Love in the Afternoon Read online

  He touched her lips with a single finger, stroking the tremulous curves, using the tip of his thumb to part them. He kissed her, fitting his mouth to hers at varying angles. Each kiss delivered a deep, sweet shock to her nerves, spreading fire inside her, making it impossible to think clearly. His hands swept over her with a sensitive lightness that promised rather than satisfied. She was being seduced, quite skillfully.

  She felt herself being pressed to her back, one of his legs pushing between hers. His fingers smoothed over her breast, finding the aching point of a nipple veiled in silk. His thumb prodded the bud, swirled lightly, stroked with a softness that made her writhe in agitation. Taking the tip of her breast in his thumb and forefinger, he squeezed gently through the gossamer, sending a bolt of desire through her. She moaned against his lips and broke their kiss as she struggled to draw in more air.

  Christopher bent to her chest, the mist of his breath penetrating the shimmering fabric and heating the skin beneath. His tongue touched the taut peak, flickered wetly over the silk, the gauzy stimulation affording both frustration and pleasure. Beatrix reached with shaking hands to push the nightgown out of the way.

  “Slowly,” he whispered, trailing his tongue across her skin, not quite reaching the place where she most wanted it.

  Her fingers went to his cheeks and jaw, the abrasion of his shaven bristle like raw velvet against her palms. She tried to guide his mouth, and he laughed quietly, resisting. “Slowly,” he repeated, brushing kisses in the soft space between her breasts.

  “Why?” she asked between agitated breaths.

  “It’s better for both of us.” He cupped beneath her breast and shaped it in gentle fingers. “Especially you. It makes the pleasure deeper . . . sweeter . . . let me show you, love . . .”

  Her head tossed restlessly as his tongue played on her flesh. “Christopher . . .” Her voice was trembling. “I wish . . .”

  “Yes?”

  It was so terribly selfish, and yet she couldn’t help from blurting out, “I wish there had been no other women before me.”

  He looked down at her in a way that made her feel as if she were dissolving in honey. His mouth descended, caressing hers with tender, urgent warmth. “My heart belongs only to you,” he whispered. “It was never lovemaking before. This is a first for me, too.”

  She puzzled over that, staring into his bright, lambent eyes. “Then it’s different, when one is in love?”

  “Beatrix, dearest love, it’s beyond anything I’ve ever known. Beyond dreams.” His hand glided over her hip, fingers gently tugging the black gossamer aside to reach her skin. Her stomach tightened at the temptation and knowledge in his touch. “You’re the reason I live. If it weren’t for you, I never would have come back.”

  “Don’t say that.” It was unbearable, the thought of anything happening to him.

  “ ‘It’s all come down to the hope of being with you,’ . . . Do you remember when I wrote that?”

  Beatrix nodded and bit her lip as his hand slid farther beneath the transparent silk panels.

  “I meant every word,” he murmured. “I would have written much more, but I didn’t want to frighten you.”

  “I wanted to write more, too,” she said shakily. “I wanted to share every thought with you, every—” She broke off with a gasp as he found the vulnerable place between her thighs.

  “You’re so warm here,” he whispered, stroking her intimately. “So soft. Oh, Beatrix . . . I fell in love with you by words alone . . . but I have to admit . . . I prefer this way of communicating.”

  She could barely speak, her mind dazzled by sensation. “It’s still a love letter,” she said, sliding her hand over the golden slope of his shoulder. “Only in bed.”

  He smiled. “Then I’ll try to use proper punctuation.”

  “And no dangling participles,” she added, making him laugh.

  But she lost all reason for amusement as he stroked and cradled and tormented her. Too many sensations, coming from different directions. She twisted in the gathering heat. Christopher tried to ease her as the rapture rose too high, too fast, his hands gentle on her quivering limbs.

  “Please,” she said, perspiration gathering on her skin and at the roots of her hair. “I need you now.”

  “No, love. Wait just a little longer.” He caressed her thighs, his thumbs stroking up to the humid folds of her sex.

