by Miranda Lee
‘Faith?’ He shook his head. ‘I’m not a very religious person, I’m afraid.’
‘What has that got to do with faith? Faith is simply believing. If you believe Rebecca will get better and you treat her as such, then she will believe she’s going to get better and she will!’
He searched her eyes, with a type of wonder in his. ‘Promise me you won’t go back on tonight,’ he suddenly urged in a low, husky voice. ‘Promise me now. Say it!’
‘I…I promise,’ she whispered shakily.
‘And not just for a short hour or two,’ he insisted. ‘All night.’
She shivered beneath the rather ruthless passion in his voice.
A nod was all she could manage this time.
William opened the passenger door at that precise moment, and Marina was relieved to turn away from James’s disturbing intensity. But she knew it was only a temporary reprieve. Tonight she would place herself totally in his hands.
She hoped he would be merciful.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MARINA woke with a start, as you do when you have fallen asleep not in your own bed. She half sat up, glanced around the dimly lit room, then sank back down on top of the bed with a sigh, her eyes sliding across to the form sleeping beside her.
Rebecca looked totally at peace in sleep, as most children did. She’d hardly moved since she’d drifted off while Marina read to her, having worn herself out with showing her visitor absolutely everything on the estate. The house, the pool, the tennis court, the horses, the lake and the gazebo, chattering non-stop all the time.
When his niece had begun to droop after lunch, James had put his foot down and insisted she have a nap. Marina had lain down next to her on the bed to read her Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree, and in no time Rebecca had travelled from Faraway Land to the Land of Nod.
James had settled in an armchair across the room while this was going on, listening happily. When Rebecca had dropped off and Marina had tried to stop reading he’d insisted she go on. He’d wanted to hear the end of the story—claimed he’d adored Enid Blyton as a boy and could not get enough.
Marina could not recall if she’d finished the story. At some stage she must have closed her eyes herself and nodded off. The book, she noted as she rolled over and peered down, was lying on the carpet. And James was…
Marina’s head jerked up and she stared through the gloom, surprised to find James still there, his head sunk sidewards, fast asleep. Goodness, she thought. What on earth was the time?
She struggled to see her watch, surprised again to make out that it was not as late as the faded light indicated. Only six. It was then she noticed the drawn curtains. Had James done that? Or Mildred? Maybe Talbot, the butler?
She would not have put it past either of those last two, who were the nicest people. Mildred was a real sweetie and Talbot wasn’t nearly as stuffy as Henry. There again, he was not of the old school. He was a very modern style of butler. In his late forties, fair, shortish but fit-looking, he was efficient, courteous and attentive without being obsequious or too pompous.
Although Marina had become perversely fond of Henry’s old-fashioned ways, he could do with lightening up a bit, she believed.
Dinner was not to be served until seven-thirty, so Marina decided not to wake anyone else just yet. She was loath to disturb the soundly sleeping Rebecca, and there was something far too intimate about waking James from sleep for Marina’s liking. With the evening at hand, she knew it was imperative for her to keep good control of her nerves—and the situation. She’d got herself into a right state last night and she didn’t want a repeat performance—certainly not until they were safely alone together.
Rebecca was an intuitive child, and for all her kindness Marina doubted Mildred had come down in the last shower. It seemed likely the housekeeper had turned a blind eye to many a liaison under this roof, if the previous Earl and his wife had been such a swinging jet-setting couple. The same went for Talbot. Butlers must surely notice things like that. But Marina didn’t want any blind eyes being turned towards herself and the new Earl. She wanted the whole household to be genuinely blind to their relationship.
Relationship? sneered that rotten voice in her head. What relationship? You’re having a one-night stand with him, Marina, that’s all. Don’t go giving yourself airs and graces, now. You are not the love of His Lordship’s life. You are a very convenient passing passion while Her Ladyship is making up her mind.
