The Marrying Season (11 page)

Genevieve was glad to leave her plate and huddle on a footstool
in front of the fire, but its heat could not take away the chill inside her. Tonight was her wedding night. Her hands tightened on her knees as she thought about her grandmother’s words, and it occurred to her that she had been foolish to agree to this marriage without thinking it through.

Myles returned, candle in hand, and led her up the stairs and down a narrow, dark hall, into a room that was equally dark and cramped. Genevieve’s heart dropped even lower as she glanced about, taking in the single rickety chair and the small washstand that were the only other objects in the room besides the bed. Someone, the innkeeper she presumed, had brought up their bags and lit an oil lamp, but the small glow did little to alleviate the gloom of the chamber.

“I am sorry,” Myles told her, surveying the unprepossessing place. “I fear this is all they had. The rain has driven several people to stop here.”

“I am sure it will be fine.” Genevieve managed to keep her voice even. “It looks, um, clean.” Her eyes skittered over the bed. It was hard to look anyplace else in so small a room.

“I’ll step out for a moment. Give you a chance to, um . . .” Myles, too, glanced around vaguely, and Genevieve realized that he must feel awkward as well.

Somehow this thought bolstered her courage, and she was able to smile at him almost normally. “Thank you.”

As soon as he left, she dug out a nightgown from her bag and hurriedly undressed. Her fingers, clumsy with cold, fumbled at the buttons of her dress, and she
dreaded the thought of being caught half-dressed when Myles returned. Once she was in her nightgown, her clothes neatly folded and stuck back into her traveling bag, she hesitated, unsure what to do. It was awkward to just stand about, and it made her blush to think of Myles seeing her in her nightgown. It was no more revealing than a number of evening dresses she had seen, but that she wore nothing beneath it—and that Myles would know that—made it seem indecent.

Finally, she crawled into bed. It might be forward of her, she supposed, but she was chilled and quite worn-out from a combination of nerves and misery. She curled up on her side, pulling the covers up over her shoulders, and waited for Myles to come. She thought of closing her eyes and pretending to be asleep, but that was a coward’s way out.

Her heart beat faster at the thought of Myles’s disrobing and getting into bed with her. What would he expect her to do? To say? She could not help but think she would displease him. She had never known how to attract men. Some had told her she was beautiful, but that, she suspected, had more to do with who she was and how large a dowry she possessed than with herself. Indeed, she was apt to turn men away with her sharp tongue.

Certainly Myles was not attracted to her. In all the years she had known him, he had never made any attempt to court her. Oh, he had flirted with her, but Myles would have flirted with a statue if that was all that was around. Genevieve had seen his mistress, a small, curvaceous brunette, completely unlike herself.

Myles would come to regret marrying her. Perhaps he already did. The tears she had been struggling to suppress throughout this whole miserable day suddenly came flooding forth, too many, too strong, to deny. And, of course, that was the moment Myles chose to come back into the room.

Genevieve hastily turned away, struggling to gulp back her sobs. She listened to the sounds of Myles moving about the minuscule room, pulling off his boots and removing his jacket. Genevieve buried her face in the pillow. Perversely, the harder she tried to conceal her sobs, the more they pushed out of her.

“Genevieve?” Myles stopped in the midst of taking off his waistcoat and turned toward the bed. “Are you—” He lifted the candle. “Genny! Are you crying?”

He set down the candle and crossed the room. Genevieve moaned and rolled away from him. “No! Don’t look at me.”

“Dear girl.” The sympathy in his voice was almost too much for her to bear. “I can hardly spend our married life not looking at you.” Myles sat on the edge of the bed and took her by the shoulders, turning her toward him. “Don’t cry. ’Tis not so bad as it seems.”

She tried to pull away, but he would not let her, wrapping his arms around her. His warmth and strength surrounded her, and she could not hold back any longer. Genevieve flung her arms around him, burying her face in his chest. “Oh, Myles! I am so ashamed!”

Genevieve broke into sobs, clinging to him, and Myles
lay down on the bed beside her, cradling her against him. “Ah, Genny, I know I am not the sort of man you envisioned marrying. But I’m not a bad sort, really. We’ll rub along together well enough. You’ll see.”

