Did she say his name again?—it didn’t matter. Sight and sound were nothing to him now: all that mattered were the waves and lightning-bolts of sensation dashing from the surface of his skin all through and round his innards, faster and faster until there was no faster to go, and the whole world stilled into gleaming rapture, time’s passage marked only by the pulsing of his release.
All too soon the dream began to recede, slipping through his fingers no matter how hard he clutched, and taking with it his chance to bring pleasure to the woman who’d said his name.
Her, he clutched at hardest of all. Perhaps in consequence, she was the last bit of the dream to dissolve.
Or… not dissolve. She kept a curious solidity even as all else shifted about him: he was on his side, it seemed, his cheek on a pillow, and there was clothing of some sort, which there had not been in the dream. And still it somehow felt as though he had an armful of feminine softness, clutched close enough that his ribs pressed into her with every ragged breath.
Horror pooled in even before understanding flooded him; before he blinked his eyes open to see the back of a dark-haired head mere inches away.
He swore, and yanked his arm from her, scrambling as far away as the bed would allow. “What did I do?” In blind panic he fumbled his hands over his clothing. “My God, Lucy, what did I do?” He was fully clothed, breeches all buttoned. He couldn’t have actually violated her, thank God.
“Nothing. You were asleep. It doesn’t matter.” Even with the bed’s curtained darkness preventing any good view of her, he could tell she’d stayed on her side, facing away. Her voice, small and taut and higher-pitched than was her wont, dashed his last slim hope that he’d managed to contain the dream in his skull and keep it from animating any part of his body.
God. What must she have thought? He had violated her with his actions. Even if he hadn’t put himself inside her, violation was the word for what he’d done. “You were awake,” he choked out. For how long? “Why didn’t you…”
Wake me, he’d meant to say, but oh, Lord, she’d tried, hadn’t she? That was why he’d heard her say his name.
“I didn’t know what to do.” Her words zipped round the curtained space like arrows, every one finding its way to his vitals. “I knew you were asleep, and I knew you’d be embarrassed.”
Embarrassed didn’t come close. He felt as if his skin had all been peeled away, exposing him to the world—to himself—as nothing but a lot of seething ugly bodily impulses. “You oughtn’t to have worried about that. You ought to have kicked me. For God’s sake, you ought to have driven an elbow into me, or—” He heard himself, and stopped. “I’m sorry. It’s not your responsibility to prevent my wrong behavior. It’s mine. I should never have got into this bed.”
“It wasn’t… I know you didn’t…” She took a great breath, audible through the darkness. “I have that kind of dream sometimes too, and so I understood—”
“Please. Stop. Please don’t speak of this. It’s not proper for me to know any such thing about you.” Proper. What right had he to speak of proper, ever again? He dragged his hands over his face, the rasp of two-day whiskers sounding like the very voice of dissipation. “I’ll write to your father. As soon as I’ve—” No, not as soon as I’ve got dressed, because he already was. In the same shirt and breeches and hose he’d put on before leaving Cambridgeshire two mornings ago—all of it wilted, and the shirttail now sodden with the consequences of his wanton dream. “As soon as I’ve found ink and paper and a pen, I’ll write to him.”
“Why?” She was so aghast, she rolled over to face him. “Surely you don’t mean to tell him what happened!”
“I mean to tell him that we plan to marry.” He hauled the curtain open and sat up on the edge of the bed. The room was too dark for him to see his boots but he’d left them somewhere hereabouts. “In the interest of decency, I’ll spare him from knowing the details.”
The covers rustled and the mattress creaked as she pushed herself up to sit against the headboard. “The details are the only reason anyone could force us to marry. If we keep the knowledge to ourselves, there’s no need.”
“I beg your pardon, there’s every need.” He bent over, feeling about on the floor for his boots. “I don’t care if no one else in the world knows that I compromised you. I know. And I know what a gentleman must do, once he’s compromised a lady.”
“It’s not fair.” Her voice wavered under a queer mixed weight of obstinacy and panic. “It’s not right that we should have to throw away our futures because of something you didn’t mean to do, and I didn’t do at all.”
