The image of her in Barksdale’s power made him so crazy, Ned had to push it away. ‘The intrepid Mrs Merrill, who’d almost succeeded in digging herself out of that cottage like the craftiest of hares that ever waltzed out of a kitchen garden after stripping it clean? I think not! Brave as you are, you would have worked out some way to escape him.’
She shuddered. ‘I’m not brave. I was terrified.’
‘Indeed, you are brave,’ he argued. ‘You didn’t sit there wringing your hands and cowering, you crept away. That’s the essence of bravery—acting despite your fear.’
‘I was terrified until I saw you riding up. Then I knew I would be all right. One way or another, eventually you would have got me away from him.’
‘I would have ridden without food or sleep like a madman until I freed you,’ Ned agreed flatly, shuddering inwardly at the awful image of her entrapped by Barksdale. Shaking his head to expel it, he said, ‘But let us talk no more of that. I cannot bear even the thought of you in Barksdale’s thrall.’
‘Let us speak instead of Davie’s courage and ingenuity, then! You saved me from Barksdale, but I would never have had a chance to break away, had it not been for Davie’s cleverness. You should have heard him!’
She chuckled. ‘One could almost sympathise with the extreme measures Barksdale took to rid himself of the boy, for Davie certainly had studied to perfection how to mock and goad the man! He distracted him so completely, if that breach in the wall had been any larger I would have been able to scamper away as swiftly as that hare you mentioned. By the way,’ she continued, her mirth fading, ‘you’re not angry with Davie, I hope. He had no way of knowing that Tanner would turn around to join the searchers instead of continuing on to the school, as Mr Elliot had assured us.’
‘No. Even if I were, remorse has punished him more severely than any chastisement I could devise. He’s already shown himself an exemplary assistant. Once he’s learnt the rudiments of reading and sums at your school, I believe he should be sent to university. A young man of his ingenuity and daring should go far.’
‘So you will speak to your patron about sponsoring him?’ she exclaimed, her face lighting. ‘That would be wonderful!’
‘Of course I shall,’ he recovered, his face heating at his near-blunder. Thank heavens the need for subterfuge would soon be over, allowing him to speak his thoughts freely without having to guard his heart and tongue.
How he longed to share with her all the details of his life he’d thus far had to withhold! Not just his hopes and aspirations for Blenhem, but the whole of his life.
His childhood and growing up with a doting mother and a fond, absentminded father who’d preferred scholarship to the vicissitudes of farming. How from earliest memory he’d loved the land, the smell of it freshly ploughed in spring, its damp mustiness after a gentle rain, its baked-dry tang in the heat of midsummer. How he’d eagerly assumed responsibility for the family properties when his father had offered to transfer its management over to him at an early age. How he’d yearned for a kindred spirit to share his passion for tending it and improving the lives of the people who worked on it.
He couldn’t wait to win her hand and take her to Oxford where, once Ned assumed the reins of the family properties, his parents had retired so his bookish papa might pursue his studies in medieval history. Meet his mother, a perfect scholar’s wife who’d never seemed to regret exchanging the vast halls and drawing rooms of Wellspring Manor in Kent for a handful of rooms in the city with only a tiny staff to manage. Content to arrange the dinners and soirées at which her husband and his scholarly cronies argued over the policies of King John and the Hundreds Rents while she chatted with the other wives.
They would both love her—and be delighted that their only son had found a lady to love at long last.
Ned emerged from this happy vision to find Joanna staring at him. Alas, candour and the dreams they might set free would have to wait until the business of Barksdale, the mill fire and the carriage attack was settled. And now that he was assured that her injuries were not serious, propriety dictated that he leave her.
No matter how fiercely both heart and his aroused senses protested against that conclusion.
After another tender kiss to her abused knuckles, reluctantly Ned relinquished her hand. ‘I’d best go and let you return to your rest.’
Her fingers tightened on his. ‘Don’t go,’ she murmured.
A bolt of desire, hot, demanding, shot through him, turning his blood to steam and his quiescent member to rock.
