Devil in My Bed (17 page)

Perhaps she’d made the wrong choice back then. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to take it back . . .

Not until she had seen how marriage could be did she want it. Not until she’d woken up in these rooms with the man she loved and his child did she get a glimpse of what a normal life might be.

Turning, she saw that Melody was drowsing on the sofa, her finger in her mouth and her eyes droopy and glazed as she clutched Gordy Ann tightly. Madeleine moved to pick her up and settled back down on the sofa with the child on her lap.

I could be Melody’s mother. I could love her and care for her and never would she realize she was not my own.

If only she could have this life forever, here with Aidan, like a real woman.

Yet, perpetuating her lie would cost Melody the chance to know her true mother.

That woman doesn’t want her, remember?

“I do,” she whispered into the silken head nestled on her shoulder. “I want you. Both of you.”

When supper arrived that evening, it was a feast. Aidan was actually a bit dismayed to think that Wilberforce believed he could eat it all. With Melody and Madeleine safely concealed in the bedchamber, he stood back to let the line of trays flow in.

With any luck, none of the footmen noticed Gordy Ann—but then, what would they see but a grubby, knotted cravat abandoned on the sofa? God, he was getting as bad as Melody!

Fortunately, Colin showed up for supper just as the footmen were leaving.

“I think I’m going to need your assistance with all this.”

“My fault. I told old Wilberforce that I was eating with you tonight and that I had a powerful appetite on.” Colin gazed with satisfaction at the trays of plenty. “Crikey, we could have been eating like this all along? Wait until Jack gets back. We’ll fatten him up in no time.”

Jack. Right. Aidan thought about the letters he’d sent to Jack’s various ports of call. Would he receive any of them? Was he even now rushing back to see the child he thought was his daughter?

So sorry, old son. My mistake. You’re still alone in the world, but I have a new family.

Aidan looked at Gordy Ann, that smeary, ghostly wad of linen that now looked entirely like a doll to him.

Things have changed around here, my friend. We’ve all had to change with them.

Madeleine and Melody joined them. “Oh heaven!” sighed Madeleine. She looked at Aidan with delight.

“I haven’t had beef in months!”

Despite the pain in his heart, he could not help but laugh at the greedy glee in her face. He bowed playfully. “Have at, then, my lady.”

She looked so eager and happy that he could not hold a grudge. Perhaps he’d pushed too hard, too soon earlier. After all, he had years to learn the hidden depths of the mysterious Mrs. Chandler.

It was a cheerful party for dinner. The trays overflowed the small round table, so Madeleine set up a buffet on the sofa after covering the cushions with a sheet. This allowed even Melody to choose her own portions.

Aidan eyed the towering pile of cooked carrots on that plate, then leaned to one side to see the tiny child behind it. “If you eat all those, you’ll turn into a rabbit.”

She giggled. Several carrots slithered from the top to land on the carpet. Madeleine rescued the plate and set Melody up with a spoon and a giant napkin about her neck.

“Eat up, little bunny.”

Colin was watching them, shaking his head in amusement. “Pour you all into a bowl and stir. Instant family cake.”

Colin soon had Melody and Madeleine laughing with tales of boyhood adventures they had shared.

Aidan merely smiled at the rather obvious majority of “Aidan falls face down in mud” stories. He was enjoying seeing Madeleine laugh too much to care about his own damaged pride.

She looked so lovely in this relaxed setting. When he’d known her before, she’d spoken and listened freely but there had always been a purpose to their meetings. He’d had only one use for her, he realized, therefore he’d only seen one side of this complicated woman. Madeleine receiving a lover was a different creature than Madeleine with a family.

Now she sat with Melody pulled into her lap, wiping carrots from the child’s face—including her eyebrows!—and laughing with Colin. She was dressed in something faded and a bit too loosely fitted, but it only made her cheeks seem brighter and her hair smokier by contrast. He liked her hair down like this, a loose braid that let small strands escape to float near her cheeks. She wore no corset, he realized when she bent to set Melody free. He could see her full breasts moving freely when her bodice gaped a bit. If he took her into his arms right now, he would be rewarded with soft, warm female, no whalebone in sight.

