The herbal was about eight feet square, the dimensions of a dressing closet or linen closet, though it had a sizeable window that faced the back gardens, and a hearth that took up most of one wall.
Jack closed the door, which only made sense on a cold evening. “You have organized this place.”
“What good are medicinals if nobody can find them?” Madeline took an armchair by the fire. “What did you wish to discuss?”
Jack propped a hip against the work table. “Not a what, but a who. I’ve been freezing my ballocks off, dashing all over the shire to ask people about your family’s past, and it occurred to me—just as my nose had come to resemble an icicle—that I could simply ask you a few questions.”
Madeline scuffed out of her slippers—Jack’s slippers—and tucked her feet under her. “Why ask questions about the Hennessey womenfolk?” For that was all that remained of her family. Three women without means, none of whom needed the magistrate asking questions.
“Because you’re a puzzle, confound you, and I like solving puzzles.” He frowned at the discarded slippers. “I like you.”
Liking was… permissible. Madeline had liked every man to whom she’d granted a kiss or a cuddle. That Jack Fanning liked her, and would say so, was still a problem. He was to be her discreet frolic outside the bounds of propriety, her revenge on haphazardly upheld standards of decency.
Her calculated risk. “I like you too.”
“Then tell me who you are, Madeline Hennessey. You arrived in this area at the age of fourteen, joined your Aunt Hattie in service at age fifteen. That leaves more than half of your life unaccounted for.”
As well it should be. “I had parents, one of each, in the usual fashion. They were fond of each other, and of me, as best I could tell. My father was also fond of gin.”
Jack twiddled a sprig of rosemary, the piney scent perfuming the herbal. “Opium by another name.”
“For some,” Madeline said, trying to ignore how firelight cast Jack’s features into planes and shadows. He’d be attractive into old age, drat him. “Papa drank to excess and gambled, and that’s a fine way to go on for those who are either titled or blessed with infinite wealth. He was a well-born commoner who lived beyond his means on a good day. When my mother died, he sent me to my aunts, assuring them he’d mail regular sums for my expenses.”
“And the regular sums never arrived,” Jack said, “while a need for decent boots and the onset of winter are painfully predictable. One can see why you’re reluctant to repose your trust in the male of the species.”
What was he—?
Well. Madeline considered Jack’s reasoning, because in her efforts to earn her wages, look after her aunts, manage presuming footmen, and favor the occasional sore knee, she hadn’t made time to reflect much on her upbringing.
Why invite misery? “Papa wasn’t a bad man, but he was weak. He ended up in the Marshalsea prison, where he was beloved by all despite his enormous debts. Consumption took him, and that was a mercy. My aunts had nothing good to say about him.”
“And yet,” Jack said, “he was charming, handsome, witty, well-liked, and he adored your mother and you. You couldn’t even resent him very effectively when he broke promise after promise.”
Had Jack tossed the cold, wet towel at her, Madeline could not have been more surprised at his observation.
“We worried for him. When Papa was ill from his excesses, when he’d disappear for days at a time, when we found him asleep in the stable, we worried for him.”
And now, years later, in a quiet little herbal, Madeline could resent her papa like blazes.
And resent her poor mother, and the stupid English laws that required a woman to cleave to her husband even when he was wrecking the futures of all concerned.
Madeline had been five years old the first time she’d found her papa asleep in the garden before breakfast. Seven when she’d realized nobody worked for them very long. Eight when she’d lost her pony.
“This discussion makes me want to break something,” Madeline said. “Something delicate and valuable.” The herbal was full of glass jars, crockery, mixing bowls… She clutched her shawl lest her hands find something fragile to hurl against the hearthstones.
Jack rose and knelt before her. “I’m not delicate, and I’m not asking for your trust, except in so far as I’m willing to give you mine.”
He kissed her, and that… that helped. Madeline could refocus disproportionate upset over old business onto the new passion of kissing Jack Fanning. He tasted of mint tea, and kneeling as he was, Madeline could wrap her arms around him and control the progress of the kiss.
