The Official Essex Sisters Companion Guide

  He got into bed and the whole bed listed to that side with a mighty creak.

  “It’s a good thing we’re not married yet, because this bed couldn’t survive a bout of shaking sheets,” he muttered, pulling the covers over himself.

  Annabel kept her eyes closed tight.

  “Now,” he said, sounding very pleased with himself, “I count six kisses left to me, and one of which is the most important of all, since it’s the one owing to me when you answered my question about marriage.”

  Annabel’s heart was pounding so loudly that she could hardly hear him.

  “I think I’ll save that last one for a bit of education,” he said thoughtfully. “Didn’t you ask me what a coney is, Annabel my love?”

  She opened her eyes. “Yes.”

  “A coney’s a rabbit,” he whispered, moving closer to her. “A soft, velvety rabbit.”

  Annabel tried to think about rabbits and kisses, but his body was just next to hers, and the only thing between them was a frail bit of cotton. She felt as if she could feel the heat of his chest although he wasn’t yet touching her.

  Ewan looked at his bride-to-be and told himself for the hundredth time that he would be able to control himself. She was breathing in a shallow way, and he’d seen her looking at him with a stealthy pleasure that suggested she’d be no help in kicking him out of bed. Except—

  “Annabel?” he inquired. “Why have you closed your eyes? You’re not afraid of me, are you?”

  Thankfully, he saw a glimmer of a smile on those luscious lips of hers. “Is that a question?”

  “Yes,” he growled. And then he couldn’t wait any longer: he reached over and gathered the delicious body of his almost-wife into his arms. He kissed her until she was trembling in his arms, until they were both near senseless, until her tongue was as bold as his. And then he slowly, slowly rolled onto his back, bringing her with him.

  Her eyes popped open. For one thing, she had direct contact with his groin now, and he wasn’t quite certain she understood the implications of what she was feeling. Not that his Annabel ever showed any particular signs of virginal innocence.

  Sure enough, she obviously knew precisely what she was feeling. She was staring down at him with a little frown between her brows and he could practically see the objections racing through her mind.

  “It’ll fit,” he said, pulling down her head for a kiss. “I promise. There’s no need to fear me, Annabel.”

  She reacted just as he would have guessed. “I’m not afraid of that. You—”

  But he swallowed her words, slipped between her lips with all the hunger for her taste that he felt in his body, kissed her until she was clutching his hair and kissing him back, and until she’d cradled herself between his legs in a way that told him that they would be a marvelous fit for each other.

  He pulled away from her mouth only when he found that his hands had stopped caressing her narrow back and had shaped themselves to the most beautifully round bottom he’d ever felt in his life.

  So instead of continuing with that caress, which would surely lead to madness, he rolled her over, keeping one leg over hers, determined to gain control of himself before he touched her again. She was exquisite, this bride of his, even with her smoky eyes squeezed tight. They tilted at the corners with an exotic little curve that was at odds with the practicality of planning adultery before she even decided whom to marry. The very thought of it made him grin. But he had to admit that for a woman this passionate, and yet so set on marrying a man of wealth, adultery was likely just a practical suggestion. He’d have to keep her too busy to think of other men.

  He dropped kisses on her eyes and the rosy tilt of her mouth, but she still didn’t open her eyes. “Don’t you want to know what a coney is, then?” he whispered in her ear, giving her a little bite.

  She gasped, and opened her eyes. She was a great one for seeing the world blind, this lass of his. “You told me,” she said. “It’s a rabbit.” Her voice was all husky and low, and made Ewan’s groin throb so that he almost lost control again.

  He took a deep breath. “Aren’t you a bit more curious, then, about the origins of the phrase?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  He slid his leg down the long smooth length of her legs, and surprised himself by wondering if he truly would be able to stop in time. Surely he would. He hadn’t practiced restraint for all these years to have it desert him when he most needed it. Slowly, reverently, he put a hand on her breast.

