Cooper, frowning thoughtfully, lifted the fabric and draped it around Nell. “What do you think?”
Her audience stared. “Excellent choice,” Lady Gosforth said after a moment. “I never would have thought of that color for you, but it’s perfect. You will set a fashion. Cream facings I think—”
“Palest primrose,” Cooper interrupted, then paled at her own temerity.
Lady Gosforth narrowed her eyes. “Palest primrose, yes. The bold choice again. And a hat to match with a pale yellow feather.” She stared at Cooper down her long nose and gave a nod. “You have a flair for this, girl. Well done. Between us we’ll have my niece becoming a byword for style.”
Cooper blushed and tried not to beam with pleasure.
Lady Gosforth’s words warmed Nell, too. Not just the amazing idea of her becoming a byword for style, but the even more precious words,
my niece
.
It was another step forward, a small stake in the future. One day, one step at a time she was managing. She was coping. By day—most of the time—she was all right; night was the problem.
They made love every night now. She craved the ecstasy, the intimacy, and the temporary oblivion of it. She usually fell asleep straightaway.
It was the bleak hours before dawn that haunted her, when she lay wakeful in Harry’s arms while he slept.
She would think about the day to come or the one that had passed, about riding in the park with Harry and Rafe and Luke, or about the parrots and the monkeys in the Pantheon Bazaar, or how she’d learned to tilt a hat just so for the best effect, and then suddenly the hole inside her would wrench open again, as she remembered that she’d never get to do any of these things with her daughter, with Torie.
Then she would weep, silently in the dark, so as not to wake Harry.
One day, one night at a time.
Fifteen
E
ach night as she made love with Harry, Nell thought about what Lady Gosforth—she still found it hard to think of her as Aunt Maude—had told her:
Harry doesn’t believe he’s worthy of love. Never has.
If he didn’t know by now that she loved him, there was only one thing for it: she would have to tell him. The trouble was she was such a coward about doing it.
What if Lady Gosforth was wrong? What if he’d meant exactly what he said when he’d told her he didn’t want love from her?
What if she bared her heart to him and he was embarrassed by the whole thing? She would die of mortification.
Or what if he looked at her uncomfortably and then, as men did, changed the subject?
The worst and the most likely possibility was that he’d be kind about it. She couldn’t bear it if he was kind and understanding, as if she’d made a complete fool of herself but he didn’t mind. Because he was kind.
Each night she nerved herself to tell him and each night she took the cowardly way out, saying nothing.
H
arry glanced over his letter to Ethan. He reminded Ethan to find out the name of that visitor who’d bothered the maids. He still hadn’t heard back. He told Ethan that his wedding had been moved to Alverleigh and that Gabe and the princess, Tibby and the boys were there already and that if—when Ethan discovered the name, he should now send the letter to Alverleigh. He underlined it.
There was also a considerable list of things to be done. Ethan would probably want to shoot him when he read the list. He’d bargained for horses, not all this.
But a man only got married once.
He added a postscript reminding Ethan they would be off to Alverleigh in two more days.
He also wrote to the Barrows, inviting them to come to Alverleigh for his wedding. And if the earl didn’t like that he could lump it. Mr. and Mrs. Barrow were more family to Harry than any coldblooded, blue-blooded earl.
I
n the morning they were leaving for Alverleigh. Tonight had to be the night, Nell told herself. There wouldn’t be another opportunity like this. Who knew how it might be at Alverleigh? She might hardly see him. She had to screw her courage to the sticking point and tell him. And show him as well. In more ways than one.
She’d never removed her nightgown before, and he’d never asked. He’d caressed her through it and slipped it up as far as her hips, but she’d been shy about being completely naked with him, and—again—had taken the coward’s way out.
Tonight she stopped being a coward. Tonight she would bare herself to Harry Morant—body and soul.
After dinner she ordered a bath to be set in front of the fire in her bedchamber. While footmen lugged cans of hot water up the back stairs and Cooper swished a generous splash of oil of roses into the water, Nell placed candles around the room. She sent a footman to fetch a screen and placed it in front of the bath.
