by Lynne Barron
“Come for me,” he ordered, a snarl of sound against her lips.
Georgie trembled, her nails bit into his buttocks. “No.”
“Come, damn you.”
“Tell me…”
“I want you.”
“Tell me…tell…me,” she panted into his mouth. “You love me.”
“I love you,” Henry groaned, the words lost and found in the kiss they’d not broken, the kiss that kept them tethered together as she climaxed.
With her breasts flush against his chest, her belly pressed to his, their breaths mingling and their lips and tongues stroking and suckling, he experienced the release that swept through Georgie with his entire being.
The tremors that began low in her belly and traveled outward, down her long legs and deep into her core, clenching and clasping his cock from head to base in a pulsing, spasming vise of soft, wet flesh.
The breath that stalled in her chest before puffing into his mouth on an almost silent cry of surprise and wonder, the sound rising and climbing, transforming into a shout of elation and satisfaction.
It might have been the exultant shout from a woman who’d given him only laughter, it might have been the tight, milking clasp of her cunny around his throbbing cock, that sent Henry over the edge into a release so unbearably, blindingly, agonizingly sublime that he lost his wits altogether, thrusting and lunging and lifting her clear off the throne as he spilled inside her convulsing quim.
But somewhere amid his lost wits, his declaration rang out, adding a heart wrenching beauty, an aching poignancy to their joining and he knew he was doomed to love this damaged woman until the end of time.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Georgie Buchanan had the oddest sensation that she’d forgotten something of paramount significance. Took a misstep on a curving path, miscalculated a complicated mathematical equation, mistimed a nuanced dance figure, misspoke an errant word in a speech of grave importance. Missed something crucial, something with far-reaching consequences.
As the last tremors of her orgasm faded, she made a concerted effort to sift through her feeble mind in search of whatever it was that she’d forgotten, but her head seemed to be stuffed with wool, matted and gray, unwashed and uncarded.
Clutching Henry’s heaving back, holding his furiously beating heart to her breast and twisting a sweat-damp lock of his hair around her finger, she attempted to blame both the queer sensation of having overlooked something imperative and her fuzzy thoughts on post-coital bliss.
But only for a brief moment, no more than the time it took for her lover to drag in a sawing breath and release it against her neck, sending gooseflesh prickling down her limbs. She might lie to everyone around her, sidestep and dance around until her toes went numb, but she rarely shied away from facing her own truths.
She’d bungled things with the earl, mucked something up in some inexplicable manner.
But she could fix it, make things right with her future husband, just as soon as she realized where she’d gone wrong.
Georgie intended to marry the handsome earl. She did not deserve him, not by a long shot, but she’d never allowed such sentimental claptrap to stop her from getting what she most desired. And she was not about to start now.
So she’d sent off the missive to the pretty newspaperman. He’d not yet shared the tasty morsel with his readers. For once time was on her side.
So Henry had been out of sorts upon realizing her previous lovers included a debauched social climber with a penchant for pleasurable punishment and a dissolute lord whose proclivities included the orchestration of orgies.
Henry loved her, he’d said so, and he would not lie, never mind she’d all but forced the admission from him.
Georgie had about as much experience with love as she had with apologies. But surely, like apologies, love came from the heart and once honestly and truly given, all was forgiven.
As soon as they’d regained their wits they would talk things out, make up and laugh about all of it.
Afterward they would return to Alice’s Autumnal ball just in time for Lord Somerton to announce their impending marriage. Tomorrow or the following day the story would appear in the papers and Henry would bluster about for a bit, but it would be too late for him to change his mind. He would be honor-bound to marry her. After the wedding she could spend the rest of her life endeavoring to deserve him.
And one day she would be riding along in her curricle, thinking about nothing in particular and it would come to her, like a bolt of lightning out of the clear blue sky, and she would laugh at whatever silly misstep or miscalculation she’d made, secure in the knowledge that it had been neither significant nor consequential.
“You’ve unraveled me, Georgie.”
Henry’s words were soft and just shy of rough and Georgie’s eyes filled and her lips trembled around a smile. She might have told him she’d fully enjoyed unraveling him only she had the sneaky suspicion she might burst into tears if she attempted to speak.
As muddle-headed as she was, she found nothing strange in the manner with which Henry took hold of her wrists and pulled her clinging hands from his person. When he lurched away from her and lurched to standing, yanking up his trousers and fumbling with the buttons, she only watched him, entranced by the blue light drifting over his bent head and broad shoulders.
“By all that’s holy,” he muttered, straightening his jacket with a sharp tug to the lapels. “In a fucking chapel.”
Georgie made no attempt to hold back a laugh. “I don’t think this is a fucking chapel, so much as a storage room that once served as a chapel that’s been fucked in.”
“On the pope’s throne, no less,” he continued, his fingers plucking at his disheveled cravat.
Georgie slowly came to her feet, her skirts falling around her as she turned to look at the chair. It was old and superbly crafted, carved from one tree if she had to guess. The velvet cushion was worn and threadbare, faded red or perhaps purple. It was difficult determine, what with the painted moonlight streaming through the windows.
