Chapter Eighteen
And this is in the night: Most glorious night!
Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be
A sharer in thy fierce and far delight—
Adelaide closed the leather volume with a sigh. How magnificent it would be to see nothing but the rocking waves below, and above the starry sky. Still dreaming of Childe Harold, she went to her window and opened it. The air was cool, and perhaps there were a thousand fewer stars twinkling over London than the Adriatic, but, oh! Byron was right. The night was too glorious for sleep. She stretched her arms, welcoming it.
And the face of Nicholas Eastwood popped right between them.
“Goodness me,” she said with a gasp, stepping back a pace.
He slid his body through the window, twisting to accommodate his broad shoulders with a grimace. Then he stood before her.
In her bedroom.
In the middle of the night.
“Goodness me,” she said again.
He smoothed a hand over his coat. “Good evening, Adelaide.”
She came to her senses with a jolt. “It is most certainly not evening. It is past midnight, as you well know. If it were evening, you would have come to the door like a proper gentleman.”
“I did not wish to wake the household,” he said affably.
Too affably.
Nick was never affable.
She put her hands to her hips. He was neatly attired in his dinner clothes, despite his climb to her window. Even his cravat was tied well enough. He did not sway or slur his words. His eyes, however, were a shade too wide and bright.
“Nicholas Eastwood, are you drunk?” she demanded.
“Might be so.”
He had climbed into her window whilst in his cups? Good God. She ran to the window and peered down. “There’s no ladder! However did you get up here?”
“The ivy, of course. I remembered that you keep late hours, and your light was on.” His gaze landed on the chair where she had kept company with Childe Harold. The corners of his mouth turned down in a sulky frown. “Reading, of course.”
At his words, a memory rose up before her, so vivid she could almost touch it. Nick, stealthily slipping into her room while Aunt Bea snored across the hall. Hushed, desperate kisses that muffled cries of passion.
Oh, he could not be here!
“You have to leave,” she said unsteadily.
“Must I? I’m rather tired, Adelaide.” To her horror, he sat down on her bed.
Her bed.
“Not there.” She tugged on his arms unsuccessfully while he watched through half-lidded eyes. His lips twitched with amusement. “Sit on the chair,” she demanded quietly.
“Or the floor?” He slid from the bed to the floor with a thump and a laugh.
“Hush! Oh, hush!” she whispered frantically, kneeling next to him to cover his mouth with her hand. “If someone hears you—”
He took her hand away from his mouth, but he did not release it. Instead, he gazed down at it as though he had never seen a hand before. He stroked his thumb across her palm, then traced the lines with his fingertip. Her breath caught as he moved to her wrist, studying the blue veins he found there.
“How is it so small?” he asked.
She choked on an inappropriate giggle. “It would have to be small to fit properly on my small arm, wouldn’t it?”
He laughed, and her heart beat just a little faster.
A lock of her hair fell forward as she watched him. Distracted from her bafflingly small hand, he slowly wrapped the dark curl around his finger. She kept her eyes firmly lowered, afraid to break the spell. Tighter and tighter he wound it until she felt a gentle tug at her scalp.
She raised her eyes to his. They were so very close, and so very blue. He smelled of soap and brandy, an intoxicating combination of saint and sinner.
He searched her face with the same wonder with which he had examined her hand. “How are you so beautiful?” he whispered.
She was not beautiful, to her great regret. Oh, she was not an antidote, but she was hardly a diamond of the first water. She was small both of stature and of breasts, with features that seemed to operate by laws of opposites—very dark hair, very white skin, a very red mouth, and a nose that was more than enough for her face.
It was the drink that made him say such things. It was the drink that made him touch her like she was something precious.
She, on the other hand, had no such excuse for kissing him.
It was brief. A mere press of lips to lips before she retreated. He was not himself. She had the uncomfortable feeling that she was asserting an advantage she ought not to take. But, oh, what was the harm in it, truly? She would ask nothing of him. She would stake no claim to his person or fortune. She only wanted this one moment, one last taste of him.
“May I kiss you again?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, surprise in his voice. He raised his eyebrows, as if to say, what other answer could there possibly be?
She leaned toward him, and again touched her mouth to his. The kiss was firmer this time, yet more tender. She wanted to commit the feel of him to memory. She had not had the opportunity to do so before. Their affair in Cornwall had ended suddenly when he was urgently called back to duty. They had not been able to say goodbye.
This would be their goodbye.
He pulled back before she was sated.
“Adelaide,” he chided. “That is not how we kiss.”
She could not help but smile at the mischief in his eyes. “No?” she asked.
“No.” He shook his head and warmth spread through her belly as his expression turned carnal. “We kiss…like…this.”
They clashed together. Lips parted, tongues entered. Her taste mingled with his, brandy and the hot chocolate she’d had with her book. She gave his tongue a hard suck, seeking more of it, and he groaned.
Ah, she had missed his kisses. The tips of her breasts hardened into aching peaks, reminding her that they, too, had once enjoyed his mouth. And lower still was another ache, one that could not be ignored.
She placed a hand on either side of his face, holding his mouth to hers while she scrambled onto his lap. She spread her knees to sit astride, but her night rail held her fast. Breathlessly, she broke the kiss and reached between them to free herself. She was bare beneath, and could not help but slide her finger against the needy nub at the center of her sex as she raised the garment to her waist.
In an instant he caught her hand in his own, bringing it to his mouth. He sucked the taste of her from her finger in one languorous pull, his eyes darkening with lust. Her hips rocked against him in response—oh, how she ached!—and again she sought his kiss.
She rubbed her tongue against the seam of his mouth, and his lips parted. Her hands tangled in his hair as his went to her breasts. He palmed their weight, squeezing gently, and again she rolled her hips against his hardness.
“Adelaide.” He broke the kiss with a groan. “Oh, angel, you will make me do something very wicked.”
His words stilled her. Was she mad?
The ache in her sex subsided, replaced with a much heavier, more painful throbbing in her bosom.
“Forgive me,” she said quietly. “I quite forgot myself.”
She moved to get off him. His hands flexed, the pads of his fingers digging into her thighs to keep her there…and then gentled as he released her.
She stood. “It would be best if you left the way you came, so as not to wake the servants. Can you manage to do so without injuring yourself?”
“Of course.” His voice was cool, but she dared not meet his eyes. “I have scaled walls twice this height.”
“Not whilst in your cups,” she said. Because she was worried for his safety. She allowed herself to focus on that, rather than the unbearable wound in her breast.
He paused. “I am not so very drunk. I find my senses rapidly returning.”
She flushed with shame.
She said nothing as he went through the open window. Interminable seconds passed into minutes before she allowed herself to look. He was gone. Uninjured, no doubt.
She did not sleep that night, instead staring at the ceiling while his words echoed in her head.
Wicked, wicked, wicked.
Only when the first light of dawn streaked through the white curtains did she finally wonder.
Why in heaven had Nick come to her bedroom?