Alex walked to the windows and began pulling the curtains closed to keep the light from announcing their presence to the outside world.
“After we’re married,” he commented offhandedly, “I assume you’ll want to spend some time here, refurbishing, getting to know the tenants, that sort of thing.”
Sophie stared at him with a kind of awe. “You are, without doubt, the most tenacious human being I have ever met.”
“Was that a compliment or an insult?”
“I’m not quite certain,” she replied honestly. “Alex, we’ve discussed this. I am not going to marry you. I am flattered by your offer, and I…like you very much. I respect and admire you, and I know we have a certain…”
“Mutual passion?” he offered helpfully.
“Affinity,” she stated primly. “But we simply will not suit.”
Alex pulled a chair out from the table. “Sit down.”
“No, thank you. I’m perfectly comfortable as I am.” She wasn’t the least bit comfortable. She was tired and sore, and she had run out of candles to light, but he was telling her what to do again.
“Sophie, please, have a seat. I am exhausted, but good manners dictate I not sit in a lady’s presence while she is yet standing.”
She wasn’t entirely sure she believed that, but at least he was trying.
She took the proffered chair and watched as he pulled out another and turned it to face her. Sitting down, he leaned forward and captured her hands in his.
“Sophie,” he started gravely. “We disappeared, at night, from a house party attended by half the ton. We have since spent two full days and nights together, alone. Surely it has occurred to you that you have been compromised?”
Sophie paled. “I hadn’t…” She swallowed hard. “With everything else, I hadn’t given it any thought.”
“I’m sorry.”
She pulled her hands from his and crossed the room in a futile effort to give outlet to the panic beginning to well up inside her.
Alex stood, but made no move to follow her.
“It’s not your fault,” she mumbled.
Dear God, compromised. She searched her memory for what Mrs. Summers had told her of girls who had the misfortune of becoming compromised. She’d only half listened at the time. It simply wasn’t a concern when you were often the only English-speaking woman within hundreds, even thousands of square miles.
“I’ve been compromised,” she repeated thoughtfully. “But not ruined. I need only marry to set things right, and to my knowledge there’s no rule stating whom I must marry. I’ll simply ask Sir Frederick when we return.”
“Sir Frederick?” Alex was too surprised to point out the glaring holes in her plan.
“Of course. He’s perfect.”
“Of course,” Alex mimicked.
“He can give me Whitefield, and I can give him a respectable marriage…to a woman.”
Alex didn’t pretend to not understand her meaning. “How is it you know about Sir Frederick?”
“Mirabelle told me. It was her idea to put him on the list. Although, I believe it was Evie who came by the information originally.”
“Good Lord,” Alex muttered. “William should have hired those two girls. They would have ferreted out Loudor’s secrets months ago.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Sophie, Sir Frederick will not agree to marry you. He wants a bride who will repel scandal, not invite it, and a young woman who has been compromised by another man does not fit the description of a respectable bride.”
“Well, beggars can’t be choosers.”
“Unfortunately for you, Sir Frederick isn’t a beggar. He’s wealthy and immensely popular. He’ll have no difficulty securing some open-minded widow in need of the financial security a union with him would provide.”
Sophie thought about that for a moment, then—“Damn it!”
She returned to pacing the room, ranting in a language Alex didn’t understand. He let her rave a while, which he felt was rather good of him, considering it was a reaction garnered from his marriage proposal. What he really wanted to do was clamp a hand over her mouth. Finally, when he felt she had cooled off sufficiently, he took a deep breath and tried reasoning with her again.
“We must marry.” Very well, it wasn’t reasoning, but she was so blasted stubborn and—
“No.”
Alex had used up his store of patience. “Why the hell not?”
“Don’t swear at me.”
“You must be joking. You swore at me not five minutes ago.”
“I wasn’t swearing at you. I was swearing at….”
“The situation?” he offered caustically.
She answered him with a scowl.
“Answer my question: Why not?”
She wanted to shout, Because I love you! And then she wanted to cry. If he ever loved her in return, the price to be paid would be too high.
If he ever loved her. If he ever loved her. That was a fairly enormous “if.” She knew he cared for her, and it was possible, if they were together for many years, that he might grow to love her. But it wouldn’t be love as she knew it. It wouldn’t be this all-encompassing emotion that made her want to simultaneously throw her arms around him and kick him in the shins. He wouldn’t be in love with her. The sort of love she felt for him was very rare indeed, and to have it returned was even rarer.
What she felt for him was surely…unrequited love. The thought of it had the oddest effect on her. She felt a fierce pain in her chest…and she felt relieved. She didn’t think unrequited love could be considered balanced in and of itself, but she was absolutely certain it could never be mistaken for good fortune. Since he would never love her back, she wouldn’t be at risk to suffer the inevitable payback of an equal dose of misfortune.
“Sophie.”
She would be safe. She was safe. She could marry Alex—if he allowed her return to her father. She groaned inwardly. So many ifs!
“Sophie! Either you marry me, or you don’t marry at all,” Alex declared, having given up on his earlier question.
