by Mary Balogh
It was very hard for a man to love unselfishly when desire hummed through his veins and hammered against his temples and was an agony in his groin.
He was still kneeling between her thighs, but he brought his weight down onto her now, careful to take some of it on his forearms. And he began at last to move in her, aroused by her stillness, which was nonetheless not passive, by the small, exquisite body that was unmistakably Lily's, by memory of the last time they had been together, by his long abstinence, by her return from the dead, by the steady squeaking of bedsprings that were noisy even for a single sleeper, by the sighs of pleasure that escaped her with the rhythm of thrust and withdrawal that he held steady for as long as he could.
Lily, he thought as all sensation, all awareness became focused on the exquisite pain of his desire. "Lily," he murmured. "My love. Ah, my love, my love."
She had stopped sighing. Her body had gone slack and he knew that she had moved into the world of release ahead of him with quiet joy rather than with any sudden bursting of passion. He could not have asked for a more precious reward for his patience. She was as far from fear as it was possible to be.
"Beloved." It was a mere whisper of sound. The endearment she had used on their wedding night.
His own climax came quickly. He bore her downward with all his weight as he pressed hard and deep and allowed the blessed release of all his need, all his pain, all his love into her.
It was a moment of extraordinary oneness.
Everything was going to be all right, he thought as he began to emerge into full awareness again a minute or two later. Everything. They were together and they were one. There were some problems—some minor problems that they would solve together over time. There was nothing they could not do together. All was well.
"I am sorry," he murmured, realizing how heavily he was lying on her. He lifted himself away from her, sliding slowly free of her body as he did so, and lay beside her, still warm and breathless and sweaty. He wriggled one arm beneath her neck and turned his head to look at her. But he had only one glimpse before the candle guttered and finally went out. Her eyes were closed. She looked peaceful.
"Thank you," she said, and she turned onto her side to curl against him as one of her hands slid up his damp chest and came to rest near his shoulder.
He felt the pain of tears in his throat. It felt like forgiveness. Like absolution.
The air was cool on his damp body. He hooked the blankets with one foot and drew them up about both of them. "Better?" he asked. He chuckled softly. "And thanks are scarcely necessary unless they are intended as a compliment. In which case I should add my thanks to yours. Thank you, Lily."
She sighed once and fell asleep with a smile on her face.
All was going to be well. He gathered her closer, rubbed his face against her hair, breathing in its fragrance, and shifted into a more comfortable position. If only he could see Lauren as happy. Surely she must be in time. She had so much to offer the right man. And Gwen—her happiness had been cut so short.
But sometimes, he thought sleepily, one could surely be pardoned for indulging in selfish happiness. He felt the deepest sympathy for both his sister and his cousin and former betrothed. But for now, for tonight, he felt so totally happy for himself, for Lily, for them, that it was difficult to spare a thought for anyone else.
He slept.
***
When Lily awoke, it was to a feeling of yearning so intense that it was painful. There were the first suggestions of dawn beyond the window. She was inside the picturesque little thatched cottage by the pool beneath the waterfall—she could imagine the scene as it appeared when one came down into the valley on the way to the beach. She was there now with Neville, her husband—his arm was slack about her, her head pillowed on his shoulder. He had made love to her and it had been wonderful beyond imagining. She had felt cleansed from the inside out. And he had not felt disgust—she would have known it if he had.
The yearning was to make this night somehow permanent. If only they could live here together, just the two of them, for the rest of their lives. If only they could forget Newbury Abbey, his responsibilities as the Earl of Kilbourne, her captivity, his family, Lauren. If only they could stay like this forever.
It was without a doubt the happiest night of her life.
But though she had always been a dreamer, she had never confused dreams with reality. Dreams gave one moments of happiness and the strength with which to deal with reality. And sometimes, when dream and reality touched and became one for a brief moment in time, as they had done this night, they were to be accepted as a precious gift, to be lived to the full, and then to be released. Trying to grasp hold of them and retain them would be to destroy them.
The night would be over, and they would return to Newbury Abbey. She would continue to feel—and to be—inadequate, inferior, out of place, and out of her depth. And he, being a gentleman, would continue to make the best of the situation. He would continue to see Lauren almost every day and would continue, perhaps unconsciously, to compare the woman who was his wife with the woman who ought to have been his wife.
Could she draw lasting strength from this dream-come-true? Lily wondered. He could not possibly love someone so unsuited to his station in life despite his endearments while he had been making love to her. But he was not averse to her either. He was not repulsed by her. He had wanted her—she had felt it in the growing tension between them as they had sat at the fireside. And he had enjoyed their lovemaking. She had enjoyed it too. All her worst fears—that the act itself would always disgust her, no matter who the lover—had been put to rest. The lover made all the difference to the act. And she loved him.
