“What do you like for breakfast?” he asked.
And then, when she told him toast, he shook his head. “Not honest enough. You can’t have a kiss.”
“Do you like stewed mushrooms?”
But when she said no, he shook his head and said she was wrong, she loved stewed mushrooms and she ate them every day.
And he wouldn’t give her a kiss.
He was laughing at her, those beautiful green-flecked eyes were laughing, and so she pulled herself from his hands and stood in the middle of the empty ballroom, laughing back at him.
Then she put her hands on her breasts and smiled, a knife-edged, invitation of a smile. “What do I like best in bed?” she asked.
And when he said—
But she was losing the dream, just when she was finally going to be able to kiss him, her husband, her Ewan.
She opened her eyes and the familiar sense of aching loss filled her heart. Then she frowned.
Across her bedroom she could see a pair of legs. Male legs wearing wet boots. A man was in her room! It was the thought of a second, of an instant. Her hands shot into the air, flailing, and she opened her mouth to scream as loudly as she could—
And he was there. On his knees next to her. It was Ewan. His eyes weren’t laughing as they had in her dream. They were somber, panicked.
“Oh God, sweetheart,” he said, “I didn’t mean to frighten you. Forgive me.”
She stared at him, slowly coming back to herself. “What are you doing here?” she finally asked, whispering it.
Ewan couldn’t remember.
He got hold of her hands somehow and he brought them to his mouth.
And then finally, looking at her almond-shaped eyes, he remembered. “I came to ask you to forgive me,” he said hoarsely.
“Oh.” Her voice sounded flat and unforgiving to him.
“I can’t forgive myself unless you forgive me. But if you can’t forgive me, I understand—I understand, Annabel. Because I can’t forgive myself, and I can’t forget. And”—his hands tightened—“merely the way you screamed when I entered shows me that you’ll never be able to forgive me for what I did. I’ll just—”
She blinked at him. “Ewan, what are you talking about?”
“I didn’t defend you,” he said, the raw ache of it sounding in his voice. “I let that man touch you and I didn’t rip him to pieces with my bare hands. But, oh God, Annabel, if I had seen it, I would have. I have no principles where someone like that is concerned, I swear it.”
“Ewan—”
But he swept on, all the fear and self-loathing in his heart coming to an articulate point. “You’ll likely never feel safe around me again. But if you could just forgive me, Annabel, that’s all I ask.” And then at her silence, “Please.”
That was all he could do. Beg. Silently he held on to her hands, hoping out of the darkness of his soul that she still loved him a little bit.
Annabel was still wondering if she was dreaming.
It felt like a dream, to have Ewan before her, to hear the tender anguish in his voice, to have him begging her to forgive him.
“Why did you come?” she whispered.
“I said—”
But she shook her head. “Why did you come here?”
Ewan swallowed hard. He wasn’t ready to answer that question.
No: he’d come all the way from Scotland to answer just that question.
He clung to her hands, searching her eyes until he read the truth in her eyes. She didn’t care about forgiveness; she only cared about one thing.
“Because I’m a fool,” he said, his voice harsh with the truth of it. “I love you, Annabel. I know you think I don’t. But I do. And yet when the worst happened, I threw you away. Because I don’t—” He swallowed and held her hands even tighter. “I don’t know how to love someone.”
There was a glimmer of tears in her eyes, and he knew that she understood. He would never be the husband whom she wanted. He’d failed her, and he’d failed their love.
“I can see that you—” He broke off. His voice grated with the pain of it. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Annabel. I’m no good at loving, and I deserted you when you most needed me. But I love you, and I always will.”
“People who love each other,” Annabel said, “don’t leave.”
“I lost my mind,” Ewan said simply. “I don’t have any excuses.”
“I’m the one who left.”
Ewan’s heart leapt. Was she smiling through her tears?
“I’m no better at being married than you are,” she said in an aching whisper. “I’ve kept thinking for the last month that I should have stayed there. I should have fought to be with you, locked you in a room with me and thrown the key out the window. Screamed at you until you remembered we were married.”
