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“You don’t get it do you?” She held his lean shoulders, eyeing him closely, while bending over him. “I could not have accepted your offer with child and I did not know you well enough to find out if I could trust you!”
She lifted her body again. The pain of talking about this too unbearable. She needed to go somewhere cry her heart out. She needed to go lick her wounds. She joined all her papers in a messy bunch and left the escritoire in a hurry.
Hugh stood, left there alone, lost and sorrowful. So she had left him because he was a lord, because of what his aristocratic peers did to people like her. While mistresses came flocking because he was an Earl, capable of giving them luxuries. Sarah had not wanted luxuries. She had struggled to protect her child, even it meant bringing it up in poverty. Why did she marry him then? She did not need money or title, by the way.
He had felt so glad to know that she had had his baby. Hearing that it had not survived constituted lancinating pain. The pain she had felt. He could not offer her solace. Then or now. Damn him, he thought! He felt unable to offer solace to his own wife. What kind of husband did he prove to be anyway? Where did she go? He only wanted to enfold her in his arms and tell her it everything would be alright.
CHAPTER 15
Nonetheless, she did not show up, neither that evening, not the next, or the following one. His bed felt cold and lonely. She had gone in her former house, as her lady’s maid had informed him, before she went there. His guts wrung at her absence. She had every right to keep her distance. He had got her with child, his position had frightened her and then he’d talked to her in anger, when he must have given her support. He could not live without her, though. Those years had been utter torment.
Sarah sat in her bed in the Wilkins house, late at night, reading a book, under the coverlet. She had to seek refuge there in quiet and solitude. Talking about what had really happened opened old wounds. She had wanted her baby so dearly. At that time, she had thought her little boy would be the only thing that left from her time with Hugh. When, exhausted from delivery, her aunt held her the bundle with a gloomy look in her face; Sarah had looked at the tiny body with a tuft of black hair in the rags, motionless, something had broken inside her. She had just looked at the tiny corpse in her arms. She could not cry, she could not scream or talk. She froze in such size-less pain that she expressed no reaction. The fact fell on her like an avalanche of rock when the little boy had been buried. The sorrow exploded in her and tears fell endlessly. A couple of weeks later she had returned to London to find a job. Making herself busy had been the only way to cope with it all.
Alfred had known about her pregnancy. It had been the minimum she could do: tell the man who offered to be her husband in name and make her the heiress of his patrimony. Nevertheless, otherwise, she never touched the subject. She avoided thinking of it altogether. The simple word stillborn evoked a well of emotions, memories and yearnings.
Now…well, she’d been there for a week and she’d to admit that she missed Hugh. Dearly. She decided she had had her fill of introspection. Tomorrow she would go back home. Home, yes. Home meant a place beside the man she loved. She reopened her book and continued reading it.
Hugh tossed and turned in his solitary bed and sleep did not seem to be coming so soon. Annoyed, he felt very annoyed and frustrated, body and soul. In an impulse, he got up and grabbed some clothes. He did not look good, he knew. He had not shaved in days, his clothes wrinkled and the sleepless nights showed in his face. He did not care.
His carriage stopped at the Wilkins home entrance. He knocked impatient. A sleepy Evans came to open the door. “Where is she sleeping, Evans?” He asked, walking in without invitation. He went up the stairs, too much in a hurry to hear Evans’ answer. On the upper floor, he did not have to look much. He saw light coming from under one of the doors. He walked there.
Sarah lifted her head from her book when the door opened without a knock. The most gorgeous man in the entire world came in: her husband. The man seemed in a deplorable state, which did not diminish his attractiveness in the least. Her heart skipped a beat.
“I wonder how long you’re going to torture me for.” He closed the door and leaned on it. She wore a flimsy nightgown that enticed his imagination and his body.
“Oh, Hugh, I am not torturing you!” She watched his dishevelled figure and a shower of sensation washed over her. “I just needed some time alone to sort out my mixed feelings.”
“It felt like torture to me.” He started unbuttoning his wrinkled white shirt and paced to her.
His lean fleeced chest revealed button by button as he neared her and kicked his shoes. He rested one knee on the mattress and Sarah looked at him, wide-eyed, parted lips. Her nipples peaked visibly under her flimsy nightgown. His eyes lowered to them. He lay down beside her at the same time his hand tore the damn fabric and his mouth took what her body offered so generously. She gasped when his mouth devoured her small firm breast, his stubble tickling her skin maddeningly. Her hands immersed in his jet-black sleek hair as her head fell back. His impatient hand uncovered her lower body and sought her centre, finding her ready. He started circling his fingers there mercilessly.
In seconds, she transformed in a pulp of wantonness. Her hands went to fumble with his fly and released his hot hard shaft. She went ablaze. A week without him could be very…difficult. Her hands caressed all his back, his chest his firm abdomen and she kissed his neck when he shifted his hunger to the other breast. His mouth and his fingers were driving her mad.
He felt her fingers close around his member and agony overcame him. “Sarah. Oh, Sarah!” His other hand entangled in her hair. “I missed you like hell!” He kissed her avidly.
In response, she cradled him with her body. She had missed him too, oh so much! They kissed and kissed until their bodies burned with urgency.
“Hugh, oh!” She arched her body, breaking the kiss. “Have mercy on me!” Her legs circled him and pulled him closer in a clear invitation.
“Oh, my ardent wife!” He murmured in a hoarse voic
e as he finished undressing.
He came over her again, the womanly smell of her so familiar and tempting. Her body received him, hot and wet. This felt like his home. She had always been his home, where he wanted to be, in her, with her, for all his life.
A melting delight invaded Sarah as she surrendered her body and feelings to him, her husband, and her man. Through her body, she gave him her love, her pleasure, everything she had and more.
They satiated each other in a deeper sense, body and soul; and they fell, pacified, in each other’s arms
A long time passed, Sarah lay on her back and Hugh had half his body over hers, their lags entangled under the coverlet.
Hugh caressed her shoulder and kissed the curve of her neck. He lifted his head and looked her in the eyes. “Sarah, I am sorry for all you’ve gone through.” Now that the thunder of desire had receded a little, he could think clearly enough to talk to her.
In response, she held him closer. “It’s alright.”
“I shouldn’t have gotten you pregnant.” He caressed her face tenderly. “I should have…avoided problems!” His thumb strolled over her lower lip. “But a mind-blowing heat of passion overtakes me every time we’re in the same room. Prevention lay beyond me.”
“I’ve never blamed you.” Her fingers toyed with his sleek hair. “It’s just that I wanted that baby so badly! Losing it became the hardest thing to endure.”
