“Your skin is very pale,” she said. “And your hair so very dark.”
Banallt shrugged. And then, knowing exactly where she was looking, he curled his hand around himself. He stroked up once, then down, a little harder up than on his downstroke.
“I think,” she said in a very low voice, “your body is lovely.” She rested a hand on her stomach.
“Thank you, ma’am.” He shifted some of his weight to one leg, and stroked himself again. Her breath stopped.
“Do you like touching yourself?” she asked. Her eyes met his and he held her gaze.
“I’d like it better if you were touching me, but yes, I do like touching myself.”
She stood up. She was slipper-less and stocking-less. Her bare feet joined his on the carpet. Thank God he’d built up the fire. The air around him was warm, so long as he stayed near the fireplace. Her black-dyed gown gleamed with gray highlights in the dimness. She came in close. Close enough to touch him. Her hand was out, and he expected a touch, but she didn’t. All he felt was a whisper of air as she went by. He turned with her when she walked past. “That seems very wicked of you, Banallt.”
“I’m a wicked man. Does that shock you?”
“Yes.” She walked behind him, but he stayed where he was. He liked the sensation of her being behind him without knowing what she was going to do. He listened to the soft swish of her skirts as she moved. The scent of orange water came to him, a scent that he’d come to associate with his wife. He flinched in surprise when she ran a finger down his naked back, from the top of his neck to the bottom of his spine. His erection pulsed, and his fingers gripped reflexively. “I don’t think I’ve ever told you what a lovely man you are.”
“No, I don’t believe you have. You may if you like.”
“I wish I were taller,” she said softly. Her palm came to rest in the small of his back. His muscles tensed.
“I’m glad you’re not. I find the difference between us to be ... stimulating.”
“Very lovely to look at.” Her skirt brushed his calves. He drew in a breath when her arms came around his body, underneath his arms, but too high to touch his cock, more’s the pity. His heart beat a tattoo against his ribs as her palms flattened over his torso. She lay the side of her face against his back and her breath warmed his skin.
“Madam,” he said, holding back a laugh. “You are very bold.” He tried to turn around, but she tightened her arms around him. About now would be the perfect time to put her on her back and sink deep inside her. But he was equally wild to know what she intended to do with him.
“Don’t move,” she said. Her voice held an odd note that had him cocking his head. “Stay just as you are. I have a confession to make.”
He stilled. “I know all your secrets, Sophie.”
“All but one.” She slid a hand up higher, to his pectoral. Her fingernail scraped his nipple. Damn, the woman was going to send him mad with desire. Gently, her lips pressed against his back. Her other hand moved down, to his hand, the one still gripping his penis.
“Jesus,” he said. He inhaled sharply. “Sophie.”
“A confession about the last time Tommy and I ... were intimate.”
“I don’t want to talk about your bloody dead husband.” Would he never be free of the infernal man’s ghost? “He’s gone. Dead, Sophie. I am your husband now.” His words rolled out in a growl. “Whether you love me or not, it’s me you should be thinking of tonight.”
Her body went still. “That night,” she whispered. “That night, I imagined Tommy was you.”
His breath caught in his chest.
“It was beyond anything,” she continued. “I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I didn’t stop. I wanted someone to want me the way you did. I wanted you. Without ever touching me, Banallt, you showed me the difference between what Tommy felt and what you felt for me. My own husband never wanted me. He never loved me, and I knew you wanted me. I saw you behind my closed eyes, and I pretended you were with me, making love to me instead of my husband.” Her hand around his squeezed gently. “And it was wonderful. So very wonderful. He knew something was different. And when ... that moment came—it never had before with us ... it was your name I called out.”
God in heaven, Sophie.
He closed his eyes and let his head drop back until he felt his hair touch his shoulders. “Did he hear you?”
She didn’t answer right away. He heard the tremble of her breath, felt the warmth of her where she touched him. “Yes.”
