He rose up, the feel of the cold marble headstone still on his hand, his shoulders already bracing for the impact of whatever ill-hatched need had brought her out this time of night. The light from his lantern fell squarely across her face, and he almost doused it as a means of self-preservation. Her cheeks were pink with cold and exertion, and those dark red curls were flying loose about her head. His exhaustion was no match for the pull of attraction the sight of her always incited, but it at least provided him the excuse to resist succumbing to the temptation.
“What are you doing out here in the dark, Julianne?” She’d not even brought a light with her to trek across Summersby’s darkened paths. Then again, was he really surprised? This was Julianne, after all. Planning and forethought were sorely lacking in his wife’s arsenal of life skills.
“I came to find you.” Her voice cut through the night like the sweetest of blades.
He studied her, trying to sort out what she wanted with him, with the world. He was glad to see she had at least donned a shawl, and that for once she’d shown enough sense to gauge the weather before tumbling into trouble. He’d left the warmth of the manor in his shirtsleeves, and the cold now came close to tearing holes in his lungs.
He waited for the conversation to turn around to her true purpose. He expected her to rail at him for leaving her alone in her room. Demand to know what matter of discourse he’d had with her father. Instead she took up his hand, a shock of warmth and comfort he hadn’t known he needed. She drew him away from his dark vigil and toward the specter of the Grecian folly, waiting nearby like a stone sentry in the moonlight. She pulled him up beneath its high, arched ceiling, sat him down on a bench with her small, vital hands.
And then she blew out the lantern he carried, plunging them into darkness.
“Julianne—” he started, but fell silent as she sat down too. She lifted the shawl from her shoulders and placed it around them both. Her head tilted over onto his shoulder and her hand crept up to twine tightly with his. And there she waited, like water at rest in a glass.
Four days of marriage and a dozen vivid arguments had not made him anything close to an expert in the dilemma of this person who was his wife. But this newest layer was difficult to decipher. This was Julianne, toast of the ton, darling of drama. How could she sit here so quietly, offering such comfort, waiting to share this grief? No one deserved that sort of burden.
“Tell me what happened that day,” she whispered.
He exhaled, and she was so close he could feel how his breath ruffled her curls. The moonlight spilled through the open sides of the folly, casting fantastical shadows across them, and he imagined they grew teeth in that moment. He did not wish to speak of this. An accident, he’d told her. Surely that was enough for her to know.
And yet, he found himself speaking. “We were hunting.”
She exhaled delicately, as if she had been holding her breath. “Grouse, if I recall.”
“Yes, well, the grouse were not cooperating.” He hesitated, unsure of his own words. She felt essential there, where her hand lay joined with his. During the brief length of their marriage, he had lifted her into coaches, his hands spanning her narrow, corseted waist. He’d helped her down from the smoke-obscured steps of the train, steadying her against the soot-slick surface. But he couldn’t remember just sitting with her, her body quiet against his, her hand clasped firmly in his own. It was an unbearable intimacy.
“You already know I had been arguing with my brother. I was in a most disagreeable frame of mind in those months after I returned from Italy. I was angry with him, and with my life, and I said something to Eric I regret to this day.”
“He accused you of wanting something that by rights belonged to him.” She lifted her head and offered him a tremulous smile, as if they were both pretending this had a neat, happy ending when they already knew how it turned out. “And you told him to go to the devil and take his future countess with him. I heard that much when I was hiding here, in this very spot. He was talking about me, wasn’t he?”
Julianne’s interruption—and her accuracy—rattled him. Yesterday’s confession that she hadn’t truly seen what had happened had led him to hope that she hadn’t understood anything that had happened that day. Clearly, she knew more than she ought.
He nodded. “He was jealous.”
She sighed, and then readjusted the shawl around both their shoulders. “I have always regretted that dance.”
He could well imagine she did. “Then you should not have asked me.”
Her head popped up, and he could feel her gaze probing through shadows. “I did not regret dancing with you, Patrick. I regretted dancing with Eric. I did not want to be the source of such discord between brothers. I probably should have accepted your cousins’ offers to dance, instead of pursuing you that night.”
A spear of envy found its mark. “My cousins asked you to dance?”
“Yes.” She sighed, and he felt the motion echo through him, where her body pressed up against his. “But I didn’t want to dance with Mr. Blythe or Mr. Willoughby. I didn’t think they would catch your brother’s attention in quite the same way that a dance with you would. I was so, so naïve.”
Patrick’s thoughts proved too raw to form anything coherent of her confession. “It was but the latest in a long series of arguments between my brother and myself, Julianne. Truly, you were not to blame.” And she wasn’t. Patrick was sure, even without her flirtation as a ready excuse, he would have found something to argue over with Eric that morning.
He tried to focus on what he had been feeling that day, more than what he had been doing. “I remember stalking away from our quarrel, seething with resentment. And then a stag stepped out of the brush, not even twenty feet away. I pulled the hammer back and sighted on the animal’s heart.”
She squeezed his hand, her fingers curling over his, waiting for him to go on as if she trusted him to tell the whole of it.
