Valentine

Chapter Eleven

"So what happens now?" Theo lay back on her elbows, regarding her husband with a quizzical smile. The clock on the mantelpiece struck four o'clock. Her wedding night was beginning rather early.

"For a start, you stay where you are and do nothing," Sylvester said. His eyes were narrowed, his mouth a firm, straight line, as he stood by the bed looking down at her as she lay in a cloud of virginal white.

"Shouldn't I at least take my shoes off?" She wriggled her feet, clad in ivory satin slippers, by way of demonstration.

"No, I don't wish you to remove a single garment." He eased the snug-fitting silk coat off his shoulders without taking his eyes from her.

There was such intensity of purpose in the hooded gray gaze that Theo shivered, and all desire to joke vanished. It had only been a way of lessening her own tension, she realized.

She watched as he unfastened his cravat and tossed it to join his coat on the chaise longue. The white waistcoat followed it. With slow deliberation he unfastened the tiny pearl buttons hidden in the ruffled sleeves of his shirt before shrugging out of the garment. It joined the others.

Theo had felt the warmth of his skin, the power in his chest and shoulders, but she'd never seen his naked torso. The muscles in his back moved beneath the taut skin as he turned to throw his shirt onto the chaise. There was not an ounce of spare flesh, and when he turned back, she saw a thin white scar running down his rib cage, curving around the narrow waist, following the thin line of black hair down beneath the waistband of his satin knee britches.

In leisurely fashion he pulled off his shoes and his striped stockings. Theo found that she was holding her breath as the buttons of his britches flew undone. He pushed them off his hips, stepped out of them, and turned to throw them onto the chaise.

Theo's eyes stretched wide as they slid down his back, over the firm buttocks, the long, muscular thighs, the hard calves.

He turned slowly to the bed. The scar was etched into the flat belly, finishing just above one slim hip. Theo stared at his aroused flesh and felt the first faint stirring of alarm, imagining that jutting shaft entering her, becoming a vital part of her own soft body, invading her.

But she couldn't take her eyes from him. He was beautiful in his nakedness… beautiful and terrifying.

Sylvester leaned over her, cupping her chin in the palm of his hand, bringing his mouth gently to hers. "There's nothing to fear," he said as if he understood the wild complexity of her emotions. "There may be a little pain at first, but it will soon pass."

Theo only nodded, for once in her life unable to find words. Tentatively, she placed a hand on his shoulder, feeling the smooth round bone fitting her palm before sliding her hand down his arm, over the hard swordsman's biceps, her fingers rustling through the thick dark hair on his forearm. After the barest hesitation, she laid her hand flat on his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart beneath the skin. Boldly, she touched one nipple with the tip of her finger, and he smiled, holding himself still, leaning over her as she continued her exploration.

She traced the scar with a fingertip, running over the clear outline of his ribs and down to his hip, feeling the sharp jutting bone of his pelvis. She wanted to go further but suddenly found she couldn't. She looked up and saw he was still smiling.

"All in good time," he said softly as if he perfectly understood this sudden shyness. "Let's divest you of some of these bridal trappings."

Bringing one knee onto the bed, he deftly removed the pearl fillet that held her veil in place and lifted the filmy white cloud from her head. Her hair beneath was braided into a coronet around her small head. It was a style that gave a neatness and maturity to her face that was a far cry from her usual gypsy dishevelment or the uncompromising plainness of the one long plait.

He let his hand roam over her body as she lay back on the bed, over the swell of her breasts against the laced bodice of her gown, over her belly, pressing the white silk against her skin into the concave hollow, and down over her thighs, molding them with the rich material. His fingers braceleted her ankles, remembering of their own accord that very first time when he'd clasped the slender bony ankles in the same way and dragged her into the mud.

His smile broadened and he looked up her body. "Any memories, gypsy?"

For answer she kicked in mock petulance against his grip, and he laughed, sliding the slippers off her feet, before running his flat hand up her silk-stockinged leg, beneath her skirt.

His fingers found her lace-trimmed garters. Deciding that he would like to see what he was doing, he took the hem of her gown and slowly drew it up over her thighs.

