“What is – ”
“Protection,” he gasped, as though barely able to control himself. “To prevent any … consequences.”
Whatever it was, Chloe could not see, but she did not need to: all she had to do was feel as he entered her wetness, and she writhed under the pleasure that the movement gave her.
“Oh, Moses, what – ”
That was all she managed. At that very moment, Moses began the sweetest rhythm, one hand teasing her nipple, one hand cupping her buttocks towards him, his mouth utterly possessing her own, and the hardness of his body entering her and leaving her in a slow but strong movement.
If she had any mind to speak, it would have been faster and harder, but instinct took over and her hips, guided by Moses’ hand, started to rock, deepening the pace, and her back arched against the hand that was teasing her breast and yet sparking jolts of pleasure between her breasts and her secret place, and how could such ecstasy be matched?
“This is it,” Moses jaggedly whispered in her ear, finally releasing her from a kiss that she never wanted to end. “Look at me Chloe – look into my eyes as we – ”
“As we what?” Chloe asked wildly. “As we – oh God!”
She did not need his answer in words, for his body responded at her excited and innocent question. As Moses groaned her name over and over again, he pounded into her and the friction and slickness of it all, his fingers working her breast and forcing her buttocks to rock against him in the perfect rhythm pushed her over the edge into a mind-blowing explosion of pleasure and ecstasy that seemed to continue for hours.
Moses watched the half-asleep form lying in his arms. It must have been an hour since they had shared the most intense thing that two people could, and yet he had not grown bored of just looking at her face.
Worn out and warm in the afterglow of lovemaking, Chloe was nestled in his arms with eyes barely open.
Her lashes flickered, and she glanced up at him – and it was as though he had been struck by lightning. All of a sudden, the emotions that he had not even realised that he had been holding back rushed over him like a torrent, like a waterfall finally tipping over the edge, like a dam that had been held back for too long.
This was the only woman, the only person, who had been able to put a smile on his face in the last year, and not because they made love, but because she was bright, and smart, and beautiful. She was not afraid of him, and she was not afraid to offend him. She was something utterly new.
“Chloe,” Moses whispered, and he could not help but smile as he spoke. “You are quite beautiful, you know. Inside and out. And you have … you are the first person to …”
His voice trailed off, as he noticed Chloe’s breathing had slowed, and her eyes were closed.
Miss Vaughn was fast asleep.
6
When Chloe awoke in the softest bed she could ever remember, she was completely alone.
Her eyes blinked in the soft light and then took in the incredibly lavish bed with silk sheets, hangings with gold embroidery around the four posts, and more pillows and cushions than she would ever know what to do with. There was the sense that someone else had been there, too, but no evidence of another.
She cleared her throat and the room echoed. Blinking, her eyes tried to take it all in, but the room seemed to go on forever, with tapestries on one side, and gold framed paintings on the other.
She had never found a room in The Beeches like this. Was it a state bedroom that she had wandered into last night?
The ceiling, she could see, was painted with Grecian looking cherubs. One of them near the door had a large glass of wine, but she could not remember drinking anything like –
The walk. The water. Wandorne.
The lake and the boat and the rain and –
Chloe sat up, and only then realised that she was completely naked in the bed, and Sir Moses was absolutely nowhere to be seen. The sunlight that was drifting lazily through the windows was clearly from late morning.
How long had she slept? When had he left her? Immediately after ..?
And now the memories of that hedonist night rushed back, and Chloe blushed slightly to remember how wanton her behaviour had been. To think that she had agreed to – and wanted! – such a night, with such a man. Bedded by a baronet.
Her body did not look any different, and yet she felt different: whole, as though a part of her had been missing before. As though a question had been asked at the very beginning of her life, and until last night, she had never had an answer.
Suddenly the bed felt too large, too lonely. Chloe pulled herself out of the silk sheets and found the gown that had been lent to her crumpled in a heap on the floor, lying where it had been dropped from her naked body as Moses’ hands –
Chloe blushed, even though she was alone. The heat of her thoughts was more than enough to bring a pink glow to her cheek.
It took her but two minutes to get dressed, and this time she had enough presence of mind to weave the ribbon carefully before she stepped into it, pulled the back tight with a quick tug, and knotting it carefully. Slipping her feet into her shoes and glancing once more around the room where she had – quite willingly – lost her innocence, she left the room.
And gasped. The landing that she had stepped out into, ignored as it had been when she had been carried in Sir Moses’ arms towards the promise of pleasure, was truly spectacular. The high arched ceiling was broken up with large panes of glass, causing light to drift down and give the feeling of an orangery, or a glass house.
The stairs were wide and covered in red velvet carpet with gold trimmed at the edges. Every step Chloe took brought her before new beauties, and although she could still see the neglect, the cobwebs at the edges, the lack of love that this house had suffered, it was still beautiful.
At the bottom of the stairs, she looked around her, as though hoping to see a clearly lettered sign pointing to the breakfast room. Had she even been shown the breakfast room in that heady tour Moses – Sir Moses, Chloe reminded herself sternly – had given her last night?
