Not in Haddon House. Nor in London. But here, with her beneath him, her body sweetly giving, her arms wrapped around him, holding him close, as if she feared he would disappear if she did not cling like ivy vines to a façade. She was home. His love, his heart, his wife.
She convulsed around him, and he knew a flood of pleasure. His ballocks tightened. Heat licked up and down his spine. He could not last another—
He came on a roar, filling her with his seed.
Sealing his lips with hers, he kissed her, hard and hungry.
The ripples of her orgasm quivered around his cock as he lay atop her, boneless and sated.
He nipped her succulent lower lip, then raised his head, tenderly brushing a golden curl from her cheek. She was flushed, her eyes glimmering in the low light. As vibrant as he had ever seen them. And brimming with love.
Adrian wanted to say something profound, but words were stuck in his throat. He had neither eloquence nor poetry in him.
“You are so damned beautiful,” he said instead. “I could look upon you all night like this.”
“Stay,” she said, a command and a request.
He lowered his forehead to hers, their ragged breaths mingling, becoming one. “You have me. I am yours, Tilly. Always and forever yours.”
“As we were meant to be.” Her lips sought his once more.
Chapter 19
You have my promise and solemn vow that, once removed, the problem shall not further offer you trouble. The proper amount of coin can provide a man with anything he wishes.
~letter from The Honorable Mr. George Shaw to His Grace, the Duke of Longleigh
The day had dawned rainy once more, the light filtering in the windows veiled by the gloom beyond. Tilly stood by the Duke of Longleigh’s desk in the study she had ordered closed after his death. Much of the furniture remained covered to protect from dust. It was the last room at Haddon House that still bore traces of him.
The time had more than come to erase the last vestiges of the former duke’s odious presence. And she and Adrian were going to see to the task together. They had made plans to depart for Coddington Hall several days hence, but before they left, they had some business to attend to; namely, making Haddon House feel more like a home to them all so that when they returned, there were no more ghosts to haunt them.
She wondered what Adrian saw as he looked upon the marble busts, the walls lined with books, the sideboard where empty decanters and glasses had been left carefully placed, as if at any moment, Longleigh would return and begin making a misery of their lives again. Her husband’s prolonged silence filled her with trepidation.
After the miracle of the night before, coupled with waking this morning to his sweet kisses, his arms wrapped lovingly around her, she could not help but to wonder if devoting their morning following breakfast to this task had been too much.
Too much, too soon.
The study had belonged to Longleigh’s father before him. The furniture was heavy and dark, a nod to older styles. She suspected some of it—the desk, for instance, and the grim oil paintings, were relics of former dukes. But it was a room she had not bothered to enter before Longleigh’s death, and especially not after. It smelled of tobacco smoke and hair grease, and she had not wanted to be reminded of the duke in any fashion. After his death, she’d had the carpets taken up and beaten and all the windows opened to freshen the chamber. Then she’d had the furniture draped and promptly forgot about it.
Despite her past efforts, the room still smelled as if it had been closed up and unused. The air was as stale as the décor. It was the specter of the man who had once inhabited the room, however, that was ugliest of all.
Still, Adrian had not spoken. She was growing accustomed to his periods of silence. It was simply a part of him, and she loved all of him, this complex mixture he was of past and present. He was still healing from his imprisonment, but she knew that some wounds would never truly heal. Others would take far more time.
He wandered about the room, examining the book case, one long finger traveling over the stamped and gilt leather spines.
“Some poetry is in order,” he said at last. “We can remove the Latin. It has no bearing upon us here and now, as I see it.”
Poetry. Heremembered. All the poems she had read him—the evidence of them was there in his eyes, his lips, the way they turned up. The secrets. The knowledge.
Oh, Adrian. How is it possible to fall more in love with you each day?
“Which poetry, do you suppose?” she asked, as if his suggestion had left her entirely unaffected when in truth, she was anything but.
“I had Shelley in mind.I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers.That sort of thing.”
The line was from the poemThe Cloud. She had read it to him in Derbyshire. She remembered the day all too well. Memories made her cheeks heat.
“I read you that poem,” she said softly.
