Sherry Thomas - Ravishing the Heiress

She did not want to remember; she only wanted to forget.

She bit into his shoulder. She touched him most indecently. She writhed against him, pagan, shameless, driving him—and herself—into a renewed frenzy, a dizzying peak of obscene delights.

And then, at last, the next all-obliterating paroxysm.

Consciousness returned with a vengeance. Millie’s eyes flew open. The room was still somber, but it was definitely morning.

She’d best hurry. There were all her amethyst pins to be collected from the carpet, not to mention the buttons she’d ripped off his clothes. And of course the sheets must somehow be made pristine again—baby-making was a messy business.

“Good morning.”

Her head jerked toward the foot of the bed. Fitz, in his riding jacket and breeches, gloriously stylish in the dusky light.

“Morning.” She yanked the blanket higher over her person and thanked God that he could not see her flush. “What time is it?”

She’d given instructions to her maid to wake her at eight—an hour and half later than usual. Fitz typically left for his ride as she was drinking her cocoa in bed. But since they were up quite late, engaged in rather exhausting activities—her face heated again—perhaps it was half past seven rather than half past six.

“Half past nine.”

She bolted straight, barely remembering to hang on to her blanket. “What? But Bridget was supposed to wake me up at eight.”

“She came by at eight. But you were still fast asleep so I dismissed her.”

She blinked. “You still were here at eight?”

“Yes, sleeping.”

“Bridget saw the two of us together?”

He tapped his riding crop against the top of the footboard, his tone mock patient. “It’s quite forgivable these days, you know, to be found in bed with one’s spouse. I’m sure Bridget would find the strength to accept it.”

She only heated more, feeling flustered and gauche.

At least she didn’t need to hide the hairpins or the buttons from Bridget anymore, as the latter had already seen what all that pin-tossing and button-ripping had led to.

“Well,” she said—and didn’t know what else to say.

Tongue-tied, too.

Fitz tilted his head. “Are you quite all right?”

Would he be, if he knew he had only six months with Mrs. Englewood?

And what did she have to say for herself, going after him like a pack of wolves?

“I—” She looked down to see strands of her hair tumbling over her shoulders. Such a strange sight: She never had her hair loose except for drying it after a bath. “You were right all those years ago, when you suggested that I was curious about the act itself. I guess it was past time for me to have a go at it.”

“Sore?”

“Negligibly so. You?”

She realized the stupidity of the last word the moment it was uttered, but it was too late.

He tried not to smile and didn’t quite succeed. “Not at all. I’m perfectly well.”

The playful curve of his lips, the teasing light in his eyes—she’d always wanted him to look at her like that. She didn’t know whether the pain in her chest was the anticipation of losing him or the expansion of new hope cracking through the barricades.

She cleared her throat. “I was just asking since you didn’t seem to have left for your ride yet.”

“I was waiting for you to wake up. Didn’t seem right to go anywhere before I’d spoken to you.”

He rounded the corner post of the bed and came toward her. She hiked the blanket up to her nose. He pushed it down, but only so that he could take her chin between his fingers and turn her face.

“Best choose something with a high collar today,” he said.

She did not understand him until she was alone again, sitting before her vanity. She examined her reflection in the mirror for any outward differences, something that might cause pedestrians to stop on the sidewalk and whisper to each other, Look, there goes a woman freshly plucked.

And that was when she saw the lover’s mark on her neck.

Look, there goes a woman laid something proper.

Many newlyweds’ first dinners were disasters. But Venetia was an old hand at managing a household and the Duke and Duchess of Lexington’s first dinner, a small, intimate affair for family and select friends, proceeded without a single snag.

Venetia and her husband had invited Helena to stay with them, starting this very night. Helena had accepted, her mind already busy, trying to think of a way to take advantage of the change.

“You are scheming something,” said Hastings.

The man was beginning to read her all too easily, as if she were a children’s alphabet primer. She looked longingly toward the other occupants of the drawing room, hoping someone would saunter by. But as was usually the case, once Hastings had cornered her, no one else came.

