Annie Burrows (15 page)

It was prolonging her pleasure. A glorious, warm extension of what they’d just shared.

Until he ran his free hand down her back, cupped one buttock and began to squeeze it rhythmically.

‘N-no...’

He lifted his head, a frown creasing his brow.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m getting...you are making me...’

He grinned that wicked grin again.

‘That is the whole point.’

‘But...’

To answer her confusion, he let go of her bottom, took her hand and drew it down to his groin.

She gasped. He was...

‘Again?’

He nodded.

‘And this time,’ he growled, ‘we can take it slowly.’

And they did. Side by side they lay in that narrow bed, legs entwined, kissing and touching languorously. Until mounting desperation had her clawing at him for closer contact, harder touches, deeper kisses.

‘Now...please,’ she breathed into his mouth, willing to let him flip her on to her back, this time, if he wanted, just so long as he would stop the slow, aching torment and give her the release she craved.

Instead, he rolled on to his own back, pulling her on top again.

Only this time he didn’t let her have it all her own way. He caressed her hips, ran his hands up her waist and tilted to one side so he could cup one breast. Then half-sat, pulling her forwards so that he could flick his tongue over her nipples.

In this position she could rock herself to orgasm in seconds. But then it would be over. And she didn’t want this to end.

So she tried to calm down. Relax the inner muscles that were straining and clenching.

But her heart was pounding so hard, and his hands and mouth were working her so relentlessly that she couldn’t seem to stop. Her hips ground against him. She arched back, increasing the pressure.

And a second orgasm took hold of her and flung her to the stars.

He seized her by the back of her neck, dragging her down and smothering the strangled cry that tore from her throat, with a wild and masterful kiss.

And she collapsed on to him again, trembling like a leaf.

He stroked her back, soothed her with gentle kisses. And only when she’d stopped shaking did he deftly flip them both over, reversing their positions.

Mentally she braced herself for him to pound to a swift release while she still floated in the warm aftermath.

Instead, he entered her slowly, and began to rotate his hips gently, insistently rocking against her most sensitive spot. Deliberately attempting to stimulate her again.

‘I can’t,’ she protested. She could not believe she’d just had two orgasms in such rapid succession. It was surely impossible to reach such heights a third time.

He just smiled against her throat and kept right on doing what he was doing.

And in spite of thinking it was impossible, her inner muscles twitched, and came back to life. Her hips instinctively undulated to match the rhythm of his own.

He shuddered, and when she looked into his face she could see he was gritting his teeth. He was deliberately holding back, waiting for her.

Time after time he almost came to the brink and had to slow down. She could only marvel at his self-control. He clearly intended to hold back until he made her come again. No matter how long it took.

By the time she was teetering on the brink of yet another orgasm, every muscle in her body was straining to bring her to release, while he was quivering with the effort it was taking him not to. Her inner thighs ached, her buttocks ached. She was becoming exhausted. She didn’t think she was going to be able to keep going long enough to get there.

But then he reached down between their two sweat-slicked bodies and found that sweet spot. With a few deft strokes he pushed her straight over the edge and she was falling, falling, and yet climbing, oh, she was flying into white-hot oblivion.

And he was flying there with her. Shuddering and pulsing and burying his face into the pillow to stifle his groan of bliss.

When she came to herself, it felt as though all her bones had melted in that last conflagration. He didn’t seem to have fared any better. For a while, they both lay fused together in mutual satiation. Panting for breath, while their heartbeats thundered through their lax limbs.

And a great swell of emotion brought tears to her eyes. It was no longer possible to block out what she felt for this man, not after what they’d just shared. No wonder she’d exploded with rapture the moment she’d taken his body into hers. She had not just been waiting for the moment for one afternoon, but for eight long, lonely years.

She’d wanted him with every fibre of her being when she’d been a shy and insecure young débutante. Every bit as much as she’d wanted him when she saw him again as a mature and sexually experienced woman. The intervening years might as well have not happened for all the difference they made to how she felt about him.

How she would probably always feel about him.

One large fat tear ran down her cheek and into her ear.

For eight long years she’d been telling herself she didn’t love him. That her heart had not been broken when his disappearance had given her no choice but to marry another man. But now she knew better. The sex could not have been so spectacular if she did not love him.

She, more than anyone, knew the difference between a mechanical coupling, designed to sate a physical appetite, and an act of love. And she had just given herself to Lord Rothersthorpe heart and soul.

As for him...

He’d made no secret of the fact that he wanted her. But it was only in a physical sense. He could not have exerted such self-control if she, if this, had meant anything very much to him.

While she had made love, for the very first time in her life, he had just enjoyed a satisfying sexual encounter.

It no longer felt like glorious closeness, to have him lying on top of her like that, now she’d faced up to the fact that they were both in such very different frames of mind.

