by Jade Lee
He was still, lying in the opposite direction, his bare chest pressing delightfully against her thigh. At her look, he pressed a kiss to the top of her leg and she gasped in surprise. It was almost a perfunctory kiss, and yet her body still reacted as if he were doing something a great deal more intimate.
“I think you should rest a moment before we begin again.”
She knew he was right but she just shook her head. “A moment, a day, an aeon more, doesn’t matter. I think I have been sensitive to your touch from the very beginning.”
“I like the sound of that,” he said as he pushed himself upright. She scooted sideways to allow him more room. Truthfully, she was beginning to feel cold, so she reached around to gather the covers. Then, of course, she remembered she still had her half boots on.
“Of all the ridiculous things!” She leaned forward to unhook her boots, then immediately felt self-conscious as her breasts swung with her movements. She pulled her arms tight to her chest as embarrassment heated her face. But when she glanced at him, she saw that he was far from horrified by the sight. If anything, he seemed disappointed when she covered herself up.
“I like the way you look,” he said softly. “Every single part of you.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, so she busied herself with her shoes. But of course her fingers got tangled, and she released a very unladylike curse. He chuckled as he put his hands over hers—large and soothing.
“Let me help. You may not realize this, but it is common to feel some embarrassment afterward. Please do not. This is new to you, and I can tell you that everything about it was perfect.”
She waited as he gently pulled off her boots. Then she untied her stockings, allowing him to draw them off of her until she was fully naked and could at last slip under the covers. It was bizarre that she was now completely undressed but felt more comfortable because she was fully covered. Only when she felt the warmth of the heavy blanket around her did she finally dare to say what was on her mind.
“You say it was perfect?”
“Absolutely.”
“But isn’t it usually more, um, shared?”
He arched his brows, humor shimmering in his eyes. But he didn’t laugh at her, thank heaven. “You told me before you understand the mechanics?”
He asked it as a question, so she nodded. “Schoolgirls talk, you know, after some of them have gotten married. And some of my friends were raised in the country. Between the two, I believe I have gleaned what happens.”
“Do you also know that the first time can be painful?”
She nodded.
“But there are ways to prevent that or at least minimize the pain. Helaine, are you now thinking that we can…that I can…” He looked so hopeful even as he struggled with his words.
“Yes, Robert, I am considering it.” She was smiling as she said the words, another silly blush heating her cheeks. “It is very wicked of me, but after what we just did”—she shrugged—“I want to learn more. I want to do more.”
He grinned and she could tell that he was very, very pleased with himself. “I am at your command, my lady. Whenever and whatever your heart desires.”
He meant it as a joke. He was teasing her as he sat there, all golden skinned and beautiful. But he used the words “my lady.” As a joke. But she was a lady in truth. Lady Helaine. And she had just shamed her heritage terribly. The thought had her burying her face in her arms, her shoulders stiffening as she imagined what her grandmother would say of a woman like her.
“Oh, no,” she heard Robert say. “Helaine, what happened? What are you thinking?”
He put his hand on her bare shoulder, large and warm where neither blanket nor pillows touched. She wanted to sink into his heat. Instead, she lifted her head and looked him in the eye.
“What would you think of Gwen if she were to do this?”
His hand remained on her shoulder, but the rest of him recoiled in horror. “Pray do not make me think of my sister in these terms.”
“Because it is wrong?”
“Because she is my sister.”
Her lips quirked a bit at his tone, but she quickly sobered. “Don’t misunderstand,” she said as much to herself as to him. “I would not choose differently, Robert. Tonight has been wonderful.”
“It is not done yet.”
She couldn’t help smiling a bit at that, but still her conscience pricked her. It was silly, of course. She had made her choice and did not regret it. Plus, no matter what title she’d been born with, her situation was vastly different from Gwen’s. And yet, it still bothered her. She had fallen. “We are both daughters of earls. And by all accounts, our fathers are similarly…er, flawed.”
Robert snorted. “Yes, though my father tends to make his mistakes a little more privately than yours.”
“He could hardly be more public.”
He nodded, and his hand squeezed her shoulder. “Helaine, it is merely a word. Mistress. Lover. Woman.”
“Tart.”
He winced. “No one will damn you for what we’ve done.”
She knew that. Her mother had all but thrown her into his arms. Her best friend, Wendy, would clap her hands and demand details. And as for her grandmother and even her father, they were all long gone. Their opinions mattered nothing. And yet…
“I feel as if I have cheapened myself somehow. And shamed my family name.”
He sighed and his hand went to her face to stroke a finger across her cheek. “Do you want me to take you home?”
She bit her lip, taking less than a second to decide. “No,” she said firmly. “I don’t regret what we’ve done, Robert. I really don’t. It’s just so hard to understand. It was wonderful, and now I’m…”
“As beautiful and wonderful as you were an hour ago.”
She snorted. “I doubt my priest would say that.”
He flashed her a rueful look. “If we are to look to the priests for our judgment, then I, for one, was damned a long time ago.”
