The Wedding Wager

by Hale Deborah

  “That’s right, Elsie.” Leonora waved the paper in the air to dry the ink. “I need your assistance in a very delicate matter. I know I can rely on your discretion and good sense.”

  “Thank you, miss. You know I’d do anything in my power to oblige you.”

  As she folded the note and sealed it with wax, Leonora tried to steel her scruples against the trust and respect in Elsie’s eyes. This could well be the last time she’d see them.

  “Early tomorrow morning, I want you to deliver this note to Camden Place and make certain Miss Hill and her stepmother receive it.”

  “Very good, miss.” With more than a little curiosity, Elsie glanced at the paper Leonora handed her. “Anything else?”

  Leonora nodded. “Once you’ve delivered the note, you must hurry back here and wait for them to call. Then you must show them up to my private sitting room.”

  Elsie’s fine tawny brows arched. “But, Miss Freemantle, you haven’t got a private sitting room.”

  “Indeed I do, Elsie. Third door on the left at the top of the stairs.”

  “But that’s—”

  “My private sitting room.”

  Elsie looked down at the note, then back up at her mistress. “I hope you know what you’re doing, miss.”

  Though she continued to stare at Elsie steadily, Leonora did not reply until after the girl had bobbed a curtsy and left Sir Hugo’s library. “I hope so, too, Elsie.” She breathed in the aroma of books—perhaps for the last time. “I hope so, too.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Where was he and what was he doing?

  Less than half-awake, Morse rolled over and pulled the bedclothes around his neck. He’d had a late night, and something told him he needed to sleep longer. Dickon had been ordered to not rouse him until noon at the earliest.

  Something else roused Morse from sleep. A warmth in his bed where none should be. The faint whisper of breath drawn in and out, at odds with the rhythm of his own. A bouquet of lavender.

  Or perhaps he was dreaming. This would not have been the first time he’d dreamed of having Leonora in his bed. His body stirred in anticipation as he reached out for her.

  His hand found flesh, sheathed in some fine, soft cloth. Almost as exciting to the touch as bare skin. His fingertips began a reconnaissance of this inviting landscape. The smooth plateaus. The gentle swells. The provocative clefts.

  Lost in the pleasure of their quest, they called for reinforcement from his lips. Morse obliged, diving to a fragrant locale and laying claim. Part of it rose to acknowledge him. Mute, but imperious in its demand for tribute. A levy Morse was only too eager to render.

  Growing impatient with the gossamer barricade between his envoys and their conquest, he mounted an assault and sacked it. Poised for plunder, Morse hesitated. The sound of cloth tearing, a woman’s gasp—this dream had become far too vivid!

  He wrenched his eyes half-open.

  “Leonora!” The word erupted from him in a hoarse discharge.

  No question it was she. Her dark hair unbound and splayed upon his pillow. Fingers of morning sunlight coaxed glints of copper from her sable tresses. Skin like blushing apple blossoms. Eyes like a spring morning swathed in mist. And her nightgown ripped from throat to belly, gaping open around her bare breasts.

  How he wanted to convince himself she wasn’t real—so he could plunge back in again.

  He mastered himself enough to croak, “How did you get here? What are you doing here?”

  She made no attempt to pull the jagged edges of her torn shift closed. Nor did she pull up the bedsheets to cover herself.

  Instead she looked into his eyes and spoke as if her presence in his bed was the most natural thing in the world. “You asked me why I was so set against marriage. I came here to tell you.”

  “C-couldn’t it wait? For a more…proper time and place?”

  She shook her head. “It is a private confidence, I have to share with you, Morse. And I could think of no more private place than here.”

  “Very well.” Morse flopped onto his back and lifted his arms behind his head.

  If he continued to stare at Leonora as she was, he would never be able to concentrate on what she had to say. Unless he pinned down his hands, he would not be able to curb his inclination to touch her again. “Say what you came to say.”

  “Very well.” She took a deep breath. “Do you recall my telling you once that I considered the best husband in the world to be no husband at all?”

