The Earl's Entanglement (Border Series Book 5)(82)

Emma closed her eyes and smiled in anticipation.





32





He hated to wake her. But staying much longer would guarantee an awkward conversation with both Geoffrey and Sara. He would slip out and explain in the morning.

“Garrick?”

He’d put out the candles and stoked the fire earlier, and though he could sense sunrise was but a few hours away, the only light now came from the corner of the room. But he could still see her face clearly.

Emma’s eyes fluttered open.

“I didn’t want to wake you.” Trying to remind his body that Emma had been a virgin just a few hours earlier, he attempted to distract himself from thoughts of taking her again. Lifting the coverlet over her, he kissed her on the nose.

Her lips were much too dangerous.

“Stay, for just a bit longer.”

He’d stay, but he didn’t dare moving any closer to her. “Not for too long, love. Unless you care to have an awkward breakfast conversation with your brother and sister-in-law about the order in which we’ve done things.”

Fully awake, Emma sat up. When she tossed her legs over the side of the bed and stood, Garrick forced himself to turn away.

Moments later, the bed sank under her weight once again.

“Come under here,” he said. Thankfully, she didn’t question him. Had her beautiful body been fully exposed to him, he wouldn’t have been able to resist.

Sitting up, Emma pulled a sheet over her bare breasts and held a box out to him.

He pointed to the sheet. “There’s no need for shyness between us.”

She shrugged and let it fall back down. Garrick grabbed it before it fell completely.

“But,” he said, “you may cover yourself now.”

“You speak in riddles.”

Garrick nodded down at himself, at the evidence of his need for her. “You lost your maidenhood just hours ago. If we—”

Her eyes widened. “Four times is too many?”

“Nay!” he amended. “Nay, but not this morn. Are you not sore?”

She paused long enough for him to glean her answer.

“’Tis too soon,” he said, his suspicions confirmed.

He took the box. “What is this?”

It would seem he wasn’t the only one in need of a distraction.

“Oh, ’tis a box. Can you not tell?”

He held back a grin at her teasing remark. It was very obviously a box.

“Open it.”

He sat up and did just that. The ring inside appeared to be old but valuable. He lifted it from the box.

“I do believe Sara knows you’re here. She sent this to me just before you came. Look inside.”

When he spied the inscription, Garrick knew immediately to whom it had belonged. “This was Richard’s ring.”

Her smile held a thousand promises. “Aye.”

The full impact of what he held in his hand forced him to drop the ring back inside the box. “I could never—”

“Sara bid me give it to you,” she said, pulling the box from him and taking the ring back out. “And I’ve just done so. You’d not be so churlish to refuse a gift from me, would you?”

Though she teased, her words held more than a question about a ring. She asked if her opinion meant something to him.

He didn’t hesitate when she handed the ring to him once again.

“I’d not refuse anything from you,” he said, turning it around in his fingers. “Why does Geoffrey not wear it?”

Emma frowned. “I wondered the same.”

He handed it back to her, and Emma returned the ring to its box.

“Thank you,” he said. “I shall wear it with great pride.”

Emma put the box on the stand beside the bed and turned back to him. God, she was lovely.

“Did you know him well?” Emma asked.

“Aye, we sometimes wondered if he and my father were actually brothers. They looked similar, in build at least, and both spent their lives devoted to their people, to Northumbria, and to their families. He was a good man. One of the best.”

He spoke of Richard, but of his own father too.

And he could tell Emma knew it. She reached for his hand and squeezed it as she laid her head on his shoulder. What would his father have thought of Emma?

“He’d have liked you,” he said. “Immensely.”

“Richard?”

“Nay. Well, aye, I’m sure he would have. But I meant my father. He deferred to my mother in many things, save one.”

She shifted but did not look up.

“Everything about him was ‘large.’ Not just his stature, but his movements. His speech. When he walked into a room, you knew he was there.”

“Is that a kind way of saying your father was not very dignified?”

“It is.” Garrick couldn’t see her face but forged ahead anyway. “My mother often chided him, but he never changed his ways. She eventually gave up on him and concentrated instead on ‘civilizing’ the sixth Earl of Clave.”

“You?”

“Aye.”

Emma looked up at him then. “And they respected him still?”

He cupped her face in his hands. “They did, my love. Those of us who knew him best respected him more for his willingness to defy convention. He would have been proud to call you his daughter.”