All I Ever Needed Page 30

  "Perhaps you should have a drink instead."

  Her wry tone made him chuckle. "A poor substitute. I know it for a fact."

  "Then you didn't drink enough."

  "There could never be enough," he said quietly. "I love you."

  Sophie nodded faintly, accepting it. She stared at their clasped hands for a long moment and then at him. "I wish I were not afraid." She leaned into him, slipping her hand free so that she could place it on his shoulder. It was at her urging that they came to lie on the bed with his mouth but a hairsbreadth from hers. "I don't want to be afraid."

  She tilted her head so that her lips brushed his. Once. Twice. Her mouth parted, and she deepened the kiss, touching the tip of her tongue to his upper lip, then engaging his own. She held him close, her hands running the length of his back. There was comfort in the weight of him against her and the way his fingers lay lightly across her breast.

  East felt her panic even as she tried to restrain it. The edge of it was there in her voice and in the first wild beating of her heart. She would have had him take her hard and without thought if he had allowed it, but when he held himself back and let her know that he was unafraid, she accepted that, too.

  He kissed the corner of her mouth and moved to her throat. She murmured something that might have been his name. He wanted to believe that it was. He liked the idea of it on her lips as he kissed the curve of her neck, then her shoulder, and again as he pushed her chemise down over her arms.

  The small of Sophie's back arched when East's mouth found her breast. The first tug of his lips uncurled the knot in her stomach and flooded her with warmth. Heat came later, building slowly as he teased one kind of tension from her body and replaced it with another.

  She came to know his touch everywhere. She felt his mouth at the sensitive inner curve of her elbow and at the back of her knee. He lifted her hair and kissed the hollow just below her ear. His mouth drew a line from her waist to her hip. He caught her wrists and held them on either side of her head while he kissed her long and deeply and made her move restlessly under him.

  He removed her chemise and studied her with his eyes and then his hands, then again with his mouth, parting her thighs so that he might know her there as well. He watched her darkening eyes and knew she understood his intent. He pressed his lips to her abdomen first and then raised his head to catch her glance again. This time she nodded, and his mouth moved lower still. He had no difficulty recognizing the sound of his name as she cried out with this first, most intimate, touch.

  She was as responsive as he knew she would be. He felt her fingertips graze his hair, then his shoulder, before finding purchase in the bedclothes. She rocked back, lifting for him, and gave herself up to the pleasure of it. He made her mindless of everything but her own need and the fact that he had aroused it.

  Sophie felt the familiar rise of heat and the tension just beneath the surface of her skin. She absorbed every touch of his lips and tongue and fingers as a separate sensation, yet knew them all at once, and when she came she had not known how close she had hovered to the edge until she stepped away from it.

  He was there to catch her, as he always was. The inevitability of it struck her anew, and she wondered that she had ever resisted it. It occurred to her that there had been a kind of safety in loving him with no expectation that it might be returned, and that perhaps she had not been protecting him at all, but herself.

  Sophie's eyes fluttered open. East was watching her, looking vaguely satisfied. "I think you flatter yourself," she said.

  He grinned. "A little. Am I wrong to do so?"

  She could not even pretend to consider her answer. "No. You have a rather happy talent for..."

  East waited, enjoying that she was put to a blush as she searched for the right phrase.

  "...negotiating terms of surrender."

  "Indeed."

  Sophie looped her arms about his neck and drew his head down. "I imagine I shall have to do whatever you like now." She nudged his groin with her hip and felt the heat of his erection through his breeches. "At least while we are still abed."

  "I never once supposed," East said wryly, "that you would do my bidding out of it."

  Laughing, she helped him out of his clothes, all of them this time because she wanted to see him naked. She moved over him with her body in much the same way he had moved over hers. She tempted and teased, sometimes with her hands, sometimes with her mouth. Her exploration was more curious than bold and proceeded with a caution that was a torment in its own right. She asked him what he wanted, and he showed her. Her hair brushed his thighs as she bent her head and took him into her mouth.

