The Mammoth Book of Regency Romance (7 page)

“Don’t stop,” she whispered even when her feet glowed with heat and he had to reach forwards to rescue the empty wine glass from her loosening hand.

As he straightened, he laughed softly and she struggled not to hear fondness in the sound.

Kinvarra wasn’t fond of her. He’d never been fond of her. She’d been foisted on him by family arrangement, an English heiress to fill the coffers of his Scottish earldom. Her foul behaviour during their year together had only confirmed his suspicions that he’d married a brat.

“Let’s have our supper before it gets cold. You’re exhausted.”

She let him take her hand and raise her to her feet. It seemed odd that so much touching was involved in sharing this room. She hadn’t expected it. But she was in too much of a daze to protest as he led her to the small table and slid a filled plate before her.

She was so tired that it hardly registered that Kinvarra acted the perfect companion. When she couldn’t eat much of the hearty but simple fare, he summoned the maids to clear the room. He left without her asking to grant her privacy to prepare for bed. She was too tired to do more than a quick cat wash and she had no intention of removing her clothes. When he returned from the corridor, she was already in bed.

What happened now? Trepidation tightened her belly and she clutched the sheets to her chest like a nervous virgin.

He looked across at her, his eyes enigmatic in the candlelight. Inevitably the moment reminded her of her wedding night. He’d been the perfect companion then too. Her gentle knight, the beautiful earl her parents had chosen, the kind, smiling man who made her laugh. And who had taken her body with a painful urgency that had left her hurt and bewildered and crying.

After that, no matter what he did, she turned rigid with fear when he came to her bed. After a couple of weeks, he’d stopped approaching her. After a couple of months, he’d stopped speaking to her, except to quarrel. After a year, she’d suggested they live apart and he’d agreed without demur. Probably relieved to have his troublesome wife off his hands.

She lowered her eyes and pleated the sheets with unsteady fingers. “Are you coming to bed?”

He arched one eyebrow in mocking amusement. “Why, Lady Kinvarra, is that an invitation?”

She felt her colour rise. How ridiculous to be a worldly woman of twenty-eight and still blush like a seventeen-year-old. “It’s a cold night. You’ve had a hard ride. I trust you.” Strangely, so quickly on top of her earlier uncertainty, it was true.

He released a short laugh and turned away. “More fool you.”

Confused she watched him set the big carved chair beside the fire. He undressed down to breeches and a loose white shirt. “It’s only a few hours until dawn. I’ll do quite well here, thank you.”

When he’d insisted they share a room, she’d wondered if he had some darker purpose. Some plan to take the wife who so profligately offered herself to another. To teach her who was her legal owner.

But his actions proved her wrong.

What did she expect? That he’d suddenly want her after all this time? She was a fool. She’d always been a fool where Sebastian Sinclair was concerned.

The constriction returned to her throat, the constriction that felt alarmingly like tears. She lay back and forced herself to speak. “Goodnight, then.”

“Goodnight, Alicia.”

He blew out the candles so only the glow of the fire remained. She listened to him settle. He tugged off his boots and drew his greatcoat over him for warmth. There was an odd intimacy in hearing the creak of the chair and his soft sigh as he extended his legs towards the blaze.

She stretched out. The bed was warm and soft and the sheets smelled fresh. She was weary to the bone but no matter how she wriggled, she couldn’t find that one comfortable spot.

Recollections of the day tormented her. Harold’s desertion, which should have been a considerably sharper blow than it was. If her original plans had eventuated, she’d now be lying in his arms. She should regret his weakness, his absence, but all she felt was vast relief. Her mind dwelled on Kinvarra’s unexpected gallantry. The fleeting moments of affinity. The powerful memories of their life together, memories that tonight stirred poignant sadness instead of furious resentment.

Kinvarra had turned the chair towards the hearth and all she could see of him was a gold-limned black shape. He was so still, he could be asleep. But something told her he was as wide awake as she.

“My Lord?” she whispered.

“Yes, Alicia?” He responded immediately. “Can’t you sleep?”

“No.”

