Chapter 2
The Awakening
The young Marquess left his father’s study willingly. In truth, he was not in a bad mood, despite his father’s hectoring. He was rather used to the Duke’s ugly bluster. And in any case, he was cheered by the wonderful secret that he tended in his heart, where no one could see it or take it away from him.
For years, Christopher had a friend that his father, had he known, would never have approved of. She meant the world to him. Her name was Joanna, and she was a Traveller.
She was two years younger than he was. Every summer since Christopher was fourteen, the two children had met and played in the forest surrounding the Gresham estate, during the few short months the Travellers camped there.
The first time he encountered her, he thought she was a wood nymph or fairy sprite rather than a human child. Small and slight, she had black gypsy hair that hung almost to her waist. Framed by the veil of raven hair, her eyes were startling: one a warm golden topaz, the other a glittering jade green.
Funny, all those years, I never thought of her as a girl. As my comrade, my twin, a mysterious spirit as close to me as my own soul. But never as a girl.
Girls were like Christopher’s sisters, the Lady Daphne and the Lady Henrietta. Girls simpered and blushed. Girls had delicate constitutions that could not be subjected to rough sports. Girls had sensitive feelings that could not be subjected to coarse language.
Girls spend most of their time standing before the looking glass and worrying about whether their hair is done in the latest fashion or their clothes designed in the latest mode.
Girls were hemmed in on every side by Society’s rules and restrictions: they could not talk to a boy unless a chaperone was present. When greeted by a man, a girl could only offer her hand for a prescribed number of seconds. If a man rose to offer her a seat, she could not sit down while the seat was still warm from the man’s contact with it.
In short, girls are boring idiots. Ergo, Joanna is not really a girl.
Joanna as a young teenager could hoist her skirts and shimmy up a tree or a rock as fast as he could. Joanna could snare animals for food, or catch trout in the stream using a pointy stick. Then she would roast the fish, skewered on the same stick, over a campfire she built herself. Nothing had ever tasted better to Christopher.
Joanna could curse like a sailor without a blush. In Christopher’s opinion, it was rather charming in such an innocent child. There was no harm in it.
Joanna is the brave, brash younger brother I always wished I had. She is the best buddy a fellow could ever spend time with.
In truth, Christopher had been a lonely little boy. He hadn’t realized how lonely he was, though, until he no longer was. He hadn’t known that no one in his life understood him, until someone finally did. Joanna felt like a part of his very self. He’d cut his own arm off before he’d ever hurt her.
Two years had passed since he had last seen the mischievous little sprite. Christopher had left for Oxford when he was eighteen, and he had no way of communicating with her since then. The Travellers didn’t give forwarding addresses to the Royal Mail.
Then yesterday, the townspeople were all commenting that it must be summer, because the gypsies had come back, regular as clockwork. Christopher’s heart rose within him, as if in a wordless song.
He slipped away from the ducal manor house and checked the hollow old tree where as children they had left each other notes. A balled-up bit of paper was waiting. “Christy, I’m back, are you? The ravine tomorrow at midday. J.”
She hasn’t changed at all.
At least, I really hope she hasn’t changed.
* * *
As it happened, though, she had changed so much he hardly recognized her. She had grown a couple of inches over the last couple of years, as had he. She was entirely different, somehow.
The soft, pliable, slightly plump face of childhood had been overlaid with a grown woman’s features. Her face was thinner, her high cheekbones more pronounced, and the shadows below her cheekbones more interesting.
Her lips were no longer cute in their pouty fullness. Now they were luscious, redder somehow, like moist, delicious fruits ripe to be bitten and sucked. Her marvelous eyes glowed, not with the childlike merriment of old, but with some deeper, more mysterious female knowledge.
And her figure. Christopher swallowed hard, looking at her. Her makeshift clothes hung differently on her. There were curved parts of her that strained the very fabric of that old dress now, as if they sought to rip through their bindings into the caress of eager hands.
Her waist nipped in delightfully. Her shapely ankles under the patched gown had been sculpted by a master. Her long legs seemed made just to be parted by a man’s hungry hands.
Christopher noticed all these things about her, things he had never cared to notice about a girl’s body before.
“Joanna?” he said.
Then Christopher felt suddenly ashamed of himself. He was not an innocent—he had been out in the world, and had heard men talk about women in just this way. Lusting after them like animals. This is my best friend. It’s disgusting to think this way about her, even for an instant.
As he wrestled with these thoughts, she just stood there, looking at him.
In the old days, he would have run up and given her a mighty hug, clapping her on the back like a brother. He felt constrained, now. One did not greet a goddess by clapping her on the back. Her unexpected beauty paralyzed him completely.
“Christy?” she answered, saying that precious nickname used by her, and only her. He noticed that she, too, did not race forward for an embrace.
Their world had turned upside down. They had lost childhood’s innocence, and they now saw each other through the eyes of a man and a woman.
“I missed—”
“I thought—”
They spoke at the same time, and their words stumbled over each other. They started to laugh. He thought, then, that maybe all would be well.
