A Lady Awakened (36 page)

Her body opened to him like a hothouse flower. She set one hand at the back of his head, and eased herself to the edge of the chair to get more of him, to get all he had to give.

And he had plenty. He pushed her second leg over the chair’s other arm to spread her wide—she was beyond offering even a token resistance—and clamped his hands over her hips to still her when she wanted to move. Likely she’d be outraged at this, but the more he controlled the pace and pressure, the longer he could keep her going.

She fought his grip, voicing her frustration in guttural animal tones. He drove her harder, and higher, his merciless tongue in three places at once, his merciless hands holding her fast. Every move he thwarted—every twist, every thrust—rippled out to the rest of her body. She kicked and flailed, no longer human or even animal but elemental, pure and raging under his touch. Air, fire, earth, water: his whirlwind, inferno, his avalanche, his own private tropical storm.

Oh, but he was a selfish man. Selfish to keep her imprisoned in her pleasure, and selfish because it was his own burgeoning need that finally made him loosen his hold, and let her go from that peak where he’d kept her over the edge and on down.

She fought for breath. She looked, wild-eyed, into the mirror and then down to where he still knelt between her legs. “That was …” Again to the mirror. “That was …” Again to his face. “What was that?”

“A woman’s greatest trick. I wish to God you could teach me how.” He came to his feet, scooping her up on the way, and made for the bed. “And now, milady, I’m your king. With royal seed to plant and a royal lust that will not be denied.”

She wasn’t the woman to deny a man anything, now. She laid herself out on the bed and took him, all of him, for the third time that afternoon. Damnation, but she did make him feel like a king. She made him feel as though he’d always been one, muddling along just waiting for her to kiss him out of some enchantment into his birthright. He spilled into her, breath arrested in his throat, time suspended all round them, and slid off, pulling her to his chest, settling his chin on the top of her head.

“Martha,” he said on his first steady breath, “I love you.”

P
ULSE TICKED
in his throat, not an inch away from her eyes. Carotid artery, was that? Or jugular vein? A girl’s education didn’t include internal anatomy. But she might look it up in a book. At all events the pulse looked hurried.

She shut her eyes.

One had known this might come. One had seen certain signs. And he was a naturally affectionate man. A month spent in the exclusive company of any woman should perhaps have produced the same effect. It would pass, undoubtedly, when he was back among the fair distractions of London.

Her heart, as warm toward him as any sensible heart could be toward a man of only a month’s acquaintance, demanded she speak. She had a delicate confidence of her own to impart.

Gently she edged away to a distance from which she could properly address him. “I have something to tell you,” she said.

W
HAT WERE
the chances she would choose those words to preface
I love you too
? Not great. He nodded, and waited.

“I expected my courses some five days since. I begin to believe I’ve conceived.” Her face glowed, as it had been wont to do lately. This had been the reason all along.

“Martha, I love you.” He’d said that already. “I want to marry you.”

She put a hand, tender and sympathetic, to his cheek. He felt a fearsome urge to knock it away. “You’re fond of me.” As though she were a wise adult correcting an errant boy. “As I am of you. But we’ve both known the limits of this bargain from the beginning. It cannot end in anything like marriage.”

“I do not refer to anything
like
marriage.” With effort he kept his voice calm. “There is nothing
like
marriage. There is only marriage, and I know of nothing in our bargain that rules it out. Only your own heart can do that.”

“My heart has nothing to say in the matter.” Those words could raise gooseflesh in a feverish man, even as her tone grew warm and earnest. “I’ve pledged to keep Seton Park out of Mr. James Russell’s hands. I cannot marry, and give it up.”

“Why, for God’s sake? Will he raze it to the ground? What do you fear from him?”

She hesitated, her lips pressing together. Would she not even tell him this? “I have nothing to fear,” she said abruptly. “But I believe the housemaids do. I know he has been guilty of villainy in the past.”

Ah. Here was what had driven her to undertake something so disagreeable to her sensibilities in the first place. He might have known it would be some such crusade. “You cannot be certain, though, of what he’ll do in the future. And must the burden of the servants’ safety fall entirely on you?”

“Who will bear that burden, if I don’t?” Every word took her deeper into righteous conviction. “Nobody takes an interest in the welfare of such women. Your own Mrs. Weaver can tell you that. And I will not gamble on the threat’s uncertainty. The stakes are too high.” Every word pushed him farther away. She’d kept from him this central mission. She’d apparently had confidences from Mrs. Weaver to which he was not privy.

“Martha.” He would not ask after the confidences, and be distracted from his purpose. “I believe I could make my happiness with you.” Best to put it plainly. “I hope I could make yours, too. And you and I and this child are a family. Will you really throw all that away?”

She swallowed. He could see—he could feel in the pit of his stomach—her slow descent into despair of his ever understanding. “There are more important things than happiness,” she said. Of family she said nothing.

He rolled onto his back. The canopy filled his vision, blue brocade only slightly less impressible than the woman at his side. He’d foreseen this, hadn’t he? This preposterous outcome. Only he hadn’t known the bottom of the well would be chest-deep in frigid water that made every breath a chore. “Will you not even say you might accept me if you bear a daughter?” The image came back with painful clarity, a girl with her posture and his smile.

