Heartha tied the nightcap’s ribbons beneath Blaze’s chin, and helped her into bed. “Would you like me or one of the other girls to stay with you on the trundle, my lady? The storm is something fierce, and it ain’t peaked yet, I’m thinking.”
“Nay,” said Blaze bravely with a nonchalance she was absolutely not feeling. “The storm bothers me not. Good night, Heartha.”
Heartha curtsied, and with a final pat to the down coverlet hurried from the room, saying, “Sleep well, my lady.”
Sleep? She was never going to sleep with all that booming and flashing going on outside her windows. She snuggled deeper into the bed, wishing that she had allowed her servants to draw the draperies. Then she would have had only the thunder to contend with. The wind began to moan and keen around the house. A fierce little gust hissed down her chimney, teasing the fire, which leapt at it, sending eerie shadows to mottle the walls of the room. Blaze shivered, suddenly remembering Old Ada’s stories of the ghosts and ghoulies that rode upon the roiling back of storms such as this one.
“I will not be afraid,” she whispered aloud to herself, and the very sound of her own voice was somehow comforting.
The night seemed to grow blacker, and the storm now began to mount in its intensity until the very house itself seemed caught directly dead center in the midst of the maelstrom. Blaze’s good intentions dissolved amid a roar of thunder that actually shook the house to its foundations, which, coupled with a ferocious crack of lightning that struck one of the chimneys upon the roof directly above her, sent a rattle of bricks cascading down and over the slate roof above her windows.
Terrified, she began to scream. Peal after peal of pure, unadulterated terror. Despite the great noise of the storm, her frightened cries sounded throughout the upper floor of the house. Almost immediately the connecting door between her bedchamber and her husband’s burst open as the earl dashed into the room.
“Blaze! What is it, my sweet? What has alarmed you so? Is it a nightmare, my darling?” Edmund was at her bedside, gathering her into his arms. The sweet fragrance of her bath oil made his head reel with desire.
“Th-the s-storm! I h-hate th-thunderstorms!” she sobbed piteously into the fine linen of his nightshirt, for he had not taken the time to put on his dressing gown.
“Why did you not ask one of the maids to stay with you then?” he asked practically.
“It ... it’s ch-childish to f-fear th-thunderstorms!” she wept wildly, shivering as another boom sounded overhead. “I ... I did not want you to th-think that I was s-so fainthearted as t-to f-fear a little th-thunderstorm!”
Little thunderstorm? He would have laughed, had her terror not been so real. It was a horrendous storm. One of the worst he had ever known. Her warm, wet tears had soaked his nightshirt through at the shoulder where her face was hidden. She was yet trembling. His hand reached out to stroke her honey-colored hair in a soothing gesture as the thunder crashed once more outside the windows.
“Do you want me to stay with you?” he asked her, thinking as he did that she was the sweetest armful of female that he had ever held.
“Aye, my lord.”
Gently he set her back against the feather pillows, catching her gaze with his. Her eyes were like rain-washed crystal violets, and her mouth was quivering with seductive innocence.
“I cannot guarantee my behavior, Blaze. Do you understand what I am saying? I must be completely candid with you about that, my sweet.” His look was a serious one.
She caught at her lower lip in consternation, her small even white teeth worrying the pink flesh. “You would make love to me?” she said low.
A small smile played at the corners of his mouth. “You would quickly forget the storm, I promise you,” was his answer. “If you prefer, however, I will leave you, my sweet,” he finished.
Again Blaze paused to consider her plight, but another fierce shattering of thunder that rattled the windows sent her hurtling back into her husband’s arms again. Desperately she clung to him, her soft breasts pressing against his chest. In that single moment Edmund Wyndham’s good intentions dissolved. He was a mortal man, not a high-minded knight from some ancient world of courtly love. Blaze was his wife, and he yearned desperately for her. Tony was right! She was his! By God, he would have her, and no more of this nonsense! With a groan of longing he pulled his nightshirt off, tangled his hands into her hair, tipped her head back, and finding her mouth, he kissed her.
