Alternately he used his fingertips and his open palms, his lips, his tongue, drawing inward as he reached the tops of her thighs.
She uttered a cry. He gripped her hips and raised them from the bed, pressing kisses to her belly. His lips strayed lower, to the tender skin in the bend of her thigh. He used his tongue and even his teeth for a sensual nip. She rocked beneath him, sighed, grabbed handfuls of the counterpane.
‘‘Tell me all you wish me to do, Nora.’’
Her hands glided to her breasts, her fingers closing over her nipples.
‘‘Ah, you want to feel my hands there, is that it?’’ A ‘‘yes’’ made itself heard between panting breaths. Her small breasts filled his hands, burned beneath his palms. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted and gleaming. She arched into him, splintering his control.
‘‘Sweet Nora, you are far too tempting. . . .’’ He spoke until his mouth reached her breast. Then his tongue grew too busy for words, learning the shape and taste of her nipple, molding it into a tight little peak. His teeth closed around it. She cried out.
Her head came off the mattress and she gaped at him. He expected sharp words, a shove. Waited for her to crawl out from under him. His lust both raged and cringed as he anticipated the rebuke. Could he head it off?
‘‘By God, Nora, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—’’
‘‘Hurt me?’’ She shook her head wildly. ‘‘You didn’t. That was . . . astounding. Gracious, I . . .’’ Her head fell back. Her eyes drifted shut. ‘‘Can you do it again?’’
‘‘I’ll try my best.’’
He had her moaning within seconds, had himself breathless with urgency. But he neglected nothing, not a part of her, until her hands tore at his trouser buttons and her legs wrapped around him, drawing him close and making her desires clear.
‘‘Finish it,’’ she breathed against him. ‘‘Teach me all of it.’’
Her fingers tightened, digging into his buttocks with an insistence that spurred him. But once again he fought the urge to hasten inside her.
Instead he grasped her knees and eased her legs from around his waist. Backing the necessary few inches away, he held her thighs apart while he kissed his way between them. With his tongue he prepared her, adding his own moisture to the already damp folds. He searched out the hidden globe of flesh and with his lips adored it, revered it, pleasured it until Nora thrashed and clenched her fists against the mattress.
Her apparent readiness and his own voracious need sent him sprawling over her.
‘‘No more pretending.’’ Pressing the head of his arousal against her, he braced his arms on the bed and pushed.
Instead of the effortless sweep he expected, he encountered the very last thing he’d imagined or wished—a barrier. Even before his mind processed its meaning, he felt the sudden break, then a heated rush of fluid and Nora’s stifled cry against his shoulder.
He went utterly still, his heart clenched around an awful certainty.
She is a virgin. Was a virgin.
God help him.
Her hands clutched at his arms and a mewling sound, part anguished, part imploring, vibrated through him. Her legs once more encircled his waist, holding him, impelling him.
Even as the magnitude of how thoroughly he’d wronged her howled through him, he thrust forward. Because she wanted him to. Because he needed to. Through the resistance, past the tightness of untouched muscle and farther, he buried his length, his mind, his being into soul-damning bliss.
She uttered a faint ‘‘yes’ and he thrust again, losing himself to the tempo, to the savage song echoed from his lips to hers. The mingling notes built, became louder, insistent, sweeping him over a devastating brink.
Chapter 7
Nora felt a splintering ... a shattering ... a burst of fiiery color. Flaming scarlet, sizzling amber, blistering ocher ...
A chasm yawned and gaped, and the receding pain was replaced by a lustrous shaft of spiraling ecstasy; by a knowledge both heady and frightening. Her world shifted, careened and broke apart while the girl she’d been flickered away, cast to oblivion by Grayson’s thrusts.
She gripped him with arms and legs, as inside her a woman emerged, one with desires and demands she’d never imagined. She opened her eyes and looked up at him. He was . . .