She had no answer to that. They both knew as a titled lord, no priest would say a word against him. But she, on the other hand, could be cursed as a whore from many a pulpit. Not that it would happen. The priests had no interest in her at all. But it stung a little that as a titled man, he was given grace, whereas she would have to beg for forgiveness.
He searched her face, but she had no answers for him. So he shifted on the bed, putting his back to the wall before gathering her into his arms. She went easily. There was no place in the world that felt better to her than right here. She pressed her face to his chest and rubbed her cheek against his flesh while he held her tight.
And she did her best to hide her tears.
Chapter 20
Robert felt her tears wet his skin. He knew she was trying to hide it, and so he didn’t comment. But that didn’t stop his mind from spinning. What would you think of Gwen if she were to do this? Those were her words, and he was hard put not to shudder as his mind replayed the question over and over.
The two women were completely different, of course. Their situations, their stations in life, were in vastly different places. He did mark some obvious similarities in strength of character, but that made them both formidable women. He liked that about them both.
I don’t regret what we’ve done. Neither did he. And yet, he couldn’t stop the moral squirm that he had just debauched an innocent. In fact, he was still painfully hard with the hunger to complete what they had started.
Which brought him to the obvious question: What did she regret? What was she crying for? He guessed it was her lost childhood and the titled woman she should have become. She wasn’t mourning what they’d done, only the things she’d lost the minute her father had proved himself an ass.
“I know about lost possibilities,” he said to her hair. “Nothing like what you lost, but in my mind it was everything. At least for a while.”
She straightened off his chest. At his urging, she realigned herself against him. She was s
till settled in his arms, but could now watch his face while he talked. And he in turn could be tortured by the full length of her glorious legs along his.
“It must have been a woman,” she guessed.
“It was,” he confirmed. “My mother. I remember a time when she laughed. There was a day when I was just a boy when we had a picnic outdoors. I went swimming and Gwen sat on the blanket and smeared jam all over herself. Jack hadn’t been born yet. Mother looked at Gwen and laughed. She’d pressed her hands to her mouth but we could hear it.” He closed his eyes, pretending he could remember the sound of it. He couldn’t, but he imagined it. “She’s beautiful when she’s happy. Really, really beautiful.”
“Of course she is. Do you know what happened? Why she changed?”
He shook his head. He dropped his cheek on the top of her head, needing the support as he spoke. “I didn’t even notice at first. She’s never been a loud woman and if she spent most of her time indoors, I didn’t care. I was a boy. I wanted to run around without my mother, not have her trail around behind me.”
Helaine shifted against him, twisting slightly while his body thrilled to the sweet torture. When she looked him in the eye, he stole a kiss from her lips. It was sweet and stirring. And she ended it much too soon.
“Your mother seems sad to me. Just…well, desperately sad.”
“I know,” he said as he dropped his back against the wall. “As I said, I didn’t realize it at first. I was a boy and then I was at school. But one summer I spent a month at my friend’s home. His mother was never still, always busy, always expressing herself.”
“Expressing herself?”
“Well, she had five children plus guests. It was like a house party but for children. Jamie’s mother would be laughing at one of us while chiding another child to stay out of the tarts. Meanwhile, she ordered the household and helped teach the younger kids while the tutor worked with the older ones. Every day we went outside for hours, probably just to save the furniture, but it was never ending. And it was the best month of my life.”
“Until you went home and compared that woman to your mother,” she said, proving that she understood exactly what had happened.
“I tried to help her. I did everything I could to please her, to make her smile. I tried to get her to go on walks, to sing, anything that might work. Over the years, I’ve begged, teased, coaxed, even yelled.”
“And none of it worked?”
“Oh, it all worked for a short while. As it is working now with Gwen’s future in-laws. She’ll make the effort for a bit, pretend that she is feeling better, but eventually it stops. In time, she returns to her bed worse than before.”
She pressed a kiss to his neck and stroked her fingers idly across his chest. “How awful. What a terrible thing to grow up, see your mother suffering, and not be able to do anything about it.”
“It never stops, Helaine, but I can’t help hoping. Each time, I can’t…not hope.”
“Of course not. She’s your mother.”
“There was a day back when I was in my twenties. Gwen was about to come out and Mother had to help with that. She went to the dressmaker’s, attended parties and routs, I even saw her smile when she watched Gwen dancing at a ball. I thought that finally we had broken through. Finally…”
“The Season was too much for her?”
“Right before Gwen’s court presentation, Mother took to her bed and would not come out. Wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t bathe, wouldn’t do anything. Gwen and I both tried to help. Even my father took a stand, but it was like she wasn’t there. A body without a soul. It was terrible.”
She was silent with her arms wrapped around him and her head on his shoulder. She lay there thinking. He knew she was thinking, but about what?
“It was at the presentation that I realized the truth. I looked at all the court ladies in their gowns, I looked at Gwen practically shaking in her excitement, and I finally knew that Mother would not change. She would never be a woman fully alive the way other women were. I had to accept that, do what I could for her, and not spend my days worrying after her.”
