by Jane Lark
After they’d eaten, feeling a little like a stuffed goose, Jane lay back on the rug and rested her head on the cushion. Robert had tidied up and put the hamper aside for the servants to collect later, when they returned. He lay beside her with his head on his palm as he propped himself up on a crooked arm and his other hand began playing with a stray curl of her hair which lay on the rug.
“This weather cannot go on forever,” she said, her awareness of his closeness growing and her breath becoming scarce. She could feel his body heat along her side.
“No,” he answered, his voice distant.
“Is the drought affecting the crops?”
“Probably.”
She turned her head and looked up at him. He smiled, his eyes focusing heavily on her. She remembered that first night in London and the predatory, brooding hunger she’d seen in his eyes then. This intensity was very different. It appeared to be true affection, love even, but it burned with longing. The lock of hair he toyed with tugged her scalp as he played, and she felt a now familiar tingling warmth race across her skin and settle between her legs.
“Robert.” His name meant so many things she could not say, and perhaps it was the deep-seated fear of losing him soon, or the level of attention he’d shown her, or just that her resistance had finally failed, but it was she who reached for him. Her fingers lifted, gripped the back of his neck, and drew him down.
He came willingly. She felt no hesitation.
As his mouth touched hers, her lips parted, welcoming him. Greedy, she was the first to slide her tongue into his mouth.
He answered in equal measure, his tongue dancing with hers.
Her body arched, longing for more, her breasts pressing against his chest and her pelvis touching his hip while her fingers braced his scalp through his hair.
His leg shifted and urged her to part hers. His knee settled in between them over her riding habit. His upper thigh pressed into the pulsing place between her legs.
She pushed back against him, kissing him, feeling the weight of his body as he kissed her harder.
His hand slid upwards from her waist and closed over her breast.
A whimper of pleasure and need escaped her mouth. It was caught in his.
Robert’s fingers began working loose the buttons at the front of her habit, popping them free with one hand without ceasing the kiss.
She was so hungry for him, so in need of him, so aware of every lean muscle in the body which lay half over hers, and again, it was so different to the night she had first met him. This was no longer the need of the past and sexual tension. This was about now, and him. She had come to know him and love him all over again, more than she had done years ago. Her tender-hearted, very dear, Robert.
With a low growl, his warm fingers slipped inside her gown, beneath the cloth, and found flesh, closing over her breast again. The intimate touch sent a shaft of sharp pain to the place where his thigh pressed hard between her legs.
His kiss left her lips and began covering her face, her neck, as she felt the evidence of his arousal, hidden in his breeches, press against her hip.
He began rocking against her and kissed the skin he’d bared at her chest, then her breast.
With beautiful, delicious pain burning inside her, she shut her eyes and just felt as he rocked his hips, and she followed his lead.
Air touched her breast when his mouth opened and his tongue circled and flicked, while his firm grip squeezed her soft flesh and his thigh pressed hard against her.
This thing he could control was wonderful.
His warm mouth sucked her breast again and he shifted a little so the top of his thigh sat more snugly between her legs, as she rocked against him, maintaining the rhythm he’d set, though now he’d stilled.
She sighed, pressing her head back into the cushion on the rug, her fingers on his shoulders while his gripped and released her breast in tune to the movement of her hips.
She loved him and she could feel it building, the feeling he’d taught her in London. The wave flowed into her, the crest of it rising higher.
It broke and she cried out as it flooded her, sending her senses reeling then numbing them, leaving her weak and exhausted as it washed over her and ebbed away. Her breath left her lungs on a sigh.
His forehead rested against her collarbone, his hair tickling her skin. His body was no longer taut. His leg lay loosely between her thighs, and his hand was on the ground beside her.
“I’m sorry.” She barely knew why she apologised, but it was just the way he lay over her. “Did I do something wrong?”
He laughed and his head came up. “Hardly.” Then he took a deep breath and released it on a heavy sigh.
She felt the heat of it on the swell of her breast through her open gown.
He moved his leg away and returned to the position he’d begun in, propping up his head on one hand, while the fingers of his other hand trailed about her cheek and brushed aside her hair.
She re-secured her buttons without rising.
His finger touched the corner of her mouth.
She smiled, her gaze meeting his, and touched his cheek.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he whispered.
“So are you.”
“So, what do we do now?”
“I don’t know.”
“You started it, Jane. Do you have any idea how much I want you? It’s been hell trying to keep my hands off you. But if that is what you want, I will.”
She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders against the ground. “I have no idea what I want.”
He sighed, still watching, but then he rolled away suddenly. “I suppose we ought to get back anyway. Come along.” He stood and held out his hand to help her up.
Beside the horses, he folded his hands to make a step.
She set her foot in it, and, like so, he lifted her into the saddle.
“Are we going straight home?” she asked.
He smiled up at her, his wolfish rakehell smile.
“One kiss, my Lord, and you are back to being predatory.”
He laughed as he set his foot in his stirrup and pulled himself up with an agile grace that had her admiring every inch of his muscular physique. But once he’d mounted, he said, “Actually, I was smiling because I like hearing you call Farnborough home.”
