Cecilia Grant - [Blackshear Family 03] (31 page)

“Good?” He didn’t need to ask. The curve of his lips made perfectly plain that he knew.

She nodded. Her hands had convulsed on him, one clutching at the bottom edge of his waistcoat while the other curled around a fistful of sleeve.

“Good,” he repeated, an affirmation this time. “Now hold on tight while I make it even better.”

W
ITH ONLY
a bit of twisting, and the involvement of one hand, he was able to get her nipple in his mouth again. She sighed, the smallest touch of voice in it; not quite a moan, but no matter. He’d have moans from her, too, in another minute or so.

He let her feel the whole broad surface of his tongue, slowly. She was so damn stiff against the softer parts of his mouth. He would have liked to see her with her bodice restored, her nipples hard and obvious through the silk, announcing to the world how he’d aroused her. For that matter he would have liked to send a hand up those
skirts he’d promised not to lift, and find out if she was as wet between the legs as he suspected.

His hips rolled against her, and
there
came the first moan, frayed at its edges with the same astonishment her wide eyes had betrayed, in that instant when he’d found the right spot. He’d lay money that she hadn’t ever learned where her best nerves were or what she could do with them. And much as he knew this was a prize he ought to leave to her husband—or hell, perhaps to her explorations and her own hand—he couldn’t. His greed was too great, her moans too bewitching, the memory of his months of hopeless infatuation all too strong. Why shouldn’t he take this compensation, and please her at the same time?

He put a purposeful rhythm into his hips, and sped up the work of his tongue.

S
HE ARCHED
and writhed and moaned, a raw, anxious sound reminiscent of a she-cat prowling for a tom. She would be ashamed, if he hadn’t driven her past all such cares.

Penelope had said it could be pleasant, with a man who cared to make the effort.
Very pleasant
, she’d said, low and significant, because apparently her sister had married such a man and liked to speak of the fact.

But
pleasant
told you nothing.
Pleasant
was a warm spring day in a flower-filled meadow.
Very pleasant
meant especially pretty flowers, and a dry place to sit down in the grass. What word could possibly name the sensations that made your body seethe, shameless and desperate as a she-cat in season?

Her hands couldn’t seem to find the right place to settle. His waist. His shoulders. The arm of the sofa, up above her head. “Nick.” She wound her leg tighter, clamping his hips hard to hers. “I want …” She couldn’t say
it. Couldn’t admit aloud to what she wanted, not when he’d promised only half a minute ago to keep her skirts down and his buttons fastened.

He raised his head, his eyes dark and all-seeing. “I know.” His face dipped near and his mouth brushed hers. “Believe me, I want it, too. But we can’t.” He pressed his hard part against her, through the layers of detestable clothing, and rolled her nipple between fingers that had crept to her breast without her noticing. “Let me tend to you this way. You’re almost there. I can feel it.”

Almost where?
She wanted to cry out in despair at her own ignorance, in fury at his refusal to seize the permission she was granting. She dug her fingers into the sofa’s upholstered arm, one solid handhold as the rest of her raged, answering his every touch and demanding more.

“Good, sweetheart, good. Don’t fight it. You’re so close.” He kissed her face all over, murmuring such meaningless words in between. Then he lifted his head to watch her. His gaze tracked from her face up her arms to where she gripped the sofa, and his eyes narrowed. He liked to see her this way.

She’d triumph in having pleased him, if she were capable of any thought so clear. But all was fierce sensation now, the industry of his fingers, his pressure between her legs; and her brain could only flash and spark ineffectually, like a pistol that someone had forgotten to load.

She thrashed against him, faster and faster as the pleasure built. He swore through gritted teeth; she didn’t mind. She screwed her eyes shut and loosened her grip on the sofa to fling her arms round him, binding his whole body to hers as rapture came crashing over her, forceful and astonishing as a wild ocean wave.

Let it drown her. She didn’t care. Let it sweep her out to sea, past the reach of any rescue. She didn’t need rescue.
She would stay right here, adrift and unrepentant for the rest of her days, because nothing else in life would ever again feel so right as this ruin.

F
OR EIGHT
or nine different reasons, he should have been sorry. He wasn’t. He lay still, feeling all her muscles go slack. His breaths and hers played a whispered duet in the otherwise silent room.

