In her mind, they would be as if married by this act he contemplated. She would not offer herself to another after she had taken David as her lover. And she knew better than to reveal that bit of foolishness to him.
Not today, not ever.
***
David paused outside his bedroom door and dipped so Letty could lift the latch. She made no protest when he walked right through the sitting room and carried her to his bedroom.
Something in him rebelled against his own headlong desire, though, so rather than deposit her directly onto the bed, he instead settled her on the sofa turned toward the hearth.
“Are you hungry?” he asked, kneeling before her. He’d touched her feet before, and it seemed a safe—and biblically humble—place to start. “Or would you perhaps like a bath?”
She put a hand on his nape, a curiously chivalric touch. “I want only you.”
He said nothing, lest he babble a response. This entire endeavor—an intimate association with virtually no financial protection for her—left him at sea, and yet, it was what Letty wanted. He finished with her shoes then untied her garters, rolled down her stockings, and sat back. “You can manage from here?”
“If you’ll unhook my dress and undo my laces.”
What he knew of Letty’s history suggested he’d had many more intimate partners than she—at least three continents’ worth—and yet, no happy, sophisticated detachment descended as he contemplated the next hour. She rose and presented him with her nape.
This was fortunate, for it meant she could not see his hands shaking as he undid the myriad fastenings down the back of her dress. “I’ll leave the privacy screen to you.”
She sent him a curious look then disappeared into the corner of the room behind a japanned screen. David’s first priority was to banish the damned cat, his second to get himself naked.
“Letty?”
“Just a moment.”
“My dressing—”
She emerged from behind the screen wearing David’s favorite dressing gown, a lovely green velvet lined in blue silk. “I did not bring any extra clothes with me,” she said, smoothing a hand over the fabric. “I did not anticipate, that is—I hope you don’t mind.”
Did not mind that she’d been too innocent to foresee why he’d lured her to his house on a quiet Sunday morning?
David had everything off but his breeches, and he’d managed all but a few buttons of both falls, his thoughts as undone as his clothing.
Could he please her?
Could he pleasure her?
Was she truly attracted to him, or simply tolerating his advances the way women could with men they could not afford to offend?
She smoothed her palm over his dressing gown again, her fingers betraying a slight tremor.
“Letty, come here.” Wariness flashed through her eyes at his blunder. “Please, would you come here and allow me to hold you?”
She crossed the room to stand before him, the hem of his favorite dressing gown dragging on the carpet. “I had not planned on the day taking this turn.”
He slipped his arms around her, he, who had been planning on taking this turn with her for weeks. If he’d shown an ounce of interest in any other woman at The Pleasure House, that woman would have been plotting and scheming toward this moment as well, as would any other lady in Polite Society with whom he waltzed more than once.
“Shall I call for the carriage, Letty?” The question cost him.
Against his chest, she shook her head. “Don’t expect much. I gather from listening to the women at The Pleasure House that Herbert’s demands of me showed a lack of imagination all around.”
She blamed herself for not knowing more of debauchery. “No toys?”
Another shake of her head.
“No games? No bindings? No drugs or potions?”
She shot him a puzzled look. “Is there a list somewhere, of what constitutes a proper romp in bed?”
Every culture kept such lists somewhere. David kissed her nose. “Will you play a game with me?”
The wariness was back, more forcefully, and though she didn’t leave his embrace, she withdrew emotionally. “What sort of game?”
David found it necessary to tuck her more closely against him, so he might address his request to her left temple. “Just for today, might you indulge me in the fiction that you are simply Miss Letty Banks, and I am merely Mister David Worthington. We are attracted to each other, and fate has intervened to allow us to act on that attraction. We are not employer and employee. I am not a viscount, and you are not a madam. You are merely Letty, and I am David.”
Rather than allow her to scoff at such foolery, he kissed her mouth. Today marked a shift in their dealings, and he would seal this new bargain with a sweet, slow kiss.
“Thank you,” Letty said, drawing back a half inch. “And in that spirit, that fictional spirit, you must decide how we go on. For you see, I have never had a lover before.”
When he closed his arms around her this time, the feeling was different, more tender and yet more desperate, because despite all of his experience—swiving, rogering, fucking, shagging, ad nauseam in ten different languages—he had never been a lover before.
When he kissed her again, she met him. Leaned into him, sank her fingers into his hair, and plundered his mouth and his wits both. They half stumbled onto the bed, and she laughed when he sent his breeches sailing in the general direction of the privacy screen.
“Laugh at me, will you? Naughty wench.” He rose up over her on all fours, wishing he had more clothing to pitch across the room if it would make her laugh.
“I’ve always wanted somebody to call me that,” Letty said, drawing her thumb over his chin.
“Wench?” He treasured her odd admission, because the wistfulness in her eyes said this was truly a wish.
“Yes. I was raised in a pious household, though the local tavern was a friendly place. When I had occasion to go to The Tired Rooster, the serving girls always seemed so merry and full of fun.”
