by Mary Balogh
“As host,” he said, “I will have to dance all evening. I will have to waltz with someone else if you are not there.”
“Oh, Peter,” she said, cupping one of her palms about his cheek.
“Tell me you don’t want me waltzing with anyone but you,” he said.
“Peter-”
“Please tell me.”
She bowed her head and closed her eyes.
“I cannot bear the thought of you waltzing with anyone but me,” she half whispered.
“Susanna-”
She opened her eyes and looked into his, her own still somewhat reddened from the weeping.
“I really cannot bear it,” she said, but he was no longer sure she was talking just about the waltz.
He spread his hand over the soft curls at the back of her head and drew it down toward his until her arms came about his neck and he kissed her.
And he knew at that moment that love would never die, that it would never fade away altogether. The time might come when he would meet and marry someone else. He might even be reasonably happy. But there would always be a deep, precious place in his heart that belonged to his first real love. To Susanna.
But he was not going to think meekly about that someone else and that reasonably happy life he might live. He was not giving up what he really wanted without a fight. He might never have been much of a knight during his twenty-six years, he might never have been in the habit of searching out dragons to fight and quell-indeed, he had run from them five years ago. But he would find one and fight it to the death if Susanna were the prize.
Or perhaps even if she were not.
Her face was a little above his, cupped in his hands, her auburn curls spilling over his fingers, her eyes very green.
“Let me take you upstairs,” he found himself saying. “There is no fire up there, but the bedcovers are warm. Let me make love to you.”
He felt as though he had walked out to the end of a plank, a helpless prisoner on a pirate ship. He felt more vulnerable than he had ever felt in his life before. If she said no, every dream he had ever dreamed would be shattered. For he was not asking her just to bed with him. He was asking for her love. He was offering his own.
He was offering everything he had, everything he was.
Did she know that? Did she understand?
He watched her swallow.
“Yes,” she said.
23
She should, of course, have said no. This time she knew exactly what she had agreed to-future pain, the danger of consequences. And she knew too that afterward, sometime before she returned to Bath, he would offer her marriage again-and that she would refuse again. She even knew that his feelings for her were deeper than just liking. She knew that her refusal would hurt him.
She did not care about any of it.
Sometimes love was to be grasped in any form and in any manner it was offered. And sometimes love must be given in the same way. After a morning of emotional turmoil, she wanted, more than anything else in this world, to give love, to pour it out recklessly and unstintingly.
“Yes,” she said again, and got to her feet.
He set a guard in front of the fire and took her by the hand. They left the room and went up the wide staircase together without speaking and turned to their right, past several closed doors, until he opened one that led into a front-facing room, obviously the main bedchamber, which was fully furnished, just as the downstairs was. The bed was made up.
“Susanna,” he said, turning to her, taking both her hands in his and holding them against the lapels of his coat, “are you sure?”
She was. She had never been more sure of anything in her life. She wanted to give, and she wanted to receive, and it struck her suddenly that both were equally important components of love. She loved him and would give him her body. She would allow him to give to her in exchange.
“I am,” she said. “Make love with me, Peter.”
“ With you.” He smiled as he leaned his head closer and touched his lips lightly to hers. “Yes, I like it.”
She let him unclothe her, first her dress, then her stockings, then her undergarments. She thought at first that she would be embarrassed. But how could she be when his eyes worshiped her and his hands too as he stripped the clothes away? And there was something undeniably erotic about the cold room and his warm hands. Her arms were covered with goose bumps, partly from the cold, partly from the anticipation of what was to come.
He kissed her again, more deeply this time, his tongue coming into her mouth, his hands on either side of her waist and then spreading over her buttocks to bring her fully against him-naked body to fully clothed body.
Desire sizzled through her.
“You are so beautiful, Susanna,” he said against her lips. “So very beautiful.”
Her fingers fumbled at his neckcloth until she discovered the way to remove it. She pushed his coat off his shoulders and down his arms until it fell to the floor. She undid the buttons of his waistcoat and sent it to follow his coat. She pulled his shirt free of his breeches, and he raised his arms so that she could lift it off over his head.
While he watched her through narrowed eyes, she set her palms flat against his chest and moved them up over the light dusting of hair to his shoulders, down his arms, back to his shoulders, and down to the waistband of his breeches. He was neither large nor brawny-he was slender and beautiful. But his chest and shoulders and upper arms were firmly muscled. She spread her hands over his chest again and set her face between them, kissing him.
He was warmer than either her hands or her lips. He smelled wonderfully of his usual cologne.
She felt the throbbing of sexual desire low in her womb and down between her thighs. She felt her breasts tauten, her nipples harden. She shivered.
He chuckled softly as he kissed the top of her head.
“I’ll do the rest,” he said. “Besides, you are freezing to death.”
He turned and drew back the bedcovers and watched as she lay down, his eyes moving over her.
