Cherished

by Elizabeth Thornton

  Before Leon came through the door from the little dressing room, Emily’s mind was delicately balanced. But when she heard the ice in his voice as he dismissed the maid, a voice that could charm the shades in the underworld if he had a mind to, the scales tipped.

  Clearing her throat, she said, “Sara is a little paler and thinner, but for all that, she seems to have got over her illness. Peter could not thank me enough for making the effort to come and see her. He says it was the expectation of our arrival more than anything that made the difference.”

  He was pacing like a caged panther. She was wandering around the room, keeping her distance, feigning an interest in various objects, as though she were a collector intent on making a purchase. When it came to her what she was doing, that she was acting as if she were afraid of him, she edged her way to the bed and plumped herself down. If there was one person she did not fear, it was her own husband.

  He swung to face her and his eyes blazed. “Why didn’t you tell me Addison was here?”

  “You know why. I was afraid you would forbid me to come.”

  “Now why should I do that?”

  Enunciating each word slowly and carefully, she said, “I was worried about Sara. You were reluctant to let me go to her. You know you were. I wasn’t about to give you a reason to put me off coming here.”

  There was another reason, a more cogent one, for her not to be traveling at this time. Emily was beginning to suspect that she was with child. She knew her husband well enough to be convinced, in that event, nothing would have persuaded him to let her make the journey.

  His eyes narrowed on the betraying color in her cheeks. “Is that all it was?” He paused and those sharp eyes seemed to narrow to slits. “Emily, what are you concealing from me?”

  She was very calm, very much in possession of herself. “If you had cared to read my sister’s letters to us, you would have known that William was here. It was no secret. If I chose not to mention his name, it was only because I know how you feel about him.”

  There was a lot more to it than that, but Emily wasn’t about to confess all until she was cornered, and if she had her way, that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

  “You still haven’t told me your impressions of Sara,” she began, leading him carefully away from all mention of William Addison.

  His voice gentled appreciably. “You’re not still worried about Sara? Don’t be. There is no cause for alarm. She has fully recovered. Your own eyes must have told you so.”

  She allowed herself a small smile. “Yes. I’ll say one thing for Hester. She did not stint herself on Sara’s behalf. As a nurse, she has no equal. Peter says that if Hester had not been here to manage things, he would have been half out of his wits.”

  “Hester, like most women, can be very managing when she wants to be.”

  For a moment, she had the uncanny feeling that he was toying with her. She looked at him closely, and dismissed the thought from her mind. “I still can’t seem to warm to the woman, though. Uncle Rolfe says that she has an opinion on everything and now I know what he means. She thinks the Indians are foreigners. Can you believe that? I didn’t dare look James Fraser in the eye after she made that remark.”

  “Why?” He was standing right in front of her and she had to angle her head back to look up at him.

  “Why? Because it’s a derogatory, callous remark from the mind of someone who thinks herself superior.”

  His eyebrows rose. “I’ve heard you use that word to describe me time out of mind.”

  She forgot about trying to distract him. He was casting up the sins of her youth. If they both played that game, they would be here till doomsday. Stung by the injustice of the jibe and his deliberate attempt to bait her when she was doing her best to keep the peace between them, she stuttered, “You…you unconscionable…”

  “Foreigner?” he supplied when she floundered. “Or were you going to say ‘Frenchman’ this time around?”

  She bolted to her feet. With no clear idea of what she was doing, but with a burning determination to make him listen to her without interruption, she pounced on him. If he had not had the agility of a cat, they would both have gone crashing to the floor. With one adroit twist and a backward step, he managed things so that they went tumbling to the bed. Emily landed on top of him.

  Seizing the advantage, she grabbed for his wrists, flinging his arms above his head, holding him down, subduing him with her weight.

  Between labored breaths, she got out, “If there is one thing I cannot abide, it’s people who finish other people’s sentences for them. I had a governess who used to drive me to distraction with that trick. You are going to listen to me, Leon Devereux, if it’s the last thing you do. I was not going to say ‘foreigner.’”

