Cecilia Grant - [Blackshear Family 03] (37 page)

“Kate,” he whispered. He couldn’t stop kissing her. He couldn’t let her leave yet. “I’m so glad you came to me today.” He rolled her onto her back and eased on top of her. He was hard again. It was as if his body knew she’d be going, and had to plead for another chance with her while she was still here.

“I’m glad, too.” She clung to him, her arms lashed tight around his back. “Do you remember when you said I’d wish another man had been the first to kiss me?”

“I think so.” He kissed his way down her neck. His arousal was demanding attention and he was losing his ability to converse.

“I never will. I’ll never be sorry for what we’ve done. I’ll always be glad I did these things first with you.” She squirmed under him, and suddenly the head of his cock met with her soft, wet privates.

“Sweetheart, be careful.” He started to shift himself
away, and only when she caught his shaft in her hand did he realize she’d meant for that contact to happen.

“Nick.” She looked him in the eye. “Please.”

His breath caught and for a moment his lungs forgot how to work. Outside the closed window and two stories down, indistinct laughter sounded as people passed by in the Middle Temple Lane. Her hand tightened gently, encouraging him. Her eyes were dark with need.

A part of him wanted nothing more than to bury himself in her that instant. Another, more conscientious, part spoke up. “We can’t. I can’t ruin you. I can’t ruin your prospects.”

“You’ve ruined me already in every way that matters. You know you have.”

He closed his eyes. He couldn’t … “It’s not that simple. You’ll have a husband …” But even he didn’t believe her eventual husband had greater rights to her body than she did herself. “It wouldn’t be pleasant.” That was a better argument. He opened his eyes. “It’s not comfortable the first time, for a woman. It hurts. You may bleed.”

“I know. I’ve heard of that. I don’t mind.” The hand that wasn’t on his cock stroked up and down his back. “I told you there will be pain in any case. I’m not afraid.”

“It might be worse than you expect. I don’t want you to remember that, when you remember this day.”

“Please,” she said again. “I’ll have to do this for the first time with someone. If it’s wonderful, I want it to be with you. If it hurts and I need care and comforting, I want it to be with you.”

Damn her barrister blood. If there was ever an occasion on which he needed to not be out-argued, it was surely this one. But he had no answer for her, besides the answer his body could give.

He drew in a big breath. “Stop me if it’s too uncomfortable, or if you have a change of heart for any reason.”
He waited for her to nod her assent, and then he set himself at her entrance and pushed, slowly.

He’d never done this with a virgin. He wasn’t sure what sort of resistance there would be. He braced himself for something blocking his way, for something tearing, but it felt rather more as if he was stretching her, gradually, to accommodate him.

She’d sunk her teeth into her lower lip. The skin had gone white all around her mouth.

“Is it too much?” He made his voice as soothing as he could. “Do you want me to stop?”

She shook her head. “I’ll tell you if I need you to stop. Don’t ask again.”

So he didn’t. He pushed a little more, and a little more, and finally he was well inside her. He kissed her, in case she needed care and comforting, and he drew out a few inches and thrust, gently as he could.

It set his brain on fire.

“It doesn’t hurt too much?” Was he not supposed to ask that, or just not supposed to ask if he should stop? His poor burning-up brain couldn’t remember the rules.

“It hurts a bit.” Her face was pale and determined. “But not too much.”

“Take heart. I can promise you this won’t last long.” She was so absurdly tight about him. He kissed all over her face as he moved in and out, trying not to go too deep or too hard. The pleasure built in him with merciless speed—thank goodness she had no experience against which to measure his performance—and within a too-short time he was pulling out of her to spill into the sheets.

She stayed a little while after that. After being deflowered. Damned if he was going to send her home without placating her sore places by means of some thorough, luxuriant kissing. She liked that, and it kept him from thinking too hard about what he’d done. Only after he’d
helped her back into her clothes and seen her safely downstairs, outside, and on her way home; only when he came back to his bedroom and looked at the rumpled linens where she’d been, did he feel his sanity returning, bringing with it a colossal portion of regret.

N
O DOUBT
Mr. Blackshear was sorry now. What honorable man would not be, after sending a lady home debauched and deflowered? Never mind that she’d been the one to talk him into bed and then into her body. He’d find a way to shoulder all the blame, telling himself he ought to have resisted.

She was so glad he hadn’t resisted.

“The next corner is where we turn.” She’d made Rose walk a long way. She’d felt so restless coming home this afternoon, transformed and unfit for any of her usual daytime occupations, and the walk to fetch her sisters from school had made her more restless still. When Rose had wished to go to the shops in search of a certain shade of purple embroidery silk, she’d been quick to offer her company. Then halfway through that errand she’d realized she had an errand of her own.

“They must be very good, to have given Papa the use of their carriage. They do know all about our family?” Rose, having been at Miss Lowell’s all day, didn’t know that Kate was already supposed to have been in South Audley Street this morning. She’d see nothing to question in this visit.

“They do know. And yes, they are very good.” Miss
Smith had been good from the start. Kind, generous, tactful, loyal, and, as of yesterday, downright noble. And while Kate herself might fall woefully short of the standard her friend set in personal merit, she at least knew how to appreciate nobility when she saw it. And how to pay that quality its proper tribute.

I don’t know
, she’d answered when Mr. Blackshear asked what she meant to do in regard to marriage. It was still true. She didn’t know what she would do. But she did know now what she would
not
do. And that was a start.

Louisa sat with one of her sisters in the Smiths’ drawing room, and as Kate and Rose were shown in, she came to her feet and crossed the room to meet them. “I’m so sorry about your grandmother.” She squeezed Kate’s hands. “Mother heard from Lady Harringdon this morning of the loss. We’ve been thinking about you and your family all day.”

