Tarnished Amongst the Ton Page 23

  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.

  Then his weight and heat had gone, leaving her reaching for him. She opened her eyes and saw his dark head where his hand had been, his hair fanned out over her thighs, startling against the white skin. He pushed firmly but gently to open her and then kissed her there, even as he slid two fingers into her. Shocked, she tensed. It would hurt, she had known it would…

  ‘Oh.’ It was a murmur, a gasp. Instinctively she tightened around the intrusion, arched up against his mouth, sobbed wordless pleas that he would never stop, never, because it was almost there, that wonderful sensation that transcended reality.

  He moved, too fast for her to protest at the absence of his lips, his hand. He was over her, holding her, whispering what she knew were love words although she did not know the language. His hips moved in the cradle of her thighs and he filled her in one long stroke and she shattered, broke, heard her own voice crying out.

  Phyllida came to herself to find the pleasure was not waning, only changing. Ashe moved within her, his body part of hers, his gasps of pleasure hers as well as his. She curled her legs around his hips, tilting up until he was as deep as she could take him, and clung to the broad shoulders, slick with sweat, kissed him wherever she could reach and heard her own voice, ‘I love you, I love you’, as he groaned and went rigid in her arms.

  They lay locked together in a hot, sticky, blissful knot on top of the tangled sheets. Phyllida kissed the angle of Ashe’s neck, the only place she could reach. ‘You were not arrogant at all,’ she told him. ‘Very modest, in fact.’

  He pushed up on one elbow and smiled down at her. ‘I’m glad you think so. Does that mean that you have not changed your mind?’

  ‘It does. I intend making an honest man of you, my lord.’ She wriggled out of his embrace and surveyed the room. ‘Just look at this! Your breeches are hanging from my dressing-table mirror, there is a boot in a hat box and that dreadful brown gown will never be the same again. And to think that before you came in I was lying here trying to convince myself that no one died of a broken heart and that somehow I could get over y
ou.’

  ‘Do you think you might?’

  ‘Get over you?’ Phyllida placed her index fingertip in the middle of her chin and assumed a pose of deep thought. ‘I suppose I could possibly become tired of you. To be on the safe side you had better ask me in, say, eighty years’ time.’

  ‘I will make a note in my memorandum book,’ Ashe said seriously. ‘I do love it when you pretend to be serious and prudent.’

  ‘Well, make the most of it.’ Phyllida ran one fingernail down the middle of his chest, down to the flat belly with its intriguing trail of hair, and tickled into Ashe’s navel. ‘Because I fully intend to be scandalous, frivolous and utterly naughty.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Ashe murmured, submitting to her hands. ‘I will do my very best to survive eighty years of this, my love, but I warn you, we had better practise as much as possible.’ And then he ceased to be able to say a coherent word for the next half-hour.

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

  All Rights Reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II BV/S.à.r.l. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ® and TM are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

  First published in Great Britain 2013

  by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited.

  Harlequin (UK) Limited, Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road,

  Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

  © Melanie Hilton 2013

  eISBN: 978-1-472-00378-2

  Table of Contents

  Praise

  Excerpt

  Author Note

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Copyright