“I will be happy to carry you to bed, Pru, dear, but I have no intention of sleeping…yet,” he said, enjoying her startled reaction.
“You mean there is…more?” she asked, her beautiful hazel eyes wide as they gazed up at him.
He smiled. “Ah, yes. Much more. A whole night more. Pru, dearest, we have just begun.”
He helped her to stand then and turned her around to undo the tapes of her gown, lifting her arms from its confinement and pushing it down her hips to the floor. The black slip came next, and, though his body throbbed and hummed, Sebastian took his time. Layer by layer, just as he had always imagined, he removed her clothing to reveal the woman hiding beneath.
All that was practical and sturdy and scholarly about Prudence Lancaster slowly fell away, until he was left with a stranger: a tall, long-legged beauty with shining hair, standing before him in her shift. He turned her back to face him and, with a look, asked her permission to remove her final covering. Her gaze flicked hotly in answer. Sometimes there was no need for words between them, Sebastian thought as he lifted the hem.
When the last bit of material came off, Sebastian stood clutching it and stared. He could not breathe. For an instant, he could not draw in air, and then he sucked in a deep draft and another and another, while he tossed her garment aside in dazed wonder.
She was beautiful. Perfectly wrought. For him. The candlelight caressed her golden skin, her small, high breasts, peaked with dark nipples, her slender waist, and those incredibly long legs. There was nothing light or fluffy or dainty about her. She was strong, smooth and supple, and she glowed with an inner radiance, intelligence and passion that made him feel boldly, cleanly alive.
“Beautiful,” Sebastian whispered, lifting a finger to stroke her shoulder. Fine bones. Infinite facets. For all her innocence, Prudence did not shy from him, but stood as poised in the nude as she had clothed. But then, he knew her secrets, and the knowledge was heady. He alone had tapped the fires that burned beneath the woman she showed to the world.
Resting both hands on her lovely shoulders, he stepped toward her, drawing her to him until her breasts pressed against him. “Pru, dearest Pru,” he whispered before leaning down to kiss her.
Her skin was like silk, yet warm and responsive beneath his explorations. Her mouth was eager, vital and giving, and her tongue dueled with his without hesitation. When he felt her fingers sliding through the hair on his chest, he groaned. Taking her hand, Sebastian pressed it to the bulge in his breeches. Now! his body demanded, rubbing against her, but he satisfied himself only with her touch.
“What is it?” she whispered, her fingers moving over him with curiosity.
“It is for you, all for you, Prudence,” Sebastian murmured. “To pleasure you, inside you.” And, suddenly, he, who had reduced sex to something meaningless long ago, felt a certain reverence for the act. He, who had scoffed at marital bonds all his life, was abruptly struck by the imagery of the wedding ceremony. “With my body I…will worship you,” he said.
And he gathered her in his arms and laid her on the bed, her shining hair spread out upon his pillow, her body and all that she was waiting for him. His hands fumbled with the fall of his breeches, and then he had them open and pushed them down and off, kicking them aside.
He joined her on the cool sheets, moving over her, pressing her back into the softness, astonished by his own delight. Her mouth met his, lush and warm and full of greeting, and he felt as though he had never been dead inside, but always like this—awake, aware, and bursting with emotion. He kissed her eyelids, her cheeks and the curve of her chin, her throat, her silken shoulder, her breasts.
Her soft sighs were like music, and Sebastian drew them out by taking a nipple in his mouth. He suckled her, and she arched against him, burying her fingers in his hair. Her sounds danced across his taut nerves, but he was beyond desire. He felt so alive that every breath, every nuance of her body, was sharp and fresh.
He readied her with his hand, and when he slipped a finger inside her, she writhed and moaned, begging him for his body. He responded, fitting himself to her entrance and entering slowly. Just as if his own need were an otherworldly thing, Sebastian managed to slide in and out, over and over, until her maidenhead gave way gently before him. She opened her eyes wide then, surprised at the breach, but she shed no tears. He was the one who felt pressure behind his lids, because of her precious gift to him.
