“Once or twice a year. I think my aunt would like to see me more often.” A thin thread of melancholy wove through her voice. She’d sounded this way outdoors when she’d spoken of liking to find things out. “She and my uncle proposed to raise me after my mother died, but Papa wouldn’t have it.”
“You would have grown up among cousins then. Do you ever wish you had?” He stepped back to his place behind her and started on the knot to her stay-laces.
“Oh, no. Not really. I’m fond of my cousins, and also of my aunt and uncle, but not so fond as I am of Papa. And it would have been so different.” A quick look found her to be frowning at her reflection, perhaps picturing the girl she would have been if raised at Hatfield Hall instead of Mosscroft. “Of course, I would probably know more about how to behave in society. I suppose that would be for the better.”
“Are you worrying about the party again? Don’t. You’re going to be a grand success.” The knot succumbed to his efforts much more quickly than last night’s knot had, partly because this one was his own handiwork and partly because last night he hadn’t had the first idea what he was about. “Only think of it: all those people will have had two days to begin tiring of each other. They’ll crave nothing so much as a new face, and there you’ll be, with your intriguingly late arrival and your infectious appetite for enjoyment. You’ll be just what the party was wanting.” Note how I speak of the party. You can see, can you not, that I’ve accepted what your future will be, and accepted that I’ll have no place in it.
He glanced up at the mirror again, and this time caught her looking back at him with a half-solemn smile. “You’re very good to say so.” Her head tilted and her expression grew more earnest, eyes glimmering in the light from the tabletop candle. “You are very good, Andrew; so much better than I thought at first.”
“Did you think me a priggish hypocrite? A dreary sobersides, perhaps?” He raised an eyebrow and put a jocular lilt into his voice, to steer them both away from any earnest mood.
“I thought you rigid and un-thoughtful, I’m sorry to say. I thought you overly proud of your own virtue, and inclined to be too severe on everyone else.”
“Don’t be sorry. I gave you ample reason to think so.” The laces sang against linen as he drew them briskly through their threading-holes. The sooner he was done with this task, the sooner he’d be out of this conversation, which was sounding already as if it could lead him nowhere good. “And even now I wouldn’t call it an unfair assessment.”
“I would.” Her spine seemed to vibrate, under his fingers, with the weight of this sentiment. As though she’d dredged it up from her very core. “I want you to know that. I don’t expect we’ll have much chance for speaking tomorrow, so I just…” Her lips pressed together and her chest rose with an inhalation, he saw from the corner of his downward gaze. “I want you to know I do see your worth.”
“Thank you. That’s kind of you to say. I’m sensible of your merits too.” He kept his attention firmly on the progress of the corset-string, out through the left hole, out through the right, out through the left. Whatever softened or heartfelt look might grace her features now, he did better to not see it. “There’s your lacing all out.” He wound it on the breadth of his hand and set the coil on the tabletop. “I’ll withdraw to the hall. Tap at the door when you’re ready for me to come back in.” Without waiting for a reply he whisked himself out of the room, pulling the door shut behind him, and leaned his weight on the wall. His pulse drummed in his ears and he had to fold his arms against the chilly hallway air.
I can’t, his brevity and quick exit had meant her to know. I’m sorry but I cannot have this conversation with you. Maybe if they somehow encountered one another some months from now, he’d be able to listen calmly while she spoke of his worth. But not now. Now, with a night in the same bed but minutes away, he needed all the philosophical detachment he could scrounge. Lying mere inches from her with a confession of her regard ringing in his ears might be more than he could bear.
Behind the door, the floor creaked. She would be moving about, probably folding her gown away in the trunk, picking out a nightgown, unpinning her hair.
He stepped away to a window at the hall’s near end. There under moonlight was the little hill where they’d gone to release the falcon. Faith, she’d said just before letting the thing fly off, and hope that your efforts will be enough. And as much peace as you can muster with the possibility that they won’t. And in the moment he’d felt as if that might be as good a plan for marriage as anyone could have.
