Web of Love

Chapter 24

THE BEACH OR THE VALLEY?” LORD EDEN ASKED as they reached the stone bridge across the stream.

“The valley,” Ellen said. “It is so very peaceful.”

“And the day is very like summer,” he said, “despite all the signs of autumn.”

He took her hand in his as soon as they were out of sight of his brother and sister-in-law. She did not resist. They walked in companionable silence for a while.

“What has happened with your stepdaughter?” he asked. “You appear to be on reasonably good terms today.”

Ellen told him of her morning encounter with Jennifer and of the fact that the girl had made a few stilted attempts at luncheon to address remarks to her, even when it had not been necessary to do so.

“It will take a little time,” she said. “But I think our broken relationship can be repaired. I am afraid she has just learned one painful lesson of adulthood-that those adults we have depended upon and loved are also weak and fallible mortals.”

“I will have a talk with her,” he said, “though she probably does not feel particularly friendly toward me at present. I will assure her that she will always have a home with us.”

They walked on.

“At the risk of incurring Alexandra’s wrath,” he said when they came to the place where they had tethered their horses on another day, “shall we climb up? The view should be lovely on a clear day like this.”

They scrambled up the bank and through the trees until they reached the clearing almost at the top of the slope. And they stood side by side, not quite touching, looking back along the valley to the sea.

“I’m glad,” Ellen said, “that it all belongs to someone who appreciates it. Your brother does, doesn’t he?”

“It is only since I have been away,” he said, “that I have stopped thinking of it as my home. I love Amberley. It is my childhood home, and Edmund’s home. But for the first time I feel some enthusiasm for going to my own property. It is a lovely place, Ellen, in quite a different way from this. And it is mine. I will be able to establish my family there from the start.”

Ellen took a step away and sat down on the grass. Lord Eden joined her there.

“Now that your stepdaughter knows,” he said, “there is no further reason for us to delay announcing our betrothal, is there?”

Ellen hugged her knees. “I suppose not,” she said.

He laughed softly. “I think it is as plain as the nose on everyone’s face anyway,” he said.

“Yes.”

“I want to set a wedding date, Ellen,” he said. “Will this side of Christmas be too soon for you? I thought perhaps we could marry in the chapel beside the house here, with just our families present. Under the circumstances, I don’t think it would be appropriate to have a public wedding, would it?”

“Let’s talk about it later,” she said, turning her face up to the sun and closing her eyes. “Let’s just enjoy the day, Dominic.”

“And talking about weddings spoils the day?” he said. “Very well, then. Let’s enjoy the day.” He lay back on the grass and clasped his hands behind his head.

They were silent for a while, and Ellen began to relax in the sunshine that felt almost hot on her face. Had she hurt him, she wondered, by refusing to talk about anything as definite as a wedding date? She would have to talk about it soon. Their betrothal would doubtless be officially announced later that day, and then there would be no avoiding the questions of date and place.

She turned her head to look at him. He was gazing back, his eyes half-closed against the sunlight, his mouth half-smiling.

“Come down here,” he said, stretching one arm along the ground.

She lay back, her head on his arm, and closed her eyes. A couple of minutes passed before the light of the sun against her eyelids was blocked out and she felt his mouth on hers, warm and light, his lips slightly parted.

She opened her eyes when the pressure was removed, and looked up into his green eyes. He smiled slowly, and she felt herself smile in response. She did not move.

His tongue explored her lips when his mouth returned to hers, and probed gently between. It was a long and a lazy kiss. Ellen did not move, beyond relaxing her lips and allowing his tongue its will. He felt good. He smelled good. She felt her whole body relax.

She kept her eyes closed when he stopped kissing her and lay back down beside her again. His hand was caressing her face, his thumb moving lightly over her eyelids and her cheeks. Over her mouth. And the hand moved down to touch her breasts, to trace their outline, to cup their fullness. And down over her waist and abdomen.

“You are losing your waist,” he murmured against her ear.

“Yes.” She did not open her eyes. She willed the spell not to be broken.

His hand moved over her, touching, exploring, caressing through her clothing. And it felt so very good. She wanted to turn into his arms, to wrap her own about him. But she lay still and seemingly relaxed.

His hand was edging up the skirt of her dress and was finally beneath it, strong and warm against her legs, against her inner thighs. Up over her stomach, over the early swelling of her pregnancy.

She lay still and relaxed, with closed eyes.