“You go first,” Joanna said generously. Or perhaps she wanted to gauge his feelings before she took any risks?
Christopher struggled. This was hard, very hard. Just close your eyes and pretend you’re talking to the old Joanna. Just plunge in. You used to be able to tell her anything.
“It’s been so long, Joanna. I missed you so much when I was away at school. You’re my very best friend, and I had no way of reaching you. I thought maybe you’d forget me.”
“Moron,” she said. If he kept his eyes closed, she sounded young and cheeky, just like the old Joanna. “I was so lonely. Among the Travellers, there was no one I could talk to, the way we always used to talk. I was angry you were gone so long!”
“It was the same for me. You think there was anyone at Oxford, or when I took my European Grand Tour last summer, that I could talk with like we talk? You don’t know how much I’ve missed you.”
“You’re all grown up now, Christy. You’ve been to places I’ll never see—Oxford and Europe—why, I’ve never even been to London. You’re going to find me pretty boring now.”
“Boring? Joanna Bagley, you’re the most exciting person I know! Don’t you remember, when we were children, we said when we grew up we’d travel all over the world together, having adventures?”
But even as he said it, his throat constricted with something like loss and grief. He was a man now. She was a woman. He knew he couldn’t travel unchaperoned with an unmarried woman—the scandal would rock Society. He would be ostracized as a cad. She would be judged a woman of low morals.
And Society would be right to be scandalized. Because she was no longer just a sweet, enjoyable child—she was a strikingly beautiful woman who would draw attention everywhere she went. And no one would believe that a man could be alone with such a woman and not want her in his arms, in his bed. He would indeed want those things himself. He couldn’t deny it.
He looked up at her and saw sadness in her face that mirrored his own. She, too, seeme
d to understand things had changed. “You used to tell me you’d run away with me and join the Travellers.”
He hid his head in his hands, raking his fingers through his hair. “Oh, Joanna,” he said softly. “What are we going to do? You’ve been a part of me for so long that it would kill me to lose you. But we can’t love each other now the way we did as children. We’re not children.”
Her voice was strong and resolute. “Well, if becoming a man and woman means we can’t love each other like children anymore, then we just have to start loving each other as men and women do.” There wasn’t a trace of embarrassment in her words.
He looked at her in shock. Truly she must still be a complete innocent, to even say such a thing. She couldn’t know what she was talking about. Only a—well, a wanton, could offer herself to a man so lightly and freely. And a wanton was the last thing his Joanna was.
Imagine if any of the dandies at ’varsity were to hear such a beautiful young woman talk this way? They would ruin her good name. First they’d trick her into doing whatever they wished, then they’d ruin her reputation and snicker publicly about it.
Christopher knew what appetites he wanted to satisfy on the glorious body of the girl standing in front of him. But beyond that, he truly loved Joanna, as he had never before had the chance to love another human being.
Good God, she’s only eighteen, no matter how ripe and delicious her body looks. What kind of a cad would force himself on an innocent girl?
Joanna might think she knew what was best for her, but he was older and he knew better. He must protect her. From his own newly raging desire, which he could not deny. And from her own innocent recklessness, which if unchecked would bring her to shame. He must guide their feelings in a safer direction.
“Joanna, you are dearer to me than any sister. And I love you more than a sister. No matter what happens, you can count on me for that.”
She must never know that I love her as so much more than a sister.
For the rest of their short time together that afternoon, he tried to focus the conversation on commonplace, familiar things: the horses her Da was readying for the county livestock fair; his dog Huntress’s latest litter—including the runt, Orion, who was thriving on cow’s milk and almost as strong as his mates.
They just about made it safely through that painful, troubling day.
He walked home in the summer twilight, his mind roiling with conflicting emotions. Perhaps he should just stop seeing her? But no, he couldn’t bear that. For the joy of her company, he would do whatever it took to hide his true feelings.
It occurred to him then that in all the years they had known each other, the word “love” had never before been spoken by either of them. And yet to say it now seemed the most obvious and natural thing in the world.
Chapter 3
Strategies and Snares
Joanna was lost in thought as she made her way back to the Traveller encampment that same evening. She needed to think this situation through carefully.
Joanna knew she had changed during the two years Christopher had been gone. But her Christy had changed just as much.
His face had hardened into manliness. It was all lines and edges, now. His eyes were still as honest and direct as always, and they glowed with good health. But his fine square chin with its attractive dimple had grown much more determined and resolute.
His nose had become more patrician, as if he were coming to an acceptance of his lofty role in the world. The soft, light boyish down on his cheeks was gone, and in its place a faint shadow of dark beard, cleanly shaven, had replaced it.
Joanna saw how Christopher’s shoulders had broadened and how hours of sport at Oxford had developed his chest and biceps. His muscles rippled beneath his shirt. He had arms meant to hold a woman, to protect her from the world. Any woman, young or old, would want him.
And at twenty, he was a full-grown man. Joanna herself was only eighteen, and she had had no experience of men, but still she knew herself to be a woman. And she lived among earthy people who well understood what urges drove men and women.
