by Mary Balogh
And his signature. Not his name or his title. Just one word.
Papa
Justin folded the letter neatly and deliberately, put it back into his pocket … and drew it out again. He turned.
Her head was against the back of the chair. But her eyes watched him. He strode toward her, handed her the letter, and went back to look out through the window onto darkness.
He concentrated upon his breathing as he had never done before, ignoring thought, quelling emotion. In, cool. Out, warm. I am breathing in. I am breathing out. Papa. No. In, out. My dearest son. No. In, cold. Out, warm. You lit up my life and your mother’s.
He did not know how long he had been standing there, breathing in, breathing out, before his concentration was broken. Arms had come about his waist from behind, and her body rested against his, the side of her head against his shoulder. She said nothing.
He crossed his arms over his waist, curling his fingers about her slender arms. And he took her warmth, her relaxation, into himself. He turned eventually and held her to him until he stooped down to scoop her up into his arms. He strode over to the chair where she had been sitting, sat down with her, grabbed her cloak from the arm of the chair, and wrapped it about her though there was no chill in the air. He held her tightly. A few minutes passed.
He felt the tremor first with his stomach muscles. Then there was the ache in his throat and down in his chest. He sniffed once. But it was no good. She nestled her head between his shoulder and neck.
And he wept.
With great, hideous gulps and sobs. With an almost total loss of dignity. And control. The armor he had built so painstakingly about himself was shattered. Gone without a trace.
“I am s-so s-s-sorry.”
“I am not,” she said. “I am not, Justin.”
His name on her lips destroyed what little control was left.
And he wept on until there was nothing left.
He fumbled about in his pocket for his handkerchief, swiped at his eyes, and blew his nose. “Devil take it,” he said. “I am so sorry. Whatever will you think?”
She tipped her head back against his shoulder and looked into his face. “Can you forgive him?” she asked.
He thought about it a long time, until his breathing fully calmed.
“She was vain and conniving,” he said. “She destroyed his life and very nearly mine too. And probably her own. She lied to Maria and depleted her happiness. But she was essentially a helpless woman, out of her element, only seventeen when she trapped him. And he chose to honor and protect her. Until doing so led him into hell itself. The choice between two evils. He chose the one he had to choose, being the man he was, the man I admired above all others. Yes, I forgive him. I just wish I could tell him so. And I wish I could tell him that I would not wipe out the last twelve years and everything that happened during them even if I could. There would be no Ricky, no Wes, no Hilda.”
“No broken nose,” she said.
“And no broken nose.”
He closed his eyes and rested his head against the chair back.
“Life is a funny thing,” he said. He surprised himself by laughing then. “A profound observation indeed. Someone should include it in a book of wise quotations for the ages. Life is a funny thing.”
They sat quietly for a while.
“Stay here with me?” he said then. His voice made a question of it.
There was another stretch of silence.
“Yes,” she said.
Estelle heard the echo of her response and waited for guilt, panic, denial, moral outrage, something to rush at her in protest. Nothing did. She had said yes, and yes was what she meant.
He stood up with her and set her on her feet before tossing her cloak back over the chair arm. He reached for her hands and curled his own about them at their sides. Then he moved his hands up her arms and along her shoulders and cupped her face in his palms. There were the marks of tears still on his own cheeks. His eyes were luminous. And she marveled over the fact that this was the same man she had first seen on horseback, dark and dour, huge and menacing, while she sat on the riverbank. She set her own hands on either side of his waist.
“You will be marrying me,” he said.
Her eyes smiled into his. “That is a proposal?”
“No,” he said. “That is a statement.”
“The proposal is still to come?” she asked. “Are you busy composing a sonnet?”
For a moment— ah, for a precious moment— laughter flashed in his eyes. She thought he was about to say something. But he kissed her instead, lightly and gently, and she felt all his need for her, all his yearning for a human touch, for connection. She felt his barely leashed passion. This was something she would not have considered herself capable of doing in a million years— lying with a man to whom she was not wed or even officially betrothed. But there were no doubts in her mind. He needed her now, tonight, and she … ? Ah, she needed him too. His father’s letter had affected her deeply. If only … If only her mother had had enough warning of her death to have written to her and Bertrand. Surely she would have done it had she known. And surely she would have written something similar at the end—Live a life filled with love. It is, ultimately, all that matters.
She wrapped her arms about Justin’s waist, leaned into him, and kissed him back. Not just with desire, but with everything that was herself.
He drew back from her after a while and went to extinguish the lantern and all the candles except the one on the bookcase. The single flame flickered dimly over walls and ceiling while he tossed a few of the cushions from the bed onto the chair with the books on it. He drew back the covers to expose crisp white sheets and pillowcases.
“It is narrow,” he said, turning to her again. “But we will make it wide enough.”
“Yes.”
He turned her to face away from him and undid the buttons at the back of her dress, which she had so recently done up without the help of her maid. He folded the edges back and over her shoulders and down her arms until the whole dress slid down her body to pool at her feet. She was not wearing stays. She turned for him to roll down her stockings one at a time and remove them with her shoes. Only her shift remained.
