Mary Balogh - The Proposal

And his arms came about her and he hugged her to him tightly enough to squeeze most of the breath from her body. Gwen laughed with what breath she had left.

He released his hold on her, looked into her eyes, and undid the clasp at the neck of her cloak.

“Time for action instead of just words,” he said.

“Yes,” she agreed as her cloak fell to the straw at her feet.

Only one thing had kept their lovemaking in the cove at Penderris from being perfect in Hugo’s memory. He had had his hands all over her on that occasion, and he had ridden her deep and long, but he had not had her naked. He had not known her flesh to flesh, as a man ought to know the woman he loved. Know in the biblical sense, that was.

Tonight they would both be naked, and they would know each other with no barrier, no artifice, no mask.

“No,” he murmured when she would have helped him undress her. No, he would not be deprived of this. And there was no real hurry. It must be at least one o’clock already, and the grooms would be here by six. But that still left plenty of time for a few good lovings and maybe a little sleep in between. He had never slept with a woman. He wanted to sleep with Gwendoline almost as much as he wanted to have sex with her. Well, maybe not quite as much.

He unclothed her slowly, her dress, her shift—she was wearing no stays—and on down her body until only her silk stockings remained. He stood back to look at her in the lamplight. She was beautifully, perfectly shaped. She had a woman’s body rather than a girl’s. A woman’s body to match his man’s body. He ran his hands down lightly over her breasts and in to her waist and over the flare of her hips. She shivered, though not with cold, he guessed.

“I am a little self-conscious,” she said. “I have never done this before. Without clothes, I mean.”

What? What the devil sort of man had Muir been?

“You are wearing clothes,” he said. “You still have your stockings on.”

She smiled.

“Come,” he said, taking her hand. “Lie down on the blanket. I’ll take off my own clothes and then cover you with my body and so restore your modesty.”

“Oh, Hugo,” she said, laughing softly.

She lay down, and he went down on his knees to draw off her stockings, one at a time. He kissed the insides of her thighs, her knees, her calves, her ankles, the arch of her feet as he went. And then, of course, he wanted to release himself and take her then and there. He was ready. She was ready. But he had promised himself that it would be flesh to flesh this time.

He knelt back on his heels and pulled off his coat.

“Do you want me to help?” she asked.

“Another time,” he said. “Not now.”

She watched him, just as she had watched at the beach when he peeled off his wet drawers.

“I am a great big brute, I am afraid,” he said when he was naked. “I wish I could be more elegant for you.”

She looked into his eyes as he knelt between her legs again and spread his knees beneath her thighs.

“There cannot be any other man as modest as you, Hugo,” she said. “I would not change a thing about your appearance. You are perfectly beautiful.”

He laughed softly as he leaned over her, his hands bracing himself on either side of her shoulders, and lowered himself so that he could feel her breasts lightly brushing his chest.

“Even when I scowl?” he said.

“Even then,” she said, lifting her hands to cup the sides of his neck. “Your scowl does not deceive me for a moment. Not for a single moment.”

He kissed her softly while his loins burned with an urgent heat.

“I wanted this to be perfect,” he said against her lips. “This first loving tonight. I wanted to play endlessly before taking you to the heights of ecstasy and leaping off into the void with you.”

She laughed again.

“I think we can dispense with the play,” she said, “and save it for another time.”

“Can we?” he asked. “Are you sure?”

She pressed her lips to his and lifted her bosom to press against his chest and twined her legs about his hips, and he forgot that the word play even existed. He found her and plunged into her. And if he had feared that she was not fully ready for him, he was soon disabused. She was hot and slick, and her inner muscles clenched about him and invited him deeper.

He withdrew and plunged again and established a rhythm that would bring them to climax within moments. The haste did not matter. This was not about stamina or prowess. And memory came flooding back, not a memory that had ever been put into words, but one he had felt at the center of his heart—that Gwendoline was the only woman in his life with whom having sex was subordinate to making love. She was the only woman with whom sex had ever been a shared thing and not just something for his own physical ease and pleasure.

He slowed his rhythm for a moment, raised his head, and gazed down into her eyes. She looked back, her own half closed. She looked almost in pain. Her teeth closed about her bottom lip.

“Gwendoline,” he said.

“Hugo.”

“My love.”

“Yes.”

He wondered briefly if either of them would remember the words. Saying nothing and saying everything.