His passion surprised her. They had kissed and cuddled these many weeks past, but he had never kissed her as he was kissing her now. It was a demanding kiss that seared her tender lips, forcing them open that his tongue might pillage within the fragrant cave of her mouth. Their tongues met for the first time, and she shuddered with the sensuousness of the new feeling. Warm velvet stroked warm velvet. Her entire body felt weak with the sensation, yet she strained to answer his hunger.
There were no more words left between them now. Edmund kissed her until she moaned pleadingly at him to cease, and so instead his hot mouth sought a path down her satiny throat. Strong fingers shredded the blossom-pink silk of her night garment, yanking the fabric away that he might gaze upon her innocence lit golden by the pale firelight. With another groan he buried his face deep in the valley between her virgin breasts, branding the flesh above her wildly beating heart with another kiss.
Fingers reached out to tease at the nipple of one breast. His touch was almost a relief, she thought, so charged with tension was her whole body. Yet she was not afraid. Nay! There was no fear of what was to come in her mind, for she loved him. In her budding passion she dared to admit it to herself. She had known it almost from the beginning. She loved her husband! What she knew now was that she wanted him to love her. Raising his head, he then lowered it over the little nipple he had been fingering. Shyly Blaze reached out to stroke his dark brown hair. His mouth tugged hungrily upon her flesh, and she whimpered softly. His teeth scored the nipple gently, sending a thrill of pure longing down to her very toes. Fiercely she kneaded the shapely back of his neck.
His other hand began to smooth itself in seductive circles over the sensitive tight skin of her belly, moving ever downward until it slid across one silken thigh. Blaze murmured with open pleasure. His touch was mesmerizing, and she was frankly enjoying it. Playfully his fingers pushed between her closed legs once, twice, remaining the third time to press lightly against her nether lips, which to Blaze’s surprise were moist, and encouraged the invading digits forward between them. She gasped when her thighs fell apart seemingly of their own volition.
Edmund raised his head from her lovely breast. “No, my sweet,” he reassured her tenderly. “It’s all right.”
His dark head dropped to her other breast, drawing on it hard at the very same moment he pushed a single finger into her trembling body. Blaze arched against him, shocked by this invasion of her most secret self. The finger withdrew as easily as it had entered, and he pulled himself level with her once more to taste of her lips again.
“You are not afraid of me anymore, are you?” he murmured against the softness of her mouth. Playfully he nibbled upon her lower lip.
“Nay, I am not fearful,” she whispered back breathily, “for I find that I love you, my lord,” she finished boldly.
“Do you indeed?” he replied, somewhat startled by her honest admission. Then his fingers trailed tenderly back and forth over her cheekbone. “Do you indeed love me, Blaze Wyndham? Could I be so fortunate a man as to have found love twice in a single lifetime?” He kissed her lingeringly, his lips moving softly over hers. He had never wanted her more than he did at this moment, but the unspoken question shining so nakedly in her eyes needed an answer. “And if I loved you, my sweet, would it make you happy?” he asked her.
“Ohhh!” All her vulnerability was there for him to see in that soft sound. Her perfect heart of a face shone with the joy his words brought her. “You love me?” she asked ingenuously.
“From the moment I saw you
r adorable face in that miniature your mother gave me,” he said, “though I have been loath to admit such feelings even to myself.”
“Because of Lady Catherine?”
“Aye. I felt it somehow disloyal, but remembering the sweetness of Catherine’s nature, I know she would want me to love again, and by the blessed rood, Blaze, I do love you!”
He kissed her hard, and her arms wrapped themselves about his neck, drawing them into a passionate embrace. From that moment on, the world took on a dreamlike quality for Blaze. His tongue seemed to be everywhere on her. In her mouth fencing with her own tongue, teasing at her nipples, boring into the cleft of her navel. Her hands took on a life of their own, smoothing down his back again and again, fondling the rounded curves of his firm buttocks.
She felt his weight suddenly pressing upon her, his legs, unlike his chest, delicately furred and surprisingly soft against her skin. Then she became aware of something hard, warm, and smooth pressing against the inside of her thigh. Instinctively she knew, and she wanted to touch him there. She wanted to know better the means of her destruction, for certainly once they were joined by that fierce yet fragile bridge, her girlhood would be destroyed even as she reemerged in her new incarnation as a woman.
