by Darcie Wilde
Benedict shuddered against her. She felt him struggling against her hands to raise his head. She let him, because she wanted to see his eyes, wanted to see the haze of pleasure there.
Instead, she saw worry.
“We need to stop,” he said. “Your friend will be here soon.”
What on earth was he talking about . . . ? Then Madelene laughed.
“I forgot to tell you. I came alone today.”
He stared, and then he smiled, slowly, wickedly. “You did?”
She nodded. “I had an appointment of my own, so I just had the coachman bring me directly here afterward.”
“I shall have to have a word with that chaperone of yours,” Benedict murmured. “She really is most careless.”
“You said we were not thinking about her.”
“No,” Benedict agreed. “We’re not.”
He kissed her again, sweetly, thoroughly. At the same time, he was lowering them both onto the worn Turkish carpets until they were on their knees together. Her hands stroked down his back until her palms caressed his taut buttocks. She liked it. She liked the way her questing hands made him draw a deeper breath, made his own hands tremble a little against her back, and broke the rhythm of his kisses. She liked that she could unsettle him, even while she hoped he would never stop caressing her. Even more than this, though, she liked the hard ridge of his arousal pressed so shamelessly against her.
Her dress loosened. She felt the cool air on her bared back. When had he done that? How had he done that? She didn’t care. He kissed her shoulder, drawing her sleeve down, kissing each inch of skin as he exposed it, until she drew her arm free.
“Oh, my dearest,” he breathed.
He was kissing her, and his hand cupped her exposed breast, and even through stays and chemise, the pleasure of it burned. His other hand was pressing against her shoulder blades so that her breast was crushed against his hard palm. She pressed her mouth against his shoulder and moaned.
“Turn around, Madelene,” he said huskily.
She turned herself so he could more easily reach her laces. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the subtle brush of his fingers as he found the knots and loosened the stays. Her body tensed with need, and yet at the same time, she felt a profound relaxation.
Her bodice fell away, down to her hips. Benedict lifted her stays from around her and laid them aside. Madelene turned again, with nothing but her chemise covering her, and it was to see Benedict staring. His Adam’s apple bobbed nervously.
“What’s the matter?”
“I . . . I’m afraid,” he whispered.
“You? Of what?”
“Of how much I need you. Of disappointing you. Of . . . of you coming to regret what we do now.”
“But I could not. I want this, Benedict. I want you.”
She drew her chemise off over her head. She was entirely naked now, except for her stockings and garters. The warm breeze slipped sensuously across her skin, and perspiration beaded between her breasts and thighs.
Benedict’s hand shook as he reached out. Gently, lovingly, his fingertips traced the side of her breast. His thumb ran across her nipple. She made a small sound deep in her throat and leaned toward his touch.
That must have been the right thing to do, because whatever hesitation had gripped him vanished. He cupped her fully, massaging her, stroking her, raising a heat in her unlike any she’d known yet. He circled his thumbs across her nipples, and the sensation was exquisite. She let her head fall back and dug her fingers into his shoulder blades.
Somehow, her fingers found the lapels of his smock and his coat and pushed them both back. Benedict laughed and kissed her, and she laughed and surged forward, and then they were both wrestling with his clothing, tossing aside smock and coat and waistcoat, pulling off shoes and stockings. Her fingers dug eagerly into the waistband of his tight breeches to drag his shirttails free. Her fingers shoved his aside as they both tried to undo the buttons on his fly at the same time. He pulled her sideways, rolled them over, struggling, wrestling, delighting in the absurdity of it. She felt the shock of the hard floorboards under her soft skin, but it didn’t matter, because somehow Benedict’s breeches had come off and Madelene could finally feast her eyes on the whole of him.
“Oh. My,” she breathed.
“Do you like what you see?”
“Yes,” she breathed. “It’s . . . rather larger than the illustrations in the books.”
“Flatterer.” He gathered her to him. “Now you come with me.”
He scooped her lightly, easily into his arms, and she shrieked and giggled and clung to his shoulders. She also kissed his throat, because it was near to her. The rasping texture of the stubble there was so fascinating, she barely realized she was being lowered onto a bed. Her eyes, which had closed themselves, flew open in surprise.
They were behind the set of carved screens that fenced off one corner of the studio, and which, she now saw, concealed a wooden camp bed and a washstand. Benedict had sat himself down on the narrow bed so his back was against the wall, and pulled her to him until she was draped sideways across his lap. It was a ridiculous position. It was delightful, especially since he was kissing her again. She ran her palm across the hard planes of his chest, revelling in the feeling of the crisp, dark curls beneath her hands. She found his nipple and touched it and toyed with it, just like he had with hers, until he drew in his breath with a long hiss.
She smiled and felt his cock throb hard where it pressed against her thigh. Hesitation, cold and unwelcome, made her hand falter in its heated explorations.
Benedict felt this at once and drew back.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I . . .” Madelene touched his shoulder and his arm. “This is going to sound ridiculous.”