Home. But it was not, was it? It had always felt like home. It was the only place which had ever felt like home. But the truth was, she had no home. None but this borrowed one. No real place where she could feel safe and happy.
Jane turned her horse and lifted into a trot.
He moved to ride beside her. “Did I say something to upset you?”
“No. What shall we do?” She sensed him look at her.
“Do you really wish me to answer that? Beyond taking you to bed, I can think of nothing to suggest at the moment.”
“While your brain is still in your breeches, you mean?” she mocked, as he had mocked her, kicking into a canter.
“Now, now, Jane, such foul protestations are not becoming. I did not hear you complain a moment ago while you took your pleasure from me.” His tone was churlish and sarcastic, the humour hollow, as though he was actually offended.
She stopped the mare’s stride and swung the animal about in a sharp turn to face his approach. “Are we arguing?”
His stallion stopped then danced sideways. “Are we? I hardly know any more.”
“Nor I,” she replied, her gaze searching his face, although she didn’t know what she looked for.
“Then we are not. Come on, a gallop, a race. That will knock the tension out of both us and the horses.”
She nodded, then turned her horse, and kicked her heel. Her mare took off.
The fields and trees were yellow and brown, not green.
Surely the drought had to break soon.
~
The rest of the day was odd. Whatever she did, she was aware of Robert, and he seemed just as aware of her. Even when he and John
were indulging in a game of backgammon and Jane was sitting on the drawing room floor, playing with Mary-Rose and the dogs, Jane’s gaze kept catching and locking with Robert’s.
In answer to the uncomfortable physical awareness she now felt in his company, she started avoiding him, and, over the next few days, she ceased spending time alone with him.
In response, Robert watched her even more, with a soulful look in his eyes, which she could see asked her to explain what on earth was going on. But he did not voice it, and she knew he was letting her withdraw.
After a couple of days, he gave up asking her to ride or walk with him and spent more time on business and less with the family.
When Ellen asked him why he was suddenly so busy, in front of Jane, he made some excuse about having left the business to others for too long, and it being time he took up the reins.
Edward broke into the conversation then and began speaking about the crops and herds and harvests.
When Mary-Rose’s baptism grew closer, and Ellen’s family descended on Farnborough, Jane knew then her prediction had been right. Her little pretend family started drifting apart.
She liked Ellen’s sisters and their husbands, but with so many young children here, Mary-Rose and Robbie mostly stayed in the nursery, and John had his real aunts and uncles to entertain him.
Then friends arrived from a neighbouring estate, and cousins of both families. Jane only knew Robert’s cousin Rupert, who’d married a year ago. He’d introduced his wife, Meredith, but even Rupert was like a stranger to Jane. She’d only met him twice when he’d stayed at Farnborough as a child.
Feeling out of place, Jane spent more time alone, retreating to her room to read, as she’d done today. She was sitting quietly on the window seat, bathed in summer sunlight.
A warm breeze swept in through her open window, catching at her hair. Her feet rested on the cushion before her, and a book lay open on her lap as she looked out the window. She hadn’t been able to concentrate on reading.
A single, sharp tap struck the bedchamber door. It made Jane jump, but turning and gripping the book to stop it slipping to the floor, she bid whoever to enter, expecting to see a footman.
It was Robert. He held a letter in his fingers, and he looked at her from the open door, but did not come in.
“This arrived for you.” He held out his hand.
Jane rose, leaving the book on the window seat, and went to collect it.
“You need not have brought it yourself,” she said as she took it.
“Why, because you don’t trust yourself near me? I would have thought I’d proven myself capable of restraint by now, even if you have not.” His words were cutting and his expression sullen. He didn’t move from his spot beyond her chamber door. But then he changed character completely, shrugging it off and sighing as he looked past her to the open window and the curtain caught on the warm draught. “Never mind. I did not come up here to argue. I just wished to know you are well. You have been hiding, I think.” His gaze came back to her. “What is wrong, Jane?”
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Just saving yourself for Sutton,” he whispered in a low breath, as though he had not intended her to hear it, or perhaps had not even intended to voice it, but could not quite help himself. It stung.
Her mouth opened to say something in response, although, heaven knew what, but he lifted his hand and shook his head.
“That was mean of me. I’m sorry. Ignore me. I’m just in a truculent mood, bored of my own company probably. Anyway, what I came to say is, we are having a game of cricket in the meadow after luncheon. Will you come down?”
She nodded, but she couldn’t keep letting him believe there had been something between her and Joshua. It hadn’t seemed to matter, but now … “It is not what you think, Robert.”
“What?”
“What you thought you saw at Vauxhall. There is nothing between Joshua and I like that … He wants his fortune, that is all.”
“Yet he—”
“Do not ask me to speak of it, please.” She heard the bitter pitch in her voice that said she could not. She felt too ashamed. She did not have the courage to admit how terrible her life had been, and the last thing she wished for was to drag him into her current nightmare.
