Sarah reclined against the pillows, the coverlet at her ankles, clothed only in the shimmering fall of her hair. She’d fanned it loose, and like a pale ocean it flowed up over her breasts, down into the trough of her belly, breaking here and there over an elbow, a boulder of hipbone, before subsiding in a satin pool above her knees.
“I’m glad you’ve arrived,” she said, her low voice loud in the charged silence. “I was getting chilled.”
“L-let me warm you,” he rasped. In two swift strides, shedding his dressing gown as he went, he reached the bed.
She let him kiss her, reveling in the taste of him, but when he reached to pull back her hair, she caught his wrists. “I want to look at you,” she whispered. “Let me.”
With an inarticulate sound, he dropped his hands. His eyes focused on her, he let her guide him back against the pillows, adjust them behind him. Still half concealed, half revealed in her robe of tresses, she knelt beside him and simply looked.
His gaze followed hers as she studied his naked body with a thoroughness she’d never before been able to indulge. That hollow at his throat looked made for kisses, she noted, and the little dimpled places beneath his collarbones. She wondered how the flat, rigid nipples would taste, whether the fine dark hair of his chest would tickle against her cheek, and felt a wicked delight that soon, she would find out. She drank in the sinewy curve of arm, the bony bend of wrist, the concave plane of abdomen.
Then she feasted her eyes lower, on the crinkly ruffle of curls, the tensed thighs from which his erection projected, a marvelous construction of taut length and smooth skin. Though she moved nothing but her eyes, his shaft leapt under her gaze.
“S-Sarah,” he groaned. Perspiration had broken out on his forehead, his chest. He pushed to sit up.
She stopped him with her palm, gently insistent. “Stay, my lord. I’m not finished.”
With a murmur, he subsided, but propped himself on his elbows to watch as her glance traveled lower still, to the plump sacks at the junction of his saddle-muscled thighs, the sharp angles of his kneecaps, the round of calf and bump of ankle, the toes splayed with tension.
“Do I turn over?” he asked.
Her secret places throbbed with heat and damp at the knowledge of what she would do. “No,” she replied unsteadily. “I want to see you watching me.”
She moved a fraction, and he tensed. Hands clenched on the bedclothes, he stared at her, the pulse beating visibly at his throat. In the candlelight, his moist skin glowed.
But she didn’t touch him, not yet. She merely bent her face to his foot and exhaled over it, watching as her warm breath ruffled the tiny hairs of his toes. Securing her trailing hair behind her, she traveled slowly back up his body, blowing over his ankle, calf, knee, thigh.
Her whole body was pulsing, her nipples burning and tender, her passage drenched and ready, by the time she reached his rigid member. She had to stop, draw in a deep breath, before she could direct a long continuous flow of air over it.
Nicholas cried out, and her heart exulted with sensuous joy and lascivious power. Though his face contorted, his eyes squeezing tight and his shoulders writhing, she knew it was sweet torment and delicious agony that held him prisoned, prone before her.
“S-Sarah!” he begged, his voice strangled.
“Soon,” she promised.
He opened glittering eyes to watch her, sucking in his belly at the soft erotic wind of her passage, hissing through clenched teeth as it crossed his nipples. He arched his neck back at its touch on his throat, thrust his head forward again to take the breath of her on his jaw, opened his mouth to feel it on his tongue.
And then she kissed him.
With a growl he grabbed her, slick against his chest, his mouth devouring. She kissed him back just as hungrily, but when he tried to roll her over, move her under him, she pushed him away. After a moment, his grip loosened.
He glanced at her, his eyes wild, unfocused. “Sarah, please! Now!” But when she sat back, he let her go.
She wanted more. She wanted him beyond control, transported out of mind and senses, lost totally in her and her loving of him.
“I want to touch you,” she said. “Let me.”
“Touch,” he said hoarsely.
She bent and kissed him, not his mouth but the skin just beyond it. Holding his chin, she traced her lips along his brow, his jaw, nibbled at his earlobe, feeling him exhale hot against her face. She touched her tongue to the pulse at his throat, tasted the hard ridge of collarbone, the tickly curl of chest hair.
