LITMIR.BIZ

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with ecstasy and repletion and release.

      ‘I love you, Taris.’ Said again as he closed his eyes and slept.

      Taris could tell that the gossip of the servants had come to the ears of his brother when he walked into breakfast with Beatrice the next morning.

      ‘Did you sleep well?’ Humour was apparent in the question and he was certain that Bea had heard it too.

      ‘Very, thank you.’ Determined that he would not let Ashe have his fun, he helped himself to a generous plate of eggs and bacon and began to speak of the Davis function that they had all promised to attend that evening.

      Emerald’s arrival, however, only seemed to add to the tension. The escapade with the nightgown had probably been her suggestion in the first place and as she sat he could tell that the meal was going to be a long one.

      ‘You arrived back late last night, Taris?’

      ‘I did.’

      ‘And you are late rising this morning?’

      ‘I am.’ He stressed the personal pronoun with a telling emphasis.

      ‘Which is unusual for you?’

      ‘It is.’

      ‘Mama thought she heard music coming from Cristo’s room last night. She told me so this morning.’

      His sister-in-law could no longer hold in her laughter and it settled around the room. Beneath the table Taris felt Beatrice’s hand steal into his own and she squeezed it before speaking.

      ‘Where is your brother Cristo?’

      Her question was exactly the right one—it drew everyone’s attention into a completely opposite direction.

      ‘Our brother has lived in Europe for a number of years after deciding that England no longer suited him.’

      Asher’s reasoning was not quite the truth, Taris thought, but close enough.

      ‘He certainly had good taste in books. I have looked over the shelves in his room and have decided that even the public reading rooms in London do not have the breadth of topic his library has.’

      ‘A characteristic he inherited from our father.’ Taris was careful in his choice of words and when his sister Lucy appeared at the doorway the family was quick to drop the subject altogether.

      ‘Why did your brother leave Falder?’ Bea asked the question again an hour later when she was alone with Taris.

      ‘He killed my father.’ The four words were enunciated without emotion.

      ‘He shot him?’

      ‘Nothing as dramatic as that. He just decided that the English system of privilege was not for him and left. All might have been more easily forgiven had our father not been in the throes of a severe winter ague. It was the opinion of the physician at the time that Cristo’s disappearance killed him.’

      ‘Disappearance?’

      ‘He left no note. It was only later that one did come and by then our father was long dead. When we tried to locate Cristo he had no wish to be found and sent a message to that effect. As the years mounted we decided to respect his wishes.’

      ‘But your mother…’

      ‘Still loves him. He played the piano well and every so often she fancies she hears music coming from his room.’ Bea noticed the way he turned from her as he told her, as though perhaps his mother was not the only one who missed a Falder son.

      Bending to a drawer in a desk, he brought out a dark blue box and handed it to her. ‘When I inherited my uncle’s estates I also inherited his family jewels. They are kept here as I had no use for them. Is this something you might wish to wear?’

      An intricate gold-and-topaz necklace lay in a white satin interior and to each side matching earrings were embedded.

      ‘Oh, I could not accept such a thing.’

      She was speechless and honoured. This was no insignificant piece. If she wore this, everyone would know where it had come from.

      ‘There are many others should you want to sort through them as I cannot make out any of their forms.’

      Carte blanche. Not a little offer. Still, she would rather have had the words that she had given him so many times last night.

       I love you.

      In this room with his hair pulled back into a queue he looked like a man who might never give her them back. Not in the daylight, with the voice of sanity and restraint between them and his lack of sight a potent reason for his reticence.

      Darkness was their milieu, she decided, when the tendrils of night reduced any difference and the language between their bodies demanded no words.

      Lord, even now the memory of it made her blush. As though he felt it too, his hand came against hers in a simple gesture, and the box of jewellery was laid down upon the desk, forgotten.

      ‘Beatrice?’ A question.

      ‘Yes.’ An answer.

      The heavy slam of his heart was visible in the pulse at his throat. Not as unaffected as she might imagine.

      She felt his hand skim across the line of her bottom and lift her skirt. The other one loosened his lacings and tilted her hips, entering slick wet and wanted, his breath against her throat as he pushed in further, no softness at all in it. Sheathed and tight. Full and intimate. Cold oak against the warmth of flesh, and the door unlocked.

      Still, she could not pull back as his movements quickened, her hands splayed across the blotter, her head rolling as the same magic took her by surprise.

      Anywhere? He could take her anywhere and she would follow? Her whimpers were quietened by his mouth as he covered the gathering waves of release and she was tipped into the place where nothing at all mattered.

      He did not let her go when they had finished. Did not move apart or relinquish his tight grasp of her, his breath hoarse and the joining of their bodies tight in want.

      ‘God.’ Only that above the sound of breath, and the feel of cold air against her bare skin was sinful and exciting. The hot squeeze of his manhood still within her and the daylight exposing everything that night-time never had.

      When his hands slid to where his body still lingered, she merely opened her legs further and let him explore, the scent of their lovemaking musky in the air around them.

      ‘More,’ she whispered and his answering laugh was as unguarded as she had ever heard it.

      ‘Much more,’ he returned as his fingers found a spot that made her whole body blush.

      The sound of the clock brought them back and she had never felt so deliciously decadent as she ran her tongue across the outline of his lips.

      ‘Taris?’

      His eyes sharpened as her fingers traced the scar across his left eye, the trail beginning in his hairline and finishing on the rise of his cheekbone.

      Had any lover ever touched him in the way she was doing now? By the way he stayed so very still she thought not.

      ‘Did it hurt?’

      The amber of his irises was brittle gold. ‘At first it did, though the ocean saved me, I suspect, for the salt leached away the pain. By the time we reached land again I could barely feel it.’

      ‘How long were you in the water?’

      ‘So many hours that we lost count. With the blood loss from this it was Ashe who dragged me with him finally, though the currents did their part in the rescue and deposited us on land on our second evening afloat.’

      ‘I have never heard any of this even whispered!’ she said.

      ‘Because of Emerald. It was her

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