“I love you,” he said quietly. “I know we meant this marriage to be a logical and judicious match without the encumbrance of foolish emotions, but I find I am, alas, like my romantic antecedents. I have fallen in love. Can you forgive me? Can I one day teach you to love me, my darling Allegra?”
“Oh, Quinton,” she said weakly. “I do not know what to say to you. If I am honest with you, and I must be, I have to admit to feeling some emotion I cannot comprehend with regard to you. But is it love? I do not know. I have never been in love, and the love I feel for Papa, Aunt Mama, and Sirena is, I know, an altogether different thing.You really love me?Why?”
Rolling onto his back the Duke of Sedgwick thought a moment. “I really don’t understand it myself, Allegra,” he admitted. “But I know that I love you. Those few weeks you were away from me I could not bear your absence. Ask Ocky. I was a perfect fool, waiting for and anticipating your return. At one point I convinced myself you might not rejoin me. It was agony.”
“Why on earth did you think I wouldn’t come back to marry you, Quinton?” she asked him. This was a proud man, and his sudden revelations were most startling to say the least.
“What have I to offer you but a title? Having come to know you this past summer, Allegra, I knew that my title wasn’t reason enough, for you are too honest to be awed by such things.”
“But I gave my word to the match,” she replied. “You surely didn’t think I would break my word?”
“Logic and reason, I have discovered, play no part in love,” he said quietly.
“I see,” she said. “But do you trust me?”
“With my life, my darling,” he swore.
Allegra laughed. She couldn’t help it. A starburst of happiness was beginning to fill her. “You love me? Youreallylove me?”
“Yes!”He pulled her into his arms, and kissed her hungrily.
“Oh, my.” She laughed again. “Dearest Quinton, this is going to change everything,” she told him.
“I know,” he admitted, and kissed her again, his big hands beginning to wander over her body.
Allegra purred with open contentment. He loved her. She had never before believed in love, but suddenly his devotion was very important to her. “It is most unfashionable for a husband and his wife to be in love,” she said, then murmured happily as his kisses covered her torso, to be followed by his warm bathing tongue. “Ohh, Quinton, that is nice,” Allegra said softly. “Ahhh, yes,” she agreed as he suckled upon her breasts until she thought they would burst from the sheer pleasure. When he began to lick her ear she imitated his action, whispering to him, “Do you want to fuck me again, Quinton?”
“I am going to fuck you again, Allegra,”he replied as he pushed slowly into her, teasing her by withdrawing and entering again several times until she began to protest.
She wrapped herself about him, silently demanding his full attention and homage. “I want to feel thesoaringagain!” she finally told him.“Don’t stop! Don’t stop!”Her nails dug into his shoulders, and then raked down his back sharply.
The light pain honed his appetite for her. He drove deeply into the hot marsh of her sex making her whimper. The body beneath his strained and writhed as he forced her fiercely to passion’s peak. His own desire for her was enormous. “You are mine, Allegra.You are mine!” he groaned, unable to withhold his own passions any longer.
“Oh! Oh!Ohhhh!” she cried in return. What was happening to her? It had been wonderful before, but this time she didn’t think she was going to survive their shared lust. She was dying. Ohh, God, she was dying!And it was incredible!
When Allegra came to herself again it was within her husband’s arms. Her cheek was pressed against his chest, and she could hear his heart thumping beneath her ear. His hand was gently stroking her dark hair which had come undone from its proper nighttime plait.
“You are revived,” he said softly.
“Am I still alive?” she wondered aloud.
He laughed. “You have an incredible capacity for passion, my darling young wife,” he told her, and she felt him kiss the top of her head. “You leave me breathless, Allegra.”
She was silent for several minutes, and then she said, “Will you leave me tonight, Quinton?”
“No, my dear,” he answered her. “It is unlikely I shall ever leave your bed again, no matter the gossip involved.”
She smiled then closed her eyes, feeling more at peacewith herself and with her life than she had ever felt before.
Quinton Hunter sensed his wife relax, but he was not yet ready to sleep. He had no idea what had made him admit his love for Allegra, but at least she hadn’t been repulsed by her new knowledge. She had even said she harbored some sort of feeling for him, but she had not said she loved him. That would surely come in time, he decided. For the first time in his life he understood his father’s drinking himself to death after his mother’s death. To be without the one you love was surely a hell on earth.
Allegra awoke early. Quinton still lay by her side, curled onto his side, sleeping peacefully. She studied him closely for the first time. He was handsome, but it was not his beauty of either face or form that attracted her. Looking into his face she saw something else. She saw strength and honesty.But I don’t believe in love, she thought once more.You don’t?the little voice in her head mocked.Then why do you care that his demeanor is one of strength and honesty?
Quinton Hunter opened his eyes, and looked into Allegra’s beautiful face. Her gaze was suddenly startled by what she saw.
“You do love me,” she said wonderingly. “I can tell. It is the look in your eyes, Quinton. Oh dear! Oh dear!” God almighty! She sounded like a perfect ninny, but his words last night while surprising were nothing compared to the emotion she saw now in those silvery depths.
“You think too much, my darling,” he told her. “Get up, madame. We have a houseful of guests arriving today, and a future King of England in the Lake bedchamber even as we speak.”
