Page 71 of Marry in Secret
She pressed her heels into the mattress, pushing up against him in silent urgency. He paused, and it was as if they trembled together on the edge of a cliff. Then he surged into her, hard and sure, and she found his rhythm. Higher, harder, faster until together they... shattered.
***
Afterward she lay relaxed in his arms, a little sleepy, a little dreamy. “So what have you been up to while we’ve been transforming this house?”
“Fittings,” he said in a dark tone that made her giggle. “Endless, dreary fittings. I have been stuck with pins, plagued with patterns, and as for the debate between knee breeches or full-length trousers—”
“Ollie has been cracking the whip, has he?” Belatedly she recalled that it was not the most felicitous of jokes to make. “I mean—”
“The man is obsessed. He is determined I shall not disgrace him at this ball of yours.”
“Don’t you mean disgrace me?”
He looked down his nose at her. “You, my dear deluded young lady, are not my sartorial advisor; you are merely my wife.”
She giggled again. “And what else have you done today?”
“Oh, this and that. Various arrangements.” He trailed his fingers down the line of her spine.
“What sort of arrangements?” She waited for him to explain, but the chatty Thomas of old seemed to have disappeared. It was a little like coaxing an oyster to talk.
“What did you arrange?”
“A fellow in Ollie’s office has been helping me trace my men’s relatives to check that they’re all right.”
“Oh, that’s a wonderful idea. How far have you got?”
“It’s slow progress. Only one so far, Dyson’s wife. We’ve learned that his mother has died, but she was very old and she passed away peacefully in her sleep. His wife has been pretty stretched, I gather, without the earning power of her husband, but she’s managing.”
She raised herself on one elbow. “You didn’t let her know her husband is alive? And that you’re planning to bring him home?”
“No. I don’t want to raise false hopes. She’ll be all right now.”
All right now.She was learning to read between Thomas’s lines. “You sent her some money, didn’t you?”
He shrugged. “It doesn’t take much to keep a family going.”
She lay back down with her arms around him and snuggled her cheek on his chest. “I love you, Thomas Beresford. You’re a good man.”
Thomas stroked her hair and didn’t respond.
***
She liked to talk after they made love. Thomas preferred to lie there in silence, stroking her warm, silken skin. Lord, was there anything softer than a woman’s skin? To say he’d missed her, missed this, was the most ludicrous of understatements.
“Tell me about Mogador.” She stroked his chest, rather like petting a cat.
He stiffened. For a few moments he didn’t say a thing, but he could feel her waiting. “I told you I don’t wish to talk about it.”
“You said you didn’t want to talk about being a galley slave. I was just wondering what Mogador was like. I’ve never been to another country.” Her voice was soft, soothing in the darkness. “The sultan’s palace, for instance. Was it glamorous, like something out ofThe Arabian Nights? Or was it a disappointment? But if you don’t want to talk about it...”
He didn’t want to talk about any of that time, wanted to wipe it from his mind—if only he could. The nightmares continued to haunt him. They’d fade eventually, he was sure. They had to.
Still, it was natural for her to be curious, and his period at the sultan’s palace was one of the better times. And after the bedsport he’d just had, he was feeling relaxed and loose and as close to happy as he’d been in years. If he couldn’t talk about it now, when could he?
“It was the sultan’s palace, but the caliph was the fellow I dealt with. He lived there, part of his job, I suppose, and the sultan lived inland, in another city. It was a magnificent place, especially after we’d spent so long sleeping under the stars or, if we were lucky, under canvas.” Or in a filthy crowded pen, like animals.
He shoved that memory aside.
