“I should take myself off back home,” he said, “before any of the servants are about.”
He looked predictably gorgeous, his dark hair disheveled, his eyelids sleepy, his shoulders bare. He was in her own bed with her, she thought foolishly. They had done that together, and it had been wonderful. If there was to be guilt, she was not going to feel it yet. Or at all. She had quite consciously decided to do this, to enjoy it and him. She slid her hands over his shoulders, cupped the sides of his neck, rubbed her thumbs over the underside of his jaw.
“You need a shave,” she said.
He smiled slowly, that genuine, devastatingly attractive smile that began with his eyes.
“Are you afraid of whisker burn, Lady Barclay?” he asked.
“No.” She found herself smiling back at him. “You are leaving, are you not, Lord Hardford?”
“Yes,” he said. “After.”
“After?”
“After I have said a thorough good-bye,” he said. “No, that sounds too final. After I have said a thorough farewell. May I?”
She drew his face down to hers in reply.
“Let me do it,” he murmured against her lips as he moved over and onto her between her thighs and came into her, hard and ready and deep. “Relax.”
It was not what she had intended but . . . well, he was the expert.
It was delicious beyond words—to lie open on her back, all her muscles relaxed, even the inner ones that ached to close about him. To feel the hard, steady rhythm of his lovemaking into the soft heat of her body. To surrender. To receive and give nothing in return except her surrender. It was against her very nature to be submissive. It was something entirely new to her.
It was . . . well, it was delicious beyond words.
And, totally surprisingly, she shivered into release—but release from what?—after a few minutes. He felt it and held still and firm in her until she was finished, and then he continued until he was done and she felt the hot gush of his release deep inside.
For a moment—ah, foolishness indeed!—she wished she was not barren. But she let the thought go and enjoyed the full weight of his body relaxing onto her.
She could hear the dog snuffling in his sleep from somewhere in the room.
What was it going to be like, she found herself wondering as she stared up at the slope of the ceiling, after he had gone? Not just from her house tonight, but . . . after he had gone from Hardford and Cornwall, perhaps never to return.
He inhaled deeply and audibly and lifted himself away from her and off the bed. She watched him get dressed. He turned to watch her as he did so. He was totally unself-conscious about his body, she realized. She desperately wanted to pull the blankets up from her waist but did not do so. It would be absurd to cover herself out of embarrassment in light of what they had done twice in the past few hours.
“When I seek refuge here again,” he said as he pulled on his coat, “I will be quite happy with conversation and perhaps some tea. And I will not have a temper tantrum even if you turn me away altogether. I do not want you to think that I will come here in the future only to bed you. I do not want to think of you as my mistress. You are not that.”
“But how disappointing,” she said. “I was looking forward to negotiating with you on the size of my salary.”
“What?” he said. “Half a roof is not enough?”
“Ah, but both halves actually belong to you,” she reminded him, “as does the house beneath them. You have said so yourself. You became very lord-of-the-manorish and quite obnoxious, in fact, when you said it.”
“Did I?” He tipped his head to one side and looked at her with a lazy smile—another new expression. “But I do not own the woman inside the house, do I? Nor do I wish to. You may turn me away whenever you choose, Imogen, or ply me with tea, or bring me to bed.”
And there it was. The real man. The real Percy Hayes, Earl of Hardford, all artifice stripped away. A decent, principled man, whom she liked. Oh, too tame a word. She liked him enormously.
“You can bring my dog to bed too if you wish,” he said, “to cuddle between us after.”
She laughed.
His head tipped a little farther to the side.
“Imogen,” he said, “let yourself do that more often. Please?”
But he did not wait for an answer. He strode toward the bed, kissed her firmly on the lips, and pulled the blankets up to her chin.
“I know you have been longing to do that for the last ten minutes,” he said. “Stay there. I will see myself out. That key I saw hanging beside the door in the hall is not the only one you possess, is it?”
She shook her head.
“I will take it, then,” he said, “and lock the door behind me. I will not also unlock it at any time to let myself in, though. That will be by invitation only after I have knocked. Good night.”
“Good night, Percy,” she said, and saw a flicker of something—desire?—in his eyes before he turned away.