Three Times a Bride (16 page)

It was wild and dark, a pulsing jungle of sensation. He took her into the darkness, drawing her deeper with his hands, his mouth, his low, ragged voice.

The remnants of her garments fell away, along with the last vestiges of her reason. She was lost in his scent, so potently masculine, and in the sinful taste of him, and in the stunning power of muscle under taut, smooth flesh.

She wanted him to crawl inside her, under her skin. She wanted him to be part of her. Even when his hand settled between her legs, upon the most private of places, it wasn’t enough, and she arched up to his touch for more.

He caressed her in secret ways that made her moan and squirm under his hand, but it was not enough. The tantaliz
ing strokes slipped deeper, inside her. Spasms racked her, hot, delicious…but not enough.

She trembled on a precipice, caught between wild pleasure and an unreasoning, inescapable craving for more, for something else.

“Dear God,” she gasped, writhing like one demented, which she was. “Do it. Please.”

“Soon.” A rough whisper. “You’re not ready. It’s your first—”

“Hurry.” She could feel his shaft pulsing against her thigh. She dug her nails into his arms. “
Hurry.
”

Cursing, he pulled her fingers away. She could not keep away. She dragged her hands down over his belly, to the place where instinct led her. She found the thick, hot shaft. Immense. Her hand could not close about it. “Oh, my goodness,” she whispered.

“Stop it. Christ, Gwen, don’t rush me. It’ll hurt and you—”

“Oh, Lord. It feels…so strong…and alive.” She hardly knew what she was saying. She stroked the velvety flesh, lost in heated wonder.

She heard a strange, strangled sound above her.

Then he was caressing her intimately again, dragging her back into the frustrating madness. Her hand fell away from him as the furious pleasure swept her to the precipice.

Then it came, one swift thrust—and a stinging sensation that jerked her back to reality.

She gulped in air and blinked. “Good heavens.”

He was enormous. She was not comfortable.

Yet she was not exactly uncomfortable, either. Not altogether.

“I told you it would hurt.”

She heard the ache in his voice. Her fault, she reproached herself. Everyone knew it hurt the first time. She should not
have let herself be taken unawares. Now he probably thought he’d done her a permanent injury.

“Only at first,” she said shakily. “That is normal. You mustn’t stop on my account.”

“It’s not going to get much better.”

She looked into his glowing eyes, saw the shadows lurking there. “Then kiss me,” she whispered. “I’ll concentrate on that and ignore the rest.”

She reached up, slid her fingers into his thick, wet mane, and drew him down.

He kissed her fiercely. The hot need she tasted ignited hers. She simmered in the devil’s brew, and the pain and tightness bubbled away into nothingness.

He began to move inside her, slow strokes at first, but soon quickening. She moved with him, her body answering instinctively, gladly. In the intimate beat of desire, passion returned, hotter than before. She was joined with him, and this was what she’d needed: to be one, to take him with her to the edge of the abyss…and beyond…into the last, searing burst of rapture…and then she sank with him, into the sweet darkness of release.

Some time later, enveloped in her husband’s dress-
ing gown, Gwendolyn sat tailor-fashion near the foot of his bed.

She had piled a heap of pillows at his back, and he sat with his legs stretched out in front of him—under the bedclothes because she had insisted he keep his feet warm.

The debauch in the bathing room had left them famished. They had raided the larder and sneaked up to his bedroom with a tray of thick sandwiches, which they’d made short work of.

Though the bath, the lovemaking, and the meal had radically improved his mood, he was not altogether tranquil.

Gwendolyn was aware of the glances he stole at her from under his black lashes when he thought she wasn’t looking. She wished she knew what those troubled glances signified. At present, only one aspect of his character was truly clear to her.

Though facing a horrendous death in quicksand, he’d tried to drive her off—because he was afraid she’d fall in.

He had been willing to risk medical bedlam and eventual
incarceration in a mad house, rather than subject her to marrying him.

Though informed of the deadly risks of unsupervised laudanum consumption, he had locked himself alone in his room—to spare her witnessing his miseries.

The Earl of Rawnsley, in short, had a protective streak a mile long and three miles deep.

Gwendolyn didn’t think she was overestimating him. She’d had enough experience with her father, brothers, uncles, and cousins to recognize this particular ailment.

The awareness was doing nothing to restore her clinical detachment, which was in dangerous disrepair already.

Just looking at him paralyzed her intellect. When she recalled what that sensuous mouth, those strong, graceful hands, and that long muscled body had done to her, her entire brain, along with her heart and every other organ and muscle she possessed, turned to jelly.

His low voice broke into her bewildered thoughts.

“I don’t think you ought to stay in here,” he said gently.

She looked up from her folded hands. His carefully polite expression made her heart sink.

She could guess why he wanted her out of his sight. He’d probably spent most of the time since they’d left the bathing room devising a courteous way of telling her he’d rather not repeat the experience.

But she’d been rejected countless times before, Gwendolyn reminded herself, and it hadn’t killed her yet.

