She couldn’t help but notice that he hadn’t mentioned the powerful connection the place must hold with Lavinia, and her uncertainty must have been written on her face, because he said, ‘I didn’t find Thornfalcon haunted by Lavinia when I went back, rather to my surprise. My mother had the tact to make sure that I did not occupy Ambrose’s chamber, and… does it make sense to say that my youthful feelings for her seem very distant from me now? Perhaps because I was away so long – almost eight years! – and I came back as a different person. A man, not a boy, and more importantly, a soldier. I may have little faith in my current knowledge of the running of the estate, but I am sure that I can learn, and my military career has given me great confidence in my ability to manage people, which is more than half the battle. If I had ever seen Lavinia there as Ambrose’s wife, or mistress of the house, it might have been different, but I never did. And if you are worried about taking her place, my love, you should be aware that the servants never cared for her – I had not realised quite how much until Pennyfeather told me. But the last thing in the world I want is to make you uncomfortable, least of all on our honeymoon. There must be dozens of other places we could go. Wyverne, even – it’s your home, and it’s much closer and easier to get to. I am sure there might be a corner found for us in such a palace.’
Amelia smiled, but said, ‘It’s not really my home, you know, Marcus. I was born there, but I don’t have any memory of living there as a child. My mother died when I was small, and my Aunt Jemima came and took Charlie and me away to live with her and her own children, outside St Albans in Hertfordshire. My Aunt Keswick’s home is nearby, so we were a great group of cousins all quite close in age, and spent most of our time together, including our lessons. We lived there happily till Aunt Jemima died and my uncle quickly remarried. His new wife made it quite clear that she did not want a houseful of great overgrown children, some of whom who were not even his. Then we went to live with Rafe, because by then he was old enough to take care of us, but at his own small home, not at Wyverne, where my father was. I’d barely been there at all until two years ago, and it holds no special significance for me. We used to sneak in like a pack of thieves sometimes when my father and Rosanna were away, to visit my grandmother in secret – can you imagine how ridiculous?’
He was looking at her with sympathy and understanding. ‘You haven’t really had one settled home in your life, then?’
‘No, although for the last few years, my home, and Charlie’s, has been wherever Rafe was. I don’t think my experience has been all that unusual. So many people I know have parents who remarry, or have grown up as orphans, passed between relatives. But if you had been thinking that I grew up in the grandeur of Wyverne and expected to be in charge of such a palace when I married, that’s not the case at all. I’ve almost always lived in much smaller places. And yes, I would like a home of my own at last. My portion is all invested in the Funds, and does not include any property.’
‘That I can give you. A home that is yours. Do you think, then, that you would be content to go to Thornfalcon? Or would you like to think about it for a while, and consider other alternatives?’
She shook her head. ‘If we are to be married on Tuesday, I had better not think about it for very long!’
Marcus laughed. ‘You are a constant delight to me. My dear, you are right in all you say – we shall be obliged to spend a good part of our year at Thornfalcon. It would be idle to pretend that we shall not. Now that I have resigned my commission, as in all honesty I should have done a good while ago when Ambrose died, the care of the place is my job. I cannot be sitting idle when there is work to be done and nobody else to do it. But that doesn’t mean we need to go there now.’
‘I would like to, I think,’ she said slowly. ‘I want to be with you, and I want it to feel… permanent. However happy we might be in some other place, it can only be an interlude, and not our real life. I would like our real life to begin, far away from all this gossip and scandal and deception.’
‘So would I,’ he said. ‘My darling, so would I.’
EPILOGUE
The wedding was small and private in the end – a rather subdued but valiant best man in the shape of Mr Gastrell, both families, and Lady Keswick and her adult children. They held a wedding breakfast in Brook Street, so that the Dowager Lady Wyverne was able to attend and still retire when she grew weary. But she was on exceptional form that day. ‘Oh, if I had met you eighty years ago,’ she told Marcus with a completely straight face, ‘I would have cut the child out and won you for myself, I promise you!’
‘I take that as a great compliment, Madame La Marquise,’ was his grave reply.
‘So you should!’