“Kate.” He kissed her cheek. Would he ever be able to call her Miss Westbrook again? “Don’t go to sleep. You’ve got to go back downstairs.”

“When did the music end?” Her words came out a bit sluggish. Her eyes opened only halfway. She was too intoxicated, still, to feel any urgency about getting back to the ballroom.

“A minute or so since. No more. You’ll be just in time for supper. But you mustn’t linger.” He eased himself off her as he spoke, and sank into a crouch at her side. “Do you mind if I put your bodice to rights? There’s no mirror in here.”

“Um. Yes. If you please.” She struggled to a sitting position and he helped her get everything straightened away, bosom put back out of sight, shift in its proper place, silk smoothed over all. “Do you not mean to go to supper, too?”

“Eventually. But I’ll need several minutes of very dull thoughts first, preferably while standing in a draft, in order to make myself presentable.”

She puzzled it out, darting a not-quite-intentional glance below his waist to confirm her interpretation. “That … didn’t happen for you, then? As it did for me?”

He shook his head. “A good thing, too. It’s not so tidy an event for a gentleman as it is for a lady. Not advisable when one is wearing breeches.”
Besides, I needed to
keep my head so I could see every second of your pleasure
, he didn’t say.
I’m going to recall it in vivid detail when I get home tonight. Two or three times at the least
. Certainly he didn’t say
that
.

“Ah. I didn’t know.” She put up a hand to feel whether her hair was disarranged. She was gazing straight ahead now, embarrassment beginning to overtake her as the aftertaste of her climax faded.

“Kate, look at me.” One more time he took her chin in his fingers. Here and here, he’d kissed her but a moment ago. “You may rely absolutely on my discretion and my respect for you. No one will hear of this from me, and there will be no alteration in my manners toward you. I hope you won’t avoid me, or be ill at ease in my presence.”

She nodded, her eyes not quite meeting his.

“We’ve done no worse than many, many young men and women before us. We did better than most, by leaving your virtue intact. There’s no reason you shouldn’t accept a marriage offer with a clear conscience, when the time comes, and no reason you and I cannot go on as we were. As friends, with a shared interest in keeping the knowledge of this event from ever coming to light.”

He wasn’t saying the right thing. He could feel her sinking deeper into mortification with his every word. She kept her eyes on his face, but with visible effort.

He let his hand fall from her chin, and picked up her hand from where it was restlessly smoothing a wrinkle in her skirt. “We’re allies in this. Not adversaries. We’ve no need to be embarrassed before one another.” Still he wasn’t sorry, but he was beginning to see that he probably would be, if this awkwardness persisted—and why would it not? If a kiss had been enough to alter their friendship, why on earth should he expect that they could recover from an impropriety of this order?

“Thank you for saying so. I ought to go.” She was all
but squirming to get her hand out of his; to get away from this conversation. She was right, too. He endangered her reputation with his selfish wish to get them back on easy footing before she left.

“Indeed you ought. Forgive my detaining you.” He rose and helped her up, and no other words passed between them before she departed the room. And a gnawing sense of disappointment ultimately did just as much as Latin declensions and the chilly air by the window to render him fit for polite viewing once more.

S
HE WENT
to supper with Lady Harringdon, who was delighted to have an attendant again and thoroughly unaware of her having been gone from the ballroom for so long. No one, for that matter, appeared to have noticed her absence. So easily could a lady get up to mischief, without a zealous chaperone.

In small bites she consumed a polite portion of her tomato aspic, conversing as well as she could with the matrons among whom she and the countess sat, and trying not to wonder which of them had in her youth ever let a man take liberties. Trying even harder not to wonder whether each had experienced, within marriage or without, that unspeakable explosion of pleasure that echoed in her body even now.

Penelope Towne had implied a woman’s enjoyment depended on the skill of the man. Thus there must be women, even long-married women, whose husbands had never brought about that private cataclysm.

Mr. Blackshear had done it so easily, without even removing his clothing or hers. Was that merely a testament to some sort of impersonal expertise, honed through practice with Lady Attainable and other worldly women? His attentions had felt expert, to be sure. They hadn’t felt impersonal.

