Page 64 of Miss Dauntless
Tremont drew her into his arms. “And you did, as you always have.” As she would again, if necessary. The thought made him bilious—and very determined.
“It won’t come to that, Marcus. I won’t let it come to that. Please kiss me.”
Matilda did not give him time to comply with her order. She got hold of him by the hair and commenced kissing him witless. Her kiss tasted of desperation and courage and told Tremont that she wanted loving, not philosophy, not courtship, not gentlemanly affection.
He scooped her up and deposited her on the bed, then came down atop her.
“If you want finesse from me today,” he began as Matilda drew her knees up along his flanks, “I fear I am unable to oblige.”
“I want your damned breeches off.”
He was naked in ten seconds flat, and Matilda used the time to slip out of his robe. She lay on the bed, cheeks flushed, knees up, the chemise about her waist.
“To hurry this moment is criminal,” Tremont said, crouching over her. “To refuse it would be… incomprehensible.” He settled closer so they were belly to belly and breast to chest, and still that wasn’t close enough.
“I want to consume you,” Matilda said, linking her hands at his nape. “To inhale you and make you part of me forever.”
“You are part of me forever.” That admission gave Tremont a respite from the lust and bleakness riding him. Matilda was right: Love was a comfort, and love was as real as the law or honor or scandal and more powerful than all of them put together.
He stroked Matilda’s hair back from her brow, took a firm hold of his self-restraint, and began a leisurely kissing campaign. Somewhere between her jaw and her shoulder, Matilda let out along, soft sigh and retaliated with a slow glide of her palm down Tremont’s back and over his hip.
They lavished tenderness on each other until easing their bodies together became the only intimacy yet to explore. Tremont went slowly and sweetly, holding out for more of those sighs from his lover. She yielded them and arched into his caresses until give-and-take blended into a shared exultation.
Matilda surrendered to pleasure twice, the second occasion being Tremont’s notion of an erotic peroration. He turned a dreamy, delicious loving passionate and then explosive, until Matilda’s body grasped what her mind apparently had not: Pleasure could come in yet still greater increments than she’d imagined.
“You fiend,” she whispered as Tremont levered up to give her room to breathe. “You utter, shameless… You are not what you seem, Marcus.”
At that moment, he was trying to mentally recite from Caesar’s Gallic letters, because even withdrawing might push him over the edge.
“What am I?”
“Not a philosopher, not a peer, not a scholar… You are a lover.”
Because he did love her, he eased from her body, availed himself of the handkerchief on the night table, and spent on her belly.
“I amyourlover, Matilda.” And some fine day, he would know every joy that status could confer, but today was not that day. He tidied up and gathered her in his arms. “Nap if you like. I comported myself with unseemly dispatch. There’s time.”
That offer was all wrong, all courteous and considerate, when the moment wanted… sweet, sleepy nothings and quiet caresses. A restorative nap and a resumption of intimacies.
“If this loving is your idea of unseemly dispatch, Marcus, I will not survive your sieges.” Matilda drifted off, while Tremont arranged himself beside her and watched the hands of the clock beside the wardrobe advance.
Matilda’s whole marriage to Harry Merridew had been a siege, and now the invading army was back, ready to pillage and plunder what it hadn’t carried off in the earlier battles. Matilda was mentally preparing for defeat, else she would not have asked for this interlude.
Tremont took another quarter hour to review what he knew, reconsider strategy, and look for options that did not exist. The best he could do before rousing his beloved was to remind himself that the meeting would yield more information, and with more information might come more hope.
He continued to ruminate while they dressed and donned cloaks and hats, pondered yet more while they traveled half-way across London, and waited until he’d handed Matilda down from the town coach to pose his question.
“Before we go in there, Matilda, clarify one point for me: If I’m able to wrest only you or Tommie from Merridew’s grasp, but not both, I am to keep hold of Tommie, correct?”
She studied the façade of a staid establishment going a bit seedy around the gutters and walkways. In spring, the row of houses probably acquired an air of genteel repose, but winter revealed age and the beginning of neglect. Only a shiny plaque by the door—Drees and Son—confirmed that they had reached a place of business rather than a domicile.
“Don’t make me choose. It won’t come to that.”
“When has Harry Merridew ever done what you needed him to do?”
“When he married me.”
“And thereafter?”