  The warm curve of it made him almost moan aloud but instead he stayed rigid, instead watching Annabel who, of course, had her eyes closed tight. He dared to rub a thumb across her nipple, and her body instinctively arched up. Her hand flew to his wrist and she said, her voice shaking, “Ewan!” But she didn’t open her eyes, and he counted that as a welcome.

  “Yes, love,” he whispered, keeping his hand—and his thumb—right where it was. Then he let himself kiss her again and desire exploded like fury between them. She was writhing under his hand now, making little squeaking sounds that inflamed his blood. Slowly, slowly, he ran his hand from her breast to the sweetness of her flat stomach, over a hip, down a long sleek leg, and finally found the edge of her nightgown, bunched at her thighs.

  Her eyes flew open. “What are you doing?” she cried, grabbing his wrist again.

  It was time for kiss number three. He kissed her until her eyes closed in helpless surrender, until she dropped her fierce grasp on his wrist and wound her arms around his neck. And then before she could stop him, he ran his hand up the sweetness of soft skin at her inner thigh to . . . there.

  She went rigid. “I thought we weren’t—” she said, with a gasp.

  “We aren’t,” he told her, at the same time he warned himself of the same thing. “We aren’t. This is just another kind of kiss, Annabel.”

  But her eyes were open, and narrowed at him. “I’ve never heard of such a thing!”

  “You didn’t learn everything there is to learn in the village,” he said to her, trying to keep his voice even when his fingers were wandering over the softest tangle of hair he’d felt in his life, and his breath felt as it were exploding in his chest.

  “I don’t think this is proper,” Annabel insisted. “We’re not—”

  She squeaked, and Ewan knew it was time for kiss number four. And in the middle of that fevered kiss, he touched her until her legs relaxed and she cried out against his lips again and again, finally hiding her head against his shoulder and twisting against him.

  “But the kiss, Annabel,” he said, knowing that his control was growing weak. Another moment of this and he’d simply roll over and—“Our last kiss, and my gift . . .”

  She mutely tried to pull his head down to hers.

  “Nay,” he said gruffly, “that’s not it.”

  And then quickly, before those beautiful eyes of hers could fly open and she could leap off the bed, he moved down.

  Annabel was in a haze of heat and desire. Against her thigh she could feel Ewan’s—Ewan’s—and for all he said things would fit, she had a nagging suspicion that they wouldn’t. But every time the suspicion grew firm in her mind, he would kiss her senseless again and she would forget the point she wished to make, lost in a haze of ecstasy.

  At least he’d finally taken his hand off her breast, but—

  “What are you doing?” she said, surprised by her own ragged voice.

  He was lying between her legs and there she was, like a wanton, with her nightgown pulled up almost to her waist. “Stop that!” she cried, trying to sit up, but a huge muscled arm slid up her stomach and held her down. And his other hand . . .

  He touched her there. She couldn’t help it; a whimper broke from her lips. But he could see her. He shouldn’t be in such a position. “Ewan!” she said, trying again for rationality, for decency, for—

  She lost her train of thought. His fingers were—

  That wasn’t his finger!

  “Ewan!” she choke
d, but he didn’t answer, and his hand was holding her down—well, it was caressing her breast—and there was nothing to do but close her eyes tight and sink into a velvet darkness that had nothing in it but his tongue and the flames licking around her body, sending her arching helplessly against him, trying to cry his name but managing only muffled sounds, her voice cut into ribbons by the sweetness of his kiss.

  This—this—but she couldn’t remember what it was called. She couldn’t remember her own name. Every sensation in her body was focused on the decadent, silky touch of his lips.

  “I can’t—I can’t—” she managed . . . and then she shuddered, bursting into a spasm more intense than she had ever felt before, an all-consuming, raging explosion that had her gasping and crying out, and then falling back, limp, to the bed.

  Eyes closed.

  And when she finally opened them, he was there, propped on one elbow, smiling at her. She felt nothing more than a passionate desire to wipe that smile off his face.

  “Do you know what Tess told me about marital consummation?” she asked him.

  He shook his head. “I trust it wasn’t some foolishness about lying back and enduring.”

