With This Kiss: A First-In Series Romance Collection

by Kerrigan Byrne

  Christ. He was just one man. Who could he trust to—?

  A few heavy, staggering sounds reverberated on the ceiling above him before a great, thunderous crash drove him to his feet.

  The master bedroom. His wife!

  Feeling as though he’d been kicked in the chest by an unruly horse, he took the stairs three at a time, sprinting down the hall until he exploded through the door, shearing the latch.

  His very shaken, very nude wife was attempting to pull herself into a sitting position from where she’d sprawled on her back, using a toppled marble table to stabilize her.

  He lunged forward. “Don’t move,” he barked in the same commanding voice he’d used on countless criminals.

  She’d already frozen when he’d burst in, but his words had the opposite effect, sending her scrambling to find something with which to cover herself. “Oh, bother,” she groaned. “I-I don’t… I’m all right. I just need—need a towel. Please. Please go.”

  “Don’t be foolish,” he admonished as he hit his knees next to her, his hands hovering over the slick, lithe lines of her prone form, searching for injuries. “What the bloody hell happened?” he demanded. “Did you hit your head? Is anything broken? Can you move all your limbs? No, never mind, don’t try to move. I’m calling for a doctor. Bart?” he bellowed. “Where the bloody hell is he? Did no one hear you fall hard enough to shake the house? Bart!”

  “No!” She seized his shirt when he would have risen with one desperate claw, keeping the other arm ineffectually over her breasts. “I don’t want anyone to see me!”

  “If he sees you, I’ll replace his eyes with hot coals. I’m calling him to send him for the doctor.”

  “I don’t need a doctor. I am perfectly well, I simply—”

  “You don’t get to make that decision, a slip like this is serious, especially in your condition! Must you fall so bloody often? I order you to take more care with your footing!”

  He put his hands on both her shoulders to keep her still as she tried again to sit up. His grip slid as her still-slippery limbs flailed in a wild attempt to fight him off.

  After a few slick and ineffectual endeavors, he succeeded in pinning her arms at her sides, leaving her gleaming body completely bared to him.

  He resolutely examined only her eyes, as he leaned above her. They held no indication of the clouds one noted with a head wound. In fact, they sparked with dark azure tempests that would make Calypso proud.

  “I didn’t slip, exactly,” she protested with a mulish expression.

  “No? Then tell me how, exactly, you came to be on the floor.”

  Long, dark lashes swept down over damp cheeks flushed with heat. “I… finished my bath, stood, and stepped out of the tub to reach for the towel. By the time I had one foot on the ground I was overwhelmed by extreme vertigo and thought to steady myself on the table.” A confused frown pinched between her brow as she looked over at the fallen furniture . “I must have fainted, because the next thing I knew I was on my back staring up at the ceiling.”

  “I suspect you’re truly addled if you think anything you just imparted to me makes me feel a modicum of comfort,” he gritted through his teeth. “You and the child must be all right; do you understand me? You lie here. I will get a doctor. And he will examine you thoroughly. That is the end of this ridiculous discussion.”

  He would have said more, but all the words had compressed the air out of his lungs, and he couldn’t seem to fill them. His hands trembled where they shackled her arms and the legs he knelt on felt too unsteady to hold their position for long.

  It had been years since his body showed such obvious signs of terror. Maybe since his very first battle when bullets missed him so narrowly, he could hear them sing by his ear.

  Lord, but she was a weakness.

  Instead of arguing, she lifted her palms to his chest, this time in careful conciliation. Her expression softened, warmed, and something pooled in her eyes that evoked inappropriate memories of the last time he’d held her beneath him.

  “I’m not being reckless, you know. I often feel faint after a hot bath, and because our child is possessed of a finicky appetite, I haven’t been eating as I should. Certainly, that’s the cause of this spell.” Her lovely features gathered into a twist of self-effacing mortification. “I dare say I crumpled rather than fell, and landed on my back, not my stomach.”

