Dangerous in Diamonds - Madeline Hunter [95]
For a moment nothing moved. Not him and not her. She opened her eyes. He braced above her, his shoulders taut, his face severe. He looked, she knew, to make sure that odd little fear had not fluttered to life.
He must have seen enough to know it had not, or else he could wait no longer. He lifted one of her legs and hitched it over his hip, and entered even deeper. Then the fullness withdrew, and entered again. Carefully at first, then somewhat less so. She did not mind that. She still pulsed where they joined, still ached with a quiet need, and it felt good and right to have him in her.
He realized, as the stupor thinned and Daphne lay in his arms afterwards, that he had not used the condom tucked in the book on the table beside the bed.
Careless, that. Physicians insisted they were only to prevent disease, but any fool knew they served another purpose too. Both purposes should have been tended to tonight of all nights, for her sake and reassurance.
He considered his peculiar lapse and what it could mean, which led to considerations of what he did or did not owe this particular woman. He resisted the fullness of it but forced his mind down that path anyway. He had not gone far before he realized that, in a manner of speaking, precautions against pregnancy had been unnecessary.
The reasons why struck him as inescapable. So did the inevitable consequences. It was perhaps a tribute to just how contented he felt right now that those consequences did not seem nearly as dire as they should.
“When we get back to town, I will get a special license,” he said. “Our mutual friends can attend, and your Rarest Blooms if you want, but I would prefer to keep out all of the tedious relatives.”
She had been playfully twisting the hairs on his chest, but now she froze so totally she might have fainted dead away. She had not been so still since that first night in the greenhouse.
Finally she turned and looked at him oddly. It could be the lighting, but she appeared annoyed.
“I am being thoughtless, aren’t I? My apologies, Daphne. You can of course invite your tedious relatives if you want. Mine will not be allowed, is what I meant.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Our marriage. The wedding. That is what special licenses are for.”
She sat up and pulled the sheet around her. “You are mad. I have just been ravished by a madman.”
“Actually, officially, you have not been ravished yet. Trust me about this. I was far too polite this time for it to qualify as ravishing.”
“Will you please stay on the subject at hand? This marriage? It is bizarre for you to speak of it.” She peered at his face. “Are you asleep? Is this one of those waking dreams some people have in which they move and talk?”
“Why would you call this bizarre? It is so normal and ordinary that I astonish myself.”
“Normal is bizarre for you.”
“Daphne, unlike a certain hypocritical ass whom I regret to admit is a relative, I am a gentleman still. You in turn were an innocent. Hence—” He gestured at her, him, and the bed. “Marriage.”
She sighed deeply in that Hawkeswellian way. He would have to discourage that habit after the wedding.
“Castleford, your adherence to at least the bare basics of the gentleman’s code of chivalry is admirable. Truly. Except we both know I was not an innocent. Hence”—she gestured as he had, mimicking him—“madman.”
“You were not the ex-mistress or the widow of some other man, though, were you? As for the experience that stole your innocence, I am responsible for that too.”
“Dear heavens, you are really blaming yourself for that, aren’t you? You want to marry me as a form of penance. I won’t have it.”
“The hell you won’t. Look me in the eyes and tell me that you have never blamed me for what happened to you or that scullery maid and god knows how many others due to my silence about what I knew him to be.