by Rose Lerner
“I don’t want you to stop.” He shut his eyes and just felt, felt every slide and slip and fingertip. God. She was watching him. He didn’t let himself think about what she saw. Unlike her, he wasn’t brave enough to meet her eyes while she did this. “Is it still my turn, or did that count?”
“You can have two turns,” she conceded.
It was probably ungentlemanly to accept. He opened his eyes. “I want you to spend while I’m inside you.” It was the best feeling in the world, the way a woman’s muscles rippled around a man.
Her mouth fell open. “I—um—”
“I’m close,” he warned her. “If I tell you to pull off, you must listen.”
She shook her head. “I know where to get herbs to bring on my courses. You don’t have to worry about getting me with child.”
Oh, thank God. After the last week, just being inside her might make him spend.
It was a close-run thing as she guided herself onto him. The slick heat and pressure as she sank down had him gasping and clutching at her thighs. “Touch them,” she urged, arching her back to bring her breasts closer to him.
It shoved her further onto his cock. He groaned and took her breasts in his hands. Struggling to get closer, he levered himself up on one elbow, sucking her nipple into his mouth and teasing it with swift flicks of his tongue, matching the rhythm of his hips as best he could. They were naked and sweating and desperate, and touching her felt like touching himself, it made her shiver around him. She put her own hand between her legs and rubbed, her fingertips hitting his belly.
He switched breasts, rubbing his thumb over the nipple still wet from his mouth. Her hand moved faster, her movements more urgent. The wet clench of her around his cock was unbelievable. He realized he was gripping her breast tightly, and relaxed his fingers.
She gasped. “Do that again.” He obeyed. She was bouncing against him now, panting, every movement sending jolts of sensation through him. He tensed, holding on to his control with all his might.
“Please,” he said, his voice strung taut, and shoved his hips up.
She spent. Her body shook against his, her muscles contracting around him. The crest of his pleasure rose, the moment of unspeakable ecstasy before orgasm drawing itself impossibly out. “Oh,” she said, “oh,” and kissed him, her tongue pushing drunkenly inside his mouth just as her cunt gave one last, lazy ripple.
He shut his eyes as the wave of pleasure broke, plummeting him down into the sea. His blood crashed like thunder in the blind moment after lightning strikes. He buried his face in the curve of her neck and rode out the storm.
Phoebe felt drunk—that particular species of drunk she remembered from being a young girl trying to conceal that she and her friends had drunk an entire bottle of Martha’s mother’s blackberry cordial. Her body felt boneless, weightless; it seemed to move of its own accord, slower than usual but still faster than she expected. Her face kept trying to break out in a smile. It was raining, but her skin was suffused with warmth down to her fingers and toes.
Lord, that had been marvelous. Better than marvelous. And they could do it again tomorrow evening. Maybe even tomorrow morning, while Helen was at the library.
She opened the door to her staircase. For a moment her foot refused to lift high enough to get on the first step. She wasn’t tired or sore. She just felt—lazy. As if nothing could possibly be important enough to justify that much effort.
She smiled to herself, tempted to sit down on the steps and relive the afternoon for a few minutes.
Her mother’s voice came from upstairs.
There was a painful twang in Phoebe’s neck as she tensed all over. She couldn’t hear what Mrs. Knight was saying—evidently her mother was still in the die-away, long-suffering, painfully reasonable portion of the conversation—but she could hear that Helen’s reply was tight with tears. She hurried up the steps and burst through the door.
“—encouraging you,” Mrs. Knight finished, turning her reproachful gaze on Phoebe.
“Who’s encouraging her to do what?” Phoebe demanded.
“She can’t give up her child,” Mrs. Knight said.
Phoebe tried to hold on to the serenity she’d felt a few minutes before. Failing that, she tried to hold on to her temper. “What do you want her to do, then?”
“I want her to marry the father.”
