Chapter 24 #2
“Make me forget,” she said. “Adam, make me forget.” She reached up her arms to him.
“You are so beautiful,” he said, leaning over her to bury his face in her hair. “The most beautiful woman in the world.” One hand stroked over a breast. A warm, long-fingered hand.
She reached up to undo the buttons of his waistcoat and shirt.
And he was afraid. She was so very beautiful. He wanted to be perfect for her. He raised himself to a sitting position again.
“I will close the door,” he said. The light from two branches of candles was shining through the doorway and slanting across the bed.
“No,” she said, reaching for him.
“Fleur,” he said, looking down into her eyes, troubled. “I don’t want you to see me again. I am very ugly.”
“No.” She caught him by the arms, pulled him down to her. “I want to see you. I must see you. Please, Adam. I will be afraid in the darkness.”
He stood up beside the bed and undressed very deliberately. And he watched her watch him, as he had done on a previous occasion. Except that then he had been angry, daring her to show distaste, while this time he waited for it with a dull certainty that it would happen.
“Adam,” she said when he stood naked beside the bed finally, “you are not ugly. Ah, you are not ugly. But I am so glad I did not know you before the wounds. I would not have been able to bear it.” She reached out a hand to touch his left side lightly, and ran the hand down his side and thigh. “You are not ugly.”
He lay down beside her on the bed, looked into her eyes, smoothed back the silky red-gold hair that he had loosened. And he kissed her again.
She spread one hand over the heavy hairs on his chest and lifted the other to explore the rippling muscles of his arm and shoulder.
She moved it down over his chest, around to his back.
Her tongue circled his, stroked over it, was stroked in its turn.
And she felt his hands move over her, touch her, explore her, arouse her.
And she was no longer afraid. Her breasts were taut and tender to his touch. His hands were sending aching vibrations from them up into her throat. There was a heavy throbbing between her legs.
He had taken her once, briefly and dispassionately. Apart from that one occasion, it was many years since he had had a woman. He wanted to be perfect for her. He needed to bury himself in her and release his seed into her with a few swift thrusts. But he wanted to be perfect for her.
He moved a hand down between her thighs, opened her gently with his fingers, touched her, stroked her lightly. She was hot and wet to his touch. She moaned and twisted against him.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said, his mouth against hers again. “This time it won’t hurt, Fleur. I promise you. Are you still afraid?”
“Yes.” Her voice was a sob. “Yes. But come to me, Adam. Come to me.”
He lifted himself over her and lowered himself on top of her, his head turned against the side of hers. And terror flared again as his legs came between hers and pushed them wide and his hands came beneath her to lift and tilt her.
And then he was coming into her, warm hard maleness mounting all the way into her. Without any tearing. Without any pain. Only the throbbing and the aching all about him and the waiting for him to put an end to it. She could hear someone moaning.
He drew his hands from beneath her and lifted himself on his forearms and looked down at her. Her eyes looked back into his. Her hair was spread like a flaming halo all about her head.
“I want it to be good for you,” he whispered. “I want it to be perfect for you, Fleur. Tell me what to do. Do you want it ended quickly?” He withdrew from her, pushed slowly in again.
She raised her knees, set her feet flat on the bed on either side of him. She closed her eyes and threw her head back. She moaned again. He stroked her slowly and deeply, over and over again.
He lowered his head to brush her lips with his. “I want it to be perfect for you,” he said. “Tell me when to come, Fleur. Tell me when you want me to come.”
She opened her eyes and looked up into his.
And she saw the dark hair, the hawkish face, the scar, the powerful shoulder muscles, the dark chest hair.
And she felt his strong thighs pressing her own wide and felt his slow and deep and intimate strokes into the very depths of her.
She remembered very deliberately that first encounter with him.
And she let it go, let it slip beyond the realm of conscious memory.
“I think the aching will drive me mad,” she whispered to him. “And I want it to go on forever.”
But when he lowered himself onto her again and brought his arms about her and quickened his rhythm, she raised her knees to hug his hips and knew that forever must be held to a moment. She tilted herself against him, tensed against him, waited for the shattering of sanity.
He felt her come, though she said nothing. And he slid his hands gratefully beneath her again and thrust and held deep inside her several times until he could feel her tension soften and tremble about her central core.
“Now, my love,” he said against her ear. “Now. Come with me now.”
And he listened to her strange cry as he pushed into her once more and felt his own breath release with a sigh against the side of her face just as his seed had sprung deep inside her.
She shuddered and trembled about him and against him and abandoned herself to the aftermath of love, content to feel his body bear her down into the bed with its relaxation, content to rest her spread thighs against his, content to feel his hands cupping her hips, and to feel him throbbing deep in the part of her that belonged to herself and the man to whom she chose to give it.