“A pope once sat in this chair?” she asked doubtfully. True it was large and grand, but no grander than the chair in Killjoy’s great hall. “Which one?”
“Alexander or Leopold or maybe one of the Medicis,” he answered. “What difference does it make? It once belonged to a pope and I fucked you on it.”
“I rather doubt he’ll mind, especially if he was one of the Medicis, seeing as how they were a lecherous lot.”
“After I gave my word as a gentleman,” he grumbled.
“You gave your word to a dead pope?” she asked in confusion, not entirely certain which of them was speaking in riddles.
“To your cousin.”
“Oh, well, Killjoy will care even less than the pope.” Georgie left off examining the possible pope’s throne and turned to find Henry frowning at her.
“I care.” He placed one hand over his heart. “I care that I gave my word that I would not touch you again until after the wedding.”
“And you meant to hold to your word?” Perhaps she ought to have kept the laughter from her voice, but surely he hadn’t truly intended to remain celibate until their wedding. Why, if she’d been at home to receive him even once in the last twelve, no thirteen days, they certainly would have been up to a bit of mischief.
“My word is my vow and I am honor-bound to hold to it.”
“Oh, honor, yes now I see,” Georgie said, striving for a serious tone, suspecting she’d failed miserably when Henry ran a hand through is hair, tousling the already mussed curls.
“But you had to strip me of even that.” Henry turned away and paced up the aisle nearly to the door before turning around to face her once more.
“I stripped you of your honor?”
“Along with my sanity, my integrity and my self-control.” He paced back toward her, the words pouring from him as if they’d been bottled up too long. “And any sense of propriety and gentlemanly conduct I ever po
ssessed.”
Georgie realized, rather belatedly, that Henry was truly distressed. No longer angry, exactly, but rather resigned and disheartened and disappointed.
Georgie was shocked speechless, a rarity to be sure.
“And let us not forget honesty, chivalry, restraint, piety, good humor, common sense and simple manners.”
Disillusioned.
Shock gave way to horror, washing through her, crashing over her in waves, drowning her in regret and shame.
She’d been the cause of his disillusionment. She’d given him reason to doubt his honor and integrity, and all the rest of the wondrously rare and good qualities that made him the man she’d fallen in love with, the man she’d only just realized she intended to marry.
“I didn’t…I couldn’t…you still possess all of that,” Georgie whispered, her hands pressed to her belly, ineffectually trying to tamp down on the queer fluttery sensation that started up again.
“I fucked you on a pope’s throne, in a chapel, for pity sake.”
“But, it isn’t—”
“I tied you to your bed.”
“Yes, but only with a ribbon.” Somehow it seemed vastly important Georgie make the distinction. Even with her thoughts muddled, it took her only a moment to recognize her error.
“Not with velvet cuffs, you mean?” Henry demanded, advancing until he stood looming over her. “Cuffs, ribbons, ropes, it makes no difference. I bound your hands to the bloody bedpost. Christ, I struck you. I pinned you to the wall and struck you.”
“In play,” she cried, desperate to defend what had in truth been little more than a light tap, two.
Henry spun about and marched back down the aisle, pressed his hands to the warped wood and bowed his head and Georgie’s heart constricted, one hand rising to cover her mouth, to hold back the sob working its way free of the mess brewing in her belly.
“In punishment for your disobedience.” Henry’s words were spoken so softly she almost missed them in the quiet of the old chapel. She wished she had missed them, wished she had let loose her anguish if only to cover up the sound of his.
“It was a game,” she whispered against her fingertips.
“A game I enjoyed.” Henry slowly turned around and held up his hand, looking at it as if it did not belong to him at all.
Georgie took two unsteady steps, decided that her legs might not hold her and stopped, clutching the back of the nearest pew, the wood smooth and cool, a startling counterpoint to the heated flush crawling up her chest and traveling down her limbs.
“I watched that young couple grapple against the wall until they’d reached completion and the sight aroused me,” he muttered. “Christ, I am no better than Clive and Carlton.”
“Oh, Henry, you are nothing like them…not that they…that what we…what I…coupling is an odd business…” Damn and blast, but she could not find the words to soothe him, to make him understand that he, they had done nothing wrong, or even out of the ordinary.
“Quirks and predilections,” he said with a shake of his head, his voice a low rasp. “I never possessed such quirks and predilections until you came along and introduced them to me. Was that it, then? Was simple lovemaking not enough for you?”
“There is nothing simple about our lovemaking.” Georgie forced her shaking legs to move toward him, using the pews for balance as the room spun and lights flickered in her vision, red, blue and green. “It is more complicated than any loving I’ve ever known, beautiful and honest and true. You must believe that, if you believe nothing else I’ve ever said to you.”
“You’ve unraveled me, Georgie.”
His words took on new meaning, the pain in them glaringly obvious to her now, when it was likely too late.