  Morse grunted something vaguely affirmative. That night at Laurelwood, when he’d walked her home from the village and begged her for another chance at the wager. He’d told her how he hated to take orders because he’d been raised on a tenant farm—always at everyone’s beck and call.

  She’d told him something, too. Something he had trouble recalling now. About needing to give orders because she’d grown up with no regularity in her life. Why hadn’t he listened then? Why hadn’t he asked?

  “My second stepfather gambled away almost every penny of my mother’s small fortune. We were always moving residences or traveling down to the country on the spur of the moment in order to keep ahead of his creditors.”

  “Second stepfather? How many did you have?”

  “Only three. But they were three too many. The first I scarcely recall, and a good thing, perhaps. He used to bellow at mother and me over the least trifle. Then when mother would get upset and cry, he’d get angrier still and…”

  Morse’s arms wrestled themselves free and gathered her close to him. Was that what she’d hidden from, by pulling her bonnet over her eyes? He wished he could hurl himself into the past, to stand her protector when she’d been frightened. Now all he could do was offer her a haven against the heartache of those memories.

  She did not push him away, but accepted the crumb of comfort he extended. It seemed to hearten her, for she began to speak again. “Fortunately, he let his temper get the better of him with someone able to defend himself. My first stepfather was killed in a duel when I was seven years old.”

  “And the next one gambled?” Morse prompted.

  “He fell from the roof of our house one winter, trying to evade his creditors. He left mother and me with just enough money to attract her last husband.”

  Leonora shuddered in Morse’s arms. “I believe he may have been the most odious of the three. He used my mother’s money and connections in society to go hunt richer women to keep him. I believe she died of the humiliation and a broken heart.”

  “What made your mother marry such rascals?”

  Morse realized he was clutching Leonora too tightly. The boundary between protection and imprisonment was a thin one—too easily crossed. He eased his hold on her.

  She rested her head against his chest, as if speaking straight to his heart. “They were charming, Morse, when they chose to be. Handsome and glib. And my mother, heaven rest her, didn’t believe she could live without a man.”

  Now he understood. Perhaps more than she intended.

  “Your mother’s example convinced you of the opposite.”

  The tantalizing silk of her hair whispered against his chest as she nodded. “I became persuaded that without a man was the only way for a sensible woman to live.”

  A load of shame landed upon him. Almost as great as the one he’d carried after Lieutenant Peverill’s death. Leonora had lightened that—absolved him.

  Now, Morse could find no absolution. He had behaved no better than Leonora’s stepfathers. Callously employing his looks and his charm to deceive her for his own purposes. A wonder she’d given his marriage proposal even passing consideration.

  As if she’d read the contents of his heart, she murmured, “When you asked me to marry you, I wanted to say yes. I knew you could not be like those men who preyed upon my mother, only…”

  “Only, I had behaved like a cad once.”

  “Partly that. And partly…well…I couldn’t believe you’d want me, bluestocking spinster
Miss Freemantle, when you could have your pick of the belles of Bath.”

  So that was it.

  Her long-standing mistrust of men, heightened by memories of how he’d once exploited her feelings. All intensified by deep doubts about her worth as a woman.

  “You gave me a chance, though, didn’t you?” An opportunity to break her heart. “A chance to prove I didn’t want anything but you.”

  “I was wrong. I should never have tested you that way. No wonder you thought me no better than…”

  “Hush, now.”

  He lifted her close and kissed her. The sensation of her bosom pressed against his chest made the blood pound in Morse’s ears until he could scarcely hear himself think. After what she’d just confessed, he wanted Leonora more than ever.

  But this was no dream. This was life—with choices and consequences. He’d made too many bad choices in his life. Some out of ignorance. Some out of selfishness. And he’d resented the consequences. Now he was prepared to live with the consequences of a choice he had made out of knowledge and out of love.

  Breaking from that kiss was one of the most difficult things Morse had ever done in his life. “You’ve told me what I asked. Now you’d better go.”

  She clung to him, and he was not certain he possessed the strength to push her away. “I think you know that’s not the only reason I came here this morning.”

