Читать книгу Regency Scoundrels And Scandals - Louise Allen - Страница 41

The caress of Ashe’s mouth was as gentle as it had been the first time he had kissed her, but this time it was surprisingly undemanding. Gradually Bel began to feel impatient with the respectful slide of closed lips over hers. She wanted his heat again, the taste of him, the hard thrust of his tongue, the indecent way he had sucked her lip between his.

Greatly daring, she parted her lips and ran her own tongue along the join of his, feeling them curve into a smile before he opened to her. Hazily Bel was aware that he had lured her into taking the initiative, but she was too engrossed in exploration now to feel resentful at his tactics.

She let her tongue slide languorously over his, then answered a sudden thrust with one of her own, duelling, teasing and being teased while the taste and the scent and the feel of him swept over her, until she felt she was melting into his body.

Ashe lowered his hands until they cupped her buttocks and pulled her up against him so she could feel the hard ridge of his erection against the curve of her stomach. It was a blatantly sexual display of desire and the intensity of the response it provoked in her was outrageous. She wanted him, now, desperately.

Heat seemed to pool low inside her, and she wriggled against him, seeking relief for the ache that was building, just where he pressed. Arousal, desire, sheer physical yearning—all the things she had not realised existed, had now only hazily began to suspect, could be hers with this man.

Shockingly she felt Ashe grow harder as she clung close, and deep in his throat he growled softly, the sound vibrating against her lips, a masculine signal of need that should have terrified her. Instead she felt powerful, amazed that she could have this effect upon him despite her ignorance and his experience.

Bel slid her fingers between their bodies and began to unbutton his shirt. Impatient with the mother-of-pearl buttons, she tugged and pulled and then, as her fingertips met skin and the rasp of hair, she froze. ‘Go on,’ he said huskily in her ear. ‘Touch me Bel. I want your hands on me.’

‘I do not know what to do,’ she whispered. But it seemed her hands did know, sliding under the parted front of the shirt. She felt the tickle of hair on her palms and then hot, satiny skin as they slid over his ribs. Back to the centre, then down over ridges of muscle to the flatness of his stomach where the hair seemed to focus. Her thumb found his navel and dipped in, wiggled experimentally, provoking a gasp of laughter.

He was moving his hips against her as he held her, signalling his need, yet he controlled it for her. It seemed impossible that this big, powerful man would let her explore like this, would seem content for her to set the pace.

Ashe lowered his face into the angle of her neck and began to lick slowly up until the tip of his tongue found her ear. The caress brought back memories of lying crushed beneath him on the floor, his mouth hot and moist as he explored her, and all she could think about was feeling his body over hers again, his heart against hers, his mouth taking hers.

Bel’s fingers slipped lower, into the waistband of Ashe’s trousers where the tantalising trail of dark hair vanished. ‘Yes. Bel, yes.’ The fastenings were tight; he sucked in his breath so she could twist her fingers round and open them, then her hand was curling round the hard, hot, terrifying length of him. A moment later and she was on her back on the bed, Ashe was shedding the remains of his clothes and she was staring wide-eyed at the first naked man she had ever seen in the flesh.

And what flesh. Bel swallowed. He was beautifully made, the candlelight flickering over smooth muscle and long limbs and…Suddenly she was nervous, her eyes closed tight. She was very aware of how flimsy her own garment was, how she must look to him, sprawled wantonly on the bed.

‘It’s all right, Bel, don’t be frightened.’ His weight dipped the bed beside her and Ashe began to stroke her quivering body, his hand running softly over the fine silk. It whispered against her skin. ‘I won’t do anything until you want me to, I promise.’

‘I do want you to. To do everything. Anything. But I do not know what those things are that I want.’ Bel opened her eyes and smiled ruefully. ‘That is what is so scary.’

‘Then, Bel, let’s find them together.’ He smiled back, then bent to kiss her breast just where the edge of the nightgown ended. ‘Belle, bella, bellissima.’ His lips fastened over one nipple and he began to suck it gently through the gossamer fabric, sending shock waves of sensation through her. She writhed, gasped, clutched his head, uncertain whether she wanted him to stop at once or never stop at all. It seemed he intended never to stop. Perhaps she would simply die of the sensation. Tongue, teeth, lips combined to send her into a fever, reduced her to a helpless, panting puddle of longing and desire.

Just when she was certain she could bear it no longer she felt his hand caress up under her skirts, his fingers slide into the secret folds that were hot and wet for him, slip between them to find the entrance to her body and then, as she arched in shock against his mouth, into the heat. Bel sensed her muscles clasp around the intrusion as his thumb found the single aching focus of her straining body and she felt his weight over her, his mouth on hers as she screamed in agonised delight and collapsed, shuddering, under him.

