The Marriage Wager (17 page)

Emma giggled a bit hysterically. Her only servant, Ferik, had very much wanted to come. But he had not seemed just the person to take on a honeymoon.

“A hot bath is what you need,” the housekeeper continued. With a sharp glance, she gathered two of the housemaids and sent them for hot water before bustling Emma up the stairs to change.

***

When Colin and Emma met for dinner some hours later, each was once again respectably clad. They took their places at the table with suitable dignity and helped themselves from the various savory dishes offered with practiced good manners. They ate—somewhat sparsely, it is true, but not enough to cause concern in the kitchen.

The conversation, however, lagged. When one of them ventured some innocuous remark, and the other looked up to respond, a charged silence tended to fall when their eyes met. They would each look quickly away, and the topic raised would be lost in the confusion.

“They seems sommat tired,” concluded one of the footmen as he returned a tray to the kitchen.

“I expect they’ve caught their death of cold,” replied the cook. “Out in that rain for hours. I’d best put together a posset.”

When Emma rose from the table a little later and passed through the door the footman was holding open for her, she was at a loss as to where to go. She didn’t want to sit alone in the huge drawing room. It seemed silly to maintain town conventions when there were only two of them. And the truth was, she didn’t want to sit still. She was deeply restless and unsettled.

Fetching a shawl from upstairs, she let herself out onto the terrace that ran along the back of Trevallan and into the cool night air. The sky had cleared some time before, and the flagstones were dry. It was a perfect place to pace and to grapple with the fact that she could not stop thinking about Colin as she had seen him in the cave today. The picture kept rising in her mind no matter how she tried to banish it, and she found herself imagining what it would be like to run her fingers along the muscles of his arm or through the dark hair sprinkled over his chest. The memory of his kisses illuminated these scenes and intensified them, and she was shocked at her own desire.

Even more, she was deeply distrustful. Such feelings were dangerous; they clouded reason, distorted reality, and led one to make terrible mistakes. Hadn’t she learned that, in years of misery? And though it was true the situation was completely different now, it had also been clear that these sorts of feelings weren’t part of the bargain that was her marriage. Comradeship, Colin had said. And he had certainly not shown much eagerness to share her bed.

Emma turned and began pacing rapidly the other way. When he looked at her today, it had not seemed to be comradeship in his eyes, she thought. It had been something far wilder, something that sent shivers of alarm and anticipation through every fiber of her body. And yet he said nothing, did nothing, about it.

She turned, and paced even faster. A worried inner voice kept declaring that she was in serious trouble.

Sitting in the dining room with his second glass of port, Colin was equally restless. He was thinking of the rosy hue of Emma’s skin as it had shown through her shift, and of the enticing outlines of her breasts under the transparent cloth. He was recalling the enflaming curve of waist into hip and imagining quite vividly how it would feel to run his hands along that beautiful line before he crushed her against him. His mind would not be torn from these images and others, and as a result, he was beginning to feel acute physical discomfort.

The point of marrying Emma had been that the match would not be subject to agitations and upheavals, he thought with annoyance. They were supposed to have a clear understanding, an agreement. They were both adults, with some knowledge of the world. And yet here he was plagued with unfulfilled visions of his own wife.

With a muttered oath, he drank again. The problem was, with the long journey and so on, the thing had simply been put off too long, he concluded. And the delay had blown it all out of proportion. The solution was to carry through the first time, and then everything could return to normal. It wasn’t as if there was some mystery, something he had never done before. Aware of a keen pulse of anticipation that somewhat belied his reasoning, Colin drained his glass and rose from the table. “Fine,” he said aloud, and went to look for Emma.

She was not in the drawing room, or the study. Her bedchamber was empty. The upstairs room that the lady of Trevallan customarily used as a private sitting room was also empty. Striding down to the library, and finding it similarly untenanted, Colin began to feel irritated. Where the devil was she?

In rapid succession, he checked the morning room, the blue parlor, and the billiard room. He was simmering with frustration when he startled a footman in the hall and demanded, “Have you seen her ladyship?”

