Awaiting the Moon (28 page)

“I… I wish to speak with you,” he said, trying to think of any reason to keep her there for the time being. “Come, sit by the fire, for I believe you are chilled.”

She was reluctant and glanced at the door. He wondered if she had heard or seen something she was not willing to share with him, and that was why she was out of her room in just her nightrail. He let his gaze travel her form, appreciating the rosy outline of flesh under the white muslin if her gown. The cold had peaked her breasts, and the nipples jutted enticingly under the filmy fabric. As scandalous as their midnight meeting was, he didn’t care. Let anyone castigate him who dared; no one would, for he made his own rules to live by.

He took her hand and sat her down in the chair nearest the fire, letting his hand cup her shoulder and his fingers brush her jutting breasts. His awareness was such that he could see, throbbing in her neck, her pulse, quickening as he touched her. He took the chair next to her and watched for a moment, as she, conscious of his gaze, crossed her arms over her breasts.

He shifted, uncomfortably aware of the blood rushing to his nether regions.

But discipline was his byword; always would the animal part of his male being be defeated by rigid discipline and harsh self-command. He demanded of himself far more than he ever asked from any of his serving staff or family members.

“What do you want?” she asked, turning to face him, having regained her own self-command.

“Do not speak to me so, Elizabeth,” he said, keeping his tone deliberately hard. “I have already given you more quarter than I would any other person in my employ.”

She nodded and, as difficult as it was for her, he could see, said, “I’m sorry, sir. I did not mean to be impertinent. I was still a little shocked at such rough handling.”

“I apologize. I hope I have not bruised you, but you must learn to stay in your own room at night.” The veiled warning in his tone did not escape her notice, and she bit her lip, looking away to the fire. “I appreciate your care for Charlotte, but let her be. I will speak to her in the morning again.”

She was silent. And yet he felt sure that beneath her calm exterior she was musing on his reasons for insisting that she stay in her room at night. Unquestioning obedience was not her natural response.

“Do you know, some say I ought to have married,” he said, hoping to distract her from her thoughts. The only way to deflect an intelligent mind from working on a problem was to give it a new line of thought to ponder. “I ought to have brought a womanly, motherly influence into this house to care for my nieces and nephews, it has been said.”

She glanced over at him, her interest quickened. It was something she had wondered about, evidently. “Why did you not marry? Not for their sakes, I mean, but for your own?”

The real reason he would never marry was powerful, and being reminded of it cooled his blood like an ice bath. “I have been devoted to my family,” he said. “It cannot have escaped your attention that they are a troublesome lot and require much of my time. Marrying and having a wife and children would have taken too much of my attention, that being reserved for my family only.”

“It has always been my impression,” she said, staring over at him, “that marriage does not take much of a man’s time, though a woman might devote her whole life to the art of being married. Are not wives formed to serve and help a man? Is a wife’s sole purpose not to take the onerous burdens of life from her husband’s broad shoulders?”

There was an edge to her voice, and he thought she felt more about that observation than she had shared. But he imagined it for a moment, imagined having a wife, say… Elizabeth.

Instead of sitting in the library that moment separated from her by the space of three feet, he would be in her bed making love to her. And in the day he would be teaching his sons to hunt and his daughters to ride. Oh, yes, in his life it would take much of his time to be a husband and father, for he would never leave such a family to their own devices. Some fathers did—his own father, for an example—but he never would. He put his head back. Wholly caught up in the dream, he pictured the scene, even: on his lap a gentle girl like her mother—only not so curious—and beside him, in front of the fire, a handsome boy, like his father but… and there the image popped, disappearing like a luminous soap bubble.

Impossible. His head drooped. Marriage was out of the question, and even more so was having children. He would not perpetuate the taint of his family trouble. If he succeeded, it would end with his generation; that was the work of his life, the cause to which he had committed himself, and it required all his dedication and all his sacrifice. The end would be worth it; he had to believe that and keep working towards it.

“Nikolas,” Elizabeth whispered.

