“Every lady embroiders.” Astrid’s hoop sported a scene of rabbits peeking out from beds of pansies, which was fitting, given present company. Andrew had been least in sight for much of the day.
“You weren’t so shy with me last night, dear heart, or yesterday afternoon,” he pointed out, casually resting his arm along the back of the bench.
Their good-night kiss in the library had become positively incendiary, and yet, since breakfast, Andrew had been distant. Polite, smiling, charming, and in some regard, not at home to callers.
“How was Cousin Gwen?” Felicity had kindly let slip that Andrew had ridden off to call at Enfield.
“Difficult,” Andrew said, tipping his face up to the sun. “She disdains the frivolous company of others, says she has farms to manage, livestock to see to. I have a fondness for difficult women, though. I will yet earn her trust.”
Perhaps he was flirting; perhaps he was scolding. Two years of marriage to Herbert did not prepare a lady to distinguish between the two.
“And how is little Rose?”
“Rose thinks her big cousins are capital fellows. Clearly, I’ve made a conquest.”
Astrid jabbed her needle into the vicinity of a rabbit’s tail. “Very young women are so easily impressed.”
“I rather think my horse made more of an impression on wee Rose than I did.” Andrew smoothed a finger over the rabbit’s abused fundament, and Astrid felt something like a shiver, though she sat in strong sunlight. “Did you sleep well?”
“Well enough.” Considering she’d gotten up several times in the night to heed nature’s call. “And yourself?”
“I tossed and turned all night in anticipation of further intimacies with you,” he said, giving her the impression this was nothing less than the truth—a miserable truth, too.
The same rabbit got the brunt of Astrid’s bewilderment. “So why didn’t you come to my room?” She probably wasn’t supposed to ask that, but she and Andrew had moved past supposed to and should rather decisively.
“I wasn’t sure you’d appreciate it, to be honest. You need your rest, Astrid, and I was demanding of you yesterday.”
She pondered that for a moment, smoothing her finger over the bunny fundament she’d just abused. “I think, Andrew, I would sleep better in your arms.”
He sat beside her, close but not touching, a quiet sigh confirming that again she’d expressed sentiments one wasn’t to express, even in the midst of a dalliance. “You trust me too much, Astrid. When you confide such things, you make me want to vault off this bench and sprint into the next shire.”
He stayed exactly where he was, though, while Astrid reflected on how beautiful his eyelashes were. Debutantes longed for lashes like that, abundant, sensual, the perfect counterpoint to aristocratic features and glacial blue eyes.
“What else?” she asked, because he had stayed right beside her.
“You make me want to hold you and never let you go.”
He spoke quietly, not a scintilla of flirtation in his sentiments. Her lover was matching her for foolishness, also for bravery and sincerity.
She ran her thumb over the bunny’s satiny ears. “Is that all?”
Andrew’s smile was slow and devastatingly sweet. “You make me want to swive you mindless, out here in the sunshine, up in your big, soft bed, in the hayloft, in the butler’s pantry, and everywhere in between.”
They had one week. Astrid set aside her pansies and rabbits and stood, taking a moment to make sure she had her balance. “It’s a pleasant day. We should have some privacy in the haymow, though the butler’s pantry strikes me as cozy, and the foot of the garden has some wonderful hedges of honeysuckle.”
Andrew spared a glance at the discarded embroidery hoop, then rose and winged his arm at her. “Hay can be itchy, and the butler’s pantry is dark. I have ever been partial to the scent of honeysuckle.”
***
“You look like hell.” Gareth led a big bay gelding from a loose box as he offered his brother that cheerful greeting. “Shall I have the lads saddle up a horse for you, or can you manage on your own?”
Andrew raised one sardonic eyebrow, and grabbed a halter and lead shank off a hook near the door. He sauntered out to the individual paddocks behind the stables, his step looking to Gareth off somehow—tired, stiff, or more burdened than a young man’s should be on a pleasant early autumn afternoon. Andrew came back leading a big, rawboned black gelding with a nervous eye.
