Her excitement made her bold. His arm prohibited him from taking sole control. She would use that to her advantage. She slid to her knees, parting his banyan to find him already thoroughly aroused and naked beneath. She tentatively rose up to take him in her mouth, wanting to kiss him intimately the way he had kissed her breasts. Surely there must be a male equivalent for what he’d done for her. Beldon drew a sharp breath, his good hand anchoring in her hair, but there was no mistaking the motions for anything other than pleasure and it buoyed her confidence. He was all salt and moisture on her tongue.
‘Lilya.’ Beldon’s husky voice demanded her attention. ‘We must move this to the bed if you want me to last any longer.’
She rose with a smile and held out her hand. ‘Come to bed then, my love.’
Beldon’s eyes gleamed with a husbandly possession, a dangerous smile curving his lips. ‘I had no idea you were such a temptress.’
She took him astride on the bed out of deference to his shoulder. His blue eyes glittered up at her, desire riding him hard. He bucked hard against her, and she cried out at the force of him pulsing deep inside her. Then they were rushing together into the peace of a well-sated oblivion.
Beldon was gone when she awoke. From the coolness of the sheets, it appeared he’d been up and about for a while. From the amount of daylight streaming in through the curtains, she should have been, too. She’d spent the entire night in Beldon’s bed. She really ought not to have. They weren’t married yet and there were the servants to consider. That gave her a cause for worry. Lilya scrambled from the bed, taking a moment to gather up her robe where it had fallen the night before, and slipped into her room.
Being back in her chamber wasn’t good enough. Lilya immediately recognised her bed didn’t look slept in. Hastily she pulled out a nightgown and slid beneath the covers, laughing at the silliness. What lengths had to be achieved to preserve appearances! Really, Beldon should have awakened her when he got up.
Then again, if he had, they might still be in bed. What a delicious thought that was. She’d become quite the wanton under his expert tutelage. Lilya suppressed a giggle and rang for a maid.
‘There, you look right pretty, my lady.’ The maid stepped back from the dressing table to survey the simple style she’d fashioned for Lilya. ‘I hope it will do, me not being a real lady’s maid.’
Lilya smiled in the mirror. ‘It will be fine. You did a lovely job.’ Frankly, the reflection in the mirror stunned her. The woman in the mirror looked positively radiant. ‘Lovely’ was too tame a word. She’d never looked ‘radiant’ before. Lovely, yes. Beautiful, yes. But radiant? True, the hairstyle looked nice. There was something else in her reflection, too, a softness that hadn’t been there before. She’d slept well, unbothered by dreams, and not waking once in the night. That was unusual for her.
The dark circles beneath her eyes had faded. Perhaps she finally looked rested. Perhaps it was something more. Perhaps it was the product of being a well-loved woman. Oh, not in the sense that Beldon loved her. But ‘loved’ in a more physical sense. It was more apt to say she had the look of a well-pleasured woman. She’d definitely been that. Her reflection blushed at the vivid memories. Beldon had been well pleasured, too, as she recalled.
She found she was anxious to get downstairs. What kind of man awaited her this morning? Would Beldon be the passionate lover from the night, the aloof gentleman of the ballroom, or the fierce warrior who had fought for her? Lilya took the stairs with a skip in her step. She was starting to realise it didn’t matter which face Beldon wore. Each one of them possessed the ability to reduce her insides to jelly.
‘I was thinking, Lilya,’ Beldon drawled as she entered the breakfast room, ‘that we shall need a chaperon.’ They were the words of the aloof ballroom gentleman, but his eyes were living blue coals. Ah, the lover and the gentleman—what an intriguing combination, she thought.
She played the innocent and put a few things on her plate from the sideboard before sitting down. ‘Whatever for? I can’t imagine what could happen that would require a chaperon.’
‘Well, my dear, perhaps it’s what can happen without one that is the bigger concern.’ He gave her plate a considering stare. ‘Take this strawberry, for instance.’ He picked the berry up from her plate and dipped it in fresh cream. ‘Open your mouth a little,’ he urged, his voice dropping to an intimate tone. ‘What if I were to feed this strawberry to you like so, and you took a bite? Go on, take a bite, just like that.’
Lilya did as she was instructed, keenly aware of the juice and remnants of cream left behind on her lips. Beldon went on, ‘Then, afterwards, your lips needed licking and I leaned over.’ His thumb and forefinger steadied her chin. There was nowhere to look but in his eyes. She would drown there. ‘And I, being a gentleman, licked your lips for you.’
Beldon’s tongue lightly flicked across her lips, raising a delightful sensation that ran the length of her. He rose from his chair and came to her, kneeling before her. ‘A gentleman might wonder how he could be of service to his lady. He might wonder what else she might need licked.’ His good hand moved up her leg, pushing her lemony skirts up in its wake.
Lilya guessed his intentions and gasped. ‘The servants!’
Beldon shook his head, a wicked smile, the one she was coming to learn he reserved solely for more amorous pursuits, claimed the sensual line of his mouth. ‘They have been dismissed. We will not be bothered for a while.’
