Tremaine's True Love (18 page)

Trapezius, latissimus dorsi, gluteus…

Gluteus
God-help-me-us
. A giggle threatened, a very pleased giggle as Mr. St. Michael returned to the bed.

“Do you typically wear your robe and stockings under the covers?” Mr. St. Michael asked. His voice was different in the lower light, maybe more French or more Scottish, but definitely less English.

And certainly more naughty. Nita shifted back, swinging her legs into the bed. “I do not. Aren’t you cold, sir?”

Mr. St. Michael took Nita’s foot in his hands and drew her stocking off slowly, so the soft wool caressed her calf, ankle, and arch. Nita gave him her other foot, assailed by the certainty that anatomical labels and stubbornness would not see her through what came next.

“Your robe, my lady?” He folded her stockings on the night table casually, as if women’s clothing were familiar to him—though they were
wool
stockings.

Nita shrugged out of her robe, an awkward undertaking that involved scooting her hips and rocking from side to side. Mr. St. Michael waited patiently, his nudity a visual lure immediately to Nita’s left.

“My guess is you’ve seen the male body before,” he said, folding the robe across the foot of the bed. “Are these maidenly vapors for my benefit?”

He sauntered around to the other side of the bed, the meager light of the banked fire revealing only outlines and shadows.

“I’m not a maiden,” Nita said, flipping the covers back so he could join her between the sheets.

He stopped, one knee on the mattress. “Do I have a rival for your hand?”

His tone was merely curious, as if a rival might be an interesting twist to a tricky negotiation, though Nita also had the sense a wrong answer might send him right back into his boots and breeches.

“No rival. You’re not disappointed?” Had she hoped he would be?

He settled on the bed. “We have a word in English to describe a woman without sexual experience—she is a maiden. We have no word for a man in a similar untried state. The general term—
virgin
—sits awkwardly on the male, and he has no specific term of his own. I’ve found this curious.”

Mr. St. Michael was comfortable sharing a bed, lounging on his side as if he and Nita shared a blanket in a meadow.

“You’re curious about the terminology?” Nita was curious about his anatomy, but also about the passion he’d seen in her—and she sensed in him.

“That too. Come here, please. Some discussions are better undertaken in close quarters.”

Nita scooted under the covers—the room would soon grow chilled—and wished she’d kept a candle lit.

“What are we to discuss, sir?”

He arranged himself around her, so Nita was on her back, Tremaine St. Michael draped along her side.

“Were
you
disappointed, my lady?”

A lump rose in Nita’s throat, inappropriate, inconvenient, and unwelcome. The question was insightful and quietly tendered.

“I was young. He was a dashing fellow in his regimentals, handsome, charming, and newly down from university. I’d known him most of my life, but he’d gone away a boy and come back a man.”

Or so she’d thought. He’d gone away a boy and come back a scoundrel, in truth.

Mr. St. Michael pulled Nita closer and kissed her cheek. “Did your handsome cavalier have the bad grace to die in service to King and Country?”

Nita turned, tangling her legs with Mr. St. Michael’s. “He did, of dysentery. Disease carried off nearly as many soldiers as enemy fire on the Peninsula, and he was one of the casualties.”

How cozy and comforting to drop her forehead to Mr. St. Michael’s sturdy shoulder and share a regret with somebody who would not judge her for her indiscretion.

“Did his death inspire your campaign against illness and injury?” Mr. St. Michael’s hand settled on Nita’s nape, fingers massaging away tension, regret, and even self-consciousness.

“My mother trained me regarding herbs and nursing. That feels good.” Nita’s mother had also trained her to endure an unrelenting sense of responsibility. Would marriage offer a cure for that affliction or make it worse?

Mr. St. Michael said nothing for a long, sweet moment, while the sheets warmed, and Nita relaxed into the novel comfort of sharing a bed with a man who knew his way around the female body.

“Are you still in love with your young soldier?” Such was Mr. St. Michael’s sophistication that he wouldn’t have begrudged Nita a sprig of willow for a young man long dead.