She wondered hazily if she had lost consciousness for, as she regained her senses enough to differentiate between the parts of her own body and his, she found the nightgown was gone and she was moulded, flesh to flesh, heartbeat to heartbeat with Ashe.

‘Let me take you, Belle,’ he murmured and surged into her on one powerful thrust. Always before she had lain rigid under such an onslaught, enduring the meaningless, effortful, mercifully short male striving towards release. Only now Ashe seemed quite as concerned to bring her to that peak of ecstasy again as to reach his own, and it seemed that the beautiful body dominating hers was quite capable of going on for as long as it took. She wanted it to last for ever because it was so wonderful, and yet to be over at once, because she wanted to share that storm of completion with him.

She felt the tension twisting into unimaginable heights, felt a change in his body, heard his breath rasp in his throat and curled her legs around his hips, pulling him in. ‘Ashe! Ashe, please…’ He gave one more thrust as she lost herself, then she was conscious—just—of him leaving her, holding her tight, gasping into her hair as they fell together, down into darkness.

Ashe rolled on to his back, bringing Bel with him to lie cradled against his chest in the curve of his arm. She gave a soft whimper of pleasure and snuggled close as his groping hand found the corner of the sheet and pulled it over their damp bodies.

He gazed up at the underside of the curtains as he let the aftershocks of their lovemaking shudder through his body. It had been beyond anything he had imagined and he could not understand why. Bel was lovely, sweet, eager. But she had come to him completely untutored and repressed—as close to a virgin as a woman could be after sleeping with a man. She had none of the tricks to pleasure him his mistresses had known—and yet the tentative wonder of her hands on his body, the awe in her eyes, the total trust with which she had given herself to him were powerfully erotic. And humbling, he realised.

‘Bel?’

‘Mmm?’ She snuggled in closer, rubbed her cheek against his pectorals and found his nipple with her lips. ‘Mmm.’

‘Stop it, wicked woman. Let a man catch his breath.’ She released the tense flesh and he saw her ear go pink at what she must have thought was a reproof. ‘I like it too much,’ he explained, mentally cursing her husband again, and she relaxed. ‘Are you—are you all right?’

He had expected her to be shy at the question, to answer hesitantly. Instead she wriggled up until she was sitting, her knees curved into his hips, and smiled at him, the sheet pooling around her. Glowing, that was the only way to describe her. Her skin was flushed pink, deeper across her breasts. Her hair tumbled wantonly around her shoulders and her eyes, fixed on him, were wide and wondering. ‘All right?’ She shook her head, the curling locks shifting in the candlelight. ‘That phrase hardly seems adequate. I had no idea it was like that. Is it always like that?’

It seemed he had not disappointed her. Ashe felt himself relax. He had not been conscious of a tension, but now he saw what a responsibility he had accepted and how hurt Bel could have been if she had chosen a man who did not live up to the trust she had placed in him.

‘I find it hard to believe that it would ever be like that for me again,’ he said seriously. ‘It can be as good—it will be—but that was special.’

‘Oh.’ Bel considered this, equally serious. ‘But I did not know what I was doing.’

‘You didn’t need to; you did what came naturally and that was…wonderful.’

‘Oh,’ she said again, dropping her lashes. ‘May we do it again? Soon? I mean, of course, when it is a convenient evening for you.’

‘It is very convenient now,’ he said smiling.

‘But—’She glanced down to where her wriggling had pulled the sheet away from his loins, and her mouth opened slightly in surprise as her gaze had the predictable effect on him.

‘You see what you can do just by looking? If you would like to explore,’ Ashe suggested, lifting her hand and placing it on the flat plane of his stomach, ‘we can see just how soon that convenient moment will arrive.’

Bel was woken by the pressure of Ashe’s lips against her temple. ‘Sweetheart, I must go now. What do you want to do about the bed?’

She struggled back to consciousness through what seemed to be a drift of rose petals, swansdown and fluffy clouds and found him sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed and smiling at her. ‘What time is it?’

‘Four.’ It was not a dream this time either, then. He had been there, he had made love to her—three times—he seemed pleased with her and she, she was still floating. Three times, each time different, each time blissful… ‘The bed?’ he prompted, grinning at her befuddlement.

Bel pushed back her hair with both hands and looked around at the tangle of bedclothes and the tumbled pillows. ‘We will never make it look as it did before,’ she concluded. ‘If you can arrange the covers so it looks as though I was restless and pushed them right off, and pass me that copy of Byron…’ She heaped up the pillows and snuggled back into them, half-sitting, half-lying, then remembered her nightgown, found it on the floor and dragged it on. ‘There. I could not sleep, sat up half the night reading and fell asleep with my book.’

