The Official Essex Sisters Companion Guide (27 page)

And then she caught Ewan’s secret smile when Father Armailhac asked him to repeat,
With my body I thee worship
, and thought that she wouldn’t have liked to wait a week. She felt with a deep clarity the importance of the moment when Ewan slid a cold, heavy ring over her finger. And the rightness of the moment when he bent his head and kissed her, one of those clear, tender kisses that they shared over the bolster.

“The Earl and Countess of Ardmore,” Father Armailhac said, turning from them to the assembled household clustered in the pews. Everyone broke into shouts . . . Nana was crying and smearing the heavy rouge she’d put on for the occasion. Gregory was jumping up and down, looking far younger than his eleven years. Rosy was sucking a finger and smiling. Uncle Tobin wasn’t wearing a hunting coat . . .

Annabel clutched her husband’s arm and they walked out into the cool, dark pine forest, lit by torches along the path now. It was strewn with little white flowers and her dress swept through them, leaving a wake in its stead, like the prow of a ship.

Those servants who hadn’t fit into the tiny chapel were waiting for them outside the castle, along with a man moaning on the bagpipes.

“I don’t like bagpipes,” Annabel observed.

“You’re no true Scots,” her new husband retorted. “Wait until my neighbors hear of this. They’ll all be here, with fiddlers and pipers, and the celebration will last for twelve hours. But for now, the night is ours.”

Annabel shook hands with every resident of Ewan’s castle, from Mrs. Warsop down to Tibbon, the shoe-black.

Then Ewan held out his hand.

And she went to him.

“I just want to say that this is bound to be a disappointment,” Annabel said. She was as perfumed and curled and polished as Elsie could make her. She was wearing the scrap of French silk that Tess gave her. She was cold—not with fright but with apprehension.

She’d been thinking about it. She didn’t have much idea how to do this, and if everything Ewan said was correct, neither did he. The local women had all told her that consummation needn’t be painful, if she married a man who knew what he was doing. “Marry a tired rake,” Mrs. Cooper had said. “They know everything, and yet they’re worn out and ready to settle down. As long as he doesn’t have the pox.”

The pox was something she didn’t have to worry about. But Ewan clearly would have no idea how to make this whole business less painful. Her thighs tightened at the thought. But what had to be done had to be done.

He walked into the bedchamber as if it were an evening just like any other. She almost expected him to pick up a bolster and place it in the middle of the bed.

“Are you frightened?” he asked.

“Not at all,” she said stoutly. “I just think that we should—we should understand that beginnings are not always the most propitious of all occasions.” She knew that sounded pompous but she couldn’t think of a better way to phrase it.

He looked a little puzzled as he untangled her language. Then, Ewan-like, he went straight to the heart of the matter. “Aye, lass, I’ve heard that it can be painful for a woman. And I’m sorry about that.”

“There are ways to make it not painful,” she said hopefully.

But he was shaking his head. “Old wives’ tales, or so Nana says.”

“You
asked
her?”

“Of course. Nana knows all there is to know about a woman’s body. She says some women suffer quite a bit, and others don’t even notice and might as well not be virgins at all.”

Annabel nodded, a little jerkily.

“Did you and your sisters ever ride horses astride, the way men do?”

She just stared at him, and he frowned. “Of course you didn’t,” he muttered, “you’re ladies.”

He was standing just before her now, and then he suddenly dropped to his knees. She had a moment’s desperate thought that he meant to pray—
pray, how embarrassing
!—but thankfully, no. Instead of praying, his hands closed around her slender ankles.

“I’ve been dreaming of this moment,” he said, his voice husky as the darkness itself. “I’ll do my best to make it an occasion we both enjoy, Annabel.”

She was shivering at his touch, already shaking a bit. His hands slid up her ankles, up long smooth legs, and his mouth followed, pressing hot kisses everywhere. Her knees shook. “Could we—shouldn’t we lie down?” she whispered, peering down at him.

But Ewan was deaf to her voice, hearing only the hoarse sound of his own breathing as he tasted her sweet flesh, danced higher, his fingers pushing aside the silk of her nightgown. It fell over his shoulders and then he was in a golden, gleaming tent of
silk, with nothing but the cream of Annabel’s legs and an enchanting buttery patch of hair that was begging for his touch . . .

He let his hands shape her round bottom, pulled her sleek body against him and then . . . Ewan didn’t know anything about the art of seducing virgins, of taking virginity, of introducing a woman to the pleasures of the bed. But he knew one kind of kiss they had both enjoyed, and one thing at which he appeared to be quite capable. He let one hand slide between her rounded thighs and pushed them apart slightly, then began to kiss his way up her creamy thigh.