  His heart kicked beneath her hand, and he grappled with fierce and foreign emotion that stole his ability to speak.

  “Is it your aim for the doctor to examine me in a shivering, naked puddle on the floor?” she asked with an arch of her brow.

  Morley’s jaw slammed shut. Now was not the time to notice her nudity. This was quite possibly a medical crisis.

  He refused to glance down at her breasts.

  He glanced.

  He refused to look.

  He looked.

  Well he refused to appreciate.

  Goddammit.

  Lunging to his feet, he snatched the towel from the stand and returned to her, averting his eyes as he covered the more scandalous parts of her before crouching down again. “I’m going to carry you to the bed,” he warned.

  “I’m quite capable of—ooph!”

  He scooped her from the floor and hauled her against his chest as her bare legs dangled over his arm. The towel covered the front of her, but there was nothing between her skin and his hands as he hauled her to the bed and sat her down gingerly.

  “Sir?” Bart called from the end of the hall. “What’s happened?”

  Morley released her and strode to the door to keep the footman from venturing into the room and seeing anything he ought not to.

  Likely saving the footman’s life.

  “My wife has fainted and taken a fall; I need you to send for the doctor.”

  Bart’s eyes went round with worry in his moonlike face. “Right away, sir.” He scurried back in the other direction.

  Morley shut the door, and when he turned around, his knees nearly buckled from beneath him at the sight of his wife levered over her chest of drawers, her arm frantically fishing within.

  She still clutched a towel to the front of her, but she currently faced away from him. Revealing. Everything.

  Morley’s mouth went dry as lust punched him low in the belly with such savagery, he felt slightly ill. His body responded violently to a sight he’d never forget.

  Her ripe bare arse and thighs created a perfect heart shape to frame the shadow of the cove between her legs.

  Sweet Christ just when he didn’t think he’d anything left in him to break.

  Snatching up a nightdress, she straightened and pulled it over her head and down her body, all the while still flailing to find the openings for the arms and neck.

  He went to her in swift strides. The moment he put his hands on her, she stilled, allowing him to guide her arms into their sleeves and unbutton the high collar enough to permit her dark head to pop through.

  Something about helping her into her gown settled him, as well. His breaths calmed, though his cock did not, but he no longer felt as if his heart tried to escape by way of his throat.

  She reached up to push the tangles of her hair away from her face, but he beat her to it, smoothing the damp tendrils from her cheeks and elegant neck.

  She regarded him with a lost, rather unsure expression that tugged at his heart.

  “For future reference, you’re being neither prudent nor good,” he said in a voice suddenly made of silk.

  Her lip quirked. “For future reference, my name has always been a lamentable irony.”

  She attempted a good-humored smile, but it never took. She only succeeded in looking exhausted and alluring, and very young.

  Too young for him, probably.

  Good Lord, he didn’t even know his wife’s age. He knew next to nothing about her. Her health. Her skills, her strengths, her flaws. Her life before this.

  Before him.

  Though he’d h
ad her in a garden, he’d never even seen her naked before tonight.

  Certainly, he’d fantasized about it to an obsessive degree, but nothing had been able to prepare him for the perfection of her. Generous breasts, dramatic curves, and an arse so delectable he ached to—

  “You really should be lying down,” he said with brusque efficiency, closing the door firmly on those thoughts.

  Her face fell. “I needed to dry and dress. I’m not about to meet the doctor in the altogether, am I? Also, my hair will dry in clumps of snarls if I don’t brush it.”

  He gently but firmly steered her toward the bed. “I will tend to you.”

  She kept any remonstration to herself as she allowed him to tuck the bedclothes around her lap. Her eyes tracked him as he retrieved her silver hairbrush from her vanity and brought it to her. “Allow me to—”

  She snatched the brush from him. “No need, I’ve a tender head and it takes a delicate touch.”

  Better she do it, then. His hands still shook, and his emotions seemed to be taking wild, pendulum-like swings. His feelings for her, he realized, were not gentle. But ardent.