“You are not as pragmatic and unsentimental as you want the world to think,” Nita said, kissing his shoulder. “I’ve since realized I was not in love with Norton. I was in love with romance, with the notion of my own household, of a place where my brothers weren’t always leaving and my mother’s ill health wasn’t increasingly obvious.”

Norton Nash would have made a very indifferent spouse. Nita had long since admitted that. He’d been shallow, vain, and without higher principles that might have inspired him to make something of himself. Part of her antipathy toward Edward was a result of the same attributes, allowed to flourish in expectation of a baronetcy.

“Gloomy talk,” Mr. St. Michael said, kissing Nita’s temple. “What say we relieve you of this shroud you’re wearing? Conversation will grow more cheerful as a result, I promise.”

This was how he teased, with a bit of a dare in his silliness. Nita hiked up on her elbows and reached beneath the bedclothes for the hem of her nightgown.

“A moment, please,” Mr. St. Michael said. He sat up, cross-legged, beside her, and untied the three bows holding the nightgown closed at Nita’s throat.

“You are very competent with ladies’ attire, Mr. St. Michael.”

“Do you know, when you scold me like that,” he replied, easing Nita’s nightgown over her head, “all vinegar and starch, it makes my cock twitch?”

However he might have ended his sentence, Nita could not have anticipated
that.
She ducked back under the covers, which had become agreeably toasty.

“You have a hidden streak of naughtiness,” she said. “I like that about you. As for the twitching, a tisane of valerian taken regularly might provide some relief.”

“More starch and vinegar,” he said. “You’re not helping. ‘First do no harm,’ isn’t that the highest canon of a physician? You’re dealing mortal blows to my self-restraint.”

“I’m not a—” Gracious saints. Without clothing, the business of cuddling beneath the blankets was an altogether less innocent undertaking. “You’re very warm, Mr. St. Michael.”

“If you don’t start calling me by my name, I’ll come before I’ve so much as kissed you.”

“But you’ve already kissed—”

He kissed Nita again, silencing her retort, pushing the warm, hair-dusted expanse of his chest against Nita’s breast and arm.

“My name is Tremaine. When I had more family, some of them referred to me as Maine. In spoken English, this likens me to a part of a horse. In French, I’m part of the human anatomy.”

La
main
, a feminine noun for the hand.

Nita ran
her
hand over the wondrous texture of his chest. “Are you babbling? I’d like it if you babbled a little.”

“I will sing ‘God Save the King’ in any one of five languages, if you’ll just keep touching me.” A heavily burred growl more than a babble. She liked that even better.

“I’ll enjoy your serenades some other time,” Nita said. “My brothers would kill you did they find you here, and my sisters would never allow me to live down my disgrace.”

“Dammit, Nita, if we’re to be married—”

She drew her fingertip around his nipple lightly, clockwise, counterclockwise. “Interesting.”

“Heaven defend me from an anatomist in siren’s clothing—or lack thereof.”

Tremaine
had the ability to make Nita smile with his complaining, also to inspire her. She licked that same nipple and inhaled a hint of heather and flowers.

“Do that again at your peril,” he hissed, making no move to dodge out of licking range.

“Are you threatening me in my own bed, Mr. St—?”

He pinned Nita’s hands above her head, his grip loose but implacable. “You like my naughty streak, may God help you. I didn’t even know I possessed one, sober man of commerce that I am, but I hope you come to adore it.”

His mouth descended on Nita’s breast, a hot, delicate onslaught of sensations that made her want to both squirm and hold very, very still.

“She desists,” he muttered, his tongue moving in a slow circle. “And she tastes of lemon.”

He drew on Nita gently, but that single overture had Nita’s back arching and grip on his hands becoming desperate.

“I like that.” Assuming Mr. St. Michael did not slay Nita utterly with his attentions in the next five minutes, she’d thank Kirsten for the lemon soap. He moved to the second breast, and Nita did squirm.

“Shall I dose you with valerian?” he muttered against her heart.

“Dose me with your kisses, or I’ll scold you for the next hour straight. I have five brothers and three younger sisters. I am a prodigious scold when inspired.”

