Chapter 4

Books had been found—nine of them. Very clearly, the Earl of Wetherby thought, they had not been contributed to the house by Price, or if they had, they had been intended as decorations or as doorstops or paperweights. Their subject matter did not seem quite in Price’s line—or in his either, for that matter.

Despite the unsuitability of the books, he and Rosamund Hunter were each reading one, seated silently engrossed at either side of the fireplace.

Engrossed! He would not have been surprised, he thought, focusing his eyes on the book before him for a moment, to find that it was upside down in his hands. It was time to turn a page. He turned one just as Rosamund did the same thing with her book. He looked up and met her eyes for a fleeting moment.

It was deuced uncomfortable. He had suggested the books after dinner rather than cards because there had been far too much awareness and tension between them the evening before. She had agreed with an eagerness that had suggested she was having similar thoughts.

They had conversed with great animation over dinner. She had told him about the neighbors with whom she had associated for the nine years since her marriage, revealing a wit and a keen observation of human nature that had kept him laughing much of the time. And he had told her something of his boyhood, when he had been made much of, a son at last after two daughters and a full seven years after the second of those. He had grown up surrounded by doting females.

“It took me quite by surprise,” he had told her, “when I went out into the world and discovered that there were some women who actually disputed my claim to be God’s great gift to the female branch of the human race.”

She had laughed.

Anyone coming in upon them during dinner would have thought them the heartiest of good friends. And in a way they were. It was very easy both to talk and to listen to Rosamund Hunter. It was the silences that were the trouble. Silences between friends were supposed to be relaxed and easy affairs. Obviously he and the lady were not friends.

“Is your book interesting?” he asked now, and thought as he was saying it that if he had spent time trying to compose the most inane question imaginable, he could hardly have done better.

“Yes, very,” she said brightly. “I have always admired poetry.”

Well, he thought, consoling himself, her answer lacked something in profundity, too.

“Is yours interesting?” she asked.

“Yes, indeed,” he said. “Sermons are always good for provoking thought.”

So much for that line of conversation, he thought, returning his eyes but not his mind to his book and remembering to turn another page.

It was snowing again. Not as heavily as before, but enough to keep them housebound. Without a doubt, even if the snow stopped during the night and the sun shone the next day, Mrs. Hunter was not going to be able to leave until at least the day after. And no one would be able to come in search of her, either.

That meant that they were facing the rest of this night together, all the next day, and the next night at the very least. He did not think he would be able to do it. He might have to take a blanket and pillow out to the stables to sleep with the horses.

She was wearing a pale-lemon satin, one he had thought would look good with Jude’s coloring. With Rosamund’s dark hair and eyes it looked nothing short of stunning. She wore the paisley shawl about her almost bare shoulders again. Her hair was looped down over her ears and coiled simply at the back. Her eyelashes were thick and long, he noticed, glancing up at her as she looked down at her book.

She had good skin, creamy and soft. It would be good to touch her. It had been good to touch her that morning, though in reality he had barely kissed her at all, knowing that if he had deepened the kiss by even one fraction he would have ended up making an idiot of himself.

But why so? She felt the same way. She was as aware of him as he was of her. She was a woman, not a girl. She was no virgin. She was a widow. Perhaps she would not be unwilling. Perhaps they could put this tension to rest by doing what they had both been thinking of doing and wanting to do since some time yesterday afternoon.

But would she crumble afterward and be tortured by guilt and remorse? Would he? He had never bedded any but women whose profession it was to sell their favors. He had never slept with a lady. And in one month’s time he was to betroth himself to Annabelle.

But he was not betrothed yet. He had one month left of freedom before pledging himself to a lifetime of fidelity to one woman.

He wanted Rosamund Hunter. He wanted her badly. But if he could just force his mind onto this one sermon, if he could just concentrate long enough to read it through from beginning to end, then perhaps he would be able to resist temptation. He turned back three pages to the beginning.

He had read two sentences when Rosamund got abruptly to her feet.

“It’s too warm by the fire,” she said, and crossed the room to seat herself on a stool close to the window, her back to him. She opened her book and gave it her attention again.

Now where was he? the earl thought. He had been quite engrossed for those two sentences.

What she should have done, Rosamund was thinking, was to plead a headache. She could have taken herself off to her room and been safe for another night. Why, oh, why, had she not thought of that? But having pleaded the heat of the fire in order to remove herself from such closeness to him in order to set him behind her, out of the line of her vision, she must now stay for a while and continue to read her book—or not to read her book.

She felt like jumping to her feet again and screaming. She felt like having a major fit of hysterics. She turned a page.

