O ver the last weeks, Peggy was stunned to find that she had been enveloped into the Briarwood family. They included her in everything: breakfast, lunch, dinner, cards, dancing, music, walks, entertainment. They often liked to put on Shakespeare in the evenings. She was finding she was actually quite good at it, though she had no intention of going onto the stage. Ever.
She did not really know what to make of what was happening to her. Nor did she truly understand how this all had transpired.
The Briarwoods had done the same with her grandmother and her mother.
Her grandmother, her mother, and the dowager duchess kept putting on more acts.
As a matter of fact, they did several scenes a night, sometimes with costumes and set pieces! And the dowager duchess’s sister, Estella, would come in from town on her day off and they would do more scenes.
Peggy had never seen her grandmother or her mother so happy. They had purpose now. And they had health. Because of wealth.
Wealth was a powerful thing. A beautiful thing. If one was lucky enough to get it.
She wondered what her purpose would be if her grandmother and mother were going to stay here and help women in the East End. She knew that her purpose at present was helping Maximus, but beyond that, she wasn’t entirely certain. She strode down the hall, heading towards her chambers. She paused at Maximus’s door, which was open, and she glanced inside.
She had expected that he wouldn’t be there, that a servant would be inside cleaning, but he was there, much to her shock. Maximus stood beside the mantel, holding it tightly with his hand, his other hand pressed to his eye.
“Are you quite well?” she asked softly, crossing in quickly.
“Sometimes it hurts,” he said honestly, without even looking towards her, as if the pain was too much. “The doctors have assured me that there’s absolutely nothing wrong, and they said it will just happen every now and then, like a phantom pain. Sometimes it convinces me that my eye is still there. But I open it and, well, I can’t see anything out of it.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, knowing that there really weren’t adequate words.
“Don’t be,” he said firmly. “I’m grateful to be alive.”
“You can be both grateful to be alive and dislike that you’re in pain.”
That seemed to give him pause, and he looked at her as he pulled his eye patch more securely in place.
“I won’t mind seeing,” she said gently as she led him over to the chaise lounge and sat him down.
“It’s a mess.”
She laughed, and he jolted back.
“Forgive me,” she rushed. “It’s just that I have seen such things that would likely make your eye look like a Reynolds painting. It is the way of growing up in a veritable cesspit. Truly, if it wasn’t for my grandmother and mother, I’d be an entirely different creature. You can trust that I won’t flinch.”
His face creased with worry.
Slowly, carefully, she lifted her hand to his eye patch, then gently eased the leather back from the angry, scarred tissue.
He looked askance with his good eye, as if waiting for her to recoil.
Instead, she traced his strong face with her fingertips, and then she stroked his temple down to his cheek gently, hoping to alleviate his discomfort. “I don’t like to think of you in pain.”
“Well, everyone experiences pain,” he said, his breath catching in his throat as he surrendered to her touch.
“I suppose you’re right,” she sighed. “But I’d like to soothe it for you.”
“Thank you,” he said. “That’s very kind. But you’re really the one who needs—”
“Oh dear,” she said. “Let’s not do this.”
“What?” he blurted, surprised, and yet he continued to lean his face into her touch, savoring it, like a plant that has been in darkness turns toward the sun.
“Ignore your own suffering,” she explained. “I have suffered in my life, and you have suffered in your life. You don’t need to take care of me, Maximus.”
“I want to take care of you.”
“Do you?” she asked, her fingers stilling on his beautiful visage.
He nodded, lifting a hand to cover her own as she touched his face. And then he pulled the palm of her hand towards his lips and kissed it softly.
“Very much,” he rumbled. “I want to take care of you every day, and I want to ensure that nothing ill happens to you.”
Her heart pounded as she studied his gentle hold on her palm. “You just pointed out that suffering is a part of life.”
“Yes,” he said, stroking her palm now with his thumb, “but it’s much easier when we have people about us who help. It’s what I’ve had my whole life, and I want that for you too.”
Her breath hitched in her throat. She wanted to give in to this. She wanted to give in to him so badly, but she knew she couldn’t give him her heart. It was too dangerous, so she would have to give him something else instead. She lifted her other hand to his face, determined to distract him from this line of thinking, determined to prove that she could have this relationship with him without risking his betrayal, without betraying herself, without invoking the future that her mother warned her of.
“Let us not think of such things,” she whispered. “Let us just be alive.”
He groaned. “Any time I tell you of my dreams or desires, are you going to insist I am not living in the present?”
She laughed. “You asked me to help you wake up! Dreaming is being asleep!”
“Oh, but, Peggy, dreaming of the future means I have hope for the future.”
She tensed as a rather terrible thought hit her. “Did you ever think you might not?”
He was silent for a long moment before he took both of her hands in his. When he began to speak, his voice was deep with emotion—raw, vulnerable, determined. “When I was first injured, the sorrow was intense. It was very bad, and I can’t really explain why because my injury was not nearly as horrific as so many others. Some say it was just the shock to the body. It dragged me down into a dark mire for some time. I went to every ball and every play when I returned to London, hoping I would one day wake up my old self.”