Ewan couldn’t bring himself to smile. “But would you ever feel the same about me?” he said, asking the question that he’d answered negatively so many times in the middle of the night. “I didn’t save you from those men, I—”
“Do you know why I love kissing you?” she whispered, her eyes searching his.
He shook his head. A tiny gleam of hope shone in his heart. She hadn’t put her feelings in the past tense.
“Because I always feel safe with your arms around me. Always.”
He swallowed.
“And do you know why I close my eyes when you make love to me?”
“No,” he said hoarsely.
“Because I am safe with you . . . I don’t need to see what happens. I can simply be . . . simply feel.”
He ran a hand over her cheek. “Do you . . . do you forgive me, Annabel?”
“There is something that I can’t forgive you for.”
His heart stopped. It had all been too easy, too much of a gift. He couldn’t bring himself to ask.
“You haven’t kissed me in months,” she said, her voice an aching whisper. “I haven’t felt safe in months.”
Slowly, slowly he bent his head to hers and their lips touched. It was like all their kisses: the sweetness was there, but the wildness too, the sense that they had only just stopped kissing and now they were continuing the same kiss they shared in May and then in June.
Two seconds later, he was devouring her, pouring his soul and his love and his unhappiness into the kiss.
And she was kissing him back . . . she was, she was.
“I only taste you, and I am hopelessly drunk,” he whispered finally, kissing her closed eyes.
They flew open. “You desire me?”
“Of course. And love you. Oh God, Annabel, ask me how much I love you.”
“How much do you love me?” She was smiling, a little.
“Honestly?” he said.
She nodded.
“So much I can’t add it, nor count it,” he said, his eyes searching hers. “No matter how I try not to, I simply love you more. If I am drunk with love for you, I will never be sober.”
“But you desire me too?”
Her eyes still looked unconvinced, so Ewan took the kiss he earned by answering her question. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her with all the pent-up longing of the last months, with all the longing he always felt for her, and always would.
“And Rosy?” she whispered, when he lifted his mouth.
He traced her crimson lips with a finger. “She is with God,” he said simply.
“And you?”
He knew what she meant. “And I. Although I shall take more care in the future not to turn my back on His gifts.”
Annabel smiled but she had that little frown again. “What is it, sweetheart?” he whispered, kissing her eyebrows.
“I’m afraid,” she said.
His heart sank, but he put his arms around her. “I’m here,” he said fiercely. “I swear by everything sacred that I will never take my eyes off you, Annabel. And I will kill anyone who touches you again in cold blood.”
“Not that!” she protested. “It’s—do you
still desire me, now?”
Surprised, he pulled back and looked at her. His wife had a face like a delicate triangle, arched eyebrows, tip-tilted blue eyes, lips that looked kissable even when she was scowling at him.
She was the most desirable, beautiful woman in the world. “Of course I do,” he said, tilting her face so that his lips could touch hers. “How can you doubt it?”
But Annabel had to say it.
“What if I told you that I didn’t want to make love for three months? That you couldn’t share my bed? What if I became unattractive and—and utterly unappealing?”
He grinned at that. “Impossible!”
“But what if I did? And I want an honest answer,” she added. “What if I were sick and had to keep to my bed for months? Or I came out all in spots? Or I contacted some sort of plague?”
“I would miss making love to you. I dreamed of it every night in the past five months. But what I truly missed had nothing to do with our bodies joining. What made me wake, aching, in the middle of the night was my heart, not any other part of my body.”
Tears rose to her eyes. “Are you quite sure?” she whispered.
“If you don’t want to make love to me ever again, I understand,” Ewan said. “If that experience in the cottage gave you a revulsion for men that can’t be overcome, we’ll live with it. You needn’t be afraid of me, not ever.”
“It’s not that!” Annabel said, almost laughing when she realized what he thought. “It’s—it’s this.” She pulled off the cover that had been tucked up to her breasts.
He looked at her face, puzzled.
“Dunce,” she said to him lovingly. Then she took his hand and put it on her great, hard tummy.
He reeled and almost fell back. “God almighty, Annabel!”
