Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

W ho could sleep at a time like this? Apparently, Cora could. Not Liam, though. His entire body vibrated. His own damn fault he wasn't basking on a slow-rocking sea of satiation right now. He should have put the idea of perfect right out of his head, but he'd thought their bed, just a short ride away.

And then…

Invasion. That very bed he'd meant to lay Cora down upon so he could taste every glorious inch of her—her mother had slept there.

He groaned, his heel bouncing up and down, vibrating his entire body.

God, his body ached. Too tight and too hot, but—he glanced out the window—Norton Hall was close. And his wife… well, she was drooling, just a bit from the corner of her mouth as she curled up on her side on the seat across from him. He should be holding her in his arms, but he couldn't. If he touched her, he would ravish her, and then… Hell, he'd have disappointed her again . That seemed to be his destiny.

No. He'd been pushed about by destiny too often in his life. Not with this. Not with Cora. He'd chosen her, and he would make their next time, their real first time, perfect.

But… a little touch wouldn't hurt. He reached over and wiped the drool from her cheek with the pad of his thumb and then pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. She frowned and groaned, and he retreated to the other side of the coach.

She awoke and sat up with a yawn, stretching her arms above her head and craning her neck left and right. She looked out one window, then the other, then gave him her full, unblinking attention. "Are you still in the grips of madness, then?"

"In the grips of lust, yes."

"You know it's possible to… make use of a coach."

"I do. And we will. Not yet."

She yawned again, hiding her mouth behind her hand. "I suppose it will be nice to be alone for a while. I shall have time to write."

He could grant her time to write. He'd need time to eat after all. But he'd make sure she wrote near the bed, so he did not have to wait too long to get her back into it.

Her gaze went distant, and she tracked the changing scenery as they passed. Her jaw softened, her lips parted slightly, and those gray eyes slipped away from steel and into a soft fog. Distracted, distant, lonely. She always looked like that when she thought no one was watching.

"Cora, would you have preferred to stay in London with your mother?"

She wrinkled her nose. "No. I'm rather glad she abhors the country. Not much chance of her following us. Though… that is unkind of me. She is always at her lowest when my father seeks re-entry to our lives. I am glad she has a place to hide until he tires of home once more."

"You'd rather be with your friends, then, at Bluevale and Clearford?"

Her tongue appeared and drew a slow line between her lips before she spoke. "No. I think I'm exactly where I'd like to be." She rose and crossed the space between them to sit next to him, and even the closeness of her skirts, almost brushing his legs, felt like a caress. "I… I have been so angry with you."

"I deserve your anger."

She tilted her head side to side. "Yes and no. I can be a bit dramatic, myself." In her lap, her tangled hands picked at her thumbnail. "But we are married, and… while I might not believe in the perfection of the married state, I do believe it has its advantages. Our time at Mother Circes taught me that, at the very least, the married state is excellent for… exploration, sating curiosity. If we focus on these aspects, we'll rub along well together indeed."

Oh, he'd rub her well, all right. He'd rub his lips against hers, and then drag them between her breasts, then rub his cock—

"Are you listening to me, Liam?"

He blinked. "Apologies. Woolgathering. You were saying?" He needed to listen to her, but all the blood in his body had rushed to his nether regions ages ago, and it hadn't quite made it back to his brain. Focus . She didn't believe in the married state. Unfortunate, that. But she had mentioned rubbing.

His tongue on her hip, his cock against—

Focus .

"Liam…" Tentatively, she brushed her fingertip against the outside of his thigh. "I find I desire to explore the realm of physical pleasure, and since I find my husband so very willing, I thought, perhaps, it might be best to explore it with you. Whether you wish an heir right away or not."

"Yes."

"Yes… what?"

He swallowed, her hand in his own. "Yes, I am delighted by everything you have just said and will comply wholeheartedly."

She chuckled, grinned, then repressed both reactions with a haughty lift of her chin. "Excellent. We could… perhaps… pick up where we left off earlier… right here. Now."

"No. We wait."

"Wait. Hm. Can you, though?" Somehow, her lips became pinker, softer, and the look in her eyes damn near killed him. Molten and daring, it nearly melted his resolve. Her gaze flicked down. To where his cock strained against his fall.

"Damn you, Cora. Yes, I can." He could. He could. Well, he would try his best. Because she deserved it. "Now"—he patted his lap—"put your foot here and tell me why your mother hates your father so damn much she had to commandeer our London home."

She blinked at her stockinged feet. "You took my slippers off when I was sleeping?"

"To make you more comfortable, yes. They're just there." He pointed at the corner of the coach where her shoes tumbled together, forgotten. "Now, your foot, Cora. Turn that way, lean against the wall, and give it to me." He patted his thigh. "Stretch your leg out and put your foot right here."