“He’s a bastard who doesn’t deserve to live, let alone marry Helen,” Phoebe said flatly. “If you wanted her to be happy instead of just wanting her to follow your self-righteous little code of behavior—”
“Don’t you talk to me like that,” Mrs. Knight said sharply, drawing herself up. “I am your mother.”
“I’m glad to hear I’m still a member of the family,” Phoebe snapped.
Mrs. Knight blinked, looking wounded and angry. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Phoebe glanced at Helen. She hadn’t told her sister what their mother had said, about Helen choosing not to be part of the family anymore. It infuriated her that her mother was either pretending not to have said it, or, possibly, had actually forgotten. Mrs. Knight rarely remembered the unforgivable things she’d said in a quarrel. “It means I’ve asked you to let me know when you’re planning to come over and visit,” she said as calmly as she could.
Red spots appeared in Mrs. Knight’s cheeks. “I don’t understand why you feel the need to hide things from me.”
“I’m not hiding anything,” Phoebe said for the hundredth time. “I just don’t like you to turn up unannounced, that’s all.”
“She came to see me,” Helen said quietly.
“Yes, and she waited until she thought I wouldn’t be here so she could bully you properly, didn’t she?”
“I can talk to Mama without your help,” Helen said. “Mama, I—” Phoebe felt a shock of mingled hurt and mortification. Was she just interfering? Oh God, she was.
Mrs. Knight didn’t even wait to hear what Helen was going to say. “Come home, sweetheart,” she said in a soft, affectionate voice she never used with Phoebe—maybe because Phoebe always snapped at her when she tried. “You’ve made a mistake, but you can fix it now. You know I want you to be happy more than anything in the world. And you never will be if you give up your child. If Phoebe were a mother herself, she’d understand that.”
It was a low blow—and the worst of it was that Phoebe would never be sure her mother had meant it to be. She felt turned to stone, immobilized by anger, hurt, grief, jealousy. She had been hiding that even from herself, that she was jealous of her poor sister’s pregnancy. She hated herself.
“Mama, I can’t marry the father.” Helen’s face crumpled. “He’s married already.”
Phoebe was shocked out of her stupor. Helen had—she had knowingly helped a man make a fool out of his wife? If someone else had told her, she wouldn’t have believed it.
Mrs. Knight looked shocked too. Her bloodshot eyes blinked rapidly, and she shook her head in denial. Helen watched like a little girl hoping desperately for her mother to tell her everything would be all right.
“If someone had told me that about you, I wouldn’t have believed her,” Mrs. Knight said finally.
Helen’s mouth trembled. She turned and fled into the bedroom, slamming the door. The distinct, unpleasant sounds of heaving sobs came from the other side. Helen was still a girl, and some older married man had taken shameless advantage of her.
“Crocodile tears won’t set this right, girl!”
“She isn’t pretending,” Phoebe said.
“Listen to her.” Mrs. Knight shook with indignation. “Those noises are ridiculously exaggerated. She always does this. She wants to make me feel guilty.”
Phoebe gritted her teeth. “That’s how Helen cries.” Her rage grew inside her, struggling to get free. She could feel herself turning splotchy.
Mrs. Knight started for the bedroom door. Phoebe blocked her way. If her mother decided to be stubborn, there wasn’t much she could do, but she lifted her
chin and crossed her arms and glared. “No,” she said. It was hard not to back down. She felt hot and cold, her breath shaky.
To her complete shock, Mrs. Knight stepped back a pace. “I am her mother.”
“That’s not what you said a few days ago,” Phoebe hissed.
“It’s not right to hate your mother like this,” Mrs. Knight said fiercely.
Phoebe knew that. She did. She tried to say I don’t hate you, but she couldn’t. Even that was giving too much ground. She felt sick.
Finally Mrs. Knight said, “I won’t stay where I’m not wanted.” She banged the door shut on her way out.
Phoebe sagged, wishing she could go to bed. “Ships? She’s gone. Can I come in?”
“Please don’t,” Helen said, sniffling.