The thought of that gentleman made her head spin slightly. What was she going to say to him? What was he going to say to her? Or would they just ignore it, pretend that it did not happen, act as though the experiment was a success?
Chloe smiled at the remembrance of the pleasure he had given her. Well, it had certainly been a success.
She opened a door and discovered a large and leather lined billiard room. After trying another door, she found what could only be a gun room, and on the third attempt, the library.
Temptation overpowered her, and despite the slight grumbling in her stomach that was crying out for sustenance, Chloe took a few steps into the room when her eyes caught sight of a book’s spine with words inscribed in gold.
She did not even stop to think. Reaching forward, Chloe brought the book down, and saw in the title page that it was a book she had not yet read, entitled Organon der rationellen Heilkunde. Without taking her eyes from the book, she took a few steps to the nearest armchair, curled up in it, and started to read.
The sound of the door opening caused her to start, and the man standing in the doorway did nothing to quieten her racing heart. Her stomach lurched, and not due to hunger: Sir Moses was even more handsome than she remembered, and today he was just as improperly dressed as before, his shirt opened and unbuttoned at the top, revealing the promise of a broad and muscular chest.
A chest that had been clutched to hers, the hair on it scraping against her breasts and awakening –
“Ha!” Sir Moses barked out a laugh, and shook his head with a smile. “I should have expected to find you here, rather than whiling away the morning with your toilette or newspapers.”
Chloe raised a self-conscious hand to her hair, realising that it had not been brushed in almost a day and had started to go a little wild. Well, completely wild.
But Sir Moses did not seem to have noticed a thing. “Breakfast is ready.”
A flush of something like rage, and a little more like frustration, pinked Chloe’s cheeks. Well, was that the sort of way to greet a guest a good morning? A guest, moreover, with whom you had shared … with whom you had just experienced, for the first time …
And now her cheeks darkened into a deeper pink, nearing red. It had been the first time to experience such wonderful things for her, it was true, but that did not mean that it was necessarily the first time for him. A man so gentle and yet knowing in the ways of love: how could she had thought it? And yet she had not thought to ask, not even considered whether Sir Moses and his fiancée had ever …
Chloe blanched at the very thought of it and rose from the armchair, leaving the book sorrowfully behind. She knew that they had agreed to keep what happened last night unemotional, but still. She had hoped that there would be a little more politeness than this; he had not even remained to show her the way.
The reason for this soon became obvious. The door for the next room had been left ajar, and from it echoed the noise of knife and fork on plate.
Entering it with as elegant and controlled a walk as possible – a real effort – Chloe saw that Sir Moses was seated awkwardly facing the door with a look on his face that she could not read. Was it intrigue? Was it embarrassment? He certainly looked discomforted.
As she lowered herself into the chair opposite him, Sir Moses smiled at her with little emotion behind his eyes.
“Help yourself,” he said gruffly. “Anything you want, ask Baxter here, and he can tell you whether or not Cook will stand for it.”
Chloe raised an eyebrow at Baxter, who was standing by the doorway and inclined his head to her in a morning greeting.
Which was far more gracious than anything she had received from his master. Chloe sat, motionless, unsure what to say. Should she bring up the night before in conversation? Could she even countenance such a thought, with Baxter standing, right there, ready and waiting to hear any and all words that came out of her mouth?
It had been Sir Moses, after all, who had requested that it was not emotional, Chloe reasoned with herself as she reached out to pour herself some tea. And she had agreed: she had been intrigued, curious to experience the delights that a man could give a woman, and a woman could give a man. She did not want to be tied to a man through marriage, and she had been the one who had promised him that he would owe her nothing.
So why was she desperate to catch his eye? Why did she want him to speak, and to speak kindly, to speak with words of care and in tones of devotion?
If there had been words in her soul that were right to say, she could not find them. Instead, Chloe avoided his eye completely, and pulled toast towards her and started to butter it furiously, as though it had once done her a serious wrong.
Should he wish to speak, Chloe told herself, he could speak. She would not prevent it.
Just as she had this thought, Sir Moses cleared his throat, and she found herself looking upwards far more eagerly than she would have liked.
“Yes?”
Sir Moses picked up a letter that was lying on the table next to his plate. “This arrived for me this morning, Miss Vaughn. Would you like me to read it to you?”
“If it is a letter for yourself, ‘tis no business of mine to know its contents,” replied Chloe stiffly. How could he look at her with such lack of warmth, without any feeling whatsoever, when just hours ago he had been crying out her name?
“‘Dear Sir Moses, your letter came at such a time when I was so concerned, I truly think it was brought to me by Heaven,’” began Sir Moses in a dry and slightly bored monotone. “‘For when I think of the agonies that I underwent when I returned home to find Miss Vaughn not waiting for us as I had assumed but instead missing with none around me sure of…’ There is a long paragraph here, Miss Vaughn,” he said, eyes raised from the letter in a sardonic eye, “I will not bore you with it.”
Chloe flushed. She recognised the good hearted concern of the letter, even when read aloud by Sir Moses’ bored voice. So, poor Lady Kathryn had not known where she had gone and had evidently gone to much trouble in order to find her.