"Why do you want my foot?"

"While I insist on waiting for a proper bed. And perhaps a bath. No reason not to keep desire running high. Every touch can do that, particularly when designed to do so, and I have spent much time learning the art of it."

"I'd never considered that. Mine is already quite high."

Music to his ears. His own desire was well-nigh intolerable. But he could wait. For her. He held out a hand. "Your foot, Wife."

Slowly she rested her back against the side of the coach, making sure her skirts covered her limbs as she lifted her legs atop the seat and placed her feet in his lap. "You keep calling me that. Wife."

"It's true."

"Hm."

"You disagree?"

"What is a wife? A woman who lives under her husband's thumb? Who is recognized by law and by the church as merely a possession?" That's certainly what her mother was. A discarded possession. "I have never desired to be a possession."

"You are not." He circled her ankle. So delicate, the blush-pink stocking wrinkled and falling, loose. He reached up her leg and loosed the ribbon only half-heartedly holding it up, then rolled the stocking down, pulled it off. And had to attempt to remember the correct liturgy when baptizing a child to calm down the rage of need that gripped him when his fingers touched her satin skin.

"My mother said my father pursued her with a passion. He wanted her. And then… he did not. Do you understand why I do not trust you?"

"I have said before I am not your father. And the more I know about him, the more I hope I am not. But let us investigate your comparison. He pursued your mother passionately. I have pursued you relentlessly."

"You see, then."

"Hm. Yes. But after he had her… what did he do then?"

She closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the squabs. "Forgot she existed. Until she was with child. Then he fawned over her for being such a good wife. Until I was born. Then he disappeared again. Until I came of age to wed. I wonder that he's still at the London townhouse deviling Mama. He should have rutted off into the London fog by now. Now that I'm married." Cradled in the wrinkled mess of her skirts falling haphazardly over her lap, her fingers never quite quit moving. Picking at nails and stroking circles into palms, wringing fingers around her delicate wrists and stroking lines into her gown.

"Well, then I shall not ignore you. Instead of going away, I will stay. Instead of pretending you don't exist, I shall keep you by my side. And a happy thing it is, too, since it's what I've intended all along. That is… if you let me."

Now he felt like picking at the cuffs of his sleeves, the pilled wool of his worn trousers, biting his nails. If the last twenty-four hours they'd shared was… All this for nothing. All this for failure as a man, as a viscount, as a husband.

"I think…" Her eyes opened, and her head listed gently to the side as she studied him. "I think I shall let you try. Though I promise nothing. It is likely we are more suited for friendship than anything else. It is likely friendship is all I am capable of offering."

Elation, strong and delicious, surged through him. Best not to show it, so he set his hands about something purposeful to temper it by pressing his thumb into the arch of her foot and massaging it. Her eyes fluttered closed again, and her shoulders relaxed.

"You enjoyed this in the tub," he said. "When I massaged your foot like this. I saw it. Your shoulders sank away from your ears, and your mouth softened. As they are doing now. Why are your shoulders in your ears to begin with, Cora? Not a good place to put them." He pressed his thumb into her arch again, drew a hard line down to her heel.

She moaned and sank a bit lower.

"Does your father think of your mother as property?"

"Unwanted property. It's best when he forgets she exists. But sometimes he returns home."

"Where does he stay when he's not at home?"

"With his current mistress. He must be between women at the moment. Poor Mama."

He released her foot and picked up the other, divesting it of its ragged stocking. Her head fell to the side, giving him her profile. A somber, serious series of curves, dips, and angles, some of the tension melting away under his touch.

He'd tried hard to be good at every role he'd entered into during his life, and he'd mostly failed. At least everyone around him thought him a failure.

But this… he did only what felt right, natural—tracing circles into her, massaging tightness from her muscles—and he found success.

"I wonder sometimes," she said in a dreamy voice, "if things would have been different between them had I been a boy. I'm an only child. An only daughter. God, apparently, has a sense of humor. My father would have liked my mother better had she done her one job better—produced a son."

His hand froze on her ankle. "Cora, look at me."

She did, her eyes cold and chaotic at the same time.

"I was a horrid vicar," he said. "I'm positive every success I managed to cobble together occurred only because my family made sure it did. My Oxford degree, the testimonial from my college regarding my fitness for the role, my examination with the bishop… I bumbled through, but it didn't matter because everyone knew my destiny from the moment I was born. But despite my tenuous grasp of Latin and my complete disregard for liturgy, I do know one thing pretty well about God."

She poked his arm with her pointed toes. "That was a rousing endorsement of your expertise. Do enlighten me."

