A Lady Awakened (10 page)

“I’ve never known any to be on relief.” She took care to make the words gentle. “But other families in the parish are, I’m sure. If you like I could ask my curate—”

He held up a hand and shook his head, eyes turned once again to the chair’s arm. “Never mind. Only I don’t quite like it, you know. Asking every landholder in the parish to provide for these people who ought to be my own responsibility.”

“Tenants, too.” The words slipped out before she could calculate their effect. “The tenant farmers pay the poor rates too.”

“Even better.” He laughed, a sharp, humorless sound. “You see my ignorance. But at least I have some idea of what a gentleman ought and oughtn’t to stand for, and it plain strikes me as a shabby way of doing things. Doesn’t it strike you?” On these last words, he raised his head to face her again, eyes lit with earnest appeal.

He could not have said anything more right; anything more exquisitely tailored to win her sympathy, her support, her better regard. The call for her opinion alone should have softened her, but the admirable sentiment demanded the warmest sort of reply.

“You refer to duty.” She moved to the forward edge of the chair and clasped her hands before her. “And yes, beyond the duties we all owe to one another, I do believe a landowner has a special obligation to his tenants or laborers, to make their lives comfortable and worthwhile as far as it lies in his power to do so.” Such a rush of satisfaction, to know she was saying the right thing in her turn. His eyes were steady on her and the worry was leaving his brow. “We have so many opportunities to do good for these people. You may think yourself ignorant now, but that’s the beginning of wisdom, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” He was almost smiling. “I’m sure I don’t know.”

“Of course it is. If you thought yourself already informed, you shouldn’t be open to learning. And you
will
learn.” He needed to hear this. He needed encouragement. “Ten to one you may distinguish yourself, once you’ve begun. Many young men have done so, I’m sure. Even young men of fashion. It’s a fashionable pursuit these days, isn’t it? The study of agriculture?”

“I should certainly hope so.” Now he was smiling, unmistakably, his whole face newly awash with that light a woman’s faith and fostering could kindle. “Go on.”

“At all events a sense of duty is a commendable beginning. Even without you know how to improve the land, duty might lead you to make a difference in your laborers’ lives just by calling on them, and knowing their names, and paying those other routine attentions that tell a person of humbler station how he …” Her speech broke off. As she spoke he had suddenly sunk out of his chair to kneel before her. Now he caught her clasped hands and gently prised them apart, turning the palms up and stroking his thumbs over the inner sides of her wrists.

Oh. Not a new light, after all. Just the usual one. Disappointment plummeted through her like a stone, with chagrin at her own foolishness chasing it all the way.

“Go on,” he said, though from the vector of his attention anyone would think he was bidding her wrists to do something or other.

“I don’t believe you’re listening.” Her voice dropped a good dozen degrees in warmth.

“Not to the words.” He bent his head to brush his lips over the thin, blue-veined skin. “But you’re rather lovely when you speak so. All ardent and crusading.”

Could any woman on earth really welcome such a remark? Maybe a woman with susceptible wrists could. Probably he was used to women who gave themselves so thoroughly up to pleasure that they’d welcome any thoughtless thing he said.

She let her hands go heavy in his grip. It was easy. She felt heavy all over. “I’ve finished speaking,” she said. “We may as well go to bed, if you’re ready.”

H
E INSPECTED
this room, too, as he removed his clothes. Taking in the blue brocaded drapes, the pattern of the wallpaper, the enormous bed, his reflection in the room’s several mirrors. When he appeared to have catalogued it all, he came to bed.

He was quick. One must credit him with that. Comparatively tidy, too. He did not, at least, perspire heavily and shower her with his thrashing about, as had been Mr. Russell’s unfortunate habit. He managed his business with purpose and dispatch, just as she’d like him to, and in future she must remember to be grateful for this, and not waste time wishing for him to be better.

*  *  *

B
UT HE
could be worse. On the fourth day he insisted she not ring for Sheridan, that he might undress her himself.

To protest that this was an unearned intimacy should have been absurd, everything considered. So she submitted, with the same silent stoicism that had borne her through Mr. Russell’s occasional like whims.

