The Windflower (55 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Dawn frosted the loft with sun-shot colors that spangled the fragrant rolling surfaces with prisms and sipped night broth from the magenta shadows. Awakening to a gush of hot, voluptuous sensations, Merry felt Devon's warmth beside her, his palm a deep pressure on her breast, kneading, flexing, shaping the full mound that was softly burning under his touch. He had uncovered her to the muted sunlight and to his gaze, and her first memory was of her own flowery wantonness under his hands last night. She whimpered, curling away from him, and sat up with her back to him, the bruised hay snapping under her. Her arms crossed over the blood-hot flesh on her breasts, her hair falling like a crepe lisse curtain between her parted knees.

"What is it, Windflower?" His voice, behind her, was a gentle whisper.

There were any number of things, including the unfamiliar delicacy of her body, holding yet the sweet flavors of his lovemaking; and her diffuse uncertainties about the strength of his love; and her fears about the wisdom of this hurried marriage and . . . and . . .She felt his hands spreading the curls on her neck, uncovering the highest point of her spine. His open mouth slowly brushed her there; his tongue followed in a rough caress, a liquid, tingling circle that sent stinging pricks of pleasure in an aching trail to the base of her spine. She moaned, a deep sigh, and she felt his breath halt and come more quickly on her skin as he heard it.

"I love your pleasure sounds, Merry. I love your voice. 1 love to hear you, husky with wanting me," he whispered.

His fingers were moving on her back, sending cascades of shivers through her, a reminder of the quivering heights he had carried her to. ... One of his hands smoothed over the yearning swell of her hip, while the other courted the vulnerable flesh on her nape, moving under her hair to cup and caress her throat before lazily stroking her mouth with his fingers.

"Open your lips, little one," he murmured into her foaming curls. "Let me . . .yes ..." His thumb dragged across the rise of her lower lip, curving gently inward to the warm and moist interior, his fingers supporting her chin. Then the hand left her face, wandering downward through the lush garden of her hair until his fingers were just below her breast, lifting its softly swelling weight in his curling palm, his thumb pressing upward on her nipple, dewing the hardening, aching flesh with glossy moisture, the wetness easing and deepening the dizzying contact.

"Yes . . . oh, yes, love," he whispered,
"oh, yes,"
as she arched herself against his hand. A slow delicious sweep of movement brought his other hand to her belly, massaging her taut resisting flesh to pliancy. She felt the teasing rise and fall of his breathing on her cheek, the prickling, shifting pressure of his lips tasting the side of her neck, the damp fire of his tongue-stroke on the tip of her ear.

"Come back, my love. Turn back to me." His need for her flamed in the beguiling voice. "You've drawn my image with your clever fingers. Now let me print it on your heart." His breath, a soft exhalation, stirred the curls that hung as a nodding bouquet over her earlobe, sending vivid shock runners to the peaks of her breasts. Cupping the pink crest of her shoulders in his palms, he pressed her backward into the nest of the quilt.

"Lie with me and watch the morning brighten. Lie with me . . ,”His whisper, a heated flush upon her nostrils, carried the fragrance of kitten, of the spicy hay with its complement of wild meadowsweet, of the warm innocent scents of sleep. "Lie still, love. I only want to touch you." His hands moved to her body, a heady, eager exploration of her—her fingers, the structure of her wrists, the highly sensitive skin on the inner bend of her arm, the sturdy muscles of her upper arm, and then outward, over the refinements of her body, turning, stroking, caressing her charming parts, and with as much love, the small imperfections of flesh or form that made her a woman and not a statue or goddess created from mixed colors on a palette. His palms and fingers and lips painted what she was, real and appealing and breathless from the sensual quest of his fingers.

Gasping softly, she whispered, "How s-still do you want me to lie?"