She should not have come here. She should have left things as they were.
Mentally dismissing him, her eyes fell to the letter, and she began opening it.
She heard him release what sounded like an irritated sigh but when she looked up, he was already several strides away, walking back along the hall.
She could hardly blame him for being frustrated and angry with her. She’d been a fool to kiss him. It was that which had made everything go so wrong.
She shut the door and opened the sheet of paper.
It was from Violet. She had been invited to the Marlows’ exclusive baptism party but she wasn’t coming. She apologised, but said she’d been unwell, yet Jane was not to worry, nor to return to London, unless she wished to.
Jane folded the letter, opened a drawer, and slid it in amongst her clothes. There would be no rescue party then. She must continue on alone. She returned to the window seat and looked down on to the gardens. Several women, including Ellen, were walking along one of the paths below.
Jane sighed. What was wrong with her? Why was she not able to be happy? What had she done in her childhood to set fate so against her? Still, whatever curse had set her on this path, she knew she could not hide from it any longer. She had to go back and face Joshua. She did not sit back down to read her book, but instead sat before the travelling desk in her room and wrote to Violet’s solicitor.
An hour later, she walked through the garden in search of the party playing cricket. They were not hard to find. The sound of the hard ball striking against willow resonated about the garden, while the lower constant sound of the women’s gossip and the occasional masculine cry of success or failure carried on the warm air.
When she reached the opening on to the meadow, Ellen immediately called and beckoned Jane over. Jane was not allowed to sit beneath a tree with the children though. She was kept in the heart of the conversation and asked question after question on her childhood years with Edward and Robert.
Jane wondered if Robert had said something to encourage his guests to include her. She hoped not. It would be embarrassing if they felt sorry for her.
When the men took a break to swap the teams between bat and field, they came over and stood in the shade drinking lemonade. They were all in their shirts, today, and overly hot. Jane’s gaze picked Robert out and found him watching her as he approached. Jane turned back to speak to one of Ellen’s sisters and her husband.
“Don’t ignore me.” Jane jumped a little as the sharp retort was whispered to her ear. He was behind her and obviously still sulking.
She faced him, with only a foot separating them. His gaze said everything his mouth had not spoken and his hand suddenly gripped her upper arm. He drew her a few steps away from the others.
Robert wanted her. She clearly wanted him. Why would she not just give in to it, especially if what she’d said earlier was true, and there had been no affair with Sutton? But there was something going on.
He’d assumed that letter had come from Sutton. It had taken a great deal of willpower not to break the blank seal. What had it said?
She’d looked uncomfortable when she’d refused to give Robert the details of her fight with Sutton.
She should be uncomfortable. But her vulnerability made Robert believe her.
Yet why, then, would she not let things progress between them? She just kept holding him back. She was so bottled up, even here at Farnborough, with him. Even though she’d relaxed and seemed happy until he had let things go too far up on the hill.
Since then, she had been pushing him away.
Her pretty mouth narrowed. The same pretty mouth which had sighed with ecstasy against his, but days ago. What did she think, t
hat he was a corpse, completely unfeeling, without heart or soul, so he could take her torture without reaction? He’d been coping fairly well, he thought, until she’d pulled him to her, taken what she wanted, then again left him unfulfilled and panting for what she would not let him have. Well, now, he was out of sorts and tired of being toyed with.
He knew the signs her body spoke. She wanted him, no matter that she backed away. And that attraction would not simply go away because she willed it to. But she did not have to give in to it.
So where did that leave him? Frustrated and panting after her, still, like a bloody dog. She could torture him for the rest of his life if she wished.
“You’re brooding,” she said.
“Yes, am I not entitled to occasionally? You have done enough of it yourself this week.”
“You’re angry at me, I know,” she sighed, the air seeming to go out of her all of a sudden. “Perhaps I should just go back to Violet’s tomorrow?”
Desperation flooded him. He hadn’t considered that possibility. His grip unconsciously firmed on her arm. She shook it loose. “You cannot go,” he answered, “not before Sunday. What of the baptism? Ellen would be disappointed.”
Her fingers tucked a stray curl behind her ear.
His gaze followed her movement, and desire cut him open like a knife. He was in pain for her, every muscle, every sinew, every bone in his body belonged to this woman. And if he could never have her, what then? For now, though, all he could think of was tomorrow. She had to stay.
“Ellen has her sisters. One of them, I am sure, would be honoured.”
“No. She did not ask them. She asked you. Does it mean nothing to you?”
She looked over his shoulder to where the children played, avoiding his gaze.
God. She could not even look at him now. He already knew from her actions she could no longer bear to be in a room with him.
“Yes, but I am not really family, am I? I think Ellen is just being kind. It would be best if I was not Robbie’s godmother. It will only make things awkward in the future.”
“Jane, what the hell is wrong with you? You blow hot and cold with me, and now with Ellen. Do not let her down. I mean it. It meant a lot to her to ask you. She does nothing lightly. Do not upset her.” He narrowed his eyes, waiting for Jane’s response, feeling hard and cold inside again.