Ah, how could she possibly feel embarrassed beneath such a hot gaze? But she had been too embarrassed to remove his breeches. How silly! She smiled at him, and he covered her to the chin with the heavy covers before pulling off his boots and his stockings and then his other lower garments. He did not turn away as he did so. He watched her watching him, saw her realize that he was ready for her.
“Is it warm under there?” he asked with a grin.
“It will be,” she said.
“It certainly will,” he agreed as she slid over on the bed and he lay down beside her. “And very soon too.”
She wondered suddenly what it would be like to be married to him, to share a bed thus every night, to share bodies with frequent regularity, to…
Ah, never mind. She had today.
He lifted himself onto one elbow and looked down at her, his face inches from her own, his eyes smiling into hers.
“I would like to be the Hercules of long endurance,” he said, “and keep us both panting in anticipation for the next hour or so. But I doubt it is possible. Will you mind?”
“No.” She smiled back. “I want to feel you inside me.” Her cheeks grew hot at the boldness of her words.
And yet it was a shock-a wonderful shock-when he rolled on top of her, slipped his hands beneath her as his legs spread hers wide, and came deep inside her with one smooth, firm thrust. Smooth, she realized, because she had been very ready for him too. And painless this time.
She drew a deep breath and released it slowly as she slid her feet up the bed so that she could tilt herself to allow him deeper access. Ah, yes, she was as ready for him as he was for her, but please, please, let it not all be over too soon.
She tightened inner muscles about him and found the resulting sensation wondrously pleasurable. He was long and hard.
He drew his hands free and lifted some of his weight onto his forearms and looked down into her face.
“There is
nowhere in the world I would rather be,” he said before kissing her. “Let’s love each other.”
And that was what they did after he had turned his head away to rest on the pillow beside her and lowered some of his weight back onto her. He withdrew and entered again and withdrew and entered and set up a slow, firm rhythm of love. And this time, because she knew what happened and knew too that she could make love as well as submit to being made love to, she moved to the same rhythm, rotating her hips, pulsing with her inner muscles.
It lasted a long, wonderful time as their breath became labored and their bodies slick with sweat, as her passage became wetter and a rhythmic sucking sound accompanied their movements.
It might just be possible to swoon with pleasure, Susanna thought-until pleasure began to be overlaid with something else. At first it was a needling ache where he worked in her, and then something that bordered almost on pain as it spread downward to her legs, upward through her womb to her breasts and into her throat and behind her eyes.
And then it was pain-a strange, unbearable pain that did not quite hurt but…
But there were no words.
She heard herself moan.
The rhythm changed then. It became faster and deeper, and his hands were beneath her again, holding her steady so that there was no escape. Her own rhythm vanished as she strained toward him, every muscle taut.
And then something blossomed deep within and opened almost like the multiple petals of a rose, pushing back the tension in rippling waves as they bloomed until she surrendered to relaxation with a soft exclamation of surprise.
“Ah,” she said.
The aftermath of tension set her to trembling all over then as she sank into the blessed fulfillment of sexual desire. Not that she used quite those words in her mind. She had not known that there was such a thing.
He had stopped moving too, she realized. But he was still hard and firm and deep inside her, and his body was still tense. He had stopped so that she could savor her own pleasure.
She felt weak with a glorious exhaustion, but she wrapped her arms about him, twined her legs about his, and turned her head to kiss the side of his face.
He took his pleasure swiftly and lustily, and it surprised a languorous Susanna to discover that even in satiety more pleasure was possible. She felt the warm gush of his release and lifted one hand to rest over the damp hair at the back of his head.
“Susanna,” he murmured against her ear.
“Peter.”
They both slept, without uncoupling.
Somehow while he had slept, Peter discovered, he had moved to Susanna’s side. She was cradled in his arms, her head in the hollow between his neck and his shoulder. She was still sleeping.
It was a thought that had woken him-a memory actually.
A memory of being in William Osbourne’s office at Fincham with Theo when they were both boys, learning script writing. And of his mother hurrying into the room without knocking, looking startled, and then scolding him for not being in Theo’s room, where she had supposed he would be.
He had assumed at the time that she had been looking for him.
Now, for some odd reason when so many years had passed, he thought that if that had been the case, the look on her face would surely have been relief, or perhaps annoyance. Not surprise. And why had she not knocked? It was true that the office belonged to a mere secretary, but even so, he was a gentleman. And his office was in a private home that was not his mother’s.
And why the devil was he wondering about such unimportant matters now? Why had such a trivial memory woken him up? Just because Osbourne was fresh in his mind?
He yawned, burrowed his nose in Susanna’s hair, kissed her head lightly-and drew back his head rather sharply.
The devil!
It was surely not his mother…
It could not have been!
Good Lord, Osbourne, though a gentleman, had been only Markham’s secretary, and his mother was the highest of high sticklers. She would never have…
Yes, she could have.
