“Oh, no, Peter,” she said, sitting up and looking down at him with troubled eyes. “I cannot possibly do that.”
“You can,” he said. “It is for you. I thought you would be proud of me. It is a very little dragon I have slain, but I have done it anyway. It was my idea, and I have done all of the planning and all of the inviting. Don’t refuse to come. Please don’t.”
He would not want to attend himself if she did not-and that would lead to a mildly absurd situation.
“As host,” he said, “I will have to dance all evening. I will have to waltz with someone else if you are not there.”
“Oh, Peter,” she said, cupping one of her palms about his cheek.
“Tell me you don’t want me waltzing with anyone but you,” he said.
“Peter-”
“Please tell me.”
She bowed her head and closed her eyes.
“I cannot bear the thought of you waltzing with anyone but me,” she half whispered.
“Susanna-”
She opened her eyes and looked into his, her own still somewhat reddened from the weeping.
“I really cannot bear it,” she said, but he was no longer sure she was talking just about the waltz.
He spread his hand over the soft curls at the back of her head and drew it down toward his until her arms came about his neck and he kissed her.
And he knew at that moment that love would never die, that it would never fade away altogether. The time might come when he would meet and marry someone else. He might even be reasonably happy. But there would always be a deep, precious place in his heart that belonged to his first real love. To Susanna.
But he was not going to think meekly about that someone else and that reasonably happy life he might live. He was not giving up what he really wanted without a fight. He might never have been much of a knight during his twenty-six years, he might never have been in the habit of searching out dragons to fight and quell-indeed, he had run from them five years ago. But he would find one and fight it to the death if Susanna were the prize.
Or perhaps even if she were not.
Her face was a little above his, cupped in his hands, her auburn curls spilling over his fingers, her eyes very green.
“Let me take you upstairs,” he found himself saying. “There is no fire up there, but the bedcovers are warm. Let me make love to you.”
He felt as though he had walked out to the end of a plank, a helpless prisoner on a pirate ship. He felt more vulnerable than he had ever felt in his life before. If she said no, every dream he had ever dreamed would be shattered. For he was not asking her just to bed with him. He was asking for her love. He was offering his own.
He was offering everything he had, everything he was.
Did she know that? Did she understand?
He watched her swallow.
“Yes,” she said.
23
She should, of course, have said no. This time she knew exactly what she had agreed to-future pain, the danger of consequences. And she knew too that afterward, sometime before she returned to Bath, he would offer her marriage again-and that she would refuse again. She even knew that his feelings for her were deeper than just liking. She knew that her refusal would hurt him.
She did not care about any of it.
Sometimes love was to be grasped in any form and in any manner it was offered. And sometimes love must be given in the same way. After a morning of emotional turmoil, she wanted, more than anything else in this world, to give love, to pour it out recklessly and unstintingly.
“Yes,” she said again, and got to her feet.
He set a guard in front of the fire and took her by the hand. They left the room and went up the wide staircase together without speaking and turned to their right, past several closed doors, until he opened one that led into a front-facing room, obviously the main bedchamber, which was fully furnished, just as the downstairs was. The bed was made up.
“Susanna,” he said, turning to her, taking both her hands in his and holding them against the lapels of his coat, “are you sure?”
She was. She had never been more sure of anything in her life. She wanted to give, and she wanted to receive, and it struck her suddenly that both were equally important components of love. She loved him and would give him her body. She would allow him to give to her in exchange.
“I am,” she said. “Make love with me, Peter.”
“ With you.” He smiled as he leaned his head closer and touched his lips lightly to hers. “Yes, I like it.”
She let him unclothe her, first her dress, then her stockings, then her undergarments. She thought at first that she would be embarrassed. But how could she be when his eyes worshiped her and his hands too as he stripped the clothes away? And there was something undeniably erotic about the cold room and his warm hands. Her arms were covered with goose bumps, partly from the cold, partly from the anticipation of what was to come.
He kissed her again, more deeply this time, his tongue coming into her mouth, his hands on either side of her waist and then spreading over her buttocks to bring her fully against him-naked body to fully clothed body.
Desire sizzled through her.
“You are so beautiful, Susanna,” he said against her lips. “So very beautiful.”
Her fingers fumbled at his neckcloth until she discovered the way to remove it. She pushed his coat off his shoulders and down his arms until it fell to the floor. She undid the buttons of his waistcoat and sent it to follow his coat. She pulled his shirt free of his breeches, and he raised his arms so that she could lift it off over his head.
While he watched her through narrowed eyes, she set her palms flat against his chest and moved them up over the light dusting of hair to his shoulders, down his arms, back to his shoulders, and down to the waistband of his breeches. He was neither large nor brawny-he was slender and beautiful. But his chest and shoulders and upper arms were firmly muscled. She spread her hands over his chest again and set her face between them, kissing him.
He was warmer than either her hands or her lips. He smelled wonderfully of his usual cologne.
She felt the throbbing of sexual desire low in her womb and down between her thighs. She felt her breasts tauten, her nipples harden. She shivered.
He chuckled softly as he kissed the top of her head.
“I’ll do the rest,” he said. “Besides, you are freezing to death.”
He turned and drew back the bedcovers and watched as she lay down, his eyes moving over her.
Ah, how could she possibly feel embarrassed beneath such a hot gaze? But she had been too embarrassed to remove his breeches. How silly! She smiled at him, and he covered her to the chin with the heavy covers before pulling off his boots and his stockings and then his other lower garments. He did not turn away as he did so. He watched her watching him, saw her realize that he was ready for her.
“Is it warm under there?” he asked with a grin.
“It will be,” she said.
“It certainly will,” he agreed as she slid over on the bed and he lay down beside her. “And very soon too.”
She wondered suddenly what it would be like to be married to him, to share a bed thus every night, to share bodies with frequent regularity, to…
Ah, never mind. She had today.
He lifted himself onto one elbow and looked down at her, his face inches from her own, his eyes smiling into hers.
“I would like to be the Hercules of long endurance,” he said, “and keep us both panting in anticipation for the next hour or so. But I doubt it is possible. Will you mind?”