Beloved

by Stella Cameron

  “I believe you. But I also believe you have wanted nothing more than you want to be free, Saber. You never asked me to follow you around, to pester you with my foolish demands.”

  “What has happened?” he asked, very softly. “What happened this evening? Where did…? Crabley and Rose spoke of a carriage. Where did it take you?”

  “Nowhere!” Her dark hair streamed over her shoulders. She sat, curled into a ball. “Leave me, please. For your own good, just leave.”

  Saber stroked her hair again. “No.”

  She sighed. “I will not enter into one of your infuriating word battles, Saber. I wish to be alone. Please go away.”

  “No.”

  “This is my bedchamber. It isn’t appropriate for you to be here.”

  “Rubbish. If you truly wish to be rid of me, you’ll have to do much better. I never intend to leave you alone again. I have just decided. From now on I shall never allow you from my sight.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” She swiveled sideways on the seat and turned her face toward the windows.

  “We’re going to be married. Husbands and wives are often inseparable. Side by side at every moment. There’s nothing ridiculous about that.”

  “Every person requires some privacy.”

  “I shall do my best to become invisible from time to time. Perhaps a certain ghost could give me lessons.”

  “Perhaps.” She thought a moment before saying, “You certainly cannot be with me when I dress.”

  He almost laughed, but coughed instead. “I think I could manage to endure that.”

  “Well, not when I bathe.”

  When she bathed? Saber found it necessary to sit beside her. “That would be a great trial, but I’d manage that too.”

  “It would be impossible for you to make certain I didn’t leave while you were bathing.”

  Mmm. The lady didn’t know her power to distract a man. “An interesting dilemma. I shall simply have to take you into my baths with me.”

  “Oh! Oh, Saber, you are outrageous. Go away.”

  “No.”

  “I shall call for…”

  “For whom? I believe I am the man in charge here.”

  She fell silent.

  Saber waited, listening, watching. When she didn’t move, he touched her cold hands, slowly ran his fingers up her bare arms, bent until he covered and surrounded her. And then he rocked.

  He heard her swallow, and swallow again—heard the sound of a choked sob, felt her body quake.

  “We cannot be together,” she told him, her voice muffled. “Not ever. I am…I am what I am. Nothing can change that. I thought it possible to start an entirely new life, but I was wrong. Please, Saber, for the sake of our friendship, return to your bed now. As soon as, as—as soon as Papa returns, I shall beg him to take me away to Scotland. Then all I can do is pray.”

  Saber grew still. “All you can do is pray?” He raised his head. “Will you tell me what happened to you this evening?”

  “No.”

  Saber stood up. “Very well. You have decided to be strong and bear this—whatever it is—alone. How noble—and how foolish. I shall simply have to take command. You have been left in my care, and I must care for you.”

  She didn’t move, didn’t look up at him.

  Just as well. Saber took off his coat, wrapped it around her, and picked her up.

  “Saber!”

  He’d shocked her, he noted with satisfaction. A good beginning. At least she’d been forced to react.

  “Put me down at once.” She wriggled—to no avail, except to press a breast into his hand, and to cause him to grip her bottom more firmly through insubstantial cotton. “Saber! Put me down now! I am tired of men forcing their wills on me.”

  “Really,” he said grimly. He would soon find a way to make her tell him what she meant by that. “These rooms are cold and I do not care for them. Mine are much more to my liking. We shall go there.”

  “You cannot take me to your rooms! Put me down.”

  He strode to the door. “You found nothing wrong in entering my rooms in Burlington Gardens, miss. My bed also, if memory serves. And now you will be silent or the entire house will be awakened.”

  Ella squirmed and waved her feet. “Good! I shall awaken them and bring them to my rescue.”

  “By all means bring them.” Meanwhile, he would enjoy the twisting of her supple body against his. “I’ll explain that you are in danger and must be watched over. I’ll tell them that your rooms are too easily accessed from outside.”