His husky laughter caressed her nipple as his lips came downward to capture it, massaging it in shuddering waves with his tongue, his hair stroking back and forth on the throbbing surface of her breast. Sensitive, experienced fingers coaxed her to fever, contouring the fretting muscles of her thighs, and then shifting, so that his hand lightly cupped the rise of her silky curls, molding her, kneading her to a lavish fiery ecstasy with the flat of his palm. Wet dancing kisses covered her breasts and then found her open, swollen lips, nuzzling them hungrily, roughly, sinking his tongue into the delicious richness of her mouth. Little cries, weak moans wept from her throat. She sought his warmth, her feet burrowing like lithe mice into the quilt to arc herself in heightened closeness to the hands and mouth that were bringing passion to her in spearlike thrusts.

Whispering, "Your breasts are so beautiful. I love to feel the weight of them in my hand ... all down you ... the softness under my tongue . . . here . . . here," he tucked her body beneath him, and the joy of having all his flesh against hers tickled through the eroticized path work of her nerves.

"Devon . . .“ Her voice was almost silence, a dawn-lit breeze upon the leaf of a sweet violet.

Their gazes found each other, the meeting infinitely sweet, yet defocused, a slow unlocking of self to prepare to become one with another, greater self, as though they were twin bright beings melding within the golden streamers of a comet. His mouth hovered barely above hers, absorbing her dreamy breaths, and feeling one catch against his lips at his first light touch inside her softness. With heart-expanding slowness he brought himself fully into her, the entry as deep as he could make it. The pattern of her breath changed against his skin as her swollen lips tightened into a smile that gemmed her eyes with blinding radiance, and it was not the shape and color of her eyes that moved him—those he could hardly see—but their expression. And then even that was lost as the fierce need of his body to have her engulfed every part of his spirit, and it was no longer necessary to look at her expression because they were so wrapped in each other that he could feel every thought, every feeling that sprang from her in colorful word-pictures. The night before, when he had loved her, the experience had been so close to worship that he had hardly seemed to feel his own pleasure, but now his skin and hers were flushed with erotic warmth, and the exquisite fit of their bodies was moistly feverish, and each was learning the serrated cadence of the other's pulse. Under the shower of sprinkling light they moved in primal rhythms, each sensuous flow of motion tender, uniquely human, and loving, until the voluntary matched rhythms of their bodies escaped control, and with rapt blindness, eyes closed, they saw each other only through their senses.

Swan's-wing clouds dappled a turquoise heaven. The autumnal sun smiled on midmorning, and Devon and Merry, preparing to stroll back to Teasel Hill, found that such a simple walk posed all kinds of logistical problems. No matter how lovingly he finger-combed her hair, or with what housewifely briskness she brushed dried hay leaves from his shirt, they were both tousled and untidy, and while they had never looked more beautiful to each other, they bore every obvious evidence of two people in their honey-month who had spent a night of love in a hayloft. The idea of walking through a busy farmyard in her present condition caused Merry a certain anguish, and so the Duke of St. Cyr and his duchess decided there was no choice but to sneak into their own house. They crept along walls fragrant with plump nectarines and peaches, musical with bees. To avoid being seen was everything, and they hid behind oak trees, where acorns fell on them in a pattering shower, and collapsed with silent laughter behind a cider press. Through an open window in the breakfast parlor they made their stealthy entrance to the house and were flying up the staircase together under the quilt, winded and helpless with laughter, when a young parlormaid happened to come into the entrance hall to dust and was so startled to see a lumpy blanket running up the stairs that she shrieked in alarm. Foiled at the eleventh hour, they had to return downstairs to explain and comfort, and Merry learned that yesterday Devon had spoken no less than the truth. At Teasel Hill two shouts brought the household and half the garden staff on the instant.

Merry's aunt and Devon's mother, Aline, arrived at midday in a black and silver phaeton driven by Devon's mother. Was it really Aunt April with her soft hair dressed in fleecy Parisian curls, the carefree bite of autumn in her cheeks, her lilac-colored pelisse giving a lilylike delicacy to her spare frame rather than bluntly exposing it? Merry met her at a run halfway up the fine stone steps of the front porch. They kissed, hugged, smeared each other's cheeks with clear gelatin tears, and buried their running noses, so alike, in linen handkerchiefs. And Devon's mother, a petite figure with golden tendrils falling from her Bibi bonnet over the standing collar of her full blue percale coat, was doing some crying of her own.

