Dark Angel / Lord Carew's Bride (51 page)

“Yes,” he said softly. “I knew this was where it belonged, Samantha. I could only wish that circumstances had been different, that you had been someone else’s bride today. But I wish you every happiness, my dear.” He made her an elegant bow, his eyes holding hers.

“Thank you, Lionel,” she said, realizing only when it was too late that she had used his given name, something she had not done in six years. “I must go and find my husband.”

“Your husband,” he echoed. The sadness was back in his eyes. She turned and hurried in the direction of the house, though she was stopped and kissed by wedding guests no fewer than three times before she stepped indoors.

H
E HAD SOMEHOW GOT
himself cornered by five elderly ladies, all of whom seemed pleased to reminisce about his father or his grandfather—“that handsome devil”—and all of whom agreed that it had been extremely naughty of him to hide himself away from the public gaze for most of his life.

“We will just have to hope that dear Lady Carew will effect a change in you,” one lady said, startling him with the use of Samantha’s new name.

“And really, you know,” another said with unashamed lack of tact, “you need not hide away on account of a limp and a withered hand, Carew. Many of our war heroes have fared far worse. Young Waters, my sister’s grandson, came home without one leg and with the other sawn off to the knee.”

It was a great relief to see Samantha in the drawing room doorway, looking about her until she spotted him. Everyone she passed on the way wanted to talk to her and kiss her, but in five minutes’ time she was at his side and smiling and talking easily with the dowagers, two of whom were not above giving her rather earthy advice about the coming night and then cackling at their own wit and her blushes—as well as his own.

Samantha had the social skills to extricate them easily from the situation after a mere few minutes. He headed into the hall with her, where some of their guests were finally taking their leave. They had no time for private words for some time to come.

He longed for privacy. He was the one who had wanted a large wedding, and indeed he was not sorry. This would be a day to remember for the rest of their lives. But he longed to be alone with her. Even though there was a large part of the day left and he would not be tasteless enough to try taking her to bed before it was time, nevertheless he longed for just her company, just the two of them talking together or perhaps even silently sitting together.

He felt a sudden nostalgia for those afternoons at
Highmoor. Soon. Within a week they would be back there and would proceed to live happily ever after.

He took her out to the garden eventually, past the thinning crowds of their guests. He breathed in fresh air, tucked her arm through his, and walked with her toward a small rose arbor, which he hoped would give them a few moments of privacy. Fortunately there was no one there. He seated her on a wrought-iron seat and sat at her left.

“Someone should have told me,” he said, “that the person one sees the very least on one’s wedding day is one’s bride.”

“But this has all been so very pleasant, Hartley,” she said, turning to smile at him.

That was when he saw it for the first time. His eyes fixed on it and he felt the blood drain from his head.

“Where did you get that?” he whispered.

“What?” She frowned. But her eyes followed the line of his and she flushed and covered it with her hand. “Lionel—L-Lord Rushford gave it to me as a wedding present,” she said. “He said it was a family heirloom. Of
your
family. He said—I did not know he was your cousin, Hartley. I did not know you were close. He implied that you would want me to have it. He made a joke about it being something blue. I had the other three things—my mother’s pearls, my new dress, Lord Francis Kneller’s borrowed handkerchief. I—Do you recognize it?”

It had been his mother’s. One of her precious possessions, given her by his father on their wedding day—as “something blue,” she had always said. She had worn it
almost constantly. She had told him when she was dying that he was to have it and give it to his own bride one day. For some reason that had stuck in his mind more than anything after she died, and he had hunted for the brooch, asked his father about it, asked his aunt, Lionel’s mother, about it, grieved over it almost as much, it had sometimes seemed, as he had grieved over his mother.

He had never found it.

Lionel had had it. Perhaps he had taken it, or perhaps it had been given him. But no one had ever told him, Hartley. He had been left to search, far beyond the bounds of reason, for years.

And now the brooch had been given to his bride after all—by Lionel.