  “No?”

  “No. Leon, is it fair to cast up old history? I don’t think of you as a foreigner. It’s years since I flung that taunt in your face. I’m not a child anymore.”

  He wasn’t angry. His tone was very gentle, very reasonable. “Nevertheless, you were the one who raised the subject by referring to Hester’s conversation at the dinner table. Why did you do it?”

  She had been thinking of a way to distract him and had hit on the worst possible thing. Unsure of how to make amends, conscious that her cheeks were very warm, she said, “I swear I was not going to say ‘foreigner.’ What I was going to say was more in the nature of ‘monster.’”

  When he laughed, she felt something inside her unravel and with a great gusty sigh, she went on. “You are too sensitive, Leon. You hate to be reminded that you are French. You were born in France, weren’t you? Aunt Zoë is French and she doesn’t care who knows it. You should be proud to be French.”

  “I have a crick in my neck. Might I sit up?”

  “What? Oh, sorry.” She tried to slip off him, but in one powerful movement, he had shifted so that his back was propped against the bed and she was astride his lap.

  “You were saying. I should be proud to be French?”

  Distracted by the feel of so much potent virility beneath her, fascinated by the sleepy-eyed sensuality in his lazy grin, she groped in her mind for what she had been on the point of saying. “Yes, well, if there was no France, the world would be so much the poorer. Think of French philosophy and literature and art and so on.”

  “My mind is not so lofty.”

  She couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying, for his hands were on the backs of her bare calves, clever hands, drawing patterns on her skin, moving higher with an excruciating lack of haste.

  “Naturally, I wish to preserve the best of my French heritage. But I am a carnal animal.”

  His head had dipped slightly, and she could feel his warm breath penetrating her lips. “Carnal?” she repeated, but the thought was impossible to hold. The breath she inhaled was redolent of brandy and wine and the ripe vineyards of the Mediterranean, intoxicating, beguiling.

  She was caught in a web so finely spun that she had yet to become aware of it. He spun another silken thread. “May I introduce you to what I consider to be the best that France has to offer?” and he took her mouth in a startlingly probing hiss.

  When he released her, she nodded and managed, “I would be honored.”

  He rewarded her with a devastating smile, then he kissed her again deeply, wetly, and his hands slid higher, plundering the silken petals between her thighs. “Plaisirs d’amour,” he whispered against her lips. “To a Frenchman, that’s the only thing that counts.”

  She was clinging to him like limp seaweed cast up on a rock. He brought his lips to the graceful arch of her throat. “Say yes to me, Emily. Let me show you how it can be, shall I? The pleasures of love, in the French manner.”

  He had to shake her before she got the word out. Then, eyes holding hers, he laid her back on the bed and divested them both of their nightclothes.

  Emily had always enjoyed her husband’s lovemaking, not least because she sensed the checks he imposed on himself
for her sake. Occasionally, those checks had slipped a little. Sometimes she toyed with the idea of putting his control to the test. The thought excited her. At the same time, the thought brought a return of caution. Leon Devereux without restraints was an alarming picture. There were no restraints now.

  His passion stunned her. It had never been like this before. He showed her no deference. There was no implicit understanding that she would allow him to go so far and no further. In the act of love, he had always yielded the power to her. This time, he was in control, he was setting the pace.

  He was experienced. If she never knew it before, she knew it now. He demanded things of her he had never demanded before. The man was a master of seduction. There wasn’t a thing he didn’t know about turning that involuntary feminine no into a yes. He charted the course and she followed him.

  He was greedy, wanting everything from her. Even so, he would have stopped if she had betrayed the slightest revulsion to what he was doing. Her response stunned him, inflamed him, made him bolder. He was wishing he had trounced her like this when they were first married. He had been too forbearing for his own good. All the years he had held off, all the waiting, focused now into an explosion of need.

  It was the first time, the very first time, she had yielded him the freedom of her body. It wasn’t enough for him. It was too unequal. He wanted her to hunger for him as he hungered for her.

