It slipped as soon as she caught sight of his expression.
‘Septimus?’ she asked in that sweet, husky tone of hers that sent shivers of longing twisting his guts. ‘Is there something wrong? Did I not tell them what you wanted them to hear at dinner?’
‘What I wanted to hear?’ So now she was going to make it sound as though she was lying to please him?
‘If you wanted me to tell them a different story, why did you not prime me? I would have said whatever you wanted!’
She had the gall to look aggrieved. That did it. With a low growl, he strode across the room and took her by the shoulders.
‘Would you?’ His fingers closed hard down on her flesh. She looked back up at him with such an air of wounded innocence that it was all he could do not to laugh in her face. There was nothing innocent about her! Though the look in those eyes would have deceived anyone. Anyone.
He took her chin between his fingers, searching for some sign of treachery. He could see none. She looked straight back at him as though she had nothing to hide with those clear green eyes that so reminded him of the sea. And it struck him that you could never see far beneath the surface of the waves, either. You could never really tell how deep the waters were. Nor whether there were rocks lurking below that would rip a great hole in the hull. A mariner always sailed carefully in uncharted waters. Took nothing for granted. Only that way could he stay safe.
‘Why are you angry with me?’ she asked, those eyes taking on such a puzzled look that a man who did not know the crooked heart of her would have been taken in.
‘I am not angry with you,’ he said, realising that it would be pointless. Besides, right at this moment, most of his anger was directed at himself. How could he have allowed himself to be deceived into thinking he had married a woman he could be proud of? A woman who might become his friend?
A woman he could trust.
As well to trust the capricious seas not to blow up a tempest and swallow up ships and their entire crews whole!
She was breathing hard now, her lips slightly parted, her eyes wide with consternation.
‘Then, why—?’
‘Stop talking, woman,’ he growled and stopped her mouth with a punishing kiss. If only he could stop her spinning such outrageous lies! If only she had not made him hope for something she would never be able to give him.
He felt her trying to end the kiss. She was taking a breath as though there was something she wanted to say. But there was nothing she could say that he wanted to hear. That he would believe. That would not make him so angry that he would not be responsible for his actions!
So he captured her face between his hands and deepened the kiss, until she stopped struggling, looped her arms about his neck and subsided back on to the bed, pulling him down with her.
This was the only truth they had.
Wasn’t it?
Suddenly unsure even of this, he pushed up her skirts and ran his hands up between her thighs. Obligingly, she parted her legs and let him test her. His mouth twisted in derision. Of course she would let him test her. Because this was a test she knew she would pass.
For some reason, this was the one thing it seemed she did not need to fake. She was wet and trembling with wanting him.
He reared back and tore off his clothes. When he was stark naked, he stood quite still for a moment or two, just watching her. She licked her lips as she ran her eyes over his body, not flinching from examining his manhood as she had done the night before. Her eyes grew darker, her breath quickened. And her hands went to the buttons down the front of her nightgown.
‘Aimée …’ My God, the way she was looking at him!
If this was all an illusion, then, by God, he was not going to do anything to shatter it. If he demanded the truth, forced it from her, she might stop looking at him like that. Stop welcoming him into her bed, and giving him more nights like last night.
What the hell. With a feral growl, he strode to the bed and pulled the covers away from her, then thrust the flimsy nightdress up to her waist and plunged straight into her.
Her eyes widened with shock, but it only took her a heartbeat to recover. She flung her arms round his neck again, and murmured, ‘Oh, Septimus!’
‘No,’ he groaned, and buried his face in her neck. He did not want her to talk. She ruined everything with her lies!
‘Wh-what …?’ she panted. ‘What is the matter?’
‘What could possibly be the matter?’ he replied sarcastically, before stopping her cheating mouth with a kiss.
She moaned in the back of her throat and wrapped her legs round his waist. She was hot and wet for him. And he was hard for her. He enjoyed the act. She enjoyed the act.
Why make it any more complicated than that?
Chapter Eleven
Aimée jolted awake the next morning with a feeling that something was wrong. She opened her eyes, realised that she was in her bedchamber at Bowdon Manor where she had every right to be, and not hiding in some dingy room behind a laundry, and heaved a sigh of relief. She sat up and rang for a maid to bring her hot water so that she could wash, but the vague feeling of disquiet persisted, niggling on the edges of her mind.
By the time the girl arrived, she could no longer deny what it was that was troubling her. Last night, Septimus had made love to her with a passion that had taken her breath away. Then he had shocked her by getting out of bed almost immediately after. She had lain there, too weak and languorous to move, watching him picking up the clothing that he had torn off and scattered all over the floor. He had bent over her, pressed a swift kiss to her forehead, said ‘Goodnight. Sleep well.’
And gone to his own room.
If he had not stopped to kiss her, she might have thought he was angry with her. Or perhaps, not with her, but about something. He had been in an odd humour all evening, though he had never once taken it out on her.
Her spirits had recovered a little by the time she went down the stairs to the breakfast parlour. For, she reasoned, it was bound to take a while for her to get to know him properly and understand his odd humours. But the wonderful thing was that already, though she had seen him in all kinds of moods, not one of them made her think any the less of him.
