The Uncatchable Miss Faversham (28 page)

    She shivered a little in the wind, and his arm came round her shoulder at once. ‘Do you need my coat?’

    A frisson of desire flickered through her at that unexpected contact, and she blushed, sure that everyone must be able to see the heat leap between them – the liveried ostlers, leading the tired horses away to be stabled, the matronly and respectful innkeeper’s wife, holding a lantern aloft to light their way down the draughty passageway into the inn, even the maid coming down the stairs who, seeing Eleanor’s silk gown and lace-trimmed pelisse, gave a little gasp of admiration and stood aside in an alcove, curtseying as though she were the Princess of Wales herself.

    But Nathaniel himself seemed unaware of her body. A muscle jerked in his scarred cheek as he led her upstairs to their bedchamber, nodding curtly to the innkeeper’s wife in the doorway.

    ‘That will be all, Mrs Goodby. We will come down for supper once my wife is adequately rested.’

    With that, he closed the door in the stout woman’s face, and turned to Eleanor, shocking his new bride by sweeping her up in his arms.

    His face very close to hers, Nathaniel embraced her tightly, so tightly and compulsively she could hardly breathe.

    Then his mouth moved down her bared throat, pushing aside the exquisite lace-trimmed pelisse and nuzzling at the expanse of flesh above her breasts.

    Her cheeks flamed with the knowledge that, regardless of what he might feel, she loved this man. Her own emotions were so tangled up, it might take years to unravel them. Not that she cared to make that attempt, preferring to remain his willing captive, even if it meant closing her eyes to any affairs he might have. Her own father had loved her mother deeply, she was sure of it, and yet he had kept a mistress as well.

    Perhaps fidelity was an imposition no good wife should expect of her husband. Could she ever be a good wife, though?

    She gave a little moan, and Nathaniel looked up, searching her face with his hard gaze.

    ‘Would you prefer to rest? Or do you want to make love?’

    By way of answer, her hands dropped awkwardly to the fall of his smart white pantaloons.

    He stood watching her, a fierce light in his eyes. She glanced up shyly, still not quite at ease with this scarred, taciturn man, whose generosity and understanding had so astonished her at the church.

    What did Nathaniel feel for her? Something or nothing? They had spent the night together twice now, yet she knew so little about him.

    He wanted her body, that much was clear, for his erection strained at the fine material of his pantaloons, thwarting her efforts to free it. Yet could he ever love her?

    ‘Nell …’

    ‘I have it,’ she muttered, sliding her hand inside his pantaloons and feeling his warm erection jerk against her hand. She heard his sharp intake of breath close to her face. ‘There.’

    His hand stilled hers. ‘Wait,’ he said huskily. ‘There is something I must say first, Nell. I need to apologise to you. I’ve been a crass fool. First, I misunderstood your hesitation over marrying me, and never thought to seek you out in London and pursue my suit. If I had, we might have been married five years ago. Instead, I listened to malicious gossip about your flirtatious ways, and believed every word of it. Never mind that it flew in the face of everything I knew about you. I was so filled with self-loathing, with hateful memories of the past, I allowed my own fears to dictate ... ’

    She saw his throat move convulsively, and laid a finger on his lips. ‘Hush,’ she said softly. ‘It’s not important now.’

    ‘Yes, it is,’ he said doggedly. ‘I must explain. I must wipe the slate clean, not begin our married life together with these questions still hanging above us. Ever since Spain, I’ve not been ... a whole man. The bloodshed I saw there, what I experienced in the streets of Corunna, it left a mark on me forever. In my nightmares, I constantly relive those last few days in Spain. I remember ... ’

    Eleanor nodded as he stopped short, swallowing the words before he could voice them. She tried hard to imagine how it must have been for her husband, out there on the war-torn Peninsular. She had never been on a battlefield and hoped she never would be. But the horror of it, the bloody destruction, that was something she could at least attempt to envisage. ‘The young woman who died in your arms, is that who you see in your nightmares?’

    ‘Yes,’ he whispered.

    She kissed him, and her hand stroked him gently again, hoping to remind him that he was still very much alive – and a whole man, contrary to his fears.

    ‘You could not have saved her, Nathaniel,’ she murmured reassuringly. ‘You said it yourself. There was nothing you could have done better that day. Her wound was mortal.’