  “It isn’t?” He forced the words from his arid throat.

  “No. I came because you once offered to teach me how a man could bring a woman…pleasure.”

  He remembered. All too well.

  “I have too many memories of them inflicting pain, and I fear it has soured my opinion of your whole sex. I would be doing my future pupils a grave disservice if I did not seek a more…balanced view.”

  Laughter came bubbling out of Morse until his body shook with it and tears came to his eyes. At least, he would blame the tears on his laughter.

  Leonora sat up in bed, glaring at him. For the first time modesty overcame her and she clutched the bedclothes to her bosom. “Does the notion of making love to me strike you so very funny, Morse?”

  “No!” he gasped. Then more laughter took him. “No,” he repeated, breathless and spent as if from a seizure. He lifted his hand, resting his knuckles against her shoulder and sliding them down to her elbow. “I’ve heard lasses give many reasons for wanting a man to bed them. But never one like that.”

  “It was just an excuse, anyway,” she admitted, glancing up at him through her lashes.

  A good thing he was lying down. Such a look would have knocked him onto his backside if he’d been standing.

  “The real reason is—I want you.” There could be no mistaking it. The longing glistened in her eyes and glowed from her bare skin. “I want all of you, forever and ever, Morse. But since I can’t have that, I want whatever I can get. Part of you, for a little while. A memory I can take out now and again to warm myself by.”

  What would a gentleman do?

  “I shouldn’t…” He held out his arms to her.

  “Don’t you want to?”

  He pressed his face to the base of her throat, as if to devour her. Kiss by ravenous kiss, his lips climbed toward hers. When they reached their goal, he drank her in and invited her to do likewise. He thrust his hips out to meet hers, that she might feel his swollen desire and know how much he wanted her.

  But…

  “I’m engaged to be wed.” He moaned the words as if they’d been pulled from his mouth with hot pincers.

  “You aren’t wed yet.” She wriggled in his arms, freeing herself from the wreck of her nightgown. And driving him mad with desire.

  “Must…I beg you?” she whimpered between kisses. “I will.”

  Must he beg her to stop? He could not.

  Morse touched his forehead to hers as he tried to curb his runaway passion. “You needn’t beg. I’ll give you what you ask for. And I won’t pretend it isn’t a gift for me, too.”

  A gift of trust. She had trusted him enough to confide her secret hurts and the secret weaknesses they had bred. Now, in spite of her reasons for mistrusting men, she trusted him enough to initiate her in the secret rites of lovers.

  Bridling his own bone-deep hunger for her, Morse swore to himself that he would pour all the tenderness of a lifetime into this one bittersweet tryst with Leonora. Never again would she have cause to doubt that she was a beautiful, desirable woman.

  “You will go slowly, won’t you?”

  Now that she had provoked and convinced Morse to make love to her, Leonora grew anxious on another account. They must not finish before her invited guests caught an eyeful.

  In fact, they must not finish at all, if that meant Morse relieving her of her virginity. Should the events of the morning unfold as she had planned, Morse would no longer be in danger of wedding Miss Hill.

  But, in all likelihood, she would be bound to wed Algie Blenkinsop. Though not the man she would have chosen for herself, she had grown fond of Algie. His loyalty to her and Morse would be severely tested. At the very least, he deserved to know that any children she might bear were his own offspring.

  Could she hold to that honorable intent, though, when every inch of her flesh ached to surrender to Morse’s tender siege?

  With a lingering sweep, he ran his hand up her leg, over the curve of her hip, up the plane of her belly. Skimming the sensitive swell of her bosom, caressing her neck until it paused to cradle her chin.

  “No need to rush,” he murmured. “I am willing to take all the time you require.”

  “Good.” Reaching down, she ran an exploring hand over his body, just as he had done to her. “As this may be my only lesson, I wish to investigate every possible area of study. I am fortunate to have so skilled and patient a teacher.”

