“Well, I don’t.” The words were very firm.
He laughed.
“Gabriella,” he said, in a slightly altered tone. “You like touching me, don’t you?”
She slanted a look up at him. As she was at the moment lightly stroking his chest, there wasn’t much point in denying it. “I—yes. I guess.”
“Why don’t you then?”
Her eyes widened. “What do you mean?”
“I like it when you rub my chest that way. I like your hands on me. I could show you some other things I like, if you’d let me.”
The look she gave him must have been suspicious, because he grinned at her.
“You’re looking at me like I’m the spider and you’re the fly. Sweetheart, I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do. If you don’t like something, just say so, and we’ll stop right there.”
It was the caressingly uttered sweetheart that did it. That, and the twinkle in his eyes.
“What do you want me to do?” Not that she minded, not really. As long as all he wanted her to do was touch him, that is.
“This.” With his hand atop hers, he guided her fingers over his chest, over each flat male nipple, which to her surprise hardened under her touch, then down, over his belly, over his abdomen. Gabby’s fingers tingled at the feel of him. His skin was smooth and warm and rough with hair, and felt nothing at all like her own soft silky flesh. Touching him was a pleasure, she discovered; she could gladly have gone on touching him for the rest of the night.
He let go of her hand when, of its own accord, one of her fingers decided to explore his navel. She remembered how she had wanted to do that before, without a towel to come between his skin and hers. . . . She delved in and out, then stroked the surrounding abdomen. His firm, muscular belly was such a contrast to her own. . . .
“Don’t stop there,” he said when she paused to consider the contrast of her slim white fingers with his shades darker, hair-roughened flesh. His tone was teasing, but there was a husky note underlying the words. Gazing at him, arrested, she realized that he wanted her to go lower yet. When his hand covered hers again, and started to guide hers down, she didn’t resist. He kicked the covers down around his feet, and the object of the quest was suddenly obvious.
A tingle raced down her spine as she looked at it. Dear Lord, no wonder that thing had hurt going inside her. It should be clear to anyone of the meanest intelligence that it simply could not fit. It must have been intended for a larger female than she.
When she said as much, he laughed uproariously.
“That almost makes up for the fine, I guess.”
She frowned at him, uncomprehending. “What?”
“Nothing. Gabriella, I’m dying here. Touch me. Please.”
She was not proof against that please. When, allowing his hand to guide her, her fingers closed around him, it was all she could do not to pull back. It felt so—foreign in her hand. Before, when he’d been ill and had put her hand on him, it had been much smaller, although the contact had been so brief details had hardly registered. Now it was huge and thick and hot, with slightly damp, velvety smooth skin. She squeezed it, just to see what would happen.
He sucked in his breath, drawing her attention to his face. With fascination she saw that his jaw was set, and sweat beaded his brow. His lips were slightly parted as he breathed through clenched teeth, and his eyes were narrow glittering slits as he met her gaze.
“Am I hurting you?” she asked, preparing to let go.
“No.” The words were forced through his teeth. “Oh, no. That feels—good.”
“It does?” Interested now, she sat up, and squeezed again. He made a low guttural sound that was a cross between a groan and a growl.
“You can also—do it like this.”
His hand closed over hers again, demonstrating silently how to please him. Kneeling at his side, she repeated what he taught her until he stopped her, suddenly, by grabbing her wrist and pulling her hand away from him.
She looked at him inquiringly.
“That’s enough.” His breathing was labored. For a few minutes he simply lay there with his eyes closed and his hand wrapped around her wrist. Finally his lids lifted, and he looked at her, smiling a little wryly as their gazes met. Then he sat up.
“Gabriella.” He was very close. She was sitting back on her haunches by this time, and still the top of her head didn’t quite reach his chin.
“Hmm?”
“Will you trust me to show you something else?”
By now she was more interested than nervous. “What?”
He still held her wrist. His other hand came up to cup the nape of her neck. For a moment he simply stroked the tender flesh there without replying. Then he bent his head, and touched his mouth to hers.
37
By the time Gabby realized that they were once again lying down, and he had somehow managed to divest her of his dressing gown and was at that moment positioning himself between her thighs for another assault on her person, she was so lost in the throes of passion that she could do nothing but cling to him and wait, martyrlike, for the pain she only just now remembered. He’d beguiled her with kisses, first on her mouth and later on her breasts and belly and even her soft inner thighs. Then, to her shocked surprise, he had even kissed the very core of her, loving her with his mouth until she was trembling and gasping and writhing with passion.
Only then, when she was mindless with pleasure, had he moved between her thighs. And still her foolish, forgetful body was hot and wet and ready, burning with the fire he had ignited, wanting, needing, craving—him.
He was far too big, she remembered frantically as he probed the opening. Her eyes opened wide, but his mouth was on hers and before she could pull it free and order him to stop he was pushing inside, stretching her, filling her—but there was no pain.
Instead it felt—almost wonderful.
“All right?” he asked then, his voice thick, as he lifted his mouth from hers at last and looked down at her.