He must have taken that for encouragement because the next day he wanted to undress her again. This time he worked with deliberate leisure, as though he believed himself to be whetting her anticipation. And he spoke, incessantly, while he worked. Once more her skin was said to resemble silk, and her limbs and other parts were praised for their shape and proportion. Then, as though she could not have come to the conclusion on her own, he held it necessary to inform her of the exact effects her bodily charms had upon him.

Thus did he like to unburden himself to her. When he might have confided cares and nascent ideas, and been rewarded with that warm, steadying support she would gladly give in return, he chose instead to say trite things such as any man could say, and take as his prize that congress in which only her body need be present. She could have been any other woman, lying beneath him with her legs apart, and his enjoyment should surely have been just the same.

Not that it mattered, she thought afterward, resting on the pillow. As long as he brought the seed, she could bear whatever he brought with it. Whatever further indignities he might feel moved to propose, she would endure with patience and resolve.

*  *  *

A
MONTH
. F
IVE
days down, some five and twenty to go, counting the present occasion.

Twenty-five days. How the devil was he going to get through them?

“Wrap your legs around me,” Theo muttered, and her hands tightened briefly on his shoulders as she complied.

Her brow had creased when he’d lifted her, fully dressed, to a seat atop the conveniently sized chest of drawers, but she’d said no word of protest. Then she’d made a study of her hands while he stripped himself naked before her, and a study of the ceiling while he gathered her skirts up and found his way in. Lord only knew what she was studying now. The backs of her eyelids, like as not.

She took no pleasure in compliments. She didn’t care to be disrobed. She didn’t want him to touch her in any particular place. What was a man to do with such a woman?

He angled his head to avoid any glimpse of her placid, patient face, and caught their reflection in the room’s largest mirror: pale urgency against somber black. Not so difficult, really, to imagine a different set of motives for the exotic tableau, at this distance. Not so difficult to see a shameless widow and the man she had to have at any price. Not at all difficult to picture the frantic lust mounting up in her as she watched him remove the last of his clothes, the hunger that drove her to forsake the bed and take him here, in full mourning, defiling her husband’s memory and the sanctity of widowhood itself. That much did she desire him.

“How long am I to keep my legs like this?” As though she were posing for a bloody portrait and beginning to develop a cramp. Did she
want
to render him unable to perform?

“As long as it takes,” he said through gritted teeth. But that was uncivil. “Stop if it hurts. If it’s uncomfortable.” He slowed his motion, that she might more easily unwind her legs if she so wanted.

“No, it isn’t. I only wondered if you still required it.” Curse her husband for allowing her to perpetrate this kind of talk in the bedroom. Next she’d be asking whether he expected to finish soon.

“I do require it.” He breathed the words into her ear. “But harder. Wrap your legs around me harder.”

Her legs tightened deliciously on him as she hooked her knees a little higher over his hips. In the mirror, he watched his fingers steal up to play on the length of thigh exposed between stocking-top and rucked-up skirts. “Do you have any idea how erotic this part of you looks?” He whispered against her cheek, nudging her to turn and see it for herself. “Silky white skin, bare amid all that black. Do you see?”

Silence. Apparently she thought he spoke for his own benefit. Why did he keep trying? Why should her enjoyment matter to him, when it plainly didn’t matter to her?

And what if he were to creep his fingers up the inner side of her thigh, farther and farther until they found her sweetest bit of flesh? The woman in the mirror would like that. She’d sigh, and tilt her hips to ask for more. Hell, the woman in the mirror already had her legs locked round him, urging him to grind against her there.

That woman, he could tease. He took his hand from her leg and gripped the dresser’s edge. Both hands held on there, bracketing her and steadying him as he slowed; drew almost all the way out, tipped his head back, and closed his eyes. Good. Let her wait and wonder.

“Is something the matter?” That
voice
. If he looked now he’d find her watching him with quizzical distaste. The sight could murder all his efforts.

