He lifted her chin and kissed her lips lightly. He looked for some reaction, but she had closed her eyes. So he pressed his lips against hers more firmly, more insistently, the need for her that he had been suppressing swelling between them. He felt her body arch into his, as she stood on her toes, her breasts pressing against his chest.
He pushed back the scarf in her hair, nuzzled her ear, then kissed her neck.
* * *
Sophia had not expected him to embrace her. From the look of sympathy on his face, she had thought he intended only comfort. But she found herself remembering his kiss at the opera, his touches in the carriage. These present moments merged more and more with their past passion. Renewed grief made her reckless.
She turned her head to let him kiss her neck more easily. She wound her arms around him, one caressed the back of his neck, the other pulled him closer at the waist. He took advantage of her willingness, pressing his lips more insistently against hers, touching her lightly with his tongue, tasting the honey of her lips, and feeling the softness of her skin, until she opened her mouth to him. He kissed her lightly, then, teasing her mouth with the tip of his tongue, he explored that space that had been denied to him for too long. He longed to evoke the same open passion that he had found when he’d kissed her as a young woman, but still she held back. He increased his fervor.
Suddenly she gave in to her passion, let her tongue follow his, allowing him to touch the depths of her mouth. He felt her hands move against his back. He let his hand move to the side of her chest to caress its edge. When she gave no objection, he moved his hand more centrally, exciting her passion so that she would not refuse him.
He wanted to draw her body more closely against his, to feel her pressed fully against the length of his frame.
“Sophia.” He whispered her name as a caress. “Let me love you. Pretend we never parted, that there is nothing in the world but the two of us.”
Sophia’s eyes, dark with passion, searched his face, looking for some help in deciding. He pulled her tighter against his body, pressed his arousal against the plain of her belly. He moved his hand to cover her breast. He whispered into her neck below her ear. “I want you”—he punctuated his words with kisses—“want you as I have wanted no other woman.” He sucked her earlobe as he caressed her breast. He felt her body begin to rock against him, but he held himself in check. He laved a line of slow kisses from her ear to her shoulder and back. “I want to give you pleasure, pleasure as I gave you in my garden.” He moved to kiss her mouth, and she responded with ardor, mouth open, welcoming him.
Sitting on one of the closed trunks, he pulled her into his lap, never stopping the pressure and pull on her breast, the kisses on her neck and mouth. He leaned her against his chest, leaning her into the curve of his arm and freeing the other to slide up her leg slowly, past her ankle, her knee, squeezing the swell of her thigh. He felt for the slit in her drawers and slid his fingers between the fabric to press against her flesh. She gasped and tightened her embrace, hungry for his touch.
“Tell me you’ll be my lover.” He stopped caressing. She moaned in objection, but he refused to continue. “Tell me. We will not have misunderstandings between us . . . at least not about this.”
She opened her eyes and met his.
“I will be your lover.” Then realizing where they sat, she pulled out of his arms and stood. “But not here. Not surrounded by . . .”
He rose and kissed her thoroughly, not allowing her to remember any more. He took her hand and led her down the stairs, stopping at the foot of the stairs to press her against the wall and kiss her deeply, to press his body against the cleft of hers. He wanted to keep her desire hot.
He kissed a line from her neck to her décolletage then to her breast, kissing her through the fabric of her gown. “I will meet you at your room.”
He set her back from him. She nodded her agreement; taking his hand, she pressed his palm to her lips. Then she turned away, still holding his hand. Their fingertips parted last.
* * *
In her room, she stood at the foot of her bed, uncertain how to proceed. Should she wait for him naked in the bed or allow him to undress her? She couldn’t imagine how to go about taking any man to her bed, much less Aidan. Her body still ached for him, but she had begun to feel foolish. She wanted him. But was wanting him wise?
She heard a tap at the door, and she was surprised that he didn’t simply enter. It would attract less attention. But no matter.
