The Regency Season_Convenient Marriages

by Sophia James

  And then he was at the side of Adelaide, cutting the ties, loosening the ropes and laying her on the ground. Amazingly she took in breath, a huge gulp of air that changed her pallor from white to red in a matter of seconds and allowed her to lift one hand to his face, fingers shaking as she grasped his hair.

  ‘You are...here. I prayed to God...that you would come, but...’

  He simply lifted her, away from the cottage, away from the stinking, bleeding body of Friar, away from the ropes and the reminder of what had been. She was recovering quite rapidly, her arms gripping his and her voice stronger. He thanked the Lord for it.

  ‘I love you, Gabriel. I knew you would come for me.’

  When he sat her against the wall at the back of the house he began to laugh, the shock of escape perhaps, and the luck of it.

  God. They were both alive and safe. She still lived and breathed and was. Alive.

  The feeling of power hit him like a heavy blow right into the groin, taking the deadness and replacing it with pure and unadulterated lust. Vital. Quickened. Energetic. Any humour fled.

  ‘I want you.’ The words were out before he knew it.

  ‘I want you, too, to forget,’ she returned, reaching up and he lifted her skirts as she opened her legs. The blood beat through him out of control and frantic. If he wasn’t within her he would die, it was that simple.

  Not just want, either, but need, and not just need, but desperation.

  When she bit into his shoulder to hurry him on, he moved her thighs over him and sank in, as far as he could go, claiming her as his own.

  ‘Mine,’ he cried as he felt the giving.

  Her breath caught as the barrier of her virginity fell away and he stopped, dead still, giving her the time she might need to accommodate him, both their hearts beating in unison and desire. Her nails dug into his skin, keeping him close.

  He rode her with the thought of possession, pressed in tight with the understanding that they could both be saved by it and survive with the oneness and the relief. Almost seven months of grief and loss flowed now into elation and when she shouted out and arched he went with her willingly, the spill of his seed deep in her womb as her muscles clenched and held him still.

  Life and lifeless lay on each side of the same coin, happy and sad separated by a thread. This was the little death the French spoke of, the place where nothing else mattered save sensation, the suspension of energy whilst time stopped and each separate beat of two hearts lay perfectly merged, blended and united.

  He turned her head and kissed her in the same hard way, deep and rough, and she kissed him back, without reserve or restraint, giving as good as taking.

  This was not the time for a fragile tryst or a tentative trust. His body shook with the want of her and he felt himself harden again.

  ‘I love you. I love you more than life itself and if I lost you...’

  She placed a finger on his top lip.

  ‘There are no ifs, Gabriel. I will never leave you.’

  She smiled as she drew him back in, guiding him to the slickness of her centre. This time his ardour was quieter and more tempered, fierceness buffered and held in check. The wrath was gone, but the wonderment still lived on, her warmth and her tightness. The bruising around her neck was already turning black and the cut on her head had begun to bleed. But he could not stop and tend to her just yet, the shake of fear still in him, the fright of loss unquenched. He felt the crescendo before it even came, cutting into him like a hot knife across butter, the relief of it making him shout her name again and again in pure and honest gratitude. The noise of the pines above snatched the sound away.

  Afterwards Gabriel took her in his lap and wrapped her with his cloak so that they were enfolded in the darkness and the quiet. The moon had risen, the light of it spilling through the trees and across them both.

  Unreal and shadowed.

  ‘You are no longer impotent?’ There was humour in her whisper and he drew his hands through his hair.

  ‘Rage has cured me, I think, and fear. When I first saw you I thought you were dead and then I was in you, scrambling for life and love and for ever.’

  In the moonlight he saw her smile. ‘I think all those rumours about your prowess might very well be true. But from now your expertise is only for my benefit.’

  When he laughed the sound travelled through the glade and then echoed back, the small joy bouncing and reverberating against the trees. Like music.

  It was his life now. Complete. Adelaide had brought him that. Acceptance. Resurrection. Absolution.

  He looked upwards into the heavens and thanked God for bringing her to him, through the darkness of his life and into the light.

  * * *

  They arrived back at Ravenshill at midnight to find Daniel Wylde had been put to bed and that the bleeding on his side had stopped hours ago. Amethyst came to meet them at the doorway and when she saw Adelaide she took her into her arms.

  ‘Thank God you are safe. Thank God we are all safe. Your housekeeper made us take your room, Gabriel, but I can always move Daniel...’

  ‘No. We will sleep in the cottage at the back.’

  ‘You are sure? Did you see your neighbour— Alexander Watkins, I think he said was his name? He came looking for you.’

  ‘Yes. He helped me clean up...things and then went to get the constabulary. That’s why we have been so long.’

  A cry from Robert had Amethyst turning.

  ‘We shall have to talk in the morning.’ She smiled at both of them and then went back into the annex, leaving Gabriel and Adelaide to gather a few things and then make their way outside.

  The world seemed softer tonight, more gentle after the terrible day, and Gabriel was glad for it.

  Once in the cottage he made certain the lock on the door was secure and then lit a few of the candles he had brought over from the annex. Taking off their clothes, they jumped beneath the heavy eiderdown and settled against the cushioned bedhead.

