A Kiss to Remember

  As dark had fallen, she had donned her nightdress and climbed into bed as if it were only one of a thousand other nights. As if she hadn't spent the previous night cradled in the arms of the man she loved—kissing, laughing, sharing their plans for the future. And tasting a tantalizing pleasure that was only a shadow of what they were to have shared tonight.

  Laura squeezed her eyes shut against a blinding wave of pain. The only arms wrapped around her tonight were her own, but even they weren't enough to still her shivers of misery. She wished she could cry, but her tears seemed to be frozen into an icy lump lodged deep in her breast. It hurt so much to breathe that she almost wished she could stop.

  An eerie hush had hung over the manor all day, as if someone had died and no one dared speak above a whisper. Which made the sudden jingling of a harness and the clop of hooves on the cobbled drive outside Laura's window that much more startling.

  She tossed back the bedclothes, flew to the window, and drew aside the drapes. The elegant town coach that had delivered disaster to her wedding was making its way down the lane at a rapid clip, heading toward the village.

  Or London.

  Laura's wish was granted. Suddenly, she couldn't breathe at all.

  Perhaps Sterling Harlow had never summoned her into his exalted presence because he had come to the conclusion that she was beneath both his notice and his contempt. Perhaps he'd simply decided to return to the glittering excitement of the life he led in London and pretend the past three weeks had never happened. Only a breath ago, if someone had asked her what would be the more terrible punishment—facing him tonight or never seeing him again—she wouldn't have been able to say. But as she watched the carriage lamps rock away into the darkness, Laura knew.

  She had just managed to drag herself back to bed and draw the feather quilt over her when the bedchamber door came flying open. She sat up with a startled gasp, but this time it wasn't the footman who dared to disturb her privacy. It was the duke of Devonbrooke himself.

  He closed the door behind him and leaned against it, folding his arms over his chest as he surveyed her across the sea of rumpled bedclothes. "You needn't look so surprised to see me, darling. Or have you forgotten that it's our wedding night?"

  * * *

  Chapter 18

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  I swear I never meant to hurt you.

  Laura's papa had tried to warn her. If you sold your soul to the devil, it would only be a matter of time before he came to collect. But Papa had never warned her the devil would be so beautiful that she would be tempted to surrender that soul without a fight.

  With his lips curved into a mocking smile and his fair hair tumbling around his face, Sterling Harlow looked every inch the fallen angel. His cuffs had been shoved up to reveal muscular forearms dusted with golden hair. His stocking feet and the cravat hanging loose around the throat of his half-unbuttoned shirt only enhanced his disreputable air.

  "You may scream if you like," he suggested pleasantly. "My cousin Diana may adore me, but that doesn't mean she'll stand for me accosting a helpless young lady in her bedchamber. If you yell loud enough, Dower might even come running from the barn, pitchfork at the ready."

  Laura had no intention of screaming. This was a dance only the two of them could do. "Swooning in front of the Bogworth sisters was humiliating enough. I'm not about to wake the whole household and frighten the children by screeching like some milksop maiden in one of Lottie's novels."

  He shrugged. "Suit yourself, then. Just don't forget I gave you the chance."

  His eyes flicked lazily downward. When she had sat up so hastily, both the quilt and her nightdress had gone sliding down, baring one creamy shoulder. Struggling to appear casual, she reached for the wrapper draped across the foot of the bed. Sterling got there at the same time she did.

  "I don't know why you'd want to bother with that silly old thing," he said, gently tugging it from her hands and tossing it over Lottie's bed. "We've had some of our best conversations while you were in your nightclothes." Although his voice was cool and crisp, his eyes glittered with an unfamiliar fire.

  "You've been drinking," Laura observed, settling back against the pillows and smoothing the quilt over her lap.

  "Steadily since this morning," he confessed. "Although I was forced to stop a little while ago when I exhausted my father's supply of brandy. Did you know he kept another bottle stashed inside the pianoforte?" Sterling shook his head. "He might have had a tin ear for music, but you have to appreciate his resourcefulness."

