Page 77 of Lady Diana's Lost Lord
Every time it was different, and every time it was perfect. But this was the most perfect of all. This time, when she had consented to be his wife and he would not have to leave her at the crucial moment. This time, with the pain of parting firmly in the past and the promise of the future stretching out before them.
Diana made a soft sound of satisfaction deep in her throat as she shifted her hips, and he helped her find the motion that would bring her her own pleasure, bending his knees to plant his feet upon the mattress. Her breath came in fierce little pants, her nails digging crescents into the muscle of his chest. She found a rhythm with his assistance, rising and falling in smooth glides that threatened to drive his breath from his lungs.
He could feel a mist of sweat break out upon his brow, knew he wasn’t going to last much longer, and prayed it would be longenough. His teeth sank into his lower lip, the bite of pain only just sufficient to pull him back from the very brink, until—there. Those tiny little flutters as her delicate inner flesh gripped him with velvety contractions. The nip of her knees about his hips, the tight-strung tension, her beautiful face wreathed in a pleasure so exquisite it looked nearly painful.
His own climax crashed over him in a searing wave, and he clenchedher hips in his hands, held deep, and felt, at last, complete. A missing piece returned to him, settling perfectly into place. He sighed as Diana wilted by slow degrees into a warm lassitude, cuddling against the expanse of his chest, and he managed to wrest one hand from its tight grip upon her hip to slide through the fall of her dark hair and cup the nape of her neck.
“I love you,” she whispered, her voice sweet and drowsy. “But I would very much like to see that ring.”
∞∞∞
The sweat had hardly cooled upon his chest—where Diana’s hand rested, newly adorned with a lovely silver ring engraved with blooming vines—when there came a resounding pound upon the door.
“Diana, are you in there?”
Diana heaved a sigh, rolling her eyes. “Marcus,” she murmured to him, scraping her disheveled hair away from her face as she pressed herself upright. “I am,” she called back, casting a glare at the door as if it had somehow offended.
Ben bit back a groan as an unsettling silence drew out for a long moment. Toolong.
“Does there happen to be anyoneelsein there with you?” Marcus inquired, his voice hard and utterly frigid, dripping with disdain.
“I don’t believe that’s any of your concern.” Diana slipped out of bed, skittered across the floor, and stooped to scoop up the scattered bits of clothing lying about the room.
“I ask because my wife is presently entertaining a young girl in the nursery with Edward. And I’m given to understand the girl’s father was meant to be proposing.” Another icy silence. “Though the reasons why a proposal ought to be taking place within your bedchamberpresently escape me, I’m certain your explanation will be elucidating.”
Diana wiggled into her chemise. “Don’t be a prude, Marcus. It doesn’t suit you in the least.”
“A prude! You’re my sister! What man wants his bloodysisterdebauched beneath his own roof?” A solid thumpagainst the wood of the door, and the whole frame rattled. “Weatherford, are you in there?”
Ben scrubbed his hands over his face. There was no sense in denyingit—theyhadbeen caught out, and he was only surprised that Diana’s brother hadn’t broken down the door in the service of pummeling him to a pulp. “Yes,” he said. “I’m listening. Say what you will.”
“You will damned well marry her.Today. Is that understood?”
Diana muffled an unwise laugh in her palm. “Married in a hurry, indeed,” she whispered as she traipsed back across the floor, no longer quite so pressed to make herself presentable. Instead, she looked rather as if Marcus had done her quite a favor with his insistence.
“I don’t give a how you manage it,” Marcus continued. “If you wish to retain possession of all of your teeth—”
“We’re in agreement,” Ben called back as Diana settled once more beside him. “I’ll find a way to procure a special license. Provided you don’t mind the scandal of it.” Since it would be the only way to be wed on such short notice.
“He won’t,” Diana said. “He wed Lydia by special license a few years ago.” Lifting her voice in mocking glee, she added, “He’d be amonumental hypocrite.”
“I heard that!” Another ferocious rattle of the door frame. “Get dressed and getmarried.” A fractious mutter as his footsteps began to recede: “For God’s sake. The man doesn’t show his damned face for a bloody decade, only to turn up at last in my sister’sbed.”
Chapter Thirty One
How in the world did your sister-in-law get Hannah to have a nap?” Ben asked as Diana slid into the carriage beside him. “I haven’t managed than since she was—oh, perhaps three years old.”
Diana rapped upon the roof and then shrugged as the carriage rocked into motion. “Lydia said they just wore each other out, she and Edward.” She hadn’t really asked toomany questions, considering that they had had to impose upon Lydia to watch over Hannah while they hurried off to get married before Marcus could reconsider his generosity innotrearranging Ben’s face for him. “But there was no trouble between them, and Hannah was really quite gentle with him—far more so than she would have expected from a child of Hannah’s age.” And that was good. Hannah could benefit from some other children in her life, and Edward was just a baby, still; far too young to do more than be awed by the larger child who was so much more capable than himself. It would serve them well, she thought, since they were soon to be cousins.
“Hannah will be disappointed to have missed the wedding,” Ben sighed, collecting her hand in his as she scooted closer to his side. “But she’ll be delighted to have a mama when she wakes up. You have no idea how much we missed you,” he said fervently as he rubbed his thumb across her knuckles.
Diana thought she had a fairly good one, in point of fact. “I hope you won’t miss it,” she said. “That cottage by the sea you meant to have.”
Ben tucked her against his side, curling his arm around her. “We found dozens of them, you know. There was a perfect one in Blackpool—like we’d conjured it from a dream. Complete with a little ginger kitten waiting for us in the yard. I should have known then, when neither of us could muster even the slightest bit of enthusiasm for it.” He heaved a sigh. “Diana, there are so many things I don’t know how we’re going to manage,” he said, listing against her as the carriage zipped around a corner. “I haven’t got the funds to keep us comfortably in London. And my father—he could ruin us at any moment.”
Oh. She hadn’t told him, yet, the things that had occurred in his absence. “Ben,” she said gently. “There is nothing to worry for on that score. Not any longer.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. “You don’t know him,” he said.
