Only Enchanting: A Survivors' Club Novel

by Mary Balogh

  “Did you s-sleep well last night?” he asked.

  “We were late getting home.” She looked warily at him. “Then I had to pack my things. I slept well enough after I finally lay down.”

  Apart from the wakeful spells. And the vivid dreams.

  “You will not s-sleep much tonight,” he told her. “And I would rather the night be no shorter than it need be. Go and get undressed.”

  What? It was not long after ten. Surely they would be able to get a good night’s sleep after . . . Well, after. If she could sleep, that was. She might still be wound up by the strangeness of the day’s events, including the one soon to be enacted.

  They were leaving in the morning. For London.

  She made her way to her dressing room, feeling his eyes on her back as she went.

  * * *

  It was a prim nightgown, as he had fully expected. It was not inexpensive—none of her clothes were. Neither was it new—none of her clothes were. And it had certainly not been made to excite a man’s imagination or lust.

  It did both anyway. It covered her to the ankles and the wrists and the neck. What was left to do but imagine and lust after what was hidden from sight?

  Her hair was in a single neat braid down her back and drawn smoothly over her head and ears. She was standing by the window of her bedchamber, though he did not believe there was much of a view beyond it. It faced the hill and the wilderness walk, and there was not much moonlight tonight. She was looking back over her shoulder at him, her face wiped of all expression. Like a martyr headed to the bonfire. Or was it witches who were destined for that particular fate? She looked bewitching enough to be one. She could give the most experienced courtesan a few hints.

  He had tapped on the door and waited for her summons. He advanced into the room now after closing the door behind him.

  “Have you ever seen such an opulent bedchamber?” he asked her. “It is a good thing the w-window does not face east. We might be blinded by sunlight on all the g-gilding in the morning.”

  “I wonder if the prince and his princess did stay here,” she said. “It must have seemed like a horrid waste if they did not.”

  “We will have to make good use of it t-tonight,” he said. “And then every farthing spent on it will have been worthwhile.”

  It was a good thing his valet had dug up a nightshirt from somewhere in his baggage, he thought—perhaps from the same remote corner his knee breeches had occupied. She might have been disconcerted to discover nakedness beneath his dressing gown.

  “How l-long did it take you to braid your hair?” he asked her.

  “Two minutes?” she said as though she was not sure. “Three?”

  “Let me see if I can unbraid it in one,” he said.

  It took him longer because he stood in front of her to do it instead of behind, and he was distracted by her eyes, which were on the grayish side of blue and looked slightly smoky in the candlelight, fringed as they were by lashes that curled slightly at the ends and were a darker shade than her hair. Then he was distracted by her mouth, which no one would never compare to a rosebud, for which fact he was thankful. Wider mouths were far more kissable. And he was distracted by the smell of her hair or her skin or her. It was a scent beyond description and certainly came from no bottle or even entirely from any bar of soap. It was a scent that would be worth a fortune if he could bottle it, but he was far too selfish to share it, and why have it in a bottle when he had her?

  He was distracted by the tip of her tongue, which took its time about moistening her lips, though it was perfectly obvious she did it with no intention whatsoever of causing a tightening in his groin.

  She caused it anyway.

  She had never had a come-out, because her father had used the money set aside for it to secure his divorce. Would she have learned feminine wiles if she had? He was glad she had not learned any. He liked the ones that came naturally and were not real wiles at all, for the very word suggested something deliberate.

  It was like being married to a nun. Though he had not discovered yet what bed skills she had acquired during her previous marriage. He would be willing to wager, though. . . . No, he would not. A wager had to be made with another person.

  He hoped she had no skills.

  Strange thought. He had on occasion paid exorbitant prices for skills, as well as mere access to a female body.

  She did not look like a nun after he had unraveled her plait and spread her hair over her shoulders. It was almost waist length—unfashionably long.

  “It is neither dark nor blond,” she said. “Just a nondescript brown.”

  “I would not l-like you with dark or blond hair,” he said. “I like you with this color hair.”

  “Well, that is very gallant of you,” she said.

  She looked at least five years younger with her hair unconfined. Though he did not at all mind her the age she was.

  He kissed her, threading the fingers of one hand through all that heavy, silky hair and drawing her whole slim length to him with the other while he plundered her mouth. It was wet and scorching hot. She clutched his shoulders, and there was a tension in her that had not been there during previous embraces. Perhaps because she knew this time there would be no stopping.

  “It has been a long time,” she said a little breathlessly, a little apologetically, when he raised his head.

  She did not mean since he last kissed her.

  “How long?” he asked.

  “Oh, five or six years.”

  And then she flushed and bit her lip, and he knew that if she could recall the words, she would do so in a heartbeat. For she had told him on another occasion that she had been a widow for three years. What sort of a marriage had she been in? What sort of a man had William Keeping been? Had he been sick for the last two or three years of their five-year marriage?

  But he was not remotely interested in either William Keeping himself or the man’s sex life. He was not even interested in William Keeping’s widow.

  He was on fire for his own wife.

  “Time for bed,” he said.

  14

  They did sleep, but only for an hour or so at a time when a sort of languorous exhaustion overcame them. They made love over and over again when they were awake.