She considered lowering her blouse to reveal her décolletage, but she reconsidered. She had never been a wanton, and she wasn’t sure she could play the role successfully now. She opened the door wide.
The housekeeper’s daughter waited with a tea tray. “My mother thought you might like a bit of tea.” Seeing the door opened wide as an invitation, she walked past to set the tray on the table. “Do you wish to have your bath drawn soon?”
Sophia looked to the clock on the mantel, surprised at the time. “Yes, please. Will you bring a tub to the room?”
The maid left. Sophia shut the door in time to see Aidan entering the room from the adjoining bedroom. She had assumed the adjoining room was empty, but had neglected to ask the housekeeper the arrangement of the guests. He had heard the conversation.
“I suppose it’s good that I didn’t arrive in my dressing gown.”
“I didn’t realize how long we had been in the attic.” She lifted her palms apologetically.
He walked to her and placed a kiss on her forehead. “Neither did I. But there is time. Now that we have agreed to become lovers, there is time.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sophia had originally chosen a sober dress for dinner, one that would garner no attention and no criticism from her aunt. But after her breathless encounter with Aidan in the attic, she wished to be beautiful, or at least to wear a beautiful dress. At Elise’s shop she’d been entranced by a moss-green silk—an earthy hue, almost colorless, except when caught by the light. The silk was patterned in narrow vertical columns: delicate grape vines, with stylized leaves and dots of fruit, alternated with pale, almost ivory, columns whose texture resembled basket weave. The pattern had reminded her of Italian vineyards, the Neapolitan air tinged with spice, her gardens alive with color. But she’d seen no dress in Elise’s pattern books that suited the material. She’d almost set the bolt aside when Elise had joined her. “I could only find just enough, ma cherie, for a single dress. Most women do not see how lovely it is, so subtle, so I do not sell it. But you, you can see, no?” Sophia had nodded. Elise had promised it would be Sophia’s favorite dress.
The dress’s only ornamentation was a repeating pattern of triangular points, in two rows at the base of the skirt, the first beginning slightly below her knees. A third row of points ran across her back, mirroring the deep curve of the neckline in front, all edged in a deep burgundy-velvet rickrack. It reminded Sophia of the points on a harlequin’s costume, an unexpected and delightful detail, quiet in its execution.
For Sophia’s hair, Elise had provided wide ribbon in the same deep burgundy. The maid tied it in bands, one near Sophia’s forehead behind the curls around her face, and the second farther back, allowing her hair to trail in long curls down her back.
But, disappointingly, Aidan was not yet in the entry when she arrived, and the footman had already helped her into her cloak by the time he appeared. In the carriage they had sat apart, saying little, only their hands touching. But their promise lay between them.
* * *
The party was small, just herself and Aidan, her uncle and his wife and their children, Elizabeth and Frederick. Her aunt had offered a family dinner, and Sophia quickly realized why. Annabella hadn’t wanted any competition in making a match between her daughter and “the Duke.” To think that Sophia had been worried that Annabella might be suspicious of her relationship with Aidan.
To seat Elizabeth across from Aidan, where he could appreciate “her clear skin and pe
rfect manners,” Annabella had been obliged to leave Sophia at his side.
“Your grace, isn’t the pale yellow of Elizabeth’s dress becoming against the green of her eyes?” Annabella paused behind her daughter’s chair, placing her hands on the girl’s shoulders. Sophia saw her step-cousin blush at her mother’s narration.
When Aidan smiled blandly, Annabella moved to her own seat. “She will be offering us some entertainment after dinner: she can play the harp and sing so to make your heart break.” Annabella nodded to the servants to begin the meal.
“Elizabeth will be taking her season next year, but of course if we could find her a suitable match before that we would be quite happy. . . .” Annabella looked with anticipation for an acknowledgment from Aidan, but received none. “I would hope you would promise to dance with her in London.” She lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “She’s a good girl, knows everything that’s important for a woman to know.”
Aidan nodded.