What’s this silly business about loving me like a sister? I’ll have to put a stop to that right quickly!
She remembered Christy’s face as he first looked upon her today. She could see his eyes rake over her newly ripened body, wanting it. Wanting her. Lusting for her.
Looking at her, he had been breathing hard, and his eyes were almost feverish. There was a fine, manly bulge in his breeches, and it was a compliment to her. Yes, he was ready.
A sister! What bloody nonsense.
He was no doubt still a virgin, as was she. But he was now a man fully grown, ready to have pleasure from a girl. All this she had seen in one instinctive glance at her childhood friend, and it awakened a corresponding hunger in her.
Yes, he is the one I will have, the one I will give my maidenhead to. He is the one I will choose as a partner for my entire life, so there can be no shame if we express our love in the way God intended.
Yet she had not reckoned on Christopher’s inherent good breeding, his natural chivalry toward women. It seemed that among all the obstacles to her claiming her man, Christy himself might prove the biggest obstacle.
How could she open his eyes and win him to her? He was still such a boy in many ways. Although she was two years younger, didn’t they say girls were always more mature than boys? She knew that she and Christy were meant for each other, even if he didn’t know it yet.
* * *
Joanna reached her father’s caravan just as dusk was falling. She was back to the camp in good time, then—twilight lasted for hours at this time of year, and the Travellers were likely to sit out in the sultry evening shadows, talking and laughing and singing old Traveller ballads. Joanna loved this time of year.
She sought her father’s old caravan. It was rickety and broken down, but it still rode smoothly enough with a horse or two harnessed up to pull it. It was a cheery yellow with dabs of bright red paint. It was home, and she loved it.
There already was a campfire started in the little clearing behind the caravan. She could see other campfires near other caravans, here and there in the woods around her. Clusters of other Travellers, in small groups of kinfolk and friends, were gathering for their evening meal.
Maggie Mae was stirring something in a pot. Stew, maybe? It smelled delicious.
Joanna had known Maggie Mae her whole life. She was some sort of relation, her Da’s great-aunt perhaps. She was old as the mountain crags and as tough as the knotty roots beneath an oak tree.
Joanna’s own mother had died when Joanna was a baby. Maggie Mae has stepped in to help Da raise her. It wasn’t something a man could do by himself, particularly with a girl child.
“Here,” said the old woman, handing Joanna a large tin spoon. “Ye can stir this while I clean an’ cut up the couple o’ fowl yer Da shot down and bagged today. It’ll make a tasty mouthful for ye. There were some potatoes left, an’ I found a patch of lovely mushrooms in the woods.”
“Smells good, Maggie Mae,” Joanna said absentmindedly.
Her thoughts were back on Christopher, going round and round in her head. What do I do? If I push too hard, mayhap he won’t respect me as much. But if I act all stand-offish and prim, we’ll get no further with this.
“Here! Here! What’s the matter with ye, lass? Ye’re stirring the pot so hard ye’ll make a hole in the bottom of it yet. And ye’re sloshing good soup over the sides.”
“Sorry, Maggie Mae. I’ll be more careful.” But her thoughts pulled her away again to puzzle over Christopher.
Maggie Mae gave her a sharp tap on the shoulder to bring her back to reality. “Ye’re right addled tonight, lass. I don’t know what to make of ye.”
Joanna realized that if she didn’t snap out of her foggy state, she’d soon have Maggie Mae interrogating her like a magistrate. And Maggie Mae wouldn’t rest, then, till she had an explanation.
“Oh, I don’t know what a
ils me, Maggie Mae. Just the summer heat, I suppose. Where’s Da?”
“He’ll be back in a minute or two. Just gathering more firewood.”
“Joanna, lass!” It was her Da’s cheerful voice. A tall man, he had broad shoulders, but grief over the loss of his wife had left those shoulders a little bowed. Still, he had a strong, brave spirit that Joanna admired greatly.
He gave her a mighty hug, lifting her off her feet. “Where’ve you been all afternoon, then? Out in the forest casting spells on us all, with those witchy eyes of yers?”
Joanna loved her Da more than anyone else in the world—with the exception, maybe, of Christy. She knew that her Da adored her, and she could do no wrong in his eyes. Da would do anything to protect her. Really, she was all he had in the world, and he let her know in every look and gesture that in his estimation, she was a priceless treasure.
“Domnall, sit for the meal,” Maggie Mae urged. She was ladling large spoons of the stew into tin bowls. “The food gets cold so fast, and I want ye to enjoy it. Joanna, girl, stop talking to yer Da and let him eat some dinner.”
The three of them settled comfortably around the fire, eating their fill of the freshly caught game birds. They didn’t say much for a while—just enjoyed Maggie Mae’s good cooking. There was delightfully cool water to drink, too, just brought up from the nearby brook.
“More?” the old woman asked. They nodded, their mouths too full to talk, and she dished up seconds all around.
Tamed By The Marquess (Steamy Historical Regency) Page 2
