“If you’re a generous lover you’ll be generous in other ways.” She tried not to cry. His tenderness hurt, his harshness was as painful. She suspected revenge might be his motive, but she could not be sure. She’d not thought Felix to have a vengeful nature. But then, what did she really know of men? Or women?
“And would you call me a generous lover?’ His breath was hot on her neck as he curled his body round hers. She was naked now except for her stockings and corset.
“You’ll have to remind me.” She injected salaciousness into her tone and he responded as she’d hoped he would. No more of this dancing around the edges of what they were both about. It was too exhausting, too disorientating.
With a growl that suggested he was actually enjoying himself, he rolled on top of her and latched onto her nipple, filling her with a pleasure so exquisite she gasped aloud. She ruffled his hair, the smooth brown waves caressing her skin as he kissed her breasts, her throat, her mouth, before working his way down her belly.
A deep throbbing at her core filled her with a cocktail of the most intense ecstasy.
Skitters of desire made her tremble in his arms.
This time he held her tenderly and made love to her generously.
And Hope thought it was how she would like to die.
Chapter 7
Their lovemaking had been slow, intense, and deeply satisfying. Until this man, Hope had never enjoyed the act before. Now, as she stared at Felix’s rested, angelic face while he slept, she supposed she never would again.
She glanced between the bed, the writing desk, and the door. Wilfred’s promissory note was in Felix’s wallet, which was in the drawer. She’d caught a glimpse earlier of what she believed was the document Wilfred demanded she retrieve. Once she’d seized that, together with whatever money she could find, her job would be done.
She stopped. No, she’d not take the money. She was not a grubby thief. Wilfred would get the promissory note for five hundred pounds that he’d signed over to Felix when he’d lost at the gaming tables ten days previously but that would be all. Just possibly, he’d not find the opportunity to hand it over to Felix before Charlotte’s wedding in which case, Hope’s reputation in Felix’s eyes mightn’t be completely shredded. Just possibly, there might be some kind of future for Hope and Felix.
But her first duty was safeguarding her sister’s happiness.
As for Hope, she’d be no different than she had been three days before: a sinful, shameless, harlot destined for hell.
Only now, she’d be one who’d discovered that the scar tissue surrounding her heart was less impermeable than she’d feared.
Felix awoke, conscious of a great emptiness. It was usually so, but this time, in addition to the emptiness in his heart, was his consciousness of the emptiness of his bed.
As if something had been actively taken away from him.
For two years, he’d felt a sense of loss, but during the last six months that feeling had been augmented by a sense of utter devastation. There was nothing, he felt, that could cut through the despair and blame he felt at his sister’s death. He’d been spared when everyone had thought he’d die.
His mother couldn’t hide her devastation at the loss of her only daughter, and at each tortured look she directed at her son, Felix felt the guilt all over again.
Rolling onto his stomach, Felix put his face into the pillow where Hope’s head had rested and breathed in her scent. It was a bolder scent than he remembered. The innocent Miss Merriweather of two years ago had smelled of something light and floral. The sensual and experienced Miss Merriweather who had come to him last night had smelled of something more exotic, but that had not lessened his desire.
He kept his eyes closed while he continued to breathe in the lingering traces of her.
A deep and strange out-of-body lethargy had overcome him, yet the feeling was more healing than the lethargy that had sapped him of his desire to live for the past few months.
Now, a life-affirming conviction stole through him, like a thread of something giving him strength. The circumstances were not ideal, but Hope would be his.
He shifted position and stared at the ceiling. Thinking.
For two years, he’d dreamed of making Hope his wife. After receiving no response to the three letters Felix had written to the address Mrs Merriweather had given him, Felix accepted that her daughter had become swallowed up by the Continent and her new life there and, understanding she wanted to sever her past ties, he’d resumed his desultory courtship of Annabelle; mostly because Lady Durham seemed always to be inviting the girl to the house and planning social events which Annabelle invariably attended.
When Miss Charlotte Merriweather had said she had news that suggested her sister was in some kind of danger or difficulty, hence her lack of communication, Felix had been spurred on by the greatest sense of at last having a quest to fulfill. He’d told Annabelle, kindly, that she must lay to rest her dreams of a shared future now that Miss Merriweather was again within reach.
Yet even the discovery of learning what Miss Merriweather had had not exorcised the tenderness and passion he felt for her. She was, he believed, evading the truth when she’d hinted at how she’d come to follow her degraded path. She’d not denied it when he suggested another man.
Was it someone with whom she had a pre-existing affection and Felix had misinterpreted Miss Merriweather’s interest in him at the Hunt Ball?
Whatever had happened, Hope had apparently been abandoned and resorted to the only employment open to women in her situation, it would seem.
He drew in a deep breath. If he could just rise above his repugnance and set aside his pique, anguish and all the other emotions he felt, Miss Merriweather was willing to be his.