Braden grinned down at her. “Fortunately for you,” he said, “I have.”
It was much later when Braden Granville looked up from the book of sonnets he’d been reading aloud and saw that Caroline’s eyes were closed. Her shoulders rose and fell slowly with each deep, even breath she took, her eyelashes curled darkly against her cheekbones, her hair spread out in an amber arc against the pillows.
Smiling, he closed the book, and placed it atop the small table beside the bed they shared. It was the first time the sound of his voice had ever put a woman to sleep. He didn’t know whether to be pleased or insulted.
But Caroline, he supposed, wasn’t precisely the sonnet-type. She was much too levelheaded to be swayed by poetry. And she’d had a very long, very exhausting day— though she seemed, for the first time since he’d met her, actually happy. At least, she’d
looked
happy enough, sitting there in the Stanhopes’ kitchen, watching him as he cooked, and then later, as they were eating.
And of course directly after that, she’d looked very happy indeed, when Braden, possessed by a sudden urge to bend her back across the table and ravish her all over again, promptly did so. Not a word of complaint had escaped her lips then . . . though, he thought now, she might well have cause, since they’d yet to make love in a bed. A carriage, a swing, a bear skin rug, and a rustic table, but no mattress as yet. He’d have to rectify that, at his earliest opportunity.
But Caroline didn’t seem to mind. She behaved like a woman who’d had a weight lifted from her. Gone was the veil of worry that she’d seemed to wear almost constantly throughout their relationship. It was as if, by finally saying those three words—those words he’d so long avoided saying to any woman until now, until Caroline—he’d unstopped a bottle, and a different Caroline altogether had come pouring out of it.
A very different Caroline, for this one seemed not to have a care in the world. No nagging mother, no judgmental friends, no wedding looming on the horizon. She did not know, of course, about her brother’s recent brush with death—and Braden was certainly not about to tell her. The earl was recovering nicely and was safer in Braden’s house on Belgrave Square, with Crutch and Weasel and the rest of Braden’s staff to watch over him, than he’d have been anywhere else. Braden had felt no qualms in leaving him there. His only discomfort was in the knowledge that he had kept Tommy’s latest adventure from Caroline. . . .
But how could he tell her, when he knew the information would send her running back to London? He would tell her in the morning, he promised himself. For now, let her go on being content to forget about the future, and forget about the past, and live entirely in the moment.
Which was, considering what the future held for them, when they got back to London, the only real option.
His gaze never straying from Caroline’s sleeping face, Braden set down the book of sonnets, and reached across the bed to lift a long strand of her silken hair, which he examined in the candlelight. Who would have thought, he mused, that in this innocent-looking girl lay such depths of passion, such a well of sensuality, that he—Braden Granville, the Lothario of London—had been astounded by it?
It was with this thought that Braden blew out the candle-on the bedside table and lay back, wrapping an arm around Caroline and spooning his body against hers, wondering at the softness of her hair, which had spread out across both their pillows.
A second later, Caroline’s voice sounded in the darkness.
“Braden?”
“What is it?”
“I suppose there are a good many other ways,” she said, sleepily, “of doing . . . what we did, earlier this evening.”
He blinked in the darkness, not certain he’d heard her right. “Making love, you mean?”
“Yes. I think we should try them.”
Braden was not usually so slow, but it had been a very long day, and they’d already made love twice—if that’s what one could call their coupling, which to him seemed more like explosions of too long pent-up passion, particularly when it came to Caroline, who climaxed more quickly than any woman he had ever known. He asked, “Try what?”
His eyes having at long last adjusted to the darkness, he saw Caroline turn her head toward him. He could not, of course, make out her expression, but her voice carried her astonishment at his slow wittedness.
“Why, all of them,” she said.
He blinked. Then blinked again.
“Oh,”
he said. “Of course.” And he reached, gamely, to pull back the sheets. . . .
But Caroline had rolled over, with a contented sigh, and a “Good,” uttered in the dreamiest of voices. A second later, she was asleep again, one arm curled possessively across his middle.
Braden, smiling to himself in the darkness, lay back against the pillows, and closed his eyes.
33
C
aroline woke with a start.
Two things struck her at once as being terribly wrong. The first was that sunlight was streaming through the part in the curtains, indicating that it was already rather late into the day. Given Caroline’s habit of rising before eight to go riding, this was disturbing.
But even more disturbing was the second thing she’d noticed. And that was that there appeared to be a large naked man in her bed.
But after brushing some of the sleep from her eyes, Caroline was able to see, by throwing a glance at the ormolu clock on the mantel, that it was only just after ten.
And the naked man, she realized, as memories of the night before came flooding back, was none other than Braden Granville.
Braden Granville, with whom, she recalled, she had behaved
most
scandalously. Braden Granville, who’d told her not once, but several times throughout the evening, and
very
emphatically, that he loved her.