  “Saber, what are you thinking of? You know you cannot—”

  “I know I can, and I will.” As he opened the door, he lowered his voice. “You told me you wanted no more secrets between us. There shall be none. You said you wished to lie with me all night. So you shall. Every night—starting now.”

  “Saber—”

  “Hush. I want to take you where there will be no interruptions. Will you trust me, Ella?”

  “What you propose is madness. The entire household will hear of it. The entire ton will hear of it.”

  She was fragrant, smooth, innocently sensual. Innocent! Yes, he could no longer convince himself otherwise. “There will be no talk,” he told her.

  “What of Bigun? And Rose?”

  Saber laughed, a laugh that sounded as lacking in amusement as he felt. “Bigun and Rose have been told they will see nothing, and speak of nothing unless I tell them they may. They are both in a less than enviable position of late.”

  “Great-Grandmama was responsible for—”

  “Grandmama is the Dowager Duchess of Franchot. She feels her own guilt at her part in what happened. For the rest, she has apparently been our ally from the outset. That will not change.” He laughed again. “In fact, I pity anyone who gets in my way in this. I’m sure you haven’t forgotten the sword in Grandmama’s cane.”

  Ella chuckled too. “She is my inspiration.”

  “A grim thought. Will you let me guide you—at least for the present?”

  Her arms, stealing slowly around his neck, were his answer.

  He carried her into the hall and up three flights of stairs. The rooms he had chosen were in a separate wing high above the gardens and stables, at the back of the house. Some long-ago Franchot male had made those rooms his very private sanctum.

  Saber produced a key to unlock the door that closed off the entire area. Once inside, he locked it again. The first room he reached was his bedchamber. “I’ll make you comfortable in here and light the lamps.”

  “I am not a child, Saber. And I’m not a weak, foolish woman.”

  He threw back the counterpane and sheet, removed his coat from her shoulders, and settled her in the middle of his bed. “You aren’t a child, or a weak, foolish woman. But you have suffered at someone’s hands. That shall not occur again. I will not allow it.”

  “You cannot control the world.”

  “I can control my part of it. You are a part of my part of the world.” He looked down upon her. She lay on her side, her knees drawn up to her chest beneath a thin, white gauze shift. Her hair spread like black silk upon white sheets. She kept her eyes tightly closed. “I do not wish to control you, Ella, only to look after you.”

  “So you think you can lock me away here forever? That will keep me safe?”

  He laughed without mirth. “It would certainly offer you a measure of protection, but what a waste. No, beloved, we shall bring the secrets into the light between us, and then we shall see.”

  She was silent.

  He covered her.

  Saber lighted a small lamp on a marquetry teapoy near the fireplace. A few added coals and a puff or two of the bellows brought the fire to crackling life.

  A glance at Ella showed she had not moved. Her breathing was soft and regular.

  Exhaustion. Amazingly, she had already fallen into an exhausted sleep. By the heavens, he would find out who was responsible for whatever had been done to her this night. They shoul
d be punished.

  He loosened his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves. His stock joined his jacket and he undid the neck of his shirt. For now he would let her sleep. When she awoke, they would talk.

  Saber moved a chair where he could see her clearly, and sat down.

  A speedy marriage and then they would remove to the country. Not to Shillingdown, which was too easily accessed, but to some remote place he would secure. Perhaps in Ella’s beloved Scotland.

  She turned onto her back and tossed aside the covers.

  Frowning, he rose and went to cover her again.

  While he stood over her, her arms rose, stretched above her head.

  Saber drew back. He flexed his hands and made fists. He might be damaged, but he was, nevertheless, a man. Only a man. And he wanted this woman.

  With gritted teeth, he left the room, crossed the hall to the study. With the door open, even if someone were to gain entrance to this part of the house, they could not enter the bedchamber unnoticed.

