Elizabeth knew, the moment he put her down in the bed chamber and began gently undressing her, that something was different. Confusion fluttered through her as he took her in his arms in bed, his body rigid with desire, his mouth and hands skillful as he kissed and caressed her, but the moment she tried to caress him in return, he forced her back onto the pillows, evading her touch, gently imprisoning her wrists. Kissed and caressed into near insensibility, desperate to please him as he had taught her to do, Elizabeth reached for him the moment his grip loosened on her hands. His body jerked away from her touch. “Don’t,” he whispered, but she heard the passion thickening his voice, and so she obeyed.
Refusing to let her do anything to increase his pleasure, he brought her to the very brink of fulfillment with his hands and mouth before he shifted on top of her and entered her with one sure, powerful thrust. Elizabeth strained toward him in trembling need, her nails biting into his back as his rhythmic thrusts began, and then slowly, he started increasing their tempo. The sweetness of being filled by him again, combined with the fierce power of his body driving deeply into hers again and again, sent pleasure streaking through her and she instinctively arched herself upward in a fevered need to share it with him. His hands gripped her hips, while he quickened the pace of his deep plunging strokes, circling his hips, forcing the trembling ecstasy to overtake her until she cried out, shuddering with the sweet violence of it, her arms locked fiercely around his broad shoulders.
Slowly, Elizabeth began to surface from the stormy splendor of his lovemaking, aware in some passion-drugged part of her mind that she had been the only one to find that quaking fulfillment. She opened her eyes, and in the firelight, she could see the harsh effort Ian was exerting to stop himself from moving within her and finding his own release: His hands were braced on either side of her shoulders, and he was holding his upper body away from hers; his eyes were clenched shut, and a muscle jerked spasmodically in his cheek. They had been so attuned to each other during the months of their marriage, that Elizabeth instinctively realized what he was doing, and the knowledge filled her with poignant tenderness: He was trying to atone to her in the only way he could right now—by unselfishly prolonging their lovemaking. And in order to do that, he was deliberately denying himself the release that Elizabeth knew he desperately wanted. It was, she thought tenderly, a loving gesture—and a futile one. Because this was not at all what she wanted, and Ian had taught her to show him what she wanted. He had also taught her the power she had over his body—and he had shown her how to use it. Always an excellent student, Elizabeth put her knowledge into immediate—and very effective use.
Since his weight prevented any sort of seductive movement, Elizabeth used her hands and her voice to seduce him. Her voice shaking with love and desire, she shifted her hands down his back, caressing the bunched muscles of his shoulders and the hollow of his spine. “I love you,” she whispered. He opened his eyes and Elizabeth met his smoldering gaze as she continued achingly, “I’ve dreamed of this for so long . . . dreamed of the way you always hold me in your arms after we make love—and of how beautiful it is to he beside you, knowing a part of you is still inside of me and that you might have given me your child.” Lifting her hands, Elizabeth took his face between her palms, her fingers moving over his hard cheekbones in a trembling caress as she slowly drew his mouth toward hers. “But most of all,” she whispered, “I dreamed of how exquisite it feels to have you moving deep inside of me—”
Ian’s restraint broke under her sweet assault. A tortured groan tore from his chest, and he seized her mouth in a devouring kiss, wrapped his arms tightly around her, and drove into her, thrusting fiercely again and again, seeking absolution within her . . . finding it when she molded herself to him while his body jerked convulsively, shuddering violently, and he poured himself into her. His heart thundering against his ribs, his breath coming in deep, painful pants, Ian kept thrusting into her, willing her body to again respond to the fierce hunger of his driving strokes, determined to pleasure her again. She cried out his name, her hips arching, her body racked with tremors.
When some of his strength returned, he slid one arm beneath her hips, the other around her shoulders, and moved onto his side, taking her with him, still intimately joined to her . . . his seed deep inside her. It was, he thought, the most profound moment of his life. Stroking her hair, he swallowed and spoke, but his voice was shattered. “I love you,” he said, telling her what she had told him that terrible day in his study. “I never stopped loving you.”
