“What about seven?” she managed to get out.
“Oh, we're already well past that,” he said in a husky voice. He lifted her hand and placed it to his chest. “Feel this.”
His heart pounded furiously beneath her small palm, and she looked up at him in wonder. “Me? I did this?”
“You. Only you.” His lips found her neck, distracting her while his nimble fingers worked on the buttons of her dress. He had to see her, had to touch her. He'd go insane if he didn't. He was sure of it. He thought about how he'd tortured himself by trying to imagine how long her hair was. Lately he'd been subjecting himself to an even more acute agony, spending his time imagining her breasts. The shape of the them. The size of them. The color of her nipples. The mental exercise always left him in a most uncomfortable state, but he couldn't seem to make himself stop.
The only solution was to get her naked—totally, thoroughly, blessedly naked, and then his imagination could take a break while the rest of him enjoyed reality.
Finally his fingers reached a button near the bottom of her ribs, and he slowly spread open the folds of her dress. She wasn't wearing a corset, just a thin cotton camisole. It was white, almost virginal. It excited him more than the most provocative piece of French lingerie ever could, because she was wearing it. And he had never, not once in his life, wanted anyone the way he wanted his wife.
His large hands found the bottom of her camisole and slid beneath, touching the silky warmth of her skin. Her muscles leaped beneath his touch, her stomach instinctively sucking in. He shuddered with need as his hands moved higher, molding themselves over her ribs, then inching even higher until they found the soft, womanly curve of her breast.
“Oh, Charles,” she sighed, just as his hands closed around her and gently squeezed.
“Oh, my God,” he replied, thinking he might explode then and there. He couldn't see her, but she felt perfect. Just the right size for his hands. Hot and sweet and soft, and damn it, if he didn't taste her right then and there, he was going to completely lose control.
Of course there was a very good chance that tasting her would also cause him to lose control, but he forgot that as he pushed her camisole out of the way.
He sucked in his breath when he finally saw her. “My God,” he breathed.
Ellie immediately moved to cover herself. “I'm sorry, I—”
“Don't say you're sorry,” he ordered hoarsely. He'd been a fool when he'd thought that finally seeing her would end the erotic wanderings of his imagination. Reality was so much more exquisite; he doubted that he'd ever be able to resume his daily routine without picturing her in his mind. All the time. Just the way she was right now.
He leaned down and placed the softest of kisses on the underside of her breast. “You're beautiful,” he whispered.
Ellie, who had never been called ugly but had certainly not spent her life receiving odes to her beauty, remained silent.
He kissed the underside of her other breast. “Perfect.”
“Charles, I know I'm not—”
“Don't say anything unless you're going to agree with me,” he said sternly.
She smiled. She couldn't help it.
And then, just when she was about to say something to tease him, his mouth found her nipple and closed around it, and she was lost. Sensation flooded her body, and she couldn't have uttered a word or formulated a thought if she tried.
Which she wasn't. All she was doing was arching her back toward him, pressing herself against his mouth.
“You're better than I dreamed,” he murmured against her skin. “More than I imagined.” He lifted his head just long enough to gift her with a wicked grin. “And I have a very good imagination.”
Once again, she couldn't hold back a tender smile, so touched was she that he was doing so much to keep this first truly intimate experience from overwhelming her. Well, that was not exactly true. He was definitely trying to overwhelm her, working his magic on every last nerve ending in her body, but he was also doing his best to make sure that she had a smile on her face the whole time.
He was a nicer man than he wanted people to think. Ellie felt something warm and sweet moving within her heart, and she wondered if it might be the first stirrings of love.
Moved by a new sense of emotion, she lifted her hands, which had been lying at her sides, and sank them into his thick reddish-brown hair. It was crisp and soft, and she turned his head just so that she could feel his hair against her cheek.
He held her still for a moment, then lifted his body a few inches so that he could gaze down upon her. “My God, Ellie,” he said, his words oddly shaky, “how I want you. You'll never know how much…”
Ellie's eyes filled with tears at the heartfelt emotion in his voice. “Charles,” she began, and then paused to shiver as a chilly wind passed across her bare skin.
“You're cold,” he said.
“No,” she lied, unwilling to let anything, even the weather, break this beautiful moment.
“Yes, you are.” He rolled off of her and began to button her dress. “I'm an animal,” he muttered, “seducing you here for the first time outside. Tumbling you on the grass.”
“A very nice animal,” she tried to joke.
He lifted his face to hers, and his brown eyes burned with emotion she had never seen before. It was hot, and it was fierce, and it was wildly, wonderfully possessive. “When I make you my wife, it will be done properly—in our marriage bed. And then”—he leaned down and dropped a passionate kiss on her mouth—“I'm not going to let you out for a week. Maybe two.”
Ellie could only stare at him in amazement, still unable to believe that she could have aroused such passion in this man. He had consorted with the most beautiful women in the world, and yet she, a simple country miss, could set his heart pounding. Then he yanked on her arm, and as she felt herself being dragged back to Wycombe Abbey, she yelped, “Wait! Where are we going?”
“Home. Right now.”