‘Will you please get off me now?’ She had to get out of here, swiftly. She couldn’t bear it if he initiated the kind of sophisticated, post-coital conversation she imagined men conducted with their paramours.

He did not respond. His face was buried in her neck, his arms holding her tight, even though he appeared to be only semi-conscious.

She pushed at his shoulders.

‘You are crushing me.’

He sucked in a sharp breath. Every muscle in his body tensed.

‘How appallingly ill mannered of me,’ he drawled, sliding to one side. He kept one arm draped over her waist, leaned up on one elbow, and looked down at her, his expression sardonic.

Just as she’d feared.

With a determined grimace, she pushed his arm aside and swung her legs over the edge of the bed.

For a moment, she went a bit light-headed, and had to sit still until the feeling passed.

He took advantage of her momentary weakness to trail one finger lightly down her spine.

‘I wonder at you putting me in a single bed. It would have been more pleasant to lie for a while in comfort after—’

‘That was nothing to do with me,’ she snapped, getting to her feet. She felt so naked and not just physically, but emotionally, somehow. If she wasn’t careful, he would guess how much this had meant to her. And he...

She shook her head. She didn’t know how he would react, exactly. Except that it would mean humiliation for her, in one form or another.

But at least she could set him straight about one thing. She had not been as desperate to take him as a lover as he’d assumed, with his typical, monumental, masculine arrogance.

‘In fact,’ she blurted over her shoulder as she went to retrieve her nightgown, ‘it was not I who invited you down here at all.’

‘What do you mean? You sent me that note...’

‘
Rose
sent you that note,’ she retorted, shaking her gown out and slipping it over her head. She felt better for having the barrier between them. Flimsy silk it might be, but at least it shielded her to some extent.

‘And before you ask, I am quite sure,’ she said, bending to pick up her dressing gown, ‘that it was not so that we could embark on an affair.’

He was still propped up on one elbow, his face set in a scowl.

‘When I arrived,’ he said slowly, ‘you...’

‘You assumed I was a wanton widow, ripe for an affair,’ she said bitterly.

‘Well, if that performance was anything to go by,’ he said mockingly, ‘I was correct.’

He might as well have slapped her.

Thanking heaven that she’d got dressed so quickly, she marched to the door and went straight out.

‘Lydia! Wait!’

He hadn’t shouted. It had been more of an urgent hiss. She noticed him frantically attempting to fight free of the tangled sheets as she turned and shut the door on him, but she did not even think about waiting to hear what else he had to say.

She just went striding down the corridor. Away from him.

Tears streaming down her face.

Chapter Ten

T
here was no fathoming the riddle that was Lydia Morgan. And there was no point in trying. This was, after all, just a brief affair, on which he’d embarked to purge himself of her, once and for all.

And if last night had left him longing for more, well, that was no bad thing. On the contrary, it would have made staying here deuced awkward if he’d felt reluctant to have her back in his bed again.

Nicholas took one last look at himself in the mirror to check that his face revealed nothing of the turbulence coursing through his mind. He was going to have to greet Lydia in a few moments, over the breakfast cups, without raising suspicions about what they’d become to each other, to any of the other guests.

So the last thing he should be doing was dwelling on the way she’d discarded her clothing so impatiently, before fulfilling every fantasy he’d ever had. Or how she’d looked like a goddess, her limbs bathed in moonlight as she’d stalked imperiously to his bed. How it had all seemed more like a dream than anything he’d ever experienced.

Until the end. When they’d descended into bickering over...well, he still wasn’t sure quite what.

He tugged his waistcoat down, strode to the door and snatched it open. That was what he should be remembering when he next looked at her. The disappointment—nay, the rancour of their parting. That would give him a demeanour totally suitable for a public breakfast table.

It had been so typical of Lydia. If anyone had the right to feel annoyed, surely it was he? For the way she’d pushed him aside when she’d had enough of him, for one thing. Just as she had all those years ago. She’d used him to keep her spirits up while she’d been husband-hunting, but actually
marry
him? Oh, no. And he might be good for a romp, but actually
feel
anything? Not she.

He grimaced. That very prosaic little voice, complaining he was crushing her, had brought him back down to earth with a bump, and just as well, too, or heaven alone knew what he might have said, or done. For it hadn’t been tenderness he’d thought he’d detected under all those passionate kisses at all. He’d seen, and only just in time, that she had not been making frantic love to him at all. That she was nothing more than a sex-starved widow, revelling in finally getting her hands on a firm, young male body.

A bitter smile curved his lips as he descended the stairs to the main part of the house. He’d exceeded all her expectations, to judge by the shocked look on her face when he’d started taking her for the second time. Oh, yes, he’d given her a night to remember, all right. And the irony was that if only she hadn’t dismissed his proposal out of hand they could have had eight years of nights like that one.

