When Love Comes Calling: Two Short Stories

S
ylvie
, the Dowager Marchioness of Bartlebyrne, was tired. She hadn’t slept a full night since she’d done
it
. She couldn’t even bring herself to put a name to it she was so horrified and ashamed of her behavior. She rubbed a finger over the furrow between her eyes. The last few weeks she’d grown old beyond her thirty-nine years, watching the lines form on her face where once the skin had remained smooth and youthful. Gray hair now infused her light blonde locks. Apparently all the gossip and dire warnings were correct—illicit sex was quite bad for women of good breeding.

She sighed and sipped her tea, looking out over the veranda and down to the exquisite gardens of The Byrne, the beautiful family estate in Kent. It wasn’t as large as the main family seat in Northumberland, where the marquis traditionally resided. Her son Geoffrey would take up residence there when he finished his studies in a year or two. He had told Sylvie she should consider The Byrne her home until she wished otherwise. All major decisions concerning the estate were hers to make. It was the greatest gift she’d ever been given besides her son.

She fidgeted, waiting impatiently for her guest to arrive. As she had taken great pains dressing this morning in anticipation of his visit she’d realized with mortification that she was infatuated with him, with the new vicar Mr. Edmund James. She’d almost removed the new raspberry pink gown she was wearing. It was too young, and made her feel like an old woman trying to recapture her youth and doing nothing but embarrassing herself over a younger man. Lord knows she’d seen it often enough. And therein lay the seeds of her discontent. Not only had she had sex with a younger man three weeks ago, a younger man for whom she had no feelings whatsoever, a younger man who was in her employ, but she was now infatuated with a different younger man completely beyond her reach. And she felt like sex with her coachman John had been a betrayal of her feelings for Edmund.

Mr. James, she meant Mr. James. Her head fell into her hand as she rested her elbow on the table, uncaring of the impolite nature of the gesture. Working so closely with him the last few weeks on establishing his new living here and her work for the parish charity house had not helped the situation.

When her husband’s old friend Mr. Horton James had contacted her about the possibility of his son Edmund taking the available living in the village of Byrnham, Sylvie had been more than happy to offer it to him. According to Mr. James, his son had gotten in with the wrong crowd during his school years and as he’d gotten older his antics had taken a decidedly rakish turn. Mr. James hoped that removing him from London and giving him the responsibility of a parish would cure that problem and bring out the sensible, noble side of his nature that his family had always recognized. Being the mother of a rather precocious son herself, she was willing to give Edmund James a chance.

Then he had walked into her drawing room and her entire world had tilted dangerously on its already precarious perch. He was one of the most beautiful men she’d ever seen. The spark in his midnight blue eyes made it easy to see why so many women had fallen prey to his charms. Dark blond unruly curls far too long for fashion surrounded a face of male perfection, with fine cheekbones, a long, aquiline nose, and a large, expressive mouth. He was taller than any gentleman Sylvie had ever met, taller even than John the coachman. She hadn’t realized she liked tall men until recently. Tall and muscular, if the form outlined by his tight breeches could be believed, and Sylvie believed it, fervently.

She thumped her head on her palm several times in disgust at her wayward thoughts.

“If you have the headache, my dear, I can return later. Although I don’t think hitting yourself in the head will help.”

Sylvie jerked her head up, startled. It turned to embarrassment when she saw Edmund, Mr. James, damn it, looking at her with a small lopsided smile and quirked brow. Just the sight of him made her nipples peak and her channel clench as she felt her sex grow wet. Why oh why did it have to be him? Why couldn’t she have an appropriate infatuation on one of the older, eligible gentlemen in the region? Why this young man, a young man dependent on her, a rake trying to reform, a man who looked at her as if he wanted to devour her inch by slow, excruciatingly pleasurable inch?

