What exactly did she expect him to say? He said nothing.
“More than twenty?”
“I haven’t kept count.” And he had no intention of making an accounting.
“No notches on your bedpost, eh?” She walked away from him, deeper into his room, and stood before the open window, in nearly the same position he’d been when she’d come to his door. The breeze had picked up; it made her hair flutter and pushed her filmy nightgown and open robe back to hug her body and waft out behind her.
“Why is it, do you think, that men may take all the women they like, women they know scarcely or not at all, and they’re celebrated for it, but a woman may not even touch a man she loves until they’ve been stood in a church and had a man in a robe give them leave? And after that, the man may still follow his cock all over town, and no one cares, but if his ignored wife were to seek affection elsewhere, a whole house might be brought down under the scandal of it. How is that fair?”
He was too shocked to hear her use the word ‘cock’ to have heard anything else she’d said.
In the wake of his silence, she spun on her bare heel and stormed back to him. “Do you think it’s fair, Mr. Frazier?”
He didn’t appreciate the way she used his name like a blunt weapon. “I think it’s the way things are, Lady Nora.”
She blinked as his return volley hit its target, but her righteous fury flamed no cooler. “That’s a very disappointing answer. I expected better from you.” She brushed past him, her head held regally high, and stalked to the door.
He got there just as she’d pulled it free of its frame, and he pushed it shut, standing behind her, looming over her. “Nora. It’s not fair. Of course it’s not. But it is the way things are. For now. There will be no one else for me but you from today forward. I wish you could stay tonight. I want to feel your touch and let you feel mine. But if you don’t want to creep out in shame, what’s your solution?”
She sighed and let her head fall forward until her forehead hit the door with a thump. “I don’t know. Every way I turn, my path is blocked. I feel trapped.”
William brushed her hair from her shoulder, exposing the sleek length of her neck. “I mean to free you,” he murmured and pressed his mouth to the point where her heartbeat echoed.
Their disagreement was over, and the fight left her body on a whimper. As he kissed and laved the sweet, soft velvet of her neck and shoulder, tracing the connection between each of those three small moles, she trembled beneath his lips and whispered his name. “William.”
He turned her around and claimed her mouth. She opened to him at once, coiling her arms around his neck when he drew her to his body, threading her fingers into his hair. Through the filmy silk of her nightclothes, he could feel her heat, her heart, her innocent need.
Before they were beyond the point of turning back, he turned his head. “You have to go, Nora. This is dangerous. Just this afternoon, you told me you wanted your father to accept me. What’ll he do if he finds you here?”
Her eyes searched his for several seconds. Finally, she sighed, and he knew she hadn’t found what she’d sought. “I wonder what it would be like not to be ruled by men who think they know my best interest better than I do.”
Again he was in a thicket of thorny words. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
She smiled sadly and brushed her fingers over his lips. “You’re right, of course. I’ll go.”
He stepped back. As she settled her clothes, he lit her candle again and handed it to her. Then he opened the door and checked the corridor—it was dark and silent. Safe.
Before she stepped over the threshold, she looked back. “You do love me?”
“I do. And you’re the first, Nora. I haven’t been in love before.”
He was glad of the bright smile the words earned him. “Then, as I can’t free myself, I’ll trust you to open my cage for me.”
She walked away, a pale angel in a halo of dull gold light. He watched her as long as he dared.
NINE
Nora closed her door quietly and stood in her room, the stub of candle no more now than a wick guttering into a pool of wax. She watched the flame struggle to survive and finally die, drowned in its own leavings.
Then her room was dark, with nothing but the moonlight glowing through the closed draperies, occasionally flashing bright when the breeze through the open windows made the fabric swell and recede.
Her body felt like the wind and the candle both—swelling and receding, dying in its own heat. The sensations that pulsed through her, speeding her blood, heating her joints, hazing her mind, were both entirely new and wholly recognizable. She could still feel the hard mound of William’s own need pressing into her body, making her own flower in answer. She knew what it was that he’d felt, that she still felt, though never before had she experienced it, not to this degree.
