Chapter Fourteen
Polly opened the door and slipped out as Blake came in. He had changed too, Ellie saw, thinking that he looked every inch her exotic desert lord as he stood there in a long crimson robe, the open collar of his shirt just showing at the neck. Then he strode across the room, lifted her in his arms and took her across to the door in the far corner.
‘We share a sitting room,’ Blake said, shouldering the panels closed behind them. ‘But I have the study, so you must treat this room as yours and tell me what changes you want made.’
Ellie looked round at the cream-painted room and the rose-pink drapery and thought it all looked perfect. It even distracted her for a vital second from the delicious awareness of being in Blake’s arms, from the moment when he shifted his grip to set her on her feet.
The velvet nap of her robe slid against the silk of his and she landed on her feet faster than he’d intended, judging by the sharp exclamation he made.
Ellie jolted, stumbled, seized the back of a chair for support and bit back a cry of pain. But not quickly enough to prevent Blake from hearing her.
‘Eleanor? You are hurt? Damn me for a clumsy idiot. What is it? Your ankle?’
She turned, took a limping step towards the nearest chair and sat down. ‘No, it was not your fault in the slightest—merely my leg. I am a little tired.’
‘Tired?’ He was on his knees in front of her now, examining her face. ‘No, not tired. In pain. What have you done to yourself, Eleanor? Tell me. There was something... I should have questioned it when I saw that you were hardly limping as you came down the aisle. Whatever it was has made your leg worse now, because it did not pain you as much before. Tell me—or do I have to shake it out of you?’
‘You are shaking me,’ she said between chattering teeth.
He stopped, his hands cupping the points of her shoulders. ‘I am sorry, Eleanor.’ It sounded as though his own teeth were clenched, and he was not giving up on his questioning. ‘How did you stop yourself limping?’
‘I had a shoe built up to compensate for the shortening in my broken leg. But I did not realise how much strain it would put on all the joints and muscles that have become accustomed to being shorter. So now it is rather sore—that is all.’
‘All? You were in pain. I should have realised. You have been in pain all day. Why not take the damned shoes off?’ He threw his hands wide, as though to prevent himself from shaking her again.
‘Because I did not want to give them something else to criticise,’ she snapped. ‘I thought at least I could walk down the aisle without limping, so they wouldn’t say you had married a lame woman on top of everything else. They would find out soon enough, but at least not on your wedding day.’
‘Them? They?’
‘Your friends. Your acquaintances. Your world.’
‘Our world now,’ Blake said. ‘Our acquaintances. And soon many of them will be your friends too. Eleanor, you have a limp. That does not matter. And if it concerns someone then they may go to hell with my compliments. What does matter is that you might have done any amount of damage to that leg. I will take you straight back to bed and call the doctor.’
He made to pick her up but Ellie batted his hands away. ‘You cannot call the doctor out at this hour. Besides, what can he do? I have had a soak in a hot bath and some willow bark tea.’
‘Of course I can call the doctor.’ Blake looked as though he was one breath from completely losing his temper. ‘I am Hainford.’
‘That is the most arrogant thing I have ever heard!’
‘It is fact. I am his highest-ranking patient, so of course he will come—even if it is only because my countess has been wantonly careless with her own wellbeing.’
‘Wantonly careless? All I wanted was not to embarrass you, Blake. And I do not want to go back to my bed. I want to go to yours.’
I think.
‘If you believe I am going to have sex with a woman who is in pain, who might have done goodness knows what damage, who—’
‘I was rather hoping that you were going to make love to me, Blake—not have sex.’
Ellie did not even attempt to hide her hurt and the anger. It had been a long, exhausting, emotionally draining day and this was not how she had expected it to end.
‘You must forgive me for being insecure and for trying the impossible—to be a perfect countess for you.’
And for hoping for your lovemaking to soothe my fears and drive away my nightmares.
‘I never asked you for perfection.’ He turned and stalked across the room, stood regarding a chest of drawers as though he would like to kick it, and then stalked back.
‘You made it quite clear that a plain spinster like me was not up to your standards,’ she flung back.
Blake stared at her, then she saw recollection sink in. ‘You heard that?’
‘Yes, I heard it. So I have been eating until I am queasy to try to put some flesh on my bones, and spending all my money on clothes and my hair and those damnable shoes because I did not want you to feel ashamed of me—for all those people to despise me and despise you for choosing me.’
She was going to cry in a moment, she thought, desperately whipping up her anger to try and stop that, the ultimate humiliation.
