All Dressed in White

by Charis Michaels

  “Tessa,” he said. It was all he could manage.

  She wore a day dress in chalky blue, two shades lighter than her eyes. Her hair had been styled in two thick braids, coiled at her crown with a small blue hat perched at a jaunty angle. She wore an ivory shawl and an ivory silk pin in the shape of a gardenia on her lapel. Pearlescent leather gloves hugged her hands and disappeared into the sleeves of her dress. Tiny pearls traced her collar, sleeves, and hem. She looked like a sketch in one of Perry’s fashion periodicals. In addition to the pretty dress, she seemed to step lighter, to speak with more lilt, to smile more easily. Joseph’s thoughts rolled back to their first meeting on the street in Pixham. No woman is lovelier.

  “You look refreshed,” he said. Women grew weary of men who gushed. He allowed his eyes to do the gushing. He could not look away.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Perry is coming to take the baby. I trust he was well behaved. But where is his hat?”

  “We grew weary of the hat.” Joseph pulled it from his pocket in a wad. “He and I were discussing our impression of Hartlepool.”

  “And what conclusion did you reach?”

  “We concluded,” he said, “that we shall like it if you like it.”

  “This sounds suspiciously compliant.”

  “A father and son can comply without it being suspicious, can’t we?”

  Tessa went very still. She stared at Joseph.

  “Does it distress you, Tessa, for me to call Christian my son?”

  She shook her head. She seemed unable to speak.

  “I cannot say what it’s meant to feel like—when a man becomes a father. Trevor says it is a combination of worry and pride, hope and love. Exhaustion. Exhilaration. Protectiveness. And something more. Something beyond the realm of understanding.”

  “Yes,” rasped Tessa. Tears choked her voice. “I would say this is accurate—about motherhood, at least.”

  “The affection I feel now for Christian seems like only the beginning of something that will grow to fill my life in ways I cannot imagine. It seems like a very large, very significant love that I find myself wanting, very much. If you wouldn’t mind.”

  Again, she shook her head. She kissed the top of her son’s hatless head. “It has been my greatest wish,” she whispered. “Greater even that you would love me.”

  “Well, you shall have two wishes fulfilled, because I love you both. Oh, Tessa. I love you both.” He bent to nuzzle her neck.

  Tessa tucked herself against him and squeezed the baby. Christian made a squawking noise and began to kick. She burrowed deeper.

  “By the way,” Joseph said, speaking against her hair, “I’ve decided not to say those words again. Not until you say them. No more I-love-yous for you, my dear. I shall tell Christian, of course, because he cannot yet speak.”

  Tessa reared back. The baby grabbed the fat loop of one of her braids and she cocked her head, following the baby’s firm grip. “But I do love you,” she said.

  “No,” dismissed Joseph, working at the baby’s clenched fist in her hair. “Unacceptable. Said under duress. Parroted back to me because we are discussing it.”

  “Stop, of course, I love you,” she said, half laughing. “Christian, ouch. Let go.”

  “Perhaps you do and perhaps I do,” Joseph said, finally disentangling the braid from the baby’s fist. Christian wailed. “But you’ll not hear me say it again until I hear an authentic I-love-you from you.” He looked down at her and winked.

  A gasp from behind them interrupted their conversation. “Why is the baby not wearing his hat?”

  It was Perry, her youthful disapproval very clear. Joseph winked again and kissed both Tessa and Christian on the tops of their heads and handed the fussy baby to Perry. Tessa discussed meals and naps with the maid and then sent them on their way, but not before Perry reintroduced Christian to his hat. The baby’s cries could be heard in Durham.

  “The discussion of I-love-you is not over,” Tessa said when she returned. “I am determined to be believed.”

  “Oh, I hope not,” Joseph said, gesturing for her to proceed him on the sidewalk. “You must work to make up for lost time.”

  Tessa narrowed her eyes, studying him, and then looked toward the water. “Tell me more of what you and Christian made of the town on your walk?” she finally asked.