He kissed her brow. “I swear it won’t.”
Madelene lifted her eyes to his. She brushed a stray lock of his hair back behind his ear. “I’m afraid I’ll lose my nerve,” she said. “I’m afraid I’ll want to stop.”
But he only smiled and shrugged one shoulder. “Then we’ll stop,” he said simply.
“I don’t want to. I don’t want to want to. Don’t let me.”
“Oh, my dear,” Benedict breathed. “I can’t do that.”
“But . . .”
He laid his hand against her belly, and fresh fire gathered in the spot beneath his palm. “Listen to me, Madelene,” he said seriously. “I want you. I can’t describe how much. Holding you, it’s like returning home after exile. But you and only you can decide how far you want this to go.”
“I thought men . . . that is, I thought there was a point when you couldn’t stop.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know how it is for other men. I just know this. I will not pretend to read your mind. I will not pretend that what you say to me is not true. If you tell me to stop, Madelene, I am going to believe you, and I am going to stop. But until then”—he smiled that smile of sweetness and burning desire—“I am going to do my best to give you all that you want and teach you how very, very much I desire you.”
He kissed her again, tenderly, and his arms wrapped around her, drawing her up tight against him, with his rock-hard arm curled around her shoulders and his hand pressed against her hip. He cradled her this way across his lap, kissing her deeply, letting his free hand toy with her breasts, teasing her nipples into hard peaks, stroking her side and her belly and down, until his fingers brushed her damp curls.
She gasped against his mouth and felt him smile. His fingers pressed between her thighs and into her damp, sensitive slit.
Nothing had ever felt so good as his finger parting her. But then, that blunt, questing fingertip slid upward and touched the tight knot of flesh right at the apex of her slit.
Pleasure, pure and blinding, lanced through her, and Madelene cried out. Ben
edict clamped his mouth over hers. His tongue thrust deep inside her even as his finger pressed against her clitoris. He rocked her, rubbed her, pressed her. Her hips arched against his hand, seeking more pressure, seeking more of him. She was moaning. She was babbling and begging. He was laughing, urging her onward, clasping her tight against him. She could feel the hot press of his erection against her thigh. He dipped his head down and kissed her breasts and lapped at her nipples and she moaned again. And when he took her entirely into his mouth and curled his tongue around her ruched nipple, her body could no longer contain the feeling. Every part of her contracted tight into a single sensation of pleasure.
“Yes!” he cried and she cried and she shuddered and her heart soared free on the waves of ecstasy he raised in her. He was shuddering against her, wracked with his own ecstasy. “God! Madelene! Yes!”
* * *
“Now you really should go,” Benedict breathed into her ear.
He was lying on his side, holding her against him. The narrow camp bed could barely hold them both, so they had to remain pressed close together. Madelene suspected Benedict didn’t mind any more than she did. The contours of his body were hard and strange against her back and buttocks, but there was nothing uncomfortable about them, or about his arms wrapped tightly around her.
“But we didn’t . . . you didn’t . . . finish,” she murmured.
His mouth brushed the edge of her ear. “There will be time for that later.”
“There will?” she murmured.
“Oh yes, my dear. I promise you.”
And he was kissing her and turning her toward him, and it seemed there was time for a little more right now.
XVI
It was a Wednesday morning when the invitations returned from the engravers. Cousin Henry happened to be visiting No. 48 when they arrived, and he exclaimed with approval over the gilt edging and the raised lettering along with the rest of them.
“I have a notion,” Henry said as he laid the card he’d been examining reverently back down into the box. “Would you consider delaying posting these until the fifth?”
“Why should we?” Helene asked.
“Because then they will arrive on the sixth, and after they’ve read them, the matrons will want at least one night to consider their answers.”
“Three nights is average,” Helene said. “I’ve looked into the question.”
Henry bowed at this. “It just so happens, however, that the seventh is our company’s premiere of Much Ado About Nothing. I came here fully intending to offer you ladies use of my private box for the evening. It will create, if I do say so myself, a most excellent impression in the minds of those matrons who might be wavering.”
“Oh, Cousin Henry!” Madelene cried. “That would be marvelous.”
“It would be most generous indeed,” Miss Sewell murmured.
“It is a gift freely given,” Cousin Henry said to her. “A favor to my cousin and her friends, nothing more.”
“Well then that is how it shall be accepted.”
Helene was bent over her notebooks, flipping through pages to see how Henry’s invitation tallied with her own plans, and Adele was counting and admiring their cards, so Madelene was the only one who saw the long, deep look that passed between her cousin and her chaperone.
Of course Madelene wondered about this, but she took care not mention it to the others. There were, it seemed, so many more important things to consider and so very much to do. Madelene’s days had developed a blissful routine in which her precious hour with Benedict had come to dominate every other facet of her life.
