Chapter Twelve
“Gideon?” Another shake. “Gideon,” Caroline said more firmly. The man apparently slept like the dead.
She’d spent the better part of the last two hours alternately weeping, berating herself for weeping, then weeping because she was berating herself for weeping.
It was a vicious—and embarrassing—cycle and, if she had one thing to be glad about, it was that no one had borne witness to it.
She’d honestly been upset about the slip in her mental faculties, which had then fed into the feeling of betrayal over Gideon inadvertently revealing her pregnancy to the staff.
As soon as he’d obeyed her and quit the room, however, her regret had been nearly instantaneous.
Gradually, rationality had returned to her; what had seemed so upsetting and serious before melted away into something far less dire.
So, she’d forgotten where they were at in their game? They could have taken his suggestion and replayed the hand; it really would not have been that serious a situation and they were only playing for fun.
So the housekeeper knew of her pregnancy?
The staff were often the first to know when the lady of the house was expecting.
They’d already spent a month on this honeymoon trip.
If they were afforded the benefit of the doubt, then it was plausible that she’d only just found out about it as well.
Besides, she could scarcely believe Gideon had taken the initiative to investigate and procure remedies for her pregnancy-related ailments.
Gideon. The man who had no maternal figure and limited experience with enceinte women had proven to have impeccable instincts.
She should not have snapped at him when he’d only been trying to do what he could to understand what she experienced and find a way to help her.
And he had been right. She was tired—she was always so bloody tired.
She’d been putting so much of her energy into planning the party for Gideon and keeping it all a secret.
She hadn’t realized how much it had worn her down until that blasted peg had fallen from her fingers.
Gideon had been so kind and understanding, and she’d snapped at him.
The guilt only made her weep harder.
It took her far longer than it should have to free herself from the quagmire of emotions, but she’d eventually managed.
She also knew that she’d never be able to sleep until she spoke to Gideon and apologized for her behavior—would he understand that it had felt perfectly rational and justified in the moment?
She hoped so. They’d never quarreled before and it made her skin feel as if a thousand ants were crawling beneath it.
All was not right with the world if she and Gideon were not on good terms.
Though splashing cool water on her face did little to counteract the redness and puffiness, she did it anyway. Not remotely satisfied with her appearance, she bit back more tears of frustration and made her way to Gideon’s bedchamber.
She hadn’t expected to find him so sound asleep, let alone still as dressed as when he’d left her. She was uncertain if she was disappointed at finding him in his loose linen shirt and breeches rather than gloriously naked.
“Gideon,” Caroline repeated herself even more loudly, trying to stave off the wave of images her excited imagination was attempting to conjure.
Finally, he groaned and rolled to his shoulder.
He blinked up at her sleepily, his midnight hair tousled and flattened on one side where it had been pressed to the pillow.
His angular jaw was already freckled with stubble.
She wanted to test its roughness against her cheek…
her impossibly sensitive nipples. He stared at her with one eye until his mind finally awoke enough to register that it was she at his bedside.
She didn’t know if she’d expected him to be cross with her for her earlier treatment of him or annoyed that she’d disturbed his sleep; what she hadn’t expected was his immediate alarm.
Gideon snapped up and instantly reached for her.
His eyes, once dark and hazy with sleep, were alert and dancing silver with concern.
Still kneeling on the enormous mattress, he grabbed her hands and held them tightly, as if afraid she were an apparition.
“Caro! Are you alright? Are you ill? The baby—”
“I am fine,” she reassured him, squeezing his hands back with equal force to help ground him. For a man who was not usually so excitable, he’d been remarkably skittish when it came to her health.
Yet another reason she loved him.
And love him, she did.
Even if he might be too damaged by his parents to say the words aloud to her or recognize them in his actions and behaviors, she knew he felt the same.
A new wave of emotion began to clog her throat like a lodestone, and she struggled to speak around it. She should have known he’d read her distress in her eyes…
Immediately, he enfolded her into his arms in an embrace that was, at once, tender and bracing.