  He dragged her to a sitting position. Half crouched over her, he told her what he wanted from her. She didn’t seem to understand. She wasn’t used to taking the initiative or pleasuring him the way he wanted to be pleasured. He showed her how easily it could be done.

  For a moment their eyes held. She gave him such a look and his confidence faltered. He was going too fast for her, asking too much of her. Then she pounced on him, pushing him back into the pillows.

  She was freer, more uninhibited than he could have hoped. She was also an apt pupil, too apt, too caught up in practicing her newfound knowledge of the male animal. She cried out in alarm when he tumbled her on her back and swiftly entered her.

  He was rougher than he meant to be, punishing her, nipping at her with bared teeth, taking her with a violence that in his saner moments she would not have believed himself capable of. And she responded, wantonly, not submitting, but taking as much as she gave. It was glorious.

  Afterward, lying beside her, fighting to even his breathing, his conscience smote him. He was so much more powerful than she. Had he hurt her? Frightened her? Forced her against her will? In the blinding throes of passion, he might have mistaken the nature of those little sounds she made, those little bites and scratches she had inflicted on his neck and shoulders. Oh, God, surely she hadn’t been fighting him off?

  “Emily?” he said urgently.

  Twisting her head on the pillow to get a better look at him, hovering between awe and shock at what had just taken place, she said, “Is that how married people in France behave?”

  Relief bloomed in him and he almost laughed out loud before he remembered that his little wife was due a lesson that she must never forget.

  “How would I know?” he threw out negligently, and rolling from the bed, he reached for his dressing gown and shrugged into it. Belting it tightly, he came back to sit beside her. “Here, put this on,” he said, and handed her her nightdress.

  Her eyes were still love-dazed, but bewilderment was beginning to make itself felt. He had a very clever look about him that brought a belated return of caution. She slipped into her nightdress and settled back against the pillows. “But you said…”

  “I know what I said.” With one finger he tipped up her chin and looked deeply into her eyes. “Now,” and there was nothing loverlike about him, “having got that out of the way, may we return to the subject at hand? We were discussing William Addison and you were about to tell me whatever it is you have been concealing from me.”

  Her jaw went slack. “You can ask me about William at a time like this? After…after what happened between us, here, in this bed, not moments ago?”

  His laughter held a disquieting thread of derision. “Emily, I know you too well. I’ve had years in which to study you. I’m on to all your little ploys. Those tricks may have worked very well with your guardian, but they won’t work with me. You wanted to distract me and I was willing to allow it because it suited me. Now, if you please, I am waiting for an explanation.”

  She wasn’t ready to give him an explanation. She was quivering with indignation. “I may have thought to distract you, but only for a moment or two. You cannot believe that I was so devious as to try to seduce you. It never entered my head.”

  His eyes held a wicked glint of amusement. “No,” he agreed, “because, my dear, I made it my business to distract you. It’s what is known as being hoisted by your own petard.”

  Amethyst fire kindled in her eyes. He found the phenomenon truly interesting, but the flames made no impression on him. Between short, quick breaths, she got out, “Love, in the French manner. That was so much fustian, I suppose?”

  He gloated deliberately. “I wondered how far you would go. Convict me. I took advantage of you. My dear, a man has fantasies. Didn’t you know it? Normally, I wouldn’t have dared ask so much of you. I’ll say this for you, Emily, you are generous to a fault. And, no,” he went on, correctly interpreting the shock that widened her eyes, “I have never indulged my fantasies with any other woman. My sweet, who could I find to match you for passion?”

  She felt deeply betrayed and was torn between the desire to cry her eyes out and an equal desire to knock his head off. “By all means, let us talk about William,” she said, then slipped in snidely, “I daresay he would never take advantage of a poor defenseless female.”

  His lips twitched in that nasty way that never failed to rattle her. “True,” he said. “I daresay Addison dons white cotton gloves before he takes a woman to bed. I daresay he would run the proverbial mile if he knew what you were really like. Now, Emily, my explanation, and no more evasions.”

