Watching Max pacing the length of the small parlor later that evening, Lydia wondered if one might harness his energy and put it to good use. He could probably illuminate the entire castle.
They’d let Richard choose a room for himself, and he’d instinctively taken one in the section of the house designed for male guests. It was a very small section, proving this had always been a Malcolm stronghold.
“His mother was twenty when we met,” Max was trying to explain. “Married to a man who wasn’t interested in women, if you know what I mean.”
Lydia had read a great deal of personal information these past years. She also had some memory of a gentleman in her family’s village for which such a thing was said. She didn’t completely comprehend, but she nodded so as not to interrupt Max’s thoughts.
He ran his hand through already rumpled curls. “I didn’t understand at the time. I only learned it later when she told me she was carrying my child. I thought she was experienced and understood these matters. I was eighteen and knew nothing at all. I thought her husband would kill me. Instead, a child gave his marriage legitimacy. He was willing to support Richard if I set aside funds for his future.”
“But you left the instant Richard was born, so you’d not be tempted again?” Lydia wasn’t entirely sure how to handle this conversation, except as commentary for his journal. Was he saying he wouldn’t produce any more illegitimate children, that he had more experience now? Except he had two more mistakes to his name.
“The marriage wouldn’t look legitimate if Susan continued to fall into my bed,” he said dryly. “Any time we saw each other. . . Edinburgh is much smaller than you realize, and I hadn’t learned how to say no to a beautiful woman. And this wretched magnetism assured that she wasn’t the only one latching on to me. I was too green to finesse the ugly scenes. I had to leave. I’m not sure Richard understands that, and there is no way I can explain it to him.”
“He’ll believe whatever his mother told him anyway. It’s interesting that once her husband died, she told her son the truth. There doesn’t seem to be any resentment that I can see. He is a very fine, level-headed lad.” Lydia jotted notes, but she was more fascinated by the man than her work.
“Susan and her husband were both blond and small. Richard is dark and tall, like an Ives.” Max shrugged. “I’m sure he had questions. He might never have asked them if Susan hadn’t gone to my mother and demanded support after her husband died.”
Lydia smiled at that. “Your mother would not have taken that news lightly. Did you hear the thunder on the other side of the world?”
“When the letters caught up with me, they filled a mail bag,” he admitted with a laugh. “I’m rather amazed that she has not removed my head for not telling her about the others.”
“She has been living on the dream of one son who never comes home. To have three grandsons she might coddle. . . She will collect them all, one way or another. It’s an interesting way for her to visit the world through their eyes.”
“You are not any more upset than my mother.” He stopped in front of the table where she took notes of this conversation.
“Had I been married to you, I would have cut your throat,” she said wryly. “I’m a vicar’s daughter. I believe in vows and faithfulness and all that. Have you ever heard the Malcolm marriage vow? I vow to love, honor, and take thee in equality for so long as we both shall live. . . ? Equality means the wife doesn’t have to put up with a straying husband.”
But he would stray once he left here, she knew. It was inevitable. She had to think straight and not let his masculine proximity undermine her resolve.
Max placed his hands on the desk and leaned forward until their noses nearly touched, and her pulse escalated. His was a rather large and manly nose.
“Equality is a concept I understand better than love and honor. My father may have been a brilliant investor and my mother a dotty socialite, but he listened to her and used what he learned from her to make us all richer. That’s what a partnership is about—respecting and understanding each other’s differences. That only happens if both partners are equal.”
Considering she fraudulently held her position, Lydia didn’t feel very equal. And Max was the educated grandson of an earl, while her education and origins were much humbler.
“I have no problem with equality,” he continued, dismissing her fear as if he truly believed they were matched. “If only I could control the behavior of others. . .”
“And control your own behavior,” Lydia reminded him forcefully, leaning forward until their noses did touch. “It takes two to make a child.”
He tilted his head and kissed her.
She could no more resist his kiss than he apparently could resist the women who fell into his bed. She caught his rough cheeks between her hands and kissed him back.
Shoving aside all her neatly stacked papers, Max sat on the table. Accepting her invitation, he threaded his fingers through her hair and plunged his tongue inside her mouth.
He’d taught her this heated exchange last night. Hot lava flowed through her blood. Unbalanced, Lydia grasped his shoulders—his muscled, steady shoulders that held her as if she were a wisp of nothing.
