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Yet he’d got off his coat, undone his neckcloth, and detached the ruffles from the opening and cuffs of his shirt. The coat he’d tossed over a chair and the neckcloth on top of it. His diamond stickpin glittered from a small dish on the bedside table. His shoes lay where he’d thrown or kicked them, one on its side and one upside down, near the chair.
He’d unbuttoned his waistcoat but that was as far as he’d gone.
He lay on his side, his head on the pillow, his black hair tousled. He had flung one arm over his face, and tucked the other under the pillow. Her gaze trailed over the long line of his body, from his shoulders down over his powerful torso and trousered legs. For some reason the sight of his stockinged feet made her heart ache. She stepped nearer.
In sleep, his face was almost boyishly innocent. This must be because his closed eyes hid his too-penetrating grey gaze. In the softly shimmering light he looked almost . . . vulnerable.
Perhaps she would not kill him, after all.
He was exhausted, poor man. In the last month they’d snatched moments together, but rarely without people hovering in the vicinity—as though everybody feared the wicked Raven Radford would ravish and abandon her.
Not that he’d had much time to spend with her, even though he hadn’t needed to negotiate a peace between their parents. The parents had taken care of that themselves.
Being handsome, lively, and charming, Anne Radford soon won over Mama. The long-ago divorce scandal faded in the glamor of Mrs. Radford’s unmistakable breeding, elegant dress, and handsome villa in a fashionable neighborhood.
After engaging their lawyers in gladiatorial combat, Mr. George Radford and Papa had spent a great deal of time together, happily arguing—one a lawyer, the other a politician, and both delighting in a worthy opponent.
All the same, the social activity tired the older man, and Clara knew Radford took on a great deal on his father’s behalf. Too, he had clients needing his help. And Beastly Bernard demanding constant attention.
Then came the wedding festivities, starting last night with a men’s party Mama said the bride ought to know nothing about. And the wedding breakfast had gone on for what seemed like forever.
“Oh, go ahead and sleep,” she murmured. “Only I wish I hadn’t gone to the trouble of trying to look irresistible.”
Her nightgown wasn’t a proper nightgown at all, but a naughty piece of goods the Noirot sisters had concocted, giving rein, she supposed, to their not-very-deeply-submerged Frenchness. Unlike her simple, sensible nightgowns, this was made of linen as fine and silky as his shirt. Lace bordered the shockingly low neckline. Lace and silk ribbons trimmed the sleeves and hem, and tendrils of silk embroidery adorned the bodice.
Since she didn’t feel in the least sleepy, she hunted for something to read.
Radford’s parents had moved out of the master bedroom some while ago. Though it was elegantly furnished, the books in the writing desk’s cabinet left something to be desired. They must be Radford’s, because they included not a single novel or book of poetry. With a sigh, Clara took out a dog-eared copy of Sir John Wade’s Treatise, the one Radford had told her to read when she’d asked him for help finding Toby Coppy.
If anything could put her to sleep, this would. The title alone made her drowsy: A Treatise on the Police and Crimes of the Metropolis; especially juvenile delinquency, female prostitution, mendacity, gaming, forgery, street-robberies, burglary and house-breaking, receiving of stolen goods, counterfeiting the coin, exhumation, cheating and swindling, adulteration of food, &c.
And that was only the first half of the title.
She went round to the other side of the bed, set the book on the bedside table, and climbed onto the bed.
She took the book in her lap.
Her movement must have disturbed him, because he moved, too, onto his back, and flung his arm up onto the pillow beside his head. His waistcoat fell open, displaying the breadth of his shoulders and chest. She could see, under the nearly transparent shirt, the dark hair feathering over his chest . . . and down, over his belly, where it disappeared at the waist of his trousers.
Her face grew hot, and her heart went bumpity-bump.
She returned the book to the bedside table.
She stared at his arm. The light outlined the muscles under the fine linen. The thin fabric clung to the line of his collarbone and fell open at his throat, revealing the hollow at the base. She remembered the way he’d touched the hollow of her throat—with his finger, his lips, his tongue.
That had been only the beginning. There had been much more . . . his fingers stroking up her thigh . . . almost to . . .
Then he’d stopped.
