“Peter.”

They both slept, without uncoupling.


Somehow while he had slept, Peter discovered, he had moved to Susanna’s side. She was cradled in his arms, her head in the hollow between his neck and his shoulder. She was still sleeping.

It was a thought that had woken him-a memory actually.

A memory of being in William Osbourne’s office at Fincham with Theo when they were both boys, learning script writing. And of his mother hurrying into the room without knocking, looking startled, and then scolding him for not being in Theo’s room, where she had supposed he would be.

He had assumed at the time that she had been looking for him.

Now, for some odd reason when so many years had passed, he thought that if that had been the case, the look on her face would surely have been relief, or perhaps annoyance. Not surprise. And why had she not knocked? It was true that the office belonged to a mere secretary, but even so, he was a gentleman. And his office was in a private home that was not his mother’s.

And why the devil was he wondering about such unimportant matters now? Why had such a trivial memory woken him up? Just because Osbourne was fresh in his mind?

He yawned, burrowed his nose in Susanna’s hair, kissed her head lightly-and drew back his head rather sharply.

The devil!

It was surely not his mother…

It could not have been!

Good Lord, Osbourne, though a gentleman, had been only Markham’s secretary, and his mother was the highest of high sticklers. She would never have…

Yes, she could have.

Osbourne had been a handsome devil. Not that Peter had ever noticed that when he was a boy, but looking back he could see that, yes, the man had enjoyed more than his fair share of good looks.

His mother must have been lonely-he knew she had been lonely. She had told him so later-six years later. Five years ago.

So must Osbourne have been lonely.

Of course, anything that might have happened between them could have been initiated on Osbourne’s side. His mother might not have given him any encouragement at all. Perhaps the charges that had led him to kill himself had been true.

But his mother had been hurrying into that study, and no one had been coercing her. It even seemed to Peter now that there had been a look of eagerness on her face before surprise had replaced it, though there was no way of verifying that impression.

But dash it all-what a devil of a coil!

He just hoped his imagination had become overactive and was playing wild and nasty tricks on him.

But it was not with his imagination that he had seen his mother with Grantham-with Bertha’s father -five years ago. He had walked into her unlocked dressing room at Sidley after the slightest of knocks, on some unremembered mission, and…Well, and there they had been, the two of them. They had not even stopped first to lock the door.

Blood hammered through his temples. What if that had not been an isolated incident in his mother’s life-as she had sworn to him it was?

What if his mother had driven Osbourne to his death?

And here he was holding Osbourne’s daughter in his arms. He had just made love to her. He was determined to marry her if she would have him.

She was awake. She had opened her eyes and tipped back her head and was looking at him sleepily, her cheeks slightly flushed.

Lord, but he loved her. The realization-and the force of his feelings-shook him.

If she had known about this all along, even before reading her letter- if his thoughts had led him down the right path, that was-was it why…

Lord bless him, of course it was why. And what was it he had said to her-his very first words to her?

Miss Osbourne, an already glorious summer day suddenly seems even warmer and brighter.

He could almost hear himself say those exact words.

What a consummate ass!

At the same moment she had been recognizing his name and recoiling from him.

“Mmm,” she said now and kissed his chin and then his mouth when he lowered his head.

She was not recoiling from him now, though. Perhaps his guesses were way wide of the mark.

“Mmm to you too,” he said, rubbing his nose across hers.

“Ought we to go back yet?” she asked him with a sigh. “We must have been gone for an age.”

He had been going to propose marriage to her again after they were finished with the sex. He had decided that downstairs as soon as she had said yes. He would love her silly and then, before she could recover her wits and harden her heart, he would slip the question into their waking conversation. And then during the Christmas ball he would make the grand announcement.

She would not marry him in a million years if his mother had been her father’s lover and had then tried blackmailing him and driven him to despair and death.

Not to mention how his mother would react if he presented William Osbourne’s daughter to her as his prospective bride.

Somehow-perhaps because he did not want to believe it-he knew that his guess was correct.

“They know you are with me,” he said. “They probably know too that we left in the curricle. They will assume that I have brought you over to Sidley and that you have stayed for luncheon and an afternoon visit.”

“Why is it,” she asked, snuggling closer, “that I so often imagine myself running away and running free? I ran away once and it now seems that I must have done the wrong thing. Except that running away took me to Bath, and I have been happy there. Why do I want to run from happiness?”

“Because it is not everything you want or need or dream of?” he suggested. “I would run away with you to the end of the world now if I thought that doing so would bring us to that mythical state of happily-ever-after. I think I was actually serious during the summer, Susanna, when I suggested we go off walking in Wales together. Indeed, I know I was. But I would not ask you to do anything like that again.”

“Oh,” she said softly.