  He lighted a lamp and seated himself at the extraordinary Italian rococo desk he’d found abandoned there. He would set about some business that shouldn’t wait, and try not to think of the girl who lay so near, so vulnerable…

  He’d been right. Anyone who came or went from the bedchamber would be visible from the desk in the study.

  On bare feet that made no sound, Ella crossed to the study. “What are you doing?” She stood on the threshold of the room, the light behind making her shift transparent. “I felt you leave.”

  “I thought you were asleep.”

  “I was pretending.”

  “Why?”

  She rested her weight on one leg. “Because I wanted to see what you would do.”

  He could not look away.

  “I wanted you to come to me, and hold me.”

  “I”—he let his gaze travel over her—“I didn’t trust myself to hold you, Ella.”

  “Why?”

  He threw down his pen. “So full of questions. Don’t you understand that I want you? I want you as a man wants a woman. I have already taken too many liberties, taken too much of you that was not mine to take.”

  Ella put her hands behind her back and strolled slowly toward him. “Surely anything I choose to give you is yours?”

  He spread his hands flat on the desk. Did she know what she did? They had spoken of having no secrets, yet there were so many between them.

  “I choose to give myself to you, Saber. If the liberties you speak of are those things we have shared, then please take them again. It is all we shall have.”

  Saber frowned. He gripped the arms of his chair. “I will find out what happened last evening, you know.”

  “It doesn’t matter. In a way, it’s appropriate. There are things we must accept because they cannot be changed. I was reminded of things in my life that cannot be changed—nothing more.”

  “Please tell me what has troubled you so, Ella.”

  “Who are you writing to?”

  He glanced at the desk, at the paper he’d drawn out. “To Struan. To tell him I wish to marry you quickly. At once, in fact.”

  “So that you can save me?”

  Save her? “Come here. Come where I can … touch you.”

  Ella came, hesitantly at first, but she came. Once at his side, she faced him with her back to the desk.

  The soft fabric of her shift settled on her breasts, her belly, her thighs. She might as well have been naked. He could not have been more aroused.

  Her nipples hardened beneath his gaze.

  She pushed back her hair and he saw that her hands shook.

  “There is nothing practiced about you, my love.”

  “Practiced? What do you mean?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing. Just a passing thought.” He must lead her carefully, gently. What he felt in her was beyond price—natural purity, and faith, faith in him.

  “I feel…I feel wobbly! Isn’t that silly?” She fumbled behind her for support.

  Saber gripped her waist, smiled at her startled shriek, and lifted her to sit on the desk. “There. Oh, yes, I like you there. I believe I shall save my letter writing until later.” He brought one of her feet to rest on his thigh, followed the slight bones from her toes to her ankles with a forefinger, trailed a path behind her calf to the back of her knee.

  Ella jumped, and leaned to brace herself on his shoulders. “That tickles. And I know I shouldn’t allow you to touch me so.”

  “How the lady does change her mind about such things,” he told her. His heartbeat grew faster. “She wants to be touched. She doesn’t want to be touched.”

  “I want to be touched.”

  He looked into her eyes. Muscles in his jaw tensed. His body ached with his need for her, and with the effort it took to restrain that need.

  “What do you mean, Ella? You want to be touched?”

  She reached for his hand and took it to her breast. “You have made me feel things I didn’t know existed.”

  Slowly, she spread his fingers, pressed his palm to her budding flesh, and sighed as her eyes squeezed shut.

  “I have remembered this,” she told him. “Over and over, I remembered your hands upon me. But I know there is much more. I had thought to find Mama’s book and read what I must know.”

  “You do not need Justine’s book,” he said. Blood pounded in his ears. His gut contracted. Other parts of him did anything but contract.

  Saber held her thighs and leaned to press his lips to her throat.

  She raised her chin.

  Each inch of her skin inflamed him more, each inch that he explored with his mouth, with the tip of his tongue.

  She tasted sweet, smelled of flowers, felt so soft.

  Saber tilted his head to kiss her collarbone, the little dip above, the top of her shoulder, the side of her neck. He heard her moan, and smiled. He wanted to know all of her, and he would.