“Father Armailhac would not like to hear you use the Lord’s name in vain.” She giggled.
He had both hands spread over her now.
“February,” she said, knowing his question before he asked it. “I think that we must have made a child on our first night together, Ewan.”
A slow smile spread across his face. “Our wedding night. ’Twas a beautiful night, Annabel.”
She nodded.
“Do you know what gave me hope again?” he asked, his hands spread on her stomach. “I was in one of the fields and a little seed-blossom blew into my hand, Annabel. It blew straight into my hand, and it was so beautiful, so fragile, and so precious that I realized I’d been an idiot.”
“Oh,” Annabel breathed.
“But I didn’t really understand, did I?” Ewan said, his voice breaking with the strength of it. “God sent me a gift so beautiful that I couldn’t even grasp it at first.”
She put her hands on top of his. “’Tis a delicate, precious thing.”
Ewan’s eyes were unashamedly brilliant with tears. “You are that to me.” He kissed her. “My wife. My heart. My beloved.”
After they stopped kissing, he drew back again. “You’re so beautiful,” he breathed. “Look at your breasts, Annabel!” His hands hovered, uncertain.
“I won’t break.” She giggled, joy welling up inside her like a flood.
A moment later her head had fallen against the back of the couch. Her heart was beating in her ears; his hands were shaping her into fire.
She opened her eyes and saw that his eyes had gone pitch black. “Who knew that women became so beautiful during this time?” he said hoarsely. “We’re going to have to sleep in different rooms, Annabel, if you don’t want me to touch you.”
He rubbed a thumb across her nipple and she moaned, her hips involuntarily flexing. He pulled his hands away and actually stumbled as he rose. “’Twill be a trial,” he said, dragging his hair back from his forehead. “A challenge.”
Annabel stretched. She hadn’t felt so good in months. Nor so—so beautiful. Nor certainly so desirable. “It will be like our first trip to Scotland together,” she suggested. “Perhaps we could play the kissing game again.”
“No,” he said. His face looked agonized. “No. No kisses.”
She rose to her feet and stretched again. He wrenched his eyes away. “Aye, a challenge,” he muttered to himself.
Annabel grinned. She had never felt more provocative, more potent, more—more loved in her life. She strolled over to the bed and sat down, stretching her arms behind her so that her breasts showed to their best advantage.
“Lass, you’re going to have to help me,” her husband said earnestly. “No looking at me in such a way.”
She hid her smile and her joy, and pouted. “But I need help. And that you are here to aid me.”
“Anything,” he said. “I’ll do anything you wish, Annabel.”
“In that case,” she said gently, “I’d like you to take this gown off.”
He stayed utterly still in the middle of the room.
“And then,” she said, her voice drugged with desire, “I’d like you to kiss me here.” She touched her breast. “And here.” She touched her great stomach. “And then . . .”
But he was there, next to her on the bed, gathering her into his arms in a movement so quick that she didn’t see it happen. “I love you, Annabel,” he said to her, his voice deep with the promise, the honesty, and the truth.
“Ask me how much I love you,” she said, cupping his face in her hands. “I promise you an honest answer.”
“How much do you love me?” he whispered.
“Too much,” she whispered. “’Twill go past death, there’s so much of it. And now you owe me a kiss.” A moment later, they were rolling on the bed, nothing between them but the growing child.
And as it happened, Samuel Raphael Poley, future Earl of Ardmore, was fast asleep.
References
Web addresses change frequently, and many sources can appear in multiple places on the Internet. To avoid frustration due to the potential for broken links, search the Internet via title or author for any reference you want to find. If you want the actual Web address I used, it can be found below, if it’s still available.