Desire hummed in her now. It pulsated low in her abdomen and along her inner thighs. His eyes gazed into hers as his hands were in her hair, which she had pinned up earlier into a simple, rather untidy knot. After a few moments it all cascaded down her back and over her shoulders. She heard the tinkle of a few hairpins as they hit the floor.
He took off his coat and waistcoat then, and his neckcloth. He pulled his shirt free of his pantaloons, crossed his arms, and drew it off over his head to join her dress on the floor.
She had known that his great size was due to muscle more than fat, but she had not guessed quite how magnificent he would look without his shirt. All solid, rippling muscles and broad shoulders and powerful arms. A light dusting of hair on his chest tapered in a V shape to disappear below the waistband of his pantaloons. He was masculinity personified.
He sat down on the side of the bed to pull off his boots and stockings before standing and setting his hands on either side of her waist and looking her over slowly, from her head to her feet.
And she realized that he was intentionally moving slowly and deliberately rather than tearing in a frenzy at their clothes. It was part of the lovemaking. She guessed he was experienced and was strangely thankful. She was twenty-five years old and really knew nothing beyond a few unsatisfactory kisses.
He was looking into her eyes again.
“I always knew you were beautiful,” he said. “I just did not realize that you were … perfect. I wish I could be perfect for you.”
“Idiot,” she said, and he raised his eyebrows. “You are perfect. And even if you were not … you are Justin. That is all that matters.”
His eyes brightened again for a moment with what might have been tears. Though in truth the light from the single candle was
very dim. He grasped the sides of her shift and lifted it over her head as she raised her arms. He turned her, and she lay down on the bed and watched as he unbuttoned his pantaloons at the waist, lowered them, and stepped out of them. He lay down beside her, sliding an arm beneath her and turning her onto her side so that there was room on the bed for the two of them. But only just. And only when they were pressed together.
Estelle, feeling him along the naked length of her body, wondered if she would ever be able to catch her breath again. Now she could believe that he really was that man astride his horse who had so frightened her beside the river. But she was not frightened tonight. For she had spoken the truth just now. Nothing about him mattered more than that he was Justin.
“Let me make it good for you,” he murmured against her lips.
“Yes,” she whispered into his mouth.
He pushed back the bedcovers, and his hands moved over her. His mouth too, after it had left hers. And for the next while he did indeed make it good for her, touching her everywhere with those large, callused, sensitive hands of his and with his mouth, his tongue, his teeth, caressing her and arousing her until she ached and tingled with desire and longing. She touched him too, tentatively at first, with more assurance when he drew in a hissing breath and murmured encouragement. She explored him with one hand, kissed him, and reveled in the breathtaking carnality of it all, the feel of him, the smell of his soap, of his cologne, of him. And at every moment she was aware of the size and hardness of his arousal, of his intent, of where this was all leading.
But where there ought perhaps to have been fright, there was only the eagerness of anticipation and the wondering realization that this was Justin. The Earl of Brandon. The man of all men she had least expected to love with her whole heart and her whole body.
And then his hand was there in her most secret place, his fingers stroking, parting, going inside her. She was wet, she realized. She could both feel it and hear it and was curiously unembarrassed.
“I want to come there,” he murmured into her mouth. “You are ready?”
“Yes,” she said.
And he lifted himself over her and lowered himself onto her with all that glorious size and weight. His hands slid down between her back and the mattress to spread over her buttocks as his knees came between hers and pushed her legs wide. She could feel him at her entrance and twined her legs about his.
He pressed inside her.
There were no words. There were not even thoughts. Only sensations. Hardness, size, stretching, discomfort that was not really uncomfortable, pain that did not really hurt, thoughts and words that would not form in her head with any coherence. The conviction that there could not possibly be room enough or depth enough. The sudden sharpness of a pain that was only too real, and a deep penetration that somehow banished the pain. The joining of bodies.
“I have hurt you,” he murmured.
“No. Yes. No,” she said. And “No” again when he withdrew slowly. But only to the brink of her.
He pressed deep again. And withdrew and pushed deep. And she knew—of course she knew— that this was what happened between man and woman. This was the act of love. She tilted her pelvis slightly, the better to accommodate him, and learned his rhythm and matched it with her own and rotated her hips because it felt even better that way. She could feel his hardness better, catch it at different angles inside.
“Witch!” he said, a note of sudden urgency in his voice. “Oh, God, you witch, Estelle.”
And if he had been trying to be gentle because he knew he had hurt her, he gave it up, knowing it to be unnecessary, and drove hard into her, over and over again until nothing existed except him and her. Them. There. Panting, labored breath. Sweat and rocking movement and the rhythmic sound of wetness. And the growing sensation that they were nearing the edge of some cliff or the peak of some mountain or the heart of some volcano. But no, there were no real words.
