way, her head came down with a thump on Horace’s foolish stub of a tail.
‘Ough!’ He was big. Not fat, though—there was no comfortable belly to cushion the impact. She seemed to be trapped under six foot plus of solid male bone and muscle.
‘There you are,’ he said in a pleased voice, as though she had been hiding. His face was buried in her shoulder and the words rumbled against her skin as he began to nuzzle into it. His night beard rasped, sending shivers down her spine.
‘Get off.’ Bel wriggled her hands free and shoved up against his shoulders. It had rather less effect than if a wardrobe had fallen on her. At least a wardrobe would not have gone limp like this. There was absolutely nothing to lever on. ‘Move, you great lummox!’
The only reply she got was a soft snore, just below her right ear. He had gone to sleep, or fallen into a drunken stupor more like, she decided grimly. This close the smell of brandy and wine was powerful.
Bel wriggled some more but he seemed to have settled over her like a heavily weighted blanket; there was nowhere to wriggle to. Under her there was Horace’s fur, the thick felt backing, and, beneath that, the carpet. It all provided some padding, although rather less than her uninvited guest was enjoying. He appeared to be blissfully comfortable.
His knees dug in below her own. That was already becoming painful. With an effort she managed to move her legs apart so he was cradled between her thighs. ‘There, that’s better.’ The answer was another snore, accompanied by a squirming movement of his hips as he readjusted himself to her change of position. At which point Bel realised rather clearly that this was not better. Not at all.
‘Oh, my goodness,’ she whispered in awe.
Bel had not been sure quite what to expect of marital relations from her mother’s veiled hints during the little talk they had had just before her wedding day. She had expected it to be uncomfortable and embarrassing at first, and it was certainly all of that. But after the first three weeks of marriage, when the worst of the shyness wore off, she also realised that her marital duties, as well as being sticky and discomforting, were deadly boring. She tried to take an interest, for Henry would be highly affronted if she ever did nod off during his visits to her bed, but it was out of duty, not in the hope of any pleasure for herself.
It was not until the other young matrons with whom she began to mix forgot that she was a very new bride that she got her first inklings that she was missing out on something rather special. One day in particular stuck in her memory.
She had arrived early for Lady Gossington’s soirée and found herself in the midst of a group of the very dashing ladies who always filled her with the conviction that she was naïve, gauche and ignorant. They settled round her like so many birds of paradise, fluttered their fans and prepared to subject every arrival to a minute scrutiny and a comprehensive dissection.
‘My dears, look who’s here,’ Mrs Roper whispered. ‘Lord Farringdon.’
‘Now that,’ one of her friends pronounced, ‘is what I call a handsome man.’ Bel had studied his lordship. He certainly fitted that description: tall, slim with a clean profile, attractive dark hair and a ready smile.
‘And so well endowed,’ Lady Lacey purred. In answer, there was a soft ripple of laughter, which had an edge to it Bel did not understand. She felt she was being left out of a secret. ‘So I am led to believe,’ Lady Lacey added slyly.
Normally Bel would have kept silent, but this time she forced herself to join in; money, at least, was something she understood. ‘Is he really?’ His clothes were exquisite, but that was not necessarily any indication. ‘I did not realise, I thought the Farringdon fortune was lost by his father.’
Their hilarity at this question reduced her to blushing silence. She had obviously said something very foolish. But how to ask for clarification? Lady Lacey took pity on her, leaned across and whispered in her ear. Wide-eyed, Bel discovered in exactly what way the gentleman was well endowed and just how much this characteristic was appreciated by ladies. It left her speechless.
Now she was able to judge precisely what her friends had been referring to. Her uninvited guest was pressed against her in such a way that his male attributes were in perfect conjunction with the point where her tangle of soft brown curls made a dark shadow behind the light silk of her bed gown. And he was drunk and unconscious or asleep and yet he was still…oh, my heavens…large. That appeared to be the only word for it. Her previous experience offered no comparison at all. Henry, it was becoming apparent, had not been well endowed.
Bel stopped all attempts to wriggle; the frissons the movement produced inside her were just too disquieting. The stirring of sensation she had experienced on first seeing the intruder were as nothing to the warm glow that spread through her from the point where they were so tightly pressed together. It felt as though her insides were turning liquid, but in the most unsettling, interesting way. Her breasts, squashed by his chest with its magnificently frogged dress-uniform jacket, were aching with something that was not solely the result of silver buttons being pressed into flesh. An involuntary moan escaped her lips.
Oh, my… Bel turned her head so she could scrutinise as much as possible of the stranger. There was not a lot she could see except the top of a tousled blond head and a magnificent pair of shoulders that made her want to flex her fingers on them. This must be sexual attraction! Or was it arousal? She was not very clear about the difference, or how one told. Whatever it was, it seemed alarmingly immodest of her to be feeling it for a man to whom she had not even been introduced. She wished Eva, her new sister-in-law, was in London to ask. But the newly weds were honeymooning in Italy.
Eva—erstwhile Dowager Grand Duchess of Maubourg and now most romantically married to Bel’s brother Sebastian—very obviously knew all about sexual attraction. Not only had she been married to one of the most notoriously adept lovers in Europe, she was now passionately attached to Sebastian. Bel had hardly been able to turn a corner in the castle in Maubourg when she had attended the wedding two weeks before, without finding the two of them locked in an embrace, or simply touching fingers, caressing faces, standing close.
There was no one else Bel could trust enough to discuss such things with; she was on her own with this new sensation. The man seemed nice enough, she brooded. She had observed that drink tended to emphasise any vicious tendencies in a man, so his apparently sunny and friendly nature could probably be relied upon. There was nothing to be done about it but to wait until he woke up and they could have a more civilised conversation. At a safe distance.
It was not easy attempting to sleep while squashed under the body of a large and attractive stranger and prey to one’s first stirrings of intimate arousal. The candles began to go out, the room became dark and the only sounds were his heavy, regular breathing and the creaks of the house.
Now it was so dark Bel found her reactions were concentrated on touch and smell. Touch—even the warm caress of his breath against her throat—she tried to ignore, reflecting that if she became any more disturbed by that she would not know how to cope with it. She had heard—probably from one of Henry’s pontifications upon the sins of society—that uncontrolled sexual feelings in a woman led to hysteria, and that was definitely to be avoided.
But her nostrils were becoming used to the smell of alcohol and behind it she was catching intriguing whispers of other scents. Soap—a subtle and expensive type—a hint of fresh sweat, which was surprisingly not at all offensive, and man. Henry had smelt just of Henry: rigorously clean and scrubbed at all times. He had used Malcolm’s Purifying Tablet Soap, renowned for its health-preserving properties. This man was rather more complex, definitely more earthy and quite unmistakably male. And that, Bel realised, was another
