Almost Heaven (56 page)

“Oh!” she exclaimed, instantly contrite. “I didn’t know. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“Because,” he said, taking her elbow and beginning to guide her from the ballroom, “I wanted you to enjoy every minute of our ball, even if we had to prop the guests up on the shrubbery.”

“Speaking of shrubbery,” she teased, pausing on the balcony to cast a last fond look at the “arbor” of potted trees with silk blossoms that occupied one-fourth the length of the entire ballroom, “everyone is talking about having gardens and arbors as themes for future balls. I think you’ve started a new ‘rage’.”

“You should have seen your face,” he teased, drawing her away, “when you recognized what I had done.”

“We are probably the only couple,” she returned, her face turned up to his in laughing conspiracy, “ever to lead off a ball by dancing a waltz on the sidelines.” When the orchestra had struck up the opening waltz, Ian had led her into the mock “arbor,” and they had started the ball from there.

“Did you mind?”

“You know I didn’t,” she returned, walking beside him up the curving staircase.

He stopped outside her bed chamber, opened the door for her, and started to pull her into his arms, then checked himself as a pair of servants came marching down the hall bearing armloads of linens. “There’s time for this later,” he whispered. “All the time we want.”

CHAPTER 30

Oblivious to Berta’s pinched face as the maid brushed her heavy hair, Elizabeth sat at her dressing table clad in a lacy cream silk nightdress that Madame la Salle had insisted would be extremely pleasing to the marquess on his wedding night.

At the moment, however, Elizabeth wasn’t worried about the way her breasts were revealed by the deep V of the bodice or the way her left leg was exposed to the knee by the seductive slash in the gown. For one thing, she knew the bedclothes would hide her; for another, now that she had solitude for the first time since this morning, she was finding it much harder to ignore the tormenting things Mr. Wordsworth had said.

Trying desperately to think of other things. Elizabeth shifted impatiently in her chair and concentrated on her wedding night instead. Staring at her hands folded in her lap, she bent her head to give Berta better access to her long tresses, her mind going over Lucinda’s explanation about how babies were conceived. Since Ian had been very emphatic about wanting children, there was every chance he might wish to start tonight; if so, according to Lucinda, they would evidently share a bed.

She frowned as she reconsidered Lucinda’s explanation; it did not, in Elizabeth’s opinion make a great deal of sense.

She was not ignorant of the way other species on earth created their young; on the other hand, she realized that people could not possibly behave in such an appalling fashion. But still, a kiss in bed from a spouse? If that were so, why had she heard occasional scandalous gossip about a certain married lady in the
ton
whose baby was purportedly
not
her husband’s? Obviously there was more than one way to make a baby, or else Lucinda’s information was incorrect.

That brought her to the matter of sleeping accommodations. Her suite adjoined his, and she had no idea whether, if he did wish to share a bed with her, it would be this one or his. As if in answer to her unspoken questions, the door that connected this chamber with Ian’s opened, and Berta jumped in fright; then she glowered at Ian, whom she, like several of Elizabeth’s servants, continued to fear and blame,

and went scurrying out. closing the door behind her. Elizabeth, however, felt only a swift surge of admiration, and she smiled a little as he walked toward her with those long, easy strides that always looked both certain and relaxed Still clad in the formal black trousers he’d worn, he’d removed his coat, waistcoat, and neckcloth, and his white frilled shirt was open at the neck, revealing the strong, tanned column of his throat. He looked, she thought, as ruggedly virile and elegant in shirtsleeves as in formal attire. In the midst of that, Wordsworth’s accusations slid insidiously through her mind, and Elizabeth thrust them away.

She stood up, self-conscious in her revealing gown, and took a step forward, then stopped, arrested by the spark flaring in those golden eyes as they moved over her body in the revealing gown. Unaccountably wary and shaky, she hastily turned back to the mirror and absently ran a hand over her hair. Ian came up behind her, and his hands settled on her shoulders. In the mirror she watched him bend his dark head, felt his warm lips against the curve of her neck, sending tingling sensations down her neck and arm. “You’re trembling,” he said in the gentlest voice she’d ever heard.

