by Ava Devlin
16
Returning to Somerton via the front door was something he still wasn't quite adapted to. The instinctive steps from the stable toward the kitchen entrance caught him every time. Caesar had come to expect a second passing-by of his master, and an additional pat on the head at night as Callum rerouted himself into the manor proper.
He almost always arrived home later than the others who were sleeping abovestairs. He took care with his movements, not wishing to disturb anyone, even the occasional maid he passed in the dark. He found that after the first couple of times, he did not need to bother with a lantern to find his new room.
Perhaps he was adapting to luxury faster than he realized. He certainly knew he'd never be satisfied with a hay-stuffed mattress again, at the very least.
He could hear the wind howling outside. Some of the men had predicted a squall blowing in after sunset, and it seemed they were correct. Callum only hoped the gales didn't disturb any of the unfinished construction and undo days and days of work.
He pushed the door to his bedroom open, his hand already going for the tinderbox and lantern on the side table when he blinked a few times, realizing that the room was already awash with candlelight and the crackle of a fire in the hearth.
He froze, turning his head toward the intruder, a bored-looking Heloise Somers, lounging in one of the arm chairs with her foot propped up on the ottoman. She had a stack of loose papers next to her that she had seemingly discarded, and the core of an apple sat on the table to her left. He wondered if she'd been working through reconstruction administration while she waited for him.
She didn't rise or acknowledge his entry other than meeting his eyes across the room, a smug little smile curling the corners of her lips. She was wearing a simple, navy-colored sheath dress and her glorious mane of hair was loose down her back, with only the sides curled back and pinned behind her ears. He noted, as quickly and discreetly as possible, the line of her bare calf that was visible from the angle of the foot she was resting aloft with its little silk slipper dangling off her heel.
He hadn't seen the lines of her body so clearly since the morning of the wedding breakfast. Even when they'd had their moment of indiscretion, she had been layered against the cold. Probably best not to dwell upon that thought too long.
"I suppose I shouldn't ask how or why you came to find your way into my room," he finally said, shrugging off his jacket and making his way to the coat stand. Seeing her relaxed on that chair without her layers and layers of winter-wear, beyond providing a particularly pleasing tableau, made him wish to shed all of his bulky outdoor wear as well. Was there anything so luxurious as kicking off one's boots after putting them to use all day?
"This is my childhood home," she replied easily. "I will find my way into whichever rooms I please with very little trouble."
"Well, it's hardly appropriate," he said with mock sternness. "Surely I should ring for a chaperone."
She rolled her eyes, slinging her feet from the ottoman to the ground, and pushed herself to her feet. "Yes, yes, you've made your point quite well. You're a true gentleman now, starch and all. I am convinced, despite the quality of the poetry."
"It wasn't poetry," Callum replied with a lift of his chin. "I didn't create rhymes."
She laughed, tossing her hair over her shoulder and stalking toward him the way one might imagine a lioness approaching her prey. She drew herself up a breath away from him, tilting her head up to meet his eye, and said with a cryptic little grin, "I heard about what you did today."
"Finishing the chicken coop?" he guessed.
"No, but allow me to express extreme praise for that as well," she said with a sincere lift of her brows. "However, I am speaking of your display of friendship to Abby Collins. You set the church marms into quite the indignant buzz. Don't you know you're supposed to shun her completely? Don't you know they were enjoying their laughter at the way she gazes at you?"
"I've never made a very good church marm," he replied. "Though I am sorry to hear I was the cause of mockery at her expense."
Heloise scoffed, waving a hand as though to dispel the memory of such people. "If it weren't you, it would've been some other peevish nonsense. The important thing is that today, you managed to not only silence them, but cause them a degree of shame at their behavior. In a church of all places, one should extend kindness to the less fortunate."
He hesitated, uncertain what exactly was happening, searching the merry sparkle in her emerald eyes for some clue as to what he was supposed to do next. Uncertainly, he attempted, "I hope you do not think I was encouraging any romantic attachment through my company. I simply wished to provide her with a degree of friendship where she seems to have very little."
She narrowed her eyes a little, as though she were searching for his intentions as well. "I know that, you fool man," she snapped, though there was no sharpness to her words. "Why do you think I came here? To scold you?"
So powerful was the urge to pull her against him and plunder the petulant softness of her pretty mouth that he forced himself to swallow and take a step backward. "I wouldn't presume such assumptions, Lady Heloise."
"Lady Heloise," she mocked in a particularly poor imitation of his voice. "You are toying with me, Callum. Why?"
He chuckled despite himself, and held his hands up in surrender at her incensed expression. "I wasn't intending to, truly. It was only that once I realized how much it flustered you, it was too endearing to stop. Did you enjoy the bad poetry, at the very least, even as comedy?"
She crossed her arms and looked away, appearing very close to a pout. There was his impetuous Heloise, hidden under all those layers of sensible adulthood. "You know very well I did," she huffed. "I can't believe you kept all those stupid notes. I was such a little fool."
"You were many things," he replied, unable to resist reaching forward for her, pulling her closer with one arm wrapped around her slender waist, touching the tip of his nose to hers. "You are still. Not a fool, though."
