“Slumped in a chair?” she said with a chuckle.
“He isn’t slumped. He’s sitting.” He walked over to the chair and hauled the skeleton up beside him. “It’s hard to get a skeleton to stay seated, you know. And Seymour can be rather obstinate.”
“Seymour?” A laugh sputtered out of her. “You call your skeleton Seymour?”
“Of course,” he said lightly. “What else does one call a skeleton?”
“Yorick?” she offered.
“No, no, Yorick is only for skulls. A full skeleton requires a more auspicious name.” He carefully arranged the skeleton so that it actually looked as if it was seated. “He has no clothes, after all, with which to display his dignity.”
She cocked her head. “How do you know it’s not a she? Perhaps its name is Priscilla. Or Elizabeth.”
“Absolutely not,” he said, glancing down at the lower half. “The pelvis is too small and it’s shaped wrong, besides. This skeleton could never bear a child.”
The words came out of nowhere, as if Fate was determined to remind her of everything that had gone wrong in her marriage.
She stiffened, then anger roiled up in her, tinged with despair. “And of course that’s the essential thing,” she said bitterly. “That a woman be able to bear a child.”
When he looked startled, she knew she should stop, but now that the words had been loosed, she couldn’t seem to hold them back. “God forbid that a woman be valued for her skills as a wife or her intelligence or her ability to dance. Oh no, she is good for only one thing—bearing that essential son so that he can inherit what she is never allowed to.”
He came toward her. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry, but I cannot fathom why you’re upset.”
“Don’t call me ‘sweetheart’!” she cried. The futility of it all swamped her, making her despair. “I can never be that to you.”
“I don’t understand,” he said hoarsely. “I don’t see what children have to do with—”
“I’m barren, blast it! I can’t bear you or any other man the requisite ‘heir and a spare’!” Tears clogged her throat, and she fought them back. “S-so all your lovely words about s-spending nights with me . . . all our wonderful conversations a-and the way you make me feel . . .” She cast him a hopeless glance. “They’re all for naught, don’t you see? I can never be that woman for you, no matter how much I want to be.”
Then, to her horror, she burst into tears.
3
FOR HALF A second, Percy stood immobile, stunned into silence. Not since his mother’s illness had he seen a woman cry so deeply, and he’d forgotten how wrenching it could be.
Then, cursing himself for a fool, he hurried to draw her in his arms. “Shh, shh, it’s all right, it’ll be all right,” he murmured against her hair, falling back on the soothing words his father had offered whenever his mother couldn’t abide the chest pain and the wracking coughs.
But he knew only too well that nothing could really soothe Dorinda. Her hurt ran deeper than he could reach. God, why hadn’t he recognized the source of it sooner? He should have seen the signs—her comments about doctors, her vacillating responses to his advances . . . the fact that she’d earlier recited every sort of half-baked cure used to treat barrenness.
With a groan, he fumbled for his handkerchief, alarmed by the tears spilling down her cheeks. “There, now, don’t go on so.” At least she was letting him hold her, even though he was an oblivious dolt. At least she trusted him enough to show him her aching heart. He pressed his handkerchief into her hand. “Steady on, sweetheart, take a breath. You’ll make yourself sick.”
“Oh, w-what does it m-matter?” she managed as she pulled back from him, dabbing at her face with his handkerchief. “I’m that h-horribly useless thing to a man—a w-woman who can’t b-bear children.”
The pain in her words struck him to the heart. He caught her hands in his. “Anyone who thinks that a woman is good for only that is a fool. I certainly don’t think any such silly thing.”
Though she eyed him skeptically, she didn’t yank her hands away. “Every husband wants a wife who can bear him sons.” She dragged in a shivering breath. “Why do you think I visited so many doctors? Edgar would have done anything to ensure that I carried his child.”
He choked back the words, More evidence that he was an arse. This was probably not the moment to make that point. “Yes, but I’m sure he valued you for your other fine attributes.”
“If he did, I saw no evidence of it,” she said bitterly. “Before he died, that was all he could talk about—my ‘flaw.’”
“That is not a flaw in you,” he growled, wishing he could go back in time and thrash the hell out of her late husband. Instead he settled for trying to undo some of the damage the arse had done. “It’s just . . . part of life. And he was a fool if he cared only about your ability to give him children. A good wife is worth far more than that.”
She stared at him with reddened eyes. “He wasn’t alone in his thinking. Every doctor he sent me to felt the same.”
“Then they were fools, too. And obviously not very attentive to the lessons they’d surely learned in their practice of medicine.”
That made her blink. “What lessons?”
“I’ve been present at a number of birthings, sweetheart. And in the few tragic cases where a man was forced to choose between the life of his unborn child and the life of his wife, he always chose his wife.” He squeezed her hands. “Always.”
She stiffened. “Because a wife can produce more babies.”
“No. Because a man carefully picks the woman he wishes to be his companion for life. He can’t get that from his children. So given the choice between the real woman of his heart and a potential child of his blood, he will choose his heart over his blood every time.”
