A Gentleman’s Game

by Theresa Romain

  She only wondered if he would ever choose her again, or if once would be enough. She already knew it would not suffice for her, not when he looked at her as though she were a wreath of red blooms or a half inch of brandy. A long-wished-for treasure, an essential part of the day.

  His hands slid from her shoulders to the cap of one long sleeve. “This is different from your usual sort of gown.”

  “I have my own gowns made with buttons up the front, so I can dress myself without a maid’s help. This dress is borrowed.”

  “You cannot do the buttons yourself?” His hand was gentle, tracing the line of her collarbone.

  She shook her head. “They march down my back.”

  “You can’t undo them either, then. Let me help you.”

  Still facing her, his hands slipped around her. It was like an embrace, but better, as the tiny circles of horn slipped free from their buttonholes. Beneath his fingers, teasing free each button down to the high waist of the gown, she shivered.

  When the bodice parted and loosened, she hesitated. “My right arm…”

  “Do you want to tell me about it? Do you want me to touch it?”

  “There is nothing to tell that you don’t already know. It was burned, and it healed with scars.” She looked toward the fire, then back at Nathaniel. “There are scars on my right side too. And on my hip and back.”

  “Do you want me to see them, or do you want to keep them covered?”

  She swallowed. “What do you want?”

  “What I don’t want”—he tipped her chin up with one strong finger—“is to be an arse by doing the wrong thing when I think I’m doing the right thing.”

  “If you don’t know how to do the right thing in the bedchamber, then we’re in a bit of trouble. Because I’ve never done this before.”

  He raised his eyes to heaven, though a plaster-and-timber ceiling was in the way. “I am not referring to the mechanics of the act. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I don’t think you will.”

  Finally, she touched him. There was stubble on his chin, rough as other parts of his face were smooth. She explored them all with curious fingers: the hollow behind his jaw, the back of his earlobe, the arch beneath his brow, the crease of his lid. “There are so many places to touch,” she murmured.

  “You haven’t found nearly all of them. And neither have I.” He wrapped his arms around her, the loosened bodice bunching in his embrace. “If you were a proper Rosalind, you’d be as high as my heart. But look, you fit so nicely beneath my chin.”

  And when she stood on her toes to catch his lips with her own, the fit was nicer still. She kissed him as he slipped her bodice down her arms, letting the gown pool about her waist. In her shift and front-lacing stays, her arms were uncovered. She opened her eyes, prepared to see him staring with disgust.

  He wasn’t, though. He was only staring. Not with disgust, but with what instead?

  She folded her arms across her breasts. The scars over her right elbow tugged. “Not what you expected?”

  “I never know what to expect where you are concerned.” He smiled. “But if you refer to your scars, they saved your life. I can only be grateful to them.”

  He took her within his arms again, kissing his way down from her smooth shoulder to the puckered web over her arm.

  She felt little on the scarred areas of her body—less heat and cold, and hardly a gentle touch at all. Sometimes she felt her skin was too tight. Sometimes it itched.

  Never had it been kissed like this, sweet and slow and gentle. Down the arm that had protected her face and neck, the arm that had beat back and rolled over the flames. It was a good arm; it had saved her life as much as Aunt Annie’s treatments had. After all it had been through, it still held reins and wrote. It could unfold to stop protecting her body, her heart. Its fingers could twine in the still-damp silk of Nathaniel’s hair.

  And it could still feel pleasure, a prickling dance of sensation down its length. Here the skin was thickened, her own armor that she always carried about. It bumped and puckered; it was darker and redder and paler in spots. Her scars did not match the rest of her. Her scars were a part of her.

  Tears welled up, filling her eyes, but they were not from sadness. “They did save my life,” she said. “You’re right.”

  She would still have traded them in an instant for smooth unmarked skin that had never known fire. But that wasn’t a choice. The only choice was to be grateful or not to be. For her life being saved. For her body, still strong and healthy.

