Page 47 of Miss Dauntless
“What just occurred is to pleasure as warm is to the center of the sun and chilly is to the polar extremes, Marcus.”
He throbbed and ached to follow her into the center of the sun, but that rapture would have to wait. Tremont withdrew, rolled to his back, and, with a few brisk strokes, brought himself to completion.
“Handkerchief,” he said. “In the drawer.”
Matilda took pity on him and passed him the requested linen. “You did not want to risk conception, and yet, you need heirs.”
“I need to hold you.” He tossed the cloth in the direction of the privacy screen and wrapped an arm beneath Matilda’s neck. “I need desperately to hold you.”
He expected an argument, a discussion of vocabulary, a display of feminine independence for form’s sake, but Matilda—blessed among women—came into his embrace and tucked herself against his side.
“Do you know, Marcus, that I desperately need to be held? The lovemaking was astonishing and lovely, and I am going all to pieces, and… Please hold me and hold me, and never let me go.”
He drew the covers up over her shoulders and wrapped her in his arms.
Matilda gained some insight into what it was like for Marcus to go through life with six competing choruses at full voice in his head at all times.
Amazement thrummed through her, echoing the bodily pleasure she’d found with her intended.
Fury added to her mental cacophony, at Harry and Joseph, a pair of amatory bumblers who had the same equipment adorning every other adult male, but who hadn’t bothered to learn its proper use with a lover.
Lassitude, because Marcus’s hand stroking slowly over her bare back was indescribably soothing.
And gratitude, to Marcus and to life, for affirming her hope that intimacy with a man should be more than a bothersome interlude before a lady availed herself of a decent night’s sleep.
What Matilda feltforMarcus defied words. She recognized protectiveness in the mix, affection, enormous respect, physical attraction, and more, but the passion of those emotions lifted and blended them into a new experience, just as the lovemaking had been a new experience.
I have fallen in love.When all hope of romance had passed, when she’d disdained her younger self for longing for such sweeping emotions, the tenderest of sentiments engulfed her. She cast around for something sweet and memorable to say, something that would stay with a man who could quote Shakespeare, the Stoics, and the Bible with casual ease.
“I never want to leave this bed.”
Marcus’s chest—over which she was draped—bounced a little, and he patted her bottom. “We’d grow hungry, my dearest, and we must not neglect our responsibilities.”
He was teasing her, mostly. Matilda kissed his nose for that. “You have it backward. My father had it backward too. We must not neglect our pleasures, or those responsibilities will choke us to death as surely as a lung fever can.”
“The Stoics would despair of you, but I eventually learned that they were not the elixir of profound contentment I’d hoped them to be.”
“A boy without a father finds guidance where he can. The Stoics were by no means a bad choice.”
A beat of quiet went by, the only sound the crackling fire, then Marcus gathered her in a fierce embrace. “If you refuse to marry me, I will go on somehow, but you have ruined me for any other woman. Do you want that on your conscience?”
“The ruination is mutual, I’m sure.”
His hold eased. “We are to be married?”
How carefully he posed the question. Matilda liked—very much—that her answer alone decided the matter. She could demand a longer courtship or refuse altogether, and Marcus would adjust his expectations and behaviors to her reply, without tantrums, sulks, or pouting asides.
“We are to be married,” she said, tucking herself along his side. “I need time to explain the situation to Tommie. We must find somebody to manage our soldiers, and I refuse to wear half mourning as a new bride.”
Tremont wrapped an arm around her shoulders and drew the covers up. “Might we speak to Tommie together?”
That small question presaged a monumental shift in how Tommie was parented. “What will we say?”
“I will tell him that I esteem you above all other ladies, but whether the three of us become a family in truth depends to some extent on if and when Tommie wants that to happen. He cannot be made to feel that he’s losing you to me.”
“Ah.” The fatherless boy yet had wisdom to offer the man. “He might. And he’s already growing attached to the maids and soldiers. We will think on this.” The temptation to kiss more than Marcus’s nose grew overwhelming, and that would not do. “Tell me about your home in Shropshire.”
Marcus described a country house fashioned from the remains of a medieval castle. The dwelling itself was too large and perennially in need of repairs, though he spoke of it with affection.
