by Eloisa James
“You will laugh.”
“Probably.”
Making her husband laugh had become one of Merry’s happiest activities. “My governess used to call my bosom the Milky Way.”
That did it; he let out a bellow of laughter. “That’s got to be one of the silliest names for breasts that I’ve ever heard. How about your nipples?”
Merry wrinkled her nose. “It’s an odd word, nip-nip-nipple. Not romantic.”
“If I were the poetic sort, I would write odes to your honeyberries.” He bent his head and dropped a kiss on her.
“Honeyberries? How is that better than gooseberries?”
“You are as sweet as honey, and not green. If I were that sort of man, I could rival your aunt with three hundred rhymed couplets, and bring you bunches of flowers to boot.”
The idea made her feel dizzy, though not because she wanted flowers or a poem or anything like that.
What she was thinking—
She couldn’t be thinking that again.
But she was.
Love was like canary wine: it fizzed in her veins and made the world a sweeter place. With a grimace she threw an arm over her eyes.
“Merry?”
She felt Trent drop another kiss on the curve of her breast, but for the moment she just concentrated on keeping those three words from bursting out of her mouth. He didn’t want to hear them. She didn’t want to hear them.
She’d said them before, too many times. She’d cheapened them with overuse, because she hadn’t even understood the emotion.
He kissed her lips this time. “Are you all right, Merry mine?”
Trent called her that sometimes. Because he was possessive. Because she was his, mind and body and soul.
Merry actually groaned, realizing what she’d just said to herself. Her eyes popped open. “Cedric thought I was an easy woman because I had been betrothed so many times.”
“Why are you thinking about him?” There was an edge to Trent’s voice that she found thrilling. Her duke disliked thinking about any of her suitors; every time Mr. Kestril sidled over to her, Trent’s jaw would tighten.
“I wasn’t thinking about Cedric. I was wondering whether you thought I was a strumpet for the same reason.”
“Absolutely not.”
His answer was prompt and should have satisfied, but it didn’t. “I don’t mean in terms of bedding,” she said, struggling to find the right words. Finally, she just blurted out the truth. “I have told three different men that I was in love. Do you think that I misled myself? That I never was in love at all?”
She knew the answer. She had had no idea what love was . . . until now.
“You are an emotional person,” Trent said, running his finger down her nose. “I don’t think you misled yourself any more than other humans who run about making rash promises.”
Merry sat up, pulling the sheet up around her because she wasn’t as comfortable unclothed as Trent was; he was leaning back against the headboard, naked as the day he was born. “Love is a fickle emotion,” he said. “Here today, gone tomorrow. You just had the bad luck to discover that truth while in the public eye.”
“I don’t entirely agree,” Merry said, feeling her way through it. “Mothers love their children. My father loved me. Aunt Bess and Uncle Thaddeus love me. I’m the fickle one.”
“You’re talking about a different emotion than romantic love.”
“I don’t see why the distinction is relevant.”
“When a man tells a woman ‘I love you,’ he generally wants something from her. Most of those exchanges lead to bed, which means they’re really about desire, not love.”
Merry bit her lip. “You think desire is the only emotion between a man and woman?”
“No, not at all. Look at us.” His grin eased the bleakness in her heart. “You’re my friend, Merry. Bloody hell, I never imagined anything like it. You’re my friend and you make me never want to leave this bed.” His voice dropped with the last few words, and then he pulled down her sheet.
She forgot what they were talking about.
But it came up again the next night.
Trent had asked about her father at dinner, and she had come up with story after story about her father’s quirky brilliance as an inventor and politician.
Trent said all the right things in response, but Merry had been making a study of her husband. Something changed when she told him about the very prim lady—Merry’s mother—who had arrived from England and won her father’s heart.
Trent’s shoulders had gone stiff, and later that evening, for the first time since they married, he didn’t follow her out of the drawing room and up the stairs.
Instead, he gave her a kiss and said that he had work to do. Ten o’clock came and went; the house became still and quiet.
Finally, she climbed out of bed, pulled on a wrapper, and headed down the stairs, her bare toes curling against the silky wood of the great staircase.
She expected to see Trent at one of the three big tables in his study, but instead he was in a sofa at the far end of the room, staring at embers burning down in the fireplace. She padded over to him and sat down.
He wasn’t holding papers, a book, or even a drink. Merry slid closer and rubbed her head against his shoulder. “Hello,” she said softly.
Trent put an arm around her, and gave her a lopsided grin. “You needn’t have come down; I was on my way to bed.”
“Every once in a while, a lady can ‘fetch’ a man,” she said, stretching up to kiss his chin.
He pulled her into his lap, but he didn’t kiss her, just held her and put his chin on her head.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“Your father.”
“I wish you had known him. You are very similar.”
“I hardly think so.”
She leaned back against his arm so that she could see his face. “You are. All the investments you’ve made and the way you’ve made your estate profitable? My father would have done that as well.”
“As would any man of sense.”
“Any man with the capability, and those are far and few between. I know that you fought in the House of Lords for the Quaker anti-slavery bill, because Cedric told me so, and Father would have done that. What’s more, you built the wing on that charity hospital.”
