Fourpenny Flyer (24 page)

Which he did, ‘Yours to command, Miss Honeywood,' he said, bowing to her with excessive gallantry.

‘That's all very well, Mr Easter,' she pouted, ‘since you don't mean a word of it. You gentlemen are all the same.'

‘Put me to the test,' he challenged, squaring his shoulders and standing tall before her. ‘You'll find I mean every word I say, so you will.'

She was very aware of how handsome he was, and growing handsomer by the second. Why those side whiskers and that thick sandy hair of his were positively bushing.

‘I've a secret to tell 'ee,' she said confidentially, leaning towards him so that the others couldn't hear her and she could touch his chest with her fingertips. ‘But you shan't hear it 'till you've caught me. If you can!' And she ran off
at once, tripping through the crowds and not looking back.

He charged off after her, running awkwardly through the crush of dancers who were now rapidly filling the room, and was just in time to see her cross the hall and dart through the door into the green parlour.

He caught at her hand as she reached the fireplace. ‘Now tell,' he urged breathlessly. ‘What's the secret?'

‘Well as to that …' she said, glancing at the curtains. Were they all in place? The long velvet was very still.

‘It's a sell,' he said with bristling triumph, still holding her hand. ‘There ain't a secret, is there, Tilda? Confess.'

‘Oh yes there is,' she said, daring him with her eyes. And she leant towards him and reaching up, fluttered her eyelashes against his cheek. ‘'Tis called a butterfly kiss,' she murmured. ‘Would 'ee like another?'

The teasing, gentle touch triggered his desire so strongly that he was quite dizzy with the pleasure of it. ‘Tilda,' he groaned. ‘My love!'

She stepped back so as to get a good view of his face, delighted by the effect she was having.

‘Am I your love, Mr Easter? Am I truly? I'm sure I don't recall any words being spoke upon the subject, nor no hints gi –'

But the sight of his face stopped her in mid-sentence, for it was blazing with such open affection that he was quite transformed by it, his mouth so soft and his eyes so dark and tender, and that fair hair gilded by firelight into a bronze mane about his temples, a carved helmet, a halo.

‘Oh Tilda,' he said, shivering with emotion, ‘I adore you. You must know that. I always have, from the very first moment I saw you. Always. Oh Tilda, Tilda, my dear, dear love!'

She had no words to answer him. This wasn't what she'd expected to provoke at all. This was overwhelming. She put her hand to her mouth instinctively, her eyes wide with surprise, forgetting herself, her scheme, her envied brother, even her listening friends behind the curtain. And her face grew soft with wonder, losing the mocking brightness that until this moment had put him on his
guard and forbidden the truth. It was as if the blaze of his affection had melted all the barriers between them.

And then she was in his arms and he was kissing her mouth with such urgency it took her breath away. And his hands were stroking her arms and her shoulders, touching her nipples, sliding down her spine, gripping her buttocks, pulling her closer and closer until it felt as though they were fused together. And his every touch was magical, trailing a hot, tingling pleasure through her flesh. ‘Oh Billy, Billy!'

‘Say you love me,' he urged between kisses. ‘Oh you do love me, Tilda. Say you love me!' His face was only inches away from her eyes, blazing, blazing, and his eyes were enormous.

‘Yes, yes,' she said, as those magical hands trailed pleasure down her spine again. ‘I do. I do. Oh Billy I do love 'ee. Kiss me again. I do love 'ee.'

He kissed her again, and again, and again, until they were both panting. And just as he lifted his mouth away from hers to catch his breath a little, a coal fell in the grate and split in two with a fizzing eruption of sudden flame. The sound restored her to momentary memory. How unkind she was being, putting him on display like this. ‘Not here, Billy,' she whispered. ‘Somebody might come in and find us.'

‘Where then?' he said, still glowing with that last kiss, holding her locked against his body.

For answer she took his hand and led him to the hidden servants' door, opening it quietly and slipping through into the musty chill of the unheated corridor behind it. ‘Quick, quick, quick,' she said.

Behind the curtain, Sophie and Lizzie were in tears, and even Maria was gulping.

‘That was the most romantic thing I ever heard,' Sophie said rapturously. ‘Oh Maria, oh Lizzie, to be spoken to like that. What bliss!'

