Amanda Scott (30 page)

He was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “Perhaps I have expected too much too soon,” he said. “Though I’ve little experience with young, innocent females, I assumed that you’d take the same pleasure from sexual activity that I do. However, if your previous lack of exposure renders you uncomfortable, expecting you to respond with enthusiasm is as unreasonable of me as it would be to expect you to play whist well without ever having played it before. I’ve heard it said that many women of gentle birth never learn to yield easily in bed, let alone to enjoy themselves. I don’t want that, sweetheart. Now that you’ve explained your feelings, perhaps I can help.”

“How?”

He began to show her, but although he was patient and gentle, and although she tried to relax and enjoy his caresses, her earlier passion had abandoned her. Lying wide-awake beside him, long after he had fallen asleep, she decided that following Charley’s advice was going to prove much more difficult than she had anticipated.

Nick was dreaming of Newmarket, of standing in the enclosure, watching his horses win race after race, when the scene abruptly switched and he found himself in bed with Clara. Not really in a bed, he decided, but floating on a soft cloud while Clara, ludicrously attired in the flowing white gown and gilded halo of an angel, caressed him. While her steady gaze held his, her hands, light as thistle down, slid over his chest, touching each nipple lightly, then moving downward, barely stirring the hair on his chest, or farther down. Her fingers felt like a butterfly’s wings, skimming over, the taut bare skin of his stomach, moving lower and lower. They slowed tantalizingly as they neared his awakening sex. Still, she watched him, her eyes fixed on his.

Her hands stopped, and her head dipped toward his chest. He closed his eyes when her lips captured one nipple. Her tongue stroked gently at first, then nibbled, stirring an awareness of danger within him that teased his libido and drew a moan from deep in his throat. Her little white teeth gripped harder, then released him, baring the nipple to a kiss from the chilly air. He stopped breathing, waiting, his desire increasing with each passing second until he felt her soft lips at the other one, teasing him again, tantalizing him, stirring his lust to unbearable heights. First came a soft caress, then the nibble, then a new caress. When she stopped, letting the air chill him again, he opened his eyes, intending to pull her back, to demand full satisfaction from the saucy wench.

Her face changed, and the white gown and halo no longer seemed ludicrous. The face was Melissa’s, the halo a silvery glint of pale light on her hair. Perhaps, he thought dreamily, this was an omen, a sign that the Lord meant to guide his wife in a more proper direction. Nick smiled, thinking of what Melissa’s outspoken cousin, or Melissa herself, would think of an Almighty with such profound consideration for manly needs. The Melissa of his dream did not see his smile. Her attention was focused elsewhere as she bent to kiss the straining nerve center of his needs.

At the touch of her lips, Nick realized he was no longer floating on a cloud, or even in his own bed. He was in Melissa’s bed. He realized, too, that she was real and was really bent over him. The hands caressing his naked thighs and stomach were her hands. Her soft mouth enclosed the exact same part of him that Clara’s mouth had enclosed in his dream.

Believing she was trying to make up to him for the night before, and not wanting to startle her, he kept still, slitting his eyes just enough to watch her through his lashes. Subdued light filtered into the bedchamber. Either fog still hid the sunlight or a bit of the dawn had slipped through a crack in the curtains. Most likely the latter, he thought. Knowing his habits nearly as well as her mistress did, Lucy would not expect him to have remained with Melissa until morning. He wondered if Melissa had thought of Lucy. Lucy would not knock.

Melissa’s tongue glided over a particularly sensitive area just then, and thoughts of time and place slipped away as he closed his eyes in ecstasy. When he could think again, he realized he had been within aim’s ace of begging her not to stop. To maintain the passive role was hard, nearly impossible, because such behavior simply was not in his nature. He suspected, however, that allowing her to take the lead would better serve his interests in the end, though it would not be long before she knew he was awake. At that very moment, she stopped what she was doing. Peeping through his lashes again, he saw that she was watching him.

He opened his eyes, hoping his smile appeared lazier than he felt. “Don’t stop,” he murmured. “That’s wonderful.”