“Yes.” She must have sounded a little doubtful, or perhaps her eyes were still wide, because, despite the hard passion that suffused his face, he gave her a wry little smile.
“Trust me,” he said, and she discovered, somewhat to her own surprise, that she did. His shaft was huge and solid and hard as a rock inside her, but he wasn’t using it, just holding it deep in there, and the result was—amazing. She moved her hips experimentally, just to see what would happen, and the resultant fiery clenching of her loins around him made her gasp. He smiled again, quite differently than before, then bent his head to press his lips to the tender spot just below her ear. Still he didn’t move the lower part of his body. She rocked her hips against him again just because she couldn’t help it, and hot tendrils of pleasure shot through her belly and down her thighs. When she moaned and shivered in delicious response, he answered by sliding his hands beneath her thighs and lifting them until her knees were bent on either side of him.
“Wrap your legs around my waist,” he said in her ear.
Gabby drew in her breath, but did as he told her, and found, as she twined her limbs around him, that she was trembling with anticipation. Then, finally, he began to move. With each slow, sure thrust she cried out, arching her back, clinging to him.
“God, you feel good.” His words were guttural. Gabby scarcely heard them. Her heart pounded in her ears. She gasped, cried out, got lost in a sea of sensations that she had never even imagined existed. The melting she had experienced before had turned to pure liquid fire, and it was shooting through her veins, undulating along her nerve endings, making her feel as though at any minute her body might burst into flames. As he felt her response he began to thrust harder, faster, driving himself into her, and this time she welcomed the fierceness of his taking and responded with a hungry urgency of her own. Finally his hand slid between their bodies, found the very heart of her desire, and stroked her there, and her passion spiraled out of control.
“Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick!” she sobbed against his shoulder as suddenly her world seemed to explode into searing pinwheels of fire. Long, exquisite tremors racked her body. She clung to him, shaking, gasping as shooting stars of pleasure sizzled through her veins.
His arms tightened around her in response, and, shuddering, he plunged deep inside her as he found his own release.
When Gabby finally floated back to earth and opened her eyes, it was to discover that she was lying flat on her back with him propped up on an elbow beside her, watching her with a lazy, annoyingly self-satisfied smile playing around the edges of his mouth.
“What do you think? Did we manage to improve on fine?”
From the look of him, he knew the answer very well.
“I’m not going to answer that. You’re too conceited already.”
He laughed, bent his head, and kissed her. “You’ll tell me one of these days,” he said, quite cheerful. Then he yawned hugely, gathered her close against his side, and fell almost instantly asleep.
Before Gabby had time to feel affronted, she too was asleep, wrapped close in his arms.
When she awoke, she was in her own bed, and Mary was creeping around her bedroom building up the fire and generally readying the chamber for the day. The cold light of early morning was peeping around the edges of the curtains. She was, Gabby discovered as she stretched, quite naked, and immediately the events of the night replayed themselves in her mind. She had slept with Wickham—no, Nick. Nick now. Her Nick. She had thrown her cap over the windmill with a vengeance, given a nefarious rogue whose true name she could not even be sure of the most precious gift she had to give, and whistled Mr. Jamison and security down the wind, all in one mind-bogglingly glorious night.
And the wonderful thing about it was, she didn’t regret it one bit.
She stretched again, and suddenly became aware of the slight soreness between her thighs and the unusual tenderness of her breasts. Recollecting the cause with utmost vividness, she smiled dreamily up at the ceiling.
Nick. She had given herself to Nick.
“I’m sorry, mum. I didn’t mean to wake ye up,” Mary said contritely, looking up from where she was sweeping ashes from the hearth.
“That’s all right, Mary.” Smiling at the maid, Gabby felt a sudden spurt of alarm. Had Wickham—no, Nick now, and that had better be his real name if the rogue knew what was good for him—left any evidence of his presence behind, like his breeches, or a stocking? She had a horrible vision of his clothes being strewn about the carpet.
She couldn’t sit up to check, of course. She had to stay in bed with the covers up to her neck in case Mary should discover that she was naked. Sleeping naked was quite shocking in and of itself, even without having a gentleman’s discarded clothing discovered in one’s bedchamber. The only thing more scandalous would be for the gentleman himself to be discovered sleeping in her bedchamber—or for her to be discovered sleeping in his.
Where she had been until, she guessed, roughly an hour before.
She had the vaguest recollection of Nick carrying her to her own bed. Thank goodness he had woken out of the deep sleep he had fallen into for at least long enough to do that. It was quite likely that he had also removed his clothing from her room at that time, she thought. Whatever else he was, he was far from being a flat.
As she thought of all the things that he was, and acknowledged that she was wildly in love with him despite them, she felt a most unfamiliar bubble of happiness start to grow inside her.
“You can go ahead and prepare my bath, Mary. And bring my breakfast up.”
“It’s early to be gettin’ up, mum,” Mary said doubtfully. “Just gone half past seven, it is. ’Course, you’re not the only one up with the chickens this morning. My lord’s been out of the house for this hour past.”