“Not every man,” she said, though there was more uncertainty in her voice now. “Not Edgar. I think he would have tried any cure, no matter how outrageous, no matter what it did to me, as long as it got him his heir.”
The very thought of what she must have gone through trying “any cure” chilled him to the bone. “That wasn’t about children; that was about pride and money. If he only cared about those, then he didn’t deserve you.” He caught her head in his hands. “Because if I had a woman as fine as you for my wife, I swear I would never torment her with astringents and purges and mare’s milk.”
Her eyes went wide, confirming the sort of dubious remedies her husband and his quacks had been subjecting her to. It made him want to howl.
It made him want to show her what he already saw—that she was so much more than a brood mare.
“You don’t know what you’d do if you were desperate,” she pointed out. “No matter how much I protested, there was always another doctor who gave him new hope that I could be fixed, who offered new guaranteed cures. So if you and I were married for years and I still hadn’t managed to—”
He pressed a finger to her lips to silence her. “I would never risk your health in some fool attempt to circumvent nature.” He skimmed his finger along her luscious, perfect mouth. “I don’t know if you’re barren, but neither do I care. You’re a beautiful, intelligent woman with a heart as wide as the sky at sea, and a courage deep enough to withstand Fate’s many arrows. That’s all that matters to me.”
Then he kissed her, for lack of any other way to express the fullness in his heart. He kissed her long and hard, half expecting her to thrust him away for his impudence.
So when she curled her fingers into his sleeves and kissed him back instead, his blood soared. He deepened the kiss at once, ravaging her mouth with his tongue, reveling in the soft silk of her.
She tore her lips from his. “Percy . . . oh, Lord, Percy . . . you don’t know what you’re doing.”
With an exultant laugh, he looped one arm about her waist and dragged her close. “Of c
ourse I do. I’m reminding you that I find you desirable just as you are.” Nuzzling her cheek to drink in the honeyed scent of her, he skimmed his hands up her ribs. “I’m doing what I’ve wanted to do for months—hold you and kiss you and worship every inch of you with my mouth and hands and tongue.”
She drew back to gape at him. “But you never let on . . . I never guessed that you—”
“I thought it was hopeless.” He stared into her lovely face, encouraged by her expression of wonder and surprise. “I thought you must still be mourning your husband. That you saw me as only the friend of your friends. Until today.” He lowered his voice to a husky murmur. “Until you showed up here in the early morning to help me organize my office.”
She colored so fetchingly, he wanted to kiss her again. “That was because of Lisette. I would never have—”
“No?” He pressed kisses into her fragrant hair. “You could have asked her to assign you some other task. Or once you arrived and I showed up half-dressed, you could have screamed and run out.”
“I am . . . far too sensible for that,” she said, though she swayed against him, rousing his blood to new heights.
He chuckled. “Yes, you are.” Taking a chance, he slid one hand up to cup her breast. When she sucked in a ragged breath in response, he added, “But there was more to it than that. The moment you stared at me in my banyan, you let me see that you wanted me. Perhaps as much as I want you.”
Fixing her with a heated glance, he kneaded her breast in slow circles through her gown. “You do want me, don’t you? I did not imagine that.”
She stared at him with a sudden wildness in her eyes, then reached down to raise his other hand to her other breast. “No. You did not imagine that.”
God save him, he was in trouble now. Not that he minded. Any trouble involving the Widow Nunley was well worth it.
Dorinda was thinking much the same thing as Percy took her mouth with a savage abandon that made her ache to do all manner of wicked things. With him. To him.
She wanted to believe his tender words. She wanted to trust that he really didn’t care about her ability to give him children. Perhaps she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t help herself. His hands were all over her, reminding her that she was desirable, reminding her that she desired . . . to be with him, to be touched by him, to take him into her bed. She’d forgotten the lushness of desire, how it made a woman yearn and hope and feel.
He thumbed her nipples so deliciously through her walking gown and soft stays that she wanted to rip her clothes off to have his hands on her naked body. Meanwhile, his magical mouth trailed a path of fire down her neck to her throat, which it branded with hot, eager kisses.
Next thing she knew, he was unfastening her walking dress to better expose her bosom, and she was helping him.
“I want you, sweetheart,” he said. “Now. But if you don’t—”
“I do,” she whispered, pushing her fears firmly aside. “Take me, Percy. Please.”
Meanwhile, she urged his head down to her breasts, for she thought she’d die if she didn’t feel his mouth there. When he obliged her by unearthing one taut nipple and seizing it with his teeth, she buried her hands in his thick, silken hair and clutched him to her.
The next several moments were a blur of kisses and caresses and words of urgent need as they yanked off each other’s clothes, eager to banish the barriers between them. When she was stripped down to her shift and he to his drawers, he paused to give her a look as dark as sin and twice as hot. “Are you sure about this?” he growled, even as his gaze scoured every part of her.
Her answer was to shimmy out of her shift and drop it to the floor.
His eyes turned a sultry black as they took in her nakedness. Then he hauled her into his arms for a long, heated kiss that inflamed her senses.
