He thumbed her nipples, and her breath quickened. “Yes . . . that, too . . . is awfully convincing.” She worked loose the buttons of his waistcoat and shirt. “But let’s see what other reasons you might have to tempt me, shall we?”
After shoving his waistcoat off, she dragged off his shirt, then ran her hands over his bare chest with a clearly admiring smile.
“So what do you think?” he choked out as her questing fingers sent shivers of need down his spine. “Will this do for Reason Three?”
A minxish laugh bubbled out of her, as if she’d guessed his discomfort. “Not until I see the rest.”
“You first,” he bit out, reaching for her shirt.
She pushed his hands away. “I’m the one who requires reasons, remember?” she teased. “I have to see how you compare to those men in your naughty prints.”
“I won’t compare favorably if you give me no encouragement,” he warned. “So if you want me to . . . er . . . rise to the occasion . . ..”
“All right,” she said, a pretty blush staining her cheeks. “I’ll go first.” She unbuttoned her breeches and slid them off, but the hem of her long shirt fell to below her garters, veiling everything. “Although you already saw me naked.”
“In the dark. Not in the light of day.” When she fumbled with the buttons of her shirt, he growled, “Here, let me help.”
Seizing the lapels, he ripped the shirt in half, sending the buttons flying.
She drew a sharp breath. “Was that really necessary?”
“God, yes.” His blood pounding, he shoved the remnants of the shirt off her shoulders to bare her full breasts with their lovely brown nipples, her eloquent dimple of a navel that cried out for a ruby or an emerald, and the sweet, honey-brown curls that hid her pretty yoni.
Though not for long. “You’re a work of art, Eliza,” he rasped as he lowered his hand to part her curls.
“You’ve seen enough for now,” she murmured, stepping back from him. “It’s my turn to see what you look like, Colin.”
Muttering a curse, he shed his clothes and boots with record speed, then stood still for her critical perusal. It unnerved him to be examined like a horse at Tattersall’s, though his cock didn’t seem to mind—it leaped to attention at once. “Well?” he snapped. “Reason Three?”
Her gaze was fixed on his cock in alarm. “I’m not sure.”
“Not sure!”
“I-I was hoping your naughty pictures were an exaggeration. When I touched you, it didn’t feel quite so . . . But if you mean to thrust that huge thing inside me . . .”
A frustrated laugh boiled out of him. “It will be fine, trust me.” Clasping her about the waist, he drew her to him. “We’ll see how you feel about it later. For now we won’t count it as one of the ten.”
“All right,” she said, though she still looked hesitant. “But that means—”
“I know, more reasons. And here’s one.” He slid his hand down between her legs to find the dewy center of her pleasure. “You should stay with me because I know exactly how to excite you.”
He rubbed her until her lovely eyes turned molten and her cheeks flushed. Only then did he indulge his urge to suck and lick her tantalizing breasts.
Squirming beneath his hand and mouth, she gripped his head tightly to her. “Yes, that is . . . a compelling reason . . . my lord.”
He played with her, fingering her delicate flesh, teasing and taunting each breast in turn, reveling in her gasps of delight and her quivering body.
When he could endure no more, he straightened and backed her toward the bed. “I want you, Eliza,” he said as he tumbled her down atop the coverlet.
Eagerly he covered her with his body, loving the feel of her beneath him, the look of her with her glorious hair spread across the pillows and her eyes wide in wonder.
“I want to be inside you so badly I ache with the need.” Laying his cock in the cradle of her thighs, he slid it up and down her damp nether lips, moistening himself with her juices, preparing her and him. “My blood burns every time I think of having you, of making you mine. Is that not a compelling reason for marrying?”
Her face darkening, she looped her arms about his neck. “It would be more compelling if I didn’t know that any woman would suffice.”