“Sophie—”
“Please.” Her voice quavered. “Just listen. I haven’t told you everything.” Her hands pressed against him. “That was the night before he died. He thought I’d been unfaithful. With you. Why else would his wife call out another man’s name? The thing is, he meant for me to find him with Mrs. Peters. He intended to punish me for betraying him. The next thing I knew, he was dead. With all those awful words between us.”
He turned around, hands around her upper arms, holding tight in case she took it into her head to move away. “Sophie.”
She looked to the side, tears sparkling on her lashes.
“Sophie,” he whispered. He brought her bodily to him, pulling her hard against him. His heart spilled over. “I’ve brought you nothing but misery. Nothing but.”
That made her look at him. “That’s not so. It’s just I’m not the woman you’ve imagined all this time: never tempted, never anything but in love with my husband.”
“I knew you were unhappy.” He stroked her hair. “Any fool could see you were not happy in your marriage.”
“I was never immune to you, Banallt.”
He pulled her to him so that she had to go up on her toes. He slanted his mouth over hers and took her lips. And she threw her arms around him, holding on so tight it was as if she was afraid he’d disappear. He swung her into his arms, and in half a dozen steps he set her down by the bed, pressing her front to the edge of the mattress and working at all the damned fastenings of her gown. Hooks and buttons and ties and all those damnable laces and fastenings that tangled in her corset and tripped up his shaking fingers.
“For pity’s sake!” he burst out. “Sometimes a woman’s clothes utterly confound me.”
When at last she was naked down to her skin, he got his arm around her waist and lifted her bodily onto the bed. And then he joined her there, pulling himself over her, one leg cocked to the side, his hips against her thigh. He threaded his fingers in her hair and kissed her until neither of them could breathe. They parted just to get air into their lungs.
“You’re so lovely,” she said. “It hurts my eyes to look at you.”
“When I look at you,” he whispered, “I see the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.” Her breasts were larger than he’d imagined back in the days before he’d had reason to know. Not extravagant at all, but lush for her body. Her nipples were small, as if her breasts had grown too large for them. All this time, his prim little Sophie with her courtesan’s eyes had had a courtesan’s body, too. He dipped his head to her breast.
“Closer, Banallt,” she said. Beneath him she shifted her body, and her hands tightened on his shoulders. “Please.”
He drew back and blew on her taut nipple. “Are you begging already?” he asked.
“Never.”
“Let me remedy that.” But her body trembled as he entered her, and so did his. The build to orgasm streaked the length of his cock and quivered in his balls. He rocked into her and she threw her head back, exposing her throat to him down to the top of her bosom. On either side of him, her thighs came up and pressed against him. A low moan came from the back of her throat, nearly a sob.
He wanted to drive her mad with his body, to wring her out until she couldn’t think or speak or feel anything but him. Except he was the one who was mad for her. He was perilously close to finishing before he’d properly begun. Close. Too close.
“Banallt,” she cried. He withdrew, and her eyes flew open. Her h
ands fisted handfuls of the fabric. “No.”
And with her looking at him with wild eyes, he reentered her, and this time it was his voice that cried out hoarsely. He didn’t understand how he could feel this way without having fallen already. “You slay me, Sophie, I swear you’re killing me.”
He curled an arm around the top of her head and thrust into her, hard and deep, and then they were on their sides, and her upper thigh was over his, with his hands gripping the back of her leg, with her arching her pelvis into his, her breath coming in pants, and his no better. He rolled onto his back, bringing her with him.
She closed her eyes as she sank down, and he circled her waist with his hands, thumbs angled toward her navel, his fingers pulling hard against her back. Her hands floated to her thighs, and he about died when she let her head fall back, her hair tumbling around her shoulders, brushing his fingers.
“Sophie, yes. Like that. You’re killing me.” She was tight around him, her skin soft and warm. “Christ, yes.”
Her pelvis tipped toward him, and her head came back. Her eyes snapped open, and it was like a lightning strike between them, her eyes were so lost in him. He got her onto her back again with him driving hard inside her.
