He murmured in Hope’s ear. “It must be catching. Look over there.” He pointed to where a slender, golden-haired gypsy lad stood locked in a passionate embrace with a small, dark-haired lady dressed enticingly in scarlet.
“I’m so glad,” Hope said. “Now we can be completely happy.” She twined her arms around his neck and began to shower him with kisses. “This is the most heavenly night. I think love must be in the air.”
Actually, there was a lot of smoke from the fireworks in the air, but Sebastian didn’t care. He had Hope in his arms, and that was all that mattered.
Chapter Twenty
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room, an everywhere.
JOHN DONNE
THE NEXT AFTERNOON SEBASTIAN RECEIVED AN URGENT SUMMONS from Hope.
“My sister Charity has begun her labor,” Hope explained the moment he arrived. “We leave today for Carradice Abbey.”
“But I thought—”
“Yes, but my sister Prudence is increasing herself, and carriage movement makes her vilely unwell, so Charity and her husband, Edward, came to Carradice Abbey several months ago to await the birth. Prudence has to be with her, you see.”
“I see.” His chest tightened. She was about to be snatched from him, now, when he’d just found her. “When shall I see—”
She grabbed his hands. “Come with us. Bring the girls. Gideon and Prudence won’t mind. They’ll love them.” She blinked a tear away. “I want you with me, Sebastian. Charity is the first of us to give birth, and I haven’t seen her in an age.” She bit her lip, gazing up into his face.
She was frightened for her sister, he realized. Women died all the time having babies. He thought of Thea, dying alone.
“If you want me, of course I’ll come,” he said simply.
Within an hour, a line of carriages was ready to set out. To Sebastian’s surprise, Lady Augusta was one of the party. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world, dear boy!” she exclaimed. “I’m about to become a great-aunt. Didn’t you know these girls’ sisters are married to my nephews?”
They made excellent time and stopped in Leicester for the night. The inn was small and snug and clean, and their party filled it completely.
The plump and motherly wife of the landlord whisked all the ladies upstairs, where hot water for washing awaited them. She fed them on chicken soup, fresh rolls, and a hearty meat pie, followed by apple tart and cream. Within an hour of their late arrival, everyone was tucked up in bed.
Sebastian could not sleep without first checking on his sisters. He peeped in at the door. They were snuggled up in a big bed with Grace, fast asleep, like kittens. Lily, the maidservant, slept on a truckle bed in the corner.
He would have liked to check on Hope, too, but she was sharing a room with her twin. The landlady saw him hesitating outside her door. She said firmly, “The ladies will all be sound asleep by now, so you look to your own bed, sir.”
Sebastian went. But despite his weariness, sleep did not come easily. Rain started pattering on his windowpane.
“Are you asleep?” It was Hope, dressed only in a flannel nightgown, her cheeks flushed and her golden curls tumbled about her face. Her nightgown was voluminous and buttoned to the chin, yet he’d never seen anything more appealing. She looked so clean and fresh and lovely and yet rumpled and sensual at the same time. Like a deliciously wrapped package.
He sat up, then recalling he was naked, pulled the covers up. “What is the matter?” She shouldn’t be here.
“I can’t sleep,” she said and padded across to the bed. “I want to stay with you.”
He hesitated and said weakly, “You shouldn’t.”
“You’re right.” She climbed up onto the high bed in her nightgown and bare feet and knelt there, looking woebegone and impossibly beautiful.
“I hate the middle of the night when I can’t sleep. I need you to hold me, Sebastian.” Her lower lip wobbled. It was so unlike his brave little elf, he could not bear it. He held out his arms, and she fell into them.
He was instantly aroused.
She nestled against his naked chest and rubbed her hand over the faint sprinkling of masculine hair. “This is nice.”
Battling with fierce desire, he forced himself to put her gently away from him and pulled the sheet up to cover his nakedness. She’d called him noble, earlier. Nobility did not involve taking her virginity in a small country inn while her great-uncle and the rest of the family slept a few yards away.
She shivered, and he bent and pulled bedclothes up around her, insulating him further from her softness and warmth.