Their voices were hushed, which was absurd as there was nobody to hear. The wind rattled the windowpanes and a log cracked in the fireplace. He had been right, the weather had worsened.

“Are you cold?”

“No.”

“Hungry?”

“No.”

“What is it then, lass?” He sounded tender and his Scottish burr was more marked than usual. She remembered that from their year together. When his emotions were engaged, traces of his Highland childhood softened his speech.

Strangely that hint of vulnerability made her answer honestly. “Come and lie down beside me. You can’t be comfortable in that chair.”

He didn’t shift. “No.”

“Oh.”

She huddled into the bed and drew the blankets about her neck as if hiding from the cruel truth. Hurt seared her. Of course he wouldn’t share the bed. He hated her. How could she forget? He just played the gentleman to a lady in distress. He’d do the same for anyone. Just because Alicia was his wife didn’t make her special.

When they’d first married, she’d tried to establish some rapport between them in the daylight hours, but when she’d rebuffed him in bed, he’d rebuffed her during the day. He hadn’t wanted her childish adoration. He’d wanted a woman who gave him pleasure between the sheets, not a silly little girl who froze into a block of ice the instant her husband touched her.

She blinked back the tears that had hovered close so often tonight. She’d cried enough over the Earl of Kinvarra. She’d cried enough tears to fill the deep, dark waters of Loch Varra that extended down the glen from Balmuir House, his ancestral home.

“Hell, Alicia, I’m sorry. Don’t cry.” She opened her eyes and through the mist of tears saw he’d risen to watch her. The fire lent enough light for her to notice that he looked tormented and unsure. Nothing like the all-powerful earl.

“I’m not crying,” she said in a thick voice. “I’m just tired.”

His mouth lengthened at her unconvincing assertion. He reached out with one hand to clutch the back of the chair. “Go to sleep.”

“I can’t.” She wondered why she didn’t let him be instead of courting further misery like this.

“Damn it, Alicia …” He drew in a shuddering breath and the hand on the chair tightened so the knuckles shone white in the flickering firelight.

“I’m not … I’m not attempting to seduce you,” she said, and suddenly wondered if she was being completely truthful. What in heaven’s name was wrong with her? Surely she couldn’t want to revisit the humiliations of her married life.

Kinvarra was as taut as a violin string. Tension vibrated in the air. “I know. But if I get into that bed, there’s no way I’ll keep my hands to myself. And I don’t want to hurt you again.
I couldn’t bear to hurt you again.”

She was shocked to hear the naked pain in his voice. This wasn’t the man she remembered. That man hadn’t cared that his passion had frightened and bewildered his inexperienced bride.

This man sent excitement skittering through her veins and made her ache for his touch. She raised herself against the headboard and drew in a breath to calm her rioting heartbeat. Another breath.

Her voice was soft but steady as she spoke. “Then be gentle, Sebastian.”

Alicia hadn’t used his Christian name since the earliest days of their marriage. The shock of hearing her say “Sebastian” meant he needed a couple of seconds to register what else she’d said.

His grip on the chair became punishing.

He must be mistaken. She couldn’t be offering herself. She’d never offered herself in all these many years. Even in the beginning, he’d always had to take. He’d come to hate it, so that when she’d finally suggested a separation after those miserable months together, he’d almost been relieved.

Of course, he hadn’t realized then that his agreement would lead to ten excruciating years without her.

She sat up in the bed and watched him with a glow in her blue eyes that in any other woman he’d read as blatant sexual interest. She’d taken her beautiful hair down and it flowed around her shoulders, catching the firelight. She became his fantasy Alicia. He had to be dreaming.

A frown crossed her face, he guessed at his continuing silence. “Sebastian?”

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” he said in a constricted voice, wondering why the hell he tried to talk her out of fulfilling his dearest hopes.

He’d wanted his wife for ten lonely years and now she was near enough to touch. He’d always been blackguard enough to want more from their forced intimacy tonight than mere conversation.

Then he’d remembered those disastrous encounters at Balmuir House. He couldn’t bring himself to inflict himself upon her once again.