Theo quivered as she felt the air through the thin silk of her stockings. He slid the garters down her leg and then rolled her stockings down, easing them off her feet. Now the air fell directly onto her bared skin, and a wash of vulnerability swept through her. Her hands fluttered to push down her raised skirt, to cover her exposed limbs, and then fell to her sides as the string of her drawers was loosened.

"Lift your bottom, love," he commanded quietly, peeling the undergarment over her hips.

Theo bit her lip hard and did as she was told. Suddenly she was lost and fearful in a strange landscape, and she forgot how she'd been dreaming about this moment, forgot about the strange surges of longing, about the moments of passion they'd already experienced. She wanted to cover herself, push down her skirt, and flee from the room. The man whose hands were on her with such devastating intimacy was a stranger who now had absolute rights to her body. Whenever and wherever he chose to exercise those rights.

Sylvester felt the change in her when the muscles of her thighs suddenly clenched and she was rigid beneath his hand. A puzzled frown crossed his face. He was doing no more to her now than he'd done that evening by the stream, and she'd been wild with passion then.

He took his hands from her and immediately she relaxed. "What is it?" He looked into her face and read the bewildered apprehension in her eyes. "What do you fear, Theo?"

She moved her head against the coverlet in inarticulate denial, closing her eyes tightly as she pushed her skirt down over the top of her thighs.

"Come," he said with a hint of firmness in his voice. "Stand up and let me take off your gown." Taking her by the waist, he lifted her into a sitting position and then drew her to her feet.

He towered above her, and his nakedness was now a threat. Theo wondered how she had ever longed for this moment. How could she long to be possessed, taken, invaded? And yet what she had feared the most was that very longing that swept all rational thought from her mind. But now she was more coldly rational than she could ever remember being, and she didn't want this. Her body belonged only to her.

But his fingers were deftly unlacing the bodice of her gown, pushing it away from her shoulders so it fell in a puddle around her bare feet. Now only her thin chemise stood between her own nakedness and her husband's, and it was removed with the same efficiency.

He drew her body against his and kissed her eyelids and then her mouth, before saying quietly, "We're going to get the hard part out of the way quickly, Theo. I will do my best not to hurt you, but it will be easier if you try to relax."

She wanted to scream at him that she wouldn't let him do this, but the words wouldn't form themselves. She'd agreed to this by agreeing to marry him… she'd agreed to marry him because of this. She was married to Sylvester Gilbraith, and this was what that meant.

She lay back on the bed, closing her eyes tightly. It wasn't pain she feared; it was possession.

Sylvester's mouth took a grim turn as he realized she wasn't going to help either of them. He parted her thighs and stroked softly upwards, opening her tight petaled center, brushing his fingers across the sensitive bud. There was no reaction. His fingers slid into her body, feeling how tight and unprepared she was.

Kneeling between her thighs, he stroked her eyelids until she opened her eyes. His flat thumb ran over her mouth. "Sweetheart, I'm going to hurt you if you can't relax."

"I'm not afraid of being hurt," she said, staring up into his eyes, reading the concern behind the intent.

"Then what is it?"

"I'm afraid of you… of losing my body to you," she whispered.

The candid response, so open and so very like Theo, brought Sylvester a surge of relief. If he knew what he was facing, he could overcome it. He continued to stroke her cheek before saying, "You will lose your body to mine, and mine will be lost in yours. It's a partnership, Theo. This act more than any other."

"I'm not stopping you," she said. "Please, just finish it."

He nodded, reached above her head for the bolster, and slipped it beneath her bottom, angling her body to facilitate his entry. His flesh drove into hers in one determined thrust that breached her maidenhead.

Theo gasped with the tearing pain, but she didn't cry out, simply lay as still as she could beneath him as he began to move within her and her body opened and moistened of its own accord, so that the rhythmic movements ceased to hurt and began to set up a strange response deep in the pit of her belly. But before the response could be more than an intimation of pleasure, Sylvester allowed his climactic explosion to burst upon them both, filling her body with his seed, his flesh throbbing deep within her. And Theo found a curious sense of physical release and no sense of invasion, more of fusion, as she felt the pulsing of his body in hers.

