Ann Lethbridge - Regency Society

He eased the locket from her hand, and replaced it in his pocket, marvelling that he had not known her from the first. ‘Not as much as you think. You were beautiful then, and you are beautiful now. Emily,’ he said, enjoying the sound of the word on his lips and the little cooing noise she made when he named her. ‘Emily.’ His body tightened in anticipation, just knowing she was with him after so long. ‘Have I ever told you how completely I love you?’

‘I don’t believe you have.’ She leaned against him until his shoulders bumped against the door behind them.

‘I expect you will hear it frequently, now that I have returned to you.’ He kissed her gently, marvelling at how right it felt, holding her close, enjoying the warmth of her body, the now familiar curves of it, and the smell of her hair, and wondering why he had been foolish enough to deny himself.

And then he remembered what she had said to him on the night that they had spoken of their marriages. ‘Three times?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You told me that your husband had made love to you only three times, before leaving you.’

‘Yes, Adrian,’ she said, giving an impatient little stamp of her foot. ‘Of course, the number is greater after this week. Now it is four. Or perhaps four and a half. I am not sure how to count some of the things that have happened.’

‘But still. Three times.’ He shook his head in amazement. ‘I could swear it was more.’

‘And you would be wrong. It was only three.’ She pressed her body tight to his. ‘Now you are treating me so politely that it makes me wonder if I must force you to tend to your obligations.’

‘My obligations?’ he asked.

‘To your wife,’ she said significantly. And she slipped her hands beneath his vest, spreading her fingers over his ribs, then tugging at the tails of his shirt. She was eager for him again. And he remembered what Hendricks had said, and did his best not to wonder at the reason for it.

He stayed her hands. ‘Before we continue. When I went to White’s yesterday, I chanced to meet Rupert.’

‘How unfortunate for you,’ she responded. ‘But it explains the nonsense you were ranting at me a few hours ago. Your cousin has been harassing me endlessly in Derbyshire over your absence. You had been away so long that he had begun to doubt your existence.’ She went up on her toes to kiss him, catching his lower lip in her teeth and nibbling upon it.

‘Rupert is a blockhead,’ he muttered around the kiss, wondering if he cared one way or the other for the truth. If she meant to distract him from it, she was doing a damn fine job, for her hands had started to move again, reaching for the buttons of his trousers. ‘The next time he visits, I will box his ears and send him on his way. As I wished I could have yesterday. He was quick to offer me congratulations on the impending birth. I assured him that you told the truth, of course. And that I was very happy. As I am, of course.’ He felt her shoulders begin to shake and feared that tears were imminent. He reached up to wipe them from her cheek and his hand felt nothing but her soft, kissable skin. ‘What the devil? You are laughing at me. What do you find so amusing about this?’

‘That you insist on being so noble about my poor unwanted child.’ Her hands left his body, and he heard the rustle of her skirts and felt the hems brushing his fingers as she drew them up to her waist, then pressed his hands against her belly to prove to him that it was soft, flat and empty. ‘Have you not touched me here often enough to find the truth?’

‘I was not paying attention,’ he said. Nor was he now. He was too busy feeling the bottom of her stays, the tops of her stockings, and all the delicious flesh in between. He ran a finger under the bow in her garter. ‘This is new.’

A silk-clad leg twined about his to help her balance as she kissed his throat. ‘Your darling Emily is a virtuous lady and does not go naked beneath her gown. But there are limits to my propriety. Your tiresome cousin would not stop bothering me about his plans for the estate when he was Folbroke. So to put him off, I told him I was pregnant with your child and he had been cut out of the succession.’

‘You little liar. Do you know what agonies I went through, thinking you loved another?’

‘I suspect I do. For I have felt them every day that we have been parted.’

He winced, imagining the pain of the last day, magnified by weeks and months and years, and then pulled her close to him for a kiss that was not nearly enough to expiate it. But it seemed to help, for she purred in satisfaction against the skin of his throat. ‘Tell me, when you discovered this supposed truth about my infidelity, did you rush your mistress’s bed so that you might vent your frustrations?’

‘Perhaps,’ he admitted.

‘Then I hope that we might go back to my rooms to be alone, and that you are similarly frustrated tonight.’

He remembered their lovemaking of the previous night, and her eager response to it, after her lies to Rupert. ‘And when my cousin came back in nine months with a christening gift, where were you planning to get a baby?’

‘From you, of course. I came to London to seduce you.’

They were the last words he had thought to hear from his wife. Not unwelcome, of course. Merely unexpected. In response, his pulse increased and his mind filled with possibilities.

‘And do not tell me that you do not want a child, for I will not hear of it. Sighted or blind, it will not matter, as long as he has a strong father to show him the way.’

‘You think that, do you?’ He could not help smiling at the prospect. For a child who had such a mother could not help but grow right.

‘And his brothers and sisters as well.’

‘Brothers and sisters?’

‘You do not know it,’ she assured him, ‘but brothers, when they are not cutting up one’s peace, are a great comfort.’

‘We do not have one, yet, and you are already planning a family.’

‘And I am quite tired of planning,’ she whispered. ‘Now that you have taught me what it means to act on the desire.’

He gave a weary sigh, as though it was a burden to please her and to hide how perfectly wicked he found her plan, now that he had grown used to it. ‘You are a most trying woman, my Lady Folbroke. If that is all that will please you, then I am tired of fighting you on it. Take me, and get it over with.’

‘As you wish, my lord.’ And she was reaching for his buttons again. He grabbed for her wrists. He had not expected that she would take him seriously and now things were getting quite out of hand.

‘Emily.’ That had been a mistake. For while the feeling of her hands was making him hard, speaking that beloved name nearly made him lose control. ‘Can you not wait until I might take you to bed?’

She tugged at the end of his cravat with her teeth. ‘I have waited three years, Adrian.’ She pulled her hands up until she could kiss his fingers, sucking the tips of them into her mouth. He released her hands, trying not to imagine the lurid things that he wished to do with the mother of those future children.

He would act on them, in time. Soon, he reminded himself, firmly. Very soon. Just not now. He had a lifetime with her. Surely he could wait a few minutes, until they could go to her rooms. Or his. He withdrew his fingers and ran them over her face, tracing her smile, her cheeks, her jaw, in a chaste examination of each feature. How could he not have known this face? It should have been as familiar to him as his own. ‘You are so lovely,’ he said, trying to fill the void of neglect he had created with a more worthy emotion than lust. ‘If you mean to take the locket from me, then I must find something else to carry, so that I can share your beauty with others while I enjoy it myself. Will you sit for a cameo?’