The Sherbrooke Bride (Sherbrooke Brides 1)

“We will go to the stream and I will remain myself. I will take off your clothes, lay you down on your back and touch you and kiss your breasts and fondle you between your legs, and I will smile and talk to you while I caress you. Perhaps we will discuss the situation in Naples, from both Napoleon’s and the Royalists’ points of view. And I will wax brilliant because I am concentrating on my words and not on your body. My control will be uplifting, my experience will be at my brain’s command. Then, when I decide that I wish to continue with you, why, I will do so, and I will go slowly and do all the things to you I haven’t taken the time to do up to now. Well, more time, in any case, and you will scream and bellow until you are hoarse. And you will be very pleased that I am gentleman enough to have figured all this out.”

He turned then to look down at her. She looked both amazed and incredulous and her face was hectic with color. He laughed. “You will be able to scream as loudly as you wish. There will be no one around save a few ducks and birds. Yes, I enjoy hearing you cry out in the middle of the day with the sun on your face and me pressing you into the warmth of the earth.”

She poked him in his belly and he just laughed some more. She wanted to tell him that he could be as savage as he wished, but she hesitated, and then he said, “You will enjoy me even more when I return to being an excellent lover.” She wondered how that could possibly be true.

At Branderleigh Farm they found a three-year-old mare of Barb descent whose sire was Pander of Foxhall Stud. She was spirited, soft-mouthed, long in the back, and black as midnight with a white star on her nose. She tried to bite Alexandra on her shoulder, Alexandra jerked away in time, and the mare then butted her chin with her nose. It was love at first sight.

“That’s what I will call her,” Alexandra said, skipping in delight next to Douglas after he had finalized the sale with a Mr. Crimpton. The new mare was tied to the back of the gig.

“Midnight? Blackie?”

“Oh no, that would be trite, and you know how much we must avoid that accusation!”

He handed her up into the gig then walked around to climb up into his seat. He click-clicked the horse forward. “Well?” he asked again some moments later.

“Her name is Colleen.”

“There is no Irish blood in her.”

“I know. She is an original.”

He grinned. He realized he felt marvelous. He clicked the horse faster. He wanted to get to the stream and prove that he was the most controlled of lovers. He marshaled quite logical arguments for Napoleon’s invasion of Naples while he drove. He was scarce aware that she was seated next to him. It was splendid. He was himself again.

He helped her down from the gig, and just that—the mere closing his hands around her waist to lift her down—sent his hands to her breasts and his mouth to hers and he kissed her and touched her, and was gone. He ripped her chemise to shreds. It was hard and fast and when he finally managed to raise himself off Alexandra, his heart still pounding so hard he could hear it, he said numbly, “I truly can’t stand this, truly I can’t. Blessed hell, it is too much for a man to suffer. There, you have even wrung the Sherbrooke curse out of me and I have tried hard not to use profanity in front of you. I’ve failed. Jesus, I’m nothing but a rutting stoat, a stupid man with no sense and fewer brains.”

As for Alexandra, she doubted she would be able to move. He’d taken her quickly, as usual, and he’d been so deep inside her after he’d brought her to pleasure, making her scream as she lurched up, shafts of sunlight splashing through the oak branches onto her face. Her new mare had whinnied in response. Douglas had panted and heaved and said things to her that she guessed were very sexual, but she hadn’t understood all of them. It was odd of her, but she rather wanted to ask him to translate so she could say them to him and understand what she was saying.

“Yes,” he said, “far too much for me to bear.” Then he leaned down and kissed her. She parted her lips for him and it began again. “Damnation!” he howled to the pure sweet air, then kissed her again and he was hard inside her and pushing more and more deeply only to withdraw, to find her with his fingers and his mouth and it went on and on as she spun out of control and yet turned inward, to him, to bu

rrow inside his passion. She didn’t want him to be civilized; she didn’t want him to do anything differently. She wanted him to be a pig.

She told him again that she loved him between kisses on his jaw, his shoulder, his throat, her hands feverish on his chest and downward on his belly. Her fingertips touched his sex and he shuddered.

“No, not again.” He gently pushed her down onto her back. He stared down at her, his eyes hard. “No you don’t,” he said. “Heed me well, Alexandra. A woman says she loves a man because she has to justify her own passion to herself. If she is abandoned, if she finds great pleasure, why then, it must be love, not lust. You, particularly, are young and romantic; it is very important that you try to wrap your bodily pleasures in more inspiring packaging. It is the way your female brain functions, bolstered by all those trashy novels you have doubtless swooned over, but you will get over it if you will just be reasonable.”

“You absurd clod!” Alexandra sent her fist hard into his jaw. He was balanced on his elbow and the surprise of her blow sent him over onto his back.

“You stupid boor! You mindless rutting stoat!”

“Well, the last of it is true, I already laid claim to that.”

“Go to the devil!”

She was up and jerking on her clothing, panting and heaving, so furious with him that she was trembling.

“Alexandra, be reasonable. Stop it.”

She didn’t. If anything she jerked so hard a button went flying.

He came up on his elbows, lying stretched out, naked and sweating and feeling very relaxed. He was even grinning at her. “Alexandra, why become so distraught at the simple truth? Love is a poet’s nonsensical plaything and if he can bend one silly word to rhyme with another, why all the better. It is as insubstantial as a dream, as meaningless as the rain that flows through your fingers. Don’t use it as a crutch or as an excuse to enjoy me and yourself, you don’t need it. You and I do well together in bed. You respond fully to me, even though I seem to have this rutting-stoat disease with you. Don’t feel you have to cover it up with romantic nonsense.”

She was dressed now, though her stockings and boots were still on the ground. Her hands on her hips, she said very slowly, very calmly, “I knew I shouldn’t have told you. I knew that you don’t feel at all the same way about me and I was afraid it would give you power over me. I was quite wrong. You care so little for me that power doesn’t even come into it. I didn’t realize you would mock my words and my feelings, that you would make sport at what I feel. Your cynicism is pathetic, Douglas. If it makes you feel any better, if it makes you feel as if your beliefs are justified, well, I don’t love you at this moment. I should like to cosh you with a hammer at this moment. I would like to kick you on your backside. Instead, I think I will punish you in another way.” She picked up his boots and his trousers and ran with them toward the stream. She stopped and threw them as hard and as far as she could.

Douglas bounded up to grab for his clothes, but he was too late. “Blessed hell!” He jumped into the stream to grab his boots and trousers and Alexandra untied the horse, bounded into the gig, and was off in the next moment. His shirt and jacket lay beside her on the plank seat.

She heard him yelling at her and just click-clicked the horse faster. He couldn’t catch her, not in his bare feet, and he could whistle to the horses all he wanted, they wouldn’t pay him any heed. Alexandra smiled. The cynical bounder. Retribution tasted very sweet.

Thirty minutes later, Douglas passed the yew bush that flew his shirt like a white flag of surrender. He’d wondered where his shirt had gone to. She’d taken it, damn her eyes. He was hot, sweating, and wished he had her neck between his hands, just for an instant, just long enough for him to squeeze and make her face turn blue.