The Bride Takes a Groom

by Lisa Berne

  The answer—the idea—bloomed inside Katherine, as beautiful as a flower in spring. “This.” She brought herself closer, put a hand on his shoulder, lowered her face to his. Lightly, lightly, she touched her lips to his mouth. Connected the two of them in this powerful, intimate way. And without hesitation she tilted her head to allow the kiss to deepen, into something that was urgent and needful, and hot and wet, and tongues and teeth, and Hugo making a delicious growling sound in his throat redolent of both satisfaction and hunger, and his hands coming up to slide around her, and everything that was simple, honest, real, good.

  When at last they broke the kiss, she was breathless and smiling. And oh, how happy Hugo looked. That beautiful flower bloomed and opened wide within her. She said:

  “Second, I want to do this.” She sat up. With unhurried deliberation she touched him: in a long caress slid her hands from his shoulders down the warm muscled length of his arms; up again, then down along the broad, hard planes of his chest, the sculpted lines of his torso, his flat stomach. It was as if her palms and fingers, sensitive, alive, weren’t just feeling him, they were seeing, knowing him. And knowing he liked what she was doing. Maybe as much as she liked it, too.

  Her hands came to the bedclothes where they lay against his waist. He was hard, hard, beneath them, and a new idea came to her.

  “Third,” she said to Hugo, “I want to do this.”

  She drew the bedclothes down and away. Such magnificent . . . maleness. What a piece of work is man, Shakespeare had written, although not, perhaps, as she was interpreting it now, with earthy awe and appreciation for this very particular aspect of a man. Of Hugo. She thought of Sonnet 128. Me thy lips to kiss. She revised it in her mind: you my lips to kiss.

  She leaned down and—shyly at first, then with more boldness—she tasted him. Explored him, with her lips and tongue and fingers and mouth. Heard with her own deep delight his ragged groan. She received even as she gave, and rapidly did she lose herself in the hot mindless joy of it.

  It was only when Hugo gently pushed her away that Katherine came to, a little, and straightened. “What is it?”

  He raked his fingers through his hair. “You’ll have me toppling off the bed in a moment.”

  “In a good way?”

  “In a very good way. What do you want to do now?”

  She thought. Then: “This. Fourth thing.” She pulled from over her head the emerald necklace, let it spill like water on the far side of the bed, then her bracelets, too. “My gown. Will you unlace it?”

  “Yes.” Hugo sat up, and she twisted around, marveling, in some distant part of her, at the miracle of how easily she did it, how the pain had entirely gone. She could feel her gown loosening, and when he said, “It’s done,” she turned back around, hitched up the hem, and tugged her gown up and over her head; and then her shift, too. She was rewarded by his smile, the fire in his eyes, by every taut line in his body.

  He said, “What’s the fifth thing?”

  “This.” She lay back with catlike indolence upon the rumpled bedcovers.

  “Lying sideways on the bed? Now you are shocking me.”

  “Somehow I doubt that.”

  He laughed. “And now what?”

  “Sixth thing.” She opened her legs wide for him, and smiled when his body told her exactly how he felt about that. He came to her then, brought himself sliding above her and against her, kissed her long and deeply. All the while—and how was it even possible to feel so much? With, seemingly, every atom, every particle of her, everywhere?—all the while she was aware of, delighting in, the contrast between his hard chest, flecked with golden hair, and her own chest, her breasts so smooth and soft; the contrast between his iron-hard legs and her soft fleshy ones; the contrast between him, all hard and erect and utterly male, and herself, all soft and yielding, and so very ready.

  Male and female.

  He and she.

  Hugo and Katherine.

  Us, together, she thought, and said out loud: “Seventh thing,” sliding her hand down between them, reaching for him, eagerly guiding him closer, closer, and into her at last.

  Later, much later, when they had done, and their bodies were slick with sweat, and the room was quiet again, Hugo rolled onto his back. He unhooked a long spiral of Katherine’s hair from around his ear and took a moment to orient himself. Somehow they had ended up with their heads at the foot of the bed; his feet were on Katherine’s pillows.

  “I say,” he said, in a tone of deep appreciation, “that was something like.”

