Irresistible (18 page)

She did not answer him. The side of her head burrowed warmly against his shoulder. She was asleep again.

This, he thought, lifting the bedcovers carefully with one leg and one hand so as not to disturb her, was vastly different from what he had anticipated. In accordance with his age and his present status as a respectable country gentleman with family responsibilities, he had expected a quiet affair, short on passion, long on coziness and comfortable satisfaction. Especially with Sophie.

When was it he had thought of Sophie as a woman incapable of deep passions? After he had bedded her that first time or before? Either way, he had still believed it when he had come to her tonight. He had been eager, yes, but he had not been expecting—this.

He was not even sure he wanted this.

There was something a little disturbing, a little frightening about it. There was the element of the unknown about it. And yet it was only his mind that felt unease. His body was wonderfully satiated. He turned his head and kissed the top of hers. Her fingers curled more warmly about his and she burrowed closer with soft sounds of satisfaction. She was still asleep.

The dog had returned to the hearth again and sighed almost in unison with its mistress.

It felt good, Nathaniel thought, to be just lying here like this, relaxed and warm and sleepy after a long cozy talk and after thoroughly good sex. With a friend—he half smiled. He felt more at ease than he had felt in months—years, perhaps.

Except that this was a little different from what he had planned for himself. This was not just sex. Not even just
good
sex. This was a relationship. And the thought was somewhat disturbing. But he was far too tired and far too contented to explore the thought now. He would think of it tomorrow.

 

 

“Come here, Sophie.” It was not a command exactly, although he had reached out a hand toward her. The words were softly spoken, almost as a question.

She had pulled her nightgown back on while he dressed and put on her dressing gown over it. She had not had a chance to tie back her hair again. It must look a dreadful mess. He looked immaculate again and somehow remote, as if he could not possibly be the same man who had been in bed with her most of the night.

He was standing by the window of her bedchamber fully clothed, though not so many minutes ago he had finished coupling with her again, slowly, thoroughly, wonderfully, the way he had done it two nights ago. Unlike the first time tonight. She did not know quite what had happened then. It had been wonderful beyond imagining but also embarrassing in memory. What must he have thought of her? She had completely lost control of herself. Was it about that he wished to speak? Or did he merely intend to kiss her good night—or good morning—before leaving?

She went to him and took his hand and lifted her face to smile at him. They had not lit the candles again, though it was still dark outside, but she could see him clearly. He was looking at her with those lovely slumberous eyes.

“Sophie,” he said, “tell me about Boris Pinter’s visit here yesterday afternoon.”

Ah.

Her stomach lurched. He
had
seen. Of course he had. How could he not have? And why had she been so gauche as to have lied? It had been so unnecessary.

“Oh that.” She laughed. “He came to pay his respects. He does so occasionally. He did not stay long. He would not even take tea with me.”

“Why do you receive him?” he asked.

She raised her eyebrows.

“Do you feel obliged to do so,” he asked, “because he made up those ridiculous lies last year to enhance Walter’s fame? He did it only to ingratiate himself with the ton, Sophie.”

“Lies?” she said.

“When he came to the Peninsula,” he said, “Pinter was already a lieutenant, Sophie. He was not an ensign.”

Ah, she had not realized that.

“Then it must have been
Lieutenant
Pinter, not Ensign Pinter, whom Walter saved,” she said. “Does it matter?”

“Only in that you owe him nothing,” he said. “He was never a pleasant character, Sophie. He had a particular grudge against Walter. You must stay away from him and certainly not receive him here. Ken told you last night, quite rightly, that any of the four of us will protect you anytime Pinter chooses to bother you. It would be our pleasure to be of service to you—mine in particular.”

It was Kenneth’s “protection” last evening that had cost her her wedding ring this afternoon, she thought. The price would not have been quite so high otherwise. And next time the price would be higher again—impossibly high.

She drew her hand away. “And since when,” she asked, “have you had the right to direct my behavior, Nathaniel? To tell me whom I may or may not receive in my own home? Since you became my lover? Do you now see me as your mistress despite your earlier denials? I am
not
your mistress, and I am not either Lavinia or Georgina to be given orders you expect obeyed instantly and without question. How dare you!”

She never lost her temper with people. Never. Not with anyone. She listened to herself, to the cold control of her voice, and knew very well what was happening. The terrible anger that was bottled up inside her was finding a small outlet. Nathaniel, who wanted only to protect her, was bearing the brunt of it. Appalled, she found herself even hoping that he would give her an argument.

He did not.

He tipped his head a little to one side and looked searchingly into her face. He glanced down at her hands, which were clenched into tight fists at her sides.

“You are quite right, of course,” he said, no anger, no hauteur, no chill of hurt pride in his voice. “I do beg your pardon, Sophie. Please forgive me?”

She nodded and closed her eyes briefly, letting the anger seep away.

“I do not see you as my mistress, Sophie,” he said quietly. “That was why I could not—make love to you when I first came tonight. You are my friend and my lover.”

Damn him—she unashamedly borrowed in her mind one of Walter’s phrases. She had wanted to have a screaming quarrel with him—but how did one conduct a screaming quarrel? Now she wanted only to sag against him and cry into his neckcloth. Independence could sometimes be a heavy burden. And gentleness and tenderness could sometimes undo one far more effectively than anger or arrogance.

She smiled at him.

“Promise me something?” he asked her.

