Chapter Seventeen
There was no family to greet John and Emma as they arrived at Brantmoor, but the staff turned out en masse to honor their master and new mistress. Emma idly wondered at their thoughts. Surely, when the staff had seen the heir to the dukedom return from the dead, his arrival with a duchess acquired in the normal fashion would not be cause for much curiosity.
Not that she would be aware, of course, even if gossip had risen to a peak below stairs. The staff of Brantmoor was no doubt as well trained as one would expect. Everything about her first evening at the Georgian mansion was precisely as expected—full of ceremony and the structure of ducal life. A staff of at least one hundred, she guessed. Yet there were only two of them in residence. They would be three when Charlotte arrived. It was but a few short miles, yet a world apart from her cottage. When she was shown to her suite of rooms, which connected to the duke’s, and introduced to Liese, who had been assigned as her lady’s maid, she was very cognizant of her position here at Brantmoor, where daily life would supply ever present reminders of her station and its expectations.
That evening, the newlyweds shared a quiet dinner in the blue parlor, as the main dining room was far too vast for the two of them. Emma was aware of little else through the meal besides John’s attention. She must have eaten, but she had no recollection of what was served. They lingered over their last drink of wine, however, and she was glad for the bolster to her courage.
After the remains of the meal had been cleared, John smiled warmly at her and leaned back in his chair. “We have had a very long day. I am anxious to retire.”
She swallowed, knowing very well that rest was not his intent. They had no guests to entertain; there was no family to whom they must make excuses. They could simply retire for the night. Their wedding night.
* * *
Emma found Liese in her room, laying out the nicest of her nightdresses and smoothing the linens of an already-made bed.
“Thank you, Liese,” Emma said softly, hoping she did not reveal the extent of her trepidation. She faced away from the girl, presenting her back and the long row of tiny buttons that fastened her gown.
Liese made quick work of the buttons and, once Emma’s gown was removed, was equally quick at unknotting the laces of her corset. Emma was grateful for the girl’s efficiency.
“I will see to myself from here,” she said once she was down to her chemise and stockings. She did not need her lady’s maid to see the new mistress of Brantmoor shaking with anxiety for her wedding night.
What had she been thinking, asking him to promise fidelity?
She’d just felt so lost that evening, as though she’d ceded control of her mind and her body. She’d grasped for something, anything, to regain a sense of power over herself and her future. Yet she’d only succeeded in making herself more vulnerable. She’d wrenched from him a promise he never intended to make and would like come to resent. He’d looked at her as though she were delusional. Would he question on this night the value of the bargain he’d struck?
“Very well, Your Grace.” With a brief curtsy and a flash of conspiratorial smile that proved she had misinterpreted the reason for being rushed away, Liese scurried out of the room.
Emma breathed deeply before discarding her chemise and stockings in exchange for the night rail. She had always seen to herself at the cottage and was fully capable of dressing in her nightclothes and unpinning and braiding her hair without the help of a lady’s maid. She was a bit clumsy at the chore this evening however. Her fingers shook as she fastened the short row of buttons on the top panel of her plain night rail. The plait she managed in her long, brown hair was not the tidiest she had ever achieved. Then she looked at her reflection and wondered if she should have left her hair loose. Did it matter? Would he have a preference? Her nightdress and wrapper were not precisely alluring either. They were serviceable. She supposed delicate, prettily embroidered nightclothes were among the things her aunt had wanted for her, but there had been no time.
There was a gentle knock of warning and the adjoining door creaked open.
She turned but kept a steadying hand on the bureau.
John walked slowly into the room. He wore a loose, untied white shirt. He still wore breeches. He carried a brown velvet dressing gown draped over one arm. His feet were bare.
Emma’s feet were also bare. She knew this, of course, having removed her stockings herself, but somehow noticing his bare feet made her more aware of her bare feet.
He did not appear to notice her feet. His eyes glowed in the candlelight. They locked with hers, and she remembered his promise to lay her down and love every inch of her. Every inch. Surely, every inch of her was alive and aware of him now. Her heart beat like a rabbit’s. Her limbs tingled. She was aware of her fingertips, her breasts, the backs of her knees, and the apex of her thighs. Her fingers fumbled as she toyed with the sash at her waist.
He crossed the room to where she stood waiting for him. He leaned forward and gently touched his lips to her cheek. Then he drew back and looked at her again. His lips broke into a wry half smile. He was looking forward to this.
The warm twist in her stomach tightened.
Emma had been alone with John in the interior of the coach all afternoon, and had managed to thoroughly embarrass herself. She was certain of only one thing—she would be a disappointment. She didn’t see how she could be anything but, given she didn’t have any inkling of what to do, really. She had a general sort of knowledge of what would occur, but no details.