She frowned. “But I want to get into bed with you.”
“You can’t,” he said shortly. “I have no nightshirt.”
“Really?” Her eyes widened, and she looked at his naked shoulders with feminine appreciation. She reached out and stroked them, then kneaded them like a cat, very lightly with her nails.
His arousal intensified. As did his determination to treat her as a virtuous innocent should be treated. He would hold her chastely if it killed him. Even if he was harder than he’d ever been in his life. It would not kill him. He hoped.
She slipped out of the cocoon of blankets he’d made for her, and instead of relieving his agony, he felt immediately bereft. She climbed across his legs and sat on his thighs, her nightgown riding up on slender limbs, and his breath disappeared in a whoosh.
“I’m not a child, Sebastian.”
He groaned. “I’m well aware of that.”
She snuggled her bottom down over his thighs, and he groaned again. She gave a secret little feminine smile. She wiggled again, then leaned forward and began to stroke his shoulders. Across his shoulders and down his chest and arms, stroking and squeezing. His muscles flexed of their own accord.
“To think I used to be nervous of these,” she murmured. “Lovely.”
She circled his nipples, around and around, grazing them oh so lightly with her nails. “Are you being noble again, Sebastian?” she asked softly.
“I’m trying my damnedest to be,” he ground out.
“But we’re going to be married, aren’t we?”
He tried not to think about what her innocent touch was doing to him. “You know we are.”
She leaned back, smiling the smile of Eve. “Then why must we wait? I want you, Sebastian.” Her hand moved lower. “Don’t you want me?”
“You know damn well I do!” he growled.
“When I was at the opera house that time, you showed me a whole new world, and I don’t mean the view of London.” She leaned forward and nibbled on a flat, masculine nipple. “Fascinating,” she breathed. “Like me, only not like me . . . and I don’t mean in yellow ruffles.”
The images her words created in his mind brought an agonized groan to his lips.
“That night, at the opera, you showed me what pleasure a man—the right man—could give a woman.” She leaned forward and cupped his face in her hands. “And on that day when Dorie talked, on the chaise longue in your drawing room afterward, you gave me a taste of your heat and your strength. And you gave me glorious oblivion. I want that now, and more.” She looked a little shy, then said, “I want to be loved, fully loved. Right here, right now, in this big, high bed, with the rain on the windows outside and my sister laboring with child. I want to shut it all out and be alone, here with my lovely, strong, protective Sebastian.”
Her words brought a lump to his throat. Before he could say a word, she added, “Do you know, you have the most magnificent shoulders. They make me weak just to look at them.” Her eyes glowed softly as she added, “So will you please love me now?” Would he please love her now?
As if she were the one racked with desperate need, not he. A violent shudder passed through him, and he swallowed, leashing his fierce desire to his lady’s service. His innocent lady. Tonight would be all for her.
He let the sheets pool around his waist and hungrily watched the fascination flare in her eyes as she examined him with shy, feminine curiosity. He placed his hands on her hips and slid her slowly toward him. The movement pulled her nightgown higher, sliding up her long, slender limbs until it bunched across her hips, just covering the shadowed mystery beneath.
It would be the work of a moment to rip away the covers and sheathe himself in her. His whole body throbbed with the need to complete the act. She was already aroused; Sebastian could smell the heady female scent of her. His woman. His mate. His love.
For a long moment he didn’t move. Then he cupped her face and gently guided her mouth to his. She leaned forward, her hands on the shoulders she’d called magnificent, and kissed him softly.
His mouth and tongue teased her lips apart, and he deepened the kiss gradually with insistent rhythmic strokes that had her clutching at him with frantic hands, wanting more.
She clutched and stroked and rubbed at his shoulders. She thrust her fingers through his short-cropped hair, holding him tightly, her eyes closed tight as she threw herself into the kiss.
