An assumption, perhaps, but after that day of unalloyed togetherness, their slide into physical intimacy had been shown to be merely one strand in the connection linking them.
If she’d been looking out of her bedroom window, she would have seen him approaching the house.
Sure enough, when he strolled into the area of the shrubbery housing the long pool, there she was—waiting for him.
As he neared, the smile lifting her lips brightened, and she held out a hand.
He took it; when she would have turned and towed him on, he pulled back and stopped her. He stepped close, raised her hand to his lips, kissed her fingers, then with his other arm encircling her waist, drew her to him as he bent his head and pressed his lips to hers.
Eager joy and passion waited, like nectar on her tongue.
He’d never tasted anything so addictive. So enticing and alluring.
For long moments, he savored, and with her hands rising to frame his face, she supped and sipped and, in her own way, beckoned.
Eventually, they raised their heads and, hand in hand, with their gazes locked and both reluctant to break the link, they walked slowly on.
In her room, he closed the door and drew her to him. She came with anticipation lighting her face, with an effervescent joy that thrilled him.
Their lips melded, their tongues dueled, and passion and desire inexorably rose.
Heat welled and swelled, and they shed their clothes and gave themselves up to the pursuit of glory.
Tonight, he could feel a thrum in his blood that ran deeper, resonating more powerfully through him. It was, he supposed, their connection growing. Deepening and strengthening.
Ellen had never known that this—this joyous, glorious meeting of bodies and minds—was what intimacy was all about. He’d shown her.
He’d opened her eyes to touch—to the scintillating pleasure of his fingers tracing her curves, of his palms sculpting her hollows. He’d lavished on her caresses—laden with passion, but also with a devotion to her pleasure—that elicited a response in her that was so intense and poignant, they drove her to the brink of insanity.
Into a madness of the senses for which only he held the cure.
Driven and needy, they joined, and sensation washed over and through her, battering her senses with unadulterated pleasure in so many different ways, she felt adrift from the world, as if only the two of them existed.
Her focus drew in, locked on the physical sensations of the moment.
She gasped, panted, and clung, and gloried in their headlong rush to fulfillment. Gloried over the way he closed his eyes and groaned, over the lack of restraint the moment—and she—drove him to display.
She knew—sensed—that, with her, he lowered his shields all but constantly, letting her see emotions he’d never shown anyone else.
Perhaps never felt with anyone else?
The fleeting thought made the tension building within her tighten to an unbearable degree.
She arched beneath him, gasping as he drove deep within her—and the coiled tension snapped, and her senses soared as the brilliant sun of ecstasy seared her, then exploded, and her awareness fractured into a million shards of bright, pulsing pleasure.
The wave of scintillating sensation rolled powerfully through her as he stiffened and found his own release.
While her senses floated somewhere in the void, the power in the moment—the strong, inviolable, and immutable bedrock of their connection—cradled her, cradled him, held them gently together as the physical impact faded and left, shining in her mind’s sight, the rock formed of their joint emotions.
Even as she slid into slumber, she sensed them both reaching for and embracing the solidity of what had grown between them. The simple reality of love.
After breakfast on Monday, Ellen looked in on Robbie. She found him in the study with Hopper, immersed in dealing with inquiries from various cider mills hoping to secure some of the Bigfield House crop. When Robbie looked at her absentmindedly, she merely smiled, waved, and left him to it.
She arrived at the manor to find Louisa ready and waiting to depart for Goffard Hall.
With the three men electing to ride, Louisa claimed the reins of the manor’s gig and briskly tooled herself and Ellen down to the village and through it, to the lane that led north to Goffard Hall.
On arriving at the Hall, they were met by Julia and Mrs. Secombe; both were plainly ready to get as much accomplished as possible that day.
The first order of business was to throw open the drawing room and connected ballroom and rearrange or remove all the furniture.
Louisa and Ellen directed, Julia and Mrs. Secombe gave the orders, and the footmen heaved sofas, chairs, occasional tables, and sideboards hither and yon. Toby, Christopher, and Drake were roped in to help, each pairing with one of the footmen.
Next, the footmen—and their three male helpers—were sent first to the dining room and then all through the house to collect every straight-backed chair.
Drake, in his shirtsleeves, as were Toby and Christopher, halted beside Louisa and somewhat acidly remarked, “This isn’t going to be a ball. Do we really need all these chairs?”
Louisa turned her head and met his eyes. “Yes. The chairs are for the card tables, of course.”
Drake frowned. “Where are the card tables?”
“They,” Louisa informed him, “are next.”
It took time to refurnish the rooms as card-playing salons. It was lunchtime before Louisa, Ellen, Julia, and Mrs. Secombe declared that stage of the preparations complete. By then, the drawing room and ballroom between them played host to ten tables of varying sizes; the smallest would accommodate three players plus a dealer, while the largest, a circular table, would allow, at a pinch, seven players and a dealer.
After doing justice to the cold collation Mrs. Secombe had ordered set out in the dining room, Louisa and Julia took charge of reorganizing that room into a supper room, co-opting Toby and Drake as helpers.
Meanwhile, Ellen embarked on kitting out their card-playing salons appropriately. She consulted with Mrs. Secombe, then summoned Christopher from his current task of assisting a footman to ferry in the extra leaves to extend the dining table.
Christopher had been crossing the front hall; he caught Toby returning to the dining room and gave him his load.
Toby grunted at the weight and caught Christopher’s eyes. “Who knew card parties involved so much work?”
Louisa, directing proceedings from just inside the door, had overheard; she swung around and brightly informed them, “And there’s a great deal we haven’t started on yet.”
Toby rolled his eyes and carried the table leaves past her.
Christopher crossed the hall to join Ellen, who had produced a list from somewhere.
“We need cloths for the tables,” she informed him. “Mrs. Secombe says they should be in the linen press at the top of the stairs.”
He waved her to the stairs and fell in beside her.
As they climbed, frowning slightly, she added, “We might need to send to Bigfield House for more cloths and other items as well. According to the Secombes, they’ve run only six tables before, but Rose, Tilly, and even more Nigel seem confident that the number of guests liable to turn up for even the first of these special card parties is likely to be significantly greater than before.” She looked at the paper in her hand. “It’s annoying not having a definite number of guests. I’ll need to make another list.”