“Because there is no such state,” he said. “There is no happily-ever-after to run to. We have to work for happiness. I am going to do things the right way from now on. I decided that as soon as I left Bath. Don’t ask me what I am going to do or how I am going to do it. I don’t know. But at the end of all this I am going to have slain a dragon or two, and I am going to like myself. Then perhaps I’ll have more to offer the world-and you-than simple gallantry.”

She gazed at him and her eyes filled with tears, though she smiled too.

“I am not sorry I ran away that first time,” she said. “I like what happened to my life. And if I had not run, I would not have met you again, would I? But I won’t run again. I’ll go back to Fincham and meet my grandparents, though for some reason it will be one of the hardest things I have ever done. And then after Christmas I will go home to Bath and continue striving to be the best teacher I can possibly be.”

“You are not sorry we met again during the summer, then?” he asked her.

“No.”

“Neither am I,” he said.

“But I must get back to Fincham,” she said. “Soon.”

She raised herself on one elbow and leaned over him to kiss the side of his face and trail kisses along his jawline. Then she kissed his mouth. Her free hand pressed against his shoulder until he turned to lie on his back.

By Jove, he thought, his interest piqued, she was going to make love to him.

By the time they had reached the bedchamber earlier, he had been so bursting with desire for her-and she for him, he had judged-that he had proceeded without delay to the main feast. She, it seemed, was more disciplined.

She was also as skilled as any courtesan-though no, perhaps that was not quite so. Perhaps it was just that he was very ready to be aroused by her. But however it was, she had overcome the modesty that had caused her to hesitate to remove his breeches earlier. Her hands roamed all over him, stroking, caressing, pausing, rubbing, teasing in all the right places, and her mouth and her tongue and her teeth followed suit.

He lay still for a while, his hands flat on the mattress on either side of him, enjoying the sheer perfection of her touch, marveling at her boldness, at her instinctive knowledge of how best to arouse him without driving him too early to madness. But when she suckled one of his nipples, biting it lightly with her teeth, laving it with her tongue, his hands came up to sink into her soft auburn curls, and he groaned and then laughed softly.

“Mercy, woman,” he said.

She lifted her head and smiled down into his face, her cheeks flushed, her eyes heavy with desire.

“But I have no wish to show mercy,” she said, her voice low and throaty as she brought her lips to his and teased them with the tip of her tongue.

This was beginning to be agonizing.

And then she brought herself right over him, straddling him with her legs, her knees on either side of his hips, her hands supporting herself on either side of his head.

He skimmed his hands down the lovely curve of her back to spread over her firmly rounded buttocks. She had lovely breasts, not overlarge but firm and nicely shaped. He felt the hardened nipples brush against his chest as she lowered her mouth to his again. With the lower part of her body she rubbed lightly over his erection.

Agony had passed its beginning, but this was her lovemaking-he would proceed at her pace.

“Witch,” he murmured.

She raised herself then onto her knees, holding herself above him and biting on her lower lip as she took him in one hand, set him against her opening, and brought herself down on him.

Ah!

She was hot and wet, and her inner muscles clenched about him as she drew him deep.

He set his hands lightly on her hips and drew a slow breath. There was a certain type of agony that was also exquisite, and this was it. He would not spoil it with urgency. He smiled slowly up at her.

“To repeat myself,” he said, “there is nowhere I would rather be.”

She set her hands on either side of his waist, hugged his hips more tightly with her knees, lifted herself almost away from him, brought herself down again, and repeated the motion over and over again. She closed her eyes and lowered her chin to her chest.

Good Lord, he thought, before sensation engulfed him, she was riding him. He let her ride for a while, awash in pleasure and desire, and then his hands pressed more firmly on her hips, and he rode with her for a few minutes until they both broke rhythm, she to press downward, he to thrust upward, both to shatter into fulfillment at the same moment.

It was beyond extraordinary.

It was beyond bliss.

And it was not sex, he thought as she came downward to lie on top of him and he covered them both with the bedcovers. Not just sex.

It was love.

He had never before seen much connection between the two.

He held her for several minutes, not sleeping, knowing that she did not sleep either, knowing that she was telling herself that this was the end.

It was not the end. If someone cared to bring on a whole regiment of dragons, all of them armed to the fangs with fire and brimstone and other assorted deadly weapons, he would take on the lot of them bare-handed.

This was not the end.


This was the end, Susanna thought, her shoulder pressed to Peter’s, drawing some warmth from him as the curricle turned onto the driveway leading to Fincham Manor. Oh, she would quite possibly see him again after today. It was even probable that she would have to go to the ball at Sidley that he had mentioned earlier, though she would not even think about that yet.

But really today was the end. The end of an affair of the heart that could have no future. Now was the end.

It was also the beginning of something else. She wondered if her grandparents had arrived yet.

Her grandparents.

She still felt partly numbed at the unfamiliar thought.

Today she was going to meet three people who were closely connected to her by blood after believing for eleven years that she was all alone in the world.

But they were strangers.

Would they even like her?

Would they hold it against her that she was the product of a marriage that ought never to have been?