Aria, Eliza. Costume: Fanciful, Historical and Theatrical. London: Macmillan and Company, 1906. http://archive.org/details/cu31924032342184
Ashton, John. Social England Under the Regency. Vols. 1 and 2. London: Ward and Downey, 1890. http://archive.org/details/socialenglandund01asht and http://archive.org/details/socialenglandund02asht
Calthrop, Dion Clayton. English Costume. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1906. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33020/33020-h/33020-h.htm#pl69
Chambers’s Encyclopaedia: A Dictionary of Universal Knowledge for the People. Vol. 7. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Company, 1882. http://archive.org/details/chamberssencyclo07cham
Chancellor, E. Beresford (Edwin Beresford). Memorials of St. James’s Street, Together with the Annals of Almack’s. London: G. Richards., 1922. http://archive.org/details/memorialsofstjam00chanuoft
Cook, Thomas. Cook’s Handbook for London. London: Thos. Cook and Son, 1878. http://archive.org/details/cookshandbookfo02ltdgoog
Cruikshank, Robert. The Dandy’s Perambulations. London: John Marshall, 1819. http://archive.org/details/dandysperambulat00cruiiala
Cunningham, Peter. London as It Is. London: John Murray, 1863. http://archive.org/details/londonasitis00cunn
Debrett, John. Debrett’s Peerage of England, Scotland, and Ireland. London J. Moyes, 1820. http://archive.org/details/debrettspeerage04debrgoog
Dibdin, Charles. History and Illustrations of the London Theatres: Comprising an Account of the Origin and Progress of the Drama in England. London: For the Proprietors of the Illustrations of London Buildings, 1826. http://archive.org/details/historyillustrat00dibd
Ebers, John. Seven Years of the King’s Theatre. London: William Harrison Ainsworth, 1828. http://archive.org/details/sevenyearsofking00eberuoft
Egan, Pierce. Tom & Jerry: Life in London: or the Day and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorne, Esq. and His Elegant Friend Corinthian Tom in their Rambles and S
prees Through the Metropolis. London: John Camden Hotten, 1870.
Etherege, George, Sir. The Man of Mode, or, Sr Fopling Flutter. London: Printed by J. Macock, 1684. http://archive.org/details/manofmodeorsrfop00ethe
Foley, F. Kathleen. “Theater Review: ‘Cinderella Christmas’ at the El Portal.” Los Angeles Times, December 23, 2011. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/12/theater-review-cinderella-christmas-el-portal.html
Grose, Francis. 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit, and Pickpocket Eloquence. London: Printed for C. Chappel, 1811. http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5402/pg5402.html
Grose, Francis. A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. London: Printed for Hooper and Wigstead, 1796. http://archive.org/details/aclassicaldicti01grosgoog
Harvey, Di. Weatherbys. E-mail dated August 28, 2013.
Jackson, William. The New and Complete Newgate Calendar; or, Villany Displayed in All Its Branches. London: A. Hogg, date unknown. http://archive.org/details/newcompletenewga05jackiala
James, Eloisa. Kiss Me, Annabel (Essex Sisters). New York: HarperCollins, 2005.
James, Eloisa. Much Ado About You (Essex Sisters). New York: HarperCollins, 2004.
James, Eloisa. Pleasure for Pleasure (Essex Sisters). New York: HarperCollins, 2006.
James, Eloisa. The Taming of the Duke (Essex Sisters). New York: HarperCollins, 2006.
James, Eloisa. “The Barnes & Noble Review: Everyone Knows.” BarnesandNoble.com: Reading Romance, 2012. http://www.barnesandnoble.com/review/everybody-knows-2
Knapp, Andrew and Baldwin, William. The Newgate Calendar: Comprising Interesting Memoirs of the Most Notorious Characters Who Have Been Convicted of Outrages on the Laws of England Since the Commencement of the Eighteenth Century; with Occasional Anecdotes and Observations, Speeches, Confessions, and Last Exclamations of Sufferers. London: J. Robins and Company, 1824. https://archive.org/details/newgatecalendar03baldgoog
Le Blanc, H. The Art of Tying the Cravat; Demonstrated in Sixteen Lessons. London: Effingham Wilson, 1828. http://archive.org/details/arttyingcravat00unkngoog
Marshall, John. Marshall’s Edition of the Popular Story of Cinderella, or, The Little Glass Slipper: Embellished with Coloured Engravings. London: Printed by John Marshall, 1819. http://archive.org/details/marshallsedition00londiala