The Sherbrooke Bride - Catherine Coulter [104]
“I have seen him so angry that another man would have exploded with the pressure, but not Douglas. Obviously I haven’t observed him in bed with women in the past, but men being men, we do discuss things, and always, in the past, it’s been something of a game to him. He enjoys having a woman lose her head over what he’s doing to her; he enjoys controlling, setting the pace, deciding when and what will be done. You have shocked him to his Sherbrooke toes. He is reeling. I find it quite amusing. Also, Alex, I think your approach this evening was a master stroke. Ah, I wish I could stay and witness his downfall.”
“Downfall. I don’t like the sound of that.”
“His upfall, then, his acceptance that he is very fond of his wife both in and out of bed and that it isn’t at all a bad thing to be utterly mad about your wife.”
“Do you know, if anyone overheard us, they would ship us off to that horrible Botany Bay. I have never even thought in terms of what we now speak about openly.” She grinned. “As for Douglas, he knows no reticence, no shame—”
Tony grabbed her hand and kissed it, laughing. He looked over at Douglas to see his cousin frowning at him, murder in his dark eyes. As for Melissande, there was not only murder in her beautiful eyes, there was also dismemberment, if Tony didn’t miss his guess. He was excessively pleased. He would never in his life forget their lovemaking in the garden. He rather hoped Melissande was pregnant. She certainly deserved to be.
“Ah, it is a pity to miss any of the drama.”
Alexandra laughed. “You keep that up and you won’t be alive for the rest of the drama.”
The evening ended at two o’clock in the morning. Alexandra was still too excited to be tired, but the lavender feather on her mother-in-law’s turban was listing sharply to port; Aunt Mildred was no longer tapping her toes to the beat of the music; Uncle Albert was snoring softly against a potted palm. Douglas emerged from the cardroom, five hundred pounds richer, to take his place beside his wife as their guests departed.
“You were a success,” he said, “but I still don’t like your breasts sticking out like that.”
“I think you were a success yourself, Douglas, particularly with those black knee britches of yours molding your thighs and well, the rest of you. I imagine all the ladies remarked on your male endowments.”
She turned immediately to speak to Sir Thomas Hardesty and his wife, complimenting them on their lovely daughter, Melinda Beatrice, winking at a hovering Tysen whilst she did so. To her surprise Sir Thomas held her hand overlong and there was a definite loose look about his mouth. Douglas was stiff as a poker until they took their leave. “That damned old lecher. How dare he ogle you like that!”
“It wasn’t really ogling,” Tysen said. “He is short-sighted, that’s all.”
“You are becoming more of a fool by the day and it is excessively irritating. I should have sent you with Ryder. He would have beat the naïveté out of you.”
“Well,” Alexandra said after Tysen had given his brother an uncertain look and taken himself off, “Lady Hardesty was, I believe, ogling you a bit too.”
“You will pay for your quite inappropriate observations, Alexandra.”
She gave him a sunny smile. “Why don’t you call me Alex?”
Melissande and Tony came over and Douglas looked at the two sisters standing side by side. One was so achingly beautiful that it made a man’s tongue stick to the roof of his mouth just to look at her; and the other . . . Good Lord, just hearing her laugh made him hard and sweaty, and made him think about her lying naked beneath him. She didn’t look at all dowdy standing next to Melissande. He wanted to kiss the tip of her shiny nose.
Douglas couldn’t wait to let his hands dive into her bodice and pull it away from her breasts. He followed her into her bedchamber, dismissed her maid, and did just that. When his hands were cupping her breasts, he sighed with pleasure,