There would not be anything so very wrong in it, would there? She had heard that many married ladies took lovers, though the idea had always shocked her. How could they, she had always thought, when their husbands had exclusive rights to their bodies? Just as women had exclusive rights to their husbands’ bodies. It had always made her furious to know that many married men kept mistresses.

She had also heard that widows very frequently took lovers. She had not felt any great moral shock at the idea, but she had always been convinced that it was something she could not possibly do. She could never give that outside marriage. It was such a very intimate and physical and embarrassing thing.

And yet these were no ordinary circumstances—not by any means. And it would be just for a day or two. It would end this tension between them and it would satisfy her curiosity about younger men. How vulgar that sounded! She turned another page.

And she became aware suddenly, though there had been hardly any sound, that he had put down his book and stood up. And that after a few moments of standing quite still he was coming up behind her. She kept her eyes on her book and felt that her heart was beating right up into her throat.

His hands came beneath her arms and cupped her breasts. His thumbs found her nipples. Rosamund closed her eyes and swallowed. She felt warm breath on the side of her neck a moment before he kissed her in the hollow between her neck and her shoulder.

“I want to make love to you, Rosamund,” he said. His voice was low and husky, almost unrecognizable.

She kept her eyes tightly closed for a moment and then she turned slowly on the stool. His hands moved up to her shoulders. His eyes, gazing down into hers, were intensely blue.

“Yes,” she said. “I want that too.”

His mouth on hers was as light as it had been that morning, but his lips were parted, she noted with some shock, so that she felt heat and moistness and his tongue moving lightly across the seam of her own lips. She clutched her closed book to her bosom.

He raised his head and stooped down on his haunches in front of her. “One thing must be clear,” he said, touching one of her cheeks with his fingertips. “I am to be betrothed soon, Rosamund. I am committed to that. I don’t want to hurt you or give any wrong impression.”

“Just tonight and perhaps tomorrow night,” she said. “I understand, Justin. I want no more. But this is a time out of time, isn't it? And I want it to happen—just a very brief affair.”

“Yes,” he said. “Just very brief.” He hesitated. “I need to know. Am I like to get you with child?”

She felt her cheeks grow warm. She was the one who should have thought of that. It had not crossed her mind. She had grown unaccustomed to thinking of it. After the first year of her marriage she had forced herself to stop expecting that it would happen. There had been no point in getting herself upset month after month. She had almost forgotten that conception could be the result of intercourse. She made some quick mental calculations.

“No,” she said, “it is the wrong time.”

“Good.” He continued to look at her and stroke her cheek.

What now? Was the next move supposed to be hers? She tried smiling. She was not at all sure she had succeeded.

“Go on upstairs,” he said. “I’ll come to you in twenty minutes’ time.”

“All right,” she said, standing up and setting her book down on a small table. She smiled at him once more and left the room. It all felt so ordinary, she thought, so matter-of-fact. As if they had just made some agreement about. . . about what they would have served for breakfast, or something like that.

She had not expected to be alone like this, with time to think. Twenty minutes, in fact. And time to prepare. What had she expected? To be swept off her feet, she supposed, taken right there in the sitting room, with the chance only to feel and not to think at all.

What had she said? What had she agreed to? What was she about to do? Oh, goodness gracious, it did not bear thinking of. What was she going to do now? Undress? But what should she wear? The choice was between the ridiculously large and shapeless flannel gown and the white or the black lace. Well, the laces were quite out of the question. But would she not look ridiculous in the flannel?

Perhaps she should remain dressed. But he had sent her upstairs on the tacit understanding that she would get ready. And should she lie down in the bed, or remain standing or sitting in the chair by the fire? She had always been in bed for Leonard, but then that had been a different matter altogether. She would die of mortification if Justin walked into her room when she was in bed.

But then she would die of mortification anyway.

Oh, her treacherous mouth. This time she had not stuffed just one foot inside it but both. She wished she could relive the last five minutes so that she could show the proper outrage at both his actions and his words.

Rosamund shivered as she unpinned her hair and began to brush it. No, she was not sorry for her decision. She wanted this to happen. She was not sorry at all. She just wished that he had not let them be separated for twenty minutes. She would positively die when he walked through the door.

He was not at all sure that it had been the right thing to do to leave her to get ready, Lord Wetherby thought as he stood outside the door of her room later, his hand raised to knock. It would doubtless have been better not to have broken the tension of the moment but to have taken her by the hand and led her to the bedchamber and undressed her himself. He just did not know what was proper procedure with a lady.

The thought made him smile. There was no proper procedure with a lady, was there? He knocked lightly at the door and opened it.

