Matthew

by Grace Burrowes

“Priscilla will need a soaking bath,” Alice said. “Mr. Belmont, thank you for your hospitality.”

  The good-byes were cheerful and interminable, and Thomas’s farewell was accompanied by a glower or two in Matthew’s direction. Then the front hallway to Belmont House was empty, save for Theresa, the man she loved, and an ache larger than the sea.

  “Come here,” Matthew said, holding his arms wide. “I was wondering how I might scale the walls of Linden Hall to appear by moonlight in your bedroom tonight.”

  “Your family—”

  “Axel has dragged the boys out to the glass house and will use the time to acquaint Richard with the topics discussed in the library. We’ll cover the same ground over brandy, but right now…”

  He kissed her, and unlike Theresa’s earlier overture, Matthew’s approach was tender, savoring, and delicate.

  “I want a bed, Matthew. I want a bed right now, with you in it. I want your clothes off, my clothes off, and a stout lock on the door.”

  “My dearest love—”

  “Don’t you dare be reasonable and noble now,” Theresa said, taking him by the hand and leading him to the steps. “Save your gentlemanly balderdash for the assemblies. If we have one hour of privacy, I want to spend it in your arms. We deserve one experience of sheer glory before I go back to worrying about you, and dreading my next journey.”

  At the top of the stairs, Theresa had to pause, because she simply did not know in which direction Matthew’s rooms lay.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he said, leading her down a carpeted corridor. “You think if we make love, then I won’t be able to send you away.”

  “You dratted, stubborn, idiot man, I’m not thinking at all, but if I were thinking, then perhaps I might conclude that I won’t be able to leave you unless we have at least one memory to sustain us, one occasion of passion in a proper—”

  The next instant, Theresa was pinned against the wall, fifteen stone of Matthew Belmont stealing her words in a kiss so ravenous, she had to cling to him to remain on her feet.

  “I already have more than one memorable occasion with you, Theresa Jennings, and I intend to have many more of them. Do you believe me?”

  Looking into his eyes, Theresa saw not the country gentleman, not the perceptive widower, and not even the handsome, passionate man with whom she’d been intimate on too few occasions.

  She saw a warrior who would stop at nothing to protect those he cared for.

  “Be careful, Matthew. I believe you, but three times, your continued survival has been a matter of chance. Leave nothing to chance, I beg you, and be careful.”

  An overcast day in December was a gloomy affair, and no footman had come around yet to light sconces or start fires. Matthew’s private parlor was thus mostly shadows, and his bedroom darker still.

  “I wasn’t expecting company in here,” he said. “The sheets will be chilly.”

  “No, they won’t.” The room was cold, but Matthew’s embrace was all the warmth Theresa needed.

  “You are sure, my dear? You never did accept my offer of marriage.”

  Theresa left off nuzzling Matthew’s shoulder. “That matters to you? Your life is in danger, and you’re preoccupied with vows you may not live long enough to speak?”

  He turned Theresa by the shoulders and started on the hooks at the back of her dress.

  “I offered in good faith, and I’d like an answer.” He knew what he was doing with a lady’s apparel, for cool air trickled down the middle of Theresa’s back.

  “I’ll marry you, Matthew. The very first chance I get, I’ll marry you gladly.”

  His arms came around her. “I’ll hold you to that. Though no one outside of family may know of it, we are engaged from this moment forward. Finish undressing, and I’ll light the fire.”

  Then he was away, probably in search of a taper or carrying candle, while Theresa stood in a cold, shadowed room trying to locate her wits.

  Matthew Belmont, in the midst of attempts on his life, had recalled his offer of marriage, renewed it, and wrung an acceptance from her.

  Though he hadn’t had to wring very hard. Was he tidying up his affairs in the event he soon lost his life, or was he offering Theresa assurances of his love in the most time-honored way?

  He wasn’t about to cry the banns or announce their engagement, of course. That would rather defeat the purpose of slinking off to Sutcliffe Keep.

  And yet, they were engaged.

  “You’re standing right where I left you,” Matthew said, using a spill a moment later to light a candle on the bedside table. “I also notice you have yet to shed a single article of clothing. Shall I assist you to undress?”

