by Candace Camp
When he felt the moisture flooding between her legs, he let out a long, shuddering breath. “Oh, my sweet, sweet girl. You are ready for me so soon.”
“I’m sorry,” Charity whispered, embarrassed, hiding her flaming face against his shoulder.
“Oh, no, do not be sorry. ’Tis wonderful. You are…delightful.” His voice was hoarse, his breath rasping in his throat, and Charity found the sound of it stirring.
She moved restlessly against his hand, and he obliged her by gently caressing the soft, slick folds of flesh until she was moaning and trembling with pleasure. Finally he took his hand away for a moment to unbutton his trousers and let his manhood spring out, free and pulsing. Charity felt it pushing against her, and her eyes widened a little at this new, different excitement. She raised herself a little and moved against it, caressing the turgid flesh with her own hot femininity. Simon sucked in a sharp breath at the sensation and closed his eyes.
When he could stand the tantalizing play no longer, he guided her onto his shaft, pushing her hips down until she was flush against him. He watched the play of sensual expressions—the flicker of surprise and satisfaction and hunger—across her face as she moved slowly down until at last he was fully embedded in her. Charity’s head lolled back, exposing her long white throat, and her face was slack with sexuality. Seeing her passionate enjoyment, feeling himself deep within her, Simon felt as if he might explode. Yet he could not let himself; he was too eager to savor the moment, the joy of taking what she offered so willingly, the supreme pleasure of coming to climax within her and feeling her convulse with pleasure, as well.
He reached up and unbuttoned her dress from behind, letting it slide down to expose her breasts, covered only by the chemise. He trailed kisses across the white expanse of her chest and onto the trembling tops of her breasts. His hands delved inside her chemise, lifting the soft white globes free of the material. Holding them as if they were succulent fruit, he buried his face between her breasts, inhaling her scent, rubbing his cheeks and lips over the soft skin. Then he began to taste her, kissing and nibbling, tracing her nipples with his tongue. Covering his teeth with his lips, he worried her nipples into rosy-red engorgement, then softly, slowly, lashed them with his tongue.
With each new sensation Charity moved unconsciously upon him, arousing new delights in him. Groaning, she dug her fingers into Simon’s hair and began to circle her hips. Panting, he struggled to retain control, to savor each moment of ever-heightening pleasure. His hands went to her hips, guiding her, slowing and increasing the pressure and speed of her movements, tantalizing them both almost beyond bearing. Then, at last, Charity cried out and convulsed around him, trembling and jerking, and he could hold out no longer. He buried his face against her breasts, his hands digging into her hips, as he thrust, spilling his seed into her, his hoarse shout of joy muffled against her skin.
They went limp, spent from the rush of joy. Charity rested her head on his shoulder, dazed and weak with happiness. His arms were around her, and his cheek rested against her hair. They were still melded together, touching everywhere, and now and then he brushed a fluttering kiss upon her hair and face, or caressed her lightly.
“Are you comfortable?” he whispered. “Do you want to move?”
“No.” Charity shook her head. “Not unless you want me to.”
He chuckled and squeezed her. “No. I could stay like this forever.”
“Me too.” Charity rubbed her head against his shoulder like a cat. “I love feeling you inside me.”
Simon made a choked noise, and his arms tightened around her convulsively.
“I’m sorry. Was I wrong to say that?” She lifted her head and looked up at him. His eyes were bright, and his face was still sensually lax with satisfaction.
“God, no,” he murmured, smiling, and lazily traced her lips with his forefinger. “I love to hear you say it.”
Charity smiled back at him and daringly flicked her tongue out to taste his finger. The fire that lit his eyes told her that her instinct had been right.
“You’re making me hard again already.”
“Really?” She straightened up, surprised, leaning back from him a little. It seemed amazing to her, but she knew that it must be true; she could feel him swelling inside her.
“Really,” he replied dryly, looking back at the bare chest she had revealed by sitting up.
