The Uncatchable Miss Faversham (24 page)

    Why did the Uncatchable Miss Faversham, of all the ladies on the marriage mart, have to attract him so violently and irrevocably?

    To be sure, she was handsome enough. Beautiful, even. But it was not that which made him hunger to possess her where so other men had failed, to lay personal claim to her body and soul. No, for that irrational impulse he would have to go deeper, into her blue eyes, the tenor of her voice, even that tentative smile pinned so bravely to her lips as she begged him silently not to turn her down again.

    At that instant, he made a conscious decision to let the past go, to let himself forget the pain between them. He smiled down into those wide blue eyes.

    ‘My intentions?’ He stroked her cheek with one finger, tracing the slow burn of colour under her skin. ‘Why, to make love to you until dawn, if stamina will allow.’

    ‘And in the morning?’

    ‘Never mind the consequences now. We are alone together. Let tomorrow take care of itself.’

    ‘Let tomorrow take care of itself,’ she echoed, shivering, and then let her filigree pelisse drop from her shoulders, that one simple gesture an invitation for him to remind her of their first night together, so many years ago now that it seemed to have taken place in some half-forgotten dream.

    ‘Nell, Nell,’ he whispered, drawing her closer to the four poster bed and covering her mouth with his own.

    Her response startled him, hot and eager as she was, her arms around his neck at once, her body pressed against his in that diaphanous gown. There was a clumsiness too, an aching uncertainty to her kisses.

    It confirmed that Eleanor was not the experienced looseskirt that reputation would have her, but still in part the girl he had seduced at eighteen, fresh and untried in love. He felt certain that no other man had been in this position, alone in her London bedchamber after midnight, and felt an odd flush of triumph at the thought.

    ‘Hush, not so quick,’ he murmured, pulling back and removing her arms from his neck. ‘I must remove my damp clothes first, else your gown will be ruined.’

    ‘Damn my gown!’

    He grinned at her oath. ‘Bravely said. But you may change your mind in the morning when you see that beautiful gown stained and creased. Allow me but a moment to undress.’

    Sitting up on the bed, Eleanor turned her blushing face away, dragging the headdress from her rain-damp hair and beginning to fumble impatiently with her gown.

    No doubt she must be unused to disrobing without her maid, he thought wryly.

    His own jacket and smart black opera shoes thrown aside, he knelt on the bed beside her and aided her to remove the thin, easily torn folds of her gown. The pale skin of her spine gleamed in the candlelight. Then Eleanor turned towards him shyly, unlacing her stays to reveal the firm, high breasts that he remembered.

    Nathaniel’s erection stiffened against the skin-tight confines of his pantaloons. He tore at the rest of his clothes with an impatience to equal hers.

    They had both waited long enough, surely?

    She had stood and was unrolling her white stockings, the sight so intimate that his breath caught in his throat.

    He stopped her. ‘Let me,’ he whispered huskily, and she sat back on the bed, silently lifting her knee for him.

    The fine silk of her stockings seemed to unroll on its own under his fingers. Her stockings removed, he straightened, pushing her back onto the mattress beneath him.

    Eleanor stared up hungrily at Nathaniel’s naked body. Lean, surprisingly muscular, he was a powerful man, formidable even, despite his scars and the twisted hip. And the evidence of his jutting arousal left her with a dry mouth and thundering heart. But what of her own body?

    He had rejected her nakedness in Warwickshire. Would Nathaniel like what he saw this time?

    He swung his leg over her with obvious intent, pinning her to the bed. Yet still he made no attempt to push her thighs apart, nor lower his mouth to her breasts, as she had half-expected him to do.

    His look was hard, searching. ‘Nell, do you recall the last time you took your clothes off for me?’

    ‘At Sallinger’s Folly?’

    He nodded, his face tense, and she closed her eyes momentarily, not wishing to relive that terrible afternoon and evening when she had humiliated herself, debased herself even, offering herself to him only to have that offer thrown back in her face as though she were some unfortunate tuppeny whore from whom he feared to catch the pox.

    ‘It’s forgotten,’ she whispered. ‘Let’s never speak of it again.’

    ‘I was a fool. Can you forgive me?’