Annabel’s legs were trembling at his caress, and their situation struck him as rather uncomfortable, so he eased her down to the carpet, pushing her nightgown to her waist.

Her legs fell apart, and left her open to his sweet torment. And slowly the pounding in his ears receded, and he could hear her frantic little breaths, the silken sound of her gasps, and frantic twist of her body up against his mouth. Without ever losing his touch on her, he pulled her nightgown over her head. Granted, it had a wide neckline, but that was quite adroit of him. A touch of pride surfaced in his mind.

Her whole body was before him now, one slim leg flung to the side. She had both hands over her eyes, as if merely shutting them wasn’t enough for the embarrassment of lying on the floor without clothing . . . He thought fleetingly of moving to the bed, but instead he stood up and wrenched off his own clothing.

The moment he stopped touching her, her body went rigid. He could see her breasts rising and falling with little pants but she said nothing. And she didn’t take her hands from her eyes.

“Are you all right?” he whispered, coming on his knees next to her.

She didn’t say anything so he caught her hips between his hands and eased her rigid legs back open. Then he started kissing her stomach, kissing his way down to that buttery patch of hair again, down—

“You needn’t do that,” she said, her voice stifled by her hands, which covered her whole face.

“I want to,” he said simply. And then, two seconds later, her moans were flying into the night air again. One hand even fell from her eyes, and her legs slid restlessly up to form a perfect cradle for his body.
Soon
, he promised her silently,
soon
. Tremors were wracking her now, and she was whimpering, crying, coming to him—and then she flew free, hands over her head, her body arched into the air . . . and falling back down, gentle as thistledown.

It took everything he had to stay in control. She was sweet, swollen, ready for him . . . He said, “Annabel, could you open your eyes now?” And then: “Please?”

So she did, dewy, smoky blue peering at him. He nudged against her, and her eyes grew wider.

“Don’t shut me out, sweetheart,” he breathed. “I want to see you . . . if only this time. This first time.”

A shaky smile curved her lips. “I—”

Annabel caught back her words, shut her eyes tight, remembered and opened them—because he was there, he was sliding inside her, and there was no pain—

“Ewan!” she cried, “Ewan, my sisters and I”—her breath caught on a moan—“we sometimes rode without saddles and—” She arched and he came to her, all the way.

“Thank God,” he said, as if it were wrenched out of him, and then: “Does this hurt?”

And it didn’t.

And none of it did. Not even when he started taunting her, pulling back and smiling down at her as she tried to pull him down to her, then choosing his moment and thrusting home. Not when she decided to taunt him, and dimly remembering Tess’s advice, let her hands slide to his hard buttocks and linger there . . .

He groaned and then took her mouth, hard and purposeful, the wild kind of kiss that meant something quite different now. Annabel tasted the moment her husband lost control. He plunged deeper and deeper, his breath coming in gasps. At first she just enjoyed looking at him, but then a feeling started growing and growing, a kind of molten desire that spread from their joining through her whole body, and she found herself arching to meet him, her fingers clenching on his muscled shoulders.

“Annabel,” he said, in a growl that was half a moan. “Oh God!”

And she didn’t think he was referring to a deity now. The feeling was growing and growing, and finally Annabel just let herself slide into the chaos of it, into the sweat and rhythmic madness of it . . .

Until she cried out against his shoulder and he thankfully let his jaw unclench and drove home, home to her, to his still center, to his wife.

It was hours later. They’d moved to the bed and fallen asleep curled together, but she woke to find that he’d lit candles all over the room.

“What are you doing?” she asked sleepily.

“Looking at you,” he said, and there was such a deep, languorous satisfaction in his voice that Annabel smiled. So much for all her plans to trade her body and her bankable kisses for a man of wealth and title. In the end, she knew with a bone-deep instinct that her body was always meant to be here, adored by Ewan, even—even worshipped.

“I’m thirsty,” she whispered.

He tried to hold a glass to her lips, as if she were a child with a fever, but water ran cool down her neck. He kissed the damp away, and then Annabel suddenly realized that she could have all the kisses she wanted from Ewan, for free, without asking questions. . . .

“Kiss me,” she said.

“Annabel—”

She pulled his head to hers. “I didn’t marry you because you had a castle,” she said against his lips.

Of course there was laughter in his voice. “Nay, I know all too well that you married me because you had to do so.”

“I just want you to know that I had no idea you were so rich,” she said. “None!”

