Under the Kissing Bough (17 page)

"The woman here rather looks like Cynthia," he said, mostly to say something. He put it down again, uninterested in the cold, lifeless porcelain, and came back to Eleanor's side.

Dropping her arms, she moved away. He frowned, and stamped down on the edge of impatience that fired in him. Devil take it but was she going to keep dancing away from him all night? Should he leave? He glanced at her slender fingers, now tugging at the ties to her dressing gown.

Desire slivered through him. He wanted to be doing that.

Go slow, you idiot. It's not as if she's madly in love with you and burning for your touch.

Forcing a smile, he went over to where her rabbit snuggled in his crate. "How fares your patient? Does he like his new rooms?"

That drew her closer. She came to him, as doe-eyed and wary as a wild creature herself. But she came and leaned over the crate next to him, so close that her perfume teased his senses with the aroma of orange blossoms.

"He is much better, thank you. Tully thinks we might take off the splint in a few more days."

With light hands, he checked the animal's injury. "Days? Less, I'd say. You have a healing way with creatures, my Lady Staines."

"Oh, please do not call me that. It makes me feel...well, as if I have stolen something that is not mine."

Straightening, he stood and moved his hands from stroking the rabbit to stroking her hands again. "You are not a thief. You are a magician. You have magic in your touch. I've seen you work it with your animals—and with the village children. You had them quiet as church mice the other evening."

She made a face and moved away again to stand closer to the fire. "The only magic there was a story."

"Then tell me a story," he said, coming closer, sitting down in the winged chair and stretching out his hand to her.

She shook her head, but after a moment's hesitation she came to him and put her hand in his. He drew her down to his lap.

"I have no stories tonight," she said.

"I think you do," he told her, his voice softening. She looked lovely in firelight, with her sable hair down and the fire pulling red from its depths. He smoothed a hand over its wispy softness.

"Your lips could tell me many stories," he whispered, and he tightened his arms around her, feeling her soft curves melt into his demand, determined she would not slip away from him.

His mistletoe berry was long gone, but that was one superstition he could prove wrong. His kisses would not vanish along with the berry.

Gently, he fit his lips to hers. She sat passive and still in his lap, like a trapped rabbit herself. He let his tongue glide over her lips, and the taste of her sent a jolt through him. He craved more. Tightening his arms around her, he deepened the kiss.

And he felt her tremble.

He pulled back at once, shocked by the heat burning under his skin, aware that she stirred feelings in him that he had never known. He wanted her desperately, he realized.

The pulse beat fast in her throat and her eyes had grown even larger.

I've frightened her
, he thought. And suddenly he knew that he would do anything to protect her—even from himself.

With a smile, he forced himself to put her on her feet. Then he stood. The ache for her went straight to his core, but better to take it slow than risk their future together. He could be patient, he told himself, even as his body tried to rebel against the cold lack of no longer having her in his arms.

He could not resist a last touch of her cheek. A last quick press of his lips to hers.

God, she tasted of heaven.

"You must be tired. It was an exhausting day. I shall see you in the morning," he said, and started his rooms, doubting that his body would give him any rest tonight.

Just as he reached the doorway, a crash spun him about.

Eleanor stood very still, shocked by what she had done. How had it happened? One moment she had been in his arms, and then he had been pushing her away. The pain of his rejection had bit into her like a hot knife. She had been standing there, watching him walk away from her, and red hazed her vision.

In the next instant, the figurine given them by the Cheeverlys lay in pieces on the marble hearth.

For a moment, she stared at the shards, horrified by what she had done.

Then she looked up at Lord Staines's arrested expression.

Rejection flared into hurt anger and into panic as she realized that she could not do what she had agreed to with this marriage.

She knew how it would go. It flashed before her in an instant, like a vision, a dream that would come true. This bloodless marriage would kill her—day by day, moment by moment. Each time he turned away from her, she would die a little. Each kiss he drew back from would cut a new wound into her soul. And she would start to lash out. She would become someone she did not want to be. Someone she did not even like. She would fence off her heart, and behind those walls, cut off from light and warmth, she would die. Until only a shell existed.