  “Saber.”

  “Mmm?” He found the fragile spot beneath an ear.

  “Saber!”

  “Mmm?”

  The folds within her ear fascinated him. He blew there, lightly.

  “Saber!”

  “Yes, my love?” The hollow beneath her cheekbone invited close attention, and the tip of her chin, the corner of her mouth—and the other corner of her mouth.

  “It is extraordinary.”

  “I know.” To kiss her brow he had to rise a little from his seat. “All extraordinary. Every bit of you. Everything that I feel with you.”

  He felt her hands inside his shirt, curling over his shoulders, and smiled afresh. His Ella was a delight wrapped in gossamer and so ready to be unwrapped. He would delight in unfolding her all the way to her center.

  Saber settled his mouth on hers and her sweetness overwhelmed him. He stood between her legs and framed her face in hands that were none too steady. For a long time he was content to brush their lips together. Her fingers found the scar on his shoulder and smoothed the puckered skin. He hesitated only an instant before giving her mouth his full attention again.

  Her sweetness could draw him out of darkness.

  Her trust could banish doubt.

  Her acceptance of every part of him could send the rest of the world away.

  He sank back to his chair, drawing her face down to his. Her eyes closed and her lips parted. Saber tasted the soft moistness of her, felt the sharp edges of her teeth, the hesitant touch of her tongue.

  To possess this creature was all he asked of life. To possess and protect and keep her close. With Ella there was no pain, no screams, no hate, no fear.

  Carefully, he moved his mouth across hers, turning her face with each caress of lips upon lips. He felt the firmer thrust of her tongue, and warm pleasure spread within him. Her fingers dug into his shoulders. If he let her go she would fall against him.

  Restraint.

  Bracing herself, panting, she raised her head and looked at him. Her dark eyes were almost black, black and slumberous, the l
ashes like thick lace that cast shadows into obsidian depths. Her parted lips were wet and showed the evidence of his kisses. She held the tip of her tongue between her teeth and sucked in a breath.

  Tapes at the front of her shift were all but untied. With one finger, Saber hooked them entirely undone—one by one— until the front of the scanty gown gaped.

  Saber swallowed. So close he need not move to touch them, her breasts were revealed. Pointed, pink-tipped, small, yet not too small to fill a large man’s hands. And onward, downward, the rest of her body was small. Her rib cage beneath the firm jut of her breasts tapered to a waist he’d have little trouble spanning.

  She pulled the shift aside and stroked her breast as if absorbed. “You put your mouth here,” she told him, looking up, taking one of his hands from her face, holding it beneath the softly heavy flesh. “I’d like you to do that again.”

  His rod grew unbearably full. Obediently, willing his urges to wait, he touched his tongue to the tip of her nipple—and absorbed the scouring of her fingernails on his back, and her sudden pressure against his face.

  “Ah, ah,” he whispered. “Too quick, my love. That way too much is missed, perhaps lost.” With his thumb, he circled the center of her breast. She made ineffectual grabs at him, and he laughed. “A moment longer, sweet. The waiting heightens pleasure.” It also tested restraint.

  “I want…”

  “I know what you want. I also know what I want. Let me lead us both there.” He watched her face, her eyes squeezed tightly shut, her lips drawn back from her teeth—and circled the nipple again, and again, drawing a little closer each time.

  “Saber! It burns.”

  “A beautiful burning. I burn too.”

  She abandoned his hand to work at the buttons on his shirt. He sighed when it fell open, and longed to feel her tender flesh pressed to his. Ella raked the pads of her fingers through the hair on his chest.

  Saber attended to her other breast and her eyes flew open. A flush had mounted her cheeks, and a similar rosy hue painted her pretty breasts. And around and around the nipple he passed his thumb.

  “I … cannot bear it.”

  “You cannot bear not to bear it,” he told her. “Neither can I. We shall often suffer together like this. Should you like that?”