Embarrassed once more by the deftness of her lying, she said, “The past shapes us, but what matters is the present and the future. You still have those, and they will be what you make of them.”
“You are as wise as you are beautiful.” His gaze holding hers, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her, his lips yearning. She responded intensely, the near darkness making it easier to express her feelings. Her man from the sea was so dear, so kind and fascinating and male. She usually thought of him as average sized, but he seemed very large and very strong as he embraced her.
Dizzily she realized that her back was pressed into the bookshelves as his hands explored her without restraint. After untying the sash of her robe, he curved his palms around her breasts. Without the armor of stays, the intimacy was as shocking as it was exciting.
Her mouth opened under his, their tongues mating. She pressed her hips against him. The hard heat of his body was alarming, yet as alluring as a siren’s song.
Daring, she slid her hands inside the banyan. His body heat burned through his nightshirt as she stroked his beautifully muscled back. She had been kissed more than once, and sometimes welcomed it, but desire had never threatened to burn out of control. Until now. She wanted to draw him into herself, meld into one flesh.
“I want you so much, my exquisite wife,” he whispered before pressing his mouth to her throat. She moaned, her nails digging into him. When his hand slipped under her nightgown and moved up her thigh, she almost melted on the spot. A man’s embrace had never affected her like this, never like this.
If he were to draw her down to the cold and dusty carpet, she would welcome him gladly. But before that could happen, Bhanu reared up against them both, whining for attention. Mariah gasped and pulled away as she remembered all the reasons they shouldn’t become intimate. Not least of which would be explaining why she was a virgin. “I…I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I can’t do this. Not now.”
Adam reached to embrace her again, then stepped back, his hands clenching. “Are you afraid of me, Mariah? Or is it that you don’t want me?”
She gave a choke of hysterical laughter. “You can’t believe that I don’t want you, not after that! How can I be afraid when you have been all that is kind and understanding? But…to me, it still seems too soon. Perhaps when you know me better, you won’t want me.”
“Impossible.” He touched her hair, then trailed his hand down her body, leaving a swath of fire in its wake. “I feel that I know you deep in my soul. But…not so well here and now.” His hand dropped and he gave her a crooked smile. “When my blood cools, I will certainly agree that you’re right. But it is hard to be reasonable just now.”
He wasn’t the only one having trouble with heated blood! She retied her robe. “Food would be good. I’m sure that’s what Bhanu wants, and I was heading to the kitchen when I heard you in here. Shall we see what we can find in the pantry? Mrs. Beckett keeps it well stocked.”
He laughed and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “A splendid idea. If one appetite can’t be satisfied, feeding another is a good cure.”
She blushed but enjoyed the weight of his arm around her as they headed down to the kitchen, Bhanu scampering ahead. “What were you looking for in the library?”
“I hoped there might be a book with images of the beings I saw in my dreams.” He sighed. “It was a long shot, but I thought worth trying since I couldn’t sleep.”
“I haven’t found the library useful for anything except pressing flowers,” she said. “Hot soup from the pot kept simmering on the hob will help you sleep.”
“That sounds good.” He gave her a slanting glance. “It would help even more if you’d share my bed.”
She stopped, wary. “I thought we agreed that now was not the time.”
“I don’t mean to be together as lovers,” he said softly. “But I would like nothing better than to rest with you in my arms.”
She thought of being enfolded by his warm, hard body and smiled. Sweet sister Sarah would have said no. But Mariah simply wasn’t that virtuous. “I’d like that, too.”
She would like it a lot.
Chapter Twelve
Laughing over bread, soup, and cheese with Mariah didn’t precisely cool Adam’s blood, but the heat was reduced to a simmer. Later, they climbed the stairs to her rooms, which he’d not seen before. As in the rest of the house, decoration and furniture were uneven in quality and condition, but her bedchamber was welcoming, rich with color and scented with bright lavender.
Shyly she took off her robe, then climbed into the bed. He recognized that he was still something of a stranger to her. But she was not a stranger to him. Odd, considering that he was the one who’d lost his memory.
He climbed into the opposite side of the bed, trying not to look alarming. Mariah leaned forward to press a light kiss to his cheek. “Good night, and sleep well.” She lay down and turned onto her side with her back to him. Not the most welcoming position.
That was easily corrected. He rolled onto his side behind her and drew her against him spoon style. There was a familiar rightness in the way she fit into his arms. “You feel like heaven,” he murmured.
She tensed when his arm came around her waist, but his words relaxed her. “So do you.”
He loved the feel of her hair against his cheek. Someday soon he wanted to see the full golden glory of that hair spread wantonly over the bed as she lay under him, her lovely face flushed with desire. For now, it was almost enough to have her tucked against his chest. To not be alone.
He stroked down her body. Her nightgown was old, worn cotton, as deliciously soft as she was. As his hand moved over her stomach, she said breathlessly, “You had better return to your own bed. What you are doing is far too tempting, and I’m not sure my willpower is capable of resisting you.”
His hand stilled on the gentle curve of her abdomen. She was serious about not reconsummating their marriage, and in the part of his mind that was still rational, he understood and agreed. But he couldn’t bear the idea of leaving her and sleeping alone.
