Part 15 (2/2)
”It's all right, it's all right,” he told her as she raised both arms around him, digging her fingertips into his bare back. ”Let me love you.”
She kissed his chest, his throat, his face, as if she needed the feel of him, the taste of him. Her pa.s.sion became his pa.s.sion. He moved slowly at first, still worried for her, but when she began to move in rhythm with him it was impossible to resist her sweet temptation.
Bracing his hands on either side of her head, he raised himself up as he thrust into her again and again, faster and faster, until she gave a small cry that seemed to trigger his own release.
He collapsed against her, spent, his breathing ragged, his heart still racing at a gallop.
He'd thought himself experienced. As Justin would have termed it, a man of the world. But making love to-no, with-Lydia was something totally out of his experience. He'd never cared so much, never wanted so much, never needed to hold a woman afterwards as he did now. Just to be with her, just to feel her head resting against his shoulder, just to listen to her even breathing as she slept...wondering if her dreams were of him. Praying that they were...
CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
LYDIA WAS COMFORTABLY sore when she woke, and alone. The room was still dark, the fire almost dead in the grate. She wondered what time it was, and if she'd somehow sensed Tanner leaving, and that had wakened her.
Turning on her side, she hugged the pillow that carried his scent close to her, burying her nose in its softness.
And then she giggled.
Charlotte had told her to give him a little nudge.
Sometimes, honorable as gentlemen feel themselves required to be, it takes a...a bit of a nudge from the woman who knows what's best for him. And for her, of course.
Lydia supposed she'd done more than that. She'd all but begged Tanner to kiss her, to carry her to bed.
Think about letting go, just a little.
Only a little? ”Oh, Charlotte, you couldn't know what it is to soar above the clouds, if you could say something like that. Or maybe you did...”
Lydia turned onto her back and stared up at the ceiling, feeling rather stupid. She saw it now, how they had all conspired to shake her out of her doldrums. The lowered necklines. Rafe's quick agreement to a week at Malvern. Charlotte's little nudge. Why, they'd all but given her permission, set the table for her, and told her to enjoy her meal.
Because they'd all known what she had been fighting against for so long; her feelings for Tanner. And, obviously, they all approved.
How could they have known of his feelings for her? How could they have been so certain?
Her eyes went wide. ”He told them. It's the only way.”
She could recite from Moliere, quote full verses from a dozen poets or more. She knew a smattering of Greek, could conjugate verbs in nearly flawless French. She could name every capital of every country in Europe. She could recite the history of the English monarchy throughout all of its twisted pathways by rote.
But she didn't know when a man was in love with her?
With her beloved captain, it had been different. She had been different. Young, knowing nothing of what it truly meant to love a man, what it felt like to need to be always near him, constantly long to touch him. To want everything he could give her, everything she could offer him in return...with no hesitation, no hint of shame.
Her love for Fitz had been a quiet love, a simple love. Fitz had been long winter afternoons spent before a roaring fire at Ashurst Hall, reading Shakespeare together, listening to tales of his boyhood in Dublin, feeling important to someone. She hadn't been ready for more, and Fitz had somehow known that. He'd been her first step toward womanhood.
Tanner was the smile that warmed her all over. The voice she could listen to for hours. The distinctive footfalls on the tiles in the foyer that always set her heart racing. The face that lived in her dreams.
She'd hated him so much when he'd come to tell them about Fitz. She'd feared him more when his face began taking Fitz's place in her dreams. She hadn't been ready for him last year and had avoided him on his infrequent visits to Ashurst Hall. She hadn't been ready for the way he made her feel.
But never could she forget him.
Now she knew why.
The captain was her past, a very important part of her past. He was her beginning.
Tanner was her everything. Her today, and all of her tomorrows.
Lydia used a corner of the sheeting to wipe at her damp eyes and hugged the pillow close once more. Life wasn't easy, being able to feel could be a blessing or a curse...but she was ready for it, all of it. With Tanner, she was even eager for every moment.
Time had this way of moving on, and with its sure pa.s.sage, the bad faded, and a person could once more open herself, open her heart, to what was good. There was more than one chance in life, and only a fool wouldn't see that, and take that chance. As Tanner had said, they owed that to those who couldn't move forward with them.
She snuggled beneath the sheets, looking toward the window dotted with raindrops that must have fallen earlier, hoping for dawn so that she could see Tanner again. There might be some awkwardness at first, having just been so intimate with each other, but her eagerness to see him immediately banished that worry from her mind. If she could just sleep again, the time would pa.s.s more quickly...
She closed her eyes, and then opened them again nearly as quickly, alert to a noise from somewhere behind her. But only the wall was behind her, the one between her chamber and Jasmine's.
What was that sound? Is that why she'd awakened in the first place?
Pus.h.i.+ng down the covers, Lydia climbed out of her bed and put her ear to the wall. And heard it again. The sound of weeping.
”Oh, for goodness' sake,” Lydia grumbled, knowing that she couldn't ignore that sound, much as she wished she could. Using the tinderbox on the table beside her bed, she lit her single candle and quickly looked about to locate her dressing gown. There was no clock in the chamber, but she could nearly make out clouds in the sky, so it must be close to dawn.
Had Jasmine been crying all night? Was she even now sobbing in her sleep? And for what? She'd behaved irrationally at supper, childishly. Lydia, as was the case for most even-tempered people, had little sympathy for the girl's histrionics...but that didn't mean she could go back to bed and pretend she hadn't heard her.
Picking up her candle, she quietly let herself out of her chamber after peering up and down the hallway, hoping it wasn't late enough for the maids to be stirring. a.s.sured she wouldn't be discovered, she padded on bare feet to Jasmine's door and knocked.
”Jasmine? Jasmine, it's Lydia. Please, may I come in?”
”No! No, go away!”
Lydia rolled her eyes. Really, she may not be much for intrigue and stealth herself, but Jasmine's lack outstripped hers by a good measure. ”The whole inn will be standing out here with me if you don't lower your voice. Now let me in or I'll find someone to summon Tanner.”
She counted to ten under her breath and was just about to knock once more when the door opened a few inches and she slipped inside. A quick glance to her left told her that Jasmine's bed was placed directly on the wall that separated the two rooms.
If she had heard Jasmine, had Jasmine heard her? And Tanner? That could prove embarra.s.sing.
Once her eyes had become accustomed to the dimness, Lydia went about the small chamber, using her candle to light several others, before she turned to look at Jasmine.
The girl was clad in a rather fetching dressing gown embroidered with yellow rosebuds. Her dark hair hung loosely past her shoulders, framing her small, almost elfin face. She really was beautiful...until she opened her mouth and let her tongue run on wheels, that is.
”What's that on your cheek?” Lydia asked after a moment, lifting her candle and walking toward the girl. ”No, don't turn away from me. Your left cheek looks...bruised.”
Jasmine pressed a hand against her tear-wet cheek. ”It's...it's all my own fault. I behaved so badly last night at supper. I don't know what came over me, I really don't, Lydia. I suppose I was hungry. Papa says I'm never nasty except when I need to be fed. But then I left the supper room without so much as a bite.”
”I believe that's called cutting off one's nose to spite one's face,” Lydia pointed out quietly. ”But I thought Tanner was going to have a tray sent up to your room.”
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