Sara didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing.
“Well, you can tell her I won’t keep you up late tonight. That ought to make her happy.”
It might please Betty, but it didn’t please Sara. There was only one bedroom, with only one bed. Surely he didn’t mean he wasn’t coming to bed. Sara suddenly felt like her hopes had been blighted by a winter frost.
“To be sure it’s nicer traveling in a coach and staying in a fancy inn, instead of one of those dratted cottages with the master and his missus scowling fit to put you off your dinner, but I was sorry to see the last of that Mr. Fraser. He is such a nice gentleman.”
“Everyone treated us kindly,” Sara answered her maid, “but we couldn’t stay with them forever. It’s time Lord Carlisle took us home to Estameer. That’s what we came to Scotland for.”
“Humph! I say handsome is as handsome does, and your lord doesn’t look so good next to Mr. Fraser.”
“Then it’s a good thing I’m married to him and not you,” Sara said, firmly dismissing her maid. “And I’d appreciate it, if you would try to make it less apparent to Lord Carlisle that you think I married the wrong man.”
“You want me to hide my real feelings?” Betty asked in surprise.
“Yes, for my benefit, if not for his. He’s not as bad as you think.”
“Humph! If he’s only half as bad as I think, he’s still not worthy of you. Now if he were just more like Mr. Fraser—”
“Not everybody can be what you want them to be.”
“Including myself,” replied Betty, indicating her tall body. “It’s hard to be thought of kindly by a man, when there’s enough of you for two.”
“As you said, handsome is as handsome does, and I wouldn’t trade you for any little French maid in the whole kingdom. I don’t know how I could have gotten through these last weeks without you.”
“Or I without you, once we got started,” Betty replied. She sniffed determinedly to ward off the threat of tears. “Do you remember that big Scot who captured you? The look on his face when he discovered you weren’t a boy!” Betty started to laugh at the memory.
“I imagine he was considerably more astonished when you sat on top of him in the middle of the lane.”
“How about that first night, when you found out you had to share a bed with that squire …”
“And spent half the night lying awake because he snored like thunder!”
They laughed heartily for a minute, then Betty wiped her eyes and said, “Well, you’ll be sharing your bed with another man tonight. Let’s hope he doesn’t snore.”
Sara sobered quickly. “If that were the worse thing that could happen, I wouldn’t mind it too much.”
“Are you sure you’ll be all right, milady? If you want, I could—”
“I’ll be fine. I admit I’m a little nervous, but it has more to do with being newly married and not yet sure what my husband wants. I used to think I knew all about Gavin, but those were just a young girl’s daydreams. I woke up to find myself in a woman’s world, and it was a bit of a shock. That’s all.”
“That’s as may be, but if you want me, you only have to call. I’ll be sleeping in the next room.”
Sara allowed Betty to fuss over her some more while she put her to bed, but she steadfastly declined her maid’s offers of protection. Instead, she tried to remember everything Letty Brown had told her that day in the garden, tried to convince herself there was no reason to be frightened. She could feel her body growing ever more tense, and she consciously tried to relax, yet every time she managed to ease the tension for a few moments, it would return again even stronger than before. She finally gave up. Nothing was going to erase her fear, except a very different experience from that first night.
But then a sudden thought struck her. Why should she like being with a man just because Letty did? If there were thousands of women who professed to dislike it, surely some of them must be telling the truth. A shudder of apprehension ran through Sara’s body as she confronted the possibility that she might be one of those women. She tried to ease her fear by reminding herself that she did remember experiencing some slight pleasure before, but she knew that was like saying you experienced the pleasure of relief after your tooth had been pulled. Gavin wouldn’t come to her very often, if she couldn’t give him a warmer welcome than she would a tooth-drawer.
Sara realized that tension had been building up within her ever since she saw Gavin in Glasgow; tension that had its origin in their inability to understand each other. That pressure as now intensified several-fold by the memory of their failure to relate physically, arid the certainty that she would have to make a second attempt very soon.
