“Right,” he said, getting a hand around a breast, “lull me into anticipation of an easy victory. Lull away, Jeanette, and then thoroughly trounce me.”
He began the joining in slow, sensual earnest. He could not know how his teasing banter, his determination to see her aroused and unraveled, met a need not only of the body but also of the heart. This was not merely rutting, but mutual adoration and joy.
Jeanette’s desire and emotions blended into one yearning and then into one great conflagration of satisfaction. Sycamore trounced her, thoroughly, with more pleasure than she could endure, until she was a moaning, heaving beast beneath him and then a quietly shaken, tenderly kissed lover in his arms.
“It’s too much,” Jeanette said as Sycamore rested his cheek against hers. “With you, it’s too much, Sycamore.”
“Good,” he whispered. “And next time, we’re using some damned sponges, so it can be beyond too much for all concerned. Hold me, Jeanette.”
He eased out of her heat and finished on her belly, and when Jeanette ought to have fussed him about making a mess and giving her room to breathe, she instead held him close and endured a few tears.
For whom or why she cried, she could not have said, but Sycamore had not cheated, and she knew that, with her, he never would.
Did Jeanette cry for joy, sorrow, or something of both? Sycamore wanted to ask her, but that would invite her to question him about his own emotions, which were new, tender, and powerful.
She changed him for the better, with her stubbornness and self-possession. When she came all undone in his arms, surrendered to what he could give her and to her own pleasure, he was suffused with joy and awe, and with a towering need to both be close to her and be what she needed him to be.
All quite… quite… befuddling, in a lovely sort of way. He had been infatuated regularly, and what he felt for Jeanette made those enthusiasms so much frolic by comparison.
Jeanette slept on her side, Sycamore curved around her. A cool breeze off the river came stealing through the open window, and Sycamore resisted the urge to join Jeanette in slumber—to rejoin her in slumber, for he’d already stolen a nap. He instead tucked the covers up around her shoulder and considered what he knew of her situation.
She might well have been followed by Goddard’s minions.
Trevor’s misadventures could have befallen anybody who strolled London’s streets, and they could have been aimed at Jerome, if they’d been aimed at anybody.
A matchmaker bent on chasing Jeanette away from guard duty where Trevor was concerned might have sent along the nasty notes.
Sycamore wanted to cobble together a string of unfortunate, unrelated mishaps, but that took a great deal of cobbling, and thus other explanations wanted examination.
“You’re awake,” Jeanette said, taking his hand and kissing his knuckles. “I slept like I’d been out dancing until dawn.”
“You slept like a well-pleasured lady.” A well-loved lady. Sycamore tried on the word in his mind and was pleased that it fit. This welter of concern and desire and affection, the thinking of Jeanette when they were apart, the pleasure he took in her company, no matter the occasion…
He did not simply love her, he had fallen in love with her.
His first thought was that his brothers would laugh themselves silly if he announced this state of affairs, but his second was that, no, they would not. He’d not be announcing anything so important to that lot of buffoons anyway, but if he did, they wouldn’t laugh.
Not this time.
“I am worried,” Jeanette said, shifting to curl against Sycamore’s side. “About Trevor, about the staff at Tavistock House, about nasty notes, and ruffians in alleys.”
“I am worried about you,” Sycamore replied, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “I want to excuse all that has occurred as happenstance. Each incident on its own can be reasoned away, but the pattern is unsettling.” To say nothing of supposedly hard-of-hearing butlers lurking in corridors or Jerome Vincent’s brooding looks and mounting debts.
“Precisely, and there’s something else, Sycamore. Why, when I borrow Rye’s coach, do his young friends pursue me? If they want to know what I get up to of an evening, they can simply ask the coachman. He’s been with Rye for years and would protect me with his life.”
As delightful as drowsing naked in bed with Jeanette was, as temptingly as renewed lovemaking beckoned from the merrier part of Sycamore’s imagination, Jeanette was raising a troublesome point.
“And why spontaneously decide to start following you now?” Sycamore murmured. “Why follow you when you’re off to a mere musicale and Goddard’s coach is nowhere to be seen?”
Jeanette sighed, kissed his chest, and rolled away. “I should practice with my knives, Sycamore. I’ve been getting acquainted with the blade you gave me, and it’s amazing what the right weapon will do for a lady’s aim.”
She wasn’t flirting, alas, but rather, sitting on the edge of the mattress and looking about like a woman who’d had enough frolicking for the nonce. She paused to rub her temples when Sycamore expected her to hop off the bed and begin dressing.
“A touch of hay fever?” he asked, taking the place beside her. “Too much champagne?” Though Jeanette had had only two modest glasses with a full meal, and she’d sipped rather than guzzled her wine.
“I’m sure all I need is some fresh air. You brought me more knives?”
“The whole set. Shall I rebraid your hair?” He wanted to, wanted to linger and bill and coo, which was surely a symptom of excessive country air.
Jeanette rose and pulled her chemise over her head. “A touch-up with a comb and a few well-placed pins ought to suffice. You’d like to tour the manor house, too, wouldn’t you?”
Something was wrong. This abrupt change of mood, complete with brisk good cheer, was not how lovers who’d just swived each other to exhaustion behaved.
“Jeanette, are you sorry you went to bed with me?”
She