He left off tormenting Nita’s breasts and loomed over her, his dark hair in considerable disarray.

“For an hour
straight
?”

Straight, as in the hard column of flesh pressing against Nita’s hip. She wiggled a hand free of his grip and shifted, so she had room enough to grasp him. His shaft was surprisingly warm and, from what she could recall, of considerably more generous proportions than Norton had been so proud of.

“You are the boldest lady I’ve ever met.” His tone said he approved of her boldness.

Nita traced the contours of his arousal, from the thatch of down at the base, along the shaft, to the peculiar configuration of the business end.

“Why are you holding your breath, sir?”

He spoke through his teeth. “I’m trying not to spend, you lemon-scented witch.”

“I thought spending was the part men liked best.” Norton certainly had. All three times, he’d assured Nita he wouldn’t, and then… Had he thought she’d not grasped why her handkerchief had been needed while he’d done up his falls?

Mr. St—
Tremaine
nuzzled Nita’s throat. “I’ll show you the part this man likes best—with your permission.”

Nita let him go, because the time for teasing and giggling had passed. Maybe it had passed years ago, and she’d been too busy delivering babies and brewing tisanes to notice.

“Show me, then,” she said, giving him permission to become her lover.

But not her husband—not yet.

* * *

Tremaine enthusiastically immersed himself in the pleasures of trading in art, Holland bulbs, Italian wines, wool, and livestock. The pleasures of the flesh—when they intruded upon his immediate notice—usually struck him as a needlessly complicated road to comparable satisfaction.

He’d traveled that road many a time nonetheless.

Wooing Lady Nita was complicated indeed, involving pursuit of her intimate favors, appreciation for her tireless mind, and enticement of her trust.

What perplexed Tremaine, as he arranged himself over his intended, was how all that effort added up to
fun.

“How long has it been since anybody tickled you, my lady?”

“Your chest hair might be said to be tickling me at this very moment.”

Or Nita’s nipples
might
be
said
to be tickling Tremaine’s sanity. He kissed her, for his conversational gambit had lead straight to folly. She was a fine kisser, having the ability to make a discussion out of what some turned into an excuse for oral aggression.

“You taste sweet,” he said. “One wonders…” How would Nita’s intimate parts taste? She’d probably allow him to find out, eventually. Maybe on their wedding night.

“You taste like mint and male.” She framed his face with soft hands and kissed his brow. “Your hair bears the scent of heather.”

Tremaine hoped he tasted like a husband. Nita hadn’t capitulated yet though, not entirely, and that was only fair. When a woman surrendered control of her entire future, a man ought to work for the privilege of becoming her spouse.

“Nita, love, we cannot risk a child.”

Her hands went still, and the minute undulations of her hips—when had she started that torment?—ceased.

“I haven’t vinegar and sponges,” she said. “Had not known I might ever need them.”

While Tremaine’s nearest sheath was in Oxfordshire. He cursed in Gaelic, a language Nita was unlikely to know.

“Do you trust me, my lady?” Her answer mattered, and not simply because the urge to mate had ambushed Tremaine with a ferocity that characterized healthy animals in spring. “The Latin term is
coitus
interruptus
, and while it’s a distant second to the pleasure you’re owed, it will minimize the prospect of a child.”

And this approach might allow Tremaine to survive the next hour.

Nita brushed his hair back from his forehead. “You put a choice before me: an assured moment’s pleasure, but at the risk of a lifetime of obligation to you.”

At least Nita trusted him to provide that moment’s pleasure. To give himself time to think, Tremaine indulged in another spree of kissing, which plan backfired horrendously.

When Nita let him up for air, he was crouched over his lady, though his wits had also decamped for Oxfordshire.

“If you understand that marriage is a partnership,” Nita said, tracing his eyebrows with her thumb, “if you accept that you have no dominion over me save what I yield willingly, and that my dominion over you is on the same terms”—now she traced his lips with that same thumb—“if
you
can trust
me
, Mr. St. Michael, then I am willing to take this risk with you now—but only this risk.”

Still not an acceptance of his proposal, but progress.