David slipped down to hug her, lest she see what this sort of nakedness did to him. “Then I shall call you wench, and you will feel merry and full of fun. Kiss me, wench, and let me love you.”
Nothing came between them. Not coin, not unequal status, not social expectations, and certainly not the bedclothes. David kissed Letty until she was shifting restlessly beneath him, then probed at her sex with his cock enough to know she was damp and ready for him.
“Stop being polite,” Letty muttered against his throat. “Stop asking.”
He left off tracing her eyebrow with his nose. “I’m not to give orders, and I’m not to ask. What does that leave?”
She kissed his mouth and undulated in such a way that her curls kissed his cock. Had she practiced that exact maneuver, she could not have made it more arousing. “Take what you need. I need you too.”
Need. The word she’d chosen was startling, courageous, and accurate. He drove forward, seeking her heat. She gloved him with her sex, her sigh breezing past his ear like a benediction. In the last reaches of his rational mind, it registered that Letty had kept on not one shred of clothing, not a bracelet, ring, or silk stocking when she’d come to his bed. And her very lack of artifice was a more powerful aphrodisiac than all the tricks, games, toys, or stratagems could ever be.
In David’s long history of seductions, encounters, and trysts, and even a few orgies, his initial coupling with Letty was embarrassingly unsophisticated. They kissed, he mounted her, slid home, and started thrusting.
But the sensations… Ah, God, the sensations.
For the first time, David Worthington, Viscount Fairly, accomplished swain on four continents, wasn’t in control of a sexual joining. Letty was making love with him, arousing him, driving his passions into a spiraling coil of want and pleasure rather than providing him
a performance or a mutual accommodation.
“Slow down, love, or I’ll spend.”
“Spend,” she whispered. “Hold nothing back.”
She held nothing back, but instead locked her ankles at the small of his back and urged him closer. The slight shift in the angle of her hips gave David better purchase, and as he thrust more strongly, she began to shudder around him.
She had no artifice in this either, made no attempt to delay her pleasure, to duel with him for greater displays of self-restraint or control. A soft groan slipped from her, full of desire and longing as she bucked hard against him.
Her pleasure was too much for him. He pounded into her endlessly, the mindless violence of his release coming from a place in him as primitive as it was honest, as it was foreign to his usual habits.
When the storm abated, David lay full length on Letty’s limp form. His mind would not work, his body could barely move.
“Merciful suffering saints,” he breathed, chest heaving as he raised his torso up by slowly straightening his arms. He stared down blankly at the woman in his bed. “God in heaven, Letty…”
“Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain.” She kissed his mouth and used her hands to urge him back down to her. “Though there was certainly something of heaven in that.”
He let her hold him, needing her arms around him, not understanding what had been so different. The sexual pleasure had been unprecedented, though he’d barely offered Letty a moment’s teasing beforehand.
Some lover, he.
“I’m too heavy,” he murmured against her shoulder, trying to retrieve his manners.
“Hush,” Letty admonished, her hand stroking the back of his head. “Just hush. You feel lovely.”
Yes, he rather did, feel lovely. He gave up trying to puzzle it out, gave up his attempts at manners, gave up fretting generally, and dozed in contentment on Letty’s sweet body.
When he awoke, he was still right there, lying heavily over her, his cock slipping from her sex while she continued stroking the back of his head. Her hand stilled on his nape when he gazed down at her. She wore such an expression of affection that David felt… shy.
Also profoundly pleased.
“Cloth,” he muttered. He levered off of her, retrieved a basin and towel from on top of his bureau, and brought them to the bed. His own ablutions were brisk and efficient, but when he wrung out the towel and gazed down at Letty, he was momentarily at a loss.
“You are going to be so sore.” He held the cool cloth to her sex. Multiple continents of erotic experience, and he’d fallen on her like a beast. Even in her inexperience, she had to know she’d been ill-used.
“Stop mumbling. Get under these covers, lest you take a chill.” Letty held up the covers for him as he climbed back into bed. If he touched her again, he might become aroused, or possibly weep, so he curled up on his side, facing her.
“Letty Banks, I have never before had to apologize for my conduct in bed, and yet—”
She put her fingers over his lips. “You don’t have to now. I don’t want to know that polite, careful, controlled man who can find his pleasure without engaging his passions. I want to be in bed with you.”
“You make me sound like a courtesan.” Or like a viscount who managed his way through life.
Letty’s thumb brushed over his nipple, and she studied the effect of her touch. “You aren’t a courtesan, but you are as careful as one.”
“Not with you.” David rolled to his back, turning his head to regard her. “Would you like me to take you home now?” Lest he abuse her generosity yet more.
She left off playing with him, her expression suggesting he’d blundered again. “What I would like, is to be held.”
And she’d wanted somebody to call her wench. He threaded an arm under her neck. “Then come here, Letty Banks. Come here and let me hold you.”
She wrapped her arm around his waist, hiked a knee over his thighs, and let him hold her.
***
“By the time I was thirteen, I hated the entire New Testament by heart.”
