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But this was not just about sex.
He drew a slow, steadying breath and opened his eyes. He was still kneeling, her legs drawn over his spread knees, his hands beneath her. Her hands were flat against the mattress. Her flaxen hair was spread in glorious disarray across the pillow. Her eyes were open and gazing back into his, heavy-lidded with desire.
He braced his arms on either side of her head and lowered himself onto her, straightening his legs as he did so. He gave her his full weight, turning his head to lie beside hers.
And he worked her with long, slow strokes until there was almost no energy left and no control at all. With one final inward thrust he released into her. And he knew, even though she neither cried out nor shuddered, that she reached completion at the same moment.
It was, he knew with his last coherent thought before he slid into sleep, the only time he had ever really made love. And it was with Nora.
With his wife.
The begi
He disengaged from her, lifted himself off her, and covered her to the chin with the sheet and blanket before going to stand at the window. The room was at the back of the i
He braced his hands on the windowsill and gazed out, the morning air cool against his bare arms and chest.
Chapter Eleven
She woke as soon as the weight of his body was gone from her, to be replaced by the sheet and blanket, though she did not open her eyes until she judged that he must have moved away.
She turned her head then and gazed at him as he stood at the window, his back to her, still naked. He was a magnificent man. And a magnificent lover, too.
She still ached where he had been. Her legs were still stiff from having been pressed wide for so long. She could still smell the musk of him on the bedding, on herself.
“Richard,” she said softly, “why did you write that letter? It hurt me terribly.”
Perhaps she ought not to have admitted that. She would not have done so just yesterday.
He turned his head to look at her over his shoulder. His hands were still braced on the windowsill.
“Which one?” he asked her.
“Which one?” She frowned. “The only one. You wrote me only one.”
He stared at her for a long time without moving or saying anything. Then he laughed shortly.
“How stupid of me,” he said. “How utterly stupid. Of course! You never even set eyes on any of the others, did you?”
“There were others?”
But she knew suddenly that there must have been. Of course there had been others. He would not simply have abandoned her-though she had believed it all these years.
He chuckled again, though it was not a sound of amusement.
“We were a precious pair of i
She did not answer. She did not need to.
They stared mutely at each other.
He moved away from the window and came a little closer to the bed. He stood looking down at her though she could not see his face clearly any longer-his head was silhouetted against the window.
“Why did that one letter hurt you?” he asked her. “I offered you marriage in it-assuming we were not already married, that was.”
“You did it as an insult to Papa,” she said. “Suddenly everything had reversed itself. Suddenly you were titled and very wealthy and we were ruined almost to the point of destitution. You did it to rub his nose in the dirt of that fact, thinking he would be only too eager to accept your suit then.”
“He had already made overtures to me,” he said softly. “It was why I wrote once more. I thought it was what you wanted at last-and what you had been told to do.”
She closed her eyes again and kept them closed.
“I was a pawn in everyone’s game,” she said.
“I was surprised when you refused me,” he said. “You had been so very obedient to your father until then. It was the first time in six months that I felt some respect for you.”
Her heart had bled and bled after she had sent her reply-metaphorically, of course. Hearts did not literally bleed or break. Sometimes one wished that they did.
But all that grieving was long in the past. She had discovered that she was a survivor, like it or not. She still was. And she would be. She would survive this-this twenty-four-hour interlude in her life.
“I am going to get dressed,” he said abruptly, “and go down and see how my curricle and horses are doing. I might as well make an early start since I am up anyway.”
She watched him wash and dress. She watched him shave with the cold water from last evening. She watched last night’s hot lover transform himself into a cool and brisk and fashionable gentleman.
Soon yesterday and last night-and this moment-would seem like a dream.
Perhaps a nightmare.
He looked toward the bed when his hand was on the door as he was leaving the room.
“I will have breakfast sent up for you in an hour’s time,” he said.
She was about to protest that she could not afford to pay for it. But it would have been petty.
Why did she have the sense that they had quarreled when really they had not?
Last night they had made love twice.
They had made love.
Or was it a measure of her terrible i
Had it really been just sex?
She supposed it had.
“Thank you,” she said.
And he was gone.
Chapter Twelve
Richard’s curricle was ready to go. The woodwork was going to need some repairs and a good coat of paint, it was true, but that work could wait until he got to London. The curricle was roadworthy, and he was eager to be on the way. It was time to get back to real life.
The stagecoach had been repaired, too, the damages having proved to be less severe than had been feared at first. It stood in the i
The sun was shining again, though there was more of a wind today. The colored ribbons were flapping audibly about the deserted maypole in the middle of the village green.
He would, Richard decided, wait to see Nora on her way. He was tempted to leave before her and without seeing her again-he could send a servant up to fetch his bag. But he knew that he must make sure nothing further cropped up to delay the coach-she had no money, and he guessed that she would not willingly take any from him.
It was going to look very strange to a largish number of people when she boarded the stagecoach and he drove off alone in his curricle. They were going to wonder…
For himself he did not care the snap of his fingers what anyone thought. But she was going to be traveling for long hours with some of those very people. Would they give her a rough time?
Damnation!
And what had suddenly gone wrong up there in their room this morning? It was puzzling. They had not quarreled, and yet…
He had ended their conversation about the past abruptly by a