“How about after dinner—when I’m stronger?” Alexandra stalled.
She watched in absorbed fascination as his firm male lips formed a single word of implacable command: “Now.”
Drawing a shattered breath, Alexandra reached up and curved her hands over his broad shoulders. Without any conscious order from her mind, her hands tightened, drawing him down toward her, then she stopped, panicked by the desire suddenly shooting through her.
“Now,” Jordan repeated in a husky whisper, his lips a fraction of an inch from hers.
“W-wouldn’t you like a—a glass of wine, first?”
“Now.”
With a silent moan of despair and surrender, Alexandra curved her hand around his nape and eagerly brought his lips against her own. At first the kiss was a gentle, tentative greeting between two lovers, but the longer it continued the more pleasurable it became for both of them, and the tighter they clung to each other, seeking more. Jordan’s tongue sensuously parted her lips, slipped between them for one sweet, arousing taste, and withdrew . . . then hungrily, urgently, plunged again, and desire exploded between them.
His hands opened her gown, tugging down her chemise, baring her breasts to his hot eyes. His hand cupped her breast, pushing it upward, his thumb circling her nipple, while he watched the pink tip harden into a tight bud. And then with deliberate, aching slowness, he bent his head and put his mouth where his thumb had been. His mouth closed around her aroused nipple, his lips and tongue toying with it until Alexandra gasped with pleasure, then he lavished the same reverent attention on her other breast.
Passion was raging through Alexandra’s entire nerve stream by the time he finally removed their clothes and stretched out beside her, leaning up on his forearm. “I can’t get enough of you,” he whispered achingly, his eyes molten with desire as they gazed into hers while his hand sought and found the triangle between her legs. His eyes still holding hers, he parted her thighs, his fingers toying and teasing her, penetrating her moist warmth, until Alexandra was writhing in helpless need, arching her hips against his hand, but still he would not stop. Hot, convulsive waves were racing through her in a trembling fury, and finally she moaned aloud, her hands running up and down the bunched muscles of his arms, then she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and leaned into him. His skillful fingers became more insistent, and another moan tore from Alexandra’s throat. “I know, darling,” he told her achingly, “I want you, too.”
He had unselfishly intended to give her a bursting climax this way, before he joined with her in yet another one—as he had done the other night—but his wife made him forget that idea. Tearing her mouth from his heated kiss, she slid her fingers into the sides of his hair and whispered brokenly, “It’s lonely this way, without you deep inside of me—”
With a shattered groan, Jordan gave her what they both wanted. Still lying on his side, he wrapped his arms around her, pulled her to him, and entered her with one sure, powerful thrust. Alexandra pressed her hips hard against his pulsing thighs, and with his hands cupping her bottom, Jordan joined with her in the most selfless act of lovemaking of his life. Driving slowly, rhythmically into her, he sought only to give her pleasure with each deep thrust, while she, in the same desperate need to please him, matched his movements.
I love you, he thought with each thrust of his body; I love you, his heart shouted with each thunderous beat; I love you, his soul cried out as Alexandra’s spasms clenched him tightly. I love you. The words exploded in his being as he drove into her one last time and poured his life, his future, and all the disillusionment of his past into her tender keeping.
And when it was over, he held her in his arms, filled with a joy that was almost past bearing as he gazed at the white clouds floating in the powder blue sky. All of them had shapes and meaning to him now. All his life had shape and meaning to him now.
When Alexandra surfaced to reality an eternity later, she found herself lying on her side, stretched full length against his naked body. Jordan’s hand was splayed across her bare back, his other hand still wrapped in her hair, holding her face pressed to his chest. With an effort, Alexandra lifted her head, opened her languorous blue eyes and gazed at him, then she flushed at the knowing look in those hooded grey eyes, and the faint, satisfied smile touching the corner of his lips. She had behaved like a shocking wanton and she had done it in broad daylight! Suddenly overwhelmed by his ability to overcome all of her defenses, she drew back and said lamely, “I’m hungry.”
