“Yes, my lady, I should.” He lowered his head, bringing his wicked mouth to within an inch of hers. “With you.”
A strange sensation sank through her at his words and his nearness both, starting in her belly before sinking into the very center of her. Her breasts tingled. The part of her he’d stroked when he’d put his hand up her skirt ached. This was why good women ruined themselves, she realized. This was why so many ladies had sought him. Temptation was delicious.Hewas delicious.
She shook her head, attempting to banish the dissolute thoughts he provoked within her. “No. You need to recover. Dr. Redcay stressed how imperative it is for you to rest and regain your strength.”
“Redcay can go to the devil.” He leaned against her, their bodies making contact from breast to chest all the way to their thighs. His legs wedged between hers, her complicit skirts billowing about him. She felt him for the first time, the hardness of him pressed straight to her center with a tip of his hips. Her dress and crinoline weren’t a sufficient barrier. “You’re all I need to recover, little dove. Just you beneath me. I can assure you I have enough strength for what we both want.” His head dipped, his mouth opening on her throat.
The rigid shape of him against her, so suggestive and foreign and wicked, heightened her every sense. To her great shame, an echo of want pulsed within her. She didn’t know how they would fit together. The vague mechanics of it had been whispered to her in finishing school. None of the girls had truly known for certain what happened between a man and a woman. She ached now with her half knowledge, needing something from him. He kissed a path to the hollow behind her ear. She tilted her head to grant him better access. His mouth played over her like velvet fire.
But she could not indulge in her newfound depravity, for she was bound and determined that their marriage would never be consummated. And he was not well. He was a man who didn’t appear to take care in his own wellbeing. Were all his days just an endless string of one debauchery after the next? Did he not realize how close he’d come to being murdered the night before?
The thought chilled her. She caught his face between her palms, stilling his mouth’s exploration. The stubble of his whiskers pricked her. His valet had not shaved him, and the rough abrasion felt good against her skin. The contact jolted her but she did her best to pretend as though she was unaffected.
“Lord Ravenscroft, someone almost killed you last night. Do you not have a care for yourself? You must rest and regain your strength so that you can discover what truly happened and prevent it from happening again. If someone wants you dead, he or she will surely try again once their lack of success becomes apparent.”
He closed his eyes, seeming to gather his strength, leaning into her even more. “It was likely a case of mistaken identity.”
It was not, and they both knew it. His attacker had meant to kill him. He’d been right outside his residence.
“I fear for you, Julian.” At last, the truth was torn from her.
His eyes opened, vivid and brilliant. “You fear for me, but in every other sentence you remind me that you will leave me, and that you want no part of this marriage, no part of me. You cannot have it both ways, little dove. You must choose.”
She stared at him, stricken by the one word she’d nearly blurted.You.But no, she wouldn’t say it. Wouldn’t give up on her dreams. Who was he to her? A stranger who’d taken advantage of her foolishness? The man who’d cozened two hundred thousand pounds out of her father?
She’d spent each day since her father had brought her to England longing for her eventual return home. So many years had passed that Virginia had become hazy and indistinct, a soft and warm memory, beating within her heart but not within her mind’s eye. Why, she could scarcely even recall most of it with proper detail. And she would not abandon her cause of helping her fellow women to gain the vote that was rightfully theirs.
“Choose, damn you,” he said again, his face so close to hers, their lips almost brushing. But he did not kiss her. “I won’t force you. I won’t have you knowing that you’d prefer to be somewhere else, in someone else’s arms. Do you understand me?”
She still held his face in her hands. She couldn’t choose. It should have been easy, a quick sentence leaving her tongue.I choose Virginia.I want to go home.But the words wouldn’t come.
“I can’t,” she forced herself to say. He wanted too much from her, and too soon. They’d been wed for one day. She was not even accustomed to the layout of his household, and already all her plans had been dismantled. He’d been attacked. The unwanted feelings she’d developed for him during their impromptu courtship added to her confusion. Her body betrayed her, even now longing for him, for the weight of his frame pressing into hers, for his body against her, claiming her.
His expression was harsh, demanding as his tone, as the man himself. “I’m telling you now, Clara. You must choose. If it’s a cold piece of ground you long for, I’ll have my man take you straight to a hotel. You can bide your time until the next passenger ship departs for Virginia.”
He shuddered against her then, swaying. She reached for his shoulders, anchoring him to her until the spell subsided. Hours before, she’d been stained in his blood. She’d watched over him, praying for him to wake. Back in her chamber that morning, she’d scrubbed her hands and face, tossed her ruined dressing gown into the dust bin. The blood was gone, but what had happened to him remained. Someone meant to do him harm. How could she sail away from him forever? What if the person who’d attempted to kill him would return, this time succeeding? How would she feel from an ocean away?
“I reckon it’s Virginia then.” A grim acceptance tempered his voice. He attempted to push away from her.
No.
She overpowered him in his weakened state, holding him to her when he would have retreated. “You,” she breathed before she could think better of it.
Because a strangeness had overtaken her from the moment she’d first stepped into his study, a feeling that he alone could unlock the secrets within her. He was a mystery to her, a man who claimed to be a jaded cynic. A man who had misled her, who had courted her, who had listened to her opinions. He wasn’t as hardened as he pretended to be. He wasn’t as careless. He had decorated her chamber, had taken in his sisters. He wanted her to be his wife when allowing her to go would be the easiest path.
“It’s you,” she said again, as much for her own benefit as for his. She closed the scant distance between them to press her lips to his in a quick and nervous gesture. There. That ought to be…wifely.
Wife.Suddenly the word held knew meaning. What had she done? She’d never intended to be his wife in truth or in deed. But the promises she’d made the day before resonated, as real as his hot flesh beneath her fingertips. Yes, he was hers now.
He kissed her again, fitting their lips together, setting his lower lip between hers. His teeth nipped her upper lip, tasting her, testing her resolve. “Thank you, little dove,” he said against her mouth, a benediction. “Thank you.”
A man could grow accustomed to such treatment.
Julian watched his wife as she directed the placement of the breakfast tray she’d ordered for him. Much as he would’ve loved to fuck her senseless, slide home inside her before she changed her mind and raced off to Virginia, for the first time in his life, he didn’t possess the stamina. Odd bouts of dizziness struck him with an unpredictability that had rendered his intrepid venture to the breakfast room ill-advised. He must have lost a great deal of blood as well, the aftereffects of which left him uncomfortably feeble.
His pride in tatters, he’d allowed her to assist him back to his chamber and into his bed. With his haphazard valet missing once more, she acted the part without bothering to ring for him. She removed his shoes, helped him with his jacket and waistcoat, and plumped pillows behind his back. She was a capable woman, his wife.
It was all rather endearing, for he hadn’t fancied her the tender sort. Fierce, foolish, and brave, yes. Determined and stubborn, also. But tender…now that was an unfamiliar side to her. A side he found he rather enjoyed. A side of her that made the strangest sensation lodge in his chest.