“Cedric’s project, not mine.”
“Without your money—the money you made, not inherited—that wing wouldn’t exist.” She sounded proud, because she was proud.
More and more Merry realized that she could never have been truly happy with someone like Cedric, a man who inherited some money and married into more. She wouldn’t have developed the deep respect that she felt for Trent.
“I don’t agree, but it’s not relevant. I was comparing your father to mine.”
“Your father might well have been a different man had he been tested,” Merry suggested. “My father had to succeed, as did you.”
“I was actually thinking about the way your father wooed your mother.”
She smiled, leaning back against his chest. “He was a bit of a madman, wasn’t he?”
“Love poems—”
“All written by Bess, may I point out. He didn’t confess that to my mother for over a year.”
“Flowers, jewelry, even a serenade. It makes me wish for your sake that I was a different man.”
“Well, excuse me, if I don’t agree with you,” Merry said, laughing. “I am happy with you just as you are. A different man might not have your lance.”
Trent groaned at her jest, but then he lapsed into silence again.
He was in a bloody bad mood and he should probably just take his wife up to bed.
“Or your gooseberries,” Merry added, with a mischievous twinkle.
“Listening to your uncle’s stories, I felt as if you were cheated.”
“Because no one has recited poetry that was actually written by his sister-in-law? Or from Shakespeare, pretendi
ng the sentiments were his? Gave me a ring made from his own hair?”
He winced. “I see your point.”
“Three men wooed me. Diamonds have so little meaning that Cedric didn’t even bother to buy me one.” They had tacitly agreed to leave the late duchess’s diamond ring in the safe in Trent’s study; it was snarled in too many emotions for Merry to wear it.
His wife didn’t sound bitter, but all the same . . . Didn’t every woman want those things—not to mention a proper marriage proposal? Merry hadn’t even known whom she was marrying. Sometimes he was haunted by that in the middle of the night.
“I suppose that’s one reason why we are such good friends,” he said. “We understand the emptiness of those gestures.”
He had the uneasy feeling that he was trying to reassure himself.
“I know why I dislike gifts of poetry and jewelry,” Merry said, “but why do you?”
Trent’s hand slid down the curve of her side. “I brought flowers to my mother once,” he said, the memory coming from nowhere.
“How old were you?”
“Around six or seven.” He hadn’t thought about that afternoon in years. He’d been old enough to suspect that his mother didn’t care for him, young enough to feel hopeful that he could change her mind.
“What happened?” Merry asked.
“Nothing much. I brought them to her chamber.”
“She wasn’t pleased by them?”
“I suppose she was. She was fond of roses and I had carefully chosen all the fattest ones I could find.”
She frowned. “Something happened.”
An acid taste came into his mouth. He’d been so young.
“I asked a maid to tie a ribbon around the posy,” he said, turning back to Merry, wanting a distraction. He watched his fingers run over the dip of her waist so that he didn’t meet her sympathetic eyes. “After which, I went to my mother’s room.”
“Oh dear! I can imagine several scenarios that could go wrong after that sentence. We’ll have to put a lock on our door once we have children.”
“It wasn’t as bad as that.”
She interlaced her fingers with his and brought his hand to her mouth for a kiss.
“My brother and I weren’t supposed to go to her boudoir, of course. As far as I knew, my mother showed absolutely no interest in us, except on rare occasions when we were summoned to the drawing room before tea.”
Merry nodded.
“I wanted to give her the flowers before they wilted, so I knocked on her door, and she called ‘Enter,’ likely thinking I was her maid.”
“And?”
“She was sitting on a low chair, with her back to me. She didn’t turn around, but Cedric looked over her shoulder. He was sitting on her lap.”
“You hadn’t known that your brother was there?” There was a steely disapproval in her voice.
“No. I’d had no idea.”
“I gather you had not been invited to visit her chamber.”
“Never.”
“That must have been a deeply painful moment.” Merry’s hand tightened around his. “Please don’t tell me that Cedric looked triumphant.”
“No, no, he was sorry. I knew immediately that he’d been to our mother’s room many times, but had never mentioned it because he didn’t want to hurt me.”
“What did you do?”
“I just stood there. He said, ‘Mama, Jack brought you some flowers.’ I was Jack in those days because my father was still alive.”
“What did your mother say?” Merry prompted.
“She gave Cedric a kiss on the top of his head, ruffled his hair, and put him on his feet. She thanked me for the flowers and sent us both back to the nursery.”
For a while, neither spoke, and the only sound Trent could hear was Merry’s soft breathing.
“I’m sorry to say this because she has passed away, but I rather hate your mother,” she said, finally.
“She had every reason to favor Cedric, believe me. I was the sort of boy who was always dirty and often bleeding, with smudges all over my face, no doubt. Thoroughly unattractive.”
She twisted about until she was sitting astride his lap, able to give him a kiss. “No wonder you don’t want me to call you Jack. I won’t do it again, I promise.”
He shrugged. “That’s not important. I learned something that afternoon, something valuable. I had thought that I could buy the emotion she showed Cedric by being more like him.”
