Darby almost groaned as she struggled to free his trousers from an unexpected obstruction between his legs. He stared down at her bent head, wondering if she had any idea what that lump in his smalls represented. Since her blush had turned fiery red, he could only assume that she did. She managed to wrestle his trousers to the floor though, and rose, with an air of having done all that she could to satisfy her husband.
He watched her place his trousers over a chair. He could just see the long, slender line of her thigh through her thin nightgown.
“Henrietta,” he said gently, “I sleep without clothing.”
She narrowed her eyes. “That is a vastly improper habit.”
Darby had to admit that if he had a grain of conscience in his body he might almost—almost—feel sorry for her. He shrugged.
She chewed her lip a bit more, and then yanked his smalls down so fast that he winced and lurched forward. “Damnation!” he said, grabbing the family jewels. “Watch yourself there.”
His sweet little wife was clearly working herself into a temper, fired (Darby hoped) by lust. “Those who are incapable of undressing themselves must expect inconveniences,” she snapped.
He laughed at that, couldn’t help himself. Then he unwrapped his fist, slowly, so she wouldn’t miss anything. Her eyes widened.
“How was I to know that you—that part of you would be sticking out in such a fashion?” she asked.
“It’s the same as this part of you,” he said. His hand seemed to curve naturally around her breast, his thumb leaping to rub her nipple again. And it was already swollen, waiting for him. For a moment there wasn’t a sound in the room except for the gentle swish of his thumb across her nipple.
“You’re seducing me, aren’t you?” Henrietta sounded surprised. But any idiot could see that she couldn’t take her eyes off him. Part of him, that is. The good part.
“Absolutely,” he agreed, giving her breast a bit of a squeeze. It was so luscious that if he didn’t have it in his mouth soon, there was no saying what would happen.
She shivered all over, and he gathered her into his arms. She fit as if they were made for each other, all the delicate, smooth parts of her, and the hard maleness of him. He bent his head and licked her ear, its delicate little whorls and beautiful curves, and she trembled.
“You are going to do that, aren’t you?” she said, surprising him as always with her directness.
“What if you like it?” His breath was hot against her ear. He let his lips slide down her slender neck. His fingers danced over her breasts, visiting and revisiting the heavy curve next to her arms.
“Impossible,” she said in a strained sort of way.
“I promise not to do anything that you don’t explicitly request,” he promised.
“Why would any woman request that? I simply don’t understand the point of it, except from the point of view of having children, naturally.”
He had discovered a tender curve under her jaw. “Pleasure,” he said rather thickly. “Women can find pleasure in it, Henrietta.”
There was silence for a moment as he kissed his way to the corner of her mouth, little kisses, as light as tiny feathers. Oh, she knew of pleasure, his Henrietta. She simply didn’t realize that she knew. Because when his lips came to hers, teasingly light, she opened the sweetness of her mouth to him without hesitation, proving that she’d been waiting for his kiss.
She sighed into his mouth, and her tongue met his. He plunged in, taking possession, turning a groan into a dark possession. And she was with him. She didn’t pull back when he pulled her slender body against him and ran a demanding hand down her back, molding every curve to his hardness. Then he made a demanding undulation against her body, one that spoke of his intention and made clear his dominion.
“Would you mind if we went to bed now, Henrietta?” The question came out half-strangled.
“Well, no, I wouldn’t mind,” she said in a considering sort of way that told him that she wasn’t yet completely comfortable. In fact, she was still thinking too much. It’s hard to grin when you’re gathering a bundle of fragrant womanhood in your arms, but he managed it.
He put her down on the bed. The first thing that had to go was her braid. Setting free her hair took time though, since her braid went almost to her waist. Darby could see that she was thinking, so he helped her out by standing between her legs so that she had plenty of contact with him.
“You won’t do anything I don’t request?” she said, finally.
He raised his head from her braid. He pressed a kiss onto each eyelid. “I promise,” he said huskily. “If you don’t ask me, I won’t do it.”
“I will never ask you to—to—” she stopped, clearly uncertain how to convey the idea of intercourse.
“I understand. But just in case you do ask, have you brought the sheath that Esme gave you?”
She turned even pinker. “I needn’t because it’s my first time,” she whispered.
“Are you quite certain?”
She nodded. “Esme said no woman becomes pregnant during her first night. And I might not—apparently there’s some obstruction there.” Her words trailed off, clearly mortified by the topic of conversation.
Darby thought quickly. Presumably the sheath wouldn’t fit due to her virginity. But they probably should have a frank talk before things became too heated for discussion.
He waited until he had finished undoing her braid, and then let his fingers run through the rough silk of her hair once or twice, just for pleasure. God, but she was beautiful. In the candlelight, her hair looked like gleaming gold, as soft and slippery as butter.
Then he rose and grabbed a small bottle from his bag. He held it up. Henrietta took the blue glass bottle and looked at him inquiringly. “This is an herb called pennyrub. Apparently it is a remedy for childbearing,” he told her.
“What on earth do you mean?”
“Should you become pregnant, even using Esme’s sheath, all you have to do is drink this medicine, and no pregnancy would result. It’s security, Henrietta.”
