‘I might not have done,’ she conceded. ‘Not at first. You might have had to ask me several times before I believed you meant it, because you always seemed to find me amusing. I might have thought you were teasing me. Besides, how could I really believe that a man as experienced as you, a veritable connoisseur of female beauty,’ she said, making him wince, ‘would really want to marry a woman whose only claim to attractiveness was curly hair?’
‘Oh, the things I said...’
She smiled at him fondly. ‘You called me Hen.’
‘So did that oaf.’
‘He’d called me that since I was a little girl, because he maintained a hen was just what I looked like, with my beak of a nose.’
‘I adore your nose,’ he said. ‘It is a nose of distinction. I hope all our children will have it. I will be delighted if it gets passed down through our line for generations to come.’
‘Really?’
‘Really,’ he said, dropping a kiss on it.
She shivered with delight. ‘And I adore everything about you. Before you start saying I cannot possibly,’ she said when he frowned and drew breath to do just that, ‘because you are such a rogue, then let me tell you, my lord, that I do love you. With all my heart.’ She placed her palm on his cheek in a gentle caress.
‘You have been very lonely, I think, for a very long time. From what I have learned, nobody has ever really loved you as they should have done and it has made you feel unworthy of love. But I do love you,’ she said firmly. ‘And we are going to love each other in a healthy fashion. We will communicate outside the bedroom as well as in it. And I don’t care if you do despise all other women, so long as you never despise me.’
‘You mean it,’ he said, studying her face intently.
She nodded.
‘What have I done to deserve this?’ He snatched the hand she’d lain against his cheek and pressed a fervent kiss into the palm of it.
‘You have loved me,’ she said, running the fingers of her other hand through his already disordered curls, ‘in a way no other man ever has. You are what I need.’
‘And God, how I need you,’ he growled, pulling her into his arms and kissing her. It was a passionate kiss, which spoke both of his need, and his relief. It was so powerful that it drove them both to the sofa, on to which they tumbled, eager hands tearing at buttons and pulling aside fabric.
‘I warned you that I’m utterly selfish,’ he growled in self-condemnatory tones, as he freed her breasts from her bodice. ‘But no power on earth could make me deny myself the pleasure of your body,’ he said, fondling them, ‘while we wait for your aunt, or my godmother, to organise the society wedding you deserve.’
She subsided back into the cushions, watching, with intense feminine satisfaction, the rapt expression on his face as he cupped and stroked her breasts.
‘I have been on fire for you for what feels like for ever,’ he groaned. ‘It will do you no good to say going without will be good for my immortal soul, or some such nonsense,’ he warned her.
‘I wouldn’t dream of talking such fustian,’ she replied. ‘Because then,’ she added with a wicked smile, ‘I would have to go without as well.’
He made a low growl of approval and lowered his head to her breasts. She flung back her head and luxuriated in the sensations he aroused, crooning over and over again, ‘I love you, I love you.’
It was so liberating to be able to say it, at last. Especially while he was showing her how very much he loved her, too, with each kiss and urgent caress.
‘I can’t resist you any longer,’ he gasped, pulling himself up to look at her.
‘I don’t want you to try,’ she said. ‘In fact...’ She struggled to sit up and pushed him away.
‘What are you doing? I thought you said...’
His look of dismay faded as she began to peel off her gloves.
‘I don’t think,’ he said in a thickened voice, ‘I have ever seen a more erotic sight.’ For he understood the implication of her needing to bare her hands. There were to be no barriers between them.
He raised his own hands to untie his neckcloth.