He blew against her curls, the warmth of his breath a subtle reminder that she was already damp for him. He lowered his mouth to her and she bit her lip against the flood of sensations that swamped her upon contact. This was a heady elixir indeed to be caressed in such an intimate manner. She had not guessed at the possibility or at the intensity of its outcome. She shuddered against him in replete satisfaction, aware only now that her hands had gripped the arms of her chair with enough force to leave the imprint of her nails behind in the delicate wood.
Beldon looked up, his eyes smoky with his own desire. ‘And that, my dear, is why we need a chaperon.’
Philippa arrived late that afternoon with her family in tow and luggage wagon to follow. Even though Valerian’s home was only two hours away, they would be in residence until after the wedding. ‘Proprieties must be observed,’ Philippa said with a smile, kissing Beldon on the cheek in sisterly affection and sweeping into the hall. Of course, they both exclaimed over Beldon’s injury. But by implicit agreement, no one mentioned the business with the diamond beyond that.
Lilya knew they were all waiting and hoping, as she was, that Christoph would give up the search, that he’d believe she didn’t hold the diamond, that no keeper of the diamond would marry so publicly. He knew where she was so it had to be a good sign that he hadn’t come yet. It just had to be because with every day that passed, Lilya knew it would be harder and harder to leave.
The wedding neared. Philippa had declared it would take ten days to put together a decent affair and Lilya had checked off each day as a blessing when it passed without complication.
Each day was a chance to learn about the handsome man she’d wed at the end of the week. For all that he knew of her, she knew very little of him beyond his connection to Valerian and she found she wanted to know. She supposed she knew the things that mattered: he was honourable, he was loyal. She couldn’t have contemplated marriage if he hadn’t been those things. Running would have been preferable to marriage with a man who was untrustworthy. But she wanted to know the little things: his favorite colour, the way he took his tea, the foods he liked. If she was going to be a wife, she wanted to be a good one.
That meant learning the estate as well as the man, and Beldon was eager to teach her. Pendennys was at its best in the summer and it was obvious Beldon delighted in showing it to her. The best days were spent under the sunshine roaming the estate with him, always taking care not to exhaust him without him noticing. He hated being fussed over, but she’d do i
t anyway.
‘They all love you, you know,’ she told him one late afternoon walking back from the vicar’s. ‘Everyone I’ve met has had to tell me all the things you’ve done for them. Mrs Ford said you put on a new roof for her a few winters back. Mrs Garner said you bought her a cow so she could sell milk when her husband couldn’t work any more.’ Lilya sneaked a peek at Beldon from beneath the rim of her bonnet.
‘Don’t be embarrassed. You’ve done well here. Be proud.’ It was illuminating to see him in this light. She could add ‘proud, responsible landowner’ to the list of attributes that described her soon-to-be husband. She’d heard, of course, how much Pendennys meant to him. She had not fully understood what that meant until she’d walked the land with him. This was his life, his absolute everything. His hard work, his sweat, his money, was evident in the landscape in so many ways.
They passed by the cemetery just beyond the church and stopped to rest, leaning on the iron fencing. ‘No one will ever take Pendennys from me again,’ Beldon said, looking out over the gravestones.
‘Not even me,’ Lilya murmured, unaware she’d spoken the thought out loud.
‘What was that?’ Beldon turned his head sharply to look at her. ‘What did you say?’
It was the first time the diamond had intruded since their arrival. They’d been careful to focus only on the present, to keep the future precisely where it was—in the future.
‘Nothing.’
‘No, you said, “Not even me”,’ he argued. ‘You’re to be my wife. That’s different and it’s not at all what I meant.’
Lilya chose to let the remark pass. It wasn’t different, but quarrelling would serve no purpose. He was just as stubborn as she was. She turned her attentions to the cemetery. ‘Your father still has you in his thrall. You worry about being like him,’ Lilya divined, following his gaze. ‘I did not know him, obviously, but I can’t believe he was a terrible man. Val speaks kindly of him.’
Beldon shook his head, lifting a foot to rest on the low rung of the fence. ‘He was a good man. We all loved him and he loved us. But he let his love betray us.’
Lightning could not have struck more brightly. There it was, the reason for the aloof hauteur of the man she’d met in London; emotions must not be engaged, at least not over the long term. He didn’t trust himself to love. Caring could only extend so far before it crossed the boundaries of love. Of course, Beldon loved his nephew, loved his sister. But they were ultimately Valerian’s responsibilities. They were safe to love. But a wife? A woman who claimed his heart? That woman would be the least safe of all.
‘I do not think you are him, with or without your armour,’ Lilya offered.
‘I don’t have armour.’
‘Yes, you do. It’s your manners and your unfailing politeness. It’s hard to penetrate the surface of all the perfection you walk around with.’
‘You make it sound like I’m a prig,’ Beldon groused.
‘Not at all,’ Lilya cried. ‘That’s your charm. You have pulled it off with élan. The ladies all wonder what is beyond that handsome face of yours, what secrets lie beneath all that immutable perfection.’ Lilya gave him a sly look. ‘Surely you’re aware of the ladies and their attentions?’