  “He and I mostly made a circuit of the inn yard,” Joseph said. “But we’re told the town is grey and foggy, although the ocean views are splendid in the sun. You can expect fish at every meal, of course. Storms in November and February. And . . . there is a dockyard in search of a manifest clerk in their dock house.”

  “No!” Tessa spun to him.

  Joseph clasped his hands behind his back and smiled. “Stoker, who is sulking around somewhere, by the way, learned this as soon as we’d made port and leased a slip. I checked around. There are several positions in the dock house, actually. It is not a busy port at the moment, but it holds potential, in my opinion. I will make no more presumptions or inquiries. I leave that up to you.”

  Tessa clasped her hands together. “Oh, I cannot wait to see it. But we should find the High Street first and get the lay of the town. Even if the dockyard holds potential, we cannot remain here if the people are miserable or the shops are depressing. What of your prospects in government?”

  Joseph nodded and indicated a turn in the direction of Church Street, which was Hartlepool’s main shopping street. “Could be worse, actually. The town counsel is particularly active—they are responsible for the new dock, as you reported—and several members are too old to run again. It is not out of the question. I would have to start very small since we are entirely unknown here. But that would be the case most anywhere.”

  “But look at the church,” exclaimed Tessa when St. Hilda’s came into view.

  “Oh, yes, the town is in possession of an old Norman church. St. Hilda’s. Built in the 1100s, or so I’m told. Hartlepool has a storied, almost ancient history with shipping, pirates, Vikings, all manner of sea farers. People here have been sending out and receiving ships for thousands of years. Well done, Tessa, if your aim was to find a spot to welcome the world to England and send England back out again. Well done.”

  Tessa stopped walking, shook her head, and placed a hand over her mouth. She looked so very happy. Joseph stepped back, allowing her this moment of delight; he soaked in his own pleasure, watching her beam.

  After a deep breath, she took up his hand and they walked together, looking in on shops, asking questions of suspicious townspeople, and wandering through the knobby, bricked streets of the little town. They took lunch at a small café and devoted the afternoon to the dockyard.

  Tessa introduced herself to a procession of stunned dockworkers, each more confused and spellbound by the beautiful inquirer than the next.

  It was quickly obvious that the men endeavored to answer her questions to Joseph when he lurked about her, despite the fact that she made the inquiries. After the third answer was addressed to him, he excused himself and boarded Stoker’s brig.

  After an hour, Tessa had all of her questions answered and she and Joseph walked back to the inn. She chattered excitedly, relaying everything she had learned about ship traffic in the North Sea, the cargo and boats most commonly coming and going through Hartlepool, the usefulness of the nearby River Tees to the dockyard, and the weather in every season.

  “But did you ask about employment?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, giving a little cringe. “I couldn’t find the nerve. But I think they liked me. I believed they saw that I knew some small part of what I was asking about.”

  “I’ve no doubt they liked you very much,” Joseph said.

  And they’ve no idea that their lives are about to be forever changed, he added in his head.

  And so, I hope, is mine.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Perry insisted upon brushing out Tessa’s hair and dressing her for bed like a proper lady’s maid, and
for once, Tessa did not resist.

  For the night rail, Tessa wanted the right balance of special but not . . . overwhelming. The forthcoming evening felt overwhelming enough without a showy, provocative gown that promised something that Tessa, quite possibly, could not deliver. She finally agreed on a simple night rail in the softest pink and a burgundy dressing gown with matching pink trim. It was sweet but not girlish, fine without being overdone.

  Be calm, be calm, be calm, Tessa chanted in her head as Perry brushed the creases from her long, unbound hair.

  Calmness was the last thing Tessa felt. She was nervous and jittery and desperate to get her hands on Joseph. He’d been so helpful with the baby at dinner and Christian’s bath. She laughed at the memory of the flowers and sweets and, God forbid, original poetry that she’d once enjoyed as gifts from men. They now paled in comparison to Joseph holding the baby while Perry made up the crib and Tessa went to the other room to wash her hair.

  Now the women had been on their own for more than an hour, and Tessa insisted on ten more minutes to rock the baby to sleep. When Christian’s eyes finally slid closed, Tessa bid Perry a good-night and slipped from the room.

