With that he began to move, slowly and carefully at first, in and out, as if he worried he might break her. The slide, the weight of him across her hips drove her half mad. More, more, more. When she lowered her hands to his clenching backside, arching toward him, he sped his pace, stroking harder and faster inside her.
Moaning in time with his thrusts, her body tightened, stretched, and, with an exquisite shudder, released. Everything vanished but him and their joined bodies, the deep, jolting rhythm of him claiming her. She shattered harder, a mewling sound she’d never heard before coming from her own chest.
Her mind slowly settled into sight and sound again, just as he pushed in to the hilt, shuddering against her and inside her. Breathing as hard as she was, he settled himself along her body and lowered his head between her neck and shoulder. Amelia-Rose tangled her fingers into the damp, lanky hair at the nape of his neck. Hers. He belonged to her now, as much as she belonged to him.
He lifted his head against to kiss her, then went up on his elbows. She tightened her arms around him. If he left, everything might go back to the way it had been. She would be alone, unwanted except for her ability to wear a marriage band.
“I dunnae want to crush ye,” he said, looking down at her.
He was getting quite heavy. But he was still inside her, and she didn’t want that to stop yet, either. “Stay.”
“I mean to, until the dawn.” Niall studied her face for another moment, then wrapped his arms around her back and rolled them over.
Abruptly he lay beneath her, and she tucked her head against his chest. “I can feel your heartbeat,” she said, the hard, fast tattoo just beneath her cheek.
“Aye. And I can feel yers.” He drew his fingers through her wavy, disheveled yellow hair, the gentle tug and pull lifting goose bumps along her scalp. “Ye trusted me, lass. I’ll see that ye dunnae ever regret it. I’ll figure a way to make this work, as long as ye still want me.”
She lifted her head, resting her chin on his sternum to look at his face. This could be them, every night. The thought was nearly enough to make her giddy. But even now, with her body deciding on the next course of action in complete disregard for logical thought, she wasn’t a complete fool. “I still want you. I want everything you spoke of. I also know my mother.”
“I made it in here despite yer mother. But ye make a good point. It isnae just the two of us in this.”
“Exactly. And you don’t have a title. And you’re Coll’s brother, and she hates him almost as much as she hates you.” She wasn’t entirely certain how she felt about Coll, either, but she didn’t want to waste what little time they likely had thinking about Lord Glendarril.
“I want to see ye tomorrow. I can call at the front door and ask for—”
“No, do not call at the door,” she broke in. “I’m still free for the afternoon. Will you still meet me on the corner at Wigmore Street at half two?”
“I will be there, lass. And we will find a way for ye and me to be together that doesnae involve climbing through windows, though I’m nae adverse to that.”
The climbing-through-windows bit had worked out rather splendidly. It couldn’t last, though. They needed a solution. She couldn’t contemplate the alternative.
Francesca started awake as the front door clicked and opened. Immediately she sank lower onto the morning room couch where she’d settled at just past midnight, and slowly turned her head toward the foyer.
Niall padded past, barefoot with his boots in one hand, only wearing a waistcoat and his kilt with his coat and what looked like a wadded shirt in the other hand. Nearly silently he ascended the staircase, and a moment later another door clicked shut.
Blowing out her breath, she shifted to see the mantel clock. Nearly five o’clock in the morning, bootless, shirtless, and unobservant enough to miss her sitting there in the predawn gloom, blanket up to her chin. Niall Douglas MacTaggert had been up to something. And given the past few days, she had a very good idea what—who—it was.
He should have let her make that agreement with the Baxters. They would eventually have bowed to her terms, because she would have thrown money and even threats of censure at them until they did so. As it was now, while she admired Niall’s determination to win Amelia-Rose on his own merits, the young lady was not the one he needed to convince. He’d already convinced her, evidently.
When Eloise had fallen in love it had felt warm and orderly, and Francesca remained fairly certain that young Matthew had not shared a bed with her. Her wild sons, though—while she’d wanted them about, wanted love and marriages for them, she hadn’t quite reckoned on how very like their father they were. Angus had seen what he wanted, and taken it, in a spectacularly breathtaking manner. If her own father had been more conventional, things might have gotten bloody.
The Baxters were exceedingly conventional. Amelia-Rose had her moments of rebellion, but then she just as frequently apologized for them. None of it boded well. And if Niall failed—or if she failed him—she might well lose her chance with the other two.
Standing to drape the blanket over the back of the couch, she headed upstairs to dress. Attempting a few more hours of sleep would be useless now, when she needed solutions. Even if those solutions seemed only to exist in daydreams.
Chapter Thirteen
“This is not wise, Amelia-Rose,” Jane whispered, standing close and holding her waxed silk parasol over both their heads. “Your mother will notice you’re not home.”
“I went to her luncheon, and I’ll be home in time to join my parents for dinner,” Amelia-Rose returned. “I’m only taking the three hours in the middle for myself.”
“And when she goes looking for you to see what you plan to wear tonight?”
“She might not,” Amelia-Rose hedged. “If she does, then we’ll say I was restless and you joined me for a walk. And we’ve walked here, so it’s not even a lie.”
A coach rounded the corner up the street, the largest vehicle by far she’d glimpsed in the ten minutes since they’d sneaked away from Baxter House. The blue-and-yellow Oswell crest was emblazoned on the door, and as she recognized it a smile found her mouth and refused to step aside despite the poor weather and Jane’s glowering.
As the coach neared them the door swung open. Niall leaned out, grinned, and then hopped gracefully to the street before the vehicle had even stopped. He’d worn his kilt again, and with the rain dripping through his dark, wavy hair he looked like some ancient Celtic warrior come to claim her. To claim her again, rather.
He flipped down the coach steps and took her hand, bringing it to his lips. “Ye look very bonny today, Amelia-Rose,” he drawled, the quiet intimacy in his voice making her heart race. “Did ye sleep well?”
“After Jane finally left my room I did,” she lied. It was better for Jane, and better for her, even if she did feel a bit guilty about it. “I had very sweet dreams.”
That earned her a grin. “I nearly brought the barouche,” he said, visibly shaking himself to take the parasol from Jane and hand them into the vehicle one after the other. “But I looked outside and noticed everyone bundled up to their ears and scurrying about like wee scared mice, so I borrowed this beast instead.”
“This weather doesn’t trouble you?” Jane asked, blowing into her cupped gloved hands.
“It’s nae weather if ye can still make out the horizon,” he returned, sitting next to Amelia-Rose and then reaching up to pound his fist against the ceiling. “Did ye have a pleasant luncheon, adae?” he asked, sitting back in the well-sprung coach.
“Yes, I did. Thank you for asking, skellum,” she responded, using every ounce of willpower she possessed not to kiss him. “Where are you taking us?”
“Oswell House.”
Of all the places she’d imagined he might take her, his family home hadn’t been one of them. “Not some secret garden filled with Scottish herbs or a sheep farm or something?”