But one person’s plan, like one person’s wishes, amounted to nothing where marriage was concerned. One person’s hope and faith could never be enough for two.
He set his knuckles to the window; to the lead strips that separated the diamond-shaped panes, and leaned near to watch his breath cloud the cold glass. His task for the remaining hours of their acquaintance was simple: to do what he knew was right. At every turn, to consider what action best served duty and decency, and to choose that action. Nothing more.
Her tap sounded at the door and he began counting, meanwhile filling his lungs with draughts of icy air that crept out from his center to his limbs and brain. Thirty seconds gave her time enough to get into bed and pull the curtains. He left the window with a cool clarity of thought and purpose, and went back into the room.
She’d kept a gap in the curtains on the near side, presumably to indicate that this side would be his. Sensibly done. He went to the hearth, where his latest borrowed nightshirt hung over the back of a chair, and he stripped off his coat and waistcoat. Undressing without a valet felt odd to begin with; undressing with a woman in the room odder still, but as she herself would no doubt tell him, it wasn’t materially indecent given that she was behind curtains and couldn’t see. And really, he oughtn’t to be troubling himself about this at all when he’d seen her in chemise and stays.
He changed his shirt for the nightshirt and sat to wrestle off his boots. That was as far as the undressing would go. A man who cared for propriety had to draw the line somewhere, and breeches seemed a fit place to draw it.
At last all that remained were the candles, and getting into bed. Wick by wick he darkened the room until only the glow of the fire lit his way, and by that glow he drew back the bed-curtain and climbed in between the sheets.
He couldn’t see her, and took care to not touch her, and his whole body felt her presence all the same.
But he’d expected that. “Will you wake me in the morning, if you wake up first?” he said, in a gratifyingly calm and neutral voice.
“Yes, if you like,” came her answer through the darkness, and that took care of that. There’d be no fraught conversations in this space about his worth and her appreciation thereof.
He tugged up the covers on his side to arrange them about his shoulders. It felt good to have things properly sorted; to be once again a man who observed rules of conduct and found a way to enforce respectability even when lying a foot or so away from a lady in bed.
But it felt better, so much better, when she came wriggling across the mattress and into his arms.
Because this, too, was who he was: heat and appetite and the combustible store of impulses too long held in check. He pulled her even nearer, and found her mouth in the darkness, and forgot everything else.
* * *
He would never forgive her for this. She might never forgive herself. After her high-minded thoughts about his right to be dutiful, after watching all evening how he fought for distance and decorum, she’d toppled him the instant she had a good chance.
But Lord, didn’t a man of such stature fall magnificently down!
He employed none of the restraint he’d used that afternoon. No leisurely exploration, no pausing after each small advance to listen for permission in her response. He wanted, and he took; lips and tongue and even teeth against hers before trailing hot open-mouthed kisses all over her face: cheek, jaw, eyelid, brow, the sensitive shell of her ear
.
She arched her neck and grabbed fistfuls of his nightshirt, one behind his shoulder and one at his chest. She needed him nearer still, so she squirmed into him, angling her shoulder in under his until he planted an elbow at her other side and eased himself over and above her. She lay on her back beneath him then, pinned down by his glorious weight.
Or part of his glorious weight. He lay a bit crosswise, with his lower half not touching hers. Probably his male organ had grown prominent, and he wished to spare her the knowledge of that fact.
Her heart bubbled over like a forgotten pot on the stove. Dear painstakingly proper, impossibly marvelous Mr. Blackshear, thinking a lady might be alarmed to discover that the man above her, devouring her with his passion, was actually aroused!
“Are you laughing?” He said the words against her skin, not troubled enough to leave off kissing her. “Good God, Lucy, do you think I need more lowering memories to associate with this bed?”
“I can’t help it. Everything’s so perfect. I have to laugh. Don’t stop.”
