Page 32 of A Momentary Marriage

“Don’t fret over that. Someone else can do it. I’ll check them for you if you like.”

“Yes, but that’s not the point. I’ve always been good with numbers. I understand them. They’re fixed, certain. But now . . .” He turned his hand palm up, flexing his fingers as if grasping at air. “I’ve lost them.”

Laura took his hand. “You haven’t lost them. They’re still there; they still mean the same things. They’re just as constant as they were before.”

“Yes. It is I who’s not.” He stroked his thumb idly up and down hers. Sad as his words were, it was the intense heat of his skin that worried her. He was growing more feverish. “I sometimes see . . . things that aren’t there.”

“What do you see?”

“Nothing important. The other day I saw Mother’s cat. Only it died years ago. Last night I dreamed my—I saw Sir Laurence beside my bed. I remember the occasion; I was seven and had a fever. Years later my mother told me they had been afraid I was about to die, too, as my brother Vincent had.” His hand tightened on hers as he looked up into her face. “I am not given to imagination or mystical thoughts, Laura.”

“I’m sure you are not.” Laura’s throat burned with tears, but she managed a smile. She had not realized he had had another brother, but this was scarcely the time to question James about Vincent or his death.

His eyes drifted closed, though his thumb continued to slide along her skin. After a moment, it, too, stilled, and his grip loosened. He was asleep. Laura felt a small moment of triumph.

She considered pulling her hand from his and leaving him to sleep, but she feared the movement might awaken him. Her position, however, soon grew tiring, and her eyes kept closing. Finally she moved, and his hand tightened on hers. Her eyes flew to his face; he was still asleep. After a moment, she lay down on her side, curled in a ball in the lower quadrant of the bed, her hand stretched up to his.

chapter 12

Laura dreamed she was lying beside the fire, its heat strong against her back. She drifted awake, hot and vaguely confused. She lay stretched out on her side, an arm thrown across her, and she was enveloped in heat. Her eyes flew open as she jolted into full awareness. She was lying next to James; it was his arm that curled around her, tucking her into his side.

She went still, scrambling to pull her thoughts together. She had fallen asleep, and sometime during the night, she had shifted around until she now lay next to him. Her face flooded with color. Even with the bedcovers separating their bodies, it was an intimate position. What would James think if he awoke and found her cuddled beside him as if . . . as if they were lovers?

She sat up abruptly, pulling out of his arms, and turned to look down at James. She didn’t need to feel his forehead to know he was feverish. She had only to look at his flushed cheeks, the rosy color of his lips. The fever had momentarily given him the mask of health.

He opened his eyes and smiled at her in a lazy way, his eyes bright silver, warm and beckoning. Laura stared, remembering how his lips had felt against hers when he’d pretended to kiss her in the garden the other day.

“Laura . . .” His voice rasped. James laid his hand casually on her thigh. “Why are you here?” He frowned, puzzled, as he slid his hand up her leg. “Not that I mind . . .” His voice drifted off as his eyes closed. His hand slipped from her leg.

Laura stared, shocked by the way her body had reacted to his touch, his smile. For a moment she had wanted to lean down and kiss him, to feel his arms around her again, his heat pouring through her.

Impatiently, she shook off the image. James was obviously burning up with fever. He was delirious. Snatching the damp cloth from the pillow where it had fallen, she wet the rag and wrung it out, then began to wash his face and throat. Draping cool cloths around his wrists and across his forehead, she poured out another dose of the tincture. Laura slid her hand beneath his head, lifting it, and held the drink to his lips.

“Take a sip.” He opened his eyes. They were still that combination of hot and hazy that did peculiar things to her stomach. Obediently he swallowed, then screwed up his face and turned his head away. “No, James, now drink it.”

“Don’t wa—” As soon as he opened his lips to speak, she poured the rest of the liquid in. He swallowed, then pressed his lips tightly together and glared at her.

Laura hid a smile. Who would have thought that the lordly James de Vere could pout like a ten-year-old? She continued to wet the cloth and bathe his face, but his temperature remained stubbornly high. He mumbled, tossing and turning in the bed, and his words were usually unintelligible. But once his eyes flew open and he called her name sharply.

When she turned to him, he reached out toward her, saying hoarsely, “Put it out! Can’t you see it? Your hair—the fire—can’t you see it?” He swept his hand roughly over her head.

As suddenly as he’d awakened, he pulled his hand away and dug his fingers into his own hair, his face contorted in pain, muttering, “Stop, damn it, stop.”

He threw off his covers. His shirt was soaked through with sweat, clinging to his body. Laura opened the top few buttons of his shirt and moved the cool rag down over his throat and into the V of his shirt. Finally she simply unbuttoned it all the way, pulling it from his waistband, and bathed his whole chest.

The sight of his bare chest brought up more of the restless, twisting feeling inside her. He was too thin, his ribs pressing against his skin, but there was something about the broad set of his shoulders, the ridge of his collarbone, that made her vaguely warm and unsatisfied. And when she slid the cloth across his chest, the heat licked higher in her.

Laura was beginning to suspect she was wanton. Even as concerned as she was about James and his fever, she enjoyed stroking him this way. It was stirring and somehow exciting, and when he opened his eyes and looked at her, hunger flaring in her eyes . . . well, she enjoyed that even more.

He clamped one hand around her wrist, stilling it, then pushed her hand downward, leaving the cloth behind. She sucked in her breath, her eyes going wide with astonishment as she felt him move beneath the cloth of trousers, hard and pulsing. James made a low noise and sank his other hand into her hair, pulling her head down to his. Laura didn’t resist.

His lips were velvety soft, as hot as she had imagined them, and more aggressive and insistent than his gentle kiss the other day. His mouth moved against hers, opening her lips to his questing tongue. Laura jerked in surprise. This was wrong, surely. This was fierce and hungry, not at all loving. This was . . . delightful.

He no longer held her hand against him, but Laura found she had no desire to pull it away. She moved her fingertips lightly over the buttons of his trousers and felt his flesh surge in a primitively gratifying way.

His hand wandered up her body, hot as a flame wherever it touched. He slid in beneath the lapel of her dressing gown, flesh searing through the thin cotton of her nightshirt, and settled on her breast, and though that, too, was a surprise, she did not flinch. She was growing accustomed to these new and pleasurable things he was doing, and now she waited for them with anticipation.

James groaned and turned, pulling her beneath him. His body was heavy on hers, pressing her into the soft mattress. His mouth left hers to roam down over her throat, and a shudder shook him. Suddenly he let out a low moan of an entirely different sort, a sound of loss and desperation. “No . . . no . . . don’t go.” He buried his face in her neck, his hand clenching into the sheet beneath them. His breath, already hard and fast, came in pants. “I won’t . . .”