Behind his closed eyes, Dorian saw the answer now, with stunning clarity.
A day earlier, the insight would have had him leaping from the bath and running hell for leather for the nearest available mire.
At present, a part of his mind suggested that fleeing was not an altogether bad idea.
But he was so comfortable, his muscles relaxing in the steaming water, his tormented head pleasantly cool.
And so he said, very mildly, “Small wonder, then, that you should leap at the chance to have a patient of your very own.”
And before very long, a corpse of her very own, he added inwardly. Not that it mattered. If she wished to dissect his remains, he would hardly be in a position to object.
She did not respond immediately. Dorian kept his eyes closed, savoring the scented mist drifting about him. Her scent was there as well, rich and deep, coiling with the lavender. He did not know whether it was the scent or his ailment that made him feel so lightheaded.
“I was not implying that all members of the medical profession are imbeciles,” she said at last. “But I could not trust Abonville to distinguish among them. Bertie would be worse. He’d be sure to send for experts from London and Edinburgh, and he has such a knack for blundering.”
“I understand,” he said. “You came to…save me.”
“From medicial bedlam,” she said hastily. “I am not a miracle worker, and I know precious few brain diseases are curable. Not that I know much about yours,” she added with a trace of irritation. “Mr. Kneebones is as obstinately closemouthed as Mr. Knightly was. I knew it was a waste of breath to argue with him. Words are rarely of any use. I shall have to prove myself, as usual.”
Dorian recalled her brisk, unruffled mode of freeing him from the mire. He recalled the cool steadiness with which she’d met his attempt to frighten her away. He recalled her calm, efficient ministrations of a little while ago, when he’d been so disgustingly sick.
He considered his present comfortable state. He had not felt so tranquil in months. He couldn’t remember, in fact, when he’d last felt so much at peace. Had he ever?
He couldn’t recall a time when he hadn’t been angry with himself for his weaknesses and seething with resentment of his grandfather, who, like the doctors she spoke of, insisted on ruling absolutely.
He opened his eyes and slowly turned his head to look up at her. She kept the ice bag in place while her cool green gaze shifted to meet his.
He wondered whether the cool detachment came naturally, or if she’d had to train herself to suppress emotion, in order to survive in a world that didn’t trust or want her. He knew what that was like, and what the training cost.
“The damp does strange things to your hair,” he said gruffly. “All the little curls and corkscrews sprout up every which way, making a fuzzy red cloud. Even in dry air, it seems alive, trying to do whatever it is bent on doing. ‘What on earth is her hair doing?’ the medical men must ask themselves. One can’t be surprised at their failing to attend closely to what you say.”
“They should not allow themselves to be distracted,” she said. “It is unprofessional.”
“As a group, men are not very intelligent,” he said. “Not in a steady way, at least. We have our moments of lucidity, but we are easily distracted.”
He was—oh, so easily.
The room’s steamy fog had settled upon her. A fine dew glistened on her porcelain skin. Damp curls clustered about her ears. He thought of pushing the curls away and tracing the delicate shape with his tongue. He thought of where his mouth and tongue would go if he let them…along the moist flesh of her neck to the hollow of her throat.
His gaze skimmed down to her neckline, then lower, to where the damp fabric clung to the curve of her breasts.
Mine, he thought. And then he could not think about the future. He could scarcely think at all.
“Some men can be distracting,” she said. “At times. You, especially.”
If he had not been so keenly, yearningly aware of her, he would not have caught the faint, unsteady thread in her voice.
“Ah, well, I’m mad.” What he felt might as well be madness. Beneath the concealing corner of the towel, the part of him that never heeded reason stirred from its slumbers.
“This treatment is supposed to have a soporific effect,” she said, frowning as she studied his face.
She did not appear anxious but puzzled, which would have amused him if he had been capable of detached observation. That was impossible.
She sat near his shoulder, at the edge of the sunken tub, her legs curled up under her gown, and his base mind was fixed upon what lay beneath. He brought his hand up out of the water and rested it on the tub’s curved rim, inches from the hem of her gown.