  In her mind Agnes called it making love, though she was aware that what happened between them was far more raw and carnal than that romantic term suggested.

  He unclothed her and himself even before they lay down, and he did not extinguish the candles, though she drew his attention to the fact that they were still burning—four in a candelabrum on the dressing table, with the mirror multiplying them to eight, and one on the tables on either side of the bed.

  “But I must s-see you, Agnes,” he protested, “and what I do to you, and what you do to me.”

  The bed itself was enormous. It was surely wide enough to allow six adults to sleep side by side in roomy comfort. They used every inch of it in the course of the night but very few bedcovers, despite the fact that it was still only March and was probably chilly outside.

  Neither of them noticed the chill. They had each other for bedcovers and for a mutual source of heat.

  It was an inextinguishable source.

  Agnes was shocked by their nakedness and by the lit candles and the lack of bedcovers. She was shocked by the way his eyes burned a hot trail over her whole body, including her most intimate parts, and by his hands, his fingers, his fingernails, his mouth, his tongue, his teeth as they moved all over her, stroking, tickling pinching, scratching, licking, blowing, biting—and doing myriad things to her body that aroused her to a fever pitch of wanting. But she was no virgin despite the very limited nature of her sexual experience. And she was no girl. She had repressed yearnings of which she had been almost entirely unaware since she really was a girl and a virgin, and she saw no reason to repress them any longer when he so obviously wanted her to share his pleasure. She did not lie a passive recipient of his lovemaking for long.
Being able to do to and with a man all those things she had not even known of as well as those she had dreamed of but never known personally was invigorating and glorious beyond belief.

  Lovemaking, she discovered, was not a brief, almost clandestine groping and joining of the lower halves of bodies under cover of blankets and darkness, and a hurried withdrawal as soon as the act was over, and a murmured, almost furtive good night and a subsequent sleeping in separate rooms. Oh, no, it was something else entirely. They played the first time with hot, vigorous sensuality, she and Flavian, for what seemed like long ages and might have been half an hour before he came inside her body with one long, hard thrust, robbing her of breath, almost of sanity. And even then he was in no hurry. He worked with slow thoroughness and deep, firm strokes until her hips and inner muscles fell into rhythm with him and they worked together, arms and legs twined about each other, both of them hot and slick with sweat and panting from their exertions.

  And when, finally, he sighed against the side of her head and held deep inside her and she felt the hot gush of his seed, it was not relief she felt that duty was over for another week. It was an earth-shattering cresting of a wave and a wild, free-fall descent down the other side to the tranquil ocean beyond. It was the end of the world and the beginning of eternity—or so it felt for the first few minutes after it happened, until her breathing returned to normal and her heart ceased its thudding and she was aware of his warm weight pressing her into the mattress and of the fact that they were still joined and that they were man and wife indeed.

  She should feel ashamed, embarrassed, exposed. She felt none of those things, even when he moved off her and lay beside her, gazing at her in the flickering candlelight with green, half-closed eyes. She felt only a certain sadness that it was over and that now he would go to his own bedchamber and that perhaps she would not experience this again for a while, even maybe a week.

  But he did not leave. He slid one arm beneath her neck and the other about her waist and rolled her into him instead, and she slid into a doze, lulled by the steady beat of his heart and warmed by his damp heat and comforted by the sweaty, musky smell of him, which seemed to her to be masculinity in its very essence.

  Flavian in his very essence.

  She was deeply, irrevocably in love with him.

  They made love an incredible six times before she awoke in daylight to find him standing beside the bed and looking down at her while slipping his arms into the sleeves of his dressing gown. He still looked glorious in his near-nakedness, though his body was not unmarred by war, as she had both seen and felt during the night. There were numerous hard-ridged seams of old saber wounds and one puckered scar of an old bullet wound near his right shoulder. A number of the injuries must have been near-fatal when they were incurred.

  The scars did not mar his beauty. And he was incredibly beautiful, all golden and handsome and strong and virile.

  “I have woken Sleeping B-Beauty,” he said. “My apologies, Lady Ponsonby. But I will be mocked for the rest of m-my natural life if I do not p-put in an appearance before my friends leave. And we must leave sometime this morning.”

  He bent over her, kissed her with lingering, openmouthed thoroughness, cocked one eyebrow at her when she sighed against his mouth, told her she would quite have cast Eve into the shade if she had happened to wander into the Garden of Eden at the beginning of time, and disappeared into one of the dressing rooms. He shut the door behind him.

  They had made love both slowly and with fierce swiftness, with her on her back and on top of him—and once very, very slowly, when they were side by side, her leg drawn up over his hip while he watched her face and she watched his. Each time he had seen to it that she achieved as much physical completion as he. He was marvelously skilled at that, as if he took pride in being a good lover.

  It was half past six, Agnes saw when she looked at the ornate clock on the mantel.

  And she realized something as she felt the coolness of the morning air on her naked body and swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up. Two things, actually. One was that she felt thoroughly . . . married. Every part of her ached, and she was sore and tender inside. Her legs felt unsteady. She felt marvelous.

