At Last Comes Love

by Mary Balogh

  But to her their wedding day had been wonderful. This, the consummation, was the culmination of the wedding day. He would not let it be a disappointment to her.

  It was the least he could do.

  He spread his knees, lifting her legs over them until she twined them about his. And he slid his hands beneath her buttocks, lifted her and held her firm, positioned himself at her entrance, and pressed firmly inside.

  He both watched and listened to her inhale slowly, her eyes fluttering closed until he was deeply embedded in her. He held still.

  Lord God, she was all wet heat and soft sheath and clenching muscles. And he—

  He clamped his teeth together for a few moments. He would not, by Jove, give in to pure instinct.

  She opened her eyes and looked up at him. He slid his hands from beneath her, moved them up her sides, pressed them beneath her breasts, and brushed his thumbs over her nipples.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Oh, no, it is too much, Duncan. It is too much.”

  “Is it?” He settled his hands on her hips and withdrew from her and pressed in again and withdrew and thrust, beginning a deep and steady rhythm, gritting his teeth against too early an ejaculation.

  He looked down to watch what he did. And he glanced up to see that she watched too, with heavy-lidded eyes and parted lips—until her eyes drifted closed and her hands, spread on the bed on either side of her, pressed into the mattress and her head tipped back against the pillow and her inner muscles clenched hard about him and she breathed in labored gasps.

  He took her hands in his and raised them above her head, straightening his legs and bringing his whole weight down on top of her as he did so. He quickened and deepened the rhythm, pumping hard into her until she cried out, shuddered convulsively against him, and fell limp and relaxed beneath him.

  Her hands were hot and slick with sweat. So was the rest of her body.

  The blood pulsed through him, hammering in his ears, thundering in his chest, making his erection an agony. He worked her swiftly until the climax came, and then he sighed against the side of her face and relaxed.

  He listened to his heartbeat return to normal, perhaps drifted off into a sort of sleep while it did so, and marveled at the feel of her beneath him—and at the realization that she was a woman of great passion.

  “Duncan,” she whispered, “are you awake?”

  “Mmm? No,” he said. “Am I heavy?”

  “Yes,” she said, “but you need not move yet. It was lovely. Thank you.”

  The prim lady again—lying naked and sweaty beneath him and all twined about him.

  He propped himself on one elbow and looked down at her.

  “It was,” he said, “and thank you, Maggie. But it might grow a little tedious if we feel we must thank each other every time.”

  She cupped the free side of his face with one hand.

  “I am not sorry,” she said. “That I married you, I mean. I am really not.”

  As if she had thought she might be.

  Because of Dew? It had been a little disconcerting to see the man at their wedding breakfast—to see her talking with him, to see him take her hand.

  He opened his mouth to say something, but changed his mind.

  “I am not sorry either,” he said. “However, if there is to be any more to this wedding night, Maggie, I am going to have to get some sleep, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh,” she said—and smiled.

  He disengaged from her body, rolled to one side of her, and lifted the bedcovers up over them. He looked across at her and realized that, just like that, she was asleep.

  He lay beside her, looking at her for a while until sleep overtook him too.

  Tomorrow they would be on their way to Woodbine and the rest of their lives. Within a few days Toby would join them. He was to live with them, just as if he were a normal, regular child—as he was, of course.

  He would, Duncan thought, forever be grateful to her for that.

  His heart ached with longing.

  Daylight was making a bright square of the window behind the curtains when Margaret woke up. She stretched tentatively, remembering instantly—how could she forget?—and was aware of her unfamiliar nakedness between the sheets.

  She felt wicked and wonderful—and amused by the former.

  She turned her head, smiling. The bed was empty beside her, the covers thrown back.

  She had slept through his getting up and leaving the room? She could scarcely believe it. She had always been a light sleeper and an early riser. Of course, it had been a busy night.

  They intended making an earlyish start this morning, though they had promised to wait until her family and his mother came to wave them on their way. And they were to call at Claverbrook House.

  It was his grandfather’s eightieth birthday.

  Oh, goodness, what if everyone was already downstairs waiting for her to wake up and dress and make herself look respectable? Whatever would they think of her? What sort of a wedding night would they imagine she had just spent?

  Would they guess the truth? But of course they would.

  Oh, dear, she would die of mortification.

  She was about to throw back the covers when the door opened.

  “If I were a proper lady’s maid,” Duncan said, stepping inside the room, carrying a tray, “I suppose I would have anticipated the exact moment of your waking and would have had your chocolate steaming beside your bed and your curtains drawn back so that you could see it when you opened your eyes. I am not a proper lady’s maid.”

  He set down the tray on the table beside her bed. It held two cups of chocolate and four sweet biscuits on a plate.

  “I would hire you anyway,” she said, drawing the covers up to her chin, “but Ellen would be out of employment and I would miss her. I daresay you cannot dress hair as well as she does, anyway.”

