A Bride by Moonlight (34 page)

Sweat beaded his brow. Ruthlessly he held himself back, summoning every inch of will. A dozen strokes later, Lisette was again gasping and pleading for release again, whispering his name and even more. Whispering words—promises—she would likely never remember.

Napier drew them in, held them to his heart. Then, lifting himself, he shifted just a fraction higher, renewing his thrusts. It was as if someone tossed a burning lamp onto the bed. Hips bucking against his, Lisette opened her mouth as if to cry out.

Napier took her mouth with his, swallowing her cries. It was his last clear realization. And then he was exploding, his own release like a roar in his head. Heat rushed from his loins and gushed from his heart, pumping and pouring into her. Drawing him deeper. Then the bone-deep shuddering dragged him under, swamping him with a pleasure so profound it weighed down his limbs and dulled all rational thought.

Long moments later, Napier came slowly back to the faint crackle of a dying fire to realize he still lay over Lisette. The rain was over, the room now glowing with a soft, white moonlight that shone through the draperies he had not bothered to close.

Shifting his weight, he rolled away, onto his back so that he might thumb open the drawer of his night table and scrabble in the gloom for the knife that old habit kept close to hand. Beneath him, Lisette gave one last sigh.

“Hold perfectly still,” he murmured, slicing up through the fine linen like so much butter.

The fabric fell away, and Lisette’s hands collapsed, limp-wristed, onto the pillows. “Good Lord, Napier,” she managed to rasp, “you are going to pay for that.”

“Am I, love?” he whispered, gently threading his fingers through her hair.

“Eventually . . .” she murmured, “ . . . perhaps . . .”

Then she rolled against him, tucked her head into the crook of his arm, and promptly fell into a deep sleep. He merely held her for a time, savoring the warmth of her body and the soft rise and fall of her chest as she breathed.

Dear God, it felt so simple—so very natural and right to lie with her this way, stretched out on his back, utterly relaxed, with Lisette’s body curled around his. He marveled how her every curve and valley seemed to fit his own. How the weight of her head cradled on his shoulder felt perfect. How, when he dipped his head to kiss the crown of her head, the scent of her hair smelled like comfort.

Like home, really.

The home that should have been, because it felt as if Lisette had been meant for him. He’d known it for a while now, and was tired of denying it. At the thought, Napier felt something pressing a little like tears behind his eyes.

Christ Jesus.
What was he going to do about such a damnable quandary?

Marry her.

Take the quandary out of it, and leave the rest for someone else to deal with.

Yes, he could simply marry Lisette—assuming he could convince her to have him. But Napier rarely failed once he’d set his mind to a task. And it seemed suddenly the most rational choice imaginable.

But it was not, quite, was it? His logical self—his
old
self—understood. Marriage to Lisette would require a great deal of forethought, and the first and swiftest step must be to press on with his resignation from government service. For Lisette—whoever she was or whatever she’d done—simply mattered more.

Drawing her scent deep, he kissed her brow, then found himself staring up at the plaster roundel in the middle of his ceiling again. It seemed destined to be his fate, over and over again, to lie here with Lisette, falling just a little more in love every time she drew breath.

That breath had now relaxed into slow, deep exhalations. He turned to see she lay now in a wash of moonlight that seemed to cast her with an ethereal glow. Her halo of curls looked like rich, red mahogany against his skin; her pale, almost opalescence face was so beautiful in sated repose.

His bride.

Was it possible?

It had to be. Somehow, he would make it so. But he dared not let her sleep too long. Certainly he could not keep her here the night, though he desperately wished to do so.

Gradually, he kissed her awake, tucking his head to press his lips lightly across her temple. In his arms, she stirred and stretched like a cat. “
Umm
,” she said, “I’m sore.”

“Christ, I ought to be horsewhipped,” he choked, snaring her wrist. “Let me see.”

“Not
there
,” she said on a spurt of laughter. “Somewhere a little lower—and not, I think, in the sort of way one’s lover ought to apologize for.”

“Ah,” he said, relaxing again.

Lisette looked up at him, her blue-green gaze still soft with sleep. “You were a beast,” she whispered. “It was . . . wicked and bad and utterly divine.”

He kissed her again, tentatively, as if she were made of spun glass. “I wonder, actually, if I’ve lost my mind,” he muttered. “I might have done you a harm.”