‘As for you—frankly, I do not care what you think any longer, because you will obviously take any excuse not to go to bed with me. Which is a pity, because it is rather late for second thoughts.’
Although if I am still a virgin he can have this marriage dissolved. Does that happen any more?
‘Any excuse? You are in pain, Eleanor. What sort of brute do you take me for?’
My brute. My darling brute, who would never intentionally hurt me.
‘I do not take you for any such thing,’ she managed. ‘But you married me out of pity and I do not think I—’
‘Pity? Eleanor, what nonsense is this?’ Blake dropped to his knees again, took her by the shoulders. But this time he simply held her, his fingers warm and gentle.
‘Then why did you marry me?’ she flung back.
‘Because I desire you! Like you! Because I thought we would get along together! I did not marry you so that you could cripple yourself trying to live up to standards that I certainly have not set for you. And there is no need to look at me like that. I was stupid and I made superficial judgements before I knew you properly. I did not want to like you, Eleanor. I felt guilty because of Francis, and thinking of you as anything other than an abrasive, difficult woman made it worse. And, before you point it out, I know that is absolutely no excuse.’
‘It is not even logical,’ she said with a shaky laugh, and leaned forward against the pressure of his hands so that her forehead rested on his. ‘Are we having our first married row?’
‘I believe we are.’ He sat back on his heels and studied her face. ‘Only we are not quite married yet.’
She could feel herself blushing, even though that was why she had been storming at him only moments before. ‘I wish we were.’
If I can just get tonight over with, surely it will be better after that?
‘Eleanor, tell me truthfully what you want. You can go back to your own bed and rest. You can come to my bed and we can sleep together and that is all that will happen. Or we can make love and I will do my level best not to hurt you. And we can have supper before or after—whichever you choose.’
She did not have to ask which he wanted. The heavy-lidded look, the visible thud of his pulse in his throat told her that. And she wanted it too—wanted him and wanted this fear to go away.
‘I would like to make love in your bed,’ she said without hesitation. ‘I am really not hungry.’
Except for you.
Blake nodded, as though they had just had a lengthy, perfectly calm discussion, and then reached for the ties of her robe, his gaze intent as he unfastened it and pushed it back over her shoulders so she was sitting in a pool of green velvet, clad only in her nightgown.
‘Would you like me to blow out the candles?’ he asked as he pulled her gently to her feet.
Ellie shook her head. She wanted to see him, look at him. See that this was Blake, not any other man.
He held out his hand and she took it, let him lead her slowly through into his bedchamber. It was dominated by a bed that looked as though generations of his family had made love in it since the reign of Henry VIII. The thought of all those other nervous brides was strangely cheering.
‘It will be easier to take all our clothes off before we get into bed,’ Blake said, sounding practical. Perhaps he thought that would steady her nerves.
He untied the sash of his robe and shrugged it off, then pulled his shirt over his head—which was anything but steadying. Ellie managed not to gulp audibly as she fixed her gaze on the middle of his breastbone, stared at the swirls of dark hair that she remembered from that day he had come to the house, wounded. It was not so thick that she couldn’t see his nipples or the planes of muscle.
She dragged her eyes upward to his shoulders, seeming broader without clothes, to the line of his collarbone, the dip at the base of his throat where that betraying pulse beat out its signal to her own heartbeat. She let her gaze flicker down for a second, saw the white line of the bullet scar.
Blake leaned in and she inhaled warm, clean skin, intangible maleness, something spicy. Him. There was a fleck of shaving soap just under the hard line of his chin and that was reassuring, reminding her that this was a fallible human being, not a creature of fantasy or of nightmare.
Her nightgown was up and off before her instinctive grab for it could make contact, and Blake picked her up and set her in the middle of the big bed. And then he just looked.
Ellie wanted to cover her breasts. She wanted to cover the intimate curls and she wanted to cover the dreadful scar on her thigh. There were simply not enough hands to do all three.
The ridiculousness of the thought made her smile, and Blake smiled back.
‘That’s better,’ he said, reaching to trail his fingers down her ribcage, making her catch her breath.
It was the last place she had expected him to touch her.
‘I was so worried about you that night in Lancashire. I thought you were fading away.’
He got up on the bed beside her and this time she could not help but look at him. How strange the male body was—and how magnificent. Somewhere at the back of her mind the fear stirred.
I want this, she told herself. This is not what happened before.
It nagged at her—the anxiety that she would be frozen because of what had happened with her stepfather.
It is nothing connected with this place, this man.
‘You are all in proportion,’ he said, and stroked down over her breasts, then cupped them gently, one on each palm. ‘Small, but perfect.’
