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Ashe sat down on the side of the bed. ‘I was shocked. I was shaken and I was horrified and above all I was hurting and I had no idea why,’ he said abruptly. ‘Then I made myself think. No woman sells herself unless she is desperate, or foolishly thinks prostitution is an easy way of life. And you are neither stupid nor wanton. I ought to have had that clear in my head. I recalled what you had said about your father, how your family had been abandoned and so I asked Gregory about the time just before your mother died.’
‘You told him what I did?’ It would kill Gregory to know she had been driven to that.
‘No, of course not.’ Ashe scrubbed one hand across his face. ‘I might have made a thoroughgoing mess of this, but he has no idea why I asked him. What he told me made sense and I knew why you had no choice. Damn it, Phyllida, if a man fought and killed for honour and to protect his family, then everyone understands, thinks he’s a fine fellow. If a woman puts herself through hell for her family, sacrifices everything short of her life, then she is called a whore and is ruined.’
He twisted round to face her fully. ‘I should have had that straight in my mind and I should have told you that was what I thought, there and then. What you did for your family was courageous and honourable. When you wanted to tell me about it, I should have listened and reassured you and comforted you.’
He thought her courageous and honourable? He was apologising to her when she had taken advantage of him, hidden the truth from him?
When, lost for words, she simply stared at him, at his beloved face, taut with pain and self-recrimination and regret, he stood up. ‘I don’t imagine you can forgive me for that. Like an arrogant fool I told Gregory to stay away tonight, that I had been clumsy, but that I would make it right with you and that I would marry you. I was wrong to presume. Insensitive. I am sorry, Phyllida.’
He had his hand on the door before she could find her voice to stop him. ‘Ashe, I love you.’ His back to her, he stayed where he was, as though he could not turn. ‘I would forgive you anything, understand anything. You do not have to marry me and make that sacrifice. Just knowing you understand and do not condemn me for it, that you forgive me for letting this masquerade of a courtship go on as long as it has, that makes so much difference.’
‘Why would it be a sacrifice?’ he asked and his voice, always so confident, always so strong, was unsteady.
‘For all the reasons we have rehearsed before. Sooner or later the strain of that, of my birth, of my secrets, they would crack such a marriage. I would rather not have you than ruin your life.’ He had praised her courage just now. This, if he did but know it, was the hardest, most courageous thing she had ever done, sending away the man she loved.
‘None of it would matter if I loved you,’ he said and turned, his voice quite firm again, his eyes green and calm and certain. ‘My family like you, soon they will love you as a daughter and a sister. And, with love, we can face down any whispers about your birth.’
‘But you—’ Ashe did not lie to her, she felt that deep in her bones. Her heart, so heavy, suddenly became light, the beat so fast she felt dizzy with it.
‘But I do love you. It took a lot of pain to make me realise just why I felt the way I did. What I had thought was love before was only a faint shadow of the real thing. You loving me, despite everything, is a miracle I do not deserve. But perhaps our children do.’ His beautiful, expressive mouth curved into the first smile she had seen, it seemed, for days. ‘Marry me, Phyllida. Let me love you. Shut all your secrets away so they will wither and die in the darkness and come and live in the light with me.’
‘Yes. Oh, yes, Ashe.’ She found she had scrambled off the bed, all anyhow, her arms held open to him, and he was in them and they held each other so tight she could not breathe, but it did not matter, because Ashe loved her.
Ashe set her back a little and grinned. ‘That feels as though a huge weight has just lifted off my heart. Do you want to go and tell Gregory and my family, start to make plans for the wedding?’
‘No.’ She laughed at the surprise on his face. ‘You sent Gregory off for the night. You meant to stay here with me, did you not?’
‘Yes, but I already said it was arrogant and insensitive of me to assume that is what you would want.’ He was running his fingers over her cheek, tracing her lips, stroking her hair as though he had just found her after a long absence.
‘It is exactly what I want,’ she murmured and stood on tiptoe to kiss him. ‘I want to show you how much I love you. I want to feel how much you love me.’
‘You are not afraid?’ Ashe murmured into her hair.
Phyllida swallowed. ‘A little. Parts of it will not be… will hurt, I know that.’
‘No, they won’t,’ Ashe said with complete confidence. ‘For a start, no one has ever made love to you before and, even if they had, they were not me.’
‘Of all the arrogant creatures!’ she protested, laughing uncertainly as he attacked the fastenings of her crumpled gown.
‘Not at all. I know what I am doing—don’t frown at me like that. There have been other women, but you are the last one. The last and only.’ Her gown fell to her feet, her corset dropped away. ‘As I was saying, I have been learning to make love so I could pleasure the woman I do love.’
Ashe shrugged out of coat and waistcoat together, yanked off his neckcloth and pulled his shirt over his head. ‘There is a time and place for leisurely undressing, but this is not it. You, my darling, need sweeping off your feet and that is precisely what I am going to do.’
His boots went flying, his breeches were kicked off, Phyllida clutched rather desperately at the front of her shift as she found herself confronted by a naked, fully aroused, man. ‘Oh, my.’ Her eyes felt wide as saucers.
‘All yours, indeed.’ Ashe said as he stripped the shift from her, deposited her on the bed and straddled her hips. ‘This is the frightening bit, I imagine. I promise I won’t squash you.’ He slid down her body and she felt her legs opening instinctively to cradle him. He took his weight on his elbows and looked down at her. ‘All right?’
‘Yes. Yes, perfectly all right.’ And it was. There was no point of resemblance at all to how it had been with Buck. This was Ashe and he loved her and he was going to pleasure her. She reached up and freed his hair from the tie, ran her fingers through the silky weight of it, gasped as he bent his head and let the ends tease across her breasts.
He kissed her mouth, a fleeting caress, then slid down her body until he could kiss her breasts, nibbling the tips until she gasped and then sucking and swirling with his tongue until her hips lifted off the bed and she writhed against him, her fingers laced into his hair as though she did not know whether to hold him captive there for ever or push him away to end this exquisite torture.
‘Ashe. Oh, please…’
He moved to the other breast, shifted his weight so he could slide one hand down between her thighs where she ached and throbbed and needed him, needed him desperately to do those wonderful things that he had the other night.
When Ashe left her breasts she gasped in protest, but he only murmured, ‘Sweet, so sweet,’ and possessed her mouth again while his fingers slid and teased and pressed and she panted into his mouth, so close to the bliss, so close.
