An Infamous Marriage (18 page)

Much to his surprise, that made her giggle. “Are they like two young roes that are twins?”

He pulled away.
“What?”

“The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s, the fourth chapter, the fifth verse.
‘Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.’”

Now he remembered. He had gone through a stage, when he was too young to quite understand the imagery but old enough to be shocked something so naughty was in the
Bible,
of reading the Song of Songs again and again. His mother had asked him, hopefully, if he intended to give over his dreams of following his uncle into the army and study to become a clergyman instead.

He grinned. He would’ve made a dreadful vicar. “They’re certainly twin,” he said. “And I know I’d like to feed among them.” He caught her by the waist and pulled her up until her chest was level with his face. She shivered, whether from arousal or cold he couldn’t tell, but he worked to stoke one and assuage the other, stroking her back with warm hands and flicking out his tongue to delicately lick her hard, rosy nipple.

With a choked cry, she pushed herself at him, and he took her nipple all the way into his mouth. Good, good, so good to have this taste of her.

Now he allowed himself to drag a hand down to the juncture of her thighs, to begin a leisurely exploration of her curls and the secret folds beneath them, wet and ready for him. He teased at her entrance with a fingertip.

She cried out, then pushed his hand away. Before he could respond, she wrapped her legs around his waist and tried to lower herself onto him. She didn’t have the angle quite right, and though everything in him wanted to shift so he could slide into her heat, he pushed her away.

“Why?” she cried, shoving at his shoulders. “What’s left to wait for?”

Now
she was ready. “Get out of the tub, and I’ll show you.”

* * *

Elizabeth wanted to hit Jack again. He was driving her mad with desire, and what business did he have having more control than she did, and how much more could there
be?
But she stood on shaking legs and got herself out of the tub. He was just behind her, stumbling a little on his bad leg—her increasingly distant rational mind worried over that, because he would injure himself seriously one of these days if he didn’t take better care—and wrapping her in one of the waiting towels.

They staggered together toward the bed. He threw back the counterpane, spun her around and nudged her till she sprawled on her back across the sheets, her legs dangling bonelessly half off the edge of the mattress. At first she wanted to protest, for they were still dripping wet and the sheets would be soaked, but then he was bending over her and his mouth was at her breast, the one he’d neglected in the bath, and she heard herself moan. Her rational mind subsided with a last reassuring comment that the bed was far more comfortable than the tub.

Sooner than she would’ve liked, his mouth left her breast, and he began to lick and nibble his way down her belly. She felt his hands nudge her legs farther apart, his fingers spreading her most intimate parts open to the cool air—surely he wasn’t about to...? Was such a thing possible? She’d never heard—oh, God, his
tongue...there,
licking and teasing at the spot where her pleasure seemed to center, then delving down to thrust in and out of her, and she had never felt anything so intense, so
good.
She was dimly aware of her breath coming faster and faster, in broken gasps, and when he returned his attention to that peak spot, something within her broke, exploded, and she heard herself cry out.

Before she had time to be embarrassed that the whole household must have heard her, he had surged up over her and was thrusting inside her, slow and deliberate. Languid from the pleasure that had just passed, she wound her arms around his neck and luxuriated in the sensations—his fullness, his strength.

He stared at her, so close that they were almost nose to nose. His gaze was as intimate as the act itself.

“So beautiful,” he murmured in rhythm with his thrusts. “I’m going to make you come again, and again, just...like that...ah...” At that, his eyes rolled back, and his face took on a new intensity. “But later,” he managed, his thrusts picking up a frantic, abandoned pace Elizabeth could just match, lifting her hips to his. He went still for an instant, she felt the warmth of his seed deep inside her, and when he thrust once or twice more she came to a second peak, not as intense as the first but a lovely echo of it.

He buried his face in her neck as he eased himself out of her. “That was...too good for words.”

She ran a lazy hand down his back, enjoying the play of muscles beneath her hand. She’d managed to render Jack Armstrong speechless. The only problem was he’d had the exact same effect on her. She managed a “Mmm” of agreement.