Perhaps, she thought, something had been gained from this night. They had grown comfortable together, both physically and emotionally. They had talked as friends. They had come together as lovers. She was not so naive as to believe that all their problems were now solved and that they could proceed to live happily ever after. Far from it. But perhaps an impossibility had become just a little more possible tonight.
"I always love waking up here," he said, his voice low against her ear. "I listen to the waterfall and see the edge of the thatch on the roof through the window and smell the vegetation. And I can imagine that the world is very far away."
"Do you sometimes wish it were?" she asked him.
"Frequently." He moved her hair back from her face with one finger and settled it behind her shoulder. "But not forever. Escape is a wonderful thing as long as one can go back again."
He did not, then, feel the yearning to make this night last forever?
He kissed her—softly, lazily. And she kissed him back, feeling the warm, relaxed firmness of his man's body with the soft curves of her own, feeling desire surging through her again like new blood. She could feel the gradual tightening in her breasts and the hardening of her nipples, the aching in her womb and along her inner thighs, the throbbing in the passage between. And she could feel him grow and harden against her abdomen.
They did nothing but kiss for several minutes with softly parted lips. But warmth became heat between them and they were ready without the need for more foreplay.
"Come on top of me," he said, "and take your pleasure as you wish, Lily."
What an unbelievable luxury it was, she thought, to feel desire before a coupling, to know from the throbbing ache that there would be the wonder of completion. And to be invited to take her pleasure in her way—as if she mattered as much as he did. And she believed that with him it was true. He might not love her, but she mattered to him. If he was to couple with her and take pleasure of her, he would take care to give it too.
How very different two men could be—but she did not choose to dwell upon comparisons.
They had done it this way on their wedding night, the second time, she remembered, though he had lifted her over him then and positioned her and held her firm while he took her, her body heavy on his. She had been passive, quite witho
ut knowledge. They had had to be very quiet because their tent had been set only a little apart from where a whole company of men slept. She had been sore from the first time and it had hurt and felt wonderful all at the same time.
She came astride him after he had kicked back the blankets and raised his knees to set his feet flat on the bed. She kneeled over him, hugging his sides with her knees while she took hold of him in one hand and placed him at her entrance. She spread her hands on his chest, closed her eyes, and lowered herself onto him.
There could not possibly be a more delightful sensation in the world, she thought, feeling his rigid length stretching her deep, clenching inner muscles about him—this voluntary joining of bodies in preparation for the act's beginning. Unless it was the final moment, when everything dissolved into fulfillment and peace. Or perhaps the act itself was the most beautiful part—the pounding rhythm, the ache spiraling gradually upward through her womb, into her breasts, into every nerve ending in her body, the assurance that this man, this lover, this husband would take her to its end. She opened her eyes and looked down into his.
"This feels so very good," she told him.
"Yes," he agreed, "it does."
It had never occurred to her until he had suggested it that it might be possible to be less than passive in the sexual act. She had always lain very still—in wonder and enjoyment during that first night and this last, in simple endurance for those seven months. She had never thought of the possibility of being a lover—only of being the loved or the used. But she could take her pleasure as she wished, he had told her. And true to his word—though she knew enough now about men to realize that it must be difficult for him—he was lying quite still beneath her, though he was hard and hot inside her.
How did she wish to take it? She braced her hands on his chest, lifted herself almost off him, and brought herself down again. It was possible, she discovered as she repeated the move over and over again, to set the rhythm she had always thought a man's exclusive preserve and to find it intensely exciting.
"Ah, yes," he said, his voice husky, his hands coming to her hips and grasping her lightly there, "ride me, then, Lily. Ride me hard."
It was a startling, erotic comparison. She rode him hard and harder, her eyes squeezed shut to concentrate all the sensation inside her and inside him, inside their joined selves—there. She became aware of sound as much as of feeling—their labored breathing, the wet suck and pull of her ride, the squeaking of the bedsprings. And of smell—soap and cologne and a log-dead wood fire and the musk of sex.
But then everything was focused inward on the one spot deep within where she had resisted the deep descent time and time again, tensing against it even as she rode hard onto it, tensing and tensing until fear threatened her concentration.
"Trust it, Lily. Trust me," his voice said. "I will not fail you again."
She always had, always would trust him. And he never had failed her. Never.
But it took a deliberate effort of faith to open, to ride down onto him again without any defense at all against pain, against falling, against death.
She opened—and opened and opened as he clamped his hands hard on her hips at last and held her still while he drove against and through and again through and into and beyond and…
She heard herself cry out.
She did not lose herself completely until after she felt him come deep into the secret place where only she had ever lived, and the two of them met and merged and became one self.
Seconds or minutes or hours passed before she was aware of him bringing her body down onto his and straightening her legs to rest on either side of his own. But she was too close to sleep to respond, except that she tightened her muscles for one moment and could feel him, still warm, still inside. If only they never had to be separate again.
