All Dressed in White

by Charis Michaels

  When Tessa felt the bare skin of his fingertip touch the bare skin of her leg, she froze.

  Dark grey nighttime filled her vision.

  A cold chill descended, submerging her in icy fear.

  She tore her head to the side and gasped.

  “Wait,” she said in an airy, petrified voice.

  Joseph froze.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Tessa?” Joseph said carefully. “Love? Tessa? You’re alright. Breathe, Tessa, you’re alright.”

  She rolled away from him and dropped her arm over her eyes. Her eyelids were squeezed shut but tears spilled out, streaking her cheeks. She held her breath until she felt light-headed and then gasped for a breath. She drew her legs up to her chest and pressed her face into the mattress. The residual desire strumming through her clashed with her panic, and she felt sick. She willed the nausea away and reached for the anger. The pity. The hate of Captain Neil Marking.

  Anything but the panic. She’d promised Joseph she would not panic. She was not, by nature, someone who panicked.

  Rage won out, and she gritted her teeth and squeezed herself more tightly into a ball. She would squeeze until she was a hard, impenetrable seed. She would bury herself deep in the earth this the cold autumn, incubate all winter, and then explode to life in the spring.

  But who could wait until spring? Not Joseph? Not herself. She wanted to be sensual and affectionate and herself—her daring, reckless, carefree self—right now.

  Oh, she was so very angry.

  Angry at herself for succumbing to the fear, angry at Neil Marking, the bastard who had given her Christian but who had taken away parts of herself that she had liked very much. He’d distorted her love of beauty and poisoned her hope for sex.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly, so softly she could barely hear it. The irony was that she sobbed so loudly in her brain.

  “No,” Joseph said carefully. “No apologies. We simply try again. When you are ready. We can have quite a lot of fun trying again.”

  Tessa considered this. The calm casualty of his tone called to her. She opened her eyes. She was buried beneath a tangle of her hair. She straightened one leg, and her gown rode up. She felt the cool air of the room on her exposed leg. Joseph would see that leg. Likely Joseph was staring at her leg right now. She considered this. It did not bother her. She quite liked her legs. She wanted him to see them. She wanted him to see all of her and for her to see all of him, but she could not predict when the panic would set in. She unfolded the other leg.

  “Next time, however,” Joseph went on, “we will do it my way.”

  “We will discuss,” she said sourly.

  “We will discuss, we will touch, we will taste, we will go in stages. And when we feel panicked, we will not allow it to undo us. Not me, or you. We will try again.”

  She rolled over and stared at him. He was lying flat on his back, his hands behind his head, lecturing to the ceiling.

  He turned his head on the pillow and looked at her. “Remember when you revealed the details of the . . . attack, and I ran mad? Vaulting down the stairs and threatening murder?”

  She nodded.

  “That is my version of what you are doing now. I don’t pretend to have suffered the same trauma that you did. You endured the attack and I merely heard you describe it. But madness carries us away in a manner that feels hopeless, and sometimes we require someone else to reel us in. To say, ‘All hope is not lost.’”

  “It might be lost,” she said softly, but she thought I love you.

  He said, “After you have experienced what I have in mind . . . after we have succeeded in this . . . you will not describe yourself or the process as lost for hope.”

  “You are too good to me.”

  “I love you,” he said.

  She sat up, smiling in spite of herself. “I love you, too,” she tried.

  He shook his head. “Nope. That was a reflex. You merely answered me. It doesn’t count. This resets my vow not to say it again until you do.”

  She fell against this chest and held him. I love you, I love you, I love you, she cried in her head.

  “But, Tessa?” Joseph mumbled, his lips against her hair, “now we should sleep.” She had collapsed on his chest and he could feel the wetness of her tears on his skin. “We will try again tomorrow night. We will try again my way.”

  “No, we should try again now.”

  “Now we have taken ourselves too far, too quickly. I feel like an oaf and you are miserable. We will have another go in the morning.”

  She looked up. “In the morning?”

  “Part of my nefarious plan is to leave you wanting more, anticipating the next bit, and you are not safe at any hour. My goal is to make you, er, burn so to speak. We want the burn to be hotter than the fear.”

  “It is,” she insisted.

  “Not yet. But it will be.”

  “And you?” she asked.

  “Darling, I have already incinerated. I am the charred remains of a man who walks around in a whole man’s clothes. Beneath them, I am smoldering, blue ash.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered and Joseph swore in his head. He did not wish to make her feel blame.

  “No apologies,” he said. “This will be fun.”

  This will end me, he thought, but he kissed her and rolled her gently onto her back and gathered her in his arms and held her until she fell asleep.

  Sleep, however, evaded Joseph. He thought of the so-called “captain” who attacked his wife, the worthless rotter, and what he would do to him should they ever have the misfortune of crossing paths. He thought of Tessa, how brave and enthusiastic she was, so gainfully willing to sort this out, despite her fears. A lesser woman might have sworn off sex forever. This made him think of sex forever with Tessa—and of the most fortuitous, positive way to bring it about.