  Violent even.

  It was why he stayed away. Something volatile hung in the air whenever she was near, and volatility wasn’t something he allowed himself.

  Lord, but it felt as though he were an abandoned tangle of yarn only just discovered by a sharp-nailed woman intent upon unraveling him.

  Morley perched on the foot of the bed, bending his knee so he could face her. “Do you still feel ill?” he asked as she began to run the brush through her damp hair, starting at the ends and working her way up.

  “I haven’t been for a few days beyond mild bouts of nausea.” She flicked him a shy look from beneath her lashes. “Thank you for the ginger ale. I’ve been sipping it when I feel poorly.”

  He shifted uncomfortably. “Yes. Well. I read about it somewhere.”

  He’d read anything he could get his hands on, actually. Books on pregnancy and childbirth. Doctor’s pamphlets and periodicals. Everything. If he was going to be a father, he’d be the most knowledgeable father in the kingdom.

  She fell into a contemplative silence, her entire being focused on the task of her hair.

  Morley watched her alertly, examining her for signs of… well, of anything out of the ordinary. Not that he exactly knew what to look for. Bleeding, he supposed. Another loss of consciousness. Confusion. Pain.

  Charming little mannerisms became apparent under such close scrutiny. She’d one very expressive left eyebrow, while the right one never so much as arched. Her left hand was the dominant one, as well. She’d a freckle beneath her right eye. Just the one. And a little scar behind her jaw on the right side. She slept in a great deal of ruffles.

  And when she brushed her hair, she laced her fingers through the section to test for snarls in very rhythmic, graceful gestures.

  The inky swath draped over the shoulder of her white nightgown, waving in places and framing her face with little tendrils that beckoned to be touched.

  Lord she was lovely.

  And she was his.

  He’d never seen her like this. Even pale and fresh-scrubbed, damp and unadorned, she remained a beacon of beauty. The kind of siren that would dash a man like him on the rocks.

  And still, he’d go willingly.

  A strange, unidentifiable emotion stole over him. Not peace, exactly, never that, but a loose-limbed mesmerism he would akin to that of a cobra being charmed by a clever instrument. He couldn’t look away. Nothing else existed. Just the woman in his bed and the gentle motions of her grooming. The air was warm and moist from her bath, and he breathed in the summer scent of her soap as his heart slowed and his lids grew heavy.

  They sat in silence for a moment, or maybe an eternity, him content to do little else but drink in the sight of her.

  “Do you still love her?”

  The question manifested in the air between them, surely, as he’d barely noticed her lips move.

  Morley started a little, sitting up straighter, uncertain if he heard her correctly as his mind had been quite pleasantly—extraordinarily—empty. “Pardon?”

  She kept her gaze firmly focused on the gathering sheen of her smooth, glossy, untangled hair. And yet she kept brushing. “The Countess, Farah, do you love her still?”

  “No.” The promptness of his answer surprised even him.

  She flicked him a fleeting glance. “You can tell me without fear of reprisal,” she urged. “I’m in no position to cast aspersions, and I can’t imagine you lived like a monk before we—before our nuptials.”

  The irony was he’d done exactly that for some time now. He’d a few wild years during and after the war but…if one was to describe his romantic exploits of late.

  Monk was apropos.

  Until her.

  “I hold Farah in high esteem,” he answered. “But that is all.”

  “She returns your esteem.” An inscrutable emotion darkened her features for a moment, and she abandoned her brush to the nightstand with a sigh.

  “I don’t know if I ever loved her.” Morley couldn’t tell what compelled him to explain, but the words escaped him in a torrent of truth. “I was of the opinion that she and I suited, is all. We worked easily together, and we enjoyed each other’s company. We attended events and she liked to eat at the same establishments I do. I thought…” He’d thought she’d fill this empty house with something other than silence. He’d wanted someone to come home to. To share a life and all the beautiful, terrible things therein. “I thought love might grow between us. She’s a good woman. Someone I’d grown to trust, respect, and admire.”

