EIGHTEEN

Three days later

Wallingford found her at last in the hotel café, arguing with her bookmaker. She was still dressed for the wedding breakfast, which had not really been breakfast at all, having started at five o’clock in the evening. Her shoulders were almost bare, glowing under the lamps, and her hair was gathered up high on her head with an artful little feather. If he’d been the bookmaker, he’d have given her whatever she asked for.

“What the devil’s going on here?” He arrived at her side and touched the small of her back.

Abigail turned to him. “I can’t make this fellow give me back my twenty lire for the motor-race, which was clearly fixed. He claims that since Alexandra’s motor didn’t finish, the rest of it doesn’t matter, the rascal.”

“Oh, is that all?” Wallingford turned to the man, who sat insolently at his table with a tiny cup of strong black coffee before him. “Give the lady back her twenty lire, sir, or I shall be obliged to haul you outside and drag you before the nearest magistrate.” He skewered his fingers into the top of the table, leaned forward, and spoke softly. “By the lobes of your ears.”

“That was splendid,” said Abigail, a few minutes later, tucking the banknotes into her bodice. “How do you manage it?”

“It’s my birthright. Everything squared away upstairs?”

“Oh yes. I helped the maid move Alexandra’s things into Burke’s suite whilst everyone was eating cake, and we put flowers everywhere, and laid out a bottle of champagne. Do you think he carried her over the threshold?”

“Burke? I daresay he did. Hideous romantic, that one.”

“Well, lovely! That’s that, then.”

“That’s that.”

Abigail looked down at the marble floor. They were standing in the hall, just outside the magnificent hotel ballroom, where a party of some sort was in full swing. Laughter spilled through the door, and raised gay voices, and an expert orchestra playing a waltz.

Wallingford held out his arms. “Dance?”

“Here? In the hall?”

“Wherever you like.”

She smiled and took his hand, and he waltzed her gently along the grand corridor, surrounded by pale marble and vaulted ceiling and intricate moldings. Her body was light and strong beneath his fingertips. She moved intuitively with him, gave herself up wholly to his lead, smiling at him as they swayed and spun. A couple walked by, giggling, not noticing them at all.

“Married,” she said. “I can’t believe it. And yet they looked so very happy. I’ve never seen Alexandra so happy.”

“Nor I Burke. The chap absolutely beamed as I walked her down. There’s no accounting for taste, it seems.”

She slapped his arm. “I think he’s a very lucky man.”

The orchestra wound up the waltz with a grand flourish. Wallingford pulled back and took both of Abigail’s hands. They were warm and firm beneath her gloves; her delicate face was overspread by a fine pink blush. He didn’t dare look farther down, where her breasts curved voluptuously from the low lace-edged neckline of her dress.

“Come with me,” he said.

“Wallingford, I . . .”

He kissed her hands and led her down the corridor to the staircase. She said nothing, but he could feel the tremors of her body through her hand, which he kept in his. They climbed the silent staircase, floor after floor, meeting no one, until at last she began to flag under the weight of her dress and petticoats, and he lifted and carried her up the final curving flight.

“But Wallingford, my room . . . my things . . .”

“Hush.” He maneuvered his key from his jacket pocket and opened the door.

“You’re going to ravish me, aren’t you?” She sighed dreamily.

“If I must.” He kissed her neck and closed the door with his foot. “Anticipation cuts both ways, after all.”

He eased her to the floor and turned her around, until her back rested against his chest, and the heave of her gasp sent waves throughout his body.

“What’s this?”

“For you.”

She turned her head slowly, taking in the vases bursting with flowers, the champagne in its bucket, the little table laid out with fruit and sweets. The low glow of lights beckoned from the doorway into the bedroom.

“Much more comfortable than a boathouse, don’t you think?” he whispered into her hair.

“Oh, Wallingford.” She turned and clasped his face. Her eyes were wet. “I had no idea. When did you do this?”