David’s hand on Letty’s neck paused, while across the room, a shower of sparks shot up the fireplace flue. “That is a lot of hate for one very young lady, Elizabeth Temperance Banks.”
He’d apparently read her signature, and even murmured her name twice in the throes of passion. Letty carefully did not remark on the pleasure of being called by her Christian name.
“When your papa’s the vicar, there’s a lot of New Testament,” Letty said, and such was David’s ability to encourage confidences that she didn’t roll over and draw the covers over her head. “I hated soup grown cold because grace took so long. I hated kneeling, my left knee in particular hates kneeling to this day. I hated Sundays, because the weather is always fine on Sundays until services are over, and then it’s miserable. I hated and hated and hated.”
While her brother Daniel had learned to love.
David’s hand resumed its slow, soothing caress of her nape. “Most adolescents are rebellious. My aunts were determined I should go to university, but I pouted and sulked and raged until they let me go to sea for several years as a surgeon’s apprentice.”
Letty was at sea, though with David spooned around her in his big bed, she was also firmly anchored. “I haven’t discussed my childhood in years.” Hadn’t had anybody to discuss it with.
“You’ve been preoccupied with survival. Given your upbringing, I’m surprised any of the local boys were brave enough to sin with you. Was your foray into romance another rebellion?”
Of course it was, though Letty hadn’t taken the time to realize that. “He wasn’t a boy. I sinned with the curate, of course. Isn’t that how the farce is usually cast?”
She must have surprised her worldly, sophisticated lover, because he gathered her against him, bringing the scent of country-washed sheets and freshly bathed man closer. “Letty, I am so sorry.”
Because her back was to David’s chest, the tears that rose up didn’t need to be dashed away. “Not as sorry as I was.”
Sorry, humiliated, bewildered, and hurt. Very hurt. When David rearranged her so she lay along his side, Letty hadn’t the strength to thwart him.
“You loved him.” David used the sheet to dab at her cheeks. “Must I find this wretch and call him out for you?”
What a hearteningly violent offer. “You need not. Hell should await such a one as him, or so I hope. I did not love him. I flirted with him, and he made promises, and all I could think was I would be out from under my father’s roof if those promises were real. The curate was handsome—there’s a rule somewhere that all penniless curates must be handsome—and when I told him I wasn’t interested in further dealings with him, he went to my father and confessed our misdeeds. I was so stupid, so painfully, wretchedly stupid.”
David kissed her stupid, damp cheek. “You were not stupid. You were young, and he was wicked. The curate told your father that your charms had tempted him beyond his strength, that he repented sincerely of his lapse, and that he’d offered you holy matrimony, but in your wantonness, you’d refused him. He saw no recourse but to seek the forgiveness and guidance of his spiritual superior, who happened to be your father. And there you were, caged between a lying, self-serving bastard, and your father’s judgment. If the man’s not dead, I can make him wish he were.”
Maybe this was what had allowed Letty to join David Worthington in his bed. All that exquisite tailoring and all those fine manners hid a savagery Letty found attractive—an honorable savagery.
“He eventually became a vicar.” Daniel, who’d made it a point to keep up with church gossip, had worried that the news might upset her. He hadn’t been as reluctant to tell her of the man’s eventual death from natural causes.
David’s caresses trailed over her hair, and beneath Letty’s cheek, his heart beat in
a steady tattoo.
“As a physician, I became familiar with a number of poisons. I’ve always thought a slow poison would be a good revenge. One could watch the victim fading. You might bear that in mind for future consideration. In any case, I’m glad you didn’t marry him.”
The fire in David’s room was no paltry bed of embers, but it did not cast enough light that Letty could fathom his expression. “You’re glad because I’m available for romping with you now?”
And was this romping, exchanging memories and regrets naked under the covers as the fire burned down?
“A mere romp would never trust me with her cold soup and sore knees, Letty Banks. I’m glad, because if you had married that curate, then night after night, you would have been required to offer your body to a man you did not respect, a man who did not respect you. The law would not have protected you should he have become violent or diseased. On the path you chose instead, you were intimate with a man you at least felt a passing fondness for.”
She had not loathed Herbert. He’d been bluff, self-indulgent, and generous for show rather than out of good-heartedness, but not mean. “You aren’t… wrong,” she said.
“I’m right,” David rejoined, kissing the center of her chest. “If a protector’s attentions become distasteful, you can send him on his way. There’s nothing he can say to it. The life you’ve chosen is hard, but you’ve kept a control over your fate and a dignity the curate’s wife would never have had.”
Everything in Letty came to a still point, as if she could strain to hear a far-off, faint angel chorus over the braying of the parson in his pulpit. “You think I made the right choice?”
Because if even one person agreed with Letty’s choice, even one, then she might hold on to that dignity in truth.
“I know you did. Also the more difficult choice. Imagine the pity you would have been showered with when your husband strayed again. Imagine the piety ascribed to you, the martyrdom, when some other sweet, sheltered young lady tempted him to sin yet again. And again. And again. Like a physician, a man of the cloth has private access to women at their most vulnerable. Your curate knew that.”
David Page 14