  For the firelight that warmed without hurting, and for this man who lifted his head to look at her with desire.

  There was only one choice, when she thought of it like that, and the choice was to pull closer, to take his hand in hers and trail it over her scarred arm, then over to her breast. The nipple went tight, begging for his notice even through shift and stays—and ah, he noticed. First with gentle fingertips, then with a cradling palm as he kissed his way down the side of her neck and over her shoulder. Sensation ebbed and flowed, then came in a deep tide of pleasure that made her arch her back.

  “Will you take me to bed?” she gasped.

  Almost before the words had left her lips, he swept her up in his arms. “It would be my pleasure. And I shall do my utmost to make it yours.”

  Seventeen

  Rosalind pulled back the coverlet and lay on the bed, then helped Nathaniel strip her bare with hands grown tentative. Together they rolled her stockings down, unlaced her stays and tossed them aside.

  When Nathaniel lifted the hem of Rosalind’s shift, she pulled in a bracing breath, knowing what he would see. Here were more scars, covering her side, her hip, stretching over her back. But she would be lying about what she wanted if she clutched at her shift instead of clutching at him. Or instead of yanking the bath sheet from about his narrow hips to bare him as he had bared her. To see where the indentation of muscle at his hip bone led.

  Now it was her turn to stare. His shaft was big, jutting forth, easy to reach, to touch. The skin was hot, and when she stroked it lightly, he moaned. His was so different from hers, this blatant desire. This ease with which he stripped and showed his skin.

  He showed her more than that. The rough and smooth bits of her—he kissed and stroked them all until she was wet within, eager for him to touch every part of her. On her back, she twisted to escape the startling sweetness of his touch, to press herself more closely into his hands. She caught his arm and rubbed up its firm line as he braced himself above her.

  This was the best view of all: his face above hers, the light of lamp and fire throwing his features into shadowy intimacy. Shaping his mouth into a curve just for her, deepening his eyes to onyx.

  Would she ever tire of touching him? Of looking at the fine shape of him with the strength of planes and angles? The awe on his features when he touched her? Of noticing the way he breathed deeply when he kissed her, as though pulling her scent deep within himself?

  She wondered, but she had no answer. Except for what she wanted next.

  His breath was slow and shuddering as he lowered his head to the curve of her shoulder. He smelled of soap and the smoke of the fire. “Do you want me to stop now?”

  “No.”

  “Soon, then?”

  “No.”

  His hand drifted to cup her breast; his knees parted her thighs. “At…all?”

  “No, not at all.” She covered his hand with her own, lacing her fingers with his.

  “Ah, thank God.” Settling himself on his forearms, he covered her in a blanket of sensation. The fine hairs of his belly and chest, the hard muscles of his legs rubbed against her softness and made her slick with wanting. He made her feel beautiful. Valuable. Powerful.

  His hot length pressed her thigh, then her private area. “Don’t stop,” she said. So on he pressed.

  He joined with her in a shallow thrust, holding himself steady above her. The closeness was a shock, a wonder. But the fullness—she
bit back discomfort. It was too much, like the scarred tightness she knew so well. As each thrust took him a bit deeper, she tensed.

  He must have felt the change, cradling her between his forearms. “Let me try something different.” He pulled out, leaving her cold but relieved.

  And then came a touch of his fingertips, gentle and teasing, where he had left her. At the same instant, he bent his head to nuzzle at her breast. Closing his lips on the hard tip, he drew on her until she relaxed, melting into sensation.

  With fingers below and kisses above, he worked her in slow strokes, each wetter and hotter and slicker than the one before. He claimed her, drawing her tight, and this time the tightness was nothing like scars, with not a bit of pain. It was winding up, up in a spiral of delicious anticipation. Each touch drew her onward, like a gold wire pulled infinitely long and fine and strong. Higher, tighter, she was wound and pulled, until at last she sprang free with shudders of pleasure. They shocked her, drawing a moan from her and making her limbs tremble.