When her lips reached his nipples, he clenched her buttocks, kneaded them as she nipped her way across the taut skin of his belly.
She paused before his rigid shaft. “Sarah,” he gasped, a plea.
Gently, sheathing her teeth, she took him in her mouth. His skin was velvet under her tongue, his taste heat and salt. Then he was moving, thrusting against her, his breathing frantic gulping pants, like a runner nearly spent. She adjusted to his rhythm, pulling him deep, sliding him free. A moment later he convulsed, crying out her name.
Her own heart doing a rapid tattoo, she released him. Murmuring, he pulled her to his chest, wrapped his arms about her and held her close. She felt his stampeding heartbeat steady, then slow.
A ferocious exaltation flooded her. Hers. This time, he was fully, completely hers.
Finally, with a low moan, he sat up. He gazed at her a moment, as if he couldn’t quite believe what had just transpired, and drew one finger gently down her cheek. “Oh, Sarah, that was…” He shook his head. Then he slid his hand to her breast and grinned wolfishly. “My turn.”
She pulled his fingers away. “Not just yet.”
“More?” He gave her a theatrically exaggerated look of horror, but reclined readily back upon the pillows. “Lady, I am yours to command.” He laughed, sounding bemused. “I begin to believe I’m enchanted, and you’re a handmaiden sent straight from Aphrodite to drive me to madness.”
“Believe it,” she whispered.
She shook out her tangled hair and dried him with it, from his damp shoulders downward. By the time she reached his toes, his flaccid manhood had begun to stir. Wrapping a fistful of hair around her hand so the massed ends became a brush, she slowly dusted him with it, all along the length of his body, each plane and crevice, made him turn over so she could sweep his back and thighs and bottom.
She reveled in the muffled sounds she brought forth, in the way his buttocks puckered when she played the whisk of hair over them and down between his legs. When she turned him back over, he was fully ready.
But she again commanded him to stillness. Beginning at his toes, she slowly kissed her way up his lower body. She licked the balls of his feet, took his toes into her mouth and nibbled them. She tongued the soft soft skin below his ankle, the hollows beside his kneecaps, drawing from him deep, strangled groans.
When she reached his upper thighs, he was slick with sweat, his breathing once again a hoarse panting. He’d gone up on his elbows to watch her, expectant. But when her mouth moved from smooth muscled leg to suckle the pebbled sacks at the junction of his splayed thighs, he bent his head back and emitted a toneless, primitive wail that made her body surge with wetness and her heart exult.
Hers, hers, his body stretched and ready, and hers the power to bring him to such a pinnacle of anguished joy.
Grasping him, she took his sleek heated flesh deep in her mouth and carried him over the edge into ecstasy.
Afterward he lay limp. “Sarah,” he sighed, a mere whisper of sound, and half raised a hand to her. Then his wrist fell back, his eyes flickered closed and he dozed.
The candles had burned down to thumb-sized wedges, dimming the light to a misty glow. Her heart filled with a piercing, bittersweet sadness, she lay beside him, rested her head on her crossed arms and watched him sleep.
She had given him every pleasure her love and imagination could devise. Forever and always, come what might, she would treasure those mom
ents.
A short time later he awoke. He smiled at her and drew her atop him, molding her hips against him. “Now,” he whispered, “you cannot say me nay.”
Gladly she let him claim her. Following her lead, he stimulated, stroked and tasted every inch of her, bringing her over and over to the summit, drawing her back, and finally joining her in luxuriant fulfillment.
Near dawn, satiated, they at last pulled the damp sheets up around them. Nicholas propped her against the pillows and gazed down at her, awe, tenderness and something else she dared not name in his face.
She waited, but after a moment he merely shook his head, as if at some great mystery. “Sarah,” he said on a breath of wonder. “Sarah.”
Nonetheless, after he gathered her against him, she fell asleep certain that whatever happened tomorrow, however far he might send her on a journey through courts and divorce and shame, he, too, would never forget this night.
Smiling in bemusement, Nicholas sat at his desk the next morning reviewing with relish every delightful, astonishing detail of his night with Sarah.
