His lips curled into a smile. “Name the day,” he replied, finally getting into the spirit of the game. “Let’s go and conspire in the drawing room. We can’t do it in front of our families.”
Hand in hand, they ran away together like naughty children, leaving Cecily and Nathaniel alone in the music room.
“Thank God that’s finally arranged.” Nathaniel pulled Cecily into his arms. “I thought I would never get you alone today.”
Cecily laughed and nodded. “If you hadn’t sorted Mary and Patrick out, they would have sat in here mooning about and casting meaningful glances at one another all night.”
Nathaniel bent and kissed her lips softly, sending little shivers through her body.
“We’ve sorted out almost everything, I believe,” he said. “Or at least begun to.”
“Almost everything,” Cecily agreed, her hands coming around his waist, feeling perfectly secure in his embrace. “There are still some things I would like to hear you say.”
“Ah, I should likely apologize to you, shouldn’t I?” Nathaniel said ruefully. “I was an utter fool at the start of our marriage. I didn’t really understand what a marriage was or what it could be. I did not know how to feel love. I did not know how to feel anything intensely, as though part of me was dead or made of stone.”
“Now you can feel,” Cecily observed with a smile. “I know you do.”
“Yes, a peculiar young woman came into my life and broke my heart open again. Meeting you was the only real thing that had happened to me in years. Every part of me is alive.”
Cupping his face in her hands with tears in her eyes, Cecily peppered it with little kisses.
“I wasn’t even looking for an apology,” she admitted softly. “Although that was very beautiful. You are a good man. You deserve to feel alive, and I love you.”
“What did you want if not an apology? You surely aren’t as contrary as your sister, and it is far too late for us to elope in any case.”
Cecily laughed and shook her head. “No, I am very, very simple. Do you love me, Nathaniel?”
“Of course, I love you,” he told her without hesitation, his lips seeking and finding hers again between his words. “You must know that I love you.”
“I needed to hear you say it,” she explained. “You never did before.”
“I couldn’t,” he admitted with a self-deprecating smile. “The word terrified me, until you. Still, you must have felt how I loved you before now, surely? Every time I kissed you, it was love. Every time I caressed your body. Every time I slid inside you… That is how I most easily express my love for you.”
Cecily moaned and nodded at his words, interspersed with kisses and a gentle exploration of her curves. It had been a long and emotionally demanding day, and now all she wanted was her husband’s touch. She felt his love in each brush of skin and lips.
Hands, lips, and tongues explored and caressed, clothing was loosened, and gasps of desire filled the air. Nathaniel cupped her breasts in his hands, and her hands slid under his shirt, caressing the bulge at the front of his trousers.
Once, she would have thought such behavior improper, even between a husband and wife. She would never have imagined herself losing control in someone’s embrace, and certainly not outside of a bedroom.
Now, she was learning to appreciate Nathaniel’s lack of scruples over such conventions. He would have no qualms whatsoever about claiming her here, or in any other room of the house, and the thought thrilled her. Would he bend her over the sofa, or pull her astride him on his lap, or lift her against the wall?
“Oh God, Nathaniel, I want you so much,” she moaned.
“Then lie down on the rug by the fireplace and spread your legs for me, sweet Cecily,” he ordered with a grin. “I want to show you how much I love you.”
EPILOGUE
“Two weddings in one day,” Cecily laughed as Nathaniel twirled her around the large gathering room at the inn. “No wonder I’m exhausted!”
After a week of planning and another week of traveling north in two of his carriages, the “elopement” had finally borne fruit.
Mary and Patrick were married first at the blacksmith’s anvil, fulfilling all of Mary’s romantic fantasies. Then, to satisfy Cecily’s wish to see her sister formally married before a priest, Nathaniel had paid a local minister to read the banns three times on a single Sunday and marry the young couple seven days later, pleading his brother’s imminent deployment as an extenuating circumstance.
“I think Mary and Patrick must be more exhausted,” Nathaniel responded with a grin, lifting Cecily off her feet and kissing her as the music came to a close. “They’ve already gone to bed.”
Looking around, Cecily saw that he was right and laughed. The young newlyweds had indeed vanished from the party, although it was barely eight o’clock.
“Well, they are married now, at long last,” she said with a smile, drawing Nathaniel back to their chairs for a break and yawning as she sat down. “Let them enjoy it. We’ve all had a lovely evening.”
