Chapter Four #3
It was evident that his head injury had not affected his more basic functions. Her limbs shivered involuntarily as she finally attempted to disengage her body from his.
Feelings familiar and yet not.
She had married before the middle of her first season, her husband a cultured Scottish viscount and modest landholder.
She’d thought that his reserved nature would suit her.
They had been good companions, more friends than lovers.
In fact, the sum of her sexual experience with her quiet-mannered husband had consisted only of stolen touches and hurried couplings under the covers.
Indeed, Emma had emerged from their rushed matings more dissatisfied than not.
To this day she blushed remembering how Stuart had announced on their wedding night that it was time to put his little sausage in the oven.
She could not think of a man as well-constructed as Lord Wolverton possessing anything as inconsequential as a sausage.
Her limited contact with his heavy male appendage had been proof enough.
To think of taking an organ of such proportion inside her own body made her breath quicken.
Adrian and her late husband could not have been less alike, in physical form and character.
She slid out of his arms, a poorly planned strategical move if ever she’d made one. Every part of her body came into electrifying contact with his. Her dressing gown dropped back down to her bare ankles. She felt his hot, hard gaze travel over her naked trembling body.
She found her footing and with it the remnants of her control. She wasn’t going to cry. “I’m leaving you now.” Her voice sounded steady. Her emotions were not. “You must stay in that bed until the physician gives you permission to leave it.”
He studied her in smoldering silence. “I have no excuse for my behavior.”
She retreated to the door. “Nor I.”
He sat up, his hard face hidden in shadows. “I swear to you I will never tell anyone what just happened. On what little honor I have.”
She turned away.
“I swear to you, Emma.”
“Good night, Lord Wolverton.”
She opened the door. His deep voice followed her into the darkened hallway. Her heart pounded in her throat. “You have my word.”
The word of a mercenary.
He sank back onto the bed as the door closed with a sharp reverberation that sent a thunderclap of agony through his head. He laughed out loud, defying the pain. Reveling in it, in fact.
He felt incredibly foolish, elated. Yes, his head hurt. But—he was blessedly lucid enough to recognize his infatuation with the tidy Emma Boscastle, a proper lady who’d thought to put him in his place and had almost done it, too.
He knew she didn’t trust him. Why should she? But from the instant he sensed her watching him at the wedding today, he had felt his first spark of hope since returning to England. Perhaps there was a purpose to it, after all. Blow to his skull be damned, he had met a woman he wanted to impress.
He’d just made a hell of an impression, too, demanding intimacy on their brief acquaintance.
Did she already despise him? Of course she must. What he’d liked most about her was her mettle, her way of noticing every misstep made by others, as if she were silently lamenting the entire world and trying to put it all right.
As if nice manners could mend all the evil on earth. Could she mend a man as broken in soul as he? No woman had ever tried. His dark reputation had attracted the ladies in droves. Emma, on the other hand, had disapproved of him from the moment they met.
She was a Boscastle, one of those spellbinding souls who burned with vitality and purpose.
That alone would be enough to explain her irresistible appeal.
His best friend, Dominic Breckland, had lost his heart to Chloe Boscastle at the lowest ebb in his life.
Fortunately, Dominic had also had the good sense and good fortune to marry her.
But the whole bloody lot of them broke hearts as unwittingly as other people breathed.
Which answered the question of why he’d felt compelled to defend Emma in the first place.
Still, that hadn’t given him the right to seduce her.
She had merely been fulfilling some sense of obligation for what he’d done today.
Made a cake of himself and gotten crowned by a Chippendale chair into the bargain.
Emma Boscastle might conceivably be able to heal his injury, but all her propriety couldn’t fix the complicated pain of his personal affairs.
He breathed out a sigh. What if she could put him to right? Wouldn’t that be a feather in her cap? It was impossible, of course. No one could undo what he’d become. He’d been raised to better, aspired to worse, and there was no denying his manners had slipped over the years.
One had little need for etiquette in his past profession, in the dark, dirty places where he’d fought and loved. But a levelheaded woman like Emma was a different matter altogether, and he’d relied on his wits alone too long in this sorrowful world not to claim a treasure when he saw it.