His arms felt suddenly empty.

She caught his gaze when she straightened. His thoughts must have been obvious, for her brown eyes went dark and wide and her cheeks flushed. It was a charming blush that went right down to the tops of her breasts. Perhaps even farther. It bore investigating, that blush . . .

She tried to distract him. “More carrots, my lord? I think Melody might have left us a few.” In her agitation, another strand of hair fell from her braid, this one long enough to curl at the base of her throat.

He reached out to brush it back with his fingertips, relishing the brush against the soft skin of her neck.

“Of all the Madeleines I’ve seen,” he murmured, “I think this Madeleine is my favorite.”

She looked away but he caught her chin with gentle fingers. “Don’t take her away just when I’ve become attached,” he whispered. “I’d be so alone again.”

Her lips parted and her gaze rose to his. “Why would you say that?”

He smiled slightly and ran his thumb gently over her bottom lip. “I don’t know. Perhaps it is only my imagination, but I fear a future without you in it.”

She swallowed. “I thought you disliked me now.”

“I thought I did, too. How mistaken we can be.” He bent closer, his gaze lost in hers.

From behind them Colin cleared his throat. “Mistress Melody and I are going to run off to join the marauding pirates of Dishonor’s Plunder.”

“That’s nice,” Madeleine said absently.

“We’re planning to burn down Westminster Abbey before we leave town.”

“Mm-hm.” Aidan smiled at Madeleine. “Have fun.”

Colin grunted. “Come along, Mellie. We needn’t stay where we’re not wanted. Let’s make a dash for my rooms.”

They left a few moments later. “I’ve got her things,” Colin informed them. “Don’t wait up.” He got precisely the answer he expected, which was none at all.

In the sudden silence, it seemed to Aidan that his pulse became louder, until all he could hear was his heart’s pleading. Love me. Love me.

He stood, pulling her to her feet, with her hands in his. “I don’t think they’re coming back,” he murmured.

Her gaze moved from his eyes to his mouth. “No, I don’t think they are.”

He cupped her lovely face in his hands and kissed her lips softly. Yet when he lifted his head, her dark eyes gazed at him warily, and he despaired.

“Give me your secrets, Maddie,” he whispered. “I must have all of you.”

Her lids dropped, and she ducked her face from his touch. To his surprise, she did not pull away but instead moved closer to tuck her head under his chin.

“I cannot tell you . . . not yet.” She must have felt him stiffen, for she clung closer to him. “Aidan, please, do not press me. There is nothing with which you can aid me, and there is nothing I can do to change what was. If I tell you that I mean no harm, that my only aspiration is my own merest survival—will that be enough?”

Would it? What was it that he feared haunted her?

When they first became lovers, she was shy, wary. She told him her husband was older, that he rarely touched her, that she knew very little of lovemaking—yet that didn’t explain her tears after the first time she shook with orgasm at his hands, or the way that in the beginning she would never allow him to stay the night in her bed, as if she couldn’t fall asleep with someone else in her bedchamber.

His suspicions that her husband had not been kind were met with offhand dismissal and an airy laugh.

“What a thing to say,” she would say blithely, then change the subject.

He wanted so badly to protect her from whatever was troubling her. He wanted her to let him in, so sure was he that he could slay her monsters, that he was the one who could save her. She wasn’t alone, no matter how hard she might fight to be.

Pulling her more tightly into his arms, he lay his cheek onto her soft hair and smiled to himself. No one who smelled so good could possibly be guilty of anything too terribly evil.

“You will tell me, you know,” he pointed out. “Someday soon, you will tell me everything.”

Madeleine closed her eyes and buried her face into his chest. Soon she would be gone without a word.

No note, no impassioned plea for forgiveness would come close to expressing her regret. She would simply be there one moment and gone the next, and Aidan and Melody would go on.

So why not take this moment of happiness with her? Would it be so wrong to drink from this well of tenderness and joy, just for a moment, just long enough to sustain her for the rest of her days?

Slowly she tipped her head back to look at his beautiful, chiseled face. “You will always be my only love, Aidan de Quincy. That is one secret I will tell you right now.”