Beautiful. Intense. Gleaming with energy, trembling with controlled power and restrained fury. The very sight squeezed droplets from her eyes. Despite all her misgivings, she wanted this man. Wished to possess him as he possessed her, teach him as he taught her. Minutes ago she could not have conceived of the lesson. Now her body knew just what to do.
No longer the passive recipient of his lovemaking, she moved beneath him, arching, contracting her muscles to meet his thrusts and return them in kind. He held her hips in his large hands, guided her, breathed into her, became part of her.
Every thought, every feeling, every sensation became a twisting sphere of fire that quite suddenly fractured, consumed her whole, reshaped her and left her his.
His. For better or worse. From now until death. She listened for hypocrisy, and for the first time heard none.
Afterward they lay entwined in silence, until Grayson adjusted his arms around her. He cupped his hand round the back of her head as if she were a child or a fragile thing of great worth, and gently pressed her cheek to the hollow of his shoulder. Feeling his lips traveling through her hair, hearing the rumbling sigh deep in his chest, she knew contentment such as she’d never dreamed.
‘‘Nora . . .’’ The solemn timbre of his murmur stole a portion of her joy. ‘‘Nora, forgive me. I am so—’’
She whisked her hand to his mouth. ‘‘If you say you’re sorry, I shall leave this instant and never come back.’’
She didn’t mean it. She simply could not bear either of them regretting what they’d done.
He kissed her palm before grasping it and holding it against his chest. ‘‘I should have known. I should have believed you.’’
‘‘Yes, decidedly so. It was rather foolish of you, wasn’t it, to listen to rumors when the truth was right before you.’’ His body tightened beneath her. She turned her face to his chest and kissed a taut pectoral muscle. ‘‘But I didn’t believe in you either.’’
‘‘And now?’’
‘‘I do.’’
Again that somber sound, billowing from a cavernous place inside him—a gathering of breath, a desultory rumble.
‘‘Do stop that. You’re being like Mama.’’
He stiffened. ‘‘Just how the devil am I—’’
‘‘By being melodramatic. That’s Mama’s field of expertise.’’ She hugged him, grinning, liking the way his chest hairs tickled her cheek. ‘‘I thought it was all rather nice. Not nearly as bad as I’d feared.’’
‘‘I believe I’ve just been deeply insulted.’’
‘‘What I mean is, I didn’t think you liked me at all, so I was afraid that . . . what we’ve done . . . might not turn out to be particularly pleasurable. For either of us.’’
He rolled with her until they lay side by side, then propped his chin on his hand and gazed down at her. His other hand smoothed up and down her arm, from wrist to shoulder and back. ‘‘What made you think I didn’t like you?’’
‘‘Oh, everything you’ve said and done since we met.’’
He sighed, nodding. For a moment his hand stopped traveling her arm, then took up its journey again. ‘‘I acted the buffoon precisely because I was growing to like you. . . . But didn’t wish to.’’
‘‘Ah. You mean you were afraid to.’’
He didn’t answer. She could all but hear the ruminations of his brain as he worked that one over. She supposed he didn’t much like the notion. Yawning, she hid a smile behind her hand.
‘‘Let’s go to sleep,’’ he finally said, sounding just the faintest bit tetchy. And that made her smile too.
He awoke to the silver prod of moonlight spearing through the western windows.
Thank heavens he hadn’t gotten any of that hypocritical claptrap out of his mouth. Recent memories, warm and softly blurred from sleep, flowed through his body.
He reached for her . . . and found her gone. The shock of the empty bed beside him awakened him fully. He sat up. The mattress still held the imprint of her body. The bedclothes were rumpled but no longer warm. They’d been turned down and shoved aside.
Even as he scanned the room, hoping to find her, his heart rattled a panicked tune. A hundred thoughts, mostly recriminating, ran through his brain. What had he said wrong, done wrong? Had the euphoria with which he’d drifted to sleep been an illusion? Had Nora, appalled and resentful, waited stiffly beside him for her chance to flee?
He was on his feet, searching for his trousers. Her nightgown was nowhere in sight. He discovered his shirt half kicked beneath the bed. He dragged it over his head and loped to the door.