His words reminded Genevieve of her grandmother’s vision of their marriage. Somehow this image, which she had once viewed with equanimity with Lord Dursbury, now, with Myles, seemed bleak and barren. Her tears came even harder. Myles kissed the top of her head, his hand stroking soothingly up and down her back. He held her while she cried out all her misery. Then, finally, she fell asleep, cradled in his arms.

M
yles opened his eyes. His
cheek rested against Genevieve’s head, her fine, blond hair tickling his nose. His arm underneath her body had gone numb. But that inconvenience was the least of what filled his consciousness. What he was acutely aware of was her lithe, long body inside the circle of his arms, snuggled up tight against him, her round, firm bottom fitting perfectly into the cup of his pelvis. Their legs were tangled together, one of his knees between hers. One of his hands might be asleep, but the other one was quite awake as it rested upon the sweet curve of her hip.

Genevieve sighed in her sleep and wriggled back into him, and his body leaped in response. She was a warm, soft, desirable armful. And she was his.

He slid his free hand over her hip and down onto her leg. Her innocent and unrevealing nightgown had worked its way up during the night, so that her legs were bare from the knee down. He thought of exploring farther, of inching up the gown to show more of her long legs, and once again his body pulsed in response, hard and eager.

But that would be foolish in the extreme. It took no particular genius to know that Genevieve was an innocent when it came to the marital act. She was, after all, the daughter of a proud, aristocratic family, sheltered and chaperoned, kept not only inviolate but as unknowing as possible until the day she married. As brother to five sisters, he was aware just how well young girls were shielded from reality. Genevieve, he suspected, was more skittish than most. It would be cruel, not to mention unwise, to give free rein to the desire coursing through him. Myles was not a man to rush his fences. He must woo her.

He stroked his fingers lazily over the point of her shoulder and down her arm, then on to the dip of her waist, the swell of her hip. A sensual smile hovered on his lips. It might take some strength of will to hold back from making love to her now, but it would be worth the wait.

Genevieve had always drawn him. He had denied it, sometimes even to himself, pulling his mind away whenever it moved in that direction, knowing he would never have her. He could admit now how many times his thoughts had strayed to her over the years, imagining her in his bed, her long legs wrapped around his back, her voice breathy and yearning in his ear. Something in her distant, even cold, demeanor made him ache to turn that frost to heat, that reticence to hunger.

If he could awaken her desire, if he could find that spark that leapt between them in their quarrels and turn it into passion, then perhaps he could turn their marriage into something real. And if he did not?

Well, in that case, he had made a ruinous decision. Myles sighed and eased his arm out from beneath Genevieve. He rose to his feet and slipped silently across the room to recover his boots and jacket. It would be better to slip out and get himself under control lest he awaken Genevieve in a way he might later regret. A brisk morning walk would be just the thing to get his brain working better than certain other parts of his anatomy. When he came back, he would be more ready to begin the daunting task of winning Genevieve.

Something tickled along Genevieve’s neck.
She floated toward consciousness, aware of a vague, eager feeling, something pleasant, no, something
pleasurable
that teased her, pulled at her. Her eyelids floated open, taking in an entirely strange room—and the heretofore unknown sensation of a man’s lips kissing their way up the side of her neck.

A quiver ran through her, ending in a rush of warmth deep in her belly. “Myles.”

“Ah, you are awake.” He pressed his lips to her neck again, and his hand moved a swath of her hair aside to open up her neck to further exploration. He kissed the bony edge of her skull just beneath her ear, then his lips hovered over her ear itself, sending little shivers down her.

“What are you doing?” Genevieve strove for a cross tone, but she feared it came out more of a quaver.

“Why, kissing my wife awake.” He pressed his lips to her ear.

“I am awake now.” When he didn’t respond other than to brush his lips against the tender skin of her temple, she added, “You may stop.”

“I could.” He took her earlobe gently between his teeth, eliciting a little gasp from her. “But what would be the fun in that?”