He found her mouth with his own as he thrust deep into her again and held there, poised on the precipice and somehow, suddenly, over it. But not to destruction. To its opposite, whatever that was. The hot flow of his love deep within her. The leftover throbbing as he lay still in her. The heavy weight of him. The sweaty heat of their bodies. The peace— ah, the peace. And the sense that for a moment they had become one and were now settling gently back into their own bodies. But forever linked by the fact that they had known that unity.
“I am probably crushing the life out of you,” he said.
It was not quite that dire, but he was very heavy. And large. Deliciously so. “I do not want you to leave yet,” she said, tightening her arms about him.
But after a few moments longer he withdrew slowly from her and moved to her side, holding her to him as he did so. Somehow he got hold of the bedcovers and pulled them up over them. And Estelle sighed against him as warmth upon warmth enveloped her. The candle flickered on. Her legs were twined with his. Her arms were trapped against his hard, muscled chest. Her head was nestled between his shoulder and neck. One of his arms was beneath her, the other over her hip while his hand was spread over her back. It was a night she did not want to end.
You will be marrying me, he had said earlier. Not a question. A statement. Which ought to have made her bristle a bit with indignation but actually made her smile. A man who knew what duty and responsibility were. And love. And he would ask. She would insist upon it, though she was sure she would not have to. Her smile deepened.
And she realized he was sleeping. It was somehow the loveliest moment of the night. He had loved her and relaxed into sleep, holding her close.
Estelle closed her eyes and breathed in the sweaty, musky smell of him. Sleep. It was an enticing idea. She was so very weary and so very relaxed. A wonderful combination. Especially when she lay in her lover’s arms.
Twenty-two
Justin was conscious of a feeling of great well-being that went bone deep, even soul deep. But he must not let himself sleep late or even to a normal getting-up time. Wes would probably rise with the dawn or before it, and he would rouse Ricky too, and they would be on their way back to Gloucestershire. With a single horse and without saying goodbye.
Wes had been mortified to see Justin here in his own world. He had been mortified too by Ricky’s enthusiastic accounts of being bathed and shaved by Justin’s own special servant and of sleeping in a great big bed that felt as though it were made all of feathers. And of Justin’s sister thanking him for coming and telling him that he would have found her sooner than her brother had if he had only been here in time. And of a lady who had held his hand to take him to Justin when he first came, and whose hand he had held tight because she was frightened up high on the gallery right in the middle of Justin’s house, just under that great dome of glass Wes could see if he looked. And of how his food was fetched on a tray with real china plates and real silver forks and spoons and how it tasted almost as good as Hildy’s food.
Wes had patted Ricky’s shoulder while muttering, “Bloody hell.”
“You didn’t ought to say that, Wes,” Ricky had said. “Hildy would be cross with you.”
He ought to have made Wes promise not to leave without saying goodbye, Justin thought as he reluctantly forced himself up to full consciousness— and the realization that he was on the narrow bed in the summerhouse, his body entwined with Estelle’s, both of them naked. She was sleeping.
Good God. What time was it? He had not intended to sleep. His watch was out of reach. He must get her back to the house before she was missed, and before she was seen by any early-rising servants.
He moved the hair back from her face with one finger and lowered his head to kiss her brow, her nose, her lips. She made a low sound of protest or appreciation— it was impossible to tell which— and opened her eyes. The single candle was still burning, but it was guttering a bit, as though it was close to burning itself out.
“Oh,” she said.
“I must take you back to the house,” h
e said. “I do not want you to be seen.”
She raised one hand and laid a finger along the top of his nose. “You must have had two black eyes as well,” she said.
“Black, purple, blue, green, puce, lavender. Name a color and my eyes were it,” he said. “Wes knows how to use his fists. Did I tell you what he did after he knocked me to the floor in that tavern?”
“I do not believe so,” she said.
“He turned to the yokel who had been pawing the barmaid,” he said, “and told him to take a good look at me. He warned him he would look twice as bad if his hands ever again came within six inches of that barmaid or any other.”
She smiled slowly at him. “Will I meet him tomorrow?” she asked. “Or today, I suppose I mean.”
“He probably hopes to leave here before I am out of my bed,” he said. “I will take you back to the house and then go up and talk to him.”
“Up?” she said.
“He and Ricky are staying at the blacksmith’s house,” he told her. “Up on top of the hill behind the house. All the laborers’ cottages are there in a village of their own. There is a shop too, and a school. Most of the farmland is up there. I’ll go and talk to Wes before he can sneak away.”
“Take me with you,” she said, running her fingers through his hair and kissing him on the lips.
“That is not a good idea,” he said. “You will be seen.”
“That would be dreadful,” she said, and even in the dim light he could see laughter in her eyes. “Do you still want me to be your countess?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Do you not want your best friend to meet your future countess?” she asked him.
“Estelle—”
“I want to say goodbye to Ricky,” she said. “I love him, and I think he loves me.”
“Are you trying to make me jealous?” he asked her.
She smiled radiantly at him and he swore under his breath. He heaved a sigh.