Page 32 of Seven Swans a Swimming

“Come with me,” he said, his voice jagged, as though he barely had enough breath to speak. “Come on.”

Arabella took his offered hand and found herself pulled, out of the barn, across the parkland, around Oxcaster Lacey to a side door she had never spotted before, though that was no great surprise. The place was a maze.

With every step, her heart beat faster and her excitement grew. Just what she had agreed to, Arabella knew was scandalous. Young ladies did not give themselves up for lovemaking before they had been wed in church. Had been raised to know that, to value the innocence she would give to her husband on their wedding night.

But was this not, in a way, her wedding night? Nathaniel had admitted his affection for her, even if he had not said the words precisely as she had expected, and he had said himself, they would be married.

“My parents are out. Gone for the night. And we are engaged to be married, you know.”

They were engaged to be married—they would be married soon if Arabella had anything to do with it. So why not experience those sweet pleasures that were only to be shared by a man and wife? Why not submit themselves to the desire rushing through their bodies, the desires they could no longer contain?

The side door opened onto a corridor Arabella did not recognize, but that did not matter. Nathaniel knew. He pulled her down the corridor and opened a part of the wall, which was a door in disguise, to reveal a staircase.

“A hangover from the days when priests had to be rushed out of homes,” he said breathlessly as he pulled her up the steps, one after another. “Come on, Arabella—I am not going too fast for you?”

Arabella answered in the only way she knew how. She stopped, pushed Nathaniel against the wall in the staircase, and kissed him.

Nathaniel moaned under her possessive touch, her hands pushed back his jacket, forcing it to the floor. Arabella could not think what had taken over her, but all she knew was that she needed him, needed to be as close to him as possible—and clothes were merely getting in the way.

And he responded in kind, giving her the confidence she needed to be sure that he desired her just as much as she desired him. They stood there, Nathaniel’s back against the wall as Arabella leaned into him, kissing for goodness knows how long.

Eventually Nathaniel groaned and pulled away from her. “Damnit, Arabella, why do you have to be so delectable?”

She flushed at his words. She had never considered herself…well, anything like that. With five sisters, there was always someone else taking the attention of the room.

But this was her moment, her man, her chance to experience the devotion of a gentleman, and she was not going to forget a single second of it.

“Come on,” Nathaniel said, pulling her up the final few steps. “This way.”

Arabella nodded, eyes hazy with desire, hardly able to know how she could walk, but managing it all the same.

They had come out onto a corridor. Perhaps near the family bedchambers, she thought wildly as Nathaniel pulled her along it—but when he opened a door and pulled her inside, the hazy late afternoon sunlight drifting through the window, it was onto a room that Arabella could not believe was Nathaniel’s.

Though it was handsome enough, it had none of the grandeur of her suite. There was not much furniture in here, save a four-poster bed that looked magnificent; but there were no chairs, no bedside tables, no chest of drawers, no looking glasses or toilette.

“Where are we?” Arabella whispered as Nathaniel let go of her hand to close the door.

She was not entirely sure why she was whispering; it did not appear that anyone else was in this wing of the house, and as Oxcaster Lacey was so large, she was certain her voice would not carry.

Nathaniel leaned against the door, smiling wryly. “Guest bedchamber. I was not sure I could prevent myself from removing all your clothes if I had to get to the other side of the house, to my own.”

Arabella flushed. It was the first time she had really heard much of Nathaniel’s own desire, and it was strange, wonderful, to hear the hunger in his voice.

He wanted her. He desired her. He wanted to take all her clothes off.

A small moment of hesitancy fluttered across her mind. Was she ready for such a thing, for such intimacy? Was she ready to lose her innocence, right now, today?

Nathaniel must have seen the concern in her eyes. “We do not have to—”

“I want to,” said Arabella swiftly. She did. There was no true fear in her heart, only anticipation she had for a second considered fear.

But she trusted Nathaniel, knew that they were fated to be together. This arranged marriage, she had thought it was pulling her away from her life—but it was quite the opposite. It was pulling her toward it.

Nathaniel was her life.

He smiled, a little unsure himself. “I…well, I am sure there are gentlemen out there in the world who have done this before, who…who know what they are doing. They would surely give you a better experience than I would.”

And there he was. The Nathaniel she knew and loved. Arabella could not believe she had thought him aloof and irritating when she had first met him, when she could see now that all it was, was fear.

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