The afternoon was for renewing bonds, and for smiling. By bedtime Merry was hoarse, April was hoarse, Aline was hoarse, and Devon said teasingly that his ears were hoarse. April and Devon's mother had heard a carefully sketchy version of Merry's story from Lord Cathcart in London. Merry and Devon embroidered it upon request with details to support its basic fallacious premise: that Devon had rescued Merry from a pair of knaves who had stolen her off the
Guinevere
intending to hold her for ransom. The falsehood was the same one that would be let out to society at large, and it was designed, strangely enough, to protect Merry from the kind of tasteless speculation that the insensitive are likely to inflict on female captives. In protecting Merry the story also couldn't avoid protecting Devon, and for that Lord Cathcart and Devon both had apologized so profusely that Merry had been secretly amused. She might have told her aunt the truth; Devon had left the choice to her, but what would it serve beyond her aunt's suffering? Aunt April had already suffered enough worry. There might be a small part of Merry that was afraid she had not forgiven Devon everything, but she couldn't use her aunt to exact revenge. And when Devon drew her into his bedchamber that night, undressing her in a crystalline fog of moonlight, kissing each revealed part of her and whispering his love, her exalting body had no thoughts of vengeance.

He left her at dawn because, as he had told her the day before, they would be expecting him at Whitehall to explain his copious bundles of reports and the raft of conclusions he'd drawn, which were not likely to be very popular with anyone except General Wellington, who was coming to oppose the American war himself, according to Cathcart. And though Devon did not tell her so, he was seized by a desperation more fierce than any feeling he'd ever known to find Michael Granville and make certain Merry's safety, although he too had lost all thoughts of vengeance. There was a dark sucking spot in his conscience in the place where his hatred for Michael Granville had been, and in it lived the fear that he might lose Merry. On St. Elise when she was ill, he had never believed she would die, no matter what the surface of his logic had told him. He had taken Cat's concoctions to offer his own life for hers, and he had been so clothed in the mantle of self-certainty that afflicted so many of his blood—his father, his grandmother, his half brother—that he had been convinced, truly convinced, that the focus of his will must preserve her life. That blind arrogance stunned him now. What had ever made him think he was more than any othe man?

Last night as she slept he had moved downward in the bed enfold her waist in his arms, catching the downy softness of thighs against his tightening belly, and to lay his cheek carefully on the undercurve of her breast. Drowsiness had begun to drift through the churning excitement of the past few days, but he had kept himself awake, listening to her working heart. Moments had passed in utter peacefulness. Then a nameless dark feeling had crept from the blank folds of night, and the muffled thrum within her chest had taken on a frightening fragileness. His arms had tightened around her, his lips pressing into the musky warmth beneath her breasts, over her heart. He was not a man given to surrender to the morbid fancies of his imagination, and yet a steely coldness crept into his stomach as the macabre idea came to him that she would be taken from him to pay for his brutalities to her. Sleepless, he had sent a barrage of humble prayers spiraling toward heaven, probably to a stern God who was thinking with a twisted smile that it was a long time since he'd heard much from
this
quarter. In the silence of his mind Devon promised, and begged, and pleaded, until the blankness of slumber had overwhelmed him, and he had awoken before sunrise with the vague idea that an exasperated God had heard enough nonsense and put him to sleep.

Waking Merry with gentle kisses on her eyelids, he had made love to her sleepy, hot body, and to her winsome mind, and then left her after another aching kiss. He had stopped once in the airy l>cdchamber where his mother slept, to touch her cheek and smile, seeing that she was chewing on the lace cuff of her nightshirt, remembering his father teasing her about the quaint habit. Thank goodness Cathcart had been here to look after her while he'd been gone. Thinking that never again would he allow another human being to suffer for his own obsessions, Devon left the house, praying that when he returned he would have cured himself of the most dangerous one.

And Merry sat up alone in Devon's wide bed, hugging her knees with naked arms, and began to worry.