But she could not allow him to remain until full morning, coming down to breakfast as though they shared a life.
They would share a bed, nothing more.
The sooner he married, the better for her fickle heart.
“George,” she said, and moved the blankets from him. “Wake up.”
He stirred sleepily, slitting open one eye. “What is it?”
“You must leave.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“It’s very early.” The eye closed again. “A few more minutes, love, and I shall be ready for you.”
“I will call for your carriage.” She swung her feet out of bed, but he caught at her wrist, halting her progress.
“Wait.” His hair was tousled in the dawn light, his chest bare and lightly scattered with soft blonde hair. She had run her fingers through it the previous night as he had thrust into her, and she was dismayed to find she could still feel the sensation as though it had been seconds, not hours, ago.
“What for?”
“You are overly hasty.” He dragged her hand back to his mouth and slowly sat up, stretching and rolling out his shoulders. “Come here and let me greet you properly.”
It was altogether too easy to acquiesce to his demands, to let the command in his voice rule her body. He hauled her closer, rolling her on to her back and pinning her wrists against the bed. Just tightly enough she could feel the blood throb in her fingers. She softened under him.
“Better,” he said, the sleepiness in his eyes replaced by something entirely more raw. He bit her lip, giving it a sharp tug she felt down to her core. “If I must leave, at least let me take something to remember you by.”
Her back arched as he kissed between her breasts, and although she knew she had but to say a word and he would stop, she found she no longer wanted to.
After, she would insist he leave.
He pushed inside her with a groan, already hard and she wet and willing, and his eyes glazed. A distant part of her thought she could bear to see him above her like this, commanding yet vulnerable, utterly hers, for a good while longer.
An alarming thought, but it took root in her chest, winding around such vital things as her heart and lungs.
His hand came to her throat, and it was lightning in her veins, her body tightening around him in helpless, exquisite pleasure. In her experience, the things that were the most wrong were often the most right, and although she knew she ought to run from him—from this—she could not quite bear for it to end.
She held on until the very last moment before oblivion took her.
It was many more hours before she called for his carriage.
Chapter Seven
The days slipped by like jewels, each one a little brighter than the next. George continued to see her in secret, arriving at her house to dine, or sometimes to spend the evening with her. They would play cribbage or read together in comfortable companionship, then retire to her bed.
Her first rule remained broken in the dust behind them. Although he did not always stay the night, he often did, and she offered no rebuke except to tell him there would be no breakfast for him. He always took this in good spirit.
He even paid the most pressing of her debts with no complaint. She sold the diamonds Sir Percy had given her, and sent the money into the country. Of course, it could not pay for the dowry, but George’s gifts were always extravagant—yet chosen with such care, it pained her to pawn them again.
Still, to her knowledge he was still courting debutantes with the object of marriage; it would not be long until he found a bride and their arrangement would end. She would find another lover to pay for her daughter’s dowry—one in whose companyshe did not find so much enjoyment—and all would go back to how it should be.
Merry widows did not fall in love. It was unbecoming.
That was when disaster struck.
She had known her monthly courses were approaching by the grumbling aches in her abdomen, the pain in her lower back. And so when she awoke to blood between her thighs, she resigned herself to the inevitable and sent a note to George explaining that she would be indisposed. But that was not the problem—if anything, she was relieved at the opportunity for some space.
