, lifted her head. “Anyway, it’s all in the past.”
He wanted to tell her that past hurts properly buried didn’t slice at one in the here and now. But he couldn’t find the words, any she would accept.
“I’m not usually so sensitive about it, but this business with you and Elizabeth…” Her voice faded; she took in another breath, still looking away, into the trees. “So now you know. Are you happy?”
“No.” He stirred, stepped around the stone and closed the gap between them. “But at least I understand.”
She glanced over her shoulder as he slid his hands around her waist. Frowned at him. “I can’t see why you need to.”
He drew her around, closed his arms, and bent his head. “I know.”
But you will.
He heard the words in his mind as he set his lips to hers. Not hungrily, but temptingly, coaxingly. She followed, not at first with her usual tempestuous yearning, but yet she went with him. It was a slower, more considered, more deliberate progression into the flames; step by step he led, and she followed.
Until they were burning. Until the heat of their mouths, the pressure of body against body, was no longer enough, not for either of them.
Caught in the moment, wrapped in its promise, needing the heat of it to drive away the past’s chill, Caro resented even the moment he took to step back, shrug out of his coat, flick it out on the ground in the shade beneath a huge oak. When he reached for her and drew her down, she went eagerly, wanting, needing the contact, the wordless assurance that came with his kisses, with each increasingly bold caress.
As usual, he didn’t ask permission to open her bodice, strip away her chemise, and lay her breasts bare—he simply did. Then he feasted, pressing delight upon sensual delight upon her, until she was gasping, skin taut and tight, fevered and burning.
He didn’t ask, but simply reached for her skirt, tugged the front up between them and slid his hand beneath. His searching fingers found her knee, circled it, then traced upward, lingeringly caressing the inner faces of her thighs until the muscles flickered, until she shifted, pressed closer, wordlessly demanding…
She knew what she wanted, but when he touched her curls she nearly expired. Not just with delight, but anticipation. He boldly nudged her thighs apart, stroked through her curls, traced her soft flesh in a languid exploration that left her heated, slick, and throbbing. Then his touch firmed.
He released the breast he’d been tauntingly suckling; lifting his head, from under heavy lids he held her gaze as he slid one finger deep inside her.
Awareness gripped her, excruciatingly acute. She lost her breath, lost touch with her wits; every sense she possessed locked on that assured penetration, on the steady invasion as he pushed deeper, then reached deeper still.
Before she could catch her breath, he stroked, firmly, deliberately. Then he bent his head and covered her lips, kissed her as if she were a houri he owned.
She kissed him back as if she were, avid, greedy—demanding, commanding, even deliberately taunting. He responded in kind. Their mouths melded, tongues tangling as between her thighs he worked his hand, stroked, and drove her mindless.
Gripping his shoulders, she held him to the kiss, suddenly desperate on so many counts. Desperate for him to keep kissing her so he wouldn’t see, wouldn’t have a chance to see—so she wouldn’t have a chance to give herself away by revealing how novel, how indescribably exciting yet glitteringly, fascinatingly new the sensations he was pressing on her were.
Desperate that he wouldn’t stop.
Desperate to reach some sensual pinnacle, to shatter the tension growing and coiling and building within her.
She felt like screaming.
Even through the kiss, she sensed him swear, then between her thighs, his hand shifted.
She tried to pull back to protest; he refused to let her, followed her, holding her trapped in the kiss—then a second finger pressed in alongside the first, suddenly, startlingly, escalating the pressure. The tension racked up another notch; she could feel her body tightening against his.
He held her down, then his hand shifted again; his thumb touched her, stroked, searched, then settled—pressed in time with the stroking of his fingers.
She fractured like crystal in bright sunlight, shards of white-hot pleasure streaking through her, sharp, slicing, abruptly releasing the tension, letting it flow into a golden pool. The pool glowed, throbbed; its heat sank into her, pulsed beneath her skin, in her fingertips, in her heart.
The wonder held her, cradled her, ripped from the world for the very first time, afloat on the ecstasy of her senses.
Slowly, she returned—to the physical world, to comprehension. To the knowledge of what physical delight was, to some inkling of what she’d missed all these years—to a deeper knowledge of what she’d been waiting for, and what he’d brought her.
He’d raised his head; he’d been watching her and still was.
She smiled, slowly, lazily stretched, sensually sated for the first time in her life. Glorying in it.
Her smile said it all; Michael drank it in—decided it was even better than the smile she’d gifted him with when he’d told her he was no longer considering Elizabeth as his bride.
This was a smile worthy of the efforts he fully intended to make—mentally renewed his vow to make—to see it wreathe her face every morning, and every night. It was a smile she deserved as much as he did.
He drew his fingers from her; she’d been tight, very tight, but Camden had been dead for two years and had been getting on in years before that. But as he pushed her skirts down, he caught the frown in her eyes, the sudden dulling of the silvery glory. He raised a brow in mute query.
Her frown grew definite. “What about you?” She turned toward him; her hand found him, rigid as granite and equally hard. Her light caress would have brought him to his knees if he’d been upright.
He caught her hand, had to search to find breath enough to say, “Not this time.”
“Why not?”
There was a hint of something beyond the obvious in her disappointment—a disappointment clear enough to lend an edge to his already intent glance. “Because I have plans.”
He did, indeed, and he wasn’t about to share them with her. Given her acknowledged propensity to erect hurdles, the less she knew, the better.
Her frown grew suspicious. “What?”
Flopping onto his back, he slid an arm around her and urged her over him. “You don’t need to know.” He drew her head down, caught her full lower lip between his teeth and gently tugged, then whispered, “But you’re welcome to try to find out.”
She chuckled; again he recalled she didn’t laugh often, resolved, even as her lips pressed to his and she gave herself up to her quest to persuade him, to make her laugh more. To push away the clouds t
hat beneath all the glamour seemed to have dulled her life for too long.
Then she shifted more definitely over him, put her heart and soul into their kiss, and he forgot everything else and gave himself up to simply kissing her back.
Despite her efforts, Caro learned nothing of Michael’s plans. When they returned to Bramshaw House, her neglected duties claimed her; not until her head hit her pillow late that night did she get a chance to think of what had transpired in the clearing. Of what he had wanted, what he had learned, what he had made her feel.
Just the thought of that last made her flesh throb in remembered delight; her body still glowed faintly with the aftermath of pleasure. True, Camden had touched her in similar ways; the veils she’d drawn over those few nights when he’d come to her bed obscured the details, yet she’d never sensed in Camden what she sensed in Michael—and had never reacted, never felt with Camden any of the excitement let alone the glory she felt in Michael’s arms.
Despite the secret worry that still nagged—that something would yet go wrong, that at the end, when it came to the point, what she longed for simply wouldn’t happen—she felt a countering eagerness, an anticipation, a compulsion to go forward, to explore and experience as much as she could. As much as he would show her.
Whatever his plans were, she would follow him regardless.
Regardless of all else, there was one vital point she simply had to know.
11
Michael rose early the next morning. He tried to immerse himself in catching up with the London news, reading the news sheets and letters from various correspondents, but time and again he caught himself sitting in his armchair, booted ankle propped on one knee, his gaze fixed before him—thinking of Caro.
She’d spoken of hurdles she didn’t mean to place before him, and then revealed one gigantic, triple-bar water jump that, unintended or not, he was going to have to find some way to clear.
Camden had married her for her talents, her undeniable skills. From what he knew of Camden, that came as no surprise; if any man had known which innate abilities were required to produce a topnotch hostess, and been able to recognize them in a raw young lady of seventeen, Camden had been that man. He’d already buried two highly talented wives.
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