Shadows of the Night

by Lydia Joyce

  —and came to herself as abruptly as waking from a dream. She jerked back so hard that she yanked herself from his embrace, hardly feeling a twinge as half a dozen strands of her hair, twisted around his fingers, tore from her scalp.

  Colin looked at her. His gaze made her heart race even as she shuddered a little at how detached his expression was, as if nothing of what had torn through her had even ruffled him.

  “Is something amiss?” he asked, his tone as cool as if he were asking for a dance at a ball.

  “Yes. No. I don’t know,” she said as confusion and embarrassment rose in a hot red haze around her. “It just doesn’t seem right. None of this seems right.”

  “Shhh.” Colin placed one broad, rough finger across her lips, and to her further mortification, even that slight touch roused a tingling that spread across her skin. “Mon ange, everything is exactly as it should be. Do not be afraid. You have been doing very well.”

  Rebellious rejection jolted through her at those airy words, but Fern had no chance to incorporate it before he stepped forward, catching her against the wall with nowhere to go. Heat seemed to radiate from him, stirring her body into response, and she almost gasped with the contact when he cupped the back of her head in his palm. But he only lowered his forehead to rest against hers. His gaze bore into hers, and she could tell that he knew the shivering expectation that filled her with that touch. His shadowed eyes, though, were as still as a mirror, and as unreadable.

  “You are doing just fine,” he whispered, the breeze of his breath making her own catch. “There is nothing, nothing at all wrong.”

  And then he kissed her again, and all thought fled. His mouth was on hers, his tongue against her teeth, his hands across her body, sliding to the row of pearl buttons along her spine.

  He loosened the one under her satin belt where her bodice met her skirt, and she stiffened. Was he supposed to be doing that? It seemed too ridiculous to protest. If they were to share a bed, they could not spend the next forty years dancing around to avoid each other’s naked bodies. Besides, Colin was a gentleman; he surely wasn’t doing anything he wasn’t supposed to. It felt so good, his mouth hot against her neck, his hands moving against her body. The efficiency of his motions frightened her a little for reasons she could not define. But he must be right, she told herself as a delicious heat shivered across her skin in the wake of his mouth. There could be nothing wrong at all …

  This was going to be a more pleasant duty than he had anticipated. Colin assessed the pliancy of the woman in his arms against his previous experience and arrived at a highly satisfying conclusion.

  Why had he ever thought that passion didn’t matter in a wife? After all, however many mistresses one kept on the side, it was always the wife one came home to, always the wife who was the closest source of relief. He kissed the crevice where Fern’s generous breasts met, and she gasped. Smiling smugly against her soft skin, he congratulated himself on his choice, even though it was surely luck that had brought him this desire instead of stone. To think he’d been working himself up to this all night, as if it would be some sort of distasteful obligation! It was pleasant to know that his marriage bed would at least be a warm one.

  The last button of Fern’s bodice loosened under his fingers. The fine grenadine rustled, and the lace on the neck and sleeves bunched as he slid it down her arms, revealing her ruched and beribboned corset cover. It was wedding white, glaring in its purity, but it had no power to awe him, for its austerity served only to accentuate the thoroughly earthy pink-tinged flesh of the plump arms and lush bosom that escaped the confining whalebone. The golden haze of alcohol was scarcely necessary to appreciate such a sight.

  He tossed the bodice aside, the sleeves fluttering as it fell, and looked up to meet Fern’s gray eyes, wide with emotion. Surprise? Alarm? Desire? Maybe all three, wrapped into one.

  He had the urge to rip off her corset and free those breasts, but her expression checked him. No need to scare her, he decided. He knew well enough how to seduce a woman into a satisfactory state of enthusiasm when it was best to do so, and he judged that now was one of those times. He unfastened her silk belt almost decorously, unhooking the waistband of her skirt beneath it. He fumbled a bit at the layers of petticoats—he seemed to have grown too many fingers—until he found the ties for her crinoline. Two tugs and it was loose, falling to the floor with a muffled clatter.

