The Courtship Read online

  No, they had to remain right here. No choice. He slipped his hand between them and pressed his palm against her breast. To his relief, her heart was beating slowly and steadily. He could do nothing but wait.

  He thought about his reaction to her, and was still amazed. It had been too much, far too much. He had simply never felt anything like it, the urge to have her so powerful, so very urgent, that nothing else had existed for him in those moments, just Helen and being inside her, holding her tight and tighter still until they were joined so deeply neither of them could feel anything apart from the other.

  What had happened—he distrusted it profoundly, now that his body had calmed from its incredible need. An aberration, he thought, just being here in the rain, in this ruin of a cottage, seeing her beautiful blond hair straggling around her face, and he had lost all sense. He supposed that she had as well. He had enjoyed many women over the years. He had always been the one to set the pace of things, but this time he had lost himself in the dust. And he had spilled his seed inside her, something he never did. He wanted no woman pregnant by him. But with Helen, he had simply leapt off a cliff, screaming with the joy of it, and hadn’t cared what parts of him had landed where.

  She had quite simply stunned him.

  A woman rarely got pregnant with just one mistake. Actually, he would have spilled his seed deep inside her a second time if the roof hadn’t fallen in on them.

  At least she’d had pleasure in those moments before it had happened.

  He kissed her temple.

  He felt her move. Relief surged through him. She had been unconscious for only about four or five minutes. “Helen,” he said against her cheek. “Helen.”

  He felt her moan deep in her throat.

  “Helen, open your eyes. Come back now, Helen.”

  She opened her eyes.

  He lightly touched his fingertips to her cheek. “Welcome back.”

  He said nothing more, waiting for her to gather herself. Her eyes were vague, just as they had been when she’d been on the edge of her orgasm. He pulled back a bit more so he could see her more clearly. To let her focus on his face.

  “What happened?”

  A skinny little thread of a voice, he thought, and smiled at her. “It’s all right. You saved us from being smashed beneath the collapsed roof. However, something hit you behind your left ear. There’s just a bit of blood. Tell me, how many fingers am I waggling in front of your face?”

  “Too many.”

  “Close your eyes, just think about nothing at all. I’m here and we’re safe. But don’t go to sleep. Whatever struck you knocked you a bit silly. Tell me when you want to count fingers again.”

  “I’ve never done that before.”

  He leaned down and kissed her pale mouth. “Never been hit on the head by a falling roof? Or saved the man who just lost his head over you?”

  “That, too. I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’m quite ready to race you back to the country lane. What are we going to do, Spenser?”

  “Nothing at the moment. Don’t worry about a thing, Helen. I’ll do all the worrying. Now, how far are we from a village or a farmer’s house?”

  She was shivering. He wrapped her more tightly against him. “I know you’re wet. Unfortunately I am just as wet, so I can’t help you.” He thought a moment. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to get all those clothes off you and strip myself as well. Then we’re going to get so close we’ll be hot as oven bricks in no time at all.”

  Helen moaned, but said nothing. He stripped her, something he had done to many women many times in his adult life, but it wasn’t fun this time. Her clothes were wet and sticking to her, she was shivering, her teeth chattered, and her eyes were closed against the pain any movement brought her. “I’m sorry, Helen, nearly there now. Did I tell you how very beautiful you are? No, perhaps now isn’t time to talk about bodily sorts of things. Now, these clothes are wet. You’ll have my body against you in just a moment. Hold on just a bit longer.”

  Finally they were both naked and he managed to pull Helen’s petticoat directly over them. The petticoat was just damp, so it wasn’t quite so bad. Then he layered all their other clothes over the petticoat.

  It wasn’t bad at all.

  “You’re hotter than the old brick oven my father had installed in his hunting box near Leeds.”

  His eyes were crossed. He was hard against her belly, he just couldn’t help it. He kissed her temple. “Don’t pay any attention to me, Helen. I can’t control that part of me. Just ignore it. Are you feeling warmer?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, her breath warm against his throat. “You feel very interesting against me, but it doesn’t matter. I’m very tired, Spenser.”