“In the mood for a challenge?” Gareth asked. “I don’t think anybody’s been on Magic since I had him out last week. He looks full of himself, as usual.”
“We’ll manage,” Andrew replied as he secured the horse in cross ties. He took his time, stroking his hands over the horse’s neck and flanks, picking up each hoof, talking softly the whole time. “You wrote to me about this horse,” Andrew reminded Gareth as he began to brush Magic’s coat. “I’ve been curious to meet him. He’s certainly handsome, for all his size.”
“I bought him in part because I like his size,” Gareth answered. At six feet and a few inches each, both brothers typically favored larger mounts with good bone and wind.
“But,” Andrew replied, speaking to the gelding, “you are too much horse entirely when you take it into that handsome head to be naughty. We must encourage you to behave at all times as the gentleman you are.” The horse flicked his big, daintily pointed ears as if he were listening.
Gareth caught the last comment as well, and wanted to broach the topic of gentlemanly behavior with his brother in the worst way. He held back, lest his brother announce a burning desire to see Cathay and darkest Peru.
As the horses were saddled, then bridled, Andrew continued his soothing commentary to Magic. The groom who had been mucking stalls rolled his eyes at Gareth as this homily went on, but Magic seemed to listen, the anxiety in his eyes all but disappearing by the time Andrew was on his back.
“Damned if he don’t like Master Andrew,” the groom commented, shaking his head.
Gareth swung up onto his own mount, a steady fellow by the name of Orion. “They all like Master Andrew, wretched beasts.”
“Magic,” Andrew replied calmly, “is a fellow of great discernment and sensitivity, aren’t you, boy?” He gave the horse’s shoulder a resounding thwack of approval, which had Magic dancing sideways and capering around the yard. “He is also,” Andrew added as the horse started trying to buck in earnest, “a young man in need of a good romp.” With that, he touched his spurs to the horse’s sides, and Magic shot off down the drive at a thunderous gallop.
When Andrew eventually slowed Magic to the walk, the horse’s coat was lathered, but his neck was relaxed, and the bucks were long forgotten.
“The trouble with that fellow,” Gareth remarked, “is you think because you ran and jumped the mischief out of him today, he might be more willing to listen to reason tomorrow, but he won’t be. I rode him fourteen days straight during wicked summer heat, and he came out full of the devil every time. I never found the end of his fight.”
Andrew patted the horse again, this time gaining much less reaction. “It isn’t fight, Gareth, it’s heart that needs a little more courage. Magic needs somebody to trust.”
Magic, indeed. “You want him, he’s yours. Consider him a homecoming gift.”
When Gareth expected an argument, Andrew saluted with his whip. “My thanks, and his.”
And now, a change in topic was required, lest Gareth bring up a certain kiss he’d walked in on in the library late the previous evening. “How did you fare with Gwen?”
Andrew let the reins go slack while the horse appeared to consider the terrors lurking behind a hedge of honeysuckle. “She will not be joining our little gathering this weekend, if that’s what you’re asking, and she has neither love nor trust for the cousin who has come to toss her and her child out into the stre
ets.”
“She’s prickly.”
Magic snorted, planted all four feet, and raised and lowered his head while Andrew sat relaxed and serene in the saddle. “She’s scared. She’s done an excellent job with Enfield, though everyone is careful to suggest it’s due to the tenants, the dairymaids, or even the damned bullocks. I suspect she was running the place long before Grandpapa died, and he was only too happy to let her.”
“I can believe that.”
Andrew’s horse walked on calmly enough—for now. “And yet, whenever I mentioned having Gwen leave the place, even for a visit, she pokered up like a bishop in a bordello. After I’d paid my respects in the nursery, I asked her if Rose’s father even knows of the child’s existence, and Gwen about skewered me with her rage and contempt. Something there needs to be dealt with.”