  She also realized that for him the night had had nothing to do with love or even being in love. It had had nothing to do with the duty a husband owed his wife and his marriage. It had not even had anything to do with the consummation of yesterday’s rituals. For him it had been all about the giving and taking of pleasure.

  It felt good to know that she had pleased him. And she had pleased him. There was no doubt about that. Just as he had pleased her—which was surely the understatement of her life. It also chilled her a little to know that it had been only pleasure for him, that it probably always would be. Oh, she believed he liked her, even perhaps felt some fondness for her. She believed, despite the raw masculinity he always exuded, that he would be faithful to her, at least for a while.

  But she must always remember that for him the sexual side of their marriage would be purely pleasure. She must never assume that it was love. And she must never look for love in other aspects of their relationship. She must never risk having her heart broken.

  Oh, but it was pleasure for her too. She had had no idea. . . .

  But she must get dressed and ready to leave.

  To leave.

  To leave home and Dora and all that had grown familiar and comfortable in just a year. She must have been mad to marry a man about whom she still knew very little. Except that she was not sorry. She had been cautious for too long. All her life.

  She got to her feet and felt all the delicious unsteadiness of her legs and tenderness of her breasts and inner parts, and dared to hope that she would never be sorry. And that perhaps at last—oh, at last—she would conceive and have a child. Maybe even children. Plural. Dared she dream that big?

  But she was only twenty-six. Why must she always believe dreams were for other people but not for her?

  * * *

  They were in the dining room in the west wing of the house before half past seven. Even so, they were the last to arrive for breakfast.

  “What?” Ralph said when he saw them. “Couldn’t sleep, could you, Flave?”

  “Quite so, old chap,” Flavian said on a sigh as he raised his quizzing glass all the way to his eye and regarded with some distaste the kidneys piled upon Ralph’s plate. “I assume you did?”

  “I arranged to have breakfast sent to your suite at half past eight,” Lady Darleigh said. “But how lovely that you have joined us here instead. Agnes, do come and sit beside me. I hate good-byes, and there are a lot of them to be said this morning. But not for a while. Come and talk to me. I am going to miss you dreadfully.”

  Agnes was looking pink cheeked, Flavian saw—probably from morning-after embarrassment. And perhaps she had good reason to feel self-conscious, he thought with unabashed male satisfaction. Tidy as her appearance was, she still somehow looked well and truly tumbled.

  He had never, ever enjoyed a night of sex as he had enjoyed last night. As he had suspected, and more than he had expected, she had been a powder keg of passionate sexuality just waiting to be ignited. And he had spent a glorious night doing the igniting and riding the waves of the ensuing fireworks.

  And she was his for the taking tonight and tomorrow night and every night—and every day too if they wished—for the rest of their lives. Perhaps it was just that he had not had enough sex since his injuries. Perhaps he was just as starved as she obviously was. But he did not have to consider that possibility. They would feast after the famine until they were sated—and then work out what lay ahead.

  Perhaps the banquet would last a lifetime. Who knew?

  He sat between George and Imogen, and felt all the wretchedness of the fact that their three weeks were over, and he had more or less squandered the final week with his mad dash to London and back and then his wedding and wedding night.

  “You are going
to be in London during the Season, George?” he asked.

  “Duty in the form of the House of Lords calls,” George said. “Yes, I will be there, at least for a while.”

  “And you, Imogen?” Flavian asked.

  She had made a rare appearance there last year for Hugo’s wedding and then Vincent’s fast on its heels.

  “Not me,” she said. “I will be at home in Cornwall.” She covered his hand with her own, curled her fingers into his palm, and squeezed. “I am so glad you have found happiness, Flavian. And Hugo and Ben and Vincent too, and all within a year. It is quite dizzying. Now if Ralph can only find someone.”

  “And you, Imogen,” he said. “And G-George.”

  “I am rather too old a dog to be learning new tricks,” George said with a smile. “I will revel in my friends’ happiness instead. And in my nephew’s. I have grown closer to Julian since his marriage. He has turned out far better than anyone could have expected during the days of his wild youth.”

  “How old are you?” Flavian asked. “I had not realized you were d-doddering.”

  “Forty-seven,” George said. “I was a child bridegroom and still a child when my son was born. A long time ago.”

  Good Lord, yes, that must be true. Flavian had never worked it out before. George must have been only seventeen or eighteen when he wed. Appallingly young.

  Imogen’s attention was on her empty plate.

  “Do not look for romance from me, Flavian,” she said. “It will not happen. Ever again. By my own choice.”

  She had removed her hand, but he took it again in his own and raised it to his lips.

  “Life will be k-kind to you yet, Imogen,” he said.

  “It already is.” She looked into his eyes and favored him with one of her rare smiles. “I have six of the most wonderful friends in the world—and all of them handsome men. What more could any woman ask—even if they are showing an annoying tendency to fall in love with and marry other ladies?”

  He smiled back and caught Agnes’s eye across the table. She was still looking flushed and tumbled. He closed one eyelid in a slow wink, and she flushed brighter and half smiled before returning her attention to Lady Darleigh and Lady Trentham.