The Wild Baron (Baron 1)

“You know you don’t have to tell me any lies. I’m your wife.”

It was gone in just a flash, but she would have sworn she saw anger in him, would have sworn even that she’d felt that anger course through that lean body of his. His body. He was still inside her. He hadn’t fallen off her and rolled onto his back. No, he was with her, and now, he was moving again, very slowly, gently. Then, suddenly, he stopped.

“I can’t. I would be a selfish beast. It’s been a very long time for you,” he said, a wealth of disappointment in his voice. “I don’t want you sore. However, I might wake you early in the morning. You will like that, Susannah.”

He raised up between her legs and watched himself come out of her body. Then he closed his eyes, his hands fisted on her thighs. She felt him move into her again, but then he drew a very deep breath and pulled himself out of her.

He cursed. He rested on his knees between her legs, his head down, his breathing deep and rapid. Then he looked at her and lightly touched her. “You are beautiful, Susannah.” She actually felt her flesh begin to pulse. It was mortifying. She wanted him to keep touching her, she wanted . . .

His fingers were gone. “Just maybe next time you’ll caress me. A man enjoys that as much as a woman does.” He eased down beside her, then cursed again. He got up, soon to return with a basin of water and a cloth. “Hold still.”

He bathed his seed from her. She was so shocked that she doubted she could have moved in any case. She closed her eyes. The water was cool against her. It felt wonderful. “Maybe now you won’t be so sore,” he said, and gently eased the wet cloth, wrapped around the end of his finger, inside her. He held his finger perfectly still.

She felt drugged, outside herself, as if she were standing apart from the woman on the bed who was lying there like a strumpet. Surely a strumpet was what she was, just lying there, with his finger inside her, and she was enjoying how his finger made her feel. She wanted his finger to push deeper inside her. She wanted to press against his finger, she wanted . . . Then he was gone.

He lifted her and eased her beneath the covers. He snuffed out the candles. When he pulled her against him, she began to weep.

He said nothing, merely stroked her hair, impossibly tangled now because she’d been such a wild thing, and that blessed memory made him smile, made him feel like a god all the way to his toes. Then he frowned. He hadn’t lied to her. He had never before in his life felt that way with any other woman. Naturally she didn’t believe him.

Of course he had never been married before. Perhaps it was those words spoken by Mr. Byam that sanctioned this mysterious, even frightening reaction he’d had. There had simply been too much pleasure and too little control. He’d lost himself and he didn’t like that one bit. He wondered if she’d felt that way. He saw that lost look in her beautiful eyes and imagined that she had. He rather hoped so. A woman shouldn’t be afraid of her husband. She should want him and use him and enjoy him.

She’d used him very well. Finally, her sobs became hiccups. Still, he said nothing, for what could he say to her? He knew the moment she was gone from him into sleep.

He’d known her for one day less than a fortnight.

He didn’t wake her the following morning, for the simple reason that he didn’t awaken until there was a soft knock at the bedchamber door. She was warm, wrapped all over him, her hair tickling his nose, her knee over his belly.

The knock came again.

Why hadn’t he awakened before?

He sighed, gently eased himself away from her, covered her well, then shrugged into his dressing gown.

“Good God,” he said upon opening the door, “it’s you, Tinker. About time you got here.”

“Yes, my lord, and Mr. Pulver is with me. He had a putrid throat, my lord, and I could not very well leave him. Thus he was ill and I was his nurse. But we are here now, my lord, to take care of you.”

“I’ve already been well taken care of, thank you, Tinker. But perhaps my cravats have suffered injury in your absence.”

“Mr. Fitz told us that you have married, my lord. Married! Not just newly married, but married for many years, even a few years before your dear father died, and you have a child, a little girl. You are a father. And you kept it a secret. You didn’t even tell me. Not a hint. Nothing at all. This is all unusual, my lord. You kept it from Mr. Pulver as well. If his throat were not still sore, he would tell you of his torment that you had no trust of him. I cannot credit this, my lord, surely not, for a man of your appetites wouldn’t—”

“Perhaps you could find a less-bramble-filled verbal path to trod upon, Tinker. Yes, I’m married, thank you. If you look beyond me, you’ll see my wife in my bed. Yes, I kept it secret from everyone, including my mother. Does that make you feel less slighted? Now, what do you want?”

Pulver suddenly appeared behind Tinker. His voice was low and raw. “We do not mean to intrude, my lord”—he coughed vilely—“but surely you must realize that we are stunned. We are nearly without speech.”

“I would say the only thing you are missing is a modicum of wits. I’m pleased you didn’t croak from your putrid throat, Pulver, but you still sound like the very devil. Go see Mrs. Beete. She knows every remedy for every malady. Then get yourself to bed, at least until noon. Now, again, what do the two of you want?”

Suddenly there was a look of utter surprise on Tinker’s pinched face. “My God, I’ve been bitten!”

He whirled about to see a little girl grinning up at him. Once he’d moved, she was past him in a flash, grabbing Rohan’s leg.

He immediately reached down and picked her up. “Good morning, pumpkin. Did you sleep well? Did you draw blood when you bit Mr. Tinker’s leg?”

“He was in my way,” Marianne said and surveyed the two dumbfounded gentlemen from her new height in Rohan’s arms.

“Tinker, Pulver, this is my daughter, Marianne.”

“She looks greatly like you, my lord.”