“I do yearn for you. I burn for you. Have I failed at showing you that?”
“No.” She smiled brightly. “You’ve shown me spectacularly well. You’re right. It doesn’t matter.”
His mouth came down on hers, hard, almost punishingly, his tongue thrusting with the precision of the most finely honed rapier—one designed to pleasure, not hurt. There was fire. Need. Want.
How could she question his yearning for her when he always came to her with such hunger? It didn’t matter if hours or only minutes had passed since he’d last tasted her. Always, always, he sipped and savored even as he plunged and stole.
Stole her ability to breathe, to reason, to think. To do anything except feel. Respond.
Her body heated as though he’d arranged wood in the most efficient way and set kindling alight within it. Slow to start until it was blazing with full force. The winds and rains of a tempest could not douse it. Instead they joined in the dance, fueling it. Every element responded and came alive.
And she knew, knew where they were headed, where he was going to take her. All the doubts she’d been giving voice to went silent. She was going to travel with him on this journey, as his equal, as his partner. It was the way he always treated her.
He dragged his mouth down the column of her throat, and then up. Along the soft underside of her jaw. Stopping at the sensitive spot just below her ear where he pressed the smallest of kisses.
“I didn’t manipulate the cards because I couldn’t determine what I was holding. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made love to you because I no longer possess the ability to count.”
Saying the words aloud to her made him feel like a boulder being catapulted toward a stone fortress, and he hurled himself off the bed with such force and so quickly that her fingers barely grazed his hip when she reached for him. He stalked over to a table where he kept a bottle of scotch near for those nights when he awoke from a nightmare.
The only time he seemed guaranteed not to have one was when she was in his arms, in his bed.
He splashed scotch into a glass, tossed it back. He heard bare feet padding across the floor, a whisper of linen flowing over flesh, and when she stopped beside him, he knew without looking she was wearing his shirt.
“Would you like a nip?” he asked.
“WhatI would like is to understand exactly what it is you were telling me.”
Words he’d uttered because he’d been able to see from the expressions shifting over her face, like storm clouds going from gray to black as they charged over the land, that she was beginning to thinkshedidn’t signify. When she mattered so much that it damned near ripped him apart whenever he considered how short their time together would be.
“I’m not sure there is an understanding to it.”
“You went to Cambridge. You must have mastered maths.”
“I could count to a hundred by the time I was five. Not only that, but I could also write the numerals. I always loved numbers. They were so much easier to understand than words. They had a purpose, could tell stories with precision. Then after the railway accident... they went away.”
He poured scotch into a glass and slid it toward her. Filled another glass, picked it up, walked over to the sitting area before the fireplace, and set the glass on a nearby table. Feeling her eyes on him, he strode over, snatched up his trousers, and drew them on.
By the time he returned to his chair, she was already perched in the opposite one, her feet tucked up beneath her, her hands wrapped around the glass she held as if it was the buoy that would prevent the gigantic swells from taking her under.
“At your residence on the island,” she began cautiously, “the room I went into, the one with the maths primer—”
“I was striving to relearn what I’d once known. You can probably guess from all the evidence of my frustration—and the temper I exhibited toward you, for which I apologize—I was having no success. I don’t even know how much I paid for your barometer. As your father learned, when you are part of the aristocracy—or pretending that you are—you don’t pay then and there. You’re sent a statement at the end of the month or the end of the year. I send it to my man of affairs and that’s that.”
He could fairly see all the thoughts bombarding her brain. Her brow was furrowed so deeply, and she was gnawing her lower lip with such intensity she was going to create more scars.
“That night we had dinner with your family... you didn’t play cards with them... because they don’t know... that you are living with... this challenge.”
“This challenge? Such a pleasant way to put it. I prefer to think of it asthis hell. And you are correct. They do not know. My mother would only worry. When there is nothing to be done. At least according to my physician.”
She brightened. “You’ve been to a doctor, then?”
He nodded. “Dr. William Graves. A friend of the family, and one of the more skilled surgeons in all of Great Britain. But even he is flummoxed. He identified it as railway spine. But in truth all that means is that I was in a railway accident and came away from it not quite right.”
“How long will this go on?”
He took a swallow of scotch because this was the hardest part of all. “Graves said it might just miraculously go away. Probably not, though. Should I marry, I could line my children up and not tell you how many I have. When my father dies, how am I to effectively manage the estates? Stuart will no doubt help, but it shouldn’t be his responsibility.” He was weary of going through all this. Talking about it wasn’t going to change it. He’d gotten lost in the dark depths when in truth she needed to understand only one thing.
He shoved himself to his feet, crossed over toher, knelt beside her, and cradled her face with one hand. “I cannot tell you how many times we’ve made love, Marlowe, but I promise you that I remember each one.”
