Page 50 of The Reckless Love of an Heir (The Marlow Family Secrets #4)

If his father and mother were still angry that he had to marry Susan so soon after William’s funeral, there was no sign of it on his wedding day.

The day may have been a subdued affair, but everyone had been perfectly pleasant, especially to Susan, and quite probably for her sake.

Even Harry had kept his lips closed on the reason for the rush.

Henry hoped her day had lacked nothing bar the company of Alethea.

His uncle and aunt and cousins had left immediately after luncheon.

When Susan’s parents had left a short while later, his family drifted away, leaving her to her goodbye.

He had stayed and watched as she held them as though she never wanted to let go.

She had cried, and there was a fear of change in her eyes as she watched their carriage depart.

He had become used to that emotion in the days since William’s death; it was because she had no time to adjust to leaving her home and family.

He had stepped forward then and lain his arm about her shoulders.

Susan had taught him what it was to be selfless. But in return he would teach her to allow herself to sometimes think only of herself. She was allowed to feel sad over leaving her parents.

He proposed they retire to bed before the sun had even set, because his parents had not been talkative, and the girls and Percy had already chosen to retire. It was going to be an odd thing, though, to spend the night with Susan in his bed, in his home, with his family in the house.

He sighed. He had been standing outside the door of his own bedchamber for nearly a half hour, while a maid helped Susan undress and get into bed.

He perhaps should have knocked once he heard the maid leave through the servants’ door, but he had not been certain Susan would be ready, and he was waiting for her to call.

Perhaps she was waiting for him to call, though.

His knuckles tapped the door. ‘Susan! Are you ready?’

After a moment there was a call back. ‘Yes!’

He turned the handle. Samson rose to follow him. ‘No, you stay, and do not dare whine. If you fight over the bed with Susan, she will always win, and you will be in the kitchens.’

He walked in alone as Samson padded off towards his favourite chair.

When he saw her, he wanted to laugh. He had stripped off his evening coat, his black stock neckcloth and waistcoat and held all the items and his shoes. Yet, in his shirt and trousers he was probably as heavily clothed as she was in her bed attire.

The nightdress she wore came to her wrists and lace hung over her hands and formed a flurry about her neck. It surely could not be comfortable to sleep in that. His gaze dropped to her bare toes peeping from beneath her nightdress then lifted to her face. ‘You are all buttoned up still.’

At least with her nightdress, though, unlike the dress she had worn in the rose garden, the buttons were at the front.

He put his clothes down on a chair and walked across the room. She was smiling at him although her cheeks were pink. ‘There will be a rule, the first in our marriage. I may set them and you may set them as we go on, but this first rule will be mine. You are never to wear a nightdress in bed.’

‘And what if I am cold?’

‘You will not be cold. I shall warm you.’

His smile twisted when he looked down at the row of tiny round pearl-like buttons, then he began releasing them. ‘I do not wish to fight with a thing like this every night.’

She was looking at his face. ‘Every night?’

He glanced up. ‘Indeed, every night.’

She laughed. ‘Thank you. You have been making me laugh all day and making me feel better, when you must still feel very sad yourself. Have I told you, Henry; you are not self-centred, I take it back. I have seen everything you are doing for your family.’

His fingers continued their work releasing the buttons between her breasts as he looked into her face. ‘No. You were right, I am. You being here is only more evidence of that. The way I behaved in the rose garden was for my own selfish interest. I thought nothing of the impact on you.’

‘You needed comfort, I understood…’

‘But you made up your mind not to marry me, and I took that choice away.’ He moved aside her nightdress and cupped her left breast. She stood straight and unmoving as his thumb brushed over her nipple.

‘I do not regret what we did. I think I simply shocked myself.’

He laughed. She was still an anomaly, but now she was his wife and he could take as long as he liked discovering all the facets of her nature.

Desire and affection clasped in his stomach, tightening the muscles. He let go of her breast and then lifted off her spectacles and put them on the dressing table beside her .

‘Will you take off your shirt? It feels strange to stand here like this when you are clothed.’

A low sound of amusement rumbled in his chest. Her nightdress was gaping open, it was only fair that he stripped too. He gripped his shirt above the waist of his trousers and pulled it up over his head, then discarded it in on the chair where he had left his other clothes.