She was standing at the opposite side of the room, her back to the fire, her dark hair smooth and straight to her waist, her eyes enormous and fixed on him. She was swathed from the chin to the toes in a very large and shapeless flannel nightgown. Strangely, she looked very enticing. He was glad she had not worn one of the lace creations. He smiled and closed the door behind him.

He was wearing a dark-blue brocade dressing gown, Rosamund noticed immediately. She had not thought of that—of his being undressed, that was. Foolish of her. Her eyes strayed to the neck of the dressing gown. There was no sign of a nightshirt beneath. He looked unnervingly attractive. Her heart was beating into her throat again. She tried to smile and failed miserably.

“You look beautiful,” he said, coming across the room toward her and taking her face in his hands as he had done that morning in the billiard room.

“It belongs to Mrs. Reeves,” she said. “The nightgown, I mean.”

“I didn’t think it was one of the ones I had bought,” he said.

He had a strange trick with his eyes: he could make them smile even when the rest of his face was serious. She had noticed it before. At such close quarters she was almost mesmerized by it. She closed her eyes.

She was very tense. He could tell that. She did not cooperate at all in his kiss, but stood quite still and kept her lips firmly closed. She did not angle her head to meet his mouth comfortably. He widened his mouth over hers and prodded at her lips with his tongue. He moved his hands down to caress her shoulders and arms, to wrap his arms about her.

“You’re as stiff as a board,” he said. “Are you nervous?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Are you having second thoughts?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Forty-second.” Her teeth began to chatter and she clamped them firmly together.

“Do even numbers mean no or yes?” he asked.

She looked at him blankly.

“Do you want me to go away?” he asked. “I will if you want.” Though it would mean one hell of a sleepless night.

“No,” she said. “I want you to make love to me.”

She said it rather as if she were asking him to draw one of her teeth.

“Let’s sit down for a while, then,” he said, suiting actions to words and seating himself in the large chair beside the fire. He drew her down onto his lap and set one arm about her, coaxing her head onto his shoulder. “Just relax, Rosamund. There’s no hurry at all, is there? You aren’t a virgin by any chance, are you?”

“No,” she said hastily. “Of course not.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” he said. And he began to unbutton her nightgown down the front.

It was strange to be sitting there talking, she thought, when she had expected business to begin without further delay. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore what his hand was doing. But when it reached inside the nightgown and moved lightly over one of her breasts, she turned her face in to his neck.

“Just relax,” he said quietly into her ear. “You’re very beautiful. Did your husband ever tell you that?”

“Yes,” she said.

His thumb stroked over the tip of her breast. She thought it felt slightly rough. It sent a strange ache up into her throat. Unexpectedly she felt herself relaxing, though it was not exactly relaxation either. But she was no longer frightened or even particularly embarrassed. She should have been— Leonard had never touched her there.

She was exquisite. He had always thought he liked large-breasted women—like Jude. Rosamund’s breasts were small and firm and shapely and petal-smooth. Her nipples hardened to his touch. She had relaxed. She was no longer stiff and unyielding. He lowered his head to kiss her cheek, and she turned her head until their mouths met.

Her lips were still closed, but they were yielding. She parted them tentatively to the probing of his tongue and he explored lightly the warm, moist flesh behind. She opened her mouth and her tongue trembled over his as he pushed it inside. He could feel himself becoming aroused. She was quite as alluring as he had expected her to be. Perhaps more so. She seemed strangely inexperienced. But then she had not had numerous bedfellows to teach her the tricks of the trade.

He slid the flannel nightgown off one shoulder and down her arm and lowered his head to kiss her throat, her shoulder, and her breast. She was warm, smooth, inviting. She smelled faintly of the perfume she had worn that morning. He lifted his head to look into her eyes.

“Shall we resume this conversation in bed?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she said, sitting up and drawing the nightgown back up onto her shoulder.

Her heart began to thump again as she got to her feet. This was it, then. There could be no going back now without making an utter fool of herself. Not that there had been any going back for the last several minutes, of course. But she did not want to go back. She wanted more of his kisses, more of his hands.

He stopped her at the side of the bed and turned her toward him, his hands on her shoulders. He bent his head and kissed her briefly.

“Do you want the candles out?” he asked.

There would still be light from the fire. But not enough. She had chosen her course, and doubtless she would live with the guilt of it for months to come. But since she had chosen it and could feel no regret yet, she wanted to taste the whole of it.

“No,” she said.

He smiled, lifted the flannel back from her shoulders, and let the whole garment fall in a heap at her feet. He put his arms about her and drew her against him before she could die of embarrassment.

“This has never happened to you before, has it?” he said against her hair.

“No,” she said.

“It will be beautiful, I promise you,” he said. “You are beautiful. You have nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about.”

