Regency Innocents (30 page)

She wrapped her arms tight about his neck, pressing her lips to his throat as though in gratitude, and he sighed with contentment.

She had been so scared when he had got up and walked away, a frown on his face as though he had grown impatient
with her. It was such a relief when he came back she could have wept. She would make no more foolish protests. Whatever he wanted to do, whatever he asked of her, she would comply.

Even though to begin with she felt a little shocked that there were so many places on her body he wanted to kiss, or lick, or nip with his teeth, or pluck at with his clever, sensitive fingers.

But before long he'd roused such a tide of sensation in her that it swept all modesty aside. She writhed and moaned, kicking the curtain away as her whole body throbbed with heated pleasure. Then his fingers plucked once more, sending her shooting high into a realm of such exquisite sensation she cried aloud at the glory of it.

‘Ah, yes,' he murmured into her ear. ‘You liked that.' He was elated by her response. He had hoped she might grant him some concessions eventually, after a long period of wooing. He had been prepared to play on her sense of honour, reminding her she had a duty to give him heirs, if nothing else worked. Yet she had just yielded completely. And it was typical of her to give so much when he deserved so little. Especially considering how he had insulted her on the night he had taken her virginity. He should have been gentle and considerate of her inexperience. Instead of which …

‘I was less than chivalrous last time,' he ground out. ‘I will not be so careless of your needs in future, I promise you.'

She was so beautiful, lying in sated forgetfulness in the aftermath of what he knew must have been her first orgasm.

‘But I have needs of my own,' he said, moving over her and into her, revelling in the soft warmth of her welcome.

Her eyes fluttered open as he began to move gently, her hands lifting to his waist as, unbelievably, she began to respond to him all over again.

He forced himself to go slowly, introducing her to the next level of lovemaking with an entirely different repertoire of moves.

‘Charles!' she cried, and he felt her throbbing with release.

Hearing his name rise to her lips as she came to completion was all that was needed to send him tumbling over the edge. And, when he was spent, a feeling of such intense peace washed over him he dared not say one word for fear of shattering their first experience of harmony.

It took Heloise quite a while to come back down to earth. Charles had given her such intense pleasure. She could never have imagined her body was capable of anything so wonderful.

She turned her head to look at him. He had fallen asleep. Not surprisingly, she smiled. For he had done all the work.

‘He likes to have the mastery between the sheets,' she remembered Mrs Kenton gloating, fanning her face, and just like that her joy was snuffed out. He was always like this in bed with a woman. It was nothing special to him.

And, she recalled, a feeling of sick dread cramping her stomach, he had only done this to ‘oblige' her. She had approached him, blatantly stroking his chest, with her mouth hanging open at the sight of his semi-nudity. He knew they would not be rescued for hours, so it had seemed like as good a way to pass the time as any other. And he had needs, as he had pointed out as he had taken what was on offer.

She turned onto her side, pulling the curtain up over her shoulder, wondering why she should feel so cross. After all, not many nights ago she had worked out for herself that he would need a woman soon, and then made that spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to seduce him. She should
be crowing in triumph, not blinking back tears. For she had got what she wanted, had she not?

It made her feel even more cross when he awoke with a smile on his face. When he saw that she was sitting hunched in front of the fire, the curtain clutched to her chin defensively, he cheerfully broke up another chair, tossing the pieces onto the fire until it was ablaze. It annoyed her that he was so much more successful at coaxing warmth from a fire she had only managed to get smoking damply. And it made her resentful when he began to tell her all about how this room had been used by former countesses to take tea, since it overlooked a particularly pleasing view of the lake, as though she were a guest he had to entertain.

It was a relief when, as dusk fell, she heard footsteps approaching the tower. Charles went to the landing, informing the servants who had come looking for them what had happened, and telling them to fetch a ladder. Hastily, while his back was turned, she fumbled her way into her damp clothing under cover of the dusty curtain.

Charles wished there was something he could do to ease his wife's discomfort. He could see she felt guilty for having enjoyed herself so much with a man she did not love. She had only married him to escape the horrific subjugation she would have suffered at Du Mauriac's cruel hands. It was futile to point out that plenty of people enjoyed the sexual act without any emotional involvement whatsoever. What they had just shared fell far short of her ideal.

She had succumbed to a fleeting moment of desire. Probably brought on by relief at surviving a frightening ordeal. He had disrobed before her, she had already been naked, and nature had taken its course.

He wanted to tell her that this mutual attraction was only the beginning. That love could grow from here. But she did
not look as though she would be receptive to anything he had to say—not yet. She was clearly quite annoyed with him for taking advantage of her moment of weakness.

But he was not in the least repentant. They were lovers now, and there was no going back. She could not pretend his touch repelled her any more. They could have a good marriage. For even if she did not love him, he loved her—more than he had thought it was possible to love any woman, he reflected, as he helped her down the ladder. He would show her, he vowed, sweeping her up into his arms when she made to leave the tower on her own two feet, how good marriage to him could be. No bride would ever be as spoiled as she would be.

Ignoring her shocked gasp, and the amused looks of the two footmen who were holding the ladder, he kissed her, lingeringly, full on the mouth. And quelled her feeble protests that she was capable of walking back to the house.

‘You are far too weak to make the attempt. You have not eaten anything all day. And you spent the entire afternoon making love.'

She subsided into his arms with that mutinous little pout he was beginning to love so much, saying not a word until he laid her down on the sofa in her own sitting room.