“Let me know you there,” she begged him, and he took her hand to let it touch his manhood, no longer covered by civilized velvet as it had been in their past encounters, but hot and taut in its natural state. Her slender fingers caressed him, sliding with a soft and graceful touch back and forth along the length of him, closing about him finally in bold embrace.
Edmund shuddered and a low groan escaped him. “Ahhhh, my sweet! Ahhhhhh!” God’s mercy! He could bear no more of her trifling. Her unschooled but wonderful touch had him near to spilling his seed. As her grip relaxed, he pushed her hand away. “Enough, Blaze!” he said through gritted teeth.
“Oh, my lord, have I not pleased you? I thought you enjoyed it when I touched your manhood.” There was genuine distress in her voice.
Pinioning her beneath him, he raised himself so he might look down into her face. “There are times, my sweet wife, when a man’s desire for his woman overcomes all else. This is one of those times. I would have you, Blaze, and I would have you now!” he growled.
Beneath him he felt her legs part widely for him. Her beautiful face shone with her love for him. It was almost fierce in its look. “Then have me, my lord, I await you!” she cried out.
In that moment his admiration for her was almost as great as his love. What sons they would breed up together! He waited no longer, thrusting hard into her eager young body. There was but a momentary impediment to her passage, and he saw pain spring into her eyes, but she bravely pushed up against him, and he drove his weapon deeply home.
For a moment Blaze believed that she was to be torn asunder, so fierce was his passionate assault. He had battered against her maidenhead, but to her surprise it had given way fairly easily. Now he lay atop her, allowing her a moment to recover herself, and she felt the bigness of him within her passage throbbing his message of love. Then he began to move upon her, pressing deeply into her, then almost completely withdrawing himself so that she whimpered for his return, twisting beneath him, straining upward to prevent his escape. In her semiconscious state Blaze suddenly realized that here was pleasure heretofore unknown. She understood now why Vanora had been able to gain so much knowledge in their father’s stables, for surely this was paradise, this conjunction between a man and a woman.
She was not even aware that her nails raked savagely down her husband’s strong back, leaving in their wake bloodied welts. She did not realize that she thrashed wildly beneath Edmund, begging him over and over again to continue this incredible pleasure lest she die. Blaze soared, soared to the stars and beyond, while above her Edmund loosed his pentup torrent in an effort to quell her raging fires, totally amazed to see his virgin bride had galloped the entire course of passion.
He rolled off her finally, and they lay together gasping with their mutual exertion. Reaching out, he caught her hand in his and squeezed it, delighted to feel her squeeze back. In a sudden flash of memory he remembered his wedding night with Catherine, and how she had wept and carried on for hours after he had claimed his husbandly rights. Despite the fact that he had loved her well, and she had tried so hard to give him children, she had never really enjoyed their coming together. She had certainly never responded to him or his lovemaking as Blaze had just done.
Almost fearfully he said, “I did not hurt you, Blaze, did I?”
She sighed lavishly. “ ’Twas but momentary, my lord, and quickly forgotten, so sweet was the afterwards. Can we make love again now?”
His laughter had almost a relieved quality to it, though she did not notice. “A man needs more time to recover from love’s combat than does a woman, my sweet. Give me but a little time, and we shall indeed make love again.”
“Ohh, Edmund, I never knew that anything could be so very wonderful! Do you think we may have conceived a child?”
“It is possible,” he said quietly. “Time will tell us that.”
“We must not stop making love until we are quite certain,” she replied. “I want a large family, my lord. I hope you are prepared for it.”
“Madam, I will do my very best to accede to your wishes.” He chuckled, amused by the seriousness of her attitude in the matter.
Suddenly he found her leaning over him, and her mouth touched his teasingly. “Are you recovered your strength yet, sir?” Her little pointed tongue snaked across his lips daringly.
To his surprise, he felt hot desire begin to roil within his loins. God’s nightshirt! She was making him feel like a stripling of eighteen again!
