by Lara Archer
Where no little spinsters in plain brown frocks could turn his world upside-down with an erotic encounter in the woods, then ignore him completely.
Miss Lawton tapped at him yet again, like a damned woodpecker. “My lord,” she said, “I hope you are also planning to join the dancing in the evening. We have so few noblemen who attend our assemblies here, and I very much want to dance. Since I have not been to London yet, I’ve had few opportunities.”
Ah, that was a well-aimed volley. No, Miss Lawton had not been to London yet. Lord Lawton had not let her have her Season, precisely because he fully expected her to become a viscountess right here at home.
Damn this whole situation.
If no marriage proposal was forthcoming, John would be committing a grievous offense against her family. And he would bring shame to his own father’s memory.
Damn and damn and damn again.
Warring impulses pulled his insides in contrary directions, aching like a bruise. He wanted Mary, but Mary didn’t want him—she was making that clearer every day. And duty demanded that he do what everyone else was waiting for, and take Miss Lawton as his bride.
Maybe it would just be easier to let Mary have her way, forgot anything that happened between them, go forward with his father’s plan for him, and marry Miss Lawton and be done with it. That strategy would certainly be easier on his pride than following Mary about like a spaniel.
After all, Mary had told him repeatedly that she wanted him to keep his promise to his father. And Miss Lawton could not be giving him clearer signals she was ready to say yes to his proposal.
Maybe he should just stiffen his spine and go through with the plan.
It would be the wise and sensible thing to do.
The honorable thing.
The best salve for his wounded pride.
But the thought made him more heavy-hearted than he’d ever felt in his life.
Chapter Seven
Mary was not given to superstitions. But May Day morning dawned so bright and clear, the nighttime mists vanishing from the field and woods almost the moment the first rays peered over the horizon, it was hard to resist the lure of the old stories.
Long ago, the pagan Britons believed spirits inhabited the trees and meadows here, and that on this loveliest day of spring a maiden would spy her true love if she went out in the morning to gather flowers.
Certainly, this morning felt a thousand times better than yesterday, when she’d felt so stiff and wooden and utterly unlovable as she perched up on that ladder like some scrawny old workman while John flirted right under her nose with the gloriously beautiful Annabel Lawton.
She’d seen their hands brush together when he offered to carry Annabel’s ribbons for her. She’d seen the startled look on his face, the hint of a blush that stole over his cheeks, the alert awareness in his eyes. Of course he reacted to Annabel like that. Any man would have.
The world was settling back into its right dimensions again, after that morning with the blackberries knocked it all temporarily out of whack. Lust made John do what he’d done up on that hill, and a misguided sense of duty prompted him to offer marriage to the wrong woman. But Mary held firm to what she knew was right, and disaster had been averted.
And it would have been a disaster if she’d tried to marry John. No matter what he said, he’d have regretted it before the wedding day was even through.
If she’d needed any clearer proof that a clergyman’s plain daughter was the wrong match for a handsome, wealthy viscount, the contrast between her dutiful, dull little self and radiant, lush-bosomed Annabel settled the question once and for all.
Yesterday, she’d thought she would die inside.
But she didn’t die. She was made of stronger stuff than that. She’d been raised to do the right thing, after all, no matter the cost to herself.
It didn’t matter how John made her feel. She couldn’t let it matter. She’d make what she could of her life, and not indulge in self-pity.
Right now, the morning was beautiful, as beautiful and magical as anything the pagans could have desired. The leaves shone brilliant green and rustled in hushed, welcoming whispers. The warm breeze caressed her skin, and tiny insects with transparent wings turned golden in the sunlight, flickering through the air like friendly sprites. The smell of earth rose warm and fertile—the world was full of the possibility of transformation.
While her brother still slept soundly in his room, Mary had dressed herself quickly in a frock of thin green muslin, the lightest she had. The other young ladies would follow local tradition and set out with unbound hair and bare feet to gather May Day flowers, but they would stick to the relatively civilized meadows at the other end of the village, where they might stay on the well-packed earthen path and not dirty their toes too much. They’d come home with tame yellow daisies and daffodils. But Mary headed deep into the woods where the loveliest wildflowers grew—the scented wood anemones and bluebells, the sweet bramble roses and jewel-toned irises that required a good deal more exertion and exposure to thorns and mud.
She’d always gone into the woods on May Day, celebrating the coming of spring much as her long-ago ancestors had done, and that one day only she’d left her hair free of its usual coil, as a pagan maiden would. But this year she took an extra risk, gave herself an additional small taste of freedom: she left off not just her shoes, but her chemise and petticoat and stays as well.
It was a shocking thing to do, to have her body bare beneath her dress. A bit of sunlight behind her, and anyone could see she wore no underthings. But she’d never encountered another soul when she went Maying in the past, and she couldn’t imagine she’d see anyone this morning.
For just one brief hour, she wouldn’t feel like the vicar’s sister. She might imagine herself loose, unfettered, part of the sensuous world. It was a small compensation for forbidding herself to even look twice at Viscount Parkhurst yesterday, for holding herself rigid on that blasted ladder and not thinking—or at least trying not to think—about how much she longed for him to touch her again.