The couple spent their first night together in Half-Moon Street, rather than in an inn upon the road, which must be less comfortable as a beginning to their married life. Amelia remembered little of her first hours in her new home afterwards; she could not take her eyes from Marcus. She had drunk a glass or two of wine in celebration, but he was her intoxication, not the champagne. At last they could be entirely private, naked in a bed without fear of interruption. It was of course not the first time they had touched each other, not the first time they had given each other pleasure, but it was the first time Amelia had welcomed Marcus into her body in the ultimate intimacy. She was glad, afterwards, drowsing in his embrace, that any discomfort or awkwardness they may have felt was momentary, because of the knowledge they were already gaining of each other. And much more important was the fact that at last they could fall asleep in each other’s arms, and wake together, and reach out again in mutual desire and need.
They left early the next morning, though not perhaps quite as early as they had originally intended, stopping that night at the Castle and Ball in Marlborough, taking up where they had left off. Another early start, and now in the late afternoon, their chaise had turned off the post road to Taunton along the lane that led towards the house. The heavier, slower vehicle with Amelia’s maid, Marcus’s valet and all the luggage had kept pace with them to Marlborough, but today, they had outdistanced it.
They’d been passing along a tall, well-maintained sandstone wall on their right for several minutes, and Marcus had told Amelia that this was the southern boundary of the Thornfalcon park, though many of the farms belonging to the estate lay on the other side of the road. At last, the wall fell back to create a wide, gravelled space, which led up to a pair of Jacobean gatehouses and a set of elaborate, wrought-iron gates. Amelia swallowed and smoothed down the skirts of her smartest amaranth pelisse, feeling ridiculously nervous suddenly, and Marcus squeezed her hand in silent sympathy.
There was no need for the coachman to blow his yard of tin officiously, or get down and seek admission; they’d clearly been looked out for, and the gates were swinging open as they drew up to them. A man, a woman and a group of rosy-cheeked children had spilled out of the right-hand gatehouse, and Marcus leaned out to greet them all by name and introduce Amelia to them. But it was a brief pause; soon they were moving along a winding, tree-lined drive cast into dappled shadow by the boughs that arched and met above the carriage.
‘I’m so glad to be coming home with you,’ he said, still holding her hand tightly, his voice a little rough with emotion.
The chaise crested a low hill, and the trees gave way to open parkland that rolled gently down into a shallow valley and then rose again to where the house stood, backed by more woodland. It was, as Marcus had said, low and rambling, its roofline an irregular jumble of chimneys. The central portion was Jacobean, like the lodge houses, and the wings on either side more modern in appearance, though she knew that much of that was mere façade, and some parts of the building behind it were medieval. Sections of the stone walls were covered in climbing vines which had been clipped into shape around the mullioned windows, and great swags of yellow and white roses in full bloom. It was much less grand than Wyverne, and because of it, much more immediately welcoming and homely. The many panes of old glass in the irregular-sized windows caught the sinking sun and threw back flame.
‘Home,’ Marcus said, a wealth of emotion in his voice.
The carriage passed under an elaborate central archway and into a stone-flagged courtyard heady with the scent of more roses. ‘We don’t normally make such a grand performance of merely driving home,’ he told her. ‘There is a more convenient modern entrance to the coach house and stables at the back, which is in general use. This is all done in your honour, my love.’
Amelia saw that what she presumed to be the whole household staff had come out to greet her. Marcus handed her down from the carriage and once more, she heard a flurry of names and saw the faces that went with them. But he had thought to prepare her last night, trading kisses for remembered names and titles, and with that excellent incentive, she had managed to memorise most of them and knew them still so that she could greet them individually. She did not dare meet her husband’s eye as she shook hands with everyone from the butler and housekeeper to the shyest scullery maid and most blushing stable boy; she knew he would be grinning wickedly at her, remembering just as clearly as she did how he had rewarded her when she had in triumph produced all the names of the kitchen maids without hesitation. She did not know what recompense would be hers later for remembering them all correctly now, but greatly looked forward to finding out.
