Love Then Begins (24 page)

The moon was out now, huge and shiny like a brass plate it hung above their heads, making the torches pale in comparison. The walk over the gravel to the stables shone under their feet in the light and their steps gave an icy crunchy sound. Once they left the dancing behind them they slowed down again until they reached the stable door. Baugham unhinged the gate and pushed it open. Immediately the horses reacted to the intruder and the warm breath of beasts in their boxes rushed towards them. Closing only the lower half of the door, Baugham stayed and they looked back out at the moon casting cold shadows over the eerily quiet yard.

“So you don’t want to dance with me?” Baugham said and put his arm a little tighter around Holly’s waist. She leaned her head on his shoulder and sighed.

“I think I need a little break from this Candlemas madness. Maybe later.”

The quiet around them made them pause. “Yes,” Baugham said a moment later, “it has been madness, hasn’t it?”

“But it all turned out well.”

There was no reply. She turned to look at him.

“Love?”

“Candlemas?” It was obvious he was stirred out of his thoughts. “Yes. Yes, I suppose so. Not that I think the mummers of Lambton necessarily will agree.”

Holly sighed and Baugham kissed her hair. “You look very lovely in moonlight,” he said.

“And you saved the day today,” Holly answered.

Baugham snorted.

“No, you did. First the end of the mummers and then the dance.” She leaned into him. “I’m so proud of you,” she whispered. “So very, very proud of my husband.”

For a moment they were lost to the world in what seemed a new feeling between them. Companionship, trust, harmony based on something even bigger than their feelings. A common destiny, perhaps, that did not look as frightening or unknown as before, but secure and promising. A quiet spot in the storm that had been raging around them all day and perhaps even longer. Baugham kissed his wife and she put her head on his shoulder again. A horse, obviously wondering why this human presence did not entail closer attention to him, snorted and shook his head, breaking the quiet.

As they looked out, the cool silvery moonlight bathing the path was pierced by a shaft of warm, orange light and momentarily the distant sounds of music, laughter and dancing feet grew more immediate. They watched in silence, listening to the sounds of a door closing, shutting in the exuberant human noises again, footsteps crunching on the gravel, and of muffled voices. Neither was particularly shocked when the master and mistress of the great estate of Pemberley appeared in the moonlight, leaving their own party behind. They walked slowly, his arm comfortably draped around her shoulder, her leaning into him and letting him support her. He said something that made her laugh; she reached up and tenderly touched his cheek. He stopped, took her gloved hand and brought it up to his lips and then they resumed their slow and comfortable walk, past their unknown observers, and back toward the house.

“They’re going home,” Holly said quietly.

“So they are.”

“And I think she doesn’t need me anymore.”

“I think you may be right.”

She turned and pushed her arms beneath his coat to feel the warmth and strength of him beneath. “But you do, don’t you? You need me still?”

“Always,” he said, folding her up in his arms and bending to kiss her, to show her just how much he did need her.

“I think,” she asked breathlessly when he at last released her, “we should go back too.”

“
I
think,” he said, pressing against her, walking her backward across the hay strewn floor and sitting her down on a pile of blankets, “we should stay right where we are.”

“My lord!” she gasped, partly horrified, partly intrigued. “Here?”

“Perhaps it is the company,” he said, sitting down beside her and moving his hand beneath her skirt, tracing the place where the soft warm flesh met the silky line of her stockings, “but I have a very strong need to give in to the basest of instincts,” his touch wandered around and he felt her unconsciously shift to allow him better access, “right here and right now.”

Despite her hesitation she felt it too. The whole day had been such a strange exercise in balancing between the bawdy and dignified, between exaltation and despair she had hardly had time to pause and think. Not that this was any time for thought either. Quite the opposite. He was here, she was here, they were in some strange, peaceful no man’s land, with fervent dancing going on next door in the coaching stables and their hosts walking home to their grand rooms and halls. What did that make them?

Holly did not quite know. But she knew
who
they were and how she felt about being here with her husband, in the dark, with the moon shining through the window and the horses moving restlessly around them, not quite seen but heard and smelled and felt. She felt excited and free and hidden away in a private magical world.

His touch was so sure, so confident, that resistance and reason were hard pressed to compete, but she tried once again, “But what if . . . what if someone . . . the door . . . oh . . . ” but by that time his fingers had reached their goal and she was overcome by a rush of heat and wetness. She pressed against his touch, letting her head fall back and giving in to the moment. Vaguely aware that he was pushing up her skirt, that they slid down on the floor and the blankets fell down beside them to accommodate, she felt the cold air hit her bare legs, felt his warm mouth on the sensitive skin of her inner thighs, and soon the sharp sensations of his sure fingers in her most sensitive places gave way to an overwhelming suffusion of warmth and softness as she felt his mouth move ever upwards and upwards. She moaned and twined her fingers through his hair, giving in to the brilliant waves of softness and heat and bliss, and while she was still floating on those waves he moved over her and slid inside her, and it was more than perfect that he should know and fill that need within that she had not felt until he was there and moving and carrying her once again to the heights of pleasure, and his heavy breath in her ear, and his noises only made her grip him all the harder and pull him in that much closer until he was there too, carried away on the waves and out of control. She urged him on and he told her he was close and then she was there and he followed soon after, and they lay together, a tangle of limbs and dampness, hard breathing, and soft bodies slowing down and finally stopping and growing colder in the chilled air of the stable.