Sara decided that the first time with a man must be a difficult thing for all women of sheltered backgrounds. After years of being taught that a female must guard her modesty at all costs, and having the lesson repeated over and over again until it was ingrained in practically every fiber of her being, a woman was then expected to cast it all aside in one evening. Sara didn’t see how it could possibly be anything but a terribly wrenching experience, and that discovery made her feel a little better. I’m sure it’s much easier when two people care strongly for each other, she thought to herself a little wistfully, but it would have been much better for her if someone had at least told her what she would be expected to do. She wondered how many other marriages began badly because of ignorance.
But ignorance of the marriage bed was not the only reason she and Gavin had begun so badly. It seemed she had been unprepared for just about every aspect of marriage. She had learned a lot during this last month and a half; she hoped it would be enough, but she was already aware that the feelings she had for Gavin had been rooted in a fantasy. He might not know her at all, but then she didn’t know him either, not the person he was now. She had married him and pursued him to Scotland because of the Gavin she remembered as a child, but she was married to Gavin the man. She had been able to see that he was an anger-filled man and that his cruelty to her had its roots in hatred that had nothing to do with her, but if she was to be happy in this marriage, it was not enough that she have sympathy for him. She had to learn to love him as he was now, and quite frankly she didn’t know if she could.
Sara had tortured herself so worrying about every aspect of their relationship, that it was almost a relief when Gavin entered the bedchamber. Still, her body stiffened. He was silhouetted briefly in the doorway, then as he walked quickly to the bed, the disturbed air in the room caused the light from the candle Betty had left burning by the bedside to flicker, and shadows danced drunkenly about his face.
Sara almost held her breath. Would she ever grow accustomed to his handsomeness? His thick black hair was worn swept back from his forehead and temples. His eyes almost seemed to withdraw behind his brows, springing to life only in moments of unfettered joy. A broad, strong nose dominated the center of his face, but it was the firm lips and the massive jaw, so reminiscent of the Earl, which made his face almost unbearably handsome, and at the same time reflected the character of the man himself. Strong and determined was the message they sent out, but there was something in the eyes that said There is mare.
Gavin discarded his robe, standing before her in his naked glory, and Sara’s thoughts were immediately riveted to his body. Even though her memories of him that first night had neither faded nor lost any of their detail, the magnificence of his body overwhelmed her now, just as completely as it had then. There was nothing of his father here. Broad, well-muscled shoulders and chest, powerful arms, and muscle-ribbed stomach spoke eloquently of the heritage he received from his mother. It was her love of the highlands and the strenuous activity it took to live there which had given Gavin his body, and the love of exercise which had sculpted it into such perfect proportion. He reminded Sara of a prowling, wild animal, temporarily brought to live indoors, but unwilling to permanently forsake its natural environment.
She tried to control the tremors of excite
ment chasing each other up and down her body, but she shook like a leaf.
“You’re cold.”
“No.”
“Frightened?”
“No.”
“Worried?”
“Yes.”
“You needn’t be. There is nothing to hurt you this time.” His voice had changed; it was like a caress, deep, rich, and velvety.
Sara started to tell him that physical pain was not the worst of it, but abandoned the idea. Gavin sat down on the edge of the bed and turned toward her, and her mind could not grasp anything except the overwhelming fact of his nearness.
But Gavin didn’t approach her right away. He sat quietly, looking into her eyes. “If there’s anything that frightens you or you don’t understand, tell me and I’ll stop.
Sara nodded.
“I mean it. Anything at all.”
Sara nodded again and was rewarded with a smile that briefly conquered the perpetual severity of Gavin’s expression. If he could only be like this all the time, she thought, it would be impossible not to love him. He leaned over and traced the outlines of her cheek and jaw with his fingertip; Sara felt her body turn to jelly. How could a touch that was so soft and gentle burn her skin like a hot iron?
