The Courtship (Sherbrooke Brides 5)

“Helen, do you want me to thrash you?”

“I would do you in if you tried it. You know that. What is wrong with you? We are in the midst of a dreadful mess. We don’t know anything more about King Edward’s lamp than we did two weeks ago when you insisted upon leaving me and coming back to London. I might add that London is only an hour and a half’s ride from Court Hammering, yet you never even once came for an afternoon or an evening, even one simple meal.”

Now was the time. He had to do it, else he would be lost. He ignored her complaint and said, “Listen to me, for I mean this. I have decided to be only your partner, nothing more. Ever.”

She didn’t acknowledge that he had spoken. She didn’t even acknowledge that she had heard him. She simply clapped her heels in Eleanor’s sleek sides. Eleanor streaked off down the road. Helen said nothing more to him the rest of the ride.

It rained the final half hour.

19

NETTLE FOLLOWED IN A carriage behind his master. Lord Beecham turned around to see him leaning out the carriage window, his face a study in ecstasy even though a sullen rain was dripping over him. “His heart is soaring,” he said to Helen, who wasn’t speaking to him and in fact was a good twenty yards ahead of him on the road. “Soon he will see his goddess, Teeny.”

To his valet’s immense distress, Lord Beecham elected to stay at the King Edward’s Lamp. He did not want to be in Helen’s home, with her coming downstairs in a nightgown and him all weak in his resolution upon seeing her, with the more than likely result that he would lose his head. No, the inn was safer. She never took her clothes off at the inn. She would never look at him provocatively at the inn.

Then he thought of the gazebo and that rotted old cottage. Her wet, sodden clothes—no provocation there, and it hadn’t mattered. Ah, but at the gazebo, he had known and she had known as well exactly what would happen. And of course it had, with no particular reflection at all.

He hoped staying at her inn would prove a good idea, one that would keep him on the path of celibacy.

He would be her partner. Not her lover. He would. He was determined. He would not hurl himself from the path of righteousness again.

Helen escorted him to the inn’s largest bedchamber, an airy, high-ceilinged large corner room on the second floor, overlooking the marketplace. She had a trundle bed brought up for Nettle, who looked at it and nearly wept. “It will be all right,” Helen said, lightly patting his shoulder. “You will find another girl just as sweet as Teeny. Forget her, Nettle. She was not meant to be yours.”

Lord Beecham eventually sent Nettle down to the taproom to buy himself some ale, telling him that three mugs was all Miss Helen would allow to be poured down any one male gullet. “Drown all your feelings about Teeny,” he called after his valet. “Well, at least get them wet.”

Then Helen stood in the open doorway of his bedchamber, hands on hips, and said, “Now what?”

“You are my partner,” Lord Beecham said, and then he said it again: “You are my partner.” He walked to her, closed the door, and locked it. “Helen,” he said and locked his arms under her hips and carried her to the big bed in the middle of the room. A warm breeze fluttered the light curtains over the windows. There were few sounds now, for it was dinnertime, and most people were at home in front of their own hearths.

And he was here, with Helen, and she was on her back and he was over her, kissing her, pulling the pins out of her beautiful hair, kissing her more, her nose, her earlobe, her chin. “My God, I’ve missed you,” he managed to say between kisses. “Your breasts. I’ve never seen your breasts. I saw them in the cottage when I got you out of all your wet clothes, but I didn’t really look. I touched your breasts once, but not like I want to. I have imagined your breasts, imagined kissing them and caressing them, my hands, my mouth—oh, God, Helen.” He reared up, standing beside the bed over her. “Your riding skirt, Helen, your damned riding skirt. Then there’s the rest of all those bloody clothes you women insist upon wearing to slow men down to the point of near expiration.” He got her out of her riding skirt in just about thirty seconds, then realized that he was still dressed, all the way down to his Hessians.

“I want to do it right!” he yelled to the bedchamber ceiling, but he simply couldn’t wait, just couldn’t. He fell on her, yanked up her chemise, and left her boots and stockings on. He opened his britches and yelled when he drove into her. Helen screamed.

For the briefest instant, he believed he had hurt her. He managed to raise himself on his elbows, to see her eyes closed, her lips parted. She was breathing hard, her hands jerking at him, and she was twisting beneath him, so frantic that she nearly bucked him off her.

He watched her pleasure flood through her, watched her eyes open. She stared up at him in astonishment, then he was with her, so beside himself that he knew the end had to be near. A man simply could not bear this sort of thing. He moaned into her mouth, then his mouth was trying to keep kissing hers, but his lips were numb. He was gone. He collapsed.

“I continue not to believe this,” he said, his voice deep and rough, when breath and brain finally returned to his body. He rolled onto his side, bringing her with him. Their boots tangled together. He smiled at her, kissed the tip of her nose. He was still inside her, just barely, but still a part of her. He knew he had to leave her now, this instant, or it would begin again, and he didn’t want it to. He couldn’t allow it to, or his once-firm resolve, now hanging by a single stingy thread, would melt like candle wax touched to flame.

He closed his eyes, and slowly, so slowly it was near to killing him, he pulled out of her. She fell over onto her back again. She opened her eyes when the bed gave. He was standing there by the bed, his britches open, his hair standing on end where she had pulled it and stroked it and streaked her fingers through it, mad with wanting him. His chest was still heaving as if he had just run a very long race.

He looked immensely beautiful.

She watched him fasten his britches. She watched him straighten his clothing. She watched him walk to the window and stare out of it, down at the now empty market square.

She was lying there on her back, her legs spread, her chemise tangled up around her waist. Her stockings were still in place above her knees, held with lacy black garters. Her boots were still on her feet. Then she laughed, couldn’t help it. She was still wearing her riding hat.

“It’s amazing,” she said, coming up on her elbows. “Do you realize that this time you actually managed to get me out of my skirt before you ravaged me?”

“Yes,” he said, turning slowly to face her. “It is amazing. I remarked to myself about that when I had it done. What I really wanted was your breasts. I have yet to see your breasts, Helen, the way I want to see them.

“Ah, but I did get your skirt off you. I can no longer remember just how I managed to do it. It took nearly thirty seconds, took that thirty seconds away from me being inside you.” His breathing hitched. His eyes went wild and dark, and he stared at her spread legs. “No,” he said. “No. I will control myself.”

He turned back to look down into the market square again. “Where is the scroll?”

Helen blinked. He was trying to keep himself away from her. On a very intellectual level, she supposed she appreciated his efforts, but as she looked at him, her body still pulsed with the heat and strength of him, and she wanted him, powerfully.

“I have hidden it here at the inn. No one would ever find it.” She rose slowly and walked behind the screen to clean herself. When she came around the screen, her clothes were back in place. “I didn’t want to put my father in any more danger, our people either. It is quite safe here.” She pulled on her riding skirt. She walked over to the narrow mirror beside the armoire. She looked demented, her riding hat askew, her mouth red from kissing him at least a hundred times, her eyes vague and soft.