And yet, this part he couldn’t rightfully explain.
He hadn’t been thinking clearly, his finger hovering over the trigger in anger. He’d thrown his shot wide at the last moment—too wide—shaken by how close he’d come to killing something with his anger toward Eric so flush in his thoughts. The second shot had reached his ears a scant second later, coming from somewhere behind him.
“We both took the shot,” he finally told her. “I aimed away from the buck at the last moment. Our rifle blasts were close together in time, but I could hear them both. My first reaction was disbelief. Eric had taken his shot, despite his position behind me, and despite the very real possibility of hitting me in the process.”
Some parts of his memory were blurred, as cloudy as the black smoke that had filled the air after he had sacrificed his shot. But the next part of it remained all too clear. He remembered turning in a circle, searching for his brother through the thick of the smoke, the tirade already filling his lungs. He had found Eric on the forest floor, the blood spilling from his brother’s body. In the end, four years of training in Italy had come to naught. He hadn’t been able to do a damned thing to stop the hemorrhaging the one time it had truly mattered.
Not that he hadn’t tried. Eric’s blood had stained his hands that day, all too literally.
“When I realized he’d been hit, I ran to him and tried to help, but there was little to be done.” He remembered the calls of the other men, crashing through the underbrush. He recalled his attempts to stanch the flow of blood from his brother’s chest, the sensation of being dragged forcibly from his brother’s body.
“Patrick.” Julianne’s voice dug into his self-flagellating thoughts. “I believe I saw someone running from the scene.”
He shook his head in weary denial. “You’ve admitted you don’t see well. You must have seen the stag bounding away.”
“The motion of a man and a deer are quite different,” she said doubtfully.
“Then perhaps you saw one of the members of the hunting party running fo
r help,” he sighed. “Dr. Merial was summoned, if you recall.”
Not that the doctor had been able to revive Eric either.
He extracted his hand from hers. “I hate reliving this. I know the facts are rather damning. I cannot see how you believe me, all things told. You must know I would gladly trade my life for my brother’s.”
Her palm crept up to press against his chest, and he was quite sure she could feel the rude thump of his heart. Her voice floated toward his ear. “You were in shock, that day in the study. You felt guilty. I suppose, all things considered, it is not surprising you would have acted guilty. But that does not mean you deserve to be charged with murder, Patrick. I believe you when you say it was an accident.”
He leaned back into the bench, welcoming the chill seeping through the layers of wool and cotton, even as he welcomed her trust. They floated a quiet minute. Or perhaps it was ten minutes. He lost track of time, focused only her gentle breaths, in and out, and her quiet, unexpected strength. But soon enough, she was moving, and this, finally, was the Julianne he knew, the woman who could not be still. She lifted his hand to her chest and held it there, her heartbeat a dim flutter beneath his palm.
And then she lowered it to her breast.
His world all but shuddered to a stop. He’d just confessed the most terrible piece of his life. He was still racked with emotion, sliced open. He hadn’t expected this when she’d followed him here tonight. Hadn’t asked for it.
She was offering it anyway.
Her eyes met his, unwavering in the moonlight. She wanted this, and that was a revelation. Always, always he had initiated the contact with Julianne. Always he’d had to convince her of the path, with seduction both his tool and his destination.
But tonight, he was helpless to deny her.
He raised his hand and cupped her cheek, trailing a gentle finger down one side of her jaw, but refusing to grant his fingers access to the buttons they longed for. It was late October, and cold for that. They were out of doors, in a folly designed for beauty over function, open to the night air and the elements.
Anyone might see them.
Seemingly unbound by the same caution, she leaned in to kiss him, and oh God, the taste of her seemed to have sharpened into something lethal during the last few days of frustrated celibacy. She was cinnamon and heat, exotic yet familiar, the very definition of something so decadent he should not have it more than once. But he could tell his future with this woman was not going to be simple.
And once was not going to be enough.
“Patrick,” she breathed, her breath sweet and warm against his lips. “I do not want you to regret marrying me.”
He didn’t regret marrying her. Particularly not in this moment, not with the surprise of her on his tongue and the feel of his own need snaking to life inside him. The denial rose to his lips, but it was swallowed by her deepening kiss. He wanted to bury himself inside her, lose his mind in the tangle of her lips. But the night was too cold, his senses too dulled, his grief too sharp to fully take advantage of what she was offering, no matter the jarring interest of his body.
And yet . . . the thought of leaving her unfulfilled again tore at him.
He broke off their kiss, resenting already the intrusion of cold night air where her lips had just warmed him. He gently pushed her back until she was reclining against the seat of the stone bench, then searched his way through maddening layers of cotton and silk to find her body already slick, the most beautiful of welcomes.
Patrick hovered there, his palm pressed against her heat, waiting to see what she would do. She arched upward into his touch. But clumsy fingers were neither what he wanted nor what she needed. And so without asking permission, he set his mouth against her instead, seeking the edge of her soul she had denied him the first time they had done this.
