Page 10 of Marquess of Mistletoe
The cold became his ally, as he draped his dressing gown over the chest at the foot of the bed. His silk trousers went next, while Marielle sat up on the bed and watched as a cat watches an oblivious sparrow.
“You were wounded,” she said, as Leo drew his shirt over his head. “More than once. Come here.” She traced a finger over the scar on his left arm, then laid her palm over the mark the bullet had left on his shoulder. “I hate that you were injured.”
“I suffered far less than many others. Raphael would allow only competent surgeons to tend me, and he made sure I healed properly.”
“He’s that great beast of a man I saw in the common?”
“One and the same. Have you looked your fill?”
She frankly studied his erection. “One suspected you would not be overly burdened with modesty.”
“Is one pleased to have one’s conjectures confirmed?”
Marielle smiled, reminding him of the adventurous, determined girl she’d been. “Several of my conjectures about you have proved happily accurate. I’m trying to savor the moment.”
She was also delaying the removal of her own clothing. Leo made a circuit of the room, blowing out candles, banking the fire, and considering strategy.
“I’d make a request of you,” he said, when Marielle had passed him her night robe. Her nightgown could have served as a horse blanket, it was so voluminous.
“Now, you want to negotiate?”
“Negotiation is for mercantile endeavors, Marielle. I’m asking for your trust, as a man honestly communicates with his lover.”
“This sounds serious,” she said, rubbing her arms.
“If this is to be the only night I share with you, then I’d ask you to keep your impetuosity in check. Give me time, Marielle, to become reacquainted with you. You have been precious to me for most of my life. I don’t want to make love to your memory, I want to make love with you.”
“You were always like this,” she said, holding up the covers for him. “You could turn up serious and sweet at the most unpredictable times. I adored you for it.”
Past tense. Leo spooned himself around her, gathered her close, and set about turning the past tense into the present. He’d never been naked with Marielle before, never held her with only a thin silk nightgown between them.
For Christmas, he’d been given a chance to revisit a dream, and he intended to make the most of it, even if it broke his heart to let her go in the morning.
* * *
Why had Marielle asked Leo for this? A woman married for years knew exactly what transpired between the sheets. Her husband—or lover, if she was adventurous, which Marielle was not—spent a few minutes kissing her and fondling the parts he’d never touch under any other circumstances. Then he climbed over her, heaved and poked about for a bit, and came to a shuddering conclusion.
He’d finish by lying atop her, panting like an overtaxed hound while she stroked his hair and hoped the sheets wouldn’t become untidy, though they often did, which one would never mention.
Some of it was nice enough—the closeness and cuddling, if the man didn’t fall immediately asleep. Within two months of becoming a wife, though, Marielle had concluded that what fascinated most men, the forbidden ecstasy of intimate congress, was in truth rather tedious and none too dignified for the lady.
With Leo, she’d never worried about her dignity, never been bored by kissing and fondling. She’d loved every moment shared with him. The shared meal in the cozy private parlor had confirmed that they still had the gift of conversation with each other.
Even while she’d mentally castigated Leo for abandoning her, she’d always wondered if his lovemaking would have been more exciting than her marital experiences.
“You were my guilty secret,” she said, as Leo’s arms came around her in the bed. He was a good cuddler, damn him. Always had been. “I’ve wondered if I didn’t choose an unremarkable man for my husband, so I wouldn’t try to measure him against you.”
“Was he unremarkable?”
Marielle hadn’t given her marriage much thought, once the shock and sadness of burying a spouse too young had faded.
“My father objected to you because you were merely gentry, but I see that you were attractive in part because your family did not come from great wealth and a lofty title.”
“Your feet would freeze the Thames. I’d forgotten that about you. You don’t care for titles now?”
“I don’t care for an indolent life, Leo. My husband got up in the morning and went for a hack in the park if the weather was fine. Then he joined me for breakfast and read the paper, then he went off to his club to read another paper, and smoke, or gossip about politics. His afternoons were spent at the tailor’s, Jackson’s, Tatts, browsing Hatchards… what was the point? This was the much-vaunted life of a gentleman, and what was the point of all that indolence?”
“You were bored.”