She was feverish and restless—and, oddly, sore, a liberating ache akin to how her torso felt, her waist and ribs and chest, when an especially tight corset was finally unlaced. Like that part of her body had been denied blood until it had forgotten the need for it, and when the blood pushed through again, it had to forge its path anew.
The ache she felt now wasn’t in her torso. It sat heavily between her legs, where she throbbed in time to her heart. Her breasts, too—the tips felt especially round and sensitive. Only one thing would ease these aches, and she knew, intuitively, instinctually, what. The thing that Christopher sought so often. The thing that William, too, had apparently hunted as if he’d needed the catch to live.
She wanted him. His body, in hers. On hers. All around hers. Those soft, dark hairs that covered his chest—she wanted to feel them brushing over her chest. She wanted the weight of him, the heat, all of him. All the things she’d read but hadn’t fully understood, all the sideways remarks she’d heard her brother mutter or overheard him say aloud with friends—on this day, those random bits had fallen into place, and she’d understood. Earlier in the day, she hadn’t realised that one could kiss with an open mouth, but now she’d experienced that wonder and what it had done to her body, now she understood the alchemy of body and mind and heart.
And she knew exactly what she wanted.
Yet here she was, alone in her room, because, yet again, she couldn’t have it. Yet another freedom granted to men while women sat and waited. The worst part of being sent from William’s room, the most vexing and humiliating? That he’d been right. It was the way things were. The consequences of claiming that freedom for herself would be ruinous. Not fair at all, but true. This was a world in which a woman could claim nothing for herself.
She set the dead candleholder on the table under the nearest window and yanked the draperies open. A gust of autumn air—quite chilly without the filter of the heavy drapes—burst in and raised bumps all over her skin. The moon bathed her in pale blue, flickering now as clouds rushed in. Rain was coming; if not tonight, then tomorrow.
With her thoughts churning and her body surging under her skin, Nora pushed her peignoir from her shoulders and let it fall to the floor in a puff at her feet. She drew her nightgown over her head, dropping it to the floor as well, and stood naked before the window. The wind lifted her hair so that the loose strands tickled her back with coy kisses. Her skin went taut in the chill. Her nipples contracted into hard, rough points, the ache in them increasing nearly to pain. Following her body’s animal instinct to see its needs met, she set her hands on her breasts and nearly cried out at the blades of pained pleasure her own touch brought. Between her legs, that demanding throb, that naïve knowing, grew in urgency. She stepped one foot out, making her stance wide, and sighed as the cool night breeze moved between her legs and brushed against the hottest part of her.
Nora had had similar feelings before—calmer, but similar. She’d had them often since she’d met William. But other than the practical, expedient, and generally unpleasant business of her monthly time, she’d touched herself little between
her legs, and had touched her breasts not much more often. A shy skim of her arm across her breast, or a moment before sleep letting her fingers dance in the curls between her thighs, but little more—because she hadn’t understood. Yet another thing she’d needed a man to do: awaken this understanding of her own body. Incite such ardor in her for him that she couldn’t help but know.
But here she was, alone.
Leaving one hand to cup a tender breast, Nora dropped the other, easing her fingers down her body, over her belly, into those curls, and farther, between her thighs. She sighed at the subtle pleasure and explored the velvety-soft flesh, like a small pillow. No—like two lips, soft lips. Pushing one finger between them, she found her entrance. A familiar shyness came over her as she entered unknown territory, but she refused to let it dissuade her. Instead, she forged on, pushing her finger inside her body, seeking. This was where William would enter her. Someday, when they were married. If they were married. If her father could be made to agree to the match.
Now that she was there, she felt daring, and drew her finger out and back in. And again. The pleasure increased, but not enough. Not nearly enough. Nora thought she might burst from the tension welling up insider her, and this … it could not possibly give her relief.