She lay on the bed a moment later as he untied the sash of his dressing gown and shrugged out of it. As she had suspected, he was naked beneath it. And magnificent. And frightening. She caught her lower lip between her teeth.

It was strange, he thought a little later as he lay beside her on the bed, how making love to an innocent could be a far more wildly erotic experience than making love with the most experienced courtesan. And Rosamund Hunter was an innocent, even if she had been married for eight years. Her husband must have exercised his conjugal rights—she had said she was not a virgin—but she knew nothing.

But she responded to the touch of his hands and his mouth. And he found that he was in no hurry. He was fully aroused, but he was used to waiting for his pleasure so that it would be all the sweeter for the delay. And he liked to touch her, to feel her growing response, to hear her involuntary gasps, to feel her trembling hands on him.

He had set her hands against his chest, and she had left them there for a while, spread against rough hairs, afraid to move them. She could feel his naked thighs against hers, his hands on her, knowingly seeking out unerringly places that had her all but moaning out her pleasure and desire, his mouth at her throat, on her breasts, sucking at her nipples, on her mouth. And she could see him, his longish fair hair rumpled, his blue eyes heavy-lidded with passion.

After a while her hands began to move tentatively, curiously, wonderingly. Firm flesh, powerful muscles, narrow hips, small firm buttocks. She did not have the courage to move her hands forward. But she wanted him. Ah, she wanted him.

“Make love to me.”

His face was above hers. He was smiling down at her. “That is what I am doing.”

“I want more.”

“You want me here?” he asked her, feathering kisses along her nose and across her mouth. “Is this where you want me, Rosamund?” His fingers were touching her, parting her, stroking. One pushed a little way inside her.

“Yes,” she said, inhaling sharply.

He smiled again. “In a moment,” he said. “Does that feel good?”

“ Yes,” she said, arching to him, biting down on her lower lip. “Too good. Justin!”

“Mm,” he said, kissing her more deeply. “Impatient, are you?”

“Yes.”

She closed her eyes when he lifted himself over her and brought his whole length down on top of her. His legs pushed hers wide.

She was all slim and supple grace and heat. He would have to be careful not to explode as soon as he was inside her. He wanted to be inside her for a good long while. Her eyes were wide again when he looked down into her face.

“I’ll just have to give you what you want, then, won’t I?” he said, and watched her eyes as he found her and pushed himself slowly and deeply inside. They widened ever farther.

Soft and warm and moist heat.

“God, you’re beautiful,” he said, shaken by the power of his own reaction to her. Her eyes rolled upward and closed when he withdrew as slowly as he had entered and pushed back inside her.

She had not expected this. Oh, she had not expected this. If she had only known what it was to be like, she would have thrown an armour about herself, she would have gone trudging off into the snow as soon as it stopped falling that afternoon. This was going to be no momentary fling.

She had not expected this—this complete knowing, this totally being known. Every inch of his body and her own-known, This close naked embrace, his body pressing hers into the mattress, his firm and slender hips clasped between her thighs, his manhood buried deep in her, knowing her with firm and steady rhythm . . .

This was to be no fleeting affair, this opening of her body and baring of her soul. Her body was being unfolded, like layers being stripped away carefully, one at a time, from a parcel. He was going to reach the very innermost core of her, the part of her that was her and no one else on this earth. She could feel that he was going to reach there. She had not known that a man could reach a woman that deeply.

“Justin!”

“Sh,” he said against her mouth. And a moment later, “Don’t fight me. I’m going to wait for you even if it takes all night.”

“Justin!”

He could feel the tightening of all her muscles. He could feel her climax coming. And he knew that she was terrified of it and fighting it. He slowed and deepened his rhythm.

“Come with me,” he said, raising his head and looking down into her eyes. “Let’s go together. We’ll hold each other and go together. Come with me?”

He was as terrified as she, if only she knew it. God, what had he got himself into? It was not just pleasure and his seed he was about to release into her. It was himself. A foolish, fanciful thought at such a moment.

“Yes,” she said,

And she kept her eyes on his as he pushed into her and nudged at her until he felt the inner tremors that would soon have her whole body shuddering. He withdrew once more and released all of his tension, all of himself into her in one final plunge.

She lifted her head to press her forehead against his neck, and she clung to him with arms and legs as she lost herself completely. When she returned to herself, she was lying against the pillow again, his cheek pressed to the side of her head, her arms about him, his whole weight pressing down on her. He was still buried inside her. She was throbbing with the aftermath of passion.

Well, she had wondered about younger men, she thought with the first rational and practical thought to come to her for many minutes. And now she knew.

Oh, dear God, now she knew!