Chapter 12
When Matilda woke, she woke quickly. It was the habit of her lifetime—to go from sleep to consciousness in an instant, her eyes blinking open, her brain alert.
So when she woke the next morning, it was to the full awareness that she was in a very, very bad way when it came to Christian de Bord, the Marquess of Ashford.
He was holding her. His long, hard body was a trifle softer in sleep. One arm was wrapped around her breasts, and she could see the dark hairs on his forearm, limned with gold in the soft dawn light that filtered through the window’s hazed glass.
His knee was pushed between hers. He still wore his trousers. If he had moved in the night—turned in his sleep or shifted the bedclothes—he had ended up back here, exactly where he’d been when she’d fallen asleep.
And merciful heavens, she was doomed.
She wanted to turn over and kiss him awake.
She wanted to spend an hour staring at the elegant planes of his face, his mobile mouth.
She wanted to outline every hollow and rise of his body with her tongue.
She wanted every morning for the rest of her life to begin just like this one, tangled up in Christian’s arms.
It was not only that he’d given her the most ecstatic sexual experience of her life.
Her prior experiences in that area numbered exactly two: both safe, discreet, and utterly meaningless.
She had been curious, yes, but restrained as well, making only the most cautious explorations into the desires that were knitted into her bones.
The previous night had been a wonder beyond anything she had imagined.
But it was not just that. She admired him: his caution and his care, his quick intelligence and dry humor. She adored the way he cared for his sister—enough even to let Matilda bring along a cat that made him sneeze.
She loved the way he’d pushed her to speak her mind, to state her desires. She loved the way he’d held her, and kissed her, and made her feel precious. She loved—
No. No, no, absolutely not.
She did not love him. It was too soon. She had known him less than two months.
She was only—confused, that was all. She had gotten mixed up, somehow, from arguing with Margo by the waterfall.
She had had to tell Margo that they were eloping, had needed to provide an explanation that Margo could believe.
I love him, she’d said. I know him. I’m certain.
She hadn’t meant it. Or perhaps—she hadn’t known she had meant it.
That train of thought seemed both dangerous and inauspicious, and Matilda stopped it in its tracks.
The man had not even slept with her, for heaven’s sake.
He had barely been willing to let her travel to Northumberland with him.
He did not want to install her in his country estate and keep her there forever, no matter what her ridiculous heart wanted to hope for.
He had been married. It had been, as far as she could tell, a disaster. She could not possibly hope to tempt him to enter into such an arrangement again.
And oh Lord, some spanking and an orgasm and she was plotting how to get the man to propose. She had gone mad. She needed to get some air. She needed to go check on her cat.
Cautiously, she slithered out from underneath Christian’s arm. He sighed and muttered something in his sleep, then caught her about the waist and pulled her back against his body.
She was fairly certain the man was aroused which was not at all interesting.
“God,” he mumbled. One hand cupped her breast, and he gave an appreciative grunt. “Matilda. I—”
He froze.
Ah, there it was. Consciousness. Recollection. Regret.
She tried not to feel hurt. She tried not to feel anything at all. “Good morning,” she said. Somehow, her voice was as crisp and cool as if she’d greeted him on the street and not naked in his bed with his erection pressing into her backside.
He let her go and rolled to his back, where he lay as motionless as a corpse.
The sun was fully risen now; the light through the window had brightened. It burned her eyes.
She sat up and wrapped the bedsheet about herself, leaning against the spindled bedframe. “Perhaps you will go downstairs and procure breakfast while I dress.”
“Matilda.” He sat up as well, and she did not want to look over at him. “I’m sorry. I should not have taken advantage of you the way that I did.”
She gritted her teeth. “You did not take advantage of me.”
“I did. Your youth, your inexperience—”
Oh, she wanted to throw down the bedsheet and leap upon him. She wanted to shove him out of the bed and onto the floor. She wanted to cry.
“I am not entirely inexperienced,” she said stiffly. “Perhaps not as experienced as you are, nor as old as you are, but I am not some virtuous young miss. I am a Halifax Hellion.”