‘Oh, shut up!’ she muttered under her breath, and swung her bare feet over the side of the bed. Pressing her lips firmly together, she slid her feet into her black flatties and stood to walk over to the nearest window, gripping the heavy green drapes and pulling them apart just enough to look down at the rolling hill and the lake.
The water looked beautiful in the late afternoon light. Like liquid glass.
Marina was thinking how magnificent it would look under moonlight when James suddenly materialised behind her, his hands curling over her shoulders. When she went to whirl around, his grip tightened and he pulled her back against him.
‘Don’t,’ she croaked.
He turned her round and looked deep into her shadowed eyes. ‘Don’t what?’ he asked, his voice strained.
‘Don’t…do anything. Not here.’ And she nodded over to the sleeping child on the bed.
His expression was pained. ‘God, Marina, you frightened the life out of me there for a moment. I thought you were going to tell me tonight was off.’
‘And if I did?’ she whispered, in one last crisis of conscience.
‘Then I would have to set out to change your mind back again,’ he vowed fiercely. ‘By fair means or foul.’
‘You…you wouldn’t do that,’ she said shakily. ‘You have too much honour.’
‘This is beyond honour, Marina,’ he said, with a dark and bitter resolve. ‘Beyond anything I have ever known before. Believe me when I say if you don’t come to my room later tonight, then, by God, I will come to yours!’
The image of his battering on her bedroom door in the middle of the night was nearly as appalling as her sneaking along to his.
‘You won’t have to do that,’ she rasped. ‘I…I’ll come to your room. But only if you promise to do nothing to arouse anyone’s suspicions during the course of the evening. Don’t flirt with me, or…or look at me as you are doing at this moment.’
‘When will you come?’ he demanded to know.
‘When the house is quiet and everyone has retired for the night. I don’t want anyone to know, James. That’s very important to me.’
‘Fair enough. In that case, don’t knock. I’ll leave the door unlocked and the key on the inside. Simply slip in and turn the key. That should prevent any disaster such as Rebecca barging in in the middle of the night. Not that she’s likely to do that. As you can see, she sleeps like a log.’ And he nodded to the still unconscious child.
‘Yes, but she may have had the edge taken off tonight’s sleep with this nap.’
‘She still wouldn’t come to me if she woke. She’d ring for Mildred. Look, what say I suggest Mildred sleeps in the nanny’s room tonight? It’s right next to Rebecca’s. Just in case Rebecca wakes and wants something.’
‘Yes, yes, that would be good.’ Good? Marina thought, appalled. Good? Nothing about this was good. It was underhanded and tawdry and just simply awful! She wanted to cry, to scream at him. Beg him not to do this to her—turn her into something she was not.
‘Marina, don’t worry so,’ he chided, making everything so much worse with his own apparent ease. ‘It’s a very big house with very thick walls and doors. No one will know. I promise you. Now…’ He reached out and touched her cheek, his fingertips like licks of flame against her skin. ‘Do you know where my room is? We don’t want you stumbling around the corridors, getting lost in the dark.’
‘I won’t get lost,’ she said, jerking her face sharply so that his hand dropped away. ‘I know exactly where your room is. Rebecca
and Mildred gave me the grand tour of the house. Mildred was especially proud of the master of the house’s bedroom.’
It was hardly just a room. It was a suite, with a separate sitting room, dressing room and bathroom, all sumptuously furnished. But of course it had been the huge bed which had drawn her eyes earlier that day. A four-poster, which Mildred informed her proudly had once belonged to one of the kings of France.
It was truly magnificent, with an elaborate carved bed-head and a solid rosewood canopy. But what had sent Marina’s heart racing were the blue and gold brocade curtains sashed to each bedpost with gold tasselled cords, similar in style to those in her fantasy.
It was the most glorious bed Marina had ever seen. And the most seductive in her eyes. She’d had to work hard not to let her mind fill with new fantasies, all the more arousing because she knew this time she could make them come true, every single decadent one. She had thanked her lucky stars at the time that Rebecca had been showing her the house in Mildred’s company, and not James’s. If he’d been with them, she would surely have blushed furiously and perhaps made the housekeeper suspicious.