She was scraped and bruised and her head ached. This couldn’t be the invitation his greedy body wanted it to be, he told himself, desperately swimming against a strong sensual tide. She wanted reassurance after the terrors of the day, that was all.
‘I ought to go,’ he said, as much to himself as to her. ‘Now that you are awake, it’s not proper that I stay.’
But he couldn’t make himself pull his hand free.
A slow, wicked smile that promised mischief and delight lit her face. Ned stared, not quite able to believe what that smile promised, while his mouth dried and the bottom dropped out of his stomach.
‘I don’t want “proper”,’ she said, her husky voice brushing like velvet against his over-sensitised skin. ‘I was so frightened today, while Barksdale held me captive. But after I tried to escape, my only thought when he grabbed my ankles, trying to pull me back, was how much I’ve wanted to be in your arms. My only regret was that I might live out the rest of my probably short life without ever experiencing that rapture. Now that a merciful heaven has given me another chance, I don’t want to go another night without it. Please, Ned…stay with me.’
How could he deny her, when he had known the same fear—and was filled to overflowing by the same desire? While his heart thrilled to the sound of his name on her lips, he nonetheless struggled to find the words to return a more prudent answer.
Then she pulled his face close and kissed him.
He tasted the sweetness of honeyed herbal tea on her mouth, while his head filled with the scent of a minted compress and the spicy, exotic perfume that never failed to arouse him. Confronted with the reality of the kiss he’d imagined countless times, he simply couldn’t do the honourable thing and pull away.
Just one kiss, he told himself. He’d allow only that before obeying the stern order of honour and duty that he take himself off. And if he had only one kiss, he would infuse it with all the tenderness, love and yearning that flooded his heart at the thought of having her in his arms.
Placing his hands gently, mindful of her bruised shoulders, he drew her closer. Slowly he deepened the kiss and when, with a thrill that sent another bolt of lust through him, she opened her mouth, he couldn’t help sliding his tongue within to gently caress hers. With a little sigh that reverberated through his body, she joined in the game, mingling her tongue with his, stroking, teasing, caressing.
The sweetness of it made his heart swell in his chest, while further south, other parts of him that had no need of additional stimulation throbbed and burned. Breathing and heartbeat accelerated, while time seemed to slow to the rhythmic pulse of blood through his veins.
With a moan he felt straight to his loins, she brought her hands up to clasp his head. Without conscious thought he found himself lowering her back against the pillows and deepening the kiss. Just a little more, he promised the stern voice that, over the increasing conflagration in his senses, continued to reprove him. He’d give her just a taste of the desire that drove him mad every time she was near, a hint of the fulfilment to come.
She met the bold strokes of his tongue with her own, angling her head to give him fuller access, while she tangled her fingers in his hair, brushed her fingertips over his ears and down his neck, setting off shivering waves of sensation.
He must, he would, stop…but not quite yet. For a few more precious seconds he would savour her lushness, just long enough to store up memories to carry him through the raging
emptiness that assaulted him every night in his lonely bed while he dreamed of claiming her, licking up every drop of her sweetness, from the russet tendrils at her temples to the dimpled recesses of her ankles.
He moved his mouth to nuzzle her lips, then traced his tongue over her jaw line and upwards, into the shell of her ear. Her stroking fingers stilled, clutched in his hair, while a deep moan issued from her throat.
Triumph flooded him at this evidence that his effect on her was as heady and immediate as hers on him. He couldn’t stop now, not without first rewarding her for that admission with nibbles to her earlobe and across her cheek, soft wet kisses trailed from her chin down her neck to the pulse beating wildly at her throat.
While he played with his tongue in the hollow there, she seized one of his hands and cupped it to her breast. The breath stopped in his throat as he felt the nipple peak beneath his thumb, while with her other hand, she pulled at the knot of his cravat.
Using the unwinding neckcloth to pull his face back level with hers, gazing at him intently with passion-dark eyes, she said, ‘Now.’