Phoebe knew she shouldn’t be hurt. But she was trying so hard to help. She was giving up everything for Helen. And all she got was Please don’t come in and I can talk to Mama without your help. If that were true, why was Helen living here, shutting herself up crying in Phoebe’s room when Phoebe wanted nothing more than to curl up under the blankets, go to sleep and forget the whole damn mess?
The father of Helen’s child was married. That meant Helen had known from the beginning that if she found herself with child, there’d be no remedy. Phoebe tried not to resent that as well.
She sat on the settle—it was too narrow to lie down on—and pulled a blanket over her. She was hungry, but even going to the cupboard seemed a gargantuan effort. Missing a meal will do you good anyway, she found herself thinking. The settle isn’t too narrow; you’re too wide.
All it took was one conversation with her mother to bring her confidence crashing down.
If she couldn’t sleep, she might as well write. She got up and lit the lamp. Her writing things were mostly in the other room, but she took up a pencil and wrote on the back of an old letter.
“Oh, sister,” Ann wept. “I am more glad to see you than ever I was in my life…I have repented most sorely of the harsh words I spoke to you last.”
“No matter,” said her sister. Many tender words were then spoken, and many more went unspoken yet were understood, as is so often the case between sisters…
Chapter Twenty-Three
The door of the Honey Moon seemed to weigh several extra tons as Phoebe pushed it open the following morning. What would Mr. Moon think, if he knew she had bedded another man the day before? That she hoped to do so again today? He deserved better. Everyone in her life deserved better, and she had nothing better to give them.
No one emerged from the kitchen. Going in herself and spending an hour with people who belonged together, trying to pretend she belonged there too—she couldn’t do it. She turned around and walked out again, hurrying until she was out of sight of the windows.
She met Mr. Dymond in the street on the way to Jack’s. “Oh, Mr. Dymond,” she said, wishing she could sound arch. But her uncertainty and sadness would creep into her voice. “I forgot something at home. Would you mind going out of our way a little?”
“Not at all,” he said promptly. “A morning constitutional can do wonders for one’s health.”
She smiled, feeling lighter already in spite of herself. “I think I can promise you a good bit of exercise.” But she couldn’t capture the flirtatious tone she wanted. He made polite conversation on the way; she could barely manage monosyllables.
“Is everything all right?” he asked when they were safely in her rooms, free from prying eyes and ears.
“Helen’s at the library and Sukey won’t be by until the afternoon. Mrs. Pengilly’s hard of hearing. If we’re quiet, no one will disturb us.” She sat to pull off her boots.
He frowned.
Everything was ruined. Everything. To her intense horror, she started to cry, one boot still dangling from her hand. Dropping it, she moved to cover her face before realizing her hands were muddy. She held them helplessly before her face and sobbed. She was a mess. Why on earth would anyone want to have an affair with her?
He handed her a clean handkerchief and sat beside her, putting an arm around her shoulders. “Tell me,” he said. “Please.”
“I can’t. I can’t tell you. It’s just everything, and my mother was here last night, and you should send to London for that special license for Mr. Moon and me, and I’m disgusting and covered in snot and I just wanted—” She had just wanted to be happy. Maybe she was being punished for her selfishness.
He leaned in and kissed her wet cheeks. “You’re not disgusting.” He handed her a fresh handkerchief, dropping the first one on the floor. He was so rich he could toss handkerchiefs aside. Phoebe was still wondering whether she should go back for the one she’d left at the Drunk St. Leonard. She didn’t throw anything away. She saved her fireplace ash for Jack to make lye. She blew her nose loudly, feeling poor and repulsive.
He kissed her neck. “Do you want to talk about it?”
She shook her head.
“Then we won’t.”
Afterwards, they walked to the printing office. Nick felt content, the brisk October air stinging pleasantly against his skin. Phoebe looked happier too, he thought. Well, he’d keep her mind off her troubles. He’d show her the fun in an illicit affair, in subtle flirting in plain sight.