‘I shall never be spoken to like that,' Lizzie said sadly. ‘I know. I'm a deal too plain to be spoken to like that. Oh Sophie, the womance of it!'

‘Do 'ee think she means it?' Maria wondered. ‘Does she truly love him?'

‘Oh yes,' her sister said. ‘How could 'ee doubt it, after that?'

‘Where do 'ee think they've gone?'

‘To Heaven,' Lizzie breathed.

Actually they'd gone to her bedroom, scampering up the steep servants' stairs with their arms about each other, stopping to kiss again and again, running arm in arm and thigh to thigh like a three-legged race, along the upper gallery, tumbling back into warmth through yet another servants' door, falling together into her welcoming bed, with no one to see them and nothing to stop them. Not that either of them could have stopped anyway, with desire burning so strongly in them both. For now the pleasure they were rousing in each other was too intense to be denied. Her hair was in her eyes and her gown was crushed about her waist and there was warm bare flesh under her hands and that marvellous tingling pleasure had gathered into one place, growing better and better and better like an arrow pointing him the way, pointing her the way, up and up and up until it exploded into such exquisite feeling that she gasped and cried aloud.

Lizzie was right. It was the nearest thing to heaven that either of them had ever experienced.

Afterwards as sensation dimmed and sense gradually seeped back to them, they were both a little confused by what they had done. It had been so quick and so overwhelming, and so pleasurable and so right, but now they wondered.

‘Should we have?' she questioned. Was that why girls were chaperoned so closely?

He wasn't sure himself but he answered stoutly so as to comfort her. ‘Of course. We've only done what we would have done when we were married.' That sounded highly ungrammatical, so he tried again. ‘When we are married we shall make love every night and no one will worry about it then, will they?'

That was a delicious thought. Every night!

‘We will marry, will we not?' Billy said, stroking the side of her face. He had laid claim to her now. She was his, wasn't she?

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Oh yes, Billy.' Of course they would marry. It was the natural thing to do. Now.

‘Soon?'

‘Yes, very soon.'

‘I shall speak to your papa?'

‘Tonight?'

‘If you think so.'

She thought about it, snuggling into his neck. ‘He will agree,' she said easily. ‘He considers you suitable.'

‘Did he tell you so?' He was surprised that his courtship had been taken so seriously.

‘Oh yes. You must not be angry, my dearest Billy. He and Mama discuss everybody. They are always on the lookout for a match for me. 'Tis all they ever think about, marrying me off.
He
will suit,
he
won't. 'Tis their manner.'

‘And you?' he asked anxiously. ‘Is that your manner too?'

‘Until tonight,' she said with total honesty, ‘I did not think of love at all, or marriage, only of teasing, playing games.' And scoring little victories, which now seemed horribly petty. ‘Oh how badly I treated you, Billy my love, playing such games. What must you have thought of me?'

‘It ain't a game now, is it my lovely Tilda?'

Oh no. It wasn't a game now. It certainly wasn't a game now. ‘How quickly everything changes,' she said.

Down below them the musicians were playing a gallop. They could hear the fiddle scraping and dancers' feet thumping and thudding. ‘We must go down again,' Matilda said, ‘or they will miss us.'

‘Yes,' he agreed. But he lay where he was.

‘Get up,' she said, sitting up beside him and brushing the feathers from his jacket. And was kissed for her care of him, and still insisted.

‘Oh very well,' he said, sitting on the edge of the bed and rearranging his cravat, which had untied itself and was trailing about his shoulders like a scarf.

‘You must go down first,' she said. ‘'Twill be safe enough by the main stairs if we ain't together. I will follow presently.'

So he made himself presentable, kissed her goodbye,
and did as he was told. ‘I will speak to your father as soon as ever I can,' he promised as he left her. ‘And you must dance with me when you come down. You will, will you not?'

‘Yes,' she said ‘I promise. Now go, before they come searching.'

But first she wanted to see if she looked any different.