Ashe straightened up from arranging the covers artistically and grinned at her. ‘Very convincing. But I think next time I had better wake up in time to make the bed—or we strip it first.’ He came round to the side of the bed, then bent and kissed her. Bel put up a hand, cupping his stubble-shadowed cheek and enjoyed the rasp of whiskers as she rubbed gently.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered. Next time, there is going to be a next time.

‘No, ma belle, thank you.’ Then he was gone, shoes in hand, slipping out of the room. The door snicked shut and she was alone. Bel tossed the volume of poetry carelessly on the covers as though it had fallen from her hand, reached out to pinch the wick of the remaining candle and lay back against the heaped pillows.

Her body thrummed, lighter than air, yet so heavily relaxed it felt she might sink through the mattress. She felt wonderful, although she knew that in the morning she was going to be stiff and perhaps a little sore. It had been a miracle. Ashe had been a miracle. Bel’s lids drooped. As sleep took her again she thought hazily, This is so perfect. So perfect…

Bel floated, blissful, through the next morning. The fluffy pink clouds still enveloped her, the sun shone, just for her, the birds were singing, just because Ashe had made love to her. At lunchtime she received a bouquet of yellow roses with a note that said simply, ‘One? A.’ and rushed out to purchase two new nightgowns, a pair of utterly frivolous backless boudoir slippers, a cut-glass vase for the roses and pink silk stockings. She then went and took refuge in Ackermann’s, browsing through the latest fashion plates until her maid was nodding with boredom and she could hand a note and a coin to the doorman without being noticed.

‘Please see this is delivered,’ she said brightly, without any appearance of secrecy. ‘I should have left it with my footman and quite forgot.’

The man touched his hat respectfully and snapped his fingers for an errand boy. The note, hurried away in the lad’s firm grip said only, ‘Yes. B.’

She, Bel Cambourn, respectable widow, was having an affaire. She had a lover. She was living out her fantasy and it was utterly perfect. Bel drifted round the end of a rack of maps, wondering vaguely whether she was going to exist in this happy blur for the duration of the affair or whether it would wear off. There were doubtless all kinds of things she should be doing, calls she should make, business she should attend to, but she could not concentrate on a single thing other than the image of Ashe, nakedly magnificent—

‘Ouch!’ The pained voice was familiar.

She found herself almost nose to nose with her Cousin Elinor, who had been browsing through a stack of small classical prints. Elinor’s right foot was under Bel’s left. She hastily removed it and apologised for her abstraction.

‘I have decided to create a print room in my small closet,’ Elinor explained, once they had finished apologising to each other for not looking where they were going. ‘I think I have enough now. Do you?’ She regarded a pile of prints doubtfully.

‘How big is the room? I would take a few more if I were you. And you will need borders,’ Bel pointed out, wrenching her mind away from erotic thoughts. ‘I did the same thing at Felsham Hall and bought everything here. They sell borders by the yard.’ She picked up the top print, discovered it was a scantily clad Roman athlete with a physique almost as good as Ashe’s and hastily returned it to the pile. Ashe did not have a fig leaf.

Elinor had found a shop assistant while Bel was recovering her composure and he returned with a selection of borders for the ladies to chose from. ‘You look very well, Cousin.’ Elinor glanced up from fitting a length of black-and-white paper against a print of the Forum. ‘Excited,’ she added, rejecting that border and trying another.

‘I do? Oh.’ Bel bit her lip; she had no idea that her inner state would be obvious. ‘How?’

‘Your colour is better and—I do not know quite how to describe it—you are glowing somehow.’ Elinor put her head on one side and frowned at her cousin.

‘It’s the lovely weather, and I am enjoying being back in London. I did a lot of shopping this morning.’ Although shopping was not a reason for excitement that Elinor would recognise.

‘I wish I could have come with you.’ Unaware she had startled her cousin, Elinor made a decision on the borders and handed her choice to the assistant.

‘Really?’ Thank goodness, her cousin was taking an interest in clothes at last.

‘Yes, I need some stout walking shoes, some large handkerchiefs and tooth powder,’ Elinor said prosaically, dashing Bel’s hopes of fashionable frivolity. ‘Mama is meeting me with the carriage—would you care for a lift home?’

Bel sat on one of the stools at the green-draped counter. ‘No, thank you, I will walk, I need the exercise.’ If truth were told, she was more than a little stiff from last night’s exertions and would have welcomed the ride, but the thought of enduring Aunt Louisa’s close scrutiny was too alarming. If Elinor could tell something was changed, Aunt Louisa most certainly could.

She walked out with Elinor, the porter hastening behind with the packed prints. Sure enough, drawn up at the kerb side in front of the shop, was Aunt Louisa’s carriage with the top down, and there, walking towards her along the pavement, a willowy lady on his arm, was Ashe.