“I… I believe she’s out on the terrace, my lord,” was the stammered reply.

“The terrace,” he echoed, as if this were an incomprehensible choice. “I should have known.”

Emma started slightly when he walked through the glass doors onto the flagstones, but Colin was beyond noticing such things by this time. “It’s late,” he declared without preamble. “Time we went to bed.”

“What?”

“I said—”

“I heard you.” As he came closer, Emma took a pace backward.

With two quick steps, he was beside her, gripping her shoulders and forcing her to look up at him. He saw his own memories of the day mirrored in her eyes. She couldn’t suppress them any more than he could. Bending, he took her lips in a breathless kiss, his fingers tightening almost painfully on her upper arms. Though Emma felt awkward at first, his mouth was intoxicating—coaxing, softly enticing her to yield. His kiss went on and on, and she was caught by it, astonished once again. Her mouth softened and opened of its own accord. Aroused and exulting, Colin let his hands slide up over her shoulders and then down, lingeringly, over her breasts to encircle her waist and pull her tight against him. He deepened the kiss until it seemed there was nothing else in the world but that link between the two of them. Emma, her senses swimming, melted in his arms, and felt the insistent hardness of his body along the length of hers.

“Come,” he said after a long while, leading her inside the house to the stairs.

In her bedchamber, he captured her mouth again and gently coaxed it open so that he could use his tongue to tease and enflame her. Emma responded, at first tentatively and then with more confidence, giving herself up wholly to the kiss. He let his lips move to her neck, then dropped kisses on her shoulder and the swell of her breast above the neckline of her gown while his fingertips brushed across it.

“Oh,” she breathed.

She was so beautiful, he thought, gazing up at him with wide dark eyes blurred with passion. He was iron-hard with desire. She breathed his name, and his hands jerked a little.

Quickly, he undid the buttons at the back of her dress. His hands followed the blue cloth as it slipped off her shoulders and down her arms, over her hips. When it pooled on the floor around her bare feet, she was once again clothed only in her shift, the candlelight gleaming through it.

Colin flung his coat aside. His neckcloth, boots, and shirt soon followed, so all that remained were his breeches, straining against his arousal. He bent and slid his hands under the hem of her shift and pushed it up, running his palms lightly along her thighs, her hips, her waist, her breasts.

Emma made a sound—part enjoyment, part protest.

He threw the thin garment aside and gazed at her, standing before him naked, her pale skin burnished by the leaping candle flames. “My god,” he murmured, gazing at the beauty she offered up to him. Without thought, his hand rose to cup one perfect breast, his thumb teasing the rosy nipple and making her gasp. His desire was almost pain now. He couldn’t stop himself from enfolding her and pushing her backward toward the bed.

When he took one of her breasts in his mouth and teased it with his tongue, she cried out with the pleasure of it.

Colin could bear it no longer; he had to unfasten his breeches and free himself. When he turned back, naked, he found Emma staring at him, obviously startled and fascinated by the sight of his manhood revealed. Another mark against the wretched Edward, he thought with fierce satisfaction, then banished the blackguard from his mind as he captured his wife’s lips once more, demanding now, his hands and lips urgent as he joined her on the bed. Drunk with the feel of her, Colin savored the lovely curves of her breasts and the soft skin of her belly.

Emma let her hands roam over his muscled arms, into the crisp dark hair on his chest. A sharp urgency that she did not understand was rising in her. As if he knew, Colin’s hand moved to the ache between her legs and caressed her. Emma gasped, gripping his muscular shoulders. She thought she might faint with the intensity of the sensation. She felt as if she had stepped out of reality into a dream world. She had never imagined anything like this.

Her reactions were overwhelming the last shreds of Colin’s control. He was wild for her. Her soft panting breaths filled his senses. Her eager movements against his fingertip enflamed him beyond all reason. In fact, he realized, he could not wait a moment longer.

As he rose above her on the coverlet, his busy caresses took Emma to a peak of pleasure that she had never even imagined. It rose and rose until all her muscles were rigid with glorious anticipation. She felt as if she would fly apart. She knew that if he stopped touching her now, she would die.

