Amanda Scott (14 page)

Sybilla gasped and stepped away from him. “You think too highly of your prowess with women, sir. I promise you, a mere kiss changes nothing between us, so do not think it. Rather, set your energies to finding another bedchamber for yourself.”

His expression did not alter. “No, Sybilla. I will spend the night here with you. Oh, I’ll not force you to anything you do not want,” he added when her mouth tightened, “but I’ll not be sent away, either. You would do well to make up your mind to that and put a good face on it with your relatives. You may ring for a chambermaid now, so that you can change to a proper gown.”

The casual way he gave his permission made her teeth grate together, but she had a strong notion that if she argued with him, he would simply offer to maid her himself. That, she knew, she did not want. It really was unfair, she thought, that after nearly sixteen months of scarcely seeing each other, he could still stir her senses so easily with no more than a touch of his hand upon her shoulder. And one light kiss.

Repressing all thought of that kiss, she moved to pull the bell, hoping he would have the goodness to leave her alone with her maid. It was not fashionable for a man to share his wife’s bedchamber when visiting unless the house they visited was quite small, which Westerleigh Hall most assuredly was not. She glanced at him uncertainly when the maid entered, but Ramsbury only smiled back and retired to a chair near the window, picking up a book from the nearby table and opening it in his lap.

Stilling a sigh, Sybilla gave her orders to the maid and washed her face and hands while the young woman unpacked a green crepe gown from her portmanteau and helped her change. When she was ready, they went downstairs to find their host and hostess awaiting them in a charmingly appointed drawing room.

Clarissa appeared to be in good spirits and greeted them both warmly. “How pretty that gown is, Sybilla! Green is always your best color, you know. Charles tells me you will not be able to stay longer than the night. How disappointing, but of course neither of you would wish to catch the children’s ailment!”

There was really nothing more to be said on the subject after that, particularly with Ramsbury agreeing at once that nothing could be worse than for him to take ill and find himself laid low in Bath for a week or more. The conversation at dinner proceeded along conventional lines, and the meal and the evening that followed were both over too soon to suit Sybilla, but when Ramsbury declared at last that they should allow their host and hostess to retire, she could think of no way to prolong matters.

Upstairs in the candlelit bedchamber, she moved to ring for the maid, half-expecting the earl to stop her, but he did not. Instead he retired to the chair near the window with a branch of candles and his book until she was ready. Twenty minutes later, when she asked the maid to stir up the fire, he said calmly, “I’ll attend to that. You may go, girl.”

Biting her lower lip, Sybilla said nothing until the maid had gone, and by then she had decided there was nothing to be gained by pointing out, yet again, that she did not appreciate his issuing orders that were rightly hers to issue. For a long moment there was silence in the room, while she avoided looking at him, but at last she turned on the dressing chair to find him smiling warmly at her.

“I like that nightdress,” he said.

“Thank you.” She stood up and moved to the bed, the soft folds of creamy silk molding her full breasts and rounded hips and swirling about her slender legs. “If you are going to poke up that fire, I wish you will do so. ’Tis still chilly in this room.” She paused, looking at the bed, which seemed to have grown smaller, then swallowed and said tightly, “I do wish you would sleep somewhere else, Ned.”

“Your wishes must generally be paramount with me, my love, but not tonight.” He got up from the chair and went to stir up the fire, taking a log from the basket to put atop the low-burning wood on the grate. Looking back at her over his shoulder, he smiled. “You aren’t afraid of me, I hope.”

“No.” But her mouth was dry, and as she watched him get to his feet again and brush off the knees of his buff-colored pantaloons, she realized that her palms were damp. “No, Ned,” she said again, as much to reassure herself as for any other purpose, “I am not afraid of you.”

But when she had slipped beneath the covers, she lay there stiffly, every nerve taut within her as she watched him move about the room. When he took off his shirt and threw it across the back of a chair, the light from fire and candles set golden lights playing upon the rippling muscles of his aims and broad back. When he turned toward her and began to remove his breeches, Sybilla shut her eyes.

