She opened her eyes and saw that his face was close to hers. His breath was warm on her face, her nose and her mouth. She moved her hands up his arms to his shoulders. They were firm, like a mountainside. That was, she realized, what she was doing: clinging onto a mountainside, trying to stop the wind from whipping her away again.
“I never stopped loving you,” she said, and even as she said it, she wondered if it was a mistake; if he could hurt her again.
But this moment was apart from all that, somehow. This moment existed in its own realm. This was the moment when all the emotion and the pain and the regret would be forgotten. He leaned in and she did not pull away, could not pull away.
His lips were warm despite the cold. Her heart hammered in her chest. The sweat on her hands was cool. After a moment, she kissed him back.
3
The kiss haunted Lilla’s dreams for the next week. She and her husband walked together three more times, and they kissed again, but none of it had the magic that the first time did. It was as though Miles had reached within her and rearranged her feelings, pulling some to the foreground and pushing others into the background, where they were dim and hazy. She found herself remembering with more poignancy their time together, before the fire, before the war, before the scar. She realized that she still loved him. But she did not know if the love was strong enough to overcome the anger and the regret.
She had just awoken when there was a knock at her door. She answered it and Miles walked in. His expression was serious, without the hint of a smile. Lilla’s first instinct was that he was angry at her. She was surprised by how much the thought hurt her. She didn’t want him to be angry at her, she realized. She thought on what this said about her feelings for him. They were, indeed, shifting, reforming.
“Is something wrong?” she said, unable to keep the anxiety from her voice.
“No.” He sighed. “Yes. There is something wrong.”
“What is it?”
“Us.”
The word hung in the air like a knoll. Perhaps he had come to confront her, finally. Perhaps he had come to drag out the secret, hidden emotions and bring them into the steely blue winter sunlight.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Lilla said, forcing her voice to remain calm.
“I love you, Lilla,” he said. He took her hand. She didn’t fight him. A dim, quiet part of her begged her to pull her hand away, warned her that he would only hurt her once more. But it was much quieter than it had once been. And the image of him running from her no longer possessed the pain it had before the kiss. His fingers were cold.
“You’ve been outside,” she said.
He nodded. “I have. All night. I needed to think. And time escaped me.”
She led him to the bed and pushed his chest so he sat down. He slumped onto the mattress. Lilla sat next to him. Their legs touched and Lilla felt a thrill she had not felt in years. It was the thrill of lust, the thrill that brought dishonorable, scandalous feelings into her mind, the thrill that made her think of sweat and sex.
“I need to explain myself,” he said.
She waited silently. She would not interrupt him now. He had the appearance of a man preparing a speech. He would not have looked out of place standing before a lectern. He had prepared these words, Lilla intimated. She did not judge him for that. Sometimes, she knew, it was easier to prepare what one said, so one did not color it with sudden impulses. A long time passed. Birds began to tweet out of the windows. A pale imitation of sunlight filled the room. Lilla thought about speaking, but the silence was sacred, somehow. She guessed that Miles needed these quiet moments to compose himself.
Finally, he spoke.
“I am a coward. That is the truth, Lilla. I ran away to the war because I wanted to serve my country. But do you want to know something? This is something I have never told anybody else. Almost as soon as I was over there, I wanted to come back. There was no glory, no service. There was just mud and blood and depression. There was nothing noble about it at all. The only thing that kept me sane was the memory of our time together. It was the only thing that pulled me through the darkness.
“And then I came back, and I wanted us to resume our love. But I realized, too late, that that was impossible. And by then you were already angry with me, already hated me.”
Lilla made to interrupt, to tell him that she did not hate him, but he raised his hand.
“Let me finish, please.”
She nodded.
“No you are my wife, and I can see in your eyes that you are torn. You are torn as I was once torn. I was torn between the war and my love for you; you are torn between the past and your love for me. You think that I am still the man I was. Or you suspect it. I need to tell you, for certain, that I am no longer that man. The man who would leave a loving, beautiful, intelligent woman for some muddy field in France died out there. If I had the chance, I would reverse all of that. I swear on God that I would. I know we cannot go back to what we were, but I wish – I need – us to try and start anew.”
Lilla knew – intellectually – that these could be naught more than pretty words, that this could be calculated deception. But it wasn’t about what she knew; it was about what she felt. And what she felt was an almost overwhelming urge to throw her arms around him. As he’d spoken, she’d laid her hand on his knee. She hadn’t even realized that she’d done it. His words had touched the old Lilla, the unscarred Lilla. And though she agreed that they could not go back, that she could not be unscarred, she discovered that she did want to start again.
The hurt which had sustained her for four years was now in the way. It was obstructing her happiness. She delved deep inside of her and tried to let it go. It fought viciously. Torment wracked her. She squeezed Miles’ knee and took a long, deep breath, willing the resentment and the anger to go away, to fly into somebody else’s life. I don’t need you anymore, she thought.