Her bodice was still pulled down to her waist, her chemise beneath her breasts. Simon studied the smooth white orbs like an artist studying a painting. He ran a finger over her breasts and down each nipple. Her nipples were still rosy and engorged, damp from his mouth, with the softened, faintly swollen look of having been suckled. He thought that he had never seen anything as beautiful, or arousing, as the sight of her right now, half-naked and her hair falling down from its pins. She looked somehow both brazen and innocent…and thoroughly alluring.
“You enjoyed it, didn’t you?” he asked softly, wonderingly.
“Why, yes!” Charity was startled. “Didn’t you?”
Simon laughed. “Yes. I think you could say I enjoyed it. I knew I would, from the moment I saw you. But I was not as sure that you would feel the same.”
He smoothed his hands over her breasts, gazing at the contrast of his hard, tanned skin against her soft whiteness. “You do not mind when I look at you like this, either, do you?”
Charity blushed. “It is a trifle embarrassing, but I like it, too. It’s…exciting. To have you look at me, and to see the way your face changes.”
Gently Simon took one nipple between his forefinger and thumb and rolled it. Charity sucked in a soft gasp of pleasure.
“Oh, Charity,” he said, pulling her close and squeezing her to him. “You are a woman in a million.”
“You mean…Do most women not like it? Am I not normal?”
“I don’t know. But please don’t change.” He buried his face in her hair. “Don’t ever change.”
“I won’t,” Charity assured him, adding honestly, “I doubt I could. I like it very much, you see…what we just did.”
He chuckled. “So did I. I think we shall deal quite well with each other.”
Simon leaned his head back against the seat of the carriage. He had to blink away the moisture that was in his eyes. He felt freer and happier than he had in years. Compared with the peace within him, the fact that he was suspected of murder seemed only a minor annoyance.
“Sybilla hated it, you see,” he said, surprising himself. He had never talked to anyone about the lack of joy in his marriage bed.
“Your wife?” Charity asked, sitting up again, a puzzled expression on her face. “Your first wife?”
“Yes. She shrank from my touch.”
Charity’s mouth dropped open in a gratifyingly shocked way. “You’re making jest of me. Aren’t you?”
He shook his head. “I wish I were. Sybilla despised lovemaking—or, at least, my lovemaking. I often wondered if perhaps some other man could have made her happy. I loved her—she loved me. But after we were married, everything changed between us. She avoided me. In bed, she lay stiff and silent beneath me. I came to feel as if—as if I were raping her.” He sighed, the old bleak look returning to his face. “I suppose I was. I had the right. She allowed me to bed her. But still, I knew I was forcing her. Conventions, her marriage vows, society, that was what forced her. She endured me, she did not give herself to me. I went to her less and less often, only when I was driven by need and could delude myself into thinking that it would be different this time. Every time I left her feeling guilty and crude, an animal. After a time, I stopped. I could not bear it anymore. But it had gone on long enough that she had got pregnant. She died in childbirth.”
“And you felt as if you had killed her,” Charity said perceptively.
He glanced at her, startled. “How did you know?”
“I saw it on your face. You never tried to squash the rumors that you had killed her—because inside you felt that you rea
lly had.”
Simon nodded. “It was my passion that was the cause of it. If I had left her alone, as I knew she wanted…”
“You did not kill her. Women die in childbirth all the time. It is a common danger. God decides such things, not you. You desired her. That is not unnatural, for a man to desire his wife. Is it?”
“No.”
“I would lay you odds that other men have bedded wives who cared no more for lovemaking than your Sybilla, yet the wives have not died in childbirth because of it. And there have probably been women who enjoyed the marriage bed and still died bearing a child. It was fate, my love, not your passion.”