  Fern giggled a bit breathlessly, and he lifted her free of it. She gave him a nervous, half-coy smile, more than a shade silly. Well, he thought, if what she needs right now is a little silliness, I can give her that easily enough. So he spun her around three times, her laughter filling the silken tent of the room, before he overbalanced and let her slide a little too abruptly to the floor.

  “Oh, my,” she said, grabbing his arm. She looked up at him through a fringe of brown eyelashes. He took her chin in one hand and tilted it up.

  “You truly are a remarkable young woman,” he said, looking into her eyes firmly, sincerely.

  He felt her breath catch in perfect reaction, and her lips parted in anticipation and invitation. An invitation he had no intention of refusing.

  He caught her mouth with his, his free hand moving down her waist to push her skirts over her round hips to slide to the floor in an unheeded froth of ruffles.

  Fern made a little sound in her throat. His body tightened in reaction, and he held her harder against him as a jolt of lust buzzed up his spine, the stiff curves of her corset promising yielding flesh beneath.

  She was willing now; he was certain of it—and he was more than ready. He lifted her into his arms and carried her over to the bed, ignoring the skirts as he trod on them. She gasped a little and giggled again as he set her down on the counterpane.

  Her cheeks were pink, her lips still swollen and damp from his kisses, and her eyes were shadowed with innocent desire that made him feel decidedly lupine. Hurriedly, he stripped off his coat and necktie, his waistcoat, braces, shirt, and undershirt following. As he unfastened the first button on his fly, her gaze caught him again. He wanted nothing more than to have those eyes locked upon him as he shoved up her chemise and entered her right there as he stood between her legs beside the bed.

  But trepidation was foremost in the welter of emotion he read on her face, and so he tamped down those urges and crossed to the doorway, where he turned the knob to shut off the gaslight. With only the glimmer of the lamps in the drawing room puddling in the doorway, he returned to the bedside.

  “Are you sure this is right?” Fern whispered.

  Colin couldn’t hold back his laugh. “This is what married people do, mon ange.” He stripped off his pants and drawers, pulling off his shoes and socks as he joined her on the bed. “You know that.”

  “Of course.” Uncertainty still laced her tone, so Colin found her mouth to kiss it away. Beneath him, Fern tipped her head back, welcoming him. Her hands slid around him, her palms flat against his back. She held still for a moment, them skimmed them downward. He could feel her excitement at her own daring in the tension of her body, in the quickness of her breath and the slight quaking of the small hands splayed against his back. Her tremulous excitement was … heady. Dizzying. Wonderful, which was a sensation he scarcely recognized enough to name. It filled him with a sense of power, like a man about to gently pluck a precious flower, hesitating a moment with the petals against his palm, velvet, soft, and fragile.

  Her hands reached his flanks and stopped.

  “You are naked,” Fern said, her tone split between awe and scandal.

  “As you will be soon,” he assured her. He reached underneath her and found the laces of her corset. He pulled the bow loose with a single tug, but with his hands sandwiched between her and the mattress, the lacing defeated him. “If you don’t mind?”

  “What?” Her voice was breathless in the darkness. “Oh.”

  She started to shift, the silk and linen of her drawers and stockings rasping against the embroider
y of the counterpane, but there was a tug under his knee, and she stopped.

  “Pardon me, Mrs. Radcliffe,” he said in tones of exaggerated seriousness, knowing that it was the right thing to say, and she tittered predictably and pulled the lace edging of her chemise from under him as he shifted his weight away.

  “No need, Mr. Radcliffe,” she replied almost coquettishly. He could see only a vague outline of her body in the light from the parlor, but he could tell that she was smiling.

  He sat back on his heels as she rose to sit, giving her room to twist around and turn her back toward him. His fingers found the naked skin of her back before encountering the corset, and he felt her delicate shiver against his hand. For a moment, he let it rest there, savoring the prickle as goose bumps sprang up on the smooth flesh. Desire shot through his body, making his erection ache with need.

