To his frustration, she’d picked at her meal in spite of his gentle admonitions to eat, then disappeared upstairs the instant the meal concluded. Dinner was a repetition of the same, with her attending the event in body but not in spirit.
In his mind, he went over everything they’d said and done, and for the life of him he couldn’t fathom why she would turn so despondent again. All he’d insisted on was that she put in an appearance at meals. Surely that wasn’t enough to send her into a decline? But last night, when he’d gently tried to draw her out on the subject, she’d rebuffed his efforts with a silence that was stygian in its impenetrability. If they hadn’t been surrounded by nearly two dozen of her family and friends, he would have taken her by the shoulders and given her a rousing shake.
Then again, as he’d wondered once before, perhaps his instincts were leading him down the wrong path, and his attempts to revive her spirits were doing naught but driving her deeper into her gloom.
Sighing aloud, he gave his stallion a soothing pat on the neck. The horse was restive and anxious to be off. Mallory’s mare was as well, the animal tossing her head and pawing the ground in hopes of putting the saddle on her back to good use. Maybe he should tell the grooms to exercise the horses since Mallory obviously wasn’t coming. If he hurried, he supposed he could join the men for the hunt—a notion that seemed as dismal as his mood. Swinging around, he started back toward the stable when a flash of emerald caught his eye.
“I’m here. Let us ride,” Mallory declared, her blue-green eyes glinting as if they contained a tempest. And perhaps they did. Her expression was set, her shoulders and spine taut beneath her riding habit, long skirts swirling around her kid leather boots as though propelled by a wind. Obviously Penny had discovered another riding habit in Mallory’s wardrobe. He waited to see if she would use that as her reason for being delayed once again.
Instead, she gave no explanation at all as she strode past him. Going to her mount, she took the reins in hand and began leading Pansy to the mounting block.
Adam stopped her with a touch. “I’ll assist you up.”
She fixed him with a look but did not refuse. Looping the reins back over her horse’s neck, she positioned herself so he could lift her into the saddle.
“I didn’t think you were coming,” he said, moving around in front of her.
A brief silence followed. “I very nearly did not.”
“Mallory, I’m not sure what—”
“Forgive me,” she interrupted in a hard voice, “but I don’t want to talk. All I want to do is ride. If that’s a problem, then perhaps I should ask a groom to accompany me.”
His jaw flexed. “You have no need of a groom. I shall ride with you.”
Imperious as a queen, she lifted her chin and waited for him to help her onto her horse.
Studying her face, he noticed the faint shadows beneath her eyes. “More bad dreams?” he asked.
Her mouth tightened, and she reached again for the reins.
He stopped her, wrapping a hand around her arm. “Fine. You want to ride, and only ride, then that’s what we’ll do. I won’t say another word.”
Rather than waiting for her to place her foot inside his cupped palms, he caught her around the waist and tossed her up into the saddle. But unlike yesterday, he didn’t wait to make sure she was comfortably settled. Instead, he strode to his horse and swung up, thrusting his booted feet firmly into the stirrups. Gathering the reins in his gloved palms, he cast a glance over his shoulder to make sure she was ready, then squeezed his knees into the stallion’s flanks to set him into a run.
Quickly, Mallory drew abreast, horses’ hooves thundering across the verdant fields with enough force to startle an occasional rabbit or bird. Neither of them spoke, the world flying past as they rode side by side. Without conscious agreement, they retraced their path from the day before, crossing the grassy acres, fording the stream and pounding up the hill in record time.
At the top, Adam reined his stallion in, not willing to push the animal harder or farther than he could go. Mallory slowed as well, falling into an easy walk at his side. At length, he stopped. Moving her horse into place beside his, she did the same.
Birdsong and the gentle susurration of the wind filled the silence, Pansy’s bridle jangling in a bell-like tone as she lowered her head to clip the grass.
“Better?” Adam demanded in a quiet tone, as he gazed across the picturesque valley.
A soft sigh flowed from Mallory’s lips. “A bit, I suppose.”
He said nothing further, having already broken his pledge not to speak.
“Adam, I’m sorry,” she said. “About earlier, I…”
He leaned forward in the saddle and waited for her to continue.
“I don’t want us to be at odds.”
He turned his head. “I didn’t realize we were.”
An expression of relief crossed her face before crumbling again with renewed sadness. “Everything is just so very difficult right now. Sometimes, I just…oh, I don’t know.”
Dismounting, he walked to her and reached up. “Come. Why don’t we walk?”
Her eyes were bright as gemstones in her face, her cheeks stained pink from the vigorous exertion of their ride. Accepting his aid, she let him swing her to the ground.
He took a moment to secure the horses to the branch of a nearby tree, where they seemed content to resume their grazing. Folding Mallory’s hand over his arm, Adam led her in an easy stroll.
One minute lapsed into another, silence reigning between them again, only this time it was a quiet of companionship rather than conflict. His boots crunched on a twig, the trees overhead laden with a bounty of succulent green that mirrored the tender grass below.
“You know, Mal, I actually do understand a bit about what you’re going through,” he stated in a low tone.