She shivered, biting down on her lip and letting her eyelids flutter shut. "I'm still a fool," she confessed, tracing the flats of her palms up along his chest and looping them around his neck. "It's all your fault."
He brushed the stubbled edge of his cheek against the silken line of her jaw. He dropped light kisses on her cheek, at the tip of her sharp little chin, into the hollow at the top of her throat. "I certainly hope so," he whispered into the warmth of that delicate skin. "I'd feared I had no effect on you at all."
"Then you are a fool as well," she breathed, melting into him, the heat of her body radiating through the thin material of her dress. "I think you know very well why I came here and what I want."
If she was hoping that he would be the one to think clearly, to put a stop to this, she was making it less likely by the second. He ran his hands down her sides, his thumbs teasing at the sides of her breasts, the dip of her waist. He slid his workman's fingers over the pert little swell of her bottom and pulled her hips into his, his arousal pressing into the soft sweetness of her belly. He held her there, allowing her to feel how very much he wanted the same things she alluded to, and met her gaze, his eyes hot and gleaming.
She met that gaze, fearless and challenging as ever. "I took precautions," she said softly, trailing a finger down the center of his chest, "but you must withdraw from me before you spend your seed. Can you do that?"
He nodded, certain the movement was more curt than the situation demanded, but he could hardly think for the things her words had put into his mind. His ears were nigh ringing because of it.
She smiled then, the devilish little grin of a born troublemaker, and pressed the tip of her finger into his chest, just above his heart, pushing herself a step away. "Good," she said. "Lock the door."
He did not hesitate, turning on his heel and snatching the room key from its place on the table with the tinderbox. He turned the lock into place, securing them into the room together, and turned around to find the wind near
ly knocked out of him.
She was, somehow, already nude, standing in the puddle of fabric that had been her dress. She had her arms hanging at her sides, her chin raised, hair like glowing magma spilling down her back and twining over the lean muscles of her freckled arms. She was lit from behind by the fire, the rise and fall of her breath giving the only hint that she was not an apparition nor sculpture.
He allowed his eyes to scrape over her, to indulge in the visual feast that she presented, which he had been able to only conjure from memory for such a very, very long time. Had she grown more lush in his absence? Her hips seemed rounder, softer somehow. Her breasts looked fuller and heavier.
He found himself pulling his own shirt off over his head, tossing it away in some unknown direction. He did not know if she had pictured him in his absence or if women found as much pleasure in the male form as the latter did the former, but he wanted to give her everything and more that she was willing to give to him.
He rose from removing his trousers, just as bare as she, and stood opposite the firelight. There was a flicker of satisfaction in him at the way her eyes roamed over the broad muscle of his chest, lingering on a few of the scars he had acquired since she had last seen him. As her gaze lowered, her tongue darted out and moistened her lips, likely unaware of just how provocative such a motion was.
He didn't trust himself to touch her. He didn't trust himself to do anything that he wanted this much and not somehow muck it up. Still, as those eyes rose to find his again, he couldn't help crossing the divide between them. He couldn't resist her any more than the seasons could resist changing, any more than the sun could cease to dance with the moon.
She dug her fingers into his hair, dragging his mouth down to meet hers as he lifted her from the floor, wrapping her legs around his middle. He carried her without interrupting her kiss, to the luxurious bed in the center of the room—a far cry from the hayloft they once shared. He lowered her gently onto the coverlet, bracing one arm and then the other on either side of her so that he would not have to let her go completely.
He only left the sweetness of her mouth to explore elsewhere, to kiss down to the elegant lines of her collar, the tops of those beautiful breasts. He flicked his tongue against the rosy delicacy of her nipples, basking in the sound of her quickening breath. He slid his fingers down over the soft planes of her belly, the indents along her hipbones, his hands roaming to the places he'd long wished to revisit. He separated her thighs and stroked the silky skin just below where they met as his lips trailed down to follow the path his hands had taken.
In the dancing shadows of the firelight, her skin appeared at once a single pale slate of alabaster, void of her freckling in some places, while wild and spotted as a fawn's in others. His fingers traced over three silver lines on her hip, perhaps a scar from some misadventure he had missed during his absence. He kissed them in apology for the time he'd lost and in appreciation of the woman she'd become.
He would never take back their frenzied first encounter since his return, but it had been devoid of his favorite parts of lovemaking. He wanted to see all of her, feel all of her. He wanted to taste the ticklish skin behind her knees and breathe in the earthy fragrance of that incredible hair. He wanted to linger in everything just as much as his body argued for immediate release.
When his mouth found the most delicate part of her, he knew he'd have to keep her from writhing away from him. She had always lost control of herself when he did that, her skin burning hot. He secured his big hands over her hips and kept her still as he enjoyed the taste of her, lapping at her very essence.
She reached down to tug at his hair, her fingers warm and urgent against his scalp. She was stifling her cries into the silk-lined pillows on the bed, begging him to take her now as she rocked against the motion of his tongue.
