"Yes," she whispered, looking entirely subdued.
"Good, then. And now I'm going to make love to you for the rest of the night, exactly as I said I would, because I don't break my word, Emily. You're going to lose count of the number of times you spend. You're going to forget your own name, whatever the hell it is. You'll be begging me to stop. And when you wake up in the morning, I want no more talk about holding back, about waiting, about leaving things be. I don't want to waste another minute of my life without you by my side, in my bed, across my table. I shall order my carriage and take you to your new home, and I shall spend the rest of my life endeavoring to make you happy." He lowered his head to lick her breast. "Understood?"
She didn't say yes, but she growled, a low feminine purr of a growl, and Ashland decided it amounted to the same thing. He bent over her with fingers and lips, with tongue and teeth. He lingered over every curve and fold and angle of her body, studied and pursued her every gasp of pleasure, until she hummed like a well-tuned instrument under his caresses. Until she was shuddering and crying his name. Until her lithe body arched and her wet flesh vibrated with release. And before she had drifted back down to earth, he began all over again, doing things to her he had only dreamed of doing to a woman before, lost in the miracle of Emily.
When at last she could take no more, when she was begging him to stop, he rose and fetched the sheath from its jar and took his own pleasure at last, shoving his prick deep into Emily's luxurious wet grip. She wrapped her arms and legs around him and urged him on, and he couldn't last, she wouldn't let him last. He spent in violent spasms and sank atop her, inhaling the scent of sweat and sex and Emily. He imagined, in that instant, that he'd been released from purgatory at last and allowed through the gates of heaven.
* * *
Emilie opened her eyes to a perfect pitch blackness. For a long and panicked instant, she could not place herself in the universe. Where she was, who she was.
She breathed slowly, allowing her mind to rise up naturally from its velvet depth of sleep. A warm scent invaded her nose, rich and intimate and muscular. Such a gorgeous, familiar scent: She craved more of it. She closed her eyes again and filled her lungs, and as she did, she became aware of the heavy weight lying across her ribs, the steady breath stirring her hair, the solid mass radiating heat next to her skin.
Ashland.
Her breath tripped, and started again.
By the good Lord, he felt heavenly. That was his scent, his warmth surrounding her. That humming feeling of well-being in her limbs had come from his hands, his lips, his attentive and tireless lovemaking.
How often had they come together last night? She could not quite remember. On the table, that first time, hard and fast and exhilarating; and then again on the bed, after he had wreaked rapture on her body until she could scarcely move. They had fallen asleep for an hour or so, and then Ashland had risen and ordered a late cold supper and fed it to her himself, with sips of champagne here and bites of paper-thin ham there, with kisses and caresses and laughter, until at some point they were joined once more, rocking together in a lazy rhythm, whispering unspeakably dirty words back and forth. He had taught her all the names for his male organ pressed inside her, all the names for her own female parts, all the names for the act in which they were engaged, until her blood ran so hot she couldn't think. He had turned her over and finished them both off in a frenzy, her back against his front, his teeth nipping her neck, like animals. Afterward, he had curled his big body around hers and caressed her with his broad and loving hand. More sleep, and then one of them had begun again, she couldn't remember whom, or perhaps it had been mutual: a mutual waking and lovemaking followed by mutual collapse.
He was still collapsed. She listened to his breath, his heartbeat in the intimate black night. Was that the very faintest hint of a snore? She smiled and hugged the sound to herself. She rolled her memory back and recalled it all again, from start to finish, clarifying the details. Cataloging. Four times, then. He had made love to her four times. Four glorious, pounding, breathless times.
No wonder contentment seemed to roll off his unconscious body.
Four times tonight, once last week. Five times altogether. It wasn't much, really, to last her a lifetime. But she would remember each one.
The darkness in the room was not yet subsiding. It must be well before dawn.
She had to leave.
Before she could tempt herself into another minute, and another five, she lifted Ashland's arm from her middle-his right arm, with its rounded end that seemed so natural to her now, a normal and beautiful part of Ashland's body. At one point last night, during one of the slow and sleepy interludes between congress, she had asked him what it felt like, his phantom hand. He had nudged the end of his arm along the underside of her breast, lifting the soft plumpness, and said, "As if it wants to touch you, and can't."
Her heart contracted again at the memory. She sat up, laid his arm carefully in the sheets, and drew up the bedclothes, hardly daring to breathe for fear of waking him. The ever-wakeful, ever-watchful Duke of Ashland.
He didn't stir.
She slipped out of the bed and the bedroom. The sitting room was chilled, the fire nearly out. Her skin, accustomed to the cocoon of warmth she'd shared with Ashland, prickled with goose bumps. She drew on her clothes, shivering, and crept from the room, leaving her blindfold and her false chignon on the mantel behind her.
She wouldn't need them anymore.
* * *
Freddie was waiting for her in the stables, as he'd insisted. He lay curled in a pile of straw in the corner, snoring peacefully. She changed into her men's clothes, packed her dress in the knapsack, and shook his thin shoulder gently.
"Did you tell him?" Freddie scrambled for his spectacles.
"No."
He swore. "Where's your pluck, Grimsby? He's not going to take your head off. He loves you."
"He doesn't love me. He's never claimed to love me."
"Well, of course he wouldn't say the word out loud." Freddie snorted.
"I took off the blindfold and my hair. He didn't recognize me. I didn't have the heart to tell him outright." She led the way out of the stable and into the snow, three inches deep and building. "I just couldn't."
"Women," he said.
They trudged in silence down the deserted road, guided only by the dark lumps of buildings along the way. The snow glowed faintly on the ground, a ghostly landscape. Emilie walked with her head bent downward, and still the stinging flakes caught her cheeks, her eyelids.
At the Anvil, they collected their horses and paid off the stableboy generously. "Pardon the observation," said Freddie, swinging up in the saddle, "for I'm not well versed in these sorts of matters, but you don't seem particularly happy. All things considered."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Again, I speak without experience, but aren't women in love supposed to be beamy and delighted and that sort of thing? You look rather . . . downcast." He paused delicately as they turned into the road. "Everything all"-cough, cough-"all right?"
"Quite all right. We . . ."
He flung up his hand. "God, no. No details. This is bloody awkward enough as it is."
"I wasn't going to give you details. For heaven's sake," she added, blushing at the recollection of those details. "I only meant to say that we were quite in accord. But of course it can never happen again."
"Why not?"
"Because tomorrow morning, or rather this morning, after breakfast, I'm going to tell him the truth."
"Thank God. He'll rant and storm, of course, but at least things will be out in the open. No more of this ridiculous secrecy. Tramping through the snowy roads in the dark of night, dodging foreign agents." Freddie blew out his breath, causing a mad swirl of snowflakes around his face.
"Freddie." She looked down at the dark smudge of her hands on the reins. "Don't you see? I won't be able to stay here any longer. Disguised, disgraced. An unmarried woman . . ."
"Oh, Pater'll fix that straightaway, I'm sure."
She didn't answer. How could she? They rode along in silence, the horses keeping to the obscured road by instinct, moving briskly in eagerness to be home. The air was cold and sharp with snow; it sawed Emilie's lungs at every breath.