The Nightingale Legacy (28 page)

“You must stop that now,” he said between his teeth. “I swear it, Caroline, I’ll spill my seed if you don’t stop. A groom spilling his seed in his bride’s hand simply isn’t done on a wedding night. I’d never be able to hold my head up again around other men. I would be cast out of the male fraternity. I would have been an inept clod on my wedding night and that I simply couldn’t bear. Please.”

She held him between her warm palms for just a moment longer, until just the point when he knew it was all over for
him, when he wanted to throw back his head and yell, then she released him.

She stretched out on top of him, her belly against his, her breasts pressed against his chest. She held his face between her hands and looked down at him. “You’re magnificent, North. I now understand a bit more about you and how you work. Perhaps you could take over things now?”

He laughed; it was the only thing a sane man who was on the edge of insanity could do. He didn’t move, merely raised his own hands and cupped her face between them. “You’re always a surprise, Caroline. You’re also a tease. Oh, you don’t know you’re a tease, or perhaps you do. Perhaps all women know instinctively how to drive a man mad. Come here and open your mouth to me.”

She leaned down and his mouth was hot on hers.

“Open your mouth. The good Lord knows I taught you how to do that the second time I saw you.”

“Maybe it was the third time,” she said, and opened her mouth. His tongue was inside her mouth, touching her own tongue, and it was quite splendid, she thought, until she felt his big hands on her bottom, kneading her flesh, pressing her hard against his man’s sex. Then she stopped thinking. His fingers were between her thighs and he found her flesh and he was touching her, exploring, gently entering her and she was shaking now, moving against him, unable to help herself, all of her merging into him and what he was doing to her and what he was making her feel. In the next moment she was on her back and he was between her legs, pushing them apart with his hands and holding them steady and staring down at her.

“North, please,” she said, not knowing what to do but knowing that something very wonderful and special was going to happen.

“Just hang on, Caroline.” His voice was hoarse and deep
and then his hot breath was touching her flesh and she arched upward, moaning, letting his hands lift her higher to his mouth, and soon, so very soon after that, she was crying, sobbing, twisting on the sheets, her hands fisted, hitting his shoulders, then clutching at him, wanting what was coming so badly she didn’t think she could bear it, and then suddenly, heat spread through her, drawing her inward, and melded with the heat of his mouth and she yelled.

He held her there until he felt the complete giving of everything that was in her, and he knew that all her feeling had come to him and to herself and he wasted no more time. He came into her fully in the next instant, barred only a moment by her maidenhead, then he was through it, thrusting himself to her womb. He knew he was hurting her, that the haze of pleasure was falling away from her because of the pain of rending her maidenhead. He held himself still and pulled himself up on his elbows, a remarkable feat really, one he was pleased he’d managed to do.

“Hello,” he said, looking down into her dazed eyes. “No, don’t move. Let yourself get used to me, then I’ll move, but not sooner, else it will hurt you some more. The book said I was to apologize abjectly at least ten times when I tore through your maidenhead. It’s your badge of innocence and it’s important to you and thus I must act appropriately sorry to be the one to rob you of it.”

“All right,” she said. “What you’re saying is nonsense, but it’s all right. This is all very strange, North, this business about you being inside me. I mean you’re really inside me, not just your tongue in my mouth, but this part of you that’s just for me and now you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing, isn’t that right?”

He grinned painfully. “I sure the hell hope so. I can’t wait now, Caroline.” He moved and it wasn’t too bad. She clasped her arms around him and kissed him, letting his
breath flow into her mouth, feeling his frenzy, his growing urgency, until he was arching up, his eyes closed, his head thrown back, and he moved and she felt his seed inside her.

He came down over her, panting hard, to rest his face beside hers on the pillow.

She whispered in his ear, “I don’t think you missed any steps, North.”

F
OR SEVERAL MOMENTS
, he didn’t know what she was talking about, his brain was too dead. He said then, “I should take my pleasure before giving you yours. Then I can twit you when you haven’t any more of a functioning brain than a gnat. No, I didn’t miss any steps. On the other hand, I could have made those steps much, much steeper and thus taken a much longer time to reach the summit. What do you think?”