Genevieve dug her fingers into the mattress beside her. She didn’t know what to do. She had never felt anything like the bright sensations rippling through her at the touch of his lips and teeth and—oh, my, his tongue, as well. It seemed likely that what he was doing was not at all the thing and she ought to pull away from him. But it was too delicious, like the taste of chocolate melting on one’s tongue.

He circled the shell-like whorls of her ear with the tip of his tongue, then dipped inside, startling her almost as much as did the way her insides softened. Her eyes drifted closed and her breath caught in her throat. His lips moved onto her cheek, sliding along her jaw. He cupped the side of her face, turning it toward him, and Genevieve found herself rolling onto her back and gazing up at him.

Her mind was scattered, and all she could think was how handsome he was. Genevieve was aware of a strange desire to run her thumb across the lines of his eyebrows and cheeks, to test the plumpness of his bottom lip. A host of new feelings were coursing through her, tingling and warm and unsettling.

He bent and brushed his lips over hers, and everything
hovering inside her burst into frantic life. His mouth touched hers again, soft as a feather, fleeting as a breath, then returned again for a longer taste, and his tongue traced the line where her lips met.

Genevieve was so startled that she jumped and slid away from him. She stared at him, her lips parting in surprise. “I—we should be on our way.” Her voice came out as breathless as if she had been running.

He smiled lazily. “No doubt you are right.” He rolled onto his side, propped up on his elbow, and looked at her, his eyes sliding down her body, almost as tangible as a touch.

Heat rose in Genevieve’s throat. She was conscious of how little she wore and how her night shift had ridden up, exposing her knees. She tensed, waiting in a curious combination of apprehension and anticipation, but Myles only stood up, extending a hand to help her.

Vaguely disappointed, Genevieve put her hand in his and slipped out of bed. It was useless to be embarrassed now about his seeing her in her nightgown since he had already done so, but she simply could not get dressed in front of him. She cast about for some diplomatic way to get him to leave.

“I shall wait for you downstairs; they’re laying out a breakfast for us,” Myles said, resolving her dilemma.

Genevieve could not decide whether she should be grateful for his social acumen or irritated that he could so easily discern her thoughts. He chuckled, obviously reading that latest idea on her face as readily as he had
the others. She frowned; she had long prided herself on concealing her emotions from the world.

Myles sketched a bow and started to leave, but he turned back, pulled her to him, and kissed her. This was not one of the light kisses he had rained on her a few minutes ago, but a full, deep claiming of her mouth. Genevieve trembled, and her heart slammed in her chest as his lips explored hers, his tongue delving in to taste and touch and tantalize.

Then, just as abruptly, his mouth left hers. His arm remained around her, holding her to him, and Genevieve leaned her head against his chest, unwilling to look up and reveal the wild tumult of feelings inside her. She felt his lips press against her hair.

“What I wouldn’t give for an hour and a pleasant room,” he murmured, sending Genevieve’s pulse racing even harder. Then he released her and was out the door, leaving Genevieve staring after him in stunned dismay.

It took Genevieve a moment to collect her wits. She started toward the dress she had folded on the chair last night. She was unused to being without the services of her maid, who had remained behind to pack the rest of Genevieve’s clothes and bring them to Thorwood Park. Fortunately the carriage dress was easy enough to put on, buttoning as it did up the front, and for traveling, a simple hairstyle was more proper anyway than the more elaborate style her maid had curled and crimped it into yesterday afternoon for the wedding.

She glanced down at her hand, where Myles’s gold signet
ring sat on her ring finger, a ribbon wound around it several times in the back to ensure it would not slide off her much slenderer finger. She was Lady Thorwood now. Myles’s wife. It seemed most peculiar, yet something about the idea was exciting, too. When her grandmother talked about the duty of marrying and producing heirs, Genevieve had not envisioned anything like the way Myles had just kissed her. She closed her eyes, remembering again the tingling of her skin, the rush of blood in her veins, the way her entire body had seemed to open up when he slipped his tongue into her mouth. Surely that wasn’t usual. Something that thrilling and outrageous was bound to be improper.

She wondered if he would do it again. And when. Was it that sort of thing that made Damaris smile at Alec in that secret, sensual way? Did kisses like that make up for the pain the countess had warned her of? She felt so strange inside, so jangly and uncertain and wanting . . . something.