She grew awkward under his attention. Perhaps if she came here instead of him coming to her, she was expected to do something.
“Did he hurt you?”
He asked so calmly that it took a moment for her to realize what he meant. It saddened her that he would refer to Norbury now, on this night of all nights.
“I thought that you were never going to speak—”
“Did he? I ask only because of tonight and what we will soon share. It just occurred to me now, that perhaps he did. That maybe I had assumed he was better than he was, even though I knew he was far less than most people believe.”
She was not sure what he meant. She only knew that he alluded to something darker than she had experienced. Although, that last night, Norbury had asked for something that, if one thought about it, could have been not only shocking but hurtful.
She looked at the man now sworn to protect her. There was danger in his intensity, and it showed in his eyes. She did not think he would take well the possibility that had just entered her head, even if she assured him it had never actually happened.
“No, he did not hurt me. Not the way that I think you mean.”
“I am glad.” He did seem glad. Relieved.
His vague smile did much to lighten the mood and banish whatever anger had built in him as he contemplated that old memory. The ghost of Norbury, and anyone else from the past who had entered the chamber, disappeared like so much thin smoke floating out a window.
His thoughts were for her alone now, she could tell. His attention was too. It made her nervous and flustered to stand there while he looked at her. She looked too, at his shoulders and torso washed in the hot glow from the fire. Her body reacted to the anticipation saturating the air.
“Come here, Roselyn.”
Of course she obeyed. This was part of what she had promised today. She was not an innocent girl, and she would not reveal how much she felt like one.
She stood right in front of him. His naked chest was mere inches from her nose. An alluring chest. Their closeness alone stirred her, and the impulse entered her to kiss the body captivating her.
He kissed her first. He held her head in both his hands and kissed her more carefully than he ever had. It was as if he sought to reassure her, which she thought very good of him. Only he had already done that in the carriage the day they met in the park. She knew that part of this duty might still be unpleasant, but she also knew that some of it would be very nice.
Her body agreed. It responded to the kiss more than the care requested. The nervousness dimmed and the excitement grew.
He drew her to the bed. He sat on its edge so he did not loom above her. He could kiss her more easily now. More intimately. Less carefully. While he kissed, his hand came to rest on her breast. His caresses aroused her so quickly it astonished her. She let the hunger have its way and noticed how it centered low and deep, creating scandalous pulses of need right there.
He watched how his hand molded the cloth of the nightdress around her breast, making its shape visible. She inwardly gasped every time he grazed the nipple, so sharp was the sensation that caused.
“You are very beautiful, Roselyn.”
That beauty had not served her so well, through her own fault. His flattery still charmed her.
He looked in her eyes so deeply that she feared he would be disappointed by what he saw. “You have heard that often before. Since you were a child, I’d guess.”
“If you find me beautiful tonight, I am glad.”
“I always have. I saw you once years ago. In a theater. I did not know who you were, only that I had never seen a woman so lovely. Then I noticed your brother in the box too, and I realized you must be the beautiful Longworth sister whom so many admired.”
His slow touch created so much joy, so much pleasure, that she almost chided him for not seeking her out once he knew who she was. She caught herself in time. She knew why he had not.
Was that why he had proposed? Her mind could barely consider the question and did so in a lazy, indifferent way. Had he been unable to resist the chance to possess something that the world forbade the coalminer’s son to covet?
The idea saddened her. It raised the impulse to kiss him again. This time she did, on the hard swell of his shoulder.
She might have lit a torch, so clearly did it affect him despite the restraints that he immediately threw around his desire. His eyes darkened to where she thought she might drown in them if she gazed too long.
He pulled the end of the bow on the ribbons holding her gown at the neck. She looked down at his hand and the ribbon, while the glossy strips slid and unwound and parted. It took forever, it seemed. Deep in her body a spot tingled and tensed in reaction, as if an invisible tongue flicked her flesh.
She realized he was going to undress her. Right here, in full view, with that candle glowing on the table near her side. She was very sure this was not how it was done. But then, he might not know that. Still—
The nightdress slid down her shoulders even as surprise brought these thoughts to her mind. His expression acknowledged her astonishment, but he did not stop. He eased the dress lower until her breasts showed, heavy now and with tight dark nipples. Lower over her hips and down her legs until she stood naked above a pool of white fabric.
Shyness assaulted her. It should be dark, or almost so, if she was like this. It should be dark and they should be beneath a sheet and almost anonymous in the acts to come. She moved to cover herself with her arms.
“No.” He caught her arms before she managed it. He pulled her closer. His tongue barely touched the very tip of one nipple.
A streak of pleasure shot through her—intense, direct, and determined. Then another, and another, burying her embarrassment, making her only want him to do this forever so the wonderful pleasure would not stop.
His tongue and mouth sent her to heaven. He caressed her whole body and she was glad now that the nightdress was gone. The feel of his hands on her body, on her hips and bottom, her thighs and back, seemed right and necessary and perfect. She spun in a stupor of increasingly intense sensuality and need, where pleasure incited more pleasure in a rising crescendo.