Gabby’s eyes widened a little at this. “My lord—you mean Lord Wickham?” It was going to be quite a trick, she realized, to keep his names straight—Wickham in public and Nick in private; she had almost stumbled then. Oh, dear, the situation was growing increasingly complicated. “He is gone from the house?”
“Yes, mum. He left an hour since, and his man, that Mr. Barnet, with him. Barnet saddled the horses himself. Your Jem was real put out about that, when he came into the kitchen this morning. Said Mr. Barnet had no business in the stables.”
Gabby stared at Mary. Nick—and Barnet—had gone somewhere on horseback. If he had simply gone out for a morning ride—a very early morning ride, and this after a night most energetically spent—he wouldn’t have taken Barnet. Would he?
A hideous thought assailed her. Was he—please God he was not!—going to confront Trent?
The very idea made her feel faint.
“Run downstairs and get my breakfast, Mary. I am getting up.”
He did not come home that day, or that night. Pleading a severe headache, she spent almost the entire day in her room, on tenterhooks, waiting for him to return home. But he did not.
Mr. Jamison called, and was sent away, not too unhappily, with the intelligence that Lady Gabriella was too unwell to see him. He was not the only visitor, according to Claire, who, along with Beth, stopped in at intervals to check on her. Nearly a dozen gentlemen had called, and almost as many ladies: a sure sign of social success.
“Tomorrow you must get yourself downstairs and accept Mr. Jamison,” Aunt Augusta informed her severely, after having ascended to her chamber with the express purpose of providing her with a recipe for a tisane that she knew from her own experience cured headaches without fail. “There is still some talk about Wickham’s extraordinary behavior toward you, I’m sorry to say, although I’ve managed to squelch most of it. Well. Maud Banning has a vicious tongue on her, and always has, and she doesn’t like you and most particularly Claire. I’ve no doubt she’s at the root of it, and very few people—certainly none of sense—pay her any heed. But still, it will be as well for you to get Mr. Jamison locked up. There’s many a slip ’twixt cup and lip, you know, and suitable marriage prospects for a girl of your age aren’t exactly thick on the trees.”
Gabby agreed to that, and if her agreement was somewhat listless Aunt Augusta put it down to the effects of the headache, and went away.
By the next morning, when Nick still had not come home, Gabby was beside herself with fear. She had scarcely slept all night, so hard had she listened for him. And she had actually looked in his chamber twice, just to make certain that she had not missed him when he came in. But he didn’t come, and thoughts of him being injured or killed by Trent began to take horrible possession of her mind.
What else would keep him from home at such a juncture? After the night they had spent, surely, surely, he would not just leave? Without a word?
Too worried to care about anything but Nick, she sent for Jem.
“You want me to go see if that swine of a duke is still in town?” Jem asked with disbelief. Like Stivers, he knew Trent of old, and held him in extreme dislike, although Gabby had never revealed Trent’s part in the fall that had broken her leg. “If you don’t mind my askin’, why exactly?”
“Because—because Trent said something insulting to me. I told Wickham and he said he would kill Trent for me. And he left very early yesterday morning, and has not come home since.”
“It seems to me, Miss Gabby, that you’re tellin’ that imposter entirely too much about yer personal affairs,” Jem said severely.
“Jem, please, just do as I ask.” Some of Gabby’s wretchedness must have been apparent in her voice, because Jem’s expression changed to one of concern.
“He’s properly cozened you with his smooth talk, has he? You keep the line with him, Miss Gabby. He’s trouble, pure and simple.”
“Jem . . .”
“I’ll go, if you’re wantin’ me to. But I’m telling you straight out, it’s not likely that anything’s happened to him. What’s more likely is that he’s simply come across a better scam, and taken himself off.”
The possibilities associated with Wickham’s disappearance were endless, and none of them, from her perspective, were good.
Pleading residual exhaustion from the previous day’s headache, Gabby excused herself from expeditions proposed by both Claire and Beth, and went upstairs immediately after luncheon. It was ignoble of her to stoop so low, she knew, but perhaps, if she looked through Wickham’s—Nick’s—oh, whoever’s—room, she would find some clue as to why he had left so precipitously.
Without a word.
That was the part, she thought, that truly bothered her. After the night they had spent, after what they had been to each other, surely, surely, he would not purposely have left her for this length of time without a word.
She entered his chamber through the connecting door, feeling like a thief in the night. At this time of day, the servants were likely to be busy with chores elsewhere in the house, but still she would not like to be discovered going through Wickham’s things. It would look most odd. . . .
His apartment was, in a strange kind of way, comforting. In his dressing room, a few shining black hairs still clung to his brush. His highly polished Hessian boots, with their dangling tassles, had been placed side by side in a corner. Several fresh neckcloths hung over the back of a chair. She opened drawers, feeling increasingly guilty as she rummaged through their contents, but found nothing beyond cufflinks and the usual jewelry and gewgaws that a gentleman of fashion might reasonably be expected to possess. In his bedroom, there was even less that was personal: a collapsible spyglass placed on the mantle, a box of cigars and a bottle of brandy on the table near the fire, a book on military history on the table by the bed.
Nothing to tell who or what he really was; nothing to tell where he was.
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