She rolled toward him then, pushing him onto his back and into the softness of the bed. “Oh, I think your cravat took the worst of that little encounter,” she said, sprawling half atop him. “But if it will make you feel suitably chastised, I shall think of a proper penance—not, I imagine, an actual horsewhipping. I couldn’t bring myself. Though one does hear of ladies in Covent Garden who can—for a price.”

She was toying with a lock of his hair now, and grinning at him a little wickedly, but Napier was still kicking himself. Oh, Lisette wasn’t entirely innocent. He knew that. One couldn’t troll the sordid side of London in the guise of a young newspaperman—which he was sure Lisette had done—without learning and seeing things a lady oughtn’t know.

But merely
knowing
about certain things wasn’t the same as having engaged in them. “You aren’t a woman of experience,” he said.

“I am now.” Then her expression sobered, and Lisette propped her chin on his chest, staring into his eyes. “But perhaps you think me . . . oh, a little green still? Doubtless you are accustomed to lovers who are—”

“Shush.” Crooking his head to look down at her, Napier laid a finger to her lips. “If I ever had other lovers—which I doubt—I cannot now recall them.”

Lisette snorted with laughter. “You are the most egregious liar.”

But Napier was very much afraid he was not; certainly in this moment he could not recall so much as another woman’s name, let alone a face. And he was suddenly struck by the conviction that, after her, all others would pale.

Setting a hand at the nape of Lisette’s neck, he threaded his fingers through her thick red hair and set his lips to the warmth of her temple. “I’ve fallen, Lisette,” he said quietly. “Utterly fallen for you.”

He felt her stiffen in his embrace. “You don’t need to say that,” she said, lifting her head to look at him. “Napier, you . . . you just don’t. I’m not like that.”

“Oh?” He crooked one brow. “Like what, pray?”

She answered with a feeble smile. “You know, like one of those women who . . . who always needs to hear—”

“What, the truth?” He gave a dismissive shrug. “That’s what it comes down to, Lisette. I’ve fallen in love with you.”

“Oh, Napier, I can’t—”

“
Royden
,” he said, “remember?”

She cupped her hand around his face, her expression softening almost painfully. “Oh, I remember,” she said. “But I shouldn’t talk—
we
shouldn’t talk—of such things. Please. Just make love to me again. Or toss me out and say good rid—”

“Oh, if you want out of this, my dear,” he interjected, “you’ll have to walk away.”

She rolled onto her back. “I don’t want out,” she said softly. “That’s half the problem.”

“Ah,” he said softly. “It seems we’ve reached another impasse. Or a crossroads, at the very least.”

She lay perfectly silent for a long while. He could hear the mantel clock ticking off the interminable seconds. “I can’t have this discussion, Royden,” she finally said. “Please don’t make me.”

She was blinking back tears, he realized.

Napier felt, suddenly, like the dog he was. He had pursued her to Hackney, forced her here to Wiltshire—forced her to live a lie, merely to suit his purposes—then to thank her, he’d taken her innocence.

Now he’d tied her up in his own bed and ridden her like some half-crazed animal. And that was not even the worst of it. How could she know what to say to him just now? Weighed down by guilt as she so obviously was and dragging a lifetime’s worth of grief, could Lisette even know how she felt?

Perhaps not. A cold fear began to slowly settle in his gut: the heavy certainty that if he pushed her too far, she’d simply run. She was still afraid—afraid of Lazonby, afraid of what she’d done. And still afraid of him, too, on a level he couldn’t fathom.

And if she ran, God only knew where the girl might go. She was too clever by half to make it easy. Oh, he’d find her. He’d search to the ends of the earth. But how long would that take? And how much damage would he have done?

No, far better to get a chokehold on his impatience. To call upon that cold rationality that had always served him so well.

Suddenly, Lisette spoke again, in a voice so small he scarcely recognized it. “It’s unfair of me, I know,” she said into the ceiling, “but I cannot keep from wondering . . .”

“Wondering what?”

“Well . . . if you loved her, too.”

He turned his head, confused. “Loved who?”

She rolled to face him, her expression softening. “Lady Anisha,” she whispered.

“Lord, no. Who sold you that bit of moonshine?”

