by Amelia Nolan
He leaned down once more and kissed her, long, slow, and passionately. Her insides turned to syrup, and her legs felt as though they might buckle.
When he finally pulled his lips away, she stood up on her tiptoes, stole one last quick kiss, and then ran up the hills and over the grass, happy as sunshine, lighter than air.
Every time she looked back at him, he was standing in the same spot watching her – and her heart skipped a beat every time.
14
The one thing Evan did before returning to the house was to ride into the village on the outskirts of his father’s land. He was aware of how disheveled his appearance was, but he had to warn the farmers and townspeople of the two villains who had attacked Marian.
He spoke with the vicar who presided over the parish and asked him to warn his flock, and then talked briefly with the local tavern owner, an amiable fellow named Parker.
“Is the young lady a’right, m’lord?” the man asked.
“Yes, thank you. One was bald and childlike, though full-grown, and the other had a long, unpleasant face, much like a rat. Do you know of anyone hereabouts who matches that description?”
Parker shook his head. “Can’t say that I do. Must be passin’ through.”
“Tell the men of the village, five pounds to anyone who sends word to Blakestone, day or night, that leads to their capture.”
“Will do, m’lord.” The tavern owner grinned. “Though you might not find the bastards alive when you get here. The farmers here about, they have a rather nasty way of dealin’ with scoundrels like the ones you’re describin’.”
“As long as the local women and girls are kept safe, I don’t care how they’re dealt with. Please spread the word.”
“By the end of the week, I’ll have seen every local feller twice over, I guarantee you that, and every single one of ‘em’ll know.”
Evan thanked him, said his goodbyes, and rode back to Blakewood, greatly anticipating ten o’clock that evening.
15
Back at the house, Marian tucked her wet hair up into her bonnet and climbed in through the same first-floor window she had exited. She went swiftly through the various rooms, listening for her name being called or some indication that she was a wanted criminal, but heard nothing. After satisfying herself that she had escaped undetected, she went back to work with an irrepressible smile on her face.
The hours dragged by, but she survived them by recalling Evan’s kisses, the taste of which still lingered on her lips. As she moved she felt the contented soreness between her thighs, and eagerly awaited ten o’clock.
Dinner with the other servants was a dull, spiritless affair – even so more than usual, owing to the summer heat – but she could hardly contain her excitement. A few of them looked at her strangely as she fidgeted in nervous anticipation, but none spoke to her any more than usual.
She paced in her room nervously until a quarter to ten. Then she stole out, careful to avoid the worst of the creaking boards in the floor, and made her way to the east wing.
She waited by the window and wrung her hands. She was sure that she had waited far past the time – he was a quarter hour late, or more – when a dark figure appeared down the hallway.
“Hello?” he whispered.
“It’s me,” she whispered back, and he walked down the hall and into her arms, savagely kissing her as though she were something to be devoured.
“You’re late,” she rebuked him when their lips parted.
“It’s two minutes past!” he chuckled.
“It felt like two eons to me,” she sighed.
“Then I shall make you happy twice over to make up for it,” he whispered as he pulled her into the nearest bedroom.
16
They lay on the feather bed, naked and sweating, after a long and frenzied bout. The moonlight through the window lit the room in a silver glow.
“I wanted to ask you something,” he said as they lay in each other’s arms.
“Ask away.”
“You… you did not bleed when we first made love.”
She looked back at him but did not answer.
“And you seem somewhat experienced for a virgin,” he continued.
“Perhaps that is because I am not a virgin.”
That had been the answer he was expecting, but it still filled him with jealousy – an emotion he was not accustomed to at all.
She misinterpreted the expression on his face and backed away. “What, are you angry?”
“No,” he said, though he supposed that now he thought about it, perhaps he was.
“Is there something wrong with me now?” she said with irritation. “Am I damaged in your eyes?”
He did not answer for a few seconds.
When he did, he decided to say what most mattered to him. “I wanted to be your first. I wanted you all to myself.”
Her features softened, and she put her hand to his face. “Are you jealous?”
He hesitated again, then decided to be honest. “Yes.”
She laughed and kissed him. “You have nothing to be jealous of.”
“Who was he?”
“A boy down the road. No one special.”
His eyes narrowed.
“I’m telling the truth,” she protested. “Growing up, my father worked for Mr. Powell, who loved books more than anything, and had a vast library. He knew of my thirst for reading, and so he let me read anything and everything that I wanted.”
“What does this have to do with you and the boy down the road?”
She slapped him playfully on the arm. “Shush, I am getting to that. Anyway, I read everything Mr. Powell had in his library… and he had some rather scandalous words, at least for a thirteen-year-old child. Perhaps even a twenty-six-year-old man, seeing as when I mentioned some of them to Lord Pemberly the other evening, you seemed quite shocked.”
Evan’s eyes widened. “You read Les bijoux indiscrets at thirteen years of age?!”