Osbourne had been a handsome devil. Not that Peter had ever noticed that when he was a boy, but looking back he could see that, yes, the man had enjoyed more than his fair share of good looks.
His mother must have been lonely-he knew she had been lonely. She had told him so later-six years later. Five years ago.
So must Osbourne have been lonely.
Of course, anything that might have happened between them could have been initiated on Osbourne’s side. His mother might not have given him any encouragement at all. Perhaps the charges that had led him to kill himself had been true.
But his mother had been hurrying into that study, and no one had been coercing her. It even seemed to Peter now that there had been a look of eagerness on her face before surprise had replaced it, though there was no way of verifying that impression.
But dash it all-what a devil of a coil!
He just hoped his imagination had become overactive and was playing wild and nasty tricks on him.
But it was not with his imagination that he had seen his mother with Grantham-with Bertha’s father -five years ago. He had walked into her unlocked dressing room at Sidley after the slightest of knocks, on some unremembered mission, and…Well, and there they had been, the two of them. They had not even stopped first to lock the door.
Blood hammered through his temples. What if that had not been an isolated incident in his mother’s life-as she had sworn to him it was?
What if his mother had driven Osbourne to his death?
And here he was holding Osbourne’s daughter in his arms. He had just made love to her. He was determined to marry her if she would have him.
She was awake. She had opened her eyes and tipped back her head and was looking at him sleepily, her cheeks slightly flushed.
Lord, but he loved her. The realization-and the force of his feelings-shook him.
If she had known about this all along, even before reading her letter- if his thoughts had led him down the right path, that was-was it why…
Lord bless him, of course it was why. And what was it he had said to her-his very first words to her?
Miss Osbourne, an already glorious summer day suddenly seems even warmer and brighter.
He could almost hear himself say those exact words.
What a consummate ass!
At the same moment she had been recognizing his name and recoiling from him.
“Mmm,” she said now and kissed his chin and then his mouth when he lowered his head.
She was not recoiling from him now, though. Perhaps his guesses were way wide of the mark.
“Mmm to you too,” he said, rubbing his nose across hers.
“Ought we to go back yet?” she asked him with a sigh. “We must have been gone for an age.”
He had been going to propose marriage to her again after they were finished with the sex. He had decided that downstairs as soon as she had said yes. He would love her silly and then, before she could recover her wits and harden her heart, he would slip the question into their waking conversation. And then during the Christmas ball he would make the grand announcement.
She would not marry him in a million years if his mother had been her father’s lover and had then tried blackmailing him and driven him to despair and death.
Not to mention how his mother would react if he presented William Osbourne’s daughter to her as his prospective bride.
Somehow-perhaps because he did not want to believe it-he knew that his guess was correct.
“They know you are with me,” he said. “They probably know too that we left in the curricle. They will assume that I have brought you over to Sidley and that you have stayed for luncheon and an afternoon visit.”
“Why is it,” she asked, snuggling closer, “that I so often imagine myself running away and running free? I ran away once and it now seems that I must have done the wrong thing. Except that running away took me to Bath, and I have been ha
ppy there. Why do I want to run from happiness?”
“Because it is not everything you want or need or dream of?” he suggested. “I would run away with you to the end of the world now if I thought that doing so would bring us to that mythical state of happily-ever-after. I think I was actually serious during the summer, Susanna, when I suggested we go off walking in Wales together. Indeed, I know I was. But I would not ask you to do anything like that again.”
“Oh,” she said softly.
“Because there is no such state,” he said. “There is no happily-ever-after to run to. We have to work for happiness. I am going to do things the right way from now on. I decided that as soon as I left Bath. Don’t ask me what I am going to do or how I am going to do it. I don’t know. But at the end of all this I am going to have slain a dragon or two, and I am going to like myself. Then perhaps I’ll have more to offer the world-and you-than simple gallantry.”
She gazed at him and her eyes filled with tears, though she smiled too.
“I am not sorry I ran away that first time,” she said. “I like what happened to my life. And if I had not run, I would not have met you again, would I? But I won’t run again. I’ll go back to Fincham and meet my grandparents, though for some reason it will be one of the hardest things I have ever done. And then after Christmas I will go home to Bath and continue striving to be the best teacher I can possibly be.”
“You are not sorry we met again during the summer, then?” he asked her.
“No.”
“Neither am I,” he said.
“But I must get back to Fincham,” she said. “Soon.”
She raised herself on one elbow and leaned over him to kiss the side of his face and trail kisses along his jawline. Then she kissed his mouth. Her free hand pressed against his shoulder until he turned to lie on his back.
By Jove, he thought, his interest piqued, she was going to make love to him.
By the time they had reached the bedchamber earlier, he had been so bursting with desire for her-and she for him, he had judged-that he had proceeded without delay to the main feast. She, it seemed, was more disciplined.