Her curls blew softly across her cheeks, the fabric of her dress brushed her nipples and fluttered about her thighs. She felt the shape of her own body beneath it, for once not feeling straight and scrawny, but subtly rounded, feminine, alluring. Her flower basket beat against her hip, and even that small pressure sent shocks of physical awareness through her. A strange, restless energy tinged with desire seemed to ripple through the very air as she moved. Her blood heated and sang.
Ever since she’d lain on the forest floor with the viscount’s mouth between her legs, she was changed. The physical world had changed for her. She felt it all differently, felt new possibilities in it—even if it was illusion, even if it would all be denied her forever after, even if she’d never taste the pleasure of a man’s touch again.
A sudden, wild impulse swept through her, to throw her body down in a field of flowers, hike up her skirts, and let the sun kiss her flesh. To touch herself wantonly where John’s mouth had touched her. Where he’d pleasured her so thoroughly.
Oh, what if she could be here with John?
She shouldn’t think of him, but the thoughts flowed in anyway. In fantasy, at least, she might have him. In this world that felt so magical, they wouldn’t have to remember the restraints of civilized life. They could lie down together among the bluebells, loosen what little clothing they wore, and let the surge of new springtime life carry them away.
Her heart thundered at the idea, her lungs drew in deeper draughts of air.
Oh, that sweet sense of the world opening to her, of infinite plenty. If she thought too much, she’d see how cruel it was to feel such hope, when the horizons of her life were truly so constrained. But just this morning, she couldn’t help the buoyant feeling.
She came up over a rise lined with sweet blooming hawthorn trees, agilely dodging their thorny branches, drinking in their perfumed scent, feeling more alive and vigorous than she had any right to
feel.
And she saw him.
John.
Standing right there in the clearing she’d been heading towards.
The sun made a halo of his golden hair, and a bright nimbus of the loose white linen of his shirt. He wore breeches and boots, but no hat, no jacket, no waistcoat, no neckcloth, and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows.
In nearly the same state of dishabille as she was.
His throat and a bare expanse of his chest beneath it gleamed like bronze. He was too beautiful—a young pagan god.
And he shouldn’t be there—he wouldn’t be there, like that.
She must be dreaming him up.
She stopped dead, but she made no move to cover herself. Surely, the sunshine around her rendered her dress all but transparent without her underthings beneath it to block the flow of light. But this wasn’t real. This was a dream—a fantastical bit of magic conjured by the May Day sprites.
His gaze was raking over her form, clearly taking in the sight of her limned by sunlight beneath the thin linen of her dress, and his fists clenched so hard, the muscles of his forearms bunched.
And then he spoke. “Mary,” he said. “I knew I would find you here.”
The sound of his voice was enough to break the charm.
She wasn’t imagining him. He was real, and flesh and blood, not a magical illusion.
And it was very, very dangerous to be alone with him, in this strange, loosened state she was in. She might not be strong enough to resist him, and she knew she had to resist him, for his sake, if not for hers.
No, it was for her own sake as well—she had to keep her distance from him so she could keep something of her inner self alive when he married elsewhere.
“What are you doing here?” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “Only the ladies are supposed to be out now. Gentlemen are supposed to stay at home in their beds.”
The line of his jaw tightened. “I know. I tried. I tried very hard. And then I kept thinking about you out here.”
“You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t think about me.”
He took a step closer. “I’m finding it hard to avoid these days. Especially when I’m in bed.”
A flutter went through her abdomen at his words. “Stay back.”
But he didn’t stay back. He took another step toward her. “This morning I thought of you walking in the woods,” he said, and his tone was low and urgent. “I imagined you with your hair down, walking through the flowers. I tried to convince myself that was only a fantasy, that you’d never dare do it in truth.” His breath held a moment, then released on a sigh. “But, damn it all, look at you. Better even than I imagined.”
The flutter she’d felt became a pulse. A hot pulse, throbbing through her breasts, through the core of her.
She dropped her basket then, folded her arms across her body to cover herself.
“No, Mary, don’t,” he demanded, his voice going rough. “Don’t hide from me. I want to see you. I need to see you. Please.”
She shook her head, almost dizzy with the combination of need and fear. “We can’t, John. What you need is to stay away from me. You need to go back home.”
He took one more step closer, close enough that she could see the dark golden hair that curled on his chest. Much closer than a gentleman should allow himself to come to a lady in her current state of undress. “Do you know how I knew to look for you here,” he said, “when all the other ladies stayed close the village?”
She meant to turn and run, but his gaze seemed to pin her to the spot. “How?”
“They’re doing this in the English way. Staying in places where Nature has been tamed. But you—you understand something they don’t.”
“What is that?
“That the rites of spring aren’t English at all. That’s they’re much older than that, much more powerful.”
Her breath shuddered. “I know. My father told me about the ancient Britons,” she said, trying to keep her voice light. She needed all the defenses of her education now. “The little hillock our church stands on was built by them, long before the Saxons came. They called this time of year Beltane. The burning away of winter, the coming of new life.”