“When everyone was eating cake. When you were busy upstairs in Burke’s room.”

“Oh.” Her hands slipped down and went around his waist. She tucked her face into his chest. “What am I to do with you?”

“Whatever you like, Abigail. I’m at your mercy.” He kissed her hair. “There’s only one rule.”

“What’s that?”

He cupped the back of her head and turned her face upward. The pale skin below her eyes shone with dampness. “No one leaves this room until morning. No more running from me, Abigail. You can rail away, tell me I’m a brute, insist on whatever conditions you like, but you’re not to leave me.”

She laughed through her tears. “I won’t. I promise.”

Her lips were so round and pink, parting just slightly to reveal the white tips of her teeth. Wallingford bent his head and kissed her, as softly as he could, relaxing his mouth and his eager impulses in order to take in every sensation of her, to relish every movement and every detail of her. She tasted of champagne from the wedding breakfast, sweet and golden, effervescent in his arms, and he simply opened himself and drank her up, this endless, life-giving glass of Abigail.

*   *   *

It was the champagne, Abigail thought. She should never have swilled back that final toast. On the other hand, what could one do, when the minister kept calling for more bottles?

Or perhaps it was simply Wallingford himself, who kissed her with irresistible patience, as if he were savoring every drop of her; a marvelously sensual Wallingford, all warm slow skin and stroking tongue. He stood so tall and so close, she had to bend her neck to meet him, but his two hands were right there to support her: one caressing her back, and the other encompassing the curve of her head. He held her firmly, and under his kind lips and his strong arms, her body loosened and accepted him, leaned back and allowed him to take her weight.

What a delicious sensation, to be held so securely, without fear of falling.

She couldn’t refuse him. She didn’t want to. She had been tamping down her desire for him for days, as they toured about Rome with Alexandra and Finn; for weeks, really, as she’d moped about the Castel sant’Agata, missing him in every fiber. Did it matter if she experienced the earth-shattering rapture of her dreams? Somehow, it didn’t seem important any longer; she only wanted him, his skin against hers, his weight and substance, connection with Wallingford, union with Wallingford, and afterward, his voice in her ear and his kisses on her breast.

That was what mattered now.

She slid her hands up the sleek black wool of Wallingford’s chest and thanked God for him.

His lips pulled away. “Yes, Abigail?”

“Yes.”

He bent, picked her up, and carried her into the bedroom with that effortless movement of his, as if he’d been slinging women about since the dawn of time. The champagne bubbled up in her veins and she laughed.

“What is it?”

“You. Your flowers and your kisses. Carrying me about. You’re a romantic, aren’t you?”

He set her down and began to work the fastenings of her dress. “Bite your tongue.”

She laughed again and closed her eyes, because the brush of his fingers down her back lightened her blood and made her unsteady. The dress sagged downward, aided by Wallingford’s hands, and she stepped out of it and kicked it aside.

His hands came up around her middle, over her stays. “Do you know how beautiful you are?” he murmured in her ear. “How your skin glows in the light, like gold?” He brushed the lace of her chemise, just above the firm clasp of her corset, raising tiny goose bumps across her chest.

She leaned her head against his chest. His gaze traveled across the curve of her bosom; she felt its weight, its admiring thoroughness. His fingers went once again to her back, drawing down her petticoats, unlacing her stays, removing each layer that separated him from her bare skin, until she stood before him in her chemise and drawers.

“You’re shivering,” he said.

“I can’t seem to stop.”

He wrapped his arms around her and brought her against his big body. His hand moved in her hair, taking out the pins one by one, pulling the feather away, until it tumbled down her back. “Shy, Abigail? You?”

“Astonishing, isn’t it?”

“Why are you afraid of me now? You never were before.”

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t; she had no answer for him. All she knew was that she wanted him, his hands on her skin, and yet at the same time she wanted to stay safe inside her chemise, where he couldn’t see her fully, couldn’t see every mark and shadow of her body.