She raised her face to his, and her answer made his chest ache. “I know.”
“How did you know, sweetheart?” he asked, trying to smile.
“Because,” she said, “I wanted it so badly to be true, and you’ve always given me everything I wanted. I couldn’t believe you wouldn’t do it, just one more time. Just once more.”
She moved slightly and Ian checked her, tightening his arms. “Stay still, darling,” he whispered tenderly, and seeing her confusion, he told her, “because our child is being conceived.”
Her eyes searched his. “Why do you think so?”
“Because,” he said, slowly smoothing her hair off her cheek, “I want it so badly to be true, and you’ve always given me everything I wanted.” A lump of emotion swelled in Ian’s chest as she pressed closer against him, cradled in his arms, not moving. She was willing it to be true; he knew it as surely as he knew that, somehow, it was.
* * *
Bright morning sunlight was glancing off the windowpanes when Ian finally began to surface from his deep slumber. A sense of well-being, absent from his life for more than three months, filled him, and oddly, it was the very unfamiliarity of the sensation that awakened him. Thinking some dream had caused it, he rolled onto his stomach, keeping his eyes closed, reaching for the dream, for unconsciousness, rather than awakening to the emptiness that normally inhabited his waking hours.
But awareness was already returning. The bed felt smaller and harder than it should; and, thinking he was at Montmayne, he decided dully that he’d fallen asleep on the sofa in his bedchamber. He’d drunk himself into oblivion on that sofa dozens of times, and slept there, rather than in the cavernous emptiness of the huge bed he’d shared with Elizabeth. Ian felt it start again—the dull ache of regret and worry, and, knowing sleep would evade him now, he flung himself onto his back and opened his eyes. His pupils recoiled from the glaring sunlight, his dazed eyes taking in the familiarity of his unexpected surroundings. And then it hit him: where he was, who had spent the night with him in naked splendor and uninhibited sharing. Joy and relief swept over him and he closed his eyes, letting it wash over him.
Slowly, however, his nose became aware of something else—the aroma of bacon cooking. A smile tugged at his lips, evolving into a lazy grin as he remembered the last time she had cooked bacon for him. It had been here, and she had burned it. This morning, he happily decided, he would eat charred paper—so long as he could feast his eyes on her while he did.
Clad in a soft gown of green wool with a bright yellow apron tied around her waist, Elizabeth stood at the stove, pouring tea into her mug. Unaware that Ian had just sat down on the sofa, she glanced at Shadow who was concentrating hopefully on the bacon cooling in the skillet. “What do you think of your master?” Elizabeth asked the Labrador as she added milk to her tea. “Didn’t I tell you he was handsome? Although,” she confided with a smile, bending down to pat the satiny head, “I’ll admit I’d forgotten just how handsome he is.”
“Thank you,” Ian said with a tender smile.
Surprise brought her head around so quickly that Elizabeth’s hair spilled over her shoulder in a gilt waterfall. She stood up, smothering a laugh at the picture of absolute, masculine contentment she beheld before her Clad in a chamois peasant shirt with coffee-colored breeches, Ian was sitting on the sofa, his hands linked behind his head, his feet crossed at the ankles and propped on the low table in front of him. “You look lik
e a Scottish sultan,” she said with a chuckle.
“I feel like one.” His grin faded to a somber smile when she handed him a mug of coffee. “Can breakfast wait a little while?” he asked.
Elizabeth nodded. “I thought I heard you moving about almost an hour ago, and I put the bacon on then. I intended to make more when you finally came down. Why?” she finished, wondering if he was afraid to eat her cooking.
“Because we have some things to talk about.”
Elizabeth felt an unexpected lurch of dread. Last night, she’d lain beside him and explained everything that had happened from the time Robert appeared at Havenhurst until she arrived at the House of Lords. By the time she was finished, she’d been so exhausted from her tale and from Ian’s lovemaking that she’d fallen asleep before he could explain his own actions. Now he obviously wanted to discuss the subject, and she wasn’t entirely certain she wanted to spoil the beauty of their reconciliation by reopening it.