  Sophie thought perhaps that she should not want him in this way, that it was something only to be done for his pleasure, yet she could not deny that there was pleasure for her as well when he groaned softly or threaded his fingers through her hair. She remembered the hot suck of his mouth on her breast and the heat that spread across her belly and how her skin had felt too tight. She had wondered if she could bear it, and she had because there really had been no choice. Now it was East's turn to know the same and Sophie who reveled in the response of his body and the knowledge that he made himself vulnerable to her.

  East caught her arms and drew her up and over him, and for a moment he thought he would come right then, when what he wanted was to be buried deep inside her. Her thighs parted on either side of his, and instinct, not experience, guided her. She mounted him, and when she was settled, she felt herself contract around him. He caught her hips and held her still.

  "Don't move." His voice was tight with the effort it took to sustain this moment. "Not even there."

  She held her breath.

  He found he had the wherewithal to smile, though he suspected it was more of a grimace. "You can breathe, Sophie."

  Her lips parted so she could take a shallow sip of air.

  East took in her flushed face and the soft tangle of honey hair about her shoulders. "You have a remarkable seat."

  Just as if she were guiding Apollo to change his direction, Sophie gave Eastlyn a nudge with her thighs. He was not proof against that and groaned. A muscle worked in his jaw. She leaned forward, lifting her hips slightly before settling on him again. She drew his hands from her hips to her breasts. His thumbs made a pass across her nipples, and she contracted around him again. This time he did not ask her to stop what she could barely control. He let her have the rhythm of the ride and held back as long as he was able, knowing all the while she would break him and that he would have no regrets for it.

  When he came he nearly unseated her. She fell back, holding her own, then collapsed on top of him. The shudder that he felt from her was not the same as his own release. Her breathy little gasps were the result of laughter she could not quite restrain. She pressed her cheek against his shoulder, and when he could finally see her face he witnessed that she had abandoned herself not just to him, but to joy.

  She was radiant.

  He caught her hair and tugged lightly so that her head came up, and then he took her mouth. He kissed her slowly and deeply, the nature of it at once reverent and carnal, a celebration of what was of the soul and of the flesh.

  Sophie did not know there were tears until she tasted them on his lips. They were hers to shed, his to take. She drew back, her smile tentative and watery. He gave her one corner of the sheet to dry her eyes. "It seems I am forever crying," she said. "I have no patience for it, so I cannot imagine how you suffer it."

  He searched her face. "You are luminous, Sophie. Incandescent."

  She squirmed uncomfortably and would have moved away from him if he had not held her close. "I am tolerable to look upon, East."

  "More than tolerable, I should say, but I won't because you do not like compliments of that nature. What I mean to say is that you possess a quality that is not so easily defined, one not just of lightness, but of light."

  "It is the tears."

  "You may believe that if you
like."

  "I do. The other... when you speak of the other... I am reminded of a saint. I am not that."

  "No," he said with some feeling. "You are not that." Before she could object to his quick agreement, he added, "And neither am I. To that end I wish to arrange for a special license. I cannot be depended upon to stay out of your bed if you make me wait overlong for our wedding."

  "It had not occurred to me that you would." She eased off him and sat up, drawing a sheet around her. "I have no intention of asking you to do so. I am already carrying a child, so you cannot give me another. I fail to see the need for haste." When he regarded her as if she had taken complete leave of her senses, Sophie could not maintain the gravity of her expression. "You are surprisingly easy to tease, my lord. I would not have thought that would be the case."

  "Which part of your little speech was the tease?" he asked, giving her an arch look. "Inviting me to your bed or failing to see the need for a special license?"

  "The latter." Sophie thought he did not look entirely relieved, as if he did not trust her. "You may procure your special license. Even I know I will come to show soon enough."

  "That, at least, is something."

  "You understand, of course, the necessity of keeping our marriage a secret until that time."

