Chapter 8
Margo was warm when she woke. She stretched against the rough cotton bedsheets, flexing and pointing her toes.
She felt wonderful. She’d slept like the veriest corpse—after two dreadful nights in the post-chaise, this narrow mattress was a small paradise. Even with Henry mostly beneath her—her lips curled despite herself—she’d been deliciously comfortable.
And Henry—good heavens. A new kind of warmth threaded its way down her body. She would never have expected all that beneath his proper exterior. She could feel a faint burn when she squeezed her legs together, from where his stubble had scraped her inner thighs.
In fact, the only thing that troubled her physical contentment was the increasing demand of hunger. Fortunately, she had cheese in her reticule. She hoped it hadn’t gotten too wet. Could cheese get too wet? Or did water sort of run off it as though it had been waxed?
She sat up, the bedsheet falling to her waist. She’d no idea what had happened to Henry’s shirt. She did see Henry, though, dressed only in trousers and kneeling in front of the grate, using an iron to poke at the fire he’d once again built.
Good Lord. In the faint watery light of the morning, Margo could see rather more of him than she’d glimpsed last night, and the sight was spectacular.
What did solicitors do all day? There was no way that physique emerged from sitting behind a desk. His shoulders were broader than she would have guessed—no padded jackets for him. The man even had visible musculature in his back.
She chewed her lower lip and wondered again whether she ought to take more exercise.
He’d seemed pleased enough by her form, though. More than pleased. The warmth in her body increased, coalescing in certain places that Henry had seemed to find especially intriguing.
Next time, she thought, she would take the lead. She would use her mouth as he had. Perhaps she would make him tell her precisely what he liked. You, he’d said. She felt her cheeks flush. As endlessly gratifying to her vanity as that was, it was not very specific.
Really, she ought to be hurrying to dress and go after Matilda—but it was very early, by the angle of the sun. They had time. They had time if they were quick—and by the warm heat that had unfurled in her center, the tightness in her belly, Margo felt she could be quick indeed.
Despite herself, a sigh escaped her lips, and Henry practically catapulted from the floor and spun toward her.
Her eyes widened as she took him in. “You look wretched!” she said in surprise, and then clapped a hand over her mouth.
What a thing to say, she chided herself. Badly done, Margo.
He did, though. His face was pale, and his eyes looked bruised. He looked as though he hadn’t slept all night. He appeared to have shaved already that morning, and with an unsteady hand, because he was bleeding slightly near his left ear.
He didn’t say anything. He was staring at her in a fixed, motionless sort of way.
Oh—no. He was staring at her bosom.
Something that had gone tense inside her relaxed. He still wanted her. This was not over yet.
If she’d been the proper lady Aunt Lavinia had tried to compel her to become—the kind of lady who wasn’t sent down from finishing school—she’d have blushed and lifted the bedsheet over her breasts in a flurry of modest exclamations.
Actually, she supposed, a proper lady would not have gone to bed with her brother’s best friend at all.
But she was not, and she had, and she absolutely did not lift the bedsheet over the part of her body that had transfixed Henry. Instead, she trailed the tips of her fingers down one freckled curve.
Even from across the room, she could see the bob of his throat as he swallowed.
She let her hand fall to her lap, where the linens puddled. She nudged the sheet down on her hip. One inch, then another. Then she slid her hand over to the cool empty space on the mattress beside her.
“Would you like to come back?” she asked. “We could breakfast together. It will be warmer if you sit beside me.”
“I—” he said. “I—”
She grinned. She thought he might be blushing. He was mildly scandalized—what a delight he was—if only she could persuade him to come back! She nudged the sheet down her hip a little farther, baring at least ten more freckles. He seemed to like them.
“You should get dressed,” he said, and he plucked up the wrinkled green mass of her traveling gown, strode across the room, and dropped it on her lap.
She blinked. That had taken a turn.
Her stomach felt suddenly strange, a nauseous flip, almost as she’d felt when the post-chaise had toppled the day before.
“Yes,” she said. “I suppose I shall.”
“I’ll go outside.” His voice sounded choked. “While you dress.”
He spun and headed for the door. Margo unfolded herself from the bed. The cottage seemed suddenly freezing, and her dress and chemise were not totally dry. Where the fabric touched her body, she felt clammy and wrong.
After an absurdly long time for a man who was still bare-chested—was he trying to ensure she was dressed when he returned?—Henry reentered the cottage. He nearly bumped into her, so close had she positioned herself to the door.