She wondered fleetingly how he could have known, how he could have felt her fear at the very moment she became aware of it herself, how he could have known the very words to use to coax her past it, how he could have controlled his own release so as to let his seed flow into her at the exact moment when she opened to it—she had felt the heat of it deep inside at the moment she had cried out.
She listened to their heartbeats slow to normal and felt filled with well-being from her toes to the crown of her head. She would have drifted completely off to sleep if the air had not felt chilly against her back and her legs. But it also felt good, as did the warmth of his body against her front. Both made her feel alive and tingling with the strangely opposite sensations of exhaustion and energy.
"We can sleep," he said, his fingers playing through her tangled hair and massaging her scalp, "or we can swim. Which will it be?"
They could sleep just like this, all twined together and still joined. He would pull up the blankets again and they would be cocooned in warmth. She was deliciously relaxed and sleepy. Or they could go outside in the chilly dawn and jump into the even chillier water of the pool.
She grimaced. "Is that supposed to be a choice?" she asked without opening her eyes. But she grinned suddenly. "The swim, of course. Did you need to ask?"
"Not really," he assured her, chuckling and rolling with her so that they became disengaged and disentangled. "You would not be Lily if you did not prefer a frigid bath to a civilized sleep. The last one in is a brazen coward."
She could not risk incurring that opprobrious label by stopping to grab any clothes. She had the advantage of being closer to the door of the bedchamber. He had the advantage of longer legs. She had the advantage of thoughtlessness. He stopped a moment to grab up their towels. Even so he arrived on the fern-draped bank of the pool a full second ahead of her. But he paused to gloat. They hit the water at the same moment—or so they finally agreed to agree after they had surfaced gasping from the shock of the cold water and had argued the matter, breathless and with chattering teeth.
They swam and they frolicked, alternately sputtering and laughing, for perhaps fifteen minutes before the unrelenting chill of the water and the very definite arrival of day drove them regretfully out again to dry themselves off briskly and to rash for the cottage, where they dressed hastily.
It was the end, Lily realized, of a night when dream and reality had touched and merged. Those two opposites were about to separate again. The night was over and the day must take her and Neville back to Newbury Abbey, where they could not meet as equals in anything at all. And that had been the magic of the night, she understood in a moment of insight. They had been equals through this night, neither of them the other's superior or inferior. They had been equal as lovers. But two persons could not live on love to the exclusion of all else. And there was nothing else in which there was any equality between them. She was by far the inferior in every single regard at Newbury Abbey.
"Would you like to stay here and sleep while I go back to the house?" he asked her when they were both dressed. "You did not have many hours of rest, did you?"
It was tempting. But she knew that she could not bear to watch the dream walk away from her. She must walk away from it. Only in that way could she hope to gain any sort of control over reality.
She shook her head and smiled. "It is time to go home," she said, using the word home deliberately though Newbury Abbey did not feel as she had always imagined a home must feel.
"Yes." She did not believe she imagined the look of sadness in his eyes. He felt it too, then—the impossibility that one night of passion had tried to tease them into believing was perhaps possible after all.
He held her hand until they had climbed out of the valley. But though she was unaware of the exact moment when he released it, Lily noticed as they walked side by side up the lawn toward the stables that they were no longer touching. Neither were they talking.
They were going back home.
Chapter 14
Lauren had been having trouble sleeping since her ruined wedding day. And eating. And giving the appearance of being patient and cheerful and loving and dutiful. She ha
d never in her life thought of ending it all. But there were moments during the days following that most dreadful one in her life when she had stood at one end of the church aisle and Neville had stood at the other and Lily had stood between them—there were moments when she wished that her life would somehow end itself, that she would simply fall asleep and never wake up again.
There were far more moments when she wished it were Lily who would do the dying.
She had taken to getting up at dawn, sometimes to sit in the morning room reading for an hour or more without ever turning a page, sometimes to wander alone outdoors.
Looking for Lily.
She remembered the morning after the wedding, when Lily had been down on the beach and had then walked across the rocks to the lower village and returned home by the driveway, meeting Lauren and Gwen on the way. She knew that Lily often escaped from the house in order to be alone. Watching Lily, observing all her dreadful inadequacies, trying to deny all her beauty and natural charm, had become something of an obsession with Lauren.
She had never thought of herself as a vain woman. But why had Neville left her and then married Lily? What was it about herself that caused everyone to leave her or reject her? What was it about Lily that attracted everyone? All the men at the house were half in love with her. And even the women were softening toward her. Even Gwen…
Her wanderings took her in the direction of the beach on that particular morning, as they had done before without any success. The beach had never been her favorite part of the park. She had always preferred the cultivated beauty of the lawns and flower gardens and the rhododendron walk. The wildness of the beach and the sea had seemed too elemental, too frightening to her. They had always reminded her of how close to the edge of security her life had always been lived. She did not belong at Newbury Abbey by right of birth, after all. They could turn her off at any time. If she was not good…