The Model Master

by Sorcha MacMurrough

  "Mr. Marshall has been in a very, very dark place. She brought him back into the light. Don’t ever envy them. Just as she would never envy you the struggle you’ve had to attain your present happiness."

  Bryony looked around the lovely Wedgwood blue sitting room at Eltham Castle, and sighed. "Attaining is one thing. Keeping is another."

  "Yes, but just because you were disappointed once doesn’t mean you will be again. Sometimes we create our own monsters, due a lack of trust, or our fears."

  She looked carefully at her friend. "I get the feeling you’re trying to tell me something. So come on, out with it."

  "That you have the power, Bryony. You just need to be able to learn to use it wisely. Love can hurt, or heal. You’ve healed. Be careful with the rest."

  "Has Michael healed me?" she wondered aloud.

  "Ah, now you are starting to see it. You need to make him see it too. Trust it. Right now the poor man is terrified, and can’t confide his fears."

  "What does he—"

  "Himself, more than you. And what you create together. And might create if you’re not careful. Do I need to remind you about your monthlies?"

  She blushed. "No, but —"

  "If you want more children, you need to talk about it. I would wait, though. You still have much unresolved in both your pasts. I can give you—"

  "All right, yes. Thank you, Eswara," she said, blushing.

  "Sponges. Excellent for both monthlies and as a barrier to conception soaked in vinegar, brandy or lemon juice if you use them faithfully."

  "Gosh, you know so much."

  She sighed and shook her head. "More than I wish to at times, child, believe me."

  Bryony smiled at the golden-eyed woman gratefully. "Thank you for looking after me. You’ve done more for me than my own mother."

  "You’re my spiritual daughter, Bryony. I want to see you happy. You just need to be patient and honest. Tell each other what you need and wish for. The rest will fall into place."

  "I try," she said with a sigh, "but it’s just so difficult."

  "So you’re telling me it’s easier to swive with Michael than talk honestly about your personal relations, or what makes you happy?" she said with one quirked eyebrow.

  "Eswara!"

  "Well, it’s true. Why it is harder to talk about sexual intercourse in this society than it is to simply do it?"

  Bryony laughed then, and shook her head. "I don’t know. It’s a mystery to me. Just get me those sponges."

  She went over to Michael, who was staring at her in silent inquiry as to what she found so amusing. In full view of all of his friends she sat on his lap and kissed him.

  If anyone found it shocking, they said not a word, but Michael was uncomfortable with public displays of affection, and the presumption that he would want everyone to know how matters stood between them. Not that he ever wanted another woman, but he did want at least a modicum of control over his own life.

  He was even more galled when Bryony spoke to him about being more careful in future.

  "Are you saying you don’t ever want any children with me?" he barked in the privacy of his downstairs room at Blake’s the following night. Armed with his protectors in the pocket of his robe, it was no less than what he had been about to tell her, but somehow it still rankled.

  "No, I’m saying now is not the right time for either of us. Not when things are still so unsettled. And not until we both feel we’re ready. For all I know you might view the arrival of a child with just as much trepidation as I do at the moment."

  He gritted his teeth and said nothing.

  She showed him her sponges and said, "Please, don’t be angry. I promise you, if they're really horrible and you don’t like them, we can find something else—"

  "You don’t need to be in control all the time," he said gruffly, pushing her questing hand away.

  She frowned, hurt. "Neither do you."

  "Perhaps I do. Maybe it’s the only thing that makes me bear the unbearable," he snapped.

  "I can understand—"

  "No, you can’t. No one can! And even living through this, I’m not sure I really do."

  She began to walk away. "All right, I’ll leave you then."

  "No, wait—"

  She turned to face him once more. "I’m sorry if I upset you. If I pushed too hard. Maybe you were right all along and this is a mistake. That we have no future together. That it’s all just proximity, not really anything special between us."

  He rasped, "Now I never said—"

  She gazed at him levelly. "It’s all right. You’ve thought it. I understand that. I’ve wondered myself, if we’re being absolutely honest with each other."

  He scowled. "And what conclusion did you come to?

  She shrugged. "It doesn’t matter, obviously."

  "It does to me!" Michael shouted. "Otherwise I wouldn’t have asked."

  She sighed. "I’m going to bed."

  "Damn it, Bryony, don’t just—"

  "And don’t order me around as if I’m some servant! Or your paid mistress!" she hissed. "If I come to you in bed it’s because I want to be there with you. It’s a gift of myself. But with the mood you’re in at the moment, I can’t even talk to you."

  He groaned, seeing he truly had pushed her too far. That he was pushing her away, almost as if to prove she would really leave him one day and just trying to get it over with.