He ignored her cry of surprise, refused to be thwarted from this path. He followed her mute, thrashing protest with a knowing tongue, unwilling to let her accept a lesser fate. He sought to teach her what her body needed, to make her understand there was as much pleasure to be had in the climb as she would soon find in the fall. Strove to make her understand that by skirting her own pleasure during lovemaking, she lessened his own.
He felt it the moment she gave in. Her body, always so restless, always so reckless, stilled. And then she was moving again, this time finally straining toward where he would lead her. When she let go, Patrick did not draw back. He settled instead for the feel of her, bucking and pulsing against his tongue, embraced the pull of her hands clutching at his hair, and reveled in the bittersweet acceptance of his own denied pleasure as she fell back down to earth. He remained there a long moment, loath to release her completely from this spell. No matter the burden of holding himself back, he was tempted to toss her back up into oblivion once more.
He would have her remember this—remember him—if it all went to hell on the morrow.
The cold tried to creep in, insolent and unwelcome. Julianne drifted away from it, determined to float forever on this haze of desire. She understood, with the clarity that so often comes with a new discovery, what Patrick had meant on their wedding night.
Why he had meandered the first time.
She hadn’t trusted him enough. She had been reaching for something unknown, thinking he was holding it out of her reach on purpose, not understanding that the journey was what would carry her there. He had not found his own release just now, but he had given her quite a lesson in how to find hers. His fingers stayed pressed against her where his mouth had just wrought such delicious havoc, and she arched up toward him, wanting more. He seemed in no hurry, though she was all but inviting him in. His deft touch trailed the tender flesh at the juncture of her thighs, teasing and testing, promising and denying. She sensed he held himself back, but she knew he needed such emotion tonight.
It was her role to give it to him, after all, as his wife.
But even as the thought occurred to her, she recognized it for the falsehood it was. This need, this want, was nothing close to a role. The feeling clutching at her now was no demure wifely chore, no sense of reluctant duty. This was something that left her inverted, gasping on the inside, vulnerable parts exposed.
She lifted her body up from the bench. It was far too cold to undress, and she felt too frantic to take the time. Her fingers reached for the buttons of his trousers, and then he was springing free into her hand, clearly wanting.
She stared down at his body in the moonlight, remembering how he had reacted to merely the touch of her hand at the inn. Time seemed to slow down to a crawl. The night sounds roared in her ears, muffling the pounding of her own heart. Slowly, daringly, she lowered her mouth over him, seeking to give him the same sort of pleasure she had just endured, rejoicing in his resulting groan of frustration.
This time, she meandered. Ran her tongue along his length. The masculine scent and taste of him stirred her body to rising passion again. He proved a remarkable study in patience, letting her do her worst, but in the end, it wasn’t enough for either of them.
Too soon—or too late, it was hard to know which—he clasped her head in both hands and drew her up to meet his lips in a searing blaze of a kiss. She felt out of her skin, another woman entirely, to be kissed in the breaking shards of moonlight by a man whose mouth had just done such deliciously wicked things to other parts of her body.
“I do not regret marrying you, Julianne.”
Her heart jerked painfully toward the sound of her name on his lips. The promise in his words felt every bit as heady as the promise in his kiss. It was not a declaration of love. But for now, for her, it was enough.
He pulled back and searched her eyes, and she was drawn into the rawness of his scrutiny. She wanted him to stay this way forever, unshaven, disheveled, his eyes sparking with lust and something more promising. It felt as though something was shifting between them, something portentous and clarifying and too sweet to refuse.
“Show me,” she whispe
red, willing to beg if necessary. “Love me tonight.”
This time, he obliged her desperate plea. There was no pain, no hesitation on either of their parts. She gasped out loud, welcoming him inside her, welcoming even the feel of the cool stone bench against her back as his weight pressed down on top of her.
He moved slowly at first, but when she raked her nails across his back in encouragement, he began to move more purposefully, until she was driven toward that bright, dancing spark once more. It became a want beneath her skin, now that she knew what this feeling was about, and it unfurled within her like a cresting wave. Julianne cried out from the sheer surprise of it crashing over her, sure that she would break in two before she ever grew tired of this man’s touch.
And only then, when she caught her breath and offered him a brilliant smile that she hoped bespoke everything he had done to her heart, did he finally turn himself over to his own oblivion.
Chapter 17
Patrick awakened to an unexpected trinity of sunlight, servants, and Julianne.
The beam of sunlight poking its way through the bedroom curtains was more a curiosity than a puzzle. He knew the sun came up. It bloody well did every morning. It was more that it usually came up after he began his day. Likewise, he could hear two servants scratching about somewhere in the room, stirring the fire, pouring water, speaking in hushed tones. It had been almost a year since anyone had done those things for him, and he resented both the presumption and the intrusion.
Unlike the servants and the sunlight—which were jarring but understandable—waking in a bed with Julianne was a conundrum he could not wrap a coherent thought around. He lay still a long moment and stared at this puzzle who was his wife, unwilling to blink lest he shatter the moment into too many pieces to reassemble.
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