Page 72 of Miss Delightful
“I’ve cursed him too,” Dorcas said, her fingers skimming Alasdhair’s jaw.
“And have you missed me?” An idiot’s question. She’d seen him not four days past.
“Terribly. I want you now, Alasdhair.” Her boots were off, but other than that, she was still all buttoned up and braided. She leaned back on her elbows and bunched up her skirts. “Right now.”
A man “duchessed” a lady when he made love to her without removing his boots. This was supposedly commemorative of the Duke of Marlborough’s reunion with his wife after some ferocious military campaign and protracted separation.
Alasdhair was not a duke, and he did not care for lovemaking that bore too close a resemblance to mindless rutting. And yet, Dorcas offering herself to him like this, eager and insistent, was a powerful temptation.
“Can we not savor one another and cuddle a wee bit first?” Again, he tried for a touch of humor, but Dorcas only sat forward and began unbuttoning his falls.
“We can cuddle later. I have missed you.”
This wasn’t merely missing. This was something Alasdhair had not encountered in her before. Upset of some sort, frustration perhaps as a result of Michael’s arrival. SheneededAlasdhair desperately, and that was both alarming and enticing.
“Dorcas, settle. You won’t have to ask again. Lie back, and let me love you.”
Alasdhair eased her onto the mattress and stood between her legs. He kissed her. He nuzzled all the sweet spots she liked to have nuzzled. He stroked her breasts through too many layers of fabric, and the whole time, he had the sense she was humoring him, for all that she remained quiescent and passive.
Somewhere between Dorcas’s right ear and her left eyebrow, Alasdhair realized that hesitating because the lady wastooinsistent was nigh ridiculous. They were to be married. They’d endured more than a week of forced celibacy, and he loved her madly.
He sank into her heat on a slow glide, and she sighed as if all the troubles of the world had been lifted from her shoulders. She kissed him with an ardor that combined tenderness and demand, and made a sound of yearning that drove him witless with desire.
He didn’t last long, but she didn’t need him to. Within a few moments, her yearning had turned to keening and panting, and then she was clinging to him as if he’d rescued her from the pit itself. Alasdhair barely,barelymanaged to satisfy Dorcas before spending in his handkerchief.
He hung over her, his chest heaving and his heart more than a little bewildered. What had they just done? Did this qualify as lovemaking, something more, or something less?
“Talk to me,” he said, gathering her close. “Something is afoot, and you think to protect me by keeping it to yourself.”
Her hand drifting through his hair paused. “Why do you say that?”
A question where an answer should be. Alasdhair spoke quietly, directly into her ear. “Dorcas, you don’t hide the truth from me. What’s wrong?”
She applied the lightest pressure to his chest, and he straightened. She was flushed and rosy, her skirts frothed around her waist, and she should have looked like a happily tumbled lady.
“You are crying.” She wascrying, and she’d hidden even that from him.
“I cannot marry you.”
Cannotwas, by the smallest increment of hope, better thanwill not.Alasdhair clung to that minuscule distinction even as he let the lady go.
“You refuse to be my wife, but I’m adequate for a wimble?”
She pushed her skirts down over her knees and yet remained on her back. “Please don’t be difficult.”
Alasdhair needed to eat. He’d put off his midmorning snack because he’d wanted to share it with Dorcas if she came by. More than food, though, he needed answers. He offered her his hand to pull her up to a sitting position, then took the place beside her.
“I must know why, Dorcas. If you’d sent me a letter waving me off, if I’ve given offense somehow… but you come here and all but accost me, doing a very good impersonation of a smitten lady. Now you plan to march back to St. Mildred’s without a backward glance?” Curses welled, propelled on a rush of confusion with a violent edge. “If we cannot have a future, might we not at least have the truth between us?”
As anxious and angry as he was, another rotten feeling was crowding out his temper. Had Vicar Delancey and his perfect son pressured Dorcas into considering Mornebeth’s suit? She loved her menfolk and would do anything for them, but such a sacrifice was beyond what they deserved from her.
Surely she knew that?
“My cousins were worried for me,” Alasdhair said. “They said this courtship was happening too quickly, that I was being incautious. Were they right, Dorcas? Have you found some regrets stashed between committee meetings and calls upon the elderly and infirm?”
She pressed her forehead against his arm. “Don’t. Please, Alasdhair. I did not intend for matters to progress as they did this morning. I had a little speech rehearsed, about changing my mind. You said I could change my mind. That the decisions were mine to make. Then you started bragging about John’s letters, and I became so angry… I will not know when he mastersporg. I will not meet your family, I will never learn your complicated Highland tongue, and I will never…”
Tears trickled down her cheeks, and yet, she sounded completely composed. Alasdhair risked an arm around her shoulders.