And then his mouth was on hers again, light still, but open this time, and his tongue reached deep into her mouth to stroke her slowly and gently. And his hand stripped away undergarments and caressed her unhurriedly, circling and circling the place where he was not ready to touch her yet.

Her hands were flat on the grass beside her.

But she was no longer relaxed. His mouth was at her throat, and his hand was touching her very lightly, and stroking her very lightly in a way that made her throb from the place he touched to her throat.

His hand left her in order to adjust his own clothing. She lay with closed eyes beside him. But she opened them when he spoke to her.

“Come, Ellen,” he said softly, and reached across to lift her over him.

She looked into his eyes as he brought her down fully onto him, and then lifted up onto her knees and threw back her head until her face was bathed in the light and warmth of the sun.

And the throbbing turned to a pain and an agony.

And to a tension that was past bearing.

“Dominic!” she called to him.

And to a bursting of ecstasy.

And to a slow, shuddering return to life and happiness and fulfillment.

Strong arms came about her and lowered her to the grass beside him, and held her close. A warm mouth sought out hers and kissed her lingeringly.

“Marriage will not be such a terrible fate, you see,” he murmured against her lips.

Her eyes fluttered open and looked into his. But she was in too deep a lethargy to summon a smile. She let herself slip beyond lethargy.

Lord Eden closed his eyes and rested his cheek against the smooth hair on top of her head. He supposed he would sleep. He felt relaxed right down to his toes, and utterly satiated. But he didn’t particularly want to sleep. There was just too much physical contentment to be savored.

He had not really intended to make love to her. That had not been his reason for taking her walking or for bringing her up there. He had wanted to be with her, to build on the feeling of friendship that had grown between them since their arrival at Amberley, and to talk to her about their wedding and his plans to take her immediately afterward into Wiltshire.

Even when he had invited her to lie beside him and had started to kiss her, he had not meant to take the embrace any farther. He had wanted to touch her, to discover the changes in her body that the presence of his child in her was bringing about. He had felt the slight and soft thickening of her waist.

And it had all become suddenly and achingly real to him. She was with child by him. He had known it with his head for some time, had planned a whole lifetime around the fact. But for the first time he felt it with his body. She had taken his seed into her. Their child was gradually swelling her body. The body of the woman he was touching. The woman he loved.

And without any conscious decision on his part, he had started to make love to her, his mouth and his tongue inviting her to physical intimacy, his hand beneath her clothes, against her warm and enticing flesh. And she had made love to him. Though she had not moved or opened her eyes while she was on the ground, and though she had knelt above him, her head thrown back after he had lifted her astride him and joined them, and was thrusting his own need and love into her. She had made love to him too. He had felt her need, her total surrender to him. And she had cried out his name a moment before she had shuddered into release.

He had been right in what he had said to her before she fell asleep. He must convince her of that when she woke up, her defenses firmly in place again. Their marriage would have a chance for success. They were friends. They were good together sexually. He loved her. There was only one ingredient for happiness missing. And that did not have to be disastrous. He would not smother her with his love. He would be content to be her friend day by day, and to pour out his love for her in bed, where perhaps she would not quite recognize it for what it was.

His mind wandered back over the past few months to the disaster that had succeeded Madeline’s unexpected arrival in her rooms in Brussels. They had come a long way since that dreadful afternoon. He had much to be thankful for. And a whole lifetime of hope ahead. He was not going to let his mind dwell on the one small source of discontent.

His mind slid into sleep.

ELLEN WAS DISORIENTED for only a moment after she woke up. She was lying against Dominic, her cheek pressed to the lapel of his coat, his one arm beneath her neck, the other hand at her waist. She could tell from his breathing that he was asleep.

Had she become an utter wanton? They were on an open hillside, not quite surrounded by trees, lying asleep in each other’s arms. And before they had fallen asleep, they had made love without even a thought to possible discovery. And in a way more erotic than she had ever experienced before.

It was nothing short of scandalous.

It had been wonderful!

She eased her head back to look up into his face, but his eyes opened even as she did so, looked blankly into hers, focused on hers, and smiled in that way that never failed to make her stomach turn a somersault inside her.

“Are you offended?” he asked. “I didn’t set out to seduce you, Ellen. It just happened. But you are to be my wife soon anyway.” He kissed the tip of her nose.

“Yes,” she said.

He drew back his head and looked at her. “Why do your eyes always turn bleak when I mention our marriage?” he said. “Don’t you want to marry me, Ellen? Do you feel coerced?”

