He couldn’t raise his left arm and gather her in, not without stretching his wound. Eventually, even though he sensed she was awake, he turned carefully onto his side and slid his right arm over her waist. Felt insensibly comforted by having her beneath his arm, within his hold.
She shot him a quick glance, but immediately looked away, confirming she was wide awake. He knew why he was—he was basking, savoring the moment too much to succumb to slumber and miss it—but he knew he’d satisfied her, thoroughly, deeply, and utterly completely, so by rights she should be comatose . . . except she was thinking. Pondering.
He suspected he knew about what. Weak light from the distant candle played over them, well enough for eyes adjusted to the dimness to see reasonably well. Keeping his lips straight, his expression blank, letting his lids fall so he could only just see through his lashes, he murmured, “Your other lovers—I take they weren’t as . . . inventive as I.”
The look she shot him was faintly shocked, but even as he watched, that faded. Clearly assuming his eyes were closed, she studied his face, frowned. “I wouldn’t have said inventive. I suspect experienced is closer to the mark.”
He could smile without giving away that he was watching her. “I see. How many were there?”
Why he wanted to know was a mystery—he never had with any other lover. But with her . . . he wanted to know.
She continued to frown. “Three.”
“Only three?”
“Three before you.” Folding her arms over the covers, snugging them beneath her breasts, she acerbically added, “Three was enough to convince me that there was little in the activity to recommend it to me.”
That
had him opening his eyes wide to stare at her. Directly into her pale emerald eyes. She couldn’t possibly mean . . . “Three lovers—three times?” That would explain why he’d found her so incredibly, arousingly tight.
“I wasn’t about to further indulge them if I got nothing from the event.”
“Nothing?” His mind boggled; she’d been gloriously, uninhibitedly responsive. “They must have been clods.”
“They weren’t.” She shrugged. “Just . . . not as imaginative as you.”
He held her gaze, inwardly held his breath. “Am I to take it, inventive, imaginative, and experienced as I am, that you won’t be averse to indulging with me again?”
She hesitated, but now he was piecing her situation together, he wasn’t all that surprised. He knew well enough not to push, but merely wait; she was, after all, a gently bred female, so that she’d indulged at all with anyone . . .
He narrowed his eyes. “How old are you?”
She narrowed her eyes fractionally back. “Twenty-six.”
When his expression relaxed, she frowned. “Why? What does it matter?”
“It doesn’t, but it does explain why you’ve indulged at all—twenty-six is getting a trifle long in the tooth.”
“Indeed. As you can clearly remember, twenty-six is more or less on the shelf.”
“And they—local society—expect you to marry.”
“Yes, but that’s not why I decided to take a lover. We weren’t courting—there was never any question of that.”
He inwardly frowned. Either customs had changed radically, or he was missing some relevant fact.
Before he could think of what question to ask, she said, “I’d already decided I would never marry.”
He let his frown materialize. “Why not?”
She arched her brows, haughty again. Even naked, she could pull it off. “For the same reason Queen Elizabeth didn’t.”
Oddly, that made perfect sense. “Ah. I see.”
Linnet was surprised. Indeed, she doubted he truly had, but then he confirmed it.
“The question of power.”
“Yes. My position here is essentially that of liege-lord, a hereditary position I’ve been bred to fill, and I have no inclination whatever to give it up.”
He held her gaze for a long moment—so long she wondered what was passing through his mind. Then he said, “You haven’t answered my question.”
She frowned. “What question?”
“Whether, given my expertise, you’re agreeable to indulging with me again.”
She couldn’t see any reason why she shouldn’t. Could formulate several reasons why she should. “Ask me again later, when you’re able.”
Something hot—that sense of blue flame—shifted behind his dark eyes. The sight made her breath hitch, made parts of her tingle. Made her seize on a distraction. “Could you really tell from kissing me that it was me with you last night?” Aside from all else, she wanted to know.
He smiled, slowly. “That, and other things.”
“What things?”
The heavy arm across her waist lifted, raising the covers. “Let me show you.”
Before she’d realized what he was about, he’d lifted over her, spread her thighs with his long legs, and settled his hips between—proving that, contrary to her expectations, he was very much able already.
He looked down between their bodies, shifted, and she felt the broad head of his erection nudge past her folds—instantly setting her nerves jangling, her body tightening in expectation, in anticipation. Pausing, he raised his head, caught her eyes as he settled on his elbows above her.
From a distance of mere inches, his gaze burned into hers. “This—how you feel when I’m pushing inside you”—he demonstrated, forging slowly but steadily in—“how you close so tightly around me when I fill you— ” With a powerful thrust he filled her completely, making her gasp, making her arch beneath him, making her already furled nipples brush against the coarse bandages circling his chest—making her cry out.
Making her sheath contract tightly around him—making him hiss and close his eyes.
But then he opened them again, pinned her as she lay beneath him. “This,” he said, his voice gravelly and low as he withdrew and then thrust deep and hard again, “was the final proof.”
She’d thought her nerves were shattered, wrung out, unable to respond, not again, not so soon. But they were already sparking, tensing, tightening. As for him . . . “I didn’t think . . .” That was all she could manage to say as he filled her again.
“Don’t think.” He lowered his head to rest alongside hers. “Stop thinking. Just feel.”
She didn’t take orders well, but this time she complied.
His breathing harsh by her ear, her own breath coming in panting gasps, his heavy body moving over hers, her own responding, his hips and legs pinning her, spread and open, beneath him, she really had no choice as he settled into a driving, pounding rhythm that rescripted all she’d ever known about what could pass between a man and a woman.
Flames rose and enveloped them. Cindered all thought, any lingering inhibition. When she felt him tug one of her knees, she responded, raising her legs and wrapping them around his hips, opening herself even more.