  At once, he came into position above her again. “May I?”

  “You can try,” she gasped. Her voice hadn’t quite returned to earth yet.

  He joined with her slowly, the new slickness easing his path, the shocks of pleasure opening her to him, further and further. She widened her legs until her scarred hip protested; let it protest. Nathaniel was with her, in her, and just as he had made her shake with pleasure, now he shut his eyes, neck corded and shoulders and arms taut. The same joy spiraled in him too.

  She would make sure that he felt the same spring into infinity. He liked to touch; maybe he would like to be touched too. With a firm palm, she ran her hands up his sides. The ribs were solid, the muscles shifting.

  He pulled back; when he pushed in again, grinding his hip bone against hers, the pressure made her arch into him, locking them closer. On his back, her exploring fingers splayed hard, pulling him deeper within her.

  The sounds they made were incoherent; all breaths and moans, then yeses and mores. Her hands slid down to clutch the taut muscles of his arse. He poised himself above her, breathing hard. Perspiration dampened his skin. In the firelight, the coarse hairs on his chest glinted red and gold. “I wish we could stay like this forever,” he said, and then he pulled free of her body and clambered from the bed.

  His hand did something—she couldn’t see what before she propped up on her good elbow—and he groaned. Hand over the head of his erection, he disappeared behind the privacy screen, and she heard a splash. Washing off.

  She understood then: he had finished himself rather than spill seed within her. The wise choice.

  She collapsed onto the sheets again, aching for him. Knees loosening, she hesitated—then found the spot he had touched to bring her to the peak.

  “That is beautiful.”

  She pulled her hand away so quickly she almost swatted him. “I didn’t hear—I thought you were behind the screen.”

  “Only for a moment. I would have been sorry to miss this.”

  “You didn’t miss anything,” she blurted out. After everything he had seen, after all they had done, it seemed odd that anything would make her blush. It seemed greedy, though, to seek her own finish a second time. She had been more used to rationing pleasures than taking what she wanted.

  “Good. May I join you?”

  She managed a nod. “But don’t look at me. Please?”

  “I’ve already seen enough to remember it forever.” He eased back onto the bed, hitching one leg atop hers. His erection had sunk, and the coarse hair and weight of his male parts against her thigh were different, a new sort of enticing. “I’m still seeing it in my mind, the way you touched your—”

  She silenced him with a kiss.

  Though he closed his eyes, the wretch must have been peeking. How else could he have found her fingers so unerringly, covering them with his own? With his hand on hers, she found the slick bud, then teased and stroked it.

  Together they rubbed at her to the point of delight, then beyond. They found a spot at which thought and worry vanished, and she quaked and cried out at the pleasure they had brought on together.

  He rolled her onto her side, tucking himself in behind her like a nested spoon. Boneless as she felt, she fit neatly against him. Warmth and satiation made her drowsy; the arm about her felt secure.

  She had taken Nathaniel Chandler as a lover. And it felt…right.

  Which was new and different. When had she ever done something simply because of the way it felt?

  “Hmmmhnm,” she mumbled, wiggling closer to him.

  “A Houyhnhnm sound.” He untucked his arm from about her, but only to pull the coverlet over them. “You must be thinking about something profound. A stake in a wager of one hundred fifty pounds for your thoughts?”

  She chuckled. “They’re not so profound.” If it was not profound for one to think—this man. If only things were different, this man would be the one.

  She wanted the freedom of paying her debts, of working where she wished, of being honest. But she’d never had such freedom, and if she won it now, she did not know where it would carry her—or whether it would crush her.

  “Rosalind.” He rested his chin on the crown of her head. “I would like to be your suitor.”

  You would not want that if you knew how I spied on your father. Or that I work for someone else instead. But she couldn’t say that, so she fumbled for another reply. “Secretaries don’t have suitors.”