“Nothing’s the matter. Please don’t talk.” Oh, he’d regret that later. Never a safe thing to say to a woman. But he needed to keep that mirror-widow clear in his mind, to see her eyes widen as he went back in with excruciating slowness, deeper and deeper until his groin brushed against her where she liked it best. Then he took himself away again, to keep her hungry, and hell and damnation, it felt so good.

He drew a shuddering breath and let his head fall forward. When his eyes opened they met with her fichu, black and forbidding. Without a word he bent to catch it in his teeth—one could easily imagine a gasp of excitement in place of the continuing silence—and dragged it out from where it was tucked into her dress.

A sudden catch in the linen stopped him. She’d pinned it.
Pinned
it. By all that was holy, what kind of woman pinned in her fichu prior to an assignation? But never mind—he found and freed the pin, and pulled out the cloth and dropped it beside her. More bared flesh to enjoy in the mirror now, her bosom rising and falling with each delicate breath.

He turned from that vision and sank to meet the swell of her breast with his lips, trailing kisses over its butter-smooth surface. Just as she wanted him to. Just as she’d been dreaming he would from the moment she first spied him there in church and made up her mind to have him, in bed and everywhere else, to have him and have him and have him, propriety be damned.

In small pulses he started to move again, and meanwhile dipped his tongue down into her bodice to feather it across one nipple. She stiffened, in every place but the right one. Good God. Had he ever met with such a pair of recalcitrant nipples in all his life? Could they continue so utterly unmoved by anything he did? With a desperate groan he brought up one hand to tug down her neckline, and took the nipple entirely into his mouth.

A spasm of unmistakable revulsion shot through her. “Is that
necessary
?” she said, as a society matron might address a man who broke into drunken sea chanteys at her dinner table.

“No.” He jerked his head away from the offended bosom. “And don’t talk. I beg you.” How had he come to be in this nightmare? Any ill-chosen word from her now might bring it all down in shambles; mortifying, unprecedented shambles. Even to look at her risked a stalling in his blood. So he closed his eyes and, God help him, he thought of other women.

Of Mrs. Cheever and the way she would cling to him, if she were here atop this dresser, because his ministrations robbed her of her very balance. Of Eliza, who would arch away in an agony of helpless delight. Of women, numberless women, who would rake his back with their nails, and women who would bite down on his bare shoulder.

She was paying for seed. He would give her seed, by whatever means he must contrive. Onward he drove his hips, a mere priapic machine now, thinking of women who would whisper filthy things in his ear. Delectable filthy things, all invitation and command.

Better. Much better. He dropped his head to her shoulder and thrust harder. If he’d kept his head up he might not have heard it, but, his ear being just on a level with her mouth, he could not miss the one faint sigh, a thorough and walloping expression of patience tried.

The sound pierced him, true as an arrow from the bow of … whatever was Cupid’s opposite. And he stumbled like a wounded stag. He hauled in a breath. “Can you please … not …” How would he even finish the plea?
Can you please make some effort to hide your disgust
?
Can you not act so explicitly as though you’re waiting for me to just be done
? He moved faster. If he could just finish while he still had—

“Not talk, do you mean? You said that already. And I wasn’t.” She had no idea.

“No, I didn’t mean …” Little energy to spare for words. “I’m sorry; it’s just …” Bloody hell, he really was going to lose it; he could feel it beginning to crumble like a derelict chimney. “You just make it …”
Impossible. A punishment. A back-breaking chore
. “So hard,” he finally got out.

Like a plucked string she snapped away from him. “There is no need for moment-to-moment descriptions of your state,” she said, her voice frigid with disapproval.

Mother of God. Could she really be so stupid? Couldn’t she feel it herself? “No, I mean
difficult
. You are making it … difficult … to proceed.” He couldn’t look at her. To own the fact aloud was so, so much worse than he could have imagined.

Again he felt a snap in her; a violent start as she saw her mistake. For the span of a breath it seemed possible she might recognize her wrongs and do something, anything to help him recover and finish the job. Then she spoke. “I can’t see that I’m to blame.” Her voice rang cold and uninterested as ever. “It’s not as though I do anything to prevent your sport.”