  East pushed himself upright, modestly pulling a blanket with him, and leaned back against the headboard. "Sophie, I can honestly tell you that I have been seated across the table from diplomats who spoke languages other than English and found more to comprehend in their speech than I often do in yours. Do me the great favor of telling me this is another tease."

  Sophie shook her head. "I cannot. It must be a secret."

  "Bloody hell. Did you just not say you know the pregnancy will reveal itself?"

  "Yes, but until then, we should not reveal our marriage."

  "What is gained by that?"

  "Time. A few months perhaps, if I am careful. It might be time enough for me to settle with my cousin."

  "Settle with him? I don't like the sound of that, Sophie."

  "He is invested in the opium trade, East. I have known it for a long time. He has even made a profit of it on occasion, though he has never had much to show for it. Do you recall the steward at Tremont Park?"

  "Your cousin's spy? I do recall the man."

  "Mr. Piggins makes some of the investment arrangements for Tremont, but I suspect he also steals from him, else why is my cousin perpetually indebted? I have suggested that Piggins be relieved of his position because he knows nothing about managing the farms or the tenants or the cattle, but Tremont will not hear a word against him."

  "Then you never told him Piggins was stealing."

  "No. Never. Piggins can have all of Tremont's profits and I would not care. I want no benefit of the opium trade, even to save myself or Tremont Park, but it does mean that I should not confront the whole of it. My cousin continues to take the public position of being against the trade while he tries to profit privately. He might be willing to bargain for my silence on the matter. He would not like to have his true character revealed. People would not think ill of him being in the trade, but they will damn him for the hypocrisy. He can have no power if he is not perceived as a man of his word."

  "Why now, Sophie? You have kept your silence for years. Why would—" He stopped because he saw her eyes flinch and knew this as a sure sign that she was holding something back. "You have confronted him before, haven't you?"

  She gave no other sign for a moment but then jerked her head once.

  "When?"

  Her fingers began making pleats in the sheet while the line of her mouth remained mutinously flat.

  Eastlyn took a stab at the answer to his question. "Not before your father died, I think. As much as you feared your father's use of the opium, I think you accepted that he came to rely on it. He would have been unhappy with you if you had stopped his supply. So it must have been later. Perhaps when you realized Lady Dunsmore had become addicted."

  Sophie shot him a sharp look.

  "It's true, isn't it? She is as reliant on the tincture of opium as your father was."

  "How could you know that? I have never—" She bit her lip, and her eyes slid away from East's. "You did not know until just this moment, did you? It was only a suspicion." Out of the corner of her eye, Sophie saw him nod. "I am afraid you will have the better of me at every turn. It cannot be much sport for you to interrogate me when I give up the answers so easily."

  He reached for her, cupping her chin and bringing her round to face him. "I am in earnest, Sophie. Lady Dunsmore has always been a bit of a cipher. You were a companion to her when one would suppose she would have little need for such. She is given to megrims and enjoys the privacy of her own room. She has rather a nervous constitution and only the smallest circle of friends. I believe you acted as governess for the children because it meant one less person being privy to her problem." He let his hand fall when he knew he had her full attention. "But I am not so certain you would have confronted only Tremont on Lady Dunsmore's behalf. For her, it seems to me that you would have also gone to her husband."

  Sophie nodded faintly. "Harold is invested in the trade as well. I cannot say how successful he is, only that there is rarely any money for the household. Perhaps his profits only pay his debts from the previous quarter." Her fingers stilled for a moment. "He saw nothing wrong with it, East. Abigail is disappearing before his eyes and the eyes of his children, and he defends his support of the trade as being a sound practice. He would not admit there was any cause for concern. Abigail only takes it for her headaches, he said, and never once owned that now her headaches can last for days at a time."

  Eastlyn took this in. The opening was there to tell Sophie that Dunsmore had placed Mrs. Sawyer under his protection, but he judged it would only distract him from his purpose. "Was it at Tremont Park that you confronted the earl?" he asked. "Perhaps while I was there? You asked me about the political matter I was there to discuss with him. Was that when you realized the extent of his scheming?"