Of course, it wasn’t as though John would have preferred an experienced wife. Certainly that would be a disappointment.
Oh heavens, her mind was rattling.
Oh heavens, he was taking off his clothes.
She froze as she watched him drape the dressing gown over a chair and pull his shirt over his head. He was as lean and strong as she had felt in the brief embraces they’d shared. He reached down to unfasten his buckskin breeches and still she could not look away, though a voice in her head insisted she must or risk appearing immodest. That voice had very little success in dictating to the rest of her.
John’s fingers paused at the fall of his breeches. She looked up and met his eyes, mortified to have been caught watching.
He let the laces alone and stepped back to her, the intensity in his eyes only growing. As he grew nearer, she felt closer to panic, wanting to flee.
He leaned forward when he reached her and placed a soft kiss on her forehead. He placed another on her cheek and another at her jaw. He turned her and placed one more electric kiss on the back of her neck before reaching around to untie the sash at the waist of her wrapper.
Well, then. She briefly wondered if he would be willing to delay the consummation of their marriage if she wished it.
Did she wish it?
It would seem not, for although her mind coursed with thoughts of flight or delay, she gave voice to none of it. She remained transfixed as he stood behind her, pushing the fabric of her wrapper over her shoulders and down the length of her arms, revealing the plain white nightdress beneath. His arms wrapped around her shoulders, pulling her back to his chest as he reached to unfasten the buttons she had fastened just a few minutes before. His chest was warm but she shivered from the contact.
With the short row of buttons undone, the neckline of her muslin gown sagged open, leaving the upper portion of her breasts bare. She had ball gowns that were more revealing, but this was different. The muslin was thin and loose. She had felt the warmth of his hands through the fabric as he unbuttoned it. And, most significantly, she knew it would soon be gone.
As though in answer to her thoughts, John gathered handfuls of the fabric at her sides and pulled the garment up over her head in a single motion. She stood there while he bared her completely. She was silent all the while, but her mind was still crowded. She was grateful to be facing away from him. She wondered at her own lack of modesty as she stood bared before him. Mostly she wondered at her own insufficiency and her dread of his inevitable disappointment. The whole thing had seemed very intriguing until she’d gone and wrested that ridiculous promise from him.
He turned her body to face his. She complied without resistance, but she kept her head down, keenly aware of the heat that painted her cheeks.
John set his finger under her chin and tilted it gently upward until her reluctant eyes met his. “What’s this? Are you frightened?”
Horribly frightened. “No.”
His large, firm hands stroked gently up and down her bare arms. “What’s wrong, Emma?”
She had bared her body; she may as well bare her soul. She released a determined sigh and decided she had best come out with it. “I may have made a mistake.”
His hands stopped. His expression warned of thunder. “What do you mean a mistake?”
“I fear I may have created an impossible situation for myself.”
He shook his head then bent to nuzzle her ear. “You’re speaking in riddles, Emma.”
Her eyes closed briefly. It felt good, what he was doing just then. Her bared breasts arched involuntarily toward his naked chest. She could just let him continue, but… She pushed back from him. “I trapped you,” she blurted. “Into promising fidelity. Now in addition to women you’ve known in the past, when we…make love…you’ll be comparing me to women in the future—the women you might have known.” She dropped her head, too humiliated to look him in the eye as she finished. “How can any flesh and blood woman of the present—particularly an inexperienced one—compare with a woman who is naught but a hope or a potential—a promise of better, or even perfect?”
“Oh, Emma.” John hugged her to him and the skin-to-skin contact was as deliciously intriguing as she knew it would be, even as she felt his laughter rumble through his warm, broad chest. “Don’t you see, you have it wrong? A flesh and blood woman doesn’t have to compete with a ghost or a dream.”
She let him take her hand and lay it between them, on his bare chest where she could feel his heartbeat through his skin.
“Your flesh against mine and your blood sending heat through your body. That’s the only way we can do this.”
He slid his hands up to cup her breasts. She leaned into his touch, unable not to.
“Right there.” His murmur in her ear was husky. “How does that make you feel?”
“Like I’m falling,” she admitted. “Or suspended, but I want to fall the rest of the way.”
“Hmmm. Not yet, sweet Emma, but you will, I promise.”
He dipped his head to put his lips to hers again. He kissed her softly at first, gently tasting. She parted her lips only a little to start, hesitantly tasting his tongue with her own, but his insistence drew her into the kiss. His tongue teased her lips farther apart and danced freely with hers. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, burying her fingers into the nape of his neck, pulling herself more tightly into him, crushing her breasts more boldly into his hard chest. He ran his hands up and down the length of her back, and she sighed into his mouth at the loveliness of it. Then his hands slid lower and cupped her bottom as she clung to him, and, God, she like his hands there even better. Her fingers speared into his hair and she moaned. Still he kissed her—deeply, hungrily, until she felt an urgency building inside her. When he finally wrenched his mouth from hers, they both needed deep, panting breaths. He let his forehead fall against hers as they took in needed air.