“If you knew,” he said. “If you knew how beautiful you are to me.”

She made a noise against his chest. “You’ve seen far more beautiful women than this.”

“My love, I have not.” His hands slid down to gather up her chemise. “May I, Abigail?”

She didn’t resist as he brought the thin linen up her waist and over her chest. She tilted back and raised her arms, and in a whoosh of whiteness it was gone, and she was bare to the waist before Wallingford.

“My God.”

“The Harewood Chest,” she said ruefully. “Not so impressive as my sister’s inheritance, but . . . well, she is the older sister, after all.”

“My God,” he said again.

“Rather a nuisance to bind up, you perceive, when one needs to pass as a young man. As one does, from time to time.”

“As one does,” he agreed. A little smile brushed the corner of his mouth, though his eyes didn’t so much as flicker up to her face. Instead he rubbed his thumb against the tip of her right breast, very lightly, sending a long shiver into every corner of her body. He bent and kissed the hollow of her throat, and then he lowered his enormous frame, kissing his way in a line down her center, until he knelt before her with his face buried in her belly and his palms cupping the curve of her bottom. She rested her hands on his smooth black shoulders.

The room stood still around them, lit dimly by the electric lamp: the soft white walls, the forest green curtains, the large, comfortable armchair angled companionably next to the lamp table. The bed stretched from the center of one wall, covered in matching forest green velvet with a neat heap of pillows at the head. Wallingford’s warm breath spread from her belly. His shoulders rose and fell beneath her hands.

Remember this moment, she thought.

Wallingford’s fingers stirred at her back, slipping inside the waistband of her drawers and around to her front. He found the ribbons and untied them and, still kneeling, allowed the last of her barriers to slide down her legs to the ground.

He kissed her curls and rose to his feet.

“And now?” she whispered. Her hands still lay atop his shoulders.

Wallingford shrugged off his formal black jacket and tossed it expertly to land on the back of the chair. “And now, I have the very great honor of applying all this academic theory into delightful practice.”

She loved his starched white shirt, his crisp white tie, his gray silk waistcoat: so very formal and well-tailored, so perfect a contrast with his shining dark hair and wicked eyes. She touched his lips with one finger. “And how do you propose to begin?”

Without warning, he sucked her finger into his mouth and caressed it with his tongue. His eyes never left hers. “We begin,” he said at last, giving her finger a final kiss good-bye, “as such lessons always begin: with a thorough examination.”

“Oh no.” She took a step back.

“Oh yes.”

He swooped her up, arranged her on the chair, and settled on his knees between her legs. “Don’t hide from me, Abigail,” he said, and gently pulled her hands away. She tried to close her legs together, but his shoulders had wedged firmly between her knees.

“Now, then,” he said. “Unclench your limbs, my dear. This may take some time.”

“Oh, God.” Abigail closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the back of the chair, cushioned by the sleek black wool of his dinner jacket. She felt the crispness of his shirt between her knees, the solid muscle of his arms beneath. His palm touched her gently, somewhere atop the mound of curling hair, and her breath sucked sharply inward.

“You’re perfect,” he whispered. “Look at you. Each beautiful piece of you, exactly in its place, pink and shining.” With exquisite slowness, his finger drew downward until it brushed her inner flesh and ran along each lip, with such lightness it felt simply like a slender wand of heat passing over her.

“Wallingford, please. I can’t stand it.” She was melting, exposed, restless. Her legs moved urgently against him.

“Hush.” His finger moved, inserting just the very tip inside her. “You’re wet, love.”

“For God’s sake! Of course I am.”

“I understand that indicates the presence of physical desire?”

“Of course it does!” She tugged at his hair.

He ignored her tugs and absorbed himself utterly in his examination of her. “These are your nymphae,” he said in wonder, touching each one.

“Is that what they’re called?” she gasped.

“Yes. Except yours are much prettier than the illustration.”