A few moments later, when she felt the bed give beneath his weight, she scooted to the very edge and held her breath, but although he moved around for some moments more, he did not touch her. She heard him punching the pillow into acceptable shape before, at last, he settled down and was silent.

Opening her eyes, she glanced obliquely at the dark shape of him, outlined by the glow of firelight beyond, and saw that he had turned to his side, away from her. Instead of feeling relieved at such considerate behavior, however, she experienced a surge of resentment. Clearly, by insisting upon sharing her bed, he meant only to demonstrate the power he held over her. He was not interested in anything else.

Biting her lip, she stared up at the dark ceiling, willing herself to keep silent, to relax, even to sleep, but when he murmured gently, “Goodnight, Sybilla,” it was all she could do to keep from punching him as hard as he had punched his pillow.

The sound of deep, still familiar, steady breathing followed soon afterward, and she knew he was asleep. But sleep for her was elusive. She lay there, long into the night, long after the crackle of the fire had diminished to an occasional snap from dying embers and then gone silent. Though the room had grown cold, she had no wish to stir from the bed to put another log on the grate, for she did not want to waken him. At long last, chilly and exhausted, she slipped into restless slumber.

Before she had truly wakened, she realized she was no longer chilled. Warmth glowed through her body, and she let herself bask in the feeling for several luxurious minutes before she recognized the source and became aware of the rise and fall of his broad, bare chest beneath her cheek. She was lying on her stomach, partially across him, her breasts crushed between their bodies. One of his solid, muscular arms was wrapped around her.

Silently, slowly, she tried to slip free without waking him, but the moment she stirred, his arm tightened.

“Don’t move, sweetheart,” he murmured sleepily. “ ’Tis pleasant as it is.”

She sighed and relaxed. It was pleasant. And it was comfortable. At least it was comfortable until his hand began to move gently against her back, between her shoulder blades at first and then to her shoulder and along the line of her shoulder to her neck. One finger brushed her earlobe, and she trembled, feeling a rush of varying sensations all the way to her toes.

“Don’t, Ned,” she breathed huskily.

“Don’t?” The teasing finger tickled her ear. “Are you sure, Syb?” The finger moved lightly along the line of her jaw to the tip of her chin. “Look at me,” he murmured.

Her resistance was slight at best. There was pressure from the finger on her chin, insistent pressure, but she knew that if she truly resisted, he would not force her. She told herself firmly that she must resist, but her body would not obey her. It felt about as resistant as warm taffy. And while her head moved with a will of its own in response to the light touch of his finger, her breath grew ragged in anticipation of his kiss.

Ramsbury said nothing further, though he paused before he kissed her, a pause so long that Sybilla found herself pressing closer to him, her lips parting softly in invitation. Still, he watched her, gauging her mood, her willingness; but when at last his lips claimed hers, there was nothing tentative about the gesture. It was as though the careful restraint he had imposed upon himself had evaporated without a trace.

Sybilla responded instantly and with a passion as abandoned as his own. Moments later, when he turned, raising himself onto his elbow so that he could look down at her, she gazed up at him, waiting breathlessly to see what he would do next. And when his free hand touched her breast, tenderly at first, caressingly, and then more firmly, masterfully, she continued to gaze into his eyes, willing him to kiss her again.

Instead, he continued his exploration of her body, moving his hand teasingly over her nightdress, then pushing the covers aside so that it could move lower, unimpeded. Her senses were concentrated upon the movement of his hand.

When he began to gather the material of her long gown into his fingers, moving the silk upward until his fingers touched bare flesh, her breath caught in a sobbing gasp in her throat. And when his lips came down upon hers, crushing them against her teeth, no longer gentle at all, but demanding, possessing her, her body leapt to his, straining against his teasing fingers. She scarcely noticed when he moved away from her enough to push her gown up over her breasts, but when he stopped kissing her, she moaned in protest.

He slipped the gown over her head and pulled it free of her arms, pausing again to look at her.

“How beautiful you are, love. Are you cold?”

