“Then marry me, my sweet Honey! I have fallen deeply in love with you, and I never thought I could love any woman. Marry me!”
A clock ticked on the mantel and a cinder popped in the grate, making a log fall. He didn’t dare take a breath, as he held her back and gazed down into her eyes.
“Please, Honey, marry me!” he repeated, fear making his voice harsh. He was gambling the rest of his life on this one moment.
“I can’t,” she cried.
Chapter Ten
“Honey, don’t you love me? You said you wanted me! What . . .”
“I don’t know how I feel!”
“But you said you wanted me.”
“I do!” Honey pulled away from Bron and retreated behind the big armchair.
“Then what is wrong?”
“I don’t know, I . . . I just don’t know!”
“But Honey . . .”
Bron started to advance around the armchair, but Honey was quick and raced around the chair, across the room and out the door. As the door slowly shut behind her, he saw the pack of guests and servants, some leaving to go out into the chill of the fearfully cold night. He slumped down into the chair, just as he had the last time she ran from him. Was this his destiny? To always send her fleeing from his arms?
He would talk to her in the morning, when she was rested. Perhaps this scene with her sister and all of the new information was overwhelming her. He was anxious, so very anxious, but he would give her time, the time she wasn’t given when someone last sought her hand in marriage.
• • •
It was very late. Midnight had chimed long before, and as Honey paced in her room she realized it was Valentine’s Day, her thirtieth birthday. She had vowed, sitting in her calm, quiet parlor at Lockworth Manor, to come to some decisions by her thirtieth birthday about what she wanted to do with the rest of her life.
And now she was more confused than ever.
Bron Alvarice, Viscount Blackthorne, had asked her to marry him! He said he loved her, and seemed so very sure of himself! But then, he had so much experience he must know when what he was feeling was love.
But Honey hadn’t a clue. All she knew was that he could make her melt as if she were a statue of butter with the merest touch of his hand, and his kiss turned her into a hissing cauldron of desires that churned and bubbled inside of her until she thought her whole body would burst into flames.
But what did that mean? Those feelings were purely physical, as was the pull she felt to him, the need to be at his side. Was that all it was, man’s inexorable draw for a woman? Was what she craved to be found between the covers of his bed?
What was love? Was it separate from those feelings, or a part of them?
She tiptoed to her door and pulled it open, peeking out into the hallway. The household had long ago settled into slumber, after an unprecedented amount of rushing here and there, servants summoned, more guests to be settled into their rooms. But now all was quiet. She slipped into the hall and down toward Bron’s door, pausing before it.
Go to him! It was a whisper in her brain. Go to him and make love with him. Find out if all you want is his magnificent body on yours.
But no! What kind of brazen female went to a man’s room and begged him to make love to her? Nellie had done that, and she had seen fury and scorn on his face for her. That was what had convinced her it wasn’t his idea, that look on his face.
Go to him!
It was different between them, that voice whispered. He had asked her to marry him, surely that meant he wanted her? How would she ever know the truth if she didn’t? And when would she ever get another chance, for the house party was breaking up on the morrow!
Heart throbbing, she pushed his door open and slid in. His curtains were open and it was a cloudy night. There was just enough light to see the figure on the bed. It was him, she thought with relief, as she approached the bed. Now what? Wake him up and say, Make love to me so I can find out if I love you or only want you?
She shivered in the chill air of the room, and as she gazed down at him, he half turned and opened his eyes, starting back but restraining himself before he cried out.
“Honey!” he whispered.
“Bron, I . . .” She stopped, quivering, uncertain.
“You poor thing, you look half frozen! I will stir up the fire. Why did you not bring a wrap?”
He was about to slip from the bed but she put out a hand, and then, making up her mind, slipped under the covers beside him. He gasped.
“Honey, this is not a good idea, my love.”
“Why not?” she asked.
Bron gazed down at her face, glowing palely in the weak light from the window. She wore only a night rail of flimsy cambric, and it had settled over her curves in a way that set his pulse to hammering. “Why not?” he croaked. “Honey, I want you too badly. This is only torture, having you here and not being able to touch you in the ways I want to.”
“Then touch me,” she whispered, sliding her arms around his neck.
She was close, so close he could feel her slim hip against him, and his body throbbed in awareness. She pulled his head down and he covered her lips in a kiss, but pulled away from her and stared at her intensely.
“Honey, I want no mistakes here. I want to make love to you; do you understand that?”
“Bron,” she said, smiling up at him. “It is Valentine’s Day, and my birthday. I think this is fitting, do you not?”
“Oh, my sweet!” He buried his face in her neck and groaned, then ran his eager hands down over her body, feeling her quivering to life from his touch. If this was a dream, then it was the most delightful, marvelous, wonderful . . . and he hoped he never woke up! She met his questing lips and arched up to meet his fingers when he cupped her breast, feeling her gasp against his mouth when he took liberties he had dreamed of ever since he first laid his eyes on her.
