And pressed her on.
And she was with him.
Fearless, she clung, and with him plunged back into the raging furnace of their need.
Into the passion and the greedy flames, into the roaring conflagration, straight into the vortex of that breathless, mindless, tearing need.
No gentle giving, but a raging, reckless striving, a desperate reaching for some perfect accord.
Together they reached for it.
And flew. Through passion’s fire, through desire’s flames, beyond the pinnacle of their joint need.
Their senses imploded, reality fractured, and ecstasy streamed in.
She screamed. He groaned.
Glory blossomed, swelled, and took them, filled them, wracked them, then wrought them anew.
And they let it. Merged beyond the physical, they held tight, bodies slick, skins afire, lungs laboring. Gazes locked, breaths mingling, they clung, and let the moment speak.
No simple homage but a true reverence, a beyond-the-self prostration before some greater god, something that went far beyond them.
A surrender like no other to the something that linked them, that joined them.
That had from the first tapped them each on the shoulder, pointed at the other, and said: That one.
That power flared in them, through them, erupted, and engulfed them.
Held them and fused them.
They became it and it was them.
It shone in their hearts, overwhelmed their senses, illuminated their souls.
The moment stretched, waned, faded.
Oblivion beckoned, and they closed their eyes, felt that precious moment pass . . . let it go.
Let themselves fall into soothing darkness, to where satiation buoyed them on a golden sea, and the familiar world was a heartbeat away.
The night closed around them and wrapped them in her arms.
Exhausted, they slept.
The chill of deepening night washing over him eventually drew Breckenridge back to the world. He resurfaced reluctantly. Easing from Heather, from the warm clasp of her body, the haven of her arms, he drew back, lifted from her, then slumped beside her. Only to recall that they lay on top of the covers.
Gathering his strength, he rolled off the bed, loosened the covers, eased them from beneath her, dragged them down, then climbed beside her and drew the sheets and coverlet up, flicking them over them both.
She murmured and turned to him, snuggled her way into his arms, then sank back into slumber.
Through the dimness he studied her face but could read nothing in her relaxed features.
He didn’t want to think of what had passed between them, the depth, the connection . . . the revelation. They’d gone far beyond the mundane, the usual, the customary; they’d touched, breached, some other plane.
Something he was certain she couldn’t have failed to see, to recognize; they’d been there together, very much hand in hand.
Which meant that all should now be well, that she would have no further quibbles over accepting his suit.
Closing his eyes, he felt his lips curve. He slid into a dreamless sleep.
Chapter Eighteen
Heather!” Stepping out under the archway from the great hall, Breckenridge started after Heather as she walked down a corridor leading deeper into the manor. At his hail, she halted, turned, and smiled.
Something inside him clenched at the sight. He couldn’t remember ever feeling this nervous, this on edge.
He forced an easy smile and continued toward her. Aside from them, the corridor was deserted; that wouldn’t last.
They hadn’t had a chance to speak that morning; they’d exchanged not one word about the night. He’d woken in good time but had lain there like a dope and just watched her sleep. By the time she’d stirred, stretched like a cat, opened her eyes, and smiled—very much as she was smiling now, with that glow that warmed him filling her eyes—it had been too late for anything; she’d had to rush to get back to her room before everyone and the twins had been about.
Breakfast about the high table with everyone in attendance had been no place to broach the subject of matrimony, regardless of how confident he was that she would, now, accept him. After last night, how could she not?
She’d been so passionate, and had matched him so well, had been the female reflection of all he was as a male, her actions, her need, mirroring all he’d felt, that he’d dropped every last shield and simply been.
A terrifying freedom. One he’d grasped with all he had in him, but now, in the aftermath, in the cool morning light, the sense of vulnerability, of having said too much even though he’d uttered not one word, haunted him.
Rode like a specter at the edge of his vision and threatened him.
At least she couldn’t have missed his revelation. His truth.
Lips still curved, he halted before her, looked down into her soft blue-gray eyes.
Heather met his gaze and felt her heart literally swell. This was the moment; expectation cinched tight.
She’d spent every minute since she’d left his room trying to imagine what he might say. She no longer needed any declaration, just a word, a touch—any allusion to what they’d shared last night. One word, even a look, would do, would serve to acknowledge their new reality. Then they could move forward, into their new life.
Fighting to keep her anticipation reined, not to jig with impatience, or clutch at the pendant between her breasts, when he didn’t speak, she prompted, “I have to join Algaria in the herb garden—I told her I would yesterday, and she truly does need my help.”
Something shifted—behind his eyes, a subtle shift in his usual difficult-to-read expression. Gaze lowering, he inclined his head, the movement redolent with his habitual grace. “Yes, of course. I won’t keep you.” He hesitated, then diffidently, almost offhandedly, said, “I was just wondering about our return to the capital. We’ll need to announce our betrothal and face down the inevitable brouhaha.”
