One Unashamed Night (11 page)

‘I am not looking to shackle you into something you might live to regret.’

At that small set-down she reddened. Of course he would not be interested in a more lasting relationship. Still, she could not quite let it lie.

‘Why are you here, then?’

‘Because I like you.’

She sat speechless, for such a simple and uncomplicated reason negated all the more tangled arguments that spun around in her head.

He liked her? No expectation for anything different, no change or carefulness involved in maintaining a facade that might keep him happy? The admission was suddenly as freeing as the way he had conceded his argument on property rights, his lack of malice so unlike her dead husband that it had made her almost dizzy with the contrast.

And now an offer of more, and nobody else’s business save her own.

A clever man and a private man. A man who kept the world at bay so very easily.

Could she enjoy him without fear of all the other ties that drained a relationship in its never-ending complications? Simply be? Simply step into his arms and be?

‘I would not expect promises.’

The smile he gave her back melted her heart.

‘Of course I did not mean that you were even suggesting anything like that—’ She clamped her lips together to stop the babble further.

‘Bea?’

‘Yes?’

‘Be quiet.’

She began to laugh. ‘It is just that I should not wish you to think I was easy.’

‘Lord.’ His expletive was vexed as he removed his glasses and laid them down on the small table next to the sofa and when his hand reached out towards her the ring he wore on his finger glinted in the light, a soldier’s insignia engraved in gold.

‘Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man…’ The small ditty turned in her mind. What else had he been? When his thumb traced a line from her wrist to her elbow she took in a breath and leaned back, the warmth from the fire on her face and the heat from his touch lighting a fervour more intemperate even than the naked flame.

‘It cannot be here,’ she whispered as his touch skimmed across the bodice of her gown.

‘Then where?’

‘Upstairs. If you give me time to give the servants their leave to retire.’

His fingers stilled and pulled back.

‘It should just take me a moment.’ But he did not answer as she stood and scurried from the room.

After dismissing the staff for the night, Bea stopped in front of the mirror above the mantel in the dining room and met her reflection.

Fervent. Excited. Basked in promise.

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘Do not hope…’

The thin line between her eyes reappeared and although her dimples were attractive there was much more on her face that was not.

‘Just enjoy,’ she said more softly before taking a breath and opening again the door to the blue salon.

Chapter Nine

H
er chamber smelt of flowers and of lemon soap. The floorboards beneath his feet were slippery with polish and the rugs covering them thick. His hand reached out to the bed that he could just make out in front of him, a large square of light grey with some sort of pattern on the eiderdown.

More flowers, he decided as his thumb skimmed the outline.

Suddenly he felt nervous, his lack of sight here in an unknown room more worrying than he had thought it would be. He was careful to lift his feet when he stepped around the chest at the foot of the bed.

‘The fire has just been stoked. It should be warmer soon.’ Bea sounded almost as nervous.

‘Do you have any wine?’ he asked as he sat down on the bed, the mattress squashing under his weight.

‘Not in my room,’ she replied. ‘I could go downstairs and get it…’

He stopped her merely by catching at her arm and pulling her on to his knee.

Better, he thought, his body beginning to rise with the promise of it all. Much better, he amended, as the warm softness of breast came against him.

He had locked the door as he had followed her through and when the bells of London pealed the hour of eleven he was glad.

Hours lay before them. Hours and hours and hours. He had never before made love with a woman who knew the limitations of his sight and the relief was all-encompassing. No need to demand the candles be snuffed out or the worry of what might happen should he fumble or lose his way.

Here and now he could just be, just run his finger along the side of her face and feel her breath, her heart, the beat fast and then faster as his thumb skimmed the line of her throat, satin-soft-smooth and slender.

‘Not as cold as last time,’ he whispered as a log fell into place in the growing fire.

‘And a lot more comfortable,’ she returned, his touch determining the deep indents in her cheeks as she smiled.

Outside the wind was louder and the first spits of rain hurled themselves against the glass and for a moment he felt like a green boy, wanting her but not quite knowing how to begin, the hardness of his need pushing between them.

‘I should take my hair down,’ she said, the words halfway between a question and a statement and he felt her arms rise to do it.

‘Let me.’ His fingers ran over the silken thickness and found the hidden pins. One by one he removed them and she sat perfectly still as, clip by clip, her hair began to fall, undone and tousled, until there were no strands left up.

Beatrice sat and waited, her body coiled into tight expectation. When this was finished what would be next? Each clip marked time, loosening promise, bringing the moment nearer when his fingers might reach for other parts. With the candles still burning on the bedside table everything was so…very visible. She wished she had thought to snuff them out, to leave only the fire-glow, so kind to the many faults beneath her clothes.