God, Kate, you’ve no idea how I wanted this
. She carved out another neat forkful of the red-tinged quivering dish before her, but didn’t bring it to her mouth. A lady could not wallow very deeply in the memory of a gentleman’s stirring words to her when he’d said other, less-gratifying words as well. Concerning how it was too late now for her to return his affection, and assuring her of the propriety of her one day accepting some other man’s marriage proposal.

“A passable aspic, no more.” Lady Harringdon leaned close to issue this opinion in a confidential tone. “Lady Cathcart never would engage a French chef, even when the war ended. And here we have the fruits of her patriotism.” She’d eaten but a quarter of her own serving, and pushed the rest about her plate as though to disguise the quantity remaining. “We shall hope for better from the succeeding courses, though we shan’t hope for anything to rival what we enjoyed last week at Lady Astley’s.”

“Lady Astley’s supper was very fine,” Kate said, and wished she’d never gone to Lady Astley’s. Wished she’d never indulged the hope of one day being Lady Astley, never set out to charm Lord Barclay, never caused pain to Louisa Smith.

She wished Mr. Blackshear had been the eldest son of a titled man, with spotless connections.

This whole thing is impossible
. He’d told her nothing she hadn’t already known, with those words. Why was the fact so much more troubling when he was the one to voice it?

She ate a forkful of aspic, and then another, because it was a point of pride that she show better manners than Lady Harringdon. Each bite went down like a lump of cold tar.

At the next table sat the Captain Williams who’d hoped to waltz with her. He was tall, broad, dashing,
and elegant in his red coat and neat whiskers. She could not imagine ever writhing underneath him and making desperate she-cat sounds. Nor could she imagine doing so with any of the men who’d partnered with her tonight, Lord Barclay included.

She wouldn’t have minded, before. She would have made the best match she could, and counted herself lucky if marital congress turned out to be sometimes pleasant. Her body would never have known itself to be deprived.

Now, her body trained its attention on the room’s open door, keen and poised as a dog waiting for a stick to be thrown. And when Mr. Blackshear appeared, she felt it in her skin, in the hairs on the back of her neck, even before she glanced that way to confirm his arrival.

He didn’t look as though he’d been up to anything improper. He’d restored his coat, of course, and … thought his several minutes of dull thoughts. No evidence of his arousal remained, unless you counted the fiery imprint his masculinity had left in her most private places. He looked like nothing so much as a barrister who’d been called away from the party on some professional business, and returned almost grudgingly to this frivolous affair.

He caught her eye and smiled, quick, encouraging, and not very intimate.
Don’t worry
, said his expression.
Remember my promise. I’ll never tell a soul, and you’ll see no change in my manners toward you
.

To return his smile would be to ratify his version of events. To reduce their time upstairs to a quick animal dalliance, a fleshly misdemeanor from which both parties would naturally wish to disentangle and move on, unencumbered, with all possible haste.

She smiled, or at least warped her lips into the approximate right shape, before dropping her gaze to the aspic. What else could she do? She’d troubled him
enough already, compelling his attendance at a party where he had few friends. From the corner of her eye she could see him glance about the room—neither Lord Barclay nor Lord Cathcart had an empty seat nearby, and did he even know anyone else in this company?—before taking a place at a table of young men who appeared to be well in their cups. Her heart hurt, watching him. He deserved better. In every particular, he deserved better than what he’d gotten from his association with her.

“Such a lovely gown, Miss Westbrook.” Lady Waltham, the most resplendent, in gold-trimmed indigo, of Lady Harringdon’s little circle, addressed her with a queen’s lofty graciousness from across the table. “Have you seen this month’s
Ackermann’s
? I find the new styles altogether excessive in their layers and gatherings and embellishments, don’t you?”

Some well-primed corner of her brain remembered how to converse on this topic, and so she did. Her heart ought to be doing a sprightly jig. This was what she’d wanted: to speak on such subjects with such women; to think of how she might charm her way into their drawing rooms, and from there into the notice of their marriageable sons. Now here she was, with events hewing so close to her many-times fondly envisioned course, and everything was wrong. Her triumph was built on a scaffold of lies, from the gaze she kept firmly averted from Mr. Blackshear, to her gracious acceptance of compliments for Louisa Smith’s taste in gowns.