"I cannot do this," she blurted out, hot tears blurring her vision. "I cannot."

"Eleanor," he said, coming to her, stretching his hands to her.

She swatted away his touch, afraid of her own longing. Afraid of his pulling away from her again. Afraid of so much.

"I lied to you. I am not sensible. I'm not anything you want, because I cannot live without love." The tears streamed down her face to fall on the carpet. She walked blindly about the room, having to move, hugging her arms, shivering with the storm of emotions that shook her.

"I thought I could do this. I thought it would be enough just to love you and not to ask or expect anything. But I cannot. You told me that I had to learn how not to care, only I do care. I care too much. And I cannot seem to stop caring, so you ought to just divorce me, or get an annulment, or whatever it is you must do to end it. For I cannot do this."

Her words ended in an anguished sob. Geoff's heart twisted. He came to her, murmuring her name. She tried to turn away from him, but he caught her in his arms.

She pushed against him. "No. It is not me you want. You don't want me at all. You never did! And I cannot bear that you do not want even to touch me, or kiss me, or...or anything!"

"Hush," he said, kissing the salty tear that tricked down her cheeks. "Hush, now." He kissed each tear, working from the corner of her eyes to her cheek to the corner of her mouth, to her trembling lips. And then he kissed her, full and deeply, his soul aching to stop her ache.

When he lifted his mouth, he smiled at her. "Does that feel as if I do not want you?"

She shook her head, but doubt still clouded her eyes.

Her fear echoed in him. Should he simply hold her and rock her to sleep in his arms? He wanted to do so much more, but he feared that his own selfish needs were driving him. He no longer knew what was best for either of them.

She made up his mind for him. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she pressed her lips against his and molded her soft curves to his hard planes.

"I can bear anything but to be shut out and pushed away," she murmured.

Hot longing swept through him. He caught her up in his arms, his mind still warning with his body, but his needs obliterated his hesitations. Carrying her to the bed he forgot anything but those desperate kisses.

With words he soothed her, and with his touch he stroked her skin and sought only to give them both release from these aching needs.

And as the world exploded around him, he knew he had never felt this way about any woman. The words spun in his head, but a trickle of fear returned to him even as he collapsed next to her, and even as her arms tightened around him. And he fell asleep, those words still humming in his mind and soul, but he could not trust himself to say them to her.

* * *

The distant, muffled clamor of church bells woke Eleanor. She pried open one eye, and then smiled at the weight of Geoffrey's head, pillowed against her shoulder. She liked that feeling, she realized. She had slept before with her sisters when they had traveled and stopped at too-full inns. But she liked better this warm, hard feel of her husband against her side.

A flush burned across her as he shifted, brushing his hands across her naked skin. He had stripped them bare last night, and she grew warm now with the memory of his how his hands trailed over her skin, touching her, caressing her.

Her smile widened.

If they could do this just once in a while, she could manage to live in this marriage. The warmth brightened in her. She did not need words of love from him. No, she needed only to be able to love him. To touch him. She needed so much to give, and he had accepted everything she had offered to him as if he treasured each touch, each kiss. That would be enough for her, even if that was all he could ever give her. She felt as if she had been allowed her to touch his heart, and if he could trust her so much, she could trust him as well and had no need of armor.

The memory of how he had held her and stroked her and taken her love made her body twitch and woke a longing that embarrassed her. Her stirring awoke her husband, and his eyes slit open, startlingly blue amide the white bed linens.

"Good morning," she whispered to him. No one would hear, but she felt as if a magic spell held them and talking too loud might shatter it. "Happy Christmas."

The glitter in his eyes deepened, and he had her tight in his arms before she could move. "Good morning, wife."

She pushed a little against him. "We ought to get up and put our clothes on before the servants arrive."