“You’re disgraceful. Let me up, do.”

He didn’t answer. She felt his warm breath, and then the firm pressure of his lips, and she jumped.

“Hush, love.” The words brushed intimately inside her. His hands moved atop her thighs, holding her down.

“Oh, don’t. Oh, don’t.” Her mind seemed to be levitating above her body.

“Your scent, Abigail. I can’t describe it; I want to drown myself in it. You’re divine.” His tongue flicked across her, hot and wet, and she let out a little scream. “Does that hurt?”

“Yes! No!”

“Shall I do it again?”

“No! I . . . Oh yes. Yes!” Her hands worked in his hair.

His head bent down, and his tongue flicked again, over and across, up and down, exploring each fold and crevice, everywhere except where she most wanted it. The delicate movements eased into strokes, longer and lusher, and she writhed and panted, pinned like a butterfly under his searching mouth, every nerve in her body gathering and expanding between her legs.

I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it, no one could stand this, she thought, but her mouth could form no words, and her voice caught deep in her throat. She gripped his hair instead. She heard herself make a mewling noise, not even human.

“Look at you, so plump and rosy,” he murmured. “Look right here. You’ve turned vermillion.”

“Wallingford, please!”

“Please stop, or please go on?” He kissed her. “Now let me concentrate, darling. I’m searching for something, something terribly important. Though as I’m such a brute and a novice, I shall require your expert guidance. Is it here?” He flicked his tongue.

“No . . .”

“Here?” He flicked again.

“No . . . oh, God, oh, God, Wallingford . . .”

Another flick. “Here?”

“I shall die!” she gasped. “And you will have . . .”

“. . . Here? . . .”

“. . . the very devil of a time . . .”

“. . . Not here, surely? . . .”

“. . . explaining yourself to my sister . . .”

“. . . Here, perhaps? . . .”

“Higher, damn you!”

“Ah.” His voice grew warm and rich. “Thank you. Then it must be here.”

And her breath left her body, and her body itself was engulfed, and there was nothing in the world but Wallingford’s stroking tongue and the swirl of perfect sensation building in the tender vortex between her legs. On and on he went, his large hands holding her in place, keeping her trembling limbs from losing hold altogether, until the mad swirl reached its flood and rushed toward her and sent her flying, crying his name, clasping his head between her hands.

Wallingford held still, breathing against her throbbing flesh, murmuring words she couldn’t hear through the roar of blood in her ears. His scent drifted up from the jacket behind her head, clean and masculine, a hint of smoke. Gradually, the roaring ebbed away, and Abigail sank gently back to earth, cradled by the chair and by Wallingford’s caressing hands. She opened her eyes to the intricate plasterwork on the ceiling. The endless pattern fascinated her. She felt as if she were floating up toward it, and yet her limbs were heavy, limp, satiated. A curious paradox, she thought.

Wallingford stirred. She rolled her chin down, and saw him smiling at her, his lips gleaming and his navy eyes crinkled with masculine smugness.

“I expect you’re pleased with yourself,” she said.

“Immensely.”

“Any half-wit could have found it.”

“Still, I’m deeply grateful for your direction.” He was still smiling.

She leaned forward and kissed him. “Thank you. That was marvelous. More than I ever imagined.”

He laughed. “Darling, I haven’t even begun.”

“Haven’t you?”

In answer, he rose and unbuttoned his gray silk waistcoat, unfastened his gold cuff links and placed them under the lamp. The deliberate movements dissolved her lassitude. She sat up and helped him with his shirt. His trousers, she saw, were sporting a dramatic bulge.

She looked up. “May I?”

He nodded.

She stood and pulled down his braces, one shoulder at a time, and then she tried to unfasten his trousers but her fingers had lost their dexterity and he, urgent, pushed her hands away and undid the buttons himself. Drawers, shirt: He removed each one, until he stood as naked as she, his staff jutting forward from his dark hair, his eyes fierce.

