She tipped her head, studying his eyes, his face. “Luckily, at the moment, there’s no reason I need to venture further afield.”
“You’re content to remain within the house and grounds?”
She nodded. “For the moment.” Sliding her hands from his and taking his arm, she turned to the door. “Anyone who wishes to consult with me can come and visit me here. And I’ve discovered that peace becomes me.”
He chuckled and let her steer him out of the room, through the front hall, and up the stairs to their rooms, but the suggestion of uncertainty, that for today they had this, but that tomorrow it might be threatened, lingered.
He followed her into what used to be his bedroom but now showed signs of her occupation—a silk robe neatly laid over a chair, a brush on the lower of the tallboys, along with a shallow dish she used to set her pins and jewelry in. Collier and Aggie had come to some sort of agreement and now seemed to share territorial rights, over this room, at least.
With a happy little sigh, Mary went straight to the tallboy and started unpinning her hair.
Ryder pulled the pin from his cravat and started unraveling it. His cravat was the one item of his clothing Mary had most difficulty divesting him of; the intricate knots he favored defeated her and had on occasion sent her into fits of frustrated impatience, much to his amusement.
Tonight, however, he wasn’t in the mood to test her temper. He was impatient and eager enough on his own.
He wasn’t sure why, but the compulsive thud was already there, a slow, steady pounding through his veins. An outcome of that lingering uncertainty, perhaps. He didn’t question it but followed her across the room; his cravat finally loose, he reached for her.
Her hair tumbling down about her face and shoulders, Mary turned into his arms; hands splaying over his chest, fingers instinctively lightly gripping, she looked into his face and arched her brows. Sometimes they played games, but most often they opted for the direct and dramatic, their needs simple and complementary. Tonight . . . in the hardness of his hazel eyes, from the steely tension in the arm about her waist, she sensed there was something more he wanted, something he thought of to suggest, but, after an instant’s hesitation, he rejected all words and lowered his head, and she offered up her lips, his to claim.
He claimed them, and more. From that first touch of his lips, the first commanding kiss, she knew that tonight would be no simple repetition of anything that had gone before. Of anything they’d done before.
After his initial conquering foray, he supped and enticed, and she followed, into a long-drawn exchange of heated delight, of assured and unhurried savoring, not he of her or her of him but of them both relishing the moment, the confident presaging of the deeper, more enthralling intimacy to come.
From there, the engagement spun out; for once he openly brought to bear all his vaunted expertise and laid it at the feet of not her but what had grown between them. He deployed his undeniable prowess in its name, in its service.
She knew; she could taste that intent in his kiss, reveled in the passionate devotion that infused not just the melding of their mouths but every touch, every caress, every pressure.
Their clothes fell, shed by hands now well-accustomed to the ritual, to the worship of flesh and naked skin as it was bared to the night air, to the gilding of moonlight.
To the touch of a lover’s hands.
To the caress of fingertips that, as the primitive beat rose, trembled.
He drew her fully against him, her delicate frame and silken skin flush against his powerfully muscled, hair-dusted body, and they paused, both caught in the sensual succulence of the instant, enraptured.
The feel of him all around her, his heat, the hardness of his flesh, the tension investing his heavy muscles, the hot, rigid column pressed against her belly, all impinged and drove her on.
Her hands sweeping up over his shoulders, she sank her fingers into his hair and deepened the kiss even further.
Wantonly met his challenge and, shifting sinuously against him, issued her own.
She’d been right; there was more for them both in this deeper engagement as blindly they breached some level beyond and intensity abruptly flared, their senses expanding dizzyingly until the physical merged with passion, with feeling and driving need, was subsumed by that all-consuming desire and became a conduit, a means of pure expression—of honest, unscreened, irrefutable communication.
Breaking the kiss, he swept her up in his arms and carried her to the bed.
As he laid her down, then joined her, she opened her senses to everything he said. Not in words but with his actions, both the caresses he swept over her quivering flesh, with the web of delight he wove to snare her awareness and hold it captive to the pleasure, the joy, the passion—and the overwhelming, near suffocating eruption of their desire.
She felt it as a pressure in her chest, a swelling, welling, geysering need to give, to open her heart and share, to let that unrelenting build of emotion out. To give it to him, share it with him. Openly.
To let it free.
Her hands tangling in the soft mane of his hair, as she bucked and writhed as his tongue licked and probed and his lips caressed, lightly tugged, and he tasted, eyes closed, breathing ragged, she searched for the way.
He raised his head a heartbeat from the point where it would have been too late, and rose over her.
And she reached for him. Raked her hands down his chest, and felt him shudder.
She found him, rigid and burning, and guided him to her entrance.
He pressed in, then, on a harsh groan, thrust fully home.
He hung over her, head hanging, the muscles in his braced arms quivering with the strain of control, of holding still as she adjusted to the deep penetration, to the solid intrusion, the glorious filling.
Even in extremis, her lips curved.
After the last weeks, she no longer needed that moment but nevertheless gloried in it. Took it and, tonight, used it to reach up, draw his head down to hers, meet his lips with hers, arch her body to his, and join with him.