And when the last of her hair fell between them his fingers traced the shape of her nose and her brow and the angled line of her cheeks.

A picture. He was forming a picture.

‘I am not beautiful.’ Better to say it before he thought it.

He only laughed and brought her hand to his own face. ‘Close your eyes and feel me,’ he said, and she did so, the shape of his nose strong, his cheek marred by the scar, his chin rough from the lateness of the day where he had not shaved since the morning.

No picture but parts. Warm. Real. For a second she knew just exactly what it was he felt and was wondrous. Opening her eyes, she saw his amber glance waver.

‘Kiss me,’ she said, wanting the sense of control that she had never felt with Frankwell. Her tongue ran across her lips and she pushed against him.

The dam of restraint broke completely and his mouth came down, seeking, breathing, hot and needy. She felt his hands on the side of her face and on her neck and the heat of him was like a magnet, like a centre, like a place she could not get enough of, her own tongue dancing against his, seeking an entrance, tasting and challenging, the ache in her belly a fiery red.

She could not breathe without him, she could not exist alone, her hands threading through his hair and feeling another scar bigger than the one on his face, longer, more dangerous.

Cradling her hand, she brushed the heaviness of her breasts against his fingers.

‘God,’ he said and then repeated it. ‘You are a witch, Beatrice-Maude. I swear that you are. One kiss and I am a youth again starved of any finesse and restraint.’

‘I do not wish for restraint,’ she returned, the result of her words showing as a flush on his cheeks. For suddenly she just did not. This was not love but lust, and the full rein of such an emotion should not be pegged in by time or convention. Putting her hands against both sides of his shirt, she ripped it open. Just ripped it, exposing the bronzed and defined muscular chest of a man who was beyond beautiful.

Hers again! She was not careful as her fingers found his nipple and her mouth followed.

All the control that he had perfected across three years of anger broke free. This was nothing to do with what he could see or could not see. This was only about feeling and taking and the shirt that hung in tatters on his shoulders felt like a flag of freedom, a banner to release him from a heavy burden.

He could not believe how he felt, the meticulous detail of hiding his sightlessness so all-encompassing that it left little room for any other emotion. Until now. Until this minute. The shock of her teeth upon his nipple sending passion through every pore of his body.

More!

He bundled her hair in his fist and kept her there tasting until he could bear it no longer; with a quick movement he gathered her in his arms and laid her back on the bed, holding his hand against her as she went to move.

‘My turn now.’

He could almost imagine he saw the smile upon her face.

She was pleased when he leant over to snuff the bedside candle, and pleased too as his fingers unbuttoned her bodice, exposing the lawn and the lace of her chemise. Unpeeled, she thought, as the cold air gave her goose-bumps, enhanced by the thought of what might come next and her whole insides tightening with delight.

He had not removed his tattered shirt, but the lacings on his trousers were gone, as were the boots he had worn. She felt almost fully dressed in contrast. The difference made her writhe.

‘Hurry.’ The word was out even as she thought it and she saw the quick flash of white teeth as he drew the yellow silk of her dress down over her body. Only lawn and lace kept her from him now, and she knew he knew it too as his breathing quickened.

His hand lifted her petticoat and bundled it into a wad, before dealing with her drawers. Easily disposed of, the flimsy silk removed without exertion.

Only her now, and his hands against her thighs.

When she went to move he kept her still.

‘Please?’ Soft. Honest. No force within it.

She lay back again and waited as his fingers found what it was they sought and when her head arched her body followed, sweat beading the channel between her breasts as she reached for the stars and the sky and the place in her life where all was good and true and right.

‘Now.’ Just now. Just this time. Again. The squeezing knots of lushness washed across her, the languid ache of perfection echoing in her very bones.

Taris had never met a woman before who was so responsive, so quick to delight, so unheedful of her nakedness and pleasure.

Already she turned to him seeking, and his erection grew against the satin skin of her stomach, the bedclothes kicked away on to the floor and only firelight between them. He could see the flicker of the flames against greyness and feel the heat of passion marking the contact of her hand against his bottom. Her tongue lathed his neck, joining whispered pleadings for more.

No hesitation in it. No demand for protection or heed for safety. Just him and his seed filling her, the ease of their coupling natural and right, the rhythm of his thrusts finding a home he had never had, taken and given, deeper before spiralling up and up, his breath fast and her hips rocking and the feel of her teeth as he climaxed, her muscles milking his hardness until he collapsed against the mattress, struggling to find a breath.

Laughing. His laughter against the silence of night and the carefulness of years and the unexpected paradise of her body.

