Jo Beverley - [Rogue ] (46 page)

Watching her carefully, as if she were indeed an angry tiger, he moved into the room and shut the door. Then he chose a chair fairly close to the one in which she sat.

"As far as I knew you were still retiring early."

Eleanor stiffened. "So you did come as late as possible!"

"I have my pride, too. Did you not expect something like this?"

Eleanor sighed. "No, but Miss Hurstman did. Perhaps you should have married her."

"An attractive idea," he said, with a glittering smile quite unlike his usual one. "But I'm married to you."

"That's the trouble, isn't it? You're tied to me and are trying to make the best of it. Thank you, but I will not live on crumbs any longer!"

Instantly he was across the room and had grasped her. He pulled her to her feet. "Eleanor, what are we doing? My God, but I must be making a worse mess of this than I thought possible."

"So!" she hissed in rage of pain. "Once you are balked, all the vaunted restraint is gone! Am I going to be raped again?"

His hands dropped like stones. There was a deadly silence. Eleanor couldn't even breathe.

Carefully he returned to sit in his chair. What have I done? Eleanor asked herself over and over again. She sat down with a thump and looked at him warily, her hands over her mouth.

She did not see anger in his eyes or disgust. Only a desperate concentration.

"Let's start this again. I came late. I'm sorry if I upset you. I'm not even sure that was my intent or not. My feelings about you are not always logical. You told me to go away for three weeks, and I took the notion to do just that. I returned three weeks to the minute after you had asked me to leave. I did think of returning three weeks after I left the house. I gather that would not have been a good idea."

"Not a very good one, no," said Eleanor faintly.

"This isn't the time for playing games. Eleanor, do you want my presence or my absence?"

He was so cool, so judicial. She remembered telling Lucien she wanted to strip him down to truth. Where was the truth in this? She spoke from her aching heart. "Do you love me?"

Color flushed his cheeks. He laughed shakily. "Do I love you? So much that I have no words to say. Let me borrow. 'For nothing this wide universe I call save thou, my rose, in it thou art my all.'"

The words floated on the warm air of the room and drifted over to settle in Eleanor's heart.

"Why do you think," he asked, "I have tried so hard to get you back?"

"But you never lost me, Nicholas. I thought you were just trying to make something out of our marriage."

He shook his head. "And I took you for a wise woman. Eleanor, Eleanor..." He lapsed into silence and frowned. "As I said to Miss Hurstman once, I have debased my art. All the usual endearments sound squalid to my ears. You are my life, Eleanor, I swear to you. Beside you, all other women might as well be plaster statues... May I touch you yet?"

She gazed at him, gloriously happy... and bewildered.

"What...? Oh!"

She flung herself into his arms. He met her halfway. They kissed awkwardly at first, and then with desperation, and then with satisfaction, until he broke away and guided her to the sofa.

Gently nibbling at her ear he murmured, "Do I gather I'm accepted back as your husband, or are you just going to have an affair with me?"

She chuckled, feeling warm and soft and delirious. "Which would I prefer?"

"Both. We are going to have the most glorious affair a married couple has ever known."

Eleanor sighed with contentment. "I wonder why you love me. I'm so ordinary."

"Begging for compliments, my love? You're intelligent, wise, brave, generous, and have, thank heavens, a sense of humor. You're the most beautiful woman in the world to me, and you are totally, utterly fascinating." He deftly unbuttoned the high collar of her dress and planted warm, soft kisses at her throat.

"Words cannot express it," he said softly, looking into her eyes. "I need you in order to be whole. Now," he teased, kissing her nose, "you must tell me why you love me. If you do. You've never said it."

Eleanor looked at him and saw, with amazement, the uncertainty there. He was stripped of artifice. She raised a hand to caress his face. "I have loved you for so long! But you are so wonderful that any woman would love you, and," she added with a naughty look, "I gather many of them have."

A fire had started in his eyes, a fire of joy and, she thought, of passion. She did not see a trace of repentance as he smiled at her words and she didn't care.

"Are you going to be a jealous and possessive wife?" he asked with a grin.

"Absolutely."

"Then I will be a jealous and possessive husband." He tipped her chin toward him and put on a severe expression. "You will have to disband that coterie of young gallants who've been squiring you around all year."

"If I must," she sighed. "Did you know Lucien came here?"

"I hoped he had. He needed a friend."

"He needs a wife."

"He needs a friend and a wife, as I have found..." They surrendered themselves again to the joy of touching and the bliss of kissing.

Eleanor's gown was considerably more disarranged when she lazily said, "Your brother came here too."

"No, did he?" he commented, more interested in the lace that still concealed her breasts. "Where did you bury the body?"

