Page 71 of The Marriage Debt
‘I would never break a promise to you, Kat.’ He had reached a landing on the spiral stairs and shifted her in his arms so he could open the door. ‘I did not saywewere going to make love. I said I am going to make love toyou.There is a difference.’
‘I…I do not understand.’
‘I know.’ They were at his bedchamber door. Katherine knew she should struggle, but the same trust that had filled her when she had looked across that prison room into the eyes of a filthy, unshaven felon filled her now.
They were inside the room. Candles burned steadily, there was a fire in the grate and on the washstand steam rose lazily from the jug. Someone had only just left. Theo set her on her feet and reached behind him to turn the key in the lock. ‘The key is in the door, Kat. You can walk away if you want to.’
Chapter Twenty Four
‘I do not think I do want to leave,’ she said with difficulty, searching his face. ‘I should, I know. Theo, why?’
‘I asked you to wait a month before you made your decision. I have shown you my family, my home, the house you can make our own. I just wanted to give you a glimpse of one of the other benefits of married life.’ He was smiling at her reassuringly, but the dark fires were in his eyes and she knew that whatever he was feeling at this moment it was not calm, not restrained. And yet he was holding all that back for her.
She knew she was blushing and suddenly did not care. ‘Yes, Theo.’
‘You trust me?’
‘I have always trusted you,’ she said simply and was rewarded by the flare of emotion his eyes.
‘I think we had better dispense with this very beautiful gown extremely carefully,’ he said, letting his hands rest on her shoulders. ‘I look forward to seeing you wearing it again. Now, how does it fasten I wonder?’ His hands drifted and she held her breath. ‘Ah, I see, little buttons. One, two, three…four.’ The narrow shoulders of the gown slipped down under his palms. ‘If I hold it and you step out – or is the approved method over your head?’
‘Over.’ It was so hard to speak. She was suddenly blind in the rustling silken darkness, then blinking again in the candlelight.
Her petticoats were slipped off, then Theo was turning her in her arms, nuzzling softly at her nape while his fingers tangled with the laces of her stays. ‘These are tight. How do you breathe?’ Then they fell away and she took a deep breath, cut short as Theo’s hands came up to cup her breasts.
‘Theo.’
‘Mmm?’
‘You…oh!’ His thumbs were flicking lightly at her nipples through the thin fabric of her chemise. She wriggled against him and found herself turned again.
‘Do…not…wriggle like that.’ He seemed breathless and Katherine suddenly experienced a liberating sense of power. She had thought her body and will were reacting blindly to his knowing hands and mouth but now she knew she had as powerful an effect on him. And it was a power she must take care in exercising, she realised. Which was easier thought than done, given her complete lack of experience with men. She slid her feet out of her kid slippers then stood quite still, her heart hammering, wondering what he was going to do next.
With an expression of great concentration Theo was undoing the ribbons which secured the shoulders of her chemise and with a shiver she realised his fingers were shaking, just very, very slightly. And this was a man whose hands had been steady in the condemned cell, on the gallows, facing an armed highwayman.
She was so rapt in the thought that it was a second before she realised that she was naked except for her silk stockings and her long evening gloves. Instinctively her hands flew to cover herself. Theo was looking at her with an expression that took her breath away. There was desire there – however inexperienced she was, she could recognise that – but there was something else, something almost reverent.
‘Are you not going to take anything off?’ she ventured, anxious to break the silence which was wracking her nerves.
Theo kicked off his shoes, tossed aside his coat and waistcoat and tugged loose his neck cloth and the opening of his shirt.
‘Is that all?’ She was uncertain whether to be relieved or disappointed.
‘I told you I would never break a promise to you, but I have no intention of making it any harder than it need be.’ He took astep towards her, then another. With a squeak Katherine backed away until the edge of the bed caught the back of her knees and she sat down. ‘Am I frightening you?’ he stopped.
‘No. Yes. I do not know.’ She was wittering, she realised and pulled herself together.How am I feeling?‘Yes, I am scared,’ she admitted. He took a step back. ‘And I think I rather like it,’ she finished in a rush of honesty.
Before she knew quite what had happened she was flat on her back on the bed, her hands caught above her head in the grasp of one large, gentle fist, her legs, which she tried instinctively to curl up protectively were trapped under the weight of his leg and Theo was looking down at her with a gleam in his eyes which made her swallow hard.
‘Brave, honest, Kat. May I take off your stockings?’
He was asking permission to take offstockingswhen everything else had been so ruthlessly disposed of? She nodded. As soon as her hands were free one arm flew to cover her breasts, the other hand spread palm open, protectively across the dark tangle of curls.
She had a lot to learn, she realised as his fingers began to play with her garters. Apparently it was possibly to make removing a pair of stockings last not seconds but long, long minutes, and to make the act one of exquisite, pleasurable torture.
Stunned, she wriggled up against the pillows so she could watch his dark head bent attentively over the task of removing two ribbons and two lengths of knitted silk. How could the straying fingers following the slow descent of the stockings as he rolled them down create such shivers of sensitivity? Why, when he bent to kiss her knee did she have to bite her lip to stop crying out? Why, when his long fingers reached her ankle and then her instep and stopped to trail slowly up and down, did she have not the slightest urge to giggle, to protest that she was ticklish? Why was she lying back against the pillows, her eyes closed, herbreath short?
His mouth replaced his fingers, kissing, nibbling, licking its way up to her knees which she instinctively drew together. His hands pressed them apart, open, and his mouth began to torment the soft flesh of the back of her right knee. She gasped, felt her body arch with some instinct she did not understand and he murmured, ‘Too soon.’
