Chapter 22
You are the summer and the winter, the spring and the fall. When you change, I want to change alongside you. I want to discover you anew every morning. I want to forget what dawn looks like except in your eyes.
—from the papers of Arthur Baird, composed in pencil, copied out in ink, unsent
Lydia ran all the way to her bedchamber, which in retrospect was not her cleverest play, since it was one of the only rooms in the house that Arthur knew how to find.
His hand was on the door before she could close it. Before she could shut him out.
She was panting from her rapid ascent up three flights of stairs—at least, she wanted to believe it was from the stairs. But in truth she’d felt as though she could not catch her breath from the moment Arthur had started to speak of their wedding.
Her mother’s delighted demand for the details of the cere mony had been—well, had been very like her mother, at once affectionate and shameless.
But Arthur’s reply, the careful details in his low rough voice, had filled her with a longing so profound that she did not know how to guard against it.
She had felt ruthlessly exposed, there at the dinner table, with her family around her and Arthur’s words conjuring her heart’s desire in the candlelight.
Had he taken pity upon her—helpless in conversation, tangled in her own reserve—and thought to rescue her?
It had not felt like rescue. It had felt like a scalpel, paring away every bit of the armor she kept around her heart. He must have been able to see, when he’d looked at her, how much she wanted all of it to be real. All of them must have seen.
“Lydia,” he said as he crossed the threshold, “I’m sorry. I did not mean to shame you in front of your family. I’d thought—I’d meant to help you.” He closed the door behind him, shutting them together into her chamber.
She was hot, flushed and oversensitive, as though she could feel his gaze laying her open. She thought the faintest touch upon her skin might leave a bruise.
“It’s not because of my family.” Her voice sounded raw.
He had taken a handful of steps toward her, but at her words, he hesitated. “I’d thought perhaps I’d given you some embarrassment, with the attention of all of them upon you.”
“They are my family—it’s not the same—it’s—”
How could she explain herself to him?
With his brother, she had imagined a marriage of convenience—precisely the exchange of political goals that Arthur had spoken of at the inn.
She had been willing to accept such a marriage once. But now that she knew Arthur Baird—his careful heart, his gentleness, his immense and quiet capacity for love—she did not want convenience alone. She wanted everything.
She wanted to know that without her impulsive words on a staircase in Haddon Grange, without the intervention of the de Younges and Jasper, he would still be here with her, asking her to be his wife. She wanted to believe it.
But she had been foolish once before, had built castles in the air, and she wasn’t—she wasn’t good at this, didn’t know if she could trust what she wanted so desperately to be true.
If only he would speak first! If only she could be certain—if only there were no risk .
His face had gone stricken as he’d taken in her broken-off denial. “Is it regret then?”
She licked her lips. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Do you regret what’s passed between us?” The blue-green swirl of his eyes was a tide, a cataclysm. “Now that we’ve come back here, to your home and your family, do you wish to change your mind?”
Her lips parted in shock at his words. The blades of her shoulders brushed the wall behind her.
Of course she did not wish to change her mind.
She wanted everything—would take whatever he was willing to give her. She wanted decades at his side, a castle rebuilt, a village made plentiful together. She wanted to go home with him and never use the countess’s chamber again because she slept every night at his side. She wanted children with eyes the color of Scotland.
But he did not appear to know it. He seemed uncertain—bruised, even, by her hesitation. Perhaps, somehow, her longing for him had not been as transparent as she’d believed. Perhaps he did not know how she yearned.
To speak first—to drop her armor—was terrifying. But—
Brave , he’d called her.
If there was ever a time in her life when she had needed to summon courage, it was now. She would not hurt him, not by her apprehension nor by her cowardice.
“I will never regret it,” she whispered. “Never, Arthur. I want everything you said—Strathrannoch Castle and the meadowsweet and your hands in mine. I want you. I care for you. I—”
He surged forward and pressed her up against the wall.
She gasped. His body was large and hard. His hands went to her waist, pulling her up, his knee sliding between her legs.
“Thank Christ,” he rasped. “God forgive me, Lydia, but it would have killed me to let you go.”
Her palms had come to rest on his chest. She reveled in his solid muscular warmth, and then she curled her fingers around the lapels of his jacket and pulled him closer.