A flicker of a frown crossed her face. “I could never do such a thing.”
“We needn’t think about it,” he said soothingly.
“It’s not easy to become pregnant if we don’t do that—thing, Darby.”
Now that he could believe.
He took the bottle and stuck it on the bedside table. “I simply didn’t want you to be fearful of intimacy due to pregnancy, Henrietta.”
“Oh, I’m not. I’m not fearful.” She paused. “I’m simply disinclined. I do not like untidiness, Darby.”
She used that term before, with reference to her hip, he thought dimly. He gently pushed her to her back, lifted her voluminous nightgown and without further ado, slipped his head under it. Instantly her fingers descended on his shoulders to shove him away, but his lips found her breast before she could get leverage. Delectable it was. She had perfect breasts, gloriously weighty, rounded with that unsteady softness that made a man’s loins explode.
He could hear her protesting, but it was too late. The marauder had entered the village. He was in the dim tent of her nightgown, feasting on her body. He moved from one breast to the other and back again. Her nipples were swollen dark rose. His hands shaped and danced on her skin, and in a few moments she had stopped pushing him away and began twisting up to offer him her breast. There were no more protests, only whimpers flying into the candlelight.
He smiled. Screw Aphrodite’s seven pleasures—or fourteen of them, for that matter. There was nowhere he’d rather be than hidden under a cumbersome nightgown, listening to his own little Henrietta discover that her body was not untidy, but pleasurable.
Darby’s presence under her nightgown was one of the most bewildering experiences of Henrietta’s life. When he first ducked under her gown, she felt a quick ripple of terror and violation. Millicent had said her husband would effect his messy work under the covers, but had never mentioned a thing about him gazing at one
’s body or—or putting his mouth to it! Surely this was some new London perversion, known only to rakes.
But when his mouth descended on her breast, she lost her logical faculties. His rough suckling made her feel whimpery, and soft, and unable to move. And the longer he stayed there, the more weak she became, until her legs and middle section were liquid, and she could hardly breathe. She was quivering in the most embarrassing way.
The result was that when he ducked out from her gown and began to pull it up, inch by inch, running a strong hand up her legs, she didn’t even protest. She let him expose her legs to the air because she was too busy trying to grapple with the rising fire in her belly, with the shameful impulses that crowded on her. Far from wanting to recite laundry lists, she wanted to—to touch him. Worse, to put her mouth to him, to lick his golden skin.
It took all her fortitude not to descend in the very depths of depravity. To hold her hands at her sides although she positively longed to—
“They look exactly the same, don’t they?” he said.
Henrietta raised her head and discovered that her nightgown was gone, over her head and tossed away. Her husband was on his knees over her, muscled brown legs straddling her white legs. He was caressing her right hip with his fingers, soothing it as if to make any pain go away.
She couldn’t seem to think clearly. His fingers were brushing her skin over and over, which was a simple enough action except that it created a gaping sense of openness between her legs. A melting, languid inability to move. So she just lay and let him…well, do the things he did. Touch her shoulder, and then press kisses into her ribs, and trail his tongue over her belly. Run a hand inquiringly up her leg and even in her dazed state she knew exactly what he was asking, because she’d been longing to do it.
She let her legs fall open to his hand, and barely registered his murmured, “Good girl,” because he was touching her—there—and it felt so good that she found herself arching toward his hand, panting and moaning out loud, deep in her throat.
But he left…he left. He seemed to be fascinated by her hair. He was using it to caress her breasts, dragging a few locks across her nipples until she shivered all over and cried out for a firmer touch. He left her breast with one last rough stroke.
“You can’t—” she managed, shocked, but he already had. The sensation was rough, and soft, and unbearably exciting between her legs, especially when he suddenly bent his head and he was licking her and then rubbing—
She had her knees up now, where he’d pushed them, and she didn’t even think about whether her hip hurt (it didn’t), just stayed exactly where he bid her.
“Simon,” she moaned, not even realizing it was the first time she used his first name. “Simon, please, please…” There was an aching emptiness between her legs, and his kisses were stoking that fire, not curing it. In fact the hunger was so great she opened her eyes and wound her arms around his neck. He was braced on his hands, leaning over her, and she was just able to notice that he didn’t look composed—not at all. His hair was standing straight off his head, and his eyes looked wild.
“My wife,” he said hoarsely. She didn’t listen because she was too busy rubbing against him, again and again, like a cat, trying to cure some itch she never knew she had.
“Henrietta, ask me,” he said, and the ache in his voice sank through to her.
She took her hands off his chest, and said, “Yes?” It didn’t even sound like her own voice.
“Ask me, Henrietta!” His eyes were black, and he drove forward just slightly. She clutched his arms and arched forward, following the sensation.
“Please,” she said hopelessly, “Oh God, please.”
“Please what?”
Henrietta Maclellan had considerable courage. She faced the world with her injured hip every day of her life. She had faced down scornful ladies and once, a drunken man in the village. But nothing compared to the moment when she removed her hands from their fierce grip around her husband’s neck and reached down between his legs. “Bring me this, Simon,” she said, and her voice broke with longing. He throbbed, hot and smooth in her small hand. She kissed his chin and the edge of his shoulder and arched up against him. “Bring me yourself.”