  “Secretaries…” Nathaniel was silent for a long moment, taking a half dozen deep breaths with his arm secure about her body. “Rosalind, you are more than a secretary. You have a right to a suitor if you wish.”

  No, she didn’t. She didn’t have a right to anything. Nothing had been her own, not even her life, for a decade.

  She couldn’t admit that either.

  “Maybe,” she demurred. “But neither of us has a home. How can we speak of such things?”

  But what she really wanted to tell him—what she really saw—was that he was half gentry, half nose to the grindstone. He would have made a marvelous country squire. He would have made a marvelous…anything.

  He could build a home anywhere, and people would be happy to follow him to it.

  She swallowed the words, hard.

  “‘I pray you, do not fall in love with me, for I am falser than vows made in wine.’” So said Rosalind in As You Like It. She had never expected to live out these words.

  “I’m not asking anything of you, Rosalind. I know better than to ask for things I cannot have. Stating what I want is risk enough.” His arm slid over her belly, her waist, then up her ribs. Just touching; he liked to touch things. Maybe they seemed more real when he did, an anchor to the world.

  When his hand settled, he sighed. “You push back every time I come close, but not so hard that I think you want to break me. Just hard enough that I think you want to see if I’ll stay.” He lifted his head to press a kiss to her temple. “I’ll stay.”

  That pain lanced her heart again, that joy that hurt with the knowledge it must end. “For now.”

  “For now. In the morning we’ll both have to leave. But for now is good, is it not?”

  “It has to be good enough, if it is all we have.” She turned onto her back, then the other side, so she lay face-to-face with him. The stretch and tug of her scars made armor once more. They had saved her life; they reminded her what was hers or not hers to give. “Will you kiss me again?”

  This much she could ask. For now.

  And as their lips met, as his hands again found her breasts, she tried to forget everything except the now.

  To pretend that now would be enough. That paying her debts would be enough. That the escape she had wanted for ten years would be enough to make her happy, even if now was the only time she ever had with Nathaniel.

  * * *

  They slept apart. Nathaniel had not wanted to let Rosalind go, but he knew it was only wise for her to return to her own c
hamber. “Just as though I were a guest,” she said lightly.

  She was more than a guest to her own family, of course. And to Nathaniel, she was far more than a woman for a night.

  Their parting ought to be bearable, if it were only for now. But there was no promise of a different sort of now on the other side. She’d been right: he had no home. He had no notion what the future held for him.

  Somehow, he hoped, he would find the answers in Epsom.

  In the pale light of early morning, he tugged on Severn’s clean shirt and knotted a fresh borrowed cravat. His own waistcoat would do, and his own breeches. A maid had cleaned his boots and brushed his coat.

  When he opened the door to his chamber, he found Rosalind leaning against the wall next to it. She was wearing the borrowed gown from the night before, her long hair now pinned up and tidy. Her smile was shy. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning.” His heart thumped a hearty greeting. “Are you all right this morning?”

  Color stained her cheeks. “I am very much all right. Yes. And if you’ll note, I was ready to proceed downstairs before you this morning.”

  “What a shame that no one receives a medal for that sort of thing.” Rosalind’s angular sentences made him smile. When she smiled back, he took her hand. Just for a moment—then he released it so they might proceed downstairs in a proper line.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Mrs. Agate bustled by. Glancing at them, she called over her shoulder, “Rosie! Aunt Annie’s here to see you. She’s waiting for you in the family parlor.”

  Rosalind caught the newel post in one hand. “She is?”

  “Oh yes! She just returned from—where was it? That foundling home somewhere near Wales where she spends so much time.” Mrs. Agate waved at Nathaniel. “A saint on earth, I tell you! Well, go on, Rosie, and give her your good morning.”

  “All right,” Rosalind said, but Mrs. Agate was already off to the common room, from which the sound of clattering plates issued.

  “Your aunt wishes to see you? That must be a…nice surprise,” Nathaniel finished in some doubt, noticing that Rosalind’s face had drained of color.