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She made a noise like a startled kitten and blinked up at him. ‘Blake…?’
‘I want you, Eleanor,’ he said with brutal honesty, and waited for the rejection those tears promised.
Blake was braced for a slap, an angry outburst, even more tears—although he was beginning to see that Ellie wept more over other people than she did over herself. Instead she reached up and curled her arms around his neck, then raised her face to him, eyes closed, lips parted.
He seized the silent invitation, kissed her, took her in his arms and began to walk her backwards, pushing open the door as her back touched it. Kissing, kissing until she was against the bed.
She fell backwards with a gasp as the kiss broke, and tried to scramble up, but he caught at her skirts and tossed them up in a flurry of petticoats, then fell to his knees, his hands on her bare thighs.
‘Stay there,’ he growled as she batted at the smothering fabric. Under his left hand her skin was warm and smooth, and he cursed the bandages covering so much of his right. But his fingers were free…
‘Blake? What are you doing? Oh!’
Ellie subsided backwards as he pressed her legs apart and nuzzled into the nest of hot feminine curls. She was still moving, but then her hands found his head and clung on, her fingers burying themselves in his hair, and he smiled against her secret flesh, aroused by her frank acceptance of his actions.
Did nothing daunt Ellie?
*
What was Blake doing? Surely not kissing her there? Ellie felt shock, embarrassment, and then sensation so intense and so focused that she stopped thinking altogether.
Vaguely at the back of her mind was pain and hurt and anxiety, but somehow she could not hold on to them—not when her entire world was focused on the sensation of Blake’s lips and tongue and teeth, on the texture of his hair between her fingers, the shape of his skull, the overwhelming masculinity of him. How did he know the precise point to drive her out of her mind?
And then she stopped thinking altogether, and surrendered to the wave of fire and darkness sweeping through her. She was vaguely aware of protesting as the heat of Blake’s mouth left her, and then the mattress shifted as something pressed down on either side of her head. She felt pressure and then yielding as he sheathed himself in her and began to move.
She reached up and found him, opened her eyes onto the intensity of his gaze, saw the sudden lack of focus as he lost himself in her and the tension that was almost pain as he surged and gasped and fell forward, his face buried in her shoulder. She tightened her arms around him and held on—held him while he was hers and only hers.
His eyes had been open as he’d taken her, found his release in her. Surely that meant he had been seeing her, thinking of her and only her, in those moments? Or had his imagination conjured up another face, a beautiful face, to superimpose over hers? A lush, feminine body instead of her angles and bones?
Oh, my love, see me. See the one who loves you.
*
It was a very polite marriage, Ellie thought bleakly on the
fifth morning as she passed Blake the marmalade and he thanked her punctiliously. Ever since that afternoon when she had realised that he still held deep feelings for Felicity—the day when he had made shocking, desperate love to her, fully clothed—they had been scrupulously careful of each other.
Blake had shown her over the parts of the house she had not seen, had set aside a couple of hours a day to explain the estate, the tenants, the work of the Home Farm. She’d learned about the holdings and the business interests of the earldom and been stunned. No wonder Jon had smiled when he’d said that Blake kept him busy—and that Blake himself worked hard.
They’d entertained the local gentry when they’d called to pay their respects, and she’d met the vicar and the congregation on the third day, which had been Sunday. The Trentons had been there too, in their pew, the tops of their heads visible over the top of their high panelled enclosure, before Eleanor had sat in the Hainford pew and had been able to see nothing but the arches and the pulpit.
Polite greetings had been exchanged and nothing more said. Blake made no reference to the neighbouring estate and neither did she.
He came to her room at night and made love to her with skill and care—and a consideration that made her want to shake him and demand the fierce passion of that afternoon. But she never found the words to talk about their marriage and her dreams for them before he kissed her and left her alone in her big bed.
Blake seemed to feel that good sex and mutual politeness was what made a satisfactory marriage, and that was all. And he seemed worryingly offhand about children. He wanted an heir, she knew that, but it was almost as though ‘an heir’ was an abstract object, quite removed from a real child. Was that how he had felt? An heir to be pushed into a suitable dynastic marriage?
But he had loved Felicity…
Eleanor had made herself a list of things to achieve—learn to ride; restore the gardens, beginning with the sunken rose garden; work through the house turning it into a home; visit all the tenants. She wrote that list down, but she kept another list in her head: never let Blake see how uneasy and unhappy she felt; never betray her love for him; find a way to fight a ghost for the love of her husband.
She did not let herself dream about a baby.
*
Finally the miserable weather cleared and she thought about that first item on her list. She had ordered a riding habit before her marriage, but she had not shown Blake, and nor did she intend to involve him in her riding lessons, provided the head groom was prepared to teach her.
When Blake found out she would tell him she had intended to surprise him, but the truth was that she did not want him worrying about her leg and fussing over her.
