His Christmas Countess

Because it was indecent, she had not the slightest doubt of it. His fingers clasped lightly around her wrist, the ends over her pulse as if to monitor the effect he was having on her. She was shackled by the encircling grip as securely as if by iron manacles, because she could no more have moved her hand away than flown.

The sensitive tip of her finger was encased in the wet heat of Grant’s mouth. His tongue caressed the pad until the sting of the needle prick was lost in the soft touch. She could sense the sharp edge of his teeth, carefully kept from her flesh as gradually, so very gradually, he drew her finger into his mouth as far as the middle joint. The suction pulsed, moving it in and out, his tongue tip curled and the heat rose through her as she realised what this action mimicked.

She needed to move, to squirm in her chair and push him away, draw him closer. She needed—

Grant sat back and she jerked her hand back against her bodice, the damp finger leaving a mark on the silk for a moment. ‘Has that taken the sting away?’ His lids were half closed, his eyes dark, his parted lips a little moist.

As if he has been kissing me, she thought wildly. This is what he will look like when he holds me in his arms, when his body comes down over mine, pressing it into the bed. His naked body over mine, hot and hard and aroused.

Somehow she found the composure to murmur, ‘Perfectly, thank you’, as though he had merely dabbed at the little puncture with his handkerchief. ‘So careless of me. I might have got blood on the linen.’

Grant’s lids lifted, his lips closed as he smiled and he stood up, looming over her for a moment. Kate found her eye level was precisely right for her to see that whatever he said, however coolly he might smile at her and however steadily he got to his feet, he was aroused. Impressively, alarmingly, aroused. Just like my fantasies.

‘I think I will retire now.’ It was the instinct to escape, to be alone to come to terms with what his touch was doing to her, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth she saw that Grant had interpreted them as an invitation, a direct response to what had just happened. Kate folded her embroidery into a careful square, put it into the sewing box and made herself rise with leisurely grace. Anything but let Grant see how excited and panicked he made her. Why she must hide it, she was not sure, because instinct told her he would welcome her awareness. It was pride, perhaps, or apprehension of her own limited experience disappointing him. Or was it fear that her own confused and heated fantasies would prove false and she would feel as let-down and unsatisfied as she had with Jonathan?

‘Goodnight, my... Goodnight, Grant.’

His crooked smile was teasing. ‘Goodnight, Kate.’

He doesn’t mean it as a farewell. He’ll come to my room, she told herself as she climbed the stairs and hurried to the nursery for Anna’s goodnight kiss and a quick word with Jeannie. Then to Charlie’s room, her fingers crossed that he would be asleep and there would be no battle over lights out. But he hardly stirred as she brushed the hair back from his forehead, kissed the smooth skin and pulled his tumbled covers back over his sprawled body.

Wilson, her maid, was already in Kate’s bedchamber, alerted by the downstairs staff. ‘The new lawn nightgown—’ Kate began, then saw that it was already laid out on the bed, its matching robe beside it. Of Kate’s usual comfortable plain cotton nightgown there was no sign. ‘You already have it,’ she observed lamely.

‘Yes, my lady. With his lordship being home, I assumed this would be the right one.’ The woman said it without the slightest hint of embarrassment. Apparently she took it as a matter of course that her master would visit his wife’s bedchamber and that her mistress would want to look her best.

And why shouldn’t she? Kate told herself, attempting to look as nonchalant as the maid about the fact she was preparing to receive her husband. She thinks we are an established married couple who have been separated for months, not two virtual strangers who have not even exchanged a kiss.

She submitted to the bath and the hair brush, made a choice at random from the array of scent bottles presented to her, rejected the robe and climbed into bed, wishing she had not read so many Gothic tales where the heroine, a virgin sacrifice clad all in white, awaits the arrival of the mysterious dark man, who may be the villain, or, perhaps, the hero.

She tried to calm herself with thoughts of her youthful fantasies about marriage. It had been a sheltered life in the Essex countryside. Motherless, her behaviour had been subject to more scrutiny by her father and brother and the neighbouring matrons than it might otherwise have been. So flirtations were very mild, her social circle limited, her daydreams of a husband vague and romantic. No wonder she had fallen so hard for Jonathan.