Sylvester fell forward and his heart thudded against her breast. Theo laid a hand on his sweat-slick back; it felt like an acknowledgment she was supposed to make.

Sylvester disengaged slowly and looked down at her with a rueful expression. "I'm sorry, Theo. I thought you'd prefer me to finish it quickly."

"But I think I missed something," she said, sounding slightly aggrieved. "I did, didn't I?"

Sylvester fell on the bed, laughing with relief. "Yes, my dear gypsy. You missed a great deal. But you won't the next time."

"Can we do it again now?"

"There are a few things you need to understand about male anatomy," he said, still laughing as he sat up. "It takes a while to recover its strength."

"Am I bleeding?" Neither the personal question nor the delicate examination it invited troubled her now.

"A little," Sylvester said. "It's only to be expected. Lie still, and when it's stopped, we'll try this again."

He lay back, drawing her head onto his shoulder, and idly began to take out the pins securing the braided coronet. Theo found his fingers in her hair both soothing and arousing in their intimacy. It was a proprietorial intimacy, she realized vaguely, the very thing a few moments before she had feared.

Her hair was the most amazing color, Sylvester thought as he drew his fingers through the long tresses, arranging them over her breasts with deliberate artistry so that the glossy blue-black offered a startling contrast with the milk-white skin visible between the strands. She was as physically different from her sisters as she was temperamentally, although Rosie had some Theo-like quirks in both areas.

Smiling, he moved a strand aside to reveal the rosy crown of one breast. His finger circled slowly around the nipple feeling it grow small and hard. Theo stirred, a little sigh escaping her. Her leg moved against his with an urgent pressure.

"Are you rested yet?" she murmured into his shoulder.

"Why don't you discover that for yourself?" he suggested, running a hand down her side, into the indentation of her waist and over the flare of her hip.

"Oh… like this, you mean?" Her own hand slid down his belly, her fingers reaching through the crisp tangle of hair at the apex of his thighs.

"Exactly like that," he agreed softly, inhaling with pleasure as he rose against the palm of her hand.

Theo eased onto her side to extend her reach, a little frown of concentration between her brows, as she learned the feel of him.

Sylvester stroked over her bottom, slipping his hand between her thighs on his own voluptuous exploration, and Theo began to imitate his caresses, on the theory that what pleased her might also please him.

When he entered her this time, her body was open and ready, her eyes gazing intently into his as if, determined not to miss one iota of sensation, she was watching his expression for guidance.

Smiling, he bent and kissed her eyes as he eased deeper within the silken sheath, feeling the little ripples of her body tightening around him.

"I'm not hurting you now?"

She shook her head, her eyes bright. "The opposite. It's wonderful."

He laughed softly and began to move with more purpose, watching her eyes as she picked up his rhythm, her body lifting to meet each thrust. Her fingers scrabbled down his spine, and abruptly she gripped his buttocks, pulling him against the cleft of her body, her feet twisting around his calves. Her eyes were wide and filled with a surprised wonder as the pleasure built, deep and inexorable.

Sylvester held himself in check this time, using his body to orchestrate her pleasure as she climbed to her own pinnacle. There came the moment when her eyes sparked fire, her lips parted on a round O of astonishment, her hips arced off the bed. Sliding his hands beneath her, he held her on the shelf of his palms as he drove to her core. She cried out against his mouth, riding the crest of the climactic tidal wave until it tossed her to shore and she fell back onto the bed, sinking into the deep feather mattress, her limbs in an abandoned sprawl, her eyes closing for the first time.

Sylvester remained within her, enjoying his own leisurely climax, stroking her cheek with a forefinger until her eyes opened and she smiled, lifting a hand to stroke his back as she came out of her own trance to recognize her partner in pleasure.

"Fears laid to rest, little gypsy?" he asked softly, gathering her against him as he fell, heavy with fulfillment, to the bed beside her.

"What fears?" she murmured with a weak chuckle. "I seem to be very sleepy."