  She discovered that the most impossible thing in the world was to hold climax at bay, that the more he told her not to, the more powerfully it surged toward her. And he knew it, the devil, a teasing light in his eyes as he whispered to her . . . “Not yet. It’s too soon.” And all the while, his fingers stroked idly between her thighs, and his mouth grazed over her breast. Every part of her body was filled with desperate craving. “Don’t give in to it,” he said against her twitching skin. “Wait . . .”

  Beatrix panted and stiffened, trying to hold back the rush of sensation. But his lips opened over her nipple, and he began to tug gently, and she was lost. Crying out, she hitched upward against his mouth and hands, and let the wrenching delight overtake her. She jerked and moaned as the voluptuous spasms went through her, while tears of chagrin filled her eyes.

  Looking down at her, Christopher murmured sympathetically. His hands moved over her body in soothing strokes, and he kissed away an escaping tear. “Don’t be upset,” he whispered.

  “I couldn’t stop it from happening,” she said in a plaintive voice.

  “You weren’t supposed to,” he said tenderly. “I was playing with you. Teasing you.”

  “But I wanted it to last longer. It’s our wedding night, and it’s already over.” Pausing, Beatrix added glumly, “At least my part of it is.”

  Christopher averted his face, but she could see that he was struggling to contain a laugh. When he had mastered himself, he looked down at her with a slight smile and smoothed her hair back from her face. “I can make you ready again.”

  Beatrix was quiet for a moment as she evaluated her spent nerves and limp body. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I feel like a wrung-out kitchen mop.”

  “I promise to make you ready again,” he said, his voice threaded with amusement.

  “It will take a long time,” Beatrix said, still frowning.

  Gathering her into his arms, Christopher crushed his mouth over hers. “I can only hope so.”

  After undressing them both, Christopher kissed her sated body everywhere, tasting her leisurely. She stretched and arched, her breath quickening. He followed the subtle signs of her response, coaxing out heat as if he were nurturing a flame set to kindling. Compulsively her hands wandered over the masculine textures of him, the rough hair and hard satiny muscles, the scars that were slowly becoming familiar.

  Turning Beatrix to her side, he pulled her top knee upward. She felt him enter her from behind, the pressure of him opening her, stretching her impossibly tight. Too much, and yet she wanted more. She dropped her head to his supportive arm, and sobbed as he bent to kiss her neck. He surrounded her, filled her . . . she felt her flesh swelling with heat and sensation, her body adjusting instinctively to his.

  He whispered in her ear, words of lust and praise and adoration, telling her all the ways he wanted to pleasure her. Very gently he pushed her onto her stomach, and kneed her thighs wider. She groaned as she felt one of his hands slide beneath her hips. He cupped her sex, stroking in counterpoint as he began a deep, insistent rhythm. Faster than before, deliberate . . . ruthless. She moaned and gripped the quilt in handfuls as the sensation blazed.

  When she was at the verge of another peak, he stopped and turned her over. She couldn’t look away from the molten silver of his eyes, storms stirred by lightning.

  “I love you,” he whispered, and she jolted as he entered her again. Wrapping her arms and legs around him, she kissed and bit the thick, enticing muscle of his shoulder. He made a low sound, almost a growl, and cupped her bottom to lift her more tightly into his thrusts. Every ti
me he lunged forward, his body rubbed intimately against hers, stroking her sex over and over, sending her into a climax that shimmered through every cell and nerve.

  Christopher buried himself and held, letting the convulsions of her body pull at him wetly, severely, the mutual release exacting groans from them both. And yet the need didn’t stop. The physical release opened into a craving for even more intimacy. Rolling them both to their sides, Christopher cradled her with their bodies locked together. Even now, he wasn’t close enough to her, he wanted more of her.

  They emerged from the bed some time later to feast on the delectable cold supper that had been left for them, slices of game pie, salads, ripe black plums, cake soaked in elderflower cordial. They washed it all down with champagne, and took the last two glasses to bed, where Christopher made any number of lascivious toasts. And Beatrix made a project of applying her champagne-chilled mouth to various parts of his body. They played, and made each other laugh, and then they were silent for a while, watching the candles burn down.