“You had plenty to do with a sister coming out, a younger brother in school, and the management of the earldom.”
“That was also when I barred my father from the house. The maids lived in terror of him, and the footmen had no love of his drunken tirades.”
She shuddered against him, and he knew she was much too familiar with drunken exploits.
“The point is that everything crashed about me that Season. What had started out as a delightful time with Gwen’s coming out ended in a home in total disarray.”
“You cannot think that was your fault.”
“Of course not. But it didn’t change the disaster.”
“So what did you do?”
He lifted his head off hers, shame making him look away. “I left it all to Gwen,” he finally confessed. “The finances were in order. That much I had seen to. And Jack was at school, so he was fine. But I had reached my limit, so I packed up and came here.”
“Here?”
“Here, where I saw patients, made notes in my books, and consulted with doctors. Here, where I had more than a dozen women grateful for my attention, and Chandelle, who managed the running of the household. And here is where I got blind drunk one night, sought out Chandelle’s bed, only to be refused, and ended up passed out on the floor outside her door.”
Helaine’s hand stilled on his chest. “She refused you?”
“Of course she did. If I had been anyone else, she would have thrown me out on the street. And in the morning, when I had a splitting head and a foul temper, she kicked me upright and handed me a mop and a bucket. I was to clean up the mess I’d made and, while I was at it, to mop or sweep the rest of the house. And if I didn’t like it, then I could leave.”
“She would have tossed you out? You were her benefactor!”
“And my father is the earl, but I also barred the door to him. Rules have a purpose. Father had violated the rules of the house in accosting the maids. And I had violated the rules of this house. Rules that I myself had established. No drinking. At all. Not in this house.” He chuckled as he recalled that time. “I spent a week cleaning bedpans and mopping floors. Every dirty, disgusting job she could find, she gave to me.”
“And you did it?” He could hear the surprise in her voice.
“I did. And at the end of a week she said something to me that I’ll never forget.” He remembered the moment. He had been wringing out a filthy mop, and sweat was stinging his eyes.
“Don’t stop there!” Helaine cried. “What did she say?”
He smiled at her eagerness. “She pointed at the bucket of foul water and told me, ‘That’s yesterday. Looking at that will just get you more sick. And thinking about what might have been if someone didn’t get sick is a waste of time.’ Then she picked up the bucket and tossed the foul water outside. Then she handed me the empty bucket and said, ‘This is now. Look at now. Deal with the sick you got now.’ If I wanted to think about tomorrow, then I could. But only if I started with now. Not with yesterday, because that was gone.”
He watched her eyebrows contract as she sorted through the words. Eventually she nodded. “So you listened and went back home?”
He laughed. “No. I thought she was a bloody idiot. It took me a long while, but I realized she was right. My parents were my parents. Life has given me so many good things, it stood to reason that something else would be off. No one can have a perfect life.” He touched her chin and gazed into her beautiful eyes. “I look at the moment right now and think I am blessed.”
She smiled and he saw tenderness in her eyes. “That’s a lovely story, Robert, but I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me. That I should think of only now and not yesterday? I have been living from moment to moment since the day my father first forgot to pay the rent.”
He nodded, seeing that she had indeed learned, younger than he, that the past
can’t be changed. “But you fear you have cheapened your name. You worry what your grandmother would say. Helaine, your father destroyed your family name long before you had a chance. If things were different, then we would not be here now. But we are here now. And I can offer you so much. Do you really want to say no to that?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t said no, Robert.”
He brushed his thumb along her jaw. “And yet you cried, Helaine. What can I do to fix that?”
“Promise me that my business will not suffer because of this. Promise me that I will still have food for my mother and a home to live in. Promise me that what is between us will remain just us.”
He smiled. “This is my sanctuary here, Helaine. Only Chandelle knows my real name.”
“They know my name, Robert. They—”
“No one will speak of it. You are safe. Now and in the future. I promise.”
She released a slow exhale that heated the air between them. And as her breath released, her body relaxed as well. “You are right,” she said. “The past is long gone. Whatever might have been or might be thought is also long gone. I am not the girl I once was.”
“I like the woman better anyway.”
“Good,” she said as she lifted her mouth to his. “Then make me your mistress.”
He paused to search her face. “We could wait a bit. This is still very new.”
She wrapped her arm around his neck and drew his mouth down to hers. “Now,” she said.
He grinned. “As you command.”
* * *
Helaine slid her hands down his back until she came to the barrier of his pants. Slipping her fingers underneath, she slowly worked her way around to the front button clasp. He had gone absolutely still except to lift up enough to let her work. His breath was a hot caress on her neck, but her mind was on her fingers. Could she get him undone?
She managed it, able at last to push the fabric away. She had never touched a man’s body before. Not his bare skin anywhere but his hands. To stroke Robert’s flat stomach was like a special treat all in itself. But to touch lower was beyond anything she had ever dreamed before. Her fingers explored his wiry hair and then touched his upthrust organ. He sucked in his breath and she felt the muscles of his stomach ripple against her hand. But he did not move away. If anything, he pushed harder against her hand.