"Then sleep." He closed his eyes, stroking her hair as he felt her slip into a light doze.

Theo stirred and awoke. Her sleep had been so light, it didn't seem as if she'd ever lost awareness of the sun-filled bedchamber and the deep mattress. The scent of their lovemaking was still in her nostrils, his skin still clung to hers, his breath was still warm and even on her cheek, his hand heavy on her back, holding her against him. And her memory of that glorious surge of pleasure was as clear as if it had just happened.

She stretched against him. "I'm famished."

"You didn't eat anything at the reception," he murmured lazily. "Too busy preparing to attack my mother, as I recall."

"I don't wish to discuss that," she said, her lofty tone spoiled by a massive yawn. "We might quarrel."

"Might we?" He sat up and looked down on her with a quizzical smile. "I thought it was settled."

"For this time," Theo responded, wrinkling her nose. "But you can't promise me I'll never have dealings with your mother in the future, can you?"

"No," he agreed. "I can't promise you that."

"And will you always take my side?"

"I can't promise you that, either, I'm afraid."

It was intended at least in part as banter, but Theo frowned, hitching herself onto one elbow. "How old were you when your father died?"

"Three. Why?" He had only the vaguest memory of Sir Joshua Gilbraith, so vague that he thought it was probably based on the portrait hanging on the stairs of Gilbraith House.

"So you lived alone with your mother and elder sister all your life?"

He shook his head. "No. When I was five, I was sent away to school. I spent hardly any time at home after that. At ten I went to Westminster School and spent most of the year there."

"Why would they send you away so early?" Theo was horrified at such a grim picture. A five-year-old child was far too young to be sent out into a frequently brutal world on his own.

Sylvester shrugged. He'd never given his childhood much thought. It was a world he'd shared with his school friends; none of them questioned either its harshness or its rightness. Except Neil Gerard, who'd spent those years in a state of permanent terror. An English public school was no place for the physically timid – let alone the coward. Again some shadow of memory pushed insistently against the dark periphery of his mind. For a second he struggled with it, and then it was gone. Theo was looking at him in some puzzlement, waiting for an answer to her question.

"My trustees believed it wouldn't be good for a boy to grow up without a man in the house," he said. "An all-male environment is considered preferable for the upbringing of boys." Smiling, he brushed a lock of hair from her forehead. "Don't look so worried, gypsy. I suffered in good company."

"But you still suffered?"

"I suppose so." He shrugged again. "But we didn't look at it that way at the time. It was, after all, a highly privileged existence."

"But didn't they beat you?"

"All the time," he said with a chuckle.

"And they never kissed you or cuddled you?"

"Good God, no!" He sounded genuinely shocked at such an idea.

Theo frowned down at the coverlet. No wonder he was such a reserved man. And yet behind that intimidating, controlling exterior she knew there was humor and warmth and sensitivity. One just had to know how to tap into it.

"Well, it sounds dreadful to me," she declared, and dropped the subject, returning to the original topic. "Shall we have a picnic? There must be plenty of food in the kitchen. I know there was a dish of dressed crab, and a salmon mousse, and I believe there was a rabbit pie." She swung her legs energetically off the bed. "I'll bring up a tray."

"Theo, I detest eating in bed," Sylvester protested, half laughing at this enthusiasm.

"Oh, do you? I like it."

"Crumbs," he said succinctly. "In the sheets, sticking to your skin."

"Oh, pah! We'll shake the sheets out afterward." Theo headed toward the connecting door between their bedchambers in search of a wrapper on her own side of the door. "We can have a bottle of the ninety-nine burgundy. You can bring it up. It's in the fourth rack on the left-hand side of the first cellar three rows in."

Sylvester raised his eyebrows. "One of these days you must draw me a map of the cellars."

"Oh, you don't need a map. If I'm not here to help you, Foster will be. He knows them as well as I do."

She disappeared into her own room and didn't see Sylvester's frown. He did not intend to be dependent on the knowledge of his wife and his butler. But his wedding night was not the moment to tackle the issue. He shrugged into a dressing gown.

