He looked at her.
Mrs. Glass was in the doorway, and Imogen turned to her.
“I will ring if I need anything, Mrs. Glass.”
Mrs. Glass looked at Imogen and at Ash, folded her mending and withdrew to the back stairs without a word.
Imogen turned back to Ash and held out her hand.
He took it, and she led him to the stairs.
Her bedroom was small, meticulously clean, and defined by a narrow bed she had occupied alone for a decade. A worn quilt lay smoothed flat across the mattress, carrying a faint spray of dried lavender. A small writing desk held her notebook, positioned neatly beneath a window looking out onto the garden wall.
Ash paused in the doorway. He studied the space, taking in the frayed edge of the rug and the single candlestick, recognizing that this was the room where she had dreamed and read for ten years. He was about to permanently alter the history of thisspace, and the weight of that realization required a moment of quiet acknowledgment.
“It is exactly as I pictured it,” he murmured, his voice pitched low enough to make the small room feel suddenly smaller.
Imogen closed the door, the click of the latch unnervingly loud. “Faded and entirely too practical?”
“Honest.” He stepped closer. “And completely yours.”
The morning light slipped past the thin curtains, filling the air with a soft pale gold. Standing in the center of it, bathed in the quiet illumination, she possessed a beauty that owed nothing to the artifice of the ton. There were no powders, no practiced angles, simply a woman in her own morning gown, offering herself to a man she had actively chosen.
“You are staring,” she observed, her hands dropping to her sides.
“I am memorizing.” He moved until he stood directly in front of her. “Are you going to ask me to take off my coat, Imogen, or must I guess your intentions?”
“I believe my intentions have been perfectly clear since we climbed the stairs.” She reached for his lapels, her fingers working the top button of his coat. She moved carefully, her focus absolute.
He allowed her to strip the coat away. Her hands moved to his waistcoat, then to the intricate knot of his cravat, unwinding the linen with a solemn curiosity, as if she were executing a skill she had only ever studied in theory. When he pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it aside, she stepped back to examine the result. Her gaze dragged across the muscle of his chest, the flat plane of his stomach, the sharp lines pointing toward his waistline.
“Well?” he prompted, his pulse picking up at the sheer intensity of her scrutiny.
“Reality is vastly superior to Richardson’s descriptions,” she decided, reaching for him again.
He took the laces of her gown, his fingers betraying a slight, infuriating tremor as he worked them free. The fabric loosened, giving way eyelet by eyelet, until the gown slipped from her shoulders and pooled at her feet. He tackled the stiff boning of her stays next, the cotton beneath holding the heat of her skin. When the undergarment fell away, she stood before him in nothing but a thin white shift, the sunlight rendering the cotton dangerously translucent.
“You are overdressed,” Ash whispered, his hands settling on her waist.
He sank to his knees, burying his face against the curve of her hip. He had never worshipped anyone, but as he kissed the delicate bone of her ankle and worked his way upward, he found the practice remarkably easy to learn. His mouth traced the tightening muscle of her calf, then found the impossibly soft skin on the inside of her knee.
Imogen’s hand came down to rest in his dark hair, her fingers threading through the strands. She did not pull or guide him, merely held on as the familiar dimensions of her world began to tilt.
“Ash,” she breathed, the word a small, fractured sound as his mouth pressed a kiss to the sensitive flesh of her inner thigh.
He gathered the hem of her shift in his fists, pushing the cotton higher, exposing the long line of her legs to the cool air and the damp heat of his mouth. Her breathing shortened into a ragged rhythm, completely abandoning the composure she had worn for four seasons.
He rose, sweeping the shift over her head in one fluid motion, leaving her completely bare. The morning sun illuminated the soft curves and pale shadows of her figure. A heavy, dark flush climbed her throat, painting her collarboneand the swell of her breasts in pure, unmasked desire. It was her own untamed reaction, unprompted by performance, and the honesty of it brought him to his knees in an entirely different way.
He guided her backwards until the backs of her knees hit the narrow mattress. She sank onto the worn quilt, the scent of dried lavender and clean skin enveloping them both as he followed her down.
“You are so quiet,” she whispered, her eyes wide and dark as he bracketed her body with his forearms.
“I am trying very hard not to rush.” He brushed a stray curl from her cheek. “Tell me if I am too heavy.”
“You are exactly right.”
He mapped the landscape of her body with a slow, agonizingly deliberate palm. He traced the dip of her waist, the flare of her hip, the flat expanse of her stomach, before his fingers brushed the damp, heated curls between her thighs. Her center was already slick and swollen, and at his first direct touch, she gasped, and her hips involuntarily lifted off the mattress.