So lost was she in that daze that she did not realize she grasped his shoulder until he pried her hand loose. She barely noticed how he stood and laid her down. She regained some sense in the pause that followed, and saw him stripping in the light from the candle that still burned.
She reached over and extinguished it before she saw his body as completely as he had seen hers. He became a silhouette then, a dark figure backlit and vague. He came to her in the bed.
A kiss, so deep and intimate she would never forget it. A caress, so firm and possessive that she could only surrender to its mastery. A touch, so direct and knowing in its effect that her entire body shouted from the high-pitched pleasure it created.
He did not stop. She remained in that soundless scream full of nothing except need and excruciating sensation. She lost control of every part of herself except the small consciousness that demanded more, anything, everything.
His voice, quiet and deep. “Surrender to it. You will see what I mean. Let it happen. Choose it.”
She barely heard him. She did not understand. Her body unclenched slightly, however. Just enough for a profound shudder to begin, then increase and rise in waves of pleasure that pitched higher and higher. It burst through her body and obliterated her mind in an ethereal moment of awe.
He was in her embrace then, in her arms and over her body. She felt him pressing into her, carefully. Too carefully. She held him and shifted her hips so he would be there, so he would fill her before this incredible experience leached away.
His patience cracked. His power flowed. She did not mind. It was not horrible or even unpleasant. She surrendered to the way he took her just as she had to the release, still floating in a perfection that his thrusts only prolonged.
He woke near dawn to find Roselyn gone. Sometime during the nigh
t, soon after he fell asleep perhaps, she had returned to her own chamber and bed.
If he had gone to her, she would have expected him to leave quickly too. That was how it was done among her sort. They did not live in cottages with five chambers, where husband and wife shared a bed all night, every night.
Memories came to him, of quiet mumbles and intimate laughter in the chamber beneath his own as a boy. Those private sounds gave the cottage its life. He had no place in those conversations, but their mumbles brought peace to the night.
Odd that the memory should emerge now, so vividly that if he closed his eyes he was on his boyhood bed again. Strange that this wedding had opened so many doors to the past in his mind. Only he looked through them as a man now, and saw things that the boy had never understood.
One door would be difficult to close again. But for Roselyn’s arrival last night, he might have pondered for hours what he had glimpsed again across that threshold.
The images wanted to occupy his mind. He forced them away for now. Maybe forever. The complete truth, like complete honesty, was not always a good thing.
He drowsed, then woke again with a start. The day was far gone. He had more than nodded off.
Water waited. Clothes had been laid out. Jordan had visited but left the bridegroom to sleep. He did not call for his valet, but prepared himself to meet the day.
He went below and followed the sound of voices to the kitchen far in the back of the house. Rose was there with Jordan. She wore a simple gray dress that would be fitting for a cottage wife. She still looked beautiful.
He could not look at her without seeing her body in the candlelight, and her shyness, and the trembles of her arousal. Snuffing the candle had probably been wise, even if he had wanted to look at her all night. She had found some freedom in the dark, and he had found enough restraint to keep from ravishing her.
Her first look in his direction carried an acknowledgment of the night. Then she lowered her gaze.
Jordan set out a breakfast. “It is rustic in here, sir, but the garden view and the light are pleasant. I will move things to the dining room if you prefer.”
“This will be fine.” He sat at the table where he and Rose had eaten the dinner the day he proposed. With efficient movements Jordan served up a very late breakfast.
When he was done, Roselyn came over and put the final course on the table.
“It is an apple pie,” she said. “You told me that you like it so much that you eat it for breakfast some days.”
“Good man, Jordan.”
“He did not make it. I did.”
In the background Jordan quickly finished drying a pot. He reached for his coat. “I want to study the garden, Madam. With your permission I think that I can recommend some improvements.”
“Certainly, Jordan.”
Rose cut a big piece of pie and slid it on a plate. She stood back and waited for her husband to taste it.
He took a big bite.
The last pie had not been good. This one was horrible. He glanced to the shelf and its abundant stores. He had credited the last one’s bad taste to lack of sugar and salt. Apparently that was not the problem. Roselyn just made terrible pies.
She took pleasure in watching him eat it. He made a few appreciative sounds and expressions.
“Wonderful.” He swallowed the last bite.
“I am relieved that you liked it. Jordan kept clucking his tongue while I baked, but I think it just annoyed him that I was in the way.”
He reached for her and drew her to him. “You do not need to cook anymore. You do not need to make your own pies.”
“I know that. Only this morning I remembered how I served you pie the first time you visited and how you seemed to like it. I thought that I would like to make you another one.”
He realized that he had just been complimented for last night.
He gave her a kiss and released her. He was not hungry now, at least not for food. Least of all for this pie.
He cut himself another slice anyway.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
Kyle placed the rolled drawings in a large canvas bag.
The matter could not be delayed any longer. Too much had already been invested. He had no choice but to keep this long-agreed meeting with Norbury.