  Sophie gave him a brief, ironic smile. "I have always understood that my cousin's public opinions and private actions were seldom congruent. What you told me at the Park was merely confirmation of yet another example. Some weeks earlier I overheard Tremont speaking to Piggins about a ship called Aragon, and I knew Tremont had a substantial investment in Aragon's cargo. The size of the investment was such that there was little left to manage the Park. It was clear to me that if the ship failed to make port, there could be no recovery without engaging one more creditor. It seemed unlikely that anyone could be found to lend Tremont money. The estate's debt is already crushing."

  "So you went to him?"

  She nodded. "I told him what I knew. He meant to withhold his support of the Singapore settlement until he had the concessions he wanted. I cannot be certain what demands he intended to make on the prime minister, but I know that he wanted to coerce you into making a second proposal of marriage. I threatened him with telling you everything."

  "Is that why you ended up in the chapel?"

  "In part. And because I kissed you at the lake. Tremont meant to punish me for that as well."

  East's fingers made furrows in his thick hair as he ran his hand through it. "You cannot seriously mean to confront the man a second time, Sophie. I have seen for myself that he is capable of any manner of retribution. He is already nursing wounds from having lost you. It was a considerable blow to his pride when I told him I had helped you leave the Park and that he could not expect that you would return. He did not like having you absent of his control."

  "Yet he has not found me."

  "He has not sent anyone for you," East said. "It does not mean that he doesn't know where you are. I found you, Sophie. Given time, so can he. Perhaps he already has."

  "No. He would force me to return to the Park or Bowden Street."

  "There is another explanation separate from him not wanting to give rise to a scanda
l: Tremont does not need you just at the moment."

  She frowned slightly. "I don't understand. Do you mean to say that he has abandoned the idea of marrying me off? How could you know that?"

  "I doubt that he has abandoned the idea. It is probably truer that he means to use it as the need arises." East saw that he had merely deepened Sophie's confusion. "It is the Aragon, Sophie. The ship has delivered its cargo and returned. It is safe to assume that both of your cousins profited from their investment."

  "How long have you known this?"

  "All of it? Only since you fit the pieces of this puzzle together. I am familiar with Aragon because I have been involved with this government's concern regarding Singapore since June. I am aware of all of our trade with China and a great deal that the Americans and French are doing as well. The East India Company's business is important to the Crown, and the competition for favored status with the Chinese is of particular interest to them. They make certain I know about rogue traders like the Aragon's captain who operate without sanction from either government."

  Sophie leaned over the edge of the bed and plucked her chemise from the floor. She held it bunched in front of her while she considered what East told her. "Then there was more risk in Tremont's investment than I suspected. He might well have bankrupted the estate."

  "Perhaps." He watched her abandon the sheet in favor of her chemise and knew a measure of regret. "But he is still a Bishop, and he can always apply to the Society for help."

  "How fortunate for them that he profited this time."

  East thought that if he kissed Sophie just then, he would know the taste of sarcasm. "Aragon arrived in Liverpool shortly before I left London to come here. I know this because I was at Lloyd's when news of her arrival was delivered."

  Sophie knew that Lloyd's insured merchant ships and their cargo. "Go on. I am familiar with Lloyd's."

  "It meant little to me at the time. I had no understanding then that Tremont and Dunsmore were involved in the trade. What I did know, however, was that in recent weeks Dunsmore's spending was in excess of his customary extravagant manner. He might rarely have had money for the household, but it seems to me that he must have very patient creditors, for he spends money as though he has it. It occurred to me that he had already received funds from some source or that he was in expectation of receiving them soon. I knew it was not at the gaming tables where he had achieved success because I witnessed some of his losses there. I left London before discovering the origin of his new wealth. It would have taken some time to trace it all the way back to Aragon. I did not imagine I would learn the truth in Clovelly."