Oh, why did the sun make his hair and shirt and skin glow so beautifully—he was like flame itself, like a heat that purified, that melted, while bringing both pleasure and pain.
“And long before the time of the Britons,” he said, “the Greeks called this time of year the Dionysia, in honor of their great god who made the vineyards grow. My history tutor at Cambridge was obsessed with the practice. Wrote monograph after monograph, and I read them all. I was fascinated.” His words were scholarly, but his voice became rougher still, deepening with desire. The pulse leapt at the base of his golden throat. “In Greece, spring is harvest time, not planting time. But the idea was the same—the people left their orderly homes and went into the open fields to sing and dance and give themselves over to their deeper physical natures, so the crops would continue to grow, so new livestock would be born, so life itself would be reinvigorated. In every way.”
Her whole body was shaking now. He’d moved so close to her, she fancied the air was warmer from the heat of his body. His eyes locked on hers. Her breasts ached, and her womb clenched. Slick moisture gathered between her legs.
She stepped backwards, overwhelmed by the impulses that shook her.
He moved with her. “Greek maidens would gather baskets of flowers, just as you are doing. And jugs of wine. Intoxication was not just pleasure, it was their sacred duty.”
Intoxication—yes. He was intoxicating her with his voice, with the intensity of his blue eyes, with his height and his breadth and the scent of his skin. She backed up more hurriedly, trying to escape the magnetic pull of his body. She felt roots beneath her feet, and knew the moment before she reached it that she’d backed herself against the hard barrier of a hawthorn trunk.
John kept coming, stopping barely a hands-breadth short of her. Every fiber of her being hummed with his nearness. “Young men would carry symbols of their desire—huge wooden carvings called phalloi.”
A hot blush bloomed through her. Her father had taught her enough Greek to know the meaning of that word. The hard, smooth trunk behind her back seemed suddenly to have more meaning than it had just a moment ago—a rising shaft, a hard, surging energy. No wonder the ancient peoples had worshipped trees.
John smiled at her, his eyes full of heat. “And the young people would give themselves over to the pleasures of the flesh, for days. It was their duty—to make the world live.”
She nodded shakily. “Fertility rites.”
“Yes. That was the whole point. For the Greeks. For the Britons. For the civilized world now, though we try to hide the truth from ourselves, try to call it quaint tradition. But some of us know what lies beneath. I know. You know.”
Her pulse beat so hard now it nearly deafened her.
“Let me touch you, Mary.”
Her fingers flew behind her back to brace her—the bark was sleek beneath her fingers and the scent of the blossoms was delicious, but she knew the branches just above her head were also full of ruthless thorns. Much like the temptation he was offering her. Sweet, but with the power to wound. Wound them both, forever, no matter what path they chose. She had to make him stop. “You can’t,” she said. “You shouldn’t.”
“Let me see you, then. I want to see you. Pull down your dress, let me see your breasts.”
“Why? Why do you even want to see them? You’ve seen them—they’re so small. They’re not—I’m not—enough for you.”
“Then why am I dying of need for you?” His chest came almost flush with hers, though the smallest space of air still separated them. “Your breasts are lovely, Mary. Perfect.” His eyes swept over her face. “And Lord in heaven, look at this hair of yours. You should never bind it up again. The color of it this morning—around the edges, it’s like flame.”
His warm breath buffeted
her skin. The shape of his mouth as he spoke was tantalizing. She wanted to touch her fingers to his throat, to his chest.
“Your thighs,” he murmured. “Let me see your lovely thighs again. I’ve been dreaming of them.”
She meant to say no, but instead she sighed and let her head fall back against the tree. Something too powerful was washing over her, through her. She couldn’t think, couldn’t summon the words she knew she needed to say.
And he seemed to take her sigh as sufficient permission to dig his fingers into the skirt of her frock and lift the thin barrier of muslin upwards. He bared her calves, he bared her knees, and finally he bared her thighs and the hot, slick place between them. Sunshine and spring air brushed her skin, and seemed to make her glow from the inside as well.
“Let me touch you,” John said again, the words rasping. “Please.” He leaned in further, laying his palms flat on the tree trunk on either side of her, pressing the fabric of her dress against the wood so the hem pulled tight across her hips. Hot need stabbed through her.
Her voice came out of her in a breath she didn’t plan on releasing. “Touch me, then.”
He groaned, and his mouth found its way into the hollow of her throat. His body surged into hers, his hands going to her waist, his hips thrusting against hers. His cock felt hard and huge through the fabric of his trousers, and he ground himself into her, against the mound of curls between her legs. The delicious pressure sent shock waves of pleasure through her breasts and belly and through every limb, through the very core of her.
And then he kissed her mouth.
It was more wondrous than she could have imagined. His lips were gentle and fierce at the same time, tasting her, fitting themselves to hers, finding all her subtle shapes, giving and seeking and answering all at once.
One of his hands came up to cup her jaw, to angle her face so he could explore deeper.
There was such tenderness in his touch.
And it was…personal. Undeniably personal. This was John kissing Mary—seeking deep inside her, for something more than just animal release.