What’s more, he’d also informed her, quite without making it seem as if she had the slightest say in the matter at all—Emily would have been shocked—that they were getting married. That he didn’t give a hang what anybody said, or how many people they shocked. That he was procuring a special license tomorrow, and that they would get married on the day after that, and that was the end of it.
And that had all seemed very well last night. Last night had been the most wonderful night of Caroline’s entire life. She had been transformed, as if by magic, into someone else entirely, a bold and lascivious creature, quite unlike her normal self.
But in the bright light of day, the spell was broken. She was herself again. And she knew very well that no matter how many times Braden Granville declared that that would be the end of it, there would never be an end to it. How could there be? Because even if he did manage to get a special license today, and they married tomorrow, what was going to happen the day after that?
Caroline knew perfectly well what was going to happen. Her mother was going to have an apoplexy. Tommy was never going to speak to her again. And Hurst would be terribly, irrevocably hurt.
And she would be known throughout London as the girl who had jilted the Marquis of Winchilsea.
And it was no good saying the marquis had jilted her first. It wasn’t the same, Caroline knew, when a man did it. It was one of Emmy’s favorite topics, one that she frequently chose to bring up, especially at exclusive dinner parties where she could be sure there were plenty of philanderers present: Why was it that a man could have as many illicit affairs as he liked and suffer not the slightest social stigma, but when a woman did it, she was socially ruined?
Which was what Caroline was now. Ruined.
It was just as well, perhaps. Hurst would never take her now, not even on a silver platter. She was used, sullied, another man’s plaything. Just thinking about how she’d been used caused Caroline to pull the sheet up over her head to hide her flaming cheeks.
Oh, Lord, what had she done?
It didn’t do any good to say to herself that she’d done nothing worse than the marquis had done to her. Somehow, she felt that what she had done
was
worse. Hurst had been a loyal and faithful friend to Tommy, the best anyone could ask for. Even if he had been having an illicit love affair with Lady Jacquelyn Seldon—even if she now knew his kisses had been pale, pathetic imitations of the real thing, his whispered endearments meaningless compared to the gut-wrenching admissions Braden had made, in a voice that had forever seared those words upon her soul—he did not deserve to be treated this way.
They could not, Caroline realized, simply elope. At the very least, she had to write to her mother. She could not risk giving the Lady Bartlett an apoplexy. And Thomas, too, was going to need a letter of explanation and apology. And Hurst. . . . Oh, Hurst! What could she ever say to make it up to him?
Ruined. She was ruined. Caroline Linford, who up until the night before had been perhaps the most virtuous girl in all of England, was now most decidedly not so. And what was more, she’d been proposed to by the most notorious skirt chaser in town, the Lothario of London, Braden Granville.
It was simply too much to be believed. It couldn’t possibly be true.
But she had the evidence of it right there in the bed beside her.
She had started to get out of bed to hunt for pen and paper, so that she could begin her letters of apology at once, but was distracted when she noticed that she clutched the whole of the sheet that had covered them, so that Braden Granville lay completely exposed to her gaze . . . exposed and quite gloriously nude.
Caroline, who had never seen a naked man before— well, unless one counted her brief glimpses the night before, when she’d been too preoccupied to get a good look—studied this one with some trepidation. Men were, she had always known, quite different from women. But precisely
how
different, she’d never had occasion to explore. But now Caroline saw these essential differences, and with no little alarm.
Braden Granville was not known as a handsome man. Caroline knew that. But while his face might not have been as attractive as some—being, for the common taste, far too saturnine and brooding, with a nose that had obviously been broken not once, but several times, and that scar, that stark white scar, that sliced his brow—his figure was all that was masculine and, though she knew she oughtn’t admit it, pleasing.
How could she not appreciate the impressive size of those biceps, which even in sleep managed to look menacing? And that dark layer of hair swirling across his chest, then fanning down along that flat muscular stomach, to thicken into a nest between his legs, where lay the fascinating object that had afforded Caroline so much pleasure the night before. Her gaze was, of course, immediately drawn to it, and not just because the hair on his torso seemed to taper into an arrow that pointed at it. It really was a most extraordinary organ. Gazing at it in its relaxed state, Caroline wondered how she could ever have viewed it with the anxiety she had. In repose, it looked almost . . . well, harmless.
In fact, Caroline found herself not quite believing that such a relatively small thing could balloon to such enormous proportions. Her letters of apology forgotten for the moment, she reached out a tentative hand—after glancing quickly at Braden’s face, to make sure he was still asleep—and touched it.
Her curiosity whetted, she wanted only to . . . well, she wasn’t at all certain what she wanted.
But certainly not what occurred, which was that the thing began to grow.
Caroline, throwing a nervous glance at Braden’s closed eyelids, quickly moved her hand away. But it was too late. It was much too late.
And then she jumped again, this time with a yelp, when one of Braden’s hands closed over her wrist. Glancing down at him with large and startled eyes, she saw that he was fully awake, and grinning at her in a most unsettling manner.