In the courtyard his lordship's servant was leaning on a rapidly emptying keg of ale, deep in discussion with the itinerant peddler, a fellow Londoner who had been as pleased as Henry to meet one of his own kind among the country bumpkins.

"So he's been doin' a bit o' cradle snatchin', this bloke of your'n," the peddler observed, peering at the level in his tankard.

Henry squinted up at the sun. "Not what I'd call it. That Lady Theo seems to know what's what. Bright as a button, she is. Knows her way around this estate like the back of her hand."

"But still she's a babby compared with 'er husband."

"What's it to you, any road?" Henry demanded, his sense of privacy and personal loyalty violated by these observations from a stranger.

The peddler shrugged. "Nothin' really. Just interested. Folks in the village 'ave been talkin'."

"Loose-tongued gossips, the lot of 'em," Henry declared.

"There's talk about 'ow the lass is a Belmont and his lordship's some other family and 'ow there's bad blood between the two of 'em," the peddler persisted, bending to refill his tankard at the tap of the keg. The flow was sluggish, and he swore softly, putting his shoulder against the keg to tip it up farther.

Henry grunted. "Don't know about that. Seems to me everyone's well satisfied with the arrangement. His lordship's got himself a wife, the wife's family stay put on the family estate. Suits everyone, stands to reason."

"Mebbe so." The peddler nodded gravely. " 'Is lordship much of a hunter, is 'e?"

Henry shrugged. "Much as most gentry, I reckon. Takes his gun out on a good morning."

"There's good duck huntin' on that Webster's Pond, I've been told," the peddler mused. "Village folks like to keep it to theirselves, so I've been told, so I reckon as 'ow yer bloke don't know that. Pass it along, I should." He pushed himself away from his leaning post. "Well, I'll be on me way. Nice talkin' to ye."

"Aye." Henry raised a hand in farewell, not too sure that he cared for the stranger, fellow Londoner or not. There was something unpleasant about a man who listened to gossip. But his lordship might be interested to hear about the duck hunting on Webster's Pond… once he'd become sufficiently accustomed to the marital bed to leave it early in the morning.

Grinning slightly, Henry strolled across the yard to where a group of dairymaids were giggling among themselves. He'd had his eye on that Betsy for several weeks – a rosy-cheeked girl with a nice buxom figure that a man could really get his arm around.

"He's comin' over." One of the girls nudged Betsy in the ribs, whispering vigorously. "I told ye he'd got 'is eye on you, Betsy."

"Get away wi' you, Nellie." Betsy jabbed her elbow into her sister's ribs, but her cheeks were redder than ever.

"Fancy a walk, then, little maid?" Henry winked, noting her blush with satisfaction. "I'll buy you a glass of porter down at the inn."

"Oh, me dad would kill me," Betsy exclaimed in genuine shock. "I can't go into no inn. It's not decent fer a maid to be seen in a public taproom."

Country folk, thought Henry with a derisory head shake. "Well, how about just a walk, then?"

"Go on, our Betsy." Nellie pushed her friend forward. "Our dad won't mind. Mr. Henry's a fine gentleman with a good position."

Betsy looked doubtful, and Henry began to wonder if he was getting in too deep. A simple walk didn't commit a man to anything, and he certainly wasn't interested in following his lordship to the altar. Not yet awhile, at least.

"Oh, well, all right then." Betsy spoke before he had time to withdraw the offer. "Jest a stroll to the village… but on the main road, mind." She took his arm with a confidence that caused Henry to doubt the earlier maidenly blushes. Perhaps these country folk were less simpleminded than they appeared.

While Henry was strolling down to the village with Betsy, the peddler was walking around Webster's Pond. The ducks were settling down for the evening, sitting on the water or hiding in the tall marsh grasses. It was, indeed, a likely hunting spot.

From which direction would a man appear from the manor? The stranger walked the circumference of the pond, decided the most natural approach would be from the south, and pushed through the undergrowth looking for likely positions for his man traps.

A man picking his way through the wet undergrowth on a misty early dawn, a gun over his shoulder, a game bag at his belt, wouldn't be looking for the evil teeth of a trap, particularly on his own land.