And now it was her duty to learn to kiss her new husband properly. Only, it did not feel much like a duty, more like a pleasure. This was so confusing and the fact that she was standing between Elliott’s braced legs—how had she moved that close?—made it oddly difficult to think through the tangle of shame and need and fear.
‘I can assure you, Arabella, that when you stand there, so close, with the tip of your tongue just touching your upper lip like that,’ he said, his voice husky, ‘you need no technique whatsoever.’
My tongue? She whipped it back in and closed her mouth, but too late. Elliott leaned forwards and kissed her. Arabella let herself go, gave herself up to the sensation, stopped thinking. Things seemed to happen quite without any conscious thought. Her lips knew how to part, her tongue knew how to touch his, to explore the heat of his mouth, slide over teeth, caress the delicate inner flesh. Oh, I can do this! Her hands knew how to move up his chest until she could feel his heart beat under her palm…
Elliott shifted, pulling her in closer between his thighs. Bella felt the heat of him pressing against her belly and her breath hitched. That was what it was all about, not this drugging, sensual kissing. It was all about that.
Kissing she could learn, it seemed. But that was different. How did she learn to do something that hurt so much? She flinched like a child expecting a cuff around the head.
‘What is it?’ He freed her mouth and his hands slid down to cup her buttocks as he leaned back a little to see her face. The movement brought her tight against his erection and unexpected sensation, a hot, molten, desperate urge to rub herself against him, flared through her. Desire hit like a big wave on the beach, knocking her off balance with the shocking force of the need. She struggled against it, knowing she would be clumsy and inept, and jerked back just as Toby erupted on to the roof, sending the pigeons into the air in a panic of flapping wings.
‘Bad dog!’ Bella turned, twisting out of Elliott’s arms. ‘The silly creature—as though he could catch one. My goodness, he did make me jump. Toby, come back here!’
‘Was that what was wrong?’ Elliott asked, straightening up.
‘Of course. I think I would like to go down now.’ Quite deliberately Bella let her hand rest on her stomach for a moment and saw Elliott’s eyes follow the gesture. There was absolutely nothing wrong with her other than the shameful effects of Elliott’s kiss and her own fears and she felt a pang of guilt. She was deceiving him for the first time. Lying, in effect, to extract herself from a situation she had no idea how to handle.
The guilt tightened its grip as she saw the concern on his face. ‘I should not have dragged you up all those stairs.’
‘I enjoyed it,’ she said, managing a smile. ‘I am much better today.’
‘Then let us go down,’ Elliott said, getting through the door first to help her. ‘And you must go and rest.’
But that was not what she wanted. She wanted to continue exploring the house with Elliott, not resting with nothing to think about but that kiss and her body’s reaction to it. Bella negotiated the steep steps with care, wrestling with her feelings.
She had lain with Rafe because she thought she loved him and—she could see now—he had blackmailed her into it, not because she had felt uncontrollable carnal desire. Now here she was with his brother, whom she hardly knew, and every time he touched her, her whole body ached for his caresses. That was wrong, surely? What was happening to her? She had no idea, except that the fear was still there, the knowledge that she could not willingly do more than surrender her body to Elliott.
But if she let him keep kissing her—would that help? Only it was not fair to him to arouse him and then be such a disappointment in bed; she understood enough now about the male body and its needs to know that.
Elliott was standing at the bottom of the stairs, his hand held out to her. ‘I am fine,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’ It was easier when they did not touch.
‘If we go this way…’ he gestured down the right hand passage ‘…we come to the stairs that lead directly to your suite. You can rest; I will have tea sent up.’
‘I do not want to rest.’ Bella made her way down the uncarpeted passage in front of him.
‘But you will, won’t you?’ His tone did not encourage discussion.
Bella firmed her lips. It was almost more comfortable to bicker than to kiss. Only, she was the one do
ing the bickering, Elliott was simply laying down the law. An alarming hint of rebellion stirred inside her. After years of obeying one man’s every order, she found herself prepared to argue with this one, which was disconcerting. A woman was supposed to obey first her father, then her husband, in all things. But one did not choose one’s father, whilst a marriage was a partnership, was it not?
A door stood slightly ajar, a distraction from her troubling thoughts. ‘What is in here?’ Without waiting for Elliott’s reply she pushed it open and went in. The room was large and would be airy and light if the windows were cleaned and opened wide, Bella thought as she turned slowly to look at it. There were two little beds on either side, a wooden horse, a drum, a shelf with a line of red-coated soldiers marching to do battle with dust and spiders, and something shrouded in a dust cloth.
‘A nursery! But so far away from the main floors.’
‘It was ours until we reached six,’ Elliott said from the doorway as she went to peek into the room leading off. It was obviously the nurse’s room, with adult-sized furniture. ‘There’s a scullery on the other side where the nursery maid would make our meals and do the washing. It is quite self-contained.’
‘But—did your mother not want you with her?’ ‘We would be taken down for an hour before bath time to see Mama in her room.’
‘Oh.’ How cold. ‘And you and Rafe both lived up here?’
‘He went down to a suite on the floor below when he was six, so I was by myself after that. He had his own room and there was a chamber for his tutor, and a school-room. When I joined him I had my room there as well.’
‘Poor little boy,’ she exclaimed. ‘How lonely you must have been up here.’
Elliott still had not moved from the doorway. He shrugged. ‘It is what I was used to. It is normal in big houses.’
‘Well, it is not going to be normal here any longer,’ Bella said. Tradition was all very well, but this isolated room made her uneasy—it was as if children were banished for the crime of being young. ‘I must have the baby close. What is this?’ She flicked back the dustsheet. ‘Oh, a cradle—how lovely. Is it very old?’ Under her hand the dark oak was tactile, almost a living thing. Her touch sent it rocking gently. She peeped under the high gabled hood and smiled, imagining her baby lying safe inside smiling up at her.