“No one,” she said. “I just thought . . . everyone said . . .”

Suddenly, he understood. “Everyone, I daresay, did not include the lady or me,” he said more gently. “Do I like her? Yes, greatly—though I fear the friendship won’t survive her marriage.”

“Does that make you sad?”

Did
it make him sad? Apparently, it did not; he’d scarcely spared her a thought these last many days. “No, life constantly alters,” he said. “Anisha knows where to find me should she have need of me. And Lazonby—well, he’ll look after her. Of that I’m confident.”

Lisette lay curled on her side now, pensively trailing a finger through the hair on his chest. “When you were young, Royden, were you ever in love then?”

He wanted to tell her he knew damned well what love was, if that’s what she was after. But he bit back his impatience and rolled onto his back, staring at the damned roundel again. He was grateful Lisette was still talking. That she hadn’t bolted.

Perhaps it was better, after all, to keep things light and even for a time.

But had he ever
been
young?

“When I was eighteen,” he finally said, “and a tall, strapping lad just down from Oxford, I imagined myself passionately in love with an alderman’s widow.”

“A widow?” Lisette lifted her head a little. “Truly?”

“Oh, yes,” he confessed dryly, “and I worshipped her with the sort of ardent desperation that only virginal young men can suffer.”

“Oh, my!
Were
you a virgin at eighteen?”

“It pains me to admit it,” he said. “And she was nearly thirty, plump in all the right places, and a frightful flirt. She had this habit of plying her fan rather cleverly whilst eyeing me over it—across the aisle at church, no less. So one Sunday over dinner, I declared my intention of courting her. My father was furious. He utterly forbade it.”

“Oh, dear,” she murmured. “That was imprudent.”

Napier laughed. “Yes, perhaps,” he said, “not to mention the pot calling the kettle black, given what he’d done at my age. But I was a young buck, and imagined myself brokenhearted and filled with angst.”

“So what did you do?”

“Oh, I did what young men always do when they’re feeling randy, fervent, and thwarted,” he said. “I vowed my undying love to spite him, and began to court the lady in secret—which pleased her greatly and hurt me not a little. And that, you see, should have been my clue.”

“Your clue?” Lisette looked at him blankly. “To what?”

“To the fact that the lady and I had, in actuality, quite different objectives,” he said. “Though for a time, we spent a great many nights getting hers met.”

“And yours . . . ?”

Napier pulled a glum face. “Alas, as it happened, the lady did not wish to marry me,” he said, “nor, truth to tell, to be seen on the arm of a greenling just down from university. Not unless she absolutely had to in order to get what she wanted.”

“So . . . what did she want?” Lisette’s brow furrowed charmingly. “Your fortune?”

“Come, Lisette, I had no fortune. I was a law student at Lincoln’s Inn, and barely that. No, I had only one thing the lady wanted—and for a time, I gave it to her with unflagging enthusiasm.”

At last recognition dawned, widening her eyes. “Aah,” she said.

“Yes,
aah
indeed,” he replied, shoving one arm beneath his head. Lord, he hadn’t thought of the bounteous Mrs. Minter in years. “So I lost my virginity and I lost my heart—and in the end, I lost my beloved.”

“What happened to her?”

“She married an elderly ironmonger who’d made a right royal fortune selling fire-dogs in the Strand,” he said. “But
he
—she later explained—turned out to be so frail he preferred to go to bed with the chickens instead of his wife. And
I
was most welcome to call upon her most any evening—after the chickens had roosted, of course.”

“Oh, I see,” said Lisette knowingly. “And did you?”

Napier felt his mouth twist a little. “I did not,” he said. “Whilst I’d turned to fornication pretty cheerfully, I somehow didn’t fancy adding adultery to my long list of sins.”

Lisette giggled, and covered her mouth.

He turned his head to look at her, willing his eyes to be gentle. “And I believe,” he said quietly, “that I once asked you a similar question about being in love, but you declined to answer it.”

After a time, she sighed. “No, I said a few young men tried to court me,” she answered, “assuming, I suppose, that I’d inherit whatever was left of Uncle’s newspaper.”

Napier saw an avenue to a question that had been nagging at him. “Lisette, was it always Mr. Ashton’s intention to put you to work? Was that why he wanted you and your sister?”