The dreamy smile that had been playing round her lips, when she recollected the way he had made her feel the night before, dimmed a little when she entered the breakfast parlour, and encountered a look from the Dowager that put her in mind of a great black spider, waiting for some unsuspecting fly to get caught in her web. Repressing a shiver, Aimée turned away from her and went to the sideboard.
When she sat down, Lady Fenella, who had just finished a plate of ham, looked up and beamed at her. It was such a spontaneous, genuine smile of pleasure at seeing her that Aimée could not help smiling back.
Until Fenella said, ‘What do you plan to do today?’
Aimée had no idea. She had wondered once before what titled ladies did with themselves all day. And she was no nearer finding any answers now.
‘Lady Fenella,’ said the Dowager, upon seeing Aimée’s helpless shrug, ‘adheres to a strict timetable. Her days are always filled with activity.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, indeed. I am surprised your mother, Lady Aurora,’ the Dowager said with a sneer, indicating she still did not believe Aimée’s story, ‘never taught you the importance of routine.’
There had never been the chance to form any kind of routine in the life they had led. Not that her mother seemed to have even attempted to establish any, as far as she could recall. On the contrary, she had clear memories of her mother giggling uncontrollably as they clambered out of a balcony into an alley below, where they had already thrown the bundles containing everything they could carry. She had looked upon every flit that filled a young Aimée with resentment as the start of yet another adventure.
‘My mother had a love of spontaneity,’ Aimée replied.
‘Hmmph!’ retorted the Dowager.
After b
reakfast, still uncertain how to fill the hours until the next meal, Aimée drifted down towards the offices. Septimus was not in the estate office, but Mr Jago was.
‘His lordship?’ he replied, when she asked if he knew where she might find her husband. ‘Oh, he’s ridden over to Endon today. To see about the roofs. There is a lot of neglect to put right,’ he said, with a shake of his head. ‘He is very busy.’
‘Y-yes, of course,’ she replied, backing out of the door, feeling like a child intruding upon adult’s business, for Mr Jago had spoken with authority about subjects of which she was entirely ignorant.
In the end, she decided to seek out Lady Fenella. She, at least, would welcome her company. She discovered from a footman that Lady Fenella spent her mornings up under the glass dome of the rotunda, attending to her work.
Well, that sounded more promising. She disliked feeling redundant. She hoped she might be able to join in with Lady Fenella’s work, and begin to do something that would contribute to the welfare of the manor and its people.
Lady Fenella welcomed her arrival with genuine pleasure. She always spent the mornings up here, she confided, when the light was good, but it was not yet too hot to work.
‘Would you like to see my latest project?’ she asked.
Aimée did not know what to say when she discovered that the project upon which Lady Fenella was engaged that morning was a piece of whitework. Lady Fenella had boxes and boxes of it. Handkerchiefs, nightgowns, napkins—all highly decorative, but too beautiful, the girl sighed, to actually be put to use.
She also had quite a collection of scrapbooks. Her pride and joy were the ones she had made of mementoes hoarded from her London Seasons.
‘I am sure you could become quite adept at flower arranging, if you were only to persist,’ Fenella said, as they descended the spiral staircase that led back to the upper floor of the house, much later. ‘After lunch, you simply must come down to the flower room with me again.’
And since nobody else seemed to want her, she did exactly that.
That evening, she heard Septimus come in while she was putting the finishing touches to her toilette. The noises that came from his room then indicated he was taking a hasty wash and changing for dinner. When it sounded as though he must be almost ready, she went to the connecting door, thinking it would be pleasant to go down together. She had just set her hand to the handle, when she heard him leave his room by the other door, and the unmistakable sound of his footsteps hurrying along the corridor.
She let her hand fall to her side, a frown creasing her brow. It had not occurred to him to so much as glance into her room, though he must have known she was there!
Thank goodness, she thought, smoothing her gloves and walking slowly towards her own door, she had not actually got into his room. Knowing that he had no especial wish to be with her at the moment would have made her feel like a beggar, pleading for scraps of attention.
The odd analogy faded once she reached the gilded salon and saw how unutterably weary he looked. He had got back very late. Perhaps he had not, after all, realised she was upstairs, but had just hurried down so that dinner would not be held back on his account.
When he greeted her with that same abstracted look he had worn the night before, and she recalled Mr Jago saying how busy he was, she promptly decided she would not be the kind of wife who took offence at imagined slights. Who knows, he might even have rushed down here so that she would not be left on her own to deal with the Dowager.
And she smiled at him, with, she hoped, her heart in her eyes.
The Dowager was in a far less abrasive mood that night, so conversation at the table was desultory at best. But as the meal progressed through its various removes, Septimus, to her delight, looked at her more and more frequently. And with more and more heat until, by the time she had finished her dessert, she was in quite a froth of anticipation. Septimus had made love to her once cautiously, and later, lazily, and finally, ferociously. What new delight would he introduce her to tonight?