When he lifted his head and spoke, his blue eyes bore intently into hers. “Lovemaking is not for what might be tomorrow or years from now. It’s about losing yourself in this moment, with this person. There has never been anything that is less about the past or the future and more about right now.”
She looked in his eyes and she believed him. She couldn’t imagine herself in any moment other than this one, with his hands moving over her body, sending jolts of sensation to every corner of her being. She let John gently lift her and lay her down across the bed.
He quickly divested himself of the last of his clothing and joined her there. He hovered over her with a knee on each side and lowered his head to her breasts. She nearly rose from the bed as his mouth closed over one nipple. She plunged her fingers into his hair and clutched him to his task. His hand stroked the inside of her leg at her knee and gently teased upward toward the place where her need pulsed the hottest. She twitched and squirmed as he dragged one finger upward at the opening to her very center.
“John.” She gripped the bed linen as she called out his name, not certain whether it had been a shout or a whisper.
Emma was acutely aware that she should do something—participate somehow—but she was incapable of anything more than simply reacting to these new sensations and the restlessness building inside her.
His mouth fell onto hers as his hands continued to stroke and knead in places she’d never understood could be so painfully sensitive—so wonderfully, painfully sensitive. She slid her arms around his neck and clung to him, giving all the urgency and passion he was creating inside her back to him in that kiss.
She held on and prayed that the feelings wouldn’t stop, even as she begged him to cease his torture.
“John…I need…”
She didn’t know precisely what she needed, but she trusted John to know—had no choice but to trust him.
John’s breath was labored and short as he hovered above her, watching her. His eyes burned with an intensity that held her focus, warring with the effect his rhythmic touches were causing until she was able to hold no other thought in her mind besides knowing that the hottest part of a flame was not orange or red, but blue. This blue. His blue. Oh God. Her back arched. Her eyes fluttered closed. “Please.” It was barely a whisper.
“Emma, open your eyes.” He said it sharply enough to penetrate her haze, even as his hands and his body worked to keep her fully distracted.
She complied, then gasped, as his fingers plunged inside her.
Her lips stayed parted and he captured them again.
“Look at me, Emma,” he said again, once he’d broken the kiss.
Her eyes fluttered open once more and he smiled, wickedly pleased. Her hips undulated involuntarily against the motion of his hand.
“What did you do yesterday?”
Emma’s mind struggled to respond, but the urgency prevented even basic comprehension of his words.
He dipped his fingers inside her again. The low moan she released started in her throat, but reverberated through her body.
“What did you do yesterday, Emma? What did you do this morning?”
Her mouth opened, silently at first. “What…I don’t…”
He changed rhythm and her arm flung to the side, clutching at a fistful of bed linens.
John buried his face in her neck. “There is no before or after,” he whispered. “Only now.”
She quivered at his words.
“I’m going to make love to you now, Emma,” he whispered, his lips moving against the skin just below her ear. His voice was low and ragged. “I’ll go slow. I don’t want to hurt you. I just can’t hold out any longer.”
His words pierced the veil of Emma’s haze. Her eyes opened widely as his fingers slid out of her and his erection probed at her instead. Emma gasped and tensed as John’s body slowly invaded hers. There was tightness, she realized, but no pain. He moved rhythmically, first deeper, then shallow, then deeper again, and she relaxed to the pleasure of the sensations his rhythm produced. The rising need for release began building all over again.
She clutched him tightly as it built. She was aware of making sounds, but didn’t seem to be in direct control of them. Then the crescendo broke and she clutched him even more tightly. She held him through it as the waves shook her, then felt his body tense. He released a low groan and lowered himself atop her.
He lay there a moment before he spoke.
“I must be heavy. I will move just as soon as I am able.”
He was heavy, but she didn’t mind the weight. It was…reassuring. She lay there quietly, stretched out underneath him, their bodies in contact in so many places, and tried to simply take it in. This, she decided through a slowly clearing mental fog, was an aspect of marriage she could not have understood beforehand.
John pushed himself up and rolled to his side. He reached down to pull the bed coverings over them both then settled in next to her, with one arm draped across her.
Snugly in this position, Emma was quickly overcome by the exhaustion of the day. She smiled to herself as sleep settled in and granted her own measure of forgiveness to those girls who found themselves tempted into assignations without benefit of the marital blessing. If only she’d understood, she’d have been tempted herself.