Kate made her apology for calling outside of at-home hours, explaining that she’d wished to thank Louisa and her mother at the earliest opportunity for their very great kindness of yesterday. Introductions followed: felicitously, the Smith sister present was fifteen-year-old Caroline, and not only did she wish to see the embroidery silk when that errand was mentioned, and to know for what project it would be used, but the book she’d set aside at their entrance proved to be a novel that Rose had recently read.

Louisa prodded her sister to show the younger Miss Westbrook the house’s library, and to see whether there were any books she might like to borrow. Then, with the younger girls gone from the room, the elder two could speak with perfect freedom.

Kate took the chair nearest Louisa’s place on the sofa. Her friend waited, too well-mannered to broach the obvious questions—
How is your father? Was he welcomed
when he arrived at Harringdon House? Was he sorry to have gone?
—but making a quiet show of her willingness to listen, and her equal willingness to let the subject go untouched.

For now, it would be the latter. Other subjects took precedence.

“Are those the roses Lord Barclay sent?” A bunch of them, creamy white, stood in a crystal vase on a table at the sofa’s other end.

“Oh—indeed.” She hadn’t expected that question, and was clearly set off balance. “I think Lady Harringdon made a deal too much of that, yesterday. Myself, I never supposed he meant anything by them but simple cordiality.”

“They’re very pretty roses.” Her own were pale pink, and equally pretty. She could sit about and wonder how to interpret the fact, or she could impose the meaning most advantageous to everyone. “I would be surprised if cordiality were all he meant to express with them.”

“I don’t know.” Louisa made a brief study of the carpet, color blooming in her cheeks, before she raised her anxious eyes once more. “He was friendly at the Cathcarts’ ball, but didn’t display such marked attentions as would suggest any purposeful sentiment.” Indeed, because he’d been too busy dividing his attentions between a congenial lady who shared his interest in politics, and a mercenary beauty using every art she possessed to try to gain his notice. She couldn’t think back on the night without shame.

“Louisa, I’m going to be dreadfully frank. I hope you don’t mind.” Yesterday, she would have balked at speaking so. Today, having already done things ten thousand times less proper, she didn’t waver for even an instant. “I’ve hoped to make a marriage that can elevate my station, confer on my sisters the consequence of good connections, and advance my family’s return to respectability.
Lord Barclay, because of his title and the generous regard he’s already shown my family, struck me as an excellent prospect for a husband. I did attempt to promote my interest with him, for those pragmatic reasons.”

Louisa nodded. She could not fail to notice that all of this was being related in the past tense.

“But observing you with him that same evening, I began to see how very well you two would suit one another. And I’m nothing but delighted to see evidence of his preference for you.” If that preference was not yet fact, it would be, soon enough. The pink roses probably represented what roses from men had always represented, with her: a temporary succumbing to her superficial charms. The white roses testified to the good sense that prevented him from discounting Miss Smith’s merits and compatible mind in favor of mere coquettish beauty.

“I’m not at all convinced there’s a preference.” Louisa’s shoulders settled, slightly, as though she had not quite been able to relax in Kate’s company until now. “But I’ll confess to you I do think highly of him. Please don’t tell Lady Harringdon.” Her smile, confiding and hopeful, lit her eyes brighter than any blue hair ribbon could.

“I shan’t breathe a word.” She ran a finger across her pressed-together lips. Mr. Blackshear had made that same gesture in bed, when he’d insisted she look at his naked form. With her whole body she remembered.

She felt a bit light-headed, and not only from the memories of this morning. She’d just let go of something for which she’d schemed nearly as long as she could remember. She wasn’t likely to find another marital prospect as fitted to her ambitions as Lord Barclay. Not soon, at any rate. Perhaps not ever.

And yet she didn’t feel any disappointment. Rather
she felt a sense of satisfaction at her own accomplishments. She was the one who’d cut Louisa’s hair, and made her look so pretty for the Cathcarts’ ball. She would encourage her in cultivating Lord Barclay’s attentions, and perhaps find a way to prod Lord Barclay as well. She had a talent for these things. She might find some of the same gratification in realizing someone else’s romantic prospects as in realizing her own.

“If I may follow your example of frankness, I believe there must be many gentlemen for whom your merits will outweigh whatever reservations they might have in regard to your family.” Steadfast, idealistic, good-hearted Louisa. If the baron didn’t fall for her he was the biggest fool on earth. “I hear often from my brother of how society is changing in this respect. I feel sure you’ll make a marriage that will answer all your hopes, and in the meanwhile, you and your sisters may count on whatever advantage the friendship of my family can confer.”

“Thank you.” Kate slipped the words past a tightening in her throat, and lowered her eyes to where her hands sat folded in her lap. She’d imagined the renunciation of Lord Barclay as a sacrifice whose reward would come in the knowledge that she’d done the right thing. She hadn’t expected any benefit beyond that.

But when the younger girls came back from the library, Rose’s face aglow and three volumes clutched in her hands, and when, as they started home, her sister reported that she’d been invited to bring her needlework when she came to return the volumes, so that she and Caroline could have a good look at each other’s projects, a thought took shape that had somehow never taken shape before.

Perhaps some of what she’d hoped to attain through marriage could, after all, be attained by other means. Friendship—maybe even a double friendship with Louisa and Lord Barclay, if everything in that quarter went
as it ought—could lend its own kind of consequence. There might be invitations to social events, for her sisters as well as herself, and with no required pretense of intending to be a lady’s companion. There might be real, open cordiality between her family and this one. There might be a friend for Rose.