This glorious relaxation must be why people drank.
It certainly made her more open to the idea.
“It seems you have lost your way.”
She opened her eyes at the words, low and soft in the darkness, to find her husband standing beside the bed, staring down at her.
Chapter Ten
Dear M—
Having received no reply from you in English, I thought perhaps you might respond to alternate languages. Be warned, there is (likely incorrect) Latin ahead.
écrivez, s’il vous pla?t
Placet scribes
Bitte schreiben Sie
Scrivimi, per favore
Ysgrifennwch, os gwelwch yn dda
I confess, I had one of the Welsh kitchen girls help with that last one, but the sentiment remains.
Please write—P
Needham Manor, September 1816
No reply (in any language)
As part-owner in London’s most luxurious gaming hell, Bourne was no stranger to temptation. He specialized in sin. He was a personal acquaintance of vice. He knew the pull of emerald baize stretched across a billiard table, he understood the way the heart raced at the sound of hazard dice clattering in one’s hand, he knew the precipice upon which a gamer teetered when waiting for that single card that would make—or lose—a fortune.
But he had never in his life experienced temptation as acute as this—the call to sin and wickedness that rang in his head as he watched his new, virginal wife writhe upon his fur coverlet in nothing but a linen shift.
Desire shot through him, thick and intense, and he fought to keep himself from reaching down and tearing her night rail in two, baring her to his eyes and his hands and his mouth for the rest of the night.
To claim her as his.
Anger lingered, now mixed in heady combination with desire as she blinked up at him, slow and languid in the flickering candlelight. The whisper of a smile she offered him made him want to strip bare and climb onto that bed with her to rub the fur coverlet across her pristine skin and show her precisely how glorious depravity could be.
She blinked again, and he thickened, his perfectly tailored trousers suddenly too tight. “Michael,” she whispered, a hint of pleased discovery in her tone that did not help matters. “You are not supposed to be here.”
And yet he was, a fox leaping into a henhouse. “Were you expecting someone else?” The words were harsh to his ears, filled with a meaning that she would not understand. “It remains my bedchamber, does it not?”
She smiled. “You made a joke. Of course it does.”
“Then why am I not to be here?”
The question seemed to bother her. She wrinkled her nose. “You’re supposed to be with your goddess.” She closed her eyes and rocked into the fur again with a low hum of pleasure.
“My goddess?”
“Mmm. Alice told me that you do not sleep here.” She tried to sit up, the fur and the feather bed making the movement difficult, and Michael watched as the edge of her nightgown slipped, devastatingly, beautifully, down the slope of one bare breast. “You are always so silent, Michael. Do you try to intimidate me?”
He willed his voice calm. “Do I intimidate you?”
“Sometimes. But not right now.”
She crawled toward him, kneeling in front of him on the bed, one knee pulling the fabric taut, and Bourne found himself praying that her night rail would fall an inch more . . . half an inch. Just enough to bare one of her perfect pink nipples.
He shook off the thought. He was a man of thirty, not a boy of twelve. He had seen plenty of breasts in his day. He did not need to lust after his wife, swaying before him, testing the strength of her nightgown’s fabric and his sanity, all at once.
Indeed, he had not returned in a fit of lust. He’d returned because he was angry. Angry at her for nearly marrying Tommy. For not telling him the truth.
She broke into his thoughts, and he caught her by the waist to steady her. “I am sorry that I am not perfect.”
Right now, the only thing imperfect about her was the fact that she was clothed.
“What makes you say that?”
“We were married today,” she said. “Or perhaps you do not remember?”
“I remember.” She was making it impossible to forget.
“Really? Because you left me.”
“I remember that, too.” He had returned, ready to consummate the marriage. Ready to claim her as his and eliminate any doubt that they were married, that Falconwell was his.
That she was his. His, and not Tommy’s.
“Brides do not expect to be left on their wedding night, Michael.” He did not reply, and she brazened on, raising her hands to his arms, clutching him through layers of clothing. “We do not like it. Especially when you forgo an evening with us for one with your . . . raven-haired beauty.”
She wasn’t making sense. “Who?”
She waved a hand. “They’re always raven-haired, the ones who win . . .”
“Who win what?”