She took his hands and backed toward the bed, drawing him with her, until the velvet brushed against the backs of her legs. “Your turn,” she said.

He drew back the covers and laid her on the bed, among the pillows, and kissed her long and passionately, a possessive kiss. She ran her hands over his smooth back, over the hard contours of his muscles, over the hairs springing from his chest. “You’re beautiful,” she said. “Did I tell you that, last time?”

“I don’t remember.” He kissed her neck, her collar.

“It’s true. You’re like a statue, sculpted from stone, only real and alive. You’re beautiful. I could admire you forever.”

He shook his head, as if he didn’t believe her, and traced his lips to her breasts. He took her nipple into his mouth, and everything flared up again, her entire body bursting into heat. Her hips strained upward to find him. He suckled her tenderly, rolling the other nipple between his finger and thumb, and her back arched beneath him.

“Shh,” he said. “Wait, my love.”

“I don’t want to wait.”

His hardened organ pressed into her leg. She tried to wriggle her bottom, to bring herself closer to that tantalizing weight, but he laughed into the skin of her breasts and held her steady. “All in good time.”

She made a frustrated noise. She craved him so much, all of him; she was aflame with it. His hand slipped downward, across the plane of her belly, down her mound to find unerringly the dear little button he’d lavished earlier, even more tender now, aching with intensity. “Oh,” she groaned, and went limp.

Wallingford lifted his head. “Is that all it takes to render you compliant?”

“Yes,” she said honestly.

He circled her, rubbed her delicately, and up it built again, her beautiful swirling of sensation, even more effortless this time, as if her body recognized his touch and knew exactly how to respond.

“Please,” she said. “I’m ready. Please.”

Wallingford lifted his head from her breast and looked in her face, and his eyes were glazed over with the same passion she felt.

He mounted her. His thick staff, his battering ram, pressed between her legs. Abigail clenched herself for his thrust, but it didn’t arrive; instead, he lowered himself atop her, resting on his elbows, until his face hovered only inches from hers. “Listen to me, darling.” His voice was rough, as if he were fighting to hold it steady. “Tell me truly. Is there any possibility of a child?”

“No,” she said at once.

He kissed her. “And this time. Shall I take care, or not?”

Her mind went blank at the enormity of his question, at the gift he offered her. “Isn’t that a hardship for you?”

A little shrug. “One I’m accustomed to bearing, as necessary.”

“Oh, Wallingford.” She stroked his cheeks. A child, his child. Could she accept that risk? If she bore his child, he would insist on marrying her. She knew that beyond any question of doubt. Marriage to Wallingford? Her heart shrank in fear. And yet something else rose inside her, something primeval, something that craved his seed and his life, craved a total union, craved every possible bond between them. Craved him, all of him.

He kissed her again. “Take your time, darling. I’m only out of my mind with desire, knocking at the very gates. There’s no hurry at all.”

No, she thought.

“Yes,” she heard herself say.

“You’re certain?” He pressed against her entrance, lodged the tip inside her. He felt enormous, too impossibly large to take in. How had they done it before?

No. “Yes.” Oh, God.

His back flexed, and she braced herself, but there was no pain, only a long and marvelous stretching as her flesh parted, as her body took him in, as the battering ram glided up inside her without opposition.

“Oh!” she said in surprise.

He rocked against her, working himself deeper, smiling at her. “I’m inside you, little elf,” he said, lowering his lips to kiss her. “Inside you.”

He was. He was inside her. He was part of her, and it was beautiful. She felt as if she were blossoming from the inside out, in lush petals of Wallingford. She curled her hands around his shoulders and kissed him back.

“Raise your knees,” he said.

She raised her knees. “Oh, that’s nice.”

“How nice?”

“Very nice. Oh!”

He lifted himself a little higher. “Like this? Faster?”

