Edith Layton (27 page)

“I’m following no one. And I run from nothing,” Drum said with sudden haughtiness.

“Good. Nor do I. I’ll wait,” Rafe said, watching the sad, dark Lady Annabelle, her head bent even lower as she got into her coach. “Things change. Got to give them time. No sense running. That’s all right for Wycoff, because he’d got nothing to wait for. But I do.”

“Do you? And I?”

“Listen, Drum, I’ll say it the once and never again. She did the right thing. Listened to her heart. She loves you, but not the way a wife ought. You loved her, too,
but not too well. You’d questions, even at the end. She never did—at the end, at least. That’s how it has to be.”

“Ah. And how did you come to be such an expert on love?”

Rafe looked his old friend in the eye. “By finally seeing it isn’t something I can do anything about. It
is
. Or is not. And if it is, then a man knows it, right off. Give it time. You’ll see. And then you’ll understand me.”

“I can’t hope to grow that wise,” Drum said with irony. “So, it’s likely London this season for you? Can’t budge you overseas, can I? Well, why not? I tell you what—I think I’ll take apartments in town, too. Hotels are too confining, and I don’t want to stay at the family townhouse—one never knows when my father will take up residence. So, what did you think of the Albany? It’s exclusive, but is it worth the price?”

They strolled down the lawns, talking about fashionable addresses, as though one wasn’t thinking about what he’d lost and the other of what he was determined to win. But then, they were old friends and had risked their lives for each other so many times that tampering with the truth to spare a friend pain was nothing to them. And ignoring the truth to save his face was no trouble at all.

Damon and Gilly couldn’t stop talking about the ceremony, the guests, what had been said and what had not, all the way to The Lindens. But as they approached the front drive, their conversation faltered and died. The huge, mellowed, old stone house was bathed in the last of the setting sunlight, all its many windows glinting, the whole of it glowing like a great golden topaz in
the red and gold autumnal setting of its private park. Damon stepped down and gave Gilly his hand, and she came quiet and tentative as sunlight in early April as she ventured down the steps and up to his front door.

He swept her up in his arms and carried her over the threshold, delighted at her squeal of pleased surprise. Then they greeted the beaming staff waiting for them there. The servants, knowing the nature of honeymoons, vanished in almost magical fashion. Damon and Gilly stood alone in the front hall, with all the house silent around them.

“Well, I expect you’ll want to wash, and have a rest, it’s been a long day,” Damon said, and was shocked at how stupid he sounded, talking to her as if she were a guest and not the wife he’d dreamed, schemed, and maneuvered to finally bring home to this place to fill it with life and light and love.

“Yes,” Gilly said. As she went up the long stair with him she thought of a dozen other bits of gossip to talk about, but the thought of where they were going made the subject seem foolish and unimportant. How
did
one start? She’d been thinking about it for days. And especially nights. He’d kissed her good night each evening. Sometimes they had more time to drive themselves to distraction, but not much since they’d gotten to the countryside, what with family and friends arriving and the wedding going forward.

W
hen
? she wondered. After dinner? After she’d had a wash and put on her best nightshift? Just before bed? With all she knew about what was coming, that was one thing she’d never thought to ask Bridget. She
couldn’t wait. But she didn’t know how long she’d have to. How strange that he had become her best friend and ally, and yet this was something she couldn’t ask. She was
not
missish, she told herself angrily. She just didn’t want to put a foot wrong.

“It’s lovely,” she said, as he opened their bedchamber door. The bedchamber was done in tones of shell pink and celestial blue, with gold highlights everywhere, in the Adam style he knew she liked.

“I’m glad you think so,” he said. Realizing how stilted that sounded, he tried for a warmer note. “And I’m glad you decided to share your bedchamber with me.”

“Well, of course. Separate rooms aren’t my idea of marriage. I’m not such a fashionable creature as that!” she said, trying to make a joke.

But neither laughed. They looked at each other in the sudden silence. They gazed at each other for a long moment. Then the corners of Damon’s eyes crinkled, the edges of his mouth went up in a quirky smile. Gilly grinned. He opened his arms. She came into them.

