Susan Johnson (29 page)

But theirs had never been a rational relationship. What had drawn them together and brought them pleasure and had kept her heated memory vividly alive for him had nothing to do with reason. They had a unique, extravagant physical bond so intense, he often wondered if he’d be killing himself by marrying her. And while he’d never attempted to gauge the more subtle, sensitive nuances between passion and love, he did know that what he felt for Elizabeth Graham was different from what he felt for all the other women in his life.

Spinning around from the window, he casually said, “I’ll be back tonight,” as though the words weren’t charged with explosive significance.

“Meaning?” Her moods since her pregnancy were
intensely erratic, she’d found, and while her query was sharply put, in contrast, a flutter of anticipation streaked down her spine.

“Meaning, wear something I’ll like.” He grinned. “You’ll want to be nice to me.”

She hadn’t known what to do with herself that day, so agitated were her senses. She’d tried reading; she’d gone for a walk with Helen. She’d spent the afternoon in the kitchen with Mrs. Reid listening to stories of Johnnie’s childhood, which only increased her disquietude. She was finding it increasingly difficult to maintain any coolness of judgment when just living in Johnnie Carre’s home seemed to bring sensation to a fever pitch.

Helen seemed to take special care dressing her that evening, seeing that the folds of her skirt fell properly, adjusting the lace at her décolletage to the precise nuance, offering her a rose-scented perfume she’d brought in that evening, tying her hair back with gold ribbons to match the lace on her newly finished embroidered silk gown.

And when Elizabeth complained with a nervous testiness to such exactitude, Helen’s smile was indulgent. “The bairn do put one in a nervous way,” she kindly said. “But I’m almost finished, my Lady, and ye want to look pairfect for himself tonight.”

“Why would I want to do that?” Elizabeth said with a small huffiness. “I can’t imagine why tonight is any different from any other night.”

Her maidservant glanced away.

“You know something,” Elizabeth accused, feeling her stomach suddenly pitch, uncomfortably aware her new gown and carefully superintended toilette had some relevance.

“No, my Lady, I dinna know anything at all.…” But anxiety trembled in her voice, and her gaze wouldn’t meet Elizabeth’s.

There was no point in plaguing the poor girl when she was obviously unable to reveal what she knew, but it gave Elizabeth added warning. Not that she wasn’t always cautious when Johnnie Carre had plans.

But she hardly ate her dinner, which Helen had set so beautifully before her with hothouse roses to complement her table. When the recognizable staccato knock came at the door, she actually jumped in her chair.

Johnnie walked in a second later, not waiting for permission to enter her room, and said, “Thank you, Helen,” in his dismissive way as he pulled a chair up to Elizabeth’s table. In a few brief moments Elizabeth found herself alone at night with Johnnie Carre.

It seemed recklessly different with the candlelight golden on his face instead of the fresh morning sun.
He
seemed different, as though he were no longer a petitioner, as though he were more familiarly in command.

He wore a black velvet jacket, slashed on the arms and across the chest to show off the beauty of his fine white shirt. The lace at his cuffs and throat fell in fluid splendor; a spectacular diamond twinkled from the crushed folds of his jabot. His trews were muted shades of black and grey, and the embroidered red moroccan leather of his shoes matched the red silk garters at his knees. A peacock-blue ribbon tied his long hair back in a queue, the final embellishment to his rich attire.

“My compliments to Madame Lamieur,” he said with a dazzling smile, his cheekbones more prominent in the glow of candlelight. “Your gown’s magnificent.” Silk embroidery picked out the yellow iris on a background of
green and deepest purple, while gold lace bunched in a froth of colored ribbons decorated the neckline, elbows, and open sleeves.

“I should thank you, I suppose, for spending so lavishly.” Elizabeth knew how costly the hand-embroidered ribbon silk must be. “But I don’t need this splendor.”

“Indulge me, sweet.” He shrugged one velvet-clad shoulder. “And it keeps a dozen seamstresses busy in the village.” He grinned with a small boy’s sort of dissembling charm.

“Well, thank you then, for the village charity.” But she smiled a little at the last; his good spirits were contagious.

“I brought you something,” he said, leaning across the crisp white linen, handing her a small velvet box. “For fun,” he added with a smile.

Opening the blue velvet lid, she discovered an intaglio ring in lavender jade, the incised design depicting the facade of her new house at Three Kings. “It’s beautiful.”

“I thought you might enjoy using your architectural design as a seal.”

“Am I going back to Three Kings?” But a lightness insinuated itself into her words.

He grinned. “Eventually. I just want to marry you. I don’t want to own you.”

“Really.”

“Really, Elizabeth. This is such a useless argument. You can go where you please once we’re married. You’re not my ward.”

“And you can do as you please as well?”

Her voice had taken on a faint edge, and he wasn’t sure how to answer. “Is this a trick question?” he said with a smile.

“Answer me.”

“What do you want me to say?” He felt as though he were running a gauntlet blindfolded.

“Whatever you want to say.”

“Come downstairs then. I’ve something to show you.” A man of action, he was weary of debate, and polite behavior, and three days of waiting.

• • •

He held her hand while they walked down the narrow hallway and descended two flights of stairs, then traversed the wide corridor on the main floor to an elaborate portal through which he took her, ushering her into a large chamber with a muraled ceiling, paneled walls in honey-colored local pine, Turkey rugs on the floor, and dozens of China vases and urns filled with peach-colored roses.

“This is your bedchamber!” Elizabeth exclaimed, not expecting so unsubtle a ploy.

A large tester bed, magnificently hung in forest-green brocade, took up an entire wall, the heavily carved posts soaring a dozen feet toward the gamboling gods and goddess on the ceiling above.

“Do you like it?” he innocently said, as though the room itself were their point of discussion, and finding the range of emotion passing across her face fascinating.

