Passion hot and heady flamed between them. This time her tongue was bold and teased his firm mouth, then tangled with his. She ran a shaking hand over his crisp dark curls and loved the freedom of being able to touch him. She explored the nape of his neck with a touch of wonder at his latent strength under her fingertips. He was so different from Daniel she felt like a traitor for a moment as she thought about then and now, but the richness of the moment soon swallowed it up. Alaric was always himself, just as Daniel had been, and right now he was a novel pleasure under her exploring hands, then her mouth again once they took in enough air to risk driving one another out of control.
His hands were broad and strong on her back and she wriggled closer and gazed into his eyes for a luxurious moment. He stared back at her with his blue eyes blazing emotion she was desperate to read, but could not quite decipher. She wondered why his eyes were much the same colour as her own, but so very different. His pupils flared with what looked like strong, almost desperate feelings.
‘Marianne,’ he breathed her name so huskily it sounded like a magical spell. What they both wanted was clear enough from the grinding need inside her, but from the regret in his eyes he was not going to allow them to have it. Now his touch was meant to soothe instead of inflame. The loneliness of him drawing away from her made her want to cry, again, if she had any tears left. Except she felt them prickle her sore eyes for him this time, for the loss and lack of him even when he was still warm and strong and very much alive against her wanting body.
She shook her head. ‘Alaric,’ she whispered in the book-stale air of Hubert Peacey’s private lair. ‘You stopped,’ she half accused him, although anyone might have come in and caught them entwined like lovers and that really would not do.
‘I had to,’ he said on a long sigh of what sounded like regret. ‘Anyone could have come in and found us locked in each other’s arms,’ he echoed her thoughts huskily.
‘I suppose that would have hurt your pride and your reputation.’
‘It is not me I am worrying about,’ he argued impatiently.
‘Do not concern yourself about me, my lord. I will survive. I am quite good at it by now,’ she said flippantly and saw fury blaze in his eyes this time.
‘Survival is not good enough for you, or me. We have both survived for long enough and there has to be more than that from now on.’
‘Yes, there must be to make it worthwhile,’ she agreed, but it was all she could offer right now.
They avoided one another’s eyes as the afternoon sun suddenly crept out from behind the clouds outside and edged curiously in around the blinds that had frayed and faded and no longer protected Great-Uncle Hubert’s precious books as well as they should. That sun was already lower in the sky and soon it would be autumn and they would both be in Wiltshire at famously grand, classically splendid Stratford Park. And he would be my lord there and she would be an upper servant. Marianne the lover screamed at the rest of her to seize what she could, while she could have it. ‘I am probably barren, Alaric,’ she told him painfully and who asked the houri to speak?
‘And I probably do not care,’ he said, but how could he not?
He was a lord as well as master of large estates and all the family history dragging behind him like a ball and chain.
Ah, of course—he could not marry her, could he?
Not only was she the widow of an enlisted man and a mere vicar’s daughter, but she could not give him the children he needed so badly. A mistress who was unable to breed a pack of little bastards to complicate matters when he took a wife and bred his heirs would save him so much complication.
‘Well, I do,’ she said. She straightened her wilting stance, telling herself not to feel the loss of those children, bastards or no. She longed for them so desperately even as she eyed him militantly and hurt herself on a shattered dream she had not even known she had until now. Now she would have to regret not carrying his child as well as her abiding sorrow that she had never borne Daniel one either. Suddenly that felt like agony and something feral uncurled inside her to defend her from any more of that.
‘And you intend to use it as yet another weapon to keep me at a distance, I suppose?’ he said as if she was hurting him instead of the other way around and for no good reason either.
‘No, it is the plain truth, so I do not need a weapon to fight off amorous noblemen,’ she snapped, her past pain and frustration at her childlessness driving her into a fury way beyond any offence he might have offered her if she gave him a chance to. ‘And I would not marry you even if you wanted me to. Now if that is all I really must wish you good day, my lord. I am a very busy person and if you still want me to pack up my life once again and come with you to Stratford Park I need to hurry now, or is that scheme all over after this whatever it