  Katherine turned onto her side and brought herself closer, sliding a warm, soft arm over his chest. “Yes, it was.” She gave a happy-sounding sigh. “Thank you.”

  He laid his hand over her forearm where it rested atop the scar from the sharpshooter’s bullet. All nicely healed. “If it comes to that, I should be thanking you. I’m glad you don’t find me unappealing anymore.”

  “You? Unappealing?” She lifted her head to stare at him. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve had that impression quite a lot these past months.”

  “Oh. No. It’s not true. At all. I’m sorry you’ve thought so.” Katherine raised herself up, so that she could reach his mouth with her own, and kissed him with such ardor that he had no doubt that she meant it. This, Hugo thought, returning her kiss, was a new and promising box revealed. He brought his hands down along the length of her back, and to the fulsome, exquisitely feminine curves of her waist and hips and thighs.

  Suddenly she pulled away. “Hugo, this can’t be bad.”

  “Bad?” he echoed in surprise. “What can’t be bad?”

  “This.” Her glance encompassed him, herself, the rumpled bed. “What was explained to me as the ‘conjugal obligation.’ It was about duty, Hugo, not pleasure, or fun. And after my little—ah—contretemps with the music instructor, and I was told how low and bad I was to want such a thing—well, I believed it for a long time. But now . . .” Katherine took a deep, deep breath, and let it out on a slow exhalation. “But now I think they were wrong. I think this is good. I know it is.”

  “I agree,” Hugo said, smiling, and lazily he stretched. Speaking of good, he hadn’t felt this good in a long time. Maybe he’d never felt this good before, in fact. He laced his fingers together and put them behind his head. “Well, Katherine?”

  “Well what?”

  “What do you want to do now?”

  She looked thoughtful. And then she smiled. “I’ll be right back.” She got off the bed, and he watched as she went to the door between their rooms and, opening it, went inside. God in heaven, that bottom of hers. Sweet, sweet lust was running rampant through him again. And she could tell, too, when—returning with a green-and-yellow-striped pasteboard box—she looked down the length of him and smiled again. She got back onto the bed, drew close to sit near him, and said:

  “Seventeenth thing.”

  “We’re up to seventeen already?”

  “Yes.”

  “Quite the morning, Katherine.”

  “Yes. And it’s not over yet.” She put the box on the bed next to her. Opening the lid, she took from it a dark square.

  “Is that a conserve?” he said. “I haven’t had one in ages.” And then it hit him: Katherine wasn’t secretively indulging in her affection for chocolate. Here she was, quite literally revealing to him a box.

  “Yes. Would you like one, Hugo?”

  “I would, thanks.”

  He reached for it but instead she brought the chocolate square to his lips while with her other hand she lightly caressed his cock. He groaned, but with pleasure. Sweet chocolate in his mouth; fire everywhere else.

  After a while it occurred to him that two could play at that game. He sat up. To her he said, “Lie down.”

  “Why?” Her eyes were sparkling.

  “You’ll see.”

  “If you insist.” She lay back, with such languorous slowness that he almost shoved the green and yellow box off the bed and
had her then and there. But he reminded himself that patience is a virtue. He took a conserve from the box and offered it to her. She looked at it, and up at him: and then she bit into it, smiling with such devastating sensuousness that again he had to restrain himself. Patience . . .

  “It’s good, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Very good,” he answered. He took a small bite of the conserve, allowed his saliva to moisten the rest of it, and with the same languid slowness she’d displaying in lying down, he rubbed the conserve around the pretty pink areolae of her breasts. She quivered.

  “Oh, Hugo.”

  He didn’t stop. “Yes, Katherine?”

  “Oh, Hugo.”

  “Yes?”

  But, apparently, that was all she had to say at the moment, and he saw with gladness how her arms and legs went taut and her face very flushed. He continued for a little while longer, then, slowly, he ate the conserve and with the taste of it still lingering on his tongue, he stretched himself out next to her on his side, leaned close, and licked wet, leisurely circles round her areolae.

  “Oh, Hugo.”

  “Yes?”

  “Eighteenth thing.”

