Mary Balogh - Simply Unforgettable

“Ah, yes,” he murmured to her, “ride me, then, Frances.”

It was a startling and erotic image. But she did indeed ride him over and over again until she could ride no more but only surrender to his hands that came back to her hips to hold her steady as he pressed up hard into her and held there while something at the core of her burst open and blossomed into perfect pleasure—and then perfect peace.

She knelt where she was until he had finished, and then she lay down on him, her legs stretched on either side of his, while he drew the covers warmly over her again and wrapped his arms about her.

They were still joined.

This, she thought drowsily, was what happiness felt like. Not contentment, but happiness .

And tomorrow . . .

But mercifully she slept.

Peters and Thomas had both gone out by the time Lucius appeared downstairs the following morning, even though it was still well before dawn. They returned soon after he had gone out to the stables himself, bringing with them the news that the snow had melted considerably and that the road was already passable, provided one proceeded with extreme caution. Miss Allard’s carriage, though, was still firmly stuck in its snowbank. It would take assistance and the best part of the day to haul it out and dry it off and look it over to ensure that it was roadworthy.

“Though it might be said, guv, that it never was that anytime during the last thirty years or so,” Peters could not resist adding.

Thomas muttered darkly to the effect that there would be nothing wrong with his carriage if a certain impudent young ’un, who would remain nameless for the sake of peace, had not passed it when he didn’t ought and then stopped dead in front of it in the middle of the road. And in his day, he added, carriages were made to last.

If Thomas’s coach had not been moving so slowly that it was almost going backward, Peters retorted, and if at that pace it could not stop behind another carriage without slithering into a snowbank, then it was high time a certain coachman who would remain nameless was put out to grass.

Lucius left them to it without attempting any mediation and went back inside the inn and into the kitchen. Frances was in there, busy getting breakfast.

Knowledge hit him like a fist to the stomach. He had been holding that slender body naked in his arms not so long ago.

“If you wish,” he said after giving her the bad news about her own carriage, “we will both remain here another day. It will surely be rescued and roadworthy by tomorrow.”

The suggestion certainly had its appeal—except that the world would find them sometime during the course of the day even if they stayed here. Villagers would come for their ale. The Parkers would return from their holiday. There was no way of recapturing the charm of yesterday’s isolation—or the passion of last night’s.

Time had moved on as it always and inevitably did.

She hesitated, but he could almost read her mind as it turned over the same thoughts and came to the same conclusions.

“No,” she said. “I must get back to the school today somehow. The girls return today, and classes begin tomorrow. There is so much to do before then. I will see if a stagecoach stops somewhere in the village.”

She was not quite looking into his eyes, he noticed. But her face was flushed, and her lips looked soft and slightly swollen, and there was something more than usually warm and feminine about her whole demeanor. She looked like a woman who had been well and thoroughly bedded the night before.

He felt partly aroused again by the sight of her. But last night was over and done with, alas. It ought not to have happened at all, he supposed, though of course he had gone to some pains to see that it did happen. And to say that he had enjoyed the outcome would be to understate the case.

It was simply time to move on.

“There is none,” he said. “I have asked Wally. But if you are willing to leave Thomas here to take your carriage back where it came from tomorrow, you may come with me this morning. I’ll take you to Bath.”

She raised her eyes to his then, and her flush deepened.

“Oh, but I cannot ask that of you,” she said. “Bath must be well out of your way.”

It was. More than that, since yesterday could not be recaptured, he did not really want to prolong this encounter beyond its natural ending. It would have been best this morning if they could simply have kissed, bidden each other a cheerful farewell, and gone their separate ways. It would have all been over within an hour or so.

“Not very much out of the way,” he said. “And you did not ask it of me, did you? I think I ought to see you safely delivered to your school, Frances.”

“Because you feel responsible for what happened to my carriage?” she asked.

“Nonsense!” he said. “If Thomas were my servant, I would set him to digging about the flower beds in a remote corner of my park, where no one would notice if he pulled out the flowers and left the weeds. If he ever was competent at driving a carriage, it must have been at least twenty years ago.”

“He is a loyal retainer to my great-aunts,” she said. “You have no right to—”

He held up a staying hand and then strode toward her and kissed her hard on the mouth.

“I would love to have a good scrap with you again,” he said. “I remember you as a worthy foe. But I would rather not waste good traveling time. I want to take you to Bath in person so that I do not have to worry about your getting there safely.”

The roads might be passable, but there was no doubt that they would be dangerous. Snow, slush, mud—whichever they were fated to encounter, and it seemed probable that it would be all three before the journey was ended—the going would be difficult. He would worry about her if he knew she was alone with the elderly Thomas driving her more-than-elderly carriage. Even tomorrow the roads would not be at their best.

Good Lord! he thought suddenly. He had not gone and fallen in love with the woman, had he? That would be a deuced stupid thing to do.

He had just promised his grandfather that he would begin seriously courting a suitable bride—and a suitable bride in his world meant someone with connections to the aristocracy, someone who had been brought up from the cradle to fill just such a role as that of Countess of Edgecombe.

Someone perfect in every way.

Someone like Portia Hunt.

Not someone like a schoolteacher from Bath who taught music and French.

It was a harsh reality but a reality nonetheless. It was the way his world worked.

“I would be very grateful, then,” she said, turning away to finish cooking their breakfast. “Thank you.”

She was cool and aloof this morning—except for the flushed cheeks and swollen lips. He wondered if she regretted last night, but he would not ask her. There was no point in regretting what was done, was there? And she had certainly not been regretting it while it was happening. She had loved with hunger and enthusiasm—a thought he had better not pursue further.

He wished there were a stagecoach coming through the village. He needed to get away from her.

But less than an hour later, having eaten and washed the dishes and left money and instructions with Thomas and a generous payment with Wally for their stay at the inn, Lucius’s carriage set out on its way to Bath with Frances Allard as a passenger.

There had been some argument, of course, over who should make the payments. He had prevailed, but he knew that giving in had been painful, even humiliating, to her. If his guess was correct—and he was almost certain it was—her reticule did not contain vast riches. Her pride was doubtless stung. She sat in stiff silence for the first mile or two, looking out through the window beside her.