The Daring Miss Darcy (Lost Ladies of London #4)(65)

She had nothing to fear anymore. This man made her feel strong and invincible. “Ask me anything.”

“Do you love me, Estelle?”

The directness of his question made her catch her breath.

“I am not speaking of how you felt years ago,” he continued. “Or how you felt while living in that hellhole in France. I am speaking about how you feel now. Here. In this moment.”

She did not have to examine her thoughts. The answer lived within in her. Indeed, she heard it before he asked the question. “I have loved you for as long as I can remember. Yes, I love you now as much as I did then.”

One corner of his mouth turned up into a wicked smile. He took her hand, pulled the coverlet back to the end of the bed and gestured for her to lie down.

She sank down into the mattress, gloried in the sight of him rising above her. He lavished her body with tender kisses, tasted her intimately in a place she never imagined he would. His actions were slow, yet she could feel an intense passion barely contained.

He did not bring her to that glorious place where she cried out his name and shuddered in his arms, but it was not far away. Indeed, the feel of him entering her body, of him pushing deep, sent a pleasurable shiver racing to her toes.

Ross cupped her face and kissed her as he withdrew and entered her again.

“Oh, Lord,” she panted for the sensation was beyond anything she had experienced before. It was beautiful, highly arousing. Heavenly. “Do it again.”

Their eyes locked and the power of it touched her soul. “With pleasure.”

He closed his eyes on the next deep, measured thrust. A groan left his lips.

“Give yourself over to me, Ross.” She wrapped her legs more firmly around his waist as he rocked in and out of her.

“Do you like the feel of me inside you?” he breathed before moving to kiss her lips, her chin, to suck her lobe. “Do you like it when I fill you full?”

“Like it? It’s divine.”

Her words brought a slight shift in energy, he quickened the pace, angled his hips in such a way that he rubbed against the intimate place begging for release.

“Oh, Ross,” she gasped as the bed creaked and he drove harder.

“I need to withdraw soon.”

“Don’t.” The foolish word left her lips unwittingly, for common sense played no part in it.

He stopped and looked at her, his eyes heavy with desire. “If I don’t withdraw, you know what that means should there be a child?”

Oh, she knew. Nothing in this world would make her happier. “I know.”

He pushed inside her again. “Then you will swear it before God.”

She didn’t know if he meant to marry her or make her his mistress. “What am I to swear to?”

“That you will marry me. What else?”

“I swear.”

He plunged inside her. Four strokes and they were both hovering on the brink of their release. Her body exploded first, and then he stilled above her, flooding her with the essence of the man she loved, as he would have done on their wedding night. A guttural groan left his lips. They gasped each other’s names. She felt whole, blissfully happy. Surely nothing could come between them now. Surely nothing but happiness lay beyond this night.





Chapter Eighteen





They lay wrapped in each other’s arms, their legs entangled, their souls entwined. Vane stroked her hair, caressed her cheek, ran his hand over her bare shoulder because he could not stop touching her.

“When you came here, you said you had something important to tell me,” he reminded her. They were on the verge of falling asleep, but he knew Mr Erstwhile wouldn’t settle until she returned home.

Her warm brown eyes searched his face. “I came because it is time you learnt the truth. It was wrong of me to keep it from you, and now I can see that not knowing caused more pain than disappointment ever could.”

“Why not wait until tomorrow?”

“I hoped we could put the past behind us, that tomorrow could be a fresh start, a new day.”

Vane came up on his elbow and gazed down at her. “Then tell me everything. Leave nothing out. Let us have no secrets anymore.” He suspected the truth would be unpleasant. After all, it had given her cause to leave him and flee to France.

“I’m not sure where to begin.”

“Begin with what this has to do with my father.” He was desperate to know.

After a moment’s hesitation, Estelle told him about his father’s deliberate effort to ruin her father. Vane discovered the extent of his father’s betrayal, of the vile threats, of the ultimatum given to a young woman so torn she had not known what to do.

Tears flowed as quickly as her words.

Water filled his eyes, too. Not for his poor mother, for her father or brother, but for the innocent woman cornered by a tyrant. Vane pictured Estelle standing in the orchard, wringing her hands, gazing up at the sky and pleading for the Lord’s help. He could feel the gut-wrenching pain that accompanied leaving those you loved behind.

Were it not for the love filling his chest now, he would rage through the house in a destructive frenzy. He would smash his fist through the portrait of his father hanging in the hall, chop it into small pieces and use it for firewood. But nothing could change what had happened in the past. And all he wanted now was to bask in this beautiful state of bliss.