“I understand,” she said, her voice cool, her face hot. “I know I behaved shockingly. I scarcely know what to think of myself. I have never,
ever
, in all my life, reacted that way—to anybody.”

A muscle worked in his jaw.

“Not that I’ve had so many beaux,” she hurriedly added. “I am not a flirt, and even if I was, I hadn’t much time for
suitors. I didn’t want to make time,” she babbled on as his expression grew tauter. “But girls are obliged to make an appearance in Society, and then of course the men think one is like the others, and one feels obliged to pretend that’s true. And I must admit that I was curious about what it was like to be courted and kissed. But it wasn’t like anything, and not half so interesting as, say, Mr. Culpeper’s
Herbal
. If it had been that way with you, I’m sure I should have behaved much more decorously downstairs. I should have fastened my mind on a medical treatise and not made a spectacle of myself. But I could not behave properly. I am truly sorry. The last thing I wanted was to make myself disagreeable to you.”

With a sigh, she started to crawl from the bed.

“Gwendolyn.” His voice was choked.

She paused and met his gaze.

“You are not disagreeable to me,” he said tightly. “Not at all. Word of honor.”

She remained where she was, kneeling near the edge of the mattress, trying to read his expression.

“How could you think I was displeased?” he demanded. “I all but ravished you.”

Good grief, how could she be so stupid? He was upset with himself, not her. Because of the mile-long protective streak.

She tried to remember what Genevieve had told her about men—and the first time—but her mind was a jumble. “Oh, no, it was not like that at all,” she assured him. “You were so very gentle—and I did appreciate that, truly I did. I know I should not have acted like a general: ‘Do this,’ ‘Do that.’ ‘Hurry.’ But I could not help myself. Something”—she gestured helplessly—“came over me.”

“The something was your lusting spouse,” he said grimly. “Which I should not have allowed myself to become.”

“But we are wed,” she argued. “It was your right, and it was a pleasure for me and—” Her face burning, she boldly added, “I am glad you lusted, my lord. I should have been very disappointed if you did not because I have wanted you to make me yours since…” She frowned. “Well, I’m not sure when exactly it began, but I know I wanted it after you kissed me.” She crept toward him. “I wish you would not fret about me.”

“This was supposed to be a business arrangement,” he said. Shadows darkened his eyes. “No one would have known if the marriage had not been consummated. Your position was secure enough. I should not have touched you. You have no experience. You do not know how to protect your feelings. Your heart is too soft.”

She sank back on her heels. “I see. You are alarmed that my feelings will become engaged.”

“They
are
engaged,” he said. “You have just told me as much. Not that I couldn’t see it for myself. I wish you could see the way you look at me.”

Good heavens. Was she so obvious?

But of course she was. She was not like Genevieve or Cousin Jessica. She had no subtlety, Gwendolyn was aware. But she did possess both a sense of humor and common sense, and these came to her rescue.

“Like a lovesick schoolgirl, you mean?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, what do you expect? You are shockingly handsome.”

He leaned forward, his eyes narrowed. “I have a
brain disease
. My mind is crumbling to pieces. And in a few months I shall be a rotting corpse!”

“I know that,” she said. “But you are not mad yet, and when you become so, you will not be my first lunatic—any more than you’ll be my first corpse.”

“You didn’t marry the others! You didn’t bed them! Dam
nation.” He flung back the bedclothes and stalked, splendidly naked, to the window. “I didn’t even want to be your patient,” he said as he gazed out into the darkness. “And now I am your lover. And you are besotted. It is macabre.”

He would not think it macabre if he could see himself as she saw him, standing so tall and strong and beautiful in the candlelight.

“You said yourself that Providence does not grant all its creatures a pretty demise,” she said. “It does not give each of us exactly what we want. It did not make me a man, so that I could become a doctor.”

She left the bed and went to him. “But now I am not at all sorry I’m a woman,” she told him. “You’ve made me very glad of it, and I am practical and selfish enough to want to enjoy the gladness for as long as I can.”

He swung round, his countenance bleak. “Oh, Gwen.”

She understood then that she would not have long. The stark expression, the despair in his voice, told her matters were worse than they appeared.

But that was the future, she told herself.

She laid her hand on his chest. “We have to night,” she said softly.

He’d made her glad she was a woman.

We have to night
, she’d said.

Saint Peter himself, backed by a host of martyrs and angels, could not have withstood her. He would have let the heavenly gates slam shut behind him and taken her into his arms and devoted body and soul—eternally damned though it might be—to making her happy.

And so Dorian scooped up his foolishly besotted wife in his arms and carried her to the bed and made love to her again. And he tasted, again, the rapture of being made love to, of being desired and trusted. And later, as he held his sleeping countess in his arms, he lay awake wondering whether he was
dead or alive because he could not remember when his heart had felt so sweetly at peace.

Not until the first feeble light of daybreak stole into the room did something like an explanation occur to him.