“Don’t worry. I hadn’t any thought of stopping.” Now he was laughing too; a slightly pained acknowledgment of how thoroughly he’d capitulated to his appetites. And then he capitulated some more, kissing his way down the side of her neck.
Oh, Lord. She’d had no idea. No idea in the world that anything could feel like this. Even the kissing in the Longs’ breakfast room hadn’t prepared her for how it was to be under him in the dark, with only the fabric of their nightclothes between his skin and hers.
But she hadn’t started this for the sensations. Dimly, very dimly, she recalled that point. She cupped his jaw in her palm and guided him back up to where she could meet his mouth with hers, because she had things to say and he didn’t want to hear the words but she could perhaps make him know anyway, at least the most important parts.
I don’t regret kissing you. I’ll never regret kissing you. She held his head steady, her fingers curving round to the back of his neck and her two middle fingertips meeting where his short bristly hair began. If I marry another man I won’t ever once wish I hadn’t kissed you first.
She traced the outline of his broad lower lip with the tip of her tongue, slowly, and he went still, the better to feel what she did. You’re exactly the man you ought to be. You always were. Don’t think me disappointed. Don’t berate yourself for not being more proper, either. You’re exactly proper enough.
With her thumb she sought and found the place where his dimple hid. He dented under her touch, exhaling a quick breath of laughter. He was ticklish there. She would never have guessed.
I regret nothing, nothing. Not tricking you into staying at Mosscroft. She smoothed her hands down his back, flannel over skin, flannel over skin, and then flannel over the waist of the breeches he’d so respectably kept on. Not finagling my way into your carriage. Not the broken wheel. Not even badgering you into sharing my bed.
She could have done without last night’s mishap, but it had after all been a mishap, not a deliberate or even impulsive wrong. And it could just as easily have been she who had the ill-timed dream while he lay awake, embarrassed and astonished and at a loss for what to do.
Given more time, she would have told him this. She would have gently, tenaciously wrested self-blame from his grip and cast it far away.
Given more time, she might have done so many things.
But that was fanciful nonsense, wasn’t it? How easy it was to say “I would do this” and “He would do that” in the very beginning, when your scant knowledge of a person was padded out with your fondest wishes. More time must cause you to moderate your hopes. Perhaps she would never have had any influence upon him, even with all the time in the world.
“You’re thinking.” He lifted his face from hers. “I can feel it.” His hands came up to lay fingertips on her temples, as though there really were some activity he could discern through her skull, like hailstones bouncing off the other side of a windowpane. “Would you rather talk?” He shifted part of his weight onto his elbow, preparing to withdraw from atop her.
He really was too good for the likes of her. He’d come into this bed determined not to talk, but he would give way if he thought it would bring her comfort.
She bound her arms across his back to stop him withdrawing. “I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to think. I’ve thought too much and I’m tired of it.”
“Don’t think, then.” His voice dipped into its mulled-wine range and he kissed her again, with the abandon of a man who stood on the precipice of farewell, or possibly with the rough ardor of a pirate.
No. No more thinking, even about mulled wine or the meaning of his kiss. She kissed him back and all that mattered was how it felt.
It felt astounding. Warm and wild and elemental, primal, as if this was exactly what her body had been crafted to do. She stretched her arm above her head and pressed her upside-down palms to the headboard, bracing herself and surrendering herself to sheer corporeal rapture. Between the anchor points of her hands and hips she flared like a paper-fed fire, arching and rippling against the increasingly unsteady presence that was Mr. Blackshear.
“Lucy,” he whispered. His breath had gone short, giving his utterance a tight, urgent sound. “Will you let me touch you? Only with my hands, I promise. And I’ll stop the instant you say.”
He was touching her already, one palm cradling her shoulder blade and the other at the back of her head. In her pleasure-drunk haze, it took a second to reconcile this with his words.
“Only… with your hands?” It was probably a bad idea. Probably many a young lady had begun the skid to ruin by consenting to only with my hands.