He tightened his hold. "They know better than to visit a newly married couple the morning after the wedding."

He began to nuzzle her neck, and soon had her breathless. She gave herself up to him again, her eyes closed and her body quivering.

When he lay still beside her again, she settled her cheek on his chest and wove her fingers into the hair that sprang from the flat muscles there. She delighted in the male difference of him.

"I—I am sorry about last night," she said at last.

Twisting, he turned so that she lay under him and he loomed over her, propped up by his elbow and with his eyes darkening. "Never tell me you regret what we did."

"Oh, no. Not what we did. What I did. I acted awful."

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Did you? Then it seems I must provoke you more often, for your awful was not so very awful that we should end up like this."

He took her hand and kissed each finger. "I said you should have a ring to match your eyes. This morning, your eyes have golden sparkles in them, just like this diamond."

She sat up, hugging the sheets with one hand and holding out her ring to watch it wink in the dawn's light. "Diamond? I thought it was a topaz. I thought that—"

"That I did not think you precious enough?" he finished for her. "Well, I shall buy you diamonds and emeralds and rubies and shower you in precious stones. What say you to that?"

Her cheeks warmed. "I...I have a present for you as well."

Slipping out of bed, she darted across the cold room.

Geoff watched with satisfaction as his wife's sweet naked figure danced to her writing desk. She came back as quickly as she had left, shivering from the morning chill, a small box in her hands.

Slipping back under the covers, she pressed her cooled skin against his and gave him the box. "Here. I had not thought to give it to you, but...well, I want to give you things to please you, too."

Leaning on his elbow, he flipped open the box. With thumb and forefinger, he pulled out the watch chain. On the end dangled a glass sphere.

"Your mistletoe berry?" he said, and then he looked down into her face.

She nodded, her cheeks pink. "I...I wanted your kisses to last forever. There, now you know how very unsensible I am. I promise I will not plague you about my…"

She broke off her words, looking down and biting her lower lip. He put a finger under her chin and lifted her face, pulling her gaze up to meet his.

"About what, Eleanor? Tell me now what it is that you really want. What did you write on your card and then blot out? I think I know, but I would rather hear it from you."

A flush spread from her throat to her cheeks. She looked down and began to tug at the lace trim on the pillows. "I...I did not have the courage to ask you for what I really wanted."

He brushed a lock of hair from her forehead. "And do you now?"

Glancing up at him, she nodded. And smiled. "I wanted your love so desperately. Too desperately. But I vow not to pester you for I know that you do not really want…"

He silenced her words with a kiss. A very long kiss, and when he pulled back, he told her with a frown, "Now, tell me what I do not want."

Shyly, she smiled up at him. "Well, of course you want that. You're a man."

His arms tightened around her. "Yes, I am a man. A man who has enough sense to know when he has a wife to treasure." His eyes darkened and he smoothed a strand of hair from her forehead. "I was a man who was too stupid to see his own need, and a man too blind by past infatuations to recognize what very precious gifts were being held out to me. But, thank God, I could open my eyes and see you before it was too late."

He folder her against his body, fitting her to him.
A perfect fit
, she thought, a deep sigh of contentment settling into her bones.

Then he pushed her back and glared at her. "I love you, Eleanor. I do not even know when I fell in love with you. Perhaps when you rescued that damn donkey of yours. Or perhaps it was last night. I do not know. But I do know that I do not want to hear any more talk of annulments and divorce. And I do not want to hear about what I want or do not want from your lips. Allow me, please, to tell you that what I want is the sweetest love I have ever known."

She swallowed the lump in her throat.

"What's this? More tears?" he asked, frowning suddenly.

She shook her head. "No. It is only my happiness leaking out this time."

Smiling at her, he kissed each eyelid. "I did not think it at the time, but now I do. I must be the luckiest devil alive to have had the wrong woman reject me, and to have had my father twist my arm into meeting my fate—and that is you, you know."