Wholly and completely and with no reservation.
None.
No screen, no holding back.
She felt her heart open, let it happen, didn’t try to hold anything back. She’d already given him her hand, pledged her future, surrendered her body; now she gave him the last tiny part of her she hadn’t yet bestowed, the small careful piece of her heart she’d held back in case he never fully gave to her.
It was time. She sensed that in every driving thrust, in every synchronous beat of their thundering hearts. Time to risk giving her all. Time to believe in all they could be, to commit herself wholly, irrevocably, in her entirety to that, to being that, to becoming that, to sharing it all with him.
Ryder was long past thinking. Feeling had taken over and now drove him relentlessly, mercilessly on, whipping him toward a surrender he’d never thought to make, to an acknowledgment, a bending of the knee, he’d never even dreamt he might come to.
Nothing had prepared him for this, yet everything that was in him wanted it.
Roared for it.
He thrust into her body deeper and harder, and felt her rise to him, their bodies effortlessly coming together, not just in the physical sense, consumed by the friction and the heat, the slickness and the sensual glory, but driven and determined, reckless and abandoned, merging in a far more fundamental way.
On some deeper level, on some higher plane.
Giving and taking, receiving and lavishing, striving to achieve that last ultimate degree of togetherness.
Racing, urgent and intent, for the cataclysm that would bind them forever.
Sunk so deeply in the pleasure of her body, and of her openly shared pleasure in his, though his senses were reeling that fact shone clearly, glowing in his mind with crystal clarity.
&n
bsp; This was what it meant to be as one.
To truly reach the pinnacle of togetherness. Of closeness.
Of shattering physical intimacy driven and overwhelmed by emotion.
This was what it meant to love.
To lay aside all reservation, to give without limitation.
To lose one’s heart.
No—to willingly give it into another’s keeping, to become dependent and possessive, to accept that as the price for them doing the same in return.
This was their moment, and similar as they were, they’d reached it together.
Unlocked each other’s doors, led each other to the brink.
This was the ultimate linking.
And in that fraction of an instant of lucidity as they raced, gasping and clinging, up the final peak, he recognized it as that, as an irrevocable step that once taken could never be undone—and still he wanted it.
It would link him to her, but also her to him.
And that was worth any price.
With the last gasp of his desperation, he reached for it, that ultimate gift of him to her and her to him, closed a mental fist about it and held on as, in a firestorm of passion, sensation and emotion collided and they burned.
In the furnace of their joint passion, in the conflagration of their shared love.
Acknowledged, embraced, it consumed them, transmuted them, welded and reforged them.
Made them new, made them whole. Made them more.
As the last shudders of completion racked him, as the last of her contractions faded, he slumped upon her, too wrung out to move, too exhausted and overwhelmed to think.
Even much later, when he lifted from her, slumped alongside her and gathered her into his arms, all he could manage by way of thought was that he was never going to let her go.
He couldn’t. She was his everything.
After the passion of the night and their underlying new reality, Ryder had anticipated some degree of awkwardness between them, certainly a degree of wariness from him if not from her, but instead, when they’d woken they’d looked at each other. Looked into each other’s eyes—and seen—and they’d both smiled.
He’d rolled over and they’d made love, and their day had sailed on, idyllic and untroubled, from there.
The clock on the library mantelpiece chimed five times. As he tidied away the last of his calculations on the coming season’s crops, his mind continued to explore his new state. An unlooked-for, unexpected, unanticipated state—one of such contentment and promise that it constituted a very real vulnerability.
He was surprised at himself that he’d accepted it, that vulnerability, so readily, so easily, yet even now, while in full possession of his wits, had he the decision to make again, he would make it in the same way.
There were, indeed, some things worth the price. That were worth any price.
Putting off that acceptance, delaying this contented joy because of the threat hovering over them . . . neither he nor Mary was the type to play safe, much less to allow some villainous knave to rule them via fear.
No. Whatever came, they would handle it. And, if anything, courtesy of the night, they were even stronger now.
His mind shifting to the pleasures of the evening to come, he shut his desk drawer, then heard a crisp tap at the door. “Come.”
Forsythe entered, a faintly puzzled frown on his face. In one hand he held a salver on which rested several letters, the afternoon mail; offering the salver, Forsythe said, “My lord, Aggie, her ladyship’s maid, is looking for her ladyship but can’t seem to find her. Do you have any idea where her ladyship might be?”
Accepting the letters, Ryder frowned. “She said she was going to do some embroidery, but”—he glanced at the window, at the sunshine outside—“she might have gone for a stroll.” Pushing back his chair, he stood. “She won’t have gone far. Has Aggie checked the rose garden?”
Aggie had. She’d also checked the terraces and the immediate surrounds of the house, as well as their rooms upstairs.
The maid wrung her hands. “She’s usually about, m’lord, and she likes me to check round about now over what gown she wants to wear to dinner.”
It took the footmen fifteen minutes to quarter the rest of the house.
Meanwhile, Ryder sent for Dukes, the head gardener, who immediately went out to consult with his far-flung crew.