Maximus smiled ruefully. “I even went to the opera, much to my grandmother’s dismay. I did everything I could to pull myself out of the misery, but sometimes the misery just pulled me down harder and harder, trying to convince me that the world really wasn’t worth living in. Even worse, it tried to convince me my family might be better off without me, which is ridiculous because I love being with my family, and I know they love being with me. What I can tell you is the darkness inside us is a terrible liar, trying to convince us of the worst possible things. So don’t let it do that to you.”
She straightened, feeling suddenly uncomfortable. “Whatever are you talking about? I have no idea what you mean.”
He was silent. He didn’t try to argue with her. He didn’t try to convince her of anything else.
Instead, he kissed her, pulling her towards him as if he could convince her that way—convince her to stay with him, to be with him, to offer her soul to him.
While she could be with him now, she knew that, ultimately, she would never be able to give him what he wanted, or what he thought he wanted.
Because he didn’t really want her. He wanted freedom from his pain.
Maximus had always been a prize. He knew it. He’d never taken advantage. So it was most strange that the very woman he wanted, with ever more growing intensity…did not want him back. At least not in the same way.
She did want him. She desired him. She was open with him. She took care of him. But she would not let him return the favor that she so dearly needed.
More than anything in the world, he longed to take care of her. To ease all her hurts and all her suffering. That in itself took him out of his own self-study. When he focused on helping her, he could let go of the pain inside him.
Though he’d grown up in the most loving family, unburdened by most of the rules of society, he still felt restricted by so many of the unspoken tenets of what it was to be a man.
It was damned hard to be vulnerable. Yet, she had almost demanded of it of him just now. She was demanding even more. She pressed him slowly back against the arm of the chaise lounge. As if bolstering her own courage, her own power, she bit her sensual lower lip, then tugged his linen shirt free of his waistband.
At present, he wanted to throw her back and pounce on her, to take her in a storm of desire. But if he genuinely wished to care for her, that would be a mistake.
He needed to surrender to her. To show her that she had power as well.
So, though it took all his will to be vulnerable, he laid back and let her do as she pleased.
Once his linen shirt was on the floor, a tumble of fabric on the burgundy woven rug, her eyes drank him in. Tentatively, she reached out and touched his hard body, and he shivered at her touch. Just that bare caress nearly undid him.
Teasing her fingers over the hills and valleys on his abdomen, she worked her way down the muscles that descended into his breeches.
Her fingers hitched on the buttons, but she worked steadily until she tugged his clothes down his legs, divesting him determinedly, and of his boots too.
Gaze wide, she studied him, as if she wished to remember every bit of this.
His cock hardened and bobbed, eager for her attention.
He forced himself to draw in a slow breath. He had never let anyone see him so fully naked—either physically or emotionally—since his wounding.
His body was a map of minor scars, aside from the more serious nature of his eye.
There was no fear or revulsion in her. Quite the contrary, she seemed to adore his lack of perfection. As if it somehow made him closer to her.
She placed her hands on his thighs, then began to slide them upward.
He swallowed, barely believing she was doing this. How? How had he found her in this wild, wide world? And how had she gone from castigating him to caressing him?
Whatever it was, he was damn grateful, for it seemed to him she was the greatest thing to ever occur in his life.
She was a constant reminder that life was not about balls, houses, clubs, or gambling.
Life was about being grateful to be warm, to be cared for, to be…breathing.
And oh, how they breathed.
Their breaths were rugged, abandoned, primal.
As her hands came up to take his cock, he let out a rough groan.
Carefully, she began to stroke him. “Like this?” she queried.
He nodded. “You can…hold it a little harder. I promise.”
Her eyes flared, but she did as he suggested. Maximus still could not tear his focus from her. She was bliss. She was his. Somehow, he had to help her see that.
Then she bent her head and kissed the head. And he nearly jolted off the chaise lounge.
“Should I do more?” she asked, her voice soft and uncertain.
“Yes…Peggy.”
More confidently now, she took him into her mouth, swirling her tongue around him, exploring as if he was some new sweet to be savored.
All thought vanished as all his strength channeled to his sex. He could take it no more. He hauled himself up, put her on her back, pulled up her skirts, and contemplated her soft folds.
He had to taste her.
She let out a gasp as he took those pink petals into his mouth, closed his eyes out of sheer bliss, and brought her to pleasure. When she was moaning his name over and over, he took his cock in hand and thrust deep into her hot core.
In that moment, he knew, despite the fact that his brain was gone, he was in love with her. She had been brought to him the night they’d met. He’d heard her in the closet because he’d been meant to.
This was always going to happen. No question about it.
So, as he allowed himself and her to again be taken by the powerful bliss of mating, he trusted. He trusted that, somehow, she would be his. Not just now. But always.
Just before he crested, he pulled out and let his speed spill over her. Not because he did not want a child with her, but because he was determined that she should know her well-being was always going to be what he wanted most in this world.
And one day soon, she would feel safe enough in his arms for them to be completely one. No holding back. He just had to believe it was true.