Twelve years! Always he had known who the woman in his dreams was, the woman who haunted him as he chased her through endless corridors and across battlefields and through meadows. The woman to whom he whispered “Forever” as they stood together on a windy hilltop. He had wanted Honey, dreamed of Honey, and now he had her.
But there was something different about the reality. His body was ready for her, but he had waited for this night so long, he was going to spend time on bringing her to fulfillment. But in the meantime he could ease his poor body’s desire. He pulled up her night rail and pressed himself to her naked thigh. He expected her to react, but her cry of fear and the way she bolted from him was totally unexpected. “Honey?”
“What is that? What . . . ?”
“It’s just me,” he said, panting.
“You?”
“Me.” He took her small hand and guided it down to the physical evidence of his arousal.
“What? Oh!”
Her eyes were wide and round with amazement, and her whole body trembled.
“I want you, my love, so very badly.”
“Is that what that means?”
Her question took him totally by surprise and at first he thought she must be teasing, but the look on her face was a mixture of fear and curiosity. His mind tried to reconcile her long marriage and the fear and innocence more befitting an eighteen-year-old virgin . . .
Virgin?
He pulled away from her, but her hand remained where it was, resting against him, as she swallowed hard and forced herself to touch him. Some of the fear dissipated from her face, but as his arousal burgeoned under her questing hand, her eyes became rounder.
He yanked her hand away. “Honey, I think you ought to tell me a few facts about your marriage.”
“My marriage? Bron,” she said, moving closer to him again. “I don’t want to talk about Abner right now. I want to talk about us. You say you love me. How do you know?”
He gazed down at her and touched her cheek. “Because I can’t imagine spending every day for the rest of my life without you. But do not change the su
bject. How can you have been married for so many years and still be so innocent of the most elementary of male . . . Honey, did you never . . . did you sleep with your husband?”
“No. We had separate chambers.”
“I did not mean sleep. Did you never . . . ahem . . . were you never intimate?”
Her cheeks mantled a deep rosy red. He was enchanted, and could not restrain himself from one kiss dropped on the end of her nose. Her unique combination of a mature woman’s body and speech and soul mixed with her sweet innocence was driving him to the brink once again, but he would know the answer. “Did you never consummate your marriage with Abner Hockley?”
“No,” she said shyly. “He was unable . . . though I did not know that until after the marriage. He had been sick and wasn’t able, he said.”
“But he married you?”
“Abner collected pretty things. I was part of his collection.” She shrugged and her breasts rose and fell under the flimsy night rail.
His mind awhirl, Bron gazed down at her. She was ready to give him her innocence! “Honey, why me? Why did you come to me tonight?” Even as he asked, he realized he would never receive a more precious gift, and he knew, as he never had known before, that he loved Honey Hockley deeply and completely.
“I want you. I have the most incredible feelings through my body, and when you are near me, I want more than just to be held by you. I want you to love me.”
“I want you to love me too, Honey, but with your mind and soul and heart as well as your body.”
“But I don’t know what I feel!” she cried, her lips quivering. She sat up and covered her eyes. “I may never know if I love you or just want you. I don’t know how to tell the difference. People make love all the time and they are not in love. How do you know when you really are in love with someone?”
“I love you; I know it because I have never felt this way about any other woman before. I want to spend the rest of my life making you happy.”
She took her hands away from her damp eyes and cupped his face. “I think I might love you, but I am not sure.”
His heart throbbed with joy at her timid declaration. “Give me a chance to show you that you want more from me than just passion.”
“How will you do that? Will you make love to me?”
“In a manner of speaking. Honey, do you trust me?”
She nodded and gazed up at him, her light blue eyes brilliant in the clear beam of a shaft of moonlight that had escaped the cloud cover.
“Then come to me,” he said, pulling her to him and covering her mouth with his. He slid his hands up under her night rail, and stroked her quivering body.
Chapter Eleven
Filmed with perspiration, Honey clung to Bron, her whole body shuddering after the incredible experience she had just gone through. “Bron, oh, Bron!”
Aching with unfulfilled desire, Bron still felt a heady triumph and deep satisfaction flood his being. She had been sweetly ardent, and as he touched her and stroked her, giving her her first experience of passion, she had cried out his name repeatedly until he was so very tempted to lay her back on the bed and take the love she had offered him. But this was her night of discovery, and he would rein in his galloping passion for her in the name of love, eternal love.
He bundled her up in his arms and held her as she wept. Her arms were wound around his neck and she laid damp kisses on his collarbone and finally stilled in his arms.
In the silence of his room, her voice trembling, her words coming out on a sigh, she said, “Is it always like that for a woman? Is that what . . . if you . . .”
She could not say the words but she reached down and touched him, and he knew what she asked. His body jolted at the touch of her delicate warm hand, but he kept himself rigidly under control.
“It is only like that when you are deeply in love. And lovemaking, real lovemaking, will be even better because you love me. We’ll make children together with that kind of love. I know what I’m talking about, Honey, because I have never felt like this before with any woman.”