“Not any woman.” He scattered kisses over her neck and throat. “You’re the first woman I’ve desired since my wife died.” When she started, he added, “It’s true. And believe me, there were women enough who wanted me—pretty women, eager women. None of them tempted me. Until you.” He brushed his mouth over hers. “Surely that’s a reason.”
Her breath beat hot and fast against his lips. “A very compelling reason indeed.”
He slowly entered her then, fighting for control, fighting the urge to drive hard and deep inside her heated flesh. The urge grew nearly overpowering the farther he pressed, for she was so incredibly tight . . . so velvety soft.
“You do know this will hurt,” he warned against her mouth.
She jerked back to stare at him. “You really didn’t believe my uncle’s claim about me, did you?”
“Of course not.” He inched farther inside her. “Not that it would have mattered if he had been telling the truth. It certainly gave him no right to steal from you or force you into marriage or strike you.”
She cast him a tremulous smile so warm, it made his blood race. “Then that’s Reasons Five and Six, Colin.”
“Two of them?” he queried as he met the barrier of her innocence.
“One for believing me over him, and one for not caring.”
Gazing into her soft eyes, he felt an alarming hitch in his chest. “And here’s Reason Seven. I’m taking your innocence, sweeting. Now you have to marry me.”
With a quick, hard thrust, he broke through. When she cried out and stiffened beneath him, he clutched her tightly to him, a fierce wave of possessiveness surging through him. She was his, now, his. It was strange how glad that made him.
He kissed her and gentled her, though his blood ran high just to be planted to the root inside her. At last she began to relax.
“All right?” he whispered.
“I-I think so.”
“Just wait, sweeting,” he promised as he began to move. “It gets better. You’ll see.”
“Better is good,” she mumbled. “Because if it gets worse, I might have to take back one of my reasons for marrying you.”
He laughed raggedly. “Can’t have that, can we?”
That was the end of speech for him, for he was too intent on making it better for her, pleasuring her and fondling her where they were joined. He kissed her heady mouth, too, and ravished the hollow of her throat before moving on to suck and nip her tender little earlobe as his cock swelled inside her, dragging him inexorably toward release.
“Better?” he asked hoarsely, not sure how much longer he could bear the exquisite torture of being inside her.
“Much better . . . oh Colin . . . I’ve never . . . it feels . . .”
She was shimmying beneath him now like a dancer, her hips arching up to meet his, her breasts crushed to his chest as she kissed his chin, his jaw, his throat.
“That’s it,” he growled against her neck, his release bearing down on him with brutal swiftness. “Let it come, sweeting. Let it take you.”
“Take me, yes . . . yes . . .”
Suddenly she was moaning and thrashing and digging her fingernails into his back, as her flesh convulsed about his cock like a hot fist. That sent him over the edge into oblivion, tearing a guttural cry from his throat.
And as he spilled his seed inside her, he felt that same peculiar hitch in his chest as before. God help him. Eliza had the power to catch hold of him somewhere down deep, and he mustn’t let that happen.
Not if he wanted peace.
Eliza had never felt so contented as she felt now, lying in Colin’s arms. She felt like a woman. His woman. As she gazed up at his face, the painful truth hit her: she loved him. Q
uite desperately.
Oh, how could that be? How could she fall in love in one short night?
She didn’t know, but she had. She loved his determination to right her wrongs, his sense of justice, even his gruff temper. Most of all she loved how desperately he seemed to desire her, even if that was all he felt.
But perhaps it wasn’t all. Surely a man who could make love to a woman with so much fervor felt something for her. Perhaps if she loved him enough, it would make up for all the things about her that he thought unsuitable in a wife. Perhaps she might even dare to stay.
“How do you feel?” he murmured, nuzzling her hair.
“Wonderful.”
“That sounds like Reason Eight to me, sweeting.”
She cast him a tender smile. “Very well, I’ll count it as Reason Eight.” When he looked rather smug, she couldn’t resist teasing him. “But only if you explain something to me.”
“And what is that?”
“What exactly is the congress of crow?”