  He sat down on the side of the bed. He was dressed, but only partially—in pantaloons and a shirt that was open far enough to reveal the light dusting of hair on his chest. His hair was damp. He was freshly shaved. He was looking solemn and black-eyed—but he had joked with her. And she had joked back. And he had brought her chocolate and biscuits.

  They were such little things, but they warmed her heart on this, the first day of her marriage. The wedding day was over. So was the wedding night.

  “I feared I had slept half the morning away,” she said.

  “Which,” he said, “would have been a marvelous compliment to my skills. But instead, you are awake and it is still early.”

  Oh, he was still joking with her. It felt so very strange to have a man in this room, into which even Stephen had scarcely ever set foot.

  Her husband. It had a new reality today. Yesterday he had been her bridegroom and she had viewed him through all the euphoria of the nuptial celebrations.

  Today he was simply her husband.

  They had had relations three separate times during the night. The second time must have lasted an hour or more. She had had no idea that the female human body had so many places that could be aroused almost to madness. She had had no idea that the marriage act could consist of more than just preliminary kisses and the entry and the swift ride to release—to the man’s release, that was.

  She had had no idea that a woman could find release too—a total and mindless abandonment to … Well, to pleasure. There were actually no words to describe the experience.

  “A penny for them,” he said.

  “For my thoughts? Oh, nothing,” she said, but her cheeks were hot, and she knew she was blushing. Per haps within the next few days she could become very blasé about all this.

  “If you are going to lie there,” he said, “with the covers clutched to your chin, you are not going to be able to drink your chocolate, Maggie. That would be a shame. It smells delicious. You are shy this morning?”

  “No, of course not,” she said.

  But he looked at her and cocked one eyebrow, and she really had no choice n
ow but to prove it by lowering the covers to the tops of her breasts. But if she sat up …

  And then he did what he had done in the drawing room last night. He laughed deep in his eyes while his face remained perfectly serious.

  She lowered the covers to her waist and turned her head to look at the tray. The chocolate really did smell good.

  “This is most unfair,” she said. “You have had time to dress.”

  “You had an equal opportunity,” he said. “But you did not take it. Do you want me to wander into your dressing room in search of a dressing robe? They are probably all packed. Or shall I remove my shirt?”

  Oh, this was a very different Duncan this morning. This was—perhaps this was the intimacy of marriage. Perhaps things would always remain like this between them. Perhaps …

  “And your pantaloons too,” she said.

  He pulled his shirt off over his head and dropped it to the floor beside the bed. He stood up and moved his hands to the buttons at his waist.

  “Only if those covers get pushed the rest of the way down,” he said.

  She threw them off, and he dropped his pantaloons and then his drawers.

  Oh, goodness.

  Oh, goodness!

  “Are we supposed to drink our chocolate now?” she asked.

  He raised both eyebrows.

  “What if Stephen comes home?” she asked. “Or Nessie and Elliott? Or your mother?”

  “It is seven in the morning, Maggie,” he said. “And even if any of them should take it into their heads to come here at such an ungodly hour, I seriously doubt any of them are going to come bursting into your bedchamber.”

  She opened her arms to him.

  It was all breathtakingly swift and deep and fierce after that—and every bit as satisfying as any of the more lengthy sessions during the night.

  She was sore, she realized when they were finished. She had been sore even before they started, but that fact had not diminished her pleasure one little bit.

  “I will wager,” he said against her ear, “that that chocolate is still warm. I believe we were running a race that time. Shall we try it and see?”

  And so they sat side by side, naked in her bed, propped against the banked pillows, and ate sweet biscuits and drank chocolate that was still a little bit better than lukewarm.

  “I think, Maggie,” he said, “I am going to tell my mother this morning what I told you before our wedding. Will she keep the secret, do you think?”

  “If you ask it of her,” she said, “I am quite perfectly sure she will, Duncan. She loves you.”

  “And I am going to tell my grandfather,” he said. “I owed my loyalty to Laura while she lived, but I think I owe something to my family now. Would you not agree?”

  “I would agree,” she said. “Your grandfather loves you too, you know.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I believe he does. But that love will be put to the test again.”

  She took his free hand in hers and curled her fingers about it. Oh, this part of marriage felt very good indeed. This talking and confiding in each other, this asking for advice of each other.

  “I think love is always being put to the test,” she said. “It bends, but it never breaks. Not if it is real. Your grandfather and your mother really love you.”

  And perhaps, she thought, she would too.

  Perhaps soon.

  “I think,” she said, “I ought to go and get dressed.”

  “A pity” he said. “I like what you are wearing now.”

  She turned her head and laughed at him.

  19

  THEY were traveling in a new carriage, a wedding gift from the Marquess of Claverbrook. Nothing, it was true, could quite make English roads seem smooth and an unalloyed pleasure to travel, but nevertheless there was a marvelous feeling of luxury about being inside a well-sprung conveyance with soft, new upholstery and the smell of new leather.

  It was the afternoon of the second day. They would be arriving at Woodbine Park soon.