So what had she meant by her parting shot about not having invited him down here? Why was she claiming Rose had been the one to send that invitation at dead of night? And why had she seemed so upset when she left? If he didn’t know her better, if he hadn’t already worked out that she was using him, he might have gone back to wondering if he held a special place in her heart. He’d already considered that might account for her apparent shyness when he arrived and her spectacular about-face after he’d kissed her.

And the expression on her face when they’d been making love.

Ah, damn! He was right back where he’d started. Trying to understand her. Wanting her to
feel
something for him. When what he should be doing was just thanking his lucky stars that she was so spectacularly uninhibited in bed.

He scowled impartially round all the people already assembled at the breakfast table. Though he didn’t suppose they noticed. Most of them were clustered at the far end, near Rose, chattering away like a flock of starlings.

He pulled out a chair next to Lydia, who was staring fixedly at her plate, a blush mounting to her cheeks.

It was a wonder she could blush—a woman who could behave like
that
even if it was in the privacy of a darkened bedroom.

‘Coffee, tea or ale, sir?’ The deferential tones of one of her footmen jolted him from his torrid memories of the apparently demure woman sitting by his side and forced him to speak.

‘Ale,’ he grunted.

Lydia was breathing hard. And trembling just a little. Dammit, now he felt all...protective towards her. He could see she had no idea how to conduct herself with him in front of others, after being intimate with him. She’d never taken a lover before. She didn’t know how the game was played.

It was up to him to lead the way.

‘You should bid me good morning,’ he said softly. ‘And enquire how I slept, just as though you had no idea I was not alone.’

‘Anything else I have done wrong?’ she replied, going from demure and bashful to waspish in the blink of an eye. ‘From the look on your face as you came in, it is quite obvious you are nursing some kind of grievance.’

‘If I have a complaint,’ he replied, stung by her ingratitude, when he was only trying to make things easier for her, ‘it is...that my bed is too narrow. I found it rather...restricting.’

Her face turned scarlet.

‘However,’ he continued, nodding his thanks to the footman who’d just deposited a tankard of ale by his plate, ‘I have decided to look upon it as a challenge. I intend to spend the day,’ he said in a deliberately provocative tone, ‘thinking up ways to compensate for its limitations.’

She gasped and hastily set her cup down in its saucer before she slopped it all down the front of her dress.

‘In fact, I am really looking forward to the night and exploring new possibilities.’

For a moment she looked as though she couldn’t decide whether to run out of the room, throw her coffee in his face, or crawl into his lap and start exploring possibilities right now.

In short, he’d succeeded in reducing her to the state she always got him into, whenever they got within five feet of each other.

His mood much improved, he took a long, satisfying pull from his tankard.

She picked up her knife, sliced off a hefty chunk of butter and slapped it onto her toast.

He sighed. It was all very well scoring points off her, but it would not make conducting this affair any easier. It would be wiser to smooth her ruffled feathers by finding out what had provoked her ill humour with him the night before and putting it right. If he could.

‘One possibility,’ he began tentatively, ‘would be to avoid turning our time together into another battle.’

White knuckled, she tore her toast in the attempt to spread her butter evenly.

‘Please believe me when I tell you that I regret the way we parted,’ he said. ‘I do not know what it was I said, or did, to anger you, but whatever it was, can you not forgive me for it?’

She glanced at him, suspiciously, out of the corner of her eye, and seemed to come to a decision as she reached for a pot of jam.

‘Of course I forgive you, my lord.’

Which was not good enough. Nowhere near good enough. Not when she bit the words out between clenched teeth.

‘Yes, but what for? Why were you so upset?’

‘Because I had attached far too much importance to the event,’ she snapped, then bowed her head, as though regretting her outburst.

‘It is entirely my own fault...’ she sighed ‘...that you spoke as you did. I had no right to feel that you were insulting me.’

‘Insulting you? How? I assure you, I never meant...’

‘I...I know. Afterwards, I realised that you acted and spoke as you did because you came here looking for an uncomplicated affair with a woman you thought was experienced and...sophisticated. I should have told you, the moment you told me you thought I had sent you that invitation, and for what purpose, that I am not that kind of woman.’ She dropped a dollop of jam on to her mangled slice of toast. ‘But you are never going to believe that now, not after the way I...’

‘Do you regret...what we did?’ His heart thumped painfully fast. ‘Do you wish to discontinue our...?’

She’d been about to replace the spoon in the jam pot. His question appeared to startle her so much she dropped it on to the tablecloth.

‘No,’ she hissed, frantically scooping up the worst of the spill and tapping it from the spoon on to a side plate. ‘I suppose I should,’ she added almost mournfully. ‘But it seems that when it comes to you, I just cannot help myself.’

The sense of relief made him quite light-headed for a moment.

‘But something about...us...distresses you. Won’t you tell me what it is?’