He listened for sounds from Roselyn’s chamber. She usually started her day early. She did not have the habit of lying abed until noon like some ladies. Today, however, this level of the house remained starkly silent. Since he had kept her up most of the night, he was not surprised.
She did not seem to mind. She did not act as if she was eating porridge. And unlike in Oxfordshire, where she always came to him as if to prove she would not shirk her marital duties, here in London he went to her. That meant sometimes, like last night, he did not leave very soon at all.
She did not mind, but she had also gently arranged the nightly ritual so she would not be embarrassed. The lights were always snuffed early after that first night. He knew her body better than she thought, despite the dark. Touch revealed everything, and moonlight even more. She might prefer the obscuring shadows, she might even forget the face of the man who took her, but he never forgot it was Roselyn whom he caressed.
He smiled to himself as he acknowledged the little war his body fought every night. Roselyn Longworth incited a desire so intense, so shattering, that ferocity beckoned too often. But because it was Roselyn, a lady who could still be shy and shocked by nakedness, relinquishing control was out of the question.
It did not matter. The end was always good. Her sweet ecstacies and his own thunderous climaxes amazed him. Afterward he relinquished the total contentment that he experienced in her embrace with regret. Sometimes, like last night, he refused to leave her for hours, which meant imposing more than once.
He walked down the stairs. This house still felt new and strange to him. Roselyn had appeared very happy with it when he brought her here. She occupied herself now with rearranging it to her preference, and with making her first careful sorties back into society.
He spent his time on his business affairs, like this meeting. He rode his horse to Norbury’s with the canvas satchel slung from the saddle. The day was more fair than his mood. He would not speak of Norbury to Rose, but last night’s repeated hunger to possess her had been tied to the unpleasant anticipation of today’s meeting.
In truth the man intruded on his thoughts too much now. Not only because of Rose, although Kyle had to work hard to keep away images of that affair. Those thoughts only provoked anger, and the unholy desire to hurt the scoundrel badly.
The memory that had emerged on his wedding night kept beckoning too, demanding reassessment. He kept seeing the face of a woman, beaten and bruised. That woman’s eyes haunted him. The humiliation that they reflected was much like Rose’s expression that night of the auction.
When he came upon his aunt that day, battered from fending off the young bloods making sport of her, he had fought like a soul possessed. It had been three against one and he had only been twelve, but his enemies had not already spent four years carrying baskets of coal out of a pit.
He thought he had saved her. Only now, as the details continued their relentless resurrection in his head, he wondered. He might not have intruded at the beginning of her misuse, but at the end.
Thoughts of Rose had raised that memory on their wedding night. As he weighed how to handle her, how to make sure it was not porridge but also not frightening, the shadow of her previous lover had loomed. Then the memory came, and with it the unexpected thought that porridge might have been the least of the reasons for Rose’s distaste for physical intimacy.
He stopped his horse in front of Norbury’s house. He gazed up the facade at the perfectly wrought Palladian style that gave this building such elegance. He thought it was one of London’s best homes, with an excellence most would not notice in a sea of Classical derivations. It was wasted on Norbury, who had little sensibility for such things.<
br />
The aesthetics could not distract his mind the way they normally did. The new question mark about that long-ago fight affected much more than his boyhood history. It made him wonder more than he wanted about Rose’s affair. It even bore on his meeting today, because Norbury had been one of those boys he had thrashed.
His aunt said he had come in time, and he had believed her. But those mumbles below in the cottage had been silent for a long while after that day, and his uncle had never viewed Cottington’s patronage with grace.
Take the money but don’t be his lackey, Kyle lad. Use them good the ways they use others, but don’t ever turn into one of ’em.
The footman smiled while he took the calling card. The familiarity was not disrespectful. The servants of this house, like those at many other fine London addresses, had quickly warmed to the poor boy made good, to the man who straddled the two worlds they knew.
“My lord is occupied, but will receive you within the hour,” the footman reported on his return. Kyle followed him to the library, assuming “within the hour” meant a wait of at least fifty-nine minutes.
No sooner had the library door closed than Kyle opened it again. He headed below stairs to the kitchen. Norbury probably was not occupied with anything at all. This delay was merely the viscount’s tedious way of declaring his own importance. The time Norbury had just granted would be useful, however.
The pastry cook turned in surprise when she heard his step on the stairs. “Mr. Bradwell! Now this is an honor. My, don’t you look handsome. Your new marital situation seems to suit you.”
“Hello, Lizzy. You are looking well yourself. A bit more flour than normal.”
She brushed her gray hair and a cloud rose. Lizzy was one of several servants in this house who had family in Teeslow. She had taken service with Cottington when she was a girl, and moved to London when Norbury established his own household here.
The cook, a dour man, nodded his acknowledgment to Kyle and muttered congratulations on his marriage. He moved a large pot off the worktable, kicked a stool to the spot, and went back to scolding a scullery maid. Kyle sat on the stool.
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