“You have nothing to fear from your husband tonight,” Nicolas told her calmly. “He will sleep for many hours—through tomorrow noon probably.”
Mattie stared at him, dazed. His gentle touch was wearing down her resistance. “But the—the servants,” she protested weakly. “They might discover...” And, then, more sensibly, “They are in your pay, aren’t they?”
“Not exactly. But Klaus, the innkeeper, is a friend of mine. His servants are aware of that friendship. They will do nothing that might bring retribution down upon their heads.”
“No, I—I couldn’t,” said Mattie in a strangled voice. But she sat helpless with her trembling hands clutched in her lap as this wicked gentleman she had met but a few hours before rose and leisurely latched the door, divested himself of his hat, which he had worn fashionably indoors, tossed aside his sword, and returned to lean down over her.
“Just think how all your life you’ll regret not having tried it,” he coaxed wickedly, and as he bent down his golden hair fell in a bright shower over her shoulders. She could feel it brush her throat like tendrils of fire. Now his hands were moving impudently, easing back her dressing down from her shoulders, teasing the riband that held up her night rail until it came undone. Mattie gave an instinctive, convulsive movement. He was toying with her breasts!
I should resist him! she told herself wildly. I should tell him to go away, that I've taken marriage vows, that I belong to Arthur. I should escape! But she knew in her heart that she had no wish to escape, and that she would never truly belong to Arthur, for Arthur did not want her, had not wanted her from the start. She sat, unable to move, unable to speak, as if in a trance. But she was tinglingly, inescapably aware of what was happening to her. The tall Dutchman's hands—so gentle, so teasing, so totally unlike Arthur's rude grasp—were inside her night rail now and she found herself taking short ragged breaths and tingling with a totally unfamiliar pleasure.
“There are no women unable to learn,” Nicolas murmured tantalizingly in her ear. “There are only men who are unable to teach!”
Sighing now as he pulled her gently to him, Mattie believed every word. For this Dutchman who held her transfixed and melting was infinitely more worldly than Arthur—anyone could see that—and infinitely more qualified to teach. She could already feel herself turning into a pliant sinuous thing—not the stiff frightened woman Arthur mauled and violated. Sophisticated Nicolas would impart to her secrets she needed desperately to know. What had he called them—"the wine of life”?
And as he whispered now urgently, “Mathilde, Mathilde, don’t be afraid, don't hold back, let me teach you what it is to love,” Mattie felt a sense of revelation. He had certainly found the right word. Nicolas, she told herself righteously, would be able to teach her what Arthur had been unable to impart. Arthur had found her deficient, unable to learn, but here in Nicolas she had found an adroit teacher, full of warmth and gentleness. In his arms, she would learn to be a woman. In his arms, she would learn to be all the things that Arthur complained she was not.
Nicolas would teach her. Ah, that was the key word: Teach. She needed this instruction, she told herself righteously, and Nicolas was so willing to instruct! How could it be wrong, since Arthur would ultimately benefit? He would not know about his benefit, of course, how he had come by it, but that would not matter for the benefit would be there. Oh, yes, it was right, right that she should do this! “Teach me,” she whispered. “Oh, teach me, Nicolas!”
With a tenderness he had not felt in his life before, the lean Dutchman drew the unhappy waif into his arms. She fit as if she belonged there. At his every touch she quivered and when he kissed her, he could feel as well as hear her little heartfelt moan.
“Lovely lady of Bermuda.” he murmured, and Mattie felt the words whir dazzlingly through her brain. No one—no one had ever called her lovely before. Not even her mother, who loved her. And certainly not Arthur, who daily disparaged her face, her figure, her walk, everything about her.
“Oh, Nicolas,” she whispered desperately, “do not say things you do not mean.”
“I mean every word,” he insisted. He was slipping off her dressing gown as he spoke and easing down her night rail. He ran his hand lightly down her bare back as the soft material rippled downward. “Every word, Mathilde.”
A little sob broke from Mattie’s throat and she flung herself against him. “Oh, Nicolas,” she whispered, “do not let me fall in love with you. Please do not let me fall in love with you, for it can never be—it can never, never be. You know that.”