He chuckled. “Precisely what the picture shows it to be: a woman pleasuring a man with her mouth while the man pleasures her with his.”
“But what does it have to do with crows?”
“Damned if I know.” Eyes gleaming, he laid his hand on her hip. “Though I’m sure we could puzzle it out eventually if we tried it a few times.”
“Yes, let’s try it,” she said, then blushed at her shamelessness.
He laughed. “I believe, sweeting, that makes Reason Nine: I can show you how to do all the things in those naughty pictures that you’re clearly dying to attempt.”
“I am not,” she said with a sniff, not wanting him to think her a brazen wanton. “And anyway, that still leaves you one reason short.”
“I’m sure I can come up with another on the way to Gretna Green.” He glanced to the window, where the afternoon sunlight filtered through the muslin curtains. “We should probably leave tonight—surely your uncle will have given up on riding the roads looking for you by then. We can go to Honiton in the cabriolet, then hire a coach to take us the rest of the way.”
“That gives us a few hours to sleep.” And for her to make her decision. Though she had half-made it already.
But before she leaped into marriage with him, she wanted to know some things. “Do you mean to stay in England forever?” She shifted to face him. “Or are you just here to assess your estate’s value so you can sell it?”
He cast her a sharp glance. “Why? Afraid I’ll be dragging you off to India?”
“I would love to go to India. It’s been a fascination of mine ever since Papa brought me back silks from his trips when I was a girl.”
A faint smile touched his lips. “I should have known gothic plays and erotic prints weren’t your only interests.” He grew pensive as he stroked her arm. “I may visit, but no, I don’t mean to live there ever again.”
“Don’t you miss it?”
“Sometimes. I miss the food and the music.” He drew the covers up over them with a rueful smile. “And I really miss the climate. But very little else.”
“Have you no family? I mean, on your mother’s side.”
“My mother died when I was young, but by then most of her family had already cut her off.” He cast her a bitter smile. “My countrymen are no more fond of mixed-blood marriages than yours. But her sister, my aunt, took me in and raised me. That’s why I stayed as long as I did—to look after her.”
A faraway look entered his eyes. “So when the duke invited me to return with him to England, I refused. My aunt was too sickly to travel, and I couldn’t leave her. But once she died . . .” He shrugged. “There was nothing left for me in India. I’d never really belonged there anyway—I’d always had one foot in the English camp. Then when Foxmoor gained me the title, I figured why not? At least England didn’t have warring tribes and sudden rebellions and bandits who—”
When he broke off with a shudder, she laid her hand on his stubbled cheek. “Your wife was killed by bandits, wasn’t she?”
He nodded tersely. “Marathas. Hired to fight for the leader of our province.” His eyes glowed with sudden anger. “They murdered her because she was the wife of the aide-de-camp to the English governor-general. Because of me.”
“You couldn’t have anticipated that,” she said softly. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I should have stopped her. When I realized she’d defied me and run off to her mother’s, I should have gone after her. I should have kept her safe.”
Eliza rather liked his protective streak, but it had clearly made life difficult for him. “She didn’t want to be safe. She wanted to be happy. And sometimes they don’t go together.”
“No,” he choked out. “I don’t think . . . I made her very happy.”
And that was the source of his guilt, wasn’t it? His fear that he’d driven his wife to be reckless. “Did you try to make her happy?”
He eyed her warily. “As best I could.”
“Because it sounds to me as if she was incapable of happiness. Some people are. I have a friend at school like that—nothing ever pleases her.” She cupped his cheek gently. “You can’t stop chronically unhappy people from doing foolish things in their endless quest for happiness.”
He swallowed convulsively. “I’ve never thought of it like that, but you’re right. Rashmi had a seemingly endless supply of misery.”
“She didn’t blame you for it, did she?”
A surprised look crossed his face. “No. At the end she blamed herself. She died begging me to forgive her foolishness.” As he released a ragged breath, tears rose in his eyes.