    There was agony in his face now, the faint glimmer of unshed tears in his eyes. Nathaniel turned his scarred face away, laid his cheek on her shoulder, and she knew a wave of compassion that nearly made her cry herself. ‘But it was such a waste of her life, a waste of all her beauty and courage. And for what? The English failed her. I failed her.’

    ‘She would not have considered her death a waste though, surely?’ Eleanor asked, frowning. ‘Nor should you mourn it as such. You told me the girl was shot while fighting the French. So her life was a sacrifice she made willingly for Spain. How many men died that day in Corunna? How many were wounded and still bear the scars of that battle, as you do? Why is it more of a waste for a woman to die defending her country than when a man does the same? It’s not wrong to mourn that Spanish girl, but it is wrong to look on her death as a waste, as a failure on your part to defend her town. You did what you had to do, to the best of your ability, and she did the same. Fate was less kind to her that day than it was to you, that’s all.’

    Nathaniel lifted his head to stare at her, and ran the back of his hand across his eyes. His laugh was short and hoarse. ‘Your ideas are so revolutionary, Nell,’ he exclaimed. ‘I can see that I shall have to be careful whom I invite to dinner, lest your ideas get out into polite society and we end up like the French.’

    She smiled, and her hand grew bolder. ‘I love you,’ she said simply. ‘You are my husband ... and my equal.’

    With a groan, Nathaniel flung her backwards onto the bed, and lifted the silk skirts of her gown with little regard for the flimsy material. He stroked up her stockinged thighs, quickly finding her uncovered sex, its pouting lips already moist with longing. His fingers teased her open, expertly manipulating the tiny hidden nub of flesh there until she hissed and cried out, twisting into the soft white bolster, her face burning.

    Then, to her astonishment, he dipped his head and she felt his mouth claim her, playing the tender flesh with his lips and darting tongue, even the tiniest nip of his teeth.

    ‘No, no,’ she moaned, but he did not stop, his muffled laughter seeming to suggest that what she really meant was ‘Yes, yes!’

    Lord help me, she thought, unable to believe that what he was doing could possibly be legal. Surely … surely other husbands did not perform this intimate act with their wives? And yet it was both so exquisitely painful and delicious, she could not bear for him to stop.

    Her hands clenched tight on the thick coverlets, she shut her eyes against the blurred drapery of the bed’s four-poster canopy, trying not to shout out her pleasure for everyone in the hostelry to hear. Instead, she panted, and urged her husband on with aching little shrugs of her hips, pushing up into his clever, clever mouth.

    There was a crash as her foot, flailing wildly, caught the travelling case one of the maids had arranged at the foot of their bed and sent it flying.

    Her cheeks burnt with shame, but Nathaniel only laughed again. Nor did he stop, dropping to his knees on the floor instead and dragging her after him, further and further, until her hips were on the edge of the bed and her stockinged legs dangled down, pushed wantonly apart.

    ‘Nathaniel,’ she managed, but got no further, utterly forgetting what she had intended to say, her heart galloping in her chest.

    Hidden beneath her skirts, his lips and tongue continued to play her until she was beyond speech, her face obscured by the pushed-up folds of her gown, deeply flushed.

    When she reached her second climax, biting back a scream of pleasure by burying her over-heated face in the covers, he pulled her rapidly back to her feet.

    ‘Come,’ he breathed, his own face tense, his scar more livid than ever, drawing her across the bedchamber.

    Nathaniel threw himself down into the large armchair beside the unlit hearth, and lowered her onto his lap. His erection still jutted powerfully from his pantaloons, for he had not bothered to undress any further, unashamedly prominent below the white formality of his shirt and elegant cravat.

    ‘Here,’ he whispered in her ear, using his fingers to ready her. She moaned with helpless desire as his hands pulled her urgently onto his exposed shaft, positioning her thighs on either side of his knees, new silk stockings rolled wantonly to her ankles, her gown pushed up around her waist.

    All inhibitions lost, Eleanor rode her bridegroom in a reckless fever, her bodice dragged down to expose her breasts, his lips fastened about one pert and aching pink nipple.

    ‘You want this, Nell?’ he demanded roughly, raising his head to stare up into her face. ‘Tell me you want me!’

