Sherry Thomas - Ravishing the Heiress

I am your family. She stared at him, her vision blurred. “I haven’t even thanked you, have I, for giving me more time with Mother?”

“You don’t need to thank me for anything,” he said firmly. “It is my privilege to look after you.”

Her vision grew ever more watery. “Thank you.”

“Didn’t I already tell you not to thank me?”

She mustered a small smile. “I meant, for saying that.”

He returned her smile. “Go rest. I’ll take care of everything.”

He left the room to speak to Mrs. Graves’s butler. She stood against the door frame and watched him disappear down the stairs.

I’m glad it’s you.

1896

Fitz had not been in the mistress’s rooms since he walked through the town house upon inheriting it. A great many renovations had taken place since then, to turn the house from a near hovel to an airy, comfortable home. Their marriage, in fact, could be traced plank by plank, brick by brick.

Even now the enhancements continued: The draining of the lavender fields had been improved in the spring; a second beehive had been commissioned for the kitchen garden—it was to be a scale replica of the manor at Henley Park; and, the servants’ quarters, which had been overhauled once four years ago, were being worked on again.

Her room was light and pretty, with wallpaper the summery, crisp green of a sliced cucumber. Potted topiaries stood guard at either side of the fireplace. Above the fireplace hung a painted landscape that looked rather familiar—not the painting, but the landscape.

She stood in the center of the room, still in her full evening regalia, her fan held before her like a plumed breastplate. She glanced at him, but did not otherwise acknowledge his presence.

He did not want to make her more nervous than she must be. Instead of approaching her, he crossed the room to take a better look at the painting. “Is this Lake Como?”

“Yes.”

His gaze dipped to the mantel. Upon it were a row of framed photographs that had been taken in summers past, at their country house parties. Each photograph contained the two of them, though never alone; sometimes they were in a large group, sometimes with only her mother or his sisters.

At the edge of the mantel, another familiar object. “Is this the music box I gave you for your seventeenth birthday? Looks much better than I remember.”

He lifted the lid of the music box. It emitted the same thin, slightly discordant notes. Still worked. Who would have thought?

She watched him. But when he looked at her, she glanced away immediately.

“Where is your maid?”

“I told her not to wait up for me.”

She dropped her fan onto the seat of a nearby chair. The gesture was determinedly casual. Yet as she stood next to the padded armrest, her throat wobbled with a swallow. The sight of it—the implication of it—made his blood hot.

“It won’t be disagreeable,” he said. “It can be made quite enjoyable.”

“Oh, it had better be,” she said tartly. “I’ve heard plenty over the years on your amatory prowess. If I’m not on the roof crowing, I will consider myself disappointed.”

He smiled and put the music box back on the mantel. “Into the bedchamber with you then, lady.”

For a few seconds she stared at her dropped fan without moving. Then she went for the switch and turned off the electric sconce on the wall. The lamp in the bedroom had been left on, illuminating the path. She walked past him and disappeared inside.

So, we come to it at last.

A mundane marital task, was this not? An obligation he’d put off for too long. Why then, as he advanced toward the bedroom, did he feel as if he were being swept out to sea? That the tides and currents would be unlike anything he’d ever known in the calm estuary that had been his marriage?

She turned off the light the moment he’d closed the door behind him. He supposed he shouldn’t be too surprised—he was dealing with a virgin after all. But they knew each other so well it seemed she shouldn’t be shy at all.

“Wouldn’t you want me to see what I’m doing?”

“No.”

He smiled. “Not even when I have to wrestle with tricky bits of your gown?”

“There is nothing here you haven’t encountered enough times elsewhere.”

The darkness was impenetrable: Her windows had been shut and shuttered, the double curtains tightly drawn.

“This will be a first for me,” he murmured. “Fumbling about in the dark. I ought to have you sing a hymn so I can find you.”

She snorted. “A hymn?”

“The heavenly host rejoice tonight: At last I am doing something ordained by God and immortalized by Christ’s love for his Church—et cetera, et cetera.”

“What should I sing? ‘Hosanna in the highest’? Or maybe we ought to really make our rector proud and recite the Lord’s Prayer, too.”

