Unraveling the Earl (37 page)

“Say it, Georgie,” he commanded between one slow thrust and
the next.

“I’ll never leave you,” she promised, swiveling her hips to
take him deeper still.

“I don’t know who I am without you.”

The telltale burn built in her eyes and she blinked
frantically, knowing full well she fought a losing battle.

“Am I hurting you?” Henry asked, easing back.

Before he could withdraw, she wrapped her legs around his
hips and locked her ankles, forcing him deep inside once more. “Don’t stop.”

“Georgie?” There was a wealth of emotion in the single word,
confusion, desire and tenderness.

The first tear fell, quickly followed by another, slowly
rolling down her cheek. “Please make love to me.”

Henry gifted her with a lopsided smile, his eyes going soft
and tender as the motion of carriage gently rocked their joined bodies, his
hard length dragging over her sensitized flesh. Bringing his hands up to brush
his thumbs over her wet cheeks, he tilted her head back and captured her lips
once more. His tongue found the sensitive arch of her upper lip, lingered awhile
before stroking into her mouth, setting up a slow, sensuous rhythm that
perfectly matched their leisurely loving.

Desire climbed slow and sweet, curling around her, spiraling
until she was balanced on the brink of climax.

“Come for me,” Henry whispered, pushing deep and sending her
over the edge.

“I love you,” Georgie cried against his lips, clutching his
shoulders as she came apart, wave after wave of bliss unlike any she’d ever
experienced taking hold of her.

With an exultant shout, Henry tossed his head back,
thrusting hard and planting his cock deep as he spent within her body. Georgie
curled her arms around his neck buried her face in the crook of his neck.

“Christ, I love you,” Henry panted, even as his cock
continued to pulse and jerk.

“I’m truly sorry.”

“Shh, none of that.”

“I’ll endeavor to deserve you,” she promised, fighting the
sob that was lodged in her throat.

“Ah, love, don’t cry.” Tangling his fingers in her hair, he
pressed her head to his shoulder and swept a hand down her back.

“I’m carrying your babe.” Georgie gave up the battle, her
sobs echoing around the carriage.

“Janet? You want to name our daughter after a witch?”
Georgie rolled onto her back and stretched, her nipples pebbling in the cold,
morning air.

“I don’t know why not, seeing as how it was your bag of
witch’s tricks that gifted us with the little darling,” Henry replied, his gaze
drifting over pretty breasts that were already lusher than they’d been two
months previously, and down to her burgeoning belly. Carefully placing one knee
on the bed he bent over and kissed the adorable little bump. “Good morning,
Janet.”

“Your beard tickles.” Georgie squirmed about, laughing
breathlessly and Henry was sorely tempted to strip off the trousers, shirt and
waistcoat he’d only just donned and rejoin her in the bed tucked beneath the
eaves of an inn halfway to Scotland.

“Does it now?” Deliberately he brushed his cheek over her
belly and she erupted into giggles, the sound unbelievably sweet to his ears
after days on the road with a woman who wept as readily as other women
gossiped.

“I like your long curly locks.” She sifted her fingers
through his hair. “But I must admit I miss seeing your handsome face.”

“I promise I’ll shave the beard myself if the next village
hasn’t a barber,” he replied, his lips trailing over her hip.

“I could shave you,” she offered.

“I suppose you’ve all sorts of experience shaving a man?”

Georgie stilled, her hand falling away and Henry looked up
to find her staring at the ceiling as if she might read all the answers to
life’s problems on the beams.

Henry eased off the bed and stepped back, disconcerted by
the frown pulling at her lush bottom lip. “You aren’t going to cry, are you?”

Georgie rolled to sitting, her breasts jiggling with the
movement. “You said we would talk things out, make up and laugh about it. But
we’ve been traveling for two days and done none of those things.”

“We’ve made up,” he protested. “Haven’t we?”

“We’ve made love,” she countered. “And while the love making
has been beyond wonderful, I feel…I don’t know, like I’m walking around on
eggshells, measuring every word and touch, else you’ll wonder if I touched
another man just so, or who taught me this or that.”

“No, Georgie.” Henry dropped back onto the bed. “I don’t
care how you touched men in the past only that you never touch another in the
future. And it matters not at all who taught you this or that, so long as you
practice what you know on me alone.”