“I’m leaving!”

“I don’t think so.”

“Would you keep me here against my will?” She’d never considered that he would handle her so roughly.

“Yes,” he quietly said, “I would. I intend to bed you and then marry you, Elizabeth Graham, before witnesses.” The necessary requirements for a legal marriage that couldn’t be severed by court action were a license, a clergyman, the vows repeated by both parties, with two witnesses to the ceremony and to the bedding.

“Just like that,” she whispered in shock. “Like a barbarian?”

“Like a barbarian.” His voice was soft, his decision made hours, days before.

“And I’ve nothing to say in the matter?”

“No.”

“This is too irregular; it’ll never stand up in court. You can’t get witnesses to condone this, or a clergyman,” she heatedly argued.

He smiled at her naïveté. “It’s all quite legal, darling.
And I don’t know whether they condone it or not, but they’re all next door. Waiting.”

“They’re next door?” Her voice dropped to a murmur.

“You may not want to scream with your usual carnal abandon,” he said with a smile.

“You don’t actually mean to go through with this?”

“We’ll be more formally married in the chapel tomorrow.”

“You’ve thought of everything, apparently.”

“I think so.” A faint smile touched his mouth.

If he hadn’t looked so damnably smug, she wouldn’t have hit him with such force, but a frustrated, vengeful fury overwhelmed any normal degree of prudence or control.

And if she hadn’t hit him so hard, he wouldn’t have responded in so unusual a manner.

He actually stood arrested for a moment, his palm to his stinging cheek, tasting the blood inside his mouth, tamping down his violent urge to hit her back. His voice when he spoke a moment later gave indication of enormous self-control.

“You require a lesson in manners,” he said with exquisite restraint.

“And you’re the man to teach me?” The moment she uttered the words, she regretted her insolence, for a sudden grim tyranny gleamed from his eyes.

“The ideal man,” he said in almost a whisper. With an unnatural courtesy he’d submitted himself to her principled disdain since Hexham, and he’d reached the limits of acquired manners. Without waiting or caring whether she responded, he walked away from her, went to the door, locked it, and tossed the key on the bureau top without breaking stride. “Now we’ll see to your instruction,” he quietly said, walking back toward her, using the royal “we” with ease, stripping his elegant velvet jacket from his shoulders and dropping it to the floor without notice. He stepped out of his red-heeled shoes, moving nearer like a great cat on silk-stockinged feet. “Don’t be frightened, Lady Graham,” he murmured as he approached
her where she stood in the center of his bedchamber, “I don’t intend to hurt you.”

“What do you intend to do?” She stood bravely facing him, refusing to show fear.

He smiled at her courage. “I thought we’d begin with a lesson on wifely conduct.”

“No!”

“I promise you no pain, my Lady.”

“Don’t touch me.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to.” And while his voice was obliging, he was not. His hands captured her shoulders, his long, graceful fingers firm on the silk of her gown, and as he drew her close, he said, “You must learn to say, ‘Yes, my Lord.’ ”

“I won’t. I’ll scream, and your damnable clergyman will run away home. And we shan’t be married after all.”

“Don’t delude yourself, darling. They’ll stay until I give them leave to go. Now let’s see, I think you should kiss me first.” And he dipped his head, holding her securely in his hands. His mouth brushed hers gently; his tongue touched the full curve of her bottom lip, glided upward slowly, slid delicately into her mouth.…

And she kicked him with all her strength.

He grunted in pain, his fingers tightening on her shoulders until a second later one of his hands swept downward to cup her bottom and jerk her tightly against his lower body as he ground his mouth into hers so brutally, her back arched against the powerful pressure. She couldn’t breathe; the taste of his blood invaded her mouth; she felt his erection hard against her stomach as she struggled to free herself from his bruising hold.

Her agitated exertions only increased the friction of her full breasts and soft thighs against Johnnie’s hard body, each movement provocative, arousing. She felt it first in her nipples, more sensitive since her pregnancy; she felt a streaking heat race downward from their hardening peaks. And she tried in the flashing moment of heated perception to deny the sensation, discipline it, or chastise it away. But perception and memory had instantly merged as her body began to betray her; her senses recognized the intimate, forceful pressure. She
found herself remembering the precise, intoxicating feel of that rigid hardness inside her, and disastrously she felt her body respond further to that memory. In flashing recall that ignored all efforts at suppression, all the indelible sensations revived—how exactly he felt when he was deep inside her, how long he could keep her shuddering on the brink, how his hands touched her intimately—
everywhere
; it almost seemed she could hear again from those days at Three Kings, her keening cries of pleasure.…

And all the defenses of reason and logic she’d erected against Johnnie Carre the weeks past fell ignominiously before the inexplicable searing rush of her own desire.

Johnnie felt the sudden change as though a curtain had fallen on the first act of a play, for she ceased struggling; her mouth opened beneath his with a remembered sweetness. And he felt her soft thighs drift lightly against his arousal.

The pressure of his mouth altered subtly, and he seduced her then with the skill acquired in countless scented boudoirs, with the patient application of a nun at her prayers, with infinite variety—until he heard the first breathy whimpers, until Elizabeth arched her eager body against his, until she clung to him like a flagrant invitation to pleasure.

Then he said, very softly, “And now your education begins.…”

She shook her head, her platinum curls brushing against his hands that held her close. “No, not now … I don’t want to play games.…” Lying back in his arms, she smiled up at him, her gaze half-lidded with passion. “I want to feel you.… Take off your clothes … or at least some of them,” she whispered, her hands slipping around from his back, reaching for the closures on his trews.

“Later,” he quietly replied, catching her hands in his, balancing her for a moment against his thighs, his blue eyes drifting suggestively down her sumptuous body. “Let’s take off yours first.”