“I know,” she admitted with a nervous tremor in her voice. “I don’t know why.”

His lips curved in a smile. “Don’t you?” he asked softly. Elizabeth shook her head, longing to turn to him and plead with him to tell her what had happened to Robert; afraid to hear his answer; afraid to ruin this night with her suspicions – suspicions she
knew
had to be unfounded. Afraid of what was in store for her in that bed . . .

Unable to tear her gaze from his, Elizabeth watched his hand slide around her waist from behind, pulling her against him until she felt his hard chest against her back, the imprint of his legs against her own. He bent his head again, his arm tightening as he lazily kissed her ear, and his other hand swept up her arm, sliding beneath the satin ribbon at her shoulder, his hand seeking the side of her breast, fingers splaying wide in a bold, possessive caress.

Slowly he turned her in his arms, and then he kissed her again, this time with slow ardor, his hands molding her close, and Elizabeth kissed him back, helplessly caught up in the stirring sensations his kiss always evoked, her arms sliding around his neck to hold him clasped to her . . . and the moment they did, he swung her into his arms, his mouth still claiming hers as he carried her through the doorway and into his spacious suite, where a huge bed stood upon a dais.

Lost in the stormy kiss, Elizabeth felt her legs gliding down his as he gently lowered her against him until her feet touched the floor. But when his fingers pulled at the ribbon that held her gown in place at her shoulder, she jerked free of his kiss, automatically clamping her hand over his. “What are you doing?” she asked in a quaking whisper. His fingers stilled, and Ian lifted his heavy-lidded gaze to hers.

The question took him by surprise, but as he stared into her green eyes Ian saw her apprehension, and he had a good idea what was causing it. “What do you think I’m doing?” he countered cautiously.

She hesitated, as if unwilling even to accuse him of such an unspeakable act, and then she admitted in a small, reluctant voice, “Disrobing me.”

“And that surprises you?”

“Surprises me? Of course it does. Why wouldn’t it?” Elizabeth asked, more suspicious than ever of what Lucinda had told her.

Quietly he said, “What exactly do you know about what takes place between a husband and wife in bed?”

“You-you mean, as it pertains to the ‘creation of children’?” she said, quoting his words to her the day she agreed to become betrothed to him.

He smiled with tender amusement at her phrasing. “I suppose you can call it that – for now.”

“Only what Lucinda told me.” He waited to hear an explanation, and Elizabeth reluctantly added, “She said a husband kisses his wife in bed and that it hurts the first time, and that is how it is done.”

Ian hesitated, angry with himself for not having followed his own instincts and questioned her further when she seemed fully informed and without maidenly qualms about lovemaking. As gently as he could, he said, “You’re a very intelligent young woman, love, not an overly fastidious spinster like your former duenna. Now, do you honestly believe the rules of nature would be completely set aside for people?”

His fingers slipped beneath the satin ribbons that held her shimmering gown on her shoulders, and he eased them off.  Ian felt her tremble beneath his hands, and he put his arms around her, only to have her stiffen more. “I promise you,” he whispered, mentally cursing Lucinda Throckmorton-Jones to perdition, “that you’ll find nothing disgusting about what happens between us in this bed.” Realizing that the suspense was going to be worse than the actuality for her, he leaned down and blew out the candles beside the bed, then eased her satin nightdress off her shoulders. She flinched at his touch, and he sensed the jumbled emotions running through her. Tightening his hands on her shoulders to stop her from pulling away, he said quietly, “If I’d thought for a moment all this was going to come as a surprise, I’d have explained it to you weeks ago.”

Oddly, it meant a great deal to Elizabeth to know that while Lucinda – and everyone else, evidently – had guarded the facts from her, Ian would have trusted her with them. She nodded jerkily and waited in stiff tension while he unfastened her gown and sent it sliding down around her ankles, then she hastily climbed beneath the sheets, trying not to panic.

