Web of Love (18 page)

He had searched for her for years. And he had persisted in looking for her in young girls who were frail and in need of his protection. But she was strong and had sheltered him with her protection. And she was no girl. He simply had not recognized her.

But here she was anyway, in this bed, in his arms, warm from his lovemaking. The woman of his life. The love of his life. Ellen.

He tested a somewhat deeper breath. The pain was receding.

Was she always as wildly passionate? Had she been like this for Charlie?

No, no,
no, no. No!
Lord Eden found that he was shaking his head from side to side on the bed and gritting his teeth. Not yet. Not that name. Not yet. He was not ready yet.

He gazed at Ellen and knew beyond any doubt that this was no brief passion for him. He loved her. She had just given everything with no demand for anything in return. But he would give anyway. All of himself. All that he had. It was all hers. He had searched all his life for her. Now that he had found her, all he had, all he was, was hers.

Ellen.

His pain had gone. Her bare legs felt warm and smooth against his own. He could smell her fragrance again. She felt very, very good.

He closed his eyes.

M
ADELINE CAME VISITING THREE TIMES. And Ellen went out each morning to buy food and to have some fresh air and exercise, and once she went to bid farewell to Mrs. Byng, who was going to join her husband in Paris. But apart from that they were alone together for six days. Six days and nights of magic that they both knew must come to an end but did not wish to end. Six days during which they both held at bay what both knew must be faced soon. Six days of wonder and of love.

Ellen had woken during that first night and removed herself from the bed and the room without waking him. And she had lain awake until dawn, not even trying to sleep, not wanting to sleep. There was too much wonderment to feel.

He was still sleeping the next morning when she plucked up the courage to take warm water and his shaving things in to him. But it took a great deal more courage to go back in with his breakfast tray. She could hear him moving about in his room. And she did not know how she should behave when she went in there, what she should say.

She need not have worried. He was lying in bed again, and he watched her come into the room as he always did, and he smiled as he always did and bade her good morning. And he sat up without her help, gritting his teeth so that she would not know that he was in pain—foolish man to believe that she did not know. The only thing different from usual was that when she set the tray across his lap, he took her hand and lifted it to his lips, kissed the palm, and smiled up at her. And she leaned forward, without any thought at all, and kissed him briefly on the lips.

They said nothing beyond the usual. She sat with him while he ate, and told him some of the gossip she had heard at market that morning, told him he was foolish when he announced that he was going to walk right out into the parlor that day and back again without any assistance, and said that, yes, there were more kidneys in the pan and he might have them, since all the food he had put inside himself in the last week had not yet killed him. And, no, she did not want them herself. How could he even think of eating kidneys for breakfast?

For six days they lived much as they had lived before, except that each day he sat and walked a little more than he had the day before, though each day he swore just as fiercely at his own weakness and his seemingly insatiable need of sleep.

Ellen sat with him through much of each day, sewing when he rested or slept, waiting to leap to her feet and run to his assistance when he walked, talking and listening tirelessly when he sat or lay awake. She listened avidly to stories of his childhood and boyhood, a time of great freedom and happiness, it seemed, except for the great blot of his father's death and his mother's near-breakdown for a year afterward. But he had had his brother—only nineteen at the time of their father's death, but a rock of strength and cheerfulness and dependability, it seemed. And he had had his sister.

She told him more about her own girlhood, even up to the pain of that final dreadful quarrel, after which her mother had left, not to return. And during which she had told her husband that Ellen was not his daughter. Perhaps she would never have known, Ellen said, if her father—the earl, that was—had not been drunk at the time and had not come crying to her. He had told her and spent the following week drinking and crying and begging her not to leave him but to be his daughter anyway. But she had left.

Her father—her real father—had been a family acquaintance for years. He had been in London at the time, on leave from the army. She had gone to him and persuaded him to take her with him when he left again. He had never been unkind to her. He had always made sure that she had the best of care and all the necessary clothes and possessions. He had made an effort to spend time with her and to show her affection. But it had been difficult for both of them to suddenly play the role of father and daughter after so many years.

She never took her stories closer to the present than that. Neither of them told stories of the present or recent past. But the long-ago past was safe. And it drew them closer together. They came to know each other better, to like each other more.

Sometimes he held her hand as she sat beside his bed. And sometimes lifted it to his lips and kissed it, and her fingers one by one. Sometimes they smiled into each other's eyes and let their eyes rove over each other's faces. And never with embarrassment. Ellen even wondered about it when she was alone. Usually it was uncomfortable to look at someone without speaking. She never felt uncomfortable with Lord Eden, no matter how long the silence.

She called him that most of the time, though he always called her now by her given name. She called him by his only when he was making love to her. And they made love each night after that first. She did not know quite what to do the next night, but he called to her as she was putting out the lamp in the parlor, and she went to him, and it seemed perfectly natural to climb into the bed beside him.

She stayed with him for the whole night after that first time. And after that first time it was truly beautiful. He took her slowly and seemed to sense at each stage of their lovemaking when she was ready to move on to the next. On the second night and every night after that she came to him, shuddering and calling his name, while he still moved in her.

She had not known there could be such physical passion, such longing indistinguishable from pain, such a peace beyond the crest of her longing. She had never experienced real passion before. And yet, though the physical sensations were intensely personal, there was a meeting too of selves and emotions as well as bodies. It was true that man and woman could become one. She was always most intensely aware of him when she was being released into her own pleasure and when he was coming to his.

She loved totally. She felt cheated if she slept soundly the night through after their lovemaking. She liked to lie awake and watch him sleeping beside her. She liked to feel her love for him almost an ache in her. And she liked to feel the warmth from his body, to know that she might reach out and touch him, that she might wake him and know that his eyes would focus on her and smile.

