“You asked your grandmother such a thing?”

“Nana knows all there is to know about a woman’s body. She told me once that some women suffer quite a bit, and others don’t even notice and might as well not be virgins at all.”

It was too late to change her mind, so Annabel nodded, a little jerkily.

Ewan looked down at his bride-to-be. One moment she gave him the most temptingly seductive smile he had ever seen on a woman’s face, and the next she was trembling and clearly scared out of her wits. She had her eyes shut tight; they tilted at the corners with an exotic little curve that was at odds with the practicality of planning adultery before she even decided whom to marry. The very thought of it made him grin. But he had to admit that for a woman this passionate, and yet so set on marrying a man of wealth, adultery was likely just a practical suggestion.

Now she lay before him like a feast of raspberries and cream, and desire was surging through him like molten fire. Disjointed thoughts about the sanctity of marriage flew through his mind, but none of them mattered. She was his, and she would be his until death.

In fact, it was a great thing they were doing, because their wedding night could be a proper celebration, once they’d gotten all the fear out of the way beforehand. He could see her breast rising and falling with little pants but she said nothing. And she didn’t take her hands from her eyes.

“Are you all right?” he whispered, coming on his knees over her. Ewan didn’t know anything about the art of seducing virgins, of taking virginity, of introducing a woman to the pleasures of the bed. But he knew one kind of kiss they had both enjoyed, and one at which he appeared to be quite able. He let one hand slide between her rounded thighs and pushed them apart slightly, then began to kiss his way down her creamy stomach, down to that buttery patch of hair again, down—

“You needn’t do that,” she said, her voice stifled by her hands, which covered her whole face.

“I want to,” he said simply. And then, two seconds later, her moans were flying into the night air again. One hand even fell from her eyes, and her legs slid restlessly up to form a perfect cradle for his body. Soon, he promised her silently, soon. Tremors were wracking her now, and she was whimpering, crying, coming to him—and then she flew free again, hands over her head, her body arched into the air…and falling back down, gentle as thistledown.

It took everything he had to stay in control. She was sweet, swollen, ready for him…He said, “Annabel, could you open your eyes now?” And then: “Please?”

So she did, dewy, smoky blue peering at him. He nudged against her, and her eyes grew wider.

“Don’t shut me out, sweetheart,” he breathed. “I want to see you…if only this time. This first time.”

A shaky smile curved her lips. “I—”

Annabel caught back her words, shut her eyes tight, remembered and opened them—because he was there, he was sliding inside her, and there was no pain—

“Ewan!” she cried. Then she arched and he came to her, all the way.

“Thank God,” he said, as if it were wrenched out of him, and then: “Does this hurt?”

And it didn’t.

And none of it did. Not even when he started taunting her, pulling back and smiling down at her as she tried to pull him down to her, then choosing his moment and thrusting home. Not when she decided to taunt him and, dimly remembering Tess’s advice, let her hands slide to his hard buttocks and linger there…

He groaned and then took her mouth, hard and purposeful, the wild kind of kiss that meant something quite different now. Annabel tasted the moment Ewan lost control. He plunged deeper and deeper, his breath coming in gasps. He was grasping her hips, driving forward as if they could grow ever closer.

At first she just enjoyed looking at him, but then a feeling started growing and growing, a kind of molten desire that spread from their joining through her whole body, and she found herself rising to meet him, her fingers clenching on his muscled shoulders.

“Annabel,” he said, in a growl that was half a moan. “Oh, God!”

And she didn’t think he was referring to a deity now. The feeling was growing and growing, and finally Annabel just let herself slide into the chaos of it, into the sweat and rhythmic madness of it…

Until she cried out against his shoulder and he thankfully let his jaw unclench and drove home, home to her, to his still center, to his wife.

Twenty-four

It was the middle of the night. They’d fallen asleep curled together, but Annabel woke after an hour or so to find that Ewan had lit the candles on Peggy’s table and built up the fire.

“What are you doing?” she asked sleepily.“Looking at you,” he said, and there was such a deep languorous satisfaction in his voice that she smiled. So much for all her plans to trade her body and her bankable kisses for a man of wealth and title. Now she knew with a bone-deep instinct that her body was always meant to be here, adored by Ewan, even—even worshipped.

“I’m thirsty,” she whispered.

He tried to hold the tin cup to her lips, as if she were a child with a fever, but water ran down her neck. He kissed the damp away, and then Annabel suddenly realized that she could have all the kisses she wanted from Ewan, for free, without asking questions.

“Kiss me,” she said.

“Annabel—”

She pulled his head to hers. “I am not marrying you because you have a castle,” she said against his lips.

Of course there was laughter in his voice. “Nay, I know all too well that you will marry me because you have to do so. Although now you have a double reason.”

“I just want you to know that I had no idea you were so rich,” she said. “None!”

“I know that,” he said. “It was obvious in your desperate eyes when you accepted my proposal. Plus, no one in London seemed to know a thing about me, except your sister’s husband, Felton. He knows everything about finances, it seems.”

“Lucius Felton knew you were rich?” Annabel said.

“You can’t move stocks and such without encountering a few of the men interested in doing the same thing. We’d never met, naturally, as I send my secretary around to do such things as have to be done in person—”

“Ewan,” Annabel interrupted. “Just how rich are you?”

He smiled at her, and there wasn’t much of the simpleton about him now. “I expect I’m the richest man in Scotland, give or take a castle or two,” he said.

Annabel let her head fall back. “I don’t believe it.”

“Because I am willing to take risks,” he said, looking at her, amused. “I have had little trouble increasing my possessions. Father Armailhac always says that possessions bring with them responsibility. And sometimes I think that I try to shed responsibility by shedding possessions.”

“But everything you make comes back to you tenfold,” she guessed.

He nodded. “If you don’t wish for money, it comes to you easily. And if you don’t wish for responsibilities, they come in droves.”

“I don’t believe you. How would you feel, would you really feel, if you were no longer the Earl of Ardmore? It’s such a part of you, almost as if you were a medieval feudal lord, with the crofters and cottagers, and all the people who live in the castle, and the way they depend on you.”