Max swung his legs over to her side of the table and yanked her fully against him, until she inhaled earth and shaving soap and masculine musk and nearly swooned in his arms. She ran her hands under his coat and pushed up his waistcoat so she could feel the ripple of muscle in the same way he touched her. She gasped when he reached her breast, but her corset was impervious. She wanted out of it, right now.
“I have this overpowering urge to make a child with you,” he whispered against her mouth. “A daughter this time, one like you, with sunset hair and a laughing smile and caring nature. Marry me, Lydia. I will do everything in my power to be faithful.”
He might believe that now. . .
But what she didn’t know wouldn’t kill her. Instead, she had every certainty that she might die if she never knew what it was like to share this man’s bed.
“You will make your mother a very happy woman,” she whispered, refusing to give him power over her. She had to go into this the same way he did—logical, practical, lustful, but not in the least bit romantic. She would not swoon at his feet like the others.
Max carried his kisses down her throat. “I am likely to make you a very unhappy woman. You stand forewarned.”
Fear churned in her stomach. His honesty in this allowed her to be very clear that this was not a true marriage, in any sense of the word she knew. But she’d been destined to lead a lonely life anyway. Why not enjoy this brief affair while it lasted?
“I am likely to haunt you around the world to force you to accept your responsibilities,” she warned, in all fairness.
Carrying his kisses as far as they could go, he began untangling the ribbons and buttons she hid behind. “If haunting is the price I must pay, it’s worth it. Believe me when I say I have never felt like this, I have never attempted to seduce a woman, and I most certainly never ever proposed marriage. You are driving me mad, not my mother. Say yes, Lydia, and do us both a favor.”
She wanted to say Prove lovemaking is worth marriage, but that was no different than falling into his bed like every other woman. Did she have the strength to resist. . . ?
He lifted her to the table and ran his hand under her skirt. Heat flooded her senses when he found the flesh at the top of her garter and beneath the lace edge of her drawers. He untied the ribbons and pulled down her stocking so his bare hand stroked bare skin while he kissed her.
Lydia nearly slid off.
“Say yes, Lydia. Say yes and make us both miserable.” His big, callused hand slid up her thigh as far as her drawers would allow.
“Yes, please,” she murmured, not entirely certain which question she answered, his proposal of misery or his seduction.
“For this one night, I will make you the happiest of women,” he crowed.
Before she had any idea what he was about, he lifted her and carried her out of the parlor, straight to the guest bedchamber she had taken for her own. Carried. Her. As if she were no more than a child. For that alone, she’d forgive him almost anything. Breathless, she clung to his neck and tried to protest, but he simply kissed her senseless.
Max laid her against the turned-down covers, continuing with kisses in places no man should touch. He was so close. . . She inhaled him with the air she breathed, felt his weight more strongly than the bed beneath her.
Only when he stepped back to shed his coat did Lydia dare exhale, and then the vision of raw Max emerging from his civilized clothing swept her breath away again. He cast his waistcoat to join his coat. In shirt sleeves, his cravat untied to reveal the brown bare throat beneath, the linen barely concealing his muscled torso, Max was the image of every Greek god she’d ever imagined.
“What are you doing?” she whispered, insensibly, because she could see what he was doing.
“I have found inexperienced ladies are too slow to figure out a man’s fastenings.” He tugged his shirt from the band of his trousers. “And I want your hands on me sooner rather than later.”
“My hands. . . ?” But now that he said it, that was precisely what she wanted—her hands on him and vice versa. How very odd. She’d never noticed a craving to touch bare flesh before.
He kneeled over her, his bare torso above her, his knees pressing down the mattress on either side. With deft expertise, he began unfastening her bodice. “All ladies should wear their buttons in front. As a husband, am I allowed to decree that?”
Shattered by a vast expanse of bronzed male chest and. . . broad brown nipples, Lydia could only respond in kind. “I have no maid to help me dress. Do husbands do that?”
He untied the ribbons of her corset cover and unknotted her front-tying corset. “This husband would dispense with whalebone entirely, if given a choice. The other pretty lacy things can be enticing. And perhaps gowns I can tug off your shoulders need not fasten in front.” He leaned over and ran kisses over the naked flesh he’d exposed.
