“Arabella.” She was on her back, her husband leaning over her, kissing her eyes, her mouth, her throat, her breasts. “My love. Oh, so beautiful. So very beautiful.”
She cried out to him again as he took one nipple into his mouth and touched the tip with his tongue.
They were both naked suddenly. She reveled in the feel of powerful muscles beneath her fingers and palms as she ran her hands over his chest and shoulders, down his arms. And she ached and ached with painful desire as his hand aroused her and readied her for his entry.
“Make love to me,” she pleaded against his mouth. “Make love to me. Oh, please, please.”
But when he pushed inside her, there was none of the relaxed enjoyment that she had learned to expect from their earlier beddings. There was no detached and pleasurable analysis of what he was doing to her. There was only the need to feel him drive even deeper and more powerfully toward that unbearable ache of her longing.
He could feel her coming. He had his weight on his arms so that he would not crush the small body beneath his own. But he had her against him, taut with a passion that he had not suspected her capable of, on the brink of release.
Every move of his had been calculated from the moment he had felt her turn hot in his arms. Everything was for Arabella, so that she would know the power of his love, so that she would be satisfied, so that he might see her happy in his arms afterward. Gratification of his own desire became nothing. Only Arabella mattered. He would not care if he took nothing at all. He was making love, something he had never done before. He was giving her everything he had to give. He was giving himself.
And yet—strange reward of a love only now recognized by the heart, still not by the mind—as he felt her come, he knew that he was coming to meet her. He knew that they were to experience the rarest of all blessings of physical love: they were to unite at the moment of a shared climax.
Lord Astor held his wife’s hands against the bed on either side of her head as it happened, his fingers twined in hers. His face was buried amongst her curls.
“Geoffrey?” she whispered, her voice surprised. And then she gripped his hands, cried out against his shoulder, and shuddered into release. He sighed, relaxed his weight on her, and went with her into the land beyond passion, beyond feeling, almost beyond consciousness.
Arabella awoke the following morning with the feeling that it was late, much later than she had intended to get up. She had planned to rise early so that she might take George for a walk before anyone else was about. But she had overslept.
She turned her head suddenly as memory overtook her. But she was alone. She must have been very deeply asleep indeed to have missed her husband’s getting up and dressing. Arabella blushed despite the emptiness of the room as she stretched and felt her nakedness beneath the covers.
How could she have! She had given in to utter wantonness, ignored the dictates of reason and morality, and allowed her physical needs to lead her on. How could she now convince either her husband or herself that she was bound to him only by the ties of law and the church and duty? And what defenses would she have against her own misery when the novelty of having her had worn off and he turned to a more practiced courtesan again?
She could not even blame him. She had started the whole thing the night before. It was true that he had spoken to her and touched her, but she was the one who had pressed his hand against her cheek and kissed it. And she had eagerly followed him every step of the way in what had ensued. She could even recall begging him to love her.
She could have pleaded sleepiness if that had been all. He had touched her before she was properly awake, and by the time she was, she was so physically aroused that there had been no resisting what had happened. But that could not be pleaded for the second time. She had been awake, staring at him, studying his strong and handsome profile in the gray of early dawn, touching his chest, long before he opened his eyes and smiled sleepily at her. And she was the one who had snuggled closer and raised her face for his kiss.
She had not been unaware that time of what she was doing and with whom. She had let him arouse her, lift her on top of him, and bring her knees up under his arms. And she had put her hands on his shoulders as he moved with powerful strokes in her, and gazed into his eyes until the end, when she had lowered her forehead to his chest and taken into herself all that he had to give, and gave in return all that was herself.
She had known that he was Geoffrey, her faithless husband, and she had not cared. Not, at least, until several minutes after it was finished and he had rolled over with her and set her down on the bed and kissed her deeply on the mouth. Then, the passion gone, she had wanted to cry, knowing how vulnerable she had made herself, knowing that now she had given him the power to hurt and hurt her. She had allowed herself to love him, she had opened all of herself to him, and given all she had to give. Not just her body, but her very self. And now she would never be able to wrap herself around with the assurance that she did not care, that she could make a meaningful life for herself independent of her husband.
She had turned over onto her side, facing away from him, and concentrated every effort of body and mind on not sobbing aloud. Her body had been rigid with tension when he had moved over behind her and smoothed back the curls from the side of her face with a gentle hand.
“Are we friends now, Arabella?” he had asked. “Am I forgiven?”
She had been quite incapable of answering.
“What is the matter?” he had asked, running his hand down her side and feeling how tense she was. “Are you crying?”
She had bitten both lips and willed the sob that was trying to escape her back down her throat.
“This has made no difference, has it?” he had said at last. “I am still the erring husband who must grovel at your feet. And even then I will not be forgiven, will I, Arabella? You will never trust me. I will never be allowed to forget.”
He had rolled away from her and she could feel him lying awake behind her even as she lay, fighting to control her tears, knowing that she might as well get up then and go out for George before the grooms were up even. She would certainly never sleep.
But she had slept. And deeply so. And lay now bitterly regretting her lack of moral control the night before. And filled with wonder at the ecstasies of physical passion. And utterly confused.
Arabella threw back the bedcovers, flushed yet again at her nakedness and all it had meant the night before, and pulled on her nightgown before ringing for her maid.
Lord Astor was out riding with Lord Farraday and several of the other gentlemen from the house. They were inspecting a newly drained portion of the estate that had been seeded for the first time that spring.
“Where is Hubbard?” Lord Astor asked his friend when they had a moment together.
“He is taking himself off back to London,” Lord Farraday said. “I can’t think why, when he made the journey all the way out here with every intention of staying until tomorrow. Strange fellow, Hubbard. I suppose one can understand it when one remembers what he has gone through in the last year.’’
“Yes,” Lord Astor agreed. “Arabella seems remarkably friendly with him. She has a weakness for lame ducks. I hope she did not say anything yesterday to upset Hubbard.”