  “She told me that whatever my husband does to me, I should do to him,” she said, making her voice as provocative as she could make it. And since Annabel had practiced the art of provocation for some four or five years, she was very, very good at that particular skill. “That means, oh my almost-husband,” she clarified, “that tomorrow night—”

  There wasn’t a trace of laughter on his face now. His eyes had darkened to black and he looked as if he were in shock.

  She let her smile turn from provocative to wicked. Then she reached out one finger and put it on the smooth skin of his chest. Delicately, delicately, she trailed that finger down . . . down . . .

  “And what do they call the coney’s kiss when it’s not a coney being kissed?” she said, relishing the tightness of his jaw.

  Her finger swept down to the rigid length of him, and if it made her blink with shock, her smile didn’t slip a notch. Ewan shuddered. He hadn’t taken his eyes from hers, though.

  She pursed her lips at him and then he was there, rolling over on her with a strength that she was powerless to resist, plunging into her mouth with a ferocity that made her shudder against him as if she hadn’t been limp with pleasure only a moment earlier.

  “Tomorrow,” she whispered against his lips, once she regained her breath.

  And he was the one who closed his eyes this time.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It was a castle. A huge castle made of dark gray granite, with overhanging windows and little turrets and even what appeared to be the remains of a formal moat.

  “You—you really live in a castle,” Annabel said quite unnecessarily, turning to Ewan.

  They were rounding a bend in the road, and it lay below them, shimmering in a pink mist left from a quick rainstorm. The trees on the surrounding hills looked black against the rain-drenched sky.

  “That’s Clashindarroc Forest,” he told her. “The River Bogie runs down that way, behind the castle; my father decided to lay pipes under the gardens. He was by all accounts a great innovator. I put in a plunge-bath off the kitchen because Uncle Pearce said he would have liked it.”

  “Is Pearce your father’s brother, then?”

  “My grandfather’s brother, actually. He’s a great-uncle.”

  “You have a plunge-bath?” she said, a little belatedly. “How wonderful!”

  “Better than that. I had a proper heated bath put into the master bedchamber a few years ago. So if you’ll eschew sleeping in the lady’s chambers down the corridor, and take your place next to me in my bed, you’ll have a bath of your own.”

  “’Tis tempting,” she said.

  But she didn’t want to meet his eyes. Somehow the idea that they would actually marry that day made her feel shy. It might have been better to go into the event blind. Now she wasn’t at all convinced that the business was physically possible, and at any rate, what about that kiss she promised him? She hadn’t the faintest idea how to go about it. Surely there were ways and ways . . .

  She looked back out the window.

  The outriders to the front let out a piping call on a trumpet.

  “’Tis customary,” Ewan told her, leaning forward to look out the window. “I don’t normally announce myself like a king, I promise you that.”

  The carriage seemed to pick up speed, rushing down the hill, and now Annabel could see that the great front doors were standing open and people were pouring out and lining themselves up in rows to the left and right. It was a far cry from her father’s rotting beauty of a house, and the four servants he’d managed to keep on reduced wages.

  It was almost too much. She had all this, all these things she wanted, and—and Ewan too. She looked at him. He was grinning down at the house, his green eyes sparkling with pleasure, but he turned and met her eyes.

  “If you look at me like that,” he said with mock severity, “we’ll not make it out of this carriage, and after all the waiting we’ve done, ’twould be a truly sad occurrence.”

  Obediently she turned her head back to the window, and then the coach was drawing up with a great rattle of gravel flying from the carriage wheels. There was a cheer from the assembled servants, and Annabel stepped out into a future so different from that she imagined that she felt as if she’d wandered into a dream.

  The family stood in front. She knew who Gregory was at once. He was a skinny little shrimp of a boy, dressed all in black and looking very solemn.

  Nana was a bit more of a shock. She was a long way from the sweet, white-haired lady whom Annabel had imagined. Instead, she appeared to be wearing a straw-colored wig from the Elizabethan era. She had a beak of a nose and a slash of red lip rouge under it. All in all, she looked like a cross between a Roman emperor and Queen Elizabeth herself.

