Page 82 of Tremaine's True Love
Nita locked the door, a snick of metal on metal that might have been a pistol shot, so loudly did Tremaine hear it.
“I’ve missed you, Tremaine St. Michael.”
She tossed that admission at his figurative, betrothed feet, a challenge and a concession all in one. The demented part of Tremaine that waited for her to abandon him was reassured by her words. The male part of him nearly pounced on her in reply.
“We shared two congenial meals today,” he said, prowling closer, “and sang a recognizable duet after dinner.” He stopped immediately before her. “You can’t possibly be missing me.”
Nita went up on her toes to kiss him, bringing Tremaine a whiff of lavender, lemons, and a different sort of madness altogether. With one hand, she cupped his jaw.
With the other, she gently squeezed his cock. “Tell me you missed me too, Tremaine. We’re engaged. Sentimental talk between us is permitted.”
This woman was not bent on talk. “You should not be here, my dear.”Stay. Please stay.
Another squeeze, marvelously firm. “I agree. I should not be here. You should have come to my room. The corridors are chilly, and my feet are cold.”
As Tremaine’s mouth descended over Nita’s, his instincts tossed out a theory: Nita was also plagued by the fear that their vows would never be spoken, that Tremaine would abandon her to putrid sore throats and cursing Quakers, never to have babies or a family of her own.
When he might have plundered, his kiss instead cherished. “Will you allow us to be married by special license, my lady?”
“Stop negotiating, Tremaine. Nicholas told me he acceded to your terms, now you will accede to mine.”
Nita’s list of terms began with another prodigiously thorough kiss and a few sanity-robbing squeezes.
“That,” she said against his mouth, “is for spending the afternoon with your correspondence.”
Tremaine kissed her back, then scooped her off her cold feet and deposited her on the bed.
“Thatis for imperiling my limited skill with dinner conversation, Lady Nita. When we’re married, we will sit at opposite ends of a proper table.”
She hauled him closer by virtue of two fists snatching him by the lapels of his night robe. “Not at breakfast we won’t. Not when we’re dining in private. Not when we’re picnicking by the river.”
Tremaine loved her. Loved her courage and boldness, loved her compassion for those less fortunate, loved her ferocious desire for him.
“You will marry me by special license,” Tremaine said, untying the sash of her night robe, “or you will take pity on a poor, defenseless fiancé and leave my bed.”
The sad, lonely, disappointed part of him still expected her to do just that—to tease him to within an inch of his sanity, then flounce off into the night. The rest of him was glad she’d had the presence of mind to lock the door five minutes ago.
“Make love with me, Tremaine. I told Nicholas I’m insisting on a special license so as not to overshadow Della’s come-out this spring.”
Tremaine paused between untying bow number 884 and yanking open bow number 885. “Do you have another reason for a special license, my lady?”
Nita ran her hand over his hair, the tenor of her caress shifting their discussion from the verbal battledore of mating adults to an exchange between lovers.
“I’m afraid when I wake up tomorrow, I’ll find that I dreamed you,” she said. “You never visited Belle Maison, or if you did, you rode on your way, having bargained Nicholas’s sheep away from him. I’m nobody’s fiancée, I’ll be nobody’s wife. I’m plain, dependable Lady Nita, and always will be.”
Tremaine curled down to press his cheek against Nita’s, and when he should have confided in her about a small boy with a huge heartache, his orphaned courage dodged behind the prudence of a self-sufficient adult male.
“I’m here, Nita. I’m real, and I’m your fiancé. We will marry whenever you please. The license should be delivered on Monday.”
Words were in short supply after that. They undressed each other slowly, between kisses, caresses, smiles, and whispers. Threats alternated with promises until Tremaine was poised over his intended, skin to skin beneath the covers.
“Do you still fear I’m a figment of your dreams, my lady?”
“Part of me will likely always fear that,” she said, her fingers laced with his on the pillow. “Somewhere along the way, between my parents’ funerals and my brothers’ weddings, I lost a part of myself, Tremaine, and you’ve found it for me.”
Nita had lost the courage to hope, and how well Tremaine knew that poverty. Life became a matter of tackling challenges, of focusing always ahead, never behind.
And never inward.