And then he could think of nothing but how he filled her. Deep. Forever. Sebastian let out a long breath and felt the heat of her all around him. He wanted to stay buried inside her always, but she was making small, urgent sounds, and his blood was pounding in his ears, urging him to take action. He withdrew and surged forward again, slowly, intent upon making their union last into eternity. Her heart beat next to him, and he had the ridiculous notion that their blood flowed together, that he lived and breathed Prudence Lancaster.
Then she wrapped her legs around him and clung, calling his name, and his control left him. He grasped her hips and lifted her. Faster. Higher. Until she cried out her pleasure, and his body spasmed in a release that took him somewhere he had never been before.
Prudence woke to find the candles guttered and the faint tendrils of dawn snaking through the shutters. The infamous tower room did not look so strange without eerie night shadows and cracks of thunder adding their effects. In fact, it looked rather welcoming, but for the lack of a fire in the hearth. Shivering, Prudence snuggled closer to Sebastian’s warm body.
Sebastian! The memory of all that they had done together came rushing back. It had been a night of revelations, amazing experiences, astonishing intimacies. Prudence smiled sleepily. Now that she knew such secrets, she would better understand her characters, and the lengths they would go to for those they loved…
The thought made her pause, and Prudence moved away from the body beside her. She wondered if she could find a chamber pot, and started to get up, only to blush ferociously when she realized that she was totally nude. Tugging at a blanket, she thought to take it with her, but Sebastian had it wrapped around him tightly, and she had no wish to rouse him from sleep.
After reviewing her options, Prudence simply slipped out from under the covers and hurried to the freestanding screen set out from one of the curving walls. As she had suspected, it harbored a chamber pot, and she used it with relief. Then she walked back to the bed, more slowly this time. Her steps took on a more confident air, and she was astonished at her own boldness. Despite the chill in the air, there was a certain freedom in being stark naked.
She realized, belatedly, that she ought to feel ruined and disgraced and doomed. If one of her heroines had been so compromised, the poor creature would probably have thrown herself from the high window onto the rocks below. After due consideration, Prudence decided she really did not feel like doing that.
What she felt like doing was crawling right back in beside Sebastian. She stood at the side of the bed, looking down at him, and knew a happiness like none she had ever imagined. He was utterly wonderful, she decided, forceful yet tender, mysterious yet so often open with her. And last night, he had shown her things beyond imagining, pleasures that brought bliss to the body and awe to the soul. The blankets had slipped lower, revealing his taut chest with its enticing covering of hair and delineation of muscle, and Prudence felt a shiver of awareness at the sight.
He had one arm flung over his forehead, and she realized, suddenly, that he was regarding her under lowered lids. His gray gaze held a question in them, as if he, too, wondered how she would behave this morning. But Prudence had already made her choice. Declining to despair over her lost innocence, she resolved, instead, to revel in her new-found knowledge. Smiling in greeting, she bent over to press her mouth to his.
Gothic heroines, she decided, were rather limited, and there were times when she did not care to be one.
“Please be careful,” Prudence said, leaning over the thick stone of the window ledge. Sebastian, having
made a rather precarious rope out of the bed linens, was now climbing down the side of the tower. “Perhaps this is how your ancestress escaped,” she mused aloud.
Sebastian did not answer, but moved slowly, hand over hand, sheer strength keeping him clinging to the tautly stretched material. It was a scene right out of a gothic novel, but Prudence found, yet again, that she no longer derived pleasure from the discovery. As romantic as his pose might seem, Sebastian was in very real danger of falling to the rocks below.
Every time he swung lower, Prudence felt her heart leap into her throat. Now that she could see the unforgiving sea crashing against the cliff, she wished there was some other way to free themselves from the tower room. But Sebastian had been insistent, and she could only watch helplessly as the linens strained at their knots and the man she cared about more than anything risked his life.