It was almost a disappointment that her face in the mirror looked exactly the same: soft and pretty as it often did by candlelight, but unchanged. She gazed at it with great satisfaction for several minutes, the face of a loved woman, a woman in love, a woman engaged to be married – oh she had every right to look pretty! Then she decided that perhaps it was just as well nobody could see any different in her otherwise her mother would notice and know what she'd been doing, and she certainly didn't want that. Her hair was horribly tangled, which was hardly to be wondered at, but that could soon be put right.

She set to work with brush and comb, smiling at her reflection as she wound the unruly ringlets round her fingers. Then she stood up to inspect her gown in the long pier glass, and was horrified to see that there was a stain on the back of her skirt. It was a long smear of sticky stuff, with two little streaks of blood in it. She would have to get that cleaned off before anyone saw it or her secret would certainly be out.

It was very difficult to struggle out of her dress unaided for all the fastenings were at the back, but eventually it was done, and the stain was put to soak in her basin, while she examined her wardrobe for a suitable replacement. It would have to be white with a pink trim so as not to attract too much comment, and so that she could wear the same ribbons and slippers. Oh quick, quick, she scolded herself, or he will wonder what has happened. But even though she dressed as quickly as she could, it was more then twenty minutes before she crept back down the servants' stairs into the green parlour.

And as bad luck would have it, the first person to see her as she walked into the drawing room was her mother.

‘Ah, there you are, child,' she said. ‘We were wondering
what had become of you. You have changed your gown, I see.'

‘La, Mama,' Matilda said, just a shade too artlessly, ‘somebody spilt wine all down the back of the other. I have put it to soak.'

‘No harm done then, I trust,' her mother said, narrowing her eyes in speculation. This deliberate insouciance of Tilda's was rather suspicious. She and young Billy Easter had been missing for rather a long time and she'd just seen Billy sneaking back into the room looking decidedly shamefaced.

But Matilda was already skipping across the room to join her lover.

After the third dance she was waylaid by Lizzie and Sophie and Maria, who were eager to know what had happened. But by then she had recovered her composure and her high spirits.

‘I am engaged to be married,' she told them coolly. ‘I decided to accept him because I couldn't bear to see him suffer. Ain't that so, Billy?'

Fortunately Billy didn't have a chance to feel embarrassed and he didn't have to think of any reply either because all three girls were squealing with pleasure and very busy with congratulations. But it meant he would have to ask her father that very night before somebody else told him the news, and that was rather daunting.

But when the moment came, it was easier than he expected.

‘I have the honour sir,' he said, using the well-worn formula, ‘to ask for your daughter's hand in marriage.'

‘Is she agreeable to it, eh? That's what we need to know,' Mr Honeywood said, looking quite anxious about it. He was very warm after so much dancing, being a well-rounded gentleman, and now he was busy mopping his forehead with a spotted handkerchief.

‘Oh yes, sir,' Billy said happily, ‘Perfectly agreeable, I do assure you.'

‘You've asked her, eh?' peering round the edge of the handkerchief.

Oh lor! Billy thought. Now I'm for it. He'll be bound to
say I should have seen him first. But he admitted that he had.

‘Done the right thing me boy, damned if you ain't,' Mr Honeywood said, pocketing the handkerchief and shaking him by the hand. ‘Now I'll tell 'ee what we propose. Mrs Honeywood and I will meet your mother and discuss settlements and so forth. Deal with all the boring details, eh, while you two young things go off and enjoy yourselves. How would that be, eh?'

‘Deeply grateful to you sir. Deeply grateful.'

‘I shall tell Mrs Honeywood directly,' Mr Honeywood said, hoping she would be as agreeable as her daughter.

It was quite a relief to him that she made no objections to the match at all.

‘Just in the nick of time if you ask for my opinion, Mr Honeywood,' she said, pursing her lips. ‘She is grown unconscionably flighty in the last few months. Marriage will settle her. Write you to Mrs Easter directly. The sooner the wedding is fixed the better.'

‘You do not think we should have waited for a better match, perhaps?'

‘No, Mr Honeywood, I do not. 'Tis my opinion we have made the best match possible. In fact I would go so far as to say that we have discharged our duties towards our daughter quite admirably. Mr Easter is related to Sir Osmond Easter, don't 'ee forget, and the Easter empire is a force to be reckoned with.'