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Theo woke to find himself in a hot sticky tangle of sheets, hair and soft feminine limbs. He lay looking up at the ceiling in the faint morning light and wondered if he had ever felt better. Beyond the moment, beyond this bed chamber door, was a reality he did not want to think about yet. Time enough to face it. Half on top of him, her face burrowed into his chest, Nell slept, her breath stirring the hair on his chest in an arousing tickle. He thought about waking her, then contented himself with stroking her hair.
He had roused her once in the night, loving the way she responded to every caress with delighted surprise. And then he had been the one to be surprised when he had woken from a deeply erotic dream to find her small hand caressing him into total arousal. Half-asleep as he had been, he had almost forgotten the overriding need to preserve her virginity, had caught himself just in time as he brought his weight down over her.
Had he satisfied both her and her curiosity? he wondered. Was she going to put away this awakening, this knowledge, and become once again the respectable bluestocking spinster? She was so vulnerable, trembling in his arms. Would it take so very much to convince her to marry him?
A hand slid down his belly, its fingers teasing into the coarse hair, then tiptoeing up the rapidly stiffening length of him. ‘Good morning, Theo,’ she said, turning up her face to smile at him.
‘You, Nell, are a hussy. Don’t you want your breakfast?’
‘No.’ She had learned not to handle him as though he was breakable. In fact, Theo thought, abandoning himself to her wicked exploration, she learned everything, very fast. And if he didn’t do something, now this moment, it was all going to be over very fast, too.
‘Nell, slowly. Oh, my God…’
Elinor curled up at the foot of the crumpled bed and ate toast, heedless of the crumbs. Theo, up at the pillow end, had wedged steak between two halves of a large roll and was demolishing it, wolf-like. It had been his idea, this decadent picnic breakfast when she had declared herself too indolent to get out of bed.
‘We’ve got a longish drive ahead of us, we will eat in bed and then you must get up’ he had said firmly, ringing the bell despite her protests. ‘What? They think we are married, stop blushing.’
But she hadn’t really been blushing, she rather thought she had lost the capacity to, all in one intense night of pleasure. Of course, there was that one thing still not experienced, Theo had not taken her, claimed her body, possessed her. But he had taught her, shatteringly, the pleasure that a man and a woman could give to each other. There was one more night before they reached Maubourg. Would he come to her bed again, or would he take her literally and make last night the one and only?
Theo had demolished his steak, and his third cup of coffee, and was watching her while she daydreamed. ‘What is it?’ she asked. He looked so right there in her bed, his chest bare, the sheet draped precariously, with unselfconscious provocation, over his hips.
‘Nell, won’t you think again about marrying me?’
No! So he had not listened to a word she had said last night. Now he was going to be noble and honourable and want her to marry him. No wonder he had been so reluctant, he had known he would feel this the next morning.
‘No, Theo. Thank you, but no. I cannot marry without love, you see. I know it was wicked of me to want to experience this, but I did mean what I said last night—please do not make me feel bad by trying to do what you see as the honourable thing.’
‘Honour be damned,’ he retorted. ‘Nell, I love you—’
‘Yes, I know.’ She had to reassure him, the words tumbled out. ‘You couldn’t be a more loving friend and cousin. And I love you, just the same way.’ Lies, I love you in every way there is. ‘But you told me you would never marry, and I realise that must be because you love someone else, hopelessly—no, don’t interrupt—and I know it is sad because she doesn’t love you, but two wrongs don’t make a right. Given my feelings, it would be wrong for us to marry. Truly, I don’t think I could stand it,’ she added with as much conviction as she could muster.
‘I see. Thank you for being so clear about it.’ Theo put his plate down and threw back the sheet. Shy all of a sudden, Elinor looked away, keeping her eyes on the pile of hat and dress boxes while behind her she could hear Theo hunting through the strewn clothing for his breeches and shirt. ‘I’ll send the maid up with water and to help you to dress, shall I?’
‘Yes, please.’ How painfully polite they were being to each other. Last night, this morning, there was not an inch of each other’s body they had not caressed, kissed, explored. Now they would be discussing the weather in a minute.
The road to Grenoble was long, Theo, reserved, and the horses, tired. The magic had gone out of the journey and Elinor knew she had only herself to blame for that. How could she have failed to anticipate the emotions that would be unleashed by intimacy of that kind? He had been so right, back at the chateau. She kept trying to understand desire intellectually and all the time it was far too complicated for that.
Theo suggested that she must be tired and might prefer to travel inside where she could sleep. Elinor translated this, without much difficulty, as meaning that he wanted to be alone and could very well do without her company.
She sat in the chaise surrounded by the pretty boxes full of Theo’s joyful purchases and felt very much like weeping. Which was not helpful, she decided, waiting in an inn while Theo had a local livery stables change the fittings and harness another pair to the carriage. She had got into this mess by thinking too much; now an excess of sensibility was no way to get out of it.
The only thing to be done was to keep reminding herself that she was actually better off than she had been before Theo had come back into her life. She looked better, she felt more confident, she had had adventures and experiences and she had learned that risking letting herself feel led to both the expected disadvantages and to undreamed wonders.
If she could just manage to school her awakened body into accepting that it had experienced quite enough sensuality and was now satisfied, she was certain she would soon feel very much better.
The unexpected touch of Theo’s hand on hers made her flinch. As she got to her feet, he stood well back to give her room, and, instead of explaining that he had simply startled her, she found there was nothing she could say. Perhaps, she thought with sadness as she climbed into the carriage, there never would be again.
That night Theo had professed himself tired from so much driving and had retired with the brandy after an hour of very stilted dinner conversation, leaving her to the dubious pleasures of Petrarch and the private parlour with a view of rain-soaked rooftops. Even the glorious August weather had deserted them, making the last ten miles a miserable drag along muddy roads.
Elinor shut her book with a snap, rang the bell for a glass of red wine, wrapped her shawl tight around her shoulders, put her feet up on the fender and gave her future some serious thought. It would not hold Theo, she knew that, but she was beginning to wonder whether it would bear any relation to her life with her mother so far either.
There was nothing she did for Mama that a competent secretary who could draw could not do. She had her own money—not that she ever touched it or questioned the decisions of her trustees. Well, that would have to change if she was going to stop simply existing and start living.
She could afford her own companion, could afford to travel. Elinor stretched out a hand for her notebook and began to scribble.
Half an hour later the wine was untouched at her side and she had filled a page with tightly packed notes headed, How Much Money Do I Have? and finishing, ITALY!
She read it through slowly, stretched out a hand for the glass and fought down the rising knot of apprehension. Yes, she could do it. One tear rolled down the side of her nose and she scrubbed it away with an impatient hand. She was going to be lonely, but she rather thought she had been lonely since she was a child. Now she was going to be lonely on her own terms and in that, surely, there must be some happiness. It was just a pity it had taken her heart being broken to make her realise it.
