Teaching the Earl (14 page)

She gazed up at him, frowning, and he tugged on a tendril of hair that hung loose from her coiffure. Her hand flew up and discovered the disarray.

"Your dress, too," he told her.

"I can't fix this here. I need a mirror, and more hairpins."

He only looked at her, very level, so she blushed and said sharply, "It was not I who ran fingers through my hair."

"Come," he said, and led her to a branching corridor a little ahead of them, keeping his body between her and the milling crowds in the light. This corridor was lit by occasional sconces, and he only put his head through two doorways before he found a woman's bedroom. He ushered her in and strode to the dressing table, shuffled through the tiny coffers on the dressing table and found one full of hairpins. He tipped them out, his movements
sharply abrupt, then folded his arms across his chest and stood back to watch her.

She came forward on tentative feet. His expression was very grim. She sat at the dressing table and assessed the damage. Sections of her hair had been loosened, and although she poked at them hopefully, it was obvious she must take them down and start again. Carefully she began to unpin the dozen loops and her coiled braids.

There was a hectic flush on her cheeks and her eyes were wide and excited. He was here, and focused only on her. Yet he must be angry.

"Whatever you saw, just now,
” she said, “I'm certain you misunderstood."

"Did I?"

"You must have. I imagine it looked dreadful." His eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. "Michael has been my escort many times these past weeks. I knew him before we married. When I returned to the City he was kind and convenient and I-" she took a deep breath, "I was lonely and I encouraged him to accompany me."

His jaw tightened. She saw a muscle flex there. Still he was silent.

"I suppose I must take part of the blame, because he developed a
tendre
for me and imagined I returned it. I should have disillusioned him. I didn't. I-" she paused, pretended tying off a braid and securing it under another required all her attention. Honesty. She must be completely honest, or he would not think her penitent. "I liked his attention. After what you said to me, I needed-Wanted- I
wanted
to be cherished. It wasn't wise. Forgive me?"

Instinct told her it was a hopeless request. If there had ever been a chance he would learn to care for her, she had likely destroyed it when he came upon her being kissed in the darkness with another man. Her hands trembled as she slowly braided and tried to be brave in this dreadful
moment.

"Forgiveness is not so cheap, Madam
wife."

"I never
intended to betray you. I didn't think it all through wisely enough. I'm so sorry."

He put one gloved hand around the base of her neck. She froze. It looked shocking in the mirror, so masculine against the demure white softness of her skin.
Powerful and controlling.

"Do you intend to see him again?"

"I don't want to, ever. But I will have to. His family are invited everywhere."

"Will you seek him out?"

"Never."

"And nothing occurred with him that you keep secret from me?"

"Nothing. I swear it."

She watched in the mirror as he gazed contemplatively at the top of her head. "You do realize if you lie to me there is a very easy way to find out the truth?" His hand flexed, tightened.
Present but not painful.

"What do you mean?"

Now his stare met hers in the mirror, fiercely burning behind his apparent calm. "If you have cuckolded me, your lack of innocence will make it obvious."

"I haven't."
Her lack of innocence? She was not sure what he meant by that. Then she remembered a long-ago conversation with Lydia about female anatomy. "Do you mean my hymen?"

"Yes."

She took a breath for courage, then said the words on her lips, regardless of the consequences. "But you won't know for certain until you-" what was a correct euphemism? "try me."

He lifted his head, and his eyelids flickered. For a long moment there was silence except for the harsh sound of his breathing. "You suggest I test you?"

"You must. You don't have a choice. Otherwise how can you know for certain?" Her heart was beating so hard, so fast.

"You would have it happen so?
Dispassionate? Distrustful? That is what you dream of between us?" His chest visibly rose and fell, and his eyes were hungry.

"However it must happen, my lord," she said, not entirely certain what she promised him, what this would mean, but knowing it was better than a barren limbo of a marriage. "I abhor waste. Right now, I am wasted. I won't live like this."

"So it will be me or someone else? Is that what you are saying?"

"I-" she faltered. That would be a lie. But would it achieve her goal? Was it a lie worth telling?

His two hands cupped her shoulders now, and squeezed almost hard enough to bruise. "How did I think you were sweet and demure?"

"I
’m learning to be wild." There was something about his intensity that made her want to walk the edge with him, to plunge over into madness. She could tell he read more into her words than she truly understood, but there was nothing indifferent about him as he stood over her. She was not ignored. His focus was completely on her.

"So I am to test you?" His hand slid over her collarbone, then lower, until his fingertips were inside her
decolletage
, where they flexed against the slopes of her breasts.

She closed her eyes and longed for him to touch her nipple as he had before. Could it really have felt
as good as she thought it had? Surely that was imagination?

Suddenly his mouth was on her neck, sucking on her tender flesh at the place where neck met
shoulder, his tongue flicking the damp surface of her skin. Her eyes flew open and she gripped the edge of the seat.

"Yes."

His arms wrapped around her ribs from behind and he lifted her from the seat, knocking it over, and bore her to the bed, barely visible in the shadows. She clutched his forearms, iron bars around her midriff. Here? Now?

Should she tell him no?
Should she say she had been too bold, she was not ready after all?

But no, if the heat was in him now, she would not stop him. She wanted this. Even flawed, even knowing he still loved another, he was her husband and she wanted to be with him, and let the future fall how it would. In this moment she would act.