He lowered his forehead to her shoulder and drove them both to the edge of the pinnacle and over it in a glorious descent to nothingness. To everything.

He heard her cry out.

He heard himself cry out.

He heard a puppy squeak and then suckle.

And he sighed aloud against her neck and allowed himself the brief luxury of relaxing all his weight down onto her hot, damp, exquisitely lovely body.

She sighed too, but not in protest. It was a sigh of perfect fulfillment, perfect contentment. He was sure of it.

He moved off her, reached out for the other blanket he had brought this morning—or yesterday morning, he supposed it was—and spread it over them. He lifted her head onto his arm and rested his cheek against the top of her head.

“When I have more energy,” he said, “I am going to offer to make an honest woman of you. And when you have more energy, you are going to say yes.”

“Am I?” she asked. “With a thank you very much, sir?”

“Yes will be sufficient,” he said and promptly dozed off.

Hugo,” she whispered.

He had been sleeping for a while, but he had been making stirring sounds in the last few minutes. She watched the faint light from the lamp flicker across his face.

“Mmm,” he said.

“Hugo,” she said, “I have remembered something.”

“Mmm,” he said again and then inhaled loudly. “Me too. I have just this moment remembered, and if you will give me a few moments, I will be ready to create more memories.”

“About … about the day Vernon died,” she said, and his eyes snapped open.

They stared at each other.

“I have always tried hard not to remember those few minutes,” she said. “But of course I have remembered. Nothing can ever erase the images.”

He spread his hand over the side of her face and kissed her.

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

“And something has always fluttered at me,” she said. “Something that did not somehow fit. I have never tried too hard to discover what it was because I did not want to remember at all. I still do not. I still wish I could forget altogether.”

“You have remembered what did not fit?” he said.

“It happened last evening,” she said, “when your neighbors were all trying to persuade you to waltz and everyone was laughing and you held up your hands so that you could give an answer.”

His thumb stroked her cheek.

“You held up your hands with your palms out,” she said. “It is what people do, is it not, when they want to say something or stop something.”

He did not say anything.

“When I—” she began and swallowed convulsively. “When I turned as Vernon fell from the gallery, Jason was turned to him already, and he was holding his hands up above his head to stop him. It was a futile gesture, of course, but an understandable one under the circumstances. Except that—”

She frowned, even now trying to bring the remembered image into focus. But she was right.

“His palms were turned inward?” he said. “Beckoning rather than stopping? Taunting? ”

“Perhaps I have misremembered,” she said. Though she knew she had not.

“No,” he said. “Memories like that are indelible even if the mind will not admit them for seven years or more.”

“He would not have been able to do that,” she said, “if I had not turned my back, if I had gone up to Vernon instead of to the library.”

“Gwendoline,” he said, “if nothing had happened, how long would you have remained in the library?”

She thought about it.

“Not long,” she said. “No longer than five minutes. Probably less. He needed me. He had just overheard something very upsetting. I would have understood that as soon as I stepped into the room. I would have drawn a few deep breaths, as I had done on other occasions, and gone to him.”

“He took the loss of your child badly?” he asked.

“He blamed himself,” she said.

“And he needed comforting,” he said. “Did he give you comfort?”

“He was ill,” she said.

“Yes,” he agreed, “he was. And if you had both lived for another fifty years, he would have continued ill and you would have continued to love him and to comfort him.”

“I promised for better or worse, in sickness or in health,” she said. “But I let him down in the end.”

“No,” he said. “You were not his jailer, Gwendoline. You could not be standing watch over him for twenty-four hours out of every day. And sick or not, he was not without his wits, was he? You had lost a child as much as he had. More. But he took the burden of guilt upon himself and in the process robbed you of the comfort you so desperately needed. Even in the depths of his despair, he ought to have known that he was placing an unbearable burden upon you and doing nothing to fulfill what he had promised you. Illness, unless it is total madness, is not an excuse for great selfishness. You needed love as much as he did. He fell. No one pushed him. He was beckoned and taunted. But he was the one who fell—deliberately, it would seem. I understand why you blame yourself. I better than anyone, perhaps, can understand that. But I absolutely absolve you of all blame. Let it go, my love. Grayson cannot really be accused of murder, can he, even though his intent was doubtless murderous. Leave him to his conscience, though I doubt he has one. Leave him to his nastiness. And let yourself be loved. Let me love you.”