It was not until the other young matrons with whom she began to mix forgot that she was a very new bride that she got her first inklings that she was missing out on something rather special. One day in particular stuck in her memory.
She had arrived early for Lady Gossington’s soirée and found herself in the midst of a group of the very dashing ladies who always filled her with the conviction that she was naïve, gauche and ignorant. They settled round her like so many birds of paradise, fluttered their fans and prepared to subject every arrival to a minute scrutiny and a comprehensive dissection.
‘My dears, look who’s here,’ Mrs Roper whispered. ‘Lord Farringdon.’
‘Now that,’ one of her friends pronounced, ‘is what I call a handsome man.’ Bel had studied his lordship. He certainly fitted that description: tall, slim with a clean profile, attractive dark hair and a ready smile.
‘And so well endowed,’ Lady Lacey purred. In answer, there was a soft ripple of laughter, which had an edge to it Bel did not understand. She felt she was being left out of a secret. ‘So I am led to believe,’ Lady Lacey added slyly.
Normally Bel would have kept silent, but this time she forced herself to join in; money, at least, was something she understood. ‘Is he really?’ His clothes were exquisite, but that was not necessarily any indication. ‘I did not realise, I thought the Farringdon fortune was lost by his father.’
Their hilarity at this question reduced her to blushing silence. She had obviously said something very foolish. But how to ask for clarification? Lady Lacey took pity on her, leaned across and whispered in her ear. Wide-eyed, Bel discovered in exactly what way the gentleman was well endowed and just how much this characteristic was appreciated by ladies. It left her speechless.
Now she was able to judge precisely what her friends had been referring to. Her uninvited guest was pressed against her in such a way that his male attributes were in perfect conjunction with the point where her tangle of soft brown curls made a dark shadow behind the light silk of her bed gown. And he was drunk and unconscious or asleep and yet he was still…oh, my heavens…large. That appeared to be the only word for it. Her previous experience offered no comparison at all. Henry, it was becoming apparent, had not been well endowed.
Bel stopped all attempts to wriggle; the frissons the movement produced inside her were just too disquieting. The stirring of sensation she had experienced on first seeing the intruder were as nothing to the warm glow that spread through her from the point where they were so tightly pressed together. It felt as though her insides were turning liquid, but in the most unsettling, interesting way. Her breasts, squashed by his chest with its magnificently frogged dress-uniform jacket, were aching with something that was not solely the result of silver buttons being pressed into flesh. An involuntary moan escaped her lips.
Oh, my… Bel turned her head so she could scrutinise as much as possible of the stranger. There was not a lot she could see except the top of a tousled blond head and a magnificent pair of shoulders that made her want to flex her fingers on them. This must be sexual attraction! Or was it arousal? She was not very clear about the difference, or how one told. Whatever it was, it seemed alarmingly immodest of her to be feeling it for a man to whom she had not even been introduced. She wished Eva, her new sister-in-law, was in London to ask. But the newly weds were honeymooning in Italy.
Eva—erstwhile Dowager Grand Duchess of Maubourg and now most romantically married to Bel’s brother Sebastian—very obviously knew all about sexual attraction. Not only had she been married to one of the most notoriously adept lovers in Europe, she was now passionately attached to Sebastian. Bel had hardly been able to turn a corner in the castle in Maubourg when she had attended the wedding two weeks before, without finding the two of them locked in an embrace, or simply touching fingers, caressing faces, standing close.
There was no one else Bel could trust enough to discuss such things with; she was on her own with this new sensation. The man seemed nice enough, she brooded. She had observed that drink tended to emphasise any vicious tendencies in a man, so his apparently sunny and friendly nature could probably be relied upon. There was nothing to be done about it but to wait until he woke up and they could have a more civilised conversation. At a safe distance.
It was not easy attempting to sleep while squashed under the body of a large and attractive stranger and prey to one’s first stirrings of intimate arousal. The candles began to go out, the room became dark and the only sounds were his heavy, regular breathing and the creaks of the house.
Now it was so dark Bel found her reactions were concentrated on touch and smell. Touch—even the warm caress of his breath against her throat—she tried to ignore, reflecting that if she became any more disturbed by that she would not know how to cope with it. She had heard—probably from one of Henry’s pontifications upon the sins of society—that uncontrolled sexual feelings in a woman led to hysteria, and that was definitely to be avoided.
But her nostrils were becoming used to the smell of alcohol and behind it she was catching intriguing whispers of other scents. Soap—a subtle and expensive type—a hint of fresh sweat, which was surprisingly not at all offensive, and man. Henry had smelt just of Henry: rigorously clean and scrubbed at all times. He had used Malcolm’s Purifying Tablet Soap, renowned for its health-preserving properties. This man was rather more complex, definitely more earthy and quite unmistakably male. And that, Bel realised, was another source of titillation.
Was this business of sexual attraction more complicated than she had assumed? Did scent and sight and touch all play a part? And what about the mind? Love songs and poetry, perhaps? Bel adjusted her head to the most comfortable angle she could find and resolutely closed her eyes.
She had not expected to sleep, but she must have dozed, for when a warm, moist pressure around her ear woke her, the room was already grey with the earliest dawn light. Something was nuzzling her ear. Bel froze, then remembered where she was and who it was. He was mouthing gently at the sensitive whorls, his tongue straying up and down them. It was bliss. Her eyelids drooped again. And then he nipped gently at the lobe.
‘Aah!’ Bel had never felt so agitated. It should have hurt; instead, she experienced a jolt of electrifying sensation in a most embarrassing place. Against the unyielding pressure of his chest her nipples hardened, aching.
The lips left her skin instantly and the deep voice murmured—with only a hint of a slur, ‘Mmm…you’re awake. Good morning, sweet.’ He settled himself more comfortably between her legs with a thrilling tilt of his pelvis and it was obvious that what she had felt before was as nothing to what was happening now. He was awake, he was amorously inclined and he thought she would be receptive to his advances.
For a mad moment Bel thought of simply throwing her arms around those broad shoulders and waiting to see what would happen. She wanted a lover—here he was. Then common sense and her upbringing came to the rescue. It was one thing to choose as a lover a man you knew and respected; it was quite another to lie with a complete stranger who appeared to have wandered in off the street, however deliciously tempting he was.
‘Yes, I am awake.’ She put her palms against his shoulders and shoved, even more annoyed with herself than with him. ‘And thank goodness you are, at long last. Now, sir, please get up this instant.’
He did not stand, but at least he rolled off her, landing with a thump on his back. He turned his head and gazed at her with startlingly blue eyes fringed with thick golden lashes. Periwinkles, lapis, the sun on the sea. Bel gazed back, drowning, then pulled herself together and sat up.
‘What, sir, are you doing in my house?’
‘I was going to ask you the same thing, my sweet. I don’t remember ordering you. Don’t remember much, truth be told.’ He sat up and rubbed both hands through his hair, rumpling it worse than before. ‘God,