Even thinking about it brought a flushing heat to her face. James saw it, and enclosed her in his arms before she could think to struggle. ‘Stop getting yourself all worked up,’ he murmured as he moulded her body to his.
Her eyes rounded at the immediate wave of desire which swept through her body. It roared along her veins, curled through her stomach, then crashed against her thudding heart. A moan surfaced through an ebb tide of longing and starkly sexual need. He heard it and his arms tightened around her, making her hotly aware of his own need, which felt as intense as her own. But infinitely more powerful.
Panic-stricken, she pushed him away. Just in time, too. For there came a sound from the bed and she whirled to find Rebecca yawning and stretching. Marina could feel her cheeks burning but the child didn’t seem to have overheard or seen anything.
‘Was I asleep long?’ Rebecca asked with a second yawn.
‘Not too long,’ Marina said lightly, and walked over to pick the book up from the floor. She didn’t dare look back at James. ‘But you’d better get up now. It’s not that long till dinner.’
‘Oh. I suppose we’re having dinner in the dining room, are we, Uncle James?’ She didn’t sound at all thrilled with the idea.
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Why, would you prefer to eat with Mildred and Talbot in the kitchen?’
‘Oh, yes, please. I hate sitting at that silly long table. I can never see anyone on the other side through the candles and flowers and stuff.’
James laughed and Marina’s eyes snapped his way. He looked superbly in control, she realised. No one would have guessed that a few moments ago he had been so blatantly aroused.
‘I can remember thinking exactly the same at your age,’ he tossed over his shoulder at Rebecca as he strolled towards the door. ‘Fair enough. I’ll tell Talbot it’s just Marina and myself for dinner in the dining room.’
‘Am…am I supposed to get dressed up?’ Marina asked, before he could leave the room. Privately, she was appalled at the prospect of having to sit in state with James over a lengthy formal dinner, knowing what was to come later.
He stopped with his hand on the door knob and turned slowly to face her. His eyes were superbly bland as they moved over her body. It was Marina who was a shambles, her heart racing as his gaze moved down over her breasts with their betrayingly hard nipples poking through the soft wool.
‘No,’ he drawled. ‘Wear what you’ve got on, if you like. That looks lovely on you.’
His eyes returned to her face, where they remained fixed for a fraction longer than necessary. And, in that elongated and quite electric moment, she knew his composure was just a façade. He was still as turned on as she was. His need hadn’t abated. Neither had his passion. He was just better at hiding it than she was, better at concealing his carnal desires behind a cloak of restraint and respectability.
Marina felt anything but restrained and respectable as she stared after his departing figure.
By nine that evening Marina was almost beside herself with tension. Dinner was proving to be the trial she’d suspected it would be, despite the food being as superb as the setting.
She supposed most females would give their eye teeth to be wined and dined in such a room, with its walnut panelling and gracious antique furniture. Most females would probably give their eye teeth to be going to bed with the Lord of the Manor that night, whether he loved them or not!
But it seemed Marina was not most females. She kept wishing with all her heart that it was love stirring James to look at her as he was looking at her across the table, and not those infamous Winterborne hormones.
So much for her warnings about his staring at her with lustful eyes! It seemed she’d unleashed the beast in the Earl of Winterborne with her promise of things to come. He was making Shane look positively civilised with the way his glittering blue gaze kept fixing on her mouth and her breasts, not to mention their sinfully erect nipples!
By the time Rebecca was safely tucked up in bed around ten-thirty—the child had been quite lively after her afternoon nap, as predicted—and Marina could reasonably say her own goodnights just before eleven, she was a mess. She could also no longer delineate between nerves and desire. Her stomach churned. Her hands were clammy. Her body burned.
Once safely in her own lavish bedroom, she fairly dived into the gold-tapped en suite shower, staying there at length in an attempt to cool down her whole system while gathering some much needed composure.