Not since he was seventeen and had bedded a chambermaid who kept calling him ludicrously “my one true love”—ludicrous, since she’d already slept with half the county—had Nicolas heard so foolish a comment. But somehow, coming from this honest little girl in her billowy, ill-fitting night clothes, it went straight to his heart.
“Fall in love with me, Mathilde,” he urged, managing to wrench up her night rail until it rode around her hips. “Don’t be afraid to let yourself go—if you fall, I’ll catch you.”
Nothing like this had ever happened to Mattie. The slight rasping of her cambric night rail seemed to burn her thighs, her buttocks, his every touch seemed to set her afire. She gasped for air—and did not care if she never breathed again. She moved in splendor and shut her eyes against the dazzle. She was half naked in his arms, clasped firmly to his body, and he was thrusting within her now with a delicacy and command such as she had never known from Arthur’s rough embraces. She held her breath. This was—magic. She had become a pliant thing in these new strong arms that held her, trusting, swaying, yearning, moving toward him and then sinuously back again. She felt transported, swept skyward by vast emotions such as she had never before encountered. Marveling at each new sensation, her senses lurching wildly with his every touch, her closed eyes alight with nameless splendors, she soared with Nicolas across a shining sea. Her back arched like a purring kitten’s, strange soft sounds broke from her parted lips. She was one with him, arching, loving, soft and supple—his whole being seemed to encompass her, to swallow her up until she felt very small but very much alive. She felt—beautiful. And wanted.
Nicolas, who had thought only to amuse himself with the waif in his arms, was startled by the desperate urgency that coursed through him, sending fire through his veins. Had it been so long since he had held a woman? Three days at most, for Nicolas always lived off the country, foraging—when ladies were not available—for chambermaids and tavern maids and bright-eyed laundresses.
Now this slip of a girl with her bruised eye had caught—not his fancy, but his heart. He felt born to woo her; her supple body fitted against his lean length as one of his palms fitted the other. He knew for her a sympathy he had never felt for Georgiana. He took her to the heights and soared there with her. And heard with a kind of triumph the little cry that broke from her lips as together they went over the brink.
“Mattie,” he whispered as she lay trembling in his arms in the aftermath of lovemaking, her eyes closed, lashes fluttering spasmodically “Lovely, lovely Mattie.”
Hearing it spoken so, with that soft inflection, Mattie knew that she would never again hate her own name. Because Nicolas had spoken it—and made it beautiful.
She breathed a little ragged sigh of contentment and pillowed her head on his shoulder, let him toy idly with her body in the warm afterglow of passion, let him stroke her and tease her and tempt her until finally in a little rush of emotion she turned toward him and murmured breathlessly, “I do not feel I have learned well enough, Nicolas—I feel the need of more instruction.”
Nicolas felt a chuckle course through him. “A novice but insatiable!” he teased, tweaking a pink nipple and being rewarded by a small scuffle.
But this time it was a new Mattie who gave a long shuddering sigh of release and went like a leaf carried on the tide into Nicolas van Rappard’s ready arms. For Arthur had, unbeknownst, awakened desires in Mattie that she had not thought herself capable of fulf
illing. Arthur had awakened desires—but he had never satisfied them—not even once. Nicolas van Rappard was a talented lover. In his arms, Mattie had found desire, escape, fulfillment. And now she sought those arms again. For Mattie was ripe for romance, ripe for a lover.
She threw caution to the winds—just as in Bermuda she had thrown caution to the winds with Arthur. Romance was here and she would seize it—no matter what the ending.
Nicolas, who had considered shy Mattie a rather tepid personality and had been extraordinarily gentle with her, was amazed and delighted at her enthusiasm for this sort of thing. Her pure joy in being embraced by him, made love to by him, did much to restore his damaged ego, which had been buffeted about most cruelly by Georgiana’s blithe unconcern.
Mattie had a charming body, he had discovered, under all those layers of ill-fitting material.
“Arthur might—awaken,” she said dreamily, running her nails lightly—with exhilarating effect—along his groin.
