Page 55 of Yearning

Elizabeth handed the wine bottle back. “Oh. I see.”

“Do not look at me like that. You, of all people, should not pity me.”

“Well, Colonel Fitzwilliam—”

“Richard, please.”

“Richard,” she repeated, sighing, “I loved my husband and he loved me.”

“I think Marybeth and I may grow to love each other,” he said. “She has promised to bear exactly one of my children if I shall allow her to to bear the ‘friend’s’ child afterward, and I have to say there is something about her… I am not displeased. I do not think I need to have the sort of marriage everyone else has, you know? She is self-possessed and quite confident, and I suppose there is something about that kind of woman.” He smirked at her.

“Why is everyone always saying I am self-possessed?”

“Is everyone always saying that? I certainly said nothing about you just then, my lady.”

She glowered at him again. “You implied it. What is this, then? Why are you here if you are about to get married?”

“I should not have come and I should not have cleared your house and I should not have stayed here drinking wine with you into the late hours,” he said. “It was an idea I had, one of those ideas I thought might come to fruition sometime in the distant future, but certainly nothing that I would act on any time soon, and then… wine…” He picked up the wine bottle and took a very long swig.

“The idea was that I am a widow, and your marriage is going to be an arrangement, where you are both able to take lovers, and so you thought maybe…?”

He set down the wine bottle, groaning. “And now I shall take my leave of you, my lady.” But he did not move.

She picked up the wine bottle. She took a careful drink and then set it back down. “I am not agreeing to some sort of sordid affair, Richard, but…”

He turned to her, very surprised. “But?”

“It has been a long time since I have been touched,” she said. “And you and I… there was always something here. We have a chance to see, I suppose, what it is. If it is something that wants repeating, I suppose.” And you are not married yet.

Oh, dear, she was not going to steal him away from his bride, was she? She had a generous settlement from the baron, but it would not be near whatever Lady Marybeth had. And she would lose the dower house if she remarried.

“A long time, hmm?” he said. “Whatever was wrong with your husband?”

“I think he was simply tired,” she said.

“I am not tired,” he said.

She took another drink of wine, for courage. And then she led him to her bedchamber.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE COLONEL WAS very attentive to her, spending quite a bit of time teasing the sensitive tips of her breasts before he even deigned to probe her between her thighs. He was proficient with that, too, studied, having no difficulty finding the most sensitive part of her there, and he even seemed to know a name for it. He called it her clitoris, and he crooned to it, in a soft voice, telling it that it should swell just like that for him, that he wanted to make her break on his fingers.

He asked all manner of questions. Did she like it this way or that way? Did she want more pressure or less?

“Come for me, Elizabeth,” he breathed in her ear, and she did.

It was strange, because it had been such a production with her husband, such a trial, so difficult, and this was so, so easy, and yet… yet…

Her climax was like the rush of a river, agitating as it went over stones, rapids that grew more and more frothy until the water was splashing up against the rocks in bright crescendos of spray, and it felt so, so good.

But when he was inside her, she felt far away, lost to her own troubles and the things that faced her. She tried to center herself, she tried to bring herself back. You are missing this, she told herself.

Eventually, he just stopped. He pulled free of her and lay down next to her.

She sat up. “What?”

“No, it’s…” He shook his head. “I’ve had too much wine.”