‘Beatrice?’ He whispered her name when he could and she whispered his back, two people caught in the question of flesh and the elation of freedom and the bone-deep rightness of what had just happened between them.

‘Bea-all-and-end-all.’

And then they slept.

She could not believe that he was gone when she woke up. Could not believe that he had crept through her house without awakening her as he let himself out. How had he got home? How had he been able to negotiate a distance that he had no knowledge of? But the first rays of dawn were just touching the eastern sky and the space beside her was empty.

‘Lord help me,’ she whispered, the thought of her wanton abandon sending shivers of uncertainty through her this morning. Throughout all the years with Frankwell she had lain like a wooden doll on a marriage bed that had been the antithesis of what had happened last night.

‘Lord, please help me,’ she repeated again. Would he think her a whore? Was that why he had left? Would he think her a woman who was promiscuous and easy, a lady who would cross the boundaries without a single thought for consequences?

Consequences? Did two nights of loving mean she was now Taris Wellingham’s mistress? His woman to use when fancy struck him? A lady kept for pleasure in his bedroom?

‘No.’ She shook her head, though a darker thought lingered. Could she refuse him should he come back? She was becoming exactly the woman she had sworn she never would be again. A woman with no say over the dominion of her own body. Last time in hate and this time in lust.

Which was better?

Frankwell at least had placed a ring on her finger and the law condoned a husband’s needs in whatever form that they should take.

But now, here, in the morning light with a bed that was rumpled and musky, Beatrice felt both sullied and stupid.

A woman who would preach the doctrine of independence and then ignore every single tenet of it? She pulled the sheet around her nakedness and sat, the sight of her clothes strewn around her bed making her sigh.

Abandonment had its repercussions.

Her head fell against her hands and she wept both for the woman she had lost and for the man that she had found. And then she slept again.

Taris counted the steps between Bea’s bedroom and the stairs and then counted the number of stairs to the front door.

Perfectly easy, he thought, as his hand had found the handle and he let himself out.

Jack was waiting on the front step just as they had arranged.

‘It’s a dangerous game you play, my friend.’

‘How so?’

‘Mrs Bassingstoke is a woman of some reputation. One word of this gets out and she will be ruined.’

He was quiet.

‘There are houses in Covent Garden with girls whose names would not be so destroyed…’

‘Enough, Jack. Where’s the carriage?’

‘Around the corner. I didn’t wish to risk anybody seeing it.’

‘Thank you.’

‘If Asher learns of any of this he will have your head on the block.’

‘My brother’s newly formed morality is no concern of mine.’

‘You hold the Wellingham name, Taris. It is simply that he tries to protect it and for a man who has rutted his way until the early hours of the morning you’re surprisingly taciturn.’

‘Leave it, aye?’

They walked the rest of the way in silence.

Arriving home, Taris went straight to his room and lay down on his bed. He did not change his clothes because he wanted to keep Bea’s smell with him. Violets and laughter and freedom. The smell of abandonment and the joy of sex!

One hand fell over his eyes, shutting out any light at all and giving him rest.

Neither shapes nor colour. Just the blackness to think in.

He had left because he knew if he had been there in the morning things would have been difficult and in the break of day his presence would raise questions that a night-time assignation would not.

Still, he thought, perhaps he should have left something. As an explanation. Not a note, because it had been long since he had written anything in any shape and form but…something. He had not thought of it then in his haste and his worry. It was only now, when he had time to ponder and remember, that the idea had struck him. But what exactly could he have left because, lying here, he had no idea as to what his feelings were?

Beatrice was a woman who did not want a dalliance or a meaningless tryst, just as she had said time and time again that she desired nothing permanent either. Not a frivolous woman or a woman prone to a quick affair and yet not one who demanded anything else more enduring.

A puzzle. And he knew that the puzzle was linked somehow to the husband who had died only a few months back.

Corrected.

My husband said that if I ate more that I should appeal to him better

Clues that something had not been right. He remembered Asher’s words at the ball when he had said that Beatrice and her husband had not mixed much and that few people in the area had a good knowledge of them.

The town they had lived in had been Ipswich. Perhaps it was time to find out something about the late and very mysterious Mr Bassingstoke.

Three hours later with the intrusion of Ashe and Emerald and Lucinda and his mother into the breakfast room, Taris decided that his home in Kent, which was a little removed from all the other Wellinghams, definitely had its advantages. He was also glad that they would be repairing to Falder come the morrow for he felt like a goldfish might in a glass bowl, the curiosity of his family firmly fixed upon him and the questions that they asked leading to one person.

Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke.