Page 96 of The Tempting of Thomas Carrick
Such as the reason he was so very at ease, at peace on a level he couldn’t remember ever having attained.
Despite the limitations imposed by his injury, his day—this day—had…suited him. Had unexpectedly fulfilled him. From the first, it had been pleasant—pleasing, engaging, and satisfying in an unprecedented way—and, courtesy of what flared so hotly between him and Lucilla, had ended in soul-wrenching pleasure.
His mind dwelled on the revelation—on the answer to the question of what he needed in order to feel this way. A question he hadn’t previously asked for the simple reason that, until now, he hadn’t realized it was possible to feel so content. So sunk in contentment.
Now he knew, but he also knew it couldn’t last. His wound would heal and he’d leave for Glasgow—and by then this…madness, whatever it was, with Lucilla would have run its course. If their mutual fire hadn’t reduced to ashes by then, the flames would at least have started to subside. To lose their potency, their power.
They hadn’t yet, but they would. Such was the way of life.
To you, I will always bring life.
Perhaps, but all things died with time. Like the screen he’d originally deployed between him and her that their passion had reduced to cinders.
He had to admit that being himself—simply himself—as he was with her was a special boon, yet no matter how much he wished to cling to it, he couldn’t. Being with her would end when he left the Vale and returned to Glasgow and his other—controlled, safe, and forever—life.
She stirred. Tightening his arms around her, he shifted onto his side and rested his jaw on the top of her head. All tension leached from her limbs, and she sank into his embrace. As the delectable perfume that spoke to him of her weaved through his mind, sending tendrils into his dreams, he felt again the swell of that golden emotion—amorphous, but powerful and very real—that she and this place seemed to evoke in him, and mentally smiled.
It might be slated to end, but there was no reason not to enjoy it—even to wallow in it—until then.
The arms of Morpheus closed about him and dragged him down.
Lucilla felt him slip over the threshold into sleep. She reached with her senses, checking again, and once again felt reassurance wash through her.
She could feel his contentment like a tangible thing. While she wasn’t a mind reader and couldn’t even guess his thoughts with any certainty, she was increasingly able to read his emotions, especially now that he’d dropped the last barrier he’d used to screen his true persona and engaged with her directly, man to woman, heart to heart.
The breaching of that barrier had been her first real sign of success. The deep contentment that now held him was another.
Earlier in the evening, Marcus had stopped her in the corridor. Her twin had met her gaze and simply asked, “Are yousureyou know what you’re doing?”
He hadn’t needed to specify what he was asking about. She’d inwardly frowned but had answered truthfully, “Yes.”
He’d grimaced but had left it at that, and they’d gone down to the drawing room.
Bothered that it had been Marcus who had—again—doubted her, she’d watched Thomas closely, paying attention to his tone, his gestures, to everything she could read in him—and, of course, she had consulted her own feelings and her sense of the Lady’s directives again, but nothing there had changed.
And now the advances she’d hoped for were falling into place.
So she was on the right track, following the right path—the one she was supposed to lead Thomas down. She’d been convinced she needed to bring him to the Vale and keep him there until he understood what he was to her; what she hadn’t fully appreciated was that a part of what he had to see and learn was what she and the Vale were to him. He’d needed to comprehend that his position as her consort was not simply a matter of standing by her side, but that he had a real and active role to fill in the community and the people were ready to accept him.
This—including the bliss of this night in her bed—was how things were meant to be.
All was well and progressing as it should.
Reassured, satisfied, and as deeply content as he, she let herself slide into dreams.
* * *
Thomas enjoyed two more days of bucolic bliss before the pleasant cocoon of life in the Vale fractured and shattered around him.
He’d known this strange time would end, yet he hadn’t expected that end to come in quite such a dramatic fashion.
Not that the final act had yet been played out; that was still to come. Once he’d realized… The right place and the right time to ask his questions was patently after he and Lucilla retired to her room, so with steely resolve, he’d waited through dinner and now sat in the drawing room with her and Marcus.
As they had over the previous evenings, he and Marcus idly discussed this or that—or, as they were presently doing, flicked through the gentlemen’s periodicals with which the manor seemed well supplied, while Lucilla entertained them and herself by strumming airs on her harp.
Those previous evenings had struck him as immensely comfortable; tonight, he was impatient for the tea trolley to arrive. But he was adept at hiding his emotions, a necessity in business negotiations; Marcus, at least, seemed to have no inkling of any storm brewing, of any tension in the air.
Lucilla was more sensitive. She’d been watching him from the instant she’d first seen him after he’d strung the pieces together and had finally seen her design, but he’d made sure she couldn’t see past his façade. That the façade was back in place was, of course, what had alerted her to the change in him.