She went to his studio every day. Of course they wasted no more time on the business of sketching. There was too much to say to each other, and far too much to do. After their first intimate encounter, he replaced his narrow camp bed with a more substantial, and broader, piece of furniture. Sometimes she and Benedict came together in a kind of dizzy madness—a blazing intensity of frenzied sensation, as if they were both striving to see who could drive the other further into their ecstasies. At other times, it was tender, a slow, simmering exploration of each other’s bodies and all the shades of need and desire.
One day, Benedict undressed for her, slowly peeling away each layer of his clothing, from coat and cravat to shirt and breeches, until he stood in front of her, as beautiful and unabashed as a Greek hero. One day, she did the same for him and let him sketch her as she lay on the studio’s divan, draped in gold silk, until he could stand it no more and laid the book aside to ravish her with his mouth and his strong, eager hands.
But there was one thing they did not do, one boundary they did not cross.
“I want to feel you inside me, Benedict,” she told him as he held her close beside him on the bed, still breathless from their recent and wonderfully mutual climax. “I’m ready for this.”
“I’m not,” he said, running his hand lovingly down her arm. “I can’t.”
“There are ways to prevent . . .”
“They fail, Madelene,” he said firmly. “I will not leave you pregnant.”
Because then you’d have to marry me. She hadn’t meant to draw back. He was being considerate. He was being careful. He cherished her and did not want her to risk disgrace.
He seemed to understand her contradictory thoughts. Now that they had been together so often and with such intensity and openness, he could read her smallest glance. “Madelene, I know what you and your friends are doing,” he said. “Being as I am . . . I cannot help you with it, but neither do I wish to interfere with it. When the season ends, when you have fulfilled your promise to your friends and you come back, you will find me here, waiting for you.”
“I love you,” she whispered, because it was the only answer she could make. But there was something in her words that left her uneasy. Why should there be anything wrong with what he said, though? Of course she would come back. Where else did she want to be but here with Benedict?
He cupped her cheek in his hand. “When we are free to be together, we’ll close the door on the whole world and we will love and we will live for each other. I will teach you how much a man may cherish a woman.”
She smiled to see him smile, and to feel the thrill his touch sent through her—warm and slow and all the more welcome because now it was so familiar. “Of course, my love.”
Then it was back home for a nap and a quick lunch and a change of clothes. Mama and Lewis followed society’s custom of sleeping well past noon, so, with a little luck, Madelene could be gone before anyone else in the house was even awake. Of course, her destination was always No. 48. From there, it was off to the round of calls or other social appearances Helene had scheduled. Then home yet again, this time to a supper at which her brother might or might not put in an appearance. But even meals with her family were not so painful as they had once had been. Madelene found she could employ Cousin Henry’s lessons at the table as well as on the dance floor. She could hear the complaints, the passive criticism, and small slights and let them drift over her while she concentrated on how she moved, and sat, and held herself. She enjoyed her food, measured her sips of wine carefully, folded her napkin just so, murmured her words of apology and encouragement as required. It was all appearance, all surface calm and control, just as if she was an actress playing a part on the stage. It didn’t matter who was looking, whether it was Mama or Father or a perfect stranger on the street. They saw what she chose to show. They saw demure and mousy Madelene, whom they tolerated because she was their source of income. They did not need to see the Madelene who was loved and befriended. They did not need to see the Madelene who visited Cousin Henry for light luncheons at a coffeehouse and listened to his stories about rehearsals and all the endless, wonderful, awful facets of life in the theater.
After dinner, it was time to dress in one of Adele’s creations and get into a carriage with Helene and Adele and Miss Sew
ell, to drive to a public assembly, or the Ancient Music, or the Opera. There she could laugh and she could smile and flutter her fan. She could dance and she could enjoy. She could even talk, and once in a while she could make the men who talked with her laugh. She did not have to be afraid. Whenever she felt her old anxiety, she would simply focus on herself, on her breathing and her movement. Little bit by little bit, concentration turned to habit, and ease and grace began to feel as natural as the old fears. Little bit by little bit, the old fears broke apart and were scattered on the winds of her new life.
It was perfection. It was like nothing she’d ever dreamed of, and for once, it was all her own.
XVII
“It’s unsupportable! Infamous!” Lewis Valmeyer swung around to face his mother, who sat on her pink sofa, utterly unperturbed.
“Lewis, you will please calm yourself,” she said.
“I shan’t!” he cried, taking another gulp from the tumbler of whiskey he held in his shaking hand. “What the devil are you thinking to let her keep running about like this? I had no less than four different fellows at the club chaffing me about Madelene and how they’d seen her at this party or that.”
“I know exactly where she’s been,” Lady Reginald replied calmly. “Madelene has always gone about into society.”
“But it’s not the same this time. She’s dancing! She’s . . . she’s flirting! And what about this artist chappy, eh?” He twisted his face into a vicious sneer. “What are we going to do if she gets married?” His hand shook as he raised the glass to his mouth again. “All the money! It’d go to that damned artist, or some other damned fortune hunter . . .”