Emboldened by his unabashed desire for her, she slid her hands into his drawers and shoved them off so that he was naked against her from head to hips to heels.
“Oh, God, sweetheart,” he gasped as he filled his hands with her breasts, “you are even more than I had guessed.”
“More . . . what?” she managed, exulting in the feel of his hands on her, of his flesh hardening against her belly.
“More beautiful, more warm . . . more woman. More everything.”
While she was still smiling at those silky words, he dragged her to a nearby chair and dropped onto it, then pulled her to stand in front of him. When she gaped at him, he grinned. “You said you like to ride.”
“Ride?”
He cocked his head. “Have you never been on top to make love?”
She shook her head. “Edgar always said there was only one way to do it if we wanted to conceive.”
His face darkened. “Edgar was an arse. There are many ways to make love, and I mean for us to try them all.”
He began stroking her body, finding all the secret places that yearned for him and caressing them until she turned to putty in his hands.
So this was what he’d meant by wanting to worship her. Good Lord in heaven, it was pure sacrilege, the way he roused her. And she didn’t care one whit. She only wanted more and more and more . . .
“Please, Percy, please . . .”
Satisfaction leapt in his face as he pulled her to straddle him. “Time for you to ride, sweetheart.” He urged her over his member, then impaled her on the hot, hard flesh.
“Ohhh, yes,” she whispered, reveling in the fullness of him. “That’s . . . amazing.” When he squirmed urgently beneath her, she began to move, up and down, finding her own rhythm.
How wonderful! She loved this—being in control. Having Percy—her Percy—beneath her.
His breath came hard and fast, like his answering thrusts. “I think you lied . . . about never doing this . . . Dorinda. You’re very . . . good.”
She gave a giddy laugh. “I told you. I’m a natural . . . at riding.”
“Thank God.”
After that, there were no more words. They were too caught up in the steady beat of their ride, which quickened and darkened and intensified until she could feel the world rushing past her, feel the rushing build in her loins and her blood and her heart.
And as she crashed through into bliss, he cried out beneath her and found his own release, spilling himself inside her. In that moment everything she thought she knew about men shattered, and she knew, really knew.
He was the only man she could ever marry. Because she feared she might well be in love with him.
If that was true, then God help her.
4
PERCY COULDN’T BELIEVE it. Dorinda was his at last, every warm, beautiful inch of her. She still sat sprawled across him, her body wrapped about his like a fragrant cloak, and he wished he could keep her there forever.
He glanced beyond her, then laughed.
“What?” she murmured sleepily.
“I think Seymour is jealous.”
She roused to glance behind her. “How can you tell?”
“He’s slumped in his chair again.” They must have been vigorous enough that the vibrations along the floor had shaken him back down into that position. “Clearly he’s disappointed that I’m the one who has you in his arms and not he.”
She laughed. “I don’t know—it looks to me as if he’s hiding his face in embarrassment. Poor Seymour got to see more than he bargained for.”
He groaned. “That’s the worst pun I’ve ever heard.”
“He’s practically stiff with indignation.”
“Please stop,” he said.
Her eyes twinkled. “Or perhaps he’s just looking on the floor for a skeleton key.”
A laugh escaped him, despite himself. “You’re amazing, do you know that?”
“Because I make bad jokes?”
“About a skeleton. Which most women would regard with horro
r and loathing.”
“Most women haven’t spent as much time in doctors’ offices as I have.”
That sobered him. “Does it bother you? Being here among the medicines and the nasty implements?”
She brushed a kiss to his lips. “Not when you’re here.”
His heart caught in his throat. “Marry me.”
Her eyes went wide. “That’s . . . rather precipitous, isn’t it?”
“Hardly. I’ve known you for five months and lusted after you for four and three-quarters. I would have asked you for your hand three months ago if you hadn’t been still in mourning. And if I’d thought I had any hope of your consenting.”
She dropped her gaze to his chest. “What about my inability to give you children?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Besides, don’t let those quacks tell you that it’s only the fault of a woman if a couple can’t bear children. It’s perfectly possible that your husband was the problem. You may not even be barren at all.”
Her eyes met his, suddenly wary. It stymied him. He’d thought he was giving her good news.
“I think I’d better go,” she murmured.
He blinked. “Why?”
Slipping from his grasp, she left him to go pull on her shift. “If I don’t return in enough time to dress for dinner, they will realize something is amiss.”
“Let them. Once we tell them we’re marrying—”
“I haven’t agreed to that,” she said sharply.
He leapt to his feet. “What’s wrong, Dorinda?” he demanded as she shimmied into her stays.
“Nothing.” She presented her back to him. “Will you please do me up?”
Gritting his teeth, he did as she asked. He’d gone awry with her somehow, but he wasn’t sure where. “Are you saying you do not want to marry me?”
“We can talk about it later.” Swiftly she pulled on her front-fastening gown and did it up. “Right now I have to go.”
“Damn it, Dorinda,” he bit out, grabbing her by the arm and forcing her to face him. “What is this all about?”
Dorinda and the Doctor Page 3