“My father told me you had turned into a beautiful young woman, but I was too angry to see it,” he said, drawing that wandering fingertip lightly across her lips and causing her exulting senses to claim all of her conscious thought.
“Maybe pretty,” Sara managed to whisper. “My mother was beautiful.”
“I never saw your mother, but she would have had to be a goddess to be lovelier than you.” If he says things like this all the time, no wonder his mistresses adore him, Sara thought to herself. His fingertip brushed her eyelids, and Sara melted further. Then he took her lower lip between his teeth and tugged gently, insistently, until she relaxed against him, far too weak to feel fear, anxiety, or anything else except expectant delight. She could hardly tell when his lips took over tantalizing her skin, and his fingertips moved to her neck, and then her shoulder.
“Did anyone ever tell you that you have wonderful skin?” he murmured in her ear, as his fingertips caressed her shoulders and fondled her throat. “It’s soft and smooth and rich in texture and smells of roses.”
Someday she would tell him about the rosewater she used in her bath and on her skin and the sachets of rose petals that Betty put in her drawers, but not now, not while his soft breath in her ear made nearly every thought disintegrate like morning mist in a hot sun, not while his touch ignited a flame of desire within her.
“I got drunk because I was ashamed of what I’d done,” he whispered softly in her ear, “but I was a fool. It kept me from seeing what a truly lovely woman you are.”
Sara almost gasped. Gavin was ashamed of his behavior even before that night! Tendrils of hope reached toward the terraces of her consciousness, but the wild sensations rocketing about her body pushed them back into the abyss of her subconscious. Tomorrow she could think; tonight she would experience.
Gavin’s fingers skittered up the back of her neck, causing delicious shivers to race up and down her spine with lightning speed. He removed her nightcap and let her bountiful hair spill over the pillow, until it formed a halo of red gold in the soft candlelight.
“I had to cut it, to disguise myself as a boy,” she murmured in apology, but he seemed heedless of her words as he ran his fingers through the rioting curls, arranging them about her face according to a design that he alone understood.
“I like it as it is,” Gavin replied. His lips brushed hers, skimmed lightly over her eyelids, and returned to her mouth for several long, lingering kisses, each more insistent than the last.
Sara could taste the lingering sweetness of brandy as his tongue probed between her teeth, and she opened her mouth to him Tentatively her own tongue responded, searching, seeking, until it probed his mouth and caused Gavin’s body to tense with anticipation.
“You taste of mint,” he said, as he kissed her nose. “I like it.” Sara vowed to drink the same tea every night for the rest of her life.
As Gavin’s lips sank to her neck and then her shoulders, Sara became aware for the first time of Gavin’s own musky, masculine scent. She allowed her head to loll to one side, so that he could place his kisses unhindered. If the feel of his fingertips had excited her, the touch of his lips was electrifying. Her whole body was racked by uncontrollable tremors. The sensation was heightened still further when one hand slipped into the top of her gown and found her breast. Gently Gavin cupped the tender mound and rubbed her firming nipple, until it throbbed with a delicious ache. Sara’s whole body arched rigidly, the aching, stinging pleasure causing her muscles to behave according to rules of their own choosing. She could only lie there, utterly helpless under the onslaught of his lips and hands, totally incapable of governing her body’s response to his touch.
His other hand slid the loose gown over her shoulder and down her arms, until she felt it bunch at her waist. Half of her body was exposed to his attack!
But this gentle wooing was no attack. Sara felt like her body was being gradually released from its trammels, freed of inhibiting barriers, invited to immerse itself in a pool of warm and inviting sensual delight. Gavin’s gentle hands captured her other breast, and even though she soon felt his lips take one achingly sensitive nipple into their hot grasp and tug and tease until she thought she would moan aloud, she felt her taut muscles relax and waves of unexpected contentment spread to every part of her body.
