Page 86 of An Earl Like You
Cornwall
Sunlight crept through the draperies, stealing up the side of the bed and finally across her face. Eliza wrinkled her nose as the beam roused her from sleep.
“Shh,” came Hugh’s voice in her ear. His hand came to rest on her hip before stroking slowly up her side. “I was dreaming of a beautiful woman in my bed, and here I find one. My own sleeping beauty.”
She smiled without opening her eyes.
“My voluptuous sleeping beauty.” He cupped her breast with a low growl of approval.
“I’m not sleeping,” she whispered.
“Even better.” He kissed the nape of her neck. “I might persuade you to let me have my way with you.”
She laughed and twisted in his arms to face him. “I hope you will.”
His hands paused; his expression sharpened. “Yes?”
Eliza nodded. It had been a long time since he made love to her properly—too long. Hugh moaned, rolling over her and covering her face with kisses until she laughed again.
A sudden noise made them both freeze. Willy, in his basket by the hearth, raised his head. Eliza looked in concern toward the darkest corner of the room, but Hugh turned her face back to him. “Don’t make a sound,” he breathed. “Not one sound, Eliza.”
“Hugh! No—we can’t—oh my—” He put one hand over her mouth to stop her protest. His other hand had got under her nightdress and moved between her legs. She shook her head frantically, even as she spread her legs for him, but Hugh only gave her a wicked smile, and Eliza’s eyes rolled back in her head as he touched her in earnest.
He made love to her, hungrily but gently, and in complete silence. Every time Eliza moaned, his mouth was on hers, quieting her when she would have cried out in passion. He made her shake and writhe and rock her hips against his in pleading until he was inside her, hard and just as desperate as she was.
Almost the instant they stopped moving, though, finding ecstasy tight in each other’s arms, the fretful sound came from the corner again. Within minutes it turned into a thin wail.
“He’s awake,” she said between gasps for breath.
“So am I.” Her husband moved above her one more time, his face fierce with satisfaction. “By God—I think I saw the heavenly host.”
She raised one brow and touched his dimple. “I didn’t realize you were left so unsatisfied these past two months.”
Hugh grinned. His hair stood up in rumpled curls around his face, giving him a wild, rakish look. “Unsatisfied? I never said that. But there are levels of satisfaction...” She laughed, and he kissed her again.
The thin wail became a steady cry.
Hugh got up from the bed and crossed the room, returning with their six-week-old son in his arms. Eliza sat up against the pillows and reached for the baby, her heart almost bursting with love for both of them. Willy jumped onto the bed and sat protectively beside her, as he always did when she fed Simon, and Eliza silently amended her thought. She adored all three of them.
Later, when the nurse had taken the baby and Willy was outside running in the expansive gardens with Angus, Eliza washed and dressed. She looked through her dressing table drawers for her favorite hair combs as Mary brushed out her hair and pinned it up, and in the process she found a paper, folded and forgotten inside her jewel case.
“You may go, Mary,” she told her maid, holding the paper close to her chest. Mary curtsied and left, and Eliza went to the door of the dressing room, where Hugh was finishing dressing. “Hugh,” she said. “Come here.”
“Whenever you want me, darling.” He pushed a pin through his cravat and came to her.
They had been married a year and a half now, and she still found it hard to believe at times. Not only was he even more handsome now, with his hair grown out a bit and some color in his skin from the Cornish sun, but the way he looked at her had only grown more heated and devoted. Even when she was so round with child she could barely waddle across the room, he told her she was beautiful. Once, in the middle of an inexplicable crying fit, she said he must be either blind or in love, and he had only laughed and said it was the latter—madly, deeply in love with his wife.
Eliza had thought she was happy on her wedding day, but this was something else entirely. Not just starry-eyed in love, but certain beyond all doubt that there was no other man in the world for her, and that she was everything he wanted, as well.
Without a word she held out the paper. Puzzled, he unfolded it, and then his startled gaze shot to hers.
“You told me to keep it,” she reminded him. “Until I was certain of you.” She clasped her hands behind her back to hide their sudden trembling. “I’ve been certain for a long time, you know.”
Slowly Hugh refolded the creased copy of their marriage lines he had given her so many months ago in Mrs. Upton’s parlor. “Then why now?”
She smiled, a little guiltily. “Because I know you’ve been repaying Papa behind my back all this time.”
His mouth quirked. She’d been opposed to that plan, saying her father owed it to both of them, and he had pretended to give in to her wishes. “Then you know I intend to repay every farthing of my father’s debts.”
