Louise Allen - Regency Surrender - Passion And Rebellion

Things changed a bit when Julia was born. As soon as she could walk she toddled around after him. Wanting him to notice her. Believing he could do no wrong in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Even when she got old enough to develop some discernment, her face would still light up when she first saw him after sufficient time apart.

Which was one of the reasons why he’d been determined to move heaven and earth to keep her safe.

Although, what had it cost him, really? Marriage hadn’t turned out to be anything like the irksome chore he’d imagined. By some miracle, he’d found the only woman on earth who could have made becoming a husband a positive pleasure.

And it wasn’t just because she matched practically every item on the list his friends had helped him make. It was because, in spite of all the ways he’d gone wrong, she appeared to genuinely like him.

So he kissed her. Well, what else was a man to do when a woman looked at him like that?

‘You were looking very serious, just now,’ she said when he broke off to take a very necessary breath. ‘What were you thinking?’

He was damned if he was going to upset her by telling her she met every criterion on his list of what constituted an acceptable wife. Or admitting that he’d dreaded the prospect of marriage so much he’d actually sought the moral support and guidance of his friends in compiling it.

And he certainly wasn’t ever going to share, with anyone, that he’d had that moment of...metaphysical madness...diving into star-studded lakes of black silk to find the road to...some spiritual realm where souls could entwine, or some such rot, indeed!

He’d tell her the first thing he’d thought on waking, instead. Haul his mind back to the arena in which he felt far more at home.

‘I was thinking,’ he admitted with a rakish smile, ‘that every time we change the venue for our...conjugal activities, it gets more enjoyable. Do you know,’ he said, shifting over her, ‘I have this...craving to...’ he nudged her legs apart with his own ‘...enjoy you in every single room in this house.’ He nuzzled her neck. ‘Just to see if I’m right.’

For a moment it looked as though she was going to yield. But then her sinuous, responsive movements turned into unmistakable attempts to wriggle out from under him.

‘We can’t...not now,’ she said apologetically. ‘There’s so much to do this morning. If you want to eat Christmas dinner at a decent hour...’

‘Hang dinner,’ he said, catching her round the waist just as she was about to leave the bed and pulling her back. ‘And hang decency. We’ll eat whenever what you make is ready.’

‘But Gilbey will expect—’

‘And hang Gilbey, too. He’ll eat when we do.’

‘But—’

He stopped her mouth with a kiss. And smiled against her lips when, with a sigh, she wrapped her arms round his neck and kissed him back.

* * *

It was the happiest Christmas she’d ever known. And it wasn’t just because, at last, she had a secure home, plenty of food to eat and no need to worry about how to pay for it.

It was because of Lord Havelock.

He made Christmas Day pass in a whirl of merriment and lovemaking. Which he topped off by declaring it had been the best Christmas of his own life, too.

‘Don’t look as though you don’t believe me,’ he said, a touch belligerently, when she gaped at him in surprise. ‘You may as well know, right now, that I never lie. Have never seen the point,’ he finished loftily.

‘I didn’t mean to imply you would,’ she said, going to the oven and kneeling down to rake embers into the warming pan. ‘It is just, well, it was all so... I mean, you must have had far more grand food and all sorts of entertainments, other years.’

‘Oh. Yes, I see what you mean. And in a way, you’re right. I’ve definitely been to a great many Christmas house parties where no expense was spared. But you see,’ he said, gently taking the warming pan from her as she turned and got to her feet, ‘when I was a grubby schoolboy, I always felt I was there on sufferance, wherever I was. And then, when I got older, the same girls who’d been turning their noses up at me all their lives suddenly realised I was a catch and began trying to trap me. Don’t care for being hunted down like a...coursed hare,’ he finished bitterly.

‘I see.’ She picked up the lantern, glanced at the kitchen table and smothered a giggle. He’d surprised her, right after dinner, by sweeping the dishes aside, bending her over the table and lifting her skirts. What followed had been wild and wonderful, if a little shocking. ‘It has been the best Christmas Day I’ve ever had, too.’ It had been just as well the table was so sturdy. They’d have shattered a less robust piece of furniture.

And probably carried right on, in its splintered ruins, until they’d finished what he’d started.

‘I meant what I said, you know,’ he said with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes as he followed the direction of her gaze.

‘What about?’ She’d lost the thread of the discussion while she’d been reliving the way his hands had taken command of her body, while his lips pressed hot kisses into the nape of her neck.

‘About wanting to make love to you in every room in this house.’ As if to prove his point, when they reached the door of the room they’d slept in the night before, he kept on walking.

‘There must be a dozen bedrooms along this corridor alone.’

‘They...they won’t be very comfortable, though,’ she pointed out, hanging back.

He turned and looked at her keenly.

‘It isn’t fair to expect you to put up with another night on a hearthrug, is it? Very well,’ he said with an exaggerated sigh. ‘Let’s be practical.’ He turned back and entered what she’d come to think of as their bedroom.

‘For now,’ he said firmly, shutting the door behind them. ‘But I give you fair warning that once the Brownlows get here, I shall have them make up every bed, in every room, so that we can try out whichever takes ours fancy, whenever,’ he said, thrusting the warming pan under the quilt, ‘it takes our fancy.’

Whenever? Oh, yes. She liked the sound of that. Funny, but she’d never thought of herself as a spontaneous sort of person. But then she’d never had the chance to find out who she really was, or what she really liked. She’d been too busy just surviving.

But from the moment she’d married Lord Havelock—or at least, the moment he first started to get undressed, she’d decided she liked being able to make love whenever the fancy took them.

‘But for tonight,’ he said, taking her in his arms, ‘I shall make up for the fact we have to stay in here, by showing you...something new.’

‘Something new?’

What more could there be? He’d started by teaching her that people could make love in broad daylight. And gone on to demonstrate that they didn’t even need to lie down.

Her stomach flipped over in anticipation as he took her hand and led her to the bed. The look in his eyes made her legs tremble.

‘What,’ she whispered, ‘do you intend to do to me?’

‘Drive you wild,’ he whispered back.

Chapter Eleven

On the morning of the twenty-eighth, while they were still eating breakfast in the kitchen, the back door flew open and a middle-aged couple burst in, bringing with them the inevitable gust of rain-laden wind.

‘My lord, I’m that sorry,’ the woman began to apologise. ‘Had we any idea you was coming, we’d not have gone away. To think of you having to make do, at Christmas of all times.’

‘My Lady Havelock,’ drawled Lord Havelock icily, ‘allow me to present, finally, Mr and Mrs Brownlow. The caretakers of Mayfield.’