Her plain linen shift still covered her breasts, but she could feel the heat of his mouth clear to her soul. And other more physical places. In fact, places she had never thought about began to ache and pulse. If he only came home once a year to do this. . .
His tongue sampled the tip of her breast, wetting the thin cloth. Lydia surrendered any pretense of thought and simply fought swooning from sensation. She ran her hands over his chest, touched his nipples as he did hers, and longed for his lips again. To that end, she slid her hands around his neck and tugged his mouth back to hers.
He obliged, plunging his tongue between her teeth with a demand that echoed lower cravings. Lydia pushed aside her vague knowledge of what happened between a man and a woman and surrendered to desire.
Somehow, his rough hands—those hands that worked so well on worldly problems—removed her bodice, tugging it from her shoulders and arms, allowing her corset to fall open. Her breasts spilled wantonly into those large palms. She shuddered with need as he played her like a fine instrument, dispensing with her final frail garment.
Rolling over, Max placed her astride of him. Lydia gasped and tried to hide her nakedness with her arm. He laughed and pushed her skirt and petticoat past her hips. “You are Juno, goddess of marriage and childbirth, queen of all. Do not conceal your beauty, my goddess. Cast your spell on me.”
He half sat to suckle at her now bare breasts. Lydia clung to his hard shoulders, aware of strong thighs beneath her bottom, and of a pressure. . .
Goddess of childbirth. . . He wanted babies. And babies came from that place that ached with need.
He had her skirts off and her under him again, with only her drawers as protection.
Max thoroughly enjoyed Lydia’s startled, excited responses. He didn’t feel in the least pressured into this act. He was the one eagerly tearing off her clothes, not the other way around. Admittedly, he’d done his fair share of clothes-tearing in the past, but only out of jaded experience, because it had been expected. He’d never enjoyed this heightened degree of lust for one woman, a woman who evidently enjoyed what he was doing and did her inexpert best to offer him the same pleasures. Lydia filled his vision, his thoughts, and his hands. His desire to claim her extinguished all other considerations. He rubbed his erection against her drawers, increasing the pressure, and her feminine moan was sweet music to his ears.
She wasn’t delicate, so he didn’t need to feel like a rutting bull on top of her. Still, once he’d wrestled her down to her drawers, he slid to one side so his weight wasn’t too suffocating. Her sighs as he lapped at her extended—rosy pink—nipples engorged him to the extent that he had to undo his trousers. He retained enough sense to know he should go slow with a virgin, but he could smell her desire, feel her moisture as he rubbed between her thighs. Everything male in him reacted when her hips rose into his questing hands. He slid a finger inside to calm her while he continued their head-spinning kisses.
She went still at the invasion, but he’d learned a thing or three about the female body over the years. He tickled the nub of her sex, inserted another finger, and she was writhing with willingness in seconds. With gratitude that this desirable woman wanted this as much as he did, Max slid down her drawers.
She dug her fingers into his shoulders and kissed him fiercely. He gloried in her physical response. His Juno was no shrinking violet, but a woman with needs as strong as his own. Reassured, he shoved off his trousers. He wasn’t wearing drawers.
Kissing, stroking, he parted her beautiful thighs, answering another of his questions—her moist hair was a darker red in this place untouched by sunshine.
“I vow to take thee in love, honor, and equality.” He murmured the wedding vows as he positioned himself.
“Love?” she murmured weakly, before crying out as he pushed his cock into her narrow passage.
He’d said love. He’d never said that before. It was probably just his lust speaking.
Beyond words now, Max drank of Lydia’s strawberry-scented lips, stroked her incredible breasts, and ripped past the barrier of her maidenhood. She was his now, now and forever.
The realization momentarily scared him, but his animal body didn’t care. He drove deeper.
She bit his shoulder as he drove her to the heights of ecstasy, moaning and writhing. She was already on the brink of release. He need only. . . touch her. Her climax fed his, and he lost his mind to bliss.
Later, when he regained consciousness, Max held her shuddering and weeping into his shoulder and contemplated the enormity of this commitment.
He would not see Burma anytime soon. He had to fix a tower, win back his father’s estate, and if he planted a child in these next few weeks, he’d have to linger to see it born. After that. . .
Lydia might be glad to see the back of him.