Alyssa jolted awake. She opened her eyes and discovered that she was lying on her side on the coach seat with her face comfortably pillowed against a firmly muscled thigh covered in buff-colored breeches. The thigh she was using as a pillow and the buff breeches covering it puzzled her. When she’d left her parents’ London town house, she’d been sitting across from Griffin, and he’d been wearing his wedding suit. The trousers were pale gray.
Alyssa stared down the length of the gentleman’s leg and noted the glossy black leather Hessian boot gloving his well-molded calf and his foot. Her heart thudded in her chest, and her blood roared in her ears. She struggled to sit up, but the rocking motion of the coach over rough terrain made it all but impossible.
“Shhh, Alyssa. If you need to sit up, I’ll help you, but you’re perfectly fine where you are.” His voice calmed her. It was warm and familiar and as soothing as the touch of his hand on her hair.
She relaxed, shifted her weight onto her back, and smiled. Looking up at him seemed the most natural thing in the world. “Where are we?”
Griff leaned forward and returned her smile. Feeling an almost overwhelming urge to kiss her, he bent close enough to feel the whisper of her breath against his mouth. He paused, waiting for some sign that she wanted him to continue. But she didn’t seem to notice his desire, so Griff sat back and answered her question with words instead of kisses. “About a mile past Shepherdston Hall. If you need to make a privacy stop, I’ll order Myrick to turn the coach around.”
Alyssa remembered Griffin mentioning that Shepherdston Hall was a little over halfway between London and Abernathy Manor and that he often stopped there to rest, refresh, and change horses. “Why didn’t we stop there?”
“We did stop.” He brushed her hair from her forehead and smiled indulgently as if she were a little girl. She’d managed several hours of sleep, but her eyes were still ringed by dark bluish circles that spoke of extreme exhaustion. “We changed horses, and I changed into more comfortable traveling clothes.”
She smothered a yawn and blinked up at him. That explained the change from trousers and black shoes to breeches and Hessian boots. It didn’t explain why he hadn’t awakened her. “You promised to wake me.”
“I did wake you,” he told her. “And you told me to go away and let you sleep.”
“You left me sleeping alone in a coach while you changed clothes?”
Griffin shrugged his shoulders. “It seemed the thing to do, short of bundling you in a lap robe and carrying you inside.”
“I could have walked inside,” Alyssa replied.
“Not unless you were awake and not in your current state of undress,” he said, eyes twinkling.
Alyssa glanced down, surprised to find that she was not only using Griffin’s thigh as a pillow, but that until she’d been jolted awake by the movement of the coach, she’d apparently been sprawled all over him wearing nothing more than her chemise, stockings, gloves, the very brief and thin pair of lacy drawers the dressmaker insisted she wear beneath her traveling dress, and a soft wool lap robe with his jacket draped over it. Alyssa shivered, enveloped in the musk and citrus scent of the cologne emanating from the collar of his jacket. “You removed my dress?”
“I did,” he admitted, tucking his jacket and the lap robe more firmly around her shoulders to ward off the cool air. “Before it became hopelessly crumpled, I might add.” He made a wry face. “I didn’t think you would want to arrive at Abernathy Manor looking so travel worn.”
“Where is it?”
“Abernathy Manor?” he asked. “It’s in Northamptonshire.”
“No,” she said. “Where is my dress?”
“There.” He nodded toward the opposite seat, where her dress and jacket were neatly folded. Her bonnet lay atop her dress and beside it lay his hat, gloves, and neckcloth. Her shoes were beneath the bench seat.
Alyssa realized that she was nearly naked, while he remained fully dressed except for his hat, gloves, and cravat. “Oh.”
“It started raining two hours out of London—”
“Rain on our wedding day,” Alyssa interrupted. “I don’t think that’s a good sign. I believe it means we’ll have bad luck.”
“I believe it means we live in England where it rains quite a bit.” He tilted her chin toward him with the tip of his index finger. “If everyone in England who had rain on their wedding day was destined for bad luck, we’d have been overrun by plague and pestilence centuries ago.” He smiled at her. “I believe we make our own luck.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“We only stayed at Shepherdston Hall long enough for me to change clothes and for the coachmen to change horses. I didn’t want to tarry because of the rain. Because I want to get home as soon as possible. And you were sleeping so soundly when we arrived, I saw no reason you shouldn’t continue.” He paused for a moment. “I left you sleeping while I changed clothes and the coachmen and grooms exchanged the spent horses for the fresh ones. But you were never alone. Durham and Eastman took turns watching over the coach while I was inside the hall. And I’ve been with you ever since.”
“How long?” Her throat was dry and scratchy, and her voice sounded foreign to her ears.
Griffin shifted his weight to his left side in order to reach his watch pocket. He pulled out the watch, flipped open the cover, and stared at the hands. “A little over four hours.”
“Four hours!” Alyssa covered her eyes with her forearm and groaned. “I can’t imagine what came over me.”
Griffin tinkered with a tiny knob on his timepiece, then returned it to his watch pocket. He stretched his arms overhead, scraping the ceiling of the coach with his knuckles. “It must have been my scintillating company,” he said dryly.
Alyssa giggled.
“Or exhaustion.” He yawned. “You’ve been working practically around the clock for the past six days. Flitting about town seeing to an overwhelming number of details like a hummingbird going from blossom to blossom in the garden. But even hummingbirds rest.” He frowned. “I’m not sure when or how they rest, but I’m convinced that they do—sometimes. After all your hard work and sleepless nights spent planning the wedding, it’s perfectly natural to for you to need a nap.” He stretched his arms over his head once again. “In fact, I was tempted to stretch out beneath you and take one myself.”
