Cato cried out with the strength of his own climax; his penis throbbed deep within her velvety sheath as her inner muscles closed around him with a life all of their own.
Phoebe fell forward, her head on his shoulder, her sweat-slick skin pressed to his. He laid a hand on her curved back as if to soothe her, and for a moment her eyes closed and she seemed to sleep. But it was only a moment. Then she felt his hands beneath her bottom, lifting her slightly as he slid from her body.
She raised her head from his shoulder and looked down into the dark eyes. A smile still lingered there but there was a question behind the smile.
“I think… yes, I really think you have to explain,” he said. “Just what is all this, Phoebe?”
Phoebe climbed from his lap. She stood looking down at him, the sweat cooling on her skin, her expression now uncertain. “I thought… Portia thought…”
“Portia!” Cato exclaimed. “I might have known. She has a hand in everything.”
“Well, I had to ask someone!” Phoebe said, stung. “I knew it wasn’t right, the way every night we did this…” She threw her hands in the air. “I don’t know what it was that we were doing, but it wasn’t making love. And I wanted to make love. I didn’t know how to tell you that, so I had to show you.”
Cato regarded her in frowning silence. He felt as if his entire world had turned upside down. The frigid girl he had believed he had taken to wife was no such thing. She was as lusty as any of the women of the night he had enjoyed, as uninhibited and, it seemed incredibly, as knowing. Yet he knew she’d been virgin on their wedding night. He didn’t know what to make of it. He didn’t even know whether he liked it. Which was pure contrary ingratitude, he recognized, but it was such a shock to find a gently bred young woman possessed of such an earthy sensuality.
He saw her shiver and said swiftly, “You’re cold. Climb into bed now.” He drew back the bedcurtains and then stared at the hump of the bolster in the middle. “Phoebe, what on earth…”
“Well, I was afraid you might look in the bed before you undressed and if I wasn’t there…” She shrugged.
Cato shook his head, at a loss for words. He pulled out the bolster and turned down the covers. “In.”
Phoebe clambered into bed and nestled against the pillows. The deep feather mattress cradled her languid body and the crisp sheets were wonderfully cool and fresh against her still-overheated skin.
She watched as Cato turned away and kicked off his unfastened britches. The moment of unease disappeared as her eyes drank in every glorious inch of his back view. The long sweep of his back from the broad shoulders, the sinuous ripple of his shoulder blades beneath the muscled flesh. His backside was glorious. So different from a female bottom, Phoebe thought with a little hug of delight. It was smooth and taut rather than rounded, and startlingly white against the darker line at his waist. Obviously he had spent time shirtless in the sun. His thighs were long and hard; even the backs of his knees and the muscled swell of his calves delighted her.
And then he turned to come to the bed, and she gazed at the wide expanse of his chest, the points of his nipples nestled in the light dusting of dark hair, the narrow waist and the slim hips. Her eyes followed the trail of black hair that began at his navel. His quiescent sex now looked small and almost vulnerable, she thought, like a dormouse asleep in its nest of crisp curling black hair. A little tremor went through her as she remembered the feel of its thrusting hardness deep within her.
“Why didn’t you wish to make proper love with me?” The question spoke itself.
Cato paused, one hand resting on the bedpost. “I didn’t expect you to enjoy it,” he said after a minute.
“But… but why not?”
He ran a hand over the back of his neck. “In my experience, wives are not particularly…” He paused, searching for words. “Particularly lustful,” he said finally. “In truth I hadn’t expected you to be any different.”
“Is it inappropriate for a wife to feel lust?”
Cato considered the question. “You’re an exception to every rule in the book, Phoebe.”
Phoebe wasn’t quite sure how to take that. “What about love?” she asked, tentatively now.
Cato turned away and snuffed the candles on the mantel. “Love has nothing to do with such alliances.”
The mattress shifted beneath his weight as he climbed in beside her. After a minute he stretched out an arm and drew Phoebe against him, twining his fingers in her hair as he turned her face into his shoulder.
Cato Granville was going to learn to love her, Phoebe thought as sleep claimed her.
Chapter 9
Brian Morse rode up to the front door of Cato’s manor under a lowering sky. The snow lay thick on the ground except where a party of soldiers had cleared a narrow path along the driveway.
He looked up at the house, with its mullioned windows and gabled snow-covered roof. It was a substantial pile of stone, and he wondered how much Cato had paid for it. Not that it would have been more than a bagatelle for the marquis of Granville, whose wealth was almost legendary.
A wealth that was within Brian Morse’s grasp.
He dismounted, tethered his horse to the hitching post beside the door, and banged the great brass knocker. A well-dressed retainer opened the door. He was not one of the servants from Castle Granville whom Brian would have recognized, and he regarded the stranger with an air of polite if aloof curiosity.
“Is Lord Granville within?” inquired Brian, stamping the snow off his boots against the edge of the step.
“May I say who’s asking for him, sir?”
“Who’s at the door, Bisset?” Cato’s voice came from behind the butler. He stepped out of the dimness of the hall. His dark eyes narrowed over a flash of disquiet when he saw his visitor. But he spoke pleasantly.
“Well, Brian, this is a surprise. Come in out of the cold.”
Bisset stepped aside and Brian entered Cato’s house, drawing off his gloves. “You must indeed be surprised,” he said in somewhat ruefully apologetic tones. “I trust it won’t be an unpleasant surprise though, when I’ve explained myself.”
He extended his hand to his stepfather, who took it in a firm, cool grasp.
“Bisset, have Mr. Morse’s horse taken to the stables. Have you breakfasted, Brian?”
“Not as yet, sir. I left Oxford before dawn. I had no wish to meet any patrols and thought to travel under cover of dark and snow.”
Cato raised an eyebrow. Only something of vital importance would have sent a man out alone, even armed, on horseback and in such foul weather. “Come.” He gestured towards his study at the rear of the hall. “Bring bread and meat and ale, Bisset.”
Olivia stood at the bend of the stair looking down into the hall, hardly breathing.
“Who’s that?” Phoebe murmured behind her. She didn’t know why she was whispering, but there was something about Olivia’s posture that seemed to encourage secrecy.
“The pig,” Olivia stated.
“Who?”
“The swine… the g-guttercrawler.” Olivia’s mouth was compressed, her dark eyes flaring. “Brian Morse,” she expanded. “My father’s stepson. He’s a loathsome, belly-c-crawling snake.”
Phoebe had heard the famous story of how Portia and Olivia had squashed this particular snake back in Castle Granville two years earlier. Cato’s stepson had had the malicious habit of making fun of Olivia’s stammer.
“I wonder what he wants. Isn’t he supposed to be for the king? I’m sure Cato said so.”
Olivia shrugged. “I don’t c-care what he wants, just so long as he doesn’t stay.” She turned and ran back upstairs.