“When I’m stronger,” he promised teasingly, deliberately misunderstanding what she was hungry for.
“For food!” she gasped.
“Oh, that,” he said dismissively, but he obligingly rolled to his feet and politely turned his back, allowing her privacy while they both put on their clothes. “You have grass in your hair,” he chuckled, brushing the few blades from her glorious tangle of mahogany tresses.
Instead of answering him with a smile or a quip, Alexandra bit her lip, her gaze sliding away from his as she began to unpack the picnic dinner.
Finally understanding her unspoken need to be alone for a few minutes, Jordan strolled down to the bank of the stream where he remained for several minutes, his foot propped upon a boulder. The flowers on the hill, he suddenly noticed with dazzling clarity, were indeed white—a joyous, cheery carpet of white against dark green.
When he returned, Alexandra was holding a crystal decanter of wine. “Would you like a glass of wine?” she asked with the extreme courtesy that only very uneasy people employ. “It—it’s the special kind you drink—I can tell from this decanter.”
Crouching down, Jordan took the glass from her outstretched hand, but he put it aside and gazed directly into her eyes. “Alex,” he said gently, “there is nothing immoral, nothing shameful, and nothing wrong about what just happened between us here.”
Alexandra swallowed and glanced uneasily about them. “But it’s broad daylight.”
“I left instructions at the stables that we wished to be private here this afternoon.”
Color flared in her cheeks. “No doubt everyone knew why.”
Lowering himself into a sitting position, he put his arm reassuringly around her shoulders and grinned at her upturned face. “No doubt they did,” he agreed without a trace of her own embarrassment. “It is, after all, how heirs are made.”
To Jordan’s astonishment, a stunned look crossed Alexandra’s face and she suddenly buried her face against his chest, her slim shoulders rocking with mirth. “Did I say something funny?” he asked, tipping his chin down, trying to see her face.
Her laughing voice was muffled by his shirt. “No. I—I was thinking of something Mary Ellen told me long ago— about how babies are made. It was so outlandish, I couldn’t believe her.”
“What did she tell you?” Jordan asked.
She raised her laughing face to his and managed to gasp, “The truth!”
Their laughter rang out across the valley, startling birds in the trees overhead.
“Did you have enough port, or would you like more?” Alexandra asked when they had finished eating.
Jordan reached behind him and picked up the empty glass he’d inadvertently tipped over in the grass. “No,” he said with a lazy, white smile, “but I like having you wait on me like this.”
Alexandra managed to hold his gaze as she quietly and shyly admitted the truth: “I like doing it.”
In the carriage on the way home, Alexandra could not tear her thoughts from the stormy passion of their lovemaking or the quiet tenderness that stayed with them afterward while they ate. “Touch me,” he had told her. “I like it when you touch me.” Did Jordan mean he wanted her to touch him when they weren’t making love, the way a few wives amongst the ton often touched their husbands’ sleeve when they spoke to them. The idea of voluntarily touching him was vibrantly appealing, and yet she cringed at the idea that such an action might be construed as clinging or childish.
She gave him a
short, speculative sideways glance through her lashes, and wondered what he would do if she—very casually—rested her head against his shoulder. She could always pretend to be half-asleep, she decided. Having ventured that far in her imagination, she decided to try it and see what happened. With the well-sprung carriage swaying gently beneath her, and her heart beating a little faster within her, Alexandra partially closed her eyes and leaned her head lightly against his shoulder. It was the first time she had ever voluntarily touched him in affection, and she instantly knew from the way Jordan swiftly turned his head to look at her, that he was surprised by her gesture. She could not tell, however, what he thought of it.
“Sleepy?” he asked.
Alexandra opened her mouth, intending to save face by saying yes, at the precise moment Jordan lifted his arm and put it around her shoulders. “No,” she said instead.
She felt the slight stiffening of his body as he registered that she had just indirectly told him she wanted to be close to him, and her heart pounded as she wondered what he would do next.