  "Maybe we just talk too much. Perhaps if I just let myself feel... But I’m, well, frightened to," he confessed.

  "Because I think you’re going to leave me, Bryony. And even if we were married, that would be no guarantee that you would stay. Besides, maybe you should leave. I feel like such a selfish brute. I want you so much, love, I can’t think straight half the time. Oh God, there I’ve said it now. I’m sorry. I want to control you in order to stop you tiring of me, growing resentful of all you’ve done when I’ve give you so little."

  She shook her head incredulously. "So little, darling? But you’ve give me everything. And you have a lot to learn about control."

  She removed her robe and he stared wide-eyed as she got into the bed and reclined, spreading her legs invitingly. "Well, darling, you said you wanted to be in control. I’ll be your sex slave, cater to your every whim. You can lie right on top of me, love, and take me over and over again as much as you want, as eagerly as you like. I want you to pin me down with your hot, hard hips and take me right here and now. Ravish me with your devastatingly wonderful strokes until I can’t even pant your name."

  He moved to do as she asked, and she gave a small smile. "Now tell me who was in control just then. You or me?"

  His mouth was so dry with desire he had a hard time finding his tongue. "You."

  "And who’s in control now?" she said, dipping her hand to touch herself, so that he groaned with need as he struggled to get out of his clothes by himself.

  He could scarcely tear his eyes away from her lush ripe charms as she continued to stroke her inner thighs and one breast. Still he struggled with his clothes and had to admit she was right. Sometimes it did help if she was in control, or at least assisted him. She most certainly knew how to excite him almost to the limits of his endurance.

  But she wasn’t doing it to hurt him or be selfish, she was doing it to please him. Everything she did was for him and him alone. He realised what a fool he’d been. He had never done anything for her to make her feel special, arrange any little treats for her, make her feel pampered and spoiled as she had for him.

  He didn’t have to control her, for he might as well try to harness the wind or the tides. All he had to do was love and cherish her. He would have to make her feel the centre of his world, stop being so blindly selfish and willful. Well, all of that was going to change just as soon as he could manage to think clearly once more.

  "Darling, can you wait for me, please?" he gasped. "Give me a hand here?"

  "I’ll even give you two."

  She got off the bed as lang
uidly as a sun-warmed cat and reached for him.

  He grabbed her damp hand and sucked one finger hard, then thrust it into his lap to spread her opalescent dew all over his raging tip. He pulled her on top of him, facing away, impaling her feminine core with one sure thrust she could feel right up to the crown of her head. But when he tried to pin her hips she wriggled and squirmed. Only his fingers on her tight little nub of desire and one throbbing breast quelled her struggles to set the tempo.

  She let the pure pleasure plummet through her and cried out his name. He turned her head up and sideways to kiss her before running his hand once more over both breasts. His own climax kept pace with hers as they both shivered and at last were completely drained and utterly still.

  "I’m sorry, so sorry, love," he murmured, punctuating each word by kissing her mouth heatedly over and over again.

  "Sorry?" she questioned softly, before deepening the kiss.

  "I don’t want to fight, don’t want to hurt you. I want to do the noble thing and give you up. But the truth is I’m a selfish swine. I want you with me forever and a day."

  "It’s a bargain then. I want the same thing. But if that’s what you really want, we have to renegotiate the terms of my employment, oh lord and master."

  He stiffened slightly. "All right," he conceded.

  She nibbled his neck, making his head swim. "The first new term is that you never, ever try to send me out of your bed again. The second is that you never ever speak to me about being noble and giving me up for my own good. You are my good, Michael, now and always. You’ve given me my sons, a home, and dare I say it, love."

  "Yes, love," he sighed, holding her close. "I’m scared of it, I have to admit. But my love for you is strong enough to make me overcome that fear."

  "And any others you may have?" she asked quietly.

  He sighed and shook his head. "Not yet, but one day. I will try."

  "That’s all ask. And if you are ever afraid of this, this magic between us," she said planting her hand on the back of the one cupping her breast, "you need to tell me. We’ll talk it over and—"

  "Talk," he laughed. "I think sometimes you can read my mind."

  "I wish you could read mine so you would know I truly to do love you."

  "In time. It’s like music. You need to listen for a time to hear it. Grasp its true beauty."

  She raised herself off him long enough to settle in his lap facing him and kissed him full on the mouth.

  "Listen, and feel. And know."

  "Yes, he agreed. "Indulge all my five senses, and arrive at the truth. The trouble is I lose all my senses as soon as you touch me."

  "Lose them? Or is it that they just swirl so much you can’t separate them out?"

  "Both."

  "Hmm. Powerful?" she asked, placing her palms on his face lovingly.

  "Very. Frightening and beautiful too," he admitted.