“I’m coming, Sophie, now.” His body centered in his cock. Every nerve and sense in his body was here with her. “Jesus, now. More, Sophie, more. God help me. Please. I need to come. Now.”
“Banallt,” she whispered, and her hands slid down to his backside and brought him closer.
He reared back, holding his arms straight as orgasm raced toward him. Dimly, he thought he had to pull out, now, or he’d be too late. But Sophie held him tight, her arms around him, and he remembered she was his wife. He opened his eyes and felt her move under him, a roll of her hips toward him with her mouth open and panting, and then just a flash of her blue green eyes, and that was it. He shattered. His orgasm wrung him out. His seed spilled into her, and he damn near lost any sense of where he was.
For a while there wasn’t any sound but the two of them trying to breathe, but then Sophie said, “Is it possible?” He could have sworn she was teasing. She shouldn’t have the energy for that.
“What?” He lay next to her on his stomach, wrung out. Completely and utterly sated and yet thinking of the things he yet wanted to do to her.
“You did.” Her voice was light, teasing even.
“What?”
“You begged, my lord.”
He laughed softly. “To have you make love to me like that, I’ll beg you every night of my life, Lady Banallt.”
Thirty-three
Castle Darmead,
MAY 30, 1815
“SOPHIE?”
Sophie jumped. She’d been completely lost in her own thoughts and hadn’t heard Banallt come in. The words on her page gazed guiltily back at her. She blotted her page and set down her pen before she turned on her chair.
“Yes?”
Banallt came in, leaving the withdrawing room door open. He wasn’t wearing a coat, just a pair of buckskin trousers, shirt, and waistcoat. She’d been married before, yet she wasn’t used to Banallt being so at home around her. But then, she’d never really lived with Tommy, had she? His neckcloth was loose, too, and his hair was getting quite long. She liked the disreputable look. “How are you this morning, Sophie?”
He held a single sheet of paper in his hand. She could see the direction written on the outside and the bit of wax left from the broken seal. Quickly, she turned her pages over and brought out a fresh sheet to lay over the stack. She was writing again, not that she would ever publish, but the story refused to leave her. She kept seeing archers standing at those arrow-slit windows, firing on an attacking enemy while upstairs a young woman stared out a tower window, her heart in her throat.
“I’m well, thank you.” Quite often after they’d been apart, a sense of disbelief came over her when they were together again. Such as now. Was this wickedly handsome man really her husband? Or would he one day coldly inform her he was tired of her or tell her his legal wife had returned from Italy, not dead after all? Or perhaps their marriage was a sham. Reverend Carson would be proven to have been a fraud or to have made some egregious error in the recording of the marriage, and Banallt intended to throw her over for a Bohemian princess.
He leaned down to kiss the top of her head. She had a cup of tea on the desk, and half a scone, which she’d brought upstairs after breakfast. He picked up the cup and took a sip. “Good God, Sophie. It’s stone cold!”
“Is it?” She took back the cup. “Shall I ring for fresh?”
“No.”
She had the habit now of separating her relationship with Banallt into its various aspects. What they did at night and in private had nothing to do with moments like this, and moments like this were nothing to do with any other. A different Sophie made love to Banallt. That Sophie’s heart could not be broken. The letter in his hand crinkled. She saw Vedaelin’s signature on the page. Her heart clenched, and for a moment, she was only Sophie Mercer, and her heart was going to break. “Oh,” she said. She replaced the lid on her ink. “You’re going back to London, aren’t you?”
