Chapter Nineteen
Nineteen
He drew the curtains so that the morning light came through them in a faint golden glow and removed her clothes slowly, one by one, kissing each inch of skin as he bared it.
She removed his clothes much less slowly, pushing his coat impatiently down his arms, unbuttoning his waistcoat with quick, nimble fingers and dragging his shirt off over his head.
“Slow down,” he murmured. “We have all day.”
“And more,” she said.
“Yes, and all night,” he agreed, planting kisses across the upper slopes of her breasts. He caressed her breasts, cupping them with his hands, feeling the firm thrust of two hard little nubs even through the layers of fabric. He kissed them, nipping them gently through the fabric with his teeth.
“Now turn, my love, and let me deal with these laces and free these poor, imprisoned beauties.”
She turned, presenting him with the lovely line of her nape. He kissed it and loosened her hair, tossing pins aside impatiently and nuzzling her neck, enjoying the taste of her skin and the perfume of her silky hair as it fell, surrounding him.
He unlaced her corset with practiced skill, and she gave a big sigh of pleasure as it opened. He tossed it aside and slipped his hands around her and caressed her breasts through her fine cambric chemise.
“Oh, that feels lovely,” she said with a shiver. “Somehow whenever it’s you who takes off my corset, I seem to get a little dizzy.”
“Ah, that’s my special technique,” he growled against the skin of her neck.
“So much nicer than when a maid does it.” She gave an appreciative sigh, turned in the circle of his arms, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth.
He would gladly unlace her corsets for the rest of his life. But he didn’t dare suggest such a thing. One night, one day at a time. He had to win her trust back. He’d let her down badly, he couldn’t press her for anything more than what she was offering right now.
His blood hammered through his veins as he kissed her and held her, relishing her sweet, unique taste, the warmth and generosity of her.
Her fingers tangled in his hair, her eyes half closed as she leaned into him, her warm, soft body pressing against him, her hips moving with slow, erotic rhythm as her tongue moved with his.
He cupped her head in his hand and controlled the kiss, angling his head to fit her seamlessly, mouth to mouth, one breath, stroking the tender skin on the underside of her jaw.
He couldn’t give her up. He had to know. “Tell me about Zindaria,” he murmured.
She stiffened. It was the wrong thing to say. His lips covered hers before she could respond, reminding her of what he could give her, knowing that it would not be enough, but he was desperate. He could not, would not let her go.
He slid his hands down her body in a fevered need to have her naked. With one movement he lifted the chemise over her head. And stared.
“Drawers?” She hadn’t worn any before. These were pink. With lace. He’d never seen pink drawers before.
“They’re very fashionable,” she told him, blushing.
“They’re very inconvenient,” he said.
“What’s sauce for the goose…” she said and rubbed her palm over the front flap of his buckskin breeches. She smiled, apparently pleased with his response.
He groaned. As her fingers fumbled with the fastening of his breeches his plans for a slow seduction flew out the window. Reluctantly he let her go. “You deal with those things and I’ll see to the boots and breeches,” he gasped.
She had the damned pink drawers off in one swift action. She stood there, watching him, a small feminine smile on her face as he dragged off the boots and breeches almost in one movement.
She was beautiful. He needed to be inside her.
He lifted her onto the bed. She fell back, pulling him with her. Her legs opened to him naturally and he settled himself between her thighs, savoring the satiny feel of her skin against his, the firm give of her flesh.
He suckled her breasts until she was moaning and thrashing with need. “Now,” she told him, “now!”
“Soon,” he murmured. He slid his fingers into the sweet triangle of dark hair, feeling her dark liquid heat, smelling the aroused female scent of her, knowing with fierce masculine triumph that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
He caressed her to peak after peak of shuddering pleasure until she was boneless and whimpering with pleasure, stroking his body with soft, feverish hands, and kissing any part of him she could find.
Then and only then he entered her, groaning at the sweet, hot fit of her. She moaned in response, clutching him to her, gasping, “Yes, yes, yes,” as he thrust and thrust in a wild, hard rhythm that drove them higher and higher until at last they spiraled over the edge into ecstasy and nothingness.
He held her then, as together they floated.
After a long time, she said, “I really wanted to be the one to shoot the count. Why did you stop me?”
“It would have eaten at you later,” he told her. “You’ve never killed a man. You don’t know.”
She turned against him and, propping her chin on his chest, contemplated his face. “I imagine you’ve had to kill a lot of men,” she said softly. “Does it eat at you?”
“Not anymore,” he told her. “But the first one did for a long time. And for you, with your soft heart, it would have been much worse.”
She hugged him and kissed his chest. “Tell me.”
He shook his head. “There’s nothing to tell. He was a soldier, about the same age as me.”
“And how old were you?”
“Nineteen.” To this day Gabe would never forget the look in the other boy’s face when he realized he was dying, actually dying. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone, especially not her. Not even for a man she hated.
She said nothing, just hugged him tightly. Eventually she said, “It’s hard to believe there’s nothing to worry about anymore. It’s all over.”
“Yes.” Nothing to worry about? Gabe didn’t agree.