  She sat there with her knees drawn up, glaring at him. He moved and she said quickly, “It was all so innocent. William wrote to me, once, twice, when we were in New York. There was nothing in those letters that I would be ashamed to show anyone.”

  “Yet you did not show those letters to me.”

  She had expected him to explode with temper when he heard that she had corresponded with a former suitor. Most husbands would have raved. His reasonableness, his forbearance, shamed her far more than any diatribe. Swallowing her pride, she said, “It was wrong not to tell you. I knew it was wrong. I had hoped, you see, that you would never discover it. When I wrote to William after that first letter, I told him that he must never write to me again.”

  “But he did write to you again?”

  “Yes, but this time, I did not reply.” She looked at him uncertainly and her hands went automatically to her hair, pushing back long strands of gold that lay across her shoulders. “I’m sorry, Leon. It was a cowardly thing to do. I didn’t want any unpleasantness between us, ’tis all. And then, when we knew of Sara’s illness, I was afraid to tell you in case you would forbid me to visit her.”

  He watched her through narrowed eyes for a moment, taking in her earnest expression. Quickly dropping a kiss on her upturned lips, he said, “I should beat you, but after the pleasure you have given me tonight, it would be too ungallant, especially for a Frenchman.”

  At the mention of anything French, her meekness instantly evaporated. When he doused the candle, she made a great to-do of removing herself to the far side of the mattress, as far from him as possible, where she perched precariously at the edge.

  His warm breath on her shoulder almost sent her tumbling to the floor. Catching her back against him, laughing, he said whimsically, “I have other fantasies I have yet to share with you. I don’t suppose your generosity would stretch so far? No? I thought as much,” and with a string of barely suppressed chortles of laughter, he dragged her
back to the center of the bed, anchoring her with one hairy, masculine leg thrown over hers and a hand possessively cupping one breast.

  She lay there like a stone, listening to his breathing even as he slowly drifted into sleep. She had the last word. Suddenly levering herself up, she slapped him on the shoulder. Hard.

  “What the devil?” Blinking the sleep from his eyes, he started up. “Emily, what…?”

  “I’ve just remembered something else we owe to France.”

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “Napoleon Bonaparte!” she snapped and, viciously thumping her pillows, she settled back beneath the covers and composed herself for sleep.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Peter Benson found his sister in her bedchamber. She was at a small kneehole desk, her head bent over a ledger.

  “Am I disturbing you?” he said.

  There was no artifice in the smile she gave him. “You could never disturb me, Peter. Do come in,” and she set the ledger aside, giving him her complete attention.

  “You should not be here alone, Hester, doing the household accounts. You should be out driving. Didn’t I see William just go off in a carriage with Sara and Emily? Surely you were invited, too?”

  “Of course I was invited. William’s manners can never be faulted. But they are young people, Peter. They don’t want an old maid like me to spoil their outing.”

  He accepted the chair she indicated and quelled the small surge of irritation. He knew that to Sara and Emily, his sister was an object of derision. Admittedly, some of it was merited. Hester was her own worst enemy. She was too censorious, too ready to point out faults. Nevertheless, it galled him to see how her company was shunned by the younger girls.

  His voice was light and teasing. “What do you mean, ‘old maid?’ There is only a year’s difference in our ages. You are a fine-looking woman. If you wanted to, Hester, you could attach any gentleman you set your cap at.”

  Hester’s serene expression clouded over, and Peter remembered that some years before, his sister had formed an attachment to an ineligible gentleman. Their father would not countenance the match, and shortly after, the gentleman had snagged a wealthy wife. Peter knew only the sketchiest details, having been away at university at the time. This great misfortune had cast a blight on his sister’s life. She had become the proverbial maiden aunt, flitting from one sibling’s house to another, managing their households and a brood of nieces and nephews with very little thanks for the great sacrifices she had made. Even he had not been above making use of her for his own ends.