“I think,” she said, kissing his throat, “that you are entirely capable of finding us steps that are on side trails, very interesting, rarely stepped-upon steps. Surely your book didn’t cover every possibility. You’re incredible, North. You’re probably also very inventive.”

“I am,” he said, kissed her, then rolled over, pulling her against him. “Side trails, huh? I’ll have one by tomorrow morning, all right?”

“I’ll think about it too. I’m so glad I didn’t have to marry Owen or Bennett,” she said, then in the next moment she was asleep.

He kissed her hair, managed to lean over far enough to snuff the candles on the table beside the bed, then closed himself about her again. He hadn’t slept with a woman in a very long time.

He’d never before slept with a wife. And that’s what she was now, his bloody wife, and he’d given her a woman’s pleasure. That was quite nice and well done of him. The
male fraternity would approve. He was a damned fine man and a generous one. He hadn’t been a clod, though it had been close.

Side trails with lots of individual steps. He only had time to smile about it before he too was deeply asleep.

North awoke the following morning to find himself alone. He thought of that monster’s face she’d seen in the window the night before, jerked up in bed, and yelled, “Caroline!”

There was no answer. He turned to see the adjoining door open. He called her name again, but still no answer. He frowned and looked at the clock beside his bed. It wasn’t even eight o’clock in the morning.

Damnation, he’d wanted to wake up, then kiss her awake and love her again until she was silly with it. He tossed off the covers and stood up to stretch.

He was in mid-stretch when the door opened and there was Tregeagle standing there, as stiff as a board, looking as horrified as a vicar in a den of iniquity.

North frowned at him. “What the hell do you want, Tregeagle? Where is my wife?”

“Your wife is with
them,
my lord, and
they
are here, all
three
of them, and it is unacceptable; it is not what we’re used to. This is the Nightingale household, a household for men only, not some sort of inn for Mary Magdalenes.”

North blinked through this bitter speech, then grinned. “Oh, I see, our three pregnant ladies are here. Caroline is with them?”

“Yes, my lord. She insisted that Mr. Polgrain prepare them a very generous breakfast because, she said,
they
had to keep
their
strength up. My lord, we allowed them to be present at your wedding ceremony, allowed them even to remain for the magnificent repast Mr. Polgrain prepared, but then, of course, they left to return where they belonged.”
Tregeagle drew a very audible breath. “My lord, what are the three pregnant ladies doing here at Mount Hawke, at a man’s residence, at seven forty-five o’clock in the morning?”

“Why, Tregeagle, they’re moving in. Didn’t I tell you that yesterday?”

He thought Tregeagle would faint. He turned white, his limbs began to shake as if he were suffering from palsy. “Have Timmy the maid bring me bathwater, Tregeagle, and get a grip on yourself, man. It won’t be so bad. I think the three of you will enjoy hearing feminine conversation and laughter, don’t you?”

“No, my lord.”

North laughed and laughed. He stopped, realizing what he was doing. This laughter business was becoming more natural. It had quite sneaked up on him and now he was doing it. It made him feel quite nice, when it didn’t scare him to death.

When North strode into the small breakfast parlor a short time later, he drew up on the threshold, and just stared. There was Caroline seated unknowingly in his high-backed chair. To her left, right, and center were her three pregnant ladies all seated at the table, chatting gaily, all seemingly in very fine spirits. Well, Caroline should be in the best spirits possible, given how very wonderful he’d been to her on their wedding night. He wondered if in the near future he would have four pregnant ladies at the breakfast table. That made him smile. Then it made him frown, for oddly, it brought odd images to his mind of two very big people who were screaming at each other, then one of those big people was sobbing and cursing, and it was long ago in the past, he did realize that, but those terrifying scenes should have been long forgotten. He knew deep down it was his parents.
He hated remembering. He firmly closed the door on those memories and walked forward.

“Good morning, ladies,” he said, nodding to each of them. “Are you enjoying your breakfast?”

“Everything is delicious, North,” Caroline said, and grinned shamelessly at him. “Polgrain has even presented himself three times to ensure that everything meets with our collective approval. Shall I pour you some coffee?”

