Regency High Society Vol 6: The Enigmatic Rake / The Lord And The Mystery Lady / The Wagering Widow / An Unconventional Widow

‘I promise.’

With a swift movement he loosened the chemise to let it drop to the floor, stepping back so that he might see her in the soft candlelight. It lit her slender, graceful figure in warm tones and deep shadow, first gilding her hair to rim her head and shoulders in pure gold, then the flame flickering to highlight curves, deepen shadows, hinting at dark and glorious secrets that slapped at his senses. It was difficult in that moment to remember that she was not a young girl, but a woman who had married and borne a child. Had he ever told her how beautiful she was during the act of love? He should have done so. She needed to be told.

‘You are beautiful, Sarah.’ His body tightened to his discomfort in immediate response. Even more when her lips curved in a smile of quivering nerves. Then, because he sensed her considered denial of his words, he covered the space between them and effectively silenced her by framing her face in his hands and taking her mouth with his own.

‘You are beautiful,’ he repeated against her lips before allowing the hunger to rule and heat the kiss, winding his fingers into the silk of her hair. And Sarah—her reaction was everything he could have hoped for, stretching his command over his response to her to near-snapping point. She moulded her deliciously naked body against his, stretching her arms to clasp around his neck, the sigh of pleasure deep in her throat as she encouraged him to deepen the kiss and allowed his tongue to take possession.

So that necessity soon dictated that he push her away, breathing compromised, but staying only to divest himself of his own clothes before he would tumble her on to the pillows. Sarah watched him with growing anticipation. The glimmer of his white shirt, the dark satin of his evening clothes, all discarded. Until he stood naked before her, back-lit by the moon, which had risen to shine through the windows, outdoing the single candle whose light was now superfluous in the silvered brightness. The shadows were stark, the contours ice-edged. He stood and let her look her fill. Only reacting when she drew in a sharp breath.

‘What is it?’ A sudden concern.

But she shook her head. She would not tell him that he was beautiful, far more beautiful that she. But she raised her hand, palm up, held it out as in an offering, even though entirely shocked by her own behaviour. She felt, she decided, like Scheherazade as he sometimes called her, a seductive nymph of paradise, awaiting her lover in some exotic harem from tales of Arabian Nights. Out of character it most certainly was, but this night she felt she could play any part demanded of her. Had she not played a role all evening before the eyes of those who would spurn and condemn? This role would be no more difficult, and to her ultimate delight and satisfaction.

So Sarah waited for her lord to join her, her heart beating so loudly that she was sure he must hear it, but aware only of his magnificent body. And welcomed him when he pushed her back, slid beside her and took her into his arms.

His habitual tenderness, his consideration for her, were still discernible, must always be so, but this night his control was threatened beneath a fierce blooming of raw passion that took him by surprise. Or perhaps it did not, because Sarah, his reserved and distant Sarah, stoked the flames in his body with terrible, miraculous skill. This was the woman he had dreamed of, this the true Sarah, desire smouldering, hidden under the soft and fragile exterior. This was the lover who touched him with slender fingers, returned his kisses eagerly, along his shoulders, the expanse of his chest. Discovering with sure instinct where his pulses leapt with desire, throbbed in desperate need.

And Sarah trembled at her own temerity. Where had this courage come from? Don’t dissemble. Don’t freeze with fear. The thoughts ran through her head. Touch him. He will not reject you, did he not promise? This is Joshua, whom you love to the marrow of your bones. Have you not always dreamed of touching him, longed to feel the strength of him beneath your palms? So firm, so hard, so powerful. So thoughtful a lover.

With deliberate intent at her own urging, her hands drifted over his shoulders and chest, to waist and flat belly. Outlining the powerful flow of muscled thighs. And, with an intake of breath—oh courage! oh glory!—she curled her fingers around his strong erection.

Joshua groaned, turned his face into her hair, his blood engulfed with fire at the unexpected from this reticent lady. His breath shuddered in his lungs as he clung to sanity. Or were the shudders from Sarah? He could no longer separate the two.

‘Shall I stop?’ she whispered against his throat, instantly unsure.

‘No. No.’ He suppressed another groan. ‘I can think of no better way to die.’

‘Are you thinking of death?’ The tremor of a laugh shivered against his flesh.

‘Never death!’

So she stroked with a gurgle of delight and a thrill at his immediate response beneath her hand. But now he carried Sarah with him, for her into unchartered territory. And she joined him, answered every demand, returned every caress. How hot his skin, how demanding his hands and mouth, how incredible that she should feel like this. Then she forgot to think any more, aware only of the ripples of intense sensation that he awoke and stirred into flame everywhere he touched. Aware only of her own need to offer and give, to arch and entwine as he took over every sense in her body. Confidence swam through her veins like the most intoxicating of red wine. Until the heat scorched her, wrecked her breathing, blinded her to everything but this room, this bed, this man.

Whilst her lord used every vestige of self-control to force himself to be gentle. Force himself to move slowly, carefully. His instinct was to possess, to ravish, now when the hunger surged though his blood. Ravish as he had once promised that he would not. So he set himself to hold back, to entice and persuade, but it was a difficult task indeed when faced with her complete surrender, her generous response, her deliberate provocation.

Be patient. Give her time. Let her come to you. Let her dictate the pace.

But he burned and the needs that crawled through him became almost too great to deny. Yet he would pleasure her, raise her to such heights that she could not resist, could not deny her own needs. With assurance and skill of hands and mouth, lips and tongue, he waged his campaign with fierce dedication. No, Sarah was not mildly compliant tonight. He doubted, in one moment of heart-stopping clarity, that she would ever be so again.