Edmund watched Sylvie with hungry eyes. Christ, he wanted her so much he was nearly panting for it. His gaze traveled over her blonde hair, the color of ripe wheat stalks, then into her lovely, round, soft blue eyes. He trailed his gaze down her short little nose, turned up at the end, to focus on her small, rosebud mouth. He couldn’t resist looking at the low neckline of her pink gown, her décolletage deliciously framed. And then lower, to the sharp points of her aroused nipples thrusting against the thin silk of her gown. He felt his cock jerk. He was already half hard when he walked in the door at just the thought of seeing her this morning. The sight of her obvious excitement at seeing him made the process complete. He deliberately looked down at the bulge that was almost obscenely obvious in his tight breeches. Sylvie’s eyes followed and it felt like someone had touched a velvet hot tongue to his cock when her eyes caressed him. Even as she watched, his cock jerked again in approval and he heard Sylvie gasp. Her eyes flew to his and then skittered away, her cheeks as pink as her gown with embarrassment.

He walked delicately over to the table to sit down across from her. When he sat he made a show of arranging his breeches over the bulge, not hiding his discomfort at sitting with a cock this hard. Sylvie bit her lip and looked at her teacup, now held in a death grip. And so it was every time they met. He’d let her know in so many ways how much he wanted her, and she pretended not to notice things like a cock so hard it was nearly poking out the top of his pants. He’d enjoyed their little dance for weeks, but had almost reached his limit. If he didn’t taste her soon, fuck her, he was going to go mad. Then where would he be? The family wouldn’t even be able to banish him to another godforsaken living far from the life he’d known and enjoyed in London.

“Tea?” Sylvie choked out, and Edmund sighed.

“Yes, please, Lady Bartlebyrne.” Calling her that made his skin crawl. He didn’t like to think of her as someone else’s wife, even if that someone was dead. He didn’t know why it bothered him. God knew he’d had enough widows in his time to fill the Tower. But Sylvie was different. He could tell she’d had no lovers since her husband’s death. She seemed almost pure, untouched. And he longed to be the man who touched her in impure ways.

These morning meetings with Sylvie had become the one thing that made this new life tolerable. She’d been a great help in establishing him here and helping him to figure out what the hell a vicar even did. He’d had only a vague idea gleaned from his studies at Cambridge and regular churchgoing as a child and student, before he’d been forced by his father and older brothers to accept the living. It was either Vicar of Byrnham or being cut off and transported for failure to pay his debts. So they’d found a willing bishop, pushed him through a ridiculously simple examination that consisted mostly of questions about his family and acquaintance, and he’d been ordained. And so Edmund James, lifelong scamp, was now a man of the church. It was ludicrous. Ingram Lockerby, the leader of his band of hedonistic friends from school, had been the only one who hadn’t laughed. He’d told Edmund that he thought he’d make a very good vicar. Coming from a man who’d taught him not only how to suck a cock properly, but how to fuck a woman with another man made Gram’s pronouncement suspect. His one piece of advice was cryptic, and definitely not what Edmund wanted to hear. He’d said,
Don’t imagine that a new living will remake your life. You will still be who you are, no matter what you are.
Accepting himself as he was, according to Gram, would be the first step to accepting who he could be. Now what the hell did that mean?

Sylvie had nothing but praise for the job he was doing in the parish. He’d always had a flair for oratory, so he wasn’t surprised the sermon part of his job had been the least of his problems. Of course, his sermons were definitely not what the parishioners were used to, seeing as how he didn’t preach against vice or extol the virtues. He frequently talked to them about forgiveness and acceptance. It was something he was all too familiar with, since his family knew very little of either. As to his charitable work in the parish, what else could he do? He’d had no idea there were so many people who needed help, many through no fault of their own. He’d always assumed widows and orphans had various family members or even government remedies to choose from. He knew now he’d been a naïve fool. His work with the poor and disenfranchised would be something he would take with him when he left Byrnham, as he knew he would eventually. He was not cut out to be a vicar. His completely inappropriate lust for his benefactress was proof of that. Very few vicars masturbated at night to thoughts of tying up a widow and spanking her arse before fucking it, he was sure.

“Ed—Mr. James,” Sylvie began, her voice catching on the misstep.

“Edmund, call me Edmund,” he asked quietly for the hundredth time. “And I will call you Sylvie.”

She shook her head. “It isn’t appropriate,” she murmured.

“Nothing I want to do with you is appropriate, Sylvie.” There, he’d broken their unspoken agreement not to talk about the attraction between them. He watched her closely to gauge her reaction.

She looked away, blushing again. “You mustn’t say such things, Mr. James,” she whispered.

