Lisbon: Richard and Rose, Book 8 (8 page)

He stared down at my hand, then, very slowly, lifted his left hand and put it over mine. His warmth suffused me, flowed through me, bringing my senses to life. It had always been that way between us. He raised his gaze from our hands to my face. The blaze of arousal seared me, but I was returning it.

“This is why,” he said, his voice husky with desire. I had missed that sound, imagined it in the long, lonely nights. “I can’t touch you without wanting you. Keeping away from you makes it worse, but I don’t know what to do about that. It’s what we have now and what we have to cope with. You look so damned fragile, I hardly dare touch you.”

“You’ve known thin women before. It doesn’t make them fragile. And now I’m moving around and taking exercise again, my appetite is back and I’m regaining my curves. I thought perhaps this shape didn’t appeal to you, that you couldn’t like it.” Just one of the concerns that had kept me awake at night.

He was quick to reassure me. “No. I would want you however you look. You could lose arms and legs—God forbid—and I’d still want you. But the fragility unmans me.”

“Could you try?”

He glanced down, but I couldn’t see his state of tumescence because his banyan covered his groin. “I could. I want to throw you to the floor and take you like an animal would.”

My mouth dropped open. “You never told me that.”

His laughter echoed around the room. “You expect me to confess something of that nature? It’s shaming, especially when you were so ill. But that isn’t the reason I won’t take you now. It’s fear, pure and simple. I can’t lose you.”

“I could—”

He interrupted me with an impatient, “Yes, I know. Drown, fall from a high place. It doesn’t seem to make any difference to the way I feel.”

“It’s not just that. It’s holding you, talking to you, being with you.” I stopped there, tears clogging my throat. “Don’t shut me out, Richard, please. Leave a way through.”

He released my hand but only to place his hands on either side of my waist and draw me closer. I went so willingly and nestled against his chest with a sigh of relief. Now I could feel his arousal, hard and strong, burning through to me as if it rested against my bare flesh. Remembered tingles returned, coursing my body with a delicious invitation. I knew better than to continue, as once I would have done without a thought. I had to take care, or he’d move away.

“I promise to try,” he murmured.

I tipped up my chin and met his blue gaze, so close, so beloved. I sank into him, willingly gave everything I was to him. “Thank you.”

He took a breath, his nostrils flaring. “God, I’ve missed this. Your scent, so unique. I could remember it, but I could never replicate it. But I can’t, sweetheart. Let me take it slowly. You know how difficult I find intimacy. You and the children have helped, but I fear I will never lose that reserve.”

“You shouldn’t. You wouldn’t be you without it. And you helped me so much, when I needed to develop a shell. But not with me, Richard.”

He gave me a tight smile. “Not you. But I can’t give you everything you want.”

Feeling his erection pressed hard against my stomach, I thought he probably could. I hungered for him. He could nourish me as no food ever did, give me what my soul needed. Always. “You try too hard.”

“Maybe I do.” He sighed, his breath sweeping over my cheek, raising the small hairs on my neck. I wanted him so badly. “But here’s the truth, the real reason. Are you listening, my love?”

To hear the words “sweetheart” and “my love” came as a balm to me. He hadn’t used them so much recently. “I’m listening, Richard.”

He closed his eyes then opened them again, fixing his gaze on mine. They blazed with barely restrained passion, revealing his desires to me for the first time in months, and I knew hope.

“I thought to kill my love for you, or at the least mute it. Just to preserve you, to preserve
us
. I thought I could do it. But I can’t. God help me, I can’t. I love you, adore you as helplessly as I ever did.”

His hands shifted, slid over the slippery silk of my robe, his fingers caressing my back, tracing the line of my spine. “I can’t see you turn away from me, treat me as many wives treat their husbands. As friends, partners. We have that as well, but so much more. But I can’t make love to you. Not yet. Please believe me. And because of that I can’t share your bed. I can’t sleep with you and not want you, not love you. I’ll try, but don’t press me too hard. We’ll find a way, my love. We have to. Before the birth of the triplets, I had one consolation. My mother doesn’t consider females important, so I could have left Helen in the care of Gervase as her guardian, where she would receive a loving and careful upbringing.”