When all the greetings and congratulations had been exchanged, Marcus lifted his bride in his arms and carried her effortlessly over the threshold, which provoked an outburst of cheers among the assembled staff. This turned to laughter – some of it scandalised but most of it raucously approving – when he did not set her down in the wood-panelled entrance hall, nor pause to remove even his hat, but continued on across the chequered marble floor and up the grand Jacobean staircase. Rows of gold-framed Thornfalcon ancestors looked on with varying degrees of approval as he took her down a long passage into an apartment that contained a large four-poster bed, and no doubt a quantity of other furniture that Amelia did not concern herself with just now. It was a bright chamber filled with golden light, which presumably offered fine views over the parkland at the front of the house, but this too was of not the least interest to her at present.
Marcus set her down on the bed with just the right balance of haste and care, and stripped off his overcoat, hat and waistcoat, flinging them aside with no thought at all for their final destination. Amelia was busy with her gloves, smart bonnet and pelisse in much the same fashion, and hurled her half-boots aside with equal abandon, hearing them thump to the floor in some unseen corner.
‘I have been wondering,’ she said breathlessly, ‘how you would decide to reward me for my most impressive feat of memory downstairs, my lord.’
‘So have I,’ he said, his voice muffled for a moment as he dragged his shirt over his head. Freed from it, he stood looking down at her for a moment, bare-chested, and then he seized her ruthlessly by the ankles and pulled her towards him across the coverlet. This had the interesting additional effect of rucking up her gown and petticoats about her waist, leaving her long legs and bright-red garters uncovered to his hungry gaze. She had not the least thought of attempting to cover herself, but smiled up at him, her face flushed and expectant. ‘And this is what I settled on, my deliciously wicked Wyverne bride.’
He threw himself down on the bed between her thighs and lifted up her legs so that they wrapped across his broad shoulders and down his back, then began pulling at the knots of her garters with his teeth, first one and then the other. When they came free, he flung them aside impatiently too, and pushed down her stockings, kissing the tender skin of her inner thighs where the ties had marked them. She closed her eyes and forgot the room, the house and all the people in it, losing herself in the sensations his lips, his mouth and his clever fingers were teasing from her. He slipped his big hands under her buttocks to hold her tightly, and kissed his way up towards the dark curls where her thighs met. Once there, and armed with the knowledge of exactly what pleased her most that he’d gained last night and the night before, not to mention in a couple of highly enjoyable snatched encounters in the week before their wedding, he began licking and kissing her most sensitive places with a fierce focus that soon had her gasping and clutching at the sheets, digging her heels into his back, raising her body eagerly to meet him. She felt gloriously wanton as he lay between her legs and devoured her with the savage, passionate attention she was coming to crave. This was her new addiction and she could not imagine tiring of it. She hadn’t known a few days ago that men and women did this sort of thrillingly wicked thing to each other; now, she wondered why they ever used their time to do anything else. He freed his right hand from beneath her body and slid a finger inside her and then out again, and her electric jolt of pleasure and the incoherent cry that accompanied it had him smiling against her – she could feel his cheeks curve – but did not make him stop. She would have been most annoyed if it had; he’d scarcely begun. A second finger joined the first, and found the particular place that made her arch her back and open herself to him wider still, the edges of her vision darkening as the urgent desire for release built within her. And still his mouth worshipped at her altar of Venus, but now suddenly she wanted more, more of him, a deeper union; she was moaning his name in a confused plea she hoped he could understand.
He moved away from her and she whimpered at the sudden absence, cold on her exposed skin, but he was unbuttoning himself, leaping free, pulling her closer, slipping his hardness inside her where it belonged, finding a rhythm, and that was even better, that was what she needed now. ‘It’s when you do that,’ she gasped as he thrust into her and slowly, tantalisingly withdrew a little before thrusting once more to fill her again. It was so good it was almost unbearable.
‘I know, my love,’ he said. ‘I know.’ He was standing tall and powerful at the foot of the bed and holding her hips just as tightly as she liked, and she locked her legs about him and moved with him, passing beyond rational thought into a place where there was only sensation, and that sensation was the most intense pleasure she had ever known. She climaxed before he did, her release prolonged beyond what she would have thought possible by his continuing, powerful thrusts and by his cries as he came and gasped out her name, and fell into her waiting arms.
A short while later, they lay naked together, idly caressing and kissing, talking or being silent and, most of all, revelling in the time alone that was so new and so precious to them both.