When the footmen had all left, Cooper helped Nell to disrobe.
“Thank you, Cooper,” she said as she stepped into the bath. “Please extinguish the lamps before you leave, and then tell Mr. Harry I would like to speak to him.”
Cooper’s eyes widened but she’d been very well trained and made no outward sign. She knew, of course, that Harry slept with Nell each night—Nell imagined the whole household did, but everyone pretended not to notice. There was, after all, to be a wedding in less than a week.
Nell sank into the hot water and waited.
Harry knocked on Nell’s bedchamber door and, hearing her respond, went in. There was no sign of Nell. He frowned at the dim room, lit by just perhaps a dozen candles. Were her lamps not working? Was that the problem? Then why send for him and not a footman?
Then he heard a splash of water and noticed the screen. His mouth dried. That fantasy he’d had of attending her in her bath leapt back as if it had never faded. He forced it again from his mind. She was a very modest woman. Such an idea would no doubt shock her.
“Nell? Did you want something?” What was that smell? Roses? In December?
“Yes.” More swishing of water. “Could you come here a moment, please?”
Harry’s heart started thudding. He stepped around the screen and stopped still. Every coherent thought drained from his mind. He could only stare. She was so damned beautiful.
In a semicircle of candlelight she sat in her bath, blushing, naked, all peach and gold and soft, wet skin. Her hair was knotted high, damp tendrils clinging to her temples and neck. Full, creamy breasts were not quite submerged, rosy dark nipples soft in the warm water. Under his gaze they stiffened to firm, ripe berries.
Her legs were long, her knees floating islands in the fragrant bathwater. Through the rippling water he could see the dark gold vee where her thighs met at the base of her belly.
With some difficulty he managed to say, “What did you want?” It came out in a croak. All he could think of was what he wanted.
She pulled a sponge from the water and slowly soaped it. He watched mesmerized as her breasts swayed with each movement. She held the sponge out to him and he put a hand out blindly, but at the last moment she pulled it back.
“Perhaps you should take off your coat,” she suggested.
He dragged it off quickly and tossed it on a nearby chair.
She gave him a speculative look. “And perhaps your shirt, too. You wouldn’t want to get it all wet, would you?” Her eyes gleamed.
And his brains started working again. His modest little Nell was going all out to seduce him, like a siren of old. Every male drop of blood in him seized the challenge: Who would seduce whom?
He gave her a slow smile. “A wet shirt? Perish the thought.” He unknotted his neck cloth, tossed it on top of his coat, and pulled his shirt off over his head.
The sherry-colored eyes surveyed him with deep feminine approval.
“Now, give me that sponge.” Taking it, he stepped behind her. Lord, she was even beautiful from the back. He squatted down and started with her back, rubbing it with firm, circular movements, then up and down the length of her spine.
“Soap.” She passed it back to him and he soaped up his hands and massaged her neck and shoulders until she was almost purring and arching against him like a cat.
“Lift up your arms,” he murmured, his mouth just inches from her ear, and when she did, he slid his hands slowly around her ribs and soaped her stomach. His chest pressed against her back. Her breath hitched each time his forearms and the sides of his hands brushed against her breasts but he made no move to touch them. At first.
He waited until she was panting and writhing subtly against him, and when he finally took the hard, thrusting nipples between his fingertips, she moaned and jerked in an instant climax.
She tried to get out then, but he pressed her back into the water.
“Not yet.”
He moved around to the front of the bath, facing her.
“Give me your foot,” he said.
“But I want to—”
“Foot.” He held out his hand.
A touch sulkily she stuck her foot out of the water, splashing him deliberately. “Sorry,” she said unrepentantly as she surveyed the damp patch at his crotch. She grinned and splashed him again. “Oops.”
