She would never have met him.
And if she had not been raped, she would be married to Henry Arnold now and living in Gloucestershire. She would not be standing here in the master bedchamber at Ty Gwyn, having her hair taken down by a one-armed man who had become strangely precious to her.
How strange were the ways of fate.
But she was mentally prattling, she thought, when her hair came cascading down over her shoulders and he reached behind him to set her hairpins down on a table without taking his eye off her.
Her thoughts came crashing to a halt then, and she felt horribly, horribly vulnerable—not because she did not believe in her own beauty but precisely because she did. Beauty could blind the beholder to all else, even the personhood of the one who possessed it. And she could see in his eye that he found her beautiful.
I am Anne,she wanted to cry out to him.Please do not forget that I am Anne.
Please, please, please do not call my hair my crowning glory.
He leaned forward and kissed her mouth with closed lips. Desire shot through her like a lightning bolt, almost causing her knees to buckle. And with it came the return of thought.
All was going to be well. Surely it was.
“Anne,” he murmured so softly that she almost missed it.
And then he turned away and shrugged out of his coat and sat down on the side of the bed to pull off his Hessian boots. It was a hard thing to do one-handed—she could see that. His valet must, of course, do it for him at home. She did not know if she should offer to help, but she did not do so, and he managed. She guessed that he managed most tasks that a two-armed person would find impossible to do one-handed.
His right shirtsleeve was pinned to his side just as his coat sleeve was.
She waited tensely.
But when he got to his feet again, he drew back the bedcovers and turned to reach out his arm to her, and she realized that he did not intend to remove any more of his clothes.
“Anne,” he said, “will you take off your dress yourself? It would take me too long.”
He watched her until she stood before him in just her shift and her stockings. She sat on the bed to take off the latter, but he kneeled before her and removed them one at a time himself.
“Ah,” he said, sitting back on his heels and gazing up at her when the task was complete, “you are incredibly beautiful, Anne. I am sorry. I am so very sorry—”
“No.” She leaned forward and set her hands on his shoulders, and her hair fell forward to frame both their faces. “Please don’t be. Please, please do not. I would never have met you if you were not like this. I would not be here with you now. And I would not be here if I were not as I am. Iwantto be here with you. And if you say you are sorry, then I must say it too. I do not want either of us to be sorry for anything this afternoon.”
“Anne,” he said, “I am not very experienced. And I have had no experience at all since…this.”
It was somehow reassuring to know that he felt his own insecurities and anxieties just as she felt hers. Perhaps that was why she had found the courage to come this far.
“I am not very experienced either.” She smiled at him.
He closed the gap between their mouths and kissed her. And this time he deepened the kiss, parting his lips, passing his tongue over her lips until she opened her mouth and his tongue came warm inside and she wrapped both arms about his neck and pushed her fingers up into his hair, making a sound of appreciation deep in her throat as she did so.
Or perhaps it was he who made the sound.
“Lie down,” he whispered against her mouth as he raised his head. “Will you remove your shift? But only if you feel comfortable doing so.”
She crossed her arms and pulled it off over her head before lying down and moving over so that he could lie beside her. And strangely she did not feel uncomfortable though he stood looking down at her for several moments. He had called her beautiful and he desired her. But he had also called her by name, and she knew somehow from the look in his eye, though there was desire there, that it washerhe saw, not just her voluptuous beauty. Beneath his gaze she could feel simply herself.
And this at least was new. She had never been naked with a man before.
She throbbed with wanting him.
He lay on his right side facing her, and his hand moved over her, warm, sensitive—and trembling. She turned toward him, smiled at him, and caressed him through his clothing with her own hand—and on his left side.
He was all warm, hard-muscled masculinity. She could feel the muscles in his arm and shoulder and rippling along his back. She could feel the muscles in his buttock when she rested her hand there while her eyes drifted closed and she licked her lips. He was doing exquisite things with his thumb and forefinger at the nipple of one breast and then the other.
Curiously, the presence of his clothing against her own bare skin excited her as much as nakedness would have done. Perhaps more.