Such a blend of well-bred restraint and unbridled passion, he marveled. Over breakfast, as he poured tea, she sat cool as an untouched virgin. When he made an oblique reference to their near-sleepless night, she blushed.
In memory he traced his fingers the length of her satiny skin from collarbone to ankle. He could hardly wait till this evening. He was aroused already.
A knock sounded and Sarah entered. He beamed at her. Tremulously she smiled back and crossed to the desk.
“I’ve some commissions to complete, dull household matters, else I’d ask your escort. I’m meeting the factor to inspect the quarter’s dry-goods supplies.”
“I’m to be abandoned for meal, flour and coffee?” He sighed in mock outrage. “Will you be back for tea?”
“I’m not certain. Probably not.”
Taking her hand, he drew her to him for a lingering kiss. “Can I not tempt you away from your duty?”
She gave him an odd smile. “So easily, I must depart forthwith.” She stepped back as if to leave, then halted.
Placing her fingers on his temples, she gently traced his face from cheekbone to chin, as if he were an object infinitely dear. Her face glowed with such tenderness, such soul-searing warmth, that his breathing suspended.
“Goodbye, Nicholas,” she whispered.
Nicholas sat motionless. He’d never seen such a look on her face before. A dancing spark of excitement licked up his veins. Could Sarah love him?
Hal seemed to think so. As they sat over port after dinner two nights ago, Hal had announced in his usual enigmatic fashion, “Dotes on you.”
“Dotes?” he said, at sea.
“Sarah,” Hal replied patiently. “All April-and-May with ’er. Eyes follow you around the room, watches you when you don’t know she’s lookin’.” He made a sweeping hand gesture, as if closing an argument. “Macaroons.”
“You mean,” Nicholas said, as he pieced it together, “you think Sarah loves me?”
“See it in her eyes. Dotes on you.”
Dare he believe it? He replayed every detail of that glowing look and came up with no words short of “love” to describe it. And last night—surely she must entertain the warmest of feelings to behave as she had.
Exhilaration flooded him. He’d never thought to want that emotion from her, but he found himself delighted.
Glancing down, he discovered Sarah’s glove on the desk, where she’d evidently forgotten it. He lifted the soft leather and inhaled.
The scent was chamois and lavender, its touch silky soft. Like Sarah.
He couldn’t remember what task had brought him to the library. Whatever it was, he was no longer interested in it. Or anything else. He should have gone with Sarah.
He was acting like a besotted bridegroom, he thought with a chuckle. Then much-belated illumination finally cracked him over the head like a cricket bat.
Could it be he loved Sarah as well?
The shocking idea froze him to his chair. After Lydia, he hadn’t thought it possible he could love another woman—the hurt and distrust went too deep. His feelings for Sarah had built imperceptibly, layer upon layer, from a base of admiration and friendship. But upon assessing the depth of his concern for her, the strength of his desire to be with and protect her, and his unslakable passion, no other word seemed adequate.
Still marveling, he grasped the idea cautiously, like a precious goblet too fragile for handling. Could Nicholas Stanhope, wary, world-weary Marquess of Englemere, truly have fallen in love with his own wife?
My, how the ton would laugh. He didn’t give a damn.
Already impatient for Sarah’s return, he wandered into the hall, paused at the cheval glass to check his cravat. His face sported an idiotic grin. How many hours until tea?
Sarah checked the watch in her reticule. Delivering the package to Sinjin’s batman had taken little time, but she’d had to purchase gloves before meeting the factor. That merchant would have thought it strikingly singular for the marchioness to arrive gloveless, and she hadn’t dared risk returning to Stanhope House—and encountering Nicholas.
She couldn’t have endured another goodbye. Would she ever see him again? Her heart seared with longing, she ordered the carriage to proceed to Portman Square.
Almost, her courage failed her. She made herself envision Angela Buxley’s face and the nameless faces of all the innocents who would suffer if she did not act.