  Then he gave the laces a few expert tugs—well, semiexpert, at least, because there seemed to be a bit more clumsiness involved than he was used to—and reached around her to unhook the busk.

  The corset came loose in his hands, and he eased it off her shoulders with a sense of deep satisfaction and almost ceremonious decorum. This would be the first time of many times, the first night of countless nights, and so some semblance of formality seemed only appropriate for the culmination of such a significant day.

  The confection of lace came free of her arms, and Colin tossed it away—wincing when it clattered against something in the darkness beyond the bed—and pulled her back against him, her buttocks settling between his legs and his erection pressing against the small of her back as his arms settled around her small, soft waist.

  She made a small startled sound and arched her back away from his groin, but he held her there, and with his mouth, he found the small indentation where her neck met the muscle of her shoulder, kissing it. Under the faintly acrid taste of her perfume, her flesh was warm and sweet, soft and smooth. After another moment of resistance, she sighed and settled back against him. But there was still a wary tightness in her body that warned him not to press too hard.

  Go slowly, then, he told himself, though he wanted to do anything but. Still, he listened to his own advice and loosened his hold upon her, and she immediately pulled away.

  He put his hands on her shoulders and urged her to face him. After a moment’s hesitation, she did. He found an ankle by feel. Her foot was only stocking-clad; she must have slipped out of her shoes when he set her on the bed, proper lady that she was. He slid lower in the bed and found her garter ties just below her knee and tugged them loose. She stiffened, and he bent to kiss her plump calf.

  “It is fine, Fern,” he said against the silk.

  “Of course it is,” she agreed, but she didn’t sound as certain as he’d like.

  Slowly, he cautioned himself again.

  He rolled down the stocking and pulled it off, followed by the other, the fine hairs on her legs rising in the wake of his touch. Then, with great deliberation, he traced the outside of her drawers-clad leg up to her abdomen, then cupped a linen-covered breast in one hand and bridged the distance between them with his mouth.

  Chapter Three

  Fern gasped as Colin’s hand closed around her breast, then again as his mouth—his mouth!—found her nipple through the thin chemise. Heat washed through her, humiliation warring with pleasure. Surely this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. It must be a test of some sort. She should tell him to stop.

  But she didn’t want to, and when she opened her mouth the moan that emerged didn’t sound anything like a protest. The wet linen scraped across her skin to the movements of his tongue. It should have been irritating, and it was in a way, but it was also … incredible.

  She did protest automatically when he finally lifted his head, but he only released her long enough to find her other breast. He pulled her toward him, and she let herself come, awash in the pleasure that was half need, half emptiness where she was ashamed to admit to feeling anything at all.

  He pulled her onto his lap, her legs on either side of his waist. Between them, even though she was not pressed against it, was that hot bar of flesh that somehow did not correspond to her memories of the statues she had seen in Italy. But there was no need to think of it now, not with his mouth on her body, his free hand sliding under the fabric of her chemise to press against the small of her back.

  He released her breast for as long as it took to ease her chemise over her head. Fern thought she had been prepared by his caresses for the contact of his flesh against hers, but she was wrong. She shuddered at the shock of his rough palm against her skin, and her nerves hummed in expectation as she sensed him bend his head again. But he caught her mouth first, then worked his way down her neck. She leaned back against the hand at the back of her head and let him ease her onto the counterpane.

  He tugged at her drawers, and she thought, This is it. But what exactly it was, she wasn’t sure she knew. Still, a feeling of irrevocability accompanied the soft sound as her pantaloons dropped to the ground.

  He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her lips, murmuring incomprehensibly. He shifted between her thighs, and she felt the hot hardness against her belly and froze at its strangeness, at its weight that was somehow menacing. But Colin’s murmurs continued uninterrupted, and she relaxed as he continued to coax her, to tease her with his mouth. His tongue traced a slow circle around her ear, his teeth catching at the hollow of her clavicle, then down, teasing circles around the sensitive skin of her breast before finally taking her nipple into his mouth. A shock ran through her body, setting her nerve endings to tingling as heat swirled dizzyingly in her head.

