Amanda Scott (24 page)

Her skin was soft, her pink-tipped breasts plump and firm to his touch, and reflecting firelight made her gray eyes gleam like silver. Her lips parted invitingly. When his mouth touched hers, he felt a nearly overwhelming urge to hear her moan with pleasure beneath him. He wanted to master her, to make her squirm with desire for him. As his hands played over her body, seeking out the softest, most sensitive areas, he needed every ounce of his willpower to hold himself in check.

She was delightfully responsive and clearly exerted herself to please him. Every instinct pleaded with him to give free rein to the fire in his veins, but one niggling voice deep within him warned him to play this hand with care. More than anything else, the fear that he might hurt her made him heed that single voice.

He caressed her, and teased her a little, hoping to tempt her to a passion matching his own. But the time soon came when he knew that if he tried to restrain himself any longer, he would either end by losing his control altogether or by losing the ability to do what he had to do. Hoping he had prepared her enough so that he would not subject her to any more pain than necessary, he eased himself into her, wincing when an involuntary cry escaped her soft lips. He pressed on, knowing he would accomplish no good by stopping.

There were tears in her eyes when he finished. As he withdrew, he said ruefully, “Are you hurt very much?”

“The ache will pass,” she murmured, looking up at him with her solemn eyes. “I think we’ve made rather a mess of the bed, though. I’m quite sure I’m bleeding.”

“That happens, I’m told. I’ll ring for Lucy to attend you.”

Even in the firelight he could see the deep flush sweep into her cheeks. “Please, sir, don’t call her. I scarcely know her, and I’d rather attend to myself. There is water in the ewer on the washstand.”

“Very well,” he said, “but do you mean to make the bed as well?”

“Do you think I cannot?”

He grinned at her indignant tone, and got out of bed. “I’ll send Lisset for clean sheets and bring them in here to you myself.”

“Thank you. Will you sleep here tonight?”

“No, the night is young yet, and I’ve something I want to attend to. I daresay you’ll be glad to have your bed to yourself tonight.”

She looked doubtful, but he put it down to natural feminine uncertainty and gave it little thought. Taking up his dressing gown, he slung it over one shoulder. Then, scooping the pack of cards from the table, he strode into his bedchamber to ring for Lisset and attend to his own needs. While the valet fetched clean sheets, he dressed for a normal evening out, and when Lisset returned, Nick took the sheets to Melissa. He found her sitting at her dressing table in her nightdress, plaiting her beautiful hair.

Catching his eye in the glass, she said, “May I ask where you are going?”

“Out and about.”

“I see. Well, I hope you have a pleasant evening.”

He kissed her and left the house, not bothering to call for his tilbury. The rain had stopped, the night air was fresh, and the Billingsgate Club was but a short distance away. Arriving there, he went swiftly upstairs to the card room, paying no heed to a friend who demanded to know what he was doing there on his wedding night.

There were more such remarks, but Nick made his way directly to Oliver’s table, noticing only when he reached it that one of the four players was the man Melissa had identified earlier as Yarborne’s son, Robert.

Oliver, clearly the worse for drink, looked up with bleary eyes and said, “That you, Nick? What the devil have you done with your bride? Just look at him, Rigger. Never know him for a man who’d got married only a few hours ago, would you?”

Robert Yarborne raised his eyebrows and looked as if he would respond in kind, but Nick caught his eye, and the younger man looked quickly back at his cards. Nick shifted his gaze to Oliver. “I want a word with you.”

“What, now? This is becoming a dashed annoying habit, brother mine. We’re in the middle of a game here.”

“Put down your cards, Oliver.”

Oliver reddened, glanced at the others, then threw down his hand and said, “I’m out. Rigger, cover my losses, will you? I make it four hundred. I’ll send you a draft in the morning. Damn it, Nick,” he added as he followed him from the room, “your timing couldn’t be worse. I’m down as far as I’ve been all night, and what with Father cutting up stiff over my losses, you could at least have given me time to recover.”

“You should be grateful I stopped you,” Nick snapped.

“If your luck’s out, it’s out, Ollie, and tonight it’s out more than you know. I want an explanation for these, my lad, and it had better be a damned good one.” He tossed him the pack of cards he had taken from Melissa.