“Then why were you so angry at Alice’s ball?” Georgie blinked
her big lavender eyes.

“Please don’t cry.”

“No, I won’t. It’s just the mattress is dusty.”

Henry didn’t believe her for a moment. “Yes, I was angry and
jealous and I know I said some terrible things to you, things you’ll never
truly forgive me for.”

“But I have forgiven you, I forgave you even as the words
left your mouth,” Georgie replied before scrunching up her nose in an adorable
fashion. “No, that isn’t true and I am trying very hard to speak only the truth
these days. I forgave you the moment you admitted you still wanted me, no
matter my past peccadilloes.”

“Your willingness to forgive is only one of the many reasons
I love you.”

“My willingness to forgive?” she repeated. “But I’m a
Buchanan, we don’t forgive, we get even. Or at least we used to…that is I used
to. But I’m working on that, too.”

“Georgie, you have forgiven me time and again.”

“I have, haven’t I?”

“You’ve taken me down one of your twisted paths and now I’ve
forgotten where I was,” Henry teased.

“You were telling me why you were so angry,” Georgie
supplied readily.

“I wish I could claim some lofty reason for my rage but it
was nothing more than jealousy and wounded pride,” Henry admitted with a shake
of his head. “But you were right. You never pretended to be an innocent and I
never mistook you for one.”

“I wish I’d been innocent for you,” Georgie whispered, her
eyes filling once more.

“I don’t,” Henry replied, reaching out to take her hand. “I
love you just the way you are, wicked and devious and loyal and stubborn and
puzzling and sweet.”

“I’m not sweet, but with a little practice I might be one
day,” she replied around a broken laugh.

“Just the way you are,” he repeated, tugging until she
tumbled into his lap. “I have loved you since you stood before me baring your
all and daring me to bare mine. Nothing will ever change that, Georgie.”

Georgie peered up at him from beneath a fringe of tangled
curls. “The man I traded my virginity to was Douglas Graham. Goodness, it’s
difficult to say his name after all these years.”

“Tell me only what you are ready to share,” he said, careful
to keep any emotion from his voice.

“You already know that Connie foisted me off on a kind woman
who’d already birthed six daughters and a man so desperate for a son he would
accept a boy not of his blood.”

“Yes,” he encouraged, gently turning her in his lap so that
her head rested against his shoulder and her long legs stretched out across the
bed.

“When I was six or seven he found me out in the lie not of
my making,” Georgie continued, her words spilling over. “We, all of us, spent
the next decade continuing the pretense lest the purse of coins stop arriving
each year. A purse I suspect was sent by your mother as my father was unaware
of my whereabouts and Connie had washed her hands of me.”

“Damn, Mother had a spoon in every pot,” Henry breathed.

“You mustn’t blame your mother,” Georgie replied. “It was,
all of it, Connie’s doing, from the moment she abandoned me at River’s End
until I forced Douglas to end the charade.”

“You were a just a girl,” Henry argued. “You could not have
forced a grown man to do anything.”

“Please don’t attempt to paint me as the injured party,” she
replied, her words rushing out in a frantic, disjointed manner as she lifted
her head to meet his eyes. “Douglas did not coerce or cajole or seduce me.
Don’t you see? I followed him into the barn and begged him to spare Archie’s
life, offered up the use of my body in trade. But we both knew it wasn’t about
that lamb. It was about me and my desire to be a young woman rather than a boy.
And when he resisted I removed every stitch of my clothing, lay down on the
floor and begged him to see me and to love me.”

Henry could think of nothing to say, humbled once more by
her odd brand of honesty.

“Millie knew what I had done, she knew I had lain with her
husband. She looked at me so queer, not angry, but rather sad and old and
beaten down. I’d done that to her, aged her overnight when all she’d ever done
was love me. So I ran from her. I slipped on the first stair and then I was
falling. When I awoke my nose was so mangled I could scarce breathe. I didn’t
even realize it was broken because the pain in my leg was all I knew. The
physician set the bone as best he could but it would not heal. And Douglas ran
off with Loose Lucy, leaving Mum to tend me, only she could not look at me so
she sent that letter, sent me away.”

“Georgie, you must know she only sent you away because she
wanted the best for you,” Henry replied, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

“She couldn’t look at me.” Her voice quivered and a tear rolled
down her cheek. “She did not want to see me when all along she was the only one
who ever did…see me, that is.”