My stomach tensed. I had a feeling I knew what he was about to say, but I didn’t want to anticipate his words. He had to explain in his way, and I had to be strong and listen to him.

He gave a wry smile. “You know what I mean already, don’t you? This isn’t sentiment speaking, it isn’t hyperbole, it’s the raw truth. If you died, I would have ensured I died too. There would be no reason to carry on. I could arrange it so it appeared to be an accident, so no opprobrium would fall on you or the family.”

I whimpered, an involuntary sound, and he stopped, touching his lips to my brow in a featherlight kiss. “I have seen much, done much. But without you, it would have no point. I’d join you. You made me promise to live on, once, and I planned to beg you to withdraw it. Then you shocked me by giving me three sons. Three, and they all lived.”

I knew for sure what he’d say, but I wouldn’t make it easy for him. I lifted my head again and met his gaze. The little muscles around his jaw tensed, but he didn’t look away. “I love the babies, as I love Helen. I can’t leave them alone or in the care of Gervase because my mother would never allow it. She’d expose Gervase without a qualm, destroy his happiness in order to get her hands on the boys. Then she’d give them the same childhood that Gervase and I suffered. I can’t have that, my love. I can’t bear the thought of my children having their humanity beaten out of them, being told that family means all, individuals nothing. In time, she’d remove Dickon from the others in order to give him the special treatment that an heir deserves. Not a child, but an heir. I fear William might not survive the kind of treatment my mother is capable of meting out.”

“You told me. I agree. We can’t allow her to get jurisdiction over the boys.” The words choked me, but he was right. Most aristocratic families brought up their male children with the training they would need to become leaders of men, heads of huge family concerns, but few did it with the cold-blooded ambition of Richard’s mother. She tried to rip the humanity out of both her children, but most particularly Richard. He had looked for love elsewhere, with disastrous consequences. At fourteen, he’d become a father. Not that he knew it at the time because his mother spirited the woman away before he knew she was pregnant.

After that, when Gervase ran away with a male neighbour and revealed his true inclinations, once the affair ended, they refused to allow him back. He left, and the brothers, previously so close, spent over ten years apart.
Ten years
.

Richard was right. If we gave the children into Gervase’s care, she would move heaven and earth to have them returned to her. Or she’d take Dickon, the eldest. I could allow my sister-in-law and brother to care for them, but the Southwoods would get them back. The law was too strongly on their side. There was no easy answer, no way I could reconcile Richard to the possibility of taking the children away from his mother’s influence, short of her death.

Richard would never forgive his mother for dealing with matters after he got the maid pregnant, and for turning her back on Gervase. Lady Southwood removed the maid before Richard discovered the pregnancy. Later, she rejected Gervase so brutally it could have destroyed him.

Neither would I forgive her. Despite Gervase returning home wealthy and in one piece. During his absence, Richard had turned into a cold, calculating man, capable of infinite cruelty. He’d wreaked his revenge on society, participating in
affaires
that were less love, more physical, destroying reputations, before moving on to the next victim. I couldn’t call them
affaires du coeur
but
affaires du corps.
Only Carier had forced Richard to retain his humanity.

He could return to that if I left him. If I died. I had always known that if I died first, I would be the fortunate one, but I didn’t have the pressures he’d suffered. I’d had a loving childhood, and I could pass that legacy on to my children, lose myself in them. I had other people I loved, my family, my best friend back in Devonshire, but Richard had nobody, except perhaps Gervase, and their years apart had damaged their relationship.

Now that Gervase had found himself a partner to love, even more distance existed between the brothers. So for Richard, I was the person he lavished his love upon. I had hoped that children would expand that circle, and it had, but I should have known better than to imagine he’d remove any attention from me. Yes, he loved them, but not as he loved me. He loved nobody as he loved me, wouldn’t love anybody that way ever again.