“Treatment?” he said. “I thought this was supposed to be a spell.”
“Yes, well, I must not have added enough eye of newt. It is supposed to induce a pleasant drowsiness.”
“My brain is becoming somnolent.” His fingers touched the ruffled muslin…and closed upon it.
Her frowning attention shifted to his hand. “You have a headache,” she said.
He toyed with the ruffle. “That does not seem terribly important at the moment.”
Though the pain lingered, it no longer mattered. What mattered was his treacherous recollection of what lay under the muslin. He drew it back.
Soft kid slippers…a few inches of prettily turned ankle…and no stockings. “No stockings,” he said, his voice as foggy as his mind. “Where are your stockings, Lady Rawnsley?”
“I took them off before,” she said. “They were frightfully expensive—from Paris—and I hated to risk catching them on a splinter when I climbed in your window.”
He grasped her ankle. “You climbed in the window.” He did not look up from the imprisoned limb.
“To get into your room. I was worried you would take too much laudanum. Not an idle anxiety, as it turns out. The solution in that bottle of yours had not been properly diluted.”
She had said she couldn’t let him die before the ceremony, he recalled. Apparently, she dared not let him die before the marriage was consummated, either.
And he didn’t want to die before then, either, rot his black soul.
“You had to save me,” he said.
“I had to do something. I know nothing about picking locks, and breaking down the door would have made a ghastly row, so I took the window route. Isn’t your hand growing cold again, my lord?”
“No.” He stroked her ankle. “Does it feel cold to you?”
“I couldn’t tell whether it was me or you.” She swallowed. “I am quite…warm.”
He pushed the gown up higher and slid his hand over the perfectly curved limb he’d exposed. She wanted her hospital, he told himself, and she was prepared to pay the price.
And he wanted to trail his mouth over her wickedly lovely legs…up, all the way up to…His gaze shot to her hair, the wild red curls. His mind conjured a picture of what he’d find at the end of the journey, at the juncture of her thighs.
Then his gaze locked with hers, meltingly soft.
Then he was lost, rising from the water and reaching for her, lashing his arm round her narrow waist, drawing her toward him. He felt the air, cool against his back after the water’s warmth, but it was her warmth he wanted.
“You will take a chill,” she gasped. “Let me get you a dry towel.”
“No, come to me,” he said thickly.
He did not wait for her to come but swept her up in his dripping arms and held her tightly for a long, mad moment. Then he sank down with her into the scented cauldron, and as the water closed over them, his mouth found hers, and he sank deeper then, beyond saving…drowning in a sea of warm promises.
This was most unprofessional, Gwendolyn scolded herself as she flung her arms round her husband’s neck.
It was well known that excitement of the passions exacerbated sick headaches.
Unfortunately, nowher
e in the medical literature had she encountered a remedy for cases in which the physician’s passions were excited. She did not know what antidote to apply when the patient’s lightest touch triggered severe palpitations of the heart and a shockingly swift rise in temperature to fever point. She did not know what palliative could alleviate the coaxing pressure of a wickedly sensual mouth upon hers, or what elixir could counteract the devil’s brew she tasted when her patient’s tongue stole in to coil with hers.
She was aware of water lapping at her shoulders and her gown billowing up to the surface in the most brazen manner, but she could not retrieve sufficient clinical objectivity to do anything about it.
She was preoccupied with every slippery, naked inch of him, hard and warm under her hands, and she couldn’t keep her hands from moving over his powerful shoulders and the taut, smooth planes of his broad chest. It wasn’t quite enough. She could not resist the need to taste the smooth, water-slick skin. She eased away from his enslaving mouth and traced his wet jaw and neck with her lips while her hands continued to explore his splendid anatomy.
“Oh, the deltoid muscle…and pectoralis major,” she murmured dizzily. “So…beautifully…developed.”
She was aware of the increased urgency and boldness of his touch, and she knew her brazen behavior incited him. But his caresses were inciting her.