Rising on his elbows, he dropped quick kisses on her neck and shoulder as he readied himself.

“Don’t stop,” cried Emma, clutching his hard upper arms, then reaching up to kiss him pleadingly.

Her need drove him over the edge. “Only for a moment,” replied Colin thickly. With a groan, he plunged inside her, and nearly exploded with the wonderful feel of her so tight around him.

As he began to move urgently, Emma once again experienced a tidal wave of feeling. Only this time, he was with her, filling her, and making the torrent of sensation even more intense. There could not be more, she marveled dazedly, but there was. And then it burst through her body like a shower of fire, a flood that saturated every cell of her body with wave after wave of glorious sensation. Emma cried out at the amazing splendor of it. She didn’t want it ever to end. It flooded through her, making her dig her nails into the powerful muscles of his back and cling to him like a drowning woman. The last crescendo was just receding when Colin cried out once, holding her in a grasp of steel, then collapsed in her arms.

For a while, then, they lay in a tangle of limbs, hearts thudding, sweating lightly, cooled by the soft air from the window. Emma heard the call of a thrush, lamenting the darkness. The scent of the sea mingled with pine. “I had no notion,” she marveled.

“About what?” Colin’s voice was lazy, at once softened and roughened by desire.

“That marriage could be so… exhilarating,” she told him.

His head turned on the pillow. He gave her a slow tigerish smile. “You haven’t been married to
me
,” he replied.

***

There was something magical about this place, Emma thought. She was standing alone in the narrow terrace garden of Trevallan, among the summer flowers. Gazing out across the wild cliffs and over the sea, she could watch the sun setting in a blaze of orange. It was as if a spell had been laid over the estate by the lulling rhythm of the waves and the scents of pine and sea salt and the clean blues and greens and grays of the landscape. This was the best part of the year here. It seemed a shame to return to London, as they were scheduled to do in just three days.

She heard footsteps on the gravel path behind her, and recognized them as Colin’s. “Perhaps we should just stay here,” she said without turning.

“We would miss the Little Season,” replied Colin, coming up to stand beside her. He put one hand on the stone balustrade that ringed the outer edge of the terrace and joined her in watching the sun’s fiery disappearance. “My mother has planned a ball in our honor.” Colin had already begun to think of London and of certain plans he had made. He needed to make sure they were still in place. To him, it was too obvious for comment that they must go back. Disappearing into Cornwall immediately after their marriage would rouse even more gossip than their unconventional match. The malicious members of the
ton
, of which there were always far too many, would assume that he was ashamed of his choice or that his bride was not presentable after all and he was hiding her from society. They would spread the most outrageous stories they could fabricate, he thought contemptuously, and the whole of society would enjoy them immensely.

Colin looked down at Emma, lovely in a gown of pale blue muslin trimmed with knots of dark blue ribbon. A fierce protectiveness, so strong that it was almost like rage, flooded him. So much had been taken from her, he thought. But in this case, unlike the losses of so many others in his life, he had the power to restore it—the laughter and gaieties of peacetime life. Emma would have them all. And the polite world would be
made
to acknowledge her and offer some recompense for the years she had spent in exile.

To Emma, his reply had sounded merely polite, and she took it as a gentle reprimand. She had, she felt, received a number of these during their stay. It had seemed to her, at first, that the blazing physical passion Colin had revealed to her on that night after their ride in the rain must change everything. She had never experienced anything like it in her life, and it seemed as if a new epoch had dawned. But the morning after that first night he had been the same as ever—polite, solicitous, amusing—just as he had been on the day after sharing his nightmare. He had not referred to the intimacy they’d shared. He had acted as if nothing worthy of note had happened.

As their time in Cornwall passed, he took her riding, showed her the surrounding countryside, introduced her to neighbors. And each night he came to her chamber and dazzled her with the most amazing caresses. After which he went to his own bed. He still had the nightmares, too; she heard them.