“Is it?” She watched him, her curiosity open, like a child’s. “Do you like that?”

“Don’t talk, sweetheart.” He could hear the strain in his voice. “Please, just go on doing what you were doing before.”

Her expression turned impish. “What will you give me, Nicholas?” Teasing him, clearly enjoying herself now, she touched him with her tongue, lightly.

“Anything.” He tried to make his reply playful, but to him, it sounded desperate. He refused to say more and lay still, struggling with himself, delighting in her renewed attention but wanting to touch her, to become actively involved in what was happening. He had never played a passive role in love-making. He preferred to take the lead. She stopped again, and he groaned. “Melissa, don’t stop, for God’s sake. Not now.”

“But I want to stop for a moment,” she said, her voice sounding sultry now. “My tongue is tired. Moreover, I like feeling as if I have some power over you. When you said a moment ago that you would give me anything if I would continue, I believed you. I’ve no doubt, sir, that I could ask for the moon, and you would at least promise to try to get it for me. Is that not so? Tell me.” This time her tongue began at the base and moved in one long, sweeping stroke to the tip. “Say something nice.”

He shuddered in a wave of pleasure. “My God, Melissa, don’t stop again. You’re driving me mad!”

But instead of continuing as he had begged her to, she slid upward, moving her hands and breasts tantalizingly over his belly and chest, while she continued to kiss him, her lips teasing him until he couldn’t take any more. When she drew back, her eyes twinkling as if she were measuring his response, he reached up and caught her, pulling her down to him, capturing her mouth with his and thrusting his tongue inside. Giving her no time to react, he rolled her beneath him, holding her squirming body with one hand while he explored gently with the other to see if she was ready for him.

Finding her slick and wet, he positioned himself to take her but paused in that last moment before thrusting himself inside to savor her expression. To his shock, he saw that she was not writhing with passion as he had thought, but was struggling like a madwoman, her arms flailing wildly.

His lust disappeared in a blink and he rolled off, still holding her, seeing clearly what his passion had blinded him to before, that her eyes were wide with terror.

Her body strained almost to the point of arching, as if she had frozen in place. Nick kept perfectly still, just holding her, but the look of terror did not fade and she did not relax. Remembering her description of feeling as if she stood apart from her body and watched, he said gently, impulsively, “Come back to me, sweetheart. You are safe now.” He spoke in the same soft murmur he would have used with a trembling young racehorse. “You stirred the beast, Melissa, but he is tamed and quiet now.”

He knew he was talking nonsense, and he wasn’t by any means certain she heard him, but all his instincts told him to keep talking to her. He would never remember what he said in the next few moments, for he felt almost as if he were playing a musical instrument, watching her eyes and attuning his voice and his words to her slightest response. A new emotion stirred within him as he lay there holding her, an emotion deeper and more consuming than any he had ever felt before. At last, her body relaxed and her eyes focused, but he was not prepared for the first words she spoke.

“That’s what he did.”

Shocked, he struggled to keep his voice calm. “Who?”

“Papa.”

A chill of rage raced from his groin through his midsection and upward till he feared he would burst, but despite an overwhelming, furious desire to murder Seacourt, he remembered that Melissa had been a virgin both when they met and on their wedding night. Keeping himself under rigid control, he said, “What did he do?”

“What you just did.”

“I was moving to possess my wife, sweetheart, because she had enticed me beyond all bearing. Whatever else your father may have done, I know from my own explorations of your body that he never did that.”

“Not as a husband does, no, for he said it would diminish my value on the marriage mart, but he did other things, horrid things, from the time I was small.”

“Come here,” he said gently, knowing just as he would have known in dealing with a nervous thoroughbred that he must conceal his fury if he was to steady her and learn what he wanted to know. The gentle tone was not enough, however, for she pulled back when he tried to embrace her.

“You’re safe, Melissa,” he said in the same tone, forcing the rage away to a distant part of him, certain she would sense it otherwise and misunderstand its origin. “You will catch cold, sweetheart. Come closer, so you can get warm. I’ll hold you.”

This time she obeyed, lying stiffly beside him with her head in the hollow of his shoulder. He drew the bedclothes over them, gathering his thoughts.