He laughed and rolled over, pulling her to lie atop him. “Splendid woman.”

“Magnificent man,” she said, feeling she ought to praise him in kind. “
Thorough
man.”

He shrugged. “After as long as we’d waited, I thought you deserved no less.”

“Oh, you can be that thorough anytime you’d like.” She pillowed her head on his shoulder, feeling deliciously relaxed. “But for now, I’d sleep all day if I could.”

“So would I. Hopefully the mares and sheep will let us make an early night of it this time.” He stretched out an arm and drew the counterpane over them both. “Don’t want you to catch a chill.”

They lay in happy silence for a moment. Jack smoothed her hair, and Elizabeth’s eyes fell closed. It wouldn’t be a dreadful thing to take a nap together. Breakfast and the farm’s work would still be there in an hour or two.

They slept far longer than that. Elizabeth at last awoke just before noon and sat up, rolling her stiff neck. Men’s shoulders might make fine pillows in the immediate aftermath of passion, but for slumber of any duration they had their detriments.

She slid off the bed, shivering a little at the cool air on her bare skin now that she no longer had Jack’s warmth beside her and a blanket over her to combat the chill. She retrieved her old blue robe from where she’d left it hanging over a chair the night before last—so much had happened since then!—and tied it on. The wool prickled against her skin, so different from the soft, comfortable linen of her shifts and nightdresses, but she savored the sensation. It reminded her of Jack’s face, bristly with beard stubble, against her breasts, down her belly, between her thighs... She’d never imagined such a thing, to be kissed and sucked
there.
She ought to have been embarrassed, to be seen and touched so intimately, and she did blush at the memory. But she couldn’t wait to experience it again. Would he enjoy it as much if she did the same to him? She wanted to try, to see how he tasted and how he would react.
Turnabout is fair play,
she imagined herself telling him as she pushed him down onto the bed.

She glanced over her shoulder at him now, sleeping sprawled and vulnerable across her bed. They’d never even got round to lying the right way. The pillows at the head of the bed remained untouched, and his bare feet hung over the side. She stepped closer, but only to tuck the counterpane more securely around him.

He sat up at her touch, yawning and rubbing his eyes. Taking the blanket from her hands, he blinked at her in bemusement. “What? Do you blush to be naked and in a room with a naked man, even now?”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m not embarrassed, only cold, and I thought you must be, too.”

“If I ever do take you to Canada, remind me to buy you a fur robe. But then why are you blushing?” He ran a thumb over her cheekbone. “Your face is as red as I’ve ever seen it.”

“I’m not embarrassed,” she maintained. “It’s only—you get my blood up, I suppose.”

He grinned and hauled her against him for a kiss. “I’m glad to hear it, since you have the same sort of effect on me. We could...” He paused, and he squinted toward the tiny clock on her dressing table. “What time is it, I wonder?”

“Almost noon.”

“We’ve slept half the day away. We’ll be too rested to sleep tonight.”

She rested a palm against his shoulder. “I wouldn’t say that’s a problem, would you? I can think of better ways to spend the night than in sleep.”

“Why, so can I.”

They smiled at each other, in perfect harmony. Jack sobered and stroked her cheek. “Only you, from this day forward,” he said. “I swear it.”

She leaned into his touch. “Good.”

“I can hardly wait for the night,” he said, “but for now I ought to see how Penelope’s filly is doing.”

He was right. They had too many duties to spend the whole day in bed. “I’d like to see her too, and I should visit the Purvises.”

Having agreed to set aside passion for a few hours and take up the part of master and mistress of the Grange, they fell into amicable, desultory conversation. Jack admitted it was a trifle cold for nakedness and wrapped himself in a blanket while he played lady’s maid, helping Elizabeth into rather than out of her clothes. Since the only clothing he had in the room were those he’d worn at Penelope’s foaling, he waited while she fetched him a shirt, drawers and trousers.

Busy with their separate errands, they did not meet again for hours, but after an early dinner they went straight back to bed.

