He yanked her off the bed and to her feet, his fingers clamped about her arm to keep her upright. Without any mercy, he marched her to the still open door, then gave her a shove that sent her stumbling to the middle of the sitting room.
Behind her the door slammed shut.
An hour later Vere came out of his room for the cake. He hadn’t eaten much the entire day, and all the whiskey in the world couldn’t mask the gnawing of his hunger anymore.
He was on his second slice when he realized that she was sobbing in her room. The sound was very faint—almost inaudible. He finished the cake on his plate and returned to his bed.
Five minutes later he was again in the sitting room. But why? Why did he care? What he’d said was expressly designed to make any woman cry. And feminine tears had absolutely no effect on him: Women who were criminally inclined or mentally disturbed—not to mention merely manipulative—tended to be terrific weepers.
He went back to bed and tilted the whiskey bottle for the last drop. But bugger it to hell if he wasn’t back in the sitting room again three minutes later.
He opened her door but did not see her. He had to round the bed to the farther side to find her sitting on the floor, her knees drawn up to her chest, crying into her wedding veil, of all things.
The veil was a soggy wad. Her face was red and splotchy, her eyes puffy. She hiccupped convulsively. The front of her wedding gown, too, was damp from tears.
“I can’t sleep when you are crying like this,” he said crossly.
She looked up, a very dull expression on her face, no doubt waiting for his person to coalesce in her blurred vision. It did. She shivered.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’ll stop right now. Please don’t send me away.”
He couldn’t decide which one he hated more: the devious and dementedly smiling Lady Vere, or the devious and abjectly sniveling one.
“Go to sleep. I won’t send you away tonight.”
Her lips quivered. With gratitude, for God’s sake. In annoyance—and resentment and anger, which an ocean of spirits couldn’t drown—he made the mistake of saying, “I’ll wait till tomorrow morning.”
She bit her lower lip. Her eyes filled with renewed tears. They rolled down her already wet face to disappear into the bodice of the wedding gown. But she made no sound at all, her weeping as silent as death.
Looking away from him, she began to rock back and forth, like a child trying to comfort herself.
He didn’t know why it should affect him, why she should affect him—this woman had meant to force herself on Freddie, for God’s sake—but she did. There was something about her wordless desperation that made him hurt.
She had no one else to whom she could turn.
It was partly the whiskey. But one bottle of whiskey wasn’t enough to explain why he didn’t march out of her room, now that he’d effectively silenced her. He fought it, the alcohol-fueled compassion, the onslaught of her bottomless misery, and the stupid sense that he of all people should do something about it.
She had brought it on herself, hadn’t she?
She gasped as he lifted her bodily. But this time he didn’t toss her. Instead, he set her on the edge of her bed. He bent to remove her shoes. Then he reached behind her to unhook her dress. Her dress, her petticoats, her corset cover, and her corset itself fell from her.
Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped her face—carefully. Fresh tears swelled. For years she’d wiped away Aunt Rachel’s tears. But no one had ever done it for her.
She caught his handkerchief when he would have put it back into his pocket and brought it before her nose. “It smells like Lebanon too,” she said with wonder.
He shook his head briefly. “Let me tuck you in.”
“All right,” she said.
Their eyes met. Really, he had ridiculously beautiful eyes. And such unbearably alluring lips. She remembered kissing him. Even if she must take Aunt Rachel and go on the run, she would always remember kissing him.
So she kissed him again.
He let her kiss him, let her run her teeth lightly over his lower lip, nibble him on his jawline, and lick him, a tiny lick at the base of his throat. He emitted a small, strangled sound as she bit lightly where his neck joined his shoulder.
“Where did you learn to do that?” he asked, his breaths uneven.
Did such things have to be learned?
“I’m only doing what I want.” And what she wanted was to sink her teeth into him, the way someone would bite a gold coin to ascertain its purity.
“You are a horny drunk, Lady Vere,” he murmured.
“What does that mean?”
She didn’t wait for an answer but kissed him again. There was such pleasure in kissing him, in touching him.
He exerted a gentle pressure against her shoulder. After a moment, she realized that he meant for her to lie down. She did, holding on to him, still kissing him.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he said, even as he stretched out beside her. “I might prove a horny drunk too.”
Neither of them should be here. Lady Kingsley’s house should never have been invaded by rats. And the Cumberland Edgertons should have had the decency to take her in after her parents’ death.
She was inordinately remorseful. Of course he had every right to be angry with her. She’d manipulated—indeed, wrangled—him into this marriage. And he’d been very kind and very tolerant. Was it any wonder she looked to him for safety and guidance in such a confusing and uncertain time?
She lifted herself to her elbows and kissed him again, a straight trail down the center of his torso.
He stopped her, but only to unspool her hair. It spilled in a long cascade over her right shoulder. “So much of it, but so light, like spun air.”
She smiled at the compliment and lowered her head to his navel. He stopped her once more, his fingers sinking into her shoulder.
A question suddenly popped into her head. “What makes you grow hard?”
His gaze took on that peculiar tautness again. “Your kissing me and pulling me into bed, among other things.”
“Why?”
“Arousal is necessary to performance.”
“Are you aroused now?”
A beat of silence. “Yes.”
“What is to be this performance then?”
“I really shouldn’t,” he said, even as his body turned in to hers and she felt his arousal very clearly. “I’m not thinking with my head.”
“Is there anything else you can think with?” she wondered aloud.
He chuckled briefly. Then, at last, he touched her. He’d touched her before, of course, but always to do something else: escorting her to her seat at the dinner table or shoving her away from him, for example. This was the first time he’d touched her for the sake of touching her, for no other purpose than to feel her.
Before Aunt Rachel completely faded, sometimes she’d petted Elissande on her hair or her hand. But that was many years ago. Elissande had not known until this moment how desperately she missed it, the simple grace of being touched. He stroked her slowly, on her face, her shoulders, her arms, her back.
Still stroking her, he kissed her. She swam in pleasure. When he pulled away, she told him, “I want more.”
“More what?”
“More you.”
That was when he disrobed her, peeling away her combination, leaving her wearing only a pair of white stockings.
She should feel mortified to be so naked before him. But she did not. She felt only a little shy.
“What am I doing?” he murmured, even as he pressed kisses to her collarbone.
She shivered with the pleasure of it. “You are making me very happy,” she whispered.
“Am I? Will you remember it in the morning?”
“Why won’t I?”
He gave an enigmatic smile and kissed her down the center of her torso, as she had done with him. The air he exhaled teased her nipple. She tensed with the indescribable sensation of it, which grew a hundred times more indescribable when he took her nipple inside his mouth.