She had chosen to give to him. Only him. Him, this once only and forever.
He disengaged his body from hers, lifted himself away from her, brought her over onto her side against him, his arms about her. He drew the bedclothes up about them.
“Fleur.” He kissed her warmly, lingeringly. “Have the ghosts been banished?”
“Adam.” Her eyes were closed. The fingertips of one hand moved lightly over his face. “You are beautiful. So very beautiful.”
She was not sleeping, as he was not. He held her close, one hand smoothing through her hair, and communicated with her beyond the medium of words. They had only the one night. There was no time for talk. Or for sleep.
They lay quietly in each other’s arms until it was time to love again.
FLEUR DOZED OFF TO SLEEP at some time just before dawn. The duke cradled her head on his shoulder and rubbed his cheek lightly against the top of her head. He stared upward into the darkness. The candles in the parlor had burned themselves out long before.
It should be possible, he thought, to set her up somewhere in a house of her own, somewhere not too far from Willoughby perhaps, or somewhere close to London. He would be able to visit her for days or weeks at a time. It would become more his home than Willoughby.
They could be married in all but name. There had never been a marriage with Sybil. It was not even a consummated marriage. He could be faithful to Fleur. They could even have a child, perhaps. Or children.
It should be possible. He turned his head to kiss the top of hers. Surely it would be possible to persuade her. She loved him as he loved her. She had told him so and she had spent most of a night showing him so.
A cottage by the sea, perhaps. They could walk along the cliffs together, blown by the wind, looking out across the water. They could stroll along the beach. They could take their children running and playing on the sand.
He rubbed his cheek against her hair again. Pamela would enjoy the beach. He must take her. Willoughby was less than ten miles from the sea. He must take her before the summer was over, perhaps arrange to go with Duncan Chamberlain and his children. Pamela would enjoy the company of other children.
She would never be able to enjoy the company of Fleur’s children and his—those mythical children who lived in their mythical cottage in a make-believe world.
He could have ended his marriage to Sybil within a year of its making had he chosen to do so.
He had not so chosen. He had committed himself to the vows he had made even though she refused to allow him the rights that would have made a proper marriage of it.
He had committed himself because at the time he still felt some leftover love for her.
And he had done it because of Pamela. So that Pamela would not be a bastard.
Half a commitment was no commitment at all. Either he belonged to Sybil and Pamela or he belonged to Fleur. There could be no double life. Not for him, anyway.
He tightened his arm about Fleur and continued to stare upward.
“What is it?” she asked, turning more fully against him.
He kissed her unhurriedly.
“I want to tell you something before the morning comes,” he said.
“Yes.”
The imminence of dawn was like a tangible thing in the room.
“After tomorrow,” he said, “I will recommit myself to my marriage. I hope I will have the strength to live with that commitment for the rest of my life, with no more lapses. For Pamela’s sake I will hope it.”
“Yes,” she said. “I know, Adam. You don’t have to feel that you owe me anything. We agreed that there was just tonight. And I would not be your mistress even if you wished me to be.”
He set a finger over her lips and kissed her forehead. “This is what I want to say,” he said. “In one way, Fleur, you will always be my wife, more my wife than Sybil is. And physically I will always remain faithful to you. There will never be any other woman in my bed.”
Her lips were still against his finger.
“My marriage is a marriage in name only,” he said, “and always has been.”
He heard her swallow. “Pamela?” she whispered.
“Is Thomas’,” he said. “He abandoned Sybil, leaving her with child. I had recently returned from Belgium and still fancied myself in love with her, or with the person I thought she was.”
She let out a ragged breath.
“From the moment of Pamela’s birth she has been mine,” he said.
“I would die for her. If there were any serious question of my annulling my marriage in order to be with you, I would not do so because of Pamela. If the choice were between her and you, Fleur—and perhaps it is—then I would choose her.”
She was pressing the top of her head against his chest.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes.”
“Do you hate me for that?” he asked.
“No.” There was a long pause. “That is the very reason I love you, Adam. There is very little room in your life for yourself. It is filled with your concern for the well-being of others. I did not know it or expect it at first, but I have come to see it more and more.”
“And yet I have taken this night for myself,” he said.
“It is a selfishness and a moral wrong, Fleur, or so your curate friend would say.” He kissed her briefly.
“But I don’t want to talk. I want to love you one more time.
I wanted you to know, though, that I will remain faithful to you and will always think of you as my wife. ”
“A piece of eternity,” she said, touching his lips with her fingertips. “It has been wonderful beyond words. I would not exchange it for ten years added to my lifespan, Adam. And there is still a little of it left.”
She turned onto her back and reached up her arms for him as he rose over her once more.