  "Then you have your answer."

  A slight frown marred his handsome face. "To which question?"

  She smiled softly. "All of them."

  Michael caressed her lingeringly down the curve of her back. As he began to make love to her all over again, he prayed Bryony was right.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The end of the week brought them home to Bath. When the carriage pulled up to the front of the house, Michael stared open-mouthed. "What on earth?"

  There was a new paved path that led straight up the small hill to the house, straight as a die and with a gradual incline right down to the new gate. Part of it was open and clear; the other part had two waist-high bars on either side.

  "Bryony, what is all this?" he asked, more stunned than angry.

  "I had some workmen in to make a few adjustments to the house to make you a bit more independent. Do you want to try to wheel yourself up the path?"

  He nodded eagerly, then frowned. "But first I have to get out of the carriage."

  Simms and Robin now came out with a new contraption which enabled him to raise and lower himself out of the carriage in a chair narrow enough to slot in through the door.

  "We just have to remove part of one seat in the coach. It’s the only thing I didn’t do because I wanted to surprise you. And look, the chair’s front, back and sides come off, so you can manoeuvre in and out of it more easily, and here are two brakes to hold it steady."

  Once Michael was on the ground he went up the path, the boys happily running up ahead of him shouting encouragement. Where the steps into the house had once been there stood a ramp, and there were handles either side of the door to help him pull through the rest of the way.

  As he entered the house, he gaped. "Bryony, the staircase!"

  The steep staircase split off into two had been gutted and replaced with a single sweeping one which was effectively three sides of a rectangle with the incomplete fourth side the bottom of the stair. It had a curved balustrade upon which a platform attached to a gear system had been installed.

  "Go on, try it."

  Michael studied it for a moment, then wheeled his chair onto the platform and cranked the first lever. It raised off the ground about a foot, and then he turned the handle and began to ascend up the stairs with a sweep. One firm turn of the handle, and he was already half way up to the first landing.

  He had never been so moved in his life, and thrilled at the sensation as he rose upwards to the next floor of the house on his own steam, with the boys again accompanying him upwards on their own little legs.

  Once upstairs in Bryony’s suite of rooms, he saw she had transformed them yet again, stripping the curtains and shutters from the bay window and placing the curtained four-poster bed in it. She had taken away some of the more exotic decor in deference to him. All the pictures were gone, and there wasn’t a trace of the silk or incense she had favoured.

  His heart sank a bit. He was sorry now he had been so critical of the little things which had obviously given her pleasure, and moved that she was so willing to defer to his tastes in the room she was evidently hoping they would share.

  But she seemed not to repine for what had been lost as she gave him a small smile. "Come look at our new study," she invited.

  A second window had been added in the smaller of the two rooms, which had been redecorated in more masculine colours, wine and gold, with nary a feminine or exotic cushion or throw in sight. The desk had been put in the new window and there was no longer a four-poster but a day bed. He was delighted with the chambers, but somehow he wondered if they were not too cold and devoid of Bryony’s own personality considering he hoped her intention was to share them with him.

  Her final surprise inside the house was the crank system on a platform for him to be able to get in and out of the tub on his own.

  "So this is what all of you were up to when everyone came to visit."

  "Sorry to disappoint you. No orgies after all." She winked broadly.

  He blushed at her words, which were so close to what he had suspected foolishly.

  "Disappointed, no, never. This is wonderful. Thank you. I can’t tell you what this means to me." He reached for her, and kissed her hand.

  She smiled back at him, elated that he liked her surprise, and had not acted self-conscious in the least about the new living aids. "You know I’m more than happy to do whatever you need me to, but you might feel better not being so dependent on me all the time."

  "And you? It would make it easier to not have me clinging. Easier to not feel guilty if you left," he said quietly.

  She knelt to kiss him. "I’m not leaving you, ever, except to go shopping, and now you can come with me whenever you like. No, this is our room now, our suite, if you would care to share it with me."

  "Yes, I'm more than willing to share. But you didn’t have to get rid of all your pictures just for me."

  "I’ll do anything to make you happy."

  He kissed her hand again, then tugged her into his lap for a more thorough appreciation. "You do. You don’t have to give up parts of yourself to
do that."

  She shrugged. "It’s all about compromise. Anyway, you’re not angry? I mean, it was a bit presumptuous of me, and I am after all only a servant—"

  "Stop it, right now. You're never to say that again," he scolded. "You tell me when, and we’ll go to Jonathan and be married. As for being angry, how can I be? All this is a gift of love I could never even hope to match."

  "I’m glad you like it," she said simply. "Why don’t we see how the bathtub system works?"

  He grinned wolfishly. "With pleasure."