  Margaret was trying to decide whether women were more or less fortunate than men when they married. They moved to a different home and sometimes—as in this case—one they had never seen before and one that was far from where they had grown up. Everything was new and strange and different, and there was nothing they could do to prevent it. It was always the wife who moved to her husband’s home, never the other way around. It was as though she lost part of her identity. Even her name was forfeited on her marriage.

  On the other hand, there was something marvelously stimulating about starting a wholly new life. One could not literally become a different person, of course, but with a new name, a new home, a new part of the world in which to live, there was the opportunity to start again, to make life better in every imaginable way than it had been before. To make it happier.

  Not that she had been unhappy in her old life. But she had been … Well, she had not been quite happy either. There had been the sense that somehow life had passed her by. Last winter had been the worst. Thirty had been a dreary age to be. Now it seemed the very best age. She was no longer painfully young and vulnerable. But she was still young enough to—

  “I once thought the world began and ended here,” her husband said beside her. “I thought it was ruled by two people who loved me and would always keep me safe.”

  She turned her head to look at him. He was gazing out of the window on his side of the carriage.

  All children—if they were fortunate—felt that way, she thought. Even when they did not live among wealth or plenty.

  “Your childhood was a happy one?” she asked.

  “Entirely,” he said, turning to her, “though I was not always consciously aware of the fact, especially on those occasions when I had to avoid sitting down for a while because of a stinging bottom. Or on those other occasions when I was suffering from a scraped knee or a bruised elbow or, once, a broken arm. But children grow into boys who cannot wait to be men, and security and love mean little to them. They cannot wait to get out into the wide world, to seek adventure and an elusive happily-ever-after. They go off in search of what they already have, and in the process they lose it.”

  “Were you unhappy after you left home?” she asked him.

  “No,” he said. “I was too busy enjoying myself to be unhappy.”

  She smiled.

  “Do all children imagine,” he asked, “that when they grow up they will be free at last and able to do just whatever they wish?”

  “I suppose most boy children imagine it,” she said.

  “But not girls?” he asked. He answered his own question. “No, I suppose not. There is nothing much for them to dream of, is there?”

  “Of course there is,” she said, smiling. “There is the perfect marriage to dream of, and the perfect husband—handsome, rich, charming, attentive, gentle, tender, considerate, passionate … What have I missed? Oh, and doting. Girls dream of love and romance, I suppose, because there is no real point in dreaming of much else. But it can be a pleasant dream for any girl as she waits for her prince to come riding along.”

  She had never particularly thought about that most basic of all contrasts between men and women. Was it only the pointlessness of dreaming of freedom and adventure that made most women romantics, dreaming instead of home and a warm lover for a husband and children to bear and nurture? Or was it a nesting instinct built into the very fabric of the female being to ensure the preservation of the human race?

  “And for you that prince was Dew?” he asked.

  Her smile faded, and she looked down at her hands clasped loosely in her lap. Lush green countryside moved past the carriage windows.

  “That is the trouble with dreams,” she said, “as you discovered after you had left home. They do not always translate well into reality. But new dreams always come along to take their place. We are, on the whole, an endlessly hopeful species.”

  She certainly had new dreams, even if they were not wildly romantic. Their ma
rriage had not made a bad beginning, all things considered. And there was hope …

  “Poor Maggie,” he said, reaching across the space between them to set a hand over both hers. “This is hardly the perfect marriage of your dreams, is it?”

  “And this is not the perfect life of adventure and freedom of your dreams,” she said. “But you are on the way home again, where you were happy as a child, and I am married to a man I can respect and admire. We have not done badly. It is up to us to make something special of the future.”

  He was looking broodingly at her when she turned her head again.

  “Are we a hopeful species?” he asked her. “Or is it just a few of us—or of you rather? Have you always been an optimist?”

  “Always,” she said. “Well, almost always, anyway. Sometimes something happens that is so catastrophic it is impossible for a while—or even for a long time—to see beyond the darkness, even to believe that there is anything beyond it. But there always is. Even, perhaps, at the moment of death. Especially then, in fact.”

  He did not answer her, and she turned away to watch the scenery. They must be almost there now. He had said there were two hours still to go when they had stopped to change horses and eat luncheon, and surely they had been traveling for almost two hours since then.

  “When were you last home?” she asked him.

  “Six years ago,” he said. “Even when I planned to marry Caroline and bring her here, I was aware that it had been a whole year. And even then it seemed a lifetime. I longed to be back here.”

  “You must have known when you fled with Mrs. Turner,” she said, “that you might never come here again.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She tried to imagine that decision, that realization of all he would sacrifice if he took her away from an abusive marriage that had become intolerable to her. Had they found comfort together? To a certain degree they must have done if they had had a son together—though he had told her he had never loved Mrs. Turner. What had his life been like during those five years? They had moved about a great deal from place to place, he had also told her. But had he found a measure of contentment, even happiness? Had she? He had said she had fallen into a depression after Tobias’s birth. Had it been endless? Or just occasional?