“I know
that
,” he said. “It was obvious in your desperate eyes when you accepted my proposal. Plus, no one in London seemed to know a thing about me, except your sister’s husband, Felton. He knows everything about finances, it seems.”

“Lucius knew you were rich?” Annabel said.

“You can’t move stocks and such without encountering a few of the men interested in doing the same thing. We’d never met, naturally, as I’d send my secretary around to do such things as have to be done in person—”

“Ewan,” Annabel interrupted. “Just how rich are you?”

He smiled at her, and there wasn’t much of the simpleton about him now. “I expect I’m the richest man in Scotland, give or take a castle or two,” he said.

Annabel let her head fall back. “I don’t believe it.”

“It’s my belief that that’s why we found each other,” he said, looking at her, amused. “I have had little trouble increasing my possessions because I am willing to take risks. Father Armailhac always says that possessions bring with them responsibility. And sometimes I think that I try to shed responsibility by shedding possessions.”

“But everything you make simply comes back to you tenfold,” she guessed.

He nodded. “If you don’t wish for money, it comes to you easily. And if you don’t wish for responsibilities, they come in droves.”

“I don’t believe you. How would you feel, would you really feel, if you were no longer the Earl of Ardmore? It’s such a part of you, almost as if you were a medieval feudal lord, with the crofters and cottagers, and all the people who live in the castle, and the way they depend on you.”

He propped himself up on an elbow and thought about it. He always took her questions seriously, even when there was no question of kisses, and she loved that.

“So I lose the earldom . . .”

“Yes.”

“And the castle . . .”

“Yes.”

“And all the trappings, all the possessions—”

“More than that. You lose all the people who love and depend on you.”

“Gregory and Rosy?”

She nodded. “And the cottagers, your servants, Mac. All the people and things that make you formidable in the eyes of the world.”

“Are Gregory and Rosy safe and well-cared for?”

“Of course.”

“Then . . . do I get to keep you?”

There was a note in his deep voice that made her shiver, and she said, rather breathlessly, “I suppose so. I thought I was marrying a penniless earl.”

“Then I don’t care.” He wasn’t even touching her and she felt as if she’d received the sweetest caress of her life. “If I had you, Annabel, I could start in a hovel and make us a home.”

Annabel tried to smile, but it trembled on her lips. The magnificent bedchamber was hung with Gobelin tapestries woven in Paris. Their bed was laid with linen of finer weave than Rafe had ever owned. There was a small statue of a woman praying on Ewan’s bedstand, made by someone called Cellini. And even Annabel, who grew up in a falling-down house without a thing of value in it besides herself and her sisters . . . even Annabel could recognize great beauty when she saw it. “I’m glad we don’t have to live in a hovel,” she said finally.

“Father Armailhac says that one should be able to give up the things of the world without a moment’s regret,” Ewan said, lazily turning over and nuzzling her shoulder.

“Good for him,” Annabel said, a bit crossly. “I don’t believe that you could do it, for all you say so.”

“Believe it,” he said, but his voice was muffled by kisses. He was kissing his way down her throat, past her collarbone . . .

“What if you didn’t have me either?” Annabel asked. “What then?”

He didn’t even hesitate. “If I had no responsibilities and I had to live without you, I’d become a monk. Or a priest. Something of that sort.”

His lips were drifting across her breast; Annabel was terribly glad that Ewan had been born with so many responsibilities and hadn’t disappeared into a monastery somewhere. “I have another question.”

“Mmmm,” he said, not paying her close attention.

“If you haven’t been with a woman for years . . . how on earth did you know about that kiss?”

“Which kiss?” he asked, with maddening obliviousness. He was running his fingers over the curves of her breasts as if he would never get enough.

“You know! That coney’s kiss,” she said.

“Oh, that.”

“How did you know how to do it? How did you know what it was?”

He lay down, and began stroking the undercurve of her breast with his lips. “I made it up.”

“You
what
?”

“I made it up . . . well, part of it. Men are always telling jokes about coney-catchers, you see. Coney being a rabbit, but also—”

“I know,” she said hastily.

“So I was trying to think of a way to horrify your sister, and I made up a coney’s kiss. It worked, didn’t it? And as for how to do it . . .’twas instinct, darling. I trust my instinct a great deal.” His mouth closed around her nipple and she squeaked aloud. “My instinct tells me that you like that,” he said, smug as a cat by the hearth. “And I know
I
do.”

She swatted him.

“It’s a God-given gift I have, obviously.”

He was laughing against her breast, and kissing her at the same time, and Annabel, for once, had to agree with him on a matter of theology. ’Twas, indeed, a God-given gift.