His tongue tangled with hers, dueled and stroked, and he cupped her breast through the thick flannel, savoring the weight, feeling the nipple rise and harden in response to his touch. She made small, soft sounds of pleasure as her fingers gripped his shoulders and her legs gripped his hips. He gently scratched the nipple’s tip through the flannel, and her hips made jerky little movements in response. Each tiny quiver resonated right through his body.
She broke the kiss and jerked back, staring down at his hand as it cupped her breast. As she watched, he stroked the nipple again, back and forth in the same rhythm as his tongue had made, and even as her eyes widened in surprise, she arched her back, pushing her breast into his hand more as her hips convulsed and she made a sound deep in her throat.
She flung her head back and almost purred with pleasure as he used both his hands to pleasure her through the flannel.
Then, abruptly, she caught his big hands in hers and stopped him. She stared at his chest. “Does the same thing work for you?” she said in a husky voice.
He shrugged, feigning ignorance. She purred, “Then let us investigate, shall we?” She placed both soft palms on his chest and stroked him with blatant approval. “So nice and hard.”
He instantly cupped her breasts. “So nice and soft.”
She laughed and batted his hands away. “Stop it. I want to concentrate, and I cannot when you touch me like that.” She rubbed her hands across the planes of his chest in circular movements, narrowing in slowly on the nipples. He watched her, loving the earnest look of concentration on her lovely face. Finally she brushed her fingers across them and pinched them gently, and he arched as a fiery bolt ran from her questing fingers straight to his groin.
“Aha.” She touched his small nipple and squeezed it experimentally. He arched again. She frowned thoughtfully, then looked from his naked chest to her own expanse of flannel. Was she remembering the last time, when he’d freed her breasts and taken her nipple in his mouth?
“On the opera roof you said you had envied my dress with the yellow ruffles, that you wished your hands could replace the ruffles. And on the chaise longue, you, um, suckled me through the silk shirt. Am I supposed to remove this thing?” She blushed the moment the words were out of her mouth. “I mean, I don’t—”
He stopped her words with a kiss. “No,” he said. “You are not supposed to take that thing off.”
The blush faded. “Oh.” It was a mix of relief and disappointment.
He said softly, “I am.”
“Ohh.” The blush returned. She sat there and waited.
Twenty small polished mother-of-pearl buttons, from just beneath her chin to a point almost at her waist.
One button, two. The slender column of her throat was revealed. He kissed it, tasting the delicate scent of her skin.
The third and fourth and fifth buttons showed the hollow between her collarbones. He leaned forward and dipped his tongue into it.
By the seventh and eighth buttons his mouth was dry and his breath was coming faster. He looked at her. She gazed back and licked her lips slowly. His heart thundered.
By the tenth button, the creamy valley between her breasts was visible, and he bent forward and pressed his face between them, tasting, licking her silken, warm skin. She clutched at his head, running her fingers through his hair and kissing him.
By the fifteenth button, both breasts were free, rosy nipples thrusting for his attention, and his hands were shaking. He fumbled the last three buttons and gave up at that point. His breath came in ragged bursts, and she was panting, too, as if they’d both run in a race.
He reached for the hem where it bunched at her hips and slowly, slowly began to lift.
“Ohh.” She moaned at the slight friction against her aroused skin.
He lifted it over her hips. This was his woman. Over her waist. It caught on her breasts, lifting them. He tugged, and like a child, she lifted her arms for him to pull the nightgown off her completely. Only she was no child. She was wholly, supremely woman.
He cast the garment aside and drank in the sight of her nakedness. He had seen a copy once of a famous Italian painting, a golden-haired beauty standing in a huge scallop shell. Venus, the girl in the painting was called: a shy, pensive creature, Madonna-like in her purity.
But the Italian beauty was not more beautiful or more sensual than his own dear Venus sitting shyly, proudly astride him, one hand delicately covering the vee of gold curls, the other hovering uncertainly.
She glowed with life, with warmth, with love. For him. For plain Sebastian Reyne. He could hardly believe it. This glorious, loving creature was going to be his wife, his love for all time. He would never be alone again.
He caught her hand, kissed it, and laid it against his heart. “My own precious Venus.”
“Venus was a pagan goddess, was she not?”