Much Ado About You

Page 56

A cry came from her throat—but it didn’t speak of pain. Still…the blood. Every instinct told him that a gently raised female should experience something so distressing in her own bed, on clean sheets, in the dark preferably.
But Tess showed not the slightest wish to retreat into the shade.
She opened her eyes with a gasp and found her husband’s dark eyes looking down at her. She couldn’t help it, she laughed: a laugh and a gasp at once. “Don’t be so serious, Lucius!”
“I feel you might regret—”
“Never,” she interrupted. “You mustn’t think we’re the first to make love in Farmer Jessop’s field.”
“The Romans were long ago and as you say, they had a roof.”
“Emily,” she said, panting a little. “Emily and William. She was only sixteen—and why do you think he buried her under the sycamore tree?”
He was braced on his elbows above her and he just nudged her. A silent acknowledgment, an acknowledgment of Emily and her William.
“Do that again!”
He did, and a pleading sound flew from her lips.
“Again—”
She was arched toward him, thrown in erotic abandonment, crying with every touch. So he fell free suddenly, shook off thoughts of civility and white sheets and darkened rooms. What had that to do with his own wanton, ecstatic wife, her fingers digging into his shoulders?
He thrust.
Her eyes flew open and fixed on his face. He waited for her cry, for pain, for—for a gush of blood? He hardly knew what he was waiting for. It was as if the whole spun-sunshine silent world hung for a second, the blue sky holding its breath.
But her eyes were shining. “Go on,” she said in a husky whisper. “Or—or”—and now there was something like anguish in her eyes—“was that all?”
There, in the Roman baths, with swallows circling overhead, Mr. Lucius Felton threw back his head and laughed. And since his new wife took exception to his humor, he must needs soothe her vexed feelings.
So he thrust himself slowly into her again, and encountered nothing but joy. They experimented, until they found a rhythm that matched their passion.
The only thing pounding through Tess’s mind was an urge to move. She understood, suddenly, with shocking clarity, crude stable jests about riding women. But was she being ridden? Or was she riding? Their bodies met each other with fierce strength. Lucius’s breath was making a harsh sound, and he was clenching his teeth, braced on his arms, eyes shut.
Tess looked up at him and knew that she was losing control of the ride: her body was flying free on its own, riding him harder and higher. Suddenly she felt his hand rub across her nipple, a rough shaping of her breast with a hand that said, without words, this body is mine.
And she flung free, the heat exploding to the very ends of her fingertips, free with a cry that disappeared into the blue sky.
Chapter 29
L ucius’s house was a Tudor collection of herringbone brick and tiny mullioned windows patched in rather higgledy-piggledy, with roofs sloping down in all directions. It looked as if Elizabethan ancestors had added on various chambers when they felt like it, and the whole had settled into the ground until it had a slightly crazed but comfortable look about it.
It wasn’t nearly as large as Holbrook Court. It certainly wasn’t a castle, as Annabel predicted, nor even a mansion. It was a large house, a large, charming, comfortable pile of a house.Tess didn’t realize just how much she was dreading becoming the Lady of the Castle until the carriage drew to a halt. “Is this it?” she breathed.
Lucius waved off his footman and helped her from the carriage. “Yes, this is Bramble Hill. Do you like it?”
She looked up at him, eyes glowing, and breathed, “Oh, Lucius, I adore it!” It wasn’t until a few minutes later that she realized there was profound relief in his eyes.
“It’s not as grand as Holbrook Court,” he remarked.
They were walking up a wide sweeping circle of stairs to the large door. “I would dislike that very much,” Tess said frankly. “I thought you would live in a castle.”
“A castle?”
She nodded.
“I can buy you a castle if you’d wish.”
“No, thank you.”
Servants were spilling out of the entrance portico now, lining up on either side. Lucius might not live in a castle, but he certainly appeared to have enough staff for one.
“This is Mr. Gabthorne,” Lucius said, introducing her to a round, cheerful-looking butler. “I am happy to say that Mrs. Gabthorne acts as a housekeeper for us, and does a wonderful job too. And this is…”
Introducing the servants—each of whose names Lucius recalled without difficulty—took over forty minutes. Afterward Lucius led her into a lofty-ceilinged sitting room that opened with huge arched windows to the gardens.
“Bramble Hill was redesigned two years ago by John Nash, working with a landscape gardener,” Lucius remarked. “All the main rooms have windows to the ground. From the drawing room, one can look west or south, either across the park, or past the conservatory and along the valley.”
Tess turned around and around in the drawing room. The entrance to the garden was all entangled with ivy, honeysuckle, and jasmine. “It must be utterly beautiful in the summer.”
“I’m fond of it,” Lucius agreed.
She turned around and looked at him sharply. “I am surprised by all this—” She waved her hand at the graceful furniture and heavy silk rose fabric at the windows. The floor was strewn with rugs in faded jewel colors.
“Why?”
“I suppose because it’s so—so homey. And yet it’s not a family home, is it?”
Lucius strolled over to the mantelpiece and seemed absorbed in gathering a few fragrant chrysanthemum petals that had fallen from a bowl. “If you mean by that, did I grow up here, or was this house in my family when I was a child, no.”
“Of course that’s what I meant,” Tess said. “You found this house yourself.”
He nodded.
“And you furnished it so beautifully.”
“I had help,” he said mildly. “I travel a great deal, so it was no hardship to find pieces that I like and have them shipped here. I’m afraid you’ll find, Tess, that I am rather set in my ways. All my houses look like this.”
Her eyes widened. “Exactly like this?”
He laughed. “Not exactly.”
And then, “How many houses are we talking about?”
He cocked his head, almost as if he were listening to the wind. “Four…five counting the hunting lodge.”
Tess sat down suddenly. “And each is as beautifully appointed as Bramble Hill.”
“I like to be surrounded by attractive things,” he said, sitting down opposite her.
“Each has a full staff?”
“Naturally.”
“It might as well be a castle,” Tess said, blinking at him.
“I trust not.”
“It’s not the beauty of it that surprises me,” Tess said, looking around again. “It’s the way it looks, well, as if it had been here for a hundred years. As if you inherited it from a great-grandfather.” She walked over to the wall and stood before a grand lady in an extremely starched ruff. The lady was clutching a fan, and looking down her nose, and altogether had the look of a rather ferocious ancestor.