‘Truly?’
Ellie looked down, trying to comprehend the sight of her breasts in those big hands, her skin milk-white against his brown fingers. Her nipples had hardened into tiny aching points. Her body trusted him, responded to him, even as her mind struggled.
‘Truly.’
His thumbs teased across each peak and she jumped as the sensation lanced straight down to the centre of her, where a pulse was beating, insistent and demanding.
Bake trailed his hands down over her hips to rest on her thighs. Ellie shifted, uncomfortable that he was so close to her scar.
‘Does it hurt?’
She shook her head. ‘It aches sometimes. And it is ugly.’
‘Yes,’ Blake agreed, serious. ‘But that does not make you ugly. Look.’
He shifted so that his back was to her and she saw the ragged red line that ran diagonally from his right shoulder blade to just above his waist on the left-hand side. Unlike the white bullet scar, this had not healed cleanly.
‘Mine is bigger than yours. I fell out of a tree when I was fourteen and a broken branch tore a track right across.’ He moved back to face her. ‘Life leaves scars on all of us. Some show...some do not.’
How does he know? Does he guess?
Perhaps he had not believed her evasion when he had asked her at the inn if she had been threatened or maltreated by a man.
To her surprise, even as she was worrying over that, he lay down on his back beside her. ‘Do you want to touch me?’
‘Anywhere?’
‘Well, not that.’ Blake gestured downwards. ‘That is over-excited enough as it is, without any further encouragement.’
She had no idea if he had meant to make her giggle, but he did not seem offended when she did. It was very difficult to be afraid when you were laughing, or to be nervous of a man who could laugh at himself at a time like this.
Ellie shifted round and smoothed the palm of her hand over his chest, enjoying the sensation of the hair, at once crisp and soft. Under her fingers his nipples hardened, just as hers had—just as his had done before, that long-ago morning when he had come to her, bleeding. Blake made a soft sound, deep in his chest. She ran her palms down over his ribcage, over the bumps of his pelvic bones, to rest on the top of his thighs either side of...
That.
‘I think you could make me come just by sitting there looking at me while I look at you,’ Blake said, his voice husky.
Come.
That meant orgasm, and Verity had explained about those—and rather more about the male anatomy than Ellie had thought she wanted to know in theory. But she did know that Blake was aroused by her, even if that was only because she was female and in his bed.
‘Kiss me?’ he asked, and that meant almost climbing over him—which, she suspected, was what he wanted. His body was warm and strong and hard under her, and the feel of his chest hair on her breasts was exciting as his arms came around her and held her close.
Ellie realised that he had put her on top quite deliberately, so that his weight did not hurt her aching legs. But she was beginning to feel impatient. She wanted more than kisses, more than gentle caresses. She wanted Blake and she wanted to be done with this apprehension. She refused to call it fear, because apprehension simply had to be endured until it was proved to be needless.
She rolled away so that she was lying on her back next to him. ‘It is all right, Blake. The willow bark tea is working, so you do not have to treat me like spun glass.’
It was rather more the effect he was having on her than the tea, if she was honest with herself.
He turned on his side, supported on his elbow. ‘You feel like spun glass. You aren’t skinny any more, Eleanor, but you are so slender—and I am so large and—’
‘Mmm...’ she murmured, not at all sure that was helpful.
Blake seemed to hear it as an appreciative, provocative sound. ‘Hussy.’
He came over her, weight supported on his knees and elbows, and lowered himself slowly.
She kept her eyes open, reminded herself over and over, like a litany, that this was Blake. She breathed him in as she wriggled so that he fitted against her as instinct told her he should, and tried to listen to the messages her body was sending her. The aches and pains were still there, somewhere in the background, but the magic that was happening with the exchange of touch, of heat, of taste swept them away.
Blake nudged against her intimately and she tipped her pelvis by instinct—and then stopped as he slid inside, just a little, rocking back and forth, murmuring to her as he nuzzled her newly cropped curls, kissed his way down her neck.
He held her closer, lowered his body—and suddenly she couldn’t see his face, and all she could feel was his weight and his strength, far greater than hers, holding her helpless.
And all at once—as though someone had opened a floodgate—the panic surged up and she was back in that bedchamber in London. The candlelight was flickering on the bulk of her stepfather, who was pushing her down into the mattress, his leg pushing hers apart, his hand over her mouth as she struggled.
No, no, no!
She freed a hand, reached out, groping frantically. It closed around the candlestick beside the bed. She swung it and felt the thud as it made contact. And then, just as had happened all those years ago, the body crushing down on her was gone.