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And for the next ten, too?
And forever?
They were questions he was not prepared to explore.
When the last of the fireworks had burned itself out in the night sky, they found the Bancrofts and thanked them for a lovely evening and took their leave, though there was more dancing to come and refreshments were already being brought out onto the terrace.
They walked back to the village and the Crook and Staff I
They walked in silence, her arm drawn through his and pressed firmly against his side.
He tried not to think ahead-to tonight, to tomorrow, to the rest of his life.
Chapter Nine
It was foolish to have enjoyed the day so much, Nora thought when they arrived back at the Crook and Staff and she climbed the stairs ahead of Richard to his room. It was foolish to have reveled in this evening’s activities-the di
Ah, that waltz! The glorious romance of it all, when she had forgotten everything except the present moment with the music and the moonlight and the man with whom she danced.
And the fireworks. The light and the colors and the sounds and the smells. And the arms of the man who held her as they watched in silence.
Spellbound.
It was foolish to have abandoned herself to it all, to have flung off her defenses. For of course, all the events of the day had been leading to the night-to a night spent in a room with him, trying to sleep on the hard floor, though sleep would be an impossibility even if she had the softest of feather beds on which to lie. And this night led inevitably to tomorrow morning, when he would resume his journey in his curricle and she would go her way on the stagecoach.
The curtains had not been pulled across the window in their room. It was not a dark night outside. It was easy to see without the aid of a candle. She was relieved when he made no move to light one.
“I will lie down over here,” she said without turning to look at him. She had picked out the dark corner beyond the washstand. She had a cloak in her valise to use as a blanket. The valise itself would serve as a pillow.
“You will, of course,” he said, sounding autocratic and impatient, “sleep on the bed.”
“Oh no,” she said, turning to him. “There is really no need to be gallant. It is your room. I am only grateful that-”
“Nora,” he said softly.
She had not realized he was so close. She could feel his body heat. She had to tip back her head to look into his eyes.
She swallowed and left her sentence uncompleted.
His fingertips touched one of her cheeks, feather-light, and she closed her eyes and stood very still.
“Nora,” he said again. A mere breath of sound.
His lips were soft and warm when they touched hers, and she was aware that her own trembled against them.
But she did not draw back as she knew she ought.
A great welling of longing held her rooted to the spot.
“Tell me to stop,” he murmured against her lips, “if you wish me to stop. I promised that I would not molest you.”
She would have preferred to stand where she was and let him decide what was to happen. No decisions. No responsibility. No blame.
The old Nora, dependent upon and subservient to the men in her life-except for the one brief, colossal act of defiance, which she had not been strong enough to sustain-had been like that.
She was no longer that girl. She had a choice, and only she could make it.
She set her hands on his shoulders.
“Don’t stop,” she said.
She wondered if this had been inevitable from the moment when he had first spotted her this morning. Or from the moment when his curricle had pulled out of the i
How far back did causes go?
And what about effects?
She had said, Don’t stop, and her life would forever be changed in ways she could not even dream of yet. But she had said it consciously and willingly. It was what she wanted. And so there would be the memory of tonight added to that of today-and all of them to set against the memory of their disastrous wedding day.
She would never hate him again after tonight. Whatever happened, she could never hate him again.
His lips moved from hers to kiss a molten path along her throat and then her shoulder. His hands were unhooking her dress buttons and nudging the garment off her shoulders and down her arms.
She shivered, though not with cold.
He raised his head for a moment and lifted her beads from about her neck. They clattered to the floor as he dropped them. In the near-darkness their eyes met, and they smiled at each other.
It was her undoing. For this was no impersonal exercise in sexual passion. This was Richard and she. And she had never-ah, dear God, she had never stopped loving him.
Hating him and loving him.
But always, always the love.
He had smiled at her once upon a time, when she was a girl, and she had fallen in love with him. And now he had smiled at her again in the darkness of the bedchamber they shared.
He lowered her dress to expose her breasts and cupped them in his hands. His fingers played over them while she closed her eyes and tipped back her head. The pads of his thumbs rubbed over her nipples, which immediately hardened. A sharp, raw ache darted upward into her throat and downward through her stomach and her womb to her thighs.
And then her dress and her undergarments were being pushed lower until finally they slid all the way to her feet.
He went down on one knee before her to roll down her stockings, and she set both hands on his head as if in benediction as she lifted her feet one at a time so that he could ease the stockings off.
He kissed the instep of the second foot, her calf, the inside of her knee, her throbbing i
As she clung to him, eager and weak with need, it occurred to her that perhaps she ought to have been unclothing him, too. She knew so very little! But there was something gloriously-what was the word?-erotic. There was something almost unbearably erotic about being held naked against his fully clothed body.
She sucked his tongue deeper into her mouth, her hand behind his head, and he made a low sound of appreciation in his throat.
“Come and lie down, Nora,” he said, turning to the bed and drawing back the covers while he kept one arm firmly about her.
He leaned over her when she was lying on her back, kissing her openmouthed as he shrugged out of his coat and then tugged loose his neck cloth. She helped him then, pulling his shirt off over his head and dropping it to the floor.
His hands worked at his waist, and he stood again to remove his breeches and undergarments.
Ah, but he was beautiful, she thought, gazing up at him in the light of the moon filtering through the window. More beautiful than he had been. He was broader now and more powerfully muscled.
Or perhaps she thought so only because she was looking at him now through a woman’s eyes rather than a girl’s. She had a sudden, vivid memory of calling him beautiful then because he had been slender and graceful-and of his laughing at her use of the word just before lust had consumed them both. It had been neither skilled nor particularly satisfying, that long-ago consummation, but, ah, they had been happy. They had been embarking upon a happily-ever-after with all the blind optimism of youth.