“Her ladyship is definitely not within the house, my lord.”
Forsythe looked like Ryder felt—unwilling to panic yet, but starting to feel the first nibblings of fear. “Send to the stables. She won’t have gone riding, but perhaps she walked down to see her horse.”
At this time of day, that was a long shot, and so it proved.
“We haven’t seen her ladyship at all today, my lord,” Filmore reported.
Dukes strode rapidly back in, an unusual enough action from the normally lugubrious gardener to fix all attention on him. He nodded to Ryder. “One of my lads saw her ladyship walking in the shrubbery, my lord. He was working there. She smiled, spoke a pleasant word, then turned back to the house. Far as he knows, she returned to the east terrace, but this was some time ago, hours at least, and from where he was, he couldn’t see if she actually did come all the way to the house or turned off to somewhere else.”
A chill unlike any he’d ever experienced was seeping into Ryder’s chest. He glanced at Forsythe, Filmore, then back at Dukes. “I want every able-bodied man—assemble them in the forecourt. We need to mount a search.”
“Yes, my lord.” Forsythe looked grim.
“At once.” Filmore saluted and headed for the door.
Dukes didn’t reply, just grimly nodded and followed Filmore. Forsythe sent a footman scurrying but remained to help Ryder set out maps of the estate and surrounding areas.
Somewhat to Ryder’s surprise, Aggie stopped wringing her hands and, jaw firming, whirled and rushed from the room.
In the end, it wasn’t only the men who assembled in the forecourt but all the younger women on the staff as well, recruited by Aggie, and with the approval of Mrs. Pritchard all ready to do their bit to find their missing mistress.
That gave Ryder some leeway; dispatching the women in pairs to search every inch of the grounds left him with enough men to send riders to the nearby farms as well as organize comprehensive sweeps through the surrounding woods and fields.
Even though this was Wiltshire, as calm and gentle a county as any in England, it was nevertheless possible that some accident had befallen Mary, even if she hadn’t ventured into the woods.
That was what he was hoping, what they were all thinking. A fall, a twisted ankle—anything of that sort would be preferable to the alternative.
That something more heinous had befallen her.
It was full light when they started the search, but within the first hour, the sun started to dip, and the shadows cast by the trees lengthened. But light enough remained and the search continued, with each group reporting back to the house as they finished their allotted area, only to have Ryder send them out to another as yet unsearched locale.
Raventhorne was a large estate; covering it was going to take time. Ultimately even Forsythe, born and bred on abbey lands, left to add his number to the searchers.
Dusk was insidiously closing in when a tap on the library door had Ryder lifting his head—only to have his leaping heart crash as Mrs. Pritchard looked in. “Yes?” He tried not to sound too harsh.
“My lord, I’ve Dixon’s lad here, from Axford, and I think you need to hear what he has to say.”
Frowning, Ryder straightened from the maps he’d been poring over. “Dixon?”
“The fishmonger.” Mrs. Pritchard stepped across the threshold and beckoned someone in.
Ryder tried to blank his expression—the best he could do in the circumstances—as a boy peeked aroun
d the door, then immediately ducked his head. Ryder struggled to find an unthreatening tone. “Dixon, the younger, is it?”
The boy ducked his head again. “Aye, m’lord.” He glanced up at Mrs. Pritchard, who waved him on toward the desk.
Clearly unsure, the boy advanced three steps, then halted.
Ryder looked at Mrs. Pritchard.
“Davy here brought our delivery just now and happened to mention delivering to the Dower House yesterday.”
“The Dower House.” Instantly, Ryder focused on the boy. “Who was in residence—who was there? Do you know?”
The boy shook his head. “Don’t know who. Didn’t see anyone but Cook and her two girls, but I can tell you what was ordered?”
When Ryder nodded encouragingly, the boy rattled off a list of fishes. Ryder had no way of interpreting the significance; he looked to Mrs. Pritchard for translation.
Her expression severe, his housekeeper obliged. “The turbot, my lord, wouldn’t be for the staff, nor yet the sturgeon.”
“I’ll say!” Davy Dixon snorted. “Top of the slate, they are.”
For an instant, Ryder’s mind reeled with the wild possibility whipping through it, but then he shook aside the fanciful notion and refocused on Davy Dixon. “Thank you. Mrs. Pritchard, I’m sure we should reward such a useful report.”
Mrs. Pritchard nodded. “Come along, Davy. There’s some cake and a shilling with your name on it in the kitchen.”
Steering the boy out, Mrs. Pritchard closed the door. Ryder stood staring at the panels for several moments, then he glanced at the maps, then at the deepening dusk outside, debated for a second longer, then headed for the door and the stairs.
Mrs. Pritchard was waiting in the front hall when he came quickly down, having thrown on his riding clothes and hauled on his boots. “You’re riding over there?”
Pulling on his gloves, he nodded. “At the very least, I should ask if anyone there has seen anything of her ladyship. If they haven’t . . . when Forsythe returns, tell him to take over organizing the searchers, and that I’ll work my way through the Dower House woods. We haven’t sent anyone over that way yet, and if I’m there anyway, I might as well check.”