Joshua pressed his lips in open-mouthed caress along the shallow valley between her breasts, diverted with sly ease to tease her nipples. Refusing to halt when she drew in her breath and stiffened beneath the onslaught of his mouth. Pushed on the assault when she sighed his name against his throat and melted in his arms. Lovely. Impossibly lovely. Soft as silk. A little murmur of delight when his fingers brushed low, lower yet to touch, slide and discover, taking for his own her most intimate secrets. Her thighs parted willingly, hips arched now in blatant invitation. Hot and wet, satin-soft, compromising his banked desire. When she pressed against the heel of his hand in convulsive response, his control came close to destruction.

Yet still, as he knew she would, she resisted the demands of her own body, afraid of the flames which grew and leapt and threatened to consume.

‘Do you trust me?’ He stilled his hand.

‘Yes.’ The merest sigh.

‘Then don’t think. Just feel. Let your mind go.’

Aware that the pressure was building within her from the shivers that ran along her limbs in his embrace, the thud of her heart beneath his lips, he harnessed all his own needs to capture her mouth in a kiss of blazing desire, pushing her to the very edge, to give her that ultimate release. Until she struggled against his body and would have pushed him away in a sudden moment of panic and fear of the unknown.

‘No.’ He gentled his hold, but would not retreat. ‘Take what I can give you.’

He drove her on, ruthless now with determination to give her that intimate experience of her own body, until she cried out, sharp, shocked. He crushed his lips to hers to swallow her cries as she shivered uncontrollably against him, clung to him with gasps of astonished pleasure. Exactly as he had hoped. And triumph swamped his veins in a floodtide, as she quivered from the aftershock, face buried against his chest.

‘Look at me.’

Sarah saw herself in his eyes, dark with passion, unfathomable as the waters of a bottomless lake, as he wiped the spangle of tears from her cheeks, tears that she had not been aware of shedding. ‘I want to see you when I slip inside you. And you to see me. There is no danger here for you, darling Sarah.’ He watched her, at that moment completely enslaved, yet unaware of the endearment.

‘Yes.’ As was she. She raised a hand that trembled to his lips. ‘Now.’ It was so simple a word, and all the invitation he needed.

‘It must be so. For you are too alluring to resist any longer.’

With sure and elegant strength he moved to pin her body with his own and thrust hard and deep. Held himself there to prolong the pleasure for her, for himself. So intimate an invasion that enclosed him, filled her, overturning the mind of both except for their joy in each other. Slick skin against slick skin, her legs entangled with his, his body owning hers. She watched him, eyes caught and held, emotions naked to his gaze. For a moment he thought that she might have more than an affection for him. Then the fleeting shadow was gone. Hunger and desire, potent and dark, swept over him as Sarah bit her lip to prevent her expressing her love in words that might still return to haunt her. But now she could show him in other ways. So he began to move within her and she mirrored the thrust with innate delight. Until he pushed them both to that precipitate edge. To fly and fall, taking her with him, feeling her shudder again as his own control shattered.

‘What was that?’ Still pinned beneath him, Sarah could only glory in his power and weight. It seemed to her that any sensible thoughts she might have were still scattered through the heavens, as her limbs were heavy with splendidly overwhelming exhaustion. It was outside anything in her experience. She did not think that her heart would ever again settle into its old pattern.

Joshua raised his head, lifted his weight on his arm, brushed back the fall of hair from her face so that he could kiss her lips with exquisite tenderness. A tenderness that made her heart tremble.

‘A miracle, I think. A miracle.’

‘Yes. So I think.’ And after a little pause: ‘I do not know what came over me, Joshua.’

‘Thank God for it.’ She caught the glint of his smile in the moon’s brightness. The candle had long since burned out. And she sighed in an unexpected and strangely moving happiness.

Joshua felt her smile against his shoulder, and his heart rejoiced. She trusted him. He could ask for nothing more. Because, as he slid into sleep with her, it mattered more than anything other in his previously selfish and wilful life that she did.

* * *

‘My Lord Faringdon. I did not expect to see you here.’ Wycliffe rose from his seat in his unremarkable office in the City, his face set in deep lines of disapproval. Nothing in the austere surroundings, in the inconspicuous building off Fleet Street, would point to the importance of this man to national security.

Lord Faringdon was not in a mood to be impressed by the standing of his host or his efforts to remain invisible. ‘I am sure you did not.’ He bowed with controlled grace.

‘Perhaps it would have been better, my lord, if you had not sought to draw attention to yourself or to me.’

‘So you might think, sir. On this occasion, I do not.’

If Wycliffe was critical, his lordship was icily correct.

‘You look in the best of health again, my lord. I trust your bones have knit well.’ For a compassionate enquiry, it was delivered in a distinctly unfriendly tone.

‘Yes.’

‘If I might be permitted to say—’ the two men still faced each other, standing, across Wycliffe’s desk ‘—you should not have found it necessary to make contact with me other than by discreet channels. You must be well aware of this, my lord.’ Wycliffe’s lips thinned with displeasure.

‘I understand you perfectly, sir.’ Joshua’s jaw was rigid with suppressed anger. ‘In fact, I wrote you a letter—but decided to come in person, so that I might express myself more effectively. And be assured that you did not simply consign my complaint to your fire-grate and continue to issue instructions against the well-being of my wife.’

‘So it is a matter of some importance?’ Wycliffe’s voice rose sufficiently as to make it just a question. His hard eyes expressed no acceptance, but they failed to intimidate.