She lifted her shoulders.

“Promise to come to me if you are in any kind of need,” he said. “Promise not to be too proud or too independent to ask.”

“That is two promises,” she said.

“Promise me?” He was not to be diverted.

“Sophie?” He sounded hurt now. “Cannot you do even that much to set my mind at ease? Or go to Rex or Ken or Ede if you would prefer. But one of us, Sophie.”

“Your mind does not have to be uneasy over me, Nathaniel,” she said. “I will promise to call upon you on any matter in which I believe you may help me. How is that?”

He reached out and took both her hands in his. He squeezed them tightly. “You minx, Sophie,” he said. “You have promised nothing at all. Do you wish to continue with our arrangement?”

She felt that lurching of the stomach again. “You do not?” she asked him, scarcely able to get the words past her lips.

“I do.” He moved his head closer to hers. “But you will never let me forget, Sophie—and quite rightly too—that this is a relationship of equals. I will not take anything for granted, then. May I come again?”

“Yes.” She smiled. “It is pleasant, Nathaniel. I would like it to continue.”

“Good.” He closed the gap between their mouths and kissed her.

She led the way downstairs a few minutes later, Lass padding along behind them, and he unbolted the outer door quietly.

“Good night, Sophie,” he said before opening the door. “And thank you, my dear.”

“Thank
you,
Nathaniel,” she said.

She saw his lovely smile in the light from the street as he opened the door. “And good night to you too, Lass,” he said.

Then she was closing the door behind him, bolting it slowly so as not to make too much noise.

“Back to bed, then, Lass,” she said. Back to recapture the warmth and the smell of him, to relive the events of the night—all of them, not just the physical parts.

She was not at all sure, she thought as she climbed into bed and lay where he had lain, pulling the bedcovers right up over her head, that she would have suggested this affair if she had known it would be more than the actual couplings. Those she might recover from—she had lived without them all her life, after all, except for that dreadful first week of her marriage.

But there had been more than that tonight. They had lain side by side, their hands clasped, and simply talked as friends, as equals. And then after that wildly wonderful—and embarrassing—coupling, they had slept together for several hours. She had half woken a few times and felt him against her side, warm and relaxed and asleep.

Somehow those words, more than any others, echoed and reechoed in her mind. No, no children. Had she longed for them? Not really. Not under the circumstances. She had quelled her needs as a woman so ruthlessly that she had almost forgotten that most primal of all feminine needs. And did she long for them now? She was only eight and twenty. Sometimes she forgot that she was still young.

Oh, Nathaniel. Her heart ached and ached.

When Lass jumped onto the bed and set her chin across Sophia’s legs, she was not ordered to get down as she normally would have been. Her living presence felt infinitely comforting.

“YOU REALLY OUGHT TO have been there, Nat,” Eden said after regaling them for several minutes with an account of last night’s card party. It seemed that one young lord, newly sent down from Oxford for what had been euphemistically dubbed as “wildness,” had lost a large estate, to which—fortunately for his purse, unfortunately for his honor—he was still only the heir. He had been tossed out on his ear, or so Eden claimed. And then another young lord—London seemed to teem with them this year, Eden commented—challenged old Crawbridge to a duel over the tone in which the latter had mentioned a courtesan twice the young lord’s age. Crawbridge had merely looked the youth over from head to toe and offered to tan his backside with his bare hand before sending him home to his mother. The duel had been averted.

“Yes,” Nathaniel said with a chuckle, “it sounds as if I missed a thoroughly genteel entertainment, Ede. Rex and Ken will be bitterly regretting that they are married men. Or perhaps they should have taken their wives to join such a refined gathering.”

“Think of what we missed, Ken,” Rex said. “And all we had in exchange was an evening at Claude’s with music and conversation.”

“And cards, you must confess, Rex,” Kenneth said. “I went home half a crown poorer than when I went. Your wife went home richer by a corresponding amount.”

“And she won a shilling from Clayton too,” Rex said. “We are a wealthy family this morning.”

They were riding in the park again, the four of them. It had become something of an early-morning ritual with them. The sky was overcast with a suggestion of rain in the damp air, but they were all agreed that fresh air of any description was a necessary component of the beginning of a new day.

“If I might return to my original point,” Eden said, “
if
you are all done with your witticisms at my expense, that is.” He paused but had nothing but grins in response. “Lady Gullis was there, Nat.”

“Lady who?” Nathaniel raised his eyebrows.

Rex whistled. “Miss Maria Dart as was, Nat,” he said. “Remember? Before Waterloo and afterward too?”

“The one with—the bosom?” Nathaniel asked, waggling his eyebrows.

“And the hips and the legs and the ankles,” Rex said. “Not to mention the lips and the eyes.”

“Cupid’s Dart?” Kenneth said. “We all agreed, I do believe, that if we were in the business of shopping at the marriage mart, we would probably have a mass falling-out and come to fisticuffs and never be friends again.”

“Yes, I remember, of course,” Nathaniel said, laughing. “She married old Gullis with his millions and his gout.”

“Old Gullis’s tombstone has been decorating a church-yard for well over a year,” Eden said, “and our Maria is a wealthy widow with a roving eye, Nat.”

“And it did not light on you last night, Eden?” Kenneth asked, tutting and shaking his head. “You need to polish up those blue eyes of yours, old chap. You must be losing your touch.”