“Yes! Oh!” She could hardly breathe. He filled her to bursting, hitting some exquisite nerve at every stroke. Pressure built inside her; impossibly intense pressure, like the swirling tide he had wrought for her just a short while ago, only more profound, more solid and dimensional. “Like that! Oh, God!”

He kept moving, thrusting over and over in an unstoppable rhythm, watching her face for every flicker of response, and she loved him for it, loved every powerful movement of his body into hers.

“Oh my God, my God . . . almost . . .” She dug her heels into his legs, dug her fingers into his back, forced him harder, and without warning a fierce packet of energy burst over her, radiating through every pore of her body in hard and eager waves.

At her cry of joy, Wallingford’s body went rigid above her. She heard him groan her name from deep in his chest, and she clutched him to her, absorbing the shudder of his body, until she could actually feel the rising pulse of his own flesh meeting the ebbing pulse of hers.

He sank slowly down, damp with sweat, and this time she welcomed his weight, welcomed the mindless crush of his bones and sinews. His breath rushed hard and fast against her ear: Wallingford’s breath, the precious air from his lungs. She buried her fingers in his hair. “Arthur,” she whispered. Her brain was hazy, floating like a cloud. She kissed his wet temple.

“What’s that?” he whispered, not moving.

“Arthur.” She kissed him again. “I like it.”

*   *   *

Arthur.

He had never particularly liked his given name, but he loved the sound of it from Abigail’s lips, intimate and loving. Her body felt delicious beneath him, full and delicate all at once, but he remembered the last time and shifted himself.

“No.” She clenched her legs around him. “Stay.”

So he remained atop her, inside her, taking weight on his forearms to spare her. He drew the lemony scent of her hair into his nose and stroked a nearby curl with his fingertips.

She whispered, “You’re still . . .”

“Yes.”

“Is that . . .”

He chuckled and lifted himself up. “Because I love you, and because I’m a devil in full rut who’s kept himself chaste for a longer stretch of time than he ever imagined possible.”

“Except the boathouse.”

“That, my dear”—he kissed her—“was hardly enough to take the edge off.”

Abigail said nothing. He kissed her again, her lips and her soft cheeks, the tender nook behind her ear. “Was that satisfactory? Have I redeemed myself?”

“You know you have.”

Wallingford tried to quell himself, but it was no use: Her full breasts brushed against his chest, and her skin smelled so exquisitely like Abigail, and her wet sheath surrounded him like heaven itself. His erection swelled hungrily inside her.

Brute, he told himself.

He slid himself out and fell into the sheets at her side.

She turned with an air of surprise. “Why did you stop?”

He kissed her nose. “Because I daresay you’ve been ravished enough for one night, haven’t you?”

Abigail searched his face with her wide and knowing eyes, as if his thoughts were imprinted across his head and she could read them. Her hair tumbled about her flushed skin, curling around the generous curve of her breast. One nipple poked through the chestnut silk, hard and rosy brown. Abigail’s hair, Abigail’s breast. He thought he might crack apart.

“Do you know, I don’t believe I have.” She reached down to encompass his prick in her hand, to caress the tightened sac beneath. “You see, we both have so much to learn.”

He rolled onto his back, taking her with him.

Her eyes widened. “Like this?”

“Like this.”

Abigail rose above him and took his rigid cock inside her with a groaning sigh, took him so deep his balls nestled against her arse, so deep he knocked against her womb at every thrust. He inhaled her womanly musk, the voluptuous scent of her, the commingling of his essence with hers, and his blood fizzed in his veins.

She rode him with eager joy, with her breasts hovering before his eyes and his hands balanced on her hips, with her head thrown back in delirious pleasure. She reached her climax first in a throaty cry, and he followed directly after, spending into her with the explosive strength of a first release.

This time she collapsed atop him, and the brand-new sensation of her weight, the idyllic curves and softness of her, her sweet champagne-scented breath drifting across his face filled his hungry soul to overflowing, made him pray to God in grateful thanks.