“If I give you my word of honor that I will not join with you tonight, will you allow me to remind you of the pleasures we have shared in the past?”
She caught her breath. “You remember us being lovers?”
“No,” he said with regret. “But I know what I must have done, and I want to do it again. Both for the pleasure of touching you, and in the selfish hope that soon you will decide you are ready to truly be my wife.” His hand moved up to her breast and he gently thumbed the nipple. It hardened instantly.
“Oh, my…” She exhaled slowly. “Your word of honor that you will not lose control of yourself?”
“I swear it, and I would not break my word to you because you would never trust me again,” he said frankly. He licked the pale, delicate skin below her ears, reveling in her sigh of pleasure. “And rightly so. But it will be my delight to remind you of what a man and his wife can do short of the ultimate act. Will you allow me to demonstrate?”
Her laugh was unsteady. “If I were a better and more sensible woman, I’d say no and go to sleep elsewhere to remove myself from temptation. But I am neither good nor sensible, so proceed in your demonstration. Just remember your promise.”
“You are truly good, Mariah, and in this, perhaps neither of us is being sensible.” He moved his hips against her lovely round bottom so that they were molded together. “But sometimes sense is not true wisdom.”
She tensed at the evidence of his arousal but did not draw away. He decided to stay in this position because he would be less likely to forget his promise. He could still reach all the sweetest places on her elegantly curved body.
Her breasts, ah, her breasts…lovely and round and fitting his palm perfectly. Just the right size. Not too large, not too small. Though he suspected whatever size they were, he would think them perfect.
Now that she was no longer worried about where they would end this lovemaking, she was wond
erfully responsive to his gentle kisses on her ear and throat and his slow, thorough exploration of her breasts. She didn’t object when his hand moved down to her waist, though she tensed again when his fingers reached the juncture of her thighs.
As he rhythmically stroked that hidden heat, her hips began pulsing against him. He guessed that she was unaware how much her body was revealing.
“No!” she gasped when he tugged up the hem of her nightgown so he could touch her tender, intimate flesh. “You promised!”
“I have not forgotten,” he said, his voice soothing even if his mind was half crazed with longing. Concentrating on her helped keep his control from splintering. Though it was a near run thing. “I will stop now if you wish.”
“I…I don’t want you to stop.”
Her trust was too sweet, too precious, to betray. He slid his fingers between the moist, delicate folds. Her body remembered this even if her mind was wary.
He began stroking the silky warmth, moving faster and faster as he sensed her excitement. Suddenly she gave a suffocated cry and her body convulsed, her hips thrashing against him fiercely. To his shock, her culmination triggered his own violent release. He clutched her to him as mutual fire raged through them, blending them together body and soul.
For an endless time they lay locked together, their breathing ragged. When he realized he was holding her with rib crushing force, he relaxed his embrace. He lifted her hair and kissed the nape of her neck. “When I chose you,” he whispered, “I chose even better than I knew.”
“That was…more of a demonstration than I expected,” she said faintly.
“And more than I intended,” he said with a shaky laugh. He swung from the bed and padded across the cold floor to collect two towels from her washstand.
His footsteps triggered a hopeful whine and scratching on the outside of the door. Thinking they could use some distraction, he let Bhanu in. The dog bounded through the door, panting happily. He scratched her ears and returned to bed, handing one of the towels to Mariah. As he cleaned up, he said, “We may have company soon. It depends on whether Bhanu can manage the jump onto the bed.”
Claws scrabbled on the walnut chest that sat across the foot of the four-poster. The mattress sagged as Bhanu jumped onto it. She circled several times, then settled between their feet, adding canine warmth. Mariah chuckled. “Clever Bhanu. Lucky that the bed is large enough for three.”
“All the lonely creatures are drawn to you for comfort,” he said seriously.
She settled back against him. “I don’t think Bhanu is too discriminating. Any bed with a warm body will do.”
“But that wouldn’t do for me.” He kissed the side of her neck. “Only you will do. Only my wife.”
She caught her breath and squeezed his hand where it rested on her ribs, but she said no more. Soon she was breathing with the slow regularity of sleep.
Earlier, after that nightmarish dream of loss, he’d thought that he wouldn’t sleep again this night. Now he wanted to stay awake so he could savor the wonder of Mariah in his arms. Remember her rapturous response to his touch.
Yet, to his surprise, he yawned and soon drifted toward the world of dreams. Surely not nightmares, not this time…
The weather was filthy, with sleet and freezing rain blowing sideways across the road. Much too rough for a carriage, which would have bogged down in no time. So he rode, using his sturdiest, most reliable horse.
Ordinarily the ride out of the city wouldn’t have taken much more than an hour, but the storm slowed him to a walking pace. More than once, he feared he had wandered from the road. As his body numbed, he wondered if he should have brought someone with him. But he hadn’t wanted company, not on a journey like this.
Eventually he reached the handsome house that overlooked the Thames. He rode directly to the stables, man and horse equally grateful to be out of the bitter wind. There was no groom because this household’s groom had ridden into London with the message. He had wanted to return, but Adam had flatly forbade it because the man looked half dead already from the journey into town.