“There will be war, Sophie,” he said. “It’s certain. Wellington is in Brussels and will soon take command of the army if he hasn’t already. He’s demanding cavalry and artillery and God knows what else. St. Michael himself, I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“Then you must go.” She folded her hands on the desk. Her fairy-tale interlude was over. He was leaving her. Exactly as Tommy had done; with an excellent excuse that would not keep them permanently apart. She hadn’t seen Tommy again for nearly a year. Rumors of his behavior had reached her within weeks of his departure. The occasional bill arrived from some merchant, and she dutifully forwarded it to Tommy with a polite reminder that she had no funds from which to pay for his new gloves or a horse or his six new hats. She’d dismissed the rumors that came to her as nothing but mean-spirited gossip. The thought of Banallt taking another woman into his arms sliced her heart neatly in half.
“No choice, I’m afraid.” He took her scone and ate it. “We’ve not had much of a honeymoon,” he said. “If not for Bonaparte, I would have taken you to Paris and Rome. Florence and Constantinople.” His mouth curved. “Imagine the stories you would think of among the Saracens.”
She forced a smile. “But I am at Darmead, Banallt. My very own castle. Is there anything more romantic?” She was a jumble of conflicting emotions. What if he did not want her so close to London? What if he wanted her to come with him?
“What sort of honeymoon is that?” he asked. “When this business with the little Corsican is over, we’ll have a proper wedding trip, I promise.”
“We’ve been private here.” She stood up and began to straighten his cravat. “Will you take King with you? If you do, Darmead will need someone like him.”
He lifted his chin. “You’re the only one who can manage my neckcloths, Sophie. Why is that?”
“I have an artistic mind,” she said. Proper neckcloths required concentration during the folding. “No starch. How am I to produce anything elegant when your linen is unstarched?”
“I like to breathe when I am at home.”
“There.” She tweaked the two ends of the bow she’d made. “This is much harder than it looks, you know. A la Byron is very dashing. That’s all I can do with you like this.”
He put down Vedaelin’s letter and walked to her dresser to look at his cravat. “I feel a poem coming on,” he said.
She laughed, and he came back to slip his arms around her waist. “I’m sorry to disrupt our lives like this.”
“When will you leave? Not today, Banallt. It’s far too late for you to leave now.”
Banallt frowned. “Sophie,” he said. His eyes flashed. “Have you deliberately misunderstood me?”
“Not in the least.” She took a step back, uncertain of the cause of his displeasure. “Britain is going to war against Bonaparte, and you must return
to London.”
He drew in a breath and slowly exhaled. “I am not Tommy Evans,” he said.
“I am aware, Banallt.”
“Are you?”
“I don’t wish to argue. I know who you are. And who you are not.”
“Nevertheless, Sophie, we must return to London,” he said.
“We?” She’d never thought he meant to bring her with him. The thought made her heart feel light. And wary at the same time.
“I understand you are still mourning your brother.” He brushed her cheek with the back of her hand. “You needn’t entertain or even go out. But you are my wife, Sophie.” He hesitated. “You told me once that people will talk simply because it’s me. You’re right. They will.” He lowered his head. “They’ll talk no matter what I do, whether you stay here or come with me.”
“Of that I am also aware.”
“The truth is, whatever anyone decides to say or not say, I want you in London with me.”
She shrugged. The image she had in her head was Mrs. Peters and the way she’d looked at Banallt. Hadn’t Mr. Tallboys himself said the woman was after him and making a fool of herself? And they would return to London, where that selfsame Mrs. Peters waited for his return. “Very well, Banallt. We shall go.”
“I don’t wish to play the martinet, Sophie.” His frown deepened. “If you aren’t ready to be in public, I understand. I shan’t force you to go if you’d rather not.” He touched the underside of her chin and lifted her face to his. His eyebrows drew together. “What on earth is going on in that head of yours?”
She twisted away from him. “I said I’ll go. Isn’t that enough?”
“No,” he softly replied. “It’s not. Why do you insist on treating me as if I am a rogue who, having secured your fortune, now wishes nothing to do with you?”
“Why wouldn’t you?” she said. She regretted the words the moment they were out.
He laughed. “What fortune of yours have I gained, Sophie, when you refuse me the only one that matters to me?”
“I’m well aware, Banallt, that I am in your debt.”
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