“You know I must return with Nicky to Zindaria, now.”
Yes, Gabe realized that.
“And I will ask Jim to come, to be Nicky’s companion, to be like a brother to him, because it is important my son have a friend to whom he is just Nicky, not ‘the prince.’ And because Jim needs a family.”
Gabe nodded.
“And I am going to ask Tibby to come with me, too, to be my secretary.”
Still Gabe said nothing.
“And—and I thought perhaps Ethan would come, for a while, at least. There are some very fast horses in Zindaria…and perhaps he and Tibby…”
He shook his head. “I doubt it.”
She sighed, then gave him an anxious look. “But more than anything I need to know…what are your plans, Gabriel?”
“I’m not sure.” For once Gabe wasn’t sure what she was thinking. He had to know.
“I thought you were going to work with Harry on your horse-breeding project,” she said.
“Harry doesn’t need me for that. It was always his idea, his project. It’s his dream. And Ethan’s.”
“And what about the Grange? It’s your home. There are people there dependent on you.”
He shook his head. “I spent eight years away, and they managed perfectly well without me. In any case, Harry will probably manage the Grange, at least until he gets his own place.”
He added, “I was always restless there. I didn’t know what I wanted.”
“And do you know what you want now?”
“I do.” He waited for her to ask what it was.
She waited, looking at him expectantly. He couldn’t speak. He had to know, first, what he was up against.
The silence stretched.
She slipped out of bed and, naked, padded to the chest of drawers and pulled out her red shawl. She wrapped herself in it, covering herself, just barely.
He sat up in the bed. “What are you doing?”
“There is something I have to say to you, Gabriel,” she told him. “And I can’t say it like this. Not when I’m naked. Or touching you.”
She was an utterly enticing sight but Gabe watched her with a cold feeling of dread. She looked to his eyes very much like a woman on the verge of a difficult decision. She was going to give him his marching orders.
If she thought she was going to thank him for his most inadequate protection services and dismiss him, she had another think coming.
He deserved to be dismissed, he knew. She’d married him for protection and he’d failed her. And now Count Anton was dead, she didn’t need Gabe anymore, not even as a convenient husband.
He watched her pacing back and forward in that damned red shawl, inadequately covered, deliciously revealed, her bottom peeping out with every step she took.
She might miss him in the bedroom, he supposed, but men would be queuing up to be her lover. She was too sensual, too obviously delectable not to have them fighting for her favors.
Over his dead body.
All Gabe had were his legal rights as a husband and by God, if that’s what it took, he’d resort to that.
She paced restlessly back and forth beside the bed, her brow furrowed, chewing her lip, driving him wild, even as she drove him to the edge of despair.
She turned and said in a rush, “The thing is, Gabriel, you made a commitment in front of witnesses and God and I don’t think it’s right that you want to wriggle out of it.
I know you have a family here in England, and a home, and friends—very good friends.
There are hundreds of people here who love you but—”
Gabe felt a sudden surge of hope. Was she heading where he thought she was? “How many hundred?”
“Don’t tease me, I’m serious. I know you have a whole world full of people in England who care about you, and in Zindaria you would only have—” she broke off.
“In Zindaria I would only have—?” he prompted.
“Me.”
“You?”
She nodded. “I haven’t said this to you and I should have. I was going to tell you the night of the party but—”
“I know,” he said ruefully. He’d failed her.
“Yes, and with so much happening and then you were being so strange—”
“I was being strange?”
“Yes, very. You wouldn’t even talk to me or look at me or touch me and it was terrible, just terrible. So there just didn’t seem to be the right moment.”
“Is there ever a right moment?”
“Yes, I have to say it now, otherwise I will regret it all my life. I may—never mind.” She closed her eyes and told him, “I love you, Gabriel Renfrew, and I want you and need you to stay on as my husband, my real husband, and go to Zindaria with me, and grow old with me.”
There was a long silence. Gabriel felt as though he’d been hit by a falling tree. If a falling tree could make you want to shout and sing and dance.
He slipped out of bed and moved until he was close enough to smell her, close enough to see each individual eyelash fanned out across her pale satiny cheek, but not close enough to touch her. If he touched her, he wouldn’t trust himself to be able to speak. And the words needed to be said.
“Why are you saying all this with your eyes closed?” he asked gently.
“Because I’m a coward.” Her eyes were still shut tight.
“No, you’re not.”
“I am. I’m scared to look, scared to ask. In case it’s no.”
“Open your eyes.”
She cautiously opened them, bracing herself for whatever he might say.
He smiled, crookedly, and said the words he’d had locked in his heart for so long.
“I fell in love with you the first time I met you, when you were standing on a cliff top, wet, tired, angry, frightened, and beautiful. I’ve fallen more in love with you every day I’ve known you, and I can’t imagine that ever changing. ”
Her eyes shimmered with tears. “Oh, Gabriel, is that really true?”
“It is, my dearest love.” He cupped her face in his hands. “I have a house, a family, friends, and fortune in England, it’s true, but everything I want is right here in my hands. Everything. You are my home, my family, my purpose, and my heart.” And then he kissed her.