She needed to be the one to say when teasing escalated to a dare—taste me back—and when she opened her knees so Jack could wedge himself between them. She winnowed her hands through his hair and scooted closer, caught in the grip of both physical desire and rampaging emotion.
“Your damned clothes—” Jack muttered, rearranging bunches of fabric.
“Lock the damned door,” Madeline shot back, even as she clutched at his shoulders.
Jack sat back, his hair disheveled, his grin diabolical. “You can think at a time like this. Truly, I am in the presence of a formidable woman.”
He levered to his feet and crossed the room, while Madeline wallowed in the pleasure of watching him move.
Jack paused at the door. “I want a bed for this.”
“I don’t. Maids, footmen, your brother, anybody could see us going upstairs.”
Miss DeWitt might see them, or Jack’s own mother.
Worse, Madeline might lose her nerve somewhere between the cozy understory and the drafty upper floors. Bringing up the past, with all its heartache and betrayal, had set loose in her a determination to have her pleasure of Jack Fanning. If she was given even five minutes to consider the folly of what she contemplated, she might never have that pleasure.
Jack fastened the lock, a quiet click of metal on metal that made Madeline want to shout with triumph.
“We do it your way, then,” he said. “This time.”
“Enough talk,” Madeline retorted, rising from the chair and dragging the curtain across the window. “And you’d better have more than chatter to offer, Jack Fanning, or there won’t be a next time.”
There ought not to be a next time. There shouldn’t be a this time either.
“I adore a challenge,” Jack said, unbuttoning his waistcoat. “I suspect you do too.”
“You’ll know soon enough, if you cease prattling and get your falls—”
He was on her in the next instant, his arms around her, his mouth covering hers, and that was exactly, precisely, gloriously where Madeline needed him to be.
* * *
In India, erotic pleasure was a respected and celebrated aspect of married life—and of unmarried life. Jack had sampled as broadly of the local customs as the next bachelor officer, and yet, he’d never come across a woman quite as sure of her objectives as Madeline Hennessey.
She gave him orders—with her hands, with her mouth, and with her body insinuated against his.
Like that.
Again.
Closer.
Madeline set the pace, urgent but not frantic.
She got half the buttons of Jack’s falls undone, lest there be any mistaking what all of this privacy was in aid of.
And she towed Jack by his cravat across the room, then scooted up onto the table, occupying the spot where Jack had perched earlier.
Jack heeded her commands willingly—like that, again, closer. He adopted the pace she set, and he tucked himself up against her heat when she spread her knees and tugged him within kissing range. He capitulated to Madeline’s whims and commands not because she demonstrated great confidence about her desires and how Jack ought to fulfill them.
Just the opposite. Jack suspected—would have bet his best team, in fact—that Madeline Hennessey was a woman desperate to avoid yet another occasion of disappointment.
In
her kisses, her caresses, her muttered directions, and restless shifting, Jack sensed bitterness and hope warring for the upper hand, resignation and rejoicing battling for control of the lady’s heart.
“Now,” she whispered against Jack’s mouth. “I want you now. Enough fumbling about, enough teasing—”
Fumbling about?
“Madeline Hennessey, I have not yet begun to tease you.”
Fine words, and bravely muttered, but coming from a man who’d spent ten years pretending sexual indifference was just fine, those words were balderdash. Jack wanted Madeline Hennessey with the same passionate craving he’d once reserved for his pipe of opium, and that—that honest, terrifying truth—gave him some self-restraint.
He gentled their kiss and stroked a hand over Madeline’s hair. “There is no hurry, Madeline. We have all night if you want all night.”
She pulled back, her expression wary. “Five minutes ought to suffice.”
Hell hath no tragedy like a woman inured to disappointment. “I will swive you until your bum wears that table smooth. I will kiss you until you taste nothing but desire. I will pleasure you until you ache with satisfaction.”
Jack spent the next five minutes elaborating on his promises. He began the kissing all over again, but delicately this time, patiently, tenderly. He kissed Madeline as if she were his every dream incarnate, his secret wishes come to life. When she was tucked against his chest, sighing gently, he acquainted her with the delights his hands could wreak on her breasts.