“If he does, I promise to run him through with my sword,” Nicolas promised recklessly, and clasped her to him.
Mattie, usually so gentle and averse to bloodshed, did not even protest. She lay back with a luxurious sigh in Nicolas’s arms, and let passion take her where it would.
“This is really very bad of me,” she murmured happily, afterward, wriggling as Nicolas lazily caressed her bare thigh.
“How so?” a sated Nicolas demanded with some truculence, for how could a woman go wrong in his arms?
Mattie was smiling and now she traced the contours of his golden mustaches lovingly, laughed as he nipped at her fingers. “Because I’m married, of course.”
“But to a fool,” he shrugged.
“No,” she sighed. “To a monster. To a man I can never love—could never have loved.” She sat up and regarded Nicolas gravely. “I was confused before but—now I know the difference. Between—men.” She flushed under Nicolas’s bright regard. “I—Nicolas, help me get my night rail on properly. I am all thumbs.”
And, then, as in obedience to her demand he held up the night rail for Mattie to thrust her arms through, she suddenly flung herself against him, crushing her soft bare breasts against his hard chest. “Oh, Nicolas, I do thank you. I never—never guessed it could be so wonderful. I will never, never forget.”
And Nicolas, who had known endlessly more beautiful women and possessed many, was so touched he could not speak. He bent down and planted a gentle kiss on the pink-crested nipple of one trembling breast. “There is no need to forget me, Mattie,” he said simply. “For I will be around.”
“But I—we couldn’t. I mean, we were overcome by the moment, by the wine, but now—” She sought for words, did not find them.
“You have only to call,” he said, kissing lightly the palm of her hand. “And I will find a way.”
“Oh!” Mattie was breathless and ecstatic. She could not speak as Nicolas drew her night rail on, smoothed it down around her pulsing young body, carefully tied the riband at the top, and pushed back her tumbled brown hair gently from her shoulders.
“Why do we not stay here the rest of the night?” he murmured.
“ ’Twould be a risk,” she said hesitantly.
“A risk,” he agreed in a lazy voice.
“For we cannot be sure when Arthur will wake....”
“No, we cannot.” But his blue eyes held amusement for he sensed the change in her, the unexpected recklessness.
High color still stained Mattie’s cheeks. Her whole being was aglow. “Yet a risk worth taking,” she murmured in a soft rich voice. "And”—she sank against him— “you will remember to leave early in the morning before Arthur wakes?”
Nicolas nodded, burying his face in the smooth column of her neck His voice came to her muffled, “I’ve already asked Klaus to have me wakened at cockcrow.”
“Wicked,” she said in a breathless voice. “You knew I’d want you to stay.” ,
"Hoped. Only hoped.”
“And stay you shall,” she said with that bright new confidence. She, who had never felt even passably pretty, felt beautiful this night. She, who had never before felt she had a man to call her own—no, not even though she wore a wedding ring—was suffused with confidence and hope, elated, bursting with self-esteem and pride. Breathlessly, even as Nicolas’s warm hands and lips caressed her body, she hugged the realization to her—she had taken a lover! A wonderful, handsome fellow who called her “lovely” and said she had only to call and he would be there!
“Nicolas,” she said softly. “I want to remember us always—-just as we are at this moment.”
“But I told you I am not going anywhere.”
“I know, I know.” Her voice was soft and slurred and she did not quite meet his eyes in the firelight. How could she tell him from her fluttering heart that she expected him to vanish, for surely this was all too wonderful to last? “But could I—could I have some token, a lock of your hair to remember you by? If”—she stumbled over the words—“if life should separate us? Just a small snip of your hair—you’d never miss it—to braid into a locket and wear around my neck?”
To wear around her neck to remember him by.... Nicolas, who was given to handsome gestures, gave Mattie a startled look. Many baubles he had given away in his careless life but of all the lustrous ladies he had known—and many had coaxed from him some valuable trinket “to remember him by”—none had asked for a piece of himself. This sweet wistful child cuddled up beside him in her night rail wanted as her token only a snip of his hair to smile upon and touch.