She loved him with a totality that could come only from the unreality of the moment. Because it was unreal. And sometimes, before she firmly shuttered her mind, she knew that it was unreal, that there was a world beyond their doors, and that because of their humanity they were part of that world and at some time must go back out into it again. But not yet. Oh, please, not yet. She needed this time out of time. She needed him. She loved him.

And Lord Eden, frustrated by his great weakness and the slowness of his recovery, was nevertheless living in an enchanted time. He had been in love before, constantly, routinely, as a younger man. Painfully in love, living for one daily sight of his beloved, pining for one kindly look from her eyes. But he had never loved, he realized now; he had merely played with sentiment.

He loved Ellen Simpson. He did not think he could ever have his fill of gazing at her, of watching her about some ordinary task like her sewing, of listening to her talk and discovering her past and her background, of talking to her and watching her changing expressions that told of her interest in him.

He could never have his fill of loving her, of making love to her. It was a heady experience, a totally erotic experience, to make love with a woman rather than to her. And quite unexpected. He had never thought of such a thing, had never expected it even of his dream love. To find that Ellen wanted him, burned for him, urged him on to giving her satisfaction, and showed that satisfaction with a quite uninhibited pleasure, more than doubled his own delight in her. He could not now imagine that he had never known there could be such loving.

He loved her. It was for her that he washed and shaved himself and ate and drank and walked laboriously and painfully around and around his bedchamber and eventually out into the parlor. He would exhaust himself, cause himself unnecessary pain and shortness of breath, but he would get well for her. He would regain his strength. And when the time came that he could venture beyond these rooms and get his life back to some normalcy again—he did not like to think about the time—then he would learn to love her in an everyday setting instead of this magical one.

He would sell out of the army and marry her and take her into Wiltshire with him and settle in the home that he had never really made his own. And he would have children with her and spend his life restoring her faith in the happiness and stability of family life. Mama would love her—how could anyone not? He thought that Edmund and Madeline already did like her exceedingly.

He said nothing to her. By unspoken consent, neither of them spoke at all about the future or about the present or immediate past beyond the haven of their rooms. They lived their love, but they spoke of it only in murmured love words as they lay entwined on the bed, words that neither of them remembered afterward.

He lay holding her hand one afternoon. They had fallen quiet after talking for a while. He felt drowsy and closed his eyes. But he squeezed her hand and tugged on it slightly.

“Lie down beside me,” he said.

“The doors are all open,” she said, squeezing his hand in return. “And it is daylight.”

He opened his eyes and smiled sleepily at her. “Just on top of the covers,” he said. “I want to feel your head on my arm. Won't you humor a poor defenseless wounded soldier and help him fall asleep?”

She laughed. “The description will not suit you for much longer,” she said. “You will soon be as fit as I, sir…. Just for a little while, then.”

He turned onto his side and stretched his arm along beneath the pillow. She settled her neck comfortably against it and smiled at him.

“The surgeon never did recommend this as suitable therapy,” she said.

“The old quack did not know what he was talking about,” he said. “He would have bled me dry by now, and I would still be watching the wardrobe performing a
pas de deux
with the washstand at the foot of my bed. I much prefer this. You wouldn't care to join me underneath the covers, I suppose? It is warm and cozy in here, Ellen.”

“No, thank you,” she said. “This is far more respectable for an afternoon.”

He smiled at her and kissed her lightly on the mouth. And continued to do so, teasing her lips with his, touching them with his tongue, drawing his head back to smile at her. There was no passion between them. He was still feeling drowsy, and she looked as if she might sleep too. There was just a warm affection, a comfort, a happiness. He continued to kiss her and murmur nonsense into her ear. She made sounds of deep contentment in her throat.

And then a movement beyond her head drew his eyes to Madeline standing in the doorway. She flushed a deep crimson as her eyes met his, and took a backward step.

“Oh, pardon me,” she said. “The door was open. I…”

He laughed softly. “I never thought to see you so discomfited, Mad,” he said. “My apologies. This is all my fault.”

But even as he spoke, Ellen scrambled off the bed, resisted his attempt to catch at her wrist, and was through the door past Madeline before he could finish his words and try to make both women feel less uncomfortable.

“You had better come in and sit down,” he said to his sister. “I'm sorry. Ellen told me the door was open. Now I have hopelessly embarrassed both of you. No, do come. I'll talk to her afterward. For now, doubtless, she will be glad of some time in which to find a place to hide her head.”

“Dom.” She closed the door of the bedchamber and came to sit on the chair beside his bed. “What was that all about? You are not dallying with her, are you? She has been very good to you.”

He smiled and clasped his hands behind his head. “I was not dallying,” he said. “Neither was she.”

She looked closely into his face. “Oh, Dom,” she said in some wonder. “It has happened to you, has it not? And I am so pleased. I could not have chosen anyone better for you myself. She is a lovely person. I admire her excessively.”

“I love her,” he said. He reached for her hand. “I love her, Mad. If I were only a little stronger, I would climb to the highest rooftop in Brussels and yell it to the world.”

She sat smiling at him, his hand clasped in both of hers.

“I am going to marry her,” he said. “I didn't know it could be like this, Mad. I have always dreamed of it, but I didn't know. I had no idea. I am going to marry her as soon as I can get out of this infernal bed without feeling like a rag doll after five minutes. God, but I love her.”

“She has said yes?” she asked.

“I haven't asked her.” He smiled sheepishly at his twin. “I have been too busy loving her to think of anything so mundane as asking her to marry me. But she will, Mad. She loves me too. That is what is so wonderful about it. Can you imagine?”

“Of course I can imagine, silly,” she said. “Girls have been falling in love with you for years. Sometimes it does not seem fair that the most handsome man of my acquaintance is my own brother.”