She swallowed nervously as he laid her on it, but he didn’t give her time to express any last-minute qualms by following her down and showering her cheeks, her neck, her shoulders with brief, tantalising little kisses. They had the effect of stopping the breath in her throat so that she was incapable of speech. Not that she could think of anything to say at such a moment. Except she was making breathy little moans and squirming all over the counterpane, which expressed exactly what she felt far more clearly, to her way of thinking.
She didn’t want to protest at all when he went to pull her bodice down again, because he was making little noises expressing his own delight too. And then he proceeded to make her feel as though she was made of some delicious substance, the way he licked, and nibbled at her breasts, before swirling his tongue round her nipples. She had never, in all her life, experienced anything so indescribably wonderful.
When he moved off her, quite suddenly, she wished she’d been bold enough to put her arms round his neck, instead of clutching at the covers, so that she could have held him in place and made him carry on doing what he’d been doing.
But he’d only stood up from the bed to yank his shirt off over his head, slip off his shoes and remove his breeches.
She supposed she ought to avert her gaze, but he didn’t seem to mind her looking, so why shouldn’t she look? Anyway, she didn’t think she could have prevented herself. He was so very much more pleasingly put together than all those cold marble statues she’d glimpsed that day in the Louvre. In fact, the sight of her first naked, adult, flesh-and-blood male just about stole the breath from her lungs.
But before she could catch much more than a glimpse, he was back on the bed beside her, determined to dispense with her clothes.
If he’d paused to stare at her, once he’d got her naked, she didn’t think she could have coped with it. But he seemed far more interested in touching and tasting what he was uncovering. And his blatant hunger for everything about her put paid to most of her shyness. Besides, his caresses and kisses were making it just about impossible to think at all. He was reducing her to a molten mass of delightful sensation which drowned out intellect. There was no longer any place on that bed for shyness, or hesitancy, or logic.
She was reacting to his caresses with instincts as old as time, her hips straining towards him, telling both him and her that they were ready for the act she knew almost nothing about.
When he came over her and nudged her legs apart with his own, she found herself flexing up towards him in a way that must have been purely instinctive, because she had certainly never imagined herself doing anything so...unseemly.
And then he began to prod at her.
And then there was a searing pain.
‘Ow!’
He pushed into her again.
‘Ow, ow, owww!’
All the pleasure had gone. Instead of wanting to flex up towards him, she cringed away from the painful invasion.
‘Stop it,’ she cried, getting her hands between them and pushing at his chest. ‘You’re hurting and I don’t like it!’ How could she ever have thought this was a good idea? It was horrible.
‘Stop it, stop it, stop it!’
* * *
‘What the devil?’ He pulled out of her, rearing back so that he was kneeling between her splayed legs. She couldn’t have been a virgin. She had a child.
But there was a smear of blood on her inner thigh. He’d been dimly aware of the barrier even before she’d cried out with pain.
She had been a virgin.
How the hell was this possible?
A black miasma swirled up before his eyes, which he shut, to blot out the sight of her curling up on her side, thrusting her hands down between her legs, her face crumpled with anguish.
But he could still see exactly how it was possible.
The bastards had lied to him.
Ah, God! He placed his fists over his eyes, barely suppressing a cry of anguish as keen as her own had been.
How could his father have done this to him?
And it had to have been his father who’d told Fielding that Amethyst had secretly given birth to a child. He’d known it from the moment his friend had said he’d been told in confidence and hated to have to be the one to break it to him. He’d recognised his father’s style of setting up a dupe to do his dirty work.
But he hadn’t really questioned the veracity of the tale. He couldn’t quite believe even his father would stoop so low as to deliberately blacken a respectable woman’s name, just because she stood in the way of his plans, not back then.
He’d naïvely thought his father—with great tact and forbearing—was trying to deliver a warning that he’d strayed into a potential minefield. Giving him a chance to extricate himself from it, rather than just wading in and throwing his weight around, the way he usually did. He’d felt as though his father was finally giving him a chance to prove that he could do the right thing. That he was offering him an opportunity to go to him, and say he was ready to settle down, to stop resisting his family’s efforts to match him up with Lucasta, without either of them having to speak of the disaster he’d almost made of things when left to his own devices.
He’d thought it was that important to his father—their relationship. He’d thought all the subterfuge was about trying to avoid coming to a confrontation between them, which might have resulted in a complete breach.
His insides hollowed out as the truth smacked him in the teeth. It had been the alliance with the Delacourts that had been important to his father. His determination that all his sons should cut figures in society. Even his youngest.
No matter what it cost.
Or who paid the price.
She groaned, then, struggled into a sitting position and shot him a look of loathing.
‘I might have known all you’d bring me was pain,’ she said, jolting him out of his own agony of mind and reminding him that, right now, she was in actual, physical pain. Pain that he’d caused.
‘That you’d lead me halfway...somewhere, then let me down.’
Was that the way she’d seen it? It must have been. She couldn’t have had a clue why he’d suddenly turned so cold. For he’d cut her out of his life with brutality. And in public. Her face that night—oh, God, the wounded, bewildered look she’d given him as he’d given her the cut direct. The way she’d crumpled when he’d danced with one girl after another. What had he done to her?
Why hadn’t he questioned it? Why hadn’t he gone straight round to see his father and demanded proof?
Because he’d finally seen a way to win his father’s approval, that’s why. Having Fielding carry him that tale had told him the old man was vehemently opposed to the match with Amethyst. He had plans for his youngest son. Plans that did not include him marrying a nobody and settling down in the countryside to live a life of contentment in obscurity.
So he had played along. Hardened himself against