She had knelt before him while he was pondering his fate, and he gazed down into her blue eyes, the golden brown hair streaming over her shoulders glinting brilliantly in the glowing firelight. It was like his daydream come to life, her face before him, her loveliness shining in the fire’s glow.

“Nikolas,” she said urgently, “you look… sad, so terribly sad. What is it? How can I help?”

“Elizabeth, don’t look at me so,” he whispered, sitting forward and putting his head in his hands. “If you knew me… really knew me… you would shun me. I am a brute, a hard man not deserving of your compassion.”

“That’s not true,” she said, raising his head, her hands framing his face. “You were so kind to me just hours ago; I will
never
forget that moment.” Her voice quavered with emotion, but she mastered it and went on. “You were concerned that I was crying, and I have never met another man who would have behaved as you do. Most men shun tears and avoid women in pain. You are good, I feel it, so don’t speak of yourself so; I’ll not allow it.”

He scooped her into his arms and held her close on his lap, all of his good intentions swept away in her sweet negation of his terrible self-doubt. For long minutes he just held her close, feeling her heart beat, hearing their two hearts establish a common rhythm. Always would their hearts beat in time now, he knew, for he had learned something in the last few minutes; he had learned how easy it would be to fall in love with Miss Elizabeth Stanwycke, and how close he was to that perilous precipice. He must push that truth away, must command his emotions more rigidly, must—

She kissed him, framing his face again, her fingers thrust through his hair, raining soft kisses over his cheek and mouth. She wore nothing under the nightrail, and through the thin fabric he could feel the warmth of her flesh, enticing, exciting, arousing. His passion rising, he held her close, licking her mouth, tonguing her with fierce need. Responding feverishly, she twisted and was straddling him then, and he trembled from head to toe, feeling her inner warmth seep into him where their intimate parts met for the first time, her dampness communicating to him how sweet would be the velvety depths of her.

With trembling hands he cupped her breasts as she gazed down at him, lips parted, eyes clouded with ardent yearning. He hardened beneath her dampness and her awareness of his arousal—her eyes drifting closed, lashes fanned down over her velvety pink cheeks, as she pushed down against him— sent him to some cloud-strewn land of forgetfulness. Thumbing her nipples, feeling her strain into his hands, he pulled her to him and laved them through the fabric, wetting her nigh-trail, the nipples pebbling sweetly in his mouth as he suckled.

Throbbing urges tore though him, and the temptation to open his breeches and have his way, knowing that she was naked under the nightrail and her passion was dampening him even then, was almost painful.

But impossible. He stopped his caresses and summoned all of his considerable will to defeat the mists of passion that had rolled over him, enveloping them both. Gently, he disengaged her arms from around his neck and set her back in his chair. He strode to the cold side of the room and battled, fighting his body, quelling with ruthless control his aching need.

The chill of her dampened nightrail and Nikolas’ rapid disengagement brought Elizabeth back to herself rapidly. What had she been thinking? She was mortified by her own wanton behavior and embarrassed that he had been the one to draw back, not her. Confused and torn by conflicting emotions, she sat and shivered, folding her arms over her stomach, which churned with the warring urges she experienced.

In truth, after her conversation with Uta and Nikolas’s kindness to her in the midst of her pain, she had felt so raw and afraid. What was she feeling for him, she had wondered. Was it just physical attraction? She knew she liked him and respected him, but she didn’t fully trust him, nor should she, given how many secrets he was evidently keeping. She acknowledged that secrets were not necessarily a sign of any guilt, but still, there was not between them the level of intimacy a man and woman should have before sharing their bodies.

And yet with John she had shared her body and her soul, thinking he was sharing all, too, and it was a sham. He had lied about loving her, for she knew he suffered not a bit when he deserted her at his family’s behest. At least Nikolas was honest about what he could and could not tell her, and in a moment when he could have taken advantage of her passionate response to him, he had exhibited self-control beyond what would be expected of any man. It was humiliating, in a way, when it was she who had sworn to herself never to submit to any man’s passion again, and yet she had made the overtures towards a sexual liaison. Apparently she was not made for chastity.