  Ewan, naturally, was shouting hellos to all and sundry, and dragging her toward the group at a speed that didn’t allow her to walk in a dignified manner. Nor smooth her hair. But Annabel straightened her back and remembered that she was a viscount’s daughter.

  “Well!” Nana said, on being presented to her. “You look older than I expected. But then Englishwomen do age at a faster rate.”

  Annabel made up her mind on the spot. This old woman would either conquer her or be conquered, and Annabel refused to be bullied in her own house. “Whereas you don’t look a day over eighty,” she said sweetly, curtsying as if she stood before Queen Elizabeth herself.

  “Eighty!” Nana roared. “I’ll have you know, girl, that I’m not a day over sixty-two.”

  What a fibber. Annabel smiled at her. “It must be those Scottish winds. They fairly howl, don’t they? Ruinous for one’s complexion.”

  Ewan turned around from giving Gregory a hug. “Nana, my wife is Scottish, so don’t play your tricks on her. She’s got the backbone of a Pict.”

  “You found a Scotswoman by going all the way to London?” Nana snapped. “You could have had Miss Mary from next door if that’s what you wanted.”

  “I didn’t want Miss Mary, so I found Annabel instead. I’ve always had the luck of the devil,” Ewan said, grinning broadly. “This is Gregory,” he added.

  Gregory had white, white skin and hair as black as soot, with eyelashes to match. He would break some woman’s heart one day, unless he disappeared into a monastery, of course. He looked at her with a great deal of curiosity and then bowed as elegantly as if she were Queen Elizabeth.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Gregory,” she said, taking his hand. “Ewan has told me quite a lot about you.”

  His cheeks turned red so fast that she didn’t have time to blink. “You told her I’m a miserable singer!” he cried, turning to Ewan.

  But Ewan just reached out and tousled his black curls. “Yes,” he said cheerfully. “But mayhap Annabel will turn out to have had voice training and she can—”

&nb
sp; She shook her head.

  “Ach, then, we’re stuck with your miserable voice, lad,” he said, giving Gregory another hug.

  And just like that the red spots disappeared from his cheeks and Gregory gave Annabel a sheepish grin from within the circle of Ewan’s arms. She wasn’t the only one who felt safe around the Earl of Ardmore.

  Uncle Tobin and Uncle Pearce were like salt and sugar. Uncle Tobin, the hunter, was lean and tall and keen-eyed. He bowed with great flair and twirled his mustache. “I knew Ewan would strike gold in London!” he said, giving her a very appreciative looking-over.

  Annabel curtsied and gave him her very best sweetly-flirting-with-old-men smile. He warmed up instantly and told Ewan that he’d made a damn fine choice.

  Uncle Pearce was as plump as Tobin was thin, and as irascible as Tobin was gallant. “Play vingt-et-un, do you?” he growled at her.

  “Not terribly well,” she admitted.

  “We’ll try your paces after supper,” he said gloomily. “But I’ll warn you, missy, I play for high stakes.”

  “Not tonight,” Ewan said, putting his arm around her waist. “I’ve brought Miss Annabel home to marry me, and I’m hoping Father Armailhac will do just that, and this very evening. Which will make us a little too busy for cards, Uncle.”

  A moment later, she was holding the hand of Father Armailhac, and he was smiling at her in such a way that she actually forgot to give him one of her carefully selected smiles, and just grinned back at him.

  Because he was the kind of monk who made you smile, no two ways about it. As she had with Nana, she’d built up a picture in her mind that was entirely mistaken. She thought of monks as dressed in black with cords tied around their straining middles. From what she’d heard, they crossed themselves every other moment, carried around any number of necklaces that they counted out prayers on, and wore little black caps on the backs of their heads.

  True, Father Armailhac was wearing a black cassock. But he didn’t look serious, nor likely to pull out a string of beads and mumble a prayer over them. She blinked at him and then realized in a moment what he looked like. He looked like a llama Annabel had seen once at a fair. His hair was wooly, and his face narrow, like a llama’s. He had the same gentle eyes and thick eyelashes of those animals, along with an amiable curiosity that wasn’t in the least cloying.