After all, it wasn’t every day that a duke and both his heirs drowned in the Channel thanks to their own utter stupidity.
“Stop it,” Emmaline muttered under her breath as she rose from the small writing desk in her bedchamber and turned to contemplate the mantel clock. She was surprised to see that it had only gone past midnight. She’d hoped for more, perhaps that it was already after three, or even four.
How long before she would see John again at the breakfast table? Knowing she would not sleep, could not sleep, she believed the hours between now and then could be more easily measured in months.
In any event, it was no longer her birthday, although she could still consider it such until the sun rose in the morning. The next time she marked her birthday, it would also mark the day she’d learned that her brother and nephews had died. How odd. Which was worse, she wondered: To grow older every year, or to be reminded how many years it had been since those deaths?
“If they were going to die, anyway, they could have been just a little bit more considerate,” Emmaline told her reflection in the dressing table mirror as she pinched at her cheeks to bring color into them and then checked the neckline of her ridiculously virginal white night rail and dressing gown.
And then, before her better self, her saner self, could talk her out of it, Emmaline headed for the door to the hallway, intent on spending her twenty-ninth birthday thinking back over a much nicer memory of her twenty-eighth.
She headed for the west wing, hoping her courage wouldn’t desert her, but halted before she got to the center staircase, having seen light peeking out from beneath the double doors to the bedchamber reserved for their highest-ranking guests. The prince regent himself had stayed in the chamber twice, this last time breaking a fine antique chair just by sitting his bulk in it.
Why would Grayson put John in this chamber? It wasn’t like the butler to stray from the strict rules of social protocol that made up such things. Captain Alastair should have been put in the west wing, and probably at the end of the corridor at that, right next to the servant stairs.
Perhaps Grayson had taken a liking to John. Although Grayson rarely took a liking to anyone.
And what did it matter where Grayson had put John, or why? She told herself that all she was doing now was standing in a drafty hallway, possibly to be seen by any servant who might be up and about for some reason. Either she was going to do something for herself or she was going to die old and dry and with a regret that had her sighing into her teacup while her relatives murmured behind her back: “Poor old Emmy, unlucky in love, you know.”
She raised her hand, hesitated as she took one last, deep steadying breath, and then closed her fist and rapped her knuckles on one of the doors.
Emmaline winced as the sound of that knock seemed to fill the quiet night like cannon shot woke the world to mark a dawn battle.
“You wanted something, Emmaline?”
She nearly jumped out of her skin, whirling about to see John standing almost directly behind her.
“Why aren’t you in bed?” she asked, saying the first thing that came into her head.
“I should perhaps ask you the same thing,” he responded, his magnificent eyes slipping lazily up and down her dressing-gown-clad body.
Her toes curled in her slippers.
“I didn’t hear you come down the hallway.”
“Or up the stairs, either, I’d imagine,” he said, smiling. “Perhaps, next time, I should have one of the footmen lead the way, blowing on a trumpet.”
“Now you’re making sport of me.”
“No,” he said, his tone serious as he stepped closer to her. “I’d never do that. For one thing, I’m too grateful to see you. It has been hours and hours.”
“Yes, it has,” Emmaline told him, daring to look straight into his eyes. “And it’s just as you said, John. Tomorrow is much too far away...”
He put his hands around her upper arms and then leaned in ever so slowly, touching his mouth to hers with a gentleness that brought her closer to tears than she had felt all day.
At first she thought she was floating, but quickly realized John had picked her up, lifting her high against his chest, even as he went on kissing her. She sensed his knees bending slightly as he tried to manage the brass latch. She was about to tell him that romance was lovely but perhaps they were both a few years too old for such gallantry when the door opened and he walked her inside, kicking it closed behind him.
By now she had her face buried against the side of his neck. “That was quite...impressive,” she whispered, keeping her eyes shut as he carried her across the large chamber and toward the bed that had housed kings, queens and rotund princes.
“Thank you. I thought so, too,” John told her as he laid her on the already turned-down bed. Bless Grayson, he was nothing if not efficient.
Standing next to the bed, John stripped off his uniform jacket before joining her on the lush satin sheets, pulling her once more into his arms. His mouth mere inches from hers, he said, “I’ve wanted this for so long.”
Emmaline thought that a lovely thing to say. “We barely know each other.”
“No. We’ve known each other forever, my dearest one, always known the other of us was out there somewhere in the world, waiting. We only just happened to meet today.”
They made love slowly, because it was her first time, because they had the rest of their lives, because to rush something this beautiful, this perfect, would be tantamount to a crime.
He kissed away her silent tears when the lovemaking threatened to undo her; the unexpected intensity of her arousal, the tenderness of his every intimate touch, swelling her heart and wordlessly telling her she was cherished, she was beautiful to him, she was desirable.
But there was more. She hadn’t expected what she’d felt so far, what he’d caused her to feel, and her surprise manifested itself in a rather startled gasp as he found the very heart of her most intimate place and touched it, teased and stroked it, doing amazing things to her suddenly eager body.
She lifted her hips to him, wanting to know more, wanting to learn her feelings even as he was learning her body. A new tension invaded her every muscle, urging her forward, telling him without words that, yes, yes...there. And again, there. Do that...please do that. Don’t stop doing that...right there...please...
And when he mounted her, when her body relieved her of the responsibility to think and just reacted to his, when he settled himself deep inside her, Emmaline knew that every word he’d said to her was true. She’d been waiting for him all of her life.
Their bodies had become one, their hearts and minds, as well. He whispered sweet words in her ear, urging her to move with him, feel with him, fly with him.
Emmaline had already waved goodbye to all of her misgivings and inhibitions of eight and twenty long years. She lifted her hips to him, met his every thrust as she held on tight, pulling him deeper, deeper inside her. She felt her most secret parts bud, unfurl, bursting into the full flower of her womanhood.
And then more. Just when she felt she had nothing more to give, to take, to feel, her body began to throb around him, sending stunning sensations through her, glories both wonderful and frightening.
“John!”
And he knew, somehow he knew. His hold tightened on her and he thrust one more time as he held her close, his mouth on hers, taking in her frantic breaths, her wondrous sighs.
She felt