  He had passed the journey from London devising a series of lovemaking techniques that he would explore with her. The result, he hoped, would be either a breakthrough of her panic or his own expiration. The contemplation (alone) of the techniques had made the journey to Hartlepool the most sexually frustrating voyage he’d ever made, and he was bloody grateful it had only taken four days.

  Then Tessa had arrived, and he’d known a new level of frustration as they toured the town and met with the dockworkers and waited for night to fall. When she’d finally come to him, he’d allowed her to distract from his slow, careful seduction because she’d wanted so earnestly to take the lead.

  Chief among everything else were her consent and ownership of their intimacy, so he’d gone along.

  Also, he could not resist her. He’d wanted it to work just as badly as she had.

  But now they’d leapt too far ahead and returned right back to where they began.

  This can be done, Joseph thought, finally drifting into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  Tessa awakened some hours later, overwarm and tangled in her gown. She fumbled with the burgundy silk, desperate to be free. Joseph was stirred by her movement and slid, wordlessly, from the bed to shuck off his buckskins. When he climbed in beside her, long legs bare, Tessa swam through the bedsheets to latch onto his side, curling her legs around him, reveling in the access to him, all of him, warm and languid and heavy.

  He turned to her, eyes still closed, and she swiped a kiss across his lips. He made a mumbling noise, and she kissed him again. And again. The fourth time, Joseph locked his arms around her and kissed her back, slowly, lazily. When he finally came up for air, he found her ear and whispered, “Tessa? I’ve a game for you. Do you like games?”

  Immediately, her heart kicked into a sprint. She nodded.

  “Lovely,” he rumbled. “The game will start tonight, right now if you like, and it will continue for . . . as long as we like. Days, at least, perhaps longer.”

  His voice was low and gravelly, a sensual, sleep-ragged voice, and she felt his lips moving against her ear. Every cell in her body came urgently awake. She dug
her fingers into his shoulders.

  “The game is played when I designate one beautiful part of your body to touch, and if you allow it, and I am going to touch it, and only it, for five minutes, without stopping.”

  “Oh,” she said against his throat. This sounded . . . promising.

  “But please be aware,” he went on, “I will not grope. I will not tussle or fondle or tease. It will simply be my hand. Gently there. The pressure. The warmth. The steadiness. It will be a slow and steady warming up.”

  “Will you touch me on the outside of my clothes? Or beneath?”

  He considered this. “What do you think?”

  “’Tis your game.”

  “Well, some parts that I have in mind are not obscured by clothing. Others are. Considering our ultimate goal and the reason we play the game—”

  “My panic,” she provided.

  “Your freedom,” he corrected. “I should think we will begin outside your clothes. But not your heavy winter coat. I mean more like this beautifully thin night rail.” He grazed the silk on the curve of her hip with the back of his finger. “How does that sound.?”

  Tessa thought about this. “Honestly? It sounds . . . boring. Not what I expected at all.”

  “Yes,” he mumbled, nipping her bottom lip. “It will be ever so boring.” He kissed her in earnest.

  “You will simply touch me, unmoving, while I lay still for five minutes?”

  “Well, if you are a very good girl, after four minutes, the steady touch may evolve into something like a caress. But this is not guaranteed. We will have to see.”

  “What if I say you may move? What if my mind has drifted, or I’m overwarm, or I have an itch?”

  “Your distress is the only reason I will move away—which we both know to be a possibility. Less possible will be boredom or an itch. Heating up, I’ll wager, is guaranteed.”

  “Oh, how very sure of yourself you are,” she teased, but she would be lying if she said the notion of his game did not thrill her.

  “Quite sure,” he said. “And, after a time, likely when I cannot endure a moment longer, I will slide my hand away. Only after these minutes of my touch, and only if you wish, may we revisit the area with any movement that might, er, interest you.”

  “And after that?” asked Tessa, her voice was a rasp.

  “After that we shall go to sleep. Or we will carry on with our morning. Or our carriage ride. Until the next bit of your body is called into question.”

  “The carriage?” She raised her head.

  “When we are alone, of course.”

  She thought about this. If she was excited by the prospect of making love in the bedroom, she was positively fascinated by the notion of a moving carriage. She glanced at Joseph. He was sprawled casually across the bed, playing with a lock of her hair. So very cool and collected. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. Did she see a jumping pulse in his throat? Was he breathing heavily? She walked her fingers across his bare chest and flattened a palm over his heart. The beat thundered.

  “Will we . . . kiss during this exercise?” she asked.

  “If you like. But that is all we will do while I touch you. Or that is all I will do to you. You may do with me as you please. I invite you.”

  Now the game was taking shape in her mind. She thought of Joseph’s large, calloused hand, the heat, the pressure. She thought of him working to hold very still—this had been his rule—while she kissed him. She smiled to herself and nuzzled her body against him.

  “Alright,” she said softly, swiping a kiss across his bicep.

  He cleared his throat and shifted.

  She pulled closer still, nuzzling again. “But shall we begin now?”