    She moaned at the feel of his searching fingers at her breast, curving possessively about that soft aching flesh, stroking over the taut nub of her nipple. His mouth soon followed his fingers, and she could not help but gasp with wanton pleasure, her body eager for more.

    ‘It doesn’t matter. I have already forgiven you. How could I not forgive you? We were both fools that day.’ Her voice dwindled under the urgent heat of his caresses. ‘Nathaniel, please do not torment me like this. Not even for revenge. If you mean to take me, do it now.’

    He raised his head from her breast, his dark eyes almost exultant. ‘You want me inside you?’

    ‘Yes!’

    ‘Miss Faversham, I am shocked,’ he said simply, but parted her thighs and held himself against her, the swollen head of his shaft nudging her dampness. There was an unsteadiness to his voice that suggested how close he was to losing control. ‘Though always happy to oblige a lady.’

    When he entered her, she almost fainted. The sensations of fullness and satisfaction were so powerful she felt the blood drumming in her ears.

    Nathaniel held back a moment, one hand smoothing down the damp hair at her forehead. But when her hands dropped greedily to his hips, pulling him closer, and her knees lifted to urge him on, he gave a soft groan and began to move inside her.

    Her hips rose and fell against his thrusts, remembering the rhythm as though the first time had been only yesterday.

    This time though, there was no pain. Only an urgency and excitement to match his own.

    When his hand sought out the moist heat between her thighs, massaging the flesh there between finger and thumb, she thought she might die from the pleasure of that caress.

    Nathaniel’s eyes closed, a frown knitting his brows together, his breath coming in short jerking bursts. She lifted herself towards him, gently brushing her lips against his. The dark eyes opened, staring down onto hers.

    Eleanor felt at that moment as though nothing could ever come between them again. Her lips parted, ready to say the words, to tell him she loved him. Yet still something stopped her, holding her back from that final, terrible admission.

   
What if he did not love her too?

   
He touched her again, down there between their moving bodies, and Eleanor gasped, unprepared for the deeper, stronger sensations caused by his fingers, rubbing and teasing the tense nub of flesh. She had not thought such intense pleasure could come twice in one coupling.

    ‘Nathaniel,’ she groaned, closing her eyes as fierce waves of bliss swept over her body, threatening to drown her. ‘I need you.’

    ‘Yes,’ he muttered, understanding.

    Steadying himself on his hands, Nathaniel thrust more swiftly now, and urgently. He was concentrating on his own satisfaction now, his face oddly tense, his lean body working hard. She helped him, undulating her hips and thighs, and raised her buttocks from the sheets, bringing her own tension to a peak, small gasps accompanying each thrust.

    Suddenly he gave a shuddering moan, and buried himself deep inside her as he reached his climax.

    ‘Nell, my sweet Nell,’ he groaned.

    Eleanor wrapped her arms about him, kissing his strong throat over and over. She wanted Nathaniel to stay inside her, warm and near, but he soon rolled away, pulling the sheet over his nakedness as though distancing himself from her now that the act was done.

    She lay beside him in an uncertain silence, wanting to speak but not daring, listening instead to his breathing slow. Soon she realised that he had fallen asleep.

    Closing her own eyes to blot out the flickering candle flame, Eleanor wondered how she could smuggle him out of her bedchamber without being seen. He would have to leave before dawn, or the maids who lit the fires would be up and moving silently about the house.

    She had an ingenious plan worked out for his escape, and was just considering waking Nathaniel in order to implement it, when the dog-tiredness of her body won out against her common sense, and she fell deeply, irrevocably asleep.

‘Oh!’

    The sound of shattering china woke Eleanor instantly.

    Her eyes snapped open to see Nathaniel, standing nude beside the bed, looking much as she imagined Michelangelo’s vast marble statue of David must do. At that second, he grabbed up his shirt with an unrepeatable oath and clutched it against his exposed lower half.

    Opposite him, in the half-open doorway, stood Mary, the understairs maid who only ever emerged in the dawn hours to light fires when it was cold and freshen the wash bowls. Her mouth was wide open, a broken pitcher of water beside her on the floor, her cheeks paler than ever under the plain mop cap.