“Do you regret it?” she demanded.
She winced internally. She’d meant to approach the subject with a bit more tact. He’d made her nervous, that was all, with how long he’d taken to come back inside.
“I’m—sorry?”
She groaned and whirled away. “Last night! Do you regret it?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer, just spun back and advanced on him. “You needn’t come over all fussy and proper. You haven’t ruined me. I ruined myself years ago.”
“Margo, I—”
“There’s nothing wrong with what we did, you know! Free and consensual—is that not what you said yourself?”
His mouth was serious, so bloody serious. There was no trace of the Henry who had laughed into her skin. “I did. I know. I should not have done—”
“Don’t start with your shoulds and should nots!” She felt angry and stupid, stupid for thinking he would come back to bed, for thinking there would be a next time. “It was not the first time I had done that, you know. I am responsible for my own choices.”
“It was for me.”
She blinked, arrested. “What?”
His ears were pink, but his face did not break from its stern lines. “It was the first time for me.”
Somewhere inside himself, Henry groaned. He had not meant to admit that.
He was panicked, utterly at sea. He’d woken in the gray hours of pre-dawn, Margo fast asleep on his chest, her body a warm marvel of freckles and curves.
He’d wanted her instantly, insanely; he wanted to wake her with his mouth on her quim.
He wanted to never let her sleep any way but this, sprawled across him, her hair tickling his mouth.
He wanted to tell her he loved her. He wanted to tell her that he’d always loved her, that he would sell his soul to be inside her once more.
And he wanted to run. He didn’t know how to do this any longer. Everything had shifted, a sea change in who they were to one another. Was he supposed to pretend things were as they had always been?
What if, when she woke, she flashed those crooked teeth in a grin and acted as though nothing untoward had occurred? He would not put it past her: one more adventure, one more laughing plunge into delight.
But—it was both better and worse to contemplate—what if she woke and wanted him again?
What then? murmured his heart. What then?
He had no future with her. She was the daughter of an earl, he the son of a pipe-fitter.
Even if she did not care about such things—and in truth, he knew she did not—she was Margo.
She was life and joy and adventure, and he was the man at the side of the room, watching her light. He was no fit match for her.
And he didn’t know if he could have her again, without having her forever.
But then she did wake, and he promptly lost his mind. He wanted her—Christ, he wanted her so much—the previous night had not taken even the edge off his black lust for her. But he’d panicked, too: afraid she would say what she wanted from him, afraid she would want nothing from him at all.
When she’d said she was ruined, something had split in his heart.
Some dam inside him had burst, and he was going to tell her that he loved her, consequences be damned.
But instead the words that had spilled from his lips had been a confession of his recently lost virginity, which was not precisely the way he’d imagined declaring his affections.
“Henry,” she said, blue eyes round as coins, “how is that possible?”
“In the regular way, I imagine.” Jesus Christ, his face was on fire. “I’d not performed that particular act. I had—I was not—I was not entirely new to the experience.”
Henry prayed for lightning to strike him, but none seemed forthcoming.
She blinked once, very slowly.
It was suddenly very important to impress upon her that he had not been a complete novice in sexual relations.
Jesus. Had he seemed a complete novice?
“There are preliminary acts. Which I had, of course, engaged in. Before, er, last night.”
She blinked again, then nodded. “Yes, I’m not surprised. You seemed—” She appeared as lost for words as he was. “You seemed not to, er, require a map.”
This was a disaster. There was no coming back from any of this.
He had not precisely intended to pursue a lifestyle of celibacy. At twenty-one, when he’d first met Margo, he’d been bookish and shy—no opportunities to indulge in fleshly pleasures had presented themselves, and he had been too reticent to seek them out. And after he’d met Margo—
He’d never met anyone who held a candle to her.
He’d tried, several times, to disengage his interest from Margo, to make himself admire someone else, but all to no avail.
After those failures, he’d taken a passive tack.
Surely, he’d thought, surely someday his heart would abandon its hopeless fixation on her.
He was not making very good progress on that front.
“I’m going to dress,” he said. “And then we’re going to ride to the next town.”
“You are?” Margo bit her bottom lip. “We are?”
He tried to ignore those two crooked teeth, sunk into the pink curve. He tried not to think of how frantic with need he had been when she’d bitten his lip the same way.
“Yes. Eat your cheese.”
She looked down at her reticule, then back up at him. “Do we have a horse to ride?”
“Yes,” he said. “I stole one.”