“You’re a braver man than I.” Or more foolhardy. “Even Felicity wasn’t willing to raise that question. Do you suspect rape?”
Magic spooked at nothing Gareth could see, a nimble dodge to the side. Andrew didn’t so much as pick up the reins.
“I suspect rape or ill usage or something very like it,” Andrew replied, urging the beast to resume a placid walk. “Watch how she reacts when you are near, or likely to touch her in even simple ways. To see her expressions, you’d think I had nefarious designs on her person when all I do is bow over her hand.”
“I can’t say I like the thought of her rusticating the rest of her life away out here either,” Gareth said. “But she is of age, and used to a great deal of independence.”
Andrew flipped a hank of black mane from the left side of Magic’s neck to the right. “But what of Rose? Is she to grow to womanhood without leaving the estate, to have no knowledge of life beyond this bucolic backwater? Rose is related to a marquess and an earl, for God’s sake. We can do better for her than some simian farm boy with sweaty palms and a greasy forelock.”
Felicity would counsel her spouse to restraint, but Gareth had gone for too long without a younger brother to tease.
“Such avuncular sentiments, Andrew.”
Now the beast must attempt to snatch at a mouthful of leaves, an insurrection Andrew gently thwarted. “We are her family,” Andrew replied. “She is a little girl, without a man’s protection, and her mother is not thinking entirely clearly. Her welfare is our concern.”
“So what should we do about it?” Gareth asked, because his brother was making too valid a point to indulge in further needling.
“I am approaching Gwen as I do a skittish horse. I am giving her a chance to see I mean her no harm, to consider how she might trust me, and to decide what use I might be to her. The lad who brings the oats can catch even the crankiest mare in the paddock.”
“Granted,” Gareth said, though any happily married man knew equine analogies where women were concerned were a dicey proposition. “But, Andrew, what will you do with Gwen when you’ve caught her?”
“I have asked Gwen to consider that,” he said as they turned up the drive. “She and I are intelligent people, and we will find a solution acceptable to everybody.”
“You could marry her,” Gareth pointed out, because Felicity had pointed it out to him on two separate occasions. “She’d be happy with a marriage of convenience, and you could come and go as you please on the estate.”
“I will not marry,” Andrew said, his gaze fixed on the hills in the distance.
“Oh, for pity’s sake, Andrew. Are you still clinging to the puerile notion you can’t be faithful to one woman? The right woman wouldn’t care, you’ve got titles to consider now, and sooner or later, all that hopping from bed to bed gets old anyway.”
Andrew stopped fiddling with the horse’s mane and took up the reins.
“I find it extraordinary, Brother, you do not use the one argument that might persuade me to consider holy matrimony: I might, against all effort and sense to the contrary, fall in love and have the great good fortune to have my sentiments returned. I surmise it was just this happy fate that impelled you to the altar at a nigh-doddering age, giving up your own puerile notions regarding your entrenched unsuitability as a husband. Your faith in me is truly touching.”
Andrew delivered this speech in carefully amused tones, but when he finished speaking, he signaled his horse through some subtly of the seat, and rode the rest of the way up the drive in an elegant, flowing canter.
Gareth let him go, because in the course of his set down, Andrew Penwarren Alexander, swashbuckling lover across several continents, had admitted the possibility he could fall in love.
Felicity was right: there was hope for the man after all.
***
Astrid heard the bedroom door open and close, then lock with a soft click. A boot hit the floor, then another, followed by the rustling of cloth and a weight jostling the mattress. When Andrew spooned his warm, naked chest against her back, she reached behind her and drew his arm around her waist.
Such comfort, simply to cuddle under the covers in the middle of the afternoon. She hoped it was a comfort to him too.
They’d gone for a ride that morning to feed some ducks, Andrew putting Astrid up on a mare who looked large enough to house the entire Greek army. The outing had been lovely, and the tenderness in Andrew’s eyes when he’d asked at what hour she napped even lovelier.