  Theresa marched off toward the privacy screen rather than let the sheer seduction in his question buckle her knees.

  “You warm up the bed, Matthew Belmont. Once I get my hands on you, there will be no stopping to deal with tapes, bows, or buttons. This is your only warning.”

  “Feel free to use my toothpowder, and you’d best take the pins from your hair too.”

  Now he was dispensing warnings. A smile bloomed, as incongruous as roses in December, despite Theresa’s worry.

  “Are the sheets warm yet, Mr. Belmont?”

  His waistcoat came sailing over the privacy screen. “Patience is a virtue, Miss Jennings.”

  By the time Theresa emerged from the privacy screen, the fire in the hearth was giving out a cheery heat, and Matthew Belmont’s coat, cravat, breeches, and shirt were draped over a chest at the foot of his bed.

  “You see before you the king’s man, dutifully warming the sheets,” he said from the depths of the bed. “While I see you have purloined my favorite dressing gown.”

  Theresa loved the scent of the blue velvet, pure Matthew Belmont. “You look cozy in that bed.” That enormous bed.

  “I look lonesome. Quit stalling, Theresa. I’ll close my eyes if you’re feeling bashful.”

  Theresa let the dressing gown cascade to the floor. “I’m feeling many things, Matthew. Bashful is not among them.”

  Darkness was falling beyond the window, and Matthew had lit only the hearth and the one candle. The light was adequate for Theresa’s purposes, though. She wanted Matthew to see exactly who was joining him in that bed, exactly who had accepted his proposal.

  He held up the quilt. “If you do not get your luscious, brave, naked self over here this instant, these sheets will spontaneously ignite.”

  Theresa dashed for the bed and hopped in, only to be enveloped in a warm embrace.

  “What was that glorious display about?” Matthew asked, kissing her ear.

  “I’ve never been entirely naked in the presence of a man before. I wanted you to see me. I want to see you too.”

  “So you’ve never flaunted your wares before an entire regiment? Never been the toast of the Cyprian’s ball?”

  What was he asking? “I drank strong spirits to excess, Matthew. I gambled, I used foul language, I flirted shamelessly, I… smoked cigars, or tried to.”

  He arranged himself on his side, the firelight glinting off his smile. “You didn’t fall so very far, did you?”

  “Far enough, but I simply hadn’t a taste for true wickedness. My cousins were too strong a cautionary tale.”

  Matthew kissed her brow. “Syphilis?”

  “I suspect so, and stupid wagers, and vile associates one could never consider friends. The occasional basically decent fellow stumbled through their house parties too, Priscilla’s father among them. I don’t want to talk about that, though. All too soon, I’ll hear the coach rattling up the drive, and then I must find a way to leave you.”

  “You might part from me for a time, but you will never leave my heart.”

  His lovemaking was infernally patient. When Theresa wanted to pillage and plunder, Matthew teased. She pulled his hair, wrestled, squirmed, swore, and finally surrendered to the mood he set.

  Lazy kisses, soft caresses, a slow transition from lying beside h
er to bracing his weight above her. The result of all Matthew’s languorous passion was an urgency that for Theresa bordered on desperation.

  “You drive me to madness, Matthew Belmont.”

  “Only fair,” he murmured against her throat. “I’ve dwelled there since our first kiss.”

  He dawdled about, his mouth on Theresa’s breasts, his hands in all manner of locations, and even as desire beat through her veins in a joyous, unashamed tattoo, sorrow as relentless as the sea beat with it. This might be all they knew of loving, all they had of pleasure.

  “Matthew, I can’t wait.”

  “You’ve waited far too long.”

  Bliss, sweet and hot, accompanied their joining. Matthew knew just the right tempo, just the right everything, to send pleasure cascading through Theresa’s soul, subduing the worry, the loss, and even the fear that gripped her heart.

  “This…” she whispered, moving with him. “I can’t lose you now, Matthew.”

  “You’ll not lose me. I promise you, you will not lose me.”