  “Blink your eyes and look at me. Yes, that’s it. Now, Helen, you’re not a fragile little miss. Don’t you dare go to sleep. Wrap your arm around me. Yes, that’s right. Is your back warm enough?”

  Since he was stroking his hand up and down her back, over her buttocks and as far as he could reach down the back of her thighs, she was growing very warm, very quickly. And because he was a man, he probably spent more time stroking her hips. “This isn’t something you could have planned, is it, Spenser?”

  “The roof collapsing?”

  “No, I was thinking about all of it, each thing that happened that triggered the next. It is almost as if you put into motion a perfectly executed form of discipline. Except for me getting hit on the head. A master of discipline wouldn’t want that to happen.”

  “No, the master wouldn’t.” His hand was on her buttocks, his fingers splayed. He was pushing her against him, and he was desperately hard again, nearly shaking with it. What was wrong with him?

  “Just ignore me,” he said again against her ear.

  “That’s rather impossible. You’re shoving me against you. My head is better. Yes, and I’m warm now. Oh, goodness, this is nonsense. I’ve never lost my head like this before. I don’t like it, Spenser, I don’t like it at all.” And without any shoving from him, she moved against him.

  He didn’t care about liking it or disliking it. He just wanted her now, and it was as strong and prodding as it had been the first time. He rolled on top of her. “Helen,” he said, and began kissing her. He was between her legs and then he was inside her, her arms clasped around his back.

  It was fast and hard, and when she yelled to the roofed sky that still held steady over their heads, he reared back and did his own yelling.

  He didn’t want to leave her, and so he didn’t. He managed to cover them again and to his surprise, he went to sleep, his head beside hers, still inside her.

  Helen looked up at the narrow slice of roof that covered them. She wasn’t cold now and her head didn’t particularly hurt. She was so surprised, so utterly bewildered by what had happened between them, that when the incredible feelings began to build again inside her, she just sighed deeply and kissed him back. She felt his fingers on her, and he didn’t stop his beguiling rhythm until she was panting hard into his mouth. He smiled down at her as he moved slowly, fully, and it didn’t take long, even this time, the third time, and he realized vaguely as he spilled his seed deeply inside her that surely this was something amazing, to want and want. He wasn’t a randy boy; he was a damned man and he was thirty-three years old.

  When his brain turned outward, finally, he said against her left ear, “I really don’t want to expire in a ruined cottage, wallowing in the rain.”

  “I’m well enough, just a slight headache. It will be dark in an hour. I should be exhausted, but I’m not. I feel marvelous. I can walk now.”

  Actually, he himself could have leapt up and danced an Irish jig. His body pulsed with incredible energy. He didn’t want to, but finally he managed to make himself pull away from her. He rose and looked down at her. His face was hard with satisfaction. He gave her his hand and pulled her to her feet.

  “No,” he said, “Helen, don’t look at my mouth or I’ll toss you back down
again. We must dress. We must find shelter.”

  She hated the layers of clothes that chilled her to her very bones. When she sat down to lace up her boots, he was leaning over trying to pull on his own boots.

  She laughed. He looked at her and grinned. It wasn’t raining quite as hard when they made their way back to the country road, but it still took them an hour to return to Shugbourgh Hall.

  “Oh, my God,” Lord Prith said when the two of them strolled like bedraggled urchins into the entrance hall. “I shall heat some champagne immediately.”

  Lord Beecham begged for brandy and got it. Lord Prith shooed him off to his bedchamber, where Nettle was already pouring hot water into his bath. He stripped his lordship in a minute flat and wrapped him in a dressing gown. Lord Beecham added wood to the fire while Nettle nearly broke into tears over the state of his Hessians. When he was in the tub, leaning back, his eyes closed, he saw Helen, naked, beneath him, arching up when his fingers caressed her, and he saw himself leaning down to kiss her as she screamed out her pleasure.