To her shock, when she opened her eyes it was like opening them after a long sleep. A weight fell from her. For the first time in ages, she felt light and free. She reached up and touched her husband’s face, and then moved her hand down and touched his shoulders. “We can start again, if that is what you desire,” she said. “But know this, hear this. You will never hurt me like that again. If you hurt me again, I want to know why. I don’t want to be left in the dark, alone, wondering what happened for four years. Hurting a woman is one thing; deserting her is quite another.”
“I will not hurt you again,” he said.
There was a note of promise in his voice, and Lilla nodded. She believed him. It shocked her. But she could not deny it. Somewhere between kissing him that day in the gardens and this conversation, love had overcome her other emotions. It had beat back resentment, fought off anger, melted pain. Now there was a warm glow in her belly.
She turned her head, looked up into his sky-blue eyes, and parted her lips. “This is the part where you kiss me,” she said.
He did.
*****
Two and a half years later.
If there was a single thing which could cement a new love, it was a child. Harold had been conceived the day she and Miles had found each other again. The night seemed like a blur now. He had come into her bedroom in the morning, and he had made his speech, and then they had kissed and lay in each other’s arms. And then he’d moved his hands down her body, awaking the old lust, the old places of pleasure. Their two bodies had become one in the cold November half-light.
Lilla sat in the drawing room with Harold on her knee. He was perhaps the cutest baby in existence. She knew that all mothers thought that, and yet she could not shake the conviction that her baby truly was. He looked exactly like his father, right down to the curly brown hair and the square jaw. He would be a handsome man, Lilla thought.
Miles walked into the room and knelt besi
de them both. “Hello, little man,” he said. Then he lifted his son above his head and smiled widely as Harold giggled like a little madman. The warmth in Lilla’s belly which, two years ago, had replaced the anger and everything else, bloomed even warmer when she watched her husband and son. She could never watch the two of them without feeling warm, without being filled with irrepressible love.
The nurse collected Harold, and then Miles offered her his hand. “Let’s walk the gardens,” he said.
“If you wish,” Lilla replied, taking his hand.
They left the house behind them and walked to the trees. The first hints of summer made the trees green and beautiful. It seemed that each winter the trees threatened to wither and die, and then, inexplicably, they grew new leaves and fresh bark and lived once more.
“What are you thinking?” Miles said, as they stared into the trees.
A squirrel hopped down from a high branch, tilted its head at them for a moment, and then hopped away. For a crazy moment Lilla was jealous of the squirrel, jealous of how it got to live always in the peace of the copse of trees. But that was the old Lilla thinking, and when she truly considered it, she realized that being jealous of a squirrel was silly.
“That is silly,” Miles laughed, when she told him. “Are you unhappy, my love?”
“No,” she said honestly. “I was just thinking of before we came together once again. It was a whirlpool of emotion. I hardly knew whether I was standing or falling. It is nice to be able to stand next to these trees once more, and know for certain that I am standing, that we are in love and our love in not under attack.”
He wrapped his arms around her in the familiar motion. She fell into him, resting her head on his chest as she always did. It was a practiced movement, and it brought her comfort. Her eyes always felt heavy the moment she rested her head on her husband. He was comfortable and comforting. He was her lover and she could have slept in his arms forever.
“But you are happy now,” he said, his voice muffled because he was speaking into her hair.
“Happy?” She let out a giggle, stifled in his shirt. “Happy is an understatement, my love. If you had told me that a fire and a youthful fling would lead to the greatest happiness I had ever known, I would have laughed in your face.”
“But look at you now,” Miles said.
The squirrel returned one last time, blinking its little eyes. A soft summer breeze caressed husband and wife. Behind them was the house, in which their strong, beautiful child slept. And before them was their forest, in which life bloomed and flourished.
“Yes, look at me now,” Lilla breathed, a smile upon her lips.
In Bed with a Duke (by Sarah Thorn)
It should have been the best day of Sophia’s young life. Just three hours earlier, she had stood at the alter with David Marshall. Westminster Abbey had been full and it was supposed to have been a great occasion. However, despite the fact that David was the most handsome officer in the Coldstream Guards, Sophia didn’t love him. Neither did he love her.
Their marriage was the idea of their respective fathers. Both men presided over companies of vast wealth. The Marshalls owned the largest tea plantations in the British Empire, and the Moncriefs the largest shipping company. A family liaison of that nature would cement them together and make each family richer still.
Sophia had tried her best. She had made a tremendous effort with her appearance. Tall and slender, she’d looked radiant in her wedding dress. Her blonde hair was bedecked with the finest flowers money could buy, and her jewelry made her sea blue eyes sparkle. As she’d walked down the aisle with her father, she’d reduced many of the women to tears with her beauty. When her father handed her to David, his reaction had been one of total disinterest. From that moment, Sophia’s day had been ruined.
Despite a lavish reception and the well wishes of all the guests, Sophia’s mood didn’t lift. It wasn’t until she and David were sitting in their carriage on the way to the Grosvenor Hotel that she began think of her future. David was very attractive and giving herself to him sexually would be a pleasure, but she was worried that they had been forced to marry. She didn’t yet have very strong feelings for him. She comforted herself with the thought that her love for him would come in time.