    Eleanor struggled up on one elbow, holding up the sheet to cover her own nudity, though there seemed little point trying to recover any dignity now.

    ‘Out!’ Eleanor managed succinctly.

    The maid fled, a spot of red in each cheek as the Awful Truth dawned on her, that the unmarried mistress of the house had spent the night in the arms of A Man.

    ‘Well, that’s torn it,’ Nathaniel commented, not even turning to look at her as she lay back, stunned by the enormity of what had just occurred.

    With supreme nonchalance, Nathaniel slipped the shirt over his head and reached for his pantaloons, somewhat creased now after a night on the floor.

    When it came to his boots, he had to sit on the bed beside her to pull them on. He looked round at her still shocked face, his voice curiously calm, almost expressionless.

    ‘You’ll have to marry me now.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

‘What do you think?’

    Louisa, who had been entertaining herself by counting the dozens of different coloured silks in Mademoiselle Selle’s display, turned at her question and gasped.

    ‘Oh, Eleanor. It’s … why, it’s perfect.’

    Eleanor smoothed down the pale lemon silk of her gown and studied herself critically in the floor-length mirror. ‘You do not think it too plain?’

    ‘How will you be dressing your hair?’

    ‘As simply as possible,’ she replied, allowing the dressmaker to adjust the hem while she stood patiently in her stockinged feet. ‘Caught up into a chignon and braided with a yellow ribbon.’

    Louisa smiled. ‘My dear, nothing could be more fashionably classical. The style will declare itself ‘quiet elegance’ and all the unmarried girls will weep with fury at your beauty.’

    ‘Flatterer!’

    Her friend laughed. ‘I speak my mind, that is all. Or would you rather have brought Charlotte?’

    ‘I love Charlotte dearly, and am so pleased she was able to stay on in London until the wedding. But the idea of her little son in a dressmaker’s shop is a horror not to be countenanced. Only imagine what havoc he might have wrecked with those silks!’

    ‘Yes, and all the while Charlotte would have lounged at her ease, fanning herself and bemoaning her son’s difficult behaviour.’

    ‘Hush, you should not!’ Yet Eleanor could not help laughing at this sadly accurate description of her friend’s handling of her son. ‘It’s true that poor Charlotte is not vastly adept at controlling the boy. But perhaps Nathaniel should bear a little of the blame. He has not provided a steady enough role model while the boy’s father has been at sea, forever out riding or ... or … visiting his friends.’

    The dressmaker hurried away for more pins.

    Louisa laid a hand on her arm, her usually round and cheerful face concerned.

    ‘Tell me truly, are you happy with this marriage?’

    Eleanor felt herself blushing, and realised with a shudder how close she had come to revealing that she knew of Nathaniel’s mistress.

    It was less than a week since she and Nathaniel had been discovered in bed together, and it had been hard to face her friends’ shocked expressions that first morning. Though Louisa had seemed almost more shocked by the announcement of their betrothal, no doubt recalling how many times Eleanor had stated her firm intention never to wed. Yet there was no alternative if she was to hold her head up in public again.

    Flirting with men, and even the occasional naughty assignation, could only be considered acceptable behaviour for an unmarried girl so long as it remained secret.

    But they had been caught
in flagrante delicto
: marriage was the only respectable solution.

    ‘Of course I am happy. Nathaniel and I have had our differences in the past, as you know. But it’s time we put that behind us. Besides, you know very well that …’ she dropped her voice to a fierce whisper, ‘that I cannot do otherwise than marry him.’

    ‘Yet you have always spoken out against the institute of marriage. To lose your independence, your freedom – ’

    ‘Louisa, I have no choice.’

    ‘I suppose not.’

    ‘Then let us smile and take tea together and shop for bridesmaids’ gifts! For you must agree to be my bridesmaid, dear Louisa. I cannot do this without you.’ She kissed Louisa on the cheek. ‘It will be strange not to breakfast with you every morning, but to see Nathaniel’s face across the table instead.’

    ‘Oh, you will soon grow accustomed to it. The pleasures of married life must always outweigh seeing my face across the breakfast table.’

    They both began to giggle, interrupted only by Mademoiselle Selle returning with more lace and a box full of pins.