Sweet Bargain (24 page)

In the copse Bel discovered that her horse, hastily tethered, had gotten loose and wandered off. She thought briefly of appealing to Farre for his mount, but one look at the man's face told her that he thought even a countess must pay for her own carelessness. She would have to curb her impatience to return to Courtland.

Nick settled himself in the bath with hardly any lessening of the pleasure he'd been feeling from the moment his fists had first connected with Darlington's very substantial person. Though his muscles ached, and a colorful assortment of bruises had begun to flower on his ribs and back, he had ended Darlington's claims to Bel. And he had parted from Bel's brothers on such terms of amity that he thought they would always remain his friends even if Bel should choose the annulment he could now offer her.

He soaked his head and washed the dust and sweat and blood from his face. Then he leaned back against the high copper lip of the bath and closed his eyes and let himself imagine that Bel would refuse the annulment and declare her love for him. This thought led to so many pleasant images that he lost all sense of time and was startled by a knock on the door of his dressing room. He pulled himself up in the tepid water and glanced about for his towel. Farre would have gotten word at the stable of Nick's victory.

"Come in," he called.

The door opened slowly, setting the steam that had drifted up from the bath into swirling eddies. Then Bel stepped into the room. Her face was flushed, tendrils of golden hair had escaped their pins, her eyes were wide with surprise and, Nick knew, awareness of him. He was having difficulty breathing himself.

Bel stared at her husband. A cut marred the fine edge of one brow, his lower lip was swollen, and she could see the irregular shape of a purplish bruise on his left shoulder. She wanted very much to touch each spot, but at the same time, her legs trembled under her, and she did not dare move.

"I know what happened," she said. "I saw you fight them."

"How?" he asked.

"Farre led me there. We watched from behind the hedge," she admitted.

"We should talk," he said.

She nodded.

"I can't talk rationally to you ... like this," he confessed.

"Of course not," she said. "I'll go and let you ..."

"No." His voice was a little thicker than he wished it to be. He swallowed and tried again. "Just turn." He made a little circling gesture with the fingers of one hand, and she turned her back to him.

He took a deep breath and gripped the sides of the bath. With sudden resolution he levered his aroused body from the water and stood. He grabbed his towel, hastily applied it to his head and shoulders, wrapped it securely about him, and turned to his wife.

Bel stood with her back to her husband, scarcely able to breathe. She tried to contain the trembling feeling inside by crossing her arms and gripping tight to her elbows. The moment that she had been unwilling to face on her wedding day had come. It was terrible to leave the circle of love and trust in which she had been Bel Shaw all her life, but it would be wonderful now, she knew, to enter the circle of this man's arms.

Then her husband's arms came around her and, his lips brushed her cheek.

"I—" he started to say.

She turned in his arms and pressed her fingers to his lips, shaking her head.

"Me first," she said, gazing frankly into his eyes. But what she saw there was too much even for her new understanding of desire. She lowered her eyes, and for a few minutes lost herself in contemplation of the hollows at the base of his throat and the pulse beating strongly under her hands. Then she found her voice again. "Much as I love my family, much as I will always care for them," she vowed solemnly, "they cannot come between us. You are first with me." She lifted her eyes to his. "I love you."

Nick could not speak, so he tightened his hold on her, lowered his lips to hers, let himself be lost in kisses he did not have to count, quick touches of his mouth to all the features that were dear to him, sensuous brushes of his lips against hers, long slow yieldings of his spirit to her spirit, until he had to pull back one last time.

"I was going to offer you an annulment," he told her.

She shook her head.

He swallowed. "There are two things ... I must tell you," he said. He paused to steady his breathing.

"I love you. I have dreamed of making love to you from the first day when you stood in the Ashe in the sunlight." His words provoked a very fervent response from his wife, and it was some time before he could again marshal his thoughts.

"Second," he said.

She laughed.

"I ... can't do the things I've been dreaming of now because ... I have invited your entire family to dinner here."

Bel drew back in his arms and looked at him incredulously. He was grinning at her, and she thought happiness made his already handsome face quite beautiful. "You invited all of them here?" She could hardly comprehend this change in him.

He nodded, bringing up a hand to stroke her cheek and distracting her for several seconds. "When are they to come?" she asked.

"Four," he said. "What time is it?"

"It's twenty minutes later than you think it is," she said.

"So it is." He laughed. He took her by the shoulders, turned her around, and marched her to the dressing-room door. She looked at him over her shoulder with such reluctance to leave plain in her eyes that he nearly lost his resolve. But he had not fought his own desires so long, waiting for the something more that had eluded him, that he could not wait a few more hours for love.

"Go," he said firmly. "You don't want Aunt Margaret to find the food wanting at Courtland."

Epilogue

BEL LAY IN the warmth of her husband's arms, marveling at the completeness of their union. A line of poetry she had considered mere pretty words came back to her.
The soul transpires at every pore with instant fires.
It had been like that. Her skin which had been indifferent to the touch of silks had awakened to his touch and could not yet endure the separation that sleep must bring. She pressed more closely against him, and he stirred.

"Are you asleep?" she asked.

"No," came the reply. "Do you want to talk?"

"Yes."

"Would you mind if I lit a lamp?" he asked.

She hesitated. It was wonderful and terrible to lie in his naked embrace in the dark. It made her tremble, but she had allowed him every touch in the shadowy darkness. Now she was uncertain of the light. Still she consented. He pulled his arms from around her, rolled away, and stretched across the bed to the table that held a lamp.

While he fumbled with the lamp, she pushed herself up against the pillows, and as she did so the covers fell away, exposing her shoulders and breasts. She grabbed the sheet, intending to restore her modesty, when an indrawn breath from her husband stopped her.

He had turned back to her and was staring reverently at her body. She tugged at the sheet, and he looked up.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I am rather susceptible to your charms."

"I'll put something on," she offered.

"No." He smiled. "I like you ... in white." He drew the sheet up then, tucking it around her, outlining her shape, his hands lingering here and there.

Then he fell back against the pillows beside her, an arm flung up over his eyes.

"You said you thought me a pastoral figure. Now you know. If I am a pastoral figure, it's a satyr."

"No," she said, "you are the passionate shepherd. 'Come live with me and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove.'"

"You know I like ... proving pleasures," he said, moving his arm and looking at her with considerable desire in his dark eyes. "But I wonder if you will want to be desired quite as much as I desire you."

"I do," she assured him. "You will never have to count kisses again."

"You won't think me arrogant if I presume to take them from you?"

"You are not arrogant. Indeed, you have to cultivate more
pride
, not less, if you wish to be allied with a Shaw."

"More pride?" he exclaimed, pushing himself up and leaning on one side toward her. "The last thing your family needs is to accept a person with more pride."

"Are you insulting my family, sir?" she demanded.

"Never," he said. "But I warn you, I mean to set up a rival family, right here on the banks of the Ashe.

She looked at him.

"The Seymours. I want a dozen dark-eyed, dark-haired sons and daughters."

"A dozen?"

"At least a half dozen," he replied. He was looking at her with a marked intensity. "Do you want the light out?"

"Yes." She smiled. "For now."