“My Lydia.” He trailed kisses along her neck, a lacework of wanting. “’Tis not because of the money. I don’t know how to make you believe it, but I swear to you, I’ve not offered for you because of your fortune. I can’t say truly that we don’t need the funds at Strathrannoch. But I would have you penniless and barefoot.”
She tipped her head back against the wall and shoved her fingers beneath his jacket, closer to his skin.
His voice was low and heated, his breath caressing her ear. “Do you know what I thought of when I saw you in this pretty white dress?”
“Tell me.”
“Taking you in it.” His hands came down to her buttocks, gripping hard enough to pull her up against his arousal. “Like this. Up against the wall, your hair down and your legs around me.”
“Arthur—”
He licked a hot path up her neck and rocked against her. His teeth closed around her earlobe, biting down softly, and she could not control the sound that slipped from between her lips.
She wanted. Oh God, she wanted him. Desire for him, always so close to the surface, raced along her skin and pooled between her thighs. She felt loose and liquid and not quite steady. Her toes were off the ground.
“’Tis not just the bedding,” he said. “Christ Jesus, Lydia. It’s everything—your heart and your brain and your laugh. You make me half-crazed. When you’re gone I imagine the feel of you beneath my hands, and when you’re with me, I think about how to make you smile. I want to—to read all your letters and your pamphlets. I want to listen to you talk until I fall asleep, and then I want to dream about your voice.”
He kissed her. His mouth was a hungry entreaty, a desperate plea. Her head spun as she kissed him back, days of wanting distilled down to take and now and please. She let her anxieties drop away and allowed desire to pull her down, let it sweep her away like a current, inevitable and absolute.
She yanked at his jacket, pulling it off his shoulders, and when he lifted his hands from her backside to peel the garment off, she wrapped her legs around his waist.
His fingers found the buttons on the back of her dress. “Can I? I want to see you—I want—”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes.”
She had his absurd scarlet waistcoat off. Her hands were underneath his shirt. She could feel the ridges of muscle straining beneath her fingers, his heart pounding against her palms.
Somehow her dress was unfastened, her chemise around her waist. He cupped her breasts in his hands. His thumbs brushed across her tight nipples, and she cried out at the brilliant, shocking pleasure.
“I love that,” he said hoarsely. “The way you sound when I touch you.”
His fingers teased at her nipples, rolling the tips, pinching lightly. She felt her belly tighten, an ache redoubling between her thighs. She pressed helplessly into him, arching her back.
His mouth was on hers again. His tongue traced the outline of her lips, and she gasped and shuddered at the sensation. Everything in her felt constricted, pulling down and contracting—she felt the tightness in her abdomen, in her back, a hot and urgent need driven on and on by the firm torture of his fingers.
“God,” he murmured. “How many times have I spent myself, imagining the noises you make when you come?”
She rocked into him, pressing her sex shamelessly to his arousal. She was a pinpoint, a clenched fist, a star. She needed—she needed—
He unwrapped her legs from his waist and set her down, a careful slide against his body.
“No,” she said, and she did not care how she sounded, did not care if she had to beg. “Arthur, please—”
“Want this off you,” he rasped, and shoved her dress and undergarments down to the ground. He spared an instant for his shirt, his shoes, hers. Then he picked her up and moved to the bed, bringing her to straddle his lap as he sat.
She might have been self-conscious—she was naked, after all, except for her stockings—had he not been so manifestly aroused. The skin of his neck was flushed pink. His hands searched her body, clinging to the places where she curved, the softest places, the most heated. He skimmed her thighs, her hips, the heavy weight of her breasts.
“I’ve dreamed of this,” he said softly. “You bare before me, your eyes all dark and blurred with wanting.”
He made one lazy revolution around her nipple, and she trembled.
“But to have you here,” he went on, “to be able to touch you. To watch your face in the light. Christ, Lydia. No dream of mine could have come close to this.”
The trembling in her went on and on, drawn up into her heart.
She loved him. She would never regret that.
He passed the flat plane of his palm across her stiffened nipple. Her breath caught. He murmured soft and carnal words against her neck, his breath tickling her ear. She tangled her fingers in his curls, grown dusky in the twilight.
“Come here to me,” he murmured, and pulled her atop him as he lay back in the bed.
Nothing felt impossible now. Putting her mouth to his was as easy as breathing. His lips parted beneath hers, and his hands moved along her waist, her hips, the back of her thighs. He groaned softly into her mouth, and it felt like a question against her lips.