“Of course, that wasn’t the case with my niece here.” Annabella leaned back to allow the footman to fill her wine. “No, it always surprised me how well Sophia married. But I take some credit there.”
Sophia almost choked on her fish.
“She wasn’t much interested in marriage, you know.” Annabella motioned to the servants to wait on the table, all without slowing in her conversation. “And her mother had given her such immoral ideas.” Annabella emphasized her words with a roll of her eyes and a snort of disapproval.
If Sophia had thought that her aunt would have grown more circumspect with age, she was wrong. She knew there was no deterring her aunt from any story she wished to tell. Sophia turned her attention to the design on her plate, green Chinese tigers on a translucent white background, with gilt edges all around. Very expensive. She wondered how often the china was used or if it had been brought out solely to impress the eligible Duke of Forster.
“Immoral?” Aidan was suddenly engaged in the conversation.
“Well, you can’t expect to educate a girl like a boy and not have it come out badly. Her parents taught her all sorts of things no girl needs to know, then neglected all the things that she must know to make a good match.” Annabella leaned forward, her face a mask of dismay. “Why, when I married Mr. Elliot, Sophia didn’t know how to sit or stand elegantly, she couldn’t play any instrument or sing, she knew only country dances, and she couldn’t arrange flowers.”
Aidan remembered that girl, so refreshing in her honesty, open in her passions, willing to run across a field in pursuit of a butterfly, willing to laugh. He’d fallen in love with her from almost the first moment of seeing her. Recently, he had begun to see that girl once more. Suddenly Aidan realized that, like Ian, he longed to hear Sophia laugh.
“Half the time she’d be in the fields, botanizing, coming home with scraps of plants and dirty fingers; the other half she’d be in the library reading,” Annabella offered confidentially as if she spoke to a kindred soul.
“That doesn’t sound immoral.” Aidan knew any defense of Sophia would only draw attention. “It’s only a different sort of education.”
“But she had no sense of how to catch a man. So, of course, I had to help her.” Annabella paused to emphasize the generosity of her act. “I was thrilled when Lawrence and I met your brother Aaron at a dinner, and he seemed perfectly in need of a wife. But, when he came to ask for permission to hunt on our lands, Lawrence was in the lower meadows. I could have sent your brother the short way through the fields, but Sophia had gone into the forest. He was dressed so fine that I sent him along the forest road instead.”
Sophia hadn’t forgotten that day, the man on horseback who had cut her off then begun herding her with his horse off the path into the dark of the woods. When she had tried to run, he had jumped from the horse and pressed her against the side of a tree. In a flash of memory, she was back in the forest, his wet mouth pressing her lips into her teeth in hard, unwanted kisses, his leg pressed between hers holding her in place. One hand had pulled her skirt up to her hips. She felt again the paralyzing fear, her helplessness against his physical strength.
She dropped her fish fork, and it clattered against her plate. As if he knew the course of her thoughts, Aidan placed his hand on her leg. Its firm pressure brought her back to the present moment.
Her aunt glared, then shrugged. Evidence that Sophia was still somehow unsuitable as a wife. “Your brother must not have seen her. I’d thrown young man after young man into her path. But she never seemed to be interested in catching their attention. When I realized that she didn’t know how to attract a man, I let her go off with her cousins, hoping she might be able to meet young men more freely. And we could make a match that way.”
Sophia wondered how she had never realized her aunt’s plan. She had seen those days of freedom as an odd lapse on her aunt’s part and cherished them. She’d never imagined that her aunt had wanted her to be caught in a compromising position that would lead to marriage.
“Were they good chaperones, her cousins?” Despite his hand tight on hers, Aidan’s tone revealed only a pleasant, polite interest.
“Oh, la, I don’t know, your grace.” Annabella shrugged dramatically. “You would know better than I. For a while, I had some hopes you would fall for our Sophia, but then you left for”—Annabella waived her hand dismissively—“wherever it was.”
“Forster served His Majesty on the Continent,” Sophia offered softly.
