“Father refused him, obviously, and we found out that he was after your dowry.”
The carriage had pulled up in front of Edington Hall and Catherine felt immense relief that they were home.
*
Later that evening,Catherine was back in her room, in her night rail. She had held Henrietta’s hand until she fell asleep. The girl was rattled, but Catherine suspected she would feel much better in the morning.
She heard a knock on her door. She rose to open it.
John came into the room.
He wrapped his arms around her and she rested her head against his chest.
There was so much that they needed to discuss, but the feeling of his arms around her chased those thoughts away.
He reached down and kissed her. When she kissed him back, he gave one of his low growls that sent desire cascading through her body. She pressed her body into his, as she had wanted to all night but couldn’t in front of the crowds of the ballroom. She felt that he was already hard beneath his small clothes, which he wore with only a loose linen shirt.
He stripped off her night rail.
“You’re perfect.”
Catherine smiled, because that is what he always said—he had said it in the Tremberley gardens and he had said it to her every night they had been together since.
She sat down on the bed, holding his gaze. She watched as he stripped off his nightclothes and left them in a puddle on the floor.
He came down on top of her and, without hesitation, she opened her legs and guided him into her.
At first, he didn’t move inside of her. They just looked at one another, breathing hard, him holding her wrists above her head.
He started moving, slowly, and she could feel the tension building inside of her from the beginning, as he pushed in and out little by little. She could see the same pleasure that she felt building in his face.
As she edged towards climax, almost lost to the exquisite feeling of him, he looked down at her and said, “I want to make you mine.”
“I am yours,” she said, the pleasure almost at the point where she couldn’t speak.
“I want to spend inside of you.”
She gasped at the raw need behind his words. In this moment of intense pleasure, she couldn’t care about the consequences, how it would trouble their plans. She wanted him to fill her up, to make her completely his own.
She looked up at him and nodded vigorously. “Please. I want you to.”
“After this, there isn’t—you can’t take it back.”
“I want you to. Please. Make me yours. I am yours.”
At these words, he let out a ragged moan of want. She came apart, too, grasping his shoulders and crying out.
She wasn’t sure how long passed, as they lay in a daze. Then he turned towards her and took her hand.
“I can’t wait. I want to marry you. Soon. I can’t wait a few years—or however long it takes for Henrietta to find her match. I want to marry you much sooner than that.”
“But we can’t.”
He shook his head. “If tonight taught me anything, it’s that I am not protecting Henrietta by lying to her. I told her I wouldn’t lie anymore, but what else am I doing with you? I want her to know about us. I want to marry you. It might disrupt her season, but it will be better for her in the long run. And Henrietta adores you. She’ll be so happy.”
“I fear it’s unfair to her.”
“Right after I went to see you at Halston Place, Tremberley thought I had gone to ask you to marry me. He saw what I should have from the beginning. And when I said I hadn’t asked for your hand, that I couldn’t do that to Henrietta, he said something that has stayed with me. He said, Henrietta is a duke’s sister, with an enormous dowry, it would all come to rights. And he said some things felt better than reason.”