  He laughed softly, then took a sweet luscious nipple into his mouth and suckled it, enjoying a great deal the breathy little noises she was making, and even as he sucked harder he slid a hand down between her legs.

  She gasped, “Nineteenth thing,” and arched herself up to meet his fingers.

  “It’s remarkable how you haven’t lost track of your numbers,” Hugo said admiringly, then brought his mouth to her other nipple and sucked hard at it, too. And then he moved down, down, until his head was between her warm fragrant thighs, and another taste, musky and feminine, was there for him to savor.

  “My God, you delicious armful, you beauty,” said Hugo, his voice a little rough, “you’re better than chocolate,” and slid his palms beneath her, to bring her yet closer to him.

  “Am I really?” she answered, rather jerkily.

  “Infinitely better.”

  “Oh, good. Oh, Hugo, that’s good . . .”

  “Twentieth thing?”

  “Yes. Oh my God, yes.”

  After, they had breakfast in bed, and after that Katherine entertained them by reading out loud from her new copy of the Canterbury Tales, which made them both laugh quite a bit, and then they made love again, and then they took a nap.

  It was early afternoon when Katherine, lying close to Hugo, drifted slowly up into consciousness. Fragments played in her mind’s eye, something between dreams and memories. Last night: the DeWitts’ ballroom. Crowds of people. Being jostled. Lydia St. John, her tawny good looks seeming surprisingly faded for one so young. A big hand around her slim upper arm, a loud hearty voice and a big red face. Who? Oh, yes, her brother Denis.

  Daresay the two of you will be wanting to renew your friendship, hey? Let the world know and all that. The big hand, squeezing hard.

  Revulsion rippled through Katherine, and she remembered, now, the look of helplessness in Lydia’s light brown eyes.

  She sat up suddenly, pushing her hair off her face, and Hugo woke up.

  “What is it, Katherine?”

  “Hugo, I want to call on someone. And I’d like it if you came with me. Would you?”

  “Of course. When?”

  “Now.”

  Chapter 14

  The St. Johns were staying in Upper Wimpole Street—what a wonder a good butler was, thought Katherine, what an astonishing fount of knowledge—and by four o’clock she and Hugo, having quickly bathed and dressed, arrived in their carriage. It was a genteel neighborhood, but was by no means considered one of the better addresses among the ton. So when the butler obsequiously ushered them into the empty drawing-room, Katherine was surprised to see how elegantly furnished it was.

  She and Hugo had been seated for only a little while before Denis St. John hurried in, in his wake both an angular, fashionably dressed woman and his sister Lydia, who looked at Katherine with a kind of cringing expression so very, very different from the one she had habitually worn at school. Katherine recognized the expression at once—it was one she knew all too well.

  It was shame.

  “Well, well, if this isn’t an honor,” exclaimed Denis St. John, bringing the angular woman forward and introducing her as his wife. He glanced around the empty room and said, with the heartiness that Katherine disliked more and more: “Can’t think where everyone is! Usually we’re mobbed with visitors, aren’t we, Mrs. St. John?”

  His wife simpered. “Oh yes, mobbed. And constantly! All sorts of important people! The best people!”

  Denis St. John directed a glowering look of reproof at his wife before breaking again into a wide smile and saying to Katherine and Hugo, “No one as important as you, of course. Penhallows are better than dukes, everyone says so. Well, well, and so you’ve called on us! Quite the honor! You there, Lydia—don’t just stand there like a ninny, ring for some refreshments, hey?”

  Listlessly Lydia did as she was told, and Katherine had seen enough. She rose to her feet and said, “Miss St. John, it’s been so long since we’ve seen each other, and I should enjoy a little tête-à-tête with you. Perhaps we might go to your bedchamber?”

  That look of shame intensified, but before Lydia could answer, Denis St. John hastily put in:

  “Oh, there’s no need to do that, Mrs. Penhallow! You and Lydia can enjoy a comfortable coze right here! Reminiscences from the good old days, plans to make, bosom companions, isn’t that right, Lydia? There’s a window-seat over there which would be just the thing!”

