“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he whispered, and pushed forward.

Pain shot through her. She gritted her teeth.

He froze.

“Please. Just get it over with.”

He nodded and shoved forward hard.

She felt something tear, a little, and suddenly she was filled inside. It hurt, and it was uncomfortable, and she could see that when it didn’t hurt it would be incredible. Nev thrust a few times, shallowly. Then he brought his hand down and began touching that spot again.

It wasn’t that the pain went away, exactly-it was just that it was hard to concentrate on it when the pleasure was building and building, and even though she knew what was coming this time, it was still unbelievable when the explosion came. She felt herself convulsing around Nev, this time, drawing him deeper inside her, pressing up against him, not caring about the discomfort.

Nev thrust again, only a few more times, and relaxed all at once.

He pulled out immediately, his hand gentling on her hip. She was distantly conscious that it would hurt in a minute, although right now it just felt empty. “All right?”

She nodded. “Thank you, Nev.”

“Thank you,” he said, very seriously. Then he grinned. “I wonder how long before you’ll be up to doing it again.”

He still wanted to do it again. Penelope grinned back.

Eventually the rain stopped. Nev and Penelope walked back to the house. He had hold of Penelope’s hand and went slowly in case she was sore. His own damp clothes were becoming uncomfortable, but soon they would be home and could order baths. He let himself dwell on that thought-Penelope in her bath, clean and wet and naked. It was too soon to be inside her again, but maybe he could teach her a few other things.

He had never dreamed they were things you could teach your wife, but then he had never dreamed that prim little Penelope would take her stockings off and look up at him under her eyelashes and ask him to undress her and deflower her in the Gothic folly in the middle of a rainstorm. She had been amazing, and-he had never realized how different it would be, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that she wanted him, that she wasn’t expecting a diamond bracelet afterward. It was a heady drug.

She winced, stepping over a puddle. “Sore?” he asked.

She nodded. “It’s all right. It just-just reminds me of-” She stopped, blushing.

He squeezed her hand, knowing he was grinning like an idiot and unable to stop. She met his eye and smiled back, sheepishly, and then they were giggling. Nev hadn’t felt this good in months.

Penelope winced a little again, climbing the steps of the Grange, and Nev said, “Here-I didn’t do it the first time you crossed the threshold, so-” She made a startled noise when he picked her up, but she nestled against him and put her arms around his neck, and it wasn’t as awkward a position as he had always thought it would be.

He had to put her down for a moment to open the door, and then he almost dropped her getting through it, so they were laughing and tangled when Nev turned and saw, standing and watching them at the doorway of the Blue Salon, his mother, Louisa, and Sir Jasper.

Eleven

Nev knew just how they must look-damp, muddy, disheveled, lost to all sense of propriety. Too young and ramshackle to be the Earl and Countess of Bedlow. He felt as if what they had been doing was branded across their faces. He remembered what his mother had said when they were merely kissing in the breakfast room. He straightened. She wasn’t going to say anything to Penelope. Not now.

But he should have known she wouldn’t, not in front of Sir Jasper. She just gave a brittle laugh and said in a reasonable facsimile of indulgent motherhood, “Go on, get out of those wet things before you catch cold! I’ll order up more tea.”

They escaped gratefully up the stairs. “Newlyweds,” Sir Jasper said with a chuckle.

Sir Jasper expected to be kept waiting for a good long while. It had been quite obvious what the new earl and his common little bride had been doing during the storm.

He could hardly pretend to be astonished. The late Lord Bedlow had had the same red-blooded rakish streak-likable enough, but without his wife to keep him in check, he could easily have become unfit for polite society. The son had always had a taste for low company too; until a week ago Sir Jasper wasn’t sure he’d ever seen him without the steward’s boy at his shoulder. And in town, he’d taken his mistress everywhere. No sense of propriety.

In retrospect, it was predictable that the new earl would prefer whoring himself out to a Cit to accepting Sir Jasper’s honorable offer for his sister. And he hadn’t even the wits to make a decent settlement: Sir Jasper bribed at least one copy-clerk in every office with which he did business, and since the late Lord Bedlow-and by extension, the new one-used Sir Jasper’s man of business, it had been simple enough to get a copy of the new marriage settlements and find out that most of the money was tied up until the new Lady Bedlow had produced an heir. It might seem sneaking, almost beneath him, but it had been Sir Jasper’s duty. He needed to know how matters stood in his district-particularly as his future wife’s family was involved.

Sir Jasper smiled at Lady Louisa, who was tugging absentmindedly on a long red-brown curl as she gazed out the window. There was still plenty of time to get her brother’s consent to their union, and plenty of other ways to try if he proved intractable.

He was surprised when the young couple came back after a mere twenty minutes, damp but otherwise presentable. The wife must be a businesslike little thing. She looked it now, cold and straight as a rail, as if she hadn’t been giggling and spreading her legs half an hour before.

After he’d pretended to be delighted to meet her, Sir Jasper said, “I rode over to ask if there was any news of the poachers, but we ought not to bore the ladies-”

The countess stiffened even further. So that offended her, did it? She probably wasn’t content until she’d stuck her freckled little nose into everything.

“It doesn’t matter,” Bedlow said. “I have no news.”

“Have you been making inquiries among your people?”

“No.” Bedlow sounded every bit as happy-go-lucky and negligent as his father. If only he proved as easy to influence! “When I hire a new steward, I’m sure he will do so.”

Sir Jasper resigned himself to once again doing all the work of keeping the peace in the district. “I heard you had fired a number of your gamekeepers as well.”

“They were an unconscionable expense,” Bedlow said. “They didn’t seem to be solving the problem. And I dislike the idea of men shooting at each other in my woods.”

Sir Jasper frowned. “You would prefer them to wander about with their guns, unhindered, making free with your game?”

Bedlow flushed, looking like a whipped schoolboy.

“Pardon me if I speak warmly, but it seems to me we must make these folk understand what is due a gentleman. Besides,” Sir Jasper added, chuckling, “I know you are not a great sportsman, but Loweston has some of the thickest coveys of great bustards in the neighborhood.”

Louisa, loyal girl, flew to her brother’s defense. “Nate does not care for that! I do not like men wandering about with guns either, but they poach because they are hungry!”

Sir Jasper couldn’t help smiling. She was so young and eager. “Perhaps that was once true,” he explained. “An honest man may, in desperate straits, steal a bird or two to feed his children. But when a man paints his face black, takes up a gun, and joins with his drinking companions in a desperate gang, he is merely seeking to make easy money at his betters’ expense.”

“They form into gangs because they know if they are captured you will transport them,” Lady Louisa said. She really was pretty when she was angry. He suspected she was passionate too; it would be a nice change from his first wife. Mary had been a dear girl, but she had never much enjoyed their conjugal intimacy.