‘Adelaide.’
‘Gabriel.’ She seldom said his name unbidden and he liked the sound of it from her lips, almost bold.
‘I want to be married...properly. I want you to take me to your bed and help me to understand what it means to be a wife.’
No hidden meanings, no unexplained intentions. So like her to place things down like that. The danger intensified. But she was beside him now and parting the front of his shirt before reaching in.
He waited, feeling the familiar instant spark, but nothing more. Still, the smell of her close and the soft curl of her hair held him captive and when she looked up it was easy to bring her into his arms.
He could pleasure her. He could still do that. A new excitement clung to defeat. His body was not useless. It was well practised and most efficient at eliciting what a woman desired.
Second nature. Understood. An authority and a master at the gentle arts of loving. Even if finally it was not enough, he knew he would try.
‘Are you sure?’
She smiled and that was what did it, the happiness in her and the humour. He had never taken a woman to bed he truly liked... That truth left him astonished, but he shook it away and lifted her into his arms.
This time he was careful, careful as he sat her down on his bed and slipped off her shoes, careful as he undid the ties of her bodice so that each loosened thread exposed the soft fabric of a chemise beneath.
He had always relied on sex as a means of communication but here now it was the loving that he could give her. A different approach, softer, quieter, the feel of her skin, the rise of her flesh.
One hand slipped inside the shell of lawn over her breast, feeling, exploring, his thumb against her nipple, moving quickly and then quicker again. She stiffened and arched and then stayed still, the bud he caressed proud and hard.
Then the fabric lay pooled about her waist, the wide skirt of her gown beneath it, the candles on the mantel throwing her breasts into a mix of shadow and light.
So very beautiful.
And his.
Dipping his head, he used his tongue, trailing a pathway along the side of her throat on to the collarbone and down to the plumpness before covering her nipple, his hands cupping the round and bringing her closer, the sweet taste in him as he shut his eyes.
Always before he had been mindful. Of the armoire nearby. Of the small room off a bedchamber. Of the dangers and secrets of a house waiting to be discovered.
But here, now, he thought of nothing save Adelaide, of her grace and her humour, of her bravery and acquiescence, of the way she made small noises to show him that what he did was beautiful and that she was grateful for it.
A rush of sadness surprised him, the poignancy of all he had missed and all he had ruined there in that one moment of mindfulness, and then another thought that had him reeling.
He loved her.
He loved his wife.
He loved Adelaide beyond reason and comprehension and he had done so since the first moment of meeting her.
She was his for always, with her wit and her wisdom, with her smiles and her goodness and truth.
He couldn’t remember ever feeling as if he was not the one in charge, he who had always easily been able to translate the needs of the feminine sex and give them exactly what they wanted.
But now the rules seemed to have changed and instead of distance he was completely involved. Her skin against his own, the touch of flesh, her breath warm where his shirt fell open to bareness. The way her hair tickled his arms as it fell long and dark almost to her waist.
She smelt of lemon, clean and fresh, the heavier perfumes of the ton washed away by lightness. He smiled into the scent, wanting it to fill him up with all of the things he hadn’t had much pleasure of in the capturing of secrets.
Shaking his head, he laid his mouth against the beating vein in her throat. He had killed people by pressing down on such a spot and hardly a backward glance, another job, a further instruction.
He had not told Adelaide all of it, but sometimes in the heart of lust there also lay the spectre of death—husbands who would betray a nation, brothers with treason in their eyes.
He’d never made love before and been able to relax like this, never had the luxury of time and safety. His glance fell to the scars on his hand, disfigured against the beauty of her.
He would never be perfect, but he could not let Adelaide go. Rising, he caught her chin and covered her mouth with a groan of both ownership and surrender.
* * *
This kiss was different, Adelaide thought, intense and deeper, like words that he could not as yet say.
Oh, but how she wanted him, closer, naked, lying with her on a bed of moonlight and showing her exactly what it was she needed.
‘Gabriel?’