The carriage slowed to a stop. Her heartbeat already speeding, her fingers clammy in her new gloves, she climbed down and dismissed the carriage. When Martin, the footman Nicholas had detailed to protect her, protested the master instructed she wasn’t to go anywhere without him, she replied at her most imperious that she was calling on a friend, and another friend would see her home.
Before mounting the stairs, she handed him a folded note. He should deliver it to Nicholas, but not until after tea, she instructed.
She must do this—and she would. She climbed the stairs and rapped firmly.
A thin man with a scarred face bowed her in without comment. Over the sudden thundering of her heart, Sarah heard the neigh of horses and the clatter of wheels as the Stanhope carriage drove away. Then the door closed behind her.
Leading her up a graceful cantilevered stairway to a reception room, the gaunt butler intoned in a colorless voice that he would inform his master of her arrival.
Knowing she was now enclosed with Sir James sent a shiver up her spine. This room, like its master, was on the surface perfectly appointed and polished. Were she to press it, she wondered a little hysterically, would she find rot under the satinwood inlay, mold beneath the brocade sofa?
Would Sinjin come? Portman Square No. l3, Four of the clock. Do not fail me. Sarah, she’d written. And inserted the note in his signet ring.
Now she must provoke Sir James. Could she control his violence once she unleashed it? Having no wish to become a martyr for the sake of conscience, she could only hope so. And pray that Sinjin would be on time.
“Well, well. So you did come.”
Sir James stood in the doorway, impeccable in a black coat over buff breeches and a cream figured waistcoat. “Some wine, Manners,” he called over his shoulder as he entered. “Surely, on such an auspicious occasion, you will take a glass with me, my dear.”
Sarah had chosen a wing chair near the fireplace. Sir James approached it, smiling faintly. “Shall we observe the amenities, or do you wish to proceed immediately to this proposal you hinted at?”
“Let us begin. It is simply, as I said last night, that I cannot permit you to marry Miss Buxley.”
“Having robbed me of a more fitting bride, you can hardly object if I seek matrimony with another. Have a few months of dull propriety with Englemere made you recognize your error? How sad ’tis too late.”
He sighed. “Regret cannot alter my need to marry. So pleasingly permanent an arrangement. Despite any—dis
agreements—a wife cannot go running off.”
“Or lay testimony against you?”
“Precisely. Such a discerning wit you have, little dove. ’Tis one of the things I’ve always admired.” He smiled that slow, mocking smile she detested and walked toward her. The hair on the back of her neck bristled.
He reached for her, then checked his hand as the door opened to admit the butler with wine and glasses on a tray.
“On the side table, if you please. That will be all, Manners. Please note, we don’t wish to be disturbed.”
Sir James poured wine and handed her a glass. She accepted it, willing her fingers not to tremble.
“A toast to you, my dear. Quite brave of you to come with nary a maid to lend you countenance. Why did you, I wonder? Has your toplofty husband washed his hands of you, now that you’ve lost the brat?”
Sarah gritted her teeth, fighting the pain any mention of her loss still caused her. She took a sip of wine.
Sir James sighed in mock sympathy. “I warned he wanted you only for breeding, did I not? Of course, I’ve taken some pains to accelerate his disgust—my ‘Farmer Bride.’”
She stared in shock. Findlay had schemed with Weston to discredit her? “You—”
“Ah, yes.” He waved a negligent hand. “A trifle, perhaps, but one misstep does build upon another. Though you quite cleverly avoided several of the traps Weston set. Did you not realize I would never passively accept Englemere’s theft of you?”
He touched a finger to her chin. She made herself pull back slowly, without flinching. Findlay laughed softly.
“We are well matched. Have I not always said so? Your dull but exacting husband cannot appreciate, as I do, your many qualities. Your wit and courage. That irrepressible urge to do good. ’Twas why you came today, was it not, little dove? To flutter your pretty wings and lead me away from Miss Buxley?
“And so,” he said triumphantly, his blue eyes chilling, “does my ultimate plan succeed. I had hoped choosing the very young, very innocent Miss Buxley would bring you back to me. Not, had that purpose failed, that she hasn’t merits of her own. Such a lovely bud about to unfurl.”
The Wedding Gamble Page 27