“The less easy road,” he said.
“The long, hard ride, then, please,” she said, using her low voice again and running her palms over the muscles of his shoulders as she watched the laughter fade from his eyes. “Please, my love.”
It was very long. And very hard. It took a great deal of energy. After a while she became aware of the dampness of their sweat, the heat of their bodies, the heavy, labored sound of their breathing, the silken pounding of their joining, the erotic sound of wetness, the rhythmic squeaking of the bed.
For a while her enjoyment was tempered by the fear that it would end too soon, that she would not reach the startling explosion of pleasure she had experienced on the island bank among the wildflowers when he had touched her with his hand and then taken her on top of him. But after a while she knew with an instinct born of love and trust that he did indeed have the fortitude and the sensitivity to wait for her—as he had at the lake.
It came slowly. Achingly slowly, first with an intense physical yearning in the place where they rode together, and then swirling in slow spirals, down into her legs, back into her bowels, up into her stomach, her breasts, her throat, her nose. It came so slowly she feared there could be no ending, no climax, no fulfillment.
“Relax now, love,” he murmured against her ear. “Let me do the rest for you. Let yourself open and I’ll come to you. Trust me.”
Words dimly remembered. Had he spoken them to her before? She was afraid. Mortally afraid. He might as easily have asked her to leap off a high cliff into his waiting arms. But she had known long ago that she would trust him with her life. She had given him her love since then and had accepted his this very day. All that was left to do was to trust him with her heart, to withhold nothing that was herself—to believe with her heart, as she already did with her intellect, that he would never abuse the gift, that he would never hold her love imprisoned.
She launched herself forward off the cliff, trusting, never doubting, that he would catch her.
“Ah, love.” He was thrusting faster, deeper into her. “Oh, God!”
She was falling, shuddering out of control, never fearing for a moment, never doubting. He cried out, and his arms and his body caught her at the bottom of her descent, wrapping firmly about her, pinning her safe and warm and sated against the mattress. She could hear her heartbeat pounding in her ears. And his too. They beat as one.
He was very heavy. She could scarcely breathe. Her legs were stiff from being pressed apart for so long. She was sore inside. And she had never been more comfortable in her life.
“We,” he said, his voice sounding shockingly normal, “are going to have the first banns read next Sunday. It is high time I made an honest woman of you. Besides, it may be possible to pass off an eight-month child as an early bird, but a seven- or six-month child would look scandalously suspicious. It might even be whispered that we had anticipated our wedding night.”
“Shocking indeed.” She sighed with contentment. “Sunday it will be, then.”
“A big ton wedding one month from now,” he said. “Both our families will be set on it, and frankly I do not have the energy to argue. Do you?”
“I would like a big wedding,” she admitted.
“Good. That is settled, then.” He kissed her temple. “I have just made a delightful discovery, considering the fact that we are going to be sharing a bed for the rest of our lives. You make a wonderfully comfortable mattress.”
“And you make a tolerable blanket,” she said, untwining her legs and stretching them luxuriously beside his. She yawned lazily. “Stop talking, Kit, and let’s sleep.”
“Sleep?” He lifted his head and grinned down at her. She was filled with instant alarm. “ Sleep, Lauren? When we are both stale with sweat and sex and there is a perfectly decent pool out there, complete with waterfall?”
“Ki-it—”
He just grinned.
“I am not,” she said. “I am absolutely, definitely not going to swim out there. It is raining.”
“A definite problem,” he conceded, disengaging from her and lifting himself off both her and the bed. “You might get wet.”
Had she not giggled, she might have been saved. Though probably not, she admitted a couple of minutes later as her naked body plummeted into ice-cold water and she came up gasping, her hands with a death grip on Kit’s. She wished fervently that she knew a few foul curse words. But her teeth were probably clacking too loudly for them to be heard, anyway.
She shook her head to clear the water from her eyes and laughed at him before doing the most foolish thing she had done all day. She challenged him to a race to the waterfall and—of course—he accepted, another bedding in the cottage to be his prize if he won.
If he won!
She was still getting her arms and legs organized when he was nonchalantly treading water right under the waterfall and grinning despicably.
A wedding eve ball had been the tradition at Newbury Abbey for a number of generations. It seemed rather strange to Kit when the bride and groom might be expected to want as much sleep as they could get the night before their wedding night, but perhaps the Newbury bridegrooms who had allowed the tradition to develop had not been particularly lusty men. Or perhaps it had been a clever ruse of Newbury brides to take the edge off their lust.
However it was, his own wedding eve ball and Lauren’s was in full swing. The abbey was packed to the rafters with Kilbourne and Redfield family and friends. The dower house too, and the village inn. Even by the standards of a London Season, the gathering in the ballroom, on the balcony beyond the French windows, and on the landing and winding stairs beyond the ballroom might be called a very creditable squeeze. How everyone was expected to fit inside the village church tomorrow morning he could not begin to guess.
Lauren, with whom a mere bridegroom was expected to dance only once—and he had already been allotted his quota—was flushed and looking radiantly happy. She was also many times lovelier than the next loveliest lady in the room. She literally shimmered in a satin gown of such a deep violet that some might call it purple. The diamond necklace his mother and father had given her as a wedding present sparkled in the light of hundreds of candles. His ring—the diamond was so large and many-faceted that he had distinctly overheard one of his least favorite females, the former Lady Wilma Fawcitt, more recently the Countess of Sutton, describe it as vulgar—his ring glinted on her finger.
“You cannot get close enough for another dance, Ravensberg?” Lord Farrington asked him.
“An abomination, is it not?” Kit said cheerfully.
“Does the delectable Lady Muir dance?” Farrington asked. “One would hate to risk a faux pas when she has that limp.”
“She dances,” Kit said.
Farrington, it appeared, had escaped the clutches of the ambitious Merklingers during the spring. He was footloose again, his roving eye intact.
“I’ll go and try my luck with her, then,” he said, “and see if I can charm her away from that great handsome Viking.”
“Ralf Bedwyn?” Kit grinned—and then turned his attention to a footman who had touched his sleeve. There was a gentleman newly arrived and waiting downstairs. He had requested a word with Lord Ravensberg.
Yet another guest? Kit strode off in the direction of the staircase.
The new arrival was a very young man. He was tall and overslender as if he had not yet quite grown into his body. He was also fresh-faced. If he shaved at all yet, it was clearly not a daily necessity. He was a good-looking boy, though. Kit assessed him in one quick glance, as he had once been accustomed to doing with scores and even hundreds of new recruits.