  She paused before Joseph’s door, wondering if she should knock. He’d said this was her room too. Was she meant to knock at her own door? What if Joseph was inside half-dressed? This possibility appealed to her and she reached for the door handle. In that same moment, the door whipped open. Tessa yelped and skittered back, and Joseph gave a shout.

  “Bloody hell, you scared me,” he breathed. “I was just coming for you.” He looked right and left down the corridor. “Get inside,” he breathed and scooped her from the corridor into the room.

  “Sorry,” she laughed, allowing herself to be scooped.

  “This is why I didn’t journey with you in the coach,” he grumbled, locking the door. “I would expire with lust and jealousy if I had to watch you glide from room to room in your dressing gown for ten nights.”

  “Glide? I wasn’t gliding. I don’t glide.”

  “You were bloody floating. And your hair is glorious. You are . . . iridescent. You radiate in that thin silk and unbound hair and your . . . face. I’ve endured the tight bun and brown dresses for a month and now you’re dressed like a goddess.”

  She laughed, looking down at herself. “You are . . . agitated.”

  “I am agitated,” he agreed. “Excellent turn of phrase. And I need a drink.” He went to a drinks trolley crowded with bottles. “One for you? Can’t hurt.”

  He poured two glasses of amber liquid and held one out. She took a tentative sip, the liquor was warm and fiery. She considered him. He also wore an ivory dressing gown with gold brocade. It should have been lordly and stuffy but he looked very handsome. He still wore his buckskins beneath the dressing gown, but his feet were bare.

  “Tessa,” he began, downing his drink, “I’ve given a lot of thought to the way we should proceed. I want to embark on this in the most measured, cautious way. We should set out some boundaries, some intervals, so that we are careful to manage things slowly.”

  “And what if slowness only heightens my anxiety?”

  “It’s so very easy to leap ahead, trust me, but it can be more difficult to slow down.”

  “I’m not afraid of you,” she said, and it was true, she wasn’t afraid of him. She was afraid of spoiling this moment by discussing the life from it. She was afraid of having a cursory, diluted version of her wedding night because she’d panicked before.

  But the panic had been before, when she’d not enjoyed the incredibly freeing experience of telling him what happened on the night with the tree. That was before he told her he loved her.

  There was nothing cursory or diluted in the way she felt about Joseph.

  He glanced at her, allowing his eyes to linger on the clingy silk of her gown, the loose fall of her hair over her shoulder. “There is pleasure in going slowly,” he said. “We have a lifetime of pleasure at every pace.”

  “I’m not opposed to slowness,” she ventured, wishing to sound agreeable. She wasn’t fighting his technique, she was simply impatient with discussing it.

  “For example,” he began, “we might—”

  Tessa cut him off by launching herself at him.

  She’d not planned it—well, perhaps she’d planned a small part of it. It was one way, she thought, to redirect a thoughtful, long-winded prelude. She understood his desire to “pause” for her own good; but was there a less romantic phrase than “pause”? She couldn’t bear to embark on lovemaking with the threat of pausing.

  And so she had not.

  She had thrown herself at him, a determined combination of the Old Tessa and the New Tessa and a Fourth or Fifth Tessa who had grown weary of talking and was so very much in love with him.

  “Tessa,” Joseph breathed, fighting for words between kisses. “This is not . . . part of . . . my plan. I’m so afraid of frightening you,” he said.

  “My only known fear at this moment is, ‘a plan,’ ” she said and she jumped up, catching him around the haunches with her legs and wrapping her arms around his neck. He was given no choice but to gather her up, groaning as he pressed her to him.

  “And now what am I meant to do?” he rasped.

  She pulled back from the kiss. “But you don’t know?”

  He laughed, a low guttural sound, and it thrilled her. He staggered across the room, kissing her as he went. When they reached the bed, he tossed her. She landed in the center, gave a little yelp, and reached for him.

  “You’ll tell me,” he warned, kneeling toward her, “if you need to pause?”

  “Please don’t ask that again.”