"He is not laughing at us. I believe God would like us all to be happy, or at the very least, to find peace in our lives, a purpose that makes the world better."

Very slowly, she pulled her feet from his hold.

Cora possessed depths. That, he'd always known. The bold, fearless woman boiling over with passion was not a mask. It was the only bit of herself she allowed the world to see. Because below that… something softer, something hurt, something weeping.

He wanted to reach for her foot again, to knead out of her body that soft weeping bit of herself she hid so well, but he folded his hands in his lap instead.

"Tell me about your poetry."

She did not look at him. "It is not the kind discussed in polite circles."

"So you've given me to understand. Is it like Byron's Don Juan ?"

"Hm. More like the Earl of Rochester and Charlotte Smith produced a literary love child."

His head tilted to the side. "Who? And… who? And did they really have a love child?"

"You said you'd been reading. But clearly you have not."

"Novels. Not poetry. Always found poetry dull. Can't read two lines without my attention wandering."

"An arrow to my heart, Lord Norton."

"I have always enjoyed tales of Robin Hood, and I am quite clever with a bow and arrow myself."

"I know." The night they'd kissed, the night they'd been caught, he'd dressed as Robin Hood. "What you do not know is that I almost attended the masquerade as Maid Marian. But then Prudence convinced me to come matching her."

Liam whistled. "I knew you were perfect."

A smile flickered at her lips, then died. "The Earl of Rochester and Charlotte Smith are both poets. Dead. And he much more scandalous than she. I believe I have a copy of his works at Norton Hall. If you are truly attempting to educate yourself, I will lend it to you."

"Remember, I do not read poetry well. But… you may read it to me."

"No."

"Read your poetry to me, then."

"No. It is not written with men like you in mind."

"What kind of men are in mind when it is written, then?"

She snapped her attention out the window. "Oh, look. We're almost to Norton Hall. I see the roof over the trees."

She could not so easily distract him. "Tell me about Charlotte Smith. She who is not so scandalous."

"She writes poems of high feeling. Set in nature. They make me ache."

"Recite one of those for me?" She had the kind of voice that likely wrapped up the lines and rhymes of a poem in perfect syllables and inflections.

"You are determined, I see."

"I am."

She took a deep breath, then began.

Huge vapours brood above the clifted shore,

Night o'er the ocean settles, dark and mute,

Save where is heard the repercussive roar

Of drowsy billows, on the rugged foot

Of rocks remote.

When she'd paused for several seconds, he knew she'd give him nothing else.

"That sounds… sad."

"Merely truthful."

"I disagree. I find the ocean to be… bounding with energy, coursing with raucous life."

She snorted. "The ocean is older than us. It has witnessed much sorrow and will witness more."

His turn to snort. "I'm going to take you to the sea on a sunny day, and make you laugh ten thousand times. We shall leave the Charlotte Smith at home that day, I think."

She hid a smile.

Outside the carriage, the forest gave way to a long green lawn, and Norton House appeared, its white stone fa?ade and tall columned chimneys. He'd never thought to live in this house, with its gray and white stone, arched windows, and orange chimneys. A lovely, old place. He'd enjoyed visiting as a child. He'd always known it was part of him, his family's birth right and responsibility, but it had never felt like his. It belonged, more, to his much older cousin, the heir. But now it was Liam's. Because of apoplexy and a riding accident.

The accidental viscount—that was him. This house only his because of tragedy.

Yet he could not feel the disorienting sense of not belonging as he usually did when approaching the hall.

Because this time Cora rode, expectant by his side, and he saw the house from a new perspective. So isolated and quiet, it offered the perfect opportunity to ravish his wife. Over and over and over. Then some more. Without interruption.

"Cora," he said as the coach started down the long drive. "Once we get inside, I am going to carry you upstairs to our bedchamber. I am going to have the maids prepare a bath in your room, while I strip you bare in ours. Yes, ours . We did not share it before, but now we will. Any objections?"

She shook her head.

"Excellent. I am going to bathe you because I've been thinking about it since cornering you in the tub at Bluevale. Or I'll join you. Would you like that?"

She bit her lip, nodded.

"Then once we are pink and clean, I will dry off every inch of you and lay you upon my bed. Then do you know what happens?"

"I hope I do." She didn't try to hide her grin this time. "It will be nice to have such solitude."

"Such opportunity."

"Every empty room a possibility."

They grinned at one another like fools.

He started to hand her stockings, but then he snatched them back, leaving her arm hanging in the air. He slipped them into his pocket, the toes hanging out like little flags of surrender.

"It's a novel experience," Liam said, "to be of one mind with you. I rather like it."