  He sealed the promise with his body, with slow, relentless loving, with kisses and pleasure, until Theresa was replete with sated desire.

  “Again,” he whispered.

  For nine years, Theresa had told herself that her life had meaning because Sutcliffe prospered, because Thomas was well and whole, because Priscilla was a happy, well-loved child. All the schemes and sacrifices had paid off, her goals had been accomplished.

  And her heart had been broken.

  Matthew had mended that heart, and if she lost him, nothing would ever come right again.

  “Again,” he whispered, more softly.

  Theresa locked her ankles at the small of his back, denying her own satisfaction until she felt Matthew’s control unraveling.

  “Theresa, we must not…”

  “We are betrothed. We deserve this. You deserve this. Come with me, Matthew.”

  A battle ensued, between good sense and hope, between respect and reverence. Between a man’s need to protect, and a woman’s determination to consummate promises made with the heart. The victory went to Theresa, to hope and to love, as Matthew surrendered to passion, and the coach came clattering up the drive.

  * * *

  The damned Belmont open house was a tradition that went back at least to Matthew’s great-grandfather’s day, and invitations had been sent out weeks ago. The invitations were mostly reminders of the date chosen from year to year, for everybody in the shire, along with their guests, relations, and the occasional well-behaved dog, attended.

  And part of the tradition was that the Belmont menfolk gathered in Matthew’s rooms to prepare for the day. The routine would vary today—providing Theresa didn’t change her mind—and Matthew would sleep better that night as a result.

  “Why do we do this?” Axel groused, fluffing the folds of Matthew’s cravat. “Why do we bankrupt the larders, aggravate our offspring, and waste an entire day spreading good cheer and better drink on the same people you see in the churchyard every Sunday?”

  “Uncle Axel is shy,” Remington said, wiping at the toe of his boot with the handkerchief Matthew had left folded on his vanity. “I get my own retiring charm from him.”

  Christopher had appropriated Matthew’s hairbrush and was giving his curls a final smoothing. His hand paused, a minute disruption of focus Matthew saw any time heredity and his sons were mentioned in the same breath.

  “Papa, Rem knows,” Christopher said, setting the brush aside and tucking Matthew’s second-best flask into his coat pocket. “I think Rem knew before I did.”

  Richard, thank a gracious Deity, was off with Phillip and Dayton hanging the last of the greenery in the conservatory.

  “What does Rem know?” Matthew asked, avoiding Axel’s watchful gaze.

  “I know you’re not my papa either,” Rem said, bouncing onto Matthew’s bed. “Not that it matters.”

  “Now is not the time—” Axel began in his best lecture-hall tones.

  “If the boys have brought it up, now is the time,” Matthew countered, though Theresa and her family would be arriving any moment, and Nicholas and Beckman were already making a tour of the decanters in the library with no less personage than Vicar Herndon. “How did this disclosure come about?”

  And how did Remington, the sweetest of Matthew’s children, feel about it?

  “I was eight or so,” Rem said, flopping to his back, long legs dangling over the side of the bed. “You’d been called away to the Longacre’s, where domestic discord was once again the order of the day. When you came home I asked you why two people with children to love and a tidy cottage of their own had so much trouble getting along.”

  “They’ve squabbled as long as I’ve known them.”

  Rem sat up. “You said when two blue-eyed people have a brown-eyed child, squabbling can result. That made no sense to me, because you and Mama both had blue eyes and seemed to get along well enough, and yet, all three of your sons are brown-eyed.”

  A casual aside, intended to deflect a boy’s curiosity, and even as a child, Remington had caught every possible significance of the words.

  “That’s hardly proof,” Axel said. “All manner of babies result from all manner of unions.”

  “Not proof,” Matthew said, chagrin warring with pride in his son, “but Remington is the thoughtful type. My comment was inspiration for further speculation, I’m sure.”

  “I know Christopher isn’t a Belmont by birth,” Rem said, rising from the bed, “and he and I look quite alike. I know Mama wrote letters to some fellow she didn’t want anybody to know about, because I caught her at it, twice. I saw one of those epistles, and the salutation was, ‘My Very Dear Man…’. After that, I knew not to surprise her at her correspondence.”