“Yes, I recognize it,” he said. “It was my mother’s.”

“Oh.” She sounded enormously relieved. “Then it was a very kind gesture, was it not, Hartley, for him to give it to me? To give it back to you through me. It is a wedding gift for both of us. It is yours as much as it is mine.”

“It is yours, Samantha,” he said, “just as it was my mother’s. It looks good on you.”

She smiled at him and fingered the brooch again. But he felt a deep and impotent fury—partly against himself. Apart from her wedding ring, he had not yet bought her a gift, he realized. His mother’s lovely sapphire brooch, the “something blue” for the wedding day, had been a gift from Lionel.

What the devil had he meant by it?

Was it a peace offering?

The marquess did not for one moment believe it.

S
HE HAD OFTEN BEEN A GUEST IN OTHER PEOPLE’S homes. She was accustomed to sleeping in strange bedchambers. Indeed, it could be said that she had had no real home of her own for a number of years. It was hard now to grasp the reality of the fact that this room was her own. She belonged here at Carew House as she belonged at Highmoor Abbey by virtue of the fact that she was married to the owner of both.

She wrapped her arms about herself, though she was not cold, as she gazed about the large square room with its high coved ceiling, painted with an idyllic pastoral scene, its warm carpet underfoot, its elegant furniture, its large, silk-canopied bed.

It seemed it was to be a normal marriage—there was no reason at all why it would not be, of course. He had said he would join her here shortly. Her mind touched on what Aunt Aggy had told her yesterday and on what Jenny had said in her letter. But she did not expect either extreme from her wedding night. She did not expect to find it fearsome and distasteful. Neither did she expect to find it beautiful and wonderful. She expected—she hoped—to find it pleasant.

She had been pacing, she realized when there was a
tap on the door and she stopped. She did not call to him to come in. He opened the door and stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He was wearing a wine-colored brocaded dressing gown with a satin collar. He was smiling at her as he came across the room toward her, his hands reaching out for hers.

“I thought this moment would never come,” he said. “I have been shamelessly looking forward to it all day. All month.”

He was not wearing a glove. She found herself glancing down at his right hand as it clasped hers. It was paler than the left and thinner. His fingers were bent sharply at the joints. His wrist was bent.

“I wish I could be whole for you,” he said.

“Whole?” She looked into his eyes. “You mean because of your accident? Do you think that makes a difference to me? Because you limp? And because you have lost some of the use of your hand? You are whole in every way that could possibly be of importance to me. I regret these things only in that they cause you distress.”

She lifted his right hand to rub her cheek against his fingers. She turned her head to kiss them.

“Thank you,” he said. “I was a little afraid.”

She smiled at him—and blushed.

“You are nervous?” he asked.

“Not really,” she said. “Just a little—embarrassed, perhaps.” She laughed. “And I suppose nervous, too. But not afraid or reluctant.”

He took a step closer so that he was almost touching her and set the backs of the fingers of his left hand
against her cheek. “I have some experience,” he said. “Which I say not as a boast but as some reassurance. I know how to relax you and how to give you pleasure. And I believe I will be able to minimize the pain of this first encounter for you.”

He kissed her.

She was rather surprised, despite the fact that this was their wedding night and he had just come to her bedchamber, and despite the fact that he had kissed her at the Rochester ball—at her request. She had not expected him to kiss her tonight. Kissing was somehow suggestive of love and romance.

But she was glad. She set her arms about his neck and leaned into him. He was warm and comfortable and somehow familiar. He had said he knew how to relax her. He was doing it now. It would not have been relaxing to have been led immediately to the bed and to have been taken into the marriage act without further ado. She parted her lips as he had done and felt the increased warmth and intimacy of the meeting of inner flesh. She felt his tongue stroking the soft inside of her mouth.

She kept her eyes closed as he kissed them and her temples and her chin and her throat. His hair was soft and silky between her fingers. He intended for them to be lovers, she thought in some wonder, as well as friends and man and wife who had conjugal relations.