Sara had never felt like this. She had always been excited by Gavin’s presence, and aware of unexplained sensations that disturbed her calm, but not even her wedding night had prepared her for this cornucopia of sensual pleasures. She felt like melting butter, her whole body was boneless, floating powerlessly on the undulating waves of pleasure which emanated from her teased and tortured breasts and ricocheted off her rib cage. A marvelous detachment came over her, an indescribable feeling of well-being, and she was almost unaware that Gavin had slipped her gown under her hips and dropped it silently to the floor.
Again it was Gavin’s fingertips which explored new territory, setting more of her body aflame until she felt like a fiery sacrifice to his need. The muscles of her abdomen rolled and pitched as first his fingertips and then his lips played over her ultra-sensitive skin. Sara could feel herself sinking deeper and deeper into the welcoming embraces of this ecstasy, and not even the progress of one hand down her side and along her thigh had the power to draw her from the nimbus of pleasurable sensations which enveloped her.
She was aware only that the center of these delicious feelings had begun to shift, unconcerned that one hand had strayed to her inner thigh while the other, leaving her breasts to the ministrations of his lips and tongue, had taken a more direct route across her abdomen, both on a course which would cause them to meet at the apex of her thighs.
They met, and Sara’s whole being was ablaze, a molten core erupting at last through the hard crust of fear and ignorance. Sara felt her body relax to welcome Gavin, enfold him, and draw him deep within her.
She could not have said what he did, what was happening to her, because she was incapable of thinking, of remembering. She knew only that she held in her arms the man she had dreamed about for half her life; she knew only that his incredible gentleness had slain the last vestiges of fear and distrust; she knew only that never before had she felt so alive, so wildly happy, so indescribably wonderful! The feeling continued to intensify until Sara clung to Gavin with all her strength, hoping never to let go, trying to absorb him within her, certain she would shatter into nothingness if they were ever separated.
Then it happened; she did shatter in the most exquisite burst of fireworks she could imagine. Her body was racked with an aching hunger which stretched every muscle to its breaking point, and turned every nerve into a shooting star of desire. Explosion after explosion battered Sara’s newly responsive senses until she
felt she was slipping into nothingness, her whole body incandescent with fulfillment.
Chapter 16
Sara woke to the sound of someone moving about her room.
“Drat!” Betty said, when she saw her mistress was awake. “You were sleeping so peaceful, I didn’t want to wake you.” She picked up a breakfast tray, meaning to bring it to Sara.
“Leave it on the table,” Sara said, beginning to indulge in a pleasurable stretch. “I’m not hungry yet.” But she had no sooner raised her arms from under the covers than she realized that she was completely naked. Instantly the whole of the previous night came flooding back to her, and she pulled the covers up to her chin.
“You all right?” Betty asked.
Sara nodded. “Why do you ask?”
“You look a little funny. Different somehow.”
I feel different, Sara thought, but said, “I guess I’m still tired from all this traveling. It’ll be nice to get home.”
“That it will, but I don’t mind telling, I wish home was London. This is cold country, milady, the kind that penetrates all the way to your bones.”
I’m not a bit cold, Sara thought to herself. If Gavin continues to use me as he did last night, I niay never be cold again. “You’ll get used to it,” she said, but she had already forgotten what Betty had complained of. She could only think of Gavin and last night.
“Perhaps,” Betty said doubtfully, “but I’d better set about getting everything made of wool. You’ll catch your death in a cotton chemise.”
“What’s in that pot?”
“Hot milk.”
“I thought it might be. Ask the innkeeper for some cocoa instead, and wait until it’s ready.”
She hated to send Betty on a made-up errand, but she wanted to be left alone to take stock after last night, and Betty was distracting her thoughts. Last night had shaken the foundations of just about everything she believed about Gavin, the relationship between men and women, and the institution of marriage itself. She was going to have to start all over again, in her evaluation of what she wanted and how to go about getting it. She was pleased to know marriage offered her more than she had hoped for, but she could also see it was going to complicate matters a bit.
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