Her fingers fumbled at his neckcloth until she discovered the way to remove it. She pushed his coat off his shoulders and down his arms until it fell to the floor. She undid the buttons of his waistcoat and sent it to follow his coat. She pulled his shirt free of his breeches, and he raised his arms so that she could lift it off over his head.

While he watched her through narrowed eyes, she set her palms flat against his chest and moved them up over the light dusting of hair to his shoulders, down his arms, back to his shoulders, and down to the waistband of his breeches. He was neither large nor brawny-he was slender and beautiful. But his chest and shoulders and upper arms were firmly muscled. She spread her hands over his chest again and set her face between them, kissing him.

He was warmer than either her hands or her lips. He smelled wonderfully of his usual cologne.

She felt the throbbing of sexual desire low in her womb and down between her thighs. She felt her breasts tauten, her nipples harden. She shivered.

He chuckled softly as he kissed the top of her head.

“I’ll do the rest,” he said. “Besides, you are freezing to death.”

He turned and drew back the bedcovers and watched as she lay down, his eyes moving over her.

Ah, how could she possibly feel embarrassed beneath such a hot gaze? But she had been too embarrassed to remove his breeches. How silly! She smiled at him, and he covered her to the chin with the heavy covers before pulling off his boots and his stockings and then his other lower garments. He did not turn away as he did so. He watched her watching him, saw her realize that he was ready for her.

“Is it warm under there?” he asked with a grin.

“It will be,” she said.

“It certainly will,” he agreed as she slid over on the bed and he lay down beside her. “And very soon too.”

She wondered suddenly what it would be like to be married to him, to share a bed thus every night, to share bodies with frequent regularity, to…

Ah, never mind. She had today.

He lifted himself onto one elbow and looked down at her, his face inches from her own, his eyes smiling into hers.

“I would like to be the Hercules of long endurance,” he said, “and keep us both panting in anticipation for the next hour or so. But I doubt it is possible. Will you mind?”

“No.” She smiled back. “I want to feel you inside me.” Her cheeks grew hot at the boldness of her words.

And yet it was a shock-a wonderful shock-when he rolled on top of her, slipped his hands beneath her as his legs spread hers wide, and came deep inside her with one smooth, firm thrust. Smooth, she realized, because she had been very ready for him too. And painless this time.

She drew a deep breath and released it slowly as she slid her feet up the bed so that she could tilt herself to allow him deeper access. Ah, yes, she was as ready for him as he was for her, but please, please, let it not all be over too soon.

She tightened inner muscles about him and found the resulting sensation wondrously pleasurable. He was long and hard.

He drew his hands free and lifted some of his weight onto his forearms and looked down into her face.

“There is nowhere in the world I would rather be,” he said before kissing her. “Let’s love each other.”

And that was what they did after he had turned his head away to rest on the pillow beside her and lowered some of his weight back onto her. He withdrew and entered again and withdrew and entered and set up a slow, firm rhythm of love. And this time, because she knew what happened and knew too that she could make love as well as submit to being made love to, she moved to the same rhythm, rotating her hips, pulsing with her inner muscles.

It lasted a long, wonderful time as their breath became labored and their bodies slick with sweat, as her passage became wetter and a rhythmic sucking sound accompanied their movements.

It might just be possible to swoon with pleasure, Susanna thought-until pleasure began to be overlaid with something else. At first it was a needling ache where he worked in her, and then something that bordered almost on pain as it spread downward to her legs, upward through her womb to her breasts and into her throat and behind her eyes.

And then it was pain-a strange, unbearable pain that did not quite hurt but…

But there were no words.

She heard herself moan.

The rhythm changed then. It became faster and deeper, and his hands were beneath her again, holding her steady so that there was no escape. Her own rhythm vanished as she strained toward him, every muscle taut.

And then something blossomed deep within and opened almost like the multiple petals of a rose, pushing back the tension in rippling waves as they bloomed until she surrendered to relaxation with a soft exclamation of surprise.

“Ah,” she said.

The aftermath of tension set her to trembling all over then as she sank into the blessed fulfillment of sexual desire. Not that she used quite those words in her mind. She had not known that there was such a thing.

He had stopped moving too, she realized. But he was still hard and firm and deep inside her, and his body was still tense. He had stopped so that she could savor her own pleasure.

She felt weak with a glorious exhaustion, but she wrapped her arms about him, twined her legs about his, and turned her head to kiss the side of his face.

He took his pleasure swiftly and lustily, and it surprised a languorous Susanna to discover that even in satiety more pleasure was possible. She felt the warm gush of his release and lifted one hand to rest over the damp hair at the back of his head.

“Susanna,” he murmured against her ear.

“Peter.”

They both slept, without uncoupling.


Somehow while he had slept, Peter discovered, he had moved to Susanna’s side. She was cradled in his arms, her head in the hollow between his neck and his shoulder. She was still sleeping.

It was a thought that had woken him-a memory actually.

A memory of being in William Osbourne’s office at Fincham with Theo when they were both boys, learning script writing. And of his mother hurrying into the room without knocking, looking startled, and then scolding him for not being in Theo’s room, where she had supposed he would be.

He had assumed at the time that she had been looking for him.

Now, for some odd reason when so many years had passed, he thought that if that had been the case, the look on her face would surely have been relief, or perhaps annoyance. Not surprise. And why had she not knocked? It was true that the office belonged to a mere secretary, but even so, he was a gentleman. And his office was in a private home that was not his mother’s.

And why the devil was he wondering about such unimportant matters now? Why had such a trivial memory woken him up? Just because Osbourne was fresh in his mind?

He yawned, burrowed his nose in Susanna’s hair, kissed her head lightly-and drew back his head rather sharply.

The devil!

It was surely not his mother…

It could not have been!

Good Lord, Osbourne, though a gentleman, had been only Markham’s secretary, and his mother was the highest of high sticklers. She would never have…

Yes, she could have.

Osbourne had been a handsome devil. Not that Peter had ever noticed that when he was a boy, but looking back he could see that, yes, the man had enjoyed more than his fair share of good looks.

His mother must have been lonely-he knew she had been lonely. She had told him so later-six years later. Five years ago.

So must Osbourne have been lonely.

Of course, anything that might have happened between them could have been initiated on Osbourne’s side. His mother might not have given him any encouragement at all. Perhaps the charges that had led him to kill himself had been true.

But his mother had been hurrying into that study, and no one had been coercing her. It even seemed to Peter now that there had been a look of eagerness on her face before surprise had replaced it, though there was no way of verifying that impression.

But dash it all-what a devil of a coil!

He just hoped his imagination had become overactive and was playing wild and nasty tricks on him.

But it was not with his imagination that he had seen his mother with Grantham-with Bertha’s father -five years ago. He had walked into her unlocked dressing room at Sidley after the slightest of knocks, on some unremembered mission, and…Well, and there they had been, the two of them. They had not even stopped first to lock the door.

Blood hammered through his temples. What if that had not been an isolated incident in his mother’s life-as she had sworn to him it was?

What if his mother had driven Osbourne to his death?

And here he was holding Osbourne’s daughter in his arms. He had just made love to her. He was determined to marry her if she would have him.

She was awake. She had opened her eyes and tipped back her head and was looking at him sleepily, her cheeks slightly flushed.

Lord, but he loved her. The realization-and the force of his feelings-shook him.

If she had known about this all along, even before reading her letter- if his thoughts had led him down the right path, that was-was it why…

Lord bless him, of course it was why. And what was it he had said to her-his very first words to her?

Miss Osbourne, an already glorious summer day suddenly seems even warmer and brighter.