Мэри Бэлоу - Someone to Romance

“Jessie,” he murmured, his voice so low that everything from her toes on up curled just with the sound of it.

And he was on her and spreading her legs with his. And—ah, dear God, he was coming into her. Slowly, stretching her, bringing a sting of pain that was soon pain no longer but shock as he pressed deep. Wonderment. Happiness.

She considered irrelevantly, even though thought was not dominant at this precise moment, if theirs was a love match after all. Surely, oh surely, it was more than just a convenience for them both. She would think more on it later. Perhaps this, whatever it was, was enough.

He lifted some of his weight off her then and began to move in her, deeply, thoroughly, slowly at first while her body adjusted as she slid her legs up the mattress, first to brace them on either side of his, then to twine about their hard-muscled strength. And his movements quickened, rocking her, laying her bare seemingly to the soul, building that ache of not-really-pain until she heard someone moan to the rhythm of it and realized it was her. He gave her his weight again then and pounded into her until something exploded inside her and she went slack with pain become pleasure too intense for words, even mental words. He held deep and she felt a gush of heat at her very core.

The marriage, she thought needlessly as she listened to the beat of her heart slowing and felt his slow with it, was consummated. She was Gabriel’s wife. He was her husband. Until death did them part. It seemed a lovely, lovely thought. Not so much the death part of it, but the sense of eternity. That they belonged together forever and ever.

He withdrew from her and moved off her after a few minutes, and she regretted it even though he was a heavy man. But he had an arm about her shoulders and turned her against him. He was hot and sweaty. So was she. The sunlight from the window slanted warm across their bodies, just missing their faces.

She was so, so glad they had done this in daylight. She wondered if the family, the wedding party, was still at Archer House. She was almost sure they would be. How strange that life was proceeding normally there.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked.

“No.” He had, but it had not really been pain. Not as other pains were. That was impossible to explain in words, however. “No, Gabriel.”

He turned onto his back, his arm still about her, and bent one leg to set his foot on the mattress. He rested the back of his free hand over his eyes. And he slept, his breathing becoming deep and even.

It was almost—oh, not quite, but almost —the loveliest moment of the consummation. They were husband and wife in bed together, and he had made love to her and then fallen asleep.

Jessica smiled, turned her face to rest against his shoulder, and closed her eyes.

One’s wedding day was supposed to be the happiest day of one’s life.

She had just become the quintessential bride. For in her case it was surely true.

Eighteen

Gabriel was gazing up at the ceiling, thinking about his father. There was a time—it went on for years after he had been taken to Brierley to live—when his grief had been a raw wound, a daily ache of longing, an almost nightly anguish, with sleep elusive. How could his papa have been so very different from Uncle Julius, he had wondered then, and from Philip? His uncle had not been unkind to Gabriel, just . . . indifferent. He had been an abrupt, autocratic, impatient man who seemed to lack all finer feelings, even with his wife. Especially with her, perhaps. It had been difficult for Gabriel to believe that Uncle Julius and his papa had been brothers.

The intensity of that early grief had faded over time. But he had never forgotten how much his father had loved him, how much he had loved his father. When he had gone to America, he had transferred some of that love to Cyrus.

He missed them both today. But for his father he felt some of the raw ache his childhood self had felt when he was led away from the cemetery beside the vicarage where they had lived, and he had understood, perhaps for the first time, that he would never see his papa again. Never. Never had seemed an unfathomable expanse for his nine-year-old self. It still did today.

His father had not been at his wedding.

Or his mother. But he had known her only through the stories his father had told of her—and those Cyrus had told him. The rawness of loss had not been so immediate with her. His father had once told him that he had cried inconsolably for a whole week after her death.

“A penny for your thoughts,” a soft voice said from beside him, and he turned his face toward Jessica’s.

It was very close. His arm was about her. Her head was nestled against his shoulder. Her eyes were dreamy with sleep. Her dark hair, which he had so thoroughly brushed not long ago, was spread about her in a disordered mass. He had pulled the top sheet over them, but beneath it they were both still naked—except for her pearl necklace, he realized for the first time. He could feel her, soft and warm, all down his side.

And now someone else belonged to him. Just to him. She was his wife. This was their wedding day. It still seemed unreal.

“I was thinking about my father,” he told her.

“Tell me,” she said.

“I think,” he said, “I never quite forgave him for dying. It was unnecessary, you see. He neglected a chill because it was more important to him to serve his parishioners than to live for me. I blamed him for that, for loving them more than he loved me. But he didn’t, I understand now. He loved everyone. I had a very special place in his heart—I was his son. But that did not mean he loved his flock any the less. He was a man who had a religion—he was a clergyman. More important, though, he lived that religion. Maybe I should forgive him at last. What do you think?”

“I think you already have,” she said.

She was gazing back into his eyes. He was going to have no alternative than to love her, he thought, and was amazed he had not really considered the matter before. He was, after all, his father’s son and Cyrus’s adopted son. This was a different relationship, a far more intimate one. But she was his. His wife. This morning he had vowed to love, honor, and keep her. She had given up everything today in order to spend her life with him. She would, God willing, be the mother of his children. Of course he was going to have to love her.

He had certainly enjoyed making love to her. And he had been right when he had thought that day at Richmond Park that despite his first impression of her she might be capable of passion.

“Gabriel,” she asked him, “what are we going to do about Manley Rochford? And his wife? And Anthony Rochford?”

Yes, and there was that. It had been at the back of his mind all day. He had largely ignored it because this was his wedding day.

We, she had said. What are we going to do?

“I knew he was planning to come here soon,” he said. “I was hoping, though, to get there before he left. It would have been easier to confront him there. I waited too long.”

“Because I wanted a family wedding,” she said. “We ought to have married on Tuesday, as soon as you came with the special license.”

“Even then it would have been too late,” he said. “We would probably have passed him on the road. Besides . . .” He smoothed her hair back from her face, hooked it behind her ear, and touched his fingertips to her cheek. “I liked our wedding just the way it was. Did you?”

“I am very glad Mr. Vickers did not drop my ring,” she said, and he watched a smile light her eyes.

And there, he thought. There. That was how he wanted her to look. For him. Because he had pleased her or amused her. Because they could share a joke. Because there was some bond between them. He smiled back at her, and there was a flicker of something in her eyes, something that took away the smile but left a lingering look of . . . what? Wistfulness? Yearning?