  She pulled his face to hers and commenced to make its intimate acquaintance with her lips. The boldly jutting chin and nose. The cheeks with their provocative bristle of un-shaven whiskers. The full, emphatic brows.

  “I’m the fortunate one,” he breathed, grazing her eyelids. “To have such an apt and eager pupil.”

  Her lips found his again. With a sigh, almost of surrender, he kissed her again. Long and wondrous, it was a kiss of discovery and homecoming. Of impudence and worship. A sweet eternity of hot, dark, liquid velvet.

  She had only thought her body yearned for him, before. Now, as Morse twined his fingers in her hair and withdrew his lips from hers, Leonora felt a pull in her blood like the tides surging high for the waxing moon.

  “Hands serve well to touch elsewhere.” His voice sounded husky and his breath came fast. “But I have always considered lips the proper instruments for the neck and throat.”

  A great sigh shuddered out of her as Morse applied his instruments with exquisite skill. She’d had no idea the flesh of her neck could be so sensitive in so many places.

  The spot behind her ear—she gasped as he swiped his fiery tongue over it. The area beneath her chin. As he nuzzled it, a deep purr vibrated in Morse’s own throat. The mix of sound and sensation gave Leonora gooseflesh.

  The hollow at the base of her throat, which he hovered above, touching it with nothing but his brooding breath until she could stand it no longer. Thrusting her fingers into his crisp, dark hair, she pressed his face close. He took her cue, parting his lips and assailing her throat with reckless abandon.

  A pulsing, gnawing ache spread from her neck down into her bosom…and lower. Leonora tried to grasp the lifeline of reasons why she should make this last as long as possible.

  Miss Hill. Algie. And the deep, clinging reluctance to see her time with Morse come to an end. The rope of logic slipped through her fingers, greased by the slippery moisture of need and hunger.

  Just when she feared she would cry out for immediate satisfaction, Morse wrenched himself clear of her and collapsed onto his back. Even in her extremity, she could see the sheen of sweat on his brow and the arch of bedclothes mounded over his hips. El
oquent testimony to his counter need.

  “First declension,” he muttered to himself, punctuated by gasped breaths. “Barba, casa, femina, lingua.”

  “What are you doing?” A shaft of doubt pierced her heart. “Did I do something wrong? Don’t you want me anymore?”

  “Not want you?” A gust of laughter shook him—shaking the bed in turn. “If ever I had cause to doubt your innocence, Leonora—that one question would restore my faith a hundredfold.”

  Her complete bafflement must have broadcast itself on her features, for Morse’s laughter subsided to an affectionate chuckle. “I want you too much, lass. No woman has ever taxed my control as you do. I was reciting that Latin you drummed into my head as a way to cool my ardor. It’s good to know all those tiresome lessons weren’t for naught.”

  “Oh!” The notion made her giggle like the flighty schoolgirl she had never been. “What a novel idea. Perhaps it will work for me as well. Second declension—amicus, caseus, ventus, oculous.”

  The feverish pitch of her desire did begin to ease. As long as she could keep from dwelling on Morse’s words. No woman has ever taxed my control as you do. Just recalling them ignited her whole body in a fierce blush.

  “Third declension—mater, nox, miles, mons.” Together they recited the Latin nouns, beginning to regain a measure of equilibrium. “Fourth declension—arcus, manus, tribus, portus.”

  Then Leonora heard a noise in the corridor beyond Morse’s door. No one entered, but they might soon. She wanted to make certain Miss Hill viewed a most incriminating spectacle.

  “Tangere,” she chanted. “To touch.”

  Reaching beneath the bedclothes, she put the word into action, running her hand over the firm length of his arousal, without a saving shred of modesty.

  It brought a growl from deep in his throat. And when Morse rolled toward her, his hazel eyes gleamed with emerald fire from their brown-velvet depths.

  “Tangere,” she squeaked.

  “Indeed I do, my wanton little schoolmistress.” One dark brow and the matching corner of his mouth hoisted in perfect concert. Together with the heat of his gaze, it lent him such an air of seductive devilment that Leonora’s throat tightened and her mouth went dry.