He dropped her onto the covers, and she scrambled towards the center of the bed, then turned in expectation. He stood beside the bed, staring at her, but when their eyes met he leaned over the bed and prowled onto it in pursuit. Her heart pounded, and she panted with excitement and terror. He was so close. Closer, inches away. She fell back, propped up on her elbows, and he braced himself with one arm on either side of her body so she looked up at him.

Nowhere did they touch, but the air between them pulsed with suspense.

Then he swooped, sudden as an eagle stooping to prey, and her faint shriek was muffled by his mouth as it came down on hers. His torso pressed hers into the mattress, her arms wrapped around him, her hips were pinned by his. She could not have wriggled away, but she did not want to.

His mouth was dark heat and temptation, slick and ravenous. He devoured her as if he was starving and she the feast, one hand holding her head still, the other hard on her breast. Her hands
tunneled through his hair and with the scant inch of freedom he gave, she writhed against him. The feeling of him was magic, so potently masculine, hard and hot and everywhere. She could not sort one sensation from the next, there were so many of them and all so intense.

He shoved her dress and stays down far enough that her nipples sprang free, and then his hot mouth engulfed one, his fingers plucking at the other, and she moaned, her head tilting back hopelessly. He shifted his weight, rolled her to one side without releasing that devastation suction, and his hands fumbled feverishly at the line of buttons on the back of her dress, then the laces of her stays. Inch by inch he gave her freedom to breathe, until fabric bunched loosely around her.

But that awareness was near swamped by what he did to her breasts, that made her hips press to him in innocent welcome, untutored and fervent. She shook with the extraordinary bolts of sensation that shot through her as if her nipples were connected to that place deep within, low in her abdomen, that yearned to be closer to him, closer still.

His hand encircled her ankle, then slid swiftly from there up under her skirt, higher and higher, pushed past the constriction of his own weight, of her bunched clothing, and then his palm pressed down hard on her at the juncture of her thighs, a grinding pressure that was so exactly right she rose into it.

He muttered a curse, and there was a note of wonder in his voice.

Abruptly he rolled them both
again, so he lay beneath her and she sprawled over him. She blinked down at him, bewildered, but he did not look at her face, only pushed her upright so she straddled him, then yanked viciously at the fabric of her dress, crumpled between them.

Her dress.
He wanted it off.

She closed her eyes, shy but determined, took hold of the material of gown and petticoats and tugged them free and upwards, his hands joining hers to lift the swathes of fabric over her head.
They were tossed into the darkness. Her stays followed, a tangle of ribbons and sturdy fabric, and she was left in only a filmy shift.

Her arms lifted, crossed her chest, and she gazed down at him solemnly.

He was breathing hard, his eyes hot on her body, but then they lifted to her face, and rested there.

There was a heavy silence, a suspension of movement. She could not read his expression. His j
aw was set hard and there was wildness in him. She shivered with the chill of the room.

Instantly his palms cupped her
shoulders, urging her down to him. She came without resistance, settled to lie there on his chest, legs straddling his waist, and he lifted the corner of the coverlet they lay on, and pulled it over her back. Concealed in its folds she released her breasts and her hands went immediately to his torso, hungry to feel him, even through his clothes. She found a button in his waistcoat, then another, flicked them free then quested beneath for his shirt. A third button gave her access to his skin, hidden from sight, and she laid her palm there on crisp hair and hot skin.

She took a sobbing breath.

"You want me unclothed?" His voice was husky.

She quivered as she imagined it. "Yes."

His hands went between them, and he began to unbutton those rows of mother-of-pearl buttons, infinitely slowly. As he did it the backs of his hands rubbed her breasts, her so-sensitive nipples, ruched impossibly hard. She rested her forehead on his shoulder, unable to support the weight of her head on her weak neck.

She became aware of pressure beneath her bottom, of hardness there. As she shifted in curiosity his fingers went still, then they resumed their task more slowly. Again she moved.

"Innocence or knowledge?" he asked her.

"Pardon?"

"Do you know what you do?"

"I . . . No."

"Do it again."

She hesitated. "This?" Tentatively she moved her hips.

"God, yes." He left the buttons and then his hands were under her bottom. A moment later she gasped as he stroked her intimately. He lifted his hands away but still she was prodded with blunt insistence. When she looked down into his face she saw his eyebrows were raised in cool challenge.

"What is-I don't know-" What did he expect from her? But he continued his leisurely unbuttoning, the gap in his shirt widening around her hand. "Is there something you want me to do?"

"Do just as you please."

So she moved cautious fingers across his chest, explored the firm bumps and grooves of him, so different from her body. She discovered the flat disk of his nipple, and stroked it experimentally, her eyes on his face.

His nostrils flared.

"Is that good?" she asked. "Do you like it when I do that? Does it feel the same for you?"

"The same as what?"

"The same as when you do it to me."

"How does it feel when I do that to you?"

"Oh-" she tried to find words for that sensation of pure pleasure. "Wonderful. So I don't want
you to ever stop."

His hands went still
again. "I should stop, though. I should not be doing this."

Panic arrowed through her, and she seized his hand by the wrist, and held it to her breast. "You can't stop. You are testing me."

"Am I?"

"To be certain I've told you the truth. You must be sure."

His fingers squeezed her giving flesh. "A guilty woman would never urge me on. She would not want to be discovered a liar."