“We’ve wronged each other,” Ian said quietly, seeing her reluctant expression. “If we try to hide from it, to pretend it didn’t happen, it will always be there, lurking. It will come back to haunt both of us at odd times, for odd reasons, and when it does, it will come between us. Some little thing I say or do will rip open your scar from this, and I won’t know why you’re angry or hurt or mistrustful. Neither will you. Last night, you made your explanations to me, and there’s no need to go into it again. I think you have a right to some explanations from me.”
“How did you become so wise?” she asked with a soft smile.
“If I were wise,” he said dryly, “this separation would have ended months ago. However, I’ve had several agonizing weeks to try to think how we could best go on after this—assuming you ever let me find you, and it seemed to me that talking about it, openly and thoroughly, was the only way.”
Elizabeth still hesitated, remembering the murderous fury he’d turned on her in his study the day of his acquittal. If talking about it would make him angry again, she wasn’t certain it was worthwhile.
Reaching for her hand, Ian drew her down onto the sofa, watching as she tucked her skirts around her, fidgeted with each fold, and then looked apprehensively at the snow-covered windowpane. She was nervous, he realized with a pang. “Give me your hand, sweetheart. You can ask me anything you want to know without fear of any anger from me.”
The sound of his deep, reassuring voice, combined with the feeling of his strong warm fingers closing around hers, did much to dissolve her misgivings. Her gaze searching his face, Elizabeth asked, “Why didn’t you tell me Robert had tried to kill you and you’d had him taken aboard your ship? Why did you let me go on believing he’d simply vanished?”
For a moment he leaned his head against the back of the sofa, closing his eyes, and Elizabeth saw his regret, heard it in his voice when he looked at her and said, “Until the day you left here last spring, and Duncan greeted me with a list of my crimes against you, I had assumed your brother returned to England after he got off the Arianna. I had no idea you’d been living alone at Havenhurst since he’d left, or that you’d become a social outcast because of what I did, or that you had no parents to protect you, or that you had no money. You have to believe that.”
“I do,” she said honestly. “Lucinda ripped up at Duncan and told him all that, and you came to London to find me. We talked about it before we were married, except the part about Robert. Why didn’t you tell me about him as well?”
“When?” he asked, his voice harsh with self-recrimination and futility. “When could I have told you? Consider the way you felt about me when I came racing to London to ask you to marry me. You were already half-convinced my proposal was made out of pity and regret. If I’d have told you my part in Robert’s disappearance, you’d have been sure of it. Besides, you didn’t like me very well as it was, and you didn’t particularly trust me, either,” he reminded her. “You’d have flung my ‘bargain’ in my face if I’d confessed to kidnapping your brother, no matter how valid my excuse was.
“There’s one more reason I didn’t tell you,” Ian added with blunt honesty. “I wanted you to marry me, and I was prepared to do almost anything to bring it about.”
She gave him one of the disarming, sideways smiles that always melted him and then she sobered. “Later, when you knew I loved you, why didn’t you tell me then?”
“Ah yes, later,” he said wryly. “When I’d finally made you love me? For one thing, I wasn’t anxious to give you a reason to change your mind. For another, we were so damned happy together, I didn’t want to spoil it until I absolutely had to. Lastly, I didn’t know exactly what I was guilty of yet. My investigators couldn’t find a trace—Yes,” he said, seeing her startled look, “I hired investigators the same time you did. For all I knew, your brother had stayed away to hide from his creditors, exactly as you suspected. On the other hand, it was possible he died, somehow, trying to make his way back here, in which case, I’d have had that crime to confess to you.”
“If no information, no word of him ever came, would you have ever told me why he originally left England?”
He’d been looking down at her hand, his thumb idly tracing her palm, but when he answered, he lifted his eyes to hers. “Yes.” After a silence, he added, “Shortly before you vanished, I’d already decided to allow the investigators six more months. If no trace of him was discovered by then, I intended to tell you what I did know.”