  “You will give me the time I require if I need to pause.”

  She sat up. “Why would you need to pause?”

  “I don’t,” he said, and he shrugged off his dressing gown, revealing his bare, tanned, muscled chest and buckskins.

  Tessa sucked in a breath.

  He laughed. “But this will not be rushed, I swear to you, Tessa.”

  His oath was short lived. He dipped his head to capture her mouth; his body came down next, bare chest against the thin silk covering her breasts, his hip heavy against her thighs, his legs tangling with hers. The kiss grew deep and sensual very quickly, his tongue sweeping her mouth. Tessa reveled in the tingling sensation of all of his tanned muscle pressing against every soft, rounded part of her. He was so very substantial. And so very hard. Strength and beauty, sewn into a perfectly formed human male.

  She was desperate to learn every part of him, and while they kissed, she set her hands to work on the planes of his back, the giant ball of his shoulders, his roped arms.

  He stopped kissing her mouth and delved lower, kissing her neck, grazing her with his emerging beard, and then lower still. He used his nose to nudge open the edges of her dressing gown, laying a fiery trail of kisses as he went. He pulled back to stare down at her, and she felt the coolness of the room on her neck and shoulders.

  “Alright?” he asked.

  She nodded. “I want my dressing gown off.” She sat up and he smoothed the burgundy silk from her shoulders, massaging her arms as it went. She shivered in her bare pink night rail and felt the instinct to cross her arms over her chest, but she resisted. She was brave, she wanted this. She had just leapt at him, she’d just explored his body with voracious hands. She wanted this.

  He leaned on one elbow and propped over her. “I want to touch your—”

  She cut him off. “I don’t want to discuss each body part before it’s called into question,” she said.

  “You’re certain?”

  She nodded her head.

  “Right,” he said, and while she watched, he dropped his gaze from her face and stared at the deep rise and fall of her chest. Slowly, ever so slowly, he raised his hand. She watched it hover above her breasts. And then he extended one finger to the thin silk between her breasts and traced a slow line in between.

  Tess
a sucked in a breath.

  He drew the line back up, tickled beneath her chin, and traced it down again, lower this time. The third time, he traced the line with two fingers, grazing the sides of her breast when he passed between them. After tracing up and down with two fingers, he lifted his hand away.

  Tessa gasped and looked at him. Don’t sto—?

  He smiled languidly and looked at her with half-lidded eyes. “Again?” he asked.

  She nodded and reached for him. He allowed her to wrap her arms around his neck but he would not be pulled down. He remained above her on his side, slowly, deliberately, pressing two fingers to the pounding pulse beat between her breasts. Again, he began to trace a line between. This time, his finger circled beneath the swell of first one breast, and the other. Just the outline. A half moon that grazed the silk that contained her breast.

  Tessa heard a moan and realized it was her own fevered response. Her body burned. Her breasts strained against the pink silk. Her world shrank to his hand and she felt herself bow up in the bed, rising to meet his finger. “Please,” she whimpered.

  She thought she heard him mumble thank God, and he dropped his palm over her breast and descended on her mouth.

  The kiss was secondary to the sensations swirling through her, and she fought the distance between them, struggling to pull him closer. He dropped from his side, rolling on top of her and rocked slightly. Tessa broke from the kiss and made a little gasp.

  “Alright?” he panted, and she answered by repeating the same motion, rocking up to meet him. He groaned and returned to her mouth. She grabbed him by the face, slid her hands into his hair, holding him to her.

  By some instinct, she pushed his head to her throat, and lower still, to her neck. He knew what she wanted and closed a mouth over her breasts through the silk. Tessa cried out with pleasure. Joseph moaned and worshiped her breasts with his tongue.

  His hands circled her waist, traced her hips, and massaged the muscles of her thigh. Her left leg was pinned beneath him, but she drew up her right leg so he could trail the shape of it all the way to her curled toes. Joseph obliged, tickling the skin beneath her knee with the silk of her night rail. He hesitated when he reached the hem of her gown and then he traced one finger around the bone of ankle.