Gil stopped outside Abby’s room, took her hand from inside his arm, and held it in both his own. “You would like me to come here?” he asked. “Rather than you come to me?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I’ll return in a short while, then,” he told her. “I had better take Beauty outside for a few minutes first.”
He leaned past her and opened the door. He shut it after she had passed through.
“Well,” he said, looking down at his dog, “you are going to have to sleep alone tonight, Beaut. But a walk first? A very short walk?”
Beauty wagged her tail.
•••
She ought to be feeling nervous, Abigail supposed. But she was twenty-four years old and of course she knew a thing or two, though no one had ever spelled out the lesson for her. Knowing what happened was somewhat different, of course, from knowing how it would feel. But she was far more eager than apprehensive.
Being a twenty-four-year-old virgin was not altogether a comfortable thing. For there were longings and needs that one felt from really quite an early age, and they did not lessen with time. Quite the contrary, in fact. But as a lady—even an illegitimate lady—one could not express those longings in any way except through marriage. Hence the husband search as soon as a girl left the schoolroom—or the unexpressed reason, anyway.
Even as recently as a month ago she had been seriously fearful that she might never marry. Not because no one would ever offer, but because she would never feel...rightabout any man who did. She would not marry in order to gain a foothold back in the world of thetonthat had once been hers. Neither would she marry a man of slightly lesser rank who was prepared to overlook the blot on her birth. Yet she had always believed she could not possibly marry quite outside the world in which she had been raised. It was not snobbery but practicality. It was a matter of compatibility.
But was that what she had done today? The answer was undoubtedly yes. The worlds in which she and Gil had grown up were more like different universes.
Why, then, did marrying himfeelright?
Her small trunk and portmanteaux were packed and stacked neatly in her dressing room with her new, brightlyembroidered needlework bag, she saw. Mrs. Sullivan had told her she would send up a maid to do it. The same maid had set out the prettiest and fanciest of her nightgowns and brought up a pitcher of hot water, which was now lukewarm.
They would be leaving in the morning, quite early, and she did not know if they would be coming back anytime soon, and even when they did it would be only to visit. Hence the fact that she was to take all the belongings she had brought from London. It had not lasted long, her homecoming. But during it she had found the one man who felt right to her as a lifelong mate. She could be wrong, of course, but one could not live one’s whole life avoiding everything that might prove to be a mistake. One might thus pave the way to an old age that would be full of regrets for things one might have done but did not. That would be even worse.
She undressed and washed and drew on the nightgown. She brushed out her hair, considered braiding it so that it would not get hopelessly tangled during the night, and decided against it. She went into her bedchamber and pulled the curtains back from the window. She could see only the reflection of the candles burning on the mantel behind her, but it was a cozy sight. She half opened one of the windows and listened to the sound of silence. Strangely, itdidhave a sound, different from the indoors. It was the sound of vastness and peace. It was like an assurance that all was well and always would be.
An owl hooted in the distance.
He must have come back inside with his dog. She could not hear them. But even as she thought it, there was a light tap on her door and it opened.
“Ah,” he said after stepping inside and closing the door behind him. “Beautiful.”
“Thank you.” She smiled at him.
She would not say he looked handsome, exactly. He was wearing a silk dressing gown of a dark gold color and tan slippers. But both garments, rather than diminishing his size and the power of his physique, somehow enhanced them instead. For the silk was a fine fabric and clung to him above the belt. She had seen him naked to the waist. She had seen him wearing only hip-hugging breeches and boots that molded his calves. Now he seemed somehow less clothed, and she felt a stabbing of what she recognized as raw desire in her womb.
His dark hair had been freshly brushed. Even so, that one errant lock had fallen over his forehead. His dark eyes looked very directly at her. He must have shaved before coming here. But he could not shave away the brutal scar. He looked stern and dour, with not even a gleam of an answering smile. But she realized something about him suddenly.
His stern expression was a mask, a defense. It was something all his life experiences from childhood on had imposed on him. The world might reject and isolate and ridicule and even hate him, but it would never see him vulnerable. That he had suffered had come through in some of the things he had told her during the past few weeks and in what he had said earlier about his childhood. But it would never show on his face.
Well, we will see about that, Lieutenant Colonel Gil Bennington,she thought.
She was not the love of his heart. Probably no one ever had been, even his first wife. And perhaps no one ever would be. He was a man of unusual reserve. But he was also an honorable man. And there was kindness in him, even gentleness, despite the outer appearance of granitelike toughness he liked to project. Oh, and love too. And love didindeed come in many forms, as he had said earlier when speaking of his mother.
He came across the room to her, set his hands on either side of her waist, and looked at her, rather the way he had done on that very first day but from closer—from her head to her bare toes and back up. His eyes on hers, he drew her against him, one arm sliding about her waist, the other hand coming to cup the back of her head beneath her hair, his fingers pushing through it. And he kissed her.
She might have swooned if he had not been holding her firmly. For it was not an embrace just of lips and mouths this time. She was touching him all along the front of her body, and he was all warmth and hard muscle and a hand that moved lower down her back to nestle her against him where he was hardest. And he smelled of something—eau de cologne? shaving soap?—unmistakably male. She could do nothing but yield to the pressure of his hands and press herself to him and open her mouth to him and wonder if anything they did on the bed could possibly be more shocking or more wonderful.
“No maidenly nerves?” he asked, his lips still almost touching hers, his eyes gazing into her own. And though he did not smile, nevertheless she thought there was a thread of humor in his voice.
“No,” she said. “But you must forgive me for not knowing what to do.”
“You were doing well enough a moment ago,” he said.
“Was I?” She had not known it.