In the upper gallery he groaned a huge sigh of relief. Nora, emerging from shadow, came into view at the top of the staircase. Balancing a cup and saucer in one hand and holding her nightgown free of her feet with the other, she started toward him. His relief, vast and palpable, drummed through him.
He held out his arms to her. ‘‘You shouldn’t traipse through the house in the dark. Better yet, you should have woken me. I’d have gone with you.’’
‘‘I didn’t wish to wake you.’’ With her satin robe billowing softly behind her, she floated into his embrace, careful not to jostle her teacup. ‘‘And anyway, one of the servants made me tea and walked me to the foot of the stairs. Didn’t you hear her bid me good night?’’
‘‘No.’’ He glanced down the staircase but saw no candle glow receding from the hall below. ‘‘Who was awake at this hour?’’
‘‘Funny, she never spoke her name, and I didn’t think to ask.’’ She stepped away, carefully balancing her cup and saucer as she made her way back into the bedroom.
Lightly he stepped over the threshold behind her, gripped with an unsettling sensation as he watched her circle the bed and set her tea on the bedside table. He came to a halt, disoriented and swathed in gooseflesh. In the silver cast of moonlight, she appeared ghostlike, a shimmering apparition drifting through the room.
His breath turned icy in his lungs. Then shook his head and dismissed the very thought of ghosts. Or at least refused to pay it heed. He crossed the room and slid into bed beside her. This was his wife, his lovely, passionate yet virtuous wife. Flesh and blood. She was his future.
The past was dead.
Or so he fervently wished to believe.
It was then the whisper arose inside him. You don’t deserve her. You deserve the Honora from rumor, not this ingenuous, unsullied young Nora.
The undeniable truth squeezed his throat. Reaching for her with both arms, he gathered her to his side and kissed her brow, her hair. She let out a murmur. Her breath tickled his chin and she smiled at him as she draped an arm around his waist. ‘‘She was quite beautiful. Should I be jealous?’’
Baffled, he blinked. ‘‘Of whom?’’
‘‘Your servant, of course. The woman I met in the kitchen.’’
A wary alertness seized him. ‘‘Who was this person? Describe her.’’
‘‘She’s tall and blond. And quite charming. She had the loveliest accent. Irish, I believe. I’m not positive of that, but it was neither London nor Kentish. Quite musical.’’ She braced her forearms on his chest and lifted herself to gaze down at him. ‘‘She’s obviously someone long in your employ. She seemed to know rather much about you.’’
A chill swept his shoulders. ‘‘Such as?’’
‘‘She gave me advice . . . on how to handle you.’’ Her brows knitted at the memory. Then she grinned, obviously remembering her mother’s slip of the tongue and the conversation that followed afterward.
‘‘What exactly did she say?’’ He couldn’t help asking, though the better part of him didn’t wish to know.
‘‘She told me you needed looking after.’’
‘‘Indeed? Did she elaborate?’’
‘‘No, nothing specific. But . . .’’
‘‘But what?’’
‘‘Now I think of it, she seemed familiar. I can’t place where I’ve met her before. . . .’’
Her uncertainty echoed through him. His mind leapt to the unexplainable occurrences since his brother’s death: that day on the cliffs, the disembodied whispers, the appearance of his pocket watch in the study, the sensation that Charlotte had been in that room with him. He felt a sudden urge to rush below stairs and find this woman, just to reassure himself she was flesh and blood.
Nora’s arms went around him. She leaned her cheek against his shoulder, and suddenly it seemed easy to dismiss all of it as no more than the fatigue and imaginings of a man under too great a strain.
He seized upon an explanation. ‘‘Franny.’’
‘‘I beg your pardon?’’
‘‘The cook’s assistant. She has blond hair and sometimes works late. And the accent you heard—Franny hails from Cornwall.’’
She gave a nod, an agreement shadowed by a faint crease above her nose. ‘‘Yes, it was probably her, then.’’