It turned out to be an extremely double-edged sword. Every time he brushed their legs together under the table, every time he stretched or licked the tip of his pen or smiled at her and she shifted in her chair, eyes bright, or blushed just a little—it drove him wild. He was half-hard all day.
Maybe if he was very careful about exercising his leg for the next few days, he could risk taking her on her hands and knees by the end of the week. Or they could lie on their sides, and he could lift one of her legs over his hips, spreading her open for him—
She’d said he should send to London for the special license, he remembered suddenly. He’d been so distracted by everything that came after, he’d completely forgotten. There was no “by the end of the week”. She’d be married to Moon then.
“We need to start printing soon. When do you think it will be ready for typesetting?” She pointed at his article. The article he’d barely managed to look at today, he’d been so busy thinking about bedding her.
“It’s done,” he said, and handed it to her. He regretted it the next moment. There was nothing politic about what he’d written. And what did he know about politics, anyway? Maybe he should run it by Tony first. Then he could put off her reading it. Christ, she was crossing things out already.
She glanced up and saw him watching her. “Just spelling mistakes. Well, and some confusion between who and whom. Didn’t you go to university?”
“I didn’t study very hard.” It was an understatement. He’d studied just enough to get by—in other words, hardly at all. The son of a peer had to make a really Herculean effort to not get by at Harrow and Oxford.
She smiled. “Jack is terrible for ending sentences with prepositions. ‘Shakespeare did it’, he used to tell me when I corrected him. But every time we printed one, the schoolmaster in Nuthurst sent us an angry letter quoting Robert Lowth, and Will would be mortified and shout.”
Will sounded like a lout, Nick decided. The failure of their marriage couldn’t have been Phoebe’s fault. She would do fine married to someone less, well, loutish.
A solution to their problems presented itself.
She sniffled, blinking rapidly at the last page of his article. “This is wonderful,” she said, her voice a little thick. “Everybody will want to read it. Owen! Put this in the blank column and a half on page two. Label it ‘An Account of the Conditions of Our Troops in Spain, by an Honorable Gentleman, until recently an Officer’. Perhaps ‘Honorable’ should be in capitals? Mr. Dymond, do you want us to put your name on it? Of course everyone will know it was you, but you can choose an alias if you’d prefer. And Owen, I don’t think there’s anything in there that could be considered sedition, but give me your opinion.”
Everyone would know it was him. What had he got himself into? But everything in that article was true. What’s more, everything in that article was his real opinion, said to please nobody but himself. “Put my name on it. Mrs. Sparks, may I speak to you in the kitchen for a moment?”
She frowned at him, but he couldn’t wait. When he didn’t lower his eyes, she stood, sighing, and led him into the kitchen. “Nick, you really must be more discreet,” she hissed at him—but she stood close enough to kiss. Somehow they’d slipped into using Christian names, this morning in bed.
“Phoebe,” he said, “will you do me the very great honor of becoming my wife?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
That silenced her. Her hands fell to her sides, limp. She sagged a little. It was definitely not the response Nick had been hoping for. “What?” she asked at last.
“If you’re a Dymond, my mother will have to cover up Helen’s scandal. And I know things haven’t been working out so well with Moon.”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “But what do you get?”
“I get you.”
Her brows drew together. Why couldn’t anything ever be easy with her? “You told me you didn’t know if you would ever marry. You told me that a week ago.”
This was what happened when you were honest with someone. They knew things about you.
But why should she be grateful for a proposal from him? Why should she be pleased? Because she liked him a little better than Moon? That wasn’t saying much.
I’m just trying to help, he thought. But it was a lie. If he said it, he would lose her. “Maybe I shouldn’t marry.” He kept his eyes firmly on the head of his walking stick. “I don’t know how I’m going to support you. But I’ll find a new profession. I’d have needed one anyway. I think I’d like to be married. To you.”
“You’ve known me two weeks.”
“You’ve known Moon two weeks.”