“No!” She reached for him, pulling his head down again, demanding more kisses, arching against him, and moving her hands over his body in all the ways she remembered would stir him most. Together they strove to reach peaks they had nearly forgotten existed, and when he entered her, she cried out her pleasure, making him smile briefly before his own passion overcame him and his powerful body leapt of its own accord into its primordial effort to conquer hers.

Afterward, satiated, energies drained, they lay back against their pillows in limp repletion. Even when Ned slipped his arm beneath her and drew her head to his shoulder, Sybilla remained silent, still lost in the wondrous feelings he had stirred within her. Not until he gently kissed her temple did she respond. Then, with a deep sigh, she said, “I’d forgotten.”

“We mustn’t,” he murmured.

“No.” But even as she said the single word, she found herself wondering what on earth she had done.

She kept her thoughts to herself, however, and the rest of the morning passed quickly, with only two small arguments between them, the first when Ramsbury announced that she would leave her phaeton behind until one of Charles’s servants could drive it to Bath for her, and the second when he discovered that she had slipped up to the nursery to reassure herself that her nieces were being properly looked after. Since there was already a light snow falling, she could scarcely demand either that they take the phaeton themselves or that someone follow them with it at once. And since Clarissa interrupted them before she could do more than react indignantly to his tight-lipped condemnation of what he called her foolishness in exposing herself to the children, she came off second best in both encounters.

They made their farewells to Charles and Clarissa at last, and were on the road by ten o’clock. Jem drove them as far as Mangotwood in the ancient, dilapidated coach that had carried Ramsbury from Nibley, but in Mangotwood the earl arranged for the coach to be returned to Nibley and hired a proper post-chaise and four to carry them all the rest of the way.

The old coach had been poorly sprung and had smelled, even in the cold air, and its seats were threadbare. Nevertheless, Sybilla had preferred its spacious interior to that of the small chaise he hired, although the second vehicle moved a good deal faster behind a team guided by a pair of elderly postilions in yellow oilskins, with Jem clinging to the footman’s perch behind. They changed horses in Bristol and, once on the Bath Road, with skies clearing, they made very good time.

Ramsbury had been in an excellent mood from the outset and paid little heed to Sybilla’s bouts of silence. When he spoke to her directly, she responded but did nothing more to encourage conversation, and once they were on the Bath Road, she leaned her head against the squabs and shut her eyes.

He said, “Tired, love?”

“I didn’t sleep well,” she said without opening her eyes.

He chuckled but didn’t say anything more, and when next she opened her eyes, the post-chaise was clattering over the cobblestones of Queen Square. She had slept through the busy town of Keynsham and the quieter villages of Saltford and Twerton and had not wakened even when Ramsbury put his arm around her and drew her closer so that she might lay her head upon his shoulder.

She sat up, flushing when she realized he had been holding her. “I must look a fright,” she muttered, attempting to straighten her hat and wishing, not for the first time, that chaises came equipped with looking glasses. “What time is it?”

“It is just past one, and you look fine,” he told her, brushing an errant lock of hair from her face. “Here’s the Circus. We’ll be in Royal Crescent in just a few minutes.”

“It seems as though we’ve only just left Bristol.”

“To you, perhaps.” He moved his shoulder as though to work the stiffness out of it, and she smiled ruefully.

“How long have you been holding me?”

“Not so long.” He glanced out the window. “Here we are now. ’Tis as though we never went away.”

“Good heavens, Ned, it’s been days. I hate to think of what may have been happening here in our absence. At the very least, my father will be out of humor.”

“He is never in a good humor,” he pointed out, then fell silent until the chaise drew to a halt when, without waiting for anyone to emerge from the house, he pushed open the door, jumped down, and turned to help Sybilla. By the time her feet touched the flagway, the front door of the house had opened, and Robert had run down to meet them. Ramsbury ordered him to collect Sybilla’s portmanteau and then turned to tell the postilions to wait for him. Turning back, he offered her his arm.

Inside, he drew her into the stair hall and turned to look down at her with a glint of amusement in his eyes. “You will want to refresh yourself and see that all’s well here, Syb, so I’ll take myself off to Camden Place now and come back to dine with you later.”