“We can't.”
He turned around very slowly. “The hell we can't.”
“Charles, your language.”
He ignored her scolding. “Eleanor, every damned inch of my body is burning for you, and you couldn't possibly deny that you feel the same way. So would you like to give me one good reason why I shouldn't haul you back to the Abbey this minute and make love to you until we both pass out from it?”
She colored at his frank speech. “The tenants. We were to visit them this afternoon.”
“Hang the tenants. They can wait.”
“But I already sent word to Sally Evans that we would be by in the early afternoon to inspect the work on her chimney.”
Charles didn't pause for a moment as he pulled her toward home. “She won't miss us.”
“Yes, she will,” Ellie persisted. “She has probably cleaned her whole house and prepared tea. It would be the height of rudeness not to show up. Especially after the debacle in her cottage earlier this week.”
He thought about the scene in the fireplace, but that did little to improve his mood. The last thing he needed were memories of being trapped in a very tight space with his wife.
“Charles,” Ellie said one last time, “we have to go see her. We don't have any other choice.”
“You're not just putting me off, are you?”
“No!” she said, loudly and with great feeling.
He blasphemed out loud and then swore under his breath. “Very well,” he muttered. “We visit Sally Evans, but that is all. Fifteen minutes in her cottage and then it's back to the Abbey.”
Ellie nodded.
Charles swore again, trying not to dwell on the fact that his body had not yet resumed its normal relaxed state. It was going to be a most uncomfortable afternoon.
Chapter 14
Ellie thought Charles was taking this setback rather well, all in all. He was certainly grumpy, but he was obviously trying to be good-natured about it, even if he wasn't always succeeding.
His
impatience showed in a thousand ways. Ellie knew that she would never be able to forget the look on Sally Evans's face as she watched Charles down his entire cup of tea in one extremely fast gulp, clank the cup back onto the saucer, proclaim it the finest beverage of which he'd ever partaken, and grab Ellie's hand and nearly yank her out the front door.
All in ten seconds.
Ellie wanted to be angry with him. She really really did. But she couldn't quite manage it, knowing that his impatience was entirely due to her, to the way he wanted her. And that was too thrilling a feeling for her to ignore.
But it was very important to her that she make a good impression on the villagers, and so when Sally asked if they'd like to inspect the progress on her chimney, Ellie exerted firm pressure on her husband's hand, smiled, and said that they would be delighted.
“It turns out it was a bit more complicated than a regular cleaning,” Sally said as they exited the front door. “There was something stuck…I'm not really certain what.”
“All that matters is that we get it fixed,” Ellie replied as she walked outside. “It has been cold of late and it is only going to get colder.” She spied a ladder leaning against the side of the cottage. “Here, why don't I go up and take a quick look.”
She was only on the second rung when she felt Charles's hands at her waist. In less than a second, she'd been deposited firmly on the ground. “Why don't you stay here,” he countered.
“But I want to see—”
“I'll look, if it's so imperative that one of us do so,” he grumbled.
There was a small crowd of onlookers gathered around the cottage, all visibly impressed by the earl's hands-on approach to land management. Ellie waited in their midst while Charles scaled the ladder, nearly bursting with pride when she heard such comments as, “He's a right one, the earl,” and “Not too hoitytoity to do a spot of work, he is.”
Charles moved across the roof and peered into the chimney. “It looks good,” he called down.
Ellie wondered if he actually had any prior experience with chimneys upon which to base that opinion, but then decided that that didn't really matter. Charles sounded as if he knew what he was talking about, which was all that really mattered to the tenants, and besides, the man who had done the actual work on the chimney was at her side, and he was assuring her that it was as good as new.
“And so Sally won't have any trouble keeping warm this winter?” she asked him.
John Bailstock, the mason and chimney sweep, replied, “None at all. In fact, she—”
His words were cut off by a sudden cry of, “God almighty! The earl!”
Ellie looked up in horror to see her husband tottering near the top of the ladder. She was momentarily frozen to the spot, feeling as if time were passing before her at half its usual speed. The ladder was making an awful splintering noise, and before she could react, Charles was falling through the air, through the ladder, actually, which was practically crumbling before her eyes.
She screamed and ran forward, but by the time she reached him he had already hit the ground, and he looked terribly still.
“Charles?” she choked out, falling to her knees beside him. “Are you all right? Please tell me that you're all right.”
He opened his eyes, thank God. “Why is it,” he said wearily, “that I always manage to injure myself when you're near?”
“But I didn't have anything to do with this!” she returned, utterly horrified by his implication. “I know you think I botched the stove, and the orangery, and—”
“I know,” he interrupted. His voice was barely audible but he did manage a tiny smile. “I was teasing.”
Ellie breathed a sigh of relief. If he could tease her, then he couldn't be that hurt, could he? She willed herself to calm down, sternly telling her heart to stop racing—never could she remember feeling such a paralyzing fright. She needed to be strong just then; she needed to be her usual self—efficient, calm, and capable.
And so she took a deep breath and said, “Where are you hurt?”
“Would you believe me if I said everywhere?”