Beldon chuckled. ‘I have noticed I get my fair share of attention on occasion.’
‘You smile more in the country. I like that. It was one of the things I noticed about you first.’
‘You’ve have mentioned it before.’ Beldon leaned close to her ear. Whatever he said, it was going to be wicked. ‘Do you want to know what I noticed about you first?’
‘Don’t say my eyes. Everyone in England says my eyes.’
Beldon drew back for a moment in an exaggerated pose of thoughtful contemplation. ‘Hmm, well, yes. I can see where some might say that. They are rather nice, all dark and tipped up a little at the edges like a cat’s.’
‘Ahem.’ Lilya cleared her throat, unwilling to let a pending compliment get away. ‘You were going to tell me what it was you noticed first?’
Beldon grinned, letting his eyes dance with mischief. ‘It was your back, my dear.’
‘My back?’
‘Yes, and tomorrow night I will show you exactly what I was thinking when I saw it.’
Tomorrow night. Just the thought made her weak in the knees. It would be their wedding night. It did not matter they’d spent every night they could in his bed. Tomorrow would be their first night as man and wife. Tomorrow, everything would change. They would be bound together for ever in the eyes of God for better or worse. Please, Lilya thought. Let it be for the better.
Beldon waited until the house fell silent before going downstairs to his study. The hall clock read one in the morning. Technically it was his wedding day, although the sun wouldn’t be up for hours. No one would be up for hours. That was fine with him. The house had been bustling the past few days with preparations. He had preparations of his own to make and he wanted to be alone for them.
Beldon sat down behind the wide desk that had served four generations of Pendennys barons and pulled out writing materials. He dipped his pen, drew a deep breath and began to write: I, Beldon Elliot Stratten, the current Baron Pendennys, being of sound mind and body, do hereby certify this document to be my last will and testament…
Dire words, to be sure, for a man to pen on the morning of his wedding. It reminded him of the old tradition of Scottish brides beginning their winding sheets for burial the day after their weddings. But if anything happened, he wanted to be prepared. He wanted Lilya and Pendennys to be safe. The estate would go to young Alex, Philippa’s son, in the event he died without an heir.
Beldon finished the document and sanded it before setting it aside. He reached for another fresh sheet. He hesitated a moment before writing the bold letters across the top: Our escape in the event of emergency. This list was harder to write than the will. What happened if he couldn’t protect Lilya at Pendennys? What happened if the day came when they had to flee in order to save their lives? Could he simply walk away from the estate for Lilya? He’d promised himself once years ago when he’d first taken on the estate that he’d not let it go as long as there was breath in his body. He’d have to be dead to part with Pendennys; it was his legacy and it had become his life.
Beldon paused and looked down at the sheet of paper, a new thought coming to him, one that might save them for ever when the time came. If he was willing. What would he give up for Lilya? How far would he go for love?
Love. Beldon sighed. He’d tried so very hard to avoid it and it had found him anyway. He was in love with Lilya. He wasn’t sure when it had happened. He couldn’t look at a calendar and circle the day. Perhaps he’d loved her the moment he’d spotted her in the Fitzsimmons’ ballroom. Perhaps he’d loved her the day she’d shown him the diamond, or the day they’d first made love. He didn’t know. Love had been very stealthy in this case, creeping up slowly, disguising itself in the cloak of duty and the mask of honour.
Yes, he loved the woman who would wed him tomorrow and he’d stand with her even if it cost him everything.
Chapter Seventeen
Happy-ever-after started today! Lilya’s room was a flurry of activity, full of maids bustling about with clothes and combs and jewellery. Philippa sat serenely in the window seat, holding the baby and directing the chaos with a well-placed instruction here and there. Lilya hardly minded. She’d been up early in spite of a late night. Supper had been delayed on Philippa’s behalf. She’d spent the day organising the decorating of the little chapel.
Lilya had yet to see the results. As the bride she’d been shooed away, the villagers laughingly declaring it was bad luck for the bride to decorate for her own wedding. But there’d been finishing touches to put on the wedding breakfast that would be held after the ceremony this morning and Lilya had been busy with them when she and Beldon had returned to the house.
She’d slept surprisingly well and taken a he
arty walk this morning, glorying in the natural beauty of Pendennys by sunrise. Now, there was nothing left to do but dress and make her way to church.
She was really going to do this. Her nerves started to rise as the dress was lifted over her head. Her wedding! She was going to be married, something she’d once thought of as an impossibility.
The gown was an ivory confection Philippa had brought from home. Lilya’s original wedding dress was languishing unclaimed in London, a casualty of her hasty departure. But Lilya loved this wedding gown even more. It had belonged to Valerian’s mother and an earlier age. But it was done in simple elegance without excessive trims, much like Lilya’s own gowns. The fuller skirt of a bygone era belled out delightfully when Lilya took a practice step. She felt like a fairy queen.
Philippa laughed as Lilya twirled experimentally in front of the long pier glass. ‘Our skirts are getting wider again, in a few years this will be all the style. Everyone will say how à la mode Lady Pendennys is.’
Secret Life of a Scandalous Debutante Page 15