He paused.
Still waiting for her word, she didn’t respond.
Drawing breath, he met her eyes, went on, “I should draft a notice for the Gazette—I should probably send that ahead of us, to set the scene, as it were. We should also send letters to our families—they’ll need to be prepared.”
He fell silent, waited.
Heather knew her expression had frozen—to hide the eruption of anger that was searing through her. She felt like screaming.
What did she have to do to get him to admit he loved her?
He did; after last night, she was sure he did. . . .
She inwardly rocked, felt as if the ground beneath her feet literally shifted even though she stood on solid stone.
He was an acknowledged expert . . . could last night have been a sham, a pretence, something he’d concocted to satisfy her? Knowing what she wanted to see in him, had he simply given her that, even though it hadn’t been true?
Had last night simply been another conquest to him, albeit with a different goal?
She’d made her declaration first—her wordless confession of her love for him. Had he then pulled the wool over her eyes?
Hurt, deeper than any she’d ever felt, sliced through her.
She blinked, looked into his eyes—desperation rising, searched but couldn’t see.
Anything.
Any glimmer of the love she’d expected to find shining there.
That didn’t mean the damned man didn’t feel it—he always kept his emotions so contained . . . but the purpose of last night had been to reassure him, to encourage and allow him to give her just one word, one hint, however oblique, that he loved her.
If he didn’t . . . she’d already gone over that argument. She couldn’t go forward without any acknowledgment.
He’d grown uncharacteristically
restive. Now he shifted. “Think about it and let me know later.” He half turned to walk away.
“No—wait.” As he turned back, jaw firming, she tipped up her chin. “You’re laboring under a misapprehension. I haven’t yet accepted any proposal—indeed, none has been made—certainly not in any form of words I find acceptable.”
His face, his eyes, hardened. She drew breath, held his gaze, and strove to make his options crystal clear. “You know what I want. Until you give me the assurance I need, I won’t be agreeing to any wedding, especially not with you.”
She didn’t wait to hear what he thought of that. Swinging around, she stalked off, down the corridor to the side door.
Rooted to the spot, Breckenridge watched her go. Watched, and felt his chest slowly constrict. Tighten until he couldn’t breathe.
Last night he’d done what she’d wanted and exposed his heart—and that still wasn’t enough for her?
Especially not with you. He felt like he’d been kicked in the gut; he’d heard those words before.
Of course, last time—fifteen years ago—Helen Maitland had laughed as she’d uttered them.
Swallowing a vicious curse, his face like stone, he turned and walked away.
Just as he had fifteen years before.
He’d left Helen Maitland without a backward glance.
Heather Cynster was a different matter.
A different female.
A different proposition altogether.
He’d ridden out with Richard, hoping the fresh air and exercise would wipe the turmoil from his brain, but no luck. Breckenridge strode out of the manor’s stables and headed across the cobbled rear yard, then remembered and detoured toward the herb garden.
Halting in the shade of the manor’s walls, he scanned the sloping garden. He spotted Heather immediately, cutting swags of some herb with a pair of shears. Surveying the rest of the garden more closely, he thanked his stars; Algaria wasn’t there.
He started down the winding path. Heather was facing the other way; she hadn’t seen him yet.
Regardless of her intransigence, he wasn’t about to walk away. And much as he might like to dismiss her insistence on some “assurance” as feminine pigheadedness, that would get him nowhere.
You know what I want.
So she’d stated, yet that was the point that had him stumped.
She must know that a declaration of love from him—the foremost rake in the ton—simply wasn’t in the cards. Even discounting his experience with La Maitland, which admittedly Heather knew nothing of, his all-but-constant dalliances with the married ladies of the ton—something she did know about—had left him with a very definite notion regarding the value of love.
Namely that one should place no faith in it at all.
To him the word love had no real meaning.
Or if it did, it wasn’t anything good, fine, and desirable.
No lady of the ton would believe a verbal promise of undying love from a gentleman of his reputation.
Besides, she’d been there, with him, every gasp of the way last night. She was intelligent and observant; she couldn’t possibly have missed the essential truth he’d revealed, so she had to be clear on that much, at least. She had to know the depths of his feelings for her, had to comprehend the true nature of his commitment. He’d exposed his heart in no uncertain fashion; she had to have seen and understood.
She’d done her own share of exposing and revealing, too. If he’d noticed, observed, and interpreted what she’d done, how she’d behaved, as a reflection of the truth of how she felt about him, then there was no chance whatever that she’d been blind and hadn’t seen his reciprocation for the wordless declaration it had been. Women were far more attuned to such nuances, and actions definitely spoke louder than words in that arena.
That issue, that side of things, was done with. Taken care of.
So what else did he have to reassure her of?
Especially not with you.