“‘I am relieved therefore,’” continued Sir Moses in a dry voice, “‘to hear that my charge has been rescued by you, Sir Moses, and I thank you for offering the shelter of your illustrious home until the morrow, when I shall arrive at eleven o’clock in the morning to take her back into my care.’ So there we have it, and you have but half an hour to wait until you are rescued from me.”
Disappointment welled up in her heart, but Chloe did her best to ignore it. So, he could not even bring himself to ask her to leave but instead announced it through Lady Kathryn’s letter. He did not even have the decency to look her in the face as he summarily dismissed her, to all intents and purposes his lover, from his house.
7
Before Miss Vaughn could reply, tiny silver bells were chiming the half hour, and she rose hastily before Moses could ask her to stay.
“I will wait in the morning room for Lady Kathryn’s arrival,” she said in a quiet voice. “Please do excuse me, Sir Moses.”
Moses’ mouth was open, but he had no words. What did you say to a woman who you ravished the night before in the heat of passion, and a medley of emotions that you never thought you would ever be able to feel again?
If he could be honest with himself, he was disappointed. The letter, he had thought, would sadden her with its suggested early departure from him. Chloe – Miss Vaughn, he must remember to call her that now that they were in polite society again – Miss Vaughn had not even questioned it or asked whether it was necessary for her to go so immediately.
It hurt to discover how greatly he wanted her to ask to stay longer, or sigh that Lady Kathryn’s arrival was too sudden. Even now she was curtseying her exit and asking in a quiet murmur to Baxter where exactly the morning room was.
She had just accepted it. There did not seem to be any excitement in her features, that was true, thought Sir Moses as he turned over the sardine on his plate, appetite lost. She did not seem to want to leave him, and yet there was no interest in remaining either.
A thought struck him, and hope rose in his chest. Perhaps she would say something, before Lady Kathryn arrived. There were still thirty minutes. Thirty minutes for something truly incredible to happen. Perhaps she was just waiting for the right moment.
He would give her one. Abandoning his breakfast, Moses almost dropped his knife and fork on the floor in his haste to move. As he stumbled through the doorway of the morning room, Chloe – Miss Vaughn, Moses hastily corrected himself silently – must have only just seated herself. Her slender and elegant fingers were arranging her skirts around her as she looked up in surprise.
“Sir Moses! I … thought that you were finishing your breakfast.”
He swallowed. There was a space beside her on the sofa, but did he dare sit there? Light was streaming through the tall wide windows, and they illuminated several other places that he could sit – the chair by the fireplace, another by the little card table – but he was determined.
She did not make any move as he sat down beside her, and a hand now finished with its skirt moving task laid motionless beside her. It was mere inches from him, and Moses felt his heart quicken. All he had to do was reach out – just reach out with his own, and he would be able to take her hand in his, and the contact between them would no doubt spark a conversation where they could be honest, finally, about the emotions that were crashing through –
“I wonder whether my friend Rebecca will be accompanying Lady Kathryn this morning,” said Miss Vaughn in a light tone, lifting her hand and placing it within her lap, out of Moses’ reach.
He had reached out, of course, and he grabbed at a book that was lying on the table before them in an effort to hide the real reason why he had lunged towards her.
“Perhaps,” he said without thought, trying to figh
t the flush of embarrassment from creeping up from his cravat. “Would you like to see her?”
Miss Vaughn smiled, but it looked brittle. Small talk, thought Moses bitterly. It was the last thing that he wanted between them.
“I enjoy her company, and it would be lovely to see her again,” was the staid and polite reply.
Moses could feel his temper rising: was he to be inflicted with this type of nonsense? But then his shoulders relaxed, and he leaned back slightly against the back of the sofa. Surely she could not be this calm, not after what happened last night. A little prod in the right direction would get Miss Vaughn speaking her true mind before long.
“And,” he said lightly, as though the question had no real import, “will you tell Miss Rebecca exactly what has happened between us?”
Whatever reaction he had been hoping for, the one that he received was certainly not it.
“Excuse me, sir,” Miss Vaughn said with fire spitting from her lips, “but if I recall correctly, there was an agreement made between us that quite explicitly forbade any such intimations to anyone, by either of us.”
Moses was out of his depth. “Why yes, I remember, but – ”
And now Miss Vaughn had risen from the sofa in a great swell of anger and rustling skirts. “I would think that a gentleman would be able to trust a lady’s word – and keep his own, if it comes to that. I hope that I can rely on you, or do you think that it will be too arduous for you?”
“I do – I mean, I do trust your word,” Moses said hastily. By God, how could this all go wrong so quickly? All he wanted was a little honesty between them … but what if this was her honest thoughts? What if she felt nothing for him at all? “I just wondered, that was all. I was curious whether your friendship with her would – ”
“Ah, I see.” Miss Vaughn was staring at him with a glint in her eye, and with a sinking feeling Moses realised that he was completely outgunned in this particular battle. “It was a test, was it not? And should I feel grateful to have passed, Sir Moses?”
Beached with a Baronet Page 6