She stopped pacing and looked at him. “One of us was insulted by that remark, but I’m just not sure which one.”
“Do I get a vote?” he grumbled.
“No.”
“I thought not. Be reasonable, Sophie.”
“I am being reasonable. All I want is to be able to return to my father.”
Alex considered that for a moment. “Very well.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said ‘very well.’ We’ll marry and you can be reunited with your father.” He held his hand up to forestall any comment from her. “After you give me an heir.” Alex was reasonably certain he could convince the viscount to return to England by then.
She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “What if I can’t have children? Or what if I only have daughters?” she asked.
“I would be delighted with daughters,” Alex said honestly. Little dark-haired, blue-eyed imps just like their mother. He reconsidered that. Little dark-haired, blue-eyed angels sounded better. His daughters were not going to spend their days learning how to pick locks and throw knifes. Nor were they going to engage in dangerous activities of any sort.
“You’re scowling,” Sophie remarked, not sounding particularly concerned. “But what of an heir? And what if I can’t have children at all?”
Alex sighed. Then I will thank God every day for having you all to myself, he thought. What did it matter? They’d find a way to be happy together. Lord knew he couldn’t be happy without her.
“We’ll set a time limit,” he said. “If we are unable to produce an heir in, say…” he waved his hand about a bit, “ten years, then—”
“Ten years!”
“Well, we don’t want to be too hasty. Lady Thurston had Kate fairly late in life, you know.”
“Three years,” Sophie countered.
“Seven.”
“Five.”
“Done.” And th
at was that.
Twenty-six
Sophie blinked.
Alex grinned.
“Well then,” she gulped.
“Well then,” he repeated, smiling wolfishly and moving toward her in much the same manner. “How shall we celebrate our engagement?”
“Er…”
“Come now, you don’t mean to renege do you? It’s considered very bad form, you know.”
“I’m not going to renege,” she said a little defensively, glad to focus on something other than the feral way he was eyeing her.
“Delighted to hear it.”
He advanced toward her and Sophie instinctively retreated until her back was pressed against the wall. Alex leaned forward and pressed his palms on the wall at either side of her head, neatly boxing her in. His eyes raked over her as if she were a feast set before a starving man and Sophie felt the heat of it, the thrill of it, race along her skin.
“I think we’ve tried this once before,” she said, wondering at her nervousness, and the excitement that came along with it. It wasn’t as if she had never kissed him before. Of course, she didn’t recall him ever before looking quite so…hungry.
Alex’s eyebrows shot up. “Betrothal?”
“No, kissing to celebrate an agreement. It involved a hat pin, remember?”
“Ah, yes,” he murmured, bringing his face closer to hers. “The hat pin. If I recall correctly, I suggested we kiss to seal a pact that day. Now we are celebrating our engagement. It is entirely different, I assure you.”
“If you say so.” Really why should she argue? Were she nervous or not, he was going to kiss her and they were going to be wed.
Sophie felt a weight lift from shoulders. She was going to marry Alex and not some old man who treated her like an adorable bonbon. Whitefield was safe, her father was safe, and she got Alex. Perhaps not forever, but for a while at least, and that was considerably more than she had allowed herself to even hope for.
She no longer had to fight down every desire, the longing she felt every time she looked at him, thought of him. Alex was hers now. She could kiss him to her heart’s delight.
She threw her arms around his neck and did just that.
Alex may have been a little bewildered at her sudden enthusiasm, but it came nowhere near his delight. And that didn’t come anywhere near to the overwhelming lust that started in his groin and expanded to encompass every nerve ending in his body.
His hands traveled up her back, into her hair, down her shoulders and to her waist. He reached around and cupped her bottom, bringing her tight against the proof of his desire.
She groaned into his mouth, and the sound made him a little crazed. Easing away from her, he hooked one arm beneath her knees and lifted her high against his chest. He made slow progress to the makeshift bed, finding it difficult to remember where he was going. She was doing the most amazing things with her mouth. Nibbling on his lips, nipping at an earlobe, trailing wet kisses down his neck. They were untutored caresses, but they elicited a response from him the most skilled of courtesans could not have managed.
“My God, Sophie,” he breathed, finally finding the linens on the floor and lowering them both until she lay beneath him.
“I should wait,” he mumbled kissing his way down to one still-clothed breast. “You deserve a real bed, a—”
“I don’t want to wait,” was her breathless reply.
“Thank God.” Alex pulled the fabric of her dress down to expose a single taut nipple. He lightly trailed his tongue over it in experimentation. She gasped. He grinned against her skin and did it again, teasing her endlessly, lapping, circling, blowing gently against the damp nub, until her gasps became moans. Then he latched on and suckled. She cried aloud and threaded her fingers through his hair.
Alex could have stayed there for hours. Well, maybe not hours exactly, he was more than a little eager to explore other parts of her. But he could have stayed there for a good deal longer if the weatherworn fabric of her dress were not scraping at his chin, a reminder that it was an obstacle to what lay beneath.
“This has got to go,” he said, giving the nipple a final kiss before sitting her up and helping her unbutton the back of her dress.
