She heard the muted sounds he made, stifled through sheer dint of will, felt the quaking of his arms, the strain of holding himself back until she’d come out the other side of bliss. Itwasn’t until she had let her head drop back upon her pillow, her every muscle gone lax and loose, that she felt him withdraw from her body and lose himself in the final throes of his own climax as he spilled himself upon the quivering flesh of her stomach.
∞∞∞
“Are you leaving already?” Mercy asked, curling up beneath the covers as Thomas draped them over her. He had busied himself the last few minutes in cleaning himself, giving her a few moments of semi-privacy to clean herself, and tidying up the clothing they both had left scattered throughout the room.
“No,” he said. “I was just—” Overthinking. Agonizing over his actions.Hell. Very deliberately he pulled his spectacles off of his face, deposited them upon the nightstand, and snuffed out the wick of the lamp, plunging the room into darkness. “Shove over,” he said, as he braced one knee upon the bed beside her and crawled beneath the covers, flopping onto his stomach.
In the darkness that surrounded them, he could see only the fuzziest outline of her face, hear only the soft, even sound of her breaths. Beneath the thick of the covers, he slid his hand across the soft cotton sheets, seeking hers beneath it. “I should have told you,” he said as he found her fingers and interlaced them with his own, “or at least asked you. It’s true that it would be best not to court the scandal of a child born too early—but most of all, I just don’t want to share you quite so soon.”
“Share me?”
“With a baby,” he said. “With—with little Florentia.”
The puff of her breath across his cheek, a whisk of laughter that warmed his soul. “Or Sherborne,” she said, and her fingerssqueezed his.
“My God,” he said on a low groan. “We are going to have to discuss this in depth.”
“Names? I’m afraid they’re non-negotiable. You said it was my decision.”
“With you, everything is negotiable,” he insisted. And then: “I wanted you to know, because you seemed…surprised.” Or startled. Confused, perhaps. There had been something there in her eyes, some nameless emotion he had been ill-quipped to understand. “It wasn’t a rejection. I was thinking of our future.” He slid closer, wedged his knee between both of hers. “And I don’t want you to be the subject of gossip, if I might prevent it.”
“I am always going to be the subject of gossip, Thomas.” The words were offered lightly, but there was an ache behind them, a sort of fatalism which he had rarely heard from her. “People are always going to assume what they will. There is nothing you can do for it.”
“No,” he said, and wrapped his arm around her to draw her into the circle of his arms, “but we do not have to give them ammunition. Are you angry with me?”
He felt the slow shake of her head, the swish of her hair across the pillow. “I’m grateful,” she said. “I hadn’t considered—but I’m glad you did.” She muffled a yawn against his shoulder, cuddled tight against his chest. “Will you stay a while longer?”
He could think of nowhere else he would rather be. “Best to let the household settle a bit,” he said. “I’ll make my way back to my own bed chamber before dawn.”
“Mm,” she murmured, and her long legs slid along his, entwining them as if they’d done this a hundred times before. Her hand splayed over his chest, over his heart, fingers absently tracing a pattern. One of her prints, he thought, sketched across his skin. “Will you wake me before you go?”
“If you like,” he said, turning his head to breathe in the sweet,spicy cinnamon scent of her hair. “Why?”
Her lips brushed his chin, soft and smooth and stirring. “I want to be wicked once more before dawn.”
Chapter Twenty One
Is that him?” Thomas inquired beneath his breath as he joined Mercy at the front of their theatre box between acts, with the tiniest gesture of his head toward the gentleman across the theatre at whom Marina had spent most of the evening peering at through her opera glasses. “Marina’s bookseller?”
Mercy gave a little start, her eyes darting toward Marina, who was chatting with Juliet near the rear of the box, awaiting visitors. “Yes,” she said, almost guiltily. “That’s him. How did you learn of it?”
“Mother told me,” Thomas said, and rested his arms upon the railing. “You knew, then?”
“I suspected,” Mercy said, with a tiny shrug. “We’ve encountered him a bit too often for it to have been by chance alone.”
“And you said nothing.”
“If it hadn’t been meant to be a secret, Marina would have told me herself,” Mercy said softly. “And it was not my secret to tell. There was never any manner of indiscretion which I could deduce. It was harmless—”
“Harmless.” Thomas scoffed the word, the tiniest hint of a sneer curling his lip. “He’s a damned bookseller.”
Mercy winced, sidling away a pace as if the words had beendelivered alongside a blow. “And I am a merchant’s daughter,” she said, striving to keep the hurt from her voice.
Thomas made a rough sound beneath his breath, and his fingers twitched as if he had had to resist the impulse to reach for her, to soothe the hurt he had inflicted, however unintentionally. “That’s not what I meant,” he said. “You must know that’s not what I meant.”
“Must I?”
Thomas bent his head, flexed his fingers within his gloves. Ran them through the perfectly-combed strands of his hair, ruining the understated elegance of it. “She is accustomed to a certain standard of living,” he said. “One she could hardly expect a bookseller to provide.”