He found a boot and started pulling it on, though where he was to go, with the house still sleeping, he hadn’t the first idea.
Never mind. Busying himself with his boots gave him a moment to absorb the unexpected sting of hearing her equate marriage to him with the throwing-away of her future.
“Lucy, you cannot go through life expecting to argue your way out of every consequence. And extenuating circumstances can only extenuate so far. Would it matter whether I was asleep, or what I’d intended, if I’d yanked up your skirts and violated your person?” He hadn’t meant to be quite so coarse or vehement, but throw away our futures still stung.
“That would be different. You’d have ruined me for marriage to any other man in that case. I’d have no choice but to marry you.”
Those were the terms on which she’d marry him, then: only if she had no other choice.
Well, who could blame her? He’d hardly made a good advertisement for himself as a husband this night. What woman would want a man so carnally incontinent she might wake to find him disgracing himself against her without permission, rote and heedless as a dog exercising its lusts on some blameless bystander’s leg?
He scooped up his other boot and pulled it on. “If that is what you wish,” he said, and he hated the brittle, affronted voice in which he said it. It wasn’t as though he would even have asked her to marry him if he hadn’t felt duty-bound. He scarcely knew her, and most of what he knew suggested they’d be a bad match indeed.
“It is. Thank you.” Those few subdued syllables hung in the darkness for a moment before she spoke again. “Are you putting on your boots?”
“Yes. I’m going to find a place downstairs. If the Porters discover me I’ll tell them I wanted to give you some peace.” He tugged at the leg of his breeches, to straighten the seam where it went into his boot. “We’ve spent enough time in here to prevent any doubts of our being married, I think.”
She was silent, though the air between them fairly vibrated with whatever reply she was biting back.
“What is it? Surely you see I can’t remain in this bed.”
“No, I understand.” Her voice grew fainter. “I only don’t know how I’m to lace up my stays.”
Oh, Lord. The stays. He’d completely forgot.
He heaved himself from the bed and went to the window, pushing the drapery aside. Sometime in the night, the snowfall had stopped. Quite a bit of it blanketed the land, though, obscuring the shapes of the trees and mounting up in drifts all pale and pristine in the moonlight. The sky in the east showed streaks of gray: daybreak couldn’t be too far off.
He touched his forehead to the glass and closed his eyes. It was Christmas Day. He’d known since his failure to find a wheelwright that this Christmas would be a poor one. But he hadn’t known he’d be facing it with this hacked-out hollowness in his chest.
“I’ll do your stays.” He spoke over his shoulder. “I’ll remain in the room for that purpose. There’s a chair near the hearth, and I’ve had enough sleep to get by.”
“Thank you,” she said. No rustle of sheets followed, or creaking of the mattress, or any other sound to indicate she was doing anything but sitting as she had been, back to the headboard, staring into the curtained dark.
For nearly a minute he stood in the silence, racking his brain for any words that might make things easy between them again. At las
t he let the drapery fall, and went to take his place in the chair by the hearth.
Lucy paused at the door to the kitchen. If she were at Hatfield Hall she might be going into the breakfast room now. She would be well-rested and wearing her hair in some more artful arrangement than she’d been able to manage this morning on her own. She’d enter the room to find pretty china, silver forks and spoons, and, with luck, a place at the table beside some jolly young man who would tell stories that made her laugh. He might flirt a bit, in an easy manner, leaving it to her to decide whether she wished to respond. And the room would be warm, and the food would be sumptuous, and everyone would be in fine holiday spirits.
She allowed herself two seconds to wish, wholeheartedly, she were at Hatfield Hall. Then she fixed a smile on her face and crossed the threshold.
“Happy Christmas, Mrs. Porter.” With as much ebullience as she could muster, she went to the table where the woman stood at work. “Thank you so much for having your maid bring up that hot water, and the shaving things. I don’t believe there’s a gift on earth that could have pleased Mr. Blackshear more than the sight of soap and a razor.”
