The Courtship - Catherine Coulter [41]
Actually, he himself could have leapt up and danced an Irish jig. His body pulsed with incredible energy. He didn’t want to, but finally he managed to make himself pull away from her. He rose and looked down at her. His face was hard with satisfaction. He gave her his hand and pulled her to her feet.
“No,” he said, “Helen, don’t look at my mouth or I’ll toss you back down again. We must dress. We must find shelter.”
She hated the layers of clothes that chilled her to her very bones. When she sat down to lace up her boots, he was leaning over trying to pull on his own boots.
She laughed. He looked at her and grinned. It wasn’t raining quite as hard when they made their way back to the country road, but it still took them an hour to return to Shugbourgh Hall.
“Oh, my God,” Lord Prith said when the two of them strolled like bedraggled urchins into the entrance hall. “I shall heat some champagne immediately.”
Lord Beecham begged for brandy and got it. Lord Prith shooed him off to his bedchamber, where Nettle was already pouring hot water into his bath. He stripped his lordship in a minute flat and wrapped him in a dressing gown. Lord Beecham added wood to the fire while Nettle nearly broke into tears over the state of his Hessians. When he was in the tub, leaning back, his eyes closed, he saw Helen, naked, beneath him, arching up when his fingers caressed her, and he saw himself leaning down to kiss her as she screamed out her pleasure.
Three times he’d taken her.
What the hell had he done?
As for Helen, she realized much sooner exactly what she had done, and she cursed the air blue. Teeny paced in front of her tub, back and forth, wringing her hands, completely misunderstanding why her mistress appeared so angry she could spit.
Teeny said, “There is no reason for you to be mad about all the blood on your head, Miss Helen. I will be upset for both of us. It’s real blood, Miss Helen. Let me call in the physician.”
“I’m not mad, Teeny, you are. Now listen to me. I would have to be dead before I would let Ozzie anywhere near my person.”
“But you have said that he never tries to kill people.”
“Yes, that is true, but he fancies himself in love with me. No, he cannot come near me. Come now and help me wash my hair. We’ll get the blood out, don’t worry.”
Yes, Helen knew what she had done. What she had done three times. And it had been glorious. She cursed herself as she walked down the stairs to dinner.
Luther and Eleanor were home in the stables, having returned even later than she and Lord Beecham had, which was why, her father told her, no one had been in the least concerned.
“What were those damned horses doing if they didn’t come back here after they threw us?” Lord Beecham asked the table at large as he felt the rich turtle soup slide all hot and tangy down his throat. Was that a hint of lemon he tasted?
Helen cleared her throat and said to the potatoes on her fork, “They were probably taking shelter, just as you and I were, Lord Beecham. Don’t worry, Father. I can see you puffing up to worry in the worst way. I drank the warmed champagne and it cleared my head to such a degree that the past three hours could never have happened.”
She looked Lord Beecham straight in the eye. “Indeed, those three hours are fast becoming a blur in my mind. Yes, now all I remember is Lord Beecham and me riding away from here to Dereham. Then everything is a complete blur. There must have been rain, since we came back wet, but for all the in-between?
“It is gone from my mind and my memory. Now, everything is as it was. Nothing is any different. Nothing at all.”
Lord Beecham should have heard that with relieved ears. But he didn’t. He didn’t know why, but it enraged him. She wanted to forget he had given her immense pleasure three times? He cursed into his soup.
Helen rose when she finished her dinner. She looked directly at her father. “I am going to bed now. I hope you and Lord Beecham will excuse me. Whatever happened this afternoon has made me