  The wobble of her chin belied her hard-won stoicism and she nodded slowly as if she did her best to digest his words.

  “Unlike me.”

  I never wanted her like I want you.

  He almost said it. The words tripped to the edge of his lips like a reckless man about to jump to his death. Farah was never a danger to him, but neither had she been a joy. He’d desired her, as she was lovely, and he was a man. But she’d never tempted him anywhere close to the line he’d leapt over for Prudence. He’d never ached in her absence nor did he fear the power she had over him.

  For there was none.

  Whereas now…

  “Was your meeting with Blackwell about me?” she queried, her gaze pinched and worried as it finally met his.

  “You know I can’t discuss—”

  “You can’t discuss what? My case? My life? You realize this is my innocence to prove and if I knew what was happening, I might have a chance to help.”

  “It simply isn’t—”

  “How would you fare, husband, under similar conditions? Locked in this infernal house with nothing to do but worry about the future. Treated like everyone’s terrible secret. It’s cruel.” Her voice became ragged on the last words, and her eyes shimmered with unshed tears.

  Morley had felt pity in his life. Shame, regret, sympathy. But not this strange amalgamation of all of it.

  “You’re not a prisoner here,” he soothed. “But it’s safer for you if you’re out of sight until things…settle. I thought we agreed it’s the right thing.”

  She made a noise of irritation and scrubbed at her eyes to erase a forthcoming storm.

  Hesitantly, Morley reached out and placed his hand on her ankle over the counterpane. Her bones were so delicate, so small beneath his hands.

  “I sympathize,” was all he could think to say. “In your circumstances I’d likely go mad.”

  She blinked at him, and her face relaxed a bit, some of the frustration draining into acceptance. “Then…why must I be left in the dark?”

  “Because that is where I need you,” he answered more vehemently than he’d meant to.

  At her pained flinch, the explanation burst from him like a geyser. “Don’t you understand? I cannot stand to be in the same room with you—wait.” He held up his hand against her unspoken pain as her eyes went
owl round. “That is, I cannot be in your presence and possessed of my wits at the same time. You’re like…a tune in my head I cannot rid myself of. A torrent, or a whirlwind, spinning me until I cannot see my way forward. I can’t have that now. I need to be objective. Unemotional.”

  “Unemotional?” she echoed slowly.

  “Especially when the stakes are so high. When I want—” He caught himself just in time.

  To see that she’d stopped breathing, her stare rapt and absorbed.

  He’d said too much.

  “When you want what?” she whispered.

  “I meant to say…when the outcome has such a monumental effect on the life and future of everyone.” He slid closer toward her and she moved her legs to give him room. Leaning forward, his hand drifted toward her until it fit over her abdomen. “Of the three of us.”

  She covered his hand with her own, and Morley suddenly found himself a prisoner.

  His shackles silk rather than steel.

  Even through her nightgown and the bedclothes, he could fell that her firm stomach had a barely discernable curve to it.

  They each let out an identical breath, wondering at the life beneath their hands.

  “Somehow I’m going to prove to you that I’m innocent,” she declared with the resolution of a royal. “If I do that, would I be worthy of you then?”

  Awash in a tide of foreign and frustrating sentimentality, Morley pulled away from her, unable to stand the intimacy and not take it further. “This isn’t about that.”

  “It is to me.”

  He threaded his fingers through his hair, yearning to believe her. If only so he wouldn’t have to face the dark part of him whispering that her innocence mattered not.

  That he’d fall for her, regardless.

  “Please, let’s not talk of this now. I’m too…where in God’s name is the doctor?”

  “I assure you, I’m well. The table took the hardest tumble, I all but glided to the floor.”

  He turned his back on her, going behind the screen to lift the table back to its position. The furniture was a heavy piece, the top pure marble.

  Gads, what if she’d pulled it over on top of her?

  Suddenly he was very aware how dangerous a home could be to a woman and child.