She did not have long to wait. Jordan’s hand shifted from her shoulder and came to rest against the side of her face, his fingers gently caressing her cheek as he cuddled her closer to him and then began slowly stroking her hair.
When she awoke, they had driven up to the stables and Jordan was gently lifting her down from the carriage. Ignoring the avidly curious, surreptitious stares of the servants at the stable, Jordan lowered her to the ground and grinned at her. “Did I tire you out, sweet?” he asked, and chuckled huskily when she blushed.
With her hand linked through his arm, they began strolling toward the house, while behind them a groom began to hum off-key, another whistled, and Smarth began to sing an outrageously bawdy ditty whose tune Jordan recognized. Stopping in his tracks, Jordan turned and stared hard at his servants. Beneath his penetrating gaze, the whistles abruptly died down and the humming wavered to a tuneless stop. Smarth reached quickly for the reins of Jordan’s restive horse and led him into the stable; a groom snatched up his pitchfork and energetically dug it into the hay.
“Is something wrong?” Alexandra asked.
“I must be paying them too much,” Jordan joked, but his expression was puzzled. “They’re entirely too cheerful.”
“At least you’re finally beginning to notice there’s music in the air,” his wife pointed out with an irreverent smile.
“Shrew,” he teased with a chuckle that was rich and deep, but his grin faded as he looked down into her beautiful face and soberly thought, I love you.
The words crashed into his brain, almost bursting out of him in their need to be said. She wanted to hear those words, Jordan realized instinctively as her eyes held his, looking into his soul.
He would tell her tonight, he decided. When they were alone in his bed, he would say the words he’d never said before. He’d release her from their wager and solemnly ask her to stay with him. She wanted to stay, he knew that, as well as he knew this lovely, bewitching, joyous girl loved him.
“What are you thinking?” she softly asked.
“I’ll tell you tonight,” he promised huskily. Putting his arm around her waist, Jordan drew her tightly against his side and they strolled together back to the house—two lovers returning from a halcyon day, sated, unhurried, content.
As they passed the wide, rose-covered arch that marked the entrance to the formal gardens, Jordan grinned ruefully to himself and shook his head as he realized, for the first time in his life, that the roses tumbling over the arch were red. Rich, vibrant red.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
UNWILLING TO RELINQUISH her company, Jordan walked upstairs with her and into her bedchamber. “Did you enjoy your afternoon, princess?” he asked.
The endearment made her eyes glow like twin aquamarines. “Very much.”
He kissed her and then, because he wanted some reason to linger, he walked slowly toward the adjoining door. As he passed her dressing table, he saw upon it her grandfather’s watch in a velvet case and paused to study the heavy gold timepiece. “Do you have a likeness of your grandfather?” he asked idly, picking up the watch and turning it over in his hand.
“No. I keep his watch there as sort of a reminder of him.”
“It’s an exceptionally fine piece,” he remarked.
“He was an exceptionally fine man,” she replied in a polite tone that completely belied the secret smile in her eyes as she watched his profile.
Unaware of her smile or her scrutiny, Jordan looked at the watch. A year ago, he remembered, he had accepted this watch as if it were merely his due. Now he wanted it more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. He wanted Alexandra to give it to him again. He wanted her to look at him as she once had, with love and admiration shining in her eyes, and to give him the watch that she had intended for a man she deemed “worthy” of it.
“It was a gift from a Scottish earl who admired my grandfather’s knowledge of philosophy,” she said softly.
Putting the watch down, Jordan turned away. It would take a while longer to earn her trust, he decided, but someday she would surely find him worthy of it. On the other hand, she might give it to him for his birthday, he decided with an inward smile—allowing, of course, that she realized his birthday was only four days away. “It’s a beautiful piece,” he repeated, adding, “Time certainly has a way of passing. Before you know it, another year is gone. I’ll join you in the drawing room before supper.”