They undressed each other in stages. His coat, shirt, and waistcoat. Her gown and stockings. All the while stopping to kiss, to caress, to explore.
Sophie was fascinated by every inch of him. He was all hard angles and muscle.
“Amazing,” she whispered.
Alex chuckled. He unfastened his breeches but left them on. He’d never made love to an innocent, but he rather thought they might frighten easily. God knew their mothers did them no favor by keeping them in ignorance. The thought gave him pause.
Sophie, still in her chemise, was watching him undo the buttons on his breeches with a mixture of excitement and trepidation.
Suddenly, he stopped and looked at her a little worriedly.
“Sophie?” he said in that way people have when they’re about to ask a question but aren’t quite sure how to go about it. “Sophie, we’re…that is…do you know what we’re doing?”
She blinked. She would have though that was fairly obvious. Then a terrible thought occurred to her. “Did I…do something wrong?” she asked in a horrified whisper.
“No, sweetheart, no. You’ve done everything right, better than right, perfect.” He reached out and gently tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “I just don’t want to frighten you.”
“Because I haven’t done this before,” she explained, not quite over the scare that she may have committed some horrible faux pas.
“Yes, I know, and I can’t tell you how ridiculously pleased I am by that. But do you know what to expect?”
“Oh…Yes?” She sounded more hopeful than certain.
Alex didn’t think that was a very promising sign.
“I have a general idea,” Sophie explained. “But I’m a little fuzzy on the specifics.”
He considered that for a moment. “Why don’t you tell me what you do know,” he suggested.
Sophie pursed her lips. “Well…I know it involves kissing.”
“There is that,” Alex drew his thumb along her bottom lip. “Have I mentioned how partial I am to your lips? Lush, ripe…” The tip of his finger dipped inside, back out again. “Perfect.”
A shiver traveled up her spine and he pulled his hand away.
“What else, Sophie?”
“Um…touching…I know it involves touching,” Sophie managed.
“That is also true,” he said, trailing a finger down the length of her cheek.
“And…” He was making this awfully difficult. “The removal of clothing is necessary.”
Alex’s hand slid down to rest at her hip. “Certain pertinent articles, at any rate.”
“You mean it isn’t necessary?” She rather liked the idea of being able to do this without having to be completely naked.
“It is to night,” he growled, gripping her other hip and pulling her onto his lap. He leaned over to trail slow hot kisses down the side of her neck. “What else, Sophie?”
It took a moment for his words to seep into her passion-clouded brain. “Are you really determined to talk about this?”
“Talking about it can be almost as much fun as doing it,” he murmured.
“Really?”
“Almost,” he clarified.
He straightened a little and gently tugged on her ear with his mouth. Her senses were humming.
“What else?” he prompted.
“Um…I know…er, I know…I know you’re making this terribly difficult.”
He didn’t stop.
“I know that…that you and I are…different.”
He snaked one arm around her waist to hold her in place, while the other hand came up to fondle a breast.
“We have different parts,” she said on a gasp.
“Thank God for that. What else, Sophie?”
What else? Sophie couldn’t think of
what else. She couldn’t seem to think at all. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders.
Alex stilled suddenly, and then let out a long breath against the damp skin of her neck. “That’s it, isn’t it?” he asked.
Sophie tensed. He didn’t have to sound so put out about it. And that wasn’t it, thank you very much.
“I’ve seen cats do it,” she blurted out quickly, then clamped her eyes shut in mortification.
Cats?
Cats?
She felt the muscles in his arms tighten and shake and forced her eyelids open. He straightened and looked down at her, his own eyes dancing with merriment.
“Cats,” he repeated in an amused and slightly patronizing tone that prompted an explanation from her.
“Yes, cats.” In for a penny, in for a pound. “I was very young, and I thought they were fighting. Mrs. Summers told me to look away, but I only pretended to, of course, and…well, she tried to pull them apart but only got scratched for her troubles. She still has the scar on her hand,” Sophie rambled nervously, simultaneously wondering if it was possible to bite off one’s own tongue, and how much it might hurt if one tried.
“I’ll wager that scar makes for some interesting dinner conversations,” Alex said, grinning—in Sophie’s opinion—like an idiot.
“I’ve quite ruined the moment, haven’t I?” she grumbled.
“On the contrary, this is the most delightful moment I’ve had in years. I shall remember it always.”
Sophie cringed, very much afraid he would.
“Any other animal husbandry lessons you—?”
“No.” Several actually, but at this particular moment, no force on heaven or earth could force her to admit to that.
“I do understand the basics, Alex,” she said instead. “I’ve heard enough talk when people didn’t know I was listening. Some of the cultures we visited were very open about…”
She flipped her hand about helplessly. Just because he was comfortable talking about it, didn’t mean she ever would be.
“Making love?” he offered.
“Yes, thank you. I’m aware of the, er…mechanics involved. I know you…that is, we…”
More hand waving followed until she finally said, in a much smaller voice than she would have preferred, “er…join.”
As Luck Would Have It Page 26
