Four Very Busy Weeks Later
Quinn stood on the other side of the door connecting his room to Belle’s and took a deep breath to calm himself. God’s mercy, he was nervous. Nervous! Although why he was, he had no idea.
They’d been intimate before, for heaven’s sake. What did he have to be nervous about? Nothing…except that this would be their first joining as husband and wife. Except that tonight would be the first of all their nights together for the rest of their lives.
He wiped his sweaty palms on his dressing robe. Nervous, indeed.
Belle was making him wait, extending the very long and tiring day they’d already had. They’d taken their wedding vows before friends and family that morning in the Braeburn parish church. Robert, Sebastian, and his sister, Josephine, stood up with them, while his mother and Aunt Agatha cried from the front pew, with his sister-in-law, Miranda, dutifully patting the backs of their hands. Then came breakfast at Glenarvon beneath special tents he’d had erected among the ruins of the old castle. Everyone from the village came to congratulate them…and to welcome him permanently to Braeburn.
All the loose ends were tying up perfectly. Bletchley had been sent out of the borderlands and out of their lives forever. When the bank foreclosed on Kinnybroch, Quinn purchased it with the money he’d saved for America. Now, he and Annabelle would start their lives as equal partners, their combined lands forming the second-largest estate in Cumbria. The land would be theirs now, not hers or his. And although it was too early to receive a reply to the letter Quinn had written to Asa Jeffers and his wife, he knew they would be just fine as well. Their sons-in-law would care for them as they deserved, perhaps even deciding to keep the land in the family and farm it themselves. He suspected that any ill will they felt toward him for not claiming the land would dissolve when they received word of the birth of his and Annabelle’s first child. One he hoped would be their godchild.
And then, there was Belle herself. The little bluestocking had refused to let him into her bedroom during the past month, even after her sprained ankle and other wounds from the accident had all healed. She’d insisted that they wait to make love until after their wedding.
Four weeks. Four very long weeks without touching her luscious curves, without holding her sultry body against his, without kissing her sensuous lips and licking his tongue over every delectable inch—
He groaned and knocked impatiently on the door. “Belle?”
“Just a moment longer,” she called out. “I need to fix the ribbon along my thigh…”
His gut wrenched with ravenous yearning. Sweet Lucifer, just the sound of her voice describing what she was wearing was enough to turn him hard. For the past month, she’d seductively teased him with snippets of what she planned on wearing tonight, a lace and silk confection from her trousseau. The same silk and lace he planned on slowly peeling from her body, one tempting inch at a time, then following along with his lips—
Another groan. Good Lord, he would die if she didn’t open the door and let him inside!
“I’m ready,” she announced. Finally. “Come in, my love.”
He threw open the door and charged into her room—
Then pulled up short. She wasn’t there.
He glanced around. What kind of cruel joke was she playing? The room was ready for them. The fire glowed warm, and two glasses sat next to the bottle of scotch on the bedside table. The coverlet had been turned down, the candles extinguished, and the drapes drawn so they could linger in bed as long as they wished in the morning without being bothered by the dawn. And he was certainly ready for her.
But there was no Belle.
He frowned. “Annabelle?”
“Bluebell, you mean,” she corrected teasingly as she stepped out of her dressing room.
Quinn saw her and grinned.
Instead of wearing the gossamer negligee he’d expected, she sashayed slowly toward him wearing her rope of pearls, a pair of very blue stockings tied with bows around her thighs…and nothing else.
“Do you still want me?” she taunted as she lifted her leg to rest her foot on the chair beside him, giving him a tantalizing view of her smooth thighs and a teasing glimpse of that special place which lay between. “Even though I’m an unrepentant bluestocking?”
“I wouldn’t want you any other way.” With a growl, he lifted her into his arms and carried her across the room. “I love you.”
She sighed happily. “I know.”
Then he placed her on the bed and followed down after her.