  Another noise in his throat. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Chapter Thirty

  The hand-by-hand journey of Tessa’s body began that night and extended four days. Taken as a whole (or in parts), it was an agonizingly delicious torture that Joseph had never known.

  He began with her neck. He spread a gentle, cool hand from her jaw to her clavicle, and he kissed her. She laughed at first, she complained about ticklishness, but soon she was nuzzling in to his hand; a minute later, she was tugging at his wrist, willing him to do more. After four minutes, she was writhing beside him, begging him to engage his fingers, to caress, to touch her anywhere, everywhere.

  He tried so very hard to be cool and languid and in control. Sensuality would be lost if he was cautious or trembly or behaved as if he had no idea what he was doing. Still, when four minutes had passed, and he could finally trace the line of her throat with this his fingertip, his hand shook. He was so very determined. He wanted to reclaim her neck, exactly the spot where that blackguard had pinned her to the tree. With determination and love, he seared a new, sensual, safe memory where a terrible one had been.

  In the morning, he gave the same treatment to her bare breasts—one hand spread from the peak of one to the peak of the other. She was shouting his name and he was panting audibly before the minutes were up.

  In the days that followed, in stolen moments when they were not exploring the town and County Durham, when they weren’t laughing over meals or caring for the baby, he laid hands on the pulse point of her wrists, her raised knee on the outside of her gown; he touched the underside of the swell of her bottom while she lay on her stomach. And eventually, he touched the very center of her.

  By design, he would save her ankle for last.

  Through every other part of her body, never once did she panic, although she did moan in sensual frustration, she begged, she squirmed, she lifted off the bed. She loved and hated the sessions, and he regarded them with the same polar ferocity.

  By the day they were meant to ride into the country to view a potential future house, they were both drunk with need. The dreaded, pre-lovemaking discussions had all but disappeared. They fell against each whenever they were alone, hands hungry, lips open, bodies surging.

  As Joseph suggested, carriages were not exempt from this behavior. Carriages, in fact, were one of their favorite settings. Something about the light of day, the gentle sway of the vehicle; they were upright (or partly upright), he could reach all the way around her body, and there existed a new level of naughtiness. Tessa said this made her feel bolder, less like a pupil and more like an explorer.

  By Joseph’s calculation, they had “explored” every significant part of her body except her ankle. After that, he hoped she would be ready to endeavor the ultimate expedition of more traditional lovemaking. . . . possibly with some culminating end.

  Joseph, honestly, had stopped thinking about when and how much and—and, well when. To think about it was to experience buckling knees, lost train of thought, and conversations paused in the middle. It did him no favors to think of how much would happen when.

  Honestly, he couldn’t believe that he still walked upright.

  Instead, he explored his wife’s body just as he promised, one beautiful, slowly awakening part at a time.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Tessa wore a dress the color of crushed violets for the carriage ride to the potential new house. Joseph had stopped dead when she’d bustled out in the ensemble, staring in open appreciation. She had smiled and glowed in satisfaction, discussing the care of the baby with Perry. It had felt so very gratifying to wear her old gowns and hats. She walked taller, she spoke in a voice that felt more like her own; and the appreciation in Joseph’s eyes made her feel desired. The months in the drab browns and greys had made her feel as if she was slowly disappearing from view.

  The decision had been made to leave the baby with Perry for their journey to see the potential new house. They’d brought him along on several of their previous rambles, but Joseph was so very excited to show her this mysterious property. Tessa looked forward to seeing it with no distractions.

  “Is it far?” she asked, settling beside him on the carriage seat. She would prefer their future home to be close to the dockyard.

/>   “Not far. A twenty-minute ride. You can see the sea from the topmost room.”

  “Top room?” she asked. “Joseph, this doesn’t sound like a cottage.”

  “’Tis a cottage. Says it, right in the name. Abbotsford Cottage.”

  “It has a name?” Tessa knew what to expect from houses with names. Berymede was a prime example, and one of the finest estates in Surrey.

  “Of course it has a name, how else should we find it?”

  “How have we found it?”

  “We asked around about property for sale until we were tipped off to it. The sellers have a sentimental attachment to it and wish to meet prospective buyers in person. They were not available until today.”

  “And you’ve seen it?” she asked.

  “From horseback,” he said.

  “What if the buyers don’t care for us?”

  “And what would they not love about the two of us?” he asked. “Beautiful wife, shipping-merchant husband with political aspirations. Adorable baby.”

  “What if they discern your sordid history?” she teased, snaking a hand around his arm. “What if they believe you to be an upstart former servant?”

  “Then I shall say I am an upstart former servant and show them the size of my purse,” he sighed, stretching out and tipping his hat. He closed his eyes. They were both exhausted. Not-making-love took quite a bit of time they would have otherwise spent sleeping.

  Tessa marveled at the patience and skill with which Joseph had approached her struggles to be intimate. Of course, she knew very little of the lovemaking habits of other couples, but in her mind, she thought she had possibly been shown the very worst of sex by Captain Marking and the most glorious by Joseph.