So Adam tended his mount himself, brushing the tired gelding down and giving him feed and water despite his impatience to go inside. Another blast of ice and rain struck him like a blow as he crossed to the house and banged on the door.
Too long a wait in the vile weather before a servant opened the door. The footman gasped. “Sir! Thank God you’re here. I didn’t think you would be able to make the journey till the storm passed.”
“It was not the sort of message one ignores.” He stripped off his coat, which was so saturated that it felt as if the pockets were stuffed with rocks. “Where is he?”
“Upstairs in their room. He…he won’t leave her.”
Adam handed over his dripping coat and hat, then headed up the staircase. He’d visited the house often in happier times. Now grief saturated the very air.
He found his friend in the chamber he’d shared with his young wife. The room was illuminated only by the fire flickering in the hearth. On the bed, a slender body barely made a mound in the blanket that covered it.
His friend, a tall man with wide shoulders and powerful limbs, sat in a chair beside the bed, head buried in his hands. He glanced when the door opened, unsurprised to see his visitor. “She’s gone.” In the firelight, his ravaged face was very young.
“I know.” Adam crossed the room and dropped a hand onto his friend’s shoulder. “And the baby?”
“He was…too small to survive.” The man laid his hand over Adam’s as he drew a shuddering breath. “How will I go on without her?”
“You will endure,” Adam said quietly. “You will grieve, and the scars will stay on your soul forever. But eventually you will carry on. She would have wanted nothing less for you.”
“I suppose you’re right,” the broad man said flatly. “But it’s damnable.”
“Damnable indeed.” Seeing a brandy decanter on a side table, he poured two glasses. They both needed the blaze of brandy, though for different reasons.
His friend gulped half the fiery spirits, choked, then drank the rest. When he had his breath again, he said, “I don’t know what I’ll do with myself now.”
“You need a new home and a new occupation. Something that will keep you busy.” Adam sipped his brandy slowly. “You thought to enter the army before you married. Perhaps that is a path that would suit you now.”
The other man turned his empty glass absently. “Perhaps. Serve my country, and maybe find a bullet on some foreign field. Both decent prospects.”
“Don’t you dare go off and get yourself killed,” Adam snapped. “I forbid it.”
His friend’s response was almost a laugh before the dream shifted to another scene entirely….
Mariah was in the happiest dream she’d ever known—warm and safe and cherished. Until she realized it wasn’t a dream but reality. Alarm spiked through her as she remembered what had passed between her and Adam the night before. She’d been mad to permit him to touch her that way! Yet she could not wish that she hadn’t experienced such pleasure. She was a wanton, just as Sarah had told her.
Warily she opened her eyes to find that she was lying on her back with Adam’s arm across her and his green eyes watching with cherishing warmth. He really was most amazingly handsome, with a touch of the exotic in the structure of his bones. A purist might say his hair needed cutting, but she liked it long. She lifted her hand and stroked the glossy dark locks. “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” he replied. “Did you sleep well?”
His smile dispelled her worry about just how a woman woke up in bed with a man for the first time. This was marriage, she realized—a circle of intimacy that bound just the two of them in their own private paradise. Dangerously alluring.
Her pleasure faded when she wondered what other woman might have known him like this. A woman who was not a casual lover, but who had been a beloved wife.
Mariah’s stomach tighten
ed into a knot. For the first time, she hoped that Adam would never regain his memory. That he would stay here and be her husband till death did them part.
Horrified at the selfish wrongness of that hope, she sat up and managed a smile. “Wonderfully well. And you?”
He looked thoughtful. “I didn’t expect to sleep, but I did. And I dreamed, though it wasn’t like the nightmare I had earlier.”
Bhanu popped her head up at the foot of the bed, then came up and flopped between them. Good. The more separated they were, the better. She stroked the dog’s flopping ears and was rewarded with a sigh of canine bliss. “What was the dream?”
“There were several. One was riding to be with a friend who had just lost his wife. It was very sad, but not a nightmare. Then I dreamed about playing with two other children, a boy and a girl. He was about my age and she was younger, I think. They both had green eyes. I wonder, did I have a brother and sister?”
Avoiding more lies, she said, “If you did, I never heard you speak of them.”
“I wonder if they died. I felt a sense of loss in the dream.” Shaking his head, he swung from the bed. “I feel as if I have a handful of pieces from a puzzle so large that I’ll never see the whole.”
“Give it time,” she said. “Julia Bancroft says the mind is the most complicated part of the body.” As Mariah watched Adam don his robe and slippers, she decided that the best possible outcome was for him to regain his memory, be unmarried, and willing to forgive her deception. Then they might have a future—but the odds seemed hopelessly against that.
She might as well enjoy what time they had together. “Would you like to go for a ride this morning?”
“I’d like that very much.” He grinned. “Then, my lady, I shall start to build you a garden.”
Chapter Thirteen
Greenock, Scotland
After another long day of pursuing separate investigations, the three men met for dinner in the private parlor of the inn that had become their headquarters. Kirkland dumped his damp coat over a chair and set the long leather protective tube on the table.
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