For the first time since they’d been intimate, the frown melted from his brow. His mouth curved into a wicked smile. His rakish smile.
‘Do I detect a challenge?’
She shrugged with feigned insouciance, though her heart was beating a rapid tattoo.
‘Well, I’m always up for a challenge.’
‘Ooh,’ she murmured with approval, glancing down at his lap. ‘Indeed you are.’
‘You will have plenty to compare that first time with, before this night is through,’ he promised her. ‘It will be a night you will never forget.’ If she wouldn’t marry him, if she only saw him the way other society women did, as fit for a night of pleasure but no more, then he was going to make sure that she would never know pleasure like the pleasure he was going to give her, tonight.
No other man would ever measure up.
* * *
Through the gathering shadows of evening, and into the moonlight, he exerted all his strength, and all his considerable expertise, into living up to his vow. He woke her, time and time again throughout the night, sometimes to pleasure her, sometimes to feed her or bring her drinks to replenish her strength.
* * *
When she woke the next morning she ached in the most unusual places, but not in a bad way.
On the contrary, she felt a pleasurable lassitude throughout her whole body. For the first time in her life, she was tempted to yield to the heaviness weighing down her limbs. She had never lain in bed late of a morning. Even if she’d been dancing all night at a ball, she would be out in the stables, getting her horse saddled before anyone else in the house was stirring.
But after one night of Tom’s ministrations, she felt completely undone. If she wasn’t so determined to face Justin, she would have rolled over and gone back to sleep.
Instead, she yawned and stretched like a cat.
‘You are awake?’
She opened her eyes, turned her head on the pillow and found Tom gazing across at her. He had a lock of her hair twined round his fist. But he held it so gently she hadn’t even noticed.
‘I think the church bells must have woken me,’ she said.
It was Sunday. Exactly one week since she had fled Antwerp, and the respectable safety she’d known all her life, to come searching for Gideon. One week that had changed her into a different person. Gone for ever was the self-effacing, eager-to-please girl who was scared of men, of passion, of life itself.
‘I should be thinking of going to church,’ she mused. ‘I missed going last week. But I cannot possibly take communion.’
‘Because you’ve sinned?’
‘Because I can’t pretend to repent. Because I’m not sorry. Not about the time I’ve had with you, at least. And I don’t think you can make a partial repentance, can you? Oh, dear.’ She sniffed. ‘I promised myself I wouldn’t cry. No, don’t hug me,’ she said, scooting out of his reach and scrambling out of bed. ‘And don’t look at me like that. As though you regret what we did.’
‘It isn’t that. I just can’t bear to think I’ve made you cry.’
‘You haven’t,’ she said, lifting her chin. ‘And you won’t. No, don’t go being all sympathetic,’ she said, stepping further away when he made as though to reach for her again. ‘I need to be strong, now, to face Justin. And if you encourage me to lean on you I shall probably go to pieces altogether.’
‘You are going to see him, then.’ Tom sank back into the pillows, his face drawn.
‘Yes. I have to, don’t you see? All my life, I’ve done my best to avoid scenes. I’ve never let anyone know what I really think, or feel. I’ve just gone along with what they told me I must do, behaved the way they said I must, so that they would leave me be. My house was one long battleground, growing up. If it wasn’t Mama and Papa at daggers drawn, it was Gideon getting into a scrape, or Harriet spouting radical principles. I took delight in being the good girl. It was the only thing about me that was of any comfort to Mama.’ She shook her head. ‘But now it’s time to take a stand. To face Justin. To face life squarely, instead of getting my own way by stealth. And I shan’t be able to do it if I’m breaking my heart over you.’
He frowned. ‘Breaking your heart?’
‘Oh, Tom. Don’t you know how much I love you?’ Good heavens. Where had her Latymor pride gone this morning? Although, if she was determined to start being honest and forthright with everyone, then where better to start than with the man who’d become the most important person in her life?
‘I’m sorry if you don’t like it, but I really wish we could have had more than one night. If only there was some way we could be together for longer. If only we...’
She lifted her chin, scurried back to the bed, stooped over and kissed him swiftly on the forehead.
‘Even marriage might not be too high a price to pay.’