With unbearable sweetness, his lips brushed softly over her face, dredging a sigh of joy from deep in her throat. When he smiled down at her, his poignant tenderness made her want to weep. Helpless with desire, she molded herself to him, heat and desperate need welling up in her.
Then he began to move inside her, a rhythm that was ancient, mindless, elemental. Her longing built as he loved her, blossoming to a sweet anguish that made her shake, until with one final thrust he unleashed a storm of fire and she cried out at the piercing ecstasy…
Brynn stirred awake, her body throbbing with need in the darkness. Beside her the bed was empty. She was alone.
She had only been dreaming. Lucian wasn’t with her, arousing her with his soul-stirring caresses. She had driven him away with her coldness.
She reached up and touched her face, surprised to find it wet with tears. In her dreams she had found the tenderness she craved from Lucian, the warmth, the joy.
Squeezing her eyes shut, Brynn clutched a pillow to her breasts, remembering her dream and her desperate longing to cherish him.
She couldn’t allow herself such indulgence, though. She might deplore the cold reserve between them, but she knew it could be no other way.
Lucian didn’t visit her bed that night, or at any time during the following week-a reprieve for which Brynn told herself she was grateful. His avoidance, however, only renewed her sense of loneliness.
Her strained relationship with her husband wasn’t her sole cause of despondency, either. Eager to prevent a recurrence of the recent contretemps with her gentlemen admirers, Brynn deliberately cut back on her social engagements. When she did go out, she was careful to keep a crowd of female friends around her, and she refused to speak to Pickering and Hogarth altogether.
Her efforts only made her feel more isolated. Yet she found herself experiencing a strange melancholy that couldn’t be attributed simply to loneliness. Her courses came and went, which meant she hadn’t conceived, which meant the unsettled state of her marriage would continue. Even though Lucian was avoiding her bed at the moment, that would have to change.
At least her loneliness briefly abated toward the end of her first month as a countess when Grayson paid her a visit on his return from Harrow.
So glad was Brynn to see him that she flew down the stairs and practically launched herself at Gray as he awaited her in the entrance hall.
“Lord, don’t choke me, puss,” he said, laughing as he pried himself loose from her stranglehold on his neck.
Realizing she was being observed by the butler and several footmen, Brynn took her brother’s hand and pulled him into the nearby salon, shutting the door behind them for privacy.
“I hope you’ve brought me news of Theo. I’ve received scarcely a word from home since I left.”
“Because we have all been busy trying to run the household. I never realized how much you contributed to making the place comfortable, Brynn.”
She turned aside the compliment impatiently. “What of Theo?”
“You’ll be pleased to know he is safely and happily ensconced at Harrow. I left him debating the efficacies of certain acids with one of his new masters.”
“Happily? He truly seemed happy?”
“Ecstatic.” Grayson’s gaze turned searching. “What of you, Brynn? Are you at all happy?”
She shrugged, not wanting to discuss her marriage. “I never desired happiness. Now, please, tell me more about Theo.”
She settled with Gray on the settee and interrogated him for half an hour over their youngest brother’s reaction to school and the details of his attendance, down to how many pairs of stockings he had packed. Finally satisfied, Brynn sat back and let Gray enjoy his tea, which the attentive butler had delivered some moments before.
When eventually they got around to discussing Gray’s plans, he responded by looking oddly self-conscious. “I hoped I could wrangle an invitation to stay here, if Wycliff doesn’t object. I would rather not waste funds on taking rooms at an inn.”
“But of course you must stay,” Brynn declared, adding in a defiant undervoice, “whether or not Wycliff objects.”
She rang for the butler and made arrangements to have the ancient Caldwell carriage and horses stabled, then showed Gray to a guest bedchamber herself. Her relationship with the housekeeper, Mrs. Poole, was still strained, and she didn’t want the woman’s sour remarks to spoil her reunion with her brother.
Intending to allow Grayson time to refresh himself and rest, Brynn suggested they meet for dinner at six. “It is unfashionably early for London, I know, but I prefer to keep country hours.”
“Will Wycliff be joining us?” Gray asked with a studied casualness.
“I doubt it,” Brynn replied. “I usually dine alone. Lucian doesn’t spend much time at home.”
That brought her brother’s searching look again, but he didn’t comment directly on her marriage. Instead he asked her an odd question. “Brynn, what do you know about Wycliff’s work at the Foreign Office?”
“Not much. We have never discussed it.”