The Courtship - Catherine Coulter [76]
She was lying there on her back, her legs spread, her chemise tangled up around her waist. Her stockings were still in place above her knees, held with lacy black garters. Her boots were still on her feet. Then she laughed, couldn’t help it. She was still wearing her riding hat.
“It’s amazing,” she said, coming up on her elbows. “Do you realize that this time you actually managed to get me out of my skirt before you ravaged me?”
“Yes,” he said, turning slowly to face her. “It is amazing. I remarked to myself about that when I had it done. What I really wanted was your breasts. I have yet to see your breasts, Helen, the way I want to see them.
“Ah, but I did get your skirt off you. I can no longer remember just how I managed to do it. It took nearly thirty seconds, took that thirty seconds away from me being inside you.” His breathing hitched. His eyes went wild and dark, and he stared at her spread legs. “No,” he said. “No. I will control myself.”
He turned back to look down into the market square again. “Where is the scroll?”
Helen blinked. He was trying to keep himself away from her. On a very intellectual level, she supposed she appreciated his efforts, but as she looked at him, her body still pulsed with the heat and strength of him, and she wanted him, powerfully.
“I have hidden it here at the inn. No one would ever find it.” She rose slowly and walked behind the screen to clean herself. When she came around the screen, her clothes were back in place. “I didn’t want to put my father in any more danger, our people either. It is quite safe here.” She pulled on her riding skirt. She walked over to the narrow mirror beside the armoire. She looked demented, her riding hat askew, her mouth red from kissing him at least a hundred times, her eyes vague and soft.
She was shocked to the soles of her goodly sized feet. Miss Helen Mayberry’s eyes were never vague and soft. She was the taskmistress of Court Hammering. This was her inn, where she and she alone ruled. She was in control, she was decisive, she was always the first one to know exactly what to do about anything at all.
She had just ravished a man without a by-your-leave, had done it quickly and very well. Well, perhaps he had been a good part of that ravishment as well. She straightened herself as best she could, pinned her hair back under her riding hat. She still looked like she had been kissed silly. And other things as well. Anyone looking at her would realize that. She slapped her cheeks, then turned to face him when he said, “Reverend Mathers and I did manage to decipher a bit more of the scroll. It was very slow going. Would you like to see what we have now?”
A glimmer of the old excitement came back into her brain, not all of it, but enough. Passion was a strange thing. It simply wrung you out and left you feeling like you were lying in the clouds, your brain empty, your body glowing, your heart filled. “Yes,” she said, “but first, would you like to dine?”
It meant leaving this bedchamber. It meant being in a private dining room with servants and guests not many feet away. It meant it would be next to impossible to toss up her skirts and position her on the dining table between the roasted hare and the poached trout. He would be safe from her and she from him. If he was truly a good man, there would not be a lock on the parlor door for him to click tight and then haul her up on the table. There would be no temptation like that.
“One time,” he said as he followed her out of the bedchamber. “That is a vast improvement.”
“I suppose it is,” she said, “but I hated it when you left me. I wanted you again.” With those words slamming into his brain, burrowing into him to his very bones, he followed her down the inn stairs.
Her three lads were busy in the yard because there were guests arriving for the night. She spoke to Gwen, to Mrs. Toop and to Mr. Hyde, who was tasting his own ale. When Gwen carried covered platters into the small parlor, Lord Beecham moved to the fireplace, where a small fire burned, and stuck