There would be more time to savor her later, he told himself. They had the rest of their lives. Far be it for him to disregard a plea for the very thing every instinct was telling him he needed as well. He reared up, catching her mouth with his own, silencing her words with his tongue, and drove himself into her to the hilt.
She bit down on his lip, her nails scraping along the muscles of his back. She no longer clawed him to bleeding the way she had the first time they'd made love, all those years ago, but she had never been able to control pawing at him like a lioness while he took her in this way.
She wrapped her legs around his hips, linking her ankles as she bucked against him, holding herself close to him, unwilling to give up the taste of his lips even for the pleasure of their joining. She was no passive miss to be enjoyed, and never had been. She met him thrust for thrust, finding her own pleasure with a ragged cry that he drank down like ambrosia.
She slid her hands up along his neck, through his hair and onto either side of his face, her eyes sliding open as her body melted into satisfied bliss. "Callum," she breathed. "Mine."
"Yours," he agreed, his voice strained, body taut as his own pleasure rose within him. He remembered at the last moment what she had requested of him, almost a breath too late, and withdrew just in time to milk his final pleasure onto the softness of her thighs.
It was so overpowering, so completely satisfying, that he felt the will drain from his limbs, his strength depleted, his hunger sated. He collapsed onto her, ragged breaths coming in heavy gulps. Their thighs mingled, the slick result of their coupling smearing between their flesh.
He rolled onto his side, pulling her close to him. His eyelids were heavy, his body thoroughly taxed. Just for a moment, he thought, they could rest in each other's arms. Just for a moment, they could catch their breath. They could be at peace.
He did not know how long he had dozed on the cusp of oblivion, but when he blinked back into the world, he found she had arrived ahead of him. Her eyes were already open and emerald bright, fixed upon his own. He reached down to slide his thumb across the curve of her cheek, marveling at the fact that she was here, tucked into his arms again.
She had come to him. She had come with the express intention of falling into his bed. It was more than he deserved to even hope for.
What was it she had said? She had taken precautions? Against what?
"What did you mean," he whispered, twining his fingers into her curls, "when you said you took precautions?"
"Oh." She bit her lip, looking a little bashful. "Something I learned as a midwife, to prevent conception."
He blinked, the haze that had settled over his mind in the midst of desire clearing immediately. "But in the clinic ..."
"I am certain we didn't conceive in the clinic," she whispered, touching his hair. "But the risk we took was foolhardy."
He exhaled slowly, considering what she was saying. "That whole summer, we never even considered it. You might have very well ended up like Abigail Collins."
She was silent for a moment, still, with her eyes searching his face. "What if I had?" she finally whispered. "Then or now?"
He considered it, what it would have meant for them. In truth, he was not at all displeased with the idea of her growing round with his child. The thought sprouted in his mind with an idyllic light as he stroked her back. He could picture her with her hair down her back, large with her pregnancy, greeting him with a kiss in a field of heather which grew in the plains before a country homestead. It was something he realized he did want, very much, and soon it would be a real possibility. Their suffering had finally put him in a position to make it real.
"You would make a wonderful mother, Hel, but you are right that it’s best we wait. Such a surprise would only mean that I must speak to your brother sooner than I had planned," he told her, "before everything was in place."
"My brother?" she repeated, her whisper replaced by a bewildered indignation. "What do my brothers have to do with anything?"
He chuckled, wanting nothing more than to kiss her until she understood him. "I wanted to wait, at least until I had purchased a property and a few mounts, enough to prove I
can provide for us. I thought perhaps to breed carriage horses."
She pulled back, her brow wrinkled as she gazed up at him. "Again, what part do either of my brothers play in such thoughts?"
"Well," he said, smiling, "it is customary, is it not, to ask for the blessing of the head of a household if you wish to wed its daughter?"
"The head of House Somers is currently me, is it not?" she snapped. "Else you might consider that I have lived in the dower house these past years, not at Somerton. If you want someone's permission, you'd best ask my mother, then, as you do not wish for me simply to decide myself."
"Hel." He sighed, his exasperation tinted with affection. "I only wish to do this correctly, to be worthy of you."
"Yes, you've said before," she replied, collapsing back against his chest. "You always were, though, and I never wanted the proper way of things anyhow."
"I know," he replied. He pressed a kiss into the top of her head, relieved that she was not pulling away anymore. "I know."
"Stables," she pondered on a yawn. "It is not a bad thought. You've a way with horses."
"Heloise?" he said, his heart fit to melt within his chest. "Do you wish to marry me?"
"Mm," she replied, already dozing off again. "It is a lovely thought."
17
She was going to have to tell him.
Soon.
She still had no idea how to go about it. How does one tell a man such a thing?
Warm and sated, curled into bed with her, he had seemed pleased with the idea of putting a child in her. That's all it had been, though, an idea, a fantasy in which he pictured a baby from concept to birth, not a three-year-old girl who already spoke her thoughts and walked alone.
He had missed so very much. She had been driven by her anger about it, the knowledge of what he'd forced her to do alone, the resentment of what she’d lost. She had unquestioningly been the injured party in their affair, but now ... now she realized that he would never be able to reclaim some of the most precious moments of one’s life.