Was this all there was to making love? This shimmer of feeling? Pleasant, but no more than that. And yet men sought it out like the greatest treasure. Was it better for them? Was it yet another thing bestowed on men but refused entirely to women? This time by God himself?
Still afire with sensual need and now bitterly disappointed, Nora grabbed her nightgown from the floor, shoved it back on, and buried herself unhappily under the covers.
The next fortnight passed uneventfully. October became November, and autumn aged and hardened to its usual chilly drear. The men in the house busied themselves with various kinds of work: her father performed his duties as lord and peer, and Christopher served as William’s liaison with important men in and around Kent. In the evenings, they shared dinner and socialised in the drawing room after, either alone as a family or while entertaining a few guests. No one of particular note, only friends and neighbours among the other noble families of Kent.
On two occasions during those weeks, Nora’s father invited young men to dine with them, making decidedly unsubtle attempts to offer her for their connubial consideration. Nora did her best to catch their interest and inwardly delighted to see William seethe.
It was practically the only enjoyment she had. Daily rain kept her cooped up inside, even when the men were away, and her father hadn’t gone on his weekly excursion since Christopher and William had arrived. What was worse: William had put distance between them since she’d come to his room on his first night at Tarrindale Hall. He was kind and chivalrous, and he spoke and bantered with her as ever, but when she tried to catch him in a quiet moment alone, without spying eyes and ears around them, he ducked away. He wouldn’t even hold his gaze on her for very long. If it weren’t for the fire that still raged during those brief moments when his eyes did meet hers and linger, Nora might have thought his declaration of love had been false.
But the fire did burn, and he did seethe visibly when she paid heed to other men, and Nora was assured that his feelings for her were true. Not that it seemed much to matter. And not that she was particularly successful in drawing the notice of other men—or they in drawing hers. They were polite, and she attempted to be the same. William sat and glowered, but behaved with outward civility.
Even Christopher was subdued. It was all very tedious.
Dull disappointment pervaded Nora’s spirit. The weather, the company, her own body, even love itself was nothing like she’d hoped. She wandered through the heavy, damp air of her home, restless and depressed.
One morning, as the middle of November neared, Nora was first to the breakfast table. Her father had left for London the day before, on parliamentary business, and wasn’t expected back for two more days. Normally, she’d consider this a boon of freedom, but there wasn’t much freedom to be had these days, even when the door to her cage was left open.
She fixed a plate without paying much attention to the fare, and sat. Alone in the room, she set her elbow on the table and propped her head on her hand. As she pushed her fork through her eggs, not bothering to take a bite, her brother and William came into the room together. They were dressed for business already, and she sighed. Another day in the house alone.
It wasn’t raining, but the low, grey sky threatened it, and the ground had been saturated for days, anyway. She couldn’t take Middy out in the sucking mud and risk injuring him.
The men made up their plates and sat at the table. William beside her, which was unusual. Normally, he sat beside Christopher—which she preferred, because she could watch him without being noticed for it, and occasionally catch his eye and see that reassuring burn. Nora turned to him, expecting his eyes to move away. They didn’t. He held his gaze and offered her a warm smile.
“What?”
“We’re going to Dover for the day. I’m meeting with an interested party, and Chris is going to make the introductions.”
Dover was twenty-five miles away over country roads, which took about two hours in Christopher’s Daimler, in fair weather. In the current condition of the roads, and using the older country car, they’d have to move more slowly. Hours’ travel each way, and whatever time they spent in Dover. She really was going to be alone all the day. Looking over her shoulder at the grey gloom outside, Nora sighed again.
“Come with us, Nono,” Christopher said.
Nora whipped her head around and gaped at her brother’s grin. “What?”
William’s hand settled on her thigh. “Come with us. Spend the day away from here with us. No servants, no father, just us. We’ll have an adventure.”