She felt the weight of his hands upon her breasts, a warm pressure that made her ache and push into his hand, seeking more. The sensuous mouth upon her neck simmered kisses whose heat bubbled under her skin and made her quiver with impatience. His wicked tongue teased her ear…maddening.
Above the water’s plashing, she heard the low animal sound he made when she shivered uncontrollably and burrowed into him, as though she could crawl into his skin. She wanted to.
She could not get close enough. The water…her clothes…everything between them…obstacles.
“Do something,” she gasped, fumbling with her gown. She tugged at the bodice, but the soaked fabric wouldn’t tear. “Get it off,” she told him. “I can’t bear it.”
She felt his fingers struggling at her back with the tapes. “They’re too wet,” she said feverishly. “You can’t untie them. Rip it.”
“Wait. Calm down.” His voice was thick.
She dragged her hand down to his belly.
He sucked in his breath. “Gwendolyn, for God’s sake—”
“Hurry.”
“Wait.” He closed his mouth over hers and swept her lunatic rage away in an endless, soul-draining kiss.
She clung to him, her mouth locked with his while he swung her into his arms and up, out of the bath and onto the damp towels.
When he broke the drugging kiss at last, she opened her eyes to a burning gold gaze. He knelt over her, straddling her hips. His skin was slick, shimmering in the candlelight. Water streamed from his long, night-black hair.
While she watched, spellbound, he brought his hand to the neckline of her soaked gown. With one easy yank, he tore it to the waist. “Happy now, witch?” he whispered.
“Yes.” She reached for him and drew him down, frantic to feel his skin against hers.
Hot, hasty kisses…over her brow, her nose, cheeks, chin…and more, down over her throat to sizzle over her breasts. The scorching kisses burned the spell away, and the madness returned.
She caught her fingers in his hair to keep him there. She needed more, though she hardly knew what the more was. She felt his mouth close over the taut bud of her breast, and the first light tug shot threads of tingling electricity under her skin, into…somewhere…a world inside her she hadn’t realized was there.
It was wild and dark, a pulsing jungle of sensation. He took her into the darkness, drawing her deeper with his hands, his mouth, his low, ragged voice.
The remnants of her garments fell away, along with the last vestiges of her reason. She was lost in his scent, so potently masculine, and in the sinful taste of him, and in the stunning power of muscle under taut, smooth flesh.
She wanted him to crawl inside her, under her skin. She wanted him to be part of her. Even when his hand settled between her legs, upon the most private of places, it wasn’t enough, and she arched up to his touch for more.
He caressed her in secret ways that made her moan and squirm under his hand, but it was not enough. The tantalizing strokes slipped deeper, inside her. Spasms racked her, hot, delicious…but not enough.
She trembled on a precipice, caught between wild pleasure and an unreasoning, inescapable craving for more, for something else.
“Dear God,” she gasped, writhing like one demented, which she was. “Do it. Please.”
“Soon.” A rough whisper. “You’re not ready. It’s your first—”
“Hurry.” She could feel his shaft pulsing against her thigh. She dug her nails into his arms. “Hurry.”
Cursing, he pulled her fingers away. She could not keep away. She dragged her hands down over his belly, to the place where instinct led her. She found the thick, hot shaft. Immense. Her hand could not close about it. “Oh, my goodness,” she whispered.
“Stop it. Christ, Gwen, don’t rush me. It’ll hurt and you—”
“Oh, Lord. It feels…so strong…and alive.” She hardly knew what she was saying. She stroked the velvety flesh, lost in heated wonder.
She heard a strange, strangled sound above her.
Then he was caressing her intimately again, dragging her back into the frustrating madness. Her hand fell away from him as the furious pleasure swept her to the precipice.
Then it came, one swift thrust—and a stinging sensation that jerked her back to reality.
She gulped in air and blinked. “Good heavens.”
He was enormous. She was not comfortable.
Yet she was not exactly uncomfortable, either. Not altogether.