But composure had apparently fled to the far corners of the earth. She groaned her dismay at her utter inner panic. Her mind spun with self-reproach.
Giving her so-called word like this was the worst and the stupidest thing she had ever done! My God, she’d promised to deliver herself to his bedroom like a…a…whore! In a way, she wished she were a whore, instead of the basically very inexperienced bed-partner she was. With Shane, she’d simply lain back and gasped in pleasure and surprise at what he’d done. Before Shane she hadn’t done anything either, her two earlier boyfriends wanting nothing but quickies, she now realised. They hadn’t required her to do anything except not stop them.
But James was a difficult kettle of fish. He would surely be expecting a woman of the world. Instead, he was going to get her!
Marina emerged from the shower, shaking.
As midnight drew near she knew she could not delay much longer. She was physically ready, her body washed and perfumed and naked beneath her nightwear. The oyster satin nightie and matching robe covering her nudity were very pretty, though not overly seductive. Oddly, she’d left her hair up, perhaps in defiance of her fantasy about her hair being spread out on a snow-white pillow.
Pride alone propelled her out of the room. No way did she want James coming to her room and making a scene.
The walk down the corridors and along to James’s wing did not take nearly long enough. Before she knew it she was standing at his door, and before she knew it he was sweeping that door open as though some sixth sense had told him she was there.
‘Where in hell have you been?’ he snapped, and, grabbing an arm, yanked her into the bedroom. Just as swiftly he shut and locked the door behind him.
There were no lights on in the room, she noted shakily, yet it wasn’t in darkness. The curtains at the main windows were wide open and an eerie silver moonlight was streaming in, making the blues in the room look grey and the gold like platinum.
James was wearing a darkly patterned silk robe, tightly sashed around his waist as though he had sashed and resashed it many times in the last hour. His obvious agitation made her feel a little better. Clearly he wasn’t in the habit of making midnight assignations with women he had not promised to love and cherish, but from whom he’d exacted a promise of total sexual surrender for one long, mad, marvellous night.
Suddenly it was all too much for her, and with a soft sound of just such sex
ual surrender she threw her arms around his neck and lifted her mouth for him to crush.
He crushed it at first. Then adored it, tasting her tongue and licking at her lips, making her mouth feel not so much a mouth but an exquisite meal, to be savoured before being devoured.
She was melting against him when his mouth turned savage again as abruptly as it had gentled, making her moan beneath its onslaught, half in fear, half with a wild, mutual passion.
He must have heard the fear, however, for he dragged his mouth away and buried it in her hair, his breath hot and ragged. ‘You don’t know what you do to me,’ he rasped. ‘I’ve been in hell all week. But this last hour has unravelled me completely. I’m not going to be able to last.’
His confessed vulnerability was oddly reassuring and sweetly touching. She pulled back to cup his face and look up at him.
‘James,’ she said softly, and traced over his face and mouth with gentle fingertips. ‘Darling James…we have all night, remember? It doesn’t matter.’
He groaned and opened his lips to take one of her fingertips between them. Desire flashed like lightning through her, and without thinking she pushed the finger further inside his mouth, watching with wide eyes and pounding heart while he sucked on it.
Marina had read about women going weak at the knees over a man but had thought it a melodramatic exaggeration.
But it wasn’t. As he sucked her finger she literally went weak at the knees, her legs turning jelly-like. Her head began to whirl. She had to take her finger out or risk collapsing!
She plucked it away with a low moan of regret and he just stared at her. Her hands moved as in a dream, slipping the robe from her shoulders to let it flutter to the floor. Then came the nightie, one strap at a time, till she was standing naked before him.
She had never felt so desirable in all her life. His hungry gaze gobbled her up, especially her breasts which already ached for his touch. She felt their aroused heaviness lift upwards when she raised her hands to pluck the pins from her hair. She dropped them on the carpet, one at a time, letting the mass of red-gold curls tumble around her bare shoulders in erotic disarray.