“I don’t advise you on how to live your life, Hastings. You should return the same courtesy.”

“I would. Except if I were to set off a scandal, you wouldn’t need to marry me. If you did, however, I wouldn’t get off the hook so easily. I’m practically part of the family and people will look at me and wonder why I didn’t step in and save you.” He paused dramatically. “But I’d rather not marry you.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t?”

“I’m an old-fashioned man, Miss Fitzhugh. The little woman ought to be, well, little, to start. She ought to agree with everything I say. And she ought to look at me with stars in her eyes.”

“And yet your fictional bride would have had you for breakfast.”

His gaze raked her. “That’s why I keep her hands bound,” he said slowly. “And her person fictional.”

Her breaths came in shallowly. “Then don’t marry me. I won’t cry my little heart out.”

“But I will, when it comes to that. I won’t have any choice. So don’t push matters to their logical end, I beg you, Miss Fitzhugh. You are the only one who can stop our marriage from taking place.”

And with that, he rose to accost the dowager duchess at the other end of the room.

Fitz had never thought his wife beautiful—pretty, yes; lovely, at times; but not beautiful. How blind he’d been, like a novice gardener who only understood the gaudy spectacle of roses and dahlias.

The light lingering on her smooth, fine-grained skin. The way she held her head, her throat, slender and elegant. The courtesy and interest in her eyes, as she listened to her neighbor.

He couldn’t look away from her.

She was not a showy blossom, good for a few days—or at most a few weeks. She was more like the hazel tree beloved by Alice: In summer one found shelter and peace under the green shade; in winter the bare limbs were still shapely and durable. A woman for all seasons.

Their eyes met. She colored and looked away, the very model of decorum. When she’d been anything but in the dark, when she’d been all indecent touches, hot kisses, and rapturous whimpers.

Her ear, exposed by her upswept hair, was delicate and comely. Her profile was as exquisite as any he’d seen on an ivory cameo. And her eyelashes, had they always been so long, curved as dramatically as scimitars?

At the end of the evening, with Helena staying behind at the Lexington town house, Fitz and Millie traveled home alone.

They were silent inside the carriage. He didn’t know what to make of his reticence to speak to her. He certainly didn’t feel physically bashful—he’d disrobe this minute if his nudity in a moving carriage with all its windows open wouldn’t offend her. But it was shyness all the same, a shyness of the mind, perhaps. He was not yet accustomed to the reality of their marriage, not yet accustomed to going home with a woman he held in such high esteem—and making love to her, too.

Her maid took an eternity to get her ready for bed—the queen did not need this much time before her coronation. The moment she left, Fitz opened the connecting door.

Millie sat before her vanity, in her dressing gown, turning her hairbrush in her hand. At his entry, she glanced up at the mirror and watched as he approached her.

Could she see his hunger in his eyes? The entire day he’d thought of nothing but the untrammeled creature she became when all her clothes had been stripped away.

He lifted the end of her pleat and loosened the ribbon that kept the strands tied together. How small such things usually were: the restraints and fastenings that held together order and modesty. Without the ribbon, he easily unraveled the braid.

Unbound, her hair was still neat—it dropped in a straight-edged cascade down her back—but it was far from the simple light brown he’d always assumed it to be, instead full of nuances and variations, with threads of gold, bronze, and even coppery red.

“Will you turn off the light?” she murmured.

“Eventually.”

Now he wanted to see her, her hair, her skin, her intricate, interesting face.

He parted her hair at the nape, traced her vertebrae one by one, and watched her reflection in the mirror. Five years ago, perhaps even three, he’d have thought she reacted not at all. But now he’d become much more fluent in the language that was her expressions. He perceived the minute fluttering of her eyelids. He also caught the fact that she was biting the inside of her lip, because her lower lip pulled ever so slightly toward the seam of her mouth.

He undid the sash of her dressing robe. Her fingers tightened around the handle of her hairbrush. He lifted her out of the chair and flicked the dressing robe from her shoulders.