And then, when she drew breath to make the first of what he was sure would be a litany of complaints, he forestalled her.

‘Sukey! See that Her Ladyship has a hot bath, and tend to the grazes on her shins. Then put her to bed and bring her some hot soup, bread and butter, and some of that apple pie she enjoyed so much at dinner the other night, if there is any left. And don't forget a pot of hot chocolate. I,' he said, dropping a kiss on his wife's parted lips, ‘will return when I have had my own bath and a shave, and put
on clean clothes. And, Giddings?' He turned to address the butler, who had followed them up the stairs on seeing the bedraggled state of his master and mistress. ‘No visitors for the next two—no make that three days.'

‘Very good, my lord.'

‘And don't glare at me like that,' he advised Heloise. ‘I have dealt with all the most pressing estate business, I have given my duty invitation to the neighbours to meet my Countess, and now I am entitled to enjoy my bride.'

Heloise let out one cry of vexation as Giddings turned, red-faced, from the room. First he had made it obvious to those two grinning footmen what they had spent the afternoon doing, and now he had scandalised Giddings with a statement of what he intended to spend the next few days doing. Where had all his rigidly correct behaviour gone, just when she could have done with it to spare her blushes?

Though in many ways she enjoyed his attention over the following week, just as much as he seemed to be enjoying hers, she never quite got rid of the feeling that it could not last. In desperation she grabbed what happiness she could, whilst privately waiting for the axe to fall.

It fell one morning while they were at breakfast, and Charles was reading one of the newspapers he had couriered up from London daily.

‘My God,' he breathed, his eyes scanning the printed columns. ‘There has been a battle.' Though he lowered the paper, it was as though he was looking straight through her.
‘The
battle—the decisive battle. The losses have been disastrous.'

‘Wh … who won?'

‘Nobody.' His face was grim. ‘The cost in human life was too great to call it a victory for Wellington. The losses
from Robert's regiment alone …' He appeared to pull himself together. ‘I will have to return to London. He should not be alone to deal with this.'

She went cold inside. He was going back to London. Just as he had always planned.

She could not let him walk out of her life like this. Not without a fight! Before they had become lovers she had fled out into the gardens rather than humiliate herself by confessing he was the centre of her universe. But now the thought of trying to survive without him was even more unbearable than the prospect of begging for a tiny place in his life.

‘Please,' she began hesitantly. ‘Please let me come with you.'

She saw disbelief in his eyes, and her heart began to thunder. She was breaking the terms of their agreement.

‘Yes, I know I promised I would never cause you any trouble. But really, truly, I will not get in your way. I might even be able to help you,' she argued in desperation. ‘I managed to help Robert before when nobody else could! Surely I could be of more help in London than stuck down here in the middle of nowhere? Please, Charles, let me try. Let me come with you. Don't leave me here alone!'

‘L
eave you here?' Charles frowned. ‘Why would I do that?'

‘B … but that was why you brought me down here! Because I had become too much trouble in London …'

‘Because you had been
having
too much trouble in London,' he corrected her. ‘I hoped that by the time we returned we might have come to a better understanding. So that you would feel you could come to me when you were in a scrape.'

‘You never planned to leave me here?' Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Truly?'

‘I have never lied to you, Heloise,' he replied sternly. ‘I never will.'

‘But you were so angry …'

‘Yes, I was angry the day we travelled down here. But that was not your fault.'

‘Oh, but it was. I promised I would never give you any trouble, and I was in such a tangle …'

‘I hold myself responsible for that. I should have taken better care of you. I knew there would be people that would
try to hurt you in order to score off me, and I did nothing to protect you. Can you forgive me?'

‘F … forgive you? There is nothing to forgive!'

He felt shamed that she should take such a generous attitude. Most women who'd found themselves tied to such an unsatisfactory husband would have done nothing but complain. Some would even have taken a lover—for consolation if not revenge.

Yet she seemed to be poised for him to mete out punishments for the most trifling faults … He blinked, remembering the day she had first come to him with her proposal. She had assumed from the very first that he would find her so irritating he would end up beating her.

She had no idea of her own worth.

And as yet he had done nothing to demonstrate just how much he valued her.

But all that was about to change …

‘Well, now we have that misapprehension cleared up, we should make all haste to leave. Both of us,' he said firmly.

She scurried from the breakfast room as though his remark contained some kind of threat. She was so ready to believe the worst of him, he sighed. Just as Robert had been.

She had declared she found him cold and proud and unapproachable.

It was true that he had an abhorrence of expressing his feelings, especially when they were as turbulent as the ones Heloise aroused in him. Fortunately, he had already taken steps to show his regard for her.

But it was not just his reserve or her own lack of self-esteem he had to counter. As he climbed into the carriage beside her, and caught the expression of trepidation on her
face, it hit him afresh that her plea to return to London was not in any way due to a wish not to be parted from
him
.

She had only spoken of her desire to help Robert. And when he reflected how miserable she had been during her stay at Wycke, it was perhaps only natural she should want to return to the city. He frowned as the carriage rumbled through the lodge gates and out into the lane. Her dislike of the place was yet another hurdle he would have to overcome. For he had a duty to his tenants and neighbours to visit the place more than once each year. And he was not going to leave Heloise alone and unprotected in London while he dealt with estate business. Besides, his heirs would be born there. And he wanted them to grow up there. He could picture a brood of perhaps three or four, tumbling over their mother's lap under the shade of the yew tree on the south lawn. Heloise would be such a good mother—loving and loyal.