He glanced up, eyes unguarded, pools of gold and the ends of tawny-and-red curls falling across his face. In London she had thought he looked like a hardened angel, but tonight she could easily see the vulnerability and the sadness clinging to a ragged edge of hope.
‘I want you,’ she said, then as his hands found the hem of her dress and rose upward she forgot to think at all.
* * *
She woke alone, in her own room in her own bed, a sprig of lavender lying across the pillow. She was naked, she knew that even as her fingers went to the place that her husband’s had been, the secret warmth beating and a wetness there she had not known before.
No wonder Gabriel Hughes’s name was whispered in the way that she had heard it, with reverence and intrigue and plain pure want.
I want you.
She remembered moaning his name again and again as he had taken her to the stars and the moon and the heavens with his clever fingers and his soothing mouth. And after he had placed one hand across her stomach and another behind her.
‘Can you feel that?’ When he had pressed down the echoes of what had been became stronger, the heel of his hand low and deep. ‘With touch a climax can be extended. Claim it, Adelaide, for me.’
And she had, rising against his palm and arching as ecstasy beached across her, deeper this time and longer, wringing the life from any pride she still had left, the sensation of heat and release making her float until her body was nothing but feeling and vibration.
My God, she had barely recognised the woman she had become. He could have done anything at all to her and she would have welcomed it, her, the paragon of spinsterhood and common sense and good manners.
Turning into the pillow, she hid her face, wondering about the smile that tugged at her lips and made her giggle.
Gabriel Hughes, the fourth Earl of Wesley, was hers for ever. Nights of lust under moonlight for the rest of her life. And yet worry blossomed beneath the realisation. What of him? How had he found his pleasure in what they had done? She had barely touched him and he had not wanted her to, either. She remembered running her hand up his inner thigh, but he had captured her fingers and laid them instead upon her breast, wetting them with his mouth so that the heat and the cold made her shiver and then understand.
In the opposites one could find fulfilment. He had been gentle and then rough as his teeth had come where her fingers rested, and the edge of pain had also become the edge of pleasure.
She stilled in order to concentrate on the throb that began to beat with just her thoughts. She wanted him again and again, here and now, in the sunlight and the morning, her legs splayed apart as her fingers sought the flesh swollen from his touch.
Desperate. Had he made her that? With his expertise and his learning. There were no tears at such a thought, but only the beating, dancing delight of anticipation and desire.
* * *
Adelaide heard voices as she came down the stairs an hour later and her hands fisted at her sides. In this state of mind she had no want to deal with strangers, though as she listened more carefully she realised it was Lord and Lady Montcliffe.
Would they know? Could they tell? Was there some understanding between married people that she had not known of before, some secret club, some untold confidence? She had hidden the marks Gabriel had left upon her body under a swathe of lace about her neck, but she knew in her eyes and on her face there would be glimmers of all she remembered. She could not even look at her husband as she came into the room, but smiled as Amethyst Wylde took her hand.
‘I hope you don’t mind our intrusion, Adelaide. Daniel had to come this way to see about a horse and so we chanced it and dropped in for he had some news to share with Gabriel.’
‘I am glad you came for it is lovely to see you.’ And it was, she thought, for these people were interesting and generous and warm. She included Daniel Wylde in the comment as they sat down again, glad when the men left Amethyst and her to converse alone.
‘Christine Howard said I was to give you her love and to say that the lotion you made for her mother seems to be doing the trick.’
‘I suppose I should have made some up for Gabriel’s mother, too, for she seems most unhappy.’
‘Oh, that will be all due to his sister’s problems. I have only met Charlotte Hughes briefly and she was a beautiful but bitter woman. It seems the man she had met in Edinburgh was already married according to Lucien’s mother and so she is coming back to London.’
Adelaide was glad she was not venturing north to Ravenshill Manor instead. She wanted a few weeks to understand what marriage was about without others staying in the small annex with Gabriel and her.
‘Is this the news you said that Daniel brought with him?’
‘No. it was something else entirely.’ By the brief flare in her eyes Adelaide knew Amethyst did not wish to divulge the matter.