Oliver nearly dropped them, but that he knew what they were was obvious from the look of mischief he threw at Nick when he said, “I wondered what the devil you were doing here. Any other man would be enjoying his bride. Don’t tell me you’ve deemed her unacceptable to be your wife because she routed you at cards.”

Grabbing him by his shirt, Nick put his face close and said furiously, “You’d be well served if I taught you a lesson tonight, Oliver, so don’t tempt me. When you speak of my wife, do so with respect and civility. Is that clear?”

Sputtering a hasty apology, Oliver added, “I didn’t mean any offense, Nick.”

“Good, but that’s not all I want to say to you. Come in here.” Glaring at a servant trimming candle wicks, until the man left the room, Nick shut the door. Then he spoke harshly and to the point for several minutes, favoring Oliver with a description of his character guaranteed to leave him shaking in his boots. When he had finished, he said, “Now, take that resentful look off your face, admit you deserved to hear every word I said, and tell me where the devil you came by those damned cards.”

“That’s none of your affair,” Oliver retorted. “Anyone who wants to avoid being cheated ought to know such stuff, which is exactly what I told Melissa. The more one knows, the less likely one is to be caught in a sharp’s trap, that’s all. You should be glad I taught her how to identify fuzzed cards. Did she use them to beat you?”

“No, she has more scruples than you do. How much did you lose tonight?”

“To Rigger and the others? Not above a thousand, if it’s any of your business. I daresay you’ve lost more than that in a single hand, and more than once, at that.”

“Go on home, Ollie,” Nick said, “before I lose my temper altogether.”

At first, Oliver looked as if he meant to refuse, but when Nick moved toward him, he stepped back and put up his hands defensively, saying, “Oh, very well, if you insist, but I think you’re making a great piece of work about nothing.”

When Oliver had gone, Nick went back upstairs, his demeanor now apparently calm and relaxed. To the next person demanding to know what he meant by leaving his bride on their wedding night, he said with a laugh, “I begin as I mean to go on, my friend, in marriage as in all other things.”

M
ELISSA HAD WATCHED HER
husband’s departure with mixed emotions, feeling abandoned but relieved. Their consummation had not only gone more smoothly than she had anticipated but in the impassioned moments before Vexford possessed her, her desire for him had grown to such a peak that she had feared she might somehow explode. He was a skilled and gentle lover. His touch seemed magical, stirring sensations she hadn’t known lay within her body. Paying close attention, wanting to learn what would please him, she had quickly realized that he, too, could be aroused by a touch. She had discovered places on his body where the lightest pressure of her fingertip could make him gasp with pleasure, and the knowledge that she had this power over him both intrigued and delighted her. The power was a small one, though, since he had so easily left her afterward to join his friends.

She found out the next day where he had gone.

When Oliver emerged from his bedchamber and came downstairs to the green salon shortly before a light midday meal was to be served, she noted that he was looking dispirited and said, “Are you feeling unwell, sir?”

“If I am,” he said curtly, “it’s as much your fault as anyone’s.”

“Good heavens, how can that be?”

“Because you told Nick where you got that pack of cards, that’s how. I can’t think how you came to be so crack-brained as to show them to him on your wedding night! He came looking for me at the Billingsgate Club, and he was as near as he’s been in years to tearing off my limbs and beating me to a pulp with them.”

The mental image his words created was almost too much for her sense of the ridiculous, but knowing that he blamed her for his brother’s fit of temper was enough to stifle any urge to laugh. “I didn’t tell him where I got them, Oliver, but something I said may have led him to guess. I’m sorry if he was angry with you.”

“Well, he was. Where is he now?”

“I don’t know. We accompanied your papa and mama to St. James’s Church this morning, but afterward he said he had business to attend to. Your mama told the servants not to wait luncheon for him, because she and your papa mean to go out of town again this afternoon.”

“Do they?” His tone was indifferent, but then, as if he realized he was being uncivil, he added, “Where are they off to now?”

“I don’t know precisely,” she said, not wanting to confide to him her suspicion that Lord and Lady Ulcombe were leaving out of a tactful desire to give the newlyweds some time to themselves. When Ulcombe suggested at the table that Oliver might like to accompany them, she was sure of it.