‘Are you—?’
‘Now,’ she repeated, cutting off his query with a hard, demanding kiss that left no room for doubt.
In that instant, resistance crumbled and he was lost.
Willingly he submitted as she undressed him, jerking free the buttons of his waistcoat, tugging off that garment and then pulling the shirt over his head. He intended to return the favour, teasing her out of her night rail, but before he could grasp it, she urged him on to the bed beside her, then leaned over to circle his bared nipples with her tongue. Rational thought departed for good when she began to suck and nip him, while one hand smoothed its way down his belly and beneath the waistband of his trousers.
He raised his hips, his torso straining upwards as he sought to move his throbbing member nearer her lazily descending fingers. But still suckling him, each pull on that sensitive flesh sending darts of sensation downwards, she teased her fingers over his hipbones, his abdomen, around the curve of his waist towards his buttocks. He groaned in frustration and frenzy.
Murmuring soothingly, she removed the hand from beneath the garment. Before he could utter a panicked protest, she set about unbuttoning his trouser flap. An instant later, cool air flooded over that most overheated part of him as his erection sprang free.
She bent over him, her unbound hair sweeping across his naked skin with the silken caress of a thousand tiny fingers. Then he felt the hot wetness of her mouth at his belly, stroking and licking in a slow descent to the place he most wanted her to be.
His only rational thought was the realisation that, once she reached there, he would last about as long as a child’s sweet ice on a hot day.
Even so, it took him several seconds to be able to utter a strangled ‘No!’ and move a hand to stay her.
She looked up to smile at him, her eyes heavy lidded. ‘I want this,’ she said softly, reaching down and tracing a finger up his member, which leapt under her hand. ‘I’ve wanted it practically since the night we met,’ she continued, cupping her hand around the tip. ‘Let me, please?’
Words were scrambling in circles to the rhythm of her slow massaging strokes. It took several seconds before he could capture enough to nod his assent and reply, ‘My…pleasure.’
A mischievous glint lit her eyes. ‘I certainly hope so,’ she replied, and bent to take him in her mouth.
All that remained then was sensation, exquisite flooding waves of it pushing him rapidly to the pinnacle and beyond. With a cry he tried to stifle, he felt himself shatter in a burst of ecstasy.
When the world righted and the stars settled back in their places, he opened his eyes to blink up at her smiling face. ‘Was it?’ she asked.
‘Was it…?’ he repeated stupidly before catching her reference, then shaking his head in wonder. ‘Words cannot express,’ he said simply, reaching out to caress her cheek with one fingertip.
‘For me, too,’ she whispered, capturing his hand and holding it against her face.
‘I feel selfish, though,’ he confessed.
Her grin returned. ‘Don’t. ’Twas me being selfish. For now when we love again, it can last and last.’
A chuckle rumbled in his chest. ‘Clever girl! Yes, it can—and it will.’
More than that, he promised himself, he would make her burn and sigh and tremble on the brink until she cried his name and begged for release. Create for her a night she would never forget, one that would bind her to him forever.
He felt a wolfish grin light his face as a wave of sheer joy bubbled up from his chest. He couldn’t wait to go to work. ‘Your turn, madam, I believe,’ he said.
‘Joanna,’ she corrected. ‘Call me “Joanna”.’
‘Joanna,’ he repeated reverently, thrilled to have been granted permission to use the name that sang through his dreams. Then he snagged the hem of her night rail and pulled the garment up over her head.
He caught his breath on a gasp as he looked at her for the first time, sitting proudly naked before him, smooth shoulders and dimpled arms and full, lush, rounded breasts, the dusty nipples already erect beneath his admiring gaze. Helpless before that invitation, he bent to suckle one.
Her head lolling back, she gave a shuddering sigh. Her gasping breaths and the rigid hands clutching at the bed linens urged him on as, after lavishing attention on each breast, he moved lower. Teasing her legs apart, he smoothed his hands over her legs to the satin of her inner thighs, then bent to lick the tender bud within the petalled folds at her centre, until, with a muffled cry, she shattered.
