For heaven’s sakes! All he’d done was roll up his sleeves and she was practically dribbling at the sight of his forearms.
‘I’m sure I must have done,’ he said, as she handed him a scrubbing brush. And only just managed to stop herself from running her hand up that enticing expanse of sinewy, hair-roughened flesh.
‘On their days off. At fairs and such,’ he added, seizing the nearest plate and manfully dunking it into the soapy water. ‘And there was definitely one who used to prowl around the stables after the head groom at...well, never mind where. She couldn’t have had much in her cockloft to throw herself at him the way she did. Without the slightest sign of encouragement, I might add. Remember her, Gilbey? I can see you loitering in the doorway, so don’t bother trying to pretend you aren’t listening to every word. Don’t you have work to do?’
‘Yes, m’lord,’ said the groom, before disappearing out into the night to do whatever it was he did for the horses.
Thank heaven she hadn’t started stroking her husband’s arms. She hadn’t been aware the groom was there, so rapt had she been by the sight of a man, her man, cheerfully engaging in what her father would have scathingly described as woman’s work.
‘The tale of me up to my elbows in soapsuds will spread like wildfire through the taverns,’ Lord Havelock grumbled, holding out the plate he’d scrubbed for her inspection.
‘Perfect,’ she said with a sigh. Then blushed. ‘The plate, I mean,’ she added hastily. ‘At least it will be once you rinse it. Or perhaps I should rinse it.’ She went to take it from him.
‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ he said, dunking the plate into the clean water in the next sink over and clasping her about the waist. ‘I am quite capable of doing this, you know.’
‘Yes, but if you don’t want people to talk—’
‘I don’t care what people might say about me,’ he declared, before dipping his head to kiss her. ‘They can go hang for all I care.’
She totally lost the thread of what they’d been discussing as he kissed her over and over again, walking her backwards across the room until she fetched up against a wall. The slide of his wet hands up her legs as he impatiently thrust her skirts out of the way, and the thrill of complying as he murmured heated, explicit instructions into her ear.
The joy of having this man want her so much that he couldn’t even wait to find a horizontal surface to lay her down on thrilled her.
And the gratitude that came from discovering that for all his impatience to have her, he possessed the self-control to wait until he’d satisfied her, before taking his own pleasure.
* * *
It got better every time, with Mary. He’d thought nothing could surpass their wedding night, yet sharing that mattress in front of the fire, the next night, had somehow been even better.
And as for last night...even when they’d eventually finished ‘doing the dishes’, the fire between them hadn’t gone out. They’d raced up the stairs to the room she’d prepared and torn each other’s clothes off with such haste they hadn’t bothered using the warming pan she’d insisted on filling with embers from the kitchen fire.
He raised himself on one elbow to look at her. Just look at her. How had he ever thought her plain? Not that she had one of those faces that attracted notice at first glance. No, what she had was an attraction that shone from the intelligence in her eyes, or the warmth of her smile.
He couldn’t help just sifting her soft, silken hair through his fingers, then fanning it out across his pillow. He liked the fact she didn’t wear it in bunches of fussy ringlets. In fact, he wouldn’t be surprised if she found it hard to make it take a curl. It was so straight—like her.
He wasn’t a fanciful sort of man, not normally, but when it came to her hair, he’d surprised himself by comparing it to all sorts of things that another man, the kind of man who was bookish, might work up into a poem. It put him in mind of hot summer nights when, as a boy, he’d stolen away from this house to go swimming in the lake. Naked, he would float on his back in water that had felt like silk against his skin and gaze up at the stars. Stars whose reflection shimmered in the water that bore him up. There seemed hardly any distance between water and sky. He’d got the notion that if he stretched his hands up, he could have touched them, made them shiver the way their reflections all around him shivered. As though he was floating in sky, and stars, and water, all at the same time.
And when he plunged his fingers into her hair while he was plunging himself inside her, he got the feeling that what he was doing was not just slaking a physical urge, but something more...something almost mystical.
Her eyes fluttered open, fixed on him and...warmed. Welcomed his presence.
There was no pretence about it. There hadn’t been a moment of hesitation, followed by the calculated smile he was used to getting from the women he’d taken to bed in the past. She was genuinely pleased to see him when she woke up.
A strange feeling stirred inside. A feeling of acceptance he hadn’t felt since... Well, he wasn’t sure he’d ever had anyone show such fondness for him, not once they’d got to know him as well as she’d done, over the past few days. He couldn’t remember his mother all that well. He’d been too young when she’d died to work out whether those vague feelings of acceptance had truly come from her, or whether he’d just dreamed them up in his childish need for...for something he certainly never got from his father. His father had definitely never been fond of him. He’d seen him pet his hounds and horses, but never, not once, had he been anything but brusque with his own offspring.
Things changed a bit when Julia was born. As soon as she could walk she toddled around after him. Wanting him to notice her. Believing he could do no wrong in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Even when she got old enough to develop some discernment, her face would still light up when she first saw him after sufficient time apart.
Which was one of the reasons why he’d been determined to move heaven and earth to keep her safe.
Although, what had it cost him, really? Marriage hadn’t turned out to be anything like the irksome chore he’d imagined. By some miracle, he’d found the only woman on earth who could have made becoming a husband a positive pleasure.
And it wasn’t just because she matched practically every item on the list his friends had helped him make. It was because, in spite of all the ways he’d gone wrong, she appeared to genuinely like him.
So he kissed her. Well, what else was a man to do when a woman looked at him like that?
‘You were looking very serious, just now,’ she said when he broke off to take a very necessary breath. ‘What were you thinking?’
He was damned if he was going to upset her by telling her she met every criterion on his list of what constituted an acceptable wife. Or admitting that he’d dreaded the prospect of marriage so much he’d actually sought the moral support and guidance of his friends in compiling it.
And he certainly wasn’t ever going to share, with anyone, that he’d had that moment of...metaphysical madness...diving into star-studded lakes of black silk to find the road to...some spiritual realm where souls could entwine, or some such rot, indeed!
He’d tell her the first thing he’d thought on waking, instead. Haul his mind back to the arena in which he felt far more at home.
‘I was thinking,’ he admitted with a rakish smile, ‘that every time we change the venue for our...conjugal activities, it gets more enjoyable. Do you know,’ he said, shifting over her, ‘I have this...craving to...’ he nudged her legs apart with his own ‘...enjoy you in every single room in this house.’ He nuzzled her neck. ‘Just to see if I’m right.’
For a moment it looked as though she was going to yield. But