She did not answer for a while. “I just wish the baby had not forced it on us,” she said.

“Is that what you think?” He frowned. “You think I am marrying you only because of the child?”

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” she said. “And it’s the sensible thing to do and the responsible thing to do. And I honor you for being willing to do it, and I am not going to back out, because it would be selfish and irresponsible to do so. I just wish it were not so.”

“The baby is not why I am marrying you,” he said quietly. “It is just the excuse.”

“The excuse?”

“I have been unfair to you, Ellen, and I’m sorry,” he said. “I used the argument that I thought would best work with you, and it seems that I have succeeded very well indeed. But it was an argument that came from desperation.”

She merely looked at him.

“I didn’t think there was any other way of getting you,” he said. “But it was not the honorable thing to do. I owed you the truth, especially since I was asking you to be my wife. Married couples should not have any secrets from each other.”

“What is the truth?” she asked.

He looked rather shamefaced. “Pure selfishness, I’m afraid,” he said. “I love you, and I love the child because it is yours. Ours. I haven’t stopped loving you since I discovered you hovering over my bed in Brussels, the only stable being in a world of delirium and pain. In fact, I love you more now than I did then, because we have developed a relationship since then. I’m sorry, Ellen. I know you don’t need this when you have just lost Charlie. But I won’t burden you with my love, I promise you.”

“I did love him,” she said carefully. “For those years there was nothing brighter in my life than my feelings for him.”

“I know,” he said. “I will never make you feel guilty for feeling that way.”

“I love him still,” she said. “He is a part of me. And I won’t ever stop loving him and occasionally crying for him.”

“I know, Ellen.”

“I will never love you as I loved him,” she said.

He nodded.

“But then, I never loved him as I love you.”

He looked into her eyes, his expression quite blank.

“I never knew,” she said, “that love for two men could be so intense and all-consuming and yet so different. Charlie was my very best friend, my brother, my father, my protector. And, yes, my lover too, for we had a quite normal marriage and I loved the physical part of it because it brought me closer to him than I could be at any other time. I would have been happy with him for the rest of my life, Dominic. I would never have allowed anything more than a vague and unwilling attraction to you.”

“I know.”

“And you are my consuming passion, my web of love,” she said. “I don’t think I can ever have enough of you. And yet it is not just physical, either. At one time I thought it was, and that was when I despised and hated myself. But it is not. It is a passion, a hunger, for you, not just for your lovemaking. A hunger to be with you and part of you for a lifetime. I can return your love, Dominic, provided only you accept that a part of me will always be Charlie’s.”

He laid a finger along the length of her nose. “I would think the less of you,” he said, “if I thought that it might ever be otherwise.”

They smiled tentatively at each other.

“So, Ellen Simpson,” he said, “do you feel a little better now at the prospect of marrying me?”

She nodded.

“Before Christmas?”

“Tomorrow, if you wish,” she said.

“Alas,” he said, “there are such things as banns.”

“A shame,” she said.

“Besides, I have to ride to London, with or without you, to ask the Earl of Harrowby for the hand of his daughter. Do you think he is likely to cut up nasty?”

She smiled slowly at him. “You are going to do that?” she asked. “When I am a widow of five-and-twenty, and perhaps not his daughter anyway? How lovely, Dominic. He will be very pleased.”

“Not likely to poke me in the nose because I have caused his daughter to be increasing?” he said.

She shook her head. “I think he will thank you for making it possible for him to become a grandpapa so soon.”

“I can have the banns read next Sunday, then?” he asked.

She nodded.

He sat up suddenly and got to his feet. He reached down a hand for hers.

“How indisposed is your condition making you feel?” he asked, pulling her up beside him.

“Not at all,” she said. “I have never felt healthier in my life.”

“Good,” he said, stooping to wrap his arms firmly about her waist and lifting her from the ground to twirl her around and around until she was shrieking with laughter.

“It is so good to hear you laugh, Ellen,” he said as he came to a stop and set her feet back on the ground. “I am going to try to fill your life with laughter.”

“I wonder if the world will ever stop spinning wildly about me for as long as I am with you,” she said breathlessly.

“Absolutely not, my love,” he said against her mouth, before deepening the kiss. “I make you a solemn promise here and now that it never will.”

“Then good-bye equilibrium and sanity,” she said, wrapping her arms up about his neck. “My love.”