“I told you it would hurt.”
She heard the ache in his voice. Her fault, she reproached herself. Everyone knew it hurt the first time. She should not have let herself be taken unawares. Now he probably thought he’d done her a permanent injury.
“Only at first,” she said shakily. “That is normal. You mustn’t stop on my account.”
“It’s not going to get much better.”
She looked into his glowing eyes, saw the shadows lurking there. “Then kiss me,” she whispered. “I’ll concentrate on that and ignore the rest.”
She reached up, slid her fingers into his thick, wet mane, and drew him down.
He kissed her fiercely. The hot need she tasted ignited hers. She simmered in the devil’s brew, and the pain and tightness bubbled away into nothingness.
He began to move inside her, slow strokes at first, but soon quickening. She moved with him, her body answering instinctively, gladly. In the intimate beat of desire, passion returned, hotter than before. She was joined with him, and this was what she’d needed: to be one, to take him with her to the edge of the abyss…and beyond…into the last, searing burst of rapture…and then she sank with him, into the sweet darkness of release.
5
Some time later, enveloped in her husband’s dressing gown, Gwendolyn sat tailor-fashion near the foot of his bed.
She had piled a heap of pillows at his back, and he sat with his legs stretched out in front of him—under the bedclothes because she had insisted he keep his feet warm.
The debauch in the bathing room had left them famished. They had raided the larder and sneaked up to his bedroom with a tray of thick sandwiches, which they’d made short work of.
Though the bath, the lovemaking, and the meal had radically improved his mood, he was not altogether tranquil.
Gwendolyn was aware of the glances he stole at her from under his black lashes when he thought she wasn’t looking. She wished she knew what those troubled glances signified. At present, only one aspect of his character was truly clear to her.
Though facing a horrendous death in quicksand, he’d tried to drive her off—because he was afraid she’d f
all in.
He had been willing to risk medical bedlam and eventual incarceration in a madhouse, rather than subject her to marrying him.
Though informed of the deadly risks of unsupervised laudanum consumption, he had locked himself alone in his room—to spare her witnessing his miseries.
The Earl of Rawnsley, in short, had a protective streak a mile long and three miles deep.
Gwendolyn didn’t think she was overestimating him. She’d had enough experience with her father, brothers, uncles, and cousins to recognize this particular ailment.
The awareness was doing nothing to restore her clinical detachment, which was in dangerous disrepair already.
Just looking at him paralyzed her intellect. When she recalled what that sensuous mouth, those strong, graceful hands, and that long muscled body had done to her, her entire brain, along with her heart and every other organ and muscle she possessed, turned to jelly.
His low voice broke into her bewildered thoughts.
“I don’t think you ought to stay in here,” he said gently.
She looked up from her folded hands. His carefully polite expression made her heart sink.
She could guess why he wanted her out of his sight. He’d probably spent most of the time since they’d left the bathing room devising a courteous way of telling her he’d rather not repeat the experience.
But she’d been rejected countless times before, Gwendolyn reminded herself, and it hadn’t killed her yet.
“I understand,” she said, her voice cool, her face hot. “I know I behaved shockingly. I scarcely know what to think of myself. I have never, ever, in all my life, reacted that way—to anybody.”
A muscle worked in his jaw.
“Not that I’ve had so many beaux,” she hurriedly added. “I am not a flirt, and even if I was, I hadn’t much time for suitors. I didn’t want to make time,” she babbled on as his expression grew tauter. “But girls are obliged to make an appearance in Society, and then of course the men think one is like the others, and one feels obliged to pretend that’s true. And I must admit that I was curious about what it was like to be courted and kissed. But it wasn’t like anything, and not half so interesting as, say, Mr. Culpeper’s Herbal. If it had been that way with you, I’m sure I should have behaved much more decorously downstairs. I should have fastened my mind on a medical treatise and not made a spectacle of myself. But I could not behave properly. I am truly sorry. The last thing I wanted was to make myself disagreeable to you.”