  “I don’t want to fall asleep,” Beatrix mumbled. “I want tonight to last forever.”

  She felt Christopher smile against her cheek. “It doesn’t have to last. I’m personally quite optimistic about tomorrow night.”

  “In that case, I’m going to sleep. I can’t keep my eyes open any longer.”

  He kissed her gently. “Good night, Mrs. Phelan.”

  “Good night.” A drowsy smile curved her lips as she watched him leave the bed to extinguish the last of the candles.

  But first he took a pillow from the bed, and dropped it to the carpet along with a spare quilt.

  “What are you doing?”

  Christopher glanced at her over his shoulder, one brow arching. “You’ll recollect that I told you we can’t sleep together.”

  “Not even on our wedding night?” she protested.

  “I’ll be within arm’s reach, love.”

  “But you won’t be comfortable on the floor.”

  He went to snuff out the light. “Beatrix, compared to some of the places I’ve slept in the past, this is a palace. Believe me, I’ll be comfortable.”

  Disgruntled, Beatrix drew the covers around herself and lay on her side. The room went dark, and she heard the sounds of Christopher settling, and the measured sound of his breathing. Soon she felt herself slipping into the welcoming blackness . . . leaving him to contend with the demons of his sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Although Beatrix considered Hampshire to be the most beautiful place in England, the Cotswolds very nearly eclipsed it. The Cotswolds, often referred to as the heart of England, were formed by a chain of escarpments and hills that crossed Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire. Beatrix was delighted by the storybook villages with their small, neat cottages, and by the green hills covered with plump sheep. Since wool had been the most profitable industry of the Cotswolds, with profits being used to improve the landscape and build churches, more than one plaque proclaimed, THE SHEEP HATH PAID FOR ALL.

  To Beatrix’s delight, the sheepdog had a similarly elevated status. The villagers’ attitude toward dogs reminded Beatrix of a Romany saying she had once heard from Cam . . . “To make a visitor feel welcome, you must also make his dog feel welcome.” Here in this Cotswold village, people took their dogs everywhere, even to churches in which the pews were worn with grooves where leashes had been tied.

  Christopher took Beatrix to a thatched-roof cottage on the estate of Lord Brackley. The viscount, an elderly friend and connection of Annandale’s, had offered to make the place available to them indefinitely. The cottage was just out of sight of Brackley Manor, built on the other side of an ancient tithe barn. With its low arched doors, sloping thatched roof, and twice-flowering pink clematis climbing the outside walls, the cottage was enchanting.

  The main room featured a stone fireplace, beamed ceilings and comfortable furnishings, and mullioned windows overlooking a back garden. Albert went to investigate the upstairs rooms, while a pair of footmen carried in trunks and valises.

  “Does it please you?” Christopher asked, smiling as he saw Beatrix’s excitement.

  “How could it not?” she asked, turning a slow circle to view everything.

  “It’s a rather humble place for a honeymoon,” Christopher said, smiling as she bounded to him and threw her arms around his neck. “I could take you anywhere—Paris, Florence—”

  “As I told you before, I want a quiet, snug place.” Beatrix pressed impulsive kisses on his face. “Books . . . wine . . . long walks . . . and you. It’s the most wonderful place in the world. I’m already sorry to leave.”

  He chuckled, endeavoring to catch her mouth with his own. “We don’t have to leave for two weeks.” After he captured her lips in a long, searing kiss, Beatrix melted against him and sighed.

  “How could ordinary life possibly compare to this?”

  “Ordinary life will be just as wonderful,” he whispered. “As long as you’re there.”

  At Christopher’s insistence, Beatrix slept in one of two adjoining upstairs bedrooms, separated only by a thin wall of lath and plaster. He knew it bothered her not to share a room with him, but his sleep was too restless, his nightmares too unpredictable, for him to take any chances.