“Well, it’s only Dover,” Christopher chuckled. “But Will’s talent for adventure is renowned. He can even get up to mischief standing before a milliner’s, so perhaps we’ll find excitement in Dover, too.”
Nora stared at William’s hand. Under her gaze, he squeezed her thigh. “Come with us, darling.”
Stunned by his use of the endearment and his intimate contact here in the dining room, after weeks of courtly distance, Nora looked across the table at her brother, who seemed unsurprised.
“Oh, I know all about your illicit love affair. Consider me Will’s champion. And yours. As long as I have anything to say about it, you’ll not marry some doughy count or daft baron. If you want this uncouth colonial, then I shall do all I can to ensure that you have him.”
“Truly?”
Christopher spanned the table and held out his hand. She set hers inside it and felt his warm love as his fingers clasped hers. “As I told Will, you cannot make a show of it before Father until he’s been brought round, or all will be lost before it’s begun. But yes, Nora. Truly. I want you to be happy, and you won’t be if you stay trapped in this world.”
The heavy burden of Nora’s malaise didn’t miraculously evanesce with her brother’s words. Its mass clouded her mind and her heart, and she couldn’t quite believe it was all so simple. Moreover, she chafed at the notion that men still managed her life. These men were on her side, but her happiness was up to them, not her. She wanted a chance to make her own choices.
William squeezed her thigh again. “Nora?”
Perhaps she simply wanted too much. It should be enough that William and Christopher offered her the chance for happiness, even if she couldn’t take it for herself.
She offered William a smile. “I’m glad. I’d like to join you in Dover today.”
Dover, a port town with an ancient history, sat at the narrowest span of the English Channel: the Strait of Dover. On clear, calm days, the land of France was just visible. From the French side, the chalky magnificence of the White Cliffs of Dover could be seen with greater ease.
Sitting on the narrowest distance between England and France, Dover represented England’s bes
t access to the European continent. It also represented its greatest vulnerability to attack. Until and unless aeroplanes became common and useful, most Europeans who wished to visit Great Britain, and British citizens who wished to travel on the continent, passed through Dover. And many hostile incursions on British soil had made landfall here.
The world was at peace now, but the people of Dover squinted across the Strait, as if it were their solemn duty of birth to stand at the vanguard and protect the realm. In fact, throughout history, it had been their duty.
As an important port town, Dover was also a centre for industry, and it had the look of it—grimy and dingy at its heart. The countryside was lovely, and the coast majestic, but once the buildings rose up and hemmed in the streets, all colour and light faded into shadow.
The ride from Tarrindale was a joy—warm enough, and dry enough, for the top to stay down, and, though the roads were rutted and muddy, Christopher drove carefully and didn’t jar his passengers overmuch. By the time they arrived on the outskirts of town, the sun filtered valiantly through the clouds, offering a watery cheer to the air. Dressed in a russet wool walking suit and a matching wide-brimmed hat, with a motoring duster and veil over the ensemble, Nora sat behind the men, her eyes closed and her head tipped up to face the wind. In the front seat, the men spoke business. She kept her ear tuned to their chatter but didn’t participate. They seemed to forget she was with them, but she didn’t mind. She breathed as deeply as she could and enjoyed the fresh air and escape from the house.
In Dover, they toured the Port, and William approached stevedores and dockmen and peppered them with questions about their work and the traffic over the Channel. They went to the site of the aborted tunnel project, but after nearly thirty years, there wasn’t much of it left to see. Dover had taken it back.
After a light luncheon at a café near the harbour, the men dropped Nora in the shopping district, and she spent a listless two hours browsing hats and gloves and shoes she didn’t really want before they were back from their meeting with the ‘interested party’—Chester MacDougal, the owner of a shipping and transport company whose primary focus was import-export with the continent. They found her in a glove shop, where she was completing a purchase, a pair of dove-grey kidskin gloves with embroidered trim that matched the soutache braid on her outfit—the first thing that had roused any interest in her.
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