Simon swallowed hard and brought her hand up to his lips, placing a gentle kiss in her palm. “You are a joy, Charity. I cannot think how I deserved to have you.” He gazed deeply into her eyes, reaching out to brush a strand of hair back from her face in a tender gesture. “Until you came to my bed that night, I did not know if Sybilla had been an aberration, or if all women care so little for loving. Or if it was just that I was an animal, too crude and rough to make love to a woman so that she enjoyed it, so low in nature that I enjoyed things that others would find disgusting.”
“No!” Charity cried fiercely, taking his hand and pressing it to her cheek. “You are not an animal. You are kind and gentle.” Tears glistened in her eyes. “Don’t ever believe anything else.” She curled his fingers over her hand and began to press kisses along his knuckles, as if to punctuate her words. “You are not low, and the things you do are not disgusting.”
She looked up at him flirtatiously, her lips curving into a smile. “In fact, I enjoy the things you do very much.”
“Do you?” He smiled back in the same sensual way, his eyes darkening. “Then perhaps you would like to do them again?”
Her eyes widened a little. “So soon?”
“Would you mind?”
Charity giggled. “No, my lord, I would not mind at all.”
“Good.” He sealed her mouth with a kiss.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE TIME THEY SPENT at Deerfield Park was the happiest that either Simon or Charity could remember. They paid their dutiful visits to the small ivy-covered church on Sundays and held a party to introduce the locals to the new Lady Dure. But apart from those things, they spent their days exactly as they pleased: taking long walks through the woods or riding along the river, visiting the village of Deerfield nearby, romping with Lucky. Charity, freed from the constraints of her parents, indulged herself by doing precisely what she wanted when she wanted, and it seemed to her the most fortunate thing in the world that she was able to do it with the man she loved. As for Simon, he found himself engaging in activities he hadn’t done for years, and laughing like a boy.
Their nights were filled with lovemaking—and, often, so were their days. Reveling in a willing, joyous partner, Simon was ever thinking of new things and new places to try, and Charity was eager to comply. They learned each other’s bodies, each other’s wants and needs, their most sensual spots. They spent long, lazy afternoons in bed, talking and exploring, teasing and experimenting. Charity wondered how she could have lived so long without knowing such joy. Simon wondered how he could once have thought that a bland marriage of convenience was all he wanted.
With her sympathetic heart and her habit of bringing home strays, with her mischievous sense of fun and her spirit of adventure, marriage to Charity would never be anything like convenient, he knew. He also knew that anything but marriage to Charity would be deadly dull. She was everything he wanted, even though he had not known before what that was. Simon had sworn that he would never love again, that he would not lay himself open to that sort of pain and heartbreak. But he knew, whatever he might say, that he was rushing headlong toward that precipice and that, moreover, he could not even summon a desire to stop. He remembered Charity’s cheerful agreement to a marriage without love, her sunny statement that she doubted that she was capable of falling in love, and he wondered if her words had been true. He was finding, more and more, that he hoped they were not.
They had planned to return to London in three weeks, but they found themselves putting the trip off for one week and then another, until by the time they returned, it had been almost six weeks since their wedding. For that time, they had lived as in a world apart. At Deerfield Park, there had been no gossip, no murder, no one watching their every move and discussing it. They soon found out how unreal that time had been.
The first day in London, Inspector Herbert Gorham came to call on them. He found Charity at home by herself, and when Chaney announced to her that the inspector was there, she quickly agreed to see him. She wanted to see for herself exactly what sort of man he was.
She soon found out. He was small, with a weasel-sharp face and thinning hair, for which he compensated with an enormous walrus mustache. The result was like that of a child trying on a false mustache: it made him look both small and silly. His eyes, however, disabused one of the impression of silliness. They were light green, and very sharp, as if he saw everything that went on around him.
Charity nodded at him when he entered, trying to address him as her mother would. “Mr. Gorham.”
“Lady Dure.” He took off his hat and bowed to her. “It is so kind of you to give me this time.”
“I am quite eager for you to find the true killer of Mr. Reed, of course. As we all are.”
“All except the killer, my lady.” He allowed himself a thin, supercilious smile.