His warm lips pressed to her hairline where he murmured reassurances and tender phrases.
He called her his darling Caro, praised her strength, and told her to lean into him as much as she needed to.
And she did just that. Caroline wrapped her arms around his lean waist, feeling the firmness of his body, the heat that rolled off of it like a blazing hearth.
Never had she felt safer, more supported, more cherished than when she was in Gideon’s arms.
It took some doing, but she regained her composure and leaned back enough to look up into his face. He was devastatingly handsome cast in shadows, her vivid memory filling in the gaps left behind by the night.
“I am better now,” she said, her voice so small when confronted by at least fifteen stone of man.
Of tender man, she reminded herself as he offered her his gentle, lopsided smile of encouragement.
“I came to apologize.” His dark brows rose at that, but he remained silent and allowed her to continue.
“I may have displayed a slight overreaction earlier. You were infinitely patient with me and I am sorry if I seemed ungrateful of your support. You must have thought me such a ninny for crying like I did. I—I do not know what came over me, but I could not help it. I am sorry.” His long, square-tipped fingers barely grazed the underside of her jaw, unleashing a shiver of pleasure from the nape of her neck down to her bare toes.
“While I appreciate the apology, it was not necessary. Nothing was broken—inanimate or otherwise—so I shall consider no harm done.”
Caroline had to bite back her smile as she dug her fingers into his sides and made him bark in laughter. “Can you take one thing seriously—just one? I am busy apologizing for my irrational behavior.”
“And I accepted your apology, though it was unnecessary. I may be a man, I may be woefully unprepared and undereducated, but I am trying. What I saw was nothing above what I was told I might expect. If you display a bit of irrationality from time to time, then so be it. I would prefer there be no tears, but I understand it cannot always be helped.”
“Are you asking me not to cry?” she snorted incredulously.
“No. I only say that because it wounds me to see you in such a state.”
Caroline’s heart stuttered, reminding her how very, very close they were. Tired of fighting her impulses, she slid her hands up the hard wall of his chest and wound them around his neck, pulling Gideon’s lips down to meet hers.
Pinwheels of sensation and light burst behind Gideon’s eyes the second Caroline’s mouth grazed his.
The well of concern he’d felt at waking to find her standing over him with her eyes red rimmed and puffy evaporated along with the world around them until there was only her lips on his.
His body reacted with instantaneous ferocity, hardening with such swiftness that it made his knees weak.
She pulled them closer, pressing her unbound breasts against his chest until her pebbled nipples teased him through the thin fabric of their remaining clothing, and the firm curve of her belly grazed the hard ridge of his cock.
He ached to grasp her delectable bottom and yank her more closely together so he could grind against her until there were no doubts as to the voracity of his desire.
His restraint wore thinner and thinner with every pass of her tongue on his, every stroke of her nails in the short hair at the nape of his neck.
He trembled with it. He ached from it. Something primal roared to life within him, demanding that he pull her to the bed and claim her.
She was his. She carried his child. She would never belong to another. Never.
Gideon held himself in check, but just barely. Even when she arched into him and whimpered at the friction of her breasts on the hard wall of his chest, even when she nipped at his lower lip, even when she gasped and shivered as his fingers traced the outline of her perfect curves.
She breathed his name like a plea.
“Hmm?” was his reply, too absorbed in every point of contact between them to break away and form a coherent question.
“Might we…please…make…love again…?” she asked, each pause punctuated by another kiss.
God’s wounds, what her words did to him.
Her request was like angels’ song to his forsaken ears.
For months, he’d been without a woman’s touch.
No one had quite lived up to her since their night; no one had driven him mad with naked desire.
Oh, he’d tried to hold up his bargain that they would share one night and one night only, but he’d desired her for so bloody long that he’d been unable to stomach the fact that the only way he’d have her again was in his dreams. It was what had driven him to Lady Night’s the evening he’d met Oliver and Emily.