  Three times he’d taken her.

  What the hell had he done?

  As for Helen, she realized much sooner exactly what she had done, and she cursed the air blue. Teeny paced in front of her tub, back and forth, wringing her hands, completely misunderstanding why her mistress appeared so angry she could spit.

  Teeny said, “There is no reason for you to be mad about all the blood on your head, Miss Helen. I will be upset for both of us. It’s real blood, Miss Helen. Let me call in the physician.”

  “I’m not mad, Teeny, you are. Now listen to me. I would have to be dead before I would let Ozzie anywhere near my person.”

  “But you have said that he never tries to kill people.”

  “Yes, that is true, but he fancies himself in love with me. No, he cannot come near me. Come now and help me wash my hair. We’ll get the blood out, don’t worry.”

  Yes, Helen knew what she had done. What she had done three times. And it had been glorious. She cursed herself as she walked down the stairs to dinner.

  Luther and Eleanor were home in the stables, having returned even later than she and Lord Beecham had, which was why, her father told her, no one had been in the least concerned.

  “What were those damned horses doing if they didn’t come back here after they threw us?” Lord Beecham asked the table at large as he felt the rich turtle soup slide all hot and tangy down his throat. Was that a hint of lemon he tasted?

  Helen cleared her throat and said to the potatoes on her fork, “They were probably taking shelter, just as you and I were, Lord Beecham. Don’t worry, Father. I can see you puffing up to worry in the worst way. I drank the warmed champagne and it cleared my head to such a degree that the past three hours could never have happened.”

  She looked Lord Beecham straight in the eye. “Indeed, those three hours are fast becoming a blur in my mind. Yes, now all I remember is Lord Beecham and me riding away from here to Dereham. Then everything is a complete blur. There must have been rain, since we came back wet, but for all the in-between?

  “It is gone from my mind and my memory. Now, everything is as it was. Nothing is any different. Nothing at all.”

  Lord Beecham should have heard that with relieved ears. But he didn’t. He didn’t know why, but it enraged him. She wanted to forget he had given her immense pleasure three times? He cursed into his soup.

  Helen rose when she finished her dinner. She looked directly at her father. “I am going to bed now. I hope you and Lord Beecham will excuse me. Whatever happened this afternoon has made me very tired.

  “Lord Beecham, I will see you in the morning. If it isn’t raining, we can once again endeavor to reach Dereham.”

  What was he to say? What he wanted to do was push back his chair, rise slowly, never taking his eyes off her, walk to where she stood, and put his hands around her white neck. He didn’t know how hard he would squeeze. Certainly hard enough to gain her attention, curse her. He flexed impotent fingers as he watched her leave the dining room. She was dressed in soft gray silk down that draped very nicely over that delicious white body of hers.

  He had made love to her three times, given her his all, actually more than his all, simply because, for no reason he could fathom, she had hauled it out of him. She had completely possessed him, emptied him, and now she wanted to forget it?

  Not if he had anything to say about it.

  He and Lord Prith played whist. Lord Prith talked about how his sweet little Nell was the very picture of her soft, very gentle mother. If it had not been for Flock hovering close, Lord Beecham would have choked to death on his brandy.

  He lost sixty pounds and had drunk too much delicious smuggled French brandy by the time Flock fetched his lordship for their evening walk.

  11

  “DAMN YOUR EYES, HELEN, you will talk to me about this. Women always love to talk after making love to the point of rendering a man insensible. Usually a woman starts chattering immediately, when the man is lying there, felled, still utterly witless. I will admit that our surroundings yesterday were perhaps not all that inspiring, and thus you wished to wait to talk everything to death and in great detail. Now it is time. We are in pleasant surroundings. Now you may speak to me.”

  Nothing from Helen.

  He persevered. “You may now feel free to thrash everything over, Helen. You may complain about certain minor digressions or perhaps omissions.”

  But Helen, curse her beautiful eyes, began whistling.