* * *
Jordan leaned nearer to the mirror, inspecting the closeness of his shave. In an exceptionally good humor because he was about to join Alexandra in the drawing room, he grinned at his valet in the mirror and said jokingly, “Well, Mathison, what do you think—will this face of mine spoil the lady’s appetite?”
Behind him, Mathison, who was patiently holding up an impeccably tailored black evening coat for Jordan to put his arms into, was so startled to be addressed in this comradely fashion by his normally taciturn employer, that the poor valet had to clear his throat twice before answering in a stammering, blustering tone, “I daresay her grace, being of refined tastes herself, can only delight in your appearance this evening!”
Jordan’s lips quirked with amusement at the memory of his “refined” young wife perched upon a tree limb with a fishing pole in her hand. “Tell me something, Mathison,” Jordan asked as he shrugged into the black coat. “What color are the roses on the arch at the gardens?”
Startled by the abrupt change of topic and the question itself, Mathison replied blankly, “Roses, your grace? What roses?”
“You need a wife,” Jordan replied, chuckling as he clapped the astonished manservant on the arm like a brother. “You’re worse off than I was. At least I knew there were roses on—” He broke off abruptly as Higgins hammered on his door in an unprecedented frenzy, calling “Your grace—your grace!”
Waving Mathison aside, Jordan stalked to the door and yanked it open, angrily confronting the stately butler. “What the devil is the matter with you?” he demanded.
“It’s Nordstrom—a footman, your grace,” Higgins said, so distraught that he actually tugged on Jordan’s sleeve, pulling him into the hallway and closing the door before he began to babble disjointedly, “I told Mr. Fawkes at once, just as you said to do should anything unusual happen. Mr. Fawkes needs to see you at once in your study. At once. He told me not to tell anyone, so only Jean in the kitchen and I are aware of the dire event which—”
“Calm yourself!” Jordan snapped, already heading for the red-carpeted staircase.
“What’s this all about, Fawkes?” Jordan demanded as he sat down behind his desk and waited for the investigator to be seated across from him.
“Before I explain,” Fawkes began cautiously, “I need to ask you a question, your grace. From the time you drove away from the front of the house in your carriage with the picnic baskets today, who handled the decanter of port that was packed into the picnic basket this afternoon?�
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“The port?” Jordan repeated, caught off guard by a discussion of wine rather than a footman. “My wife handled it when she poured a glassful for me.”
An odd, almost sad expression darkened the investigator’s hazel eyes, then it vanished as he said, “Did you drink any of it?”
“No,” Jordan said. “The glass tipped over in the grass.”
“I see. And your wife, of course, had none of it either?”
“No,” Jordan said shortly. “I seem to be the only one who can stomach the stuff.”
“Did you stop anywhere and leave the baskets unattended before you arrived at your destination? The stables, perhaps? A cottage?”
“Nowhere,” Jordan clipped, eager to see Alexandra and angry because this interview was delaying that. “What the hell is this all about? I thought you wanted to discuss a footman named Nordstrom.”
“Nordstrom is dead,” Fawkes said flatly. “Poisoned. I suspected the cause of his death when Higgins came to fetch me, and the local physician, Dr. Danvers, has just confirmed it.”
“Poisoned,” Jordan repeated, unable to entirely absorb such a macabre event taking place in his own house. “How in God’s name could such an accident happen here?”
“The only accidental thing about it was the victim. That poison was intended for you. I blame myself for never having believed your assassin would actually try to accomplish your death from inside your own home. In a way,” the investigator said in a harsh voice, “I’m to blame for your footman’s death.”
Oddly enough, Jordan’s first fleeting thought was that he’d been wrong about Fawkes. In contrast to his earlier impression of the investigator, he was now inclined to believe that Fawkes was deeply committed to protecting the lives of those he served, rather than to turning a profit Then it hit him that someone in his own house was apparently trying to poison him, and the thought was so repugnant that he could scarcely believe it. “What in God’s name makes you think what could be an explainable accident was actually a miscarried attempt on my life?” he demanded angrily.
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