“Oh, Gilly,” he said into her hair, “how long I’ve waited.”

“Oh, Damon,” she sighed with absolute relief.

That was all they said. They soon were too busy to say another word. Their kisses were almost frantic at first. They slowed, becoming long, breathless, and deep. She didn’t know when the kissing became caressing, too. Or when her gown slid off her shoulder, or when his lips left her shoulder to settle on her breast, and then, with such perfect understanding of her incomprehensible needs, attended to the longing in the other breast in the same incredible way.

Her hands bunched his shirt, stroked his shoulders, she tried to touch him and not just that which covered him. It was vital to be close to him as she could. He didn’t need any of the clever plans he’d thought of to get her at her ease, out of her clothing, and into their bed. It simply happened. Her clothes were eased off in a moment.

Damon wasn’t thinking of clothing, at least not his own. He never remembered getting his boots off, not with the way she kept running her hands up and down his back as he did. He didn’t know how he got himself out of his shirt without strangling himself, but somehow he did. He ripped his breeches away, and then stopped. He looked at her widened eyes, remembering too late that it was afternoon, and this was not the way to attract a woman who was as good as a virgin but for that terror in her childhood.

“Oh my,” she said, staring. “Oh, Damon!”

He checked, awkwardly, one knee raised to get into the high bed. Their easy familiarity had made him forget she was unfamiliar with this. Passion had made him forget. His pose now fortunately hid that excitement from her. But nothing was hidden from his eyes. She sat, staring—but naked and perfect, her breasts free to his eyes, knees drawn up, showing her shapely legs in a pose too innocently tempting to be deliberate. His arousal was sharp to the point of pain.

“What?” he asked, trying to slow his breathing and temper his heartbeat, perching on the side of the bed. He angled away from her, cursing himself, fearing that in his unseemly haste he’d loosed demons, reminding her of that hideous experience in her youth.

But she never made the connection because she’d never seen anything like him. She looked at the golden skin covering the wide chest that tapered to a flat abdomen, rippling with nothing but corded ridges of muscle. He didn’t have much hair on his body and the afternoon light showed that firm form all in tints of gold and dusky pearl. Even his sex, which she’d glimpsed rising high and firm almost to his navel, was fitting, handsome and shapely, old ivory with a trace of rose at the end of that fascinating length. But that wasn’t all she saw. And being Gilly, not all she admired.

She shook her head. “Lud! If I’d seen you like this before, I’d have made a scandal of myself and no mistake! You’re a sight to see, Damon Ryder. No wonder you could level those four by yourself that time. You’re in the pink of condition.” She reached out, all unknowing, to touch his chest and let her hands feel what her eyes showed her was there.

He paused, then smiled, his heart soaring in relief. “Gilly, will you never stop surprising me?”

She drew her hand back and brought it selfconsciously to cover her breasts. “Was that wrong? I mean, it’s only that I liked to watch a mill, now and then, in the old days, for the sport of it, and to lay an easy bet if I could,” she said, slipping into boxing cant. “And I just thought you stripped to great advantage.”

“Oh, but I do. Great advantage,” he said silkily, going to her, taking her hand, putting it on his racing heart. “Yours and mine. Come, I’ll show you.”

“Oh,
that
? I saw. In fact, I never saw the like!” she said in wonder, her eyes going down his body. At his start of surprise, she added, “No, s’truth, I never did.
Blokes don’t wave
that
about the streets, I can tell you, without someone takes their head off for them if they do. It isn’t decent, or safe. Privacy’s a rich man’s right. Why, if you undress at a time like this where I grew up, you could get your clothes stolen, and there’s no place to keep your knife.”

She paused, looking anxious, wondering why she was blathering so much, realizing she was nervous, wanting to get back into his arms, and suddenly not knowing the way. She could only go on. “No,” she said, shaking her head, “when it comes to such play, I assure you, breeches stay on, skirts get lifted, not removed. The poor keep their clothes on. Should we?”

“Gilly…” he said, amused and distracted, “if you want, if you wish, we can, we will, but…”

“But I love the feel and look of you, and if that’s what you do, oh Damon, oh, so I will do, and gladly!”