She said in a small voice, “Are you angry with me?”

“I’m angry, but not at you. You’ve done nothing wrong. Why did you wake me as you did?”

“Because you asked me to last night, and I knew from Papa that men like it,” she said, her voice so low now that he could scarcely hear her. “When he was angry, he would make me do that, and he would call me his magic girl, his sorceress, who could change him from a beast to putty in a child’s hands. You liked it too, Nicholas, but when you said I had stirred the beast … Papa said that once, too, when he tried to enter me. I screamed, and it must have frightened him because he stopped and he promised it would never happen again. It didn’t, but are all men beasts inside?”

He felt sick, but he said evenly, “No, they are not. Many of us are idiots, however, and some are knaves.” He wanted to know more, but he was not sure if he should press her now or force himself to let it all slide into oblivion for her sake.

“It was my fault for stirring the beast,” she said. “I-I had only to look at Papa in a certain way, and he would not thrash me. The other was horrid, but it was easier and less painful to withstand than a beating. It would happen anyway afterward, because he would apologize to me and then begin to stroke and caress me to show how much he loved me. I think that was when I first began to go into another place and watch.”

Not certain how much longer he could restrain the urge to find Seacourt and beat him to a bloody pulp, it was with unmixed relief that Nick heard the sound of the door latch. “Come in, Lucy, come in,” he said heartily when the little maid put her head round the door and stared in astonishment at them. “Before you bring our chocolate, throw open the curtains, and let’s have some more light in this room.”

She obeyed at once. He had not noticed a change in the light, but when the curtains were opened, sunlight poured in, spilling paths of gold across the carpet.

M
ELISSA, TOO, HAD WELCOMED
Lucy’s interruption, albeit not with the same unmixed relief as Nicholas. Though she had sensed his anger and frustration, and had recognized at least one moment of pure rage, his anger had not frightened her. She knew it was not directed at her.

Still, she was grateful when he did not demand more detailed explanations after Lucy left them with their chocolate. When she expected him to return to the subject of Sir Geoffrey, he asked instead if she would like to visit the menagerie at the Tower of London that day. Surprised but not displeased, she agreed with alacrity. On Saturday, he took her driving in Richmond Park, and on Sunday after attending church with his parents and Oliver, he hired a boat to take her to Hampton Court Palace.

Each night, he slept with her and held her in his arms, but he made no attempt to do more than caress her. He was gentle and kind, and she saw new sensitivity and tenderness in the way he looked at her, but she sensed a barrier between them and knew she was as much to blame for it as Nicholas was. More than once he seemed to hover on the brink of reopening the fateful subject, but he did not. They talked of many things, but most were commonplace, as if, like the barge that carried them to Hampton Court, their conversation skimmed the surface, unready to explore the depths.

She wished Nicholas would put his feelings into words. She thought he was being kind, and wished she knew him better, but each time she was tempted to generate more intimate conversation, the knowledge that she had no way to repay Yarborne stilled the impulse. Twice, she nearly confessed the whole, but she was afraid to spoil the growing bond between them. She believed now that she had loved Nicholas from the moment he took her away from the Little Hell, and she hoped his growing tenderness toward her might someday blossom into love. She would not spoil that chance by telling him what she had done and asking him to pay yet another hundred pounds on her account. There was only one thing she could think to do that might yet prevent him from learning what a fool she had been.

“Thank God you’re here,” Charley said, meeting Melissa in the entrance hall of St. Merryn House Monday afternoon, and dragging her into the nearest parlor. Melissa’s mind was still fixed on her troubles, but she made no effort to resist. As she laid her whip on a nearby table and began to remove the wash-leather gloves that matched her pale yellow riding habit, Charley exclaimed, “They are driving me mad, the pair of them. If I don’t end by murdering one or the other, I shall be extremely surprised. You’ve simply got to do something.”

“What are you talking about?” Melissa had paid little heed to her cousin’s words, and now, as she dropped her gloves onto the table beside her whip and turned toward the pier glass to remove her hat, she evaded Charley’s sharp gaze.