  He lifted his head, and she was still panting and dizzy when she felt a hard, round prodding at the intersection of her legs.

  No, she thought, that can’t be right. She started to object, but then he pushed, and she felt herself opening to the invasion. That rod of flesh was too hot, too large, stretching her, hurting her. She floundered, unable to spin her unraveling wits into a thought, to wrap it around what was happening to her and her denial of it. The ache became a pain that lanced through her, and her protest was lost in a hiss. Then he pulled back, and she managed to get control of her voice again.

  “W-wait.” But it was hardly a whisper, swallowed in the horror and lingering pain.

  Colin paused, and she thought for an instant that he had heard her, but then he thrust into her again, deeper.

  This time, there was only a slight burn of discomfort and then something new and strange, a kind of pleasure that came unexpectedly, so much like the pain that it was hard for a moment to tell them apart. The aching hollowness within her was filled, satisfying a different kind of ache, but how it was filled! Something in her rebelled—rebelled against the pain and pleasure that Colin stole from her, spiraling her own body out of her control, but most of all, against the invasion of that shaft of flesh and its possession of her body.

  I am mine, mine, mine. But Colin’s body pinned her against the bed, his thrusts summoning from her sensations that she had no power to control or even understand. Part of her body crowed with a ravenous delight, welcoming the mastery and the pleasure both, lifting her legs to encircle his waist and tightening her hands around his biceps. But the deepest part of her ran away, curled up and hid from that pillaging of her body.

  With that retreat, the traitorous welcoming built with every thrust into a sizzling heat that threatened to overwhelm her, pushing her higher as his rhythm increased. But it wasn’t without a price. She felt it taking—felt him taking—and she closed her eyes against it as she tried to shut her mind to his insidious invasion.

  He was heavy against her, demanding, asking for a part of her that she did not want to give, and suddenly that anger within her, the part so distant she hardly felt it to be a part of her, boiled to the top. Her hands, which had been lying limp against the counterpane, lifted to the chest that was hanging over her and pushed.

  Colin’s breathing changed abruptly, but h
e didn’t so much as shift. He thrust into her again and again and again, and then he gave a low moan and a shudder that shook his whole body; and then he lay still.

  Stunned, she let her hands drop. A moment later, with a chilly kiss on her cheek, Colin pushed away, leaving Fern with a dampness between her legs and the feeling that she had been used. She lay there limply, staring at the ceiling, while beside her, her husband’s breath returned to its normal pace. A minute passed, then two. Colin rolled out of bed. She watched his naked silhouette as he stepped into the light of the suite’s parlor, and then she heard the noise of a door open and shut.

  The water closet, she realized numbly. He was going to the water closet. For some reason, the mundanity of that action seemed absurd, even insulting. After what had happened between them, that unspeakable, wonderful, horrible thing that he had done to her, he went to relieve himself?

  It came to her as she lay there, motionless, that this was what Faith and the twins had meant by their titters and innuendos. Fern knew now the reason for their blushes … but their smiles? That she could not fathom. How could a woman give in to the pleasure with the violation that accompanied it? The brutal, unsubtle assertion of power and ownership? She grabbed a corner of the rumpled counterpane and scrubbed it between her legs as if she could wipe away the memory, too. Maybe there was something wrong with her. Maybe it was that part of her that never could be still when she was lectured on the duties of a wife, too strong and too stubborn to fall into easy subservience. It couldn’t be right. Not in a virtuous, upstanding woman.

  But Fern was not so sure anymore exactly how virtuous she wanted to be.

  Faith would probably just shake her head if she knew what Fern was feeling, and the twins … Who ever knew what the twins were thinking? Perhaps they were so used to sharing with each other that they didn’t imagine such an encounter an invasion. Fern knew what the rector at Dunville would have advised: that she pray for a softer heart so that she would welcome the mastery of her husband.