She’d taken the sweetest, kindest, most loyal and honorable man she’d ever known and forcibly pried his eyes open. He’d been happy living in a world where honor and truth and decency were more than just words. They were a code of conduct, a moral map by which good men found their way about on the twisting paths life presented.
She’d pushed him from that path, pushed him beyond that comfortable life and he was no longer blissfully ignorant of the perils to be found on the other side.
And she’d done it intentionally. Not with malice, never with malice, but with a selfish desire to peel back the layers of the complex man, part reluctant rake, part charming boy, to expose the hidden depths of his passion.
“From the beginning you picked at the seams of my life,” Henry continued relentlessly, his word jumbled, his voice a low, tortured rasp. “You could not be satisfied with the cut of the cloth, you had to make an adjustment here, tear away a stitch there, until I no longer fit in my own skin.”
Georgie wanted to cover her ears so as not to hear his words, cover her eyes so as not to witness his torment. She was powerless to do either. Her limbs were heavy, weighed down by remorse and a terrible grief, her eyes painfully dry and hot. Sorrow, vast and boundless, surrounded her, heating her skin until moisture beaded on her brow and a trickle of perspiration trailed down her spine.
“Christ, Georgie, why?” he demanded, whirling away to pace before the door without waiting for a reply that would never come as she was long past anything so simple as speech. “Since the moment I met you, you’ve done nothing but play with me, with your lies and schemes and seductions, and I’ve done nothing but pursue you, begging for more of the same.”
Georgie let out the breath she only just realized she was holding and couldn’t catch another. Spots danced before her eyes and she swayed.
“For two bloody months, you’ve led me on a merry chase. But enough is enough.”
“No,” Georgie gasped. .
It wasn’t a misstep, or a miscalculation, or even a mistimed move or a misspoken word.
It was all of that and more.
It was bad timing, worse luck and the worst possible consequence imaginable.
Two bloody months.
Two cycles of the moon.
Two missed visits from Aunt Flo.
And a man who continued to rant, entirely unaware that a bolt of lightning had just split her world in two.
“Oh, yes, Georgie, I’ve had more than enough. You’ve undone me, turned me inside out, twisted my guts into knots and my heart into a misshapen lump until I don’t even know who I am or what I’m about anymore. But it ends now, tonight, by God.”
Henry stood framed by the old, warped door, his tawny curls in disarray, his blue eyes shadowed, his jaw clamped tight. His chest rose and fell, his nostril flared as he dragged in a breath, the low hiss the only sound in the odd little room filled with shifting and overlapping jewel-toned light.
Georgie knew she ought to say something, anything before he spoke the words that would forever alter both of their lives, the words she could almost see forming on his lips as they parted, almost hear echoing off the stone walls.
She had only to drop her hand and open her mouth and they would come tumbling out. It hardly mattered what words she spoke, she had only to give him one truth out of many.
I love you.
I’m truly sorry.
I’ll endeavor to deserve you.
I am carrying your babe.
Any one of the phrases would stop him from giving up on her and walking away, abandoning her to a future without him.
Before she could form a single word, the door at his back cracked open with a squeak and a dark head and a pair of gray eyes appeared around the edge.
Henry whipped around and stepped back as Alice pushed the door wide and stepped over the threshold.
“Good Lord, Hastings,” she said, her voice dripping with irreverent amusement. “I thought Mr. Clive was having me on when he said he’d seen the two of you sneaking up here. How is it I never thought to make use of this old chapel?”
“For pity sake, can’t a man have even a moment’s privacy?” Henry asked, his voice shaking with banked emotion.
“By the looks of Miss Buchanan, yo
u’ve had more than a moment of privacy,” Alice replied, her gaze taking in Georgie’s tangled tresses and wrinkled skirts.
“Alice, are you up here?” Olivia’s distinctively soft, cultured voice called out from the dark hallway.
“Damn it, can none of you mind your own affairs?” Henry demanded just moments before his sister pushed past Alice, stopping just inside the room, her eyes going wide as she took in the colored moonlight and the lady standing midway up the aisle with her hand pressed to her lips.
“Goodness, what are you doing up here in the old chapel?” Olivia asked of her brother. “And why is Miss Buchanan…that is…Henry, surely you have not been…er, dallying with your intended up here?”
“Leave it alone, Olivia,” Henry replied, running one hand through his hair, giving the curls a tug that had to sting.
“Tidy your betrothed and come along. Father wants to make the announcement after this set,” Alice said with a wave of her hand.
“Christ, the announcement,” Henry murmured, but Georgie barely heard him through the strange rumble in her ears.
Spots danced on the edge of her vision as her gaze fastened on Alice’s gloved hand, on the rolled up newspaper tied with a faded pink ribbon clutched in her fist.
“Have you not given it to her, then?” Olivia asked.
“I was about to when you distracted me,” Alice replied, turning to Georgie and starting up the aisle. “A paper boy brought this around. He said it was the first printed copy of the morning edition and I was to give it directly into your hands, yours and no one else’s, the cheeky little pup. Oh, and there was a message but I’m afraid it’s gone right out of my head.”