Her feelings for him were more powerful than anything her imagination might have wrought, and Prudence was forced to admit that they were, no doubt, among the very strongest of human emotions. She was obviously in love with Sebastian, earl of Ravenscar, whom others called the Devil Earl. And it had nothing to do with his abbey or his name or his title or his dark, compelling attractiveness. Well, maybe something to do with that…But she had the suspicion that, whether they were ensconced in a ghostly sepulcher or in the most mundane of environments, she would still feel as deeply for him as she did right now.
He was approaching the bottom of the tower, and Prudence caught her breath when he let go of the makeshift rope and waved up at her. She returned the gesture with a none-too-steady hand as he set off, climbing over the sharp, slippery rocks sprayed with sea foam before he disappeared around the curve of the tower wall.
Prudence released the pent-up air in a harsh exhalation, but she kept watch at the window, hoping that she would not see Sebastian appear again, only to be swept out by the waves that crashed so mercilessly against the cliff. When the minutes ticked by uneventfully, she told herself that he had reached land and gained entrance to the abbey.
What Mrs. Worth would think of the earl and his guest having spent the night together, Prudence hesitated to imagine, but she told herself to expect scorn for now—and for as long as she deigned to stay with Sebastian. Admittedly, no one knew of her arrival in Cornwall except the housekeeper and the coachmen, but all employees carried tales, and Prudence knew she could not remain at the abbey indefinitely. Sooner or later, her presence would become common knowledge. And then?
She would be ostracized as a fallen woman, a soiled dove, a foolish spinster who had moved beyond the pale. Prudence realized that such a sentence would not upset her as much as it would Phoebe. Unless her sister found a husband in London, she would be returning to Cornwall, and it would be unfair to expect her to share Prudence’s isolation.
What a coil! Prudence’s practical side told her that she should leave Wolfinger as soon as possible, but the rest of her simply could not be brought into agreement. In truth, she did not think herself capable of parting from Sebastian unless he sent her away. She felt too alive, too wonderfully vital, to go back to her previous existence.
The cottage that had once been her world seemed too confining, the imagination to which she had retreated a paltry shadow of the passion she had come to embrace. Although she knew it was cowardly, Prudence decided to throw her future into Sebastian’s hands for the time being. Let things fall as they might; she would worry about the consequences later.
Prudence was still staring out the window, lost in her bleak musings, when the door finally opened. She felt like running to Sebastian and throwing her arms around him in celebration of his safety, but she caught herself in time. Instead of the dark man of her dreams, Mrs. Worth stepped in—alone. Steeling herself for the woman’s disapproval, Prudence faced the housekeeper, only to be greeted with the clucking concern of a mother hen.
“You poor girl! Locked away up here like the madwoman herself! Strange doings,” she muttered, shaking her head. “But the abbey is a strange place, as I’ve said often enough. Come on now, and I will draw you a bath, poor thing.”
Prudence hesitated, glancing down at the knotted linens that trailed out the window, but Mrs. Worth waved a hand dismissively. “The earl said as he would tend to that,” she assured Prudence. Remembering the dark stains that marked her lost innocence, Prudence was relieved to know that no one else would set eyes upon them, and she was touched by Sebastian’s thoughtfulness.
Turning to follow the housekeeper, Prudence knew she ought to be grateful for Mrs. Worth’s kindness, and yet she felt an odd yearning for her lover. As she made her way carefully down the narrow stairs, Prudence told herself that he was probably getting into some dry clothes. Then again, he had been as trapped as she by the situation in which they found themselves last night, and now that they were both free, the worldly earl might have no more interest in her.
Although distressing in the extreme, it was a possibility, Prudence admitted, as was the notion that she might be bundled off and on her way to her own cottage within the hour. An ache that was startling in its intensity closed up her throat as she realized that all her worries for the future might be for naught.
“Come along,” Mrs. Worth called. “The bathing chamber is this way.” Swallowing hard, Prudence refused to succumb to such gloomy musings, and hurried to follow the housekeeper.
A bath. Prudence smiled at the imagery the word conjured up for her: a soak in the small brass tub beside the cottage’s kitchen hearth or a quick wash from the pitcher in her bedroom. Of course, she had heard of rooms devoted entirely to bathing, but she had never seen one—until today.