What other conclusion could there be? The house was locked secure each night. No one could have stolen in, and even if someone had, what sort of intruder made tea for the occupants before robbing them?
He thought of asking Franny herself, but how would it look for the master of the house to inquire of a servant about his wife’s nocturnal wanderings, especially in light of the rumors that already existed? Before long half the servants in London would be gossiping. And Nora had endured gossip enough for a lifetime.
‘‘Next time you raid the kitchen at midnight, sweet-heart, wake me and bring me with you.’’ He tightened his arms around her, and vowed to keep her safe.
‘‘What the devil is all this? I haven’t placed any orders recently. Certainly none to warrant this tower of crates.’’
‘‘From Thorngoode Continental, sir.’’
At the top of the stairs, Nora heard the name of her father’s shipping company, followed by Grayson’s grumbled reply.
Oh, not now, she thought with a sinking stomach. Please, don’t let some difficulty or misunderstanding arise between Grayson and her parents. Not today.
She’d awakened in his arms earlier. He had already been awake, not wishing to disturb her, he’d said, but waiting for her. Then he’d kissed her and covered her with his body, sinking deeply into her and filling her with his warmth. Unlike last night, this had been leisurely, tinged with an enticing languor. But no less consuming. No less glorious.
Could something beyond money and reputation be brewing in this forced marriage of theirs?
Below, the unfamiliar voice said, ‘‘Shall I haul it all away then, sir?’’
‘‘No. No, I’ll sign for it.’’
She hurried down, intending to ward off trouble if she could. She saw Grayson handing the deliveryman a bill of lading and a coin. He looked tired, his features drawn and his eyes framed by shadows.
They’d gotten precious little sleep last night, after all.
He cocked his head at her as she reached the bottom step. ‘‘And what might you know of all this?’’
All this signified a good dozen crates of various sizes, each stamped with her father’s emblem and company initials. ‘‘I’m sure I haven’t the foggiest. Let’s open one.’’
‘‘No need. I can tell you what’s inside.’’ Her father strolled into the hall from the drawing room. ‘‘Art supplies and paintings, my girl. Yours.’’
Her hand flew to the base of her throat. ‘‘My paintings!’’
‘‘Yes, and brushes and c
anvas, all your powders and those foul-smelling jars of oil.’’
‘‘Oh, Papa.’’ She ran to him and threw her arms around his neck. He responded with gentle pats at her back, his nose poking her hair as he kissed her. ‘‘Thank you, Papa. You’re such a darling. But . . .’’
She released him, her eyes narrowing. ‘‘I thought Mama had it all tossed in the trash bin.’’
‘‘I did.’’ Her mother walked out from the drawing room. Standing beside her husband, she slipped her hand around the crook of his elbow. Her mouth tilted in disapproval, but she said nothing more.
‘‘I had it all collected back out and stored at the wharf.’’ Papa pursed his lips, stole a glance at his wife and breathed a long-suffering sigh. ‘‘Didn’t see the point of your having to buy all new. And the paintings . . . could never replace those.’’ He made a sweep of his hand, encompassing the boxes crowding the hall. ‘‘Talent the likes of yours must not go wasted. No, indeed.’’
Mama gave a snort.
Nora blinked away tears. Her paintings and supplies . . . it was all too good to be true. Everything beginning with the moment Grayson took her in his arms and kissed her last night had been too perfect to be true.
She turned to him, standing patiently by, if looking a little bemused. He had told her more than once she might continue painting if she wished. Would seeing all this clutter in his home change his mind?
‘‘Where shall we put it?’’ she asked.
He gave a shrug. ‘‘That’s for you to decide. I suppose you’ll have to traipse through the house and decide which room lends the best light.’’
As they all filed into the morning room for breakfast, a thread of unease wound through her happiness. Traipse . . . Last night Grayson had warned her against traipsing about the house alone in the dark. But she hadn’t been alone, had she?
The blonde—Nora had met her before. She remembered now. The woman in the kitchen last night had been the same as in her dream the night before her wedding. The one who had reassured her about marrying Grayson.
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