In the hotel, they sat next to each other on the bed and stared into space. To Sophia, David seemed distant and cold. It was as if a ghost was sitting next to her. She wanted to change the mood. Sophia had often dreamed of her wedding night. In fact she had often dreamed of naked men taking her, teaching her erotic things. Now she wanted to do it for real.
She took the initiative and stood up. Once in the middle of the room, she looked at him and began to unfasten her wedding dress. He didn’t flinch. Even when she revealed her luscious breasts, he didn’t move. When Sophia was naked she stood and looked at him in expectation. Still nothing.
”David please, get up and hold me,” she pleaded. He did as she wished. He took her in his arms but he didn’t touch any place that would lead to her arousal.
Sophia had talked about sex with her married sister. She’d been a fountain of information. Sophia had listened intently, and now she was about to try something she was sure would get David’s attention.
When she felt for his bulge she felt no sign of arousal at all. Surely a red blooded man, even one who is not in love, would jump at the opportunity to have sex with a beautiful woman, she thought.
She got to her knees, snapped open the buttons and pulled his penis out. When she took him into her mouth, she’d expected it to swell and begin to throb. That is what her sister had told her. But David’s member just remained flaccid. Sophia sucked for many minutes, but eventually gave up. She walked to the bed and got under the covers.
”David, today we stood in front of God and our families and expressed our love for one another. I know that our marriage was an arrangement, but I do hope in time you will come to love me, as I will you. Tomorrow you will go to your regiment and then to France, please come and talk to me.”
”What do you want to talk about?”
”Our marriage and the future.”
David took off his clothes and lay down next to her. When she felt for his penis again, there was still no reaction.
The next morning David left early. Sophia had so wanted to feel her husband naked on her, penetrate her and take her to places of such an erotic nature it would make her gasp. But now she lay frustrated, and as sexually laden as it was possible for a young woman to be.
*****
Sophia and David were to live in Netherton Hall, a mansion in the countryside. It was given to them by David’s father. It was Sophia’s job to decorate and furnish the house, before David returned from military duties in France.
She applied herself busily and soon the house was full of workmen. Sophia spent much of her time looking at their buttocks and the bulges in their trousers. At times the men would wink at each other in the knowledge that she was sneakily looking at them. In their tea breaks they would fantasize about which one of them had the package that would satisfy her the most. Sophia wouldn’t have cared, in her state she could easily have taken them all and still been left wanting more.
When the workmen had finished, it was the turn of the merchants. They arrived in a steady stream, one after the other. Sophie sat next to them and looked at curtains and matching bed linen. She had been particularly attracted to one tall merchant who was about her age. He’d spent most of the time they’d been together, looking at her breasts. She, equally interested, had spent most of their meeting looking at the erection hiding in his underwear. When he got up to leave, Sophia looked down at him and noticed how big he was. She was sorely tempted to take him to bed with her, but with great difficulty, she managed to quell her lust.
When the house was finally finished, the men stopped coming to see Sophia, and she was left with
her thoughts and frustrations. Instead of men, she had to put up with her female friends. Alice, Emily and Charlotte.
One fine afternoon, they sat in the garden and looked over the lawn to the flower border beyond. It was June and a wet spring had given way to a beautiful summer. As Sophia poured the tea, her three friends chatted about men. All of them single, and not yet engaged, they looked to Sophia for guidance. Alice was the prettiest of the three. She was a little shorter than Sophia and she had blonde hair. She wore a lovely blue dress, with high waist line and puff sleeves. Her décolleté left absolutely nothing to the imagination.
”Tell me Sophia, what is it like to lie with a man?” Alice asked.
”Well, it’s, er, interesting.”
“Interesting?” Alice repeated. ”I had hoped it would be more than just interesting.”
”To tell the truth ladies, I don’t know what it is like to lie with a man. Well, actually that is not true. I know what it is like to lie next to a man but I don’t know what it is like to feel a man lie on me.”
The three ladies gasped. ”But how can that be, you are married?” said Emily.
”Yes,” the other two added, in unison.
”I know, and that is the very worst thing. I am married and I don’t know what it is like.”
”But surely on your wedding night?” Alice said.
”No, nothing. My husband was not interested.”
After Sophia’s friends had digested this information they felt a good deal of sympathy for her.
”My dearest Sophia, what are you going to do? I mean, if your husband is not interested in you, do you really want to live without a man in the bedroom?” Alice asked.
”No, I do not. To my friends, I make no secret of the fact that I am utterly frustrated. In fact, to the point where I have been staring at the workmen who built this magnificent house.”
”You should take a lover,” Charlotte joked.
”That’s a good idea,” Alice remarked. ”Why not? What do you have to lose? If your husband won’t make love to you on your wedding night, when on earth will he? Probably never.”
Romance: Detective Romance: A Vicious Affair (Victorian Regency Intrigue 19th England Romance) (Historical Mystery Detective Romance) Page 44