  “No,” said Katherine, as imperious as Henrietta Penhallow in her haughtiest mood, “I would prefer to go upstairs with Miss St. John.” She went to Lydia, put her arm through hers, at the same time flashing a quick glance at Hugo which she hoped communicated Hold the fort here, please, and was glad to see the look of instant comprehension in his eyes, and the slight, martial nod of his head.

  Plainly flummoxed, Denis St. John shot an angry look at his hapless wife, then went to the bell-pull and yanked hard upon it, muttering under his breath, “Where’s that butler, damn his mangy hide?”

  Katherine, satisfied, swept Lydia out of the drawing-room, then followed her lagging steps up a flight of stairs onto a landing, sunless and not very clean. About halfway down the corridor Lydia opened a door and stepped aside to let Katherine in.

  It was a mean little room, cheaply furnished with a narrow iron bedstead, a small armoire, a rickety-looking dressing-table and a single chair. The contrast between the drawing-room below and this dismal bedchamber caught Katherine off-guard and she frankly stared. At school Lydia St. John was known to be the daughter of a very wealthy baron, long established on the vast family estate in Kent, a fact which Lydia herself had frequently mentioned.

  “Well, have you seen enough, Mrs. Penhallow? Or would you like to stay and gloat some more?” Lydia’s voice was bitter.

  “Gloat? No!” Quickly Katherine turned to her. “It’s just that—” There was no tactful way to say it, but Lydia stepped in.

  “Yes, there’s quite a difference between the public rooms and the private ones.” Lydia smiled without humor. “The St. Johns have fallen on hard times, Mrs. Penhallow, but my brother Denis is doing everything he can to conceal it.” She pulled out the chair, and gestured to it. “Would you like to sit down? I promise you it won’t break. I know because Denis has sat on it many times when he comes to lecture me—and he’s quite a substantial man, isn’t he?”

  Katherine sat down and waited until Lydia had sat on her bed opposite her. “I’m sorry to hear about your—your financial reversals. I had thought your father’s fortune to be secure.”

  “It might have been, had he not passed into his dotage a hateful drunkard and allowed Denis to take over its management. Denis has lost everything—most of the estate, my dowry, the family’s plantation in the West Indies.” Lydia added, with a terrible casualness, “He tried to marry
me off to one of his rich so-called friends in Jamaica. The only way I managed to avoid it was by spreading rumors that I was mad. His friend became worried that any children we’d have would inherit the taint, and withdrew. Denis was—furious.”

  “Oh, Lydia, I’m so sorry,” exclaimed Katherine.

  Thin shoulders went up in a hopeless shrug. “That’s why we’re here for the Season, you know. A last chance to salvage the family fortunes. Denis intends for me to wed, and as soon as possible. Which explains why he was thrilled that you and I knew each other. He’s hoping you’ll help me—take me under your wing.” Bitterly, Lydia went on, “He doesn’t know that we’re not friends at all, and I’m afraid to tell him. I was dreadful toward you, wasn’t I, all those years? I was so jealous of you. So beautiful, so brilliant.”

  “Jealous? Of me?” Katherine could hardly believe what she was hearing.

  “Yes. Very. And I took it out on you in any way I could think of. My God, but I was awful. You’ll be pleased to know, Mrs. Penhallow, that life has humbled me.”

  “I’m not pleased at all. And I do want to help you.”

  Lydia was silent. Then, finally, suspiciously, she said: “Why?”

  “Because I know what it’s like to be a pawn in someone else’s game.”

  Silence again. Then: “Now that you’re a Penhallow, once it’s known I’m your protégée it will make all the difference in the world.”

  “I’ll do my best. Is there someone you want to marry?” Katherine asked, then saw how a shudder rippled through Lydia’s slender frame.

  “God, no! And put myself under the control of someone else?”

  “Not all men are like that,” said Katherine, thinking of Hugo, thinking with a rush of gratitude of him downstairs, steady, calm, strong.

  “I don’t want to be married,” Lydia said with suppressed violence, hands clenched tight in her lap. “And I hate living with Denis. And my nasty sister-in-law.”

  “Then being here is pointless,” said Katherine. “Being made to attend the Season. Is there someplace else you’d rather be?”