  "From what I hear, there was precious little else to appreciate about the man."

  "Is that what Lady Eleanor told you?" Sterling's voice was deceptively light. "Ah, yes, dear, saintly Lady Eleanor! I was like a son to her, was I not?"

  Laura lowered her eyes, ashamed of her own monstrous cruelty, however unwitting. She would have gladly bitten out her own tongue to take back those careless words.

  Sterling frowned at her. "You disappoint me, my dear. I had rather hoped you would throw yourself at me and plead prettily for my forgiveness."

  "Would it do any good?" She slanted him a glance from beneath her lashes, halfway hoping he would say yes.

  "No," he admitted. "But it would have still proved very entertaining." He leaned one shoulder against the bedpost. "Along with my drinking, I've been doing quite a bit of reading today. Did you know that Lord Hardwick's Act of 1753 made falsifying an entry in a marriage register with evil intent a capital offense?"

  "If you're going to have me executed, I wish you'd go ahead and summon the hangman," Laura snapped, frustration making her reckless. "He's bound to be in a better temper than you."

  "Killing you wasn't quite what I had in mind. But I really shouldn't be so hard on you, should I? After all, you've suffered nearly as great a shock as I have. It must have been quite distressing to learn that you'd just wed 'a repugnant toad of a man who cares nothing for anyone but himself—a heartless, petty, vindictive wretch.'"

  "You left off 'vile,'" she reminded him grimly.

  "It is rather ironic, isn't it, considering that you weren't even going to invite me to your wedding, that you'd just as soon have invited Beelzebub himself."

  Laura briefly closed her eyes as her own words came back to taunt her. "I can't blame you for hating me."

  "Good," he said crisply.

  "You probably won't believe me, but I did it to protect the children. When you wrote and said you were going to claim Arden Manor for your own, you left me with little choice."

  "Did you honestly believe I would cast innocent children into the streets?"

  "No. I believed you would cast them into the workhouse."

  "Even I'm not that much of a devil. I had every intention of finding Lottie and George homes in some reputable household."

  She met his gaze boldly. "And what about me? What was to become of me?"

  "As I recall, I was going to marry you off to some fool." Sterling shook his head with a soft, bitter laugh. "And I suppose I've done just that." He came around the bed, his steps as measured as his word. "I really can't blame you for thinking me the devil. You were already well aware of my colossal indifference toward the woman who gave me life, my debauched habits…" He trailed off, leaving those dangerous words hanging in the air between them.

  She smelled the heady sweetness of the brandy on his breath before he touched her. Before he sank down on the bed, resting his weight on one knee, and slipped a hand beneath her hair. She stared straight ahead, not responding to the persuasive warmth of his fingers against her nape, but not resisting it, either.

  Touching his mouth to her ear, he murmured, "Do you remember what you promised to give me should we ever come face-to-face?"

  "One of Cookie's crumpets?" she ventured.

  His lips drifted around to graze the corner of her mouth. "A tongue-lashing I'd never forget."

  If he'd been rough with her, if he had taken her mouth with punishing force, Laura might have been able to resist
him. But he was far too diabolical for that. Instead, he teased her lips apart with the tip of his tongue, then tenderly claimed them for his own. He might be a devil, but he still kissed like an angel. Unable to resist the devastating sweetness of those silky thrusts, her mouth melted into his, giving him that tongue-lashing she'd promised.

  He groaned, the deepening ferocity of his kiss giving her a taste of the hurt and hunger raging beneath his iron control. Before she even realized what she was doing, she had risen to her knees and pressed herself against the lean, hard planes of his body.

  He tore his mouth away from hers. Breathing hard, he wound one hand through her hair and tugged her head back, forcing her to look him in the eye. "Damn it, Laura, I want the truth! You owe me that much. Why? Why did you choose me? If you didn't know who I was, then it couldn't have been the money and it couldn't have been the title. You obviously had no lack of suitors. If you believed what my mother told you, you could have married any man in Arden and still have inherited this accursed place." Her kiss had stripped the veneer of brittle mockery from his features, leaving them fierce and raw. "Why me?"

