“Yes.” She did not know the half of it, and he did not have the energy or the will to tell her.
She had come to stand beside him, he realized. He wrapped one arm about her shoulders and turned to draw her against him. He touched his forehead to the top of her head. She had not yet changed or cleaned up after a day of travel. Neither of them had. But he breathed in that familiar soap smell of her and folded her even more tightly into himself.
“We are right by the window,” she said.
He reached up a hand and jerked the curtains closed. And he kissed her with openmouthed urgency, reaching for the safety she represented.
“This c-conversation needs to be continued on that b-bed,” he said against her mouth.
“In broad daylight?”
“It w-worked well enough in the carriage,” he pointed out.
“The maid.” She glanced at the dressing room door.
“Servants will not enter an occupied room uninvited,” he told her.
He did not wait to unclothe either her or himself. He tumbled her to the bed, hiked her skirts to the waist, unbuttoned the fall of his pantaloons, positioned himself on top of her and between her thighs, and plunged into her as though his life depended upon finding some sort of salvation in her hot depths. He pounded into her, the blood thundering in his ears, and exploded into release a good few seconds before he heard the breath sobbing out of him and in again.
He rolled off her and flung an arm over his eyes. His headache was still hovering.
“I am s-so s-sorry,” he said.
“Why?” She turned onto her side and spread a hand over his chest.
“Did I h-hurt you?”
“No,” she said. “Flavian, you must forgive yourself for being alive when your brother is not.”
She did not know thehalfof it. But he withdrew his arm and turned his head to look at her. He smiled lazily. “It was good s-sex?” he asked. “Even though there was not much f-finesse?”
“And there was in the carriage?” she asked, her cheeks turning pink.
He raised one eyebrow. “You have no idea of the skill involved in such maneuverings, ma’am,” he said.
“I believe I do,” she told him. “I wasthere.”
“Ah,” he said, narrowing his eyes and gazing at her lips, “that wasyou, was it?”
And he turned over to kiss her again, more slowly this time, more skillfully, with more of a thought to pleasing her. He wondered how Velma was feeling. Her heart had surely been in her eyes when he first stepped into the drawing room.
And how washefeeling?
He was feeling safe with the wife of his own choosing. His headache had done an about-turn and was marching away into the distance without him.
“Agnes,” he whispered, and sighed with contentment.
16
Life then changed more radically than Agnes could possibly have expected it would.
Her mother-in-law recovered by dinnertime on that first day from the worst of her shock and dominated the conversation. It was not difficult to do, for Marianne and Lord Shields had returned to their own town house, Flavian chose to be sleepy, and Agnes could not seem to marshal her thoughts well enough to initiate any social talk.
It was a very good thing Easter was late this year, the dowager commented, and it would be a couple of weeks yet before thetondescended upon London in any great numbers and the Season began in earnest. They would have those weeks in which to assemble a wardrobe at the very least. She had taken one look at Agnes’s lavender evening gown earlier, and her expression had become pained.
Agnes must be made to appear more like a viscountess, the dowager said quite bluntly. She would summon her own modiste to the house tomorrow and her hairdresser within the next few days. That way there would be no chance of Agnes’s being seen by the wrong people before she was ready to meet anyone at all.
Flavian exerted himself at that point.