Her nightclothes were unadorned with embroidery or bows, but Jack imbued his caresses with every grace note and flourish he could muster.
And Madeline Hennessey bloomed for him, with as many nuances and hues as the passion flowers Jack had first seen in India. Breath by breath, sigh by sigh, she exchanged desperation for surrender, and hurry for wonder.
“You excel—” she murmured.
“We excel.”
As the fire burned down in the hearth, Jack built a conflagration. He took eternities to insinuate a hand under Madeline’s skirt, and treated himself to every curve and contour of her limbs at a pace intended to aid memorization.
Sturdy, feminine, graceful, strong, warm, interesting—between Madeline’s ankle and knee, Jack mentally applied a dozen adjectives to the territory he explored.
New territory, and that occasioned both pride and sorrow. The sorrow was an acknowledgment that the love won in India had been lost there too. The pride was Madeline’s gift to him.
Despite herself, despite all the disappointment she’d endured previously, she was trusting Jack now as a lover, if nothing else.
He shifted, so the only place he touched Madeline was the seat of her pleasure. She leaned back, bracing herself on her hands. Her hair had come loose, a cascade of russet curls rioting over her shoulders and down her back.
Madeline rocked minutely into his touch. “When you do that….”
Jack pushed her skirts up, so he could see where he caressed. The candles and firelight didn’t illuminate much, but that she’d let him look at her meant worlds.
“When I do this, it makes me want to be inside you,” Jack said, illustrating his words with a single finger. “Like that.”
“Wicked,” Madeline said. “Wickedly lovely.”
Jack made it lovelier still, and very, very wicked, though his cock was clamoring to finish what his fingers had started. Madeline allowed the pleasure and let herself find satisfaction when she might have resisted. As Jack let her skirts fall over her knees, and held her panting against his shoulder for a drowsy moment, he realized she might not know how to delay her own gratification.
“I don’t want to let you go,” Madeline said. “I can’t move.”
“Good.”
Jack finished undoing his falls and took himself in his hand. He used his cock to nudge and tease at Madeline’s sex, and at first, she remained passive. Then she began to move, to anticipate Jack’s explorations, and reverse the cat and mouse.
Jack dipped, Madeline scooted, and before he’d maneuvered the requisite quantity of self-control into place, they were… joined.
“Yes,” Madeline whispered. “Don’t just stand there now.”
“I need a moment.” A moment for the jolt of pleasure to fade to a throb. Madeline was heaven—like coming home, and like waking up in an exotic paradise, both.
“You need—?”
Jack felt comprehension suffuse her—her kiss tasted of smugness.
“Take as long as you like,” she said, stroking his bum. “We have all night if you need it.”
He’d never last all night. At some point, his shirt had come off, along with his cravat and his waistcoat. Madeline entertained herself by applying her tongue to Jack’s nipples, which entirely defeated his efforts to regain his composure.
“Madeline, I’m trying not to disappoint you.”
She goddamned wiggled. “You taste like sandalwood and”—more torment, counterclockwise—“fruit, or clove maybe. You’re delicious.”
I am doomed. “I will not remain like this, all but buried inside you, and discuss my bath soap.”
Madeline shimmied, so her robe and chemise fell off her shoulders.
“Madeline Hennessey.”
“You can call me Maddie,” she said, taking more of him.
Jack had promised himself that Madeline’s dictates would determine the details of their joining. She’d set the pace, the tone, the tempo. Now, not disappointing her wasn’t enough. He needed to please her, to recalibrate her grasp of how much pleasure was possible when two people set about indulging their passion.
A fine plan.
Jack’s plan went up in flames as Madeline urged him deeper and locked her ankles at the small of his back. He tried to hold back and managed to send Madeline through the fire once more, but that was the limit of his endurance. When she re-established a tempo, Jack let go.
He wrapped his arms about her, moved in close, and gave her the short, hard strokes that sent pleasure ricocheting through him. Madeline’s nails dug into his back, and he gloried in the intensity of the sensation.