His mouth returned to hers. His hands were stroking up and down her back, relaxing her further. His left hand came forward to circle gently over the side of her breast. She turned slightly without conscious thought until her
breast was cupped in his hand and his thumb was rubbing very lightly over the nipple.

Oh, he felt very good. She had known that he would feel good. How wrong Aunt Aggy had been—had her own marriage been so dreadful? This was lovely. Though this, of course, was not the marriage act.

“We will be more comfortable lying down,” he said against her lips, as if he had read her thoughts.

She wondered if the time would come—she supposed it must—when all of this would be so routine that she would hardly think about it at all. But suddenly, as she lay down on the bed and watched him blow out the candles and waited for him to join her, she was glad this was the first time. Two of the most momentous experiences of her life—her wedding and her first sexual encounter—were happening today, and she wanted to remember them for the rest of her life as also two of the most pleasant experiences of her life.

He slid his right arm beneath her head and drew her against him before kissing her again. He was wearing only a nightshirt now, she could feel. He was very warm. She snuggled into his warmth. He felt solid and dependable. She was so glad it was he. She was so glad this was not an experience of wild passion and love. She would have been terrified. This she could enjoy. Thoroughly enjoy.

“Yes,” she whispered when he touched her breast again. “That feels good, Hartley.” His hand moved to the other breast.

She fell into a waking dream of contented pleasure.
She was almost unaware that after a short while he undid the buttons at the front of her nightgown and slipped his hand inside so that he could stroke her naked breasts. Certainly there was no embarrassment.

“Beautiful,” he murmured against her mouth. “Softer than silk.”

She was a little more aware when he lifted her nightgown to her hips. But she was curiously unembarrassed. Had the time come, then? She was ready for it. But he did not do what she expected. His fingertips stroked lightly up the inner thigh of one of her legs and the backs of his fingers stroked down the other thigh. It was exquisitely pleasurable. She parted her legs slightly.

And then his hand moved higher and his fingers touched secret places, parting folds, stroking lightly through them. She tensed only slightly before relaxing again. He was her husband. He had the right. And really it felt very good. She would never have expected it. And then she tensed again as she both felt and heard wetness.

“No, no,” he said against her ear. “You must not take fright. This is quite natural. This will help ease any discomfort. It is your body preparing itself for mine.”

Aunt Aggy had not mentioned this. She relaxed. Though it was not quite relaxation, either. She felt—desire? No, not quite that, perhaps. She had no wish to feel desire or anything suggestive of passion. Her body had prepared itself for his and was waiting for his. Yes, he had described it well. Her body was ready.

And so, when he lifted himself over her and onto her, she welcomed his weight and his legs widening her own.
Her breath quickened. She pressed her palms hard into the mattress on either side of her.

He was against her. And coming slowly and firmly into her.

It was—yes, it was by far the most wonderful experience of the day. Perhaps of her life. How foolish Aunt Aggy’s warnings seemed now. There was no pain, except for one brief moment when she thought there would not be enough room and then felt him breaking through and realized that it had just been the loss of her virginity. There was no other pain, even though there was an unexpected tightness and stretching. He was far bigger than her imagination had anticipated. When he was finally fully embedded in her, she felt very—married, although she knew that this was not all.

“Have I hurt you?” His warm breath tickled her ear.

“No.” She moved her arms to wrap them about his waist. “It feels good, Hartley.”

“Slide your feet up the bed,” he said. “You will be more comfortable. Wrap your legs about mine later if you wish.”

Later
. Just a few seconds there would be, Aunt Aggy had said, of movement that could be intensely unpleasant for the woman. It was best to hold one’s breath and count slowly to ten—beyond, if necessary. Jenny had disagreed.

She bent her legs and braced her feet against the mattress on either side of his legs.

He began to move. Very slowly out and in again until a rhythm had been established. She could hear wetness
but could understand now how it created ease of movement for him and pleasure instead of pain or discomfort for her.