This was not the way Ian intended his wedding night should be, and as he removed his clothes by the light of the single candle burning across the room, he was determined that it would at least end as he intended. Elizabeth felt the bed sink beneath his weight and drew her whole body into the smallest possible space. He moved onto his side, leaning up on an elbow, and his hand touched her cheek.

When he said nothing Elizabeth opened her eyes, staring straight ahead, and in her agitated state, lying naked next to a man who she knew was undoubtedly naked as well, she was a mass of disjointed emotions. Wordsworth’s warnings tolled in one part of her mind while another part warned her that her own ignorance of the marital act didn’t relieve her of keeping their bargain; she felt tricked somehow, as well.

Lying beside her, Ian put his hand on her arm, his thumb stroking soothingly across her arm, listening to her rapid breathing. She swallowed audibly and said, “I realize now what you expected from your part of the betrothal bargain and what rights I granted you this morning. You must think I am the most ignorant, uninformed female alive not to have known what –”

“Don’t do this, darling!” he said, and Elizabeth heard the urgency in his voice; she felt it as he bent his head and seized her lips in a hard, insistent kiss and did not stop until he drew a response from her. Only then did he speak again, and his voice was low and forceful. “This has nothing to do with rights – not the ones you granted me at our betrothal nor the ones this morning in church. Had we been wed in Scotland, we could have spoken the old vows. Do you know what words, what promises we would have spoken had we been there, not here, this morning?” His hand slid up to her cheek, cupping it as if to soften the effect of his tone, and as Elizabeth gazed at his hard, beloved face in the candlelight her shyness and fears slid away.

“No,” she whispered.

“I would have said to you,” he told her quietly and without shame, “With my body, I thee worship.”

He spoke the words now, as avow, and when Elizabeth realized it, the poignancy of it made her eyes sting with tears. Turning her face into his hand, she kissed his palm, covering his hand with hers, and a groan tore from his chest, his mouth descending on hers in a kiss that was both rough and tender as he parted her lips for the demanding invasion of his tongue. Her arms went around his broad shoulders, and he pulled her against his full length, clasping her against his rigid thighs while his tongue began to plunge into her mouth and then retreat, only to plunge again in an unmistakably suggestive rhythm that made desire streak through Elizabeth as she pressed herself closer.

He rolled her onto her back, his hand sliding caressingly over her breast, possessively cupping its fullness, then teasing her nipple, grazing it lightly, until it stood up proudly against his palm. He lifted his mouth from hers, and Elizabeth felt an aching sense of loss that was replaced by sweet torment as he slid his mouth down her neck to her breasts, nuzzling them slowly for endless moments before his lips closed tightly over her taut nipple. She moaned as he increased the pressure, her hands tangling in his hair, her back arching in helpless surrender, and all the while his hands were sliding and stroking with skillful reverence over her, heating her skin and making her ache with incomprehensible yearnings. He kissed her flat stomach, trailing his lips ever lower, his tongue plunging into her navel, a low laugh coming from his chest when she gasped and gave a leap of surprise; then his hands slid lower, curving around her hips, his lips nuzzling closer to the curly triangle between her legs, deliberately taking his time. Elizabeth belatedly realized what he was going to do and panicked, her hands tightening. He hesitated, and she sensed his reluctance to stop an instant before he ignored her and kissed her there, too, but swiftly. Then he leaned up and over her again, his mouth at last claiming hers in another endless, drugging kiss as he drew her tongue into his mouth and his arms encircled her. She thought he would take her then, but the kiss continued, filled with exquisite promise and wild hunger. Rolling onto his side, he took her with him, his hand gliding down her spine, holding her hips pressed to his, forcing her into vibrant awareness of his raging desire. And then he gentled the pressure against her mouth until he was lightly brushing his parted lips against hers. By the time he lifted his head, Elizabeth’s breathing was shattered, her hands were clutching his shoulders, and her heart was pounding like a maddened thing; again she waited with a mixture of excitement and fear for him to take her. Ian felt her escalating tension, and although he was already desperate for release, be brushed a kiss against her forehead. “Not yet,” he whispered.