    ‘I want you,’ she gasped, and gripped his shoulders as Nathaniel suddenly shifted, using his knees to increase the pace, his head thrown back, dark eyes half-closed, yet their expression intent, utterly focused on her body atop of him.

    ‘My wanton bride.’

    ‘Only for you,’ she groaned, tearing loose his cravat to kiss his strong throat. She could not bear there to be any barriers between them, not now they were husband and wife. ‘I don’t just want you. I
love
you, Nathaniel. All these years, while the young men laughed and called me the Uncatchable, you’re all I ever thought about. You’re the only man I dreamt about when I was lying alone in my bed.’

    ‘Then why refuse to marry me for so long, my sweet tormenter?’

    His hand had tangled in her chestnut hair, pulling free the pins and yellow ribbon which had bound it so tightly in its demure chignon. She heard the raw edge of pain in his voice and shivered, not daring to meet his eyes.

    ‘If you love me, and always did,’ he asked, ‘why give yourself to me that first time and then run away to London? ’

    ‘I was too young.’ She hid her face in his throat. ‘I was afraid.’

    Nathaniel’s throat convulsed against her mouth, and his hands pushed her away, searching her face. ‘Of what? Of this?’ He indicated his scarred cheek, eyes hard as agates. ‘Were you afraid to live with such an ogre?’

    ‘No, no,’ she insisted, running her fingers over the raised livid edges of his scars. ‘I could never think that. Have never thought it.’

    ‘Tell me, then,’ he said intensely, stilling her fingers with his own, examining her face as though he had never seen it before. ‘I must hear this out, Nell. I want to understand.’

    ‘I was afraid to sell myself into marriage,’ she whispered. ‘I wasn’t ready to be a wife at eighteen, to hand over my body and my fortune to a man I barely knew, and bow to his will for the rest of my life. Your sex holds all the cards where marriage is concerned, Nathaniel. That’s why you had that agreement drawn up, wasn’t it? To make this a marriage of equals, if only financially.’ Eleanor hugged herself to him, still very aware of his hard body beneath her. ‘I did love you when I was eighteen, Nathaniel. But now I love you as a woman, with all my heart and soul. And I married you before I knew about that agreement, remember?’

    ‘I know,’ he admitted, and a wry smile flickered about his mouth. ‘But I had to be certain, you understand? I had to be sure you would be willing to give yourself to me completely, despite everything Louisa had told me.’

    ‘And what did she tell you?’

    He laughed, hearing the sharp whip of jealousy in her voice. ‘Only the truth. That I was a fool even to doubt your feelings.’

    ‘Go on,’ she prompted him when he paused, frowning.

    ‘No, it’s nothing.’

    Pulling aside his shirt without ceremony, she lowered her mouth to his chest, licking and flicking his skin with her tongue until he groaned, shifting urgently below her body.

    ‘Tell me the rest!’

    He half-laughed, half-groaned, stroking his hands down her back in the loose silk gown. ‘You wanton tease! Very well, your intelligent friend Louisa pointed out that you were the one who insisted I come up to your room after the theatre, even though you must have known the danger. She said the maid always comes in to open your curtains and offer you coffee at the same hour each morning, and that you had deliberately allowed me to stay overnight, knowing that a matrimony would be forced upon you once we were discovered together.’

    Her cheeks hot with shame at such an accusation, Eleanor shook her head. ‘We fell asleep, how could it have been helped?’

    ‘Deny it all you like. But this makes more sense. You wanted to marry me, but did not wish to admit it openly.’ He shrugged, secretly entertained by the flare of anger in her eyes. ‘Hence your staged discovery of our indiscretion.’

    ‘How dare you insinuate that I wished to be found out and shamed?’ She stopped, seeing his smile. ‘Oh, you beast! You’re teasing me!’

    ‘Only in part,’ Nathaniel admitted. He drew her closer, slipping his hands along her thighs with a groan of pleasure. ‘But now that I’ve done teasing you, perhaps you will stop teasing me. I love you, my beautiful bride, and am still a little dazed that you finally stopped running. But we have been married nigh on ten hours, my love. It is nearly night and our marriage is not yet consummated.’

    ‘Then we had better rectify the situation,’ she murmured, secretly thrilled at the words ‘my love’ on his tongue. She shifted against him, her body deliciously alert to his slightest movement. Pressing her lips to his mouth, she reminded him of what they had been doing before he began this conversation.