She pursed her lips but slipped her shoes on bare feet. "What are you going to do with those stockings?"

"Haven't decided yet. You'll know when I do."

Her breath caught, and she licked her lips, but then the coach slowed, and she blinked away the lust. She sat firmly upright, her back a marble column of wrinkled muslin. "Liam." A hesitation, a short cessation of breath, then, "In the interest of being of one mind with one another… what I seek at Norton Hall is not… a marriage. Not days at the beach and reading poetry to one another."

"What is it you want, then?" He worked carefully to keep emotion from his voice. The coach had stopped, but neither of them would leave it until he knew her intentions, knew what battle lay ahead for him to fight.

"An exploration. With you. Of the body and its many pleasures. Only that. You must understand that happy endings are nothing more than fantasy. If some possess them it is because they are the sort who happy endings are made for."

"And I'm not the sort."

Something in her face shattered into a thousand sharp and pricking pieces. "You are." She inhaled, and it sounded more like a sob. "I am not."

He was about to argue, to deny vehemently, but her gaze flew over his shoulder, and whatever she saw there made her mouth drop open soundlessly.

He turned. "Bloody hell."

A woman stormed out the front door of the house, her skirts held wide. She had light, wispy hair and a short, wide frame, and a little duckling line of children marched behind her.

"Liam!" the woman called, almost running now.

"Mama?" Liam opened the carriage and stepped down, and his mother swamped him. So did the ducklings, until he was lost amid a sea of hugging arms and kicking legs, a wind of welcomes and other happy exclamations. His family. He would have laughed with a quick bubble of surprised joy. Any other time. But now, when he wanted only his bed, his wife, and a house empty but for servants who knew not to poke about? He wanted to melt into a puddle of disappointment, right into the gravel.

His mother pushed him out at arm's length, and the ducklings—his brother Henry and sisters Mags, Mary, and Bethy—backed away, still circling him, studying him as their mother did. The entire army of them lived in Scotland with her second husband, Angus Murray, who ambled just that moment out the door and into the fray, his tall, broad frame towering over his tiny wife, his strawberry-blond hair and beard neatly trimmed. He gave a hearty chuckle and waggled his fingers at Liam. No, not at Liam, at a spot behind Liam.

Cora poked her head out of the coach, and Angus rounded all the others to hold out a hand to her, a sparkle in his eye. She took it and let him help her to the ground.

"Lovely to see ye again, Lady Norton," he said in a thick brogue.

Liam's mother glanced at Cora, then back to Liam. "I see the rumors are unfounded."

"What rumors, Mama?" Liam said. "And what are you doing here?"

"The rumors about your marriage. About your… activities , Liam." She slapped his upper arm. "That is why I am here. The things I've heard ." Her gaze felt lethal. "But if they were true, then you would not be here now with your wife." Mrs. Murray patted her son's cheek a bit more roughly than necessary. "You have not answered my letters. Gossip reaches Edinburgh, you know." She floated to Cora's side and took her hands. "Are you well, darling? Is my son treating you as he should?"

"Well, he abducted me, yesterday… today? Time has rather become impossible to segment. But, no, perhaps Liam is not treating me as he should."

His mother and Angus threw their heads back in laughter.

Angus pounded Liam on the back. "You've married a woman with a sense of humor. Excellent work, my boy."

Liam's smile more closely resembled a grimace. "And just how long are we to have the joy of your company?" The lust that had gripped him since the brothel had thawed considerably since setting his boots to the ground. Parents could do that.

"Some while, I hope," Angus said. "A fortnight at least. Took us a blasted fortnight to get here, after all. Bad roads and…" He pointed at the children one after another, counting under his breath. "How many of ye are there now? Twelve? Sixteen?"

"Five, Papa," Bethy said. "Including the baby." She looked at Liam. "Flora is sleeping, and we dare not wake her up because she screams like a banshee."

"Just so." Angus ruffled Bethy's hair. "It's impossible to count ye all. Ye're simply so wiggly one loses track.

"Well, come inside." Liam's mother draped one arm around his waist and the other around Cora's, steering them toward the house. "Come along, come along."

"Are you welcoming me into my own house?" Liam shared a quizzical glance with Cora behind his mother's back as she tugged them through the door.

Cora widened her eyes, and he thought he knew exactly what words were tumbling through her mind. Because they were likely the same rattling around in his.

I wish to be alone to write, and you wish to be alone to ravish me. But all these people are now here, and shall we have to travel to the very depths of the sea or the top of the highest mountain to find solitude?

He lifted one shoulder, then dropped it, biting his bottom lip, a series of expressions that meant let us plan an expedition forthwith .

She sighed, clearly understanding, and he felt it to his bones.