She shook her head. ‘This is hardly a fit topic for the breakfast table. Anyone might overhear.’

So there was something. And heaven help him, but he wanted to know what it was. His heart had leapt when she said she’d attached too much importance to the event. Which might mean she did feel
something
for him.

Or perhaps it was only that she was irritated about losing control. There had been more than a touch of exasperation about the way she’d said she couldn’t help herself...

‘Come for a walk with me. A ride with me.’

‘No. I have my duties.’

He seized her hand when she waved it towards the young people at the other end of the table.

‘Stop this, Lydia. We need to talk to each other. I need to understand you.’ If only he could get to the heart of her mystery, perhaps her hold over him would slacken. She would no longer tantalise him, drive him to distraction, once he could see her as just a woman, like any other. Not that he would tell her that. So instead he added, ‘So that we won’t ruin this short time together by quarrelling so often.’

He was shocked to see something very much like torment in her eyes.

‘What have I said now?’

But before she could answer him, Robert came in. He glanced round the table, taking in Rose sitting in state amidst her courtiers, and then, with a narrowing of the eyes, Lord Rothersthorpe’s hand on Lydia’s wrist.

With a rueful grimace, he let go, wondering how on earth he would explain
that
to her stepson, should he choose to take issue with him.

But then, fortunately for all concerned, Michael came skipping in, ran straight up to Lydia and flung his arms round her neck.

She rested her cheek on his hair, closed her eyes and appeared to breathe him in.

It was such an entirely instinctive reaction that he had the sense that for the very first time he was seeing a side to Lydia that she did not have to fabricate. She was, without doubt, a mother who loved her son.

But what else was she, that was the question? Every time he thought he caught a glimpse of the real woman, she turned into something else, right before his eyes. It was like being led across marshland by a will-o’-the-wisp. She shimmered, she tantalised, she beckoned to him, but remained always just out of reach.

Was that the secret of her fascination? If so, then getting to know her well would definitely ensure her power over him would cease.

But then Robert drew up a chair beside him, putting an end to any chance of talking freely.

Or of arranging a private meeting during the day, so that they could just talk and break the spell she invariably cast over him.

* * *

But she was in no hurry to set him free. As was the way with house parties, everyone dispersed after breakfast to amuse themselves according to their tastes. Lydia let him catch glimpses of her, flitting from one group to another, or disappearing through a plain door that led to the kitchens and staff quarters. But not once could he catch her alone.

* * *

Not even at lunch, where she monopolised the earnest young son of the local vicar, who came in daily to tutor Michael, and, if his ears did not deceive him, Cissy too. She used the excuse of her prolonged absence to demand a progress report.

Eventually, though, the tutor made his excuses and left. Lord Rothersthorpe was just about to take the vacant place at her side when Robert got to his feet and tapped a spoon on his glass to attract everyone’s attention.

‘It looks as though it is going to be a lovely afternoon,’ Robert said. ‘So I thought we could make the most of the gardens.’

There was a general murmur of assent.

Michael went to his side and tugged at his sleeve. Robert bent down and Michael whispered something in his ear.

‘That is a grand idea. Ladies, gentlemen, Michael would very much like to invite you to a game of crickers on the orangery lawn.’

‘Crickers? What is that?’ Mr Bentley strolled over and ruffled Michael’s hair.

Michael ducked away from the over-friendly hand of Mr Bentley, a scowl which made him look very much like his older brother darkening his countenance.

‘It is a game we have adapted to suit the shape and size of the lawn hard by the orangery,’ said Robert. ‘Not quite cricket, though we do use stumps, and not quite rounders, though the players of each team guard their bases.’

‘Oh, yes, that would be such fun,’ cried Rose, going to his side and swiftly flicking Michael’s disordered hair back into place. ‘And Michael, of course, must be captain of one of the teams.’

Rose’s suitors fell into line at once, declaring that it did indeed sound like capital fun. After a surreptitious dig in the side from her brother’s elbow, even Lord Abergele’s sister adopted a patronising smile and declared she didn’t mind humouring the children.

‘Marigold, I think you had better be the captain of the other team,’ Rose declared.

Lord Rothersthorpe bit back a smile as the sixteen-year-old struggled between worry that the haughty baronet’s sister would regard her as childish and delight at being about to play what was clearly a favourite game. And being captain of a team to boot.

Delight took precedence as Robert tossed a coin and the two captains began to pick their teams.

Michael, having won the toss, got first choice. He chose Cissy, which was very noble of him since the girl was not likely to be much of an asset. Marigold showed no such sentiment. She chose her own brother Robert, then himself, Lieutenant Smollet, the Prince of Pickles—who’d been known as George Lutterworth when he’d entered this rather eccentric household—and finally had to accept Lutterworth’s bespectacled sister Cynthia, since she was the last person left.