“We mean to look in at Fairleigh, just overnight, you know,” Ulcombe said when Oliver asked where they were going.

“Well, I’m surprised you’re going on a Sunday, but I’ve no wish to visit my aunt and uncle, or to entertain their scruffy brats,” Oliver said. “I’ve business of my own here in town. Oh, and that reminds me, sir, I’ve a small matter to discuss with you privately before you leave, if you don’t mind.”

“Dipped again, Ollie?”

“Aye, I could use an extra five or six hundred, right enough,” Oliver replied, reaching to help himself from a dish of broccoli the footman held for him.

Ulcombe said nothing until the servants had departed. Then he said evenly, “I believe we have already had this conversation, Oliver.”

“Well, I know I promised to go easy, sir, but you know how it is, and last night being Nick’s wedding night and all, I expect I just drank too much to know what I was doing. I’ve promised someone a bank draft for four hundred to cover my losses, but I’ll need the extra to keep me out of dun territory for a while.”

“I see. Very well, I’ll write a draft on my bank for you and put an additional hundred to your account, but that will have to suffice until Quarter Day.”

“Quarter Day! But that’s nearly six weeks away.”

“So it is. How gratifying to learn that you are acquainted with the date. I might just remind you that one hundred pounds is more than a year’s wages to most people. I fear, Oliver, that I have somehow led you to believe I am cut from the same bolt of cloth as the late Lord Chesterfield, who claimed that young men should be supported in all their worst excesses. His own son kept secret from him a wife and two children, and while I acquit you of any such deception, my boy, there are better ways to spend your money—and mine—than on mere pleasure. You must study to learn economy.”

“You don’t preach such stuff to Nick,” Oliver said resentfully.

“I trust I do not preach to anyone, but if you mean that I do not recommend to Nicholas that he study to learn economy, allow me to point out to you that he is not dependent upon me for every groat he spends.”

The object of their discussion chose that moment to enter the dining room, and Melissa, for one, was glad to see him because the exchange between Ulcombe and Oliver had rendered her acutely uncomfortable. Apologizing for his tardiness, Vexford glanced from his father to his brother, but although Melissa was sure he must have overheard at least the end of their exchange, he did not comment on it. He greeted her politely and bent to kiss his mother’s cheek.

Beyond casting him a look of resentment, Oliver paid the interruption no heed, saying petulantly when Vexford had seated himself beside Melissa, “It’s not my fault that I am dependent on you, Father. I’d enjoy high water just as Nick always does if you’d provide me with an income equal to his.”

“Nicholas enjoys the income from the Vexford estate because it is his by right of birth, Oliver, but it is not as great as you seem to imagine. The difference between you is that he contrives to live within his means. I’ll say no more about that, however. I proceeded with this conversation despite your request for private speech with me, and I have no wish to embarrass you further. Nevertheless, you will do well to remember my words. Not another penny will you get before Midsummer Day.”

“Then I wish I’d asked for a thousand instead of just a monkey.”

“You would not have received it,” Ulcombe said.

Lady Ulcombe said cheerfully, “How very much nicer the weather is today than yesterday. I believe we will enjoy a most pleasant journey to Fairleigh, my dear sir.”

Ulcombe replied in kind, and Vexford supported their effort to turn the conversation into more comfortable channels, but Oliver did not respond. Melissa noted in the next few days that he spent most of his time away from home. Even when his parents returned from Fairleigh, the Barrington household saw little of him. Not, she observed with increasing resignation, that it saw much of his elder brother either.

Vexford seemed content to continue living as she supposed he had before his marriage, apparently feeling no obligation to exert himself on his wife’s behalf. His attitude toward her was friendly but scarcely that of a loving husband. Though he visited her bedchamber Sunday night, and the following night as well, when she pleaded exhaustion on the first occasion and a headache on the second, he did not press her but took himself off to Brooks’s without complaint.

He clearly assumed that she had engagements of her own to amuse her, and indeed, cards of invitation appeared daily, beginning with Monday’s early post. On Tuesday she received her first bride visits, the ladies of the
ton
apparently thinking that two days were sufficient time for her to settle into her new home.