Never, in all his life, had he ever done anything that was any good to anybody. He’d done no more than fantasize about rescuing his mother from a world where she didn’t belong and taking her to the Continent, where she would no longer have to lie and pretend. When he’d finally got around to visiting her here, he’d missed all the hints she dropped, and gone on his merry way. If he had paid attention instead, and stayed, and helped his father care for her, they might have forestalled his grandfather and the “experts.” Even at the mad house, when it had seemed too late, it needn’t have been, if Dorian had used the clever brain he’d inherited. He should have played on his grandfather’s overweening pride and sense of duty, and worked him round by degrees. Mother had pulled the wool over the old tyrant’s eyes for years. Dorian could have done it, should have done it.

And he should have done it later, when the ax fell, instead of storming out of Rawnsley Hall in a childish tantrum. Then he might have accomplished something. He might have used the earl’s money and influence to good purpose, in scholarly pursuits, for instance, to further knowledge, or perhaps in a political endeavor.

Everyone died, some early, some late. It was nothing to whimper about. But dying with nothing but regret and if onlys was pathetic.

That, Dorian realized, was what had kept him so unsettled for these last months.

Now, though, his soul was quiet.

Because of her.

He nuzzled his wife’s wayward hair. He had made her happy. He had made her forgive the Almighty for making
her a woman. He smiled. He knew that was no small achievement.

She wanted to be a doctor. Equally important, she would use the Earl of Rawnsley’s money and influence to good purpose.

Very well
, he told her silently.
I cannot give you a medical degree, but I will give you what I can.

And that must have been the right conclusion, because his busy mind quieted, and in a little while, he fell asleep.

After breakfast, Dorian took her out to the moors, to the place where his mother had brought him eight years earlier.

He helped Gwendolyn from her horse—treating himself to but one brief kiss in the process—then led her to a boulder at the track’s edge. He took off his coat and laid it on the cold stone and asked her to sit, which she did with a bemused smile.

“Last night you said I was not your first lunatic,” he began.

“Oh, not at all,” she eagerly assured him. “Mr. Eversham, who took over Mr. Knightly’s practice, was particularly interested in neurological maladies, and he let me assist him in several cases. Not all the patients were irrational, certainly. But Miss Ware had six different personalities at last count, and Mr. Bowes was prone to violent dementia, and Mrs. Peebles—may her troubled soul rest in peace—”

“You can tell me the details later,” Dorian interrupted. “I only wanted to make sure I had heard correctly last night. I was not fully attending, I’m sorry to say. I have not listened properly since you came.”

“How can you say such a thing?” she exclaimed. “You are the only man except Mr. Eversham who’s ever taken me seriously. You did not laugh at my hospital idea, and you were not horrified about the dissections.” She hesitated briefly. “You are rather overprotective, true, but that is your
nature, and I know it is a very gentlemanly and noble inclination.”

“Overprotective,” he repeated. “Is that how you see it, Gwen?”

She nodded. “You want to shield me from unpleasantness. On the one hand, it is rather lovely to be coddled. Still, on the other, it is just the tiniest bit frustrating.”

He understood how he’d frustrated her. She didn’t like being kept in the dark about his illness. He had treated her like a silly female, as other men had done.

“I have surmised as much.” He clasped his hands behind his back to keep from gathering her up and “overprotecting” her in his arms, as he very much wished to do. “Yours is a medical mind. You do not see matters as we laymen do. Illness is a subject of study to you, and sick people represent a source of knowledge. Their ailments make you no more queasy than a volume of Cicero’s works does me.” He paused, his face heating. “I fancied myself a scholar once, you see. Classics.”

“I know.” Her green gaze was soft with admiration. “You took a first, Bertie says.”

“Yes, I am not merely a pretty fellow,” he said with a short laugh. “I have—
had
—a brain.” Embarrassed, he looked away, toward the moors. “I also had plans once, as you do. But they were not…well thought out, and it all ended in…rather a mess.”

His throat tightened.

He told himself it was ridiculous to feel uneasy. He had prepared himself to tell her everything. He knew it was right. She needed to learn the facts—all of them—in order to make intelligent decisions about her future. At present, her attachment to him was probably little more than a new bride’s infatuation, a response to the physical passion they’d shared. If, after he enlightened her about his past and what the future held in store, she chose to leave, she’d swiftly re
cover her equilibrium. If she chose to remain, she would do it with her eyes open at least, prepared for the worst. To show respect for her mind and character, as well as belief in her goals, he must give her the choice, and accept her decision, and live—and die—with the consequences.

“Dorian?”

He closed his eyes. How sweetly his name fell from her lips. He would remember that, too, no matter what happened—or he would remember, at least, for as long as his brain functioned.

He turned back to her, smiling as he shoved his wind-blown hair from his face.

“I know you want to hear all the fascinating details of my illness,” he said. “I was only trying to decide where to begin.”

She sat up straighter and her soft, adoring expression transformed into the steady green regard that had so intrigued him when they first met. “Thank you, my dear,” she said, her tone thoroughly professional now. “If you don’t mind, I should like you to begin with your mother.”