He gathered her close until her heartbeat slowed and her breathing settled…while the smooth caress of her naked skin against his body heated his flesh and soon had him once again hard and aching.
After a few minutes lying pliant in his embrace, she stretched against him and nuzzled his neck, then chuckled against his throat. ‘Ah, I was correct, I see,’ she said, bringing her hands up over his back and smoothing her fingers down his naked skin, beneath the gaping waistband of his breeches, to press his hardness against her.
‘Correct indeed,’ he affirmed, rubbing his cheek against her hair.
‘Excellent,’ she sighed. ‘I can scarcely wait to begin again.’
And with that, she twisted beneath him, wrapped her legs around his and pressed upwards, sheathing him within the velvet softness of her body.
The feel of being within her, surrounding by her moist hot flesh, was wonderful beyond all imagining. ‘No more waiting,’ he promised, and drove himself deep.
Chapter Seventeen
H ours later, Joanna woke filled with a wonderful sense of euphoria. Despite not actually claiming sleep until the early hours of the morning, she felt brimming over with energy and enthusiasm.
How could she be anything but energised after a night of lovemaking as tender, passionate, inventive and satisfying as anything she could have imagined? Daydreams paled beside the reality of being with her Ned, who had fulfiled her hope for a reprise of their lovemaking several times over.He’d brought the sensual appetite that had slumbered since her husband’s death to full awakening—and she’d revelled in every moment. Perhaps, she thought with a sudden touch of anxiety, a bit too much. She hoped she hadn’t shocked him by her shameless initiative and bold demands.
Though she’d pleasured him as thoroughly as he’d pleasured her. And, ah, how well he’d done that! With his mouth, his tongue, his fingers, his stroking member, he’d brought her again and again to the ecstasy of release.
She couldn’t wait to do it all over again tonight.
She uttered a dreamy sigh at the thought, before the warmth of the sun coming through the windows suddenly penetrated her abstraction and she sat bolt upright, peering at the time on the mantel clock. Over her drowsy protest, Ned had left her bed about an hour before first light. The household had almost surely finished breakfast by now, so he must have asked Mrs Winston not to rouse her.
&n
bsp; Embarrassment came and went in a quick hot wave. In a household this small, she knew the secrets of the night were unlikely to last long. If Mrs Winston—and the other servants—weren’t already aware of their night-time revels, the maid who laundered these tangled sheets would soon alert them.
Sighing, she shook her head, then winced at the twinge of pain. If the household learned of the liaison, so be it. She was no longer a young virgin of good birth looking for a husband, but a servant without a reputation to protect, a mature woman who knew what she wanted and wasn’t afraid to ask for it.
She loved Ned Greaves. It was silly and pointless to turn missish now about the prospect of the rest of the household knowing it.
The little fear darted into her heart again that their night together might have irreparably damaged their friendship. Firmly she squelched it. Too late now to worry about the consequences of her bold action.
Besides, if she didn’t scramble out of bed and get herself downstairs quickly, she would miss him before he left to attend to the day’s work.
Some fifteen minutes later, cheeks flushed with effort, she hurried into the breakfast room—and stopped short, both surprised and delighted to see him still seated at the table. Her cheeks flushed even hotter after Myles gave her a rare welcoming nod—followed by broad wink that confirmed the secret was out.She suppressed an inward sigh. At least if she were known to have acted the wanton, it appeared the staff approved her choice.
But her agitation faded when she gazed into the face of the man who’d risen as she walked in. On his countenance she saw the same radiant joy that she knew illumed hers.
They must have greeted each other, though her dazzled mind heard none of the polite pleasantries. She only knew he sprang up to escort her to the sideboard, hovering beside her as if he were as eager as she was to be near again. He helped her choose food she didn’t remember eating, after which Myles filled her cup with coffee she didn’t recall tasting, winking at her again before he finally removed himself. At last, they were alone.
From Waif to Gentleman's Wife Page 19