“I see you, Georgie.” Henry held her gaze. “I see you and I
love you.”

“I love you, too,” she replied on a sniffle, curling her
arms over his shoulders and playing with the hairs at his nape, something she
did often and to great effect. “I’ve never shaved a man. You would be my
first.”

“As much as I like the idea of being your first, I think
I’ll wait until I find a barber,” he replied, following the change in topic as
she’d evidently said all she intended to about that particular part of her
past.

“You were the first man to make love to me,” she said,
ducking her head shyly. “That morning at Idyllwild before I left, that was the
first time I felt love with the lust.”

“You were afraid.”

“I’m no longer afraid,” Georgie lifted her head and gifted
him with a slow smile.

“Is that so?”

“But I am hungry,” she replied around a giggle as she
crawled off his lap. “Have we any peaches left?”

Henry rose to cross the cozy room. “Stay abed and eat the
last peach you’re likely to find before summer. And you’d best enjoy the damn
thing, seeing as how finding them put me off my timetable and nearly destroyed
my entire scheme.”

“What scheme?” she asked, scooting up to rest against the
simple wooden headboard.

Henry tossed the peach, not the least surprised when she
reached out and caught it. Taking a bite, she closed her eyes and hummed in
pleasure.

“Come, surely you, of all people, recognize a well-crafted scheme
when it unfolds before you,” he teased, sitting at the foot of the bed and
stretching his legs along hers.

“You tricked my servants…” she began, stopping to swipe her
tongue over her bottom lip lest the juices dribble down her chin.

“Actually, I did not trick them at all. I simply asked
nicely for their assistance. Flies with honey and all that.”

“You somehow learned of Chester’s wedding and knew I would
not be able to resist attending.”

Henry waited, taunting her with his silence.

“No, that leaves too much to chance,” she mused, and he
imagined her trying to decide how she would have set things in motion. “You
knew Chester was to marry…no, no, that still leaves too much to fate…mayhap
you…did you bribe him?”

“Don’t sound so shocked, love,” Henry murmured, his lips
twitching. “How do you think most marriages come about, if not through
bribery?”

“Dowries and marriage settlements.”

“For a lady obsessed with names, you missed a tell-tale
clue.”

“Louisa Anne Fitzroy,” Georgie exclaimed, her eyes shining.
“Fitzroy was the surname given to some king or other’s illegitimate children.
And you are related to most of the great families. You offered up a wealthy…no,
you dowered a cousin of some sort and offered her up as bait?”

Henry smiled and tapped her hip with his foot in
congratulations. “Brilliant as well as beautiful.”

“I might say the same thing about you.”

“I wish I could take all the credit, but I only sent a
missive each to Tatiana and Alice to set things in motion,” he admitted.
“Together, they saw to the details.”

“You hatched a scheme to catch me?” Georgie asked, blinking
furiously.

“You aren’t going to cry, are you?”

“How cunning you are, Lord Hastings.” She scrambled to her
hands and knees and crawled down the bed until she straddled his hips. “Why, your
scheme was a thing of absolute beauty. To be sure, I’ve fallen in love with you
all over again.”

“If I’d known a crafty scheme was the way to your heart, I’d
have caught you long ago.” He swept his hands down the curve of her back.

Georgie gazed at him from shining lavender eyes. “I was
caught the first time you looked at me as if I were a big dish of raspberry
crumble and you wanted me whether I was topped with fuzzy mold or sweet cream.”

Henry brushed his lips over hers, once twice, swiped his
tongue along the seam. “Do you know I’ve never been overly fond of raspberry
crumble? I much prefer the flavor of fresh, sweet peaches served up on your
luscious lips.”

“Only my lips?”

Henry lifted his head and glanced about.

“Looking for this?” The last peach of the season, minus one
bite, rested in the palm of Georgie’s hand. “I’ve never played with fruit, my
lord Henry.

“A first for both of us, love.”

Georgie took a big bite of the sweet, overripe peach, a slow
smile lifting her lips as juice dribbled over her chin and trickled down her
long, elegant neck.

The Earl of Hastings had no choice but to tumble his future
countess to her back and follow that sweet sticky trail, wherever it might
lead.