She cleared her throat. “Actually, I would. That was quite a tumble.”
“I don't think I've broken anything.”
“All the same, I'd feel better if I checked myself.” She started feeling his limbs and inspecting his body. “How does this feel?” she asked as she prodded a rib.
“It hurts,” he said plainly. “Although that might be residual pain from our carriage accident before we married.”
“Oh, goodness. I'd forgotten all about that. You must think I'm some sort of bad luck charm.”
He only closed his eyes, which wasn't quite the, “Of course not!” Ellie had been hoping for. She moved on to his arm, but before she could ascertain whether he'd broken or sprained it, her fingers met with something hot and sticky.
“Good heavens!” she burst out, staring at her redstained fingers in shock. “You're bleeding? You're bleeding!”
“Am I?” He turned his head and looked at his arm. “I am.”
“What happened?” she asked frantically, inspecting his arm even more carefully than before. She'd heard of injuries in which broken bones protruded through the skin. Lord help them if that was the case with Charles; Ellie had no idea how to treat such an injury, and more to the point, she was fairly certain she'd faint before she had a chance to try.
A villager stepped forward and said, “My lady, I think he sliced his skin on a piece of the ladder as he fell.”
“Oh yes, of course.” Ellie looked over at the ladder, which was laying on the ground in several pieces. Several men were gathered around it, inspecting the remains. “There's a bit of blood on the wood,” one of them told her.
She shook her head and turned back to her husband. “You're going to be full of splinters,” she said.
“Lovely. I suppose you're going to want to remove them?”
“It's the sort of thing wives do,” she said patiently. “And I am your wife, after all.”
“As I was just beginning to appreciate fully,” he muttered. “Very well, do your worst.”
Once Ellie got started on a task, there was no stopping her. She had three villagers help her move Charles back into Sally Evans's house and sent two more to Wycombe Abbey to fetch a well-sprung carriage to bring them home. Sally was asked to make bandages out of an old petticoat—which Ellie assured her would be replaced posthaste.
“And boil some water,” Ellie requested.
Sally turned around, holding a ceramic pitcher. “Boil it? Wouldn't you rather get started cleaning his wound with what I have here?”
“I would certainly prefer water at room-temperature,” Charles interjected. “I have no desire to add burns to my current list of injuries and ailments.”
Ellie planted her hands on her hips. “Boil it. At least get it hot. I know that I feel cleaner when I wash with hot water. Therefore it stands to reason that it would do a better job cleaning your wound. And I know that we're not supposed to leave behind any bits of wood.”
“I'll boil it, then,” Sally said. “Good thing the chimney is fixed.”
Ellie went back to work tending to her husband. None of his bones were broken, but he had sustained a number of bruises. She used a pair of tweezers borrowed from Sally to pluck out all of the splinters in his upper arm.
She tweezed. Charles winced.
She tweezed again. He winced again.
“You can yell if it hurts you,” she said softly. “I won't think less of you.”
“I don't need to—Ow!”
“Oh, I'm sorry,” she said sincerely. “I was distracted.”
He grumbled something she didn't quite understand, and she had a feeling she wasn't meant to. She forced herself to stop looking at his face—which she'd realized she quite enjoyed looking at—and concentrated on his wounded arm. After several minutes she was satisfied that she'd removed all of the wood.
“Please say you're done,” Charles said
when she'd announced that she'd gotten the last of it.
“I'm not certain,” she replied, her face scrunching as she examined his injury yet again. “I've removed all of the splinters, but I'm not sure what to do about the primary gash. It might need stitching.”
He blanched, and she wasn't sure if it was at the thought of his requiring stitches or her performing them.
Ellie pursed her lips in thought and then called out, “Sally, what do you think? Stitches?”
Sally came over, carrying a kettle of hot water. “Oh, yes. He definitely needs stitches.”
“Couldn't I obtain a professional opinion?” Charles asked.
“Is there a doctor nearby?” Ellie asked Sally.
Sally shook her head.
Ellie turned back to Charles. “No, you can't. I'm going to have to stitch you up.”
He closed his eyes. “Have you done this before?”
“Of course,” she lied. “It's just like stitching a quilt. Sally, have you any thread?”
Sally had already removed a spool from her sewing box and placed it on the table next to Charles. Ellie dabbed a piece of cloth into the hot water and wiped off his wound. “So it will be clean before I close it up,” she explained.
When she finished that task, she broke off a piece of thread, and then dunked it in the hot water for good measure. “Might as well do the same for the needle,” she said to herself, and then dunked that as well. “Here we go,” she said with forced cheerfulness. His skin looked so pink and healthy and well… alive. Rather unlike the last hemline she'd sewn.
“Are you sure you've done this before?”
She smiled tightly. “Would I lie to you?”
“You don't want me to answer that.”
“Charles!”
“Just get on with it.”
She took a deep breath and plunged in. The first stitch was the worst, and Ellie soon found out that her little lie actually had some truth to it—it was a bit like stitching a quilt. She attacked her task with the same devotion and singleminded concentration she used with all of life's work, and soon Charles had a row of neat, tight stitches in his arm.