“I want you, Sylvie.” The desire in his voice made it almost a growl, but he couldn’t, wouldn’t, control it today. This had gone on long enough. “I want to be in your bed. Take me, Sylvie.”

Her eyes flew to his, wide with shock. Surely she knew that was how he felt? She was breathing heavily. Her breasts, barely contained by the dress already, tested the limits of the low neckline. Edmund groaned and lowered his head for a moment, clasping his hands between his spread knees. “Sylvie,” he groaned, “can’t you see what you’re doing to me? You’re killing me with this waiting.”

“Lady Bartlebyrne,” she whispered automatically.

“Sylvie,” he said firmly. She was shaking her head again. “Yes, Sylvie. You are Sylvie in my thoughts, my dreams, my fantasies. It is ‘Sylvie’ I cry out at night.”

Her hand flew to her mouth to smother her cry. Her head began to shake more frantically.

“I must speak, Sylvie,” he said quietly but urgently. “I can’t keep my feelings inside anymore. I want you so badly I ache night and day. My own hand is no comfort when what I want is to be buried inside you. For God’s sake! Take me, use me, I’m offering myself to you. I’m begging you to end my suffering.” Edmund ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “What must I do to convince you? I will make it good for you, Sylvie. I know how to please a woman, and I
will
please you.”

She covered her face in her hands, and Edmund was stricken to see her so upset. “Sylvie, don’t cry,” he murmured, moving to the chair next to hers. He touched her arm and she turned away from him. He felt the cut like a knife to his chest.

“We can’t,” she whispered brokenly. “Don’t you think I want to, Edmund?” She still wouldn’t look at him. “This is the only time I will speak about this.” Her head lowered and he could see over her shoulder that she was wringing her hands in her lap. “I am far too old for you, Edmund. My son is only a few years younger than you.”

“Sylvie, you can’t be more than thirty-five. That is not old.” He hadn’t even foreseen this argument. She was young, too young to be a widow and the mother of a grown son.

“I am thirty-nine, Edmund, soon to be forty. I am not a young girl anymore.” Her voice was sad, and Edmund reached out to touch her shoulder in comfort.

“That is only thirteen years between us, Sylvie. It is nothing.”

She threw herself out of the chair and spun to face him. “It is everything! People are very cruel, Edmund. They will say I am robbing the schoolroom. I have heard it before, about others.” She leaned back against the railing, dejected.

Edmund stood and walked slowly over to stand in front of her. “Why must other people know? We can keep our affair secret, Sylvie. I don’t care about your age, or mine. All I know is that I want you.”

Sylvie looked at him with stricken eyes. “I cannot, Edmund. I cannot keep it a secret. I am not good at this…” her hand fluttered before her in consternation, “this type of thing. I am a wreck just knowing that I have feelings like that for you. I fear every day that someone will suspect. If we were to…” She fluttered her hand again, unable to say the word, and Edmund couldn’t conceal a smile at her bashfulness. She glared at him. “If we were to…to have relations,” she choked out the word, “people would know. One look at me and they would know.”

Edmund sighed and caught her flailing hands. “No, Sylvie. They would suspect, but only we would know. They would never accuse you, Sylvie. To the people here, Lady Bartlebyrne is an angel who walks the earth, their very own saint. They would never say a word against you.”

Her hands gripped his. “Edmund, I am your benefactress. Your living is dependent on me. I can’t. It would be a monumental breach of trust between us.”

Edmund couldn’t stop his bark of laughter. “Breach of trust for whom? Believe me, Sylvie, making love will not destroy my trust in you.”

“How can you say that?” she asked fervently. “I will feel as if I am forcing you into an illicit affair out of gratitude or…or fear.”

“I tell you now that I feel no obligation to give in to your insatiable lust out of gratitude, or worry that you will take away my living.” Edmund’s smile was gentle.

Sylvie’s face blanched. “Is that how you see me?” she whispered. “As some lusty old widow who desires young men?” She spun away. “It is truer than you think.”

Suddenly she turned and raced down the steps to the garden, nearly tripping over the hem of her gown. She took off running across the green, heading for the woods. “Go, Mr. James,” she called back. “These meetings are at an end.”