Those dark brows winged down sharply, bewildered. “But I owe you an hour,” she said.
“And I owe you a Christmas present,” he returned. “You never did tell me what you wanted. So instead, consider yourself absolved of any such obligation while your family is with us.” The gift of time was perhaps the most precious thing he could offer her, given the circumstances.
“Thank you,” she said as he pushed the door open for her, and it didn’t sound in the least resentful. She slid across her seat toward the door, rose to her feet, and paused.
Rather than slip out onto the pavement, she bent toward him, still well-concealed in the shadowy interior of the carriage, and kissed his cheek.
For a moment, Ian wished it was possible to peel it off his cheek and put it in his pocket, to turn it into a token he might pull out and admire when he had need of it. But she had misunderstood, and he owed it to her to correct that misapprehension. He cleared his throat and said carefully, “Just to be plain, I meant you might consider yourself absolved ofallsuch obligations.”
“I gathered as much,” she said as she slipped out of the carriage ahead of him. “But that, I think, you almost deserved.”
∞∞∞
Felicity lifted the covers, sliding beneath the sheets in the darkness. Beside her, Ian startled awake. Probably the chilly air in the room had preceded her beneath the blankets, announcing her presence. “Felicity?” he asked, hisgroggy voice tinged with surprise as he levered himself up on his elbows.
She shivered at the touch of the cool sheets. He hadn’t put extra coals upon the fire this evening. Then again, he hadn’t been expecting her. He’d absolved her of all obligations, after all, while her family was in residence. Probably he’d expected her to have chosen a different bed chamber. And she had tried, for a time, but sleep had not been forthcoming. Eventually she had given up the effort and come to him instead. Because she hadn’thadto. Because there had been a safety in that, a comfort in it.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she whispered in the darkness. “It’s too loud.”
“Has Flora been wailing again? I didn’t hear.” He smothered a yawn in his palm. “There’s another bed chamber or two on the floor above. They’re smaller, but just as comfortable.”
“It’s not that sort of loud.”
“Ah,” he said, in a low voice, and she knew he must be thinking of every midnight walk they had once taken together, on those nights when the roar of her thoughts have proved too loud for sleep. When her fraying nerves had threatened her sanity. When she had needed the cool darkness of the night on her skin, the fresh air in her lungs.
It wasn’t the house that was loud, now.Shewas loud. Her head too full of her own thoughts, too busy to let her have any peace. “I can’t go walking, can I?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “That is to say, I wouldn’t advise it.”
She’d thought not. She’d paced the house for a time, but it hadn’t satisfied the itch in her veins. It prickled at her skin even now, and a restless shiver slid down her spine.
“Let me put some coal on the fire for you—”
“No.” She stayed him with one hand upon his chest, and felt the escalation of his heartbeat beneath her palm. “I don’t want that. I just want…” She chewed her lower lip, hesitated.
And Ian shifted his weight, freed one arm to lay his hand over hers. “Tell me,” he said.
“I want to use you,” she said. “I want you to warm me, and I don’t want to talk, but most especially I don’t want tothink.” She wanted the roughness of his hands calming her twitching nerves. The physical sensation to distract her from the race of her thoughts. The exhaustion which would follow the release and send her into a peaceful sleep. The comfort of his arms around her, with which she had once been so familiar. “You promised,” she whispered, her fingers flexing beneath his.
“I did. And I meant it.” He turned toward her, moving closer, across the space that separated them. “You good girl,” he murmured as he slid one arm beneath her shoulders and found only bare skin there. The words vibrated against the skin of her throat, and the warmth of his breath shimmered over her skin, prickling the fine hairs at the nape of her neck. “Will it mean anything to you?”
“No.” Her breath shuddered in her lungs. “Yes—I don’t know. Blast you, I said I didn’t want to talk.” He couldn’t know how conflicted she’d felt just lately, in her own mind, in her own heart. How she’d hesitated outside the bed chamber door for long minutes before she’d mustered up the nerve to enter. “I just want—I only want—”
“Felicity. I know.” His cheek rubbed hers, soothing but for the abrasion of the growth of whiskers on his jaw.
Her hands reached for him, her fingers finding purchase upon his shoulders. “I can’t go walking, and I want to sleep well for once. I need my mind to be quiet enough for it. I need my head to be clear.” And he had always helped her to calm herself. To distract her from whichever dire thoughts plagued her.
“I don’t require a reason, and you don’t require an excuse.” His knee nudged between hers, and her body softened at once on instinct. Like the resurgence of a long-formed habit. “You can always come to me.”
Her breath feathered out on a sigh, and her head tipped back, sinking into the plush pillow beneath it. The restlessness that seethed beneath the surface of her skin translated itself into little shudders, which he swept away with the soothing strokes of his hands. As if he could wick away the very tension from her muscles, pluck each frantic thought straight from her brain.
The smooth strands of his hair slipped between her fingers. Somehow, one of her hands had ended up in his hair, and the other—the other traced unconscious, idle patterns upon the flat plane of his back. Her thoughts grew distant, foggy.Yes. Relief relaxed her muscles further.
His lips skated across the valley between her breasts, coasted lower, lower still. There was the slick slide of his tongue around the rim of her navel, and her toes curled as her hand fisted in his hair. “What are you doing?”
“Clearing your head, albeit in a roundabout way.” Another flick of his tongue, lower still. “I don’t know that I trust myself at the moment to withdraw in time. You came to me to ease your worries, not magnify them.” His shoulders wedged themselves between her knees. “Don’t worry. You’ll sleep well.”
His hands bracketed her inner thighs. His thumbs sifted through thecoarse curls between, finding the petals of her sex, opening her. A searing lick followed, and Felicity threw her head back on the pillow, her toes curling.