To know that brought me great joy, but also terror. Richard would one day become the Earl of Southwood, a man who controlled many lives and many fortunes. As he was now, he’d prove a wonderful earl, but as the Richard I’d first met, he would have dispatched his duties with diligence but no heart.

“So one of us has to live,” he murmured against my temple.

“
Both
of us will live.” I wouldn’t think of any other outcome. But neither would I live a half-life. “But I won’t live in the expectation of death, either. It will come, my love, whatever we do.”

He swallowed. “Not too soon.”

“No. I nearly died, but I recovered. A miracle, some might say. Do I repay that by withdrawing from the part of life that gives me the most joy? I think not. I won’t, Richard. I won’t give up, either. I refuse to hold you at a distance. You hear me?”

He stopped me the only way possible. He kissed me.

I leaned forwards, deliberately pressing my body against his, making him support me. One arm snaked around me, cinching me into him, as his mouth opened, coaxing my response. He didn’t have to coax very much.

I separated my lips under his, and his tongue plunged in, taking possession. I flung my arm around his neck, holding him as close as he held me, locking him tight. His scent wove over me, inviting me in, an aroma of the citrus cologne he wore, mixed just for him, and his own male essence. I wasn’t imagining the musky aroma of his arousal, although I had imagined it so much recently I had become adept at invoking it, but this time it was real. I breathed deeply, giving everything I was to him. Liberated, I gloried in him and forgot any warnings about pushing him too hard. I wanted him. Now.

I moaned into his mouth, responding to his voracious hunger with my own. His muscles flexed against my hands, and he tore his lips from mine. His arms tensed, holding me. Staring into my face, he released me, put his hands on my waist and paused. “Have mercy, my love.” His voice sounded harsh but edged with concern, not anger.

“I—I don’t understand.” At that moment, I didn’t. Dazed with passion, I knew only one thing. How much I wanted him.

“Give me time. Space. Please. I can’t sleep with you tonight, but I will, I swear it.”

“When?” I made no effort to hide my anguish. A tear rolled down my cheek, and he reached out to smooth it away. He held it on his thumb, looked at it as if it were the finest diamond. It sparkled for an instant before he brought his thumb to his mouth and licked it off. He closed his eyes as if savouring the most delicious nectar.

“Soon.” He looked at me, regret and pain to match mine clear to see. “I swear it. But please, if we can, I want to start slowly. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want you to hurt me. We plunged into an affair, dived into marriage, but this time I want what we do to be considered and timely. Please.”

I opened my mouth to claim that it was an excuse, but closed it again. I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t break what we’d built tonight. But oh, it hurt to watch him turn and leave the room. The door closed behind him with a decisive click. He had gone. I had it all to do again.

But I would, I decided. By all I held holy, I would do it.

Chapter Six

I thoroughly enjoyed my shopping expedition with Lizzie the next day. Lisbon was a beautiful city, with varied thoroughfares and lovely public buildings. Lizzie told me it was the Moorish heritage that made the difference in architecture, which gave the city an appearance unlike any other in Europe. It excited me. The colours were perhaps more vivid, the buildings. I savoured the sights and sounds, even the scents, and was determined to pin down exactly what I was experiencing. I could discuss it with Richard.

At least we had that back.

I’d seen him at breakfast, where we conversed as easily as we used to on the current topics of the day and how the advent of new alliances would affect Portugal and maybe the coming war. Richard was convinced war was coming, and unlike our close neighbour at home, the politician William Pitt, he deplored the necessity. “Expensive and wasteful,” Richard called it. Not to mention the heartbreak suffered by the widows and children left without a breadwinner.

We went to visit our children. I left the nursery in excellent spirits, which only continued as Lizzie and I forgot all our troubles, in the manner of women from time immemorial, and enjoyed the sights of the city and the excellent shops. I returned with a pretty new fan, a few trinkets and the sense that my strength was returning. I decided to forego my afternoon nap in favour of a quiet hour spent studying the Portuguese language and learning a few key phrases, including my new address.