“Abigail.” He growled her name against her collarbone, the toes of his boots digging for purchase on the Axminster carpet that covered the floor of the coach. Her scent teased his nostrils as he explored lower, then lower still until he was half drunk on subtle notes of lavender and the sultry, alluring musk of woman.
She gasped when he shoved her skirts above her knees. Gave a soft, breathy groan that made his hard cock even harder when he pressed his mouth to the inside of one smooth thigh above the knotted lace of her garter. He slid his hands under her bottom and squeezed, fingers biting ever-so-lightly into plump flesh as he tilted her hips up and placed her legs on his shoulders so he could kiss her properly.
Under the tented cavern of her petticoat where the cool winter sun filtered in through a sheer wall of white muslin, it was a simple task to forget the past three years had ever happened. They were still in her bed in a small, cozy house in Connecticut before he’d asked her to be his countess and watched the light dim in her eyes. Before he’d spent months searching for a wife who didn’t want to be found.
The heels of her leather walking boots dug into his shoulders when he danced his tongue over her slick seam. Dragging her to the end of the velvet seat cushion, he set to coaxing her toward abandon with the single-minded determination of a man possessed by both fire and fury. Abigail could hide from him all she wanted. But she couldn’t hide fromthis.
Her own wet, wanton desires.
He suckled her gently, almost teasingly, then let his mouth wander across her leg until frantic fingernails scraping along his skull directed his attention back to the center of his Americanrose where the petals were a shiny pink and the nectar most sweet.
He made a circle with his tongue before slowly gliding it back and forth along the stem of the rose, whilst by his own hand he sought simultaneous pleasure, wrist sliding under the buttoned waistband of his breeches to take his manhood in a firm grip.
As her breathing quickened, so did his own, the muscles in his abdomen drawing taut. Without warning, the coach rocked again, a rear wheel slamming up and over a rock in the road. The force of it drove his face forward and his wrist down in an explosive release that snared them both its in thrall, Abigail’s hips thrusting off the bench as seed shot from the head of his cock.
The coach slowed, then stilled.
The driver yelled something unintelligible.
They had arrived at Summerwind House.
Chapter Eleven
Summerwind House
Northampton, England
It was, byfar, the largest house Abigail had ever stepped foot in. As she followed Mrs. Robbins, the housekeeper, on a tour of the palatial estate filled with personal anecdotes from when Stephen was a child (“Lord Lancaster always used to stub his toe on that step” and “That’s the chandelier Lord Lancaster swung from when he was training to join the circus” and “Here is the kitchen, did you know Cornish pasty is Lord Lancaster’s favorite dish?”), she found herself intimidated by the overwhelming vastness of it all.
Perhaps it was a good thing that her cats weren’t here, as it wouldn’t take her long to lose them and forever to find them again. Ferdinand already had the bad habit of climbing into cabinets and disappearing for hours. If she let him free in the drawing room, she doubted she’d ever see him again.
Stephen had told her about the manor, of course. But nothing—not her modest upbringing, her string of small lodgings, or even her husband’s letters—had prepared her for the size of the orangery, the sheer number of parlors, or the baffling labyrinth of hallways.
During her second year of medical school, a patient seeking the help of a doctor had stumbled right through the front doorsof the classroom. He’d been bleeding profusely from a wound in his abdomen from which intestine was visible. Three of her peers had fainted. One had vomited. Two fled the room. But Abigail hadn’t done any of those things. Instead, she’d run straight up to the man and helped him onto an exam table while the professor, a retired surgeon who had amputated limbs overseas in the Tripolitan War, examined the source of the bleeding and together they’d managed to save the man’s life.
All things being equal, Abigail would have preferred a hundred patients with their innards dangling out to a house of this magnitude to manage. While most women of her age and social position dreamed of hosting balls and dinner parties, she didn’t have the vaguest idea of where to begin or what was required. Because she was a doctor.Nota countess. If only she could make Stephen understand that, but she hadn’t seen him since they’d arrived yesterday evening after their... excursion in the carriage.
When her cheeks warmed, she turned away from Mrs. Robbins and pretended to admire a painting hanging on the wall of the east wing parlor. Eventually, the tour came to an end, and after thanking the housekeeper for her time, Abigail retreated into the one room that offered something familiar.
The library.
Finding a practically untouched copy ofThe Popular Compendium of Anatomyby William Burke tucked away amidst the rows of floor to ceiling shelves, she settled in an armchair in front of the crackling fireplace for a bit of light reading. After an hour or so, a maid dressed in black appeared with a full afternoon tea service and Abigail’s stomach grumbled, reminding her that she had skipped breakfast.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling at the maid who bobbed a quick curtsy and left, leaving the door partially open behind her. Taking care to mark her page, Abigail poured herself a cup of tea—Hyson, by the smell of it—and applied a thin layer of butter to a generous slice of seedcake still warm from the oven.
Very well, she admitted silently as the cake dissolved on her tongue in a perfect mixture of caraway seeds, nutmeg, and allspice, perhaps there were somesmallbenefits to being a countess. An attentive staff, for one. Though accustomed to preparing her own meals, she was, admittedly, not the best cook. Nor was she adept at tending a fire. Such things would be a welcome improvement in her life. As would not having to worry about money. It was the other changes that concerned her.
Clasping the warm cup of tea to her bosom, Abigail went to a large window framed with long silk curtains and stared blindly out at the unfamiliar landscape covered in a fresh inch of snow. Her mother had likely once stood in a library similar to this one, her belly heavy with child, her mind burdened by decisions beyond her control. Rather than submit to a husband she did not love and settle for a life that was rich in all things but those that mattered most, she’d taken that child and fled to an unknown country. She had risked death in pursuit of independence. She had learned to survive beyond the material comforts of a society designed to keep women complacent so that they might be more easily controlled. She had done all of that, and where had her daughter ended up?
Standing in the footsteps she had forsaken.
It was irony in its purest form, and if Abigail had the power to go back and change time, she wondered where she would be now if she had refused to marry Stephen. But there was no going back, only forward. Even when that forward contained a future that wasn’t certain.
Yesterday morning when she woke up, she had been a doctor in London. This morning, she was a countess in a country estate. Two different lives that were so drastically opposite, she had noidea how to even begin to merge them together. Or if such a thing were even possible.
Over a hundred years ago, a French doctor had managed a medical miracle. Taking blood from a sheep and transferring it into a dying boy who had, against all odds, survived the unprecedented procedure. But subsequent transfusions had failed, proving that while human and animal blood appeared visually the same, they contained different properties within that made it impossible to recreate the initial experiment without deadly consequences. No matter how much care was taken, merging animal and human blood simply could not be done. It was a medical impossibility, and eventually it was deemed not only dangerous, but reckless as well, and banned completely, first in France and then in England. In America, Abigail had only read about the historic procedure.
But it made her think that there were some things that couldnotbe merged. Science forbade it, and for likely good reason. No matter what she and Stephen did, perhaps their worlds were comprised of two different types of blood. Incompatible with life.