The horses snorted. Their hooves clattered against the floor, they bumped against the walls of the boxes, the bridles clanging when they shook their heads. The smell of dry hay, muck and warm animal bodies grew stronger as the sweat and heat of the human bodies died away. Holly carefully arched her neck and kissed her husband on his throat. It turned into a lick and she smiled as she realised she was tasting him. Like he had tasted her. Then she gently bit him and heard a rumbling sound in his chest.

“I think,” she said, “I have grown tired and too used to fine bedrooms. I think I want to stay in here forever.”

In one sweep he drew the blankets around them and covered her with his still warm body.

“Then let’s rest a while,” he said. “We’re in no hurry, are we?”

S
OMETIME IN THE WEE HOURS
of the morning, their lordships awoke and stumbled, bleary-eyed, out of the stable. The grounds were deserted, but for two local farmers slumped against an overturned bench, snoring deeply. The lawns had been trampled bare of snow and were strewn with litter, forgotten hats and gloves and, surprisingly to Holly, one lone boot with a lace petticoat stuffed inside. A sudden moment of clarity had her lifting her own skirts, checking to assure herself that her own undergarments had not been neglectfully left behind in the stable. Thankfully, they were all present and accounted for.

Still feeling rather surprised at their daring, Holly prepared for the shame she knew she ought to be feeling to appear, but as she examined her feelings about what they had done in the stable, she could not conjure up anything more than a smile and a slight blush. It had seemed nothing but right when he sat her down on that pile of coarse horse blankets, it had seemed perfect when he made the world around them disappear and staying there for as long as they could was all she wanted. When the first thing she felt when she awoke all those hours later was his body pressed to hers, still warm and still strong and
there
, with her, she knew no one could tell her that what they had just done had been wrong. Foolish, perhaps, and maybe a bit ridiculous, but not wrong.

The sky was just beginning to lighten when they made their way back over the lawn, so quiet now, with the heat and damp of yesterday’s revel clinging to the branches and grass as sugared frosting. The clear crisp air and the industrious siskins chattering in the hedges, defying the cold and the hour of the day, seemed to chase away the last of the cramped muscles and headaches. They reached the house and they made their way to her ladyship’s rooms as quietly as possible for a few hours of warm and companionable sleep before the house came to life once more.

Breakfast that morning was extraordinary. Everyone of the party at Pemberley House had come down, including Flora the dog, who was happily hunting for crumbs under the table. Lord Baugham made a fleeting inquiry to his host whether there were any fences to inspect or sheds to repair, but his friend merely sent him a glance.

“That would not be appropriate this morning,” was all Mr Darcy would say and, however his lordship claimed that made no sense, it was all he was going to be offered on the subject.

Not that he was overly disappointed. By mutual and silent agreement, the previous day was hardly touched upon. Darcy seemed in a splendid mood, fussing over his wife like she was made of fragile glass. It had turned out well. Pemberley had a new acknowledged mistress and with those duties well and truly disposed of, what was not to be pleased and proud of in Mrs Darcy?

His wife noticed the little circles Mr Darcy was running around his wife, too, and she sat with a smug smile on her face and sipped her coffee in silence. Miss Darcy, then, was the chattiest one. She was the only one who volunteered a public opinion on the success of the previous day.

“I don’t think they would have appreciated it all going off without a hitch, really,” she thoughtfully said and fed Flora the last of her bun. “Strange, but there you are, I suppose.”

Baugham raised his eyebrow at this unexpected insight into human nature and public days and retreated to the window to sip his coffee. It was a grey winter day and the white hills in the distance merged with the white sky above. Here and there patches of green or black ghostly trees stood as if in suspension, bracing themselves for more wind or snow and waiting for spring. They seemed stoic about it. Probably because they had done it before through the ages.

A flock of black crows lifted from one of the elms on the lawn and the tree shook a little from the relief before returning to its usual motionless state against the grey. Something warm, bright and human sided up to him in the draught of the window.

“A penny for your thoughts?”

He smiled at her. “You expect to come by them so cheaply?”

“I don’t know. Are they worth more?”

He ignored the question.

“What is it you see out there?”

She was in a chatty mood. He looked past her and saw that Miss Darcy had left the room and that Mr Darcy was carefully spreading butter and jam over a piece of bread for his wife while she looked on and fiddled with his sleeve. He sighed and turned back.

“There, over there, about sixty miles or so, is Cumbermere.”

She looked out over the quiet fields and then she put her arm through his. “Yes. I suppose it is,” she said.

So we’ll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

— Lord Byron (1817)