  ‘I think George Friar actually loved Henrietta Clements, despite all that she said of him, Gabriel. He repeated over and over that he wanted you to feel the anguish he knew in losing her. He still thought it was you who had killed her despite everything that was decided by the courts. He said you had paid them off.’

  ‘But she threw herself into the fire after lighting it.’

  ‘I told him that, too, but...’ She stopped.

  ‘He did not believe it.’

  ‘Friar said her husband had never loved her properly, either. But he didn’t kill him. Friar said John Goode had done that himself because of money Randolph Clements had taken, money that was supposed to go to the coffers of France.’

  ‘A hive of iniquity, then, with no one trusting the other?’

  ‘These were the sort of people you stopped, weren’t they? The ones who would cause havoc on society out of madness and hate if they were just left? It must have been horrible to be amongst them and to pretend.’

  He frowned. ‘I did not always have to pretend, Adelaide.’

  ‘I know. Tonight... I could tell you had...done that before.’

  ‘Espionage has the same rules of war. Kill or be killed.’ He took her hand, his fingers threading though her own, holding on. ‘It was not always easy and it wasn’t always right.’

  ‘Can you stop, then...working for the Service, I mean?’

  ‘I almost have. I will send the names to Alan Wolfe tomorrow and they will be rounded up and questioned. There is enough proof of foul play to put them in jail, I think, and that will be the end of it.’

  ‘And then we can live here at Ravenshill and farm and rebuild and...’ She stopped and blushed as his eyes looked closely at her face.

  ‘Is this sore?’ Her lip was swollen and there was another bruise on her cheek. In the candle
light he could see so much more than he had been able to outside the cottage and his anger against George Friar returned.

  ‘I hope I did not hurt you when...’

  She finished the sentence. ‘When you made love to me as if I was the only woman left in the world.’

  ‘The only one I love, at least. As you know, I thought you were dead when I saw you in the clearing tied to the tree and I wondered if I could ever live again. It is a rare thing to have your life held in the hand of another and not want it different, I think. To belong to someone, I mean, for ever, and be the happier for it.’

  ‘My old aunts used to say that independence was the key to a good life and for a long time I believed them. Until you. Until you smiled at me and asked me questions at the Bradford ball with your golden eyes and your quick-witted words. You smelt like woodsmoke and leather and I thought I had never had another conversation like it.’

  ‘I should have touched you then and there and felt the magic. I should have taken the chance and grabbed your hand and kissed you and carted you off to Gretna Green. Instead, I watched you dance a waltz with the Earl of Berrick and he held you much too close.’

  ‘Close like this?’

  She wrapped her arms about his neck and pulled him down into the nest of duck feathers.

  * * *

  This time she wanted to be the one in control, the one to set the pace and the tone. Her mouth closed over his nipple and she took him hard, like he had taken her against the wall of the abandoned building, unyielding and fierce in the dark.

  Biting the skin across the plane of his stomach, she went lower and saw the damage that he had not wanted her to see, the swathe of burned skin across his upper-right thigh and groin.

  She knew he waited to see just what she might say for his breath stopped and his fingers clenched the softness of the cotton sheets beneath, the wedding ring he wore catching the candlelight.

  With care she traced the ruin with her tongue, along this ridge of damage and then down to the next. Always coming closer to the hard shaft that lay amidst a bush of light-brown hair, only a small burn marking the smoothness.

  And then he was inside her, the taste of him salty and masculine, sweet and known. So easy to make him hers, she thought, the rise of him sure and quick now. The power of what he allowed her boiled in her blood, too, a shared joy, a further intimacy that held no words, but only feeling. Then the thickening, as the tempo changed to a reaching, surging ache of trust.

  Gabriel. Her angel delivered from Heaven.

  ‘I love you.’ Whispered on the edge of tears, her voice quiet with feeling. He had killed a man to protect her and then banished her demons with his own body. Only strength in it and an undeniable honesty, because in the gift he gave her she had lost all fear.

  He lifted her upwards and took her mouth into his own, other flavours, further discoveries. Abandoned and open she accepted him in and she writhed with the beauty of it and the truth. She was no longer only herself. He was of her, inside, curling around constant loneliness and ancient shame. There were no rules here, no inhibitions, no places the ache of knowledge could not touch as love accompanied the sensual.

  ‘I love you, Gabriel. Till for ever.’

  ‘Make a child with me, then. Here and now. Let this be the moment of his conception, in this bed with the moon outside and Ravenshill safe. But this time together and in gentleness. This time only with love.’

  ‘Yes.’ She felt tears fill her eyes, not of sadness but of joy. She felt his hardness and her own answering push. She felt the starch of cotton beneath them and the cool of the night on their skin. She smelt the wax of a candle and heard the call of an owl, far away in the lines of trees that ran behind the high ground where a house could be rebuilt.

  Home. Here. With Gabriel.

  And then as he came within her and his fingers found that place that only he could know, she closed her eyes and simply was.

  * * * * *

  ISBN: 978-1-474-07082-9

  THE REGENCY SEASON: CONVENIENT MARRIAGES

  Marriage Madein Money © 2015 Sophia James

  Marriage Madein Shame © 2015 Sophia James

  Published in Great Britain 2017

  by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

  All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

  By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

  ® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

  www.millsandboon.co.uk