The Proposal

Waiting for her lover, she thought, closing her eyes and clasping her hands in her lap.

She was not even going to start considering whether this was right or wrong, whether she ought or ought not.

She was going to spend the rest of the night with her lover and that was that.

And finally there was a light tap on the door and the handle turned quietly. He too had changed, Gwen saw as she got to her feet and flung her cloak about her shoulders and blew out the candles and left the room to join him in the long, dark corridor. He was holding a single candle in a holder. He took her hand and bent to kiss her on the lips.

They did not speak as they passed along the corridor and down the stairs and across the hall. He handed her the candle while he drew back the bolts on the door and opened it. Then he took the candle back, blew it out, and set it down on a table close to the door. It would be unnecessary outside. The clouds, which had made a dark night of it when the guests were leaving, must have moved off, and an almost full moon and millions of stars made a lamp quite unnecessary.

He took her hand again and turned in the direction of the stables. Still they did not speak. The sound of voices carried far in the night, and some people would not have been in bed for much longer than half an hour.

The stables were in darkness until Hugo took a lantern off a hook just inside the great door and lit it. Horses whinnied sleepily. The familiar smell of them and of hay and leather was not unpleasant. They walked the length of the narrow passageway between stalls, hand in hand, their fingers laced. And then he released her hand to light her way up the steep ladder to the loft before following behind her. Two or three of the puppies were squeaking in their large wooden box, and a quiet woof indicated that their mother was with them.

Hugo hung the lantern on a hook beneath a wooden beam and stooped to spread a blanket over the fresh straw. He tossed a few pillows to one end of it and turned to look at Gwen. He had to stoop slightly so that his head would not bang against the roof.

“I had better say one thing first,” he said curtly, “and get it out of the way. Otherwise I won’t know a moment’s peace.”

He was frowning and looking really quite morose.

“I love you,” he said.

He glared at her with set jaw and fierce eyes.

It would be absolutely the wrong thing to do to laugh, Gwen decided, quelling the urge to do just that.

“Thank you,” she said and stepped forward to set her fingertips against his chest and lift her face for his kiss.

“I didn’t do too well with that, did I?” he said—and grinned.

And instead of laughing, she found herself blinking back tears.

“Say it again,” she said.

“You would torture me, would you?” he asked her.

“Say it again.”

“I love you, Gwendoline,” he said. “It is actually a bit easier the second time. I love you, I love you, I love you.”

And his arms came about her and he hugged her to him tightly enough to squeeze most of the breath from her body. Gwen laughed with what breath she had left.

He released his hold on her, looked into her eyes, and undid the clasp at the neck of her cloak.

“Time for action instead of just words,” he said.

“Yes,” she agreed as her cloak fell to the straw at her feet.

Only one thing had kept their lovemaking in the cove at Penderris from being perfect in Hugo’s memory. He had had his hands all over her on that occasion, and he had ridden her deep and long, but he had not had her naked. He had not known her flesh to flesh, as a man ought to know the woman he loved. Know in the biblical sense, that was.

Tonight they would both be naked, and they would know each other with no barrier, no artifice, no mask.

“No,” he murmured when she would have helped him undress her. No, he would not be deprived of this. And there was no real hurry. It must be at least one o’clock already, and the grooms would be here by six. But that still left plenty of time for a few good lovings and maybe a little sleep in between. He had never slept with a woman. He wanted to sleep with Gwendoline almost as much as he wanted to have sex with her. Well, maybe not quite as much.

He unclothed her slowly, her dress, her shift—she was wearing no stays—and on down her body until only her silk stockings remained. He stood back to look at her in the lamplight. She was beautifully, perfectly shaped. She had a woman’s body rather than a girl’s. A woman’s body to match his man’s body. He ran his hands down lightly over her breasts and in to her waist and over the flare of her hips. She shivered, though not with cold, he guessed.

“I am a little self-conscious,” she said. “I have never done this before. Without clothes, I mean.”

What? What the devil sort of man had Muir been?

“You are wearing clothes,” he said. “You still have your stockings on.”

She smiled.

“Come,” he said, taking her hand. “Lie down on the blanket. I’ll take off my own clothes and then cover you with my body and so restore your modesty.”

“Oh, Hugo,” she said, laughing softly.

She lay down, and he went down on his knees to draw off her stockings, one at a time. He kissed the insides of her thighs, her knees, her calves, her ankles, the arch of her feet as he went. And then, of course, he wanted to release himself and take her then and there. He was ready. She was ready. But he had promised himself that it would be flesh to flesh this time.

He knelt back on his heels and pulled off his coat.

“Do you want me to help?” she asked.

“Another time,” he said. “Not now.”

She watched him, just as she had watched at the beach when he peeled off his wet drawers.

“I am a great big brute, I am afraid,” he said when he was naked. “I wish I could be more elegant for you.”

She looked into his eyes as he knelt between her legs again and spread his knees beneath her thighs.

“There cannot be any other man as modest as you, Hugo,” she said. “I would not change a thing about your appearance. You are perfectly beautiful.”

He laughed softly as he leaned over her, his hands bracing himself on either side of her shoulders, and lowered himself so that he could feel her breasts lightly brushing his chest.

“Even when I scowl?” he said.

“Even then,” she said, lifting her hands to cup the sides of his neck. “Your scowl does not deceive me for a moment. Not for a single moment.”

He kissed her softly while his loins burned with an urgent heat.

“I wanted this to be perfect,” he said against her lips. “This first loving tonight. I wanted to play endlessly before taking you to the heights of ecstasy and leaping off into the void with you.”

She laughed again.

“I think we can dispense with the play,” she said, “and save it for another time.”

“Can we?” he asked. “Are you sure?”

She pressed her lips to his and lifted her bosom to press against his chest and twined her legs about his hips, and he forgot that the word play even existed. He found her and plunged into her. And if he had feared that she was not fully ready for him, he was soon disabused. She was hot and slick, and her inner muscles clenched about him and invited him deeper.

He withdrew and plunged again and established a rhythm that would bring them to climax within moments. The haste did not matter. This was not about stamina or prowess. And memory came flooding back, not a memory that had ever been put into words, but one he had felt at the center of his heart—that Gwendoline was the only woman in his life with whom having sex was subordinate to making love. She