Her fingers tightened against the sleeve of his fawn riding coat. Otherwise, she gave no outward response.
“It’s not quite the same, I realize,” he continued, “since I didn’t lose someone I planned to wed. And yet, love is love, isn’t it, whatever its form or relationship?”
He waited, wondering if she would respond. Instead, she kept strolling at his side.
Part of him hesitated, wishing he hadn’t initiated the conversation. Yet loving Mallory as he did, he was willing to do whatever he could to alleviate her misery, even if it might reawaken old feelings he’d rather not nudge back to life.
“Have I ever told you about my sister?” he asked with a bleakness he couldn’t entirely conceal.
Her gaze flashed to meet his. “No, not really. She died many years ago, did she not?”
He nodded. “When she was sixteen. I’d just started my first year of university when I learned of Delia’s death.”
“It was an accident, was it not?”
His mouth curved in a cynical slant. “That’s right. An accident. A terrible, untimely accident.”
“Why do you say it like that?” she questioned as she drew to a halt. “Is it not true?”
Stopping as well, he turned to face her. “According to my late father and the physician who examined her body at the time, she was the victim of an accidental drowning. They found her one morning floating in a lake near Gresham Park, said she’d swum out too far and was too tired to make it back to shore. But how could a girl who’d been swimming in that lake from the time she was a young child misjudge badly enough to drown?”
Mallory laid a hand against his chest. “Accidents do happen.”
“You’re right. And I might have believed that’s exactly what it was if not for her letter.” He paused, swallowing against the knot that still had the power to tighten in his throat, even after all these years. “She drowned herself, Mallory. She took her own life.”
“Oh!”
“It isn’t necessary for me to tell you all the sordid details. Let me just say that she was desperate enough, despondent enough that she couldn’t bear to go on living. She
told me why she’d made her choice and begged me to forgive her. By the time her letter arrived, it was already too late. She was gone.”
“Adam, I’m so sorry.” A tear traced down her cheek.
Reaching up, he brushed it away with a thumb. “I didn’t tell you all this to make you sad or to gain your sympathy. I just want you to realize that I know how hard this past year has been for you and how you’re feeling. I’ve felt it too. The pain and loss, the anger and confusion, and most especially, the guilt.”
Her eyes widened, her lips trembling on a quiet gasp.
“It’s what everyone goes through when they lose someone they truly love. But I overcame it, and you’ll do the same. You’re strong, Mallory, and it will get better.”
“But I’m not strong,” she whispered, more tears sliding from her eyes. “And I keep waiting for it to get better, but it doesn’t.”
Withdrawing a handkerchief, he tenderly wiped her wet cheeks. “Maybe it would if you’d let it.”
She frowned. “What do you mean? Are you saying I want to be unhappy?”
“No, I know you don’t. But I do think you’re afraid to let yourself take pleasure again from your life. For a long while, I blamed myself for Delia’s death, and whenever I did something I enjoyed, I felt terrible afterward.”
He paused, deciding not to tell her how, in the months right after his sister’s suicide, he’d tried to escape his grief by indulging in a spate of wild behaviour. He’d bedded countless women, gotten drunk, landed himself in more than one brawl and had even begun gambling heavily.
Then one morning he’d awakened in a squalid room, his head pounding like a set of drums and his pockets emptied of all his cash. He’d been robbed and what was worse, he didn’t even remember the event. It occurred to him then that if he continued on the same path, he was in very real danger of turning into his father.
That sudden realization proved more sobering than a week in gaol. Determined not to shame Delia’s memory, or squander the small legacy his mother had left him—money his father couldn’t legally touch and the only reason he was able to attend Oxford at all—he’d set about curbing the worst of his excesses. Reapplying himself to his studies, he’d kept mostly out of trouble, and by eighteen, had matured into a man.
Drawing a breath, he stroked a hand along Mallory’s arm and met her sorrowful, sea-coloured gaze. “It took some time,” he said, “but I finally realized that my suffering would never bring Delia back; nor would it have made her happy. She was a kind, generous person, and she would never have wished to see me sad. I can tell you without hesitation that Michael Hargreaves wouldn’t want you to be sad either. He would want you to live and have a happy life. He’s found his own peace. Give yourself the right to find yours.”
Mallory trembled, something shattering on her face. “But I’m afraid I’ll forget him,” she confessed on a whisper, as more tears slid free. “We had such a short time together before he was sent away to fight. I worry if I go back to my old life that it will be as if he never existed. As if I’ve abandoned him somehow.”
Adam curved an arm around her back and drew her close. “You haven’t abandoned him, and you will never forget. You loved him. Real love never fades.” He pressed a handkerchief into her hand and offered what comfort he could, as she buried her face against his chest and cried.
He didn’t speak as he held her, fighting the jealousy that twisted inside him while she sobbed out her love and grief for another man. It was an emotion unworthy of him and one he knew he should not feel. Still, he wasn’t a saint, far from it. He was only human, only a man. And despite his best efforts to be noble and self-sacrificing, a small, selfish part of him couldn’t help but resent the hold Hargreaves had on Mallory—even from beyond the grave.