He assumed that was an allusion to his reputation, but in what way, from what perspective, in reference to what, he had no clue.
Ladies like Heather Cynster should come with translation cards.
He had to get her to agree to their wedding, ergo he had to find some way of reassuring her in whatever way she deemed necessary.
Which meant he first had to ferret out what she wanted to hear.
She heard his footsteps as he neared, glanced his way, then turned, long sprigs of feathery growth in one hand, sharp shears in the other.
He halted two paces away.
She met his gaze, arched her brows.
He hesitated, then shifted to sit on the low stone wall edging the raised bed from which she was snipping.
Heather turned back to the wormwood she was harvesting. “I presume you didn’t come here just to sit in the sunshine.”
“No, but the prospect does have a certain allure.”
Her lips started to twitch; she straightened them. “Don’t try to charm me—it won’t work.”
He sighed, a touch histrionically.
She clipped another frond. She wasn’t going to make this any easier for him—
“Earlier, last time we talked out here, we touched on most of the usual elements that are factors in a decision to wed.”
His voice was smooth, the tones relaxed, as if he discussed such matters every day.
“Station, wealth, estate, children. The role I play now, and the one I’ll eventually inherit as Brunswick’s heir, and the role you would play by my side. In addition to that, of course, there’ll be the accompanying social round commensurate with being my viscountess. During those times we reside in London, there’ll be plenty of opportunity for you to socially shine. Assuming you wish to.”
She glanced at him, let her puzzlement show. “Why do you imagine that’s important to me?”
He didn’t frown, but she detected a certain darkness in his eyes. “I thought that might be something you’d want to do.”
She sent him an exasperated look and turned back to her clipping.
After a brief pause, he went on, “You’ll have to redecorate the house—houses, come to think of it. The London house as well as Baraclough. My mother died over a decade ago, and Constance and Cordelia have had their own establishments for even longer—both places are in dire need of a woman’s touch. You’ll have free rein—”
She made an exasperated, frustrated sound and whirled on him. “Why are you telling me this?”
His frown materialized—blackly. “I’m trying to tell you whatever it is you want to hear.” When she glared at him, he capped that with a distinctly terse, “Am I getting close?”
“No!”
He stood; she swung to face him. His jaw looked like iron; a tic flickered beneath one eye as he loomed intimidatingly and glowered down at her. “What the devil is it you want me to say?” He flung out his arms. “For God’s sake! Tell me and I’ll say it.”
That was what she was afraid of.
Her temper rising, provoked by his, she pressed her lips tight, kept her eyes locked with his, and tried to ignore the yawning emptiness inside.
He was telling her all the things she didn’t need to hear, and nothing of the one thing she did. She was increasingly afraid she’d made a tactical error the previous night; clearly he’d interpreted her wordless declaration correctly—and now that he knew she loved him, he thought everything was settled. . . .
It would have been if he hadn’t been what he was—such an expert that, on reflection, on deeper thought, there was no earthly way she could be sure that his side of their night’s exchange hadn’t been anything other than, as he’d just stated, him giving her—telling her—what he’d thought she’d wanted to hear.
Now he thought she would marry him with no more said.
Holding his
gaze wasn’t easy, not when, with him this close, every sense she possessed was reminding her of what had passed between them in the night.
“If you don’t know—”
“I don’t.”
“—then”—she glared belligerently up at him—“telling you won’t fix it.”
His eyes narrowed to agate shards. “If you refuse to tell me what you want, how can I give it to you?”
“It’s not what I want, it’s what I need.”
“Which is?”
His heart, the fool. She needed his heart.
They were all but nose to nose. Clenching her jaw, she forced herself to say, “I told you that in order to marry I required true . . . affection.” She had to grit her teeth to get the lesser word out, but there was no point badgering him to say he loved her—he just might oblige, but all that would do now was assure her he didn’t mean it.
That he was only saying it because he’d decided that them marrying was absolutely imperative for both their reputations . . . would he have behaved as he had last night, then demand this morning that she name the wedding day if that was his goal? She didn’t need to think to know the answer was yes.
That he might, if pressed hard enough, even utter the word love, just to get her to agree to marry him.
The more she pushed, the less likely this would work out well. But she had to try. “And I wanted that depth of affection offered to me freely—not because of my standing, because of who I am, my name, and not because my reputation needs saving—but because I’m me.”
He was blocking the sun, so she couldn’t be sure, but she thought he’d paled. Dragging in a breath, she concluded, “That’s what I want, and if—”
“That’s what I thought last night was all about.”
His flat tone halted her mid-rant.
She searched his eyes, could read nothing beyond an implacable determination.
“I thought”—he continued in the same cold, impossibly even tone—“that last night was all about your true affections. I thought it was about exchanging opinions—if not vows—on that score. I thought last night was about us examining our affections and thereby taking a step closer to the altar.”
Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue Page 36