“I’m glad,” she said softly. “I wouldn’t like to think you’d have gone on deceiving me forever.”
“It was not an entirely noble decision,” Ian admitted. “Fear had something to do with it. I lived in daily dread of Wordsworth appearing at the house one day and handing you proof that I’d caused your brother some irreparable harm, or worse. There were times,” he added, “near the end when I honestly wished one of the investigators would produce evidence to either damn me or acquit me, so that I could put an end to my uncertainty. I had no idea, you see, of what you’d do.”
Ian watched her, waiting for her to comment, and when she didn’t, he said, “It would mean a great deal to me, and to our future together, if you could believe the things I’ve told you. I swear to you it’s the truth.”
Her eyes lifted to his. “I do believe you.”
“Thank you,” he said humbly.
“There’s nothing to thank me for,” she said trying to tease. “The fact is that I married a brilliant man, who taught me to always put myself in the opponent’s place and try to see things from his point of view. I did that, and I was able to guess long ago your reasons for keeping Robert’s disappearance a secret from me.” Her smile faded as she continued, “By putting myself in your place, I was even able to guess how you might react when I first came back. I knew, before I ever saw the expression on your face when you looked at me in the House of Lords, that you would find it extremely difficult to forgive me for hurting you, and for shaming you. I never imagined, though, the extent you would actually go to retaliate against me.”
Ian saw the pain in her eyes, and despite his belief that all this had to be said, it took an almost physical effort not to try to ease her hurt with his hands and silence her with his mouth.
“You see,” she explained slowly, “I anticipated that you might send me away until you got over your anger, or that you’d live with me and retaliate in private—things that an ordinary man might do. But I never imagined you would try to put a permanent end to our marriage. And to me. I should have anticipated that, knowing what Duncan had told me about you, but I was counting too much on the fact that, before I ran away, you’d said you loved me—
“You know damned well I did. And I do. For God’s sake, if you don’t believe anything else I’ve ever said to you, at least believe that”
He expected her to argue, but she didn’t, and Ian realized that she might be young, and inexperienced, but she was also very wise. “I know you did,” she told him, softly. “If you hadn’t loved me so deeply,
I could never have hurt you as much as I did—and you wouldn’t have needed to put an end to the possibility I could ever do it again. I realized that was what you were doing, when I stood in your study and you told me you were divorcing me. If I hadn’t understood it, and you, I could never have kept fighting for you all this time.”
“I won’t argue with your conclusion, but I will swear to you not to ever do anything like that again to you.”
“Thank you. I don’t think I could bear it another time.”
“Could you enlighten me as to what Duncan told you to make you arrive at all that?”
Her smile was filled with tenderness and understanding. “He told me what you did when you returned home and discovered your family had died.”
“What did I do?”
“You severed yourself from the only other thing you loved—a black Labrador named Shadow. You did it so that you couldn’t be hurt anymore—at least not by anything over which you had control. You did essentially the same thing, although far more drastically, when you tried to divorce me.”
“In your place,” Ian said, his voice rough with emotion as he laid his hand against her cheek, “I think I’d hate me.”
His wife turned her face into his hand and kissed his palm. “Do you know,” she said with a teary smile, “how it feels to know I am loved so much . . .” She shook her head as if trying to find a better way to explain, and began again, her voice shaking with love. “Do you know what I notice whenever we are out in company?”
Unable to restrain himself, Ian pulled her into his arms, holding her against his heart. “No,” he whispered, “what do you notice?”
“I notice the way other men treat their wives, the way they look at them, or speak to them. And do you know what?”
“What?”
“I am the only wife,” she whispered achingly, “with the exception of Alex, whose husband adores her and doesn’t care if the whole world knows it. And I absolutely know,” she added with a soft smile, “that I am the only wife whose husband has ever tried to seduce her in front of the Hospital Fund Raising Committee.”
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