She shuddered and gasped and might even have called his name. When Jack was sure he’d done right by his lady, he withdrew, and spilled his seed against her belly.
As they held each other in a loose embrace, breathing in counterpoint, Jack thanked the gods of disporting widowers that he’d been able to withdraw—the timing had been a near thing, indeed.
And now came a pleasure Jack had forgotten—the blend of relaxation and invincibility that a good swiving bestowed in its wake. His legs and back burned as if he’d run halfway to London, and yet, his mind was utterly tranquil.
Jack groped about on the table behind Madeline and drew her chemise and robe up over her shoulders, for protectiveness had edged its way onto his emotional agenda along with… humility.
Madeline Hennessey had chosen to take him as her lover, and Jack could only hope he hadn’t disappointed her, because he very much—very much—hoped there would be a next time.
Many next times. Preferably in a nice, big, comfortable bed.
* * *
“Managing a household like this would be a challenge for any woman.” Mrs. Fanning ran a finger down the length of the family parlor’s mantel. “The problem is not the size of the dwelling, of course.”
Was she disappointed that not a speck of dust was to be found?
Madeline pretended to focus on her embroidery, a pair of doves cooing amid a leafy bower on the corner of her Sunday handkerchief. Mrs. Fanning would find no soot on the mantel, no andirons that wanted for blacking, no rugs in need of beating, though not for lack of searching on her part.
“I’m sure you’ll tell us what the difficulty is,” Miss DeWitt said.
Mrs. Fanning paused directly in front of the hearth, blocking some of the light and heat the fire cast in Madeline’s direction. The evening was chilly, the wind having picked up as the sun had set.
“My d
ear Lucy Anne,” Mrs. Fanning said, “can you imagine introducing a woman’s touch to a household that has not only been deprived of a lady’s guiding hand for years, but has also been managed by that foreign fellow Jack seems to treasure so dearly?”
This again.
“Mr. Pahdi seems quite competent.” Miss DeWitt held up her cutwork, which was more holes than paper, so diligently had she been snipping away.
“That is the very problem,” Mrs. Fanning retorted, smacking her hand on the mantel. “Mr. Patty seems competent. Jack will forgive him anything, witness Mrs. Abernathy’s unfortunate situation. That’s very pretty, Lucy Anne. Can you make another to match it?”
“I can certainly try.”
Lucy Anne DeWitt was good at trying, at persisting in the face of obstacles, at dealing constructively with the cards fate handed her. Madeline would have hated her for that, except she respected Lucy Anne, and knew all too well the burden of being an attractive female of marriageable age.
“I think a little variation in a pattern can make the results more interesting,” Madeline said, knotting off the gold thread. “Mrs. Abernathy will likely be happier in a new position.”
Lucy Anne shot Madeline an incredulous look, for Madeline’s observation came close to arguing with Mrs. Fanning.
Which was just too damned bad. Since making love with Jack in the herbal two nights ago, Madeline had become a different person. How blind she’d been—how ignorant. All the men she’d permitted intimacies previously had been bumblers at best, and inconsiderate louts more likely.
When Jack Fanning made love with a woman, she was cherished, pleasured, cosseted, and ruined for anything less than unfailing consideration from her partner.
What a cruel irony that Madeline should learn this lesson from him, whose attentions she ought to have discouraged at every turn.
“Mrs. Abernathy was a fool,” Mrs. Fanning sniffed. “Doubtless the butler was stealing, but he’s the head of the domestic staff and has Jack’s loyalty. Only a daft woman risks confrontation under such situations.”
Madeline tucked her hoop back into her workbox and closed the lid.
Mrs. Abernathy had been a bigot, a martinet, lazy, and unkind. And yet, she’d thought she was calling her employer’s attention to wrongdoing, much as Aunt Hattie had. When a man spoke the truth, he was credited with integrity and courage. When a woman spoke the truth…
Jack (The Jaded Gentlemen Book 4) Page 17