“You have my word.” For all that his breath still came shallow, he sounded so solid. So trustworthy.
She closed her eyes, dark though it already was. “Promise you won’t regret it afterward. Promise you won’t speak of writing to my father.”
“No. I won’t do that again.” The suggestion of a rueful smile twisted through his words, twining itself with the still-present urgency.
“Yes, then. Yes,” she got out, before she could think long enough to change her mind. She slid her hands down the headboard until they came to rest on the pillow. Her chest pressed into his with every rabbit-quick breath. She opened her eyes.
She could see a bit, even in the dark. He’d left the bed-curtain a little way open and by the fire’s fading light she could just discern the dark shape of him as he rose up and off her to settle at her side. His hands came out from behind her shoulder and head and his right hand landed at the neck of her nightgown, fingertips tracing over the gathers before he drew the fabric aside and leaned in to set a row of kisses along her bared collarbone.
That was his mouth. Not his hands. Maybe she ought to object.
But even while he kissed her his hand had begun to rove downward, carefully, away from the neck of her gown, and the matter of lips on collarbone swiftly gave up its claims to her attention.
With every nerve between chin and navel she listened for the progress of his touch. He brought his mouth back to hers and she lifted one of her own hands and arced it down to lay fingertips on the back of his neck, and meanwhile his roving hand stroked a path straight down over her breastbone, then out along the lowest rib, and then up and up and up, scaling the ribs like a ladder until coming to rest, inevitably, on her bosom. His palm and splayed fingers cupped her, savoring the part of her body that was so different from any part of his.
He made a small groaning sound in his throat; she mightn’t have caught it but that his mouth was open against hers. “Are you sure you don’t mind?” he whispered, sounding as if his very life depended on her answer.
Mind. She hadn’t any mind to mind with, anymore. She was all riotous senses and no coherent thought. She took hold of his hand for answer, and brought it to the ribbon that fastened the neck of her gown, and helped him pull the fastening loose.
His fingers, a bit clumsy with eagerness, slid
into the open neck of her gown and… no, she didn’t have mind enough to name what he did. He touched her, that was all: with fingers and palm he demolished what was left of her reason and lit her every nerve on fire. And a minute, or three or ten minutes later, when he kissed his way down her throat and past even her collarbone, the prospect arose of his mouth on her breast and the thought alone was nearly enough to incinerate her.
He paused. Every muscle in her body went tight as a bowstring pulled back. A soft exhalation feathered against her skin as he… deliberated. Gathered up his resolve. Thought better of everything. There was no telling, no telling at all what was going on in his head.
But she could at least let him know what she wished he would do. “Andrew.” The syllables caught on something in her throat, making her sound exactly as desperate as she felt. “I know you said you would only use your hands. But I don’t think kissing can ruin me.”
“Thank God. Thank you. I want this so much.” The words tumbled out roughly and then his lips were on her skin again, climbing the curve of her bosom until he reached the peak, and she flinched up off the mattress and met with his tongue and teeth.
Oh, Lord, his tongue and his teeth. He used them, tentatively at first and then with growing assurance, bolstered no doubt by the small inarticulate sounds she couldn’t seem to hold in. She writhed in utterly wanton style, aware all the while that his hand had crept under the covers and down to take hold of her skirt and raise it in subtle fistfuls.
Her heart pounded like a roomful of country dancers in outdoor shoes and boots. This was the point at which she must stop him, if she wasn’t perfectly sure.
She was the farthest thing from sure. Sure was a pair of distant shores, one for yes, stay with me always, and the other for no and goodbye; and she was a bit of flotsam tossed about on the sea in between.
His breaths got short as his hand edged under her rucked-up skirts and up her thigh. He lifted his mouth from her breast and she knew he was listening, ready to halt at the first hint of an objection from her, and also, perhaps, ready to drink in the signs of her pleasure and gauge from her responses how best to touch her.
A Christmas Gone Perfectly Wrong: A Blackshear Family novella (B 0.5) Page 18