She raised her chin, a signal of bravado that had been familiar in the young Alicia. The memory made his gut clench with longing.

“You’ve chased one lover away. Honour compels you to offer recompense.” Then in a less confident voice: “Sebastian, once you wanted me. I know you did.”

He swallowed and forced his response from a tight throat. “I still do.”

She’d taken her thick red cloak off when she entered the room. Now she raised trembling hands to the buttons on her mannish ensemble. An ensemble that looked anything but mannish on her lush figure.

Her travelling garb was cut like a riding habit and the white shirt was suitably modest, high at the throat. Even so, when her fumbling fingers loosened that top button, every drop of moisture dried from his mouth and his heart crashed against his ribs.

The Earl of Kinvarra was accounted a brave man. But he recognized the emotion holding him paralysed as ice-cold fear.

Tonight provided a miraculous second chance to heal the breach in his marriage. But if he hurt Alicia again, he’d never have another opportunity to bring her back to him.

He needed patience, restraint and understanding to seduce his wife into pleasure. Yet he burned like a devil in hell. What was he to do? He wanted her too much. And wanting her too much would destroy the fragile, uncertain intimacy building between them in this quiet room.

When his family had presented him with such a beautiful bride, he’d been sure they’d find joy in each other. Instead every coupling had been furtive and shameful, accomplished in darkness and ending with his wife in tears. No wonder he’d lost his taste for forcing himself upon her, although to his endless torment, his desire had never waned.

The shirt fell open another fraction, revealing a delicate line of collarbone and a shadowy hint of her breasts. She still studied him with an unwavering stare. Her hand dropped to the next button.

“Stop,” he said hoarsely.

Her hand paused. “Stop?” The vulnerability that flooded her face carved a rift in his heart. “You said …”

He shook his head and finally released the chair. He flexed his aching hand to restore the blood flow. “And I meant it. But let’s do this properly.”

Her hand fell away from her shirt to lie loose in her lap. “Shouldn’t I take my clothes off?”

He closed his eyes and prayed for control as images of Alicia’s naked body crammed his mind and turned him as hard as an oak staff. When he opened them, she stared at him as if he were mad. She wasn’t far wrong.

“We’ve got plenty of time.” He stepped towards the bed, his hands opening and closing at his sides as he fought the urge to seize her and tumble her back against the mattress. “Why rush things?”

“Kinvarra …” she said unsteadily.

“You called me Sebastian before.”

“You weren’t looking at me as if you wanted to eat me before.” She clutched at the sheet although she didn’t pull it higher. He was close enough now to notice the wild flutter of her pulse at her throat and the way her breathing made her swelling breasts rise and fall.

“Believe me, I’d love to.” He couldn’t move too quickly. He had to rein himself in or the sweet promise of joy would disintegrate into dust.

Her scent washed over him, floral soap and something warm and enticing that was the essence of Alicia. He drew a deep breath, taking that delicious fragrance deep into his lungs.

Slowly, he reached to hold the hand that clutched the sheet. At the contact, she jerked and released a choked gasp.

“Don’t be afraid, Alicia,” he murmured. “I won’t hurt you.” He hoped to hell he spoke true. His hand tightened on hers even as he told himself he needed to be careful with her.

“I’m … I’m not afraid,” she said on a thread of sound.

He laughed softly and lowered himself to sit on the bed. “Liar.”

She blushed. As a girl, her blushes had charmed him. They still did, he discovered.

“I’m nervous. That’s not the same as afraid.”

He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. He felt her shiver. Turning her hand over, he kissed her palm. As he heard her breath catch, desire spurred him to take more, satisfy his pounding need. With difficulty he beat the urge back.

Tonight what he wanted didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was his wife’s pleasure.

She remembered him as a selfish lover. He needed to vanquish those unhappy memories and replace them with bliss. His voice deepened into sincerity. “Alicia, trust me.”

He held her gaze with his. Doubt, fear and something that might have been reluctant hope swirled in her eyes. He felt tension in the hand he held. In desperate suspense, he waited for her to agree. Surely she wasn’t so cruel as to deny him now.