He was concerned that he’d fail her as a man. That she’d try his gaits, consider a lifetime in harness with him, and then let the pull of family obligations serve as her excuse for waving him on. His own father had found him wanting, his Crosspatch Corners neighbors considered him eccentric, and he’d left a trail of faux pas in Mayfair wider than the Thames.
“I want to get this right,” he said, lips pressed to Hecate’s brow.
“You already have. Please, Phillip.”
Never, ever did he want to hear Hecate begging. He gave himself up to the intoxicating pleasure of joining his body to hers, and the whole world came right.
Here, on the good earth, under the summer stars, the robins serenading the darkness, everything came right, and Phillip was home at last.
Chapter Eleven
The pleasure Phillip wrought with Hecate was beyond her wildest, most private imaginings. He was inexorable in his loving, relentless, like the approach of nightfall or a gathering storm.
Nothing distracted him, and to be the sole object of his adoring focus brought an intensity to his loving that scoured Hecate’s defenses. She fought for control even as she moved with him, fought for reason even as she grabbed with her entire body for bliss.
She lost those battles in a glorious cascade of sensation blended with emotion, a bonfire of oneness in pleasure, that by degrees became oneness in peace and no less wondrous. She was sweating—sweating—and naked beneath the stars and beneath Phillip, who had wrapped her close and cradled her gently against his chest.
Hecate kissed the nearest available part of him—his throat—and opened her eyes to behold the heavens over his shoulder.
“I’m crushing you.” His voice had acquired a lovely rasp.
“Don’t you dare move.”
He sighed and pressed his cheek to hers. That he’d await her pleasure even now, even in this, made Hecate tear up. Nobody took orders from her, nobody awaited her pleasure.
“If you farm half as well as you make love, then Lark’s Nest is the premier rural estate in all the world,” Hecate said, stroking his bum.
He kissed her cheek. “So well I’ve moved you to tears?”
She was warm and safe in his embrace, and yet, if he moved, if he got all brisk and satisfied, or rolled over and had himself a restorative nap, she’d dry her tears and be brisk right along with him.
Which her heart could not allow. This softness of spirit, the glow in her heart, was too precious to part with.
“I open my eyes after enduring the madness you visited upon me, Phillip, and I behold the stars. The entire heavens are awash in nocturnal splendor, and that is how I feel inside right now. It’s too much.”
Too much for a woman who’d devoted herself to ledgers, investments, allowances, and pensions because those had been the only means she’d had of mattering to her family. How little, how small she’d become, trying to fit into the narrow box they’d allotted her.
How exhausted and lonely. Spent.
I love you. The words welled with greater conviction than any Hecate had ever uttered, but she hesitated. Please don’t leave me crowded close behind them, and she would not spoil the moment with pleading.
“What if,” Phillip murmured near her ear, “I go only far enough to allow us to tidy up, and then we can admire the stars together, until my strength is restored? You have loved me to flinders, Hecate Brompton. I am a man at his last prayers, and they are prayers of gratitude.”
“If I had the strength to pray, mine would be as well.” Blasphemous, no doubt, to offer thanks for a tryst that was so much more than a stolen moment, but Hecate felt no remorse. In fact, she predicted more blasphemy in her immediate future and contemplated the prospect with relish.
Phillip produced a plain linen handkerchief from a jacket pocket, a white flag amid the night shadows, and dealt with practicalities. He rummaged in the wicker hamper, found the flask of lemonade, and passed it to Hecate.
“This was the right place,” he said as Hecate sat up to enjoy a drink. “The right hour, the right everything. I am so drunk with wonderment right now, you will have to lead me back to the manor house by slow, small steps.”
She passed him the flask, wishing Nunnsuch in all its grandeur far, far out along the Cornish coast, or perhaps over the cliffs and into the sea.
“You should find some sandwiches in the hamper.”
“I am more interested in holding you,” Phillip said, draping her shawl around her shoulders. “I need to, in fact, or I will waft away on the night breeze like so much thistledown. I am that inebriated on joy.”
The things he said. “Can’t have you wafting away.”
They arranged themselves like a pair of spoons, Hecate’s shawl over them both. The robin had gone silent, and the quiet was profound. Hecate pillowed her head on Phillip’s biceps, his arm about her waist.
“Sleep if you want to,” he said. “I’ll be here when you waken.”
Until the snowdrops bloomed. The marvel was not that he’d offer her such sentiments, but that she trusted what lay behind them. Phillip wouldn’t return to Lark’s Nest and consign her to the category of pleasant memory. He was in her life to stay and in her heart to stay.
“I love you,” Hecate said, just as a star dropped from the zenith of the firmament. A brief, surprising trail of light that blazed more brightly as it fell, then winked into darkness.
Phillip shifted over her, and Hecate rolled to her back.
“Again, please,” he said. “I want to see your eyes when all my dreams come true.”
“I love you,” she said. “I esteem, adore, desire, and respect you, et cetera and so forth, but the truth of my heart is that I love you.”
He brushed his thumb over her brow. “How you honor me. How you honor and decimate me.” He kissed her forehead, then her cheeks, then her mouth, a romantic benediction. “I love you, too, and I always will.”
Desire rose again, just as sweet and fierce, but less frantic, less anxious. Hecate gave up any pretense of control and bobbed along on a tide of pleasure, letting Phillip work out for them both the path to satisfaction. He took his time. He meandered and moseyed until Hecate was flailing against him, and then the heavens once more revealed their magnificence, and Hecate became a temple to shared, incandescent joy.
She dozed off, to her mild chagrin, while Phillip held her and stroked her hair. When she awoke, they needed those sandwiches she’d packed, and the robin was once again in good voice. Nights were so short in summer.
And so lovely.
“Do we return the hamper and blanket to the kitchen?” Phillip asked when he’d assisted Hecate to dress and shrugged into his own clothing.
“We do not. I haven’t the strength, and there’s no need.” Hecate brushed her fingers through his hair and contemplated the monumental effort involved in getting to her feet. She was leaving the blanket a different woman from the person who’d lain down upon it just a few hours previously.
A happier woman, a more loving woman.
Phillip rose, stretched, and offered her a hand. He had her on her feet as easily as if he were plucking daisies, and then he hugged her.
“Never, ever will I forget the miracle of this night. You are a marvel, Hecate, and that you’d look with favor upon me to this extent… I am agog.”