Was her reputation good for nothing, then?
She had acted so outrageously, so absurdly these last seven years—to protect Margo, to push back against a society that told her to be quiet and demure, that told her some made-up notion of virtue and decorum meant more than who she really was. And yet—what had it gained her?
She and Margo had not changed the world. They had not even changed the ton. All that scandal and it was not enough to convince this man, whom she wanted beyond all sense or reason, to see her as his equal in the bedchamber.
“Nonetheless,” he said, his voice a bit uneven, “I accepted responsibility for your safety when I agreed to bring you to Bamburgh. I have not acted as I ought.”
She turned to look at him then. His hand lay open on the sheet, and as she watched, his fingers flexed.
She longed to drop her hand, to link her fingers with his.
The desire to touch him was so powerful, she almost succumbed: she wanted to place her palm at the center of his chest and feel the steady beat of his heart.
“I assure you,” she said, “I am perfectly safe.”
Though it did not feel true. It was dangerous to want too much. She knew that.
He did not look at her. “I can bring up some breakfast. I am sorry, Matilda. What happened last night cannot happen again in Bamburgh. It should not have happened at all.”
“To be sure,” she said. And though she had expected it—had known this was how he would react—her heart gave a painful little twist in her chest.
Was he ashamed—to be seen with her? In front of his sister?
He did not mean that. She did not think he meant that. Only she could not be certain.
Her chest felt tight with regret, and she could not be sure what it was that she regretted.
Her reputation? Would it have helped, just now, if she’d been a perfect lady like his marchioness?
She did not think so. Had she lived that way—coy and retiring, hiding herself behind her fan—she would have lost some part of herself.
She would have lost Margo.
Christian got out of bed. He still wore his trousers, and he slipped his rumpled shirt over his head before he left the room.
Matilda felt a rush of grief, and she did not know what she mourned.
She missed her sister. She found that she hated how she had left Margo.
She worried that Margo had felt just as she, Matilda, felt now: alone and uncertain, wondering how she had gone from contentment to this cold unsettled loneliness in a moment.
She got up, wrapped herself in her dressing gown, and opened the door between their rooms. She wanted her cat.
Christian had sent word ahead with the mail coach that they would arrive by dinner. He’d sent instructions for Mrs. Perkins and told Bea to expect a painting tutor and something else—a surprise, he’d said.
The cat, cleaner but still shockingly ugly, sat in Matilda’s lap. Her hands were buried in its newly fluffed charcoal mane, and she’d barely taken her eyes off the thing the entire day’s ride.
She did not smile. Christian sneezed extravagantly and hated everything.
He was a cad. A blackguard. He had taken advantage of her.
He wanted to do it again. He could not sit across from her without wanting to get down on his knees in front of her, push up her skirts, and lick her cunny until she came.
He’d been too crazed last night for patience, but this time he would take it slowly, bring her to the edge of climax again and again, until she was mindless and begging, until he could tip her over the edge with nothing but his breath. He—
No. He would not do that. He would not touch her again, not if it killed him.
And it might.
Kill him.
He could barely breathe when he looked at her.
His heart felt as though it was battering against his ribs, desperate to get out.
He could not even say what he wanted—he wanted all of it, all of her, everything at once.
He wanted to be inside her. He wanted to hold her all bloody night.
He wanted to make her smile. He wanted her in a consuming, possessive, unreasonable way, and he could not want her like that.
He had married before. Grace had been too young, just as Matilda was. He had not been able to make her happy, and then she had died, and—
No. He could not even think about marriage and Matilda together. It felt like staring into the sun. Every part of him shied away from it.
He had to leave her alone. He had to stop thinking about her and wanting her and feeling breathless and wild, hopeful and afraid at once. He knew too well that it was not safe to want this much. Not for him. Not for his family. He had hurt them before, and he would not do it again.
So when Matilda did not speak on the journey up to Bamburgh, he did not either.