“Happy Christmas to you too.” Mrs. Porter wore her sleeves rolled up. Flour dusted her forearms almost to the elbows. She was doing something with a lump of dough. “Did you sleep well? The room wasn’t too cold?”
“It was perfectly cozy. I slept very well indeed. So did Mr. Blackshear. May I ask what you’re making?” Her pulse galloped and her cheeks felt warm. She hadn’t slept well; neither had Mr. Blackshear; and the room had most certainly not been cozy—indeed that was how the trouble had started, with Mr. Blackshear so cold and miserable on the floor that she’d had to go and fetch him back to the bed.
“This is just a loaf of bread. But after I set the dough to rise, I thought I’d make a pie.” Mrs. Porter pressed the dough with the heel of her hand as she spoke, leaning a good part of her weight into it before turning and folding it and pressing again. “We didn’t make a Christmas pudding this year, since it was only to be Mr. Porter and me. Nor do I have any mincemeat ready. I have dried apples, though, and I think a pie of any sort is a good addition to a Christmas dinner.”
No Christmas pudding! All of yesterday’s melancholy sympathy came flooding back at this latest evidence of what a meager holiday the Porters had planned for, with their reduced circumstances and their absent daughter.
Well, shame on her if she couldn’t put her troubles and disappointments aside for a few hours, and bring what youthful Christmas cheer she could to this house. “A dried-apple pie sounds lovely.” It did, now that she thought of it. “Is there some easy part with which I can help? I’ve always wished I could be in the kitchen when the Christmas cooking went on.”
Mrs. Porter told her where to find an apron, and soon enough she was mixing apples and sugar in a pot atop the stove, with a bit of cider to make the apples plump. Mrs. Porter managed the crust, which was the difficult part and involved an entirely different process from what she’d done with the bread dough. Two or three minutes into this state of affairs, footsteps sounded in the corridor and Mr. Blackshear appeared in the kitchen doorway.
He’d shaved. Well, of course he had. She’d seen the soap and razor brought in, after all, and hardly exaggerated when she told Mrs. Porter of his pleasure at receiving them. But she’d almost forgot, over the course of a day, what he looked like without that layer of stubbly whiskers. He wore one of Mr. Porter’s shirts, too, with a fresh cravat—they’d arrived along with the soap and razor—and he’d wet his hair to make the rumpled parts lie down flat. The rumples in his waistcoat and breeches, he’d of course been unable to address.
It pinched at her heart somehow to see him so, half like the man he’d been on this journey, and half like the man he expected himself to be.
But that wasn’t the sort of meditation that could promote youthful holiday cheer. “Guess what we’re making, Mr. Blackshear.” She sent him her most winning smile. She would not let the new awkwardness between them blight the Porters’ Christmas.
“Something with apples. I smelled them from halfway down the hall.” He smiled too, a bit tentatively. He hadn’t met her eyes once in the mirror while lacing up her stays. This time she hadn’t minded. The frankness with which they’d spoken in the dark, directly after the incident, had evaporated in the cold light of morning.
“It’s a pie. I’m stewing the apples.” She made a show of frowning into the pot as she stirred. “With some of that sugar you brought yesterday. Mrs. Porter is making the crust, which requires a good deal more skill.”
“It’s more a matter of practice than skill, I’d say.” Mrs. Porter was mixing flour with some kind of fat, her fork clicking musically against the bowl as she worked everything into a lump of dough. “Get it wrong enough times, and you’ll learn to get it right. Did you want a cup of tea, Mr. Blackshear?”
“Perhaps a bit later. I imagine Mr. Porter is outside doing some chores? I thought I’d see if I can be of any help.” He went to fetch his greatcoat, still hanging over a chair by the fire. He had to pass very near her on his way, and when the air stirred between them as he brushed by, she felt as if she might crumble into a million pieces on the floor.