He knew where she was now: by her vanity table. She jumped as his hand settled on her shoulder. Had she not heard his approach in the dark?

“All right, so you found me. Your turn to hide now and mine to seek,” she said, her voice just a bit squeaky.

“Some other day. We’ve business to attend to, Lady Fitzhugh.”

She wore long kidskin gloves that extended well past her elbows. They were fastened at the top with three ivory buttons each. He popped the buttons—one, two, three—pushed one glove down and pulled it off.

“I forgot to say so earlier, but you looked quite lovely tonight,” he said. He slid his palm along her now-exposed arm. So much of her was a mystery to him.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice barely audible.

He removed her other glove. “Did I ever tell you, when we first married, I never quite knew what you looked like? Your face changed every time I saw you. And when you came back from America, I had to look twice to make sure it was you.”

Ruffles on her gown brushed the back of his hand.

“So…if I’d been away for a little longer, I’d have been able to walk past you without you recognizing me?”

“I quite doubt it. Your eyes do not change. Your gait does not change. And your footsteps—I can always tell when you pass by my door.”

She let out a breath.

He touched her hair, the careful crown of it her maid had constructed earlier in the evening, pulled out two of the amethyst pins, and tossed them aside. They landed with small, muffled thuds against the carpet and the lace cloth spread upon her vanity table.

How long had he been curious about this day, this hour?

Since the Italian trip, certainly. Though if he had to be precise, he would guess it to have been that crucial meeting during which they wrested control of Cresswell & Graves from Mr. Graves’s subordinates.

He’d firmly buried that curiosity: A pact was a pact. They’d shaken hands on eight years and eight years he intended to keep his hands to himself.

But buried things had a funny way of sprouting roots and feelers just beneath the consciousness. So that when he did at last acknowledge it, he found himself facing not the same small seed of desire, but a jungle of lust.

And she, who felt as deeply and relentlessly as any other mortal, but kept such a serene facade, had she, too, hidden nuggets of yearning in the least frequented corners of her mind?

She kept a decided silence, but beneath his fingers there were tremors: She, with her ladylike, tightly laced ways, did not want to give in to something as common and vulgar as lust.

But he wanted her to. He wanted to break apart her facade piece by piece.

The very thought of it took his breath away. Eight years of platonic friendship, of keeping to affable yet firm limits of conduct, of not thinking about how it would be when they at last came together—

A subtle perfume rose from her skin, rich, golden, and mouthwatering. Lavender honey, that must be it: Their soap was made with not only distilled lavender essence, but also the lavender honey from their fields.

He inhaled her. It was only natural that next he bent his head and kissed her on her bare shoulder.

A white-hot heat pulsed from her shoulder to her fingertips. The intensity of it stunned Millie. Had he wrought permanent damage to her nerve endings? Would she wake up in the morning with no sensation at all in her extremities?

But no, he kissed her again, at the base of her neck, and liquid fire scorched her once more.

Faintly she became aware that he was still extracting her jeweled hairpins. They fell soundlessly upon the carpet. Equally faintly she saw the need to ask him not to do that. Or she’d have to remember to gather them up before Bridget came in the morning with her cocoa.

It would be too embarrassing for Bridget to know what had taken place during the night, especially as in six months’ time he would be doing exactly this with Mrs. Englewood, touching her arm, kissing her shoulder, taking down her dark, glossy hair.

Except he’d be at it with much greater fervor and impatience, wouldn’t he, driven by a desire that had smoldered for more than a decade? None of this courtly consideration, these deliberate little touches that annihilated her but affected him not at all.

She was thankful for the dark. He might yet feel the tremors beneath her skin, but at least he would not glimpse the parting of her lips, or the closing of her eyes—involuntary reactions that she could not quite control, which would completely give away her pretense of amiable indifference.

He kissed her on her ear, a kiss with the barest hint of moisture to it. She could not breath for the electricity of it, a violent spark of pleasure that shook and scarred. His fingers caressed her shoulders. His lips pressed into her exposed nape. Dark, hot sensations spiked into her.