“Love me, my lord Edmund,” she murmured, and he could see the smoky desire filling her eyes.
Reaching up, he caressed a plump young breast, and she whimpered softly. His eyes narrowed speculatively, and then filled with pleasure as he realized that in taking her virginity he had unleashed an incredible pent-up well of passion within his sweet wife. She was like a young mare come into her first season, and he would have to be a strong stallion to satisfy her longings. It was not an unpleasant thought. Rolling her over beneath him, he kissed her almost cruelly, crushing her soft lips with his, yet feeling her respond with a wildness he hadn’t even known could exist in a woman. There was no time for niceties, for he found himself hard and eager for her, and as for Blaze, she was as eager, her newly opened passage wet and hungry for him. With an almost pained cry he drove into her!
At various intervals throughout the rest of the night they made fierce and passionate love, until finally in the first pearly light of dawn they slept, tangled together in pure and utter exhaustion. Heartha, entering her mistress’s chamber at the usual hour, gaped with wide eyes upon the scene, and then with a broad smile splitting her face, backed from the room to hurry off so she might spread the good news that the young countess was no longer a virgin. That an heir to the earldom was now but a simple matter of time!
In the days that followed, Blaze and Edmund’s deepening passion for one another became openly obvious to all. They could not bear to be away from one another for too long a time. They touched constantly, and their languishing looks at one another were, in Heartha’s pithy opinion, “like to set the hayricks afire.” They spent the long autumn nights behind closed doors, and did not arise until the sun was well past the horizon. If Blaze did not conceive a child immediately, it was not from want of trying.
Family was forgotten in their newly born love, and Lady Dorothy, arriving early one mid-November afternoon to discuss the Christmas celebration at RiversEdge with her brother’s wife, was vastly amused, and secretly delighted, to be told that the earl and his wife were “resting” in milady’s bedchamber. With a rich chuckle and all the tact of a seasoned diplomat, Lady Dorothy withdrew, leaving a message that she had called and would return on the morrow.
Anthony Wyndham was not so amused, and his irritatio
n with both Blaze and Edmund puzzled him. Why should he care that his uncle and new aunt were in love, were obviously striving to create an heir for Langford? He had never coveted Edmund’s holding, believing it but a matter of time before an heir was born. He had been as disappointed as Edmund and Catherine had been when their deeply cherished hopes were dashed time and time again. He had been equally pleased when Edmund had remarried, even if he did not believe Blaze the right bride, for God only knew the earldom of Langford with all its wealth could have brought an heiress, and not this poverty-stricken little girl of English and Welsh heritage with only her fertile mother to recommend her.
Arriving at RiversEdge late one morning, he rode into the stableyard to find it deserted. Undoubtedly the grooms and stablemen were all out exercising the horses. Dismounting, he walked his own sweating animal about for a few minutes to cool him down, and then led him into the semidarkened stables to tether him in an empty stall. As he dumped a small measure of grain into the bin for his horse he heard the distinct sound of a woman’s laughter in the rear of the building. It was followed by a man’s deeper laughter. Curious, he moved silently toward the sound to catch the servants who would amuse themselves on their master’s time. Perhaps he would tumble the guilty wench himself as the price for his silence. He grinned wolfishly as he approached the stall from which distinct sounds of loving combat were now emitting. Perhaps it was that great creature with the big breasts who hefted logs so easily into the fireplaces of the Great Hall. Anthony licked his lips in anticipation, and peeped over the side of the stall.
To his immense shock, he saw not a pair of miscreant servants, but his uncle sprawled over the half-clothed body of his wife, pumping valiantly away upon her. For a moment he stood frozen and staring down at the erotic living tableau. Blaze had long legs for a petite woman, and she wore black knitted stockings gartered with rosettes set just below the tops of her white, white thighs. Her skirts were about her waist, and her bodice was wide open, revealing two plump, round creamy breasts, each topped by a bright cherry of a nipple. Her eyes were closed, the lids almost mauve in color. Her head was thrown back, her mouth open to emit soft moans of obvious pleasure. Her honey-colored hair was totally undone.
Blaze Wyndham Page 11