Her hand slipped away and Darby lowered his head for one last agonizingly sweet kiss. Then, when she was quivering all over, he entered with one long, smooth stroke, praying for control. But she was a virgin, all right. He hit a barrier and stopped.
He bent down and kissed that sweet mouth, all swollen from his kisses. “This part is going to hurt,” he whispered.
She whimpered in response, but it wasn’t from pain. She was clutching his forearms so hard that he’d likely have bruises.
“How does it feel, Henrietta?” he whispered. He’d never cared much how any of his other partners felt, as long as they seemed appropriately gratified, but he couldn’t stop watching Henrietta’s face: the way she looked at him with sheer longing. When it came to his wife, he wanted to know everything about her.
She opened her eyes and what he saw there drenched him with lust. He drove forward without waiting for an answer, caught her cry with his mouth, answered it with a groan of his own.
There was a momentary pause in their conversation, if you could call it that, while Darby tried to adjust to the sweetest, tightest experience of his entire life.
“Oh God, Henrietta, you feel so good,” he said thickly.
“You don’t.” He almost laughed at her honesty. “But—” she wiggled a little, and the breath caught in the back of his throat—“perhaps…”
He withdrew and slid smoothly back to her core.
“Do you like that?” he whispered, placing feather-light kisses on the edge of her mouth.
He was teaching her something. Henrietta knew it dimly. All she could do was try to chase the feeling that raced through her body when he moved. It was nothing that she would have described as pleasure. It was too fiery for that, too all-encompassing, too much. It made her feel anguished with longing.
“Do it again,” she cried. She had been holding on to his forearms, but it didn’t feel enough—none of it felt enough. She let her hands run down his back, over lovely muscles and then—what was a pair of buttocks compared to what she had already touched? They were muscled and tight and she clutched them and said something fierce, something to make her husband move in, closer to her, all the way.
He shuddered the moment she touched him. Dimly Henrietta realized that she could make him groan, make him burn as she was.
So she pulled him closer, and arched up until she could feel every inch of him, until that empty, craving space inside her was filled with him, and her arms were filled with him, and her heart—
Well, that too.
37
In Which Lady Rawlings Remembers That Propriety, Decency, and Honor Rule English Society
He was sitting by the fire, sharpening a set of garden implements. He sprang up when she entered. “Esme.”
“Did you know that my friend Henrietta married Simon Darby?” she said without preamble, sitting down on the rough-hewn bench across from him.
He picked up the tool again, his eyes guarded. “There was talk of the wedding in the village.”
“Have you heard the marriage service lately, Sebastian? It’s so beautiful.” She caught her voice before it shook. “I don’t think I listened when I married Miles. There was a part—I don’t have it just right, but the vicar said that marriage was a remedy against sin, and to avoid, to avoid fornication.”
“You are no longer married, Esme.”
“I never honored him in marriage,” she said, and a tear escaped down her cheek. “It’s the least I can do to behave with propriety after his death.”
Sebastian put the tool aside. He knelt beside the bench with utter unself-consciousness. “Marry me, Esme. Please. Honor me. I will honor you as your husband never did. Our marriage would be a remedy against sin, if anyone could ever call it a sin to love you.”
>
She just shook her head, her throat thick with tears. “I can’t. I dreamed of Miles last night,” she said, trying to explain. “In my dream, he was so happy about the baby. And he was alive and well.”
“I can’t say that I wish he were alive, but I am sorry that his memory causes you grief.”
“It’s not his memory, or not entirely. I hate myself for what we are doing to his memory. I am still in mourning. In mourning! And yet here we are …I hate myself!”
“Why hate yourself?”
“I am betraying Miles, my husband.”
“I don’t agree,” he said, and all the stiffness was in his tone that used to accompany pronouncements by the Marquess Bonnington. “Lord Rawlings is dead. You have no husband. You are widowed, and I am unmarried. While our interaction was unconventional, I do not see how it could be construed as betraying a dead man.”
“He is still alive in my heart,” Esme said slowly. “I can’t stop thinking about him. And the baby. I keep thinking about the baby too.”
“I am grievously sorry about your husband’s death. But we did not kill him, Esme. He had a weak heart. He could have died at any time. You yourself told me that he had had two attacks that week alone, and that the doctor had given him until the end of the summer.”
“That’s not it, Sebastian. I cannot do this. I cannot be this kind of person.”
He opened his mouth, but she forestalled him.
“Last summer, at Lady Troubridge’s house party, you walked into my bedchamber as if I were a courtesan, available for all callers.” She didn’t say it with anger, simply as a fact. “You came because I acted like a whore.”
“No!”
But she stopped him again. “Like a whore,” she repeated calmly. “Falling into your arms in the drawing room. It’s no wonder that you thought to enter my bedchamber without warning and that you expected I would greet you with open arms. I made myself into a convenient woman.” Wonder of wonders, she wasn’t even crying. Her pain was too deep for tears.