Her mouth trembled under his. So soft. Unexplored. Before, with the constraints of her age and position, this brush of lips had been enough. It had had to be. Now, however...
He pushed his tongue against their frail barrier, demanding entrance. Demanding response. And finally he was answered. Her mouth opened, breath sighing out in a sweet release, even as his tongue invaded. And conquered. Unwilling to be denied. Sarah was a woman now, his wife, and no longer an uninitiated girl.
His hand released her arm, slipping to her back and pulling her more firmly against him. Her body was pliant, seeming to melt into his. Welcoming his touch. Realizing that, he deepened the kiss, plundering the. sweetness of her mouth. Using every bit of the expertise he had acquired in the long years that had passed since he had first kissed Sarah Spenser.
She had trembled in his arms then, just as she was now. Responding to him. Her mouth moving hungrily against his. As hungry for this, it seemed, as he had been.
He could feel her breasts, their small peaks hardened with the cold or with desire, pressed into his chest. His hand slipped lower, cupping under the softness of her buttocks, lifting her up into his erection. Wanting her so badly he was almost mindless with need. With love—
Her mouth opened with a gasp. She jerked away, pushing against his chest and almost unbalancing him. When he opened his eyes, hers were on his face. Too wide and dark, as if dilated with shock. The tips of her fingers were pressed to her lips, which looked swollen. As if they had been well kissed. And they had been, he acknowledged. Damnably well kissed.
“What’s wrong?” he asked softly.
She had been enjoying this. He was certainly experienced enough to know that. He hadn’t been celibate so long that he couldn’t recognize the nature of her reaction. Her body had responded as strongly to that kiss and their nearness as his had. And then suddenly...
“No,” she said.
Her arms crossed protectively over her breasts, hands rubbing up and down the long sleeves of her nightgown as if she were cold. She was shivering, he realized, her body vibrating as strongly as if she were in fever.
“Sarah?” he questioned. He took a step toward her, his crutch echoing on the wooden floor. Intrusive. Too loud among the sibilance of their whispers.
She didn’t answer him. Instead, she turned and ran, slender ankles flashing beneath the white of her night rail. Her bedroom door banged closed behind her, the sound sharp in the quietness of the sleeping house.
And he was alone again in the hallway. It was almost as if it hadn’t happened. Almost as if Sarah had not been here. As if he had dreamed the encounter.
He had not, of course. The hard, painful ache in his groin assured him that the woman he’d held had been no figment of his imagination. She had been real and warm and responsive. And then...
He released the breath he had been holding. And then she was gone. Almost as if he had frightened her. Almost as if she had been shocked by what he was doing.
He stood a moment, trying to understand what had happened. And he didn’t. Finally he turned and, taking more care this time, he climbed the narrow steps of the servants’ stairs, moving out of the light of the candles Sarah had brought and back into the cold, lonely darkness.
Chapter Nine
“I have to go back to Longford,” Sarah said.
Her face was composed, the lines in which it was set too tight, almost pained. And her blue eyes were shuttered.
“On Christmas Day?” Justin asked disbelievingly.
Despite the lecture he had given himself last night, disappointment knotted his stomach. He still didn’t understand what had happened to make Sarah run away, but he hadn’t been able to forget how she had responded to his kiss before she did. He had been looking forward to spending the day with both of them. Now it was apparent her flight hadn’t ended last night when she had slammed her bedroom door against him.
“My father...” Sarah’s voice faltered, almost as if her throat had closed against the words. She put her lips together, her teeth catching the bottom one briefly before she opened them again and went on. “He has episodes where he’s even more confused than is now normal for him. Sometimes he even becomes violent.”
“Surely you can wait until—”
“No,” she interrupted. “They can’t manage him. They never can when he’s like this. They sent for me yesterday, but I received the message only this morning.”
“If you can wait a few days—” he began.
“Not even a few hours, I’m afraid,” she said. “I have to start for home now if I’m to arrive before nightfall.”
He couldn’t tell if she regretted that need for haste or not. She had already turned toward the door of his room when he asked, “What about Drew?”
The question stopped her, and she didn’t answer for a long moment, even after she had turned to face him again. Her hesitation reinforced his suspicion that the reason she had traveled to London in the dead of winter with a snowstorm threatening had something to do with the child. Had Andrew had another, more dangerous, encounter with the village boys? If so, he had said nothing about it in the days they’d spent together.
“It is Christmas,” he reminded her, hoping that he was seeing a wavering of her determination.
“Are you suggesting I leave Drew here?”
He hadn’t been, but there was no reason why she couldn’t, he realized. Drew wouldn’t mind. He was afraid of the marquess, although he had tried very hard not to admit that. And it was Christmas. “Why not?” Justin asked.
Her eyes examined his face as if she were trying to decide.
“I’ll bring him home when I come. Or...” Now he hesitated, wondering if everything would go back to the way it had been between them at Longford. To that distance and sense of estrangement, which, he acknowledged, had been by his choice. “Or you can come back here when you’ve seen to your father.”