  She gazed up at him, her eyes brimming with both tears and defiance. "Because I wanted you! Because I saw you that day in the wood and I wanted you for myself!"

  He went utterly still, not even breathing. Then he shook his head, her own helplessness reflected in his eyes. "No one has ever accused me of not giving a lady what she wanted."

  This time when his mouth came down on hers, it was with his full weight behind it. They went tumbling into the bed together, their mouths meshed into a fiery web of delight. As Sterling kicked away the quilt that separated their straining bodies, Laura clung to him, giving free rein to her own hunger. He might not be her Nicholas, but he was no stranger, either. He was her husband. And he had every right to come to her bed, just as she had every right to receive him there, even if it meant wandering in a dark and perilous wood where pleasure could be even more of a danger to her soul than pain.

  Laura would have sworn she'd exhausted the last of his patience, that he owed her nothing more than a rough, hasty coupling, but not even his feverish urgency could make him careless with her. The whole time he was tugging up the hem of her nightdress, he was bathing her sensitive throat in hot, damp kisses. Before she could catch her breath, she was naked in his arms. She couldn't say what had become of her nightdress any more than she could say what had become of his shirt. She only knew that she was finally free to press her open mouth to his chest, to run her tongue over the crisp hairs dusting those supple muscles. His golden skin tasted every bit as delectable as it looked, if not more so.

  The candle sputtered, then went out, plunging them into a cocoon of darkness where the only sensation was the rough velvet of his hands against her skin. As he seized her lips again, a wild, sweet madness compelled her to arch against him, to fill those hands with the aching fullness of her breasts.

  Still pleasuring her mouth with deep, drugging kisses, he brushed his thumbs back and forth across her nipples until they began to tingle and swell. Just when she thought she couldn't bear another second of that delicious torment, he shifted his kiss from her lips to her right breast, first caressing the rigid bud with the very tip of his tongue, then drawing it into the wet heat of his mouth and sucking hard. Laura clamped her trembling thighs together, stunned by the ripples of sensation between them. It was almost as if he were touching her there.

  And then he was.

  She gasped as one of his long, tapered fingers went sliding through her damp curls. It didn't take his knee to nudge her thighs apart. All it took was a deft stroke of his fingertip against the throbbing pearl nestled in the crux of those curls. As her thighs went limp, he rolled to the side and trapped one of them beneath his own so that she couldn't have closed herself to him even if she wanted to.

  Which she most definitely did not.

  He kept her leg pinned beneath his while his hand had its wicked way with her, petting and kneading and stroking until she was panting with blind need.

  Sterling had spent most of his life taking pleasure, not giving it. Although he'd certainly earned his reputation as an accomplished lover, he had always measured each kiss and practiced caress against what he would receive in return for his efforts. But with Laura, it was enough to lie beside her in the shadows and watch the flickers of rapture dance over her delicate features, to lavish the creamy skin of her breasts with kisses and absorb each of her sighs as they left her luscious lips.

  "Please," she said in a broken whisper, not even sure what she was begging him to give her. "Oh, please…"

  But Sterling knew. And he was only too willing to oblige.

  He reached down to free himself from the agonizing constraints of his trousers. He'd never before had cause to regret his size, but as he slipped between Laura's slender thighs, he knew a moment of genuine trepidation.

  Bracing his weight on his elbows, he cupped her face in his hands. "This is going to hurt," he said hoarsely, "but I swear I'm not doing it to punish you. If you don't believe that, then I'll stop right now."

  She pondered his words for a minute. "Will it hurt you worse than it hurts me?"

  Her words surprised a helpless chuckle from him. "I'm afraid not. But I promise to do whatever I can to make it better for you."

  She slowly nodded, her tongue darting out to moisten her lips.