“When did you read it?”
“That’s different,” Evan said grumpily. “I was a boy.”
“How old.”
“Fifteen or sixteen, I don’t remember which.”
“Hypocrite,” she said, and lightly bit him.
“Ow! So… you were saying…?”
“So I received a rather all-encompassing education in the forbidden arts at an early age. Of course, it only made partial sense since it was… all theory, you might say.”
“You lacked a practical education.”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t understand something, though.”
“What?”
“Weren’t your parents trying to find you a husband?”
Marian shrugged. “Not really. My father made enough to get by, but not enough that my mother could stay home and be idle. She took in sewing to help make ends meet. At any rate, I had no dowry, so there was that impediment… and I was rather limited in choice to men of my father’s station, or slightly above it.”
“You are a very beautiful woman.”
She smiled, a tad shyly. “Thank you.”
“I would think you would have attracted a great deal of interest, dowry or no.”
“Well, as a bit of a bookworm, I was rarely out and about. And since we were not well-off, there were no lovely dances or balls. And my mother forbade me to go to any of the common folks’ dances where men drank and ‘sin occurred,’ as she put it.”
“Little did she know…”
Marian kicked him lightly. “At any rate, yes, I received several proposals.”
Evan looked at her in shock. “And you turned them down?”
“Obviously, or I would not be here with you.”
“Why, if I may be so bold?”
“They were all either boring, or ugly, or old, or a combination of the three.”
“Do not mistake me, I am so very glad you did reject the proposals of these boring, ugly, old men… but were you not concerned about your future?”
<
br /> “I looked to my mother as an example. While I know she cared greatly for my father, theirs was largely a marriage of convenience. I noticed her frustration, her sadness at there not being more to life, and I saw a warning there of what I might become if I married for security rather than for love.”
Did you also look in the street and see those who married for love, or did not marry at all, and found themselves starving or without a home? Evan thought, but held his tongue.
“Besides, I always dreamed that I would find a stuffy, overly honorable gentleman who would finally seduce me by a pond…” she said dreamily.
“Very funny.”
“…and who would introduce my work to a publisher of questionable character…”
“Well, that much is true.”
“…whereupon I would be launched into literary renown and make my own way in the world, using my pen to earn my living.”
“Seriously?”
“The last part was true.”
Evan found her statement fascinating, if thoroughly unrealistic.
“So, your… conventional gentlemen callers were found unworthy, but apparently there was one who met your standards.”
“For the practical portion of my education, yes.”
“Is that what the fashionable young ladies are calling it these days?” he asked, and was rewarded with another kick for his trouble.
“There was a boy down the road named Tom who worked for the baker. He wasn’t bad looking – ”
Evan felt the pangs of jealousy again.
“ – and he would talk to me when I went to market for my mother. One time he gave me a kiss in the alley, then ran away.”
“Tom, you scoundrel,” Evan growled.
“I seem to have a problem with men who kiss me and then run away,” she teased.
“Madam, you wound me to the quick.”
She rolled her eyes, then continued. “So, after years and years of reading of the splendors of love, I decided on my twentieth birthday to do something about it. Tom was still down the street and working for the baker, so I lured him into the alley and asked him if there was someplace private we could go. I believe I stunned the poor boy with my forwardness – ”
“You do have that effect on men, it’s true.”
She bit him harder this time, and he laughed as he yelped in pain.
“To continue: I believe I stunned him with my forwardness, because he just stood there with his mouth open like a fish. But he gradually recovered, and led me up to his small flat he shared with his parents.”
“You must be joking.”
“No, I’m not. Not everyone lives in a manor.”
“You did it while his parents were there?!”
“Oh! Good heavens, no! They were away at work. Anyway… we commenced, and… it was all over in thirty seconds. I left his flat convinced that all those novels and poems had lied to me.”
Evan stifled a laugh. “Well, that’s what you get for behaving in such an unladylike fashion.”
“I was rewarded amply for my very unladylike behavior this afternoon.”
“Yes, well… you needed some compensation for such a ghastly previous experience.”
She shrugged. “It got better.”
Evan looked at her with an incredulous expression – and a sinking feeling in his stomach. “You did it again?!”
“I consulted my books and determined that perhaps I had erred in some way – or that Tom had erred – and that more practice might succeed where our first efforts had failed. I especially liked Mr. Franklin’s advice, ‘diligence is the mother of good luck’ and ‘do not fear mistakes; you will know failure, so continue to reach out.’”
“Mr. Franklin, the American.”
“Yes.”
“I do not think he spoke those words with Tom the baker’s assistant in mind,” Evan said sarcastically.
She giggled. “Nonetheless, they were applicable.”
Jealousy roiled his insides – a very odd feeling indeed. Of all the women he had ever bedded, he had not really cared what else they did or who else they saw… but this past lover, a simple fool, made Evan want to break out his dueling pistols.
