AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Laurel caught Giles’s gaze across the heaped pillows and rolled her eyes. He grinned back. No harm done, just hours of anxiety, an exhausting journey and worry that had dug lines around Giles’s eyes.
‘You must rest,’ she told the older man. ‘And I am going to ring for hot water for two baths and then Giles and I will have dinner and leave you to yours. I am certain your doctor wants you to be quiet and have an early night. You and Giles can talk all you want in the morning.’
‘Managing, isn’t she?’ the Marquess remarked.
‘Very,’ Giles retorted. ‘It is just what you need, sir. I will send in your man and will see you after breakfast.’
‘Old devil,’ he said to Laurel once they were outside.
‘I expect he had an unpleasant time of it, especially if his mind was confused after the fall,’ she said pacifically. ‘He is enjoying having you back.’
‘I am enjoying being back,’ he said, following her through into their suite and collapsing into an elegant, boneless sprawl on the big bed. ‘Ignore all my gloom and complaints earlier. I was tired and worried.’
‘And feeling guilty,’ Laurel said as she tugged the bell pull.
‘What?’ Giles sat up abruptly.
‘About being away for so long,’ Laurel said, surprised by the sharpness of his reaction. ‘Giles, this morning, just before the post arrived, you said there was something you had to tell me? Or perhaps it was say to me—I can’t quite recall. You were interrupted.’
He flopped back flat again. ‘It was the wrong moment. Come here and I will tell you when we have all our clothes off—damnation! Yes? Come in.’
‘Hot water and two baths,’ Laurel said, with a smile for the footman who had answered the bell and a secret smile for Giles’s words. He could not be feeling too exhausted if he wanted to make love.
Giles ordered the two baths to be set together in the middle of the bedchamber and not in the separate dressing rooms where they were kept. Laurel listened to the sound of his voice as he talked to the footman standing in for Dryden who, with Binham, was probably still making his slow way towards them. She was being unlaced by one of the maids, silent with nerves despite Laurel’s best efforts to set her at her ease, and the girl was taking what seemed like an age.
Come on, Laurel urged silently.
What was it that Giles wanted to tell her, the thing that would be right to talk about when they were making love? Finally she was out of her clothes and into a robe. She sent the flustered maid scurrying off and waited for her husband to emerge from his dressing room which he did, just as she dropped the robe and stepped into the bath.
‘Aphrodite,’ Giles said, advancing on her with an obvious intent that became even more obvious when he shrugged off his banyan.
Laurel sank down into the water. ‘Bath first. I smell of horse and I am going to be as stiff as a board in the morning if I do not soak now.’
Giles growled, but got into his own tub, scrubbing as though in a race. Laurel soaped and sponged and let herself drift off into an anticipatory daydream involving a clean wet husband and a big bed and—‘Oh, bliss.’
She hadn’t heard him climb out of his bath or come over to hers, but he was kneeling behind her, his soapy hands massaging her shoulders, slipping lower, gliding over her breasts and teasing her nipples. Somehow she managed to hold on to some practicality, although goodness knew why she should, she told herself. ‘I haven’t finished washing.’
‘Let me.’ He went round to the foot of the tub, water still gleaming on his bare skin, and began to wash her feet, his fingers sliding between her toes, rubbing the arch of her feet, sliding upwards to soap her legs. Then h
igher.
‘Every little crevice.’ Giles came up on his knees, bending over her, one hand braced on the edge of the tub, one hand exploring intimately, soaping every crevice, teasing every fold until she was squirming and the water was splashing everywhere.
‘Are you clean now, Laurel? Quite clean?’ He bent over further, caught her left nipple between his lips.
‘Yes. Giles! Oh, yes...’
Chapter Twenty-Two
Laurel was still disorientated with pleasure when Giles lifted her, slippery and gasping his name, carried her to the bed, pressed her down with his weight and took her with one, long, masterful stroke. And then stopped, quite still above her, raised on his elbows.
‘Giles?’
‘The thing I was going to say at breakfast.’
‘Giles, this is no time for conversation! Will you please—’
‘This is not conversation. This is a declaration.’ The veins were standing out on his temples and the tendons in his neck were rigid with tension at holding back his body’s instinctive movement. ‘I love you.’ He began to slide within her, slowly, so slowly as she stared up at him, hardly daring to believe what she was hearing.
