The Sherbrooke Bride - Catherine Coulter [98]
“You were high-handed, you know,” Alexandra said to her husband as they walked toward the stables.
He brushed a fly from his buckskin thigh. “You need it as does my impertinent sister.” He kept walking, speaking quietly now, not looking at her as he said, “On your return to the Hall, I will take you back to that charming stream. I have decided that it is bedchambers with those big beds that make me lose my rationality and my perspective. Yes, it is the place rather than you that is responsible for turning me into a man with absolutely no finesse or savoir-faire.
“We will go to the stream and I will remain myself. I will take off your clothes, lay you down on your back and touch you and kiss your breasts and fondle you between your legs, and I will smile and talk to you while I caress you. Perhaps we will discuss the situation in Naples, from both Napoleon’s and the Royalists’ points of view. And I will wax brilliant because I am concentrating on my words and not on your body. My control will be uplifting, my experience will be at my brain’s command. Then, when I decide that I wish to continue with you, why, I will do so, and I will go slowly and do all the things to you I haven’t taken the time to do up to now. Well, more time, in any case, and you will scream and bellow until you are hoarse. And you will be very pleased that I am gentleman enough to have figured all this out.”
He turned then to look down at her. She looked both amazed and incredulous and her face was hectic with color. He laughed. “You will be able to scream as loudly as you wish. There will be no one around save a few ducks and birds. Yes, I enjoy hearing you cry out in the middle of the day with the sun on your face and me pressing you into the warmth of the earth.”
She poked him in his belly and he just laughed some more. She wanted to tell him that he could be as savage as he wished, but she hesitated, and then he said, “You will enjoy me even more when I return to being an excellent lover.” She wondered how that could possibly be true.
At Branderleigh Farm they found a three-year-old mare of Barb descent whose sire was Pander of Foxhall Stud. She was spirited, soft-mouthed, long in the back, and black as midnight with a white star on her nose. She tried to bite Alexandra on her shoulder, Alexandra jerked away in time, and the mare then butted her chin with her nose. It was love at first sight.
“That’s what I will call her,” Alexandra said, skipping in delight next to Douglas after he had finalized the sale with a Mr. Crimpton. The new mare was tied to the back of the gig.
“Midnight? Blackie?”
“Oh no, that would be trite, and you know how much we must avoid that accusation!”
He handed her up into the gig then walked around to climb up into his seat. He click-clicked the horse forward. “Well?” he asked again some moments later.
“Her name is Colleen.”
“There is no Irish blood in her.”
“I know. She is an original.”
He grinned. He realized he felt marvelous. He clicked the horse faster. He wanted to get to the stream and prove that he was the most controlled of lovers. He marshaled quite logical arguments for Napoleon’s invasion of Naples while he drove. He was scarce aware that she was seated next to him. It was splendid. He was himself again.
He helped her down from the gig, and just that—the mere closing his hands around her waist to lift her down—sent his hands to her breasts and his mouth to hers and he kissed her and touched her, and was gone. He ripped her chemise to shreds. It was hard and fast and when he finally managed to raise himself off Alexandra, his heart still pounding so hard he could hear it, he said numbly, “I truly can’t stand this, truly I can’t. Blessed hell, it is too much for a man to suffer. There, you have even wrung the Sherbrooke curse out of me and I have tried hard not to use profanity in front of you. I’ve failed. Jesus, I’m nothing but a rutting stoat, a stupid man with no sense and fewer brains.”
As for Alexandra, she