“I cannot.” Something new colored her words. Shame. “If I don’t have a boy baby, I shall procure one by other means.”

“Good God.” She flinched at the utterance but he could not help himself. “Are you really capable of that?”

“I am capable of doing whatever I must to uphold the trust these women have placed in me.” An edge crept into her voice, angry and desperate. “I should think you of all men would know that to be true.”

Of course. Now she would recast their entire relationship, including these splendid past few days, as something she’d borne, teeth gritted in her noble countenance, for someone else’s sake.

Weariness dropped over him like a sodden wool blanket. He had no more questions to ask. How exactly she would procure a boy baby—not his concern. What she knew of Mrs. Weaver—that was Mrs. Weaver’s business. He’d cared to the point of fatigue and now he would not care anymore.

“Then I have only to wish you happy.” One more ignoble sentiment came, settling like a sharp missile in his throwing hand. “And wish the curate happy too, I suppose.”

“I beg your pardon?” God in Heaven, that engaged her like no other bit of this conversation yet had. She turned to him, eyes narrowed and brow creased.

“I see what will be the outcome.” He shrugged and sat up. “Several more years of chaste conversation and yearning glances; then after a decorous mourning has passed, the fulfillment of romantic dreams that have probably been in place since—what would you say?—a month after your arrival here as Mr. Russell’s bride?”

With whipcrack speed she sat up, but he was on his feet just as quickly, reaching for his shirt and not looking her way. “You do Mr. Atkins and me a terrible injustice.” He’d never heard her voice like that. Interesting. “I suppose pure friendship between a lady and a gentleman may be a foreign concept to you, but I—”

“Friendship.” He pulled the shirt roughly over his head. “If you will call it that.”

“You have no idea of what you speak.” From the corner of his eye he could see her, pale and still and cold as alabaster. “Mr. Atkins is a worthy, honorable man. I consider myself privileged to provide him with employment.”

Employment. Devil take it. “You provide abundant employment for his right hand of an evening; I’ll grant you that.” He snatched at his trousers.

Her silence had weight and texture; it stretched out for seconds. Doubtless she was willing herself into composure. “Do not suppose I will respond to such a mean, scurrilous remark,” she said at last. “When you’ve finished making yourself decent—or rather, when you’ve put on all your clothes—you may leave. I will not be at home to you tomorrow, nor on any other day I can imagine.” She didn’t even spare him a glance.

Anger and—damnation, but he ought to have more sense—asinine grief clawed at his insides. In the space of five minutes he’d wrecked what little they had. They might have gone on a few days more, and parted on friendly terms, at least.

No. Not one more speck of sorrow, not one more scrap of sentiment wasted on a woman who would never be able to repay in kind. Damn it all, a man owed something to his pride. Unhurriedly he buttoned his trousers, shutting away the body whose indecency offended her so. Cravat. Waistcoat. Hose. Boots. Piece by piece he covered himself, as calm and methodical as though he were alone in the room.

When he paused before the mirror, a last cruel impulse gripped him. With a sweeping gesture she could not miss, he drew out his handkerchief and scrubbed the taste of her from his lips. Then he tossed away the crumpled linen and—so this was how it ended—strode from the room without once looking back.

Chapter Sixteen

D
AYS PASSED
. Two days, or maybe three. One did one’s best to think as little as possible of Mr. Mirkwood, even when one’s callers mentioned him by name. He was keeping busy, clearly. He was pursuing his dairy project without her involvement, and, for all the cruelty of those last few minutes with her, he was still sending callers her way.

Not that this could excuse the vicious things he’d said of Mr. Atkins. Vicious, and with no shred of truth behind them. Indeed if there was a guilty right hand to be spoken of, it most certainly was not the curate’s. Perhaps she ought to have said so, answering pettiness with pettiness.

Perhaps not. Mechanically she nodded and smiled at Mr. Tavistock and his wife, who sat side by side on the best parlor sofa. They were well-meaning people, but they did weary one with comic anecdotes in which the amusing points were not immediately evident. One had constantly to watch the wife, when the husband was speaking, and follow her lead as to laughter. Mr. Mirkwood should have laughed at all the right places, and wrong ones too, and never have felt burdened in the least. But she must give up thinking of him.

And indeed, when the Tavistocks had gone, something occurred to absorb her thoughts altogether and drive out such small cares as had troubled her. The footman brought a letter in Mr. Keene’s careful hand. He’d not dissuaded Mr. James Russell after all. She must expect him in a week’s time.

F
IRST, WE
will see that every lady’s door can be bolted from the inside.” Martha paced back and forth at the head of the dining-room table, the women servants assembled to hear her as they’d been one month before. “A keyhole lock alone isn’t enough. Please hold up your hand if your door doesn’t have a bolt, and Mrs. Kearney will write your name.” Her pulse jogged erratically, as it seemed to have done almost from the moment of reading Mr. Keene’s letter. So be it. If she could not command her body into calm, she would ride its unruliness the way one posted a trotting horse.

What a wonderfully clarifying thing a crisis was. One knew what had to be done—keep the servants safe from Mr. James Russell—and every small action and decision fell efficiently in line. “For as long as he should remain here, be assured you owe him no deference.” She wheeled to a stop, facing down the table. “If he addresses you in a familiar manner, you may answer him as strongly as you like. And then tell me at once.”