“It’s our bedchamber.”
She wandered nervously to the heavily carved walnut bedstead. “I’d heard that all aristocratic couples had separate bedrooms. Mrs. Barrington quite disapproved. A frivolous waste of space and money, she said.”
Ian opened another door. “The boudoir in here is yours. But you will sleep with me.”
Beth peered around him into an elegant room with comfortable-looking chairs and a deep window seat. “My. I suppose it will do.”
“Curry will help you fit it out as you like. Just tell him what you want and he will arrange it.”
“I’m beginning to think Curry is a magician.” Beth waited for him to respond, but Ian said nothing, his gaze remote again.
“I think you take an awful risk,” she said. “I read somewhere that sharing a bedroom with a woman is dangerous, because she exhales noxious fumes when she sleeps. Absolute balderdash, Mrs. Barrington said when I told her. Mr. Barrington slept beside her for thirty years and never once took sick.”
Ian slid his arms around her, the warmth of his body distracting her from all other thought. “Quacks will say anything to attract money for their research.”
“Is that what they did at the asylum?”
“They tried all kinds of experiments to cure my madness. I never saw where any of them worked.”
“That was cruel.”
“They thought they were helping.”
Beth put her fists on his arms. “Don’t be so bloody forgiving. Your father locked you away, and those people tortured you in the name of science. I hate them for it. I’d like to go to that asylum and give your doctor, whoever he is, a piece of my mind.”
Ian put his fingers to her lips. “I don’t want you part of that.”
“Like you don’t want me part of the High Holborn murder.”
Coldness crept into his usually warm gaze. “It has nothing to do with you. I want you . . . apart. I want to remember only this, not you with the things of my past.” “You wish to create different memories,” she said, thinking she understood.
“My memory is too damned good. I can’t blot out things. I want to remember you alone here with me, or in that pension in Paris. You and me, not Fellows or Mather or my brother, or High Holborn . . .”
His words died and he began to rub his temple, frustration glinting in his eyes. Beth put her hand over his. “Don’t think of it.”
“It plays over and over and over again, like a melody that won’t stop.”
Beth softly rubbed his temple, his hard fingers beneath hers.
He pulled her close. “Your being with me makes it stop. It’s like the Ming bowls—when I touch them and feel them, everything stops. Nothing matters. You are the same. That is why I brought you here, to keep you with me, where you can please make . .. everything . . . stop.”
Chapter Fifteen
Beth stared up at him, her blue eyes wet. “Tell me how.” He held her face between his hands, her beautiful face that had jolted through the clamor in his head at the Covent Garden Opera House. She’d been the only thing real to him in Lyndon Mather’s box; everything else had been shadowy and wrong.
“Stay with me.”
“We’re married,” she whispered. “Of course I’ll stay.” “You could decide to leave me.” He leaned his forehead to hers, remembering the horrible day that he’d gone to Mac’s house with the farewell letter Isabella had written. Ian had never forgotten Mac’s devastation when he’d realized that Isabella was gone.
“I won’t.”
“Promise me.”
“I have promised. I do promise.”
Her voice rang with sincerity, her eyes wide and lovely. He kissed her lips so she wouldn’t keep giving him reassuring lies. Isabella had loved Mac desperately, and yet she’d left him.
“Stay with me,” he repeated.
She nodded into his kiss. He drew her body against his, fingers finding the buttons of her bodice. Her chest came into view, and he leaned down and kissed it. She made a soft noise, and he suckled her skin, branding her yet again.
He felt her hands parting his clothes, burrowing past the layers of fabric to find him. She put her mouth to his chest just below the hollow of his throat, and he inhaled sharply. The scent of her hair filled his nostrils, driving him a little bit mad.
Ian pulled her up to him and kissed her, parting her lips, pressing his thumbs to the corners of her mouth. She was his wife, and he wanted her. For now, for always. He swiftly unbuttoned the rest of her bodice, then untied her stays in little jerks. He pushed them from her body, then unfastened her chemise, catching her bare br**sts as they tumbled out. She arched back as he kissed her again, pressing her ni**les tight against his palms.
Unlacing and pushing away her skirts and bustle and petticoats took some time, and he became impatient, tearing fabric while she squeaked a protest. He lifted her and carried her to the bed, then pulled off his own clothes with the same impatience. He climbed up with her, not bothering to pull back the bedclothes. When she started to speak, he silenced her with a deep kiss.
He pushed her legs apart and entered her, finding her plenty wet for him. Beth lifted her hips and met him thrust for thrust, already used to what felt best to her. He rode her quickly, then slowly, his arms braced on either side of her. He kissed her with swollen lips, put love bites on her neck, licked her sweating skin.
Once his initial frenzy was over, he became gender, more playful. He draped her long hair over his body, stroking it, fisting it, kissing it.