For him to take. To fill. To ravish.
Logan didn’t hold back. She’d given him a telling piece of information—her comment about Queen Elizabeth. About her position here. Her other lovers would have known it and bowed to it—and so failed. She was too strong a woman to be made love to gently, reverently, at least not at first. She didn’t need a man to bow to her but to take her, possess her—to show her what it was like, how it felt, to be desired and possessed.
So he took, gave desire and predatory hunger free rein and unrestrainedly possessed. He demanded, commanded, and took all she had to give, savoring her moans, her gasps, her surrender, until her ulitmate climax brought on his own.
The ensuing cataclysm rocked even him.
As he hung above her, gasping, waiting for his thundering heart to slow, his sawing breathing to ease, he looked down, and watched as, this time sated well beyond thought, she slipped, boneless and relaxed, into sleep beneath him.
He felt a satisfaction deeper than any he’d ever known as he withdrew from the clinging clasp of her body, then slumped beside her.
For however long he remained here, for however long this odd hiatus in his life lasted, she would be his. His to possess whenever he wished.
Whenever he could persuade her to it.
December 12, 1822
Mon Coeur, Torteval, Guernsey
L
ogan woke to dawn seeping through the room, and an empty space in the bed beside him. As the events of the night replayed in his brain, he found himself grinning, but as the reality of the situation impinged, his sense of euphoria faded.
He didn’t yet know who he—Logan Monteith—was, not as an adult, not now. He didn’t know what he did, how he made his living—didn’t know where he lived, nor where he’d been going. He needed to jog his memory and remember, but regardless, one fact stood crystal clear.
Despite his lack of memory, he had to have a life he needed to return to. Ergo, his time here, with Linnet, was limited.
He’d known that, and she knew it, too. Indeed, in a way she was counting on it, knowing that, regardless of whatever grew between them, he would eventually leave. The critical point being that she and her position stood in no danger from him.
Pushing back the covers, swinging his legs from the bed, he frowned. The knowledge that their liaison was already slated to be temporary, fleeting, sat poorly . . . as if he’d endured many such meaningless encounters in the past and no longer found succor in them.
That might well be true. Grimacing, he stood, crossed to the armchair by the window, and lifted the robe Linnet had given him. Shrugging into it, belting it, he decided he needed to do all he could to bring his memory back.
Going along the corridor, he washed, shaved. Twisting before the small mirror, he tried to unpick the knot securing the bandage around his chest, but couldn’t. He wanted to take a look at the wound, but would need help to do so. Turning his attention to the bandage about his head, he started unwinding it, only to discover it had stuck to his scalp and he couldn’t get it loose. Frustrated, he rewound it as best he could.
Returning along the corridor to Linnet’s room, he saw one of the little maids standing outside the door trying to balance a pile of clothes well enough to knock.
Hearing his footsteps, she turned, brightened. “There you are, sir—I’ve brought these up for you.” She offered the pile. “These are what you was washed up in. We’ve done the best we can with them, but Miss Trevission says that if you find anything unwearable to please continue to use the clothes she gave you.”
“Thank you.” He took the pile of neatly laundered clothes.
The maid bobbed a curtsy, turned, and clattered away. Logan entered the bedchamber, closed the door, then laid the clothes out on the bed. He studied them—the plain coat and linen shirt, the black breeches—tried to recall anything about them—where he’d bought them, even when or why he had—but they told him nothing. He didn’t even feel any sense of ownership. Perhaps he was the sort of man who cared nothing for his clothes.
That didn’t sound right, didn’t feel right.
Inwardly shrugging, he donned the clothes, discovering slashes in the shirt and coat corresponding to his wound neatly mended. The breeches were a better fit than Linnet’s father’s had been. He continued using the stockings Linnet had given him, and her father’s boots—wearable, if a touch tight. His own had yet to reappear.
Feeling oddly more himself, he went downstairs and headed for the dining room and the babel therein. Today he was early enough to catch the other men at the table. Exchanging nods and greetings, he slid into the vacant chair next to Linnet’s.
Brandon reached over the table, holding out a belt. “This is yours. We reoiled it and it came up well, but we couldn’t save your boots.”
“Thank you.” Logan took the belt. Uncoiling it, he saw the buckle was . . . something he should remember, but didn’t. Shifting in his chair, he slid the belt through the loops on his breeches, cinched and buckled it.
As the other men rose and left for their work, Linnet caught his eye. “Your boots were Hobys.”
When he blinked at her, she asked, “Do you know what that means?”
He nodded, but couldn’t work it out. A gentleman’s boots were usually made to measure and therefore not readily transferrable—witness the current pinching of his toes. So the boots he’d been washed up in were almost certainly his own, and Hoby was one of the ton’s foremost bootmakers.
The other little maid—Molly, he thought her name was—brought him a plate piled even higher than the day before. He thanked her and absentmindedly fell to eating while he tried to solve the riddle.
In case he hadn’t seen it, Linnet murmured, “Your expensive boots don’t match your ordinary clothes.”
He glanced at her, but said nothing.
Linnet left him to his thoughts. The children finished, and she dispatched them to their various chores and lessons. Buttons followed Jen, Chester, and Gilly out, shooing them ahead of her to the schoolroom.
With only herself, Muriel, and Logan left in the room, Linnet transferred her gaze to Logan, and waited.
Eventually he looked up and met her eyes. Grimaced. “I have no idea what the discrepancy between my clothes and boots means.”
He fell silent again, his forehead—what showed beneath the now lopsided bandage—deeply furrowed. Linnet looked down the table at Muriel, sipping her last cup of tea, and arched a brow. Her aunt saw, considered, then nodded.