He blinked slowly as he gazed down at her, obviously dumbfounded. “You love me?”

She laughed damply. “Of course I love you, you great idiot. I have always loved you, ever since I nearly killed you with that brick!”

He cradled her face in his large hands, smoothing her mussed hair back from her face. “Say it again,” he demanded, his voice raw with emotion.

She slid her hands up his broad chest, over his shoulders and clasped them behind his neck, sinking her body into his with the ease of memory. “I love you. I love you. I love you. You probably ought to kiss me now, for I’ll only carry on until you do.”

He kissed her so gently it made tears spring to her eyes. With her head still cradled in his hands, he kissed her upper lip and her bottom one, her nose and her chin, both cheeks, both eyes, and at last pressed his lips to her forehead. “There,” he murmured into her skin. “You’ve been most officially kissed.”

She smiled in lazy joy and opened her eyes to gaze up at him. “But you haven’t.”

Sliding her fingers into his thick, dark hair, she pulled his mouth down to hers and ravaged it, pouring her entire self into the kiss, giving him everything she’d had to hold back for the past two days, for the past four years, for the entire life she’d been forced to live before meeting him.

What are you doing? Are you mad?

Yes. I’m mad enough to let myself love him just a little longer. I’m mad enough to not care how and why I have to go, mad enough to be here now, in his arms, and not look forward or back.

So shut it and get out of my way!

Aidan wasn’t one to let opportunity knock and then leave unannounced. Even as her hot, demanding kiss rocked him back on his heels, he had a nice soft place on the carpet all picked out.

The coals in the fireplace glowed invitingly. Aidan swept Madeleine up in his arms and carried her there.

On the way, he bent so she could pick up a pillow from the sofa and then again so she could blow out the candles. She laughed at his playful consideration but sobered again when he gently lowered her to the carpet in front of the fire.

She’d been a fool to think she could ever armor her heart against him. No matter the consequences, no matter the pain, she loved this beautiful, honorable man more than her own safety, more than her own life.

He hadn’t said the same, had not confessed his own love, but she could feel it in his touch. His hands were sure and warm, yet moved slowly, as if afraid she might disappear if startled, like a forest deer.

Resting against his chest, she closed her eyes as he slowly undid the buttons on the back of her dress.

This was to be no quick tumble, she knew. This would be something they had never experienced in all their months together before.

She slid her hand up his chest and tugged gently at his intricately tied cravat. He murmured a protest, so she desisted, content that he wanted nothing more from her at this moment than to allow him to care for her, to cherish her.

When her cap sleeves slipped from her shoulders and the bodice of her gown fell away, he kissed her.

First her lips, so softly it was almost chaste. Then her cheeks, her ear, her neck . . .

The heat of his mouth combined with the warmth of the fire on her skin. Languid pleasure stole through her, slowly building on the passion of moments before. She knew this man, knew that exquisite pleasure awaited her . . . yet it was all new, all glamoured in delicate emotions she’d not felt before. The infatuation of their past was nothing compared to this everlasting welling of love she felt now.

When he stroked her sleeve down her arm, exposing breasts barely contained in her thin chemise, she arched her throat and let her head fall back in complete surrender. All rational thought fled at the feel of his warm lips and hands as her gown slipped away.

All that was left was the way his hands spread out over hers, pressing them to the floor on either side of her head. All she knew was the way he never forced, never took more than he was given, how he waited for her every time.

He was patient, willing to stretch each moment into forever—coaxing, teasing, never demanding.

It was a heady ride, this balance of willing submission and sensual control. She could be free at last, herself at last, hiding nothing, reserving nothing from him.

Held but not bound, she gave cry to the heat welling inside her. He covered her mouth with his, taking her wordless cries, answering them with his own hungry moans.

Aidan felt the crack in his control widen, then tear asunder. He was lost, self swept aside in the rush of her skin, her scented hair, her hot sighs on his face and neck.

He tugged at the neckline of her chemise. There was no time for untying bows, no thought for anything but the flavor of her nipple on his tongue.