“More flowery?”
He nodded, meeting her eyes, wanting her to understand. “A useless gesture. That’s why I have no more trust in empty words and gifts of jewels than you do. But the fact that we’re friends, Merry? That is something very rare, and it means so much more than empty trifles.”
“Friends?” she whispered, so quietly he barely heard.
He began pulling out her hairpins and tossing them to the floor.
“Yes, friends,” he repeated, his voice gone gravelly with lust.
She pushed back ever so slightly, her hand on his arm. “I want to be more than your friend, Jack.”
He felt his thoughts go still as he watched her gather her courage.
“I love you, Jack. I’m in love with you.” She cupped his face in her hands. “I love you more than I could have imagined possible.”
Trent’s heart stopped for a moment. Merry loved him . . . and she was looking at him expectantly. For one searing moment he felt a stab of pure happiness.
But on the heels of that came something else. Something darker. How many times had she felt exactly what she was feeling at this moment—attached to the laundry list of men she had been betrothed to?
Another man would tell her what she wanted to hear. That he loved her, too. As much as she did, if not more.
But he wasn’t that man. He wouldn’t lie to her.
He didn’t love her. No, he wouldn’t let himself love her.
Love, romantic love, simply wasn’t something he would allow to cloud his judgment.
Instead of speaking, he swept her into his arms and carried her upstairs to bed. Ravishing her would have to be answer enough, sliding into her tight heat with a sigh of pure relief. He thrust wordlessly, over and over, drinking the expression in her eyes. Letting her whimpers and moans drive him and waiting, waiting . . .
Merry’s sleek thighs tightened around him and her head jerked back. She cried out, words falling disjointedly from her lips, “Deeper, now, yes . . .”
And then, “Love you.”
Despite himself, the words had a primal, raw effect on him, driving the air from his lungs. Deep pleasure thrummed in his bones. He wove his fingers into Merry’s and lost himself, bliss rolling through him like the tide, leaving him clean and fresh, beached on some foreign shore.
Chapter Thirty-two
For once, Merry woke up earlier than Trent. He was lying on his back, arms flung out, taking up most of the bed. She looked over every inch of him, heart aching.
It was awful, this love.
She had always been happy to see one of her fiancés. But when she looked at her husband, she felt raw and vulnerable.
This kind of love was different. It was complex, and made up of a million strands of emotion. It hurt to feel it alone. She knew exactly why her father had commissioned poems from his sister, and sang tunelessly, and showered her mother in jewels.
She would do anything to persuade Trent to love her. He was her missing piece; he made her complete.
With him, she wasn’t American, or a duchess, or even Merry.
She was home.
With that thought, she bent her head and brushed her lips on his. “I love you,” she breathed, kissing him again, her tongue sliding inside his mouth.
He didn’t kiss her back. In fact, when she opened her eyes and looked at him, he was just waiting for her to finish.
He put her gently to the side and sat up. “We have to talk, Merry.”
“You sound like Aunt Bess,” she said. “I di
dn’t mean to demand that you respond in kind, Jack. I truly didn’t.”
He was silent for a moment. Then, “The truth is that I had hoped not to join that particular club: to wit, Bertie, Dermot, and Cedric.”
Merry took a deep breath. Of course, Trent didn’t understand. She had been infatuated with her former fiancés, an emotion as thin as a grape skin. The love she felt now was woven deep in her bones and her heart. “It’s different this time,” she tried to explain.
His eyes flashed with a hint of emotion that chilled her as effectively as an ice bath. “Those are the precise words you used at the Portmeadow ball—while talking of my brother. You assured me that your feelings for him were ‘different.’”
“It is different this time.” Merry faltered at the look on her husband’s face. Naturally, Trent didn’t like the reminder that she’d been in love with his brother—not that she had ever truly loved Cedric. “I never felt anything for him that is close to what I feel for you.”
She should have kept her love to herself, allowed it to grow while both of them got used to it. But the words and emotions had spilled out without warning. And she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, take them back.
The fact was, everything she felt for him had been growing more and more powerful every day. If she found herself in a room with her husband, she leaned toward him as if he were the true North. If she glanced up at the dinner table and merely caught sight of his dark eyes and deep bottom lip, her heart skipped a beat and her knees turned weak.
Even when she was in the gardens, her thoughts constantly strayed back to him. She missed him when he was as close as the next room.
“It feels different to you because we are physically intimate,” he said flatly. “You didn’t sleep with your fiancés; if you had, you would understand how powerful desire can be.”
Merry did understand desire. If truth be told, she lived for the moments when they climbed the stairs together in the evening. Her breath came faster with each step, a heady sensuality slamming over her like a tidal wave. By the time they entered the room, she was frantic to feel his skin against hers, to have his cock in her hand, or her mouth, or herself.
But that madness wasn’t love.
Love was something more tender and quiet. It made her pop into Trent’s study and drag him away from his work. It made her rack her brain to come up with intelligent and engaging subjects of conversation. It made her want to sleep in the curve of his body, their fingers interlocked.