“Yes,” she answered. Yes.
He urged her body farther up, setting his mouth to her nipple, a firm suction that had her hips grinding down. He must have felt the wetness between her thighs as she straddled him, must have heard the sounds in the back of her throat—a whimper, almost a whine—but she felt no shame. Only pleasure, sweet and driving, pushing her down and bearing her away.
He released her nipple and pressed his head back against the mattress. His hands dug into her hips and brought her up his body. The muscles of his arms flexed as he lifted her, a quick weightless slide.
He pushed her past his shoulders and Lydia had a moment of confused hesitation. What did he—
He brought her knees to either side of his face.
“God, you’re lovely,” he said hoarsely. “Lean forward. Kneel over me. Hold the headboard.”
She understood then, as she leaned forward, as he angled her hips so that her slick flesh was positioned above him. Her hands went to the back of her bed, the carved whorls pressing into her palms.
She could feel his breath between her legs. It was hot, unsteady. His hands were full of her thighs, and then he spread them wider and pulled her down into the wet heat of his mouth.
She cried out, an incoherent plea at the sensation. His tongue parted her, teased and toyed with her, and she felt herself jerk, writhing under his hands, above his mouth. Again—again—her hips made sharp pulses against him.
She gripped the carved headboard with all her strength. Tomorrow the curving pattern would be imprinted into her skin.
He made a soft, appreciative murmur. His fingers were inside her—first one and then another—and she felt the walls of her sex tighten around him, clutching as if to draw him in. His movements were steady and rhythmic: his fingers, the unrelenting friction of his tongue.
She squeezed her eyes shut and cried out as her climax took her. The force of it rocked her, a low shuddering that began at her sex and rippled through her body, throbbing through her abdomen, her limbs, the tips of her fingers.
She pressed her face down into her fisted hands and sobbed out her release.
When her thighs loosened, Arthur pulled her back against him, urging her body down toward his chest. Her hands were reluctant to part from the headboard; he reached up and slipped her fingers free.
Her mouth found his again. She could taste herself, her own arousal, on his lips. He kissed her—one long, hot, demanding kiss—and then pulled back.
“I want you,” he said hoarsely. “I want you so much. But we needn’t—I can wait. I can—”
Her palm was on his chest and she could feel the pounding of his heart, a match for her own.
“Yes,” she murmured.
He froze, one hand in her hair and the other half-underneath her stocking.
“I mean, no,” she said. “Don’t wait. I don’t want to wait.”
He flipped her over in the bed. She laughed and gasped, and he pressed his face into the curve of her neck on a rough, pleading sound. She could feel his erection through his breeches, hot and hard against her.
“You won’t regret it.” She barely made out his hoarse promise, growled into her skin.
Somehow, she believed him. Her anxieties, her fears of wanting more than he could give—they were nowhere to be found in this soft dreamworld of twilight and bed linens. She did not let him go.
He came into her slowly, so slow and patient, as though desire were not a mad demand upon him. He fitted himself inside her, tiny shallow thrusts, and her hips arched to take more of him.
He made a desperate sound.
“It’s all right,” she murmured. “I’m all right.”
“Oh Lydia.” His voice had dropped, just above a groan. “Oh my love. I would not hurt you for the world.”
It did hurt, a little—a stretch just past the point of comfort. But he brought one hand between their bodies and touched her. A soft caress, a gentle stroke. He whispered something in her ear, some small praise, and her hips pressed up again, seeking more.
His mouth was at her neck. His fingers moved over her, and she whimpered as need mounted in her, the ache rising as he thrust again, deeper this time. A little harder.
“Yes,” she said, “oh please, yes.”
She slid her knees up and the angle of their movements shifted—a sudden, dizzying pleasure. She cried out, her body tightening around him, her feet flexing against the bed. His hand caught hers, pressed her palm into the linens beside her head. There seemed no end to her culmination when it came—no end to his voice whispering endearments.
Beautiful , he said. My love. My own.
He was so careful with her. He moved slowly, languorously, almost until the moment of his crisis, until his rhythm grew erratic and his fingers held her fast. He trapped his cock between them and thrust hard, spilling himself on her belly as he clutched her hips. She welcomed his urgent grip, relished the way his hands recalled her to herself.
There was nothing in this moment as real as her body, and his, and the pleasure of their joining. In the gathering dark, his touch felt like a vow.