He positioned her so he could look down into her eyes. “Honey, I love you. I have always loved you. I saw you twelve years ago in a ballroom and fell in love across the room, though I was too stupid to ask you to dance. And then you were married, and I had lost my only . . . I thought it was my only, chance.”
She gasped. “I remember you,” she said, reaching up and touching gently the crinkled lines beside his eyes. “I’ve always remembered you. The Valentine’s Ball, my eighteenth birthday, the entirety of my London season. You looked at me like I was the only woman in the room, and you took my breath away! If only—”
“No ‘if onlys,’ Honey. I was so young and stupid. I wasn’t ready to recognize what was right in front of me. I wasn’t sure then, but I am now. I love you and only you forever. Will you marry me?”
• • •
It was barely three days later. What was there to wait for? Honey and Bron married by special license, and then traveled directly to Blackthorne Hall, two days’ travel away. It was in a tiny inn late on the first night that Honey learned what marriage really meant, and how much the joining of two hearts could be sweetened by the joining of two bodies. She was a real wife at last, and she felt completely and thoroughly married.
Bron leaped down from the carriage in front of Blackthorne Hall and lifted his bride out. He carried her through a light drizzle, up the steps, into the huge hall, and with a cheerful word to his assembled staff, directly up the stairs to their elegant bedchamber.
She laughingly protested. “Bron, I have not even had a chance to meet the staff, or see the house. What will the servants think?”
“They’ll understand. You see, there is this old tradition that any Blackthorne groom must initiate his wife properly into her duties as viscountess.” He laid her on the bed and flung off his coat and yanked at his cravat. “Her feet must not touch the floor of Blackthorne Hall before she has been thoroughly and completely ravished by her husband. Only then will it ensure good luck to their marriage and fertility. You do want children, don’t you?”
“I do,” she said and giggled. “And I suppose now is as good a time as any to start on that old tradition! Or I may never get out of this bed.”
“Don’t count on it for the next few days anyway, my Lady Alvarice. I intend to keep you quite busy seeing to the tradition and ensuring our future.”
“My lord,” she cried, in pretended shock. “Whatever will the servants think if you keep me locked up in this room?”
“Damn the servants. Your only duty is to see to my happiness, my sweet.”
“Then by all means, I intend to do my duty.” She laughed shyly, tossing her bonnet aside as Bron leaned over and undid the buttons of her pelisse. As he did that she undid his vest and pulled his shirt from his breeches, then reached up and pulled him down beside her on the bed. “We wouldn’t want to take any risks by flouting tradition.” She wound her arms around his neck and threaded her fingers through his hair. “Kiss me, husband.”
He obliged.
Keep reading to see an excerpt
from the second book in the
Classic Regency Romance series
by Donna Lea Simpson,
A Rogue’s Rescue.
Despite her vast wealth, Miss Ariadne Lambert, at the ripe old age of thirty-three, is a plain and aging spinster with little but a fading hope that a knight in shining armor will come to sweep her off her feet. Which makes her the perfect prey for the unscrupulous “Dapper” Dorsey, who would stop at nothing to seduce a needy and wealthy woman and then coldly fritter away her funds in the gaming halls of London. As Ariadne succumbs first to his wily charms and then to his kisses, will her need for affection rob her of her dignity—and her fortune?
Viscount Ingram, whose soiled reputation from one especially salacious incident has left him exiled to the sidelines of society, marks his time as a dark and brooding man, tolerated more for his title than his meri
t. But even he has his standards, and when he learns of a rival’s plot to seduce and then steal from a helpless spinster, he vows to stop him.
Ingram’s noble sentiments and uncharacteristic sincerity are in for a shock, however, as he discovers that the hopelessly gullible Ariadne is in fact a clever and shrewd woman who’s got more than a silly giggle up her sleeve. As the two team up in a devilish scheme to bring about the final undoing of Dorsey, cooperation turns to admiration and then attraction, and they discover that their last chance to repair their reputations may also be their first chance at finding true love.
Chapter One
Ingram stalked the crowded ballroom, his presence at the edge making the others nervous, like prey at a water hole that raise their heads and sniff the air to catch the scent of the black panther, rustling through the underbrush. Some, sighting him, moved away, pulling their impressionable daughters away from him, as if the merest touch of his shadow would taint.
But Viscount Ingram, formerly plain old Mr. Lovell Melcher, did not appear to notice. He scanned the throng for a particular face, weak-chinned, bespectacled, but vicious rather than foolish in its vacuous emptiness. And there was his despised quarry! His gaze sharpened; his dark eyes narrowed. There was the man who had escaped without paying his rightful debt and would now suffer the consequences. He started forward but was blocked in place by a sudden movement of the crowd.
“That, my dear,” a voice near him hissed, “seated so forlornly at the edge of the ballroom floor, is Miss Ariadne Lambert. Poor, poor woman. Looked after her elderly aunt for fifteen years; devoted herself wholly to the old woman’s care. Wasted all her youth. Too bad really. She was only just passable as a girl, but of course, the sickroom, and all that . . . she has dwindled into the fright you see before you.”
The Viscount's Valentine (Classic Regency Romances) Page 8