At length, her tears ceased, her sobs turning to shaky inhalations and weary sighs, as she leaned against him. Using the damp silk handkerchief she held balled up inside her fist, she blew her nose and blotted her tear-stained eyes.
Reaching into his pocket, he produced a fresh handkerchief. “Here, have another.”
She drew a hiccupping breath, and tried, but didn’t quite manage to smile. “You’re right, I have rather used this first one up, haven’t I?” Accepting the second square of white silk, she pressed the dry cloth to her eyes and cheeks and nose, pausing at his gentle urging to give “one more good blow” despite the inelegance of such behaviour.
But he and Mallory had known each other for far too many years to stand on formality at this point. If they had, she would never have cried in his arms today at all, he realized.
“Gracious,” she declared, straightening slightly inside his embrace. “I must look a sight.”
But she didn’t, she looked beautiful, he thought. Her lashes framed her luminous aquamarine eyes in dark, spiky rings, while her cheeks were burnished as red as crisp fall apples. As for her lips, they were swollen from her crying—plump and full and lusciously moist.
Sweet as candy, he thought. And every bit as delicious, he was sure.
“No,” he murmured in answer to her query. “You look lovely as always.” Then, before he even knew what he was doing, he bent and touched his mouth to hers, desperate for a taste, however brief it might be.
But a taste couldn’t begin to be enough, yearning roaring to life inside him, burning in his veins as blood beat between his temples and pooled lower in his belly and between his thighs.
She gave a clearly startled whimper, but didn’t try to push him away. If she had, perhaps he would have stopped. Instead, desire urged him on, encouraging him to take more. He’d waited years to hold her like this and kiss her. He’d dreamt countless times of how her lips would feel against his and the way her small, supple body would curve into his own much taller one. Yet his imagination was as insipid as water to wine when compared with reality—the sensations, scents and flavours more divine than anything his mind could create.
Mallory, my love, he whispered in his head, as he gave in to what he craved and deepened the kiss. Parting her mouth, he claimed her with a long, slow, sultry ease that was just this side of heaven.
She whimpered again, this time with confused hesitation, the relative inexperience of her touch impressing itself upon him as nothing else could have done. She might have been kissed before, he realized, but she was still a novice when it came to sex and the sensual arts. He, on the other hand, was experienced—extremely experienced—with a knowledge of things that would have set her blushing from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes. Compared to him, Mallory was a dewy-eyed lamb wandering unaware in a peaceful meadow, while he was the hungry, ravening wolf lying in wait just over the nearest rise.
Suddenly aware of exactly what he was doing, he broke their kiss. She swayed slightly in his grasp, her eyes closed as breath puffed in tiny gusts from her mouth.
“Oh,” she sighed.
“Oh” didn’t begin to describe it.
Taking a step back, he made sure she was steady on her feet, then he let her go.
Her eyes popped open and immediately fixed on his. “W-what was that?”
Rather than responding, he lifted a brow, schooling his features into a calmness that hid the violent need still coursing through his body.
“I-I mean I know what it was,” she went on in a breathless voice that made shivers run down his spine. “But why? Why did you k-kiss me?”
She looked utterly and completely bewildered.
“Because, my sweet,” he drawled in a smooth tone, “you looked as if you needed to be.”
Mallory stared, her heart racing frantically in her chest.
Stars and garters, she thought, Adam just kissed me. And not a peck either but a full-blown, passionate claiming that was unlike any kiss she’d ever had before. Even Michael had never kissed her like that, and he’d been her fiancé.
She paused suddenly at the thought of Michael, yet she was so dazed, so bemused, that the usual melancholy she felt when she thought of him di
dn’t appear. All she could do was stand there, her entire body tingling with heat and pleasure.
For years, she’d been aware of the rumours about Adam’s prowess and reports of all the women who secretly—and not so secretly—clamoured to share his bed. Once at a party in London, she’d accidentally overheard a pair of women—one a widow and another who wished she were—comparing a list of their lovers. None of them, the widow told her friend, came close to the ecstasy she’d found in Adam Gresham’s arms. Then she’d gone on to bemoan the fact that she’d only been with him once and that despite her best efforts to win him back, he wasn’t interested.
Apparently, Adam had a habit of never staying with any one woman for long, his elusive behaviour seeming only to enhance his already formidable appeal among the fairer sex. And now that she’d experienced his kiss, she could see that his reputation for pleasuring women was in no way an exaggeration. Fully two minutes had passed since he’d ended their own kiss, and she was still worried the top of her head might blow off, her riding hat along with it.
“Are you hungry?” he inquired, jarring her out of her musings. “I had Cook pack us a little something again just in case.”
Hungry? How could he possibly think of food at a moment like this? Then she recalled why he said he’d kissed her.
Because, sweetheart, you looked as if you needed to be.
So it had been a sympathy kiss, had it? His embrace driven not out of any real sense of desire for her but rather from a need to distract and cheer her.
What a lowering realization.
And yet, she knew he’d meant it in a kindly way and was only acting as her friend. Obviously, he was willing to do whatever it might take to rally her spirits, even if the effort required him to shock her out of her gloom with an unexpected embrace.
Wicked Delights Of A Bridal Bed Page 6