There, she would be revered, just as she deserved.
She shook her head. “Of course not. Are you regretting marrying a woman so far beneath you?”
He kissed her to banish any doubt she might have, not stopping until she was pliant in his arms, her tongue mating with his. When he lifted his head, they were both breathless. “Does that feel like regret to you?”
She pressed her fingers to her lips, her eyes wide. “No.”
“Good.” He kissed those fingers, for they were in his way, then nibbled at the tip of one. “I would also like to remind you that there is only one way in which you are beneath me, and that is when we are in bed.”
“Nando.”
Her scandalized voice left him feeling ridiculously pleased. “Of course, you might also be atop me. I do have so much to show you, wife.”
A light, becoming flush swept over her cheeks. “Atop you?”
He couldn’t quell his smile. “Oh yes. Shall I demonstrate now?”
Mischief sparkled in her eyes. “Indeed, I think you must.”
And if Nando hadn’t already been hopelessly, helplessly in love with her, he would have certainly fallen then.
CHAPTER 17
Guarding her heart against her husband grew more difficult by the day.
“Where are we going?” she asked Nando as their carriage rattled through the streets of London.
“If I tell you, then it won’t be a surprise, will it?”
“Why does it need to be a surprise?”
He grinned. “Because when you are excited, you wriggle your bottom about, and I find it utterly adorable. Also, I happen to be extraordinarily fond of your bottom, whether it is wriggling or not.”
“I do not wriggle.”
Did she? Certainly, she had never taken note of doing so, nor had anyone ever told her she did. But then, she hadn’t had cause for excitement in years. Just a handful of days as Nando’s wife, and she’d already experienced it more times than she had in the last decade. She shifted on her seat nervously at the thought, for she knew all too well that contentedness in her life was always followed by disaster. First, it had been her childhood when she and Mama had lived in that grand house, only to be thrown to the streets when her father had tired of her mother. Then,there had been the comfort afforded by the protectors who had followed, always coming to an abrupt halt.
Until there had been the last protector, and Mama had grown desperately ill—too ill to act, too ill to entertain her wealthy benefactor. In just a few short, terrible weeks, Mama had no longer been on her sickbed, and Eleanora had stood at her grave, alone in the world with scarcely anything but the clothes she could carry and the little money her mother had left her.
“Is something amiss?”
Nando, ever too perceptive, brought Eleanora back to the present with his question.
She blinked and smiled at him, thinking he looked unfairly well-rested and handsome for a man who had been up half the night making love to her. “Nothing is wrong. Why do you ask?”
“Your countenance is rather expressive, my dear.”
No one had ever told her so before Nando. But then, she wasn’t certain anyone had ever looked at her—truly looked at her—the way he did.
“Quite.” She inhaled deeply, attempting to dispel old, painful memories. “I was thinking of my mother, if you must know.”
Eleanora hoped he might accept her answer and change the subject, for speaking of her mother’s death was not something she liked to do. It still, even after so many years, brought her to tears.
“Ah.” There was a wealth of meaning in his tone as he took her hand, cradling it in both of his on his lap. “Do you want to tell me?”
Equally perceptive of him to give her the opportunity to speak of it or avoid the most painful remnants of her past.
And she was startled to realize that shedidwant to tell him. That she had been keeping the secrets of her past for so long and with such protective ferocity that sharing the truth with him would be a burden finally lifted from her shoulders.