She ought to have woken him when he first rolled over and dropped his arm across her. She’d known perfectly well he’d be aghast to find himself so disposed, but she’d lain there, guiltily enjoying the warmth of his unknowing embrace. Only after several minutes did things undergo a change, and then only gradually did she grasp what was transpiring. She hadn’t expected the insistent bulk of his male part, discernible even through layers of clothing. Or his movement, desultory at first and then increasingly regular and rhythmic. Her sensual dreams had been necessarily vague, and had never included those details.
Well, he’d told her and told her, hadn’t he, that he didn’t belong in that bed with her. He’d even invoked improper dreams as a reason he oughtn’t to remain in the room. And still, she’d been so unprepared for the event that her brain had gone blank as a whitewashed wall. When saying his name hadn’t succeeded in waking him, she simply hadn’t known what to do.
“Have you decided when you might go to Downham Market?” She spoke up, because too long a silence might give Mrs. Porter time to perceive the unease that hung like an invisible mist between her two guests.
“After church, I thought.” He picked his hat up off the chair and rotated it, brushing the crown. He’d absently held that hat upside-down on his knee in the rain, the first time they’d met. “If Mr. Porter can spare his cart then.” He inclined his head to Mrs. Porter.
“I’m quite sure he can, if you’re certain you want to make the journey.” Mrs. Porter kept half her attention on the cold water she was adding by spoonfuls to her dough. “You might wait and see if tomorrow brings better weather. Truly, you and Mrs. Blackshear are no trouble at all.”
“You’re kind to offer.” He set the hat on his head and took his gloves from one of the coat pockets. “But we really must make every effort to go today. Our relations were expecting us yesterday, and I fear each passing hour gives them greater apprehension that we’ve been struck by some disaster.”
He was right, of course. Aunt and Uncle Symond would be worrying about her, and his brothers and sisters must miss his company as much as he clearly missed theirs. Not to mention that there could be no question of spending another night together in that bedroom. Still, it saddened her to think of the Porters having Christmas dinner all alone. What if the pie was being made for her sake, and his? It did seem unlikely that Mrs. Porter would have waited until this morning to make it, if she’d meant all along to have one. At home the pies were always made a day or two ahead.
There was no tactful way to broach the topic, though, and probably no turning him from his established plan, pie or no pie. “Be careful not to stay out too long in the cold,” was all she said, in her best wifely manner, and then he went out the back door and she watched through the
window as he followed the tracks Mr. Porter had left when he’d gone out some time before.
He could have been her husband in truth. Twice now he’d said they must marry. If she’d just said yes, they could perhaps have found a way to overcome their marriage’s ugly, un-chosen beginning, and make it into something good.
If they couldn’t, the regret and recrimination would eat them both alive.
“These apples are coming along very nicely, I think.” She forced brightness into her voice, because sometimes you could get it to take hold there, and send its shoots and tendrils into the rest of your demeanor and from there even into your mood. “Do you think I can leave them on the warm part of the stove when the time comes to flatten the dough? I’d especially like to see that part.”
And she did, as it developed, not only see that part but take a turn with the rolling-pin, at Mrs. Porter’s insistence. She saw how to make the crust thin but not too thin; how to lift the unwieldy sheet of it and drape it into the pan; what to do with the excess that hung over the edge.
It wasn’t a bad way to spend the early part of Christmas morning, really. Mrs. Porter made a pot of that weak tea, and they toasted slices of yesterday’s bread and helped the maid Mary with putting things away, when she came in, and had a fine companionable time as they waited for the men to return.
And when they heard male laughter and the stomping of snow-covered boots, and then the kitchen door swung open, she could see at once that an hour of helpful labor had effected a similar improvement in Mr. Blackshear’s spirits. He had his arms full of evergreen boughs, and above them his face wore the healthy flush of cold and exertion, and his eyes glittered with good humor.
“You mustn’t blame me for this, Harriet.” Mr. Porter waved an arm at the profusion of fir and holly. “I told him it wasn’t necessary, but there was no stopping him. He said a house doesn’t smell right at Christmastide without these things.”
A Christmas Gone Perfectly Wrong: A Blackshear Family novella (B 0.5) Page 12