  Even here, in this place of unfolding happiness, there were difficult nights. He woke and sat bolt upright from dreams of blood and bullets, of faces contorted with agony, and he found himself reaching for a gun, a sword, some means of defending himself. Whenever the nightmares were especially bad, Albert always crept onto the foot of the bed and kept him company. Just as he had during the war, Albert guarded Christopher while he slept, ready to alert him if an enemy approached.

  No matter how troubled the nights were, however, the days were extraordinary . . . pleasure filled, serene, imparting a sense of well-being that Christopher hadn’t felt in years. There was something about the light in the Cotswolds, a smooth opalesence that covered the hills and farmland in a soft binding. The morning usually began with sun, the sky gradually thickening to clouds in the afternoon. Later in the day, rain fell on the brilliant autumn leaves and gave them a boiled-sugar glaze, and drew out a dark, fresh scent from the loam and clay.

  They quickly fell into a pattern of things, a simple breakfast followed by a long ramble with Albert, and then they ventured out to visit the nearby market town with its shops and bakeries, or to explore old ruins and monuments. One could not employ a purposeful stride with Beatrix. She stopped frequently to look at spiderwebs, insects, moss, nests. She listened to out-of-doors sounds with the same appreciation that other people showed while listening to Mozart. It was all a symphony to her . . . sky, water, land. She approached the world anew each day, living fully in the present, keeping pace with everything around her.

  One evening they accepted an invitation from Lord and Lady Brackley to have dinner at the manor. Most of the time, however, they secluded themselves, their privacy disrupted only when servants came from the nearby manor to bring food and fresh linens. Many an afternoon was spent making love before the hearth or in bed. The more Christopher had of Beatrix, the more he wanted.

  But Christopher was determined to shelter her from the darker side of himself, the memories that he couldn’t escape. She was patient when they came to stumbling blocks in their conversations, when one of her questions had veered close to dangerous territory. She was equally forbearing when a shadow crossed his mood. And Christopher was ashamed that she had to accommodate such complexities in his nature.

  There were moments when her gentle prying spurred a flare of irritation, and rather than snap at her, he withdrew into a cool silence. And their sleeping arrangements were a frequent source of tension. Beatrix could not seem to accept the fact that he wanted no one near him while he slept. It wasn’t merely his nightmares—he was literally incapable of falling asleep if there was someone else next to him. Every touch or sound would jolt him awake. Every night was a struggle.

  �
��At least take a nap with me,” Beatrix had coaxed one afternoon. “One little nap. It will be lovely. You’ll see. Just lie with me, and—”

  “Beatrix,” he had said in barely contained exasperation, “don’t badger. You won’t accomplish anything except to drive me mad.”

  “I’m sorry,” she had replied, chastened. “It’s only that I want to be close to you.”

  Christopher understood. But the uncompromised closeness she desired would always be impossible for him. The only thing left was to make it up to her in every other way he could think of.

  His need for her ran so deep that it seemed to be part of his blood, woven into his bones. He didn’t understand all the reasons for such mysterious alchemy. But did reasons really matter? One could pick apart love, examine every filament of attraction, and still it would never be fully explained.

  It simply was.

  Upon their return to Stony Cross, Christopher and Beatrix found Phelan House in disorder. The servants were still accustoming themselves to the new residents of the stables and the house, including the cat, hedgehog, goat, birds and rabbits, the mule, and so forth. The main reason for the disarray, however, was that most of the rooms at Phelan House were being closed and their contents stored in preparation for the household to be moved to Riverton.

  Neither Audrey nor Christopher’s mother intended to take up residence at Phelan House. Audrey preferred to live in town with her family, who surrounded her with affection and attention. Mrs. Phelan had elected to remain in Hertfordshire with her brother and his family. The servants who were either unable or unwilling to move away from Stony Cross would remain behind to care for Phelan House and its grounds.

  Mrs. Clocker gave Christopher a detailed report of what had occurred in his absence. “More wedding gifts have arrived, including some lovely crystal and silver, which I have placed on the long table in the library along with the cards that accompanied them. There is a stack of correspondence and calling cards as well. And sir . . . there was a call paid by an army officer. Not one of those who attended your wedding, but another. He left his card and said he would return soon.”