  And all those years, when a small boy ought to have been growing up secure in the knowledge of his patrimony…

  Axel became fascinated searching through the cravat pins, watch fobs, cufflinks, and other adornments Matthew kept in a dish on the clothes press.

  In the fleeting silence, no brilliant insights came to Matthew, no subtle, philosophical comforts. His only concern was for his son—for they were his sons, all three of them.

  “Remington, I’m sorry,” Matthew said, dropping onto the hard stones of the hearth. “I’m so very, very sorry, that you’ve been burdened with this knowledge for years. I hope you know—”

  Rem was scowling at him, and Christopher had taken to studying the view out the window—the drive, which would soon be thronged with damned coaches.

  “I know you love me,” Remington said. “I couldn’t ask for a better papa, and that’s all that need be said. One feels sorry for Mama, but only a little, because a gentleman ought.”

  Christopher took out his flask and tipped it up, the gesture striking a chord of memory Matthew couldn’t place.

  “I don’t know what to say, Remington, other than that you’re entirely correct. I would lay down my life for any of my boys, and consider you my beloved sons, and nobody else’s.”

  “Now see here,” Axel said, appropriating Christopher’s flask. “There will be none of this talk of laying down anybody’s life. Bad enough we must endure the open house without protestations of martyrdom on every hand. If you lot are determined to air the linen now, then I’ll take it upon my humble self to ensure the punch has been mixed in accordance with the appropriate recipe.”

  “I love you too, Uncle Axel,” Remington said, neatly swiping the flask before Axel could sample its contents. Rem gestured in Matthew’s direction. “Happy Christmas, Papa.”

  He took a sip, and again that flash of something tapped Matthew’s memory on the shoulder. He ought to have purchased flasks for them all as Christmas tokens, the Belmont crest engraved on both sides.

  “You will please refill that,” Christopher said, “and before I’m overcome with sentiment too.”

  Remington passed his uncle the flask, bent to kiss Matthew’s cheek, and hauled Axel
from the room.

  “My brother is too good for the church,” Christopher said. “I didn’t know how to tell you that all your discretion, all your attempts to spare him, were for naught.”

  As Matthew’s concept of his family went tumbling in all directions, he yet knew three things. First, he wanted to share these developments with Theresa, for she could sort emotion from reaction, and help him make sense of a situation he’d failed to accurately grasp.

  Second, Christopher had also borne the burden of secrecy.

  “Sit with me for a moment, Christopher, and if you need to cry, then for God’s sake cry. I’m so proud of my sons I’m nearly in tears myself.”

  Christopher knuckled his eyes with his cuff, then took the place beside Matthew.

  “You’re proud of us for keeping something like this from you? I argued with Rem at first, but that’s like arguing with the sea. He’s so… so like you. Determined, polite, canny, all private and honorable. One doesn’t know how to—”

  Matthew locked his arm around Christopher’s neck, pulled him close, kissed the top of his head—and then let him go.

  “You protected his confidences, and you tried to protect me, and we have to be the most protective lot of fools ever to tiptoe about with the same last name. We’ve traumatized the professor, who is similarly afflicted with noble sentiments, so please keep an eye on him for me.”

  “Uncle Ax always samples the punch. That’s simply tradition, but I think the spirits give him the courage he needs to get out his violin.”

  Axel played only at Christmas, that Matthew knew of, and he always played magnificently.

  “So are you and Remington at peace with your paternity?”

  “He is,” Christopher said. “He’s at peace with every bloody thing. Schoolwork, the other fellows, the ladies… only Richard defies Remington’s ability to pour oil on troubled waters.”

  Richard. God yes, Richard.

  “What about you, Christopher? Does it bother you, not knowing with whom your mother was in love?” For whoever that bungler was, he didn’t deserve the name father.

  Matthew rummaged around in his own emotions, which were about as organized as a pile of autumn leaves on a windy day: concern for his children, longing for Theresa’s company, resentment toward whoever had made three clumsy attempts on his life—and during the damned holidays, no less.