  Laura took him at his word, but it was still a shock when he began to lave himself in the copious nectar his skillful touch had coaxed from her body. He was hot and smooth and utterly unyielding, the perfect complement to her melting softness. He slid up and down between those dew-slicked petals, creating an exquisite friction that soon had her writhing and whimpering beneath him, poised on the very brink of madness.

  All it took was a nudge to shove her over the edge. She clung to him as she tumbled head over heels, borne on a quivering tide of rapture. Its waves were still cresting in her womb when he rocked his hips upward once again, this time sliding deep inside of her.

  Laura dug her nails into the smooth flesh of his back, biting back a cry.

  "We're only halfway home, sweetheart. Take me," he urged, kissing the tears from her cheek. "Take me all the way."

  Despite the pain, Laura could not resist such a tender plea. Wrapping her legs around his waist, she buried her face against his throat and arched against him. He pressed forward until every throbbing inch of him was nestled deep within her.

  Sterling's memory failed him again. Try as he might, he couldn't recall the face of a single woman he'd ever made love to. There was only Laura—beneath him, around him, bathing him in her tender young body's shuddering grace.

  He began to slide in and out of her in slow, deep, sinuous strokes, as if he had all night to devote to that single sacred act. He took her until he couldn't remember a time when he wasn't a part of her, until uncontrollable shivers of delight wracked her inside and out, until she dug her heels into his back and moaned, "Oh, Nicky…" in his ear.

  Sterling stopped in midstroke. Laura's eyes flew open.

  He gazed down at her, his powerful body trembling with the strain of being held in check. "I really wish you wouldn't call me that."

  She glared up at him, her breath coming in disgruntled little pants. "What would you prefer I call you? Your Grace?"

  For an instant, Sterling feared he might actually smile. "Under these circumstances, I believe 'my lord' will suffice."

  He brought his lips down hard on hers, silencing any retort she might have made. His hips resumed their motion, setting a fierce rhythm designed to make them both forget their names.

  Too late, Laura realized that she had been wrong. She was going to scream after all. If Sterling hadn't captured her cry in his mouth, it probably would have awakened everyone in the household, if not the whole parish. A guttural groan tore from his own throat as his entire body went as rigid as the part of him still buried deep inside of her.

  Still trembling with c
onvulsive aftershocks, Laura clung to him, her breath coming in broken sobs. "Oh… oh, my…" Before she could stop them, the words echoing through her heart came spilling from her lips. "I'm so very sorry! I was wrong to trick you. I should have told you the truth from the beginning. But I didn't just want you. I loved—"

  He pressed two fingers to her lips, shaking his head. "No more lies, Laura. Not here. Not tonight."

  She wanted to protest, but something in his face stopped her. Instead, she tangled her hands in his hair and urged his lips back down to hers, telling herself that there would be ample time to convince him of the truth.

  A lifetime.

  A sharp knock sounded on Laura's bedchamber door the next morning, jolting her from an exhausted slumber. She poked her head out from underneath the quilt, struggling to remember how she'd ended up with her head hanging off the foot of the bed and her feet on the pillows.

  When she did, she had to bury her head back under the quilt to smother a naughty giggle. If not for the tenderness lingering between her thighs and the musky aroma clinging to the sheets, she might have thought the entire night was some wild, erotic dream spun from the overwrought imagination of a lonely rector's daughter.

  The knock came again, brisk with impatience. Laura's heart quickened with a mixture of anticipation and shyness. It must be Sterling, returning with a tray laden with all of Cookie's most succulent breakfast offerings. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she had deprived it of both lunch and supper the previous day.

  She scrambled to the head of the bed and artfully arranged the sheet over her breasts before singing out, "Come in!"

  It wasn't Sterling who came sweeping through the door but his cousin. Lady Diana Harlow stopped at the foot of the bed and stood peering down her patrician nose at Laura as if she were a particularly nasty bedbug that required a sound squashing. "Forgive me for disturbing you, but His Grace requests your presence in the study."