He didn’t know what had prompted him to make that suggestion. A tendency to masochism, maybe. Of course, after last night, living under the same roof with Sarah, no matter which roof they were under, was going to be much more difficult.
“Are you coming back to Longford soon?” she asked.
As soon as the surgeon gives me pernaissian, he thought. That was an admission he didn’t articulate. A reminder of things he didn’t want to have to think about right now. And didn’t particularly want Sarah to think about. Not after last night.
“As soon as I can,” he promised. “Until then...why not let Andrew stay here with me?”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“I think it would be better for everyone concerned.”
Reluctantly, she nodded. She knew he was right, but he understood how much she would miss Drew. Just as he would miss him if Sarah carried the boy home with her. The huge house would seem as cold and lonely as it had before their arrival.
“Then...I won’t plan to come back to London.” she said. “There’s really no reason to do that. The house is ready to be put on the market whenever you wish. And at Longford there’s always so much that needs to be done....” Her words trailed away, her eyes still on his face.
“I’ll take care of Andrew,” he promised, knowing somehow that’s what she wanted him to do. That it was the reason she had brought the boy to London in the first place.
Finally, she nodded. He tried to find something in her eyes of the woman she had become—so briefly—in his arms. There was only anxiety there instead.
He slipped his hand into his coat pocket and brought out the present he had wrapped after he returned to his room last night. It wasn’t enclosed in silk like Andrew’s or tied with ribbon. Instead, he had put the strand of worthless freshwater pearls, which would probably be even more obvious trumpery when viewed in the sobriety of daylight, into the middle of a sheet of plain paper and twisted the ends. Then he had written Sarah’s name across the front. It looked ridiculous held out on his palm. Sarah’s eyes considered it a moment before they lift
ed to his.
“Happy Christmas, Sarah,” he said softly.
Even as he watched, her eyes glazed with moisture.
“It isn’t much,” he warned, realizing with a flood of regret how little it really was. He must have drunk more of the port than he’d realized to have imagined that Sarah, or any woman, could want this. “These were my mother’s,” he said, trying to think of some logical explanation for his gift, which he was suddenly afraid she might even view as insulting. “I bought them for her when I was about Drew’s age. I thought...”
He stopped, because he couldn’t really explain to her any of the things he had been thinking when he selected these from among the remnants of his mother’s possessions. Nor could he tell her anything of what Andrew had said to him.
Sarah’s eyes again fell to the package. Slowly her fingers removed it from his palm. She made no attempt to untwist the ends and reveal what he had given her. She held it enclosed in her hand, which fell slowly back to her side. When she looked up at him, her eyes were more open than they had been before. And no longer touched with tears.
“I don’t have anything for you,” she said.
He smiled, thinking of how much she had already given him, and knowing instinctively that neither of them wanted to be reminded of that debt. “I didn’t expect anything,” he said.
She nodded again, and then, almost as she had last night, she turned away from him and left his room, closing the door softly behind her.
“Your very own first whip?” Drew said.
His eyes had been shining since he had been invited into Justin’s room. His thin childish voice had piped out almost the entire first verse of a carol before the earl had gotten to the door to open it. Andrew had finished the song, although a few of the unfamiliar words had been slightly mangled in his rendition.
Justin managed not to smile until it was done, and then he had invited Drew in. He knew that in many families presents were exchanged on New Year’s or more frequently on Twelfth Night. He and Robert, however, had received their presents on Christmas Day, and those had always been something more than the traditional shillings and sweets.
He wasn’t sure what Andrew was accustomed to, but since he had decided last night on an appropriate present for the child, he wasn’t going to delay in giving it to him. And he knew now that his choice had been exactly right.
Drew had told him that he was sometimes allowed to ride Sarah’s pony. He himself had seen from the child’s interaction with Star that he liked horses. And Drew was certainly old enough to learn to ride. Justin couldn’t remember when he and Robert hadn’t had a couple of fat ponies, contentedly plodding around the paddock with them bouncing along on their backs.
“And you will teach me to use it?” Drew said.
That had been part of his present, of course. The promise to teach Andrew to ride. Something he was looking forward to, Justin realized, as much as the child seemed to be.
“Or how not to use it,” he corrected. “When you understand your mount, and he understands you, you will have less occasion to use the crop. It is simply something gentlemen carry.”
Drew nodded, his eyes falling again to the miniature whip. Justin had forgotten its existence, but when he had seen it last night on a shelf above his old bed in the night nursery, he had known that it was perfect for his purposes. The perfect gift for Drew. This and the promise of riding lessons.
“Thank you,” Andrew said, looking up at him again.
“You’re very welcome,” the earl said softly.
“I shall go get your present,” the little boy announced.
He carried the crop with him, of course, transferring it carefully to his left hand as he turned the doorknob and slipped out of the room. Behind him, Justin’s mouth relaxed into a smile. At least he had gotten one of them right, he thought, remembering Sarah’s eyes as they looked up from that ridiculous package he had held out to her.