But there would be more of that sort of thing. Mama had called it marital intimacy.
A part of Clara wanted to run away but another, stronger part drew her toward him . . . her husband.
Her husband.
Forever.
Nervousness surged into alarm.
What had she done? What had she done?
She closed her eyes against the mad upwelling of panic and tried to recall the wedding ceremony, but it was a blur . . . of happiness, like a dream.
Happiness. He made her happy because of the kind of man he was and because he saw her as she was. And because . . . she liked the way he looked and moved. And the sound of his voice. He’d made her heart beat faster from the moment she’d looked up at him in Charing Cross. When she saw him or spoke to him or sat near him, the world was different and better.
And she could breathe.
All this was why she’d done this irrevocable thing.
She opened her eyes.
In the candlelight and firelight, his hair gleamed like black silk. She bent over him and let her fingers glide so very lightly over the silky curls. She traced the shape of his shoulder and let her hand linger, for a moment, over his powerful upper arm, so warm. With the same delicate touch, as though he were an object of the finest porcelain instead of a strong young man, she stroked over the tissue-thin linen covering his chest . . . then down . . .
Her face burned, and she grew timid.
She returned to his face, with its uncompromising angles of cheekbone and jaw and the imperious nose down which he’d regarded her on that day in Charing Cross.
She remembered the way, more recently, he’d kissed all over her face, and the way that had made her feel. She bent and dropped feather kisses, mere shadows of what he’d done to her, over his face: his forehead and temple and the top of the arch of his eyebrow. She kissed his nose and the top of his cheekbone and the corner of his jaw. Then his mouth was so close, she had to touch her lips there.
His hand came up and he caught the back of her head and drew her down to him and kissed her, fiercely, fiercely, and the world caught fire.
Sensing her nearness, Radford had swum up out of sleep, and he’d almost opened his eyes when he felt her fingers drift, feather-light, over his hair.
Wanting to discover what she’d do, he’d tried to be still. He’d tried to quiet his heart’s racing, though it beat so hard, they must hear it at the other end of the house. But she didn’t draw away or pause. He made himself breathe evenly, as though he were still asleep.
He’d borne as much as he could, keeping still while she explored, though he thought he’d die, keeping his hands to himself. Then came those sweetly innocent kisses, like rose petals wafting down onto his face and along his nose. And when her mouth touched his, she flooded his senses: the scent and nearness of her and the sound of her breathing and the whisper of her clothing when she moved. Though he’d wanted to see how far she’d go, he couldn’t remain quiet. He couldn’t pretend sleep any longer.
He reached for her and kissed her, deeply, tenderly, hungrily—a mix of feelings, as always happened with her. She made a tumult, tugging him this way and th
at, knocking objectivity and reason askew. Stay detached and in control when Clara was by? What a joke.
He kissed her with feelings he’d tamped down again and again over the weeks since he’d met her: the delight he felt in her company, the desire he couldn’t talk himself out of, the humiliation of knowing she was beyond his reach, the fear when he thought death would snatch her away, and the despair when her father refused him.
He poured all that passionate turmoil into the kiss, and softened it, too, with an affection so deep he’d never have believed it of himself.
She tasted like sunlight, the same sunlight one heard in her laughter and saw in her smile and in the sparkle in her eyes.
She tasted like innocence and like experience, too. Her mouth and tongue joined with and responded to his as though the kiss were a dance, and they’d been dancing together all their lives.
He pulled her closer, bringing his arm round her, and never broke the kiss while he rolled her onto her back.
She was his at last by law, and what he wanted to do was take her there and then and make her his in physical fact.
But she was not a girl of experience, and if he didn’t give her time and make her first time as pleasant as possible, she would get the wrong idea about him and about marital relations, and their future together would be even rockier than it looked to be already.
This was why, though he was already overheated and though he’d waited an eternity for her, he eased his mouth from hers and said, “Well, then, let’s see what I got myself for a wife.”
He came up, shifting onto his knees, and looked her over.
Long and leggy. Voluptuously shaped. Silken skin. A perfect face, set with aquamarine eyes.
Voluptuously shaped—one couldn’t say that often enough or appreciate it sufficiently.
How on earth had Raven Radford, of all men, rated a goddess?