Her smile vanished when he lifted her foot to his mouth. “Harry, what on earth are—ohhh,” she gasped as he sucked on her toes. They curled against his tongue and he sucked harder, running his tongue along the seam between each toe. She tasted of roses.
He nibbled and sucked and at the same time began to soap her legs, running his hands down between her thighs. They quivered and fell apart and his fingers sank into her soft cleft, caressing her deeply and again, she climaxed in moments.
He lifted her out of the bath, wrapped a towel around her, and carried her to the bed, where he dried her carefully and then proceeded to make love to her again. She was more than ready for him and as the climax built and the ecstasy roared through him, she came with him as they crested, shattered, and plunged into oblivion.
He wasn’t sure how much later it was when he became aware of her stirring sleepily against him. “It wasn’t supposed to be that way,” she muttered. “I was going to seduce you.”
“But you did seduce me,” he said.
“No, you took over.” She sighed against his chest. “But I love you anyway.”
Harry froze. “What did you say?” he said after a minute.
But she was asleep. He tried to tell himself he’d imagined it or misheard it. But he’d heard it clear as day.
She didn’t mean it the way he thought she did, though, he was sure. It was the sort of thing people sometimes said.
It was just that nobody had ever said it to him before.
Could she really mean it, or was it simply gratitude? He didn’t want gratitude.
He didn’t deserve gratitude—he hadn’t managed to save her baby. He hadn’t even avenged the great wrong done her.
He had no right to love.
Yet.
He
awoke to busy fingers and the sensation of a soft, luscious body smelling of roses and sweet, aroused woman ... She climbed on top of him and his eyes flew open. And fastened on creamy, silken breasts.
“Are you awake, Harry Morant?” She said to him in an oddly determined voice.
He wrenched his eyes off her breasts and looked into the sweet face. “I’m awake.”
She lifted herself over him and slowly took him into her body. “Are you listening to me, Harry Morant?” She said undulating her body in a way that drove him wild.
He groaned at the sensation. She tweaked his nipples and his eyes flew open again.
“I said, are you listening?”
“I’m listening,” he managed. “Though it would be a damned sight easier to concentrate if you stopped doing th—aahhh.”
“Stop talking and listen. I love you, Harry Morant.”
His eyes flew to hers.
“I love you,” she said again, deliberately. Her body began to move in a slow rhythm and each time she moved, she said it again: “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
Still moving, she bent and planted kisses across his chest, murmuring, “I love you,” between each one.
His chest felt like it had a burning rock lodged in it. He couldn’t say a word.
“I love you.” She wrapped her arms around him, and suddenly heaved to the side. They rolled, still joined, and he was on top. “I love you,” she repeated, and his body started to pump, harder and harder, and with each thrust she said it again, her clear sherry eyes never wavering from his. “I love you, Harry. I love you.”
The dark, consuming wave of passion took him higher and higher, denial pounding furiously through him, and still he heard it. “I love you.”
And as he roared and the world splintered into rapture, he heard them again, the words he could not get enough of, but did not deserve: “I love you, Harry Morant.”
Harry had made an appointment to ride in the park with Rafe and Luke before breakfast. He wished he hadn’t now. His heart was so full.
I love you, Harry Morant.
What did a man say to that? He’d done nothing to deserve it. She probably wanted the words back, but he could not say them.
Yet.
He slid out of bed reluctantly and drew the covers over her small, silken body. He padded from the room and changed quickly into his riding clothes.
Rafe and Luke were waiting in the hall. “Sorry I’m late,” Harry said, snatching his hat and coat.
Rafe sniffed and frowned. “Is that roses I smell? In December?”
Luke sniffed and shook his head. “Can’t smell anything.”
Rafe leaned toward Harry, sniffed again, and arched his brow. “Changed your cologne, dear boy?”
“Nope.” Harry shrugged into his coat, still trying to deal with the jumble of confused emotions. One thought stood above them all. Nell
loved
him.
He felt so unworthy of her gift. But he would earn the right to it, he swore. Somehow.
Rafe gave him a thoughtful look. “I see.”