“Phelps told me,” she said. “I went downstairs while you were bathing and cornered him when he was on his way out. He described the state Dominick had been in, and how you faced it and dealt with it, yourself…with your owntwohands.”
She slipped her arm through his, through the one that his own fears and need had paralyzed, and a little boy’s greater fears and need had cured. “I did not know whether to laugh or cry,” she said. “So I did both.” Silver mist shimmered in her eyes. “I am so proud of you, Dain. And proud of myself,” she added, looking away and blinking hard, “for having the good sense to marry you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “Sense had nothing to do with it. But I will give you credit for making the best of a situation that would have driven any normal female to leap, screaming, from the top of the nearest tower.”
“That would have been unforgivably gauche,” she said.
“It would have meant admitting defeat, you mean,” he said. “And that you cannot do. It isn’t in your nature. As Vawtry has learned, to his everlasting mortification.”
She frowned. “I know I took advantage of him. In spite of everything, he was too much the gentleman to fight back properly. All he could do was try to shake me off. But I should not have taken advantage if the curst fool had let go of the icon. Then, by the time he finally did, I was much too overwrought to stop smashing him. If you had not come when you did, I fear I might have killed him.” She leaned her head against his brawny upper arm. “I do not think anyone else could have stopped me.”
“Yes, we big, mean lummoxes have our uses,” he said. He scooped her up and carried her to the dining room table. “Luckily, I had both arms working by then, else I doubt even I could have managed it.” He plunked her down upon the gleaming wood surface. “What I should like to know, though, is why my levelheaded wife hadn’t the common sense to keep at least a few servants with her, fire or no fire.”
“I did,” she said. “But Joseph and Mary were up in the South Tower, too far away to hear anything. I should not have noticed Vawtry myself, if he hadn’t come down the main staircase. But I had gone down to the ground floor to watch for you. Someone had to be there when you arrived, to make Dominick feel welcome. I wanted to be the one. I wanted to prove I was looking forward to his arrival.” Her voice quavered. “I wanted to reassure him and—and give him a h-hug.”
He tilted up her chin and gazed into her misty eyes. “I hugged him,cara,” he said softly. “I took him up in front of me on my horse, and I held him close, because he is a child, needing reassurance. I told him I would take care of him…because he was my son. And I told him you wanted him, too. I told him all about you—that you could be kind and amazingly understanding, but that you wouldn’t tolerate any nonsense.” He smiled. “And when we came home, the first thing Dominick saw was active, incontrovertible proof of that last. You proved that Papa was telling the truth, and Papa knows everything about everybody.”
“Then I shall hug Papa.” She wrapped her arms about his waist and laid her head against his chest. “I love you, Sebastian Leslie Guy de Ath Ballister. I love you, Lord Dain and Beelzebub, Lord Blackmoor, Lord Launcells, Lord Ballister—”
“That’s too many names,” he said. “We’ve been wed more than a month. Since it appears that you mean to stay, I might as well give you leave to call me by my Christian name. It is preferable, at any rate, to ‘clodpole.’”
“I love you, Sebastian,” she said.
“I’m rather fond of you, too,” he said.
“Immensely fond,” she corrected.
Her dressing gown was sliding down from her shoulders. He hastily drew it up. “Immense may well be the word for it.” He glanced down at where his shaft was stirring against his dressing gown. “We had better get upstairs quickly and go to sleep forthwith. Before my feelings of fondness swell to an unreasonable degree.”
“Going directly to sleep would be unreasonable,” she said. She slid her hands up and into the opening of his robe and stroked over his chest. The muscles there tightened and pulsed, and the pulsations raced downward.
“You’re exhausted from your ordeal,” he said, swallowing a groan. “Also, I’m sure you must be bruised in a hundred places. You don’t want a fifteen-stone brute heaving about on top of you.”
She drew her thumb over his nipple.
He sucked in his breath.
“You could heave aboutunderme,” she said softly.
He told himself to ignore what she’d just said, but the image rose in his mind’s eye, and his rod rose eagerly with it.
It had been a month since she’d told him she loved him. It had been a month since she had actually invited him, instead of simply cooperating. Enthusiastic as the cooperation had been, he’d missed her brazen overtures almost as much as he’d missed the three precious words.
Besides, he was an animal.
Already he was as randy as a rutting bull elephant.
He lifted her off the table. He meant to set her down, because carrying her would be too dangerously intimate. But she wouldn’t be set down. She clung to his arms and wrapped her legs round his waist.
He tried not to look down, but he couldn’t help it.
He saw soft white thighs encircling him, caught a glimpse of the sleek, dark curls just below the sash that was no longer holding the gown decorously in place.
She shifted a bit, and the robe slid from her shoulders again. She slipped first one, then the other arm from the loose sleeves. The elegant robe became a useless scrap of silk dangling from her waist.
Smiling, she brought her arms up to circle his neck. She rubbed her firm, white breasts against the opening of his dressing gown, and it gave way. The warm, feminine mounds pressed against his skin.
He turned and came back to the table and sank down upon it.