He nodded and took his plate to the sideboard. He could but gawk at the lavish array of dishes presented. Polgrain had outdone himself and North wondered why. The kippers looked delicious, as did the bacon. The scrambled eggs looked fluffier than high summer clouds, the toast and muffins were golden brown, and the pots of butter and jam looked rich and creamy. Goodness, there were even nutty buns.

He turned to see Caroline giggling beside him. “You’re wondering why everything looks so good, aren’t you? You expected dog meat and pigeon droppings.”

“How did you do it?”

“I told Coombe to tell Polgrain that if the breakfast wasn’t worthy of a viscount’s establishment, I would have the three pregnant ladies come help him in his kitchen because, obviously, he didn’t know how to cook properly. I thought Coombe would smash me over the head with that hideous Chinese vase in the drawing room, but he contained himself.”

“He is a man with self-control, thank God.”

Suddenly, she lowered her eyes to the scrambled eggs. She scuffed the toe of her slipper against the edge of the Aubusson carpet.

He snaffled the biggest nutty bun on the well-polished silver tray, looking all the while at her from the corner of his eye, and said in a voice he hoped was seductive
enough to melt the butter on his nutty bun, “I missed you this morning. I had definite very interesting plans for the use of your fair person when I woke up. There is so much of you that hasn’t yet received a fair amount of my attention.” He sighed deeply. “You shouldn’t have left me. According to the book I was studying last night, Caroline, it simply isn’t the done thing to leave your new spouse before he wakes up. It makes him feel inadequate, you see, as if he must have failed to please you on the wedding night, and thus you’ve left him alone to question his technique endlessly and wonder just how badly he performed.”

Her head had snapped up and her mouth was open by the time he came to a polished halt.

“You’re making that up, North Nightingale!”

“Not a bit of it. Have you eaten, Caroline?”

“Yes,” she said. “Now, I must help my ladies move into their bedchambers. Oh dear, I sat in your chair. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.” She was hauling away her plate and silverware, and he was just laughing at her, standing there, his plate in his hand, laughing.

“Hush,” she said over her shoulder. “You’re giving our guests a very poor opinion of me.”

“Oh no, Miss Caroline,” Alice said. “I couldn’t have imagined a lady enjoying herself with a gentleman.”

That was a stopper, but just for a moment. Miss Mary Patricia patted Alice’s hand, and Caroline said briskly, “Now, let me show you to your rooms. They’re really quite nice.”

North called out to her, “It also said in my book that to leave the new spouse immediately after breakfast also puts him in danger of serious self-doubt.”

She refused to let him dangle her about any longer, even though he did it splendidly. How could he ever have believed he was dour and dark and brooding? She moved
closer to him, out of hearing of Miss Mary Patricia, Alice, and Evelyn. “Oh, I asked Tregeagle about the monster’s face in my window last night. I looked him straight in the eye and put it to him.”

“Ah.”

“He didn’t twitch a muscle, but still, he’s had many years to perfect a show of innocence.”

“Tell you what, let me check around and then I’ll put it to Polgrain and Coombe.”

“Good luck,” she said in a gloomy voice. “They’re very good, North, very good indeed.”

“But you’ve thrown them, Caroline.”

She cocked her head to one side.

“Aren’t there now four ladies living at Mount Hawke?”

She gave him a wicked grin. “What will they say when the female maids arrive?”

“I don’t know and I don’t look forward to hearing it.”

Two hours later, North was sitting in a huge wing chair in the library, Caroline on his lap, more or less, and he was playing with her toes. One silk stocking was lying discarded on her chest. “If you were in a more amenable position I could nibble on your toes. I’ll bet they taste like lavender.”

“I told Timmy the maid to pour lavender in my bathwater. He stood there and stared at me and then grinned this big toothy grin and poured out enough to bathe an elephant. You saw the bottle, didn’t you?”

“It was nearly empty.” He lowered her foot to his lap and examined it. “It looks as if your foot has healed all right. I was scared of that damned blister. You must be careful. I knew a boy in the army whose boots were too tight and he got a blister. He didn’t pay any attention to it and not five days later he was dead.”