* * *

Over the next few weeks, Elizabeth felt as though she’d gone drunk on love, or that she was feasting upon Jack with a hunger that could never be satisfied. Most nights they left at least one candle burning, and she loved to watch the warm, flickering light play over his skin as they kissed and caressed. But once when they both happened to awaken in the middle of the night and came together in the darkness, she discovered there was a pleasure of its own in touching without seeing, as if being deprived of one sensation enhanced the other. After that they sometimes blew out the candles and made a game of trying to surprise each other with unexpected caresses.

By day they kept busy as master and mistress of the Grange and as members of Selyhaugh’s small society. Foaling and lambing continued apace with the Purvises at the helm. Jack and Elizabeth planned the breedings for the broodmares as they came into their foal heat, showed the yearlings off to buyers and named the new crop of foals. Jack broke out the
Aeneid,
declaring they had all but exhausted the names from the
Iliad
and
Odyssey,
and named Penelope’s filly Dido, two other fillies Lavinia and Camilla, and a trio of colts Aeneas, Pallas and Evander.

They regularly visited the Langs and received their calls in return. Soon Elizabeth was calling Mrs. Lang Louisa and sympathizing with her new friend’s early pregnancy queasiness. When her own regular flow began on time ten days after she and Jack consummated their marriage and began their hungry nightly coupling, she was bitterly disappointed. Jack cheered her, however, with his philosophical reflection that now they had all the more reason to keep trying just as hard for the next month.

Early in March they gave a dinner for the Langs and all their Selyhaugh circle, not even excluding Lady Dryden. It went off well, and Lady Dryden seemed entirely stripped of her fangs and claws now that Jack and Elizabeth had agreed her opinions no longer mattered. Elizabeth discovered she still enjoyed playing hostess and vowed never to allow herself to become a recluse again.

On those evenings they stayed home and had no company, they planned their Grand Tour. They determined to depart on the first of May and to spend a few weeks at the London house they had inherited from Sir Richard to enjoy the sights of their own capital before beginning their continental adventures. As they planned, Elizabeth saw a side of her husband she’d never before suspected existed. He drew up meticulous itineraries showing the routes they would take from one place to another, each one calculating how quickly they might make the journey if all went well, how long they might expect to take if every mishap dreaded by travelers visited them, and how much each leg of the journey should cost them, again with upper and lower extremes and a middle ground he used for his overall accounting.

“It all ought to average out, you see,” he told her upon presenting her with a plan that would bring them back to Northumberland in the spring of 1817.

She blinked and leafed through the pages of calculations. “What if we have a child during all this? Did you consider that?”

“Of course I did. Naturally, if you had any difficulty, or either of us fell ill otherwise, we would come home early, but I factored into my calculations the likelihood of a longer stay in either Paris or Florence, accoucheur’s fees and hiring a nursemaid.”

Blinking at the closely ordered figures, she saw that he had. “Where did you learn to do all this?”

“In the army. Where else? Believe me, planning a Grand Tour for two people who might possibly become three along the way is child’s play compared to calculating how long it will take a regiment to make the journey from, say, Nova Scotia to the farthest outpost of Upper Canada and what sort of supplies must be laid in to feed them over the winter.”

“Ah. You never speak of that side of the life.”

He shrugged. “I assume no one would want to hear about it. It’s necessary, but there’s no glamour or glory in it.”

“You still want glamour and glory.”

“That’s not the point. Consider—if anyone asked you about our horses or sheep, would you talk about your new system for keeping track of the price of wool and mutton, or would you talk about the new lambs and how promising Penelope’s filly is? Battles are more interesting than regimental accounts.”

“That’s so,” she agreed, though she suspected Jack wasn’t yet reconciled to a world at peace. “Since you’re so good at this, do you want to take over the farm accounts too?”

“Only if you dislike the work. I’ve seen enough to know you do it well.”

She set the stack of paper down and stared at him. “Have I mentioned that I love you?”

He stared back. “Outside of bed? No, you haven’t. Even there...not exactly.”