“I’ll make it up to you, Sarah,” he whispered, staring into the fire. “Someday, I swear; I’ll make it up to you.”
All the way back to Longford, Sarah thought about Justin. Just as it seemed they had been on the verge of recapturing something of what had once been between them—their friendship, if nothing else—she had been forced to leave.
And he had doubted her reasons. She had read that quite clearly in his eyes this morning. Of course, after last night, why should he not believe she was running away from him?
She had dreamed about reawakening Justin’s feelings for her since he had come home. Indeed, she was honest enough to admit that her marriage proposal had been as much about that hope as about Andrew. And then, just as it seemed she might have succeeded, she had bolted.
Justin had kissed her, and her reaction had been panic. And she couldn’t even begin to explain why. The feel of his body against hers, so incredibly hard? Or his hand on her hip, pulling her into an even more intimate contact with him?
Sarah had known what was happening. Virgin she might be, but she was no fool. And she had spent too many years in the country to be totally innocent about what transpired between a man and a woman.
Justin obviously believed she was far less innocent, however, than she really was. Knowing something intellectually, in the abstract, was far different from knowing it physically. What had happened last night had been very physical. And frightening, like anything that was truly unknown.
Still, she didn’t understand why she would ever be afraid of Justin. He had never hurt her. He wouldn’t hurt her, but as exciting as it had been, there had been something missing from last night’s interaction. It had been so sudden. Too demanding. As if he expected too much too quickly.
That wasn’t Justin’s fault, she acknowledged. She was his wife. She had given him no reason to believe she would not welcome his attentions. She would. Oh, dear God she would. But...obviously he expected her to know far more than she did about what would happen between them.
If their marriage were consummated—and now that seemed almost inevitable, she admitted, given their enforced proximity and Justin’s obvious desire for a physical relationship—then the truth about Andrew’s birth would be revealed. Which was something she would welcome, of course. And it would happen in a way that could surely not be considered breaking her oath.
So why had she run away last night? Her eyes fell again to the strand of pearls. They lay in her lap, the paper on which he had written her name beneath them. They had been there throughout the whole of this long journey.
With her finger, she touched one of the small, irregular beads. Her lips curved, remembering what he had said. He had been Drew’s age when he had picked these out. For his mother. And now he had given them to her.
She wasn’t sure of the significance of them. Maybe nothing more than the fact that Justin had been foxed last night. He had openly confessed that, and she had tasted the wine on his lips.
Had that been the explanation for his kiss, and not the growing closeness that she had imagined during the evening? Not forgiveness for what he believed she had done. Not...love. Or even affection. Or friendship. Had that kiss been simply the effects of too much Christmas spirits?
She lifted her eyes from the pearls and looked out the window of the coach, gauging its location. She would be home in less than an hour. Back to the same problems that had occupied her thoughts and her energies in the years since she had broken off her engagement to Justin Tolbert. Worries about her father. About Longford. Drew. And now about David Osborne.
She had almost been able to block that threat from her mind while she had been in London. Andrew was safe with Justin, who would never let anything happen to him. Nor would she, she vowed: If money was all it would take to prevent David from going to court to try to take Drew away from her, then she would give him money. Whatever he asked for, she thought fiercely. She would give him whatever he demanded, but she would never, ever give him Drew.
“Oh, my lady,” Mrs. Simkins cried almost as soon as Sar
ah had entered the house. She came hurrying down the hallway, her black bombazine skirt rustling. The housekeeper, probably the entire staff as well, had obviously been anxiously awaiting her arrival. “It’s that glad I am to see you,” Mrs. Simkins said, relief strong in her voice as she took Sarah’s coat.
“Is he much worse?” Sarah asked anxiously, loosening the ribbons of her bonnet and slipping it off.
“He’s wild with rage, my lady, and there’s nothing any of us can do with him this time. Not even Dawson can manage him.”
Dawson was the marquess’s valet and, next to Sarah, the person most able to coax her father to do what he should. It had been Dawson’s message that had been sent to London. A note that had languished one whole day at her father’s town house before someone thought to see if she were in residence at her husband’s.
That delay was not something she could regret, no matter how disturbed the household might be about her belated arrival. If Dawson’s message had reached her on Christmas Eve... She took a breath, thanking providence it had not. Because then, of course, she would not have last night to remember.
“What happened?” Sarah asked, laying her bonnet and reticule on the hall table.
“No one knows, my lady,” Mrs. Simkins confessed. “Dawson come downstairs for his nuncheon while your father was napping. When he went back up, his lordship wasn’t there. By the time we found him, wandering the grounds, he was in a rage, swearing and raving enough to frighten a saint. I haven’t seen him like this since before your sister died,” Mrs. Simkins said.
They would probably never get to the bottom of whatever had overset her father’s delicate mental balance. There were days when he seemed almost himself, although lost in events from the past, of course. Then there were periods like this, when he was virtually a madman. Luckily, he had never hurt anyone, perhaps because the servants were wise enough to avoid him when he was in one. of his fits.
Gayle Wilson Page 16