Wolfinger’s was as aweinspiring as the rest of the abbey. Its marble floor stretched out before her to meet walls lined with tiles depicting calming pastoral scenes, while above her a domed ceiling was cleverly wrought to resemble a cloudfilled sky. Below, she was ensconced in a sunken pool that little resembled the cramped interior of her tiny vessel at home.
Feeling delightfully wanton, Prudence stretched out one long leg and wiggled her toes above the surface. Why, there was enough water here for half a dozen people, she realized, and because of an intricate system of pipes, no servant had been forced to carry a drop of it.
The thought took away any guilt that might have interfered with her pleasure, and Prudence dipped backward to wet her hair. Bathing had always been a fairly practical procedure for her, but now it seemed positively…sensual. Perhaps her new attitude was a product of her luxurious surroundings, or maybe she was simply more aware of herself, she thought, blushing. Although she had rarely noticed her body before, now it seemed to have taken on a life of its own, demanding her attention with heightened senses.
And when she surrendered to its demands, Prudence found herself enjoying the delightful lap of warm water against her skin, the heady smell of some foreign fragrance that Mrs. Worth had sprinkled about, and the silken glide of her limbs against one another. It was as if she had entered a whole new world.
The sound of a door opening interrupted her exotic interlude, and Prudence lifted her head, suddenly alert. She stilled, listening for Mrs. Worth’s bustling noises, but nothing met her èars except silence. Whatever had disturbed her, it was not the housekeeper.
Despite the open shutters, the room remained dim, and Prudence searched the shadows for a hint of the shades that were said to haunt the abbey. Although she had longed to see the Devil Earl or his wife, she would not have chosen this time and place, when she was naked and vulnerable, for such a meeting. Eyeing the arched entry, Prudence discerned a dark form there, and her breath caught. It was no specter, she realized, but when she recognized exactly what—and who—it was, her pulse thrummed wildly.
“May I come in?” Sebastian’s deep voice sent shivers up her spine.
“Of course,” Prudence answered. She tried to speak evenly, just as though the presence of a man dunng her toilet was a normal occurrence, but her mounting excitement made her falter. Her ba
th took on a whole new aspect as she considered being observed not by a ghost, but by the current Devil Earl himself. “After all that has gone between us, I hardly think you need ask,” Prudence said.
“I shall always ask, Pru,” Sebastian replied in a wry tone. “Perhaps because I keep expecting you to deny me.” He stepped forward then, and Prudence saw that he was totally naked.
Heat climbed her cheeks and seeped into her very being at the sight of him, striding forward with arrogant grace, his muscles moving sinuously, his sex rampant. Apparently he was not yet ready to say goodbye, and that knowledge filled her with relief and happiness. Anticipation danced along her skin from head to toe at his approach, and when he stopped at the edge of the sunken area to stare down at her, stretched before him, her body little hidden by its watery covering, she felt strangely exultant.
“I must say that you do not very much resemble the bookish spinster that I met at a cliffside cottage,” Sebastian said dryly.
“No, I do not, do I? Nor do I feel the same,” Prudence answered honestly. He took a step downward, following the stair into the depths of the tub, and her blood pounded at the thought of him joining her in the water. “I feel as if I am a new person,” she admitted as she watched him with greedy pleasure. “Sebastian, it is quite remarkable, but since knowing you, I feel as if I have come alive!”
Her words made him pause, and his eyes glittered, piercing her own as fiercely as if he were probing her soul. “How very odd. For I share the same sentiment,” he whispered. His lips curved upward slightly in a rueful expression. “I thought myself a dead man, but you have reanimated me with your own life force, as surely as Mrs. Shelley’s infamous surgeon.”
“Oh, have you read Frankenstein?” Prudence asked. She sat up suddenly, ignoring the water that rolled up to splash her companion, all her attention focused upon the other author’s famous work. She did not even notice how her breasts bobbed above the surface until she felt Sebastian’s hot gaze upon them. She looked down then, coloring brightly, as he slid into the tub in front of her.
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