Her fingers touched him, spreading out over his pectoral muscles. ‘I wanted to touch you in the spring,’ she said.

When she had come up here to his rooms…

‘When you lay on the sofa in the library. You were so bruised, and so beautiful.’

‘And so reckless and self-centred.’ His hands pressed over hers.

She looked up. ‘No, I was trying to convince myself I had every cause to dislike you, but I did not dislike you that day. You fascinated me.’

‘Like one of those flowers in that book.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, you now have a lifetime to explore your fascination, both for me and for that book of orchids.’

He kissed her and her soft lips pressed gently back against his. Every time he kissed her he was reminded of her inexperience. He treasured it.

His hand slid inside her open nightdress as hers lifted to his shoulders.

He kissed her for a moment more, then bent and kissed the exquisite skin of her upper breast. Her nightdress fell off her shoulder, hanging down her arm. He bent lower. As her hands explored the contours of his body, his tongue played with her nipple.

He lifted his head. ‘Let us be rid of this nightdress.’ He slipped it off her other shoulder and pulled the cuffs over her hands, so it slid to the floor, leaving her naked in front of him. She showed no self-consciousness.

Looking into his eyes with a gentleness he had never seen in a woman’s eyes until he started looking more closely into Susan’s, ‘I love you,’ she said.

To hear those words… They did very strange things to his stomach. ‘I love you also, Susan. Now run and get into the warm bed, while I finish undressing.’

She smiled widely, before turning away.

As she turned, he smacked her bottom with a satisfying crack.

She squealed and ran for the bed as the orange light of sunset shone through the window onto her skin, highlighting her curves.

He unbuttoned his trousers then bent and pushed both his trousers and underwear down, stripping his stockings from his feet too. He put his clothes in the pile on the chair, and picked up her nightdress, and put that there too.

‘Are you not going to close the shutters?’ she asked as he walked towards the bed.

‘No. I want to see you in the last of the daylight, and then I will wish to look at you in the moonlight. Now make some space for me.’

She moved over, lifting the sheet and blanket.

He climbed in beside her.

‘I am used to sleeping with Alethea, we often share a bed…’

Her innocence made him laugh. ‘I hope sleeping with me will not be at all comparable.’

She giggled with a lightness he had only heard when she had been in a ballroom. If he could make her as happy in their marriage as she was in a ballroom, then he would be happy too.

He leaned over her, his hand embracing the back of her neck and kissed her again. Then he threw the covers back and kissed a path down her neck and across her shoulder. This is how he had wanted to make love to her in the rose garden. To have been able to kiss her skin everywhere.

His hand moved to her hip as her fingers combed through his hair and he kissed a path across her breast then lower, over her stomach.

When he kissed her inner thigh she squealed as she had when he’d smacked her. He did not stop, but held that thigh and cherished it with several more kisses.

She laughed.

But she stopped laughing when he kissed the place between her legs, and her in-breath was sharp. Though, she did not stop him, and her hips rocked upward with a natural instinct as he worked.

Her naivety was as beautiful as she was.

As he carried on, one of her legs lifted and lay over his shoulder. He used his fingers as well as his tongue, pushing them into her moist warmth. She sighed.

He had never lain with a woman in his bed here. She was the first to make those sounds of satisfaction in this room. At least there was an innocence on his part too, in that.

He gave up and crawled up the bed, his hands moving either side of her body. ‘Ready?’ he asked as he hovered over her, looking into her pale eyes.

‘Yes.’

Her eyes shone with want, discovery and… affection… Love. He had not noticed those things when he was drunk, then, all he had felt was the acceptance of her body.

He pressed into her, and her legs rose, resting against his outer thighs.

He withdrew, holding his weight on his hands so his body hovered above hers as he lifted his hips. He looked down when he pressed back in, and watched himself glide inside her.

‘Ah.’ The sound escaped her lips, as her fingernails clawed into the skin of his upper arms, hanging on to him.

He looked up into her eyes as he withdrew and re-entered.

‘Ah.’ It was such a soft breathy sound.

He moved more swiftly.

As his gaze held hers, she bit her lower lip. He wished to see all the slight nuances in her expression as new sensations spun into his blood.