“Good morning,” he said, in a voice that was deeper than usual, and still rough with sleep. “What have you been up to?”
Caroline said, with wide-eyed innocence, “Nothing—”
But the word ended on a note of alarm when Braden seized her free hand, and then lifted her toward him, not releasing her until she rested atop him.
“Now,” he said, as if their conversation the night before had not been interrupted by nine hours of slumber. “What was it last night you were saying you wanted to try?”
Caroline blushed scarlet. Not just, of course, because it was broad daylight, and he was referring to things that most people, she knew, did not even discuss under the comforting cloak of night, but also because she could feel that organ that she’d wakened, long and hard beneath her.
“I—” she started to say, but that was all she got out, before he reached up and brought her mouth down upon his.
And then, really, conversation became impossible, because his tongue was making a sweeping inspection of the inside of her mouth, as if he suspected there might still be undiscovered country there. Which was all right with Caroline, since she found that she didn’t much feel like talking, anyway. Not when his fingers were lifting the hem of her nightdress, his hands slipping beneath it, up the length of her thighs, across her flat belly, along her ribs, and then up to her breasts, to tease her nipples into the same ready hardness that she’d—albeit innocently—teased him.
What was it, she wondered, in the small part of her mind that was still capable of thought when Braden Granville’s hands were on her, that made her go so weak at this man’s slightest touch? He had only to kiss her, and she felt a wave of desire slam through her that was so violent, she was left shivering damply in its wake. Even now, she could feel that familiar tightness, that telltale wetness, between her legs that meant she was ready for him, and all he’d done was kiss her. Well, kiss her, and touch her
there,
and
there,
and, oh,
there
. . . .
And then, her back arching with pleasure, Caroline’s half-lidded eyes flew open. For she’d realized that she was so ready for him, he was already halfway inside her, and she hadn’t even noticed, she was that wet. And then his hands left her breasts, and settled instead on her hip bones.
Holding her still, his gaze never leaving hers, he entered her completely, and
that
she felt. Lord, did she feel it: she was full of him, more of him, she could have sworn, than there’d been last night.
And then he was moving, with deliberate slowness, still holding her hips, guiding her. Caroline couldn’t help gasping at the rigid thickness of him as he eased first in, then out of her tight core. But there was enough slickness there that it didn’t hurt . . . in fact, quite the opposite. Caroline felt the same mounting excitement she’d experienced the night before. She moved her hand across his furred chest, so that she could feel his heart beating beneath her palm. As she’d suspected, it was drumming with the same urgency as her own.
Then Braden was tugging her nightdress impatiently over her head.
“What,” she demanded, from within its silvery folds, “are you
doing?”
He succeeded in freeing her from the flimsy tent, and threw it to the floor, before raising both his hands to her breasts again.
“I want,” he said, in a voice so guttural with desire, Caroline barely recognized it, “to see . . .”
To see where they were joined together, Caroline quickly realized, by following the direction of his gaze. She would have blushed with embarrassment, but, lowering his hands to her hips again, and pressing her down against him, he quickened his thrusts into her, and she let out a little moan, instead.
And then the bright shaft of sunlight that had found its way through the part in the curtains seemed to wrap around her, engulfing her in an embrace of warm white down. And she didn’t mind in the least, because it felt so delicious. She could feel the tiny sunbeams licking her from the scalp of her head to the bottoms of her feet, and every inch of her tensed, delighting in the erotic sensation.
And then she collapsed against Braden’s chest, perfectly spent.
Braden, however, was not. Suddenly, he’d rolled her over and, without missing a beat, thrust into her so hard, she thought he might break the bed, since she’d learned by now that he could not break her. . . .
And then he, too, with a convulsive shiver and a hoarse shout, collapsed, quite heavily, upon Caroline.
“Braden?” she said, after a while, when he did not move. She knew this time that he had not suffered an apoplexy, because she could feel his heart beating very hard indeed against her breast.
He leaned up onto his elbows, which was a relief, since Caroline had feared his superior weight might crush her. “Yes?” he asked, in lazy tones.
She looked up into his dark eyes. They were smiling at her, every bit as much as his lips. He looked very much different than he had when she’d first seen him, that night at Dame Ashforth’s, when he’d worn such a frightening frown, and had looked so annoyed. He seemed much younger now, happier, and more relaxed. Was that, Caroline wondered, going to be his married look? If it was, it was going to be quite a bit harder for her to extricate herself than she’d ever thought.
“Nothing,” she said.
“That’s it?” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “That’s all you have to say? ‘Nothing?’”
Realizing she must have sounded a fool, she tried, “Is there anything for breakfast, do you think?”
The smile broadened, both in his eyes and on his lips.
“I see you remain stubbornly unimpressed by my lovemaking skills,” he said. “I shall have to rectify this matter at once.”