“Sleep,” he murmured, lacing his fingers through hers, and she drifted under on a sea of contentment. The clock told her she awoke half an hour later, feeling sweet, sleepy, and warm—and in need of the chamber pot.
“Nature calls,” she grumbled. Andrew held up the covers for her and kept his back to the privacy screen. She returned to the bed, resuming her place tucked against him, and wondered if she’d ever find another man with whom she could be so casually intimate.
“Your lunch is sitting well enough?” Andrew asked, notching his chin on her shoulder.
“Apparently so. If every day were as manageable as this one, pregnancy would be no burden. Feeling this good, I hardly know I am pregnant.”
“I know you’re pregnant.”
He sounded smug, the varlet. “How would you know?”
“Your breasts have become magnificently full and probably more sensitive. Don’t tell me your bodices aren’t fitting more snugly, and perhaps your slippers as well.” He caressed her breasts, lightly, gently—maddeningly.
“They are—bodices and slippers.” And he knew exactly how to touch her magnificent breasts, too. “Have you made a study of this?”
“Rather the opposite, though I can tell your womb has started to increase,” he said, slipping a hand down to palm her lower abdomen. “You are petite, so you will likely begin to show quite obviously in the next few weeks.”
“I thought my stomach was still flat,” she retorted, a bit miffed, though in truth she was not in the habit of examining her person in any detail—another gift from her oh-so-considerate late husband.
“Here,” Andrew said, rolling her onto her back. “Feel here.” He took her hand and splayed it under his over her pelvic cradle. “As trim as you are, this probably used to be concave, a little dish. Now you can feel it changing.” He pressed down lightly, and Astrid could sense the difference he described. “Your babe is growing, Astrid,” he said, a soft smile on his face.
The intimacy of that smile, of their posture, of what they discussed… Astrid closed her eyes to ensure she’d captured yet another memory to torment herself with. “When will the child quicken?” she asked, leaving her hand under his.
“You are about three months along?”
“Soon.”
“Probably another month or so, but I am sure these things vary. When you were last carrying, did you ever feel movement?” He inched his hand down in small, gentle circles.
“I did not,” Astrid said, loneliness pooling where their hands had been joined on her belly. And she hadn
’t known the absence of movement was unusual.
“I am so sorry, sweetheart,” Andrew said, kissing her temple. “I said many prayers for you when I got Gareth’s letter. And just because I’m aroused”—he trapped her hand on its journey south—“doesn’t mean you have to accommodate me.”
Herbert had never once said anything to her about the miscarriage, except, “These things happen,” as if he were forgiving her for losing the child.
She laced her fingers with Andrew’s. “I don’t want to accommodate you.” She was very sure of that. “I want to make love with you.”
He settled his lips over hers, taking a teasing, tender approach to her arousal. When she was kissing him back, her hands skating along the muscles of his back, her thigh thrown across his hips, he shifted over her. She welcomed him into her body, and endured such an upwelling of tenderness and grief she thought she might cry.
She was going to lose him. She was going to lose him too, and the loss would haunt her for the rest of her life.
The pain of it wound into other griefs, and into the beauty of joining her body to his, of cherishing him with sexual intimacies she’d shared with no other, and Astrid felt pleasure bearing down on her.
“Love me, sweet,” Andrew whispered. “Hold me tight and love me.”
She heard the words, her hips rolling in counterpoint to his, her back arched to keep her close to him. The damned man held his own pleasure back, and waited, letting her arousal build further, giving her the solid thrusts that would allow her to join him in a mutual release.
She did not know how to hold back, not with him, not when it might be their last time. “Andrew—”
“I’m here.” With languid grace, he moved into her more deeply, forcing her pleasure to such length and breadth she keened and moaned and shook with it.
When her breathing had slowed, when she could put it off no longer, Astrid opened her eyes to find Andrew looking down at her, an expression of such wonder in his eyes she could not look away.
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