“I can do better than that, Mattie,” he said, and leaning over, produced from the sleeve of his tawny velvet doublet the dainty diamond pendant that had caused so much excitement that night at Windgate.
“Better you wear this to remember me by,” he said jauntily, and Mattie clasped her hands together in delight and her mouth formed a round breathless O.
Thoroughly enjoying sweeping Mattie off her feet with the magnificence of his gift, Nicolas fingered the diamond pendant and smiled. It had been through a lot with him, this pendant. Originally it had been the gift of a contessa in Rome, who had urged it upon him in memory of a night of stars and sighs—and had been swiftly spirited away by the conte when that worthy discovered a pair of strange boots in his young wife’s bedchamber (Nicolas, the owner of those boots, had gone headfirst out the window into a rosebush at the first sound of footsteps along the gallery). The contessa’s irate husband had taken his beautiful wife forthwith from their Roman villa to the provinces and before leaving she had sealed the diamond pendant into a letter and sent it around to Nicolas’s apartments with the terse words, “You will find another neck to clasp this around.”
And indeed he had. The necklace had jaunted with him half across Europe. Most recently he had given it to Georgiana—and actually intended for her to keep it, but Danforth had snatched it from her neck and returned it to him. Then he had roguishly given it to Katrina ten Haer—and filched it back from her, letting her think she had lost it.
The necklace—generally—reposed round the throat of Nicolas’s latest light of love. And now it was going to decorate the neck of this shy romantic child who gazed at him in the firelight with her heart shining in her brown eyes.
He rather thought he would let it stay there.
“Oh-h-h-h,” breathed Mattie, who felt she had never seen anything so beautiful.
With a slight swagger to his tawny shoulders Nicolas clasped the diamond pendant lightly around Mattie’s white neck and felt the pulsations of her throat with caressing fingers. The gold chain glittered in the firelight and the diamond pendant looked like a single tear about to fall.
“This you will wear,” he said softly, “to remember the giver.”
“Oh, I will,” whispered Mattie ardently, impetuously covering his strong hand with kisses. “I’ll never take it off.” Fingering the pendant’s golden chain, she leaned back with a luxurious sigh. Then suddenly she sat up straight, her ex
pression more than a little wild. “Oh, yes, I will!” she cried in alarm. “You must get it off right now, Nicolas. Arthur knows I don’t possess such a necklace, he might guess how I had come by it. Oh, he would kill me, he would break my bones!” She shivered, and clawed at the necklace, her soft brown eyes gone big and black with fear.
“Then we must by all means get the necklace off.” Nicolas made haste to do so.
“But I—I will hide it,” Mattie said dreamily, letting the glittering chain trickle through her hands like running water, touching the tear-shaped diamond with light, experimental fingers. Nicolas had already given her the most beautiful night of her life—and now he had made her a gift of this lovely necklace, tangible symbol of his esteem, for remembrance. “I will treasure it always,” she sighed.
“No.” Firmly, Nicolas removed the necklace from her fingers. “You must not. Not if your husband would take such violent measures against you. I had not thought about that.”
“Oh, but I could hide it well!” cried Mattie.
“I wouldn’t think of letting you take the risk.” Coolly, Nicolas stashed the necklace back in his velvet sleeve. “Someday”—he brushed her pale forehead with his lips—“I will return the pendant to you. Someday when we can be—safe. I will not have you take unnecessary risks on my behalf.”
It was a romantic suggestion and Mattie gazed at him adoringly.
Before the blinding sweetness of that look, Nicolas felt his gaze fall away. Looking down at the pendant, he felt fleetingly ashamed of himself. For he had not removed the necklace from Mattie’s reluctant fingers for the reason he had given her. A new and startling use for the pendant had just occurred to him and he was eager to put it into effect. By the Lord Harry, he would set about it the very next day!
But first, through the long night, he would hold a rapturous Mattie in his arms.
His mind churning with plans, Nicolas was still not asleep when the serving girl scratched lightly on the door to tell him it was time to rise. But Mattie, worn out with lovemaking, long since had drifted off. She lay blissfully in his arms, as limp as a rag doll, and she did not wake—only made a small, childish, protesting motion when he carefully put her from him.
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