He returned and gazed down at her. “How beautiful you are, Elizabeth,” he said, his voice velvety sweet. He caressed her shoulder and stroked her hair.

Beautiful but ultimately resistible, she wanted to say but didn’t. She would not allow injured feelings or shame to rule her tongue. “I… I must go, Nikolas,” she said, allowing his name to roll from her tongue as she slipped from the chair. She longed to throw herself at him and tempt him with kisses; he wanted her, she knew it deep inside her being, and his arousal had not subsided even now, though he had mastered it. But it was better this way, better for her certainly.

“I know,” he said simply. “I know you must go.”

There was something between them, something powerful and glorious, but she had sworn to herself never to capitulate, not because womanly passion was wrong, just because the consequences were far too severe. She must learn from his example of rigid self-control and never let this happen again.

She left the library and stole up the stairs and along the passage toward her room, wondering, still, at the source of the noise she had heard that had originally drawn her from her chamber.

Voices raised in what sounded like an argument or a confrontation had made her want to investigate, but all had been calm when she crept along the hallways, at least until Nikolas had grabbed her and hauled her into the library. Was his one of the voices she had heard? If so, to whom did the other belong?

At her own door she heard something and stopped. But the sound came from past her room, down the hall, and she padded down the carpet toward Gerta’s suite; there it was, a high-pitched giggle. The countess was in a fine fettle this evening, she thought. Perhaps she was reading something humorous. But then the sounds changed, and the small hairs on the back of her neck rose as she heard an outcry.

She tried the door but it was locked, and then she backed away as she heard, unmistakably, the guttural sound of male urgency and the answering cry of a woman in the throes of passion.

She knew the sound… had uttered ones like it, she supposed. Countess Gerta had a visitor, it seemed, and there was only one possibility. Count Delacroix. So they were lovers, as she had begun to suspect.

Pity for Countess Adele welled into Elizabeth’s heart as she scurried back to her own room, wanting to hear no more. When the affair was revealed there would be a painful scene, no doubt. How it would end was anyone’s guess. But perhaps the two would marry, and perhaps that was the best outcome to be hoped for.

RIDING AT dawn, breakfast alone in his library, then a long walk outside and talk with Charlotte, who was still sullen but promised to attend lessons with Miss Stanwycke: all of those activities were calculated by Nikolas, after a sleepless and restless night, to quell the thoughts and memories that still taunted him with rich detail. He could capture Elizabeth’s scent in his memories, feel the filmy fabric of her nightrail under his tongue, and the sweet peak of a pebbled nipple under the cloth.

He could feel her silky hair tickle his neck as she straddled him, her arms wound around his neck. He could even taste her mouth, like nectar, warmth blossoming through his body at the memory of her weight on him, her hips under his hands, the curve flaring over him. And he could see her face, shadowed but visible, glowing in the flickering firelight. He closed his eyes and leaned back in his desk chair, envisioning the clouded gaze, then how her lips parted, her hair streaming down as she threw her head back in passionate abandon.

But it would surely drive him mad if he continued to think of it. He sat up, rubbed his eyes, and tried to concentrate on the paper on the desk in front of him, a request from the mayor for another meeting before the next full of the moon. It was only February, and he had to hope that the still-snowy landscape would keep the good burghers of Wolfbeck safely in their homes and beds, but he couldn’t rely on it. He would have to meet with Wilhelm Brandt and see what he wanted now.

A tap at the door roused him from his torpor and he shouted, “
Kommen sie. ”

Bartol Liebner entered and approached, trepidation in his cringing position. As irritating as that was to Nikolas, he had to realize Bartol’s life at Wolfram Castle had not been easy. With no real blood ties to the family, he had always known he was there on sufferance. On her dying bed, Nikolas’s mother had asked that he always be given a home, since it was all he had known from his youth, and Nikolas, of course, had agreed. He didn’t begrudge the old man the shelter of his roof, but Bartol always seemed to feel his inferior and dependent position keenly. For that reason alone, Nikolas attempted to be kind and milder of temper.