‘Belinda!’ Aunt Louisa.

‘Lady Belinda.’ Ashe. ‘Miss Ravenhurst.’

‘Lord Dereham.’ That was Elinor. Her mama, startled by the novelty of her daughter addressing a man in the street, turned with majestic slowness and raised her eyeglass. Ashe bowed gracefully.

‘Lady James, Lady Belinda, Miss Ravenhurst.’ Ashe raised his hat. ‘Are you acquainted with Lady Pamela Darlington?’

‘No, I am not. Good afternoon, Lady Pamela.’ Bel shook hands with a politeness she was far from feeling. What she did feel, shockingly, was the urge to push Lady Pamela into the nearby horse trough. The pink clouds of happiness vanished.

‘Ha! I remember you.’ Aunt Louisa was regarding the very lovely young woman severely.

Bel found she could not speak. Lady Pamela was pretty, beautifully dressed, totally confident. She shook hands with Lady James without showing any alarm at her ferocious scowl, smiled at Elinor and Bel and chatted pleasantly while, all the time, keeping her hand firmly on Ashe’s arm. From time to time she glanced up at him with a proprietorial little smile that widened as he smiled back. He had all the hallmarks of a man receiving the attentions of a lovely woman, damn him, Bel thought savagely, smiling until her cheeks ached. Behind Lady Pamela stood a maid and a footman laden with packages.

Bel did not know where to look. She did not dare meet Ashe’s eye, terrified of showing some emotion her aunt could read. With her insides churning with what she had not the slightest difficulty in recognising as violent and quite unreasonable jealousy, she did not want to look at Lady Pamela and all the time she knew that simply by standing there, dumbstruck and awkward, she risked making herself conspicuous.

‘We have been purchasing prints for a print room,’ she said suddenly, into a lull in the conversation. Lady Pamela smoothed an invisible thread off Ashe’s sleeve with a little pout of concentration on her face. Bel gritted her teeth.

‘How very artistic of you, Lady Belinda,’ Ashe remarked, the first words he had addressed to her since his greeting.

‘Miss Ravenhurst is the artistic one, my lord, I am merely helping her choose some images,’ Bel replied, her lips stiff. She made herself meet his eyes. There was not the slightest sign in his expression of anything other than good-mannered interest in what she was saying. How could that be? Bel had felt it would be obvious to everyone who passed—let alone her aunt—that the two of them were lovers; she felt as though it must be emblazoned across her face. But no one seemed in any way suspicious and all Aunt Louisa’s attention appeared to be focused upon Lady Pamela and Ashe.

And just what was he doing with the lovely Lady Pamela? Why were they smiling at each other like that? Pamela was hanging on to his arm in a manner that was positively clinging and Ashe was doing nothing to distance himself. He seemed to know her well. Very well.

‘Belinda!’ She jumped. Aunt Louisa was gesturing to the open carriage door and the groom waiting patiently beside it.

‘No, thank you, Aunt, I will walk back, I have my maid with me.’

‘Join us, Lady Belinda,’ Ashe suggested, proffering his other arm. Lady Pamela’s smiling lips compressed into a thin line. ‘We are going to Hatchard’s bookshop, so I imagine our ways lie together.’

‘Thank you, no, my lord,’ she said coolly. ‘I have more than enough foolish romance to be going on with, just at the present, without buying any to read.’ She bowed slightly to Lady Pamela, smiled at her relatives and set off briskly westwards.

‘My lady?’ Millie scurried to keep up. ‘Are you all right, my lady?’

‘Yes, of course I am.’ Bel blew her nose fiercely but slowed her pace for the girl’s shorter legs. The smoke and the dust must have got into her eyes, there was no other explanation for the way they were watering.

How could Ashe be so…? She wrestled for the word. Deceitful. That was it, horrid as it was. He had told her he had no attachments, no commitments, yet there he was, strolling along, giving every indication that he was on the very best of terms with one of the most eligible young ladies in the Marriage Mart. And that was a highly risky thing to be doing if a man was not serious. It led to gossip at best and to interviews with enraged fathers at worst.

If she had known he was on the look-out for a bride, nothing would have led her to make her outrageous proposition, Bel thought angrily, the low heels of her shoes clicking on the pavement with the force of her steps. He had only needed to pretend to misunderstand her, as he had done at first, and there the matter would have ended. She would have been embarrassed, yet probably relieved once she had time to think things over, and Ashe would have neatly extricated himself from a tricky encounter, as doubtless he had many a time before.

But he had not extricated himself, and she had slept with him. They had made love and while it probably meant nothing to him, Bel told herself, piling on the misery, she was never going to be the same again.

Half an hour ago she had thought her life was perfect. Perfect.