Eliza stroked his face, wishing she could take away his pain. “Then you mustn’t blame yourself, either. You did the best you could. That’s all a woman can ask of a man.”
His face crumpled, then he caught her hand to his lips, kissing it fervently before he bent his head to take her mouth in a long, loving kiss. As tears dampened his cheeks, she clutched him to her.
Perhaps they could make a marriage of it, after all. At least she could give him this. A bit of comfort and an end to the past. “You came to England to forget her, I suppose,” she whispered.
“To forget all of it,” he rasped. “To find . . . I don’t know—”
“Peace,” she said, remembering his words.
He drew back and wiped his eyes. “Peace. Yes.” He gave a self-deprecating laugh. “I know it sounds absurd to you, but—”
“It doesn’t sound absurd at all.” They lay there in a companionable silence for a while, before she ventured another question. “And you mean to find this peace in Brookmoor? Or will you sell Chaunceston Hall and go back to London to live?”
“London isn’t for me, sweeting.” He stroked her hair back from her face, clearly in control of his emotions again. “I didn’t like Calcutta any better than Rashmi did, but that’s where my position took me. I prefer the country—always did. I’m not much for balls and parties, with all those curious eyes on me, the whispering about my family, the incessant rude questions . . . . In the month I stayed at my cousin’s house, there was a constant swirl of gossip wherever I went. I wanted to escape it.”
“There will be a swirl of gossip about you here, too.”
“Yes, at first.” A cynical smile touched his lips. “But I figure that the title will go a long way toward smoothing my progress, as will my owning a large estate in the area. Here I have a better chance of being accepted, being part of a community, than I’d ever have in London.”
Not if they eloped. Not once her uncle spread his lies. Her heart sank. If Colin were right about Uncle Silas’s reason for marrying her off, then the man would be furious about losing his chance at her fortune. And desperation could make a man do mad things—like destroy the reputation of the foreigner who’d thwarted him.
“Is it so important to you to be part of the community of Brookmoor?” she whispered. “Surely anywhere you bought property could give you that.”
&
nbsp; “I don’t actually have a choice. The land is entailed. I can’t sell it.” He brushed her forehead with his lips. “Besides, this estate has been my family’s for generations. My grandfather may have tried to keep it from me, but according to the letter my cousin unearthed to prove my claim, my father wanted it to be mine. That means something to me. I want to carry on for him.”
He idly wound a lock of her hair about his finger. “I want to belong somewhere. I want my children to belong, and their children, too. My best chance for having that happen is here. Why? Don’t you want to live in Brookmoor?”
“Brookmoor is fine,” she managed, though her heart was breaking.
If they eloped, there would be lots of the gossip he hated. Being magistrate, her uncle could make it sound however he wanted. He could paint Colin as blackly as he pleased. She knew very well what English towns were like—insular and suspicious of strangers, especially foreign ones who stole away their females.
Peace would be difficult for some time to come.
She couldn’t do that to him; not after everything he’d endured with his wife and his grandfather’s treachery. He deserved his “peace,” his place to belong. By involving him, by letting him make love to her, she’d given him no choice, as surely as her uncle had given her no choice.
Mrs. Harris was right—leaping without looking had landed her in the briar bush. First, when she’d come here and dragged him unwillingly into her troubles. And second, when she’d shared his bed.
That wasn’t right. And there was only one way to make it right. To go back; to stop the leaping right where it had begun.
So when next he murmured her name, she pretended to be asleep. And she kept pretending while he settled himself against her and began to doze.
While she waited for him to fall asleep, she considered what she must do. As soon as she had her plan firm, she slipped from the bed. Thankfully, he was as exhausted as she, for he slept through her getting dressed, borrowing one of his shirts to replace her ripped one. He didn’t even rouse when she wrote letters for him to post for her, and a note meant for him.
Tempted to stay, aching to be his wife, she paused at the door to give him one last yearning glance. “I love you, Colin,” she whispered.
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