“Why didn’t you?” She surprised herself with the question, and he surprised her even more with his answer.
Griff answered honestly, “I was afraid you might find me entirely too comfortable. Afraid I might enjoy it too much. Afraid I might succumb to temptation.”
“Temptation?”
“I’m a man, my sweet, not a eunuch. You may find me entirely comfortable and cozy as your pillow, but the picture of you lying sprawled atop me is more than I could stand.” The fact that a lap robe and his jacket covered her was proof. He’d spent most of the journey with her sleeping on him, and the image he carried in his brain of her lying with her head in his lap and her firm, rosy-tipped breasts nearly spilling out of her transparent chemise had been enough to nearly do him in.
He’d been hard and aching and almost afraid to move for fear of exploding since he’d been foolish enough to try to preserve her clothing from the ravages of travel. Griffin looked at her. “And, my sweet, no bride should wake up to find she’s lost her virginity in the coach on the way to her honeymoon.”
He didn’t seem to notice the endearment, but Alyssa’s heart caught at the sound. “I believe you’re stronger than you think. I slept upon your lap for nearly four hours, and I felt entirely safe in your company. I knew no harm would come to me.”
Griffin chuckled. “Which shows how little you know of randy young bridegrooms. Harming you wasn’t what I had in mind, my lady.” His voice was low and husky, filled with meaning.
The timbre of his voice and the expression on his face intrigued her. “I know nothing of bridegrooms, randy or otherwise. For you are my first,” she replied in a voice equally low
and husky and filled with meaning. “What did you have in mind, my lord?”
“I told you, my sweet. I was tempted to do something no gentleman would ever do.”
“And what was that?” Suddenly warm, Alyssa pushed his jacket and the lap robe off her shoulders and sat up.
Griffin bit back a groan as she bared her near naked chest for him to view and brushed the vee of his thighs with her fingers. His body tightened even more. “Relieve you of your innocence while you slept, so that I might ease the aching in my groin.”
“Was it possible for you to relieve me of my innocence while I slept?” she asked.
Griffin closed his eyes and nodded.
Recalling the conversation she’d overheard between the members of the Free Fellows League, Alyssa smiled. “I’ve heard that losing one’s innocence is a messy, uncomfortable, and shockingly distasteful business. Especially on one’s wedding night. And that young ladies seldom find pleasure in the marriage bed.”
Griffin opened his eyes and narrowed his gaze at her. “Who told you that? Your mother?”
“Oh no,” she explained. “I just heard it somewhere.” She had also heard Griffin proclaim that the husbands of those young ladies were ignorant fools—and that he was neither. Alyssa waited for him to repeat that proclamation.
“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear,” he warned.
Alyssa was disappointed until Griffin continued speaking. “Especially the kinds of conversations you often hear when women gather at parties to talk. You see, my lady, a great many women are married to ignorant, overbearing fools. You are not.”
Alyssa beamed at him. “Then the marriage bed needn’t be a terrible place?”
“Not at all,” he assured her. “I’m told it can be a bit uncomfortable for the woman the first time.” Griffin cleared his throat. “But the marriage bed should be a heavenly place. A place of supreme satisfaction and enjoyment.” And he was eager to experience it, for Alyssa’s transparent chemise offered him an enticing view of the joys to be had as soon as he reached the marriage bed. He clamped his teeth together as the twin points of her breasts formed tight, dark pink buds against the delicate lawn fabric.
“Is there any way to ease the discomfort?”
Which discomfort? Hers? Or mine? Griffin groaned. “There is.”
“How?”
“A little wine. A little whisky. And a game of seduction.”
“I’m intrigued.” Alyssa leaned closer. “Tell me about this game, my lord.”
Griffin cleared his throat once again. “Why bother telling you, my lady, when we can go right to the instruction?”
“I like to be well-informed,” Alyssa teased, watching as her husband’s blue eyes darkened. “How do you play it? I want to know the rules.”
“Well,” he drawled, “seduction is a teasing game, and there is only one rule, my sweet. And that’s to ease the ache by giving only pleasure.”
Alyssa frowned at him. “Will I lose my innocence in the coach?”
Griffin laughed. “You’ll lose a great deal of it,” he promised, “but we shall add a caveat.” He looked at her. “Because you are a bride, and because no bride should lose her complete innocence in a coach on her way to her honeymoon, we’re allowed everything that gives pleasure—except consummation. That shall have to wait until we’re properly settled in the great, big comfortable bed in the master’s chamber at Abernathy Manor. In about three hours. Agreed?”
Alyssa held out her hand. “Agreed.”
Griffin stared at the elbow-length glove encasing it. He took her hand, turned it palm upward, and unbuttoned the tiny buttons of her glove before pulling it off. “I think we can dispense with the gloves,” he said, suddenly wondering at the wisdom of agreeing to three hours of extreme arousal. “This is a momentous occasion, but no longer an especially formal one.” He winked at her as he unbuttoned her remaining glove and pulled it off, too. “Nothing to warrant opera-length gloves.”
“Where shall you begin?” Alyssa asked.
“I don’t begin,” Griffin answered, a twinkle in his eye. “You do.”
“I do?”
Griff heard the astonishment in her voice. “But, of course.” He grinned at her. “Ladies first.”
Alyssa reached out and put her hand on his thigh. “Where does it ache, my lord?”
“Here.” Griffin covered Alyssa’s hand with his and moved it over a few inches, resting it atop the hard ridge pressing against the front of his breeches.
Chapter Eighteen
“It is important to make travel by coach as enjoyable as possible. And there are a great many pleasurable ways in which to pass the time. Especially during long journeys.”
—Alyssa, Lady Abernathy, diary entry, 04 May 1810