He laughed, then kissed her long and deep. Then at last when her body was softly dewed with anticipation and her lips on his and those below were both telling him it was time, it was past time, and he didn’t think he could bear the tension and the need a moment longer, he raised himself up over her and looked down into her face. In that second he paused to appreciate what was to come—

And saw the exact moment she remembered. It was at the exact moment he was about to enter her. Her eyes darkened, he saw panic drive out the drowsy anticipation that had been there. He stopped. Because her feverish movements had stopped. She lay still beneath him, white and silken, her head thrown back, that glorious flaxen hair splayed on the pillow, her
small high breasts pink tipped, pebbled. Her body was everything that demanded his sex. But she was Gilly, everything that demanded his control. He hung back, balanced on his arms, fighting for discipline. He gained it.

“Gilly, the best thing, I think,” he managed to say, “is if we change places. That way you’ll be the one to decide when. That way, you won’t have to remember whatever happened then.”

Because she had. They both knew it. When his shoulders crested over her, when his body blocked the light, she’d remembered those helpless moments when another male had been thus, when she’d lost the fight, and darkness, pain, and fury had conquered her spirit and body. But his words woke her. She stopped seeing the nightmare of her past and saw the present, and their future.

She saw Damon. He was paused, voice and muscles strained with the effort. His eyes were pained, his face stark with longing. He was the most handsome man she’d ever seen, more so now in his extremity of need, as though nature itself was trying to ensure he continue his line by making his features irresistible at this moment before he committed his body to a woman’s.

This was as far from that dark day in her youth as she was now. Because this was Damon waiting for her, her husband, yearning for her as much as she was for him. The man who’d taught her to feel, to cry, and to love a man—when she’d always believed she couldn’t love anything but an idol. There was no terror of a memory that could stand up to the joy of that. She put
her arms round his neck and whispered urgently, “Damon. I want you. Now. This way. And that way. Any old way you choose. But now.”

He relaxed, and smiled. He came to her, blotting out memories.

This was entirely right. His skin sliding against hers, the thrill and heat and sweetness of it, though he tasted salt to her tongue as her mouth touched his shoulder. Exactly right, just what she’d never known and had always missed. He didn’t lead, she didn’t follow. They shared, tenderly, then greedily.

But it wasn’t easy for her. His entry stung, and burned. That alone shocked her. Her eyes flew to his.

He knew. “A long time, a very long time, it’s been such a long time since, that’s all,” he gasped, as he tried to slow himself.

She relaxed. All was explained, everything was necessary. It was almost good, because it might have been the way it would have been had she been able to come to him whole, free of defeat. And then she stopped thinking, because he was with her and purring her praises as he moved her, and it was too delicious to think about.

He exulted. Gilly, his Gilly. His. He gave himself to her as he’d given himself in marriage to her, with no hope or desire of recall. She was too awed to share such wild ecstasy. But she was thrilled. She held on tightly as he came down hard, and cradled him as his body trembled in release after release. S
he
gave him that, she thought in triumph. He’d given her even more. He’d given her back herself.

She leaned over him when he lay back exhausted on
the pillow. Her hair drifted like a glowing veil, enclosing them both in its radiance. “Damon! That was wonderful!” she crowed. “I felt so much! Nothing was wrong with me. You were grand. I felt I almost…Let’s do it again!”

He reached up and touched her grin as a heartbreaking smile grew on his own face. “Gilly, my own true love. I can’t—just yet. Not right after…. It takes a fellow time to recover. But thank you.” He chuckled and pulled her down beside him and kissed her long and well. “Well,” he said, after a moment, “maybe not so long after all…. We’ll have to see. And feel. But there’s something else we can do to take up the time until then. I can finish this for you now, even so, and then we’ll see whether I can measure up after, shall we?”

“What
are
you talking about?” she giggled, as his hands drifted down over her.

He showed her. He tended to the faint, unsatisfied niggling itch she felt, the need that somehow still remained, even after all their closeness. He did it so sweetly, so gently, and with such concern for her embarrassment that she had none. She felt nothing but the dazzling pleasure he brought to her with his hands and mouth, and then at last with his encouraging words, until she gasped with astonished delight.