She made no demur when, once again, he announced that she would not be joining the other ladies for tea in the withdrawing room, for she could hardly wait to get upstairs!
Outside her sitting-room door, he paused, and said, ‘Go and prepare yourself for me. I shall join you in a few minutes.’
She felt a bit let down at first, but only until she began to remove her clothes. Then she remembered the money she had stitched into her undergarments—she was going to have to find a better hiding place for it, somewhere the servants would not find it. She did not want to cause any more speculation than there must already be, after the way the Dowager had forced confessions from her the night before.
She had got into bed and been sitting there, watching the connecting door with eager eyes, for what seemed like an age before he came in.
But his reaction was everything she could have hoped for. He halted on the threshold, gazing at her hungrily.
‘You are so damned beautiful,’ he said.
He made her feel beautiful, the way he stalked across to her, his gaze fixed hungrily upon her as she flicked the sheet aside so that he could join her. He sat on the edge of the bed, reached out and ran his fingers through her hair.
‘I have been thinking about doing this all day,’ he said.
Aimée was puzzled by what sounded like a note of irritation in his voice, but then he kissed her so passionately, her momentary qualm was banished.
‘I have been thinking about you, too,’ she confessed shyly, when he broke off the kiss, reared back and tore off his dressing gown.
Perhaps this … whatever it was that had flared so hot between them was as much of a puzzle to her as it was to him, he conceded. And remembered the decision he had taken the night before, not to question what they had here, in bed, but just to enjoy it while it lasted.
With fingers that shook, he removed her nightgown and, for a moment or two, just knelt above her, drinking in the delectable sight of her. She bit down on her lower lip, a little nervous at being naked, he guessed, but also aroused by it, to judge by the way her breathing quickened, and her hips were making impatient little gyrations.
‘You want me,’ he said, stroking his hand along her side, watching her rise into his caress.
She nodded, her eyes dark with longing. The colour of them had always reminded him of the sea—which reminded him he needed to beware, especially now, when he felt the tug of wanting her pulling him under.
‘I cannot resist you,’ he admitted, settling over her. Every time he took her, his hunger for her only increased. How was he to do this, night after night, and not drown?
There it was again, Aimée noted, that faint note of resentment in his voice. But then he kissed her again, and his hands upon her body were so urgent, the faint misgivings in her mind were drowned out by the glorious clamour of her body. Tonight, it appeared he intended to kiss and caress every inch of her, as though he would lay claim to her entire body.
If he was going to drown, he vowed, then he was taking her down with him. He deliberately drove her to the edge, then brought her back, time and time again, until she was clawing at him, begging him for release. When they finally went down, they went together, in a wild thrashing of limbs, and gasping for breath, as though they had both been sucked into a whirlpool of need that was stronger than both of them.
And, at last, he smiled. He was not her slave, not in this. And he would not be. He had the experience to ride the storm, to steer her through it, and make her totally dependant upon him for her passage through. He was her captain.
He gazed down at her with satisfaction as she lay sprawled naked amidst the twisted sheets, exhausted and spent. She did not notice when he left the bed. He took a moment to cover her with a sheet. It was one thing to have the victory, quite another to humiliate her. He would not do that to her. She could not help what she was, any more than a river could help flowing into the sea.
She woke the next morning alone again. Se
ptimus had come to her, and reduced her to a quivering mass of satiation, then left to sleep in his own bed.
She was beginning to suspect that this was the pattern he would always follow. He must just have taken particular care of her, that first night, because that was the kind of man he was. Kind and considerate. But in a way, she sighed, she supposed she ought to be glad that he preferred to sleep alone. It certainly made it easier to preserve her guilty secret about Lord Matthison’s money.
But surely there ought to be more between a husband and wife than just this? She knew he was busy, but could he not spare a few moments to tell her how his day had gone and ask her what she had been doing? Was he not interested?
That night, when he came to her bed, she scrambled away when he reached for her. She was determined to at least try to get to know him better. She was sure there must be some way she could be of help, if things on the estate were in such bad shape.
‘How have you spent your day, Septimus?’ she asked him, when he frowned at her evasive manoeuvre.
‘Aimée …’ he sighed, running his fingers through his mane of tawny hair, ‘I have spent all day in discussions with stewards, tenants and local bigwigs. And then I came in to dinner, to find the Dowager chattering at me too. Please, don’t expect me to talk any more. I am done with talking. I just want some peace and quiet.’ He gathered her into his arms and kissed her until she had almost forgotten why it was important that they talk to each other. ‘Let me find solace in this. Your soft, warm embrace.’
Flattered that here was something only she could give him, she yielded.
But, after only a few more days, she began to wonder if his attitude really was very flattering after all. Whenever she came across him during the day, which was not all that often, he disliked it if she tried to show any signs of affection. Surely there was nothing wrong with a wife giving her husband a kiss on the cheek, or a hug, was there? He never actually reprimanded her, but his discomfort was plain. His mouth flattened, and his shoulders visibly tensed.
Captain Corcoran's Hoyden Bride Page 18