“Well, yes, one would presume so.” She gestured toward a chair. “I am afraid, however, that I have little information to give you. I know nothing about the man’s death.”
“Sometimes a person may know more than they realize. It can be a dangerous thing.” He cast a meaningful look in her direction. Charity simply stared back at him blankly. After a moment, he went on. “I was frankly surprised when I read that you had married His Lordship.”
Charity raised her eyebrows coolly. “Indeed? I cannot imagine why.”
“So soon after Mr. Reed’s death, I mean.”
“Why? I wasn’t in mourning for him. I scarcely knew him.”
“It was not really him I was thinking about, my lady.” He paused, then added, “A person who has killed once finds it much easier the second time.”
“Are you implying that the murderer is likely to come after me?” Charity asked, looking perplexed. She knew perfectly well that the obnoxious little man was referring to Simon, but she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of even seeming to realize it.
“While you may not have known Mr. Reed very well, it might be different with the murderer.”
“You mean that the murderer knew Mr. Reed well? I can see that that would be likely.”
“No.” He frowned, and Charity was pleased to see that she had succeeded in nettling him.
“I meant that you might know the murderer very well.”
“I?” She looked at him with faint, polite contempt, as if he had committed a social gaffe. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gorham, but I’m afraid Emersons don’t associate with murderers.”
“Has Lord Dure told you, my lady, that one of his own handkerchiefs, marked with the Dure crest, was found beside the body?”
“Yes. It’s most puzzling, isn’t it? I wonder, why would Mr. Reed have one of my husband’s handkerchiefs? Did he steal it, do you suppose? He was not quite a gentleman, you know, but I hardly would have thought he would be a thief of haberdashery.”
“The obvious conclusion is,” the man went on, clearly straining to keep hold of his temper, “that the murderer accidentally dropped it.”
“So you think the murderer stole Lord Dure’s handkerchief. I suppose that is more likely, that a thief would be a killer, as well, but—”
“Lady Dure.” He spoke slowly and clearly, as if she were a child, or not quite all there. “The most obvious conclusion is that it was Lord Dure who visited Reed that night. That it was he who pulled the trigger.”
; Charity looked at him in amazement for a moment, then said, “What nonsense! No wonder you people haven’t found the killer, if you go around chasing nonsensical clues. I should think you could spend your time better.”
“The night Mr. Reed was killed, my lady, you and Lord Dure attended a party where Mr. Reed was also in attendance. I understand that Lord Dure attacked Mr. Reed that night, that Mr. Reed left the party quite bloodied.”
“Well, it was only partly Lord Dure who did that,” Charity told him judiciously. “I was the one who bloodied his nose.”
Inspector Gorham stared at her. “You, my lady?”
“Yes. He was most impertinent and impolite. A simple set-down did not do the trick. I had to be more forceful with the man.”
The inspector continued to gape and blink, looking completely at sea.
“I suppose,” Charity went on imperturbably, “you could say, if fighting with him that night was the basis for killing him, that I would be just as likely a candidate for murdering him as my husband. That is what I’m saying to you—there are many people who hated Mr. Reed.”
“Lord Dure threatened to kill him that night, did he not?” Gorham recovered enough to ask.
Charity tilted her head to one side, considering. “I’m not sure what Dure said in the heat of anger. It is usually errant nonsense, you know. He may have said something like that.”
“I think you know very well that he did,” Gorham retorted, heat building up in him as he decided that this strange, lovely young woman before him had been gaming him. No well-bred lady would bloody a man’s nose! “Lady Dure, you are playing with fire. A murderer in one’s house is not a comfortable thing to live with.”
“There is no murderer in this house,” Charity replied stonily.
The inspector tried to smile in a friendly way, though it came across looking more like a death rictus. “Lady Dure, you live with the man. It’s possible you might see something, hear something…and if you do, it would be to your benefit to come to us. You had best consider your own safety. You are in a very unprotected situation here.”