“Then Mother and Father found out,” she sighed, “and suddenly it became quite necessary to spirit me away from London.”
“How did they find out?”
“He really was a foolish boy… he wrote me a love letter and dropped it in the mail slot, but he did not seal the envelope. And he addressed it to Miss Willows, but his handwriting was atrocious, so I can see how my mother mistook it for ‘Mrs. Willows.’ That is what she claimed, anyway. Whether that was the case, or she was spying on me, she soon came to realize that I was not always going to Mr. Powell’s library when I was out.”
“He did not write about it?!” Evan asked, horrified and amused all at once. That was the first rule of seduction among gentlemen: never put anything incriminating in writing. Nothing that you or the lady could not bear to have exposed publicly, at any rate.
“Let us just say he was not discreet.”
“And so your parents sent you here to Blakewood?”
“Yes, to good old Auntie Claire and Uncle Clifford.”
“Hm. That didn’t exactly solve the problem, did it?”
“If only my parents knew,” she laughed. “‘Out of the frying pan and into the fire.’”
Evan was silent for a moment. “At least they tried to protect you.”
“Oh, I know they love me… they just… they act like… ghhh,” she finished with an exasperated grunt, unable to articulate the trials they had put her through.
Evan smiled. “At least you have parents that care for you.”
She looked at him pensively. After a few seconds she gently brushed a damp lock of hair from his forehead. “I wanted to ask, but…”
“But what?”
“I do not want to tread on painful memories.”
“My mother?” Evan said.
Marian nodded.
“She died when I was six years old, giving birth to Andrew.” His eyes grew unfocused, and he stared into the distance. “I barely remember her now… though I remember that she was wonderful. So sweet and kind. And I remember that my father was a better man, a happier man, when she was still alive… our family would have been very different had she lived…”
Very gently, Marian leaned over and planted the most delicate of kisses on his lips.
He took her hand and squeezed it gently. Neither of them said anything for several moments.
Evan finally broke the silence. “So?”
Marian looked confused. “…so…?”
“What happened with the baker’s boy?”
“I told you. He wrote a letter that scandalized my parents, and I was sent here.”
“No, I mean… once you started… practicing.”
She stared at him with the faintest hint of a smile. “That’s what you want to know? After everything we’ve said over the last few minutes, and that’s what you return to?”
“I was just curious,” he said defensively.
She rolled her eyes. “We practiced. Things got better.”
“How much better?”
She grinned. “You’re jealous.”
“No I’m not.”
“Yes you are!” and she launched herself upon him and smothered him with kisses.
He fought her only for a second, then kissed her back.
When she had stopped, he finally asked, “…well?”
“Well what?”
“You know very well what I mean!” he said, and hid the irritation in his voice poorly.
“It was serviceable.”
“‘Serviceable’? What does that mean?”
“It means that before, I had scraps of bread and water… until this afternoon, when I had my first feast.”
“Of what, pumpernickel and tea?” he pouted.
She laughed.
“Of lamb…” she whispered, then kissed his ear.<
br />
“…and beef…”
She kissed his neck.
“…and quail…”
She kissed his jaw.
“…and wine…”
She kissed his chin.
“…and cherries…”
She kissed the tip of his nose.
“…and scented ices, flavored with honey and sugar…”
She kissed his lips and lingered there for a very long time, until she lifted back her head and stared into his eyes.
“…and pumpernickel and tea,” she giggled.
“You!” he exclaimed, and wrestled with her playfully, sucking her nipples and making her gasp with delight.
After a moment, though, he broke off. “But seriously…”
“Yes?”
“…did you…”
“What?”
“Did you enjoy it?”
She sighed. “I see the books are right.”
“What do you mean?”
“Men are fragile creatures who detest the thought of having to compete with even the memory of another male.”
“That does not answer my question.”
She looked at him mockingly. “He was nowhere near as handsome as you.”
“Good.”
“And he was nowhere near as tall.”
“And?”
“And nowhere near as strong, or smart, or dashing.”
“All well and good, but – ”
Her hands stroked his member, and he grunted with pleasure and surprise. It was one of the things she did that he loved most – her lustful curiosity and shamelessness in matters of sex.
“He was not nearly so impressively endowed as you,” she purred.
He felt himself spring to life in her hand.
“Good,” he groaned.
“And he was not one tenth as talented as you in giving a woman pleasure,” she whispered.
“Good,” he whispered back, and kissed her deeply.
She broke it off. “Although I must say, he was also not nearly as obsessed with my former lovers as you are.”
He attacked her, tickling her up and down her sides, and had to smother her giggles with a pillow.
“That is because he had no former lovers to worry about,” Evan growled.
She gave him a coy look.
“What?!” he asked in shock. “Where there others?!”
“No!” she snapped playfully, and hit him with the pillow. “Just the one.”