“Well, no matter.” Annabella offered another dismissive wave. “I found her a wealthy industrialist, a bit older, willing to marry her even though she lacked accomplishments. But in the end it was Lord Wilmot we found courting our Sophia. Surprising, but a good match.”
Sophia felt her aunt’s “our” like a painful refrain. She had never been “our”; she had only been an unwanted ward to marry off. She felt deeply sorry for her young cousin—to have a mother who would go to such lengths to entrap a man.
“Found courting?” Aidan’s tone encouraged greater revelations.
“Oh, don’t you know that story? Most romantic.” Annabella pressed a piece of linen to her lips. Her hands were weighted with two large, jeweled rings.
“Forster isn’t interested in such an old story,” Sophia intervened, increasingly uncomfortable with her aunt’s conversation.
“Nonsense, Lady Wilmot,” Aidan broke in. “I’m fascinated.”
Her aunt raised her chin triumphantly and leaned forward as if she told the story in confidence. But it was clear that she had rehearsed the story many times over the years. “Sophia felt unwell and missed the last ball of the season. At the ball, I told Lord Wilmot the disappointing news that she had remained home. Apparently, he wished to check on our Sophia, because when we came home . . .”
“Earlier than expected, I presume?” he asked, smiling, but Sophia noticed the smile didn’t reach his eyes.
“Well, I recall that I had a sudden headache.... But when we came home, Sophia and Lord Wilmot were in the drawing room, and Lord Wilmot announced their engagement. I hadn’t noticed he had a tendre for her, but after that he courted our girl most assiduously, got a special license, made it clear to the whole county that it was a true love match.”
“It’s a shame then that Lord Wilmot died so young.... True love matches are so rare,” Aidan offered, and Sophia wondered if others heard the hard edge to his voice. “Don’t you think, Miss Elliot?” Aidan turned the conversation deftly to engage Sophia’s young cousin and removed his hand from Sophia’s leg.
Without the comforting presence of his hand, Sophia felt like the lonely girl she had been in her aunt’s home. Though it couldn’t matter now, she hadn’t wanted Aidan to believe that she had set out to seduce him into marriage.
How relieved he must be to realize how barely he had escaped the trap. The fledgling trust between them would evaporate. But she would not reveal how deeply she felt their loss of contact. She was no longer the awkward girl who would rather read a book th
an go to a ball. No. Tom and Italy had taught her much about how to manage a conversation, and she’d rallied in more difficult situations than this.
Having decided to be the woman she had become in Italy, Sophia found the conversation moved more smoothly, ranging from crops and yields, to the latest novels, Elizabeth’s interest in music and Frederick’s in shipbuilding. Even her aunt became less a scheming shrew and more appealing as a woman concerned with her children’s prospects and futures. Sophia hardly had to work at all, the conversation glided almost of its own accord, everyone contributing. Even if the table wasn’t filled with the riotous laughter she remembered from her childhood with her cousins jockeying for space in the conversation, still it wasn’t the icy repast she’d anticipated.
* * *
Aidan had managed to control the rest of the dinner conversation, engaging Sophia’s uncle in a discussion of methods to increase yields in fields and the merits of enclosing wasteland and her cousin in a discussion of the various ships in his Majesty’s Navy. By the end of the hour’s entertainment, when Elizabeth revealed a real talent for the harp and a lovely singing voice, he felt less interested in killing Sophia’s aunt.
But under his calm exterior, Aidan felt himself on the edge of something. Listening to her aunt’s glib testimony, he felt unreasonably angry . . . angry that Sophia had been left in the charge of such a woman, angry that he had never seen Sophia’s days of freedom as a plan to force her into a marriage, any marriage. And by placing Sophia in his brother’s way . . . Aidan felt his heart grow cold at the memory. Foolish woman, not understanding that for all his brother’s easy manner, he had a quick temper, a fondness for the feel of flesh against his fists, and a penchant for unprotected women.
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