  He jerked on Luther’s reins, and his horse reared back, nearly unseating him. He turned to her and yelled, “Damn you, stop that. All right. I will accept that just perhaps not everything that happened between us was necessarily perfect during those hours yesterday that you are claiming to forget.”

  “Goodness, Spenser, whatever are you talking about?”

  He ignored that bit of goading. He was a reasonable man. Sometimes a woman needed to be eased into spilling her innards. She had to trust a man, know that he admired her, particularly if she wished to praise him. Of course she knew he believed she was utterly delicious. She also knew, damn her, that he’d given her wondrous pleasure. He could still feel her hot breath in his mouth when she moaned her climax. He had felt it to his toes. His breathing hitched for a moment. Perhaps she was just embarrassed to tell him how spectacular a lover he was. That had to be it. “If you wish to speak of how immensely well suited we are, you may do so now. I will listen. I will attend you.”

  Helen continued to whistle. A robin redbreast answered from a maple tree to the side of the country road. Rage was building up inside him, nice, bubbling rage, but still he held his voice calm, the epitome of male reason.“Listen to me. We are alone, there is no more bloody rain today, the sun is shining down quite brightly on our heads, our horses are clipping along at a fine rate, and I am ready to listen to you.

  “It is all right, Helen. I understand you now. You want me to wrap every pleasurable thing we did yesterday all up in a poetic and soulful package.”

  She gave him a look of female amusement, a look that could shrivel a man’s manhood. “Since we did not do anything at all yesterday afternoon—at least nothing worth mentioning that I can remember—then you may take all your soulful packages and dump them in a ditch.”

  “You will stop trying to enrage me. This so-called memory lapse of yours is laughable. When I take a woman, she never forgets it. Never. If I ever take a woman three times, her life changes utterly.”

  Curse her all the way to China, she laughed. She looked over at him and laughed. He pulsed with rage.

  Then, suddenly, she stopped her laughter and looked all sorts of bored, even indifferent. She looked down at her tan leather riding gloves that had Eleanor’s reins wrapped loosely around them, looked down at her black riding boots that could have been polished to a brighter shine, but she didn’t have a valet like Nettle, so what was she to do? She looked all too ready to continue with her show of bored indifferen
ce.

  He was ready to leap off Luther’s back and take her to the ground and—his mind balked at what followed then. She turned to look at him again and said in an unruffled, calm voice that reeked of martyred female patience, of which there was no other kind in his experience, “There is no need for you to sulk, Lord Beecham. You should learn how to control your wounded male vanity.”

  “Damn you, my name is Spenser.”

  “Very well, Spenser, I will use your given name until you behave like an ass—again.”

  “Helen, do you want me to throw you to the ground and show you yet again that my taking you—three times, mind you—was one of the greatest experiences in your damned provincial life?”

  “Goodness,” she said, shaking her head at him, her tranquil self still firmly in place, and rubbing his nose in it, “you certainly have an exalted opinion of yourself, Lord Beecham. I wish that you would simply forget all that nonsense of yesterday and strive to remember that you are my partner, not my lover.”

  “I want to be both. I am both. There is no reason to discontinue either one or the other, particularly the other. I want to continue what we started. I regret that you were struck on the head by some falling roof, that you were wet through to your bones, that the rotted wooden floor wasn’t quite as comfortable as a bed, but all of that aside, regardless, you enjoyed yourself immensely. Three times. And I was the man to give you all that pleasure.”

  “Yes, I did, and so you were. So what?”

  So what? He could but stare at her, his brain at half-mast. No woman had ever said that to him in his male adult life.

  So what? She had actually said so what?

  He was primed to yell. He stopped himself. He drew a deep, steadying breath. He even smiled at her as he said, “That was quite amusing. What do you mean, ‘So what’?”

  “I mean, sir, that yesterday afternoon was a very short amount of time when one but considers the possible age of the universe, for example. It was barely a spit in the ocean of time.