favorite little estate, then took a deep breath through his nose. Leah’s scent filled his awareness, assuring him he hadn’t fallen asleep on his horse, only to dream this moment.
“I love you.” Leah smiled, but there was sadness in that smile, and Nick’s initial bubble of joy began to drift away.
“I’ve hurt you,” Nick said, “and I am sorry. I’d like to show you how sorry.” He rose, drew her to her feet, and laced his fingers through hers, tugging her into the house and toward the staircase.
Leah tugged back, bringing him to a halt. “Nicholas?”
“Come upstairs with me, please?” His eyes pleaded, but he didn’t resort to overt groveling. Not yet.
“I cannot.” She dropped his hand, and it might as well have been Nick’s heart she cast aside. “I cannot bear for you to leave me again, Nicholas. If you take me up those stairs, you must promise you will not leave me, not for some wrongheaded notion, not for some other woman. I know you are a man with needs, but I am your wife, and I will try… No.” She stopped herself. “I will not beg. I will not.”
“I will not leave you.” Nick drew her into his arms. “Not ever, though you might send me away. I don’t just love you, Wife, I am in love with you, and I can promise you I’ve never said those words to a woman before, not a human woman anyway.”
Leah frowned up at him, in puzzlement.
“I might have said them to my horse,” Nick amended hastily, “but you mustn’t worry I’ll leave you or be tempted to mischief or ever want another in my bed. I know we have much to discuss, more than you know, in fact, but please for the love of God, Leah, let me love you now.”
She searched his face then nodded once. Nick swept her up in his arms and all but ran for the bedroom.
Thank you; thank you, Jesus; thank you, God; thank you, Leah. This wasn’t what he’d intended when he’d cantered his mare up the drive. He’d intended to sit Leah down in his study with a tumbler of spirits, and clear the air between them of all the mistakes and deceptions. He should stop and do just that, because she might not be amenable to this reconciliation once she knew what he’d withheld.
That thought, however, made him only more desperate to seize his first and possibly last opportunity to be truly intimate with her.
He stood her on her feet rather than toss her on the bed, ruck up her skirts, open his falls, and have at it. This had to be right for her, in every detail, for he might never have another chance to be his wife’s lover in fact.
So he turned her by the shoulders and forced his fingers to carefully undo the hooks running down the back of her dress. He untied the bows of her chemise then drew her to sit at the vanity, where he took the pins from her hair and finger-combed the mahogany silk of it over her shoulders.
“We usually undress at night,” Leah said, catching Nick’s eye in the mirror. “By candlelight.”
“You are glorious in any light.” Nick bent to kiss the juncture of her shoulder and her neck, to inhale her, to feast on her. “And you smell of spring and sunshine.” He nuzzled and nibbled lazily before raising up to regard her in the mirror. “And you taste of warmth and willingness and every man’s fondest desire.”
“I want only to taste of your fondest desire,” Leah replied, almost sternly. She rose and inspected her fully dressed husband, a wealth of meaning conveying itself in her single arched eyebrow.
Nick was stark naked in seconds.
“Come here.” He held out his arm the very next instant and beckoned with one hand toward his wife. “Come here, please.”
That word, Nick was finding, had a magical effect on his countess. She liked to hear him ask politely for what wasn’t polite at all. When she was standing next to him in her chemise and stockings, Nick perused her with such intensity she blushed.
“I don’t deserve you,” he said at length. “I don’t deserve what we’re about to share, and I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I’ll presume on it anyway.”
As puzzlement at his words clouded Leah’s eyes, Nick distracted her by pushing her chemise off her shoulders and down over her hips. He knelt to step her out of it and to untie her garters