"I was very nice to him," said Eleanor, staying his busy fingers. She'd be indecent soon. "I find I cannot hang onto my grievance forever, and as he didn't criticize you we maintained civility."

Nicholas gave up the attempt to free the lace from her hold and slid his hand beneath gown and corset.

"Actually," said Eleanor, rather breathlessly, "I think if I hold anything against him, it's the discussion I overheard between the two of you about my child."

His hand stilled and simply rested there on her full breast. He puzzled over her words for a moment.

"That argument we had? I remember you became rather cool afterward. I thought it was because Amy had left and you no longer felt comfortable alone with me. What did we say to upset you? I'm sorry. I was only trying to upset Kit. He can irritate me sometimes."

"It was horrid. I would have liked to spit fire at both of you! Talking about me like a brood mare to be passed around at your will. He indicated you had to be forced to marry me, then you said," she remembered, firmly removing his hand and sitting straighter, "that if you tired of me, he could have me!"

"I did not."

"You did. It's etched in my mind."

"Good God!" To her astonishment, he burst out laughing.

Eleanor jumped off his lap. "I did not find it funny."

"Of course not." He sank his head in his hands. "It's a case of laughing rather than crying." He controlled himself and stood. "I'm more and more astonished you're willing to have anything to do with me at all. As matter of interest," he asked, drawing her back into his arms, "what would you have done if I'd gift-wrapped you and sent you off to Kit?"

She looked up at him. "If I'd escaped hanging for your murder, I would have managed by myself, I assure you."

"I have no doubt. Tell me how."

"I'm not used to a life of luxury. I can care for myself."

"With a child, without money?"

She smiled. "I have money. I took a leaf out of your book. I never spent much of your generous allowance. After all, you did say to send the bills to you, so I did, for everything I could. What do you think we have all been living on since you disappeared?"

He whooped and swept her up, whirling her around and around. "Eleanor, you're a delight. I adore you madly!"

She fell gasping on his chest. "And I adore you." She turned serious then and held his eyes. "Please, please don't let me down, Nicholas. I doubt if I could survive."

He buried his face in her loosened hair. "You terrify me, Eleanor. I've never had such responsibilities before. I can only vow that I will devote myself to your happiness. Which reminds me," he said, looking seriously at her. "Do you want me to hunt down Therese and punish her? I have a shrewd idea where she has gone."

"Lord, no! I hope you never set eyes on her again."

He smiled at that. "I can assure you she leaves me very cold."

"Good. What of my brother? Do you know where he is?"

"He went to Italy. I only hope someone sticks a stiletto into him before he exhausts the money from the pearls."

Eleanor winced. "I'm very sorry about them."

He shook his head. "They're of no importance." He threaded his hands through her hair, completing the dissolution of the elaborate coif. Pins scattered on the floor and were ignored. "If Arabel is fortunate, she will have your hair."

"She has your eyes, I think."

"Or Kit's," he said carefully.

"I choose to forget he might have had anything to do with her."

"If you wish. It's a question of honesty and expediency, I suppose."

"You are the person who said one should live a lie."

"Ah, but you've reformed me since then."

Eleanor could not think of a witty reply. Through all this casual conversation his fingers had been stirring her senses. His eyes held hers, speaking of love and warmth, need and passion. There was a humming in her blood, a tingling in her nerve endings, that made her mind swim.

She wished he would take her to bed and yet was too shy to ask. Failing that, she didn't know what to do, and so she opened a subject at random.

"Why did your brother not marry me?"

He veiled his eyes. "One taste of marriage was enough for him. He has never been very interested in women." His hand had slipped once more to touch her breast. The dizziness increased...

"How did he come to rape me? It makes no sense. He would never do such a thing for a piece of jade."

His hand stilled. He met her eyes rather helplessly. "It's better to forget about it, Eleanor. It no longer affects us."

She wanted him to continue with his magic. "I only thought it would help me to establish a good relationship with him if I understood things better."

"I doubt that," he said dryly.

Some of Eleanor's wits were returning. She eyed him suspiciously. "This sounds remarkably like that conversation about erotica, which nobody ever explained to me."

His eyes lit. "Now that is a much more interesting subject."

"Then tell me all about it."

"What I had in mind," he said softly, as he led her all disheveled from the room, "was more in the line of a demonstration..."

The End

Want more from Jo Beverley?

Page forward for a Special Author's Note

followed by an excerpt from

AN UNWILLING BRIDE

The Company of Rogues Series

Book Two

Dear Reader,

An Arranged Marriage
is the first